by Sakiv Koch
"The guard who had shot at me came forward. The fool peered through leaves and vines with his rifle pointing at the ground. I waited till he saw me. When his eyes met mine, I grasped the barrel of his rifle and pulled it out of his hands. I spat at him in answer to his squeal of terror and then shot him between the eyes.
"The other one at the door, I knew, was not that great of an idiot, and wouldn’t come forward recklessly. What I didn’t know—and wanted very badly to know—was how many of the Prince’s guards were traitors. Just these two? A half? All of them? How many of these men were inside the house? Had they already murdered...I grew so desperate at the flash of this last thought that I sprang up and ran out into the open blindly, pistol in one hand, rifle in the other.
"The other guard was no longer at the door. He had been making a circuit toward the spot I had just left—crawling on the ground to come upon me from behind. We shot at each other at the same instant. His bullet tore my left ear off. Mine blew away that traitor’s head.
"What took place in the next minute is a blur in my mind. I saw muzzle-flashes from five different points. Blizzards of bullets raged all around. I dived for these planters and took cover behind them. I now knew that the enemy had some opposition, which meant I had a few loyal men in the bungalow. Who, how many, where, and for how long, I still had no idea. I still had no idea if the killers had gotten the Prince.
"My only option was to get inside the house, where I had left the Rani and the Prince with the nightwatchman a few minutes ago. I didn’t have the time to think out elaborate strategies. Every second counted. I began to move away from the front of the house, where the gunfight was most intense. There’s a small door at the back, used to get in and out of the bungalow’s kitchen garden. That’s where I went, crawling in the roofless tunnel formed by the house’s sidewall and the line of these big planters which starts here and runs all the way to the back of the bungalow.
“I found the backdoor unbolted and unlocked, which wasn’t unusual for that door at that hour. I went into the kitchen, a bit upbeat at gaining entry into the house so easily. I had advanced less than a dozen feet when I got a rifle-butt blow on the base of my neck. I staggered. Would have fallen on my face but powerful hands caught both my arms, steadying me before half-carrying, half-dragging me further into the house.
Sohan Singh paused. I felt him shudder at the memory of what he saw next.
"They took me into the drawing-room at the front of the house, which was my intended destination in any case. Rani Meena Devi was there, but I couldn’t see her clearly. Two men clad in black from head to foot stood between me and her. I recognized one of them, although his back was turned toward me and I could see the knotted strings of a face-mask at the back of his head. I shall kill that man with my bare hands one day, even if it’s the last thing I do.
“‘I ask you for the last time, Meena,’ this man I am going to kill said. ‘Tell me where have you sent Sanjay with that nightwatchman?’
“‘My answer remains the same,’ the Rani said simply, without the slightest fear, although she knew what was coming next. ‘Go ahead, do what you have dreamed of doing for years, Vijender Singh.’
“I was dizzy, imbalanced, weak, but I launched myself at that demon with all my remaining strength. The powerful men – there were three of them – holding me were ready for my lunge. They jerked me back with perfectly coordinated ease and threw me sprawling on the floor.
“That rotten, soulless dog Vajinder raised a handgun and shot Meena Devi through her heart. He shattered her kind, loving heart with his bottomless hatred, his limitless greed encased in a little metallic bullet.” Sohan Singh stopped speaking suddenly. “Your name is Neel, right?” he asked me after a moment’s silence.
“It is, yes,” I said, taken aback at his recalling such an insignificant thing as my name at that point in time. Another silence ensued. Since that night, whenever silence and darkness mix together, I experience Sohan Singh’s rage-tinged pain. I hear the sound of his breathing as clearly as though he is standing next to me, panting heavily and invisibly.
“Meena Devi fell. I had not been able to rise from the floor. We were at the same level for the space of half a minute. Her gaze locked with mine. I saw the glaze of death replace the vitality of life in her eyes. It might have been an illusion, but I thought I saw the corners of her mouth flutter, as though the last thing she wanted to do in this horrible world was to smile. It didn’t happen. Agony won. She died with a grimace disfiguring her face.
“While I lay prostrate, craning my neck to look at that horror, I picked up a very slight movement in the hall’s fireplace behind Meena Devi’s corpse. It was more a flash of white from the coal-blackened grate than an actual movement. I averted my gaze to some other point and began to get to my feet. I had just seen the nightwatchman’s soot-smeared face in the fireplace. The prince had to be behind the nightwatchman. I now had to draw everyone out of the drawing-room before one of the killers could see or sense the presence of their intended prey, cowering just a few feet away from them.
“‘I know where the nightwatchman took Prince Sanjay,’ I said after I completed the painful process of standing up. ‘I’m ready to help you find him.’
“‘That’s smart of you, Sohan Singh,’ Vijender Singh said. ‘I was just about to have the pleasure of ending your loyal dog’s life. I’ll give you a chance to prove the truth of what you are saying, although I believe you are lying. In which case, you’ll die far more slowly, far more painfully than your dear Meena just did!’
“The men who had thrown me to the ground grabbed my arms once again. They drove me out the same way they had brought me in – through the backdoor. ‘Who could have thought that the great Sohan Singh is just a cowardly rat behind his façade of devotion and courage?’ Vijender Singh asked his men, all of whom tittered knowingly.
“And then these men began to converge in a single file in order to pass through the kitchen’s doorway. Vijender Singh took the lead. One of his men walked behind him. I, with two human-leeches clinging to me on either side, followed this man. The last man in our line walked with his palm on the small of my back.
“The fogginess from the blow on the back of my skull had cleared by now and the pain that lingered behind only increased my strength. I broke my captors’ grips over my arms with a colossal jerk. I gripped their arms and rammed their hollow heads into the doorframe. Then, even as these men crumpled to the ground like deflated balloons, my right elbow drove hard into the belly of the man behind me. All this happened in the time it would take you to blink your eyes a few times. The man ahead of me was beginning to turn around. I put his lights out with a massive punch to his scrawny neck, which may have snapped like a chicken’s. I am not sure, but I heard a cracking sound as the skinny man plummeted to the ground. This display of my powers unnerved that cowardly bastard, Vijender Singh. He turned tail and ran away. Come, take my arm, Neel.”
This odd command jarred me a little, but I hurried to comply with it. I had not forgotten how quick this big man was to take offense. I extended my hand in the darkness and groped about until I touched a forearm whose girth my fingers couldn’t encompass, a forearm under whose skin coursed such currents of strength that the gigantic lump of my terror dissolved and shrank a bit. I had no premonition, no idea that this living power would flee soon, that this dynamic force would depart in a little while for whichever place all life goes to after leaving this world.
"I chased Vijender Singh to the front of the bungalow,” Sohan Singh said, allowing me to keep holding his arm. “Bullets started to fly around like angry bees once again. It was a riot. It felt as though the shooters were all blind to the distinction between enemies and allies. Shadows shot at shadows. There were so many identically clothed figures running around that it was difficult to tell one from another. I chased Vijender or a man I thought was Vijender out of the bungalow and down Trumpet Hill.
“We entered the jungle, where darkness deepened my
disorientation to the extent I felt utterly lost. Which is how I feel right now, too. There was someone ahead of me and there was certainly someone behind me, too. I was hunting and being hunted simultaneously. I scraped my wounded ear against a tree trunk. The suppressed scream that escaped my lips was little more than a gasp but it brought a bullet my way swiftly. Some decent marksman. But he missed my head by a narrow margin. I believe I am rather lucky in the matter of evading death, Neel.
“We kept moving, I and the other blinded, bloodthirsty, two-legged beasts in the jungle. And then I found myself in your hamlet. A lone lamp burned at the far end of the only street in that tiny place. That’s where I saw your father. He was crouching behind some bushes and throwing stones at his own house.”
I tightened my grip on Sohan’s arm; my heart stopped and then lurched with frenetic beating, but I remained silent.
"When I first saw him, I had no idea who this stone-thrower was. He didn’t seem like one of Vijender Singh’s men – the clothes were wrong for that – but hiding and aiming rocks at someone or something was a cowardly act in my book. Your father taught me in the ensuing minute that cowardice or fear had nothing whatsoever to do with his actions.
“I sneaked upon him with the intent to take his throat in a stranglehold. I certainly needed to vent some of my pent-up furies. I’m sure I hadn’t made any sound, but he somehow straightened, turned, and flew at me in one smooth streak of motion. A shoulder in the pit of my stomach, the hard ground under my back, the knee boring into my chest, and the hands crushing my windpipe—these things make up my memory of that humbling, sobering minute.
“I struggled with all my strength, but that man shifted with each shift of my body, weakening me with pressure on this nerve or that. For the first time in my life, I feared the physical prowess of another man. ‘Stop writhing or I’ll snap your neck,’ he whispered to me. I obeyed.”
It can’t be hard for you to imagine how proud I felt when Sohan Singh—the gigantic powerhouse of a man standing beside me—told me this. His voice had been grating upon my ears until a minute ago, but now I felt I could listen to him all night long.
"I’m sorry I spoke of your father bitterly earlier," Sohan Singh said, patting my arm with his free hand. "I just resented his having overpowered me. I have known him by sight for a long time — he and your mother performed here at the bungalow the night Rani Meena Devi’s husband died. Your father recognized me. He placed a cautionary finger on his lips before springing away from me like a cat. We had many questions for each other, he and I, but he saw something at that precise moment and slipped away quietly. I haven’t seen him since then.”
The hope and strength Sohan Singh’s words had given me a few moments ago left me. I sagged again under the burden of the murderous "unknown". I was no longer interested in what else he had to tell me. It suddenly became impossible for me to keep standing. I let go of his arm, sank to the ground, and put my head in my hands.
"I am sorry," Sohan said again. "I don’t have much more to tell, except for confessing to my extreme stupidity. I thought of going to your house to see why it was under attack just like the Trumpet Hill bungalow, but I saw Vijender Singh in the light of that lone streetlamp just then.
“My blood began to boil in my veins. The murdering monster just stood under the lamp and lit a cigarette! I crept up on the cocky fool, grabbed his head from behind, and twisted it as viciously as I could. But when I removed the mask covering the deadman’s face, I saw I had killed someone else – one of Vijender Singh’s goons. I put on his mask, took down the lamp, and once more began to make my way towards your house when my disintegrated mind played another trick on itself: I saw Vijender Singh yet again. He came from behind your house and ran into the jungle.
“Instead of going to your house, where I could have found the nightwatchman and perhaps gotten some kind of a clue to the whereabouts of my king, I began to follow that treacherous, vile dog. Didn’t find him. Found you instead. That’s it. That’s my tale. I feel a bit lighter, a bit saner after getting it off my chest. We must do something now. We must act.”
His statements were assertive, but the tone of his voice was hesitant. He was like a lost, clueless little boy looking for help from – a lost, clueless boy.
It was the darkest hour now. I felt as though morning would never come, as though nothing could oppose and end that unforgiving night.
“We should go back to my home,” I said, accepting the role and responsibility of leadership this grownup man was all but thrusting upon me. “But we’ll have to get a light first,” I added. I wanted to be back with my mother as soon as possible. Leaving her in the first place went beyond the realm of stupidity and entered into the grim district of criminal impulses. What had I been thinking?
“Let’s go in for the light,” Sohan Singh said. “Going back to your house is a good idea. We should have done it much earlier, but I was oddly frozen. I wasted a lot of precious time gabbing, which I am still doing!”
We stumbled upon several dead bodies as we crossed the porch toward the bungalow’s main door. It stood ajar, letting out a shifty, jumpy stream of light burning somewhere inside the house.
Sohan Singh took my hand in his as we crossed the dreaded drawing-room’s threshold. His breathing began to rasp in his throat. He unconsciously crushed my hand and jumped when I cried out in pain. But he still didn’t let go of my hand; he needed my support more than I needed his.
"Sh-, she…," he stammered, raising our linked hands and pointing toward a glimmer of white on the floor. On a nearby table stood a candle with the last surviving inch of its wick upholding a small flame in the death-chilled air.
The flame twitched erratically in the breeze that came in at an open window, making shadows move and quiver all around us. Many unmoving, unquivering men lay on the magnificent carpet underfoot. We went slowly, hesitantly to the spot where the Rani lay. Her sari was half white, half darkened with her blood. One of her hands covered her shattered chest, while the other was raised toward a huge fireplace in a gesture of caution or farewell.
"Oh, oh, oh God," moaned Sohan, beginning to hyperventilate. He released my hand and staggered back against a wall. His immense back covered the window so that the candle-flame steadied and the motionlessness of death settled in the room.
And when the end came, Sohan Singh indicated it only with a sharp gasp, as you or I might do at the sting of a bee. He jerked away from the window with a spasm of his body, took a few steps toward me, and then crashed onto a table.
The long hilt of a knife stuck between his shoulderblades glinted in the expiring candlelight.
I screamed.
Chapter 9: The Haughty Instigator
Don’t allow me, ever, to stray too far from her, from her mention and her memory. Don’t allow me to delude you (something I’ve done all along) into believing that this is all about me, that while living through these pages your chief interest lies in the life and times of Neel.
How often and how much I put her before you is immaterial; in what light I put her before you is immaterial. My pen spills out black clouds to hide her from your view every now and then. But she’s always present, like the sun—not in the background of all this as merely an also-present factor, but above everything else, infinitely more powerful and radiant than any other entity. If this tale had a body, she alone would be its life, its heart, and its soul!
She had bit my hand one day—and now, when my eyes have finally opened, when I have been alive, dead, and alive again, I lay down my pen regularly and lift my palm to kiss it, even though it has borne no imprint of her teeth for years.
The day after she bit me, she invited me to her party, where we discovered that the first thread that had tied us together was not her bright red ribbon (which I had knotted to a doorknob) but some mysterious strings that had tangled between her father and my mother long before Rachna and I arrived in this world.
Ma had started to tell me the story—the one that began
in Russia, with the birth of my grandmother—the story which would straighten it all out for me (and twist something in me with rage, agony, and frustration). But Rachna was lost in an impenetrable fog from her birth. She didn’t know who her mother was, where she was, and why she wasn’t at home with her.
That fogginess thickened for her on the evening of her eighth birthday. It thickened to the extent of becoming a pulpy, lumpy wall around her. Her father did nothing to raze down this stifling, blinding fence.
The next day, at school, she was so quiet, so still that she appeared lifeless. Her arm, rather than shooting up at every question leaving the teachers’ lips, lay motionless on the desk. Her eyes, rather than sparkling with her usual vivacity, remained blank, glazed.
I remember the hush that fell upon our class when an old spinster mistress commanded Rachna to come to her (the spinster’s) desk. This woman had an eagle’s beak for a mouth. Her eyes were so big and dry they looked like wooden knobs painted to look like eyes. Rachna didn’t obey. She didn’t even budge from her seat.
The knobby-eyed mistress’s face tightened with anger. She marched up to Rachna’s seat and tried to get her to stand up by grabbing her ear and pulling it upward with considerable force. The spinster made me her lifelong enemy that day. I constrained myself from flying at her and breaking something in her bony body with the utmost difficulty. Lallu Lal told me later that I was vibrating like a strummed string while Rachna was being manhandled so cruelly.
I emptied a bottle of glue onto the mistress’s chair the very next day, just before she entered the classroom and took her seat. The sound of her sari tearing, the look of depthless horror on her face, the muffled explosion of involuntary titters from pleasantly surprised children – visions and memories I hoard in my heart like a zealous miser. The spinster walked backward to exit the classroom, her culprit hands screening the affected area.