Foreign Bodies Read online

  I have made another improvement to my plan. At first I had planned to be alone with S. in the laboratory, but I feared I would be suspected of having pushed S. myself. I need a witness, but if I arrange for one to be outside, he might realize the laboratory was rotating. Furthermore, because I need to execute the plan at night-time, when there is nobody around and nothing can be seen through the window, my witness cannot be someone outside. That’s why I have decided to have a witness inside the room. I will need to make sure this witness doesn’t notice the laboratory’s movement if S. really falls to his death as planned. People usually go into a state of shock when something violent and out of the ordinary occurs, so even if I move the laboratory quickly back to its original state, this witness will probably not notice it.

  19XX, XX, XX

  I finally succeeded. I invited S. over and entertained him. Not knowing he was about to die, poor S. chatted on just as he always did, making fun of me. I hid my intentions and told him gruesome stories of poisonous spiders and mentioned that I had unfortunately lost one of them recently. S. naturally looked horrified. After a while, K., an assistant at the university zoology laboratory, arrived as per my invitation. I switched the secret button on and let the laboratory slowly rotate. No one noticed. To make sure no one would detect the movement, I kept on chatting. S. and K. probably noticed I wasn’t my usual, silent self.

  When the appropriate time arrived, I released the trapdoor spider I had hidden beneath my foot. It made its way sluggishly to S.’s feet. Having heard my terrible tales of poisonous spiders, S. turned pale, jumped up and ran towards the door (perhaps S. thought I had set the poisonous spider on him to kill him: he probably knew I hated him and his flight seemed to be genuinely fearful.) At that particular time, the door was a short distance from the staircase landing. But even a little is fatal. He missed his step, hit the staircase halfway down, bounced off a second time and finally hit the ground. He died instantly. My plan had succeeded perfectly, but even if he had not died instantly, nobody would have suspected me of murder. My witness K., of course, had no idea of the malice within me. Crying out in fear of the spider, fleeing to the door and missing the staircase: all were S.’s own actions. I returned the laboratory to its original state while K. was still in shock. The rotation sped up, but K. didn’t notice it at all.

  19XX, XX, XX

  Some idiots are making a ruckus beneath the laboratory. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone eventually sees through my plan, but there is nobody like that here now.

  19XX, XX, XX

  S. died. That is a clear fact. But his death does not offer me as much comfort as I had expected and I even feel something is lacking. I had planned to stop my research on spiders after I killed him. I thought that with his death, the university would offer me a lecturer’s seat, but there has been no such news. I am disappointed, but somehow I feel I can’t stop my research on spiders.

  19XX, XX, XX

  Still no news from the university. I have started again with my research on spiders.

  19XX, XX, XX

  I have succeeded in obtaining a male and female pair of a tropical poisonous spider species.

  19XX, XX, XX

  I feel I might be cursed by these spiders. My spiders, they glare strangely at me with eyes like a detective.

  19XX, XX, XX

  I am cursed! I had not noticed that S.’s ghost was inside this tropical spider! Look at those eyes! Those are the eyes of S. as he lay at the foot of the tower covered in blood! He has become a poisonous spider!

  19XX, XX, XX

  I am not going to lose. Not to a mere poisonous spider. S. is a fool too. As befitting of someone who got himself killed, he returned to this world as a spider. Come and try. I will crush you. I will pick you apart. But that look…ah, lately, I have become afraid of spiders. Those eyes, those eyes…The horrible eyes of that spider…

  19XX, XX, XX

  I am afraid of the eyes of the spider. I can’t sleep anymore in this room. Tomorrow, I will finish this. Wait for it, spider S., I will crush you with my bare hands.

  The terrifying spider diary ended there. I shuddered as I finished reading. Suddenly I was aware that within all the jars around me, hundreds, thousands of spiders, right of me, left of me, in front of me, in the back of me, were all crawling slowly towards me. In a frenzy I ran for the door. By a great stroke of luck the landing was right there. I flew down the stairs without looking back.

  I caught a fever and stayed in bed for several days. During that time, a fire broke out in the bizarre laboratory, everything inside burned down and the hundreds of spiders all burnt to death. The police believe a beggar or tramp sneaked inside and started the fire. Without the fire, that peculiar tower would have continued rotating in silence, but probably nobody would have noticed, I think, even now.

  The Venom of the Tarantula

  Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay

  Sharadindu Bandyopadhyay (1899–1970) has been described as Bengal’s answer to Arthur Conan Doyle, although there were naturally significant differences between their approaches to crime writing. He was educated in Calcutta, writing poetry and studying law, before introducing his series detective Byomkesh Bakshi in 1932. Most of the Bakshi stories—which have evocative titles such as ‘The Gramophone Pin Mystery’—are narrated by a writer called Ajit. Bandyopadhyay moved to what is now Mumbai in 1938 to write screenplays, and he continued to work in the film industry until the 1950s. A writer as versatile as he was popular, he also wrote stories of the supernatural (he created a ghost-hunter called Baroda), historical stories, and children’s fiction. Films and television series based on his stories continue to be popular to this day.

  Bakshi is a Satyanweshi, or truth-seeker, and he and Ajit form a pleasing duo, broadly in the Holmes-Watson tradition but distinctively portrayed. Pinaki Roy argues in The Manichean Investigators: a Postcolonial Rereading of the Sherlock Holmes and Byomkesh Bakshi Stories (2008) that the Bakshi stories are ‘generally aimed at solving principally social problems of the ordinary Indians in and around the subaltern metropolis of colonial Kolkata…Bandyopadhyay thus first of all negates the Eurocentric convention of granting primacy to the bourgeoisie.’ ‘The Venom of the Tarantula’, first published in 1933, and translated by Sreejata Guha, is one of the most celebrated stories about Bakshi. This is another story in the ‘impossible crime’ vein, featuring an ingenious poisoning.

  It was almost under duress that I got Byomkesh to leave the house.

  For the last month he had been concentrating on a complicated forgery case. He would sit with a pile of papers all day and try to conjure up the image of the criminal from it all. As the mystery thickened, so did his conversation trickle gradually to silence. I noticed that this endless ploughing through papers, sitting in the library day after day, wasn’t doing his health any good. But every time I brought this up, he would say, ‘Oh no, I am quite all right.’

  That evening I said, ‘I am not going to take no for an answer. We’re going for a walk. You need at least a couple of hours’ respite in the day.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘No buts. Let’s go to the lake. Your forger won’t give you the slip in two hours.’

  ‘Oh, all right.’ He pushed the papers away and set off, but it wasn’t difficult to guess that his mind hadn’t let go of the problem at hand.

  While walking by the lake I suddenly spotted a long-lost friend of mine. We had studied together until the Intermediate class—then he had entered the medical college. I hadn’t seen him since. I called out to him, ‘Hey, you’re Mohan, aren’t you? How are you doing?’

  He turned around and exclaimed delightedly, ‘Ajit! It is you! It’s been so long. So tell me, how is everything?’ After exchanging excited greetings I introduced him to Byomkesh. Mohan said, ‘So you are Byomkesh Bakshi? Delighted to make your acquaintance. I did suspect at times that the Ajit Bandyopadhyay w
ho writes about your exploits is our old friend, Ajit. But I wasn’t quite sure.’

  I said, ‘So what are you up to nowadays?’

  Mohan replied, ‘I have my practice here in Calcutta.’

  We strolled about and spoke of this and that. An hour passed pleasantly. I noticed that during the conversation Mohan opened his mouth a couple of times as if to say something, but then stopped himself. Byomkesh must have noticed it too because at one point he smiled and said, ‘Please go ahead and say what you want to say.’

  Mohan said, a little shyly, ‘There is something that I want to ask you, but I am hesitant. Actually it is such a trivial problem that it seems unfair to bother you with it. Yet—’

  I said, ‘That’s all right, tell us. If nothing else, it will at least serve the purpose of delivering Byomkesh for a short while from the hands of that forger.’

  ‘Forger?’

  I explained.

  Mohan said, ‘I see! But perhaps Byomkeshbabu will laugh at what I have to say.’

  ‘If it is amusing I shall certainly laugh,’ said Byomkesh, ‘but from your manner it doesn’t seem to be a laughing matter. Instead it appears that a certain problem has kept you pondering—you are desperate to find a solution to it.’

  Mohan said excitedly, ‘You are absolutely right. Perhaps it is very simple—but for me it has become an irresoluble conundrum. I am not entirely stupid—I think I have my fair share of common sense; yet, you’ll be surprised to know how an ailing old man, who is paralysed to boot, is duping me every single day. It isn’t just me; he is defeating his entire family’s attempts at strict vigilance.’

  In the course of the conversation we had sat down on a bench. Mohan said, ‘Let me tell you about it as briefly as possible. I am the family-physician in a very affluent household. The family goes back a long way to when the city was just coming up. In addition to other incomes and assets they own a market from which they earn a massive monthly amount as rent. So you can gauge their financial standing.

  ‘The master of this house is Nandadulalbabu. He is actually my only patient in that household. In his heyday he was such a profligate that by the time he reached the age of fifty his health gave up on him. His body plays host to a plethora of diseases. He has long been rendered immobile from arthritis. Now there are signs of paralysis as well. There is a saying among us doctors that there is nothing strange about man’s death; it is the fact he is alive at all that is a source of wonder. This patient of mine is a prime example of that.

  ‘Words fail me in trying to describe the character of Nandadulalbabu to you. Foul-mouthed; mistrustful, crafty, malicious—in brief, I have never seen a meaner nature than his. He has a wife and a family, but he isn’t on good terms with anyone. He would like to continue along the same depraved lines as he did in his youth. But his vitality has sapped and his health doesn’t permit such excesses any longer. Hence, he bears great bitterness and envy towards everyone—as if they were responsible for his condition. He is always looking for ways and means to pull a fast one on someone to prove his ability.

  ‘His body is weak and he has a heart condition too—hence he cannot leave his room. He sits there in his den, heaping unspeakable indignities upon the entire universe with every sentence he speaks and filling page after page with writing. He has a misplaced notion that he is an unparalleled litterateur; so, now in black, now in red ink, he writes and writes. He is terribly upset with the publishers—he believes that they are in on the conspiracy against him and therefore refuse to publish his work.’

  Curious, I asked, ‘What does he write?’

  ‘Fiction. Or it may even be autobiographical. Only once did I glance at a page of the stuff; never again have I been able to look at it. After you’ve read that filth, even a holy oblation won’t cleanse you. I am certain that even today’s young experimental writers would have a fit if they read it.’

  Byomkesh gave a slight smile and said, ‘I can see the character before my eyes. But what exactly is the problem?’

  Mohan offered a cigarette to each of us, lighted one for himself and said, ‘Perhaps you think that such a special character cannot possibly have any more qualities, right? But that is not so. He has another terrific trait—to add to his wonderful health, he has a dangerous addiction.’ He took a couple of puffs on his cigarette and continued, ‘Byomkeshbabu, you are always dealing with such people; the most inferior class of the society is regular fare to you. I am sure you are familiar with alcohol, marijuana, cocaine and many other such kinds of addictions. But have you heard of anyone being addicted to spider juice?’

  I gasped out loud, ‘Spider juice? What on earth is that?’

  Mohan said, ‘There is a certain breed of spiders from whose bodies a venomous juice is extracted—’

  Almost as if speaking to himself, Byomkesh muttered, ‘Tarantula dance! It used to be practised in Spain—the spider’s bite would make people cavort! It’s a deadly poison! I have read about it but I haven’t come across anyone using it in this country.’

  Mohan said, ‘You are absolutely right—tarantula. The use of tarantula extract is very prevalent among the hybrid Hispanic tribes of South America. The venom of the tarantula is a deadly poison, but if used in small quantities it can provide a tremendous thrill to the nervous system. As you can guess, this venom is very tempting to someone who cannot live without a constant state of nervous excitement. But continuous use of this stuff can prove to be fatal. The user would be sure to die of a fit of palsy.

  ‘I am almost certain that Nandadulalbabu had picked up this beautiful addiction at some point in his youth. Later, when his body became totally unfit, he couldn’t let go of it. It was about a year ago that I came in as his family-physician and, at that time, he was a confirmed addict to spider venom. The first thing I did was to prohibit this; I told him that if he wanted to live he would have to give up the drug.

  ‘There was quite a tussle over this—he wouldn’t let go of it and I simply wouldn’t let him have it. Finally I said, “I shall not let the stuff enter your house. Let me see how you lay your hands on it.” He gave a sly smile and said, “Is that so? All right, I shall go on having it—let me see how you stop me.” And thus, war was declared.

  ‘The rest of the family was, quite obviously, on my side and so it was quite easy to set up a strong barricade system within the house. His wife and children took turns in guarding his room so that there was no means of the drug reaching him. He himself is practically immobile. So he is unable to go out of the house and collect it for himself. After making such rigorous arrangements to prevent him from getting at the drug, I began to feel a sense of immense satisfaction.

  ‘But it was all in vain. In spite of all our precautions he continued to consume the drug. No one could figure out his means of gaining access to it. At first I suspected that someone within the house was secretly supplying the drug to him. So one day, I myself kept guard for the entire day. But amazingly, right under my nose he took the drug at least thrice. I could determine this by checking his pulse, but I could not figure out when and how he did it.

  ‘Since then I have searched every nook and cranny of his room, I have stopped any outsider from coming into contact with him, and yet I have been unsuccessful in stopping him from getting his narcotic fix. This is where things stand.

  ‘Now, my problem is that I need to locate how that man gets hold of the spider venom and how exactly he tricks everyone and consumes it.’

  Mohan stopped. I couldn’t tell if Byomkesh had become unmindful during the monologue but as soon as Mohan stopped speaking, he stood up and said, ‘Ajit, let us go home. I have suddenly thought of something and if my guess is right, then…’

  I realized that the forger was on his mind again. It was possible that the last part of Mohan’s story had entirely slipped by him. A little disconcerted, I said, ‘Perhaps you weren’t paying attention to Mohan’s tale—’
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  ‘No, no. Of course I have heard him carefully. It is a most amusing problem, and I must say I am also quite intrigued by it; but right now it will be difficult for me to make the time. It is a rather difficult case that I am handling now…’

  Perhaps Mohan felt a little offended, but he concealed the emotion and said, ‘Oh of course, in that case just let it go. It certainly isn’t right to bother you with such trivial matters. But, you know, if this mystery could be solved, perhaps the man’s life could be saved. What can be more frustrating than watching a man—albeit a sinner—die a slow death right before your eyes, simply by consuming poison?’

  A trifle abashed, Byomkesh said, ‘I didn’t say I wouldn’t look into it. It will take me at least a couple of hours’ cogitation to solve this riddle. It would also help if I could see the man himself. But I may not be able to make it today. It will certainly be a crime to let an unusual man like Nandadulalbabu die. And I shall not let that happen—you may be sure of that. But I need to return to my room right now—I think I may have been able to pin down the forger—I need to take another good look at the papers. Therefore, let Nandadulalbabu continue to consume his poison in peace for just another night—from tomorrow on, I shall put a spanner in his works.’

  Mohan laughed and said, ‘That is fine with me. Please give me a time that’s convenient for you and I shall arrange for the car to pick you up.’

  Byomkesh gave it a moment’s thought and said, ‘I have an idea—it may even help lessen your anxiety for now. Let Ajit accompany you and take a good look around. After hearing his report I should be able to give you the answer to your riddle either tonight or tomorrow morning.’

  It was impossible not to notice the shadow of disappointment that crossed Mohan’s face at the suggestion that I should go with him instead of Byomkesh. Byomkesh noticed it too and laughed, ‘Since Ajit is an old friend of yours, perhaps you do not have much faith in him. But please do not lose heart; in the company of greatness his faculties have now become so unusually sharp that a few examples of his perceptiveness might astonish you. It may even happen that he will solve your problem all by himself and not need my assistance at all.’