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‘Why are you telling me all this?’ asked Ben. The sweat was pouring down his body then instantly drying due to the suffocating heat spat out by the boilers.
‘That city was home to a divinity called Dido, a princess who had sacrificed her body to the fire in order to appease the gods and cleanse herself of her sins. But she returned and was transformed into a goddess. That is the power of fire. Just like the story of the phoenix, the powerful bird whose flight fanned the flames.’
Jawahal stroked the machinery of his lethal creation and smiled.
‘I’ve also been reborn from the ashes and, like Cato, I intend to destroy every last shred of my destiny, this time with fire.’
‘You’re a lunatic,’ Ben said, interrupting him. ‘Especially if you think you’re going to be able to get inside me to stay alive.’
‘Who are the lunatics?’ asked Jawahal. ‘The ones who see horror in the heart of their fellow humans and search for peace at any price? Or the ones who pretend they don’t see what’s going on around them? The world, Ben, belongs either to lunatics or hypocrites. There are no other races on this earth. You must choose which one to belong to.’
Ben stared at Jawahal for a long while, and for the first time the boy thought he could see the shadow of the man who had once been his father.
‘Which did you choose, Father? Which did you choose when you returned to sow death among the few people who loved you? Have you forgotten your own words? Have you forgotten the story you wro
te about the man whose tears turned to ice when he returned home and saw that everyone had sold themself to the travelling sorcerer? Perhaps you can take my life too, just as you’ve taken the lives of all those who crossed your path. I don’t suppose it would make much difference any more. But, before you do, tell me face to face that you didn’t sell your soul to the sorcerer too. Tell me, with your hand on that heart of fire you hide yourself in, and I’ll follow you to hell itself.’
Jawahal’s eyelids drooped as he slowly nodded his head. A gradual transformation seemed to creep over his face, and his eyes paled in the burning steam. Defeated and dejected. It was the look of a great wounded predator withdrawing to die in the shadows. And that sudden image of vulnerability, which Ben glimpsed for only a few seconds, seemed more horrifying than any of the previous incarnations of the tormented spectre, because in that image, in that face consumed by pain and fire, Ben could no longer see the spirit of a murderer, only the sad reflection of the man who had been his father.
For a moment they stared at one another like old acquaintances lost in the mists of time.
‘I no longer know whether I wrote that story or some other man did, Ben,’ Jawahal said at last. ‘I no longer know whether those memories are mine or I dreamed them. I don’t know whether I committed those crimes, or whether they were the work of other hands. Whatever the answer to these questions may be, I know I’ll never be able to write another story like the one you remember, or understand its meaning. I have no future, Ben. I have no life either. What you see is only the shadow of a dead soul. I am nothing. The man I was, your father, died a long time ago, taking with him everything I might have dreamed of. And if you’re not going to give me your soul, then at least give me peace. Because only you can give me back my freedom. You came to kill someone who is already dead, Ben. Keep your word, or else join me in the shadows …’
At that moment the train emerged from the tunnel and passed through the central track of Jheeter’s Gate, casting forth its blanket of flames. The locomotive went under the tall arches that formed the entrance to the metal construction and continued along a line seemingly sculpted by the first light of dawn.
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.’
