The Midnight Palace - Carlos Ruiz Zafon [32]
‘An animal?’
‘I don’t know. It was probably just my own imagination.’
Aware of Bankim’s disdain for superstition and alleged supernatural phenomena, Ben knew the teacher would never admit to having seen something that was beyond his powers of analysis or understanding. If his mind couldn’t explain it, his eyes couldn’t see it. As simple as that.
‘If that’s the case,’ Ben insisted one last time, ‘what else did you imagine?’
Bankim looked up at the blackened gap that a few hours earlier had been Thomas Carter’s office.
‘I thought this thing was laughing,’ Bankim admitted in a whisper. ‘But I’m not going to repeat that to anyone.’
Ben nodded and, leaving Bankim by the ambulance, he walked over to his friends, who were desperate to hear about his conversation with Carter. Only Sheere observed him with visible concern, as if, deep in her heart, she alone was capable of understanding that Ben’s news would steer events down a dark and fatal path from which none of them would be able to escape.
‘We need to talk,’ said Ben calmly. ‘But not here.’
I RECALL THAT MAY MORNING AS THE FIRST SIGN OF a storm that was relentlessly closing in on us, shaping our destiny, building up behind our backs and swelling in the shadow of our complete innocence – that blessed ignorance which made us believe we were worthy of a special state of grace: because we had no past we felt we had nothing to fear from the future.
Little did we know that the jackals of misfortune were not pursuing poor Thomas Carter. Their fangs thirsted for younger blood, blood infused with the stain of a curse that could not be hidden, not even among the noisy street markets or in the depths of Calcutta’s deserted palaces.
We followed Ben to the Midnight Palace, searching for a secret place where we could listen to what he had to say. That day none of us feared that behind the strange accident and the uncertain words uttered by the scorched lips of our headmaster there might be any threat greater than that of separation and the emptiness towards which the blank pages of our future seemed to be leading us. We had yet to learn that the Devil created youth so that we could make our mistakes, and that God established maturity and old age so that we could pay for them …
I also remember that as we listened to Ben’s report of his conversation with Thomas Carter, each one of us, without exception, knew he was keeping something from us, something the wounded headmaster had confided in him. And I remember the worried expression on the faces of my friends, mirrored on my own, as we realised that, for the first time in all those years, our friend Ben had chosen to keep us in the dark.
A few minutes later he asked to speak privately with Sheere, and I thought that my best friend had just delivered the final blow to the doomed Chowbar Society. But future events would prove that, once again, I had misjudged Ben and the loyalty which our club inspired in his soul.
At the time, however, watching my friend’s face as he spoke to Sheere, I realised that the wheel of fortune had begun to turn backwards. Our opponent in the game was prepared to bet high and we didn’t have the knowledge, or experience, to match him.
IN THE HAZY LIGHT OF THAT HUMID SCORCHING DAY the reliefs and gargoyles on the facade of the Chowbar Society’s secret hideout resembled wax figures melting into the walls. The sun lay hidden behind a dense bank of clouds and a suffocating mist rose from the Hooghly River, sweeping through the streets of the Black Town like the fumes from a poisoned marsh.
Ben and Sheere were talking behind two fallen roof beams in the central hall of the old mansion, while the others waited about a dozen metres away, glancing occasionally at the pair with suspicion.
‘I don’t know whether I’ve done the right thing, hiding this from my friends,’ Ben confessed to Sheere. ‘I know they’ll be upset, and it goes against the oaths of the Chowbar Society, but if there’s even the remotest possibility that there’s a murderer out there who wants to