The PuppetMaster

by MacNair, Andrew L.

  What path there was felt soggy but reasonably familiar. We stepped across to the foot of the spur, where I listened again for shouts or sirens or racing motors, but there was only the wind and rain and an incredibly raucous pounding in my chest. I switched on the flashlight and filtered the beam through my fingers. We were beyond the line of vision of the guardhouse, so I pulled them away and focused the beam in a tight circle on the ground.

  “We’ll need to climb over,” I whispered. “The entrance is just on the other side, or used to be, anyway.” I reached to take her hand, but she had already started up, which was better because I needed to have at least one hand to climb. The rocks were cool and slippery with rain, and when we came to the top, I angled the beam downhill. Raindrops fell like tiny jewels through the light. To the right, the channel leading the cave had been cleared. Almost.

  The slag had been back-dragged from the entrance, clearing the opening, but five boulders had been re-set to close off the crevice. Small tread marks scarred the dirt, dashing my original hopes of quickly grabbing Ralki’s providential rock and dashing back.

  Uli crawled down into the ravine and I followed.

  “They’ve cleared it. It looks like someone’s opened it up to get inside.” My distress was audible.

  “That’s where the front was?” She pointed to the boulders.

  “Yes, Master and I entered there, and Ralki and I stood here.” I spun the beam in a slow arc along the wall. And there, waiting patiently against a vertical slab, was the same innocuous chunk Ralki had selected. Perhaps it was irony or pure luck, but at the moment all I could think was, the damn thing just wanted to be found. I jumped across and scooped it up, seeing Ralki’s sneer dissolve into disbelief. I laughed aloud, and in the echo I was sure I heard four-thousand year-old voices laughing with me.

  “A gift, My Love.” I turned and handed her the flashlight and the baseball-sized chunk. She immediately studied it in the beam. The rain was coming in sheets now, drenching us, and making vision difficult. I was quite prepared to pop our prize into my pocket and scramble back to the Cherokee.

  “Color, size, shape, und texture.” She was talking to herself. “All match. Definitely uraninite, and by the look of it, high grade. A drop of nitric acid would help.”

  With a sloppy grin I said, “I think I left mine at the villa. Can we go now?”

  She was about to reply when we both heard a metallic hiss, muffled and distant, but clearly mechanical. A low rumble followed, as if a large machine was coughing to life. It was coming from beyond the crest of the hill directly in front of us, from somewhere between the cave and the guard gate.

  “Uli, let’s go back,” I whispered, but she was already clambering up the slope. With a sigh I followed.

  At the crest, the ridge ran in shallow cambers in the direction of the mine, the cave behind us at one end, and the gate a half a mile away on the other. And somewhere in the middle, machinery was hissing to life. Uli stopped to catch her breath and I grabbed her hand and tried to picture the ridgeline through the rain. Blackness.

  “We don’t have to do this, Uli. We have what we came for.”

  Her voice came in an urgent whisper. “We need to find out what they are doing. If they’re processing it, we need to know. It can’t be that far. Let’s find where the sound is und then leave. Please.”

  Rain streamed into my eyes. I wanted desperately to be in the Cherokee motoring away, but I knew she was right. I hadn’t won one of these discussions yet anyway. I pulled the flashlight back out.

  We scrambled, with more noise than I would have liked, up and over broken shard. The mechanical sound increased, and after a few hundred meters, and an achingly long time, I saw a faint glow low to the ground. We moved on all fours until we were near enough to see what it was--three vent caps protruded from the rock like toadstools. Light glowed in muted circles below them, and the sound of hissing liquid and pumps rippled towards us.

  I took a step toward it, and was ready to drop to my knees and crawl, when Uli grabbed my wrist.

  “Stop.”

  What?” I whispered against the rain.

  She pulled on my arm. “They’re leaching it.”

  “What?” I asked again.

  ‘They’re leaching it into yellowcake right here.”

  I wasn’t altogether sure what that meant and asked, “How do you know?”

  She sniffed. “You can smell it?”

  We were fifty feet away, downwind, and close enough for me to smell an acrid, alkaline odor on the wetness of the air.

  “Ammonia. They’re processing it. Don’t go any closer.”

  I not only didn’t want to go any closer, I wanted to high-tail it in the other direction as soon as I could turn my ugly tennies around. With a little tug, I convinced her of the same idea. We scrambled back along the ridgeline to the ravine, across the cave entrance, and back to the car.

  She glanced back. “They must be crushing and leaching the ore below. That means technicians, machinery, und a lot of money. Very complicated, but the return, Gott, it could be huge.”

  I didn’t want to think about any of it at the moment.

  We were soaked and exhausted when we climbed into the car. I was just getting ready to turn the ignition key when I saw two lights moving along the road from the other direction. Uli saw it also, and we both froze. A small jeep was moving slowly south toward the gate, passing the grassy parking space at that moment. The bright beam of a spotlight bounced across the boulder field on the opposite side, exactly where we had driven thirty minutes earlier. Neither of us breathed.

  Three fortuitous things saved us from being discovered that night. The increasing rain erased all signs of our trail, the spotlight shone away from where we sat, and C.G. had taken black as his color of choice. All of those, and the luck I was thinking just might be from Sahr’s constellations, kept us from being caught.

  The outside air had cooled enough to open the windows slightly and turn the heat on low inside. I maneuvered the Cherokee around and for a moment pondered ripping straight down the access road with the high beams lit and all four tires spinning. The anger and frustration of the last nine days was spilling out like the fumes in those vents. For the first time since seeing my adversaries behind the concertina wire, I felt prepared. I knew what they were up to and why, and now, I was ready to send a blow to their solar plexus.

  We made a long, slow arc back across the exposed field and an hour later were rolling down the Azamgarh Highway once more. Deep relief flooded me and then, remembering it, reached into the back and handed Uli the small bag Sahr had given me. She opened it onto her lap, and two pieces of nan, cucumber and yogurt dip, cheese, and a small bottle tumbled out. As we neared the outskirts of Varanasi, I pulled off the road, into a spot hidden from the highway. We dipped the bread, munched contentedly, and sipped on a surprise-- brandy. “I’ll be goddamned. I don’t think she’s ever put alcohol in a picnic before. Her birthmark scrunches if I have a second lager. Unless I’m dining with my premika.”

  “Maybe she knew you needed to have a little something extra to calm you.”

  I turned in my seat and fluttered my eyelashes. “And you don’t, Ms. Hadersen? Probably not. Nothing was going to stop you back there, was it?”

  She leaned over and kissed my cheek. “No. This afternoon when you were inside me and I was crying, I knew I could do it. Your poem helped, too.” She bit my lobe. “Now let’s go kick them in their schlangers.”

  I hoped our aim was good. The thought was delightful.

  I started the engine. The rain had slackened now, replaced by a floating mist and a spray of stars in the east above the river. The blush of shop lights and thrumming of the city had receded. Varanasi was drifting to sleep, without riots, without drought, preparing once again for sunrise and burning corpses.

  Sixty-Seven

  Emotions in the villa the next morning were diverse and peculiar. I was moving about well before sunrise immersed in the sadnes
s that I would be seeing Soma’s ashes mix into the wind. Then there was the tension we all felt of sending media and intelligence agents on the trail of people that could only be described as evil. There was the combined excitement and melancholy of a train ride to Delhi to say good-bye to Jitka. The worst, however, was Sahr’s agitation. It could be felt like a high-voltage wire popping throughout the villa.

  She set a bowl of pakoras on the table with a force that almost cracked the ceramic. “Bhimaji, Durgubal came un-summoned last night. He has never done that before.”

  I was trying to rush through a cup of coffee and make notes at the same time. I wasn’t quite ready for Sahr’s turbulence. “Right, well, I have quite enough to think about this morning. His advice will have to wait.”

  “It cannot wait, Saab. There is danger in the hours ahead. Grave danger. He warned me.”

  I popped a pakora into my mouth and mumbled, “Of course there is, and we’re two steps ahead of it.”

  “It is even more serious than the last time he came. Look what happened then.” I felt the sting of that one.

  I was preparing to argue that everything not only seemed more dangerous, but was, when the sisters entered. They wore traditional saris, light blue and green, and the transformation of Jitka was astounding; she looked more feminine than I’d ever seen her. Sahr immediately helped rearrange the pleats and the length of the shawl. I poured coffee and set dahi out for the pakoras. We barely had time to eat before rushing through the door and onto Shivanan Avenue.

  And there, waiting like a patient doorman, was Vinduram Singh.

  The turban bobbed. “At your service, Sahib and Memsahibs. The shiniest taxi in all of Varanasi awaits to carry you in total air-conditioned comfort to Manikarnika.” Doors flew open.

  I looked at Sahr, whose look explained that she had arranged for Vin to pick us up the previous evening. “To Manikarnika,” I repeated.

  As I helped the sisters into the back--Sahr was already in the front--I saw Lalji’s friends taking up posts inside my gate. “Where’s Lalji,” I asked suspiciously.

  “Already left for the cremation, Bhimaji,” Sahr replied. “He begged me yesterday, and I gave him permission. It is alright?”

  “Yes. It is alright.” My watchman hadn’t the courage to mumble a hello to the Widow Soma while she lived, he should at least be able to say good-bye at her death. “Yes, it is fine,” I repeated.

  ****

  Two things struck me as we stepped from the gulley onto the steps of Manikarnika--the amount of mourners already gathered, and the blast crater. It was still unfilled, ringed only by a tripod of sticks and yellow tape. Master, quite conspicuous, stood in white dhoti and kurta beside the tirtha, the eternal flame. I didn’t approach. Soma’s preta, her encased soul, rested on a small cot-like scaffold behind him. She had been cleansed with water from the river and wrapped in white, a color she had stubbornly refused to wear when alive. The color was a symbolic stripping, a societal punishment for an undefined crime. Soma, with shy obstinacy, stuck to faded green. Uli’s orange scarf still hung in stark contrast about her shoulders, though.

  Her body looked so tiny to me.

  Further back Mirabai, Sukshmi, and others stood quietly. Satnam Kangri sat on a stool beside them. I nodded to each with a heavy smile and led Uli and Jitka upwind of the pyre. Sahr followed, and from out of nowhere, Lalji appeared to station himself next to his mother.

  Standing apart and silent were four men I didn’t recognize--young student-looking types in black trousers and white shirts. Behind them were three women, also unknown to me, two young and one older. The head of the youngest was shorn to stubble, her white sari tattered and soiled. Another widow. I wondered who they were. Even one of the police who had carried Soma’s body from the river was there. Rajneesh Sukkha, his wife, three daughters and a young son arrived. That puzzled me until I remembered that Soma had delivered the money to his family after his brother Jotilal had died.

  Most of the people Soma had encountered--even peripherally--had come to bid her farewell. Everyone but her mother-in-law.

  A group of beggars were assembled at the top, waiting for the traditional food and alms gifted at the end of the ceremony.

  Then, with the ringing of finger bells it began. Wood was ladled with oil. Devamukti began intoning sutras from the Rig Veda and Puranas, while four doms emerged from a hut near the temple. They lifted the body onto the pyre, and I half expected Adam to appear. Nothing surprised me anymore.

  With a stave from the temple flame, the head priest lit the base and flames slithered like eels through the timbers. Traditionally the eldest son performed this rite, but that was not to happen this morning.

  The air was thick with smoke. Funeral fires had been smoldering throughout the night and the morning fires of the boroughs, kindled in alleys and courtyards mixed in. It was dense, biting at our nostrils, and I couldn’t see two hundred meters down the shoreline. Uli touched my arm and nodded across the river--the first rays of sun were trying to pierce the haze.

  Behind me, the three women and the four students sang a short mantra, a request to Lord Shiva to release this child into enlightenment.

  From ignorance, lead her to truth;

  From darkness, lead her to light;

  From death, lead her to immortality.

  Aum, peace, peace, Aum

  Flames rolled about the body. I began to weep and asked that Soma’s soul not be released from the great wheel quite yet. We still need her. Let her return, stronger, surer, with the same sweetness that drew all those people to the Ghat. Sparks rose into the fumes, and I watched an ember, larger and easier to follow, drop and float for a brief, orange moment on the currents of the Ganges. Then it was gone.

  The flames, like life itself, swelled and subsided and slowly flickered out.

  Suddenly, without reasoning why, I had to know who the three women were who had sung the mantra. I trotted up the steps, but they began moving hastily toward the street. “Wait, please,” I called, but the young men kept moving. I called again and the oldest of the three women stopped. Her companions halted one step above her. I hurried. “Wait. How . . . how did you know her? How did you know Soma? Please . . . she was my friend.”

  They looked with uncertainty at me. It was clear I wasn’t to be trusted—a pale ferenghi in the wrong colored kurta. I was male, and that distrust glared even more in the younger women’s eyes. The one with the shaved head looked away, but the eldest, seeing the tears on my cheeks, softened.

  “Your friend?” she asked.

  “She was. My Master’s servant and my friend. I called her Sister. Please.” I set my fingers together in a hasty namaskar.

  That seemed to further soften the oldest. “Ah, Devamukti’s student.” And with that universal acknowledgment, she smiled. “When Soma the Timid spoke, which was rare, she spoke kindly of one she called Bhim.”

  I namasted again. “I am Bhim,”

  “Mata,” was her reply. No handshake or namaskar.

  The women looked to each other and Mata made a decision of some kind. “Come.” With nothing more, she spun and marched up the gully towards Aurangbad Road. I waved for Uli and Jitka to follow and hurried to catch up. The trio came to the rear of Vishvanath temple and waited. Uli and Jitka came and the three of us ran to join the others.

  “Mata, these are friends. They will do you no harm,” I said.

  Without a word, she nodded an assent and continued up the lane, turned right and went nearly to the gap at Aurangbad Road. At the alley before the main road the group turned again and stopped in front of a narrow, thick gate. Mata pulled out a ring of keys and pushed open the door. We followed into a courtyard full of women--dozens, young, middle-aged, and old. The entire space was filled with white saris. And every face had the tired, creased looks of pain, some appeared sick and weak, others had shaved heads. And all bore the look of the wretched--soiled and tattered, barefoot, wrinkled, and emaciated. They avoided our eyes, and I re
alized instantly where we stood, in the inner refuge of the shunned. The hand-carved sign above the door of the only building announced, Ashraya, The Haven.

  “This is a home for widows?” My voice was hushed with the respect for what was being done in that small space.

  Uli stepped from behind me to squat next to a child-girl who couldn’t have been more than twelve. Within the minute her smile had woven its magic. The young girl began chattering in Bhojpuri about something, her hands flitting about. Uli couldn’t have understood a word, but it didn’t matter. The child drew Picasso art in the dust and they conversed in other ways.

  “Yes, it is.” Mata answered. Her hand waved in an arc. “We have the roof, a few beds, and some food. Not enough, but we keep them from the death of the streets.”

  I looked around. Here and there were tiny sparks, signs of something not seen in the world of widows, hope. On the wooden entry to the rear of the building, I saw two of the four men who’d been at the cremation tending to a woman lying curled up on the boards.

  “Soma was one of our fortunate ones. She had a few decent people around her, unlike these poor souls.” She waved her again. “Devamukti and his family treated her well. She had hope and some trust. She trusted you. I would not have let you in if I didn’t also.” She motioned me toward the building.

  “I am grateful you did,” I replied” . . . How many live here?”

  “Thirty-two permanents and ten or so who drift in when they need safety or nourishment.”

  A choking feeling rose in my throat. “And Soma? Why did she come?”

  Mata’s eyes pierced me, tender and tenacious in equal measures. “I believe she was lonely for the companionship of other women like her. She talked little and never asked for food.”

  “What about the last time, four days ago?” I asked.

  Mata smiled sadly. “I thought you might ask that.” We went up the three steps to the porch. “She was terrified of something or someone, and as much as we tried, none of us could get her to speak of it. She only asked to remain in the courtyard for a time.” Ralki! I knew it in my heart. It explained her disappearance and the missing Wednesday I’d been trying to account for. This was her place of hiding.