After questioning Gita further Vijay said that she did not know the boy’s name, but that he occasionally delivered messages to Baburao. He could often be found waiting for assignments near the peepul tree in the square in the center of Halapur.
They went through polite formulas of thanks and condolence. As they walked to the car Marina said, “It’s Nagarajan again. You can’t deny it.”
“I don’t deny it.”
“He killed Baburao, or had him killed.”
“It is likely.”
“We have to find the boy with the bicycle.”
As the car bounced away from the house Marina thought about Baburao. A thrifty man, a shrewd man, the doctor had said. He got money— from relatives in the Iranian oil fields, or from Nagarajan as a bribe for his release? And because Baburao was shrewd and thrifty, he got rich. He built a house, inside which his dead body lay. Baburao was less than nothing now. Less even than a guard at the Halapur jail.
They turned toward Halapur, passing two men on the shoulder of the road who were smoking cigarettes and desultorily tinkering with a black motorcycle. They must have gotten it fixed, Marina thought a few minutes later when she heard a high-pitched whine and looked back to see them riding it, one crouched behind the other. They wore goggles, and the wind whipped their hair. Marina thought of the boy who must ride his bicycle all this way in the heat, five miles or more, to deliver messages to Baburao. At least between jobs he was able to sit under the peepul tree.
When they reached the square, however, there was no boy with a bicycle resting there, and Vijay’s inquiries of the men chewing betel brought only vague answers about where he was and when he might return.
Marina tried to suppress her disappointment. “There’s one more thing I need to do here. Maybe when I’ve done it he’ll be back.”
“What do you wish to do?”
It had been growing in her mind since their arrival in Halapur. “I want to see Agit More’s family.”
Vijay’s face darkened. “The family of the boy who was killed? Why must you do that?”
“I just want— you know, I just want to see if they need anything.”
They wandered out of the shade of the spreading tree. “It is not good,” Vijay said. “Agit More is nothing to do with you.”
Across the square, shrieking children played a game with sticks. A donkey lumbered by carrying a load of clay water jars covered with netting. Two men lounged near a motorcycle. “It is something to do with me,” she said.
“What is that?”
“The investigators said Agit More’s murder was some sort of ritual killing. It didn’t seem to have been done out of— of anger or anything. It was like a sacrifice—” Marina swallowed and persisted. “Nagarajan needed to bind his followers to him closely, make them totally loyal. I believe compelling Catherine and the others to participate in this horrible crime, killing Agit More, was a way to tie them to him forever. After that, they could never leave him, never renounce him. Because they would be guilty, too.”
“You think your sister knew about, even aided in, this sacrifice of Agit More. Is that it?” Vijay’s voice was soft.
Marina nodded. One suffocating afternoon a dog had trotted down Palika Road with the dirt-encrusted head of Agit More in its mouth. The serpent is dangerous. Its bite can kill.
“How could I know what they’d do?” Marina burst out. “I was away a lot. They never told me anything. I couldn’t have stopped them, could I?” She grasped Vijay’s arm. “Could I?”
Chills racked her body, and she was only peripherally aware of Vijay leading her away from the crowded square into a narrow alley. “No, no you could not,” he whispered.
Afraid she would fall, she held on to him. When she could talk, she said, “I hate Catherine. I hate her.”
“You hate the crime, Marina.” She felt his hands on her shoulders, his breath on her hair.
Marina always told herself she had never seen Agit More, knowing that she had seen him many times. He was surely one of the group of children who laughed and played in the street, their bony bodies looking as if they would snap at the lightest blow. Surely Agit had been one of the group who stared at her when she came and went, saw her in the street, followed her to the gate. Occasionally one of the braver ones dared to call “Hello!” If she responded, there was a chorus, “Hello!” “Hello!” “Hello!” “Hello!” as all of them said it.
She had certainly said hello to Agit sometime.
When the worst of the shaking passed, Vijay released her. He said, “We must not shock the people of Halapur. To embrace in public is not done in India. Would you like tea?”
Hunched over a steaming cup in a nearly empty tea shop, Marina said, “Suppose Nagarajan murdered Baburao. Why would he do it now?”
“Perhaps he wanted to keep Baburao from talking with us.”
She considered. “That would mean he knows where we are, what we’re doing.”
“If your own theory is correct, and Raki is in communication with him, then of course he knows about us. Raki caught you breaking into his office. He knows your name. He has seen me with you. If Nagarajan hasn’t guessed by now that we are searching for him, he is not very intelligent.”
Nagarajan unaware of them was one thing. Nagarajan poised to strike was another. “Should we go to the police, tell them our suspicions about what happened to Baburao?”
“No.” Vijay held up two fingers and ticked off his points. “First, we have only our suspicions, and the police chief is not well-disposed toward us. Second, how do we know that the police are not involved? Baburao could hardly have gotten Nagarajan out of prison and cremated another body by himself. If it becomes known that Nagarajan is alive, it will be a terrible embarrassment for the Halapur police. We will say nothing to them.
“But”— he put his hand flat on the table— “I will tell you what we will do. We will speak to the family of Agit More, if you insist. We will talk with the boy on the bicycle. Then we must return to Bombay, for me to put this matter into the hands of Mr. Curtis. If this disappoints you, forgive me, but I cannot allow you to be endangered. I simply cannot.”
Marina looked at Vijay, across the table. Behind his glasses, his dark eyes shone with determination. His jaw was set. This was her cue to cut him loose, ditch him, go her own way. She had to know, didn’t she? She would go after Nagarajan, and she would find out the truth about Catherine. And another thing— if she refused to go back to Bombay, flat out, Vijay might change his mind. He might. If he was that fearful for her safety, he might come with her, even against his better judgment. Even if she eluded him he might follow her, try to find her.
Vijay didn’t move. Marina looked away. He might come with her, or follow her, and he might be hurt. Or killed. Nagarajan was dangerous, and he knew they were after him. Marina realized that she could not knowingly put Vijay in harm’s way. Vijay wouldn’t continue, and she wouldn’t go on without him. They would return to Bombay. They would tell Mr. Curtis everything. He might be willing, given the information they had uncovered, to start some sort of investigation. She said, “Fine. We’ll tell him.”
“Good. Good.” Vijay looked happier. He pushed his chair back. “Shall we make a move?”
There was no breeze, and the heat and exhaust fumes were almost overpowering. They threaded through traffic and street hawkers. A legless, toothless old man at the temple gate stretched his palm to them, and Vijay gave him a coin. What used to be the sari shop now housed greasy-looking boxes of machine parts and tools, and for an instant, but only an instant, Marina thought about Loopy Doop.
By the next corner, the thought had vanished completely. Marina walked around the corner and looked down the street. She had come back to Palika Road.
33
The past never dies, Marina thought. How could I imagine I could rid myself of this place? To Vijay, she said, “It’s just like before.”
The night Agit More was killed, she had been in Bombay. She had needed
to get away from the ashram, from Nagarajan, to reestablish her equilibrium— or so she had rationalized it.
After her usual fruitless visit to the consulate, she had dawdled. Telling herself she had seen nothing of Bombay but the airport and the consulate, she had taken a bus tour with a group of other Americans. Most of the people on the bus were Texans on a package tour, and they spent a great deal of time, she remembered, comparing everything they saw to similar things in Texas—the Hanging Gardens to the public parks of Houston; the Jain Temple, with its white-clad priests and statues of bug-eyed gods, to the churches of Dallas; the Parsee Towers of Silence, where bodies of the dead were left for birds to devour, to the crematoriums of Fort Worth.
By the time the tour ended she had, as she had half planned, missed the bus for Halapur. She stayed the night at a hostel, sharing a room with a Canadian girl who talked about nothing but hashish. The caretaker’s baby was ill and cried for hours.
As she and Vijay walked along the road, Marina wondered, as she had thousands of times before, if she had sensed that something terrible was going to happen and had stayed away to avoid involvement. Catherine had looked more taut than usual, but Marina guiltily attributed that to jealousy of Marina’s being Nagarajan’s current favorite in bed. Whether or not Catherine really resented it Marina had never known. She said nothing, but she rarely spoke to Marina anyway.
Nagarajan would taunt her about Catherine. “Why can you not be like your sister? When she hears the truth, she knows it. Such lovely hair she has, yellow as mustard blossoms. I want always women around me with hair the color of yellow flowers.”
She knew she was slipping, losing ground, but she continued to go to him. “You see, you do like me, Marina,” he said one night as they lay, filmed with perspiration, on his bed mat.
She turned away, filled with self-loathing. “Yes, I like you.”
“You see—” Nagarajan leaned over to speak in her ear. His hair tickled her shoulder. “You are so worried, so angry. You are like a bullock who fears the sound of the bell tied around his own neck, and so will not bend his head to eat.”
“You mean I won’t bend my head so you can slip on the yoke.”
He laughed. “You are on guard always. Only think. When a bullock submits to the yoke he has a place, he is of use, isn’t it? And a wise bullock knows that the sound of his bell is only a noise he creates himself, and will bend his head to take what is before him.”
When she turned back to him that night, as she inevitably did turn back to him, he said, “You will see that the bell is making music only.”
***
Marina and Vijay had reached the front gate of the ashram. No. The front gate of the house that stood where the ashram used to be. Three children ran chattering through the doorway, stopping short to stare when they saw Marina and Vijay.
“That’s where it was,” Marina said. She stared at the house that looked very much like the other house, at the earth that showed no trace of past fires. She waited, and felt nothing. There was no reason to stay. She turned and pointed diagonally across the street. “That’s where Agit More lived.”
The More house was no different from the others, except that a yellow motorbike leaned against the side wall. As they drew nearer, the whine of a radio drifted through the open windows. Marina tapped on the front door, and a barefoot girl of eleven or so, wearing a loose faded blue dress with puffed sleeves, her thin legs and tousled short hair streaked with dust, opened it and peered out at them.
Vijay questioned and the girl answered shyly. She stood back for them to enter. “Her name is Kamala More. Her mother is at the market, and Kamala is here caring for her nephews. She says we may wait for her mother to return,” Vijay said.
A baby with a fuzz of dark hair sat on the floor. A boy about a year old was making a clatter by banging a string of wooden beads against the side of a new-looking television set. The radio, on a shelf, also looked new. Marina did not remember, from the time of Agit More’s murder, any indication that his family was anything but very poor, but television sets and motorbikes were not within the reach of poor Indian families. It looked as if in the intervening years the fortunes of the Mores, like those of Baburao, had improved.
The girl motioned to them to sit on a string cot and stood to one side watching. The toddler wavered across the room to them, gnawing his beads, and Vijay offered him a finger. The boy’s small hand closed over it and he stood swaying, regarding Vijay solemnly. Vijay chuckled. “He has a strong grip. A good, strong boy.”
He’ll be very good with his children. Marina saw Vijay in a year or so, married to Sushila, with a baby of his own. The thought was vaguely disturbing. To distract herself, she said, “I’m not sure the Mores need any help from me. Have you noticed?”
“Yes, I have.” The little boy let go of Vijay’s finger, lost his balance, and sat down abruptly. He transferred his attention back to his beads. “I cannot understand how this family can afford a motorbike. Or a television set.”
He turned to Kamala and talked with her. It seemed to Marina that the girl answered proudly. Then he said, “She tells me these things are gifts from Uncle. Uncle gave her older brother the motorbike, so he could go to work at the factory. Uncle gave them the television, and many other things. They are very grateful to him.”
“So they have a rich relative after all. I always thought the family was poverty-stricken.”
“Not necessarily a relative. ‘Uncle’ is a term of respect. The children would call any male friend of the family ‘Uncle.’”
Kamala left the room. When she returned, she held reverently three bangles of twisted gold. She displayed them as she spoke to Vijay. When she left the room again, Vijay said, “Those bangles were a gift to her mother from Uncle.”
“Is Uncle her mother’s lover, I wonder?”
“I don’t know.”
When the girl returned, he spoke to her again, and nodded at her response. “I asked her if she knew Uncle’s name,” he said to Marina. “She does. It’s Baburao.”
Of course. The shrewd and thrifty Baburao was unexpectedly generous with the family of Agit More. That was because he had let Nagarajan, Agit More’s killer, go free. Did the More family know the reason for their good fortune, or did Baburao invent an excuse for watching over them and providing for them? What would happen to them now? The baby started to fret, and Kamala picked it up. Marina wondered if Baburao’s guilt had extended to including them in his will. “Let’s go. I don’t want to be the one to tell them he’s dead.”
When they were outside, Marina said, “Agit’s murder benefited his family. How ironic.”
“Ironic, yes. Still, it is good they had something, after all their suffering.”
They did not stop again at the site of the ashram. Palika Road would be with her always, Marina knew, but now it was like a place she had seen in a dream, or a photograph in an album she rarely opened.
34
When they reached the town square, a rusting bicycle was listing on its kickstand under the peepul tree. Sitting with his back against the tree was a curly-haired boy of about fifteen wearing shorts and a loose shirt, threadbare tennis shoes without laces, and no socks. This had to be the bicycle messenger. His face brightened when he saw Marina and Vijay approach, and he jumped to his feet.
“Good day, Madam,” he said to Marina. “You have message to send?” Marina had barely begun to say no when he continued, “I see. You want silks and saris. I take you, no problem. Indian art. Ivory carvings. Brasses. Very artistic, very beautiful.”
“We want—”
Still talking, he released the kickstand and rolled his bicycle toward the edge of the square. “Stones, madam. Garnet. Tiger-eye. Good price, too. My cousin. Come.”
Marina raised her eyebrows at Vijay. If they agreed to inspect his cousin’s wares, the boy might be more willing to talk. In any case, it was impossible to break into his monologue.
“Paintings. On palm leaf. On cloth. Miniatu
res, very artistic. Lacquer boxes with flowers, birds. You will like. You are from?”
Stunned by the barrage of words, Marina could hardly gather her wits to answer. “The United States. California.”
“California. Is beautiful. You like Halapur? You come to Halapur, shop at Laxmi Emporium. My cousin. I am Hari.”
Once he was assured that they were following him, Hari’s patter slowed somewhat. Marina wondered how many souvenirs she would have to buy before she could ask Hari about the customer who had sent him to Baburao’s yesterday. Hari leaned his bicycle against the front of a building which a sign proclaimed to be the Laxmi Emporium and ushered them inside.
The jumble of merchandise seemed to include most of what Hari had promised. Brass statues of Shiva as king of the dancers gleamed next to embroidered shoulder bags. Saris were strewn on a counter near stacked bolts of bright-colored silk. A glass case held jewelry and loose semiprecious stones. Several men sat in the back of the shop, drinking tea and having what appeared to be a serious discussion. Hari waved, and one of them waved back. “My cousin,” said Hari. “I will show you.”
As they approached the counter, Marina said, “Actually, we were looking for you because we wanted to ask you a question.”
“Yes? I will answer of course. But first—” He waved his hand delicately to indicate the contents of the store.
She picked up trinkets, too distracted even to think of wanting to buy. Jewelry? Paintings on palm leaves? Carved boxes? Brass statues of Hindu gods? She rubbed her forehead. “Silks and saris, Madam?” Hari suggested.
Fine. Silks and saris would be portable, at least. At the table laden with bright-colored fabrics she selected a blue-and-silver shawl for Clara. Would one shawl be enough to get Hari to talk? He approved of the purchase, at least. “Beautiful, Madam! Finest quality. You will remember us when you wear it.”
“Actually, it’s a gift for a friend,” Marina said.
The Grand Tour: Four International Mysteries Page 77