The Five Fakirs of Faizabad

by P. B. Kerr

  Nimrod raised his hand. “Please, Moo. I’m enjoying my tea. Don’t say another word.”

  “Why?” she said indomitably. “I’ll say what I like. I don’t know what kind of English butler he was, but he can’t have been a very good one.”

  “Please, Moo, not now,” said Nimrod. “You’ll spoil everything.”

  “Why?” asked Philippa.

  “Because he didn’t serve the tea with milk,” said Moo. “The fool served it with lemon. That’s the sort of thing you might expect from an American. And easily excused. But it’s quite unforgivable in an English butler.”

  Mr. Burton stared at her with hard incredulity.

  “You stupid, crabby, stuck-up English snob,” he said, and then kicked the cup and saucer from the old lady’s gloved hands.

  “Was it something I said?” said Moo.

  It would have been hard to say exactly what happened next, except that Nimrod threw away his own teacup and leaped to his feet. There was a huge flash and a loud explosion, as if a grenade had gone off, and a strong smell of sulfur, as if someone had just struck a couple of thousand matches.

  Even John, with his quick eyes, could not have said what happened to Mr. Burton except that where the quietly spoken English fakir had been standing not one second before, there was now a roaring, beastlike man, seven or eight feet tall, who was smooth and uniformly red in his nakedness and almost entirely without human features, as if he had just sprung half formed from a giant clay modeler’s wheel.

  Grimacing horribly, the creature stamped its clay foot violently and the whole ground seemed to shake. Then it swung a right hook at Nimrod, narrowly missed the tip of his long, thin nose, and struck a rock that shattered into a thousand pieces. Dust and small fragments of rock and bits of clay rained down on everyone’s heads like a shower of hailstones.

  Still roaring like a tiger, the thing took another step forward and swung again. There was no time for Nimrod to duck or dive, and such was the clay creature’s raw destructive power that the hammer blow seemed certain to remove the djinn’s head at the shoulders.

  Philippa screamed, which was why no one heard the word that came out of her uncle’s mouth. And all that John could’ve said with certainty was that the word was too short to have been his focus word. But whatever it was, it worked and even as the huge fist made the beginning of contact with Nimrod’s cheek, the creature wielding it stopped dead, as if someone had flicked a switch and paused an old horror movie.

  Nimrod stepped away and, trembling just a little — for he was acutely conscious of how close he had come to death — let out a breath and touched his cheek, very much aware that a split second later might have seen the clay creature’s ham-sized fist follow through with its killer punch.

  “Light my lamp, but that was close,” he said.

  “What the heck is it?” said John, inspecting the clay creature more closely.

  “And what in the name of Sam Hill just happened?” added Philippa.

  “It’s all over now. Nothing to worry about. We’re all quite safe.” Nimrod let out a nervous laugh. “This is a golem,” he said. “An animated being created entirely from inanimate matter such as earth or clay. Rather like the first man, who was Adam, of course, except that Adam had a soul. Anyway, this particular golem was made by my old friend Rabbi Joshua Loew ben Gazzara for the purpose of protecting the Einstein Archive in Jerusalem. Except that it didn’t. A few weeks ago, the golem and a part of that archive were stolen from the Jewish National Library by Jirjis Ibn Rajmus, who, as Philippa knows, is an evil djinn of the Ifrit tribe. At the time, I wondered why anyone, let alone a djinn, would want to steal the Einstein Archive and a golem. Well, now I know.”

  Nimrod took out a handkerchief, mopped his brow for a moment, and then lit a cigar.

  “You see, Jirjis needed an adsuesco, which is what we djinn call a spare shape or a familiar creature, and rather useful to have around as a means of escape when you are using someone else’s body. As Jirjis was. Goodness only knows where his own body is. Probably somewhere back in Morocco. Jirjis had stolen the body of Mr. Burton and was doubtless awaiting my own arrival on Jebel Toubkal in the Atlas Mountains, to seek Mr. Burton’s advice.”

  “You mean Jirjis has been hiding inside Mr. Burton all along?” exclaimed Philippa. “But why?”

  “Jirjis had already been to a great deal of effort creating an atmosphere of bad luck in the world so that he might provoke one or more of the fakirs of Faizabad to reveal themselves. So that he might gain control of one of the great secrets of the universe as revealed by the Tirthankar of Faizabad. I think he must have gotten the idea from the Einstein Archive, which, according to Rabbi Joshua, includes a rather cryptic entry in Einstein’s diary about being visited by ‘the Man from Lahore’ while Einstein was still working rather anonymously at the Swiss Patent Office in Bern. The diary item suggested that a great secret was revealed to Einstein and that another similar great secret lay buried in Bumby, Yorkshire. That’s why Jirjis sent his mendicant fakirs to Bumby. So that they might find Mr. Swaraswati’s dasa — the servant of the buried fakir — and that she might lead them to him when he revealed himself.

  “But his plans started to fall apart when his men found the dasa but failed to find Mr. Swaraswati. And when he realized that I was on the case, he decided to enlist my unwitting help. To have me and by extension you, Philippa, bring the fakir to him.”

  “But how did he know?” asked Moo. “How did he know you were on the case?”

  “That day you came to my house in London,” said Nimrod. “You were followed, were you not?”

  “Yes, I was.” Moo nodded. “I remember now. At the time I thought he was just a mugger.”

  “Most probably he was employed by Jirjis,” said Nimrod. “I dare say, he had you followed in your capacity as the head of the King’s Gambling Board of the Secret Intelligence Service. After all, luck, whatever its color — good or bad — is your departmental pigeon, isn’t it? He wanted to see what you would do. How you would react to the crisis. And when you involved me, he immediately thought to take advantage of that.”

  “But when Moo and I arrived back in London with Mr.

  Swaraswati,” said Philippa, “why didn’t he just kidnap him? Why accompany us on this journey?”

  “Because you lost Mr. Swaraswati, Philippa,” said Nimrod. “When your carpet got split in two by lightning. We didn’t find him again until we got to Frankfurt. Remember?”

  “Oh, yes,” said Philippa. “I’d forgotten that.”

  “I hadn’t,” said Moo.

  “Nor me,” said Mr. Swaraswati.

  “Of course, by then Mr. Burton had gained my trust,” explained Nimrod. “And Jirjis must have reasoned it would not be long before Mr. Burton had gained Mr. Swaraswati’s trust, too.” Nimrod patted Rakshasas affectionately. “But he never gained your trust, did he? You knew as soon as you saw him.”

  Rakshasas barked once.

  “Of course, by then it was too late,” continued Nimrod. “In my stupidity, I had already persuaded Mr. Swaraswati to reveal his secret.”

  “You did have a bump on the head,” said Philippa.

  “The revelation of the secret was another thing that made me start to suspect him,” said Nimrod. “A man like Mr. Burton, who has spent the last twenty years of his life seeking spiritual enlightenment, would have greeted the mathematical proof of God with perhaps a little more obvious enthusiasm. But Jirjis needs no such proof, of course, and therefore he was more than a little disappointed to discover that the great secret of Mr. Swaraswati was not some earth-shattering physics formula like e equals mc squared, but something else, something that’s of no practical or financial use to him whatsoever.”

  “If you suspected him,” said Philippa, “what on earth was all that nonsense about tea?”

  Nimrod smiled. “I wouldn’t expect an American to understand, Philippa.”

  “I think I understand,” said John. “It was a test. To m
ake absolutely sure of your facts. You knew that the real Mr. Burton would only have served afternoon tea with cold milk, and never with lemon.”

  “Precisely. Not only that, Mr. Rakshasas couldn’t abide Darjeeling tea. He always much preferred Ceylon tea.”

  “Only Moo was about to blow it and you couldn’t shut her up,” added John.

  Nimrod nodded. “I’m afraid so.”

  “Sorry, I’m sure,” said Moo. “But how was I to know?”

  “Dear lady,” said Nimrod. “It’s not your fault. For the life of me I couldn’t remember the word of power that Rabbi Joshua used when he made his golem. But for that blow on the head I suffered, I might have remembered it much sooner.”

  “What was it, anyway?” asked Philippa. “The word, I mean?”

  “One moment,” said Nimrod. “Before I say it aloud, there’s something I have to do.”

  He went over to the golem, stood on a rock, and put his fingers into the creature’s mouth, from whence he removed a small piece of calfskin parchment.

  “This is the word, here,” he said. “It’s written in Rabbi Joshua’s blood and if it was uttered while it was still a part of the golem, the creature would come back to life. If life it can be called. You see, the word that activates the creature, emet, which means “truth” in the Hebrew language, also contains the word for death, met, when the first letter in emet is subtracted. Uttering the word met stops the golem in its tracks, thank goodness. And that’s what I was trying to remember. Anyway, as soon as Jirjis realized I was onto him, he abandoned Mr. Burton’s body and took the shape of the golem in order to defend himself against me. But he didn’t ever gamble on me knowing Rabbi Joshua’s word of power.”

  “But where was it?” asked Philippa. “The golem?”

  “Right here, with us,” said Nimrod.

  “Are you saying that the golem has been with us all this time?” said Philippa.

  “Yes,” said Nimrod. “Ever since Morocco he’s been sitting invisibly on this carpet.”

  “Well, that explains a lot,” said Philippa. “When I was flying the carpet, I had the sense that there were more people on it than I knew about.”

  “Then you’re to be complimented,” said Nimrod. “Your senses are keener than mine, I’m afraid.”

  “The Einstein Archives,” said Moo, brandishing some papers she had found. “The papers that were stolen. It would appear that they were in Mr. Burton’s bundle all along.”

  “Rabbi Joshua will be relieved,” said Nimrod.

  “Where is Mr. Burton now?” asked John. “The real Mr. Burton.”

  “That’s a good question,” said Nimrod. “Really, he ought to be around here somewhere. I do hope he’s all right. When a djinn leaves someone else’s body that quickly it can be rather dangerous.”

  “I’ll go and look for him,” offered Silvio.

  Rakshasas barked and ran off to help search for his former butler.

  “Me, too,” said Mr. Swaraswati.

  “And Jirjis?” asked Philippa. “Where is he?”

  Nimrod indicated the golem. “Stuck in here,” he said. “Because this object was made with djinn power, it doesn’t behave like any normal animal, vegetable, or mineral. The only way he could escape from this clay figure now is if I were to put the parchment back in the creature’s mouth and speak the word of power again. Which I’m afraid I can’t risk doing.

  “Of course, this discovery changes everything. Now that we have found the culprit responsible for adversely affecting the amount of luck in the world, the Homeostasis — the balance of luck that exists in the world as measured by the tuchemeter — will, to some extent, fix itself. However, now that we are here, in such close proximity to Shamba-la, it would seem prudent to go ahead and consult with the monks at the lamasery as to how a quick-fix event of almost mythical good luck might still be achieved. Just to make up for all the bad luck that happened before. They will know what to do, I’m sure. Just as they will surely know how to help poor Groanin.”

  There was a bark and a shout and Nimrod said, “Sounds like they’ve found something.”

  They walked over to where Silvio and Rakshasas were staring at something lying on the ground. It was Mr. Burton. And he was quite dead. The shock of Jirjis leaving his body so quickly had killed him. Rakshasas sat down beside the dead fakir and, pointing his nose at the sky, began a plaintive howl. Philippa knelt down and put her arms around the wolf.

  “That’s a pity,” said Moo. “Poor Mr. Burton.”

  “We’d best take him with us,” said John. “It may be the monks at Shamba-la can offer him some kind of burial.”

  Nimrod nodded.

  “What kind of monks are these, anyway?” asked Moo.

  “To be honest I don’t know,” confessed Nimrod. “But I’ve heard stories, of course.”

  They walked back to the flying carpet.

  “What are we going to do with him?” Philippa pointed at the golem.

  “We’re certainly not taking him with us,” said Nimrod. “Not after all the trouble he’s caused.”

  Philippa shook her head. “We’re just going to leave him here?”

  “There’s not much we can do,” said Nimrod. “Except perhaps alter the golem’s image so that it becomes something rather more in keeping with the landscape and culture of Tibet.”

  Nimrod puffed an enormous smoke ring from his cigar into the air, which he sucked back into his mouth and then blew out again while at the same time he uttered his focus word. For a moment the cigar smoke hovered above the golem like a halo and then slowly descended like a curtain of gauze, momentarily obscuring the shape of the now inanimate clay being. When the smoke cleared, the golem’s shape had changed, and instead of a fierce and brutal-looking human shape, there existed a rather more benign statue of the Lord Buddha. The statue was made of weathered stone and looked as if it had been there for a century or so.

  “That’s better, I think,” said Nimrod.

  Philippa winced. She realized that she was never going to get used to the idea of turning people into animals or, for that matter, imprisoning wicked djinn inside stone statues. “Says you,” she said.

  “Says me,” said Nimrod.

  “Don’t you get it?” yelled John. “He killed Mr. Burton.”

  “That’s no reason,” insisted Philippa.

  “It’s not always easy deciding issues like this, Philippa,” said Nimrod. “And believe me, I take no pleasure in doing this. But if nobility obliges, then being a djinn must do so still more.”

  “If you ask me, he had it coming,” said John. “If it hadn’t been for those stupid ink spots, I’d never have gone to Yellowstone and Groanin would never have come after me. And poor Groanin would be with us now, instead of buried under a mound of snow and ice.” He shook his head. “Why did he do that, anyway?”

  “I told you, I once fought a djinn duel with his father, Rajmus,” said Nimrod. “It was a duel that ended in Rajmus being shrunk to the size of an atom. In effect, he was destroyed. That was most regrettable. Anyway, I imagine Jirjis saw an opportunity to be revenged on me through John, without revealing who he was, and could not resist it. He hoped to hurt me and perhaps even to destroy you. At the very least, I imagine he thought it might be easier dealing with two djinn instead of three. And, doubtless he intended some further revenge upon me and mine as soon as the Tirthankar’s secret was known to him.”

  CHAPTER 40

  THE DICKENS OF A FRIGHT

  Inside his tent, wrapped up tightly in his orange sleeping bag, Groanin tossed aside David Copperfield and sighed irritably. Despite the usually reliable help of Dickens’s greatest novel, the English butler was finding it impossible to drop off to sleep. And he wondered if his sleeplessness had anything to do with being neither completely dead nor properly alive. Which, upon sober reflection, seemed to Groanin like an accurate description of almost every one of the characters in David Copperfield.

  “I wonder if people were ever like that,
” he said out loud. “So boring and lifeless that they might as well be dead.”

  He shivered and, still inside the sleeping bag, wriggled out of the tent like a large, fat orange caterpillar to warm his hands next to the embers of the fire. But there was no warmth in them. Not even when he threw a few twigs on to build up the flames. And he thought it odd how he couldn’t warm himself, like there was no heat in the fire.

  “Well, perhaps that’s another thing about the state I’m in,” he said. “Perhaps it’s hard to stay warm when you’re neither one thing nor the other. Hardly surprising, I suppose, when my earthly body is buried under several feet of snow and ice.”

  Somewhere in the darkness an owl hooted and a coyote yelped and then a cloud moved away from the moon, flooding the scene with a ghostly silver-white light. The wind whispered something in the treetops, which shifted like some kind of huge animal, and Groanin realized that he was talking to himself just to stop himself from being afraid of the dark.

  “Not that there is much to be afraid of when you are already halfway to becoming a ghost,” he told himself. “It’s not like that blasted grizzly bear can maul me again.” He looked reproachfully at the book that was lying in the doorway of the tent, where he had thrown it.

  “But if I do end up being dead and there is a place called heaven and I manage to get in through the gates, I shall go and find Mr. Charles Dickens,” said Groanin. “And if he’s there, too, I shall make a point of telling him exactly what I think of his silly boring book.”

  “You may tell me now if you like,” said a voice.

  Groanin let out a yell and jumped out of his sleeping bag.

  Groanin looked and saw a small man about sixty years old sitting next to the fire. The man was wearing a frock coat with a velvet collar, and a beard that was as big as a fire brush.

  “What the Dickens do you mean, sneaking up on someone and frightening them like that?” Groanin demanded crossly.

  “I’m only here because you said you wanted to tell me what you thought of my book,” said the man. “And since you are what you are and I am what I am, I decided to come and save you the effort of trying to find me.”