The Tenacity of Darkness: Book # 2 of A Thorn for Miss R.

by Sakiv Koch

  We crossed the border of the Lal Nagar principality a few minutes later. Instead of taking me into the city proper, Kalicharan directed me to the verge of a heavily wooded wilderness.

  "What! Does she have starving children to feed, too?" I asked in exasperation. These princesses and kings appeared to have nothing better to do than shoot animals and make beautiful palaces scary by mounting severed heads on their walls.

  "You'll see what she feeds," Kalicharan said cryptically as I parked the Phantom and we stepped out, my legs trembling with a mix of exhaustion and excitement. Sweet music—a fusion of sitar and tabla—wafted through the air. I followed Kalicharan on a dirt path leading into the forest.

  The sound of music grew clearer and louder as we went deeper. And then—yes, this is monumental, a watershed moment, to hasten which I hadn't shed my water for a painful number of hours!—I came upon her. I came upon Princess Roop.

  She was in an oval clearing with a lotus pond at its center. Roop stood on the other side of the pond, inside a circle of bonfires. A three-quarters-full moon was rising above the tree-line, sending its white beams to fuse with the orange firelight shimmering on the pond's surface. The pink lotuses were closing their petals, preparing to sink back to the muddy bottom for the night. Some musicians sat playing their instruments on a platform to her left, and on her right stood a woman with two heads, or two women with a single body.

  Conjoined twins. Two distinct people sharing one body. I learned their names later: Meera and Radha. Two such extraordinarily rare people, and yet my gaze passed over them as though seeing them were as ordinary as seeing spectacular sunsets from a tropical island.

  My hungry gaze latched itself onto Roop after a cursory hiatus on the twins’ faces. Princess Roop wielded a paint-brush in her hand. She was working on a life-sized canvas propped on a large easel. She suddenly raised a bejeweled, slender, beautiful hand in the air and motioned us to stop. Stop we did, yessir, in mid-stride, like two statues, moving just enough to place our in-air feet back on the surface of the bridge that we were crossing at that particular moment.

  This dazed me. I couldn’t believe the goodness of my good fortune. She had made me a part of her creative process! She had given me a priceless portion of her precious attention! This privilege thrilled me so much that a couple of hours of near-absolute stillness flew like a couple of minutes for me. Kalicharan didn't fare quite as well. He groaned and moaned under his breath. He shifted his weight from foot to foot, but he, too, essentially remained in the same place.

  And so, in that frozen slice of time, from a distance of about twelve or fifteen feet, she drew me on (in more than one sense of the word) and I drank her in. She was wearing a lehnga. It was intricately hand-embroidered in golden thread. Hundreds of silver sunbursts with brilliant solitaires at their centers gleamed like proud offspring of the moon. Gems and pearls studded the hems of her skirt and choli. Her gown was so rich it was a princess in its own right.

  Her night-black hair was a river flowing from her head to her waist, its fire-limned edges glowing and stirring in the breeze. She was tall, around five feet nine inches, by my estimate. Her living-goddess face was hard to look away from, and her eyes did something to you when they looked at you, something deep in your belly.

  She tossed her brush aside, crossed her arms, and regarded her piece intently. Kalicharan tugged at my elbow to get me moving.

  “Good morning! Wake up!” shouted a shrill voice in my ear. It was one of the twins. I hadn't noticed them sneaking on me. I was aware of just one thing, to the exclusion of all other awareness.

  "Horrible evening! Keep sleeping!" said the other, her voice harsh, gravelly.

  "Would you call yourself a rude man?” the shrill twin asked.

  "Or a foolish one?" queried the harsh one.

  "Or none?"—Shrill.

  "That is, no man, but some kind of animal?"—Harsh.

  And then the princess spoke. Her voice was a little husky, a little smoky, a little dreamy. It cut through the twins' verbal volley of punches as a bullet cuts through milling arms and legs.

  "Who are you?" Roop asked, addressing me directly from six, seven feet away. I had still not rediscovered my capacity to reason, my capacity to speak. I exuded only silence.

  "Are you mad?"—The shrill twin.

  "Or are you deaf and dumb?"—Harsh.

  "Or just tired of living?"—Shrill.

  That Maha-pandit, Kalicharan, had some Maha-mischief in his heart. He bowed his head before the princess and then spoke in his deep, cracked, stolen baritone: "I present to you His Royal Majesty the King Sanjay Pratap Singh of Surajgarh!"

  Kalicharan’s mad, smoldering eyes didn't laugh. They didn't even twinkle. They remained dead serious.

  Chapter 5: Tears of Monsters

  N adya woke up under a Gulmohar tree—her body clothed in fallen petals, her clothes heaped up near her feet. It was still dark in the woodland, although an infantile sun was peeking above the horizon.

  She was a hive of bite- and scratch marks, as though a band of rats had nibbled on her before moving on to other treats. Something cold lay on her belly. It slithered into her lap as she sat up—the golden earrings Mohan had offered her as a gift last evening.

  Her head felt a bit too heavy for her neck—it kept tipping forward of its own accord. She stood up like an old woman suffering from gout. The golden sunflowers with their captive bees caressed her burning skin as they slid to the ground at her feet, to remain hidden in the underbrush until someone luckier than Nadya unearthed them.

  Nadya got into her clothes and started staggering drunkenly through the trees.

  ***

  Akilina's throat was raw from shouting frantically for hours. "Nadya, Nadya," she continued to croak as she faltered and staggered through the night-deserted streets of Calcutta. The others comprising the search party had taken other turns and were shouting themselves hoarse elsewhere. Akilina had been tearing her hair out ever since she started worrying. She had not started worrying until after midnight.

  "How many times do I have to ask you not to worry, baby clown?" she had asked a visibly panicking Illya when dinnertime had come but Nadya hadn't returned. "She is with Mohan, which is the same as saying that she's alright."

  The relentless clock continued to insist on the seriousness of her baby's continued absence. Suddenly, within the span of a moment, the old woman's state of mind had transitioned directly from complete calmness to a mindless terror.

  And now, toppling headlong towards Mohan's house in a narrow, poorly lit street, Akilina abruptly veered off course and threw herself at a crumbling wall drowned in complete darkness. A shadow tore itself out of the black fabric of the night. It tried to dodge the old woman's mad, clawed embrace.

  "Noooooooo," Akilina shrieked, clinging to the person with a strength that had no business coursing through a frail, old woman's body. She tore, she bit, she struck, she screamed. "Where is my baby? What have you done to her?"

  The man said nothing. He grunted with the effort of his struggle. His spectacles were snatched off his face and thrown to the ground, where they broke under those four violently dancing feet. Mohan dropped a valise he had been carrying.

  "Get. Off. Me," Mohan said as he pushed Akilina back with all his strength. He might as well have attempted to push a hill away.

  "Y- YOU MONSTER, you think you could run away?" she screamed and jabbed a talon-like finger into his left eye, opening a slit in his iris, forcing him to shed a non-remorseful, jelly-like tear. Mohan recoiled and screamed in agony, pressing his injured eye with the heel of his palm. "GIVE BACK MY NADYA TO ME RIGHT NOW!"

  Dark houses started to show lights at their windows. People demanded to know what was going on there. And now other people were pouring into the street. One particular man, jutting head and shoulders above everyone else, brushed men and women out of his way in his eagerness to join the battle between the quack and the midwife.

  Mohan became frantic at A
nton's approach. The giant looked anything but gentle now. Mohan brought out the fountain pen Nadya had given him, uncapped it with badly shaking hands, and stabbed Akilina with the nib. The pen penetrated the soft tissue between her shoulder and her collarbone.

  The old woman shrieked. Mohan freed himself from her weakened grasp and sprang toward the wall. A gigantic hand grabbed him from behind. Mohan dangled mid-air for a moment and then Anton smashed him into the brick wall, bringing to fruition the wall's decades-old inclination to crumble and kiss the earth.

  Half a dozen cuts started to leak and mix Mohan's blood with the billowing brick-dust. He began crawling away. A frighteningly enormous boot rammed into the back of his head. Mohan went limp.

  ***

  The circus was in an uproar. Nadya walked into it almost at the same time that Mohan was dragged there. The girl was hurt, but the man was grievously injured. It would be fair to say that the mob had raped the rapist in terms of sheer brutality. His left eye had been blinded for want of medical attention (courtesy: Akilina).

  He bled from numerous wounds. A racially diverse clump of bruises, displaying all sorts of unsavory colors, was blooming all over his body. His clothes had been reduced to tattered rags. His former admirers, women, wept openly at seeing their enigmatic, charismatic hero reduced to this unspeakable ruin. It was hard to believe that just a day ago the same man had drawn such applause, cheers, and respect from the same crowd that was now intent upon beating him to death.

  "Stop!" Nadya cried as she emerged from between two tents. A magician in a fairy tale couldn't have turned a group of people into stone with greater speed. Everyone had feared that they would never again see Nadya alive.

  No one moved, no one spoke, no one closed their gaping mouths for a couple of moments. Fists and kicks out for further violence hovered in the air, quivering harmlessly. Even Mohan stopped twisting and struggling. The only animated being in that vast motionlessness was Akilina. She was no less thunderstruck than others, but her modes of expression differed significantly from the majority of humanity: what made others go still with shock made her tick, twitch, jump, and judder.

  In keeping with her unpredictability, she ran and enveloped and slobbered over—not Nadya—but Mohan.

  "Oh, thank you," she said, kneeling over him, sobbing and laughing simultaneously. "Sorry for doing all this to you." She patted his head and wiped away a smear of blood from his forehead. "Still want to kill you, though, you monster," she whispered in his ear and then spat on the exact spot which the late smear of blood had occupied a moment ago.

  Statues started to become people once again. The palpable grief and rage that were driving normal, gentle people to become lynchers transmuted into relief and joy. The tide of attention flowed from the culprit (now a victim) to the victim (now a savior).

  Illya hugged her, wept into her shoulder, thanked God profusely, and cursed himself vehemently for not taking better care of her. The others there more or less did the same—they hugged the huggers and uttered words both sacred and abusive.

  And now that those frozen with shock were thawing, laughing, crying, Akilina grew completely still and silent. When Nadya emerged from the cloud of various limbs and deep affection enveloping her, she went to the broken thing lying ignored on the ground.

  "I'm glad," she said, kneeling beside Mohan, "that you attacked me right when you did. In another moment, I would have accepted your proposal. That would have been even more cruel and deceptive than- than-." She motioned toward her body to indicate the enormity of the unspoken word.

  The Quicksilver Monster turned his head away from her in an attempt to hide the tears flowing out of his eyes.

  Chapter 6: Embryos of Truth

  K alicharan’s burning eyes remained dead-serious as he told that mega-ultra-extreme lie, that impossible, world-altering, world-shattering lie.

  One of the conjoined twins curtsied low, very low, as soon as Kalicharan presented me to them as King Sanjay. The other sister, although awed and surprised sufficiently, was unprepared for this act of deference by her twin. Their connected bodies lost their collective balance as a result. The sisters tottered and almost fell.

  The musicians stopped playing their respective instruments. The breeze passing through the woods stopped in its tracks. The bonfires ceased twisting and gyrating. Every sound faded into silence. Everyone and everything stilled.

  Princess Roop was the only exception. She evinced no emotion, no reaction, other than an almost-imperceptible widening of her slave-maker eyes.

  The my-ness from my being got erased at the moment of that widening of those eyes. At that moment, I stopped being Neel. Or, in any case, my sanity jettisoned me so completely I might as well have been born delusional and mad. I believed that Roop had believed Kalicharan. This indirect belief led me to believe Kalicharan directly.

  All my rationality, probity, values, and my capacity to form judgments fled from my mind and heart (considering that they had ever been there in the first place). I was suddenly a new entity standing in the now-vanished Neel’s shoes. And herein lay the real thrust and stroke of Kalicharan’s mischief—not so much in his false words as in the spurious world that these words gave rise to.

  I was a make-believe king in this make-believe world—a man gone so far in the time it takes for a heart to beat a couple of times that I would have clapped a hand over Kalicharan’s mouth had he sought to disabuse Roop of his lie. My spine had turned into a column of icy fear, but my blood boiled with the combined heats of unspeakable greed and sheer madness.

  A newborn piglet might have known how to conduct itself better than I did. As Neel, I would have bowed my head and joined my hands in a reverential Namaskar. However, since my regality was less than half a minute long in duration, I had no idea what I was expected to do when greeting a fellow royal person.

  I saluted her, or rather, King Sanjay greeted Princess Roop in a way I can’t recall very clearly now. In answer, she inclined her head and welcomed me in tones neither too dry nor overly warm. There was a full-flowing faucet of disdain built into her personality. Its flow thinned to a dribble as she turned her attention upon me.

  She took my measure. Her restive, flaming gaze passed slowly from my toes to my head, pausing for one moment (too brief, too long) to look into my furtive eyes.

  “I had heard you were very tall,” she said, making me want to die on the spot. “And not quite as handsome as you look,” she added, giving me a desire to become immortal. My happiness attained escape-velocity. It shot into outer space and began orbiting the earth. But when a thing enters or reenters our planet’s atmosphere, it (the thing) catches fire.

  Roop turned away after gracing me with this incredibly gratifying compliment. She put her hands behind her back, walked to her canvas, and studied the painting she had just created. Kalicharan nudged me. He winked the most grotesque wink imaginable when I looked at him.

  “Go talkie-talkie to her,” the naughty man whispered.

  I didn’t have the slightest idea as to what I could talkie-talkie to her about. As hard as ‘what’ was ‘how’. How did kings and princesses speak to each other? What did they discuss? Particularly when the princesses in question were extremely attractive and extremely haughty?

  So talkie-talkie I did not. I did not even walkie-walkie. I remained rooted to the spot until Kalicharan nudged me and winked again. Roop stood mesmerized by her work. She unclasped her hands from behind her back, drew out a slim knife from some secret fold of her lehnga, and stabbed me. She thrust the blade into my throat and ripped it open.

  No, I didn’t die (and this book is not ghost-written). I didn’t bleed, either, not even when she shredded my chest and stomach. She then turned upon Kalicharan. The painting lay murdered, torn to pieces, in a few moments.

  “She destroys things she doesn’t like,” said Radha or Meera.

  “Don’t state the obvious,” advised Radha or Meera.

  “The princess has to have perfection in
everything she does,” Radha or Meera persisted with stating the obvious despite Radha or Meera’s recent piece of advice to abstain from so doing.

  Roop turned around to face us. The expression on her face was the same as it had been before she had assaulted her canvas. I noticed, with a new chill creeping down my iced spine, that the stiletto knife was no longer in her hands! I looked closely (perhaps too closely) but I couldn’t detect any cleverly sewn pocket in her clothes.

  “That painting wasn’t fit for a king,” Roop said. “We shall give it another pass someday.” She turned her gaze full upon Kalicharan, looking at him as one would look at a repulsive insect or rodent. He squirmed and shrank within himself. Or he should have squirmed and shrunk within himself. But no, not Kalicharan. A strange light came into his smoldering eyes.

  “You, swine!” she growled at him. “How dare you show your pathetic, ugly face here? I would skin you alive, leper, if you had any skin to speak of!”

  I’d had no idea that Kalicharan stood so low in the princess’s esteem. What if he blurted out my true identity in order to save his skin, saggy and parchment-like though it was? I had become an accessory to his crime by remaining silent. Worse still, I would be considered the principal criminal if the truth were to come out. It felt inevitable, this outing of the truth. What had I been thinking a minute ago?

  Kalicharan didn’t evince any fear! Not that his face remained calm or expressionless. A naked, deep blend of love and longing played on it so openly Roop couldn’t have remained oblivious to it even if she were blind in one eye and myopic in the other.

  Here’s the knockout punch: Roop did remain oblivious to Kalicharan’s lewd leering! That’s how she acted, in any case, as though she couldn’t perceive that the man was openly devouring her with his eyes.

  Kalicharan cleared his throat.

  “Perhaps your royal highness would like to dine with his majesty tonight?” he suggested while rubbing his skeletal hands together, his eyes shining mischievously.