The sweat began to drip off Farley's forehead now, as he watched the horned creatures burrowing, writhing, wriggling in frantic search. His breath grew laboured; his head began to spin. He sat up, gasping, the sight of these wilful, struggling creatures still vivid in his eyes. His gaze strayed to the window, and discovered a row of faces lined up against the glass, watching him, as he squirmed in his seat, mopping his brow. His eyes locked with Mangala's; she was standing in front of all the others, staring at him, smiling to herself. Clutched in her hand, in full view, was the body of the decapitated bird, the blood still oozing from its macabre wound.

'Tell him,' the woman said with a mocking smile, 'tell him that what he sees is the creature's member entering the body of its mate, doing what men and women must do… '

And here, at this point of revelation, which shows that Farley had already arrived at the conclusion that was to make his erstwhile team-mate famous, the narrative ends. For now, unable to contain himself any longer, Farley flung the slides at the woman and stalked quickly out of the laboratory.

But before franking the letter for the post, next morning, Farley added a few scribbled lines in the margin: 'In haste: much that I feared has been confirmed in these last hours. Shortly before matins, there was a knock on my door: it was Cunningham's young assistant. He told me – oh so many things – I shall write of them all to you in time. Suffice it to say for the present, that everything is other than what it appears to be, a phantom of itself. The young man has promised to reveal everything to me if I would but accompany him to his birthplace. Fortunately the place of which he spoke is not far from the location of my clinic. We are to leave tomorrow: I shall write again and in greater detail, dear friend, once I know more… '

But Elijah Farley never reached Barich: he disappeared during the journey, never to be seen again. The police discovered that he had indeed boarded the train at Sealdah, as scheduled, but had disembarked before his destination at a remote, rarely used station called Renupur, in severe monsoon weather. A guard was said to have reported later that a young man had been seen carrying his luggage.

Abruptly Ava began to beep: Rest indecipherable, unable to continue…

Chapter 22

MURUGAN could not get to sleep.

Sweltering under the mosquito net, he lay awake, watching the ceiling fan beat the heavy monsoon air, its stubby blades flashing hypnotically in the thin crack of light that was shining through the stubbornly unfastenable balcony door. The bedclothes had bunched up around his waist in moist, sweat-soaked clusters. Taking off his vest, he rolled it into a ball and dropped it out of the mosquito net. He was naked now, except for his cotton boxer shorts.

The generator was still pounding away at the wedding down the road. The music seemed even louder now. But somehow, despite all that noise, he could hear the mosquitoes clearly, droning patiently around the bed, testing for openings, gathering in excitement every time a hand or a foot brushed against the fabric. Soon he couldn't tell whether the buzz was inside the net or outside; whether the tingling in his limbs came from their interrupted probings or the chafing of the moist sheets.

He flattened himself against the mattress and tried to lie still. Spreadeagling his arms and legs he waited – waited to discover whether they were really inside the net; whether his inflamed skin would allow him to discern the feel of their bites.

It was strangely intimate to lie there like that, against damp cloth, spread out in that elementally open posture of invitation, of embrace, of longing. When he looked down at his body, lying flat on the bed, he could not tell whether he was waiting for them to show themselves to him, or whether he was showing himself to them: displaying himself in those minute detailed ways that only they were small enough to see, to understand, because only they had eyes that were designed to see not the whole but the parts, each in its uniqueness. Involuntarily he flexed his shoulders, arching his back, offering himself up, waiting to discover where they would touch him first, where he would first detect the tingling prick of their bites, on his chest or his belly, on the muscle of his forearm or the weathered codpiece of his elbow.

The fan became a blur; the mosquito net melted into a milky fog. He was floating outside it now, looking in, at people he knew, knew very well, even if only through books and papers. And now he was in again, inside the net; he was one of them too, lying on a hard hospital charpoy, stripped, naked, watching the English doctor uncork a test tube full of mosquitoes into his net. In his fist he still clutched the coins he had been given at the hospital gates. He held on to them tightly, savouring their feel, their reassurance; they were so cool to the touch, so hard edged; they made everything so simple, so clean: a handful of coins, a rupee, for handing on the thing that lived in his blood, for safekeeping, to the doctor.

He saw faces around his bed now, rippling, like reeds, beyond the surface of the mosquito net, faces that were watching him, studying his body, as it lay there in its urgent nakedness; faces he knew, or recognized, a grey-haired woman smiling through twinkling bifocals; a gap-toothed boy, grinning, circling the bed; an old man with tears in his eyes, peering at him in the darkness; a thin, young woman, holding hands with her friend. They were standing around his bed in attitudes of concern, like nurses and doctors' assistants, waiting for him to sink into anaesthetized oblivion.

And now the bearded Englishman reappears, dressed in his white coat, smoking a cigar, armed with half a dozen test tubes; he reaches in, with a little butterfly net, pulls it out and expertly traps an engorged mosquito in a test tube, covering the opening with a handkerchief-wrapped thumb. He holds up the test tube and shows it to the others and they clap; they are excited, full of encouragement.

The Englishman draws mightily on his cigar and puffs into the test tube; the insect dies, the tiny buzzing creature that is carrying his blood inside it. The doctor holds it up and shows it to the others, they reach for it eagerly; they want to see it for themselves; this extrusion of his flesh, and in their eagerness the test tube slips from their fingers, falls to the floor, shatters, filling the room with a thin tinkle of breaking glass.

Murugan sat suddenly upright, the sweat pouring off his face, not sure whether he was still dreaming or awake. The net was buzzing with mosquitoes; he could see them dancing like motes, in the finger of light that bisected his bed. His whole body was aflame, covered with bites. He had been scratching himself furiously in his sleep; he could see blood on his fingernails, and on the sheets.

He climbed out of the bed and walked around the room, scratching hard. The air was heavy with the smell of his own sweat. He opened the door and stepped out on to the balcony.

The street below was empty now, but the generator was still running in the building down the street. The archway at the entrance to the wedding seemed brighter than ever, flooding the street with light. Relays of workers were running back and forth through the entrance, loading their bamboo handcarts with stacks of folding chairs and tables.

Suddenly, with a squeal of rubber, a taxi came shooting around the Rawdon Street corner and stopped at the gates of the old mansion at number three. A woman in a sari stepped out. She was too far away for Murugan to get a look at her face, but the light from the wedding arch was just strong enough to give him a glimpse of a streak of white, running through her hair. Taking a key out of her purse, she unlocked the gates and went in.