Marco Polo’s wartime arrest and imprisonment interrupt the life he had been trying to hold together across Calcutta, Lisa, and Susan Munro. Arrested because his connection to Italy drew police attention during the war, he remained in custody until its final day. His release did not restore what had been suspended: he left for Italy unwillingly, spent years making do with small jobs, and only later found a route back to Calcutta.

Circumstances and Stakes

Before the arrest, Marco Polo had returned to work after settling some matters in Calcutta. He could barely gather five hundred rupees, which he sent to Lisa with a promise to send the remainder as soon as he could. He had no way to write to her or learn what was happening, and no friend who could serve as an intermediary. The money was therefore more than a payment: it was one of the few practical acts available to him while communication and knowledge were cut off.

Susan Munro did write once, to tell him that she had bought a new car. The news sharpened the worry that had already been gathering around their unresolved affairs. When the lawyer asked for more money, Marco Polo borrowed it and sent it to Susan’s address. This sequence places the arrest amid obligations he was still trying to meet: money sent to Lisa, money borrowed for the lawyer, and an uncertain marriage whose legal resolution remained out of reach. The passage does not establish that any of these circumstances caused the arrest; instead, their proximity shows how abruptly his efforts to manage private matters were overtaken by wartime suspicion.

Arrest and Detention

The arrest is presented as the decisive rupture. Police attention fell on Marco Polo again because of his connection to Italy, at a time when Italy’s relationship with the Allies was widely known. The account gives no charge, hearing, or detail of the conditions of confinement. Its emphasis is on the blunt cause identified by the narrative: a connection to a country placed on the opposing side of wartime alliances was enough to bring him into police custody.

Marco Polo remained a prisoner until the last day of the war. The duration makes the detention more than a passing interruption: his freedom was held in abeyance for the entire remaining conflict. When the war ended, he went directly to Italy, but the departure was reluctant rather than a homecoming freely chosen. The narrative compresses the release and departure into a sharp reversal: the end of imprisonment did not return him to the life he had left in Calcutta, but sent him away from it.

Displacement and Return to Work

In Italy, Marco Polo kept himself afloat through small jobs on the Riviera. The description presents survival, not a settled recovery. He eventually recognized a deep imbalance in his life: a large part of what he had invested was, in his image, held in a frozen account in a distant eastern city. His desolation and resentment give emotional form to the distance created by the war. Calcutta remained the place to which his work and past were tied, yet it was inaccessible to him for a time.

He first sought work in a hotel in Rangoon. He was accepted at a good salary because there were no strong candidates, but he had not left the Riviera in order to live in Rangoon. After working there for a while, he looked for another position. In Calcutta, the manager’s post at the Hotel Shahjahan was vacant; its owners wanted a candidate with his qualifications and recommendations and received him with due consideration. The appointment brought him back to the city, though it did not by itself settle the personal questions that had been left behind.

Unresolved Affairs and Significance

On returning to Calcutta, Marco Polo asked about Susan Munro and the divorce. The woman whose presence had set events alight in wartime Calcutta had disappeared into the city’s vast human landscape. The lawyer’s office would give him no news; the elderly lawyer had sold his share to his partner and died. Marco Polo then asked at court and learned that no divorce petition had been filed in his name. The legal outcome he had been trying to arrange had not advanced in his absence, leaving his return to the Hotel Shahjahan shadowed by an unresolved marriage.

The episode connects public conflict to private suspension without suggesting that the two are equivalent. Wartime suspicion takes Marco Polo out of circulation; imprisonment separates him from the city where his commitments and prospects remain. Afterward, the sequence of Italy, Rangoon, and Calcutta measures the distance between mere survival and the recovery of a position. His eventual appointment as hotel manager is a practical return to work, while the unanswered questions about Susan Munro show that a restored career does not mean that the past has been repaired.