The Darya Nandkarni Misadventures Omnibus: Books 1-3

by Smita Bhattacharya

  Looking at the polyptych again and craning her head around, ‘Where’s the clown?’ Darya asked.

  The women stared at her, mystified.

  Darya fished out her mobile phone and showed the picture she’d taken from the restaurant’s menu card. The two women squinted at the picture for a long minute before letting out nervous chuckles.

  ‘Gone,’ one said, flicking a hand. She turned to her companion for confirmation.

  ‘Hoți … how they say … vandali,’ the other added. Ruined by vandals, Darya guessed.

  The woman pointed to a dark patch on a panel to Darya’s right. The spot—the size of a tea saucer—was likely made by a splash of black paint. She noted scratches along the edges, as if someone had tried to scrape the artwork out first, and afterwards, having failed to do so, had painted over it.

  ‘How long ago?’ Darya asked, her eyes fixed on the spot. No vestiges of the harlequin were visible. The women could well be making this up, for all she knew.

  ‘Last year,’ one replied. ‘When the church shut fully for construction.’

  Okay, so this was a non-starter.

  ‘Has anyone else come looking for the harlequin?’ She had to ask about the bodies next and was looking for an opening to gently slip in the question without alarming the two.

  ‘Many people,’ the women chorused. It was a well-known tourist attraction, they told her. However, in the past few years, they hadn’t opened it for public viewing, unless there was a large group of important people asking to see the harlequin or they’d been given direct orders from the owner to show to their guests.

  Darya tried her luck. ‘Was a short Canadian here asking to see it? Long hair, crooked legs, very pale?’ She acted out the description.

  The women shook their heads, the ends of their matching lavender-coloured headscarves shivering behind them.

  The sun had grown milder in the sky. The gardens around her looked bountiful and well-tended—a courtyard of nodding dog roses and yellow buttercups.

  Turning to the women, Darya decided to go for it.

  ‘What about the dead bodies that were found here twenty years ago?’ And before they could pretend they did not know what she was talking about, or dither, she handed each a 200 lei note.

  She need not have worried, or perhaps the money did the trick—the women seemed eager to speak. They didn’t seem surprised at all that Darya had asked the question. Most likely, several tourists asked about the bodies.

  ‘Water well,’ one of them breathed.

  Darya followed as they led her through the mud path that snaked through the garden. And as they walked in lockstep, they told her the story.

  Darya listened, all ears.

  The grisly tale had started nearly a century ago, with more fiction than fact in its body, Darya was sure. And it’d only grown in fancy as it passed from ear to lips, through the years. The two women had grown up in the village of Biertan and had joined the church as novices in 1990 when it reopened briefly after the fall of Ceausescu and communism.

  ‘Tell me everything,’ Darya insisted. ‘Right from the start.’ She had to stop them several times to understand what they were saying and rein in their excitement, but in the end, it all came together neatly, albeit sounding fantastical.

  In the early 1900s, a hobby cult had sprung from the rural pastures of Moldova, in the north of the Kingdom of Romania. The cult grew quickly in popularity and spread like wildfire in the regions around; it was the strongest and thriving the most in its southern neighbourhood, Transylvania. What started out as a pastime for farmers after the harvesting season was adopted enthusiastically by the richer folk. They comprised commercial agrarians, craftsmen, merchants, bishops, soldiers, even a few priests.

  The reasons for the cult’s rapid proliferation were threefold. First, executing its objective required skill and stealth, and it introduced a thrilling interlude in their otherwise humdrum lives. Second, it gave the rich and powerful a reason to meet, drink, and socialise, all the while boasting to each other about their conquests. And the third and the most appealing, the members told themselves they were doing the Lord’s work.

  Their mission was simple: to make the world a better place to live in.

  Darya asked the woman to pause. The words had an ominous ring to them. ‘What does that mean?’ she asked. Her throat felt dry and she wondered briefly if she should ask the women for some water, but she didn’t want to interrupt them and this absurd tale.

  It was giving her the goose bumps.

  Also, because the story she was hearing right now was frighteningly similar to the one she’d left behind on Mumbai’s Chapel Road: rich men, a clandestine cult, rituals and conquests, a secret and thrilling game.

  ‘How did they make the world a better place to live in?’ Darya asked, although she was afraid to hear the answer.

  The women exchanged glances and swapped a few words in Romanian. With a quick bob of the head, one of them scuttled away, towards the room Darya had found them in earlier, which held an insipid exposition of local life and excavations.

  ‘Scuzi,’ the other spoke for her friend, jerking a thumb at her retreating back. ‘One minute. She back.’

  True to her promise, a minute later, the woman reappeared. She had a Bible in her hand, open on a page towards the end. She held the book up and pushed it towards Darya, tapping on a passage which looked like it had been thumbed over several times over.

  Gingerly, Darya retrieved the Bible from her hands, training her eyes on the passage she’d been pointed to.

  The words were in Romanian.

  Darya looked up; eyebrows raised.

  Slapping her forehead, the woman took out a pencil which had been miraculously wedged in her bra strap and wrote down on the page in precise letters: Archangel Michael. ‘Chief of angels,’ she explained and pointed to the page on the Bible again. ‘He falls … throws …’ she mimed as if she were pushing someone, ‘… Satan from heaven. Killed Satan’s men.’

  Darya did not understand. ‘So?’

  ‘The rich men be like Archangel. They … umm … push devils from earth.’

  ‘They took off …’ the other one made a snuffing action with her fingers, ‘how you say … useless people, the weak.’

  Darya’s head riled. ‘You mean … they killed people?’

  The two women nodded vigorously.

  It was loners and drunks at first, those whom no one would miss. Later, it was just about anyone.

  The stories were thought to be urban legends for most of the cult’s believed existence. In Biertan, there were rumours that a few of the church’s priests were involved, and the covey of rich, young boys who came for summer school every year learnt not the Bible but something else altogether and did the cult’s bidding. It was less a summer school to learn the scriptures, more classes to practice their blood sport.

  And after the church reopened and the remains of seventeen bodies were discovered inside the medieval water well, the legends were legends no more.

  The woman pointed to an elliptical patch of purple tulips. ‘Found there. Below.’ Darya walked to it. The women followed closely behind. The well had since been filled up and covered. All that remained was a large wooden cross that had been implanted into the ground to mark the site, like a tombstone. Mud, fallen leaves, and gold streaks covered the cross’ body which was otherwise disintegrating rapidly. In a few years, it would be all but gone. Only the gold letters embossed on the arms would remain.

  Something familiar about it …

  Darya clicked a picture on her phone.

  Then, attempting nonchalance, ‘Irina Brasovnski,’ she casually mentioned the name. ‘Do you know her?’

  The women exchanged glances and smiled. They were small, shrewd smiles.

  ‘We know Irina.’

  ‘She in church with us.’

  ‘A rich man came to take her many year back. She in Sibiu.’

  ‘What was this man’s name?’ Darya asked.
>
  They shrugged. They didn’t know. Only that he was rich, very sick, and needed nursing care. The man seemed to know Irina’s granduncle who used to serve as the bishop of the church before the communists took over. The man from Sibiu was said to have studied under the old bishop in the church’s summer school.

  After the bodies were found and the church ceased to function in its totality, Irina didn’t have much to do in Biertan, save for assisting in stray church activities every now and then. Hence, the bishop offered Irina’s services to the rich Sibiu businessman. Tittering, one of the women added, but we know why he really took her.

  ‘Why?’ Darya asked, puzzled.

  Irina’s entire family had served the church in one way or another and the old bishop was the family head. She was sent to live with him when she was twelve, to cook and clean for him, and also to train as a nun. Some months later, she accused him of abuse. No one believed her and she eventually retracted her claim. She continued living with him—without as much as a peep—and so everyone gossiped she’d made it all up. Or that they were having a thing going on between them.

  Theories raged in Darya’s head. She’d realised that while Irina couldn’t have been involved in the deaths at the church, the old bishop might’ve been, and he could’ve taught her the ways of the cult when she came to live with him.

  The women continued their story. Darya willed herself to focus.

  After the bodies were found, the church closed, pending investigation. The church clergy professed their innocence, calling it a communist conspiracy to defame them. Officers from Bucharest came and conducted a cursory examination. A few arrests were made. Priests were transferred. But the bodies were in such a state of disintegration, and the fact that no one had reported them missing or had come to claim them, helped the police wrap things up faster than they’d planned. The dead were laid to rest in the church grounds and tulips were planted over the well to expunge any uneasy memories.

  But there was no expunging the rumours that started again.

  Of a secret group that had disbanded, forced out by communism. Made up of rich and powerful men. Men who thought they were untouchable. Killers of gypsies and wanderers. These men had failed to get rid of the bodies before the communist regime began and the church ceased to function. Or perhaps, they simply didn’t bother, confident they couldn’t be tracked down. A supposition that turned out to be true when the church reopened, and the bodies were discovered.

  Darya recalled Bogdan’s account of the unexplained deaths in Romania. Could those be related to these that she was hearing about? She needed to go back and ask him, learn the details.

  But the women weren’t finished yet.

  A strange sensation coursed through Darya’s spine as she heard what they had to say next.

  The harlequin had showed up on the polyptych inside the church about ten years ago. The figure of a sombre clown had been painted, bowing to an image of Archangel Michael. A group of boys caught running away from the church confessed to doing it. They called themselves the descendants of the Arlechins.

  On her way back, Darya googled ‘arlechin’ on her mobile phone …

  … and was disappointed to find …

  nothing.

  At least not at first.

  The first few web pages that came up explained to her that the Arlechin was nothing more than the Romanian version of harlequin, further elaborating who and what the harlequin actually was: a comic servant character in stories and plays typified by his chequered costume. His role was that of a light-hearted, nimble, and astute sidekick, often acting to thwart the plans of his master. The word ‘harlequin’ had been derived from the mischievous ‘devil’ that were part of the early French passion plays. The character became popular in England during the seventeenth century, taking centre-stage in several comedies, later spreading in fame to the rest of the continent. Physically, the harlequin was described as wearing a costume covered in irregular patches, a hat outfitted with a fox tail, and a red and black mask. Sometimes, he also wore a cape.

  Darya clicked on web page after web page feverishly, hoping to discover something she didn’t already know. And it was while she was on the third search result page that she stumbled upon a short newspaper article, originally in Romanian, translated to English online. The article was accompanied by a scan of the newspaper from ten years ago.

  A gang of boys had been apprehended lurking on the grounds of a church in Biertan in the dead of the night. On being arrested, one confessed their fathers had studied in the summer school a long time ago, and they’d been curious to see the well of bodies. The boy also added to the newspaper’s reporter, he thought the murderer was doing God’s work and should be venerated instead of being reviled.

  Darya’s breath caught in her throat.

  Finally. Something.

  She scrolled down the page with trembling fingers.

  The reporter was offering to her readers an interpretation of what she thought the boy meant.

  ‘In the New Testament of the Bible, Michael leads God’s armies against Satan’s forces in the Book of Revelation, where during the war in heaven he defeats Satan. In the Epistle of Jude, Michael is specifically referred to as “the Archangel Michael”. Images of Saint Michael started appearing in Catholic churches in the fourth century when he was first seen as a healing angel. Over time he came to be honoured as a protector and the leader of the army of God against the forces of evil.’

  So, the boys had imagined the murderer to be an angel or at least his emissary.

  Darya scrolled further down.

  The reporter described the boys as callous and flippant, irreverent to the police that had caught them, laughing even as they were being cuffed and led away. They were the Arlechin’s descendants, they shouted to the crowd that had gathered to see what the commotion was all about. Word had spread quickly.

  The boys had been let off the very next day; each had a rich father, and none lived in Biertan. Their misdemeanours weren’t considered serious. The church was going for reconstruction anyway after the bodies were found, and the owners did not want more disorder.

  The boys had been young, fifteen or sixteen years old.

  Darya read their names: Christian, Dan, Oleg, Mahmut.

  She paused.

  Oleg.

  Darya scanned through the rest of the page. There were no other mention or details about them. No surname. No background information.

  Opening another web page, she googled Oleg Shamir.

  A list of Facebook profile suggestions came up. She clicked on the one whose photo looked like the Oleg she knew.

  It was a private account. Only four of his posts were public. A picture of Oleg flashing a victory sign with a group of his friends in what looked like an opulent room (someone else had tagged him), a picture of him with a skinny girl in a bikini by a pool, two pictures of a party with Oleg barely visible … not much help. He was listed as single, his location as Krakow, Poland. So, he hadn’t updated it in a while.

  Darya went back to the article on the church vandalism.

  A nagging feeling tugged at her brain. She was sure she’d missed something ... a clue that was staring right at her.

  The boys had been let off with no jail time.

  Ah, yes.

  Darya scrolled down, realising she’d missed reading the end of the article which was tucked underneath an ad for cheap flights to India.

  The boys had painted a picture of the Arlechin in the polyptych, in obeisance to the Archangel. Neither the police nor the locals had noticed it at first, until one of them confessed to the police. He told them he was a descendant of the Arlechin and had meant to leave a mark inside.

  But his version of the popular Arlechin had comically large eyes. The eyes were symbolic, he said; that was how members recognised each other. The Arlechins have their eyes on you, they said when they’d found a target.

  The church authorities decided to let the picture of the Arlechin remain
on the altar, intending to take it off during the reconstruction. Nevertheless, news of the disfigurement spread far and wide. People flocked to the church asking to see it.

  Darya scrolled to the bottom of the page.

  And stopped.

  Something had caught her attention: the words the boys had yelled to the crowds.

  The same words.

  Darya’s spine curled.

  She zoomed the phone’s screen and read again.

  She’d read the very same words etched on the arms of an ancient cross not less than an hour ago.

  The cross that was laid over the well.

  Până ajungi la Dumnezeu, te mănâncă sfinţii

  Before you reach God, the saints will eat you.

  Then something else struck Darya.

  She’d seen the words even before that.

  Even before she knew what they meant.

  Week 12: The Present Day

  It was mid-week when Ana-Maria was able to meet Darya next. She’d informed Darya of the last-minute change of schedule, apologising profusely for the postponement of their meeting, blaming familial obligations. She’d offered to reorganise Darya’s travel for her, and now her flight was scheduled for the afternoon of the following day.

  On her part, Darya hadn’t objected; she knew this was going to be the last time they’d meet, and she could afford to wait. In any case, she wasn’t looking forward to what was coming next.

  So, at the golden hour of dusk on the appointed day, with apprehension in her heart, Darya rang the bell to Ana-Maria’s house.

  A few minutes later, she was sitting with Ana-Maria in the attic.

  ‘Alina called Christine to check if you’ve arrived,’ Ana-Maria murmured, as they took their places. ‘She’s looking out for you.’