by Arjun Gaind
It was to this sanctum that the Maharaja retreated. To his satisfaction, he saw that Charan Singh, as efficient as ever, had preceded him and foreseen to his needs. In one corner, atop a Venetian marble side-table that abutted his favorite wingback armchair, a golden salver awaited, upon which were arrayed a slender bottle of absinthe, a pâté de verre carafe of chilled water, a small bowl of granulated sugar, and a Murano aventurine goblet. Sikander sank into the welcome embrace of the armchair with a sigh. Reaching for the bottle, he proceeded to pour out a measure of absinthe into the accompanying glass. Then, he took a silver slotted spoon and gently scooped up a tiny amount of sugar, before placing it atop the rim of the glass, almost like a sieve, through which he then carefully distilled a generous quantity of chilled water. Finally, he stirred the resulting mixture quite vigorously until it turned whitish and opalescent. This was the louche, when absinthe bloomed and turned cloudy and released its hidden herbal flavors.
Eagerly, Sikander swept up the goblet and guzzled down its contents, groaning gladly. It was a habit he had picked up while in Paris, a preference for absinthe and its uniquely anise and fennel flavor. Most of his peers preferred port or champagne, but in France, absinthe was a way of life. There was a time set aside each day for what the Parisians called l‘heure verte, the green hour, when everyone, from the wealthiest of the bourgeoisie to the poorest of laborers, flocked to bars and cabarets to indulge in its soporific delights. Of course, there were those who argued that it promoted criminal tendencies, not to mention epilepsy and tuberculosis, a belief that was fast gaining ground especially after the gruesome Lanfray murders, when a Swiss farmer had murdered his family and tried to take his own life while under the influence of absinthe, but Sikander scoffed at such stupidity. As far as he was concerned, it was humankind’s inner bestiality that led to acts of such wanton savagery, and absinthe, like any other substance, whether it be opium or laudanum, was merely a much maligned catalyst.
As the thujone in the wormwood calmed his nerves, slowing his heartbeat, Sikander moved over to the piano that stood in one corner of the room, its boxy varnished shape gleaming like a chitinous insect. It was a work of art, a one-of-a-kind instrument made expressly for Sikander by Steinway and Sons, a concert grand wrought from the finest cherry wood, its case gilded with real gold and its feet carved into lion’s paws, its sides painted to represent the Muse Terpsichore playing a harp while a quartet of dryads pranced through a sylvan glade.
Sikander sank down on the piano’s bare bench, eschewing as always the comfort of a cushion. He spared a brief smile for the alabaster vase that sat atop a pedestal nearby, a handsome Bartolini from Tuscany, wrought of the purest white stone veined lightly with gold, within which were contained his mother’s ashes. Raising the piano’s lid, atop which the seal of Rajpore was enameled in iridescent mother of pearl, he stared down at the keys silently. Flexing his knuckles, he lowered one slim finger to run it hesitantly across the smooth expanse of ivory, as if he were caressing a long lost lover. A discordance of conflicting chords echoed through the air, dispelling the silence that had begun to weigh on him, the implacable dolor that seemed to saturate the closed confines of the room, making the air feel dense somehow, claustrophobic. A more poetic man might have said it sounded like the piano was groaning, glad at last to be played after all these months, and Sikander let out a sympathetic sigh of his own, closing his eyes, his expression nearing rhapsody.
Hunching forward, he began to play in earnest. The piece seemed to choose itself, not at all what Sikander had expected. He had wanted something soothing, Chopin, perhaps, or Mozart, but instead, what sprang forth was a complicated, difficult arrangement, Liszt’s Transcendental Etude no. 4, the Mazeppa, a haunting progression of melancholic arpeggios and despairing octaves that framed his dour mood perfectly.
Sikander took no particular pride in it, but he played the piano with consummate skill, as effortlessly as a virtuoso. It was his mother who had taught him to play—he had learned his first few notes sitting atop her lap, and after her death, he refused to play for anyone but himself. Now, he only sought out the comfort of the piano when he was particularly confused. In a way, it was a refuge for him, a safe place to which he could retreat and find the peace of mind that he remembered having cherished as a child, that elusive sense of calm which he had struggled to find ever since the death of his parents and the inheritance of his title.
By now, a warm drowsiness had begun to seep into his body, that roseate glow only the finest absinthe could induce. A numbness gnawed at the extremity of his senses, a pleasant fugue where the sensation of time seemed to slow down, every moment, every perception becoming painfully palpable, as though he were alive and dead at the same time, somehow caught in a waking dream. Sikander exhaled wearily. As he had explained once to Charan Singh, the absinthe was a key, a device he used to try and unlock his subconscious mind. Coupled with the piano, it served to calm him, pacifying the innate turbulence of his mind, and with that serenity came a heightened ability to make sense of the intangible, to finally see those subliminal connections between dissonant incidents which his liminal mind had taken note of but was unable to comprehend. It would be easy to describe it as a trance, but that was less than accurate. It was more like an enhanced state of awareness, not unlike that mental state that the Japanese called mono na aware, which roughly translated meant “an empathy toward things,” that rare condition when a man became aware of the impermanence of the world. This allowed his vestigial senses to come awake, giving him what could best be described as heightened perception.
Sikander had always been fascinated by such vivid examples of mysticism. Inevitably, every culture in the world had descriptions of some form of spiritual transcendence or the other, and he had spent much time making a study of a great many of these exotic systems—from what the Tibetans called gom, to what the Sufis described as muraqaba—meditative states that could be achieved only through intense concentration and careful introspection. And of course, he had dabbled equally with artificial ways to achieve such heightened consciousness, such as the shamanic dream-walking practiced by the Navajo tribesmen of America, whose medicine men were known to imbibe peyote under whose narcotic spell it was said they could break free of the mortal realm and cross over to the realm of spirits.
It had taken Sikander years of devout experimentation to find the correct formula that worked for him. Instead of peyote, it had turned out that it was the combination of music and alcohol that was his catalyst, these two diverse strands, one corporeal and the other ethereal, coming together to induce a temporary detachment from the realm of the physical, granting a brief respite where he could seek refuge in the world of pure thought and find a few moments to organize the cluttered miasma of his mind into some semblance of structure.
Given the dissonance of his current mood, Sikander was only too happy to surrender himself to the music. It washed over him, drowning him in its euphony, until all that remained was a sense of disconnection, an emptiness of the kind the Buddhists called Sunyata. Beneath his supple fingers, it swelled towards a crescendo, and with each delicate note, Sikander thought he felt it, that sundering of mind from flesh and with it, that rare flicker of insight for which he had been waiting so patiently. A tremor shivered though his lean frame, not quite an epiphany, but something close enough. He thought he could see it at last, a faint but distinct pattern coalescing from the bewildering array of evidence and suppositions he had aggregated over the day’s investigations.
Sadly, at that very moment, just as he was on the very brink of making sense of it all, a quiet knock on the door shattered his reverie. Abruptly, Sikander’s eyes snapped open, widening with fury. His hands clenched into fists, causing the music to come jarring to a premature end, leaving one last, lonely note hanging crystalline in the air, as sharp as a shard of broken glass.
Clenching his teeth, he whirled around to see who it was that had dared to disturb him. T
o his surprise, it was Jane, standing framed in the doorway, watching him with a mixture of distrust and trepidation. She seemed as pale and insubstantial as a spectre, her slender figure hunched over, clad only in a thin, silken robe which she held tightly closed, her arms folded around her as if she were afraid she would fall to pieces if she loosened her grip.
Ever the gentleman, Sikander rose, stifling a frown. His servants knew better than to intrude upon his solitude, but Jane was a stranger, and he had no choice but to bear her presence, even though he would have preferred dearly to be alone.
“Forgive me, Madam, I did not mean to disturb you,” he said stiffly, giving her the briefest of bows.
“Oh no!” Jane offered him a shy smile. “Please, don’t stop on account of me.” She waved one listless hand towards the piano. “That was quite beautiful. You play very well.”
Ignoring this compliment, Sikander shut the piano’s lid with a thwack so livid that it made Jane wince. “How can I help you, Madam?”
“I just wanted to thank you,” she whispered, taking a half step back, as if he had managed to scare her with his brusqueness.
When he saw her fear, Sikander’s rage leached away. “Please, come in,” he said, by way of apology. “I was just about to have a drink. Won’t you join me?”
Jane hesitated. He could see she was tempted to decline his invitation, but then, with an admirable grace, she took one tentative step into the room. Together, they moved over to occupy a pair of Victorian etoile armchairs that stood in one corner of the music room, on either side of a small ivory-topped pedestal table.
“Madam, shouldn’t you be in bed?” Sikander inquired as Jane sank down wearily, as if this simplest of motions had taken every ounce of energy she could summon. “The doctor was quite insistent that you needed to rest.”
“I find that I can’t sleep, sir,” Jane replied. “To tell the truth, I don’t know if I will ever be able to sleep after what happened last night.”
Sikander found himself empathizing with her. “In that case, since I am unable to fall asleep either,” he said gallantly, “let us enjoy a glass of champagne, shall we?”
He motioned toward the table, where a bottle of Pol Roger was waiting patiently in its silver bucket.
Jane blushed, and then, with a bashful smile, she leaned forward, perching on the end of the chair like a curious bird. “I have never tasted champagne before,” she murmured.
“No?” Sikander exclaimed, unable to disguise his disbelief. “That is a shortfall that we must remedy with the utmost haste.”
Picking up the bottle, he half-filled a tall silver flute, letting the bubbles fizz away before offering it to her. Jane gave him a suspicious look, as if she was unsure of what to do. Biting her lip, she took the glass doubtfully, her hand wavering as she brought it to her mouth for the most cautious of sips.
“Oh!” Her face crinkled into a grimace. “That’s absolutely dreadful.”
Sikander laughed. “Give it a moment, Madam, and try it again.”
Jane raised one questioning brow, before doing as he urged. This time, rather than disgust, her eyes widened with pleasure. She let out a surprised little chuckle. “I have changed my mind,” she said conspiratorially, “Champagne is marvelous.” With those words, she downed the rest of the glass, gulping it down in one eager gasp. Sikander watched her bemusedly, leaning forward to immediately refill her glass, ignoring her abject refusals.
“I really shouldn’t, sir. What if goes straight to my head?”
“Nonsense! Just think of it as overpriced grape juice.”
Jane laughed and accepted the glass with a graceful tilt of her neck. “Might I ask you a question for a change, sir?”
“Of course,” Sikander replied expansively, taking a sip of champagne himself.
“Have you made any progress in uncovering the Major’s killer?”
The Maharaja hesitated, reluctant to reveal any details of his investigation, particularly given his spectacular lack of success in making any real headway, but as he peered at her over the rim of his glass, noting the brittleness of her manner, he sensed Jane desperately needed some measure of reassurance to make her feel safe.
“Don’t you worry, my dear! I will find the murderer, you can be certain of that.”
Jane shuddered, as if to suggest that his words, while kind, had done little to encourage her.
“I am glad he is dead,” she blurted out, before clapping one shocked hand to her lips. Her eyes widened with horror as she contemplated the magnitude of what she had just said. “God, does that make me a bad person?”
Sikander did not quite know how to answer this question. Her candor had managed to surprise him, and once again, he was struck by the uncanny feeling that he was missing something, that there was a deeper connection between the Major and Jane that he hadn’t quite been able to apprehend.
“If you don’t mind my asking, Madam, however did you happen to end up here in Rajpore? I mean, it is rare for one to find an Englishwoman in menial employment. Most often housekeeping positions are filled by Anglo-Indians or the like, at least in the Punjab.”
Jane did not reply. Her face hardened, but not before a brief flicker of pain had managed to distort her features, just the slightest shadow of some half-forgotten tragedy that she had learned to conceal well enough but whose memory couldn’t help but betray her just for the blink of an eye. Sikander recognized it all too well. He remembered having felt something familiar, an abject despair that had all but consumed him when he had lost Camille. A man! There had been a man, he thought. That was what had bought her to Rajpore.
“What was his name?” he asked gently.
Jane winced, as if he had struck her a physical blow.
“Michael,” she said, “his name was Michael.” Her eyes were bleak, brimming with pain, as if it hurt her just to think of the past, much less articulate it into words. “He was tall and very shy, and…”
Her voice caught in her throat, and she gave the Maharaja a lugubrious smile. “Oh, for the life of me, I cannot remember what he was like at all.”
Sikander knew exactly what she meant. There were times he could barely summon up more than a shadow of a memory of Camille, a vague suggestion of laughing eyes and an elfin smile, as if she had become little more than an insubstantial ghost. But the pain, that worn ache in his heart whenever he thought of her, it was still as palpable for him as the day that she had died.
“Why don’t you start at the beginning?” He suggested.
Jane gathered her breath, and let out a vast sigh. “I never knew my father. He departed before I came into this world, and my mother followed soon after. My poor mother, what a fragile, brittle thing she was!” Jane pursed her lips sadly. “She chose to take her own life when I was just a few months old, leaving me orphaned.
“Poison,” she said blankly. “Just like the Major. Isn’t that curious?” Her voice wavered, and she gritted her teeth, gathering her strength before continuing. “I was fortunate enough to be raised by my uncle. He was unmarried, a missionary with no children, but he reared me as if I was his own and ensured that I had a fine education. A wonderful man, my Uncle Roderick, with a truly kind soul. He was an abolitionist, and traveled frequently to Africa to bring the word of our Lord to the wild Bushmen of the Namib.
“Have you ever been to Africa, Your Highness?” she asked. Sikander nodded no, and Jane gave him a shy smile, a grin of such genuine pleasure that he felt a pang of unanticipated desire. “It is a wonderful place. A land of great and simple joy, of such potent and miraculous mysticism that you find yourself humbled time and again, the sort of place that makes you truly glad to be alive.
“Is it strange then that I felt more at home on the veldt surrounded by the wilderness than I ever did in England, mingling with boys my age?” She flinched, a forlorn little twist of her mouth. “I suppose there was som
ething wrong with me, but I never felt the desire to marry, although there were a few offers. And my uncle, he was kind enough to leave the choice to me, but after what had happened to my parents…” She shrugged, letting her voice taper away to a choked murmur. “Sadly, my uncle passed when I was twenty-five, but not before he had managed to secure a position for me as a governess for a gentleman in London who had two young daughters who required instruction. And that was where I met Michael, just a few weeks after my twenty-ninth birthday.”
After her earlier reticence, she seemed glad, almost eager to tell her story, as though she had been waiting for a chance to unburden herself for years.
“He was a clerk with my employer’s shipping company, and I met him only once. But sometimes even one encounter is enough, particularly when you meet the person who is made just for you, someone who fits with you perfectly. It’s ironic, really. I spent my youth being exceedingly cynical, scoffing at people who talked of love, and then, in one fell swoop, when I saw Michael…”
She glanced at Sikander hopefully.
“Do you know what I mean, Your Majesty? Have you ever had someone like that?”
Sikander nodded imperceptibly. “Once, a long time ago,” he murmured, “I did, for a very brief time.”
“What happened to her?”
“She died, Madam,” he said, with great finality, as if to declare he had no further desire to discuss the matter with her, or anyone else
Jane gave him a sad look of commiseration, before resuming her story. “Then you know exactly how I felt, sir. I had given up on ever meeting someone like Michael, but when he began to court me, it was like a fairy tale had come to life, and I was its heroine. He swept me away. It began with him asking permission to correspond with me, a request I accepted warily enough, but then those letters, oh, those letters, how they made my heart leap each time I received them!