The Man with the Greyscale Shadows

THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION

The kite’s shadow was still trembling on the terrace, but the kite itself had gone.

Tuli stared at the flat black shape lying beside the water tank. It had the same crooked tail she had tied with blue thread that morning. It even had the tear near the left corner where Bappa had poked it by mistake with a pencil. But above the terrace there was only hard white noon sunlight and a few crows arguing over a television aerial.

“That is not possible,” said Bappa.

“Thank you, Professor,” said Tuli. “I had not noticed.”

She had wanted only one thing that day: to fly her own kite before the older boys took over the roof. It was the first day of the summer holidays, the lanes of north Calcutta smelt of hot dust and frying telebhaja, and every child in Banamali Lane had been told to stay out of trouble until lunch.

Tuli had lasted eleven minutes.

Her kite had risen beautifully, wobbling like a new thought. Then a sudden tug had come from nowhere. The string had snapped. The kite had sailed past the green shutters of the old Mukherjee house and vanished behind its locked courtyard wall.

Except its shadow had stayed behind.

Bappa crouched and touched the dark shape with one finger. Nothing happened.

“Maybe it is only a stain,” he said.

“Stains do not flap.”

The shadow gave a small shiver, as if an invisible kite above it had caught a wind that no one could feel.

From below came the voice of Tuli’s grandmother. “Tuli! If you have broken another flowerpot, tell the truth now and save time.”

Tuli looked at Bappa. Bappa looked at the shadow.

“We need my kite,” Tuli whispered. “If I come down without it, Ronit-da will say I lost it because I am little.”

“You are little.”

“I am ten.”

“That is a little number.”

“Your marks in maths are little numbers.”

Bappa shut his mouth. Friendship, Tuli felt, was mostly knowing where to press.

They ran down the stairs, past damp walls and a calendar showing a smiling goddess, and slipped out through the front gate. Banamali Lane lay white and empty under the sun. Even the stray dogs had tucked themselves into strips of shade. Ordinary people moved with one dark shadow stuck to their feet.

Then the strange Bengali man came round the corner.

He wore a clean but old white panjabi, rubber sandals, and round spectacles mended with black thread. His hair stood up in a soft grey cloud. In one hand he carried a paper packet from a sweet shop. In the other he held a broken red umbrella though there was not a cloud in the sky.

But that was not why Tuli stopped breathing.

The man had seven shadows.

One was black, sharp, and ordinary. The others spread from his feet in different directions, each a different grey: charcoal, smoke, ash, wet newspaper, pencil dust, and one pale silver line so faint it seemed ashamed to be seen. They moved when he moved. They bent round stones. They slid over paan stains and the yellow edge of a sleeping cat.

Bappa made a squeak.

The man turned.

His eyes were kind, tired, and much too alert.

“If you are going to follow me,” he said, “walk on the left. The black one bites when people step on it.”

Bappa jumped backwards.

Tuli did not. Her heart was beating like a bicycle bell, but she thought of Ronit-da laughing on the roof. She thought of the kite shadow flapping without its kite.

“Have you seen a blue kite?” she asked.

The man looked at the sky, then at the old Mukherjee house, then at his pale silver shadow. It had turned towards the locked courtyard wall.

“No,” he said. “But one of me has.”

That was how the adventure began.

The man’s name was Nirmal Chatterjee, though everyone in the lane called him Chhaya-kaku when they thought he could not hear. Shadow Uncle. He lived two lanes away above a shop that repaired harmoniums, umbrellas, and sometimes schoolbags if the tear was not too proud. The grown-ups said he was harmless in the same voice they used for things that made them nervous.

“Why do you have seven shadows?” Bappa asked as they followed him along the lane.

“Bad bookkeeping,” said Nirmal-kaku.

“That is not an answer.”

“It is a very Bengali answer. It explains everything and nothing.”

Tuli liked him a little for that.

They passed a tea stall where glasses stood upside down on a tin tray. A tram bell clanged far away on the main road. Someone somewhere beat dust from a rug. The smell of hot oil floated from Ghosh Sweets, and Tuli’s stomach gave a rude little growl.

Nirmal-kaku heard it. Without looking back, he opened the paper packet and handed them each a tiny sandesh.

“Payment,” he said, “for not screaming.”

“I did not scream,” said Bappa.

“You whistled through your nose.”

“That was science.”

Tuli laughed before she could stop herself. The sandesh was cool and grainy on her tongue.

They reached the locked gate of the Mukherjee house. Once, people said, a judge had lived there. Now only pigeons, peeling paint, and a caretaker named Bhulu-da used the courtyard. The gate was iron, green, and hot enough to fry a papad. Behind it the courtyard lay still. The blue kite was not visible.

“Bhulu-da has gone to his sister’s house,” said Tuli. “He locks everything. Even the dust.”

Nirmal-kaku’s ash-grey shadow slipped through the bars.

Bappa gasped. “Did you see that?”

“Yes,” said Tuli.

“Then I am not fainting.”

The shadow slid across the courtyard floor. It climbed the steps, passed a cracked marble lion, and stopped under a half-broken wooden bench. Then it lifted one long finger and pointed.

“Your kite is not in the sky,” said Nirmal-kaku. “It is under something.”

“How can a kite go under something?” Bappa asked.

“By being carried.”

Tuli pressed her face to the gate. Under the bench she saw a flash of blue.

Her kite.

Beside it lay a cloth schoolbag.

“That is Paltu’s bag,” she said.

Paltu was the smallest boy in Class Four, smaller even than Tuli, with spectacles that made his eyes look surprised all day. He lived with his grandmother and never ran if walking could be defended. That morning he had been crying near the sweet shop because his library book had vanished. The school librarian had said he must pay a fine if he did not return it on Monday.

“Why would Paltu’s bag be inside a locked house?” asked Bappa.

Nirmal-kaku did not answer. His smoke-grey shadow was sniffing the ground, though shadows did not have noses. It moved to the side wall, where a guava tree leaned over from the next courtyard.

Then the shadow pointed upward.

On a branch hung a strip of red thread.

Tuli recognised it at once. Ronit-da used red thread on his kites.

Her face grew hot.

“He took mine,” she said.

Bappa looked worried. “Ronit-da is thirteen. He has elbows.”

“So?”

“His elbows are famous.”

Nirmal-kaku crouched beside them. His many shadows folded round him like tired paper.

“Do not decide too fast,” he said. “Fast anger is often lazy thinking wearing shoes.”

“But his thread is there.”

“Yes.”

“And my kite is there.”

“Yes.”

“And Paltu’s bag.”

“Also yes.”

“Then what is the no?”

The man smiled. “The no is that your eyes have seen three things but your mind has already written a whole story.”

Tuli hated that this sounded true.

A clang came from inside the house.

All three froze.

Someone was in the courtyard.

From the shadow of the back veranda came a boy’s voice, thin and angry. “Go away.”

“Paltu?” called Tuli.

There was a scrape, then silence.

Bappa grabbed Tuli’s arm. “Maybe it is not Paltu.”

“Maybe you are made of boiled potato.”

“Boiled potato is useful.”

“Then be useful quietly.”

Nirmal-kaku looked down at his pale silver shadow. It had gone stiff and straight, pointing through the gate like a ruler.

“Paltu,” he called gently, “we are not here to scold you.”

“Everyone scolds,” said the voice from inside. “That is what mouths are for.”

Tuli understood that sentence in her stomach. She had heard enough mouths that week telling her she was too small, too noisy, too quick to argue, too slow to fold clothes, too likely to fall from roofs, too everything.

“I only want my kite,” she said. “And maybe your bag.”

Paltu came out from behind the veranda pillar. His school shirt was dirty. His hair had leaves in it. He held Tuli’s blue kite in one hand and his own library book in the other. The book had a brown cover and a bent corner.

“I did not steal it,” he said.

“Then why are you hiding in a locked house?” Bappa asked.

Paltu’s lip trembled. “Because Ronit-da said if I told, he would hang my bag from the tram wire.”

At the mention of Ronit-da, Tuli’s anger stood up again.

Nirmal-kaku said, “Tell from the beginning.”

Paltu swallowed. “I was returning my library book. Ronit-da and his friends were cutting kite strings from the next roof. Your kite fell in the guava tree. He climbed over the wall to get it. Then he saw my bag outside Ghosh Sweets and threw it over too, just for fun. I climbed after it because Dida will cry if I lose another book. Then Bhulu-da locked the gate and went away. I shouted, but everyone thought it was the pigeons.”

“Pigeons do not shout ‘open the gate’,” said Bappa.

“In Calcutta,” said Nirmal-kaku, “people ignore many clear sounds.”

Paltu gave a watery laugh.

Now they had a different problem. The gate was locked from outside, the wall had glass pieces fixed on top, and Bhulu-da would not return until evening. Paltu had been trapped since morning. His face looked brave in the wrong way, the way children look when they are about to cry but have signed a treaty with themselves not to.

“We will get you out,” said Tuli.

“How?” asked Bappa.

Tuli looked at the guava tree. Its branch hung low over the wall. Ronit-da had climbed over from there. Tuli was smaller. She might fit between the branch and the tin shade.

Bappa followed her eyes. “No.”

“You do not even know my plan.”

“Your plan is written on your face in large foolish letters.”

“I am lighter than Ronit-da.”

“And less elbowy,” said Paltu from inside, trying to help.

Nirmal-kaku rested the broken umbrella against the gate. “There is another way.”

His wet-newspaper shadow stretched across the lane, thin and careful, until it reached the tea stall opposite. It climbed the leg of a wooden table and tapped the brass bell that Haru used when he wanted more milk from the back room.

Ting.

Haru’s head popped out. “Who rang?”

The shadow rang again.

Ting.

Haru crossed the lane, wiping his hands on a towel. When he saw Paltu inside the gate, he said a word Tuli was not allowed to say and ran to fetch the spare key from Bhulu-da’s cousin, who sold lottery tickets beside the pharmacy.

While they waited, Paltu pushed Tuli’s kite through the bars. It was bent but alive.

“Sorry,” he said.

“You did not do it.”

“I held it badly.”

“That is allowed.”

The kite shadow on the terrace, Tuli suddenly realised, had not been a stain. It had been one of Nirmal-kaku’s grey shadows, stretched all the way from the lane to the roof, showing where her ordinary want had become attached to a larger trouble. Or perhaps not. Perhaps shadows had their own manners.

Haru returned with the key and three other people who had come because Calcutta loved a rescue if it happened before lunch. The gate opened with a rusty shriek. Paltu stepped out, clutching his book.

His grandmother arrived five minutes later, breathless, angry, and crying. She hugged him first and scolded him second, which Tuli thought was the proper order.

Then Ronit-da arrived.

He came swaggering until he saw Nirmal-kaku. Then his swagger lost air.

“I was only joking,” he said.

Tuli gripped her kite. “Your joke locked Paltu in a courtyard.”

“I did not know Bhulu-da would lock it.”

“You knew about the bag.”

Ronit-da looked at the ground. His one ordinary shadow lay black and thin beside his foot. Nirmal-kaku’s seven shadows surrounded him without touching him. They were not frightening exactly. They were worse. They were patient.

Paltu spoke in a small voice. “You can say sorry without dying.”

For a moment no one moved. A yellow taxi honked on the main road. Somewhere a pressure cooker whistled.

Ronit-da muttered, “Sorry.”

“Properly,” said Tuli.

He looked at Paltu. His ears had gone red. “I am sorry. I will cover the book if it is damaged.”

“And my kite,” said Tuli.

“Your kite is already ugly.”

Nirmal-kaku’s black shadow twitched.

Ronit-da swallowed. “I mean, I will help mend it.”

That was better than nothing.

By late afternoon, they were back on the terrace. Paltu’s book had been dried under a fan. The kite had been patched with a scrap of old exercise book and Ronit-da’s best red thread, donated under public pressure. Bappa had eaten two telebhajas and claimed it improved his courage.

Nirmal-kaku stood near the water tank, where the sun slanted low and golden over the roofs.

This time, Tuli saw, he cast only one shadow.

“Where did the others go?” she asked.

“Some went home,” he said.

“Were they Paltu’s?”

“One was his fear. One was your kite. One was Bappa’s whistle-through-the-nose science. One was Ronit’s shame, which is heavier than it looks.”

“And the silver one?”

Nirmal-kaku looked at the repaired kite in her hands. “That one was yours.”

Tuli frowned. “I was not lost.”

“No. But you were waiting to be trusted.”

She did not know what to say to that, so she ran instead. The string hummed against her fingers. The kite lifted, dipped, and caught the evening wind. Its patched belly shone pale against the sky.

On the terrace floor, one clean dark shadow flew with it.

Then, for just a second, another shadow appeared beside Tuli’s feet: small, grey, and quick as a secret smile. It pointed not at the kite, not at Nirmal-kaku, but down towards the lane, where tomorrow’s ordinary troubles were already gathering.

Tuli held the string tighter.

“Bappa,” she said, “after tea, we are going outside.”