The Midnight Palace - Carlos Ruiz Zafon [86]
Jawahal raised his eyes, and Ben saw in them all the horror and profound loneliness that imprisoned his soul.
As the train crossed the few remaining metres towards the fallen bridge, Ben put his hand in his pocket and pulled out the matchbox containing the single match he had saved. Jawahal thrust his hand into the boiler and a cloud of pure oxygen enveloped him. Slowly he seemed to fuse with the machinery that housed his soul, the gas tinting his outline the colour of ashes. Jawahal gave Ben one last look and Ben thought he could see the gleam of a solitary tear gliding down his face.
‘Free me, Ben,’ murmured the voice in his mind. ‘It’s now or never.’
The boy pulled out the match and struck it.
‘Goodbye, Father,’ he whispered.
Lahawaj Chandra Chatterghee lowered his head as Ben threw the lighted match at his feet.
‘Goodbye, Ben.’
At that moment, for a fleeting second, the boy felt the presence of another face – a face wreathed in a veil of light. As the river of flames spread towards his father, those other deep sad eyes looked at him for the last time. Ben thought his mind was playing tricks on him when he recognised the same wounded look as he’d seen in Sheere’s eyes. Then the Princess of Light was engulfed for ever by the flames, her hand raised and a faint smile on her lips, without Ben ever suspecting who it was that had just disappeared into the fire.
LIKE AN INVISIBLE TORRENT of water, the blast flung Ben’s body to the far end of the engine and out of the blazing train. As he fell, he tumbled through the scrub that had grown up alongside the rails. The train continued its journey following the track on its lethal route towards the chasm. Ben jumped up and ran after it. Seconds later, the cab in which his father was travelling exploded with such force that the metal girders of the collapsed bridge were thrown into the sky. A pyre of flames rose towards the stormy clouds like a fiery bolt of lightning, transforming the heavens into a mirror of light.
The train leaped into the void, a snake of steel and flames crashing into the black waters of the Hooghly. A thunderous blast shook the skies over Calcutta and beneath the city the ground trembled.
The last breath of the Firebird was extinguished, taking with it, for ever, the soul of its creator, Lahawaj Chandra Chatterghee.
Ben fell to his knees between the rails as his friends ran towards him from the entrance to Jheeter’s Gate. Hundreds of small white tears seemed to be falling from the sky. Ben looked up and felt the drops on his face. It was snowing.
THE MEMBERS OF THE Chowbar Society met for the last time that dawn in May 1932 by the vanished bridge on the banks of the Hooghly River opposite the ruins of Jheeter’s Gate. A curtain of falling snow awoke the city of Calcutta, where nobody had ever seen the white mantle that was beginning to cover the domes of the old palaces, the alleyways and the immensity of the Maidan.
As the city’s inhabitants stepped out into the streets to gaze at the miracle, the members of the Chowbar Society walked up to the bridge and left Sheere alone with Ben. They had all survived the events of that night. They had witnessed the descent of the flaming train into the void and seen the explosion of fire rising high into the sky, slicing through the storm like a blade. They knew they might never talk about the events of that night again and that, if they ever did, nobody would believe them. And yet, that dawn, they all understood that they had only been guests, random passengers in a train that had emerged from the past. Shortly afterwards they looked on in silence as Ben embraced his sister beneath the falling snow. Gradually, the day pushed away the darkness of a night without end.
SHEERE FELT THE COLD touch of snow on her cheeks and opened her eyes. Her brother Ben was cradling her, gently stroking her face.
‘What’s this, Ben?’
‘It’s snow,’ he replied. ‘It’s snowing over Calcutta.’
The girl’s face lit up for a moment.