“Lalji, open the goddamned gate.”
“Saab?” The frightened, sleepy voice approached. “What are you doing out there?”
I took a breath and counted to four before pointing out that he had set the chain, settled into the hammock, and forgotten to check if I was actually inside before drifting off. He stared at me in confusion, and then offered the feeble excuse, “But Saab never goes out so late at night, even when he walks by the river, it is always early.”
“Yes, well not tonight.” He stared at me. With a sigh I asked, “Lalji?”
“Yes, Saab?”
“Do you have the key?”
As if finally awake and realizing that I was still on the opposite side, he proudly drew the key from around his waist and held it up for me to see. “Indeed, Saab. I have it with me all the time.”
“Then I suggest you put it in the lock and let me in.” He quickly—as rapidly as possible for him—opened the gate and issued me into the courtyard. “Thank you. Now you may lock it and go to your hammock, but do try to remember that you are a night watchman. Sleep with one eye open from now on.”
“Yes, Saab, I will do that, one ear open also.”
I sighed and as I made my way up the steps to the veranda, thought to ask, “Are there any messages?”
Lalji looked puzzled for a moment, digging through the memory of the last six hours. “Oh yes. Master Mejanand came to the gate this evening. I told him you were not in.”
I stared at Lalji with such ferocity that he slowly arrived at his own conclusion. I hadn't been inside when he'd delivered that message and hadn't been inside all evening.
“Did he say what he wanted?” Mej Whiton coming to my gate was not unusual. As far as I knew he didn’t even own a cell phone and his preferred method of conveying messages was to just drop by unannounced. I was certain of the reason for his visit anyway.
“He asked if Saab wishes to play with the flying platters tomorrow. Sunrise is best he said, because he is traveling to the capital by the morning train.”
I nodded, thinking out loud. “I suppose I could work on my notes before he arrives and play for an hour before going to Master’s. Did he say if he was coming here, or am I to meet him at the fields?”
Lalji patted off the remains of the dirt missile that powdered his chest. “He says that he will come here before sunrise with two new platters.”
I smiled, and with a final reminder to sharpen his duties as night watchman, plodded sleepily to my room.
Seventeen
Nearly every person in Varanasi created and offered opinions of the bombings. Two had been set in the heart of the city and four more along the rail line between us and New Delhi. Sixty-nine people had been murdered, including the most recent, near Lucknow, and during the previous fourteen months the attacks had been the topic over most cups of chai and evening meals. Most considered themselves informed enough to declare the guilty party as Taweel Churi, a terrorist group based out of Pakistan, but operating northern India. An interrogation of the only captured suspect provided intelligence agencies with a name, Sutradharak, The PuppetMaster. Nothing else came from that interrogation but the name and the mysterious death of the prisoner two days later. The media picked up on the title and used it persistently to drive up readership. But no more arrests came. No one knew for certain if Taweel Churi or Sutradharak truly existed, but logic dictated that whoever was responsible had a nasty agenda. Murdering innocent people in a temple was a profanity no one could imagine. Thirty-seven had died in the Sankat Mochan blast in March. Hindus were clamoring for retaliation, though against whom, they were not certain. Muslims walked about in larger groups. Hindus whispered that the mosque leader, Imam Nomani, or more likely the crazed Cabinet Minister Qereshy, were channeling funds to the terrorists. Now, both were under surveillance by the intelligence agencies. Conspiracy theorists whispered at tea stalls, and every cult in every religion in every neighborhood was nervous.
Blistering heat and a sky devoid of rain added to the tension.
The only person besides me that didn’t offer opinions was Mejanand Whiton. As far as I could determine Mej didn’t care about anybody but himself. If he did, it certainly wasn’t expressed or shown. I cared about all of the victims in my own quiet way, and certainly felt the agony the loved-ones left behind, but like the pyres at Manikarnika, I sidestepped any opinions.
Mej had no desire to chat about worldly events. He preferred to fire off truly offensive jokes in a raspy Cockney accent, while chortling non-stop at his own vulgarities. He usually had me smiling or chuckling within minutes. This was one of the reasons I rather enjoyed his company—albeit for very short periods of time--he never asked where I came from or why I lived alone. I reciprocated by not asking anything of him.
Our association was based on a single passion. Freestyle Frisbee. Mej, like me, even in my self-imposed monasticism, liked to stay in shape, a challenge in the crowded confines of Varanasi. Being creative, we'd discovered a unique way to burn off the calories of rice and butter-based dishes, and together we’d found the only place it could be done--the marigold and henna fields south of the city. Marigolds and carnations adorned every holy object, especially dead bodies and lingum and yoni alters. The henna was made into dye for hair and body art. Fortunately the fields were just a short walk from where I lived. They provided the raw materials for the ritual of Varanasi, and provided us a place to exercise.
The fields weren’t perfect, being rock-strewn and often covered with thatch, but as sections were rotated in and out, we discovered that we could romp across them for our fun and sweat.
Mej Whiton was English NRI--Non-Resident Indian-- and that was the extent of what I knew of him. He had a rough East End inflection and a coffee-complexioned features that, to put it nicely, were plain. His pajama pants and loose shirts were always clean, and he seemed to know the ways of Varanasi as well as I did. He spoke fluent Hindi, which I took to be an endowment of his English Indian parents.
We had met the previous year at a fruit stall in the central market in the Chowk district. I happened upon him one afternoon as he was juggling five sweet-limes, chatting to an expanding audience in his version of English that had no Hs. He hailed me with a friendly ‘ello, mate,’ and after his performance we struck up a conversation where he got me quickly smiling. According to extensive research—his own--it was a proven fact that long, firm bananas were the fruit of choice of local brides after only six months of marriage. He gave me a lurid description of their use and in short time we discovered that we shared a passion for Frisbee.
Mej stood on the far side of the gate grinning at me like a winning jockey. Two new discs, a blue one on his left index finger, and a green one on his right, spun in smooth silence. With a soft flick he sent them aloft where they crossed and resettled on opposite fingers. “Crickey, now that was foocking good one, eh Bheemster.”
I grinned. The trick was better than average. I pushed a mug of steaming coffee through the bars. “Yep, you’re the well oiled machine, Mej.”
I set my mug on the bricks and stepped to Lalji’s hammock—the snoring hadn’t changed since the previous the night. I tugged on the key and as I unfastened it from his waist, my vigilant watchman rolled over with a girlish giggle and resettled into the folds of his cocoon.
“’Appy you got me message. Been a shame to waste this part o’ the day.”
With mugs of coffee we strolled down Ramnagar Road towards the pontoon bridge that spanned the river. The water was wide and sluggish there as it exited the bosomy curve in the north. A kilometer away, on the opposite bank, the dilapidated fort of the Raja rose in the shimmering light of the new day.
Mej launched into his first joke. “So, Pope John Paul and ‘enry Kissinger walk into a barber shop.”
I groaned, “Jesus, Mej.”
“Nah, e’s in the next one. He didn’t want the ‘aircut.”
I shook my head in disbelief. “What do you do
? Save these just for me?”
“Nah, store up ‘em up for the birdies. Good sense of ‘umor will snook ya more quim than your mug or talking up the size of your knob. I should know, mate. Me face doesn’t get me pussy, jokes do. So, whot do a tornado in Texas, a flood in Mississippi, and a divorce in Utah, ‘ave in common.”
Before I could even picture the first of these oddities, he laughed in a Cockney-Loosiana drawl, “Some poor arsehole’s gonna lose a double-wide.”
I groaned. “Gimmee a disc.” He spun it at eye level just within reach. I snatched it, and in a single motion spun like a ballerina and sent it rocketing ninety feet up where it leveled like a gyroscope, drifted languidly and then angled straight back down. He leapt, caught it behind his back, and flipped it into the breeze again before his feet touched the earth.
It had begun.
The art of the dance, that’s what we called it. Salsa, Rumba, and ballet with two vinyl discs, and once it started, we didn’t stop until an hour had passed. We jumped, caught, flipped, and launched ourselves like acrobats. There was a competitive element that seeped in naturally, a machismo desire to outdo each other. The discs flew. We dashed, leapt, and snatched them between our legs, heads, or backs. Mej perfected the toe- kick; I mastered the index flip. We knew every trick, every move, and by the end of sixty minutes we had pushed ourselves to a very sweaty fatigue.
And always it passed without question or chatter.
An hour later we stood drenched, watching boats poling against the current. The sun had risen above the far bank. I took a pull from the Nalgene and offered it to him. He gulped down half the bottle and slapped my back. “Sweet session, Mate. Ya made me sweat like a Shivdas whore. Sorry I’ve got to flake out on ya so quick, but I’m on the eight fifteen to Delhi. ” He spun the green disc in front of me, and I tapped it back to him. We started jogging back towards my house, and he grinned and asked, “So, whot’s the difference ‘tween a moose and a Maine ‘ousewife?”
I knew this one from somewhere in the past, and before he could beat me to it, I blurted out, “Bout twenty pounds and a red flannel shirt, I reckon.” I’d answered in a respectable New England accent, which got him laughing.
“Well bugger me, Marty. I never took you for a fooking Mainer. Always figured yous a West Coast boy, a SoCal surfer type.”
It was the first time he’d pried even gently at my history, an innocent remark meant as an opener if I wished to take it. I didn’t, but still answered, “I grew up there. In San Diego, so you figured pretty well.”
He nodded. “So ‘ow’d you get into all this bloody Sanskrit shite?”
That surprised me a little. First, it was another probe. Second, it was an acknowledgment that he knew what I did all day long. It wasn’t as if it was a secret; everyone in the city seemed to know I was Devi's student, but it surprised me that he'd asked. As if reading my thoughts, he added, “A lot of folks say you’re one of the best, Mate. I think that’s the dog’s ollocks, you know, being able to read all them fookin’ words. I mean, it's soooo old.”
“I’ve been working at it for a long time, Mej. It’s like a huge set of word puzzles to me. History, law, politics, it’s all written in the mother tongue. And to be honest, I just like the sound of it.” I decided it was my turn to ask something. “So how’d you learn Hindi so well? I mean, it was like going from Latin to Italian for me after knowing the Sanskrit. How’d you learn it?”
He looked at his fingernails and answered quickly, “Me Mum taught me mostly. It was ‘er first language, not mine, so I sort of picked it up ‘ere and there. I figured I needed to improve on it when I got ‘ere, so I bought meself a teach yourself book last year.”
As we reached my gate he asked, “So whatcha working on now, Bro? Any juicy shite? They say that Kama Sutra can give you a right fine woody.” It sounded a little boring when I told him I was translating a play about a monarch with family problems, but he told me quickly that he wanted to hear more about it when he returned from Delhi. We set a time to meet in a few days, and then I watched as he bounced buoyantly down Sonapura Road towards the Asi River. Just before the bridge he turned and grinned back at me.
Eighteen
I pushed Ugly Bike through Devi’s gate with a cushy six-minute margin. My backpack contained my HP Pavilion laptop, the flash drive with our photographs, and the previous day’s notes scanned with my portable DocuPen scanner and saved on a file. I’d arrived early, hoping to chat with Sukshmi about her marriage predicament. Instead I found Soma.
She was squatting in the space behind the right side of the tool shed and the wall, and I could tell from the way her shoulders slumped forward and her hands shook that she was crying. I leaned Miss Ugly against the wall and squatted next to her in the dust. Her hands moved up to hide her face, but as I lowered myself with a groan from the morning’s exercise, her fingers spread into a childish vee. Between her dusty knuckles I saw a smear of black kohl and tears. One eye peeked at me.
Suspecting her mother-in-law as the cause, I asked, “So, Little Sister, is your Sas angry with you again? You mustn’t listen to her puffing, you know. She grumbles at you from jealousy because you are young and beautiful and she is a fat camel with foul breath.”
Soma sniffled wretchedly and mumbled through her fingers, “Oh Bhimaji, Sas always grumbles at me, but it no longer bothers me.”
“So what is causing all these tears to fall from those pretty eyes this morning?”
She drew in a choppy breath and in an uneven voice, whispered, “It is Sri Ralki. He…” She broke into a fresh round of sobbing.
I inhaled sharply, that name typically having that effect upon me. Madru Ralki was a first inspector and assistant to the Varanasi Chief of Police. He was a fat weasel, and a purported spy for the Cabinet Minister Qereshy, which did not make him particularly popular within his own Hindu community. He denied being a turncoat, but not vehemently enough to convince me or anyone else. Unfortunately, he was also the first in a line of bureaucrats I had to speak with to renew my visa every six months. Those encounters were inevitably uncomfortable unions of oil and flame. In my slightly biased opinion, he was a pudgy bit of pomposity with far too much time and power at his disposal. His office reeked of beedees, the pungent eucalyptus cigarettes that he smoked incessantly. Always, by the time I had gotten the stamp for six more months of stay in Varanasi, I prayed that one of his little cigarettes would ignite the grease that coated his outstretched palm. What his business with Soma was, I couldn’t imagine.
“Madru Ralki? What does he have to do with you? You’ve committed no crime,” other than being a beautiful, young, outcaste.
She lowered her hands and wrapped them around folded knees. What I saw in her eyes sent a bolt of anger through me. Fear—coming from something Ralki had said. Or done.
“He just asked me some questions, Bhimaji. Just a few.”
“Questions? What questions? He has no business asking anything of you.”
She hesitated, confirming to me that he’d threatened her. That would have been his way--intimidation for silence. What he didn’t understand was that Soma was more like a sister to me, and I a brother to her, than true siblings. What she might withhold from someone else, she wouldn’t withhold from me. “First he asked me what I do for Master Devi all day, who I talk to, what my jobs are. He said they are searching for suspects in the bombings and all the people of Varanasi are being questioned. I told him I only talk to Master Devi, Mirabai, and my mother-in-law, because they are the ones who tell me what to do.” The simple truth of this statement stung me. There were few, besides me, who spoke to Soma. Why would Ralki be asking questions of a husbandless, second-hand sweeper girl?
“He asked you that, nothing else?”
Soma’s chin came to rest on her kneecaps. A long hesitation. “He asked me about you.”
I sucked in a lungful of hot dust and almost swore. Slowly I asked, “What did he ask about me, Little Pearl? Tell me the
truth, every question. I will not let him harm you. I promise.”
She looked sideways at me, trust shimmering in her pupils. “He asked me what you study with Master Devi.”
“And you told him that I am a student of Sanskrit?”
“He knew that already. Everyone knows that, Bhimaji. He asked me what you are doing now.”
This time I did swear out loud. Even in English, the word ‘fuck’ brought a flash of smile to Soma’s lips. “Bhimaji swears.”
“Yes, I did swear, and it’s a bad swear because it’s no business of Ralki’s what I do at all, especially what I work on with Master Devi. If I thought it would do an ounce of good I would march into his smelly little office and tell him so.” The image of the ember-lit face staring at me the night before returned. Had it been Ralki? I hadn’t even considered who might have been watching me because it seemed inconsequential at the time. Now I wasn’t so sure.
Instantly the fear returned. “No, Bhimaji,” she pleaded. “Please, you must not do that. He would know that I have spoken to you and send for me again.” There was something in her voice—a quiver--that told me Ralki had gone beyond a mere warning. He had intimidated her with something else.
“Soma, tell me the truth. Did he do anything else? Did he hurt you?”
She stared solemnly at her toe rings and dug them into the dust. Lips trembled as she whispered, “No, Bhimaji, he did not hurt me.”
Inside the house I heard Devi’s voice grumble, “Where is our fine young Keeper of Notes and Photographs, eh? Late again.” Then a calm, but unintelligible, answer from C.G.
With a boiling that rose from deep inside, I asked again, “Did he hurt you?”
She replied in a reticent whisper, “He pushed his hand under my chola and squeezed me there. It did not hurt. But he . . . said that he would throw me into the streets with just my bangles to cover me if I spoke to anyone about it.”
I made a mental note to break at least nine of Ralki’s fingers for that grope of my little sister’s breast. Then I would sit back and watch him try to smoke one his fucking little beedees with just a thumb.
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