“A lot of Americans do feel that way about— being tied down.”
“Exactly! Tied down!” he burst out. “We shall live with my parents, as the custom is. I shall come home from work at night, and my wife will tell me of the terrible things my mother did to her. Then my mother will take me aside to tell me that my wife is slovenly, or lazy, or doesn’t look after the children properly. Then my wife will tell me—” He put his hands over his ears, as if to shut out the imagined voices.
“You don’t know it will be like that.”
“It is always quarrelling, always rivalry.”
“I don’t believe you. If it were that awful, people wouldn’t have been living that way for thousands of years.”
Since when, Marina wondered, did I start arguing in favor of matrimony? An image floated through her head of Patrick, laughing.
Vijay looked so woebegone she had to smile. He shook his head, his own smile rueful. “I do not want to get married.”
“That’s obvious.”
“Sushila is a pretty girl, a good girl, but if I were choosing, I might choose— someone very different.”
“Do you have to go through with it?”
“The astrologer is studying his charts to pick the most auspicious day. Everyone except me is very happy.”
“That doesn’t answer my question.”
“I do not know the answer to your question.”
They fell into a companionable silence. In half an hour or so Marina recognized the outskirts of Halapur.
Ten years had made no difference. Women still sat outside their roadside lean-tos and wove baskets of long, supple, white-yellow rushes. It could have been the same broken shutter that hung loosely from one of the windows of the District Administration Center, the same bullocks that nosed in the brown stubble of its garden. In the central square the peepul tree spread its branches, and in its shade small groups of men crouched, chewing betel and talking about— what? Marina had always wondered. At the public pump women with their water jars laughed and talked, their saris bright, bangles gleaming on their arms.
The bus had stopped here. It was down one of the little streets leading off the square— Marina picked out the one immediately— that she had walked to reach Palika Road and the ashram. She could remember every turn of it. The barber shop, where customers reclined while the barber scraped their faces with his straight razor; the temple, with the maimed or blind beggars in its precincts; the shop with saris hanging outside, rustling in whatever breeze reached its cramped confines—
“Marina? I was asking where you would like to go.” The car had stopped, and Vijay and the driver were looking at her. The starting point had to be the last place Nagarajan had been seen alive, the place where he was supposed to have died.
“Let’s go to the police station,” she said.
30
When Marina had last been in the Halapur police station, she had said she didn’t want Catherine’s ring with the pink stone, and the man had put the piece of misshapen metal into a brown envelope. He had watched her guardedly, as if afraid she would suddenly scream, cry, accuse, not knowing how little chance of that there was. She could no more have wept or raised her voice than she could have touched the ring. She had thanked him and walked out of the ugly orange stucco building with its flat roof and concrete arcades.
Her work had taken her to other police stations since then, and now she knew that the one in Halapur was typical. There was the long counter, the smell of paper and of strong cleanser, the bulletin board with its printed sheets, and the man behind the counter, who looked drowsy no matter the time of day. He blinked as they came in, and sat up straighter.
“I think it will be better if I make our request,” Vijay had said outside, and now he swept up to the drowsy man and spoke in Marathi, taking from his breast pocket an envelope from which he drew a sheet of official stationery with a brief text, embossed stamps, and a signature endowed with loops and flourishes. The man glanced at it, then reached for the telephone near his elbow. While he spoke into it, Vijay picked up the paper and put it away.
The man hung up, said something to Vijay, and left the room. As they waited, Marina said, “What was that you showed him?”
“An official request for assistance with our inquiries into the incidents on Palika Road.”
“But we don’t have an official request.”
“Now we do.”
“Mr. Curtis signed that paper?”
“Well—” Vijay hesitated.
“Vijay—”
“I signed it myself. With my own name, of course.”
Marina was amazed. Nothing could be more completely out of character. “You can’t have! You’ll get into trouble!”
“Suppose we came here and asked politely to inquire into the case. We would at this moment be walking out the door. Whoever reads the document carefully, which you have noticed he did not do, will see that it says, in very elaborate language, that we are not doing this under the auspices of the consulate. It is not my fault if they do not read carefully. And besides,” he went on fiercely, “suppose I do get into trouble. I have at least done for once what it was my own wish and decision to do.”
Before Marina could answer, the man returned and indicated that they should follow him. A short way down a hall he showed them into an office where a heavy man in shirtsleeves, with slick gray hair and a hanging underlip, was dictating to a secretary in a blue sari. He ignored them for several minutes before dismissing her with a gesture and turning to them.
“I am the chief of police. You wish to see me?”
Vijay stepped forward. When he spoke, his manner was authoritative with an overtone of pompousness. “Vijay Pandit, of the American consulate in Bombay. Miss Robinson, here, is the sister of a girl killed on Palika Road in the ashram fire some years ago. We are looking into the circumstances surrounding that event.”
The chief leaned back and plucked at his underlip. He didn’t ask them to sit down. He looked at Marina. “What are you hoping to find, Miss Robinson?”
Marina’s job at Breakdown, Inc., had given her some practice in being pushy. She tried to follow Vijay’s lead. “I’ve had indications recently that my sister is alive, that she somehow escaped the fire. I want to find out the exact circumstances.”
“I see.” The chief hesitated, then sat forward. “I cannot open our files to you unless you go to a great deal of legal trouble. I was, however, a junior officer here at that time, and I remember the incident well. I can tell you without doubt that no one could have escaped or survived. Fuel oil had been thrown into the blaze, and it was very hot. We found the remains of three bodies in what we later learned had been the room set aside for meditation. In such cases identification is not easy, but we established to our own satisfaction and, as I recall, that of the consulate”—he glanced at Vijay— “the identities of the victims. I am sorry I cannot hold out any hope to you.”
“And the— the guru, Nagarajan,” Marina said. “He killed himself here, in jail. Are you familiar with the circumstances of his death, too?”
She wondered if she saw a slight ripple in his heavy jowls. His eyes didn’t move. “No, I am not,” he said. “He had committed the ritual murder of a neighborhood child, and the crime was discovered. These circumstances enraged the crowd. After Nagarajan was arrested they set fire to the ashram, and three of his followers died in the blaze. I understand that he hanged himself in remorse. The guard found him when he came by on his rounds the night the ashram burned.”
“The guard,” Vijay said. “Is that guard here? Can we talk with him?”
“He no longer works here.”
Vijay drew himself up. “We would like to have his name and whereabouts.” His tone implied that he was giving an order.
The chief’s underlip pushed out farther, but he seemed to be most interested in sending them on their way. “He is called Baburao. He lives outside of town, on the Mahabaleshwar Road. Anyone will show you.” He pulled
some papers forward and bent over them. He did not raise his head as they left.
Back in the car, as the driver slowly made his way toward southern Halapur and the Mahabaleshwar Road, Marina said, “Did it strike you as odd that he remembered the guard’s name immediately, and knew where he lived? Surely he would’ve forgotten, after all this time, and have had to look it up?”
Vijay shrugged. “Possibly. It is equally possible that it was such an important episode in his life that he never forgot.”
Houses and shops began to thin out, and they stopped at a galvanized metal stand advertising Campa Cola and Kwality Ice Cream while the driver asked directions. “Another thing,” Marina said. “Why is anybody in town going to be able to tell us how to find the house of some ex-prison guard? Do you think the police chief was just trying to get rid of us, hoping we’d spend the whole day searching?”
“That we shall see.”
In fact, the driver returned to tell Vijay he had gotten specific directions to Baburao’s house. They crossed a river, low and sluggish in its banks. Women with their saris tucked around them stood in it calf-deep, pounding their washing on flat stones. Laundry was spread to dry on bordering bushes. Beyond them, a man washed his bullock, splashing water over the animal’s neck and flanks.
Half a mile past the river they turned onto a rougher road. They wound along, bouncing from side to side, toward a line of trees. When they reached the trees, Marina saw among them the house of Baburao.
It was two stories high, built of stone of a mellow golden color. Wooden balconies ringed the top floor, matching the wide wooden veranda on the bottom. Crows strutted through the stone-bordered garden. To one side of the house a bright red tractor was up on blocks. A dusty black car stood at the front steps.
Vijay’s laugh was short and sardonic. “Now we see why everyone knows where Baburao lives. He must be one of the richest men in Halapur. The house looks new, too. He built himself the perfect British officer’s cottage.”
When they got out of the car, Marina heard the thin, far-off sound of wailing. The front door of the house, she noticed, was standing open. “Something’s wrong,” she said. The two of them hurried toward the house, crossed the veranda and entered a wide hall. A young woman rushed from a side door. When she saw them, she shrieked and started to run the other way, but Vijay spoke to her rapidly and she stopped. Her face, Marina saw, was streaming with tears. She answered him with a few strangled syllables, then disappeared into the back of the house.
Vijay looked shaken. “Baburao is dead,” he said. “His body was just found. The men have gone to bring it from the fields.”
31
A low babble of voices came from outside, and Marina and Vijay returned to the front garden. Straggling around the side of the house was a group of six or seven men, several of them supporting a limp figure on their shoulders. Marina could see long red scratches on one of the exposed calves of the dhoti-clad body. The head lolled, and she saw that one side of it was covered with blood, which had trickled across the face. One of the men was trying, without much effect, to brush away the cloud of flies that hovered around the wound. Beside the group and a little apart from it walked a man with a fringe of gray hair and steel-rimmed glasses. He wore dark trousers and an open shirt and carried a black doctor’s bag.
As the men rounded the side of the house the wailing, which had gone on continuously, grew louder, and a woman with her gray hair undone burst from the front door, shrieking and crying. Several other women followed, including the one Vijay had stopped in the hall. When the gray-haired woman saw the body she gave a long, loud cry and fell to her knees, sobbing. The women and the doctor gathered around her while the men, after a brief hesitation, carried the body up the steps and into the house. The doctor and the women succeeded in raising the gray-haired woman to her feet and half-dragged her after them. The sound of her cries was once again muffled in the interior of the house.
Nobody had taken notice of Marina and Vijay, standing to one side on the graveled path. When they were alone Marina asked, “Did she tell you what happened to him?”
“Only what I have said, that he is dead. We must find out more, I think?”
“We can’t just go in and—”
“No, no, we must wait a little.”
Vijay went to talk with the driver, who had parked the car under the trees a little distance away. Marina stood uncertainly in the garden. She had seen many grief-stricken people, but the woman’s unrestrained outpouring left her abashed, almost ashamed of her next thought, which was that now Baburao wouldn’t be able to help them. She studied the house. In terms of the way most people in India lived, it was a mansion. Ten years ago, Baburao had been a prison guard. He had risen rapidly.
Vijay returned, and he and Marina walked aimlessly through the garden. At last, someone emerged from the house. The doctor crossed the veranda and descended the steps to the black car. He noticed them and stopped, sunlight glinting on his glasses.
Vijay approached him and spoke in Marathi. The doctor answered, and when Vijay spoke again he responded, “Yes, I speak English. I studied medicine at Johns Hopkins in the United States.” He took out a handkerchief and patted his high forehead. “You are friends of Baburao?”
“We didn’t know him, but we wanted to talk with him,” Marina said.
“A terrible accident. I can do nothing for him now.”
“What happened?” asked Vijay.
“At some time during the night, Baburao left his house and walked out across his fields. In the dark, he must have stumbled and fallen into a steep gully that borders one of them. He hit his head against the rocks at the bottom. The farmer who works the field discovered the body this morning.”
“Why would he go to the fields in the middle of the night?” Marina asked.
“No one can say. It was not for his bodily needs. He was most proud that he had put modern plumbing conveniences in his new house. Walking about at night was not his custom, his wife says. She retired before he did, and no one missed him until this morning. Even then, they thought he must be nearby. As he was.” He looked at his watch. “Excuse me. I must go.”
The doctor got in his car. Vijay bent to the window and said, “We know that Baburao was formerly a guard at the prison. How did he become so wealthy?”
The doctor shrugged. “Some years ago, he got money. He said it was from his relatives working in Iran, in the oil fields. With the money he bought land. He was a shrewd man. A thrifty man.” The doctor started his car, made a gesture of farewell, and drove off, leaving Vijay and Marina in a cloud of swirling dust.
Marina heard a movement behind her on the veranda, and turned to see the young woman Vijay had questioned earlier. Her eyes were red, but she looked more composed, and Marina saw that she was beautiful, with huge dark eyes, full lips, and a waist-length braid hanging down her back. She spoke to Vijay in a low, strained voice. They exchanged several remarks before Vijay said to Marina, “I have told her we came to see Baburao on business. She is his daughter-in-law. She is apologizing that she cannot ask us to come in and take food.”
Marina was amazed. “Apologizing, when they just found the man’s body? Everything must be—”
“Yes, she apologizes, because it is our rule that guests, even unexpected ones, must be treated as if they are gods. She cannot offer us food because the dead body of Baburao has brought pollution into the house.”
“Pollution?”
“Death is just one of many things that are considered to be polluting. The people in this house must undergo ritual cleansing before they can eat again.”
The woman was looking curiously at Marina. She spoke to Vijay, and Vijay said, “She would like to know where you are from.”
“Tell her I’m from California. San Francisco.”
Vijay had several exchanges with the woman and then said, “She wants to know if California is a big place.”
“Tell her it’s very big.”
Vijay s
poke, and the woman replied. Toward the end of her speech her voice broke and she dabbed at her eyes with the end of her sari.
“She says that Baburao had promised to take the family to the States for a visit when her son was a little older,” Vijay said.
The woman and Vijay conversed a short while longer. Crying openly, the woman gasped out a few words at a time, as Vijay nodded and murmured comments. At last, breaking down completely, she took refuge in the doorway.
“She was telling me about the last time she saw her father-in-law,” Vijay said. “About midday yesterday a boy rode out from town on his bicycle with a message for Baburao. Baburao read the message and closed himself in his office all the afternoon. After dinner, he shut himself in his office again. Last night, before going to bed, she took him a cup of tea. He looked worn out. He said to her, ‘Gita, you have been a fine wife to my son and have given me a good, strong grandson.’ She was moved, and knelt to touch his feet and receive his blessing. It was the last time she saw him alive.”
Gita, no longer crying, had moved toward them once more, listening to Vijay’s recitation with an interested expression. “Does she know what happened to the message? Or what it said?” Marina asked.
Vijay’s expression didn’t change as Gita answered his question, but Marina saw his body stiffen. When the woman finished speaking, his tone was casual. “Please do not show surprise or alarm when I tell you this. She says the message was open on Baburao’s desk last night. She cannot read, but she says that on the top of the paper there was a picture of a smiling elephant. The paper is no longer in his office, and it was not found on his body.”
32
To keep herself from reacting, Marina dug her nails into the palms of her hands. Elephanta Trading and Tours, Raki, Nagarajan. When she looked back at Vijay, she thought his face seemed pinched. “Does she know the boy who brought the message?” she asked.
The Grand Tour: Four International Mysteries Page 76