FICTION | Logan Royce Beitmen Shooting Barin Ghosh

FICTION

Shooting Barin Ghosh

An excerpt from a novel-in-progress

By Logan Royce Beitmen

Imagine fire. Imagine it in black and white. Big white flames and heavy plumes of black smoke. Through gaps in the smoke, you begin to catch what looks like the top of a forehead, the bottom of an ear. The wind changes direction, clearing away some of the smoke that has been obstructing your view. You can see clearly now that it’s the face of Barin Ghosh. Lit from below with flickering shadows, it has an eerie, menacing quality. You see the flames dancing in the lenses of his wireframe glasses. His brows are slightly furrowed. His hair is greasy and rumpled. Paper-thin flakes of carbon float up from the black smoke. They hit his cheek and dissolve into ash. When he wipes them away, it leaves distinctive black and white streaks on his medium-dark skin. The streaks appear stylized, as if drawn on with lipstick. Almost like war paint.

Behind his head, in the deep space of the background, you see his white marble villa, overgrown with trees and vines. It’s lit

by gaslamps, inside and out. His gang of revolutionaries, young men in white robes and white dhotis, are rushing in all directions across the lawn, carrying stacks of books and buckets of metal hardware or pushing wheelbarrows full of newspapers. Two of them are dragging a bulging white mass, a collection of objects they’ve wrapped in a bedsheet. Everyone is in silhouette. We see their forms moving against the white façade of the villa. Barin’s back is turned away from them. He’s not looking at them. He’s stoking the fire. A second-story window opens, and someone starts throwing rifles out of it. They land in the shrubs below. A thin teenager with a wheelbarrow full of newspapers, rolls up next to Barin. He’s out of breath.

“Burn or bury?”

“Burn,” says Barin.

We watch from overhead as the newspapers fall, ten or twelve at a time, onto the bonfire. Barin jabs at them with a metal poker. Close-up on one of the papers. The masthead reads “l’anarchie.” It’s a slab-serif typeface, similar to the kind they used for wanted signs in the Wild West except the letters are rounded at the top and swoop up at the ends like cute little dollops of gelato. The fire burns the paper from the inside out — a slowly expanding blob of blackness, like blood from a bullet wound seeping through a white shirt — until the paper turns completely black.

In the blackness, we hear a voice. “They’re here! They’re here!” and suddenly everyone is shouting in Bengali.

Four police wagons pull into the yard. The lanterns on the front of the wagons swing violently, casting wild shadows through the clouds of dust that follow them in. Their horses whinny. Ten officers jump out. They handcuff everyone. No one resists. The officers cram everyone into the back of two

wagons — everyone, that is, except for Barin and Hem, whom the Chief Inspector orders to open the door for him. He calls out the names of three of his officers. “You’re with me. The rest of you, split up and search the grounds.”

The men outside use handheld tungsten-filament searchlights. They sweep the beams of light left and right in front of them as they walk. Within short order, they discover most of the rifles and handguns and some of the bomb-making materials, as well as some seditious literature, which is halfburnt but still able to be identified and catalogued.

Meanwhile, inside, most of the bookshelves are empty, but the Chief Inspector sees several books on the floor in the study. One of them is Aurobindo’s old Greek-English dictionary. He holds it up. “We taught you bastards Greek? I suppose this is the thanks we get for trying to educate the natives.” Barin and Hem say nothing.

Another officer is ripping drawers out of the oak desk in the corner. “What’s this?” he says. One of the drawers is not the right depth. It has a false bottom. He cracks through it with his nightstick and uncovers a trove of letters. Barin stiffens his lips.

“These anarchists thought they could pull one over.”

“Good work, Anderson.”

They collect the letters in a burlap sack.

The Chief Inspector leads everyone back outside, when they hear a call from the other side of the duck pond. “Come quick!” An officer has spotted the two large tanks of picric acid that Hem and Ullas hastily stashed in the reeds over there. The police photographer runs over with his camera. A loud pop, a bright flash, and the pungent smell of molten glass. He replaces his flashbulb and crouches down. Another pop-flash and that same flashbulb smell. The Chief Inspector saunters over more slowly,

behind Barin and Hem. His men have weapons pressed against their backs to keep them from running. All of them are walking in a tense cluster along the edge of the pond, where a chorus of frogs is croaking. A light breeze causes the moonlight reflected in the pond to scintillate slightly. The ducks are sleeping.

The Chief Inspector reaches the tanks. His men are aiming their beams at the tanks, and they’ve already pulled back some of the reeds to make it easier to see.

“Canary yellow,” he says. “Remember that color, gentlemen. That’s picric acid. Enough there to blow up half of Calcutta.”

“A goldmine for you, Inspector,” says Barin. “This oughta win you a nice big promotion.”

“And you a good hanging.”

The officers march Barin and Hem back to the front gate, cram them in the back of one of the wagons, then gather up the last scraps of evidence, congratulate themselves, and drive away.

Alipore Jail, exterior. The façade resembles a child’s drawing of a castle — completely flat but with a crenelated top. It’s a reinforced concrete building, and it’s been painted bright red. Or possibly black.

Interior. The officers bring the suspects in and hand them over to the guards, who line them up, one at a time, and take their mugshots. “Face forward.” Click. “Turn to your right.” Click. They are made to undress and put on striped prison uniforms. Fade to black.

You are inside a black void. In the middle of the void, a white isosceles trapezoid fades into view. A glowing white trapezoid, twice as wide at its base than at its top. It is a table, but we are seeing it in forced perspective. So, when Barin, in his striped prison uniform, is brought in from the right side and made to sit

down, and the British man in the magistrate’s wig joins him on the left, we get a clear, three-quarters view of them both, even though we understand that in reality they are seated across from each other on a regular rectangular table, looking directly into each other’s eyes.

Magistrate: Do you wish to make a statement before me?

Barin: Yes.

M: Do you understand that your statement is being made before a Magistrate and will be admissible in evidence against you?

B: Yes.

M: Is your statement being made voluntarily, or has any pressure been put upon you?

B: Nobody can make me do anything.

M: Please proceed, then.

B: I’ve said it already in my written statement.

M: [Sighs.] Have you any objection to making that statement to me here?

B: What, from the very beginning?

M: Yes.

B: Very well. In my statement I’ll be a little vague about time, because it’s difficult to remember dates. [Barin reads.] I quit college after one year and went to Baroda, where my brother Aurobindo was working for the Maharajah.

M: At what age did you come to India?

B: I was one year old. [Clears his throat and continues reading.] In Baroda, Aurobindo taught me revolutionary history, and I became a political missionary. I moved through the districts of Bengal and started gymnasiums, where young men could learn physical exercises and study politics.

M: The Body-Building Society.

B: Yes. [Continues reading.] By that time, the Swadeshi and Boycott agitation had begun. With my friends Abhinash and Bhupendra, I started Jugantar.

M: Your newspaper, which was the subject of two sedition cases.

B. We had the guts to publish the plain truth about what you Britishers are doing. We put your brutality on the record.

M: Please proceed with your statement.

B. [Reads.] I managed the paper for one and a half years and then gave it over to the present managers so I could focus on recruiting. I collected, all together, fourteen or fifteen young men from about the beginning of 1907 until now. We were always thinking of a far off revolution and wished to be ready for it, so we began collecting weapons in small quantities. All together, I collected eleven rifles, four revolvers, and one pistol. Among other young men who came to be admitted to our circle was Ullaskar Dutt. I don’t remember exactly when, but Ullas said he wanted to be useful as he had learnt the preparation of explosives. He had a small laboratory in his house without his father’s knowledge, and he experimented there.

M: You saw it?

B: He told me about it. [Continues reading.] With Ullas’s help, we began preparing explosives in small quantities at the Garden House.

M: The house at 32 Murari Pukur Road, where you were arrested.

B: Yes. [Continues reading.] In the meantime, another friend of ours, Hem Chandra Das, after I think selling part of his property in Midnapore District, went to Paris to learn explosives. When Hem came back, he joined Ullas in preparing explosives and bombs at our house. This was only five or six

months ago, after the press prosecutions became numerous, which is when we began to think seriously of using explosives.

M: As revenge? Is that why you targeted Chief Magistrate Kingsford?

B: Yes. But not only that. Wherever we went to ask for money for our cause, we were encouraged to use explosives.

M: Encouraged by your donors?

B: Yes. We took that to be the voice of the nation, the will of the people. So, we began preparations.

M: Who were your donors?

B: I do not wish to say.

M: You believe political murder will bring Independence.

B: No.

M: Then why did you do it?

B: It’s what the people wanted.

I yell “Cut!”

Yesinia stops rolling and does three hard finger snaps against the leg of her corduroy jumpsuit. “Why, Lenny? It was going perfect.”

“Barin’s hair,” I say.

“Again with the hair, man.”

“It’s still wrong. Barin, Magistrate, you two stay put. Gloria, let’s see those wigs again.”

The actor playing Barin turns to Magistrate 2 and mumbles something, which I can’t hear due to the building’s acoustics. We call it a soundstage, but really it’s a 30,000-square-foot warehouse. The floor, walls, and ceiling are all made of solid concrete. It was a produce warehouse before Mr. Chuck bought it, like where grocery stores would store their onions or whatever. Its ridiculously echoey. That doesn’t really matter, because I’m

planning to re-record all the audio later and dub it in, Italian style. Like Fellini always did. Or Pontecorvo, when he made The Battle of Algiers.

Gloria turns to get the wigs.

Yesinia has me look through the viewfinder of her camera. “Tell me you still think it’s wrong from this angle.”

“It’s wrong.”

“It’s not wrong.”

“It’s wrong, Yesinia. I’ll show you.” I go over to my desk — a sheet of plywood on metal sawhorse legs — and open my laptop.

“Man, not this again.”

“I know we’ve seen these a million times, but we don’t have it yet.” I pull up the two mugshots of Barin Ghosh from his 1908 arrest. One head-on, one in profile. “Look at him, then look at our Barin.”

“I mean… they’re not identical. But this is an art film. I thought we weren’t gonna stress about historical details. I thought we were on the same page about this.” She shakes out her curls and redoes her scrunchy.

“It’s just about the spirit, the feeling.”

Gloria is pushing the wig rack through the black void. Its clattery hardware and creaky wheels send soundwaves bouncing in all directions like a ghost dragging metal chains through an echo chamber. I know this place will drive me crazy by the time we finish shooting. Also, we painted the whole thing black months ago, during pre-production, so it still has a strong paint smell. But if it didn’t smell like paint, I guess it would smell like what it really is, a grocery store dumpster.

The wig rack. I look at the four Barin wigs. I have to admit, they all look pretty similar to the one he’s already wearing. I

point to the second one. “What about this?”

“You said it looked too emo,” says Gloria. Her own hair today is a purple fashion mullet.

“Oh, yeah. Maybe we should trim it.”

The actor playing Barin asks if we’re on break yet. He needs a cigarette. Magistrate 2 says he could use one, too.

“Alright, everyone take fifteen.”

Yesinia turns to Gloria. “You think Barin’s wig is good, right?”

“Of course. It’s my wig. But it’s up to Lenny if it’s right for the film.”

“She thinks I’m obsessing over nothing, but a shitty wig can ruin a picture. Yesinia, did you ever see Oliver Stone’s Alexander?”

“You’re talking about with Colin Farrell, right? That bleach blond thing?”

“It didn’t even fit his head.”

“Man, that was a shitty wig.”

“Right! It doesn’t matter how great the writing is, or how great the acting is, or how great the cinematography is…”

“Yeah, but Gloria doesn’t make shitty wigs,” says Yesinia. “Tell him, Gloria.”

“I’m not getting involved. You two work it out. Just tell me what to do.”

“I don’t know. Lenny wants us to look at these pictures again, so let’s just do it, I guess.”

“You want me to talk about the pictures?”

“Yeah. He’s not gonna let us do nothing else.”

“Sure, I don’t mind. Well, Barin’s hair is basically a short shag. It’s slightly asymmetrical. The texture is thick and almost straight, but it’s got a little wave to it. Slightly rumpled, slightly greasy. A bedhead kind of look.”

“Right!” I say. “He slept on the floor. So, what do you call that? A floorhead look?”

“Sure,” says Gloria.

“Lenny,” says Yesinia, “if our film’s great, no one’s even gonna notice the wig.”

“That’s a big problem,” I say, “because I want them to notice it. I need that wig to communicate to the audience everything there is to know about Barin. He cut his own hair because he believed in self-sufficiency. That’s the whole idea of Swadesh. Cutting your own hair, making your own clothes, etcetera. Everything’s D.I.Y. And Barin’s gang are a band of brothers, a band of equals. Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité. They took those ideals seriously. And you can see that in his hair. We just need to figure out how to translate that so everyone else can see it — so audiences can get all that content and meaning and the feeling that his hair represents in one instantaneous gestalt.”

“Lenny, you know what you sound like? You sound like Nick Cage in Wild at Heart.” She holds her fists against the top of her jumpsuit like she’s holding the lapels of an imaginary jacket, and she puts on her dumb-guy voice. “Did I ever tell you this snakeskin jacket represents a symbol of my individuality and my belief in personal freedom?”

“Yeah, that’s it! And it’s not a joke. For Barin, his hair represents freedom. It’s the same thing as his revolution. It’s the perfect symbol! It’s impulsive. It’s messy. But it’s also authentic, you know? And it’s not even punk, because this was like a hundred years before that. Or seventy years, whatever. But when you think about who he was, and how he lived, and then you look at that hair, I mean it’s punk! Barin basically invented punk.”

“I can make it more punk,” says Gloria.

“Yeah, maybe exaggerate it.”

“You’re wanting that wig to do too much, man. No wig’s gonna be good enough for you, if that’s what you want.”

“We have to try, Yesinia. I’m telling you. If we get the Audience Award at Cannes, it’ll be for that wig.”

“Man, we won’t even get to submit for Cannes if you keep wasting time.”

“I got this,” says Gloria. “I’ll just exaggerate it.”

“Yeah,” I say. “But subtle. It can’t look like we’re trying.”