by Marie Moore
Justin chatted easily with one group before moving on to another, moving with the grace of an athlete or a dancer. Our friends were not the only hotel guests having drinks in the courtyard that evening; Justin mingled with everyone. Politicians call it “working the room.” Watching Justin’s polished performance, I thought he would have made a good politician. On the surface he was a really attractive man, but I sensed an underlying coldness.
Thinking of the afternoon’s conversation with Justin at the pool, I suddenly realized that even after talking with him for over an hour, I hadn’t really learned anything about him. Also like a politician, he kept his private life truly private without seeming to. There was clearly a public Justin and a private Justin. I wondered what the real man was like. I didn’t think Brooke truly knew much about him either, for he had only been invited into the circle of friends a year earlier by Lucy, his neighbor at his vacation home in France.
I was just turning to ask Brooke more about him when Jay parted the curtains of the alcove and headed in our direction. From the satisfied look on his face, it was easy to see that he was pleased with what he’d been told. He plopped down next to Brooke and signaled the waiter.
“It’s your turn, Sidney. You will love this guy, whether you believe in fortunetellers or not. The man is uncanny, an absolute genius, a true seer. How he can know these things is beyond me.”
“What did he say that makes you think him so wise?” Brooke asked.
“He said a lot, Brooke. Good things. But the most remarkable thing he said was, ‘You will always be unappreciated. It is your lot.’ You both know how true that is, especially you, Sidney. Not at the agency, not anywhere. No one ever truly appreciates me. You see? The man is brilliant. Like I said, a real seer. Go. He’s waiting on you. You’re the last to go before dinner, I don’t see Adam. Hurry, listen to what he has to say to you.”
So I headed for the future waiting for me behind the tasseled curtain, my stomach aching from trying to hold in my laughter at Jay and his “fortune.” I didn’t dare look at Brooke. If I did, I would lose it. Always unappreciated. Please.
Entering the dim alcove, I took a moment to let my eyes adjust until I could clearly make out the little man sitting so still and silent beside the tiny table. The aroma of sandalwood was strong; it emanated from inside a brass burner suspended from a chain just behind him. The faint white smoke it emitted seemed to curl around his head, as if he were a genie. Small and ancient, he wore a shabby white robe and turban. His eyes were sharp and piercing under bushy gray brows in a brown wrinkled face. When he smiled, I could see that he had just a few teeth left. Those that remained were stained red with betel juice. A jar filled with money was the only object on the table.
At his gesture I sat on the stool opposite him, stuffed some bills into his jar, and somewhat reluctantly extended my palm toward him across the table.
Still smiling, he took my hand gently in his and bent over my palm, tracing its lines with his gnarled finger.
Expecting the usual patter about husbands and money, I was surprised at his silence, and unnerved when he placed my hand palm down on the table and gave me a searching look. His smile was gone, replaced with a serious look of infinite sadness and concern.
I couldn’t ignore an eerie feeling that he had seen something in my palm that he did not want to share.
Finally he said, in a deep, slow voice, “You must be oh-so-careful on your journey, lady. One man has died on your path already. Others may follow. Evil surrounds you. But from the depths of the jungle, God will come to rescue you. Now go please, ma’am, go with God, for that is all I can say.”
And then he rose, and turning, disappeared between the curtains behind him, taking his tip jar with him.
I sat alone for a moment in the scented dimness, stunned and frightened, wondering about the puzzling prediction that was not at all what I expected.
#
By morning the uneasy feeling left by the fortuneteller was gone and I was feeling my usual cheerful self.
How ridiculous of me to be unnerved by the tiny man with the red teeth! It was all just an amusement, a parlor game to entertain the tourists. Everyone knows how these people make a living, right? The swami must have heard the talk of Felix’s death and used it to scare me. And he had done a good job of it. It had worked well until daylight, when good common sense had swept the booger bears away.
I said as much to Jay over breakfast, along with a bit of an apology for being so moody and distant the previous evening.
“Oh, it’s okay, Sid. I know you can’t be Little Miss Ray of Sunshine all the time. I’m just glad you’re out of your mood.”
“It was silly of me. I can’t believe I let it bother me so. In my rational mind I know better than to trust a fortuneteller. Nothing to be alarmed about, right?”
“Sidney ….” he said, his brown eyes crinkling.
“Yes?”
“Just what exactly is a ‘booger bear’? It sounds pretty bad to me.”
“You might not have them in the North, Jay,” I smiled. “In the South, booger bears are just about the scariest things ever for little children. They live outside, in the night, and they get after you if you’re bad. You can’t see them, but they’re there. Sometimes they can even get after you if you’re not bad, but are just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Oh. I see. So you want to try to steer clear of booger bears then.”
“Yes.”
“Okay. Well, we don’t have anything quite like that in Pennsylvania, but if I ever come home to Mississippi with you I’ll watch out for them.”
“They can be anywhere, Jay, even in India.”
“Thanks for the warning.”
Following this intelligent conversation, we finished our breakfast and loaded into cars for an excursion to Fatehpur Sikri. After that tour stop, the plan was to go directly to the airport for a flight to Khajuraho, famous for ancient Hindu and Jain temples featuring erotic sculptures and listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Our bags had been sent on ahead.
We were travelling in three cars. Lucy, Brooke, and Rahim were assigned to the first car, with me, Jay and Adam in the second car, and Jasmine, Justin and Mohit following. Sharma said he had some personal matters—family business—to attend to so he would skip the excursion and travel separately. He gave no other details except to say that he would see us later at the airport for the flight to Varanasi.
Jay, riding shotgun next to the driver, was not particularly happy with our seating assignments, and Jasmine looked fairly put out as well when she saw that she would not be riding with Adam. I caught a flash of anger distorting her beautiful features, but it passed quickly. As we loaded into the cars she was already smiling and cooing to Justin in what Jay assured me was faux French.
Adam held the door for me as I settled into the back seat. Then he climbed in next to me and the car rolled away. I couldn’t have been more pleased.
The journey to our next stop, Fatehpur Sikri, was not long, but it was long enough for Adam to spin several tales of his former travels in India. His stories were warm and funny, all told in his deep Scottish burr. I loved listening to him, but Jay didn’t. At first he joined in the conversation, but the more I laughed, the quieter Jay got. Before long, there was no comment at all from the front seat. After a while I noticed that Jay was pretending to sleep.
Chapter 12
“It’s so quiet here,” murmured Brooke, staring up at the magnificent pink and deep red stone buildings of Emperor Akbar’s palace at Fatehpur Sikri, “I can hear the wind.”
She was right. There was a profound silence in the place. I realized that we had become so attuned to the bustle of the cities crowded with people, animals, and vehicles that the splendid isolation of this solitary ancient site was almost a shock to the senses.
Mohit, again acting as historian and guide, began the history of Emperor Akbar, builder of Agra Fort and Fatehpur Sikri and grandfather of Shah Jahān. He gathe
red us round a huge stone tethering ring in the courtyard near the emperor’s pavilion. There Akbar was said to have kept a chained elephant whose sole purpose was to crush capital criminals to death.
“In 1568,” Mohit said in his sing-song voice, “Akbar came to this place called Sikri. He was twenty-six years old and still without an heir. Here he met a Sufi mystic named Salim who promised him three sons. The following year a son was born. So Akbar, in his joy, built this beautiful palace and moved his entire capital here, calling it Fatehpur Sikri, meaning City of Victory. But it remained his capital for only thirteen years before being completely abandoned.”
“But why,” said Adam, waving his arm in a wide gesture toward the five-tiered wind towers, “was all this deserted? It is magnificent.”
“There was no water,” Mohit replied. “The lake that was built was insufficient. Water had to be brought from afar, and after a time the effort became too much. So here it stands, abandoned. Beautiful, yes, but home only to the wind.”
“Amazing,” Lucy said. Shading her camera from the sun, she snapped shot after shot of the stunning palace.
At the end of the lecture we were given a departure time and then released to stroll at will through the harem and the various pavilions and palaces. The stone walls and pillars were elaborately carved in both the Hindu and Islamic manner. We were lucky in that we had the place entirely to ourselves.
I had envisioned a lovely morning, strolling through the palace with Adam and continuing the warm conversation that had begun in the car, but he was reclaimed upon arrival by Jasmine.
She entwined her jeweled arm in his and tugged him toward the harem. I thought sourly that it was not surprising that the harem was always the building that interested her most in these ancient palace complexes.
I soon forgot about both of them, however, as I walked alone from the Astrologer’s Pavilion to the Treasurer’s Pavilion, immersed in the stark beauty before me.
I wandered, lost in thought, taking tons of pictures even while imagining what it must have been like when Akbar was in residence. My imagination was really working overtime as I pictured the emperor sitting on silken cushions, counting all his wealth with his treasurer. I even thought I caught a glimpse of a man slipping from column to column in the shadows, where legend says Akbar played hide-and-seek with his favorite wives.
The silence really was uncanny. Mohit’s resonant voice, the only one I could hear, soon faded away as I wandered deeper into the forest of stone columns, gazing upward in awe at the carvings of flowers, birds, lions, and elephants—mostly their heads and trunks. They were impressive even now, six centuries after they’d been carved.
I totally lost track of time. It was as if I had stepped back a few centuries. Sheltered from the blazing sun by the huge stone pavilions, lulled into imagination by the wind, I strolled deep into the sandstone complex. So deep, in fact, that it suddenly occurred to me that finding my way back to the cars was not going to be easy. I looked at my watch, realizing that it was almost departure time. There was no signage to direct me and I was not sure of the way out.
I decided to walk back the way I had come in hope of finding some of the others or an exit sign. I couldn’t hear any voices.
I had just turned a corner for the second time, aware that I was seriously lost, when out of the corner of my eye I glimpsed a big man leaping toward me from the shadowed archway of columns.
“Gotcha!” Jay shouted, pinning my arms. “Surprise!”
My heart almost stopped. Catching my breath, I whirled to scream at him for scaring me, but then I could see that was what he wanted so I didn’t. He released my arms and started laughing his red head off. I was furious, and my heart was still beating way too fast.
“Oh come on, Sidney, lighten up. I was just having a little fun with you.”
I didn’t say a word, just looked at him and turned to stomp toward the exit, which had been nearby all along. I wasn’t speaking to the big galoot. I was headed for the car.
“Aw, come on, Sid. Didn’t you have fun playing hide-and-seek as a little kid way down in Dixie?” he called after me.
No answer. I wasn’t speaking to him, just marching to the gate.
Catching up with me, he tried again, this time with a pious tone in his voice. “You should thank me, you know, for making you aware of how dangerous it can be for a woman to wander alone in such a deserted place, especially in a strange country.”
That did it.
“Thank you?” I screamed, “Thank you for scaring the daylights out of me like some big kid? Thank you? Seriously?”
“Yes. And that’s just what you get, Sidney, for wandering off like that. I’m glad I scared you. Maybe it will make you think. What if it hadn’t been me? What if someone else besides me had grabbed you and just dragged you off somewhere? What then? Better be a little more careful, Missy, unless you want to end up on a milk carton. If they even do that kind of thing here.”
We had almost reached the cars. I marched on in stony silence and now Jay was huffy too, puffed up with self-righteousness.
The others were already seated inside the vehicles, with the engines, and more importantly, the air conditioners running. No one said anything as we climbed in and closed the doors. I was glad Jay was in the front seat with me behind him. Adam gave us both a searching look but said nothing as the cars rolled away.
#
I apologized to Jay at the airport while we waited for the short flight to Varanasi.
On the long car ride from Fatehpur Sikri to the airport, Jay engaged Adam in conversations about Indian politics and economics, pointedly excluding me. Jay never made eye contact. I didn’t either.
As the miles rolled by, I just looked out the window at the passing scene, tuning them both out. Finally I cooled down and realized that Jay had been right in his warning to me, even though his methods were childish and over the top. But what was Jay if not playful? His spirit of fun is one of the things I love about him. I owed him an apology for overreacting.
I waited for a chance to speak with him privately at the airport and found him seated in a Wi-Fi area tapping away on his laptop. He looked grim.
“Bad news from Silverstein?” I said, trying to keep my tone as light as possible.
He looked up at me and said, “Oh, hi, Sidney.”
“Look, Jay, I’m sorry. You were in the right, not me. I’ve thought it over and I realize and appreciate what you were trying to do. I wasn’t thinking. I was wrong to yell at you. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, babe,” he said, with a little half smile. “Guess I was wrong, too, scaring you like that. Peace?”
“Peace.”
He frowned down at his screen, patting the seat next to him.
I sat beside him.
“Do we have a problem?” I asked.
“Yeah. You could say that,” he said, turning the screen toward me so I could read what Silverstein had written. “Silverstein says forget about Sharma or trying to be tour directors and just keep Brooke happy, but that’s not the trouble. The trouble is that apparently Felix didn’t die of a heart attack after all. He was poisoned.”
“What? Poisoned!”
“Yes. The cousin kept demanding an autopsy, so they finally did one. He died of poisoning. Some Indian poison, cerbera odollam, a toxic dose. Comes from the seeds of the othalanga tree. It stopped his heart.”
“Oh, Jay, no!”
“Unfortunately, it’s true. The toxicology report was conclusive. It took them a while to figure it out because it’s hard to detect if you’re not looking for it. But apparently quite a lot of people die of it in this country, often by their own hand. They call it ‘the suicide tree.’ The good news here, if there is any, is that Silverstein for once is not blaming us for stuff beyond our control. He just wants us to carry on as planned and keep Brooke happy and safe.”
“Are you going to tell her about Felix?”
“No. Silverstein ordered me not to tell her but said w
e could talk it over with her later, after she gets the news. Sharma is telling her after his conference this morning with the authorities. That’s the real reason he didn’t go with us today. The police informed him about Felix and he had to go to the police station. Naturally, he reported to Silverstein without mentioning a word of it to us. He lied to us about where he was going. Remember he said he had ‘family business’ to attend to? Family business, my ass! He spoke with the police and Silverstein this morning and he is meeting us here at the airport for the flight to Khajuraho.”
“That slick little weasel.”
“Yes. I don’t trust him for a minute.”
“I don’t either, but for once I have to say I’m glad he’s running point instead of us, aren’t you?”
“Yep. I am,” he said, closing the laptop. “Let’s go, Sidney, they’re calling our flight.”
#
Boarding at the airport was generally chaotic. Flights appeared oversold by a good margin. The boarding process seemed to be that all ticketholders waited in a holding area until the flight was called. Then, at the announcement, the gates were opened and there was a frantic dash for the plane. Seat assignments were a joke. People just grabbed the first seat they found, and when all were filled the door was shut and the plane taxied away, leaving the unlucky ones to wait for the next one.
We weren’t part of the mad scramble because Sharma had showed up at the last minute and made a visit to the little room behind the airline counter with his black bag. The smiling, satisfied gate agent then ushered us personally to our seats on our small plane, ahead of the general melee. This was certainly not the normal experience, but with Brooke’s money, anything was possible.
Sharma gave no explanations about his activities in the morning while we were on tour. He offered no words explaining his abrupt absence or informing us about poor Felix.
It didn’t matter. Answers to some of those questions would be forthcoming. I had big plans to have prayer with Mr. Sharma at the first opportunity, as we say down South.