The Midnight Palace - Carlos Ruiz Zafon [7]
SHE PUT THE PHOTOGRAPH back into the box and took out a pendant she’d had made for Kylian years ago, a jewel she never had the chance to wear. It consisted of two gold circles, a sun and a moon, that fitted into one another to make a single piece. She pressed the centre of the pendant and the two parts separated. Aryami strung each half on a separate gold chain and put one round each of the babies’ necks.
As she did so, she considered the decisions she must make. There seemed to be only one way of ensuring the children’s survival: she must separate them and keep them apart, erase their past and hide their identity from the world and from themselves, however painful that might be. It was not possible for them to remain together; sooner or later they would give themselves away, and she could not take that risk. Aryami knew she had to resolve the dilemma before daybreak.
She took the babies in her arms and kissed them gently on the forehead. Their tiny hands stroked her face and fingered the tears that rolled down her cheeks. Both babies gurgled cheerfully at her, not understanding. She hugged them tight in her arms once more then placed them back in the improvised cot she had made for them.
She then lit a candle and took paper and pen. The future of her grandchildren was now in her hands. Taking a deep breath she began to write. In the background she could hear the rain easing off and the roar of the storm fading towards the north as an endless blanket of stars unfurled over Calcutta.
HAVING REACHED THE AGE of fifty, Thomas Carter thought that the city that had been his home for the last thirty-two years had no more surprises in store for him.
In the early hours of that morning in May 1916, after one of the fiercest monsoon storms he remembered, the surprise had arrived at the door of St Patrick’s Orphanage in the form of a basket containing a baby and a sealed letter marked personal and addressed to him.
The surprise was two-fold. Firstly, nobody bothered to abandon a baby in Calcutta on the doorstep of an orphanage, for there were plenty of alleyways, rubbish dumps and wells all over the city where it could be done more easily. Secondly, nobody wrote letters of introduction like the one he received, signed and leaving no doubt as to its author.
Carter examined his spectacles against the light, breathed on them, then wiped them with an old cotton handkerchief he used for the same task at least a dozen times a day – twice as much during the Indian summer.
The baby boy was asleep downstairs, in Vendela’s bedroom. The head nurse had been keeping a watchful eye on him since he’d been examined by Dr Woodward, who’d been dragged out of his bed shortly before dawn with no other explanation than a reminder of his Hippocratic oath.
The infant was essentially healthy. He showed some signs of dehydration but didn’t seem to be suffering from any of the catalogue of ills that cut short the lives of thousands of children, denying them the right even to reach the age when they’d be able to say their mothers’ name. The only things that had come with the child were the gold pendant in the shape of a sun that Carter held between his fingers, and the letter – a document which, were he to believe its content, placed him in a very awkward situation.
Carter put the pendant in the top drawer of his desk and turned the key. Then he picked up the letter and read it for at least the tenth time.
Dear Mr Carter,
I feel obliged to ask for your help in the most painful of circumstances, appealing to the friendship that I know united you and my late husband for over ten years. During that time my husband never ceased to praise your honesty and the extraordinary trust you inspired in him. That is why today I beg you to heed my plea with the greatest urgency, however strange it may seem, and if possible with the greatest secrecy.
The child I am obliged to hand over to you has lost both his parents. The murderer swore he would kill them and then wipe out their descendants.