The Midnight Palace - Carlos Ruiz Zafon [65]
‘Your father had arranged to meet the soldiers inside Jheeter’s Gate, a labyrinth that only he knew, and under the pretext of showing them the Firebird, he led them into the tunnels. Llewelyn, however, had taken his own precautions, and before going to meet the engineer he had kidnapped your mother, and both of you with her. Just as Chandra was about to eliminate his blackmailers, Llewelyn revealed that he was holding you and your mother, and he threatened to kill all of you unless your father handed over the Firebird. Chandra was forced to surrender. But this wasn’t enough for Llewelyn. He ordered his men to chain your father to the engine, planning to cut him to pieces when the train began its journey, and then, right in front of your father, he cold-bloodedly plunged a knife into Kylian’s throat. He let her bleed to death slowly, hanging her from a noose in the central vault of the station. He told her he would leave you, Ben and Sheere, in the tunnels to be devoured by rats.
‘Leaving Chandra chained to the engine, Llewelyn ordered his men to start the train and take the Firebird with them. Meanwhile he was going to hide the babies in a tunnel where nobody would ever be able to find you. But things did not go according to plan. That idiot Llewelyn was overconfident and had supposed that Chandra Chatterghee would simply hand over a machine with the exterminating capability of the Firebird to an assassin like him. But Chandra had taken every precaution imaginable and had fitted the Firebird with a secret timer, known only to himself, that would release all the destructive power of the machine after a few seconds if anybody but him tried to use it.
‘As Llewelyn and his cohort of thugs boarded the train, the gang leader made a decision: as a parting gift and a prelude to the revenge he was planning to exact on the city once he had mastered the deadly invention, he would destroy the station, letting the fire raze Chandra’s work and the lives of all those who had gathered to witness its launch. However the moment Llewelyn ignited the Firebird, he also signed the death sentence of every single person on that train, including himself. Five minutes later an inferno was unleashed, taking with it the bodies and souls of both the innocent and the guilty.
‘You will be wondering why I lied to you about the prison where Jawahal was held or why his name was never mentioned in the records. Before I continue, and this is the most important thing, I want you to understand that, whatever you may hear, Chandra was a great man. A man who loved his wife and who would have loved his children if he’d had the opportunity to be a father to them. Now that I’ve said that, I will reveal the truth …
‘When your father was young and fell ill with fever, he did not end up in a shack by the river where a boy looked after him until he was better, as I told you. Your father was brought up in an institution called Grant House that still exists in South Calcutta. You’re too young to have heard the name, but there was a time when it was infamous. Your father arrived at Grant House after witnessing a terrible event when he was barely six years old. His mother, who was unwell and earned her living by selling her body for a pittance, set fire to herself in front of him, offering herself up as a sacrifice to the goddess Kali. Grant House, where Chandra grew up, was a home for the mentally ill – what you’d call a lunatic asylum.
‘For years he was confined to the corridors of that place, with no parents or friends other than people whose lives were defined by delirium and suffering. People who cried out that they were devils, gods or angels only to forget their own names the following day. By the time he was old enough to leave the institution, Chandra’s entire