Narayan was standing at the very edge of the water in an attitude of extreme hostility. He glanced furiously at her as she waded out of the sea with Max, and he glared at Tammy as he walked up to him. Tammy reached out to put his hand on Narayan’s shoulder, but he knocked it away in a gesture of contempt.
The third figure she’d noticed was now fast approaching. He was dressed in white and walked with a stick. She realised it was Subramaniam lurching towards them; he was trying to come between Tammy and Narayan, but they didn’t seem to notice the old man’s presence. Narayan and Tammy were shouting at each other. Narayan punched Tammy in the chest, at once seeming astounded at what he’d done. Subramaniam cried out, and the stick slipped from his grasp. His body shuddered, as if all the breath was drawn from it, and he collapsed. Narayan stood frozen for an instant, amazed and horrified, but then he rushed forward to kneel beside him.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The doctor they called for arrived within half an hour. Within a minute of arriving, this portly, bald and self-assured man had confirmed that Subramaniam had had a moderate heart attack. ‘He’s all right for the moment,’ he said, ‘but you must get him back to Chennai as soon as possible, and into hospital for tests.’
‘I feel responsible for precipitating this,’ Narayan told him. ‘My cousin and I had a very bad argument that came to blows. Our great uncle was trying to intercede when he collapsed.’
‘At his age and with his frailty, it could’ve happened at any time,’ the doctor reassured him. Narayan wasn’t all that reassured, even though the old man fell that night into a peaceful sleep.
Later that night, back in Tammy’s room at the hotel, Tammy and Narayan had another argument.
‘Clare and I are deeply in love, and Max knows about it.’ Tammy said. ‘We want to marry as soon as they’re divorced.’
‘I didn’t know about it, though I occasionally had my vague suspicions,’ Narayan answered. He hesitated for a few moments, searching for the right words. ‘Look, I’m really sorry I hit you. I was desperately angry and I lost my temper. But you’re supposed to be marrying Vijaya, for God’s sake, and this is gross betrayal. She’ll be utterly devastated.’
‘So what about you and Max? Hasn’t Max betrayed Clare all this time! Talk about double standards.’
‘My affair with Max doesn’t involve the sort of public humiliation Vijaya will now endure, having been engaged to you for so long. No, I don’t forgive you, though I admit to feeling enormous guilt concerning Clare.’
The next morning Subramaniam was taken back to Chennai in an ambulance; Max and Clare were allowed to sit with him on the journey. Tammy and Narayan returned in their separate cars. They all met later to the hospital and were relieved to learn he was not in any present danger.
‘I wish to give up my life in Los Angeles so I can live with you in India,’ Max said to Narayan once they were back at his house. ‘Of course it does depend on Rick being okay. I’m waiting for an email from him about his tests.’
‘I’m very touched,’ Narayan answered, ‘but Tammy’s charge of double standards has really got at me.’
‘You’ve a really tender conscience,’ Max replied. ‘That’s one of things I’ve always loved in you.’
Vijaya refused to see Tammy or Clare, obviously immensely hurt by the fact that Tammy had decided to leave her for Clare.
‘I’m planning to leave Chennai to live with my relations in Kolkata,’ Vijaya told Max. ‘In the meantime, I’m going to visit a woman in the suburbs of Chennai. She’s had acid thrown into her face by a manically infatuated youth whom she’d rejected.’
‘How monstrous!’ Max said, horrified.
‘The poor woman’s face has been horribly disfigured. I understand the youth has been arrested. His despicable male pride was offended, and he went off his head. The victim wants him hanged. She’s extremely vengeful.’
Max thought about the possibility of the cripple being hanged if it is proven that he was an accessory to the murder.
‘Have you decided what you’ll be doing in Kolkata?’ Max asked Vijaya.
‘I’m in touch through the internet with an orphanage for abandoned girls,’ she replied. ‘I’ve sent them my application to work there. Baby girls are often abandoned; baby boys seldom are. Oh yes, we’ve still a lot of sexist prejudice to shift.’ This led to further jokey comments about her male supremacist aunts. ‘I’m escaping their suffocating prudery. I’m not exactly intending to become a scarlet woman in my spare time, but I might bathe in a swimsuit and not a sari that balloons out in the water, giving a woman the shape of a fat sea cow. You should see the ogresses when they go swimming in the sea! Seriously, I need to make a total break from the past. I’ve led too narrow and useless a life so far.’
After a week in hospital, Subramaniam was allowed to return home. He was very frail now, but he still liked to sit and talk on the veranda of his house every evening. He spoke of Hinduism mostly but also referred to the Christian idea of an incarnate god.
‘I liken him to Vishnu,’ he said, ‘although Christ suffered human agony, achieving immortality through pain and death.’
He often talked about Venkataraman’s assassins, comparing them to Gandhi’s murderer.
‘They were hugely evil in what they did but not in the souls they would pass on.’
He spoke of human evil and the evil that arises from accidents of nature: earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, famine and disease.
‘Death as such is not evil, though,’ he suddenly affirmed to Max, who was sitting with him one evening. ‘Nor is suffering an evil; not necessarily. It’s something we endure on our great journey onwards, from body to body, from soul to soul. A thousand times we die so that we can be born again, travelling from life to life, until at last we achieve union with the mysterious world soul.’
The two men watched the sun as it was going down one evening. Subramaniam, holding on tightly to his much-thumbed copy of the Bhagavad Gita, turned to Max and scrutinised him.
‘Tammy told me of Shahpur and Kalyani,’ he said quietly. ‘I greatly hope her father will relent in his pursuit of them. As a young man, I saw a wife and husband killed in the Partition riots. The husband was trying to shield his wife. They were both hacked to death. I’ve longed ever since, with all my heart, for reconciliation between Muslims and Hindus.’
He put his shivering hand on Max’s arm and said he was feeling cold.
‘The light is fading,’ he said.
Max knew this was no reference to the sunset, and he felt an immeasurable sadness.
‘I think I can hear the sea,’ said the old man softly, ‘but perhaps I imagine it. Yes, the Mahatma striding onwards… the procession nearing the shore… those gentle cries of triumph.’
Subramaniam sighed. His hand dropped down, and the book slid to the floor as his head fell forward.
‘Narayan!’ Max called out.
Narayan came rushing out, already knowing the reason behind Max’s cry. When he saw Subramaniam, though, he let out a tiny gasp. Max and Narayan sat together, the old man’s body between them, just as they had sat with the body of that young woman on the beach at Malibu. Narayan held Subramaniam’s body in his arms, slightly rocking it to and fro as if it were a living child in need of being comforted. He did this for a short while before gently placing Subramaniam’s hands together and closing his eyelids.
Subramaniam’s cremation on the riverside steps moved them all. As the fire leapt upwards around the shrouded body, Max visualised the old man’s soul being carried skywards on the twisting smoke, his old voice rising in one of those prayers he used to chant. In his final days, he’d been disturbed to learn of further communal troubles among the poor and unemployed. He, like Tammy, had come to believe that the assassins were part of a wider malaise, yet a weird serenity had informed his grieved reflections.
Max found himself remembering one last conversation he’d had with the old man.
‘Progress, you have asked me about,
Max. Yes, I believe life is a progression, with huge significance beyond itself. The spirit progresses as the river flows; the world has meaning, although the people suffer. There will always be those who suffer, but there will also be those who are compassionate. And there will always be people who hate each other and fight, the spirit of cold vengeance and the mad assassins’
Max had swallowed hard.
‘Such horrors… yes indeed,’ Subramaniam had continued. ‘But we must try and help the weak and frightened in their loneliness and pain. The spirit lives. The soul of the breathing world will breathe forever. When I die, think of my spirit that is within the wind, passing down the river to the open sea…’
Clare often thought of the assassins and the strong affinities that had bound them, especially the older youth’s affectionate protectiveness of the boy.
‘The cripple approached me at the end of the meditation,’ Max told her. ‘His adoration of his wife and child and his evident gratitude to you are also redeeming factors for him. Seen in isolation, the assassins seem to be figures of hatred and revenge, but they had their mitigating loyalties and mutual tenderness.’
Clare confronted the break-up of her marriage with mixed feelings. She and Max had moved out of Narayan’s house, out of necessity, and were living in a small antiquated hotel. A pair of lively monkeys was kept in a cage in the garden, and a parrot shifted fussily back and forth on its perch in the lobby. A peacock, with its spectacular tail and dowdy mate, strutted about the grounds. These days were like a late summer for Max and Clare’s marital affection. Her love for Tammy had continued to grow, yet her nostalgia for the past life with Max was akin to her feelings at Subramaniam’s cremation, as he passed out of their lives, his ashes carried away along the river as wild ducks flew overhead in a sudden rush of wings.
She didn’t regret that her sex life with Max had ended as all her physical desire was now reserved for Tammy. She loved Tammy more and more deeply, but she didn’t like to think that the intimacy she had shared with Max was something she must now relinquish and forget. Could they not retain a little of what had grown between them and been strengthened by the trials they’d endured? Or would this threaten the marriage Tammy wanted but to which she’d not yet assented? Did she need to exorcise Max from her mind before she could agree to be engaged to Tammy? She was worried about what might happen to Max now, for she doubted Narayan’s commitment.
She pondered on her present feelings for Narayan. Her former resentment and jealousy had disappeared, but she was little impressed by his attitude to Tammy: his continuing implacability. She also thought it was tactless to make so much of his friendship with Mohini when Max was there. It was obvious that her confident experience of the world would appeal to Narayan, as would her feelings for India’s traditions, which were maintained as a living force in this wondrous ashram. [I don’t understand that.]
Work on the book was going well. Thanks to Tammy’s help, Max was able to expand it by incorporating a great deal of economic commentary. It gave him the opportunity to increase awareness of West India’s need for realistic foreign aid that wouldn’t be spent on grandiose, prestige projects or vanish into the pockets of venal government officials, something about which Tammy felt particularly strongly. The demands of the book brought a need to journey farther afield. They planned to set off northwards, provisionally for a month at a time, returning to Chennai between trips.
Maria received another text from Antonio. She showed it to Clare, so dispelling her suspicion that the so-called Animal was more myth than monster.
‘You see, he now claims to have completely thrown over the dire Innamorata,’ Maria said, her voice triumphant. ‘He longs only to be reunited with the all-forgiving me and the darling Putto, unaware of how fierce and greedy the little darling Putto has become.’
‘Have you replied?’ Clare asked.
‘Yes. I’ve told him I’d be happy to return to live with him in Rome but only if he promises there will be no more philandering. I demand exclusive adoration. He must also make an honest woman of me. My wish to marry him must sound quaintly old fashioned and not very feminist,’ said Maria. ‘You have to understand, though, that he’s a fickle, male chauvinist pig, with those rapacious eyes that forever roam lustfully around. How else could I possibly keep him captive?’
Max wanted to do something more substantial for Indian famine relief. This was partly out of his love for Narayan, although he didn’t tell him this.
‘I see it as showing my respect for Subramaniam,’ he said instead. ‘I’ll go over the matter with Clare, then email my brokers and my bank.’
Unsurprisingly, Max’s attitude to Mohini changed when her attitude to him changed. She may have been impressed when Narayan told her of Max’s impending donation, but this wasn’t in the hope he might be equally generous towards the ashram.
‘It’s sufficiently endowed,’ she said to Max. ‘What it needs is realistic hope. What it can do without are the fashionable moaners indulging in their prophecies of doom.’
She’d clearly become rather attached to Max, happily dropping round to indoctrinate him with what he called her neo-Gandhian ideology. Max responded positively to her opinions, however impractical he sometimes found them. Narayan, however, would insist on arguing, more to show he wasn’t overly influenced by her views, which impressed him more than he liked to admit.
‘Oh, Max,’ Mohini began, ‘what wouldn’t we give these days for an ounce of Gandhi’s courage and inspiration? Yet some people are fool enough to say that he was naïve.’
‘Oh come on!’ rejoined Narayan. ‘He was naïve, in a way. Sublimely naïve. He was a great teacher, with a noble simplicity that set him far above the cunning that politicians usually need.’
‘Why confuse simplicity with naïvety, Narayan dear?’ replied Mohini. ‘Oh Gandhi had simplicity all right; that’s true. It’s always the complicated, devious people who end up making a terrible mess of things. He had an earthy realism. It’s the poor sods who talk him down these days who are naïve. Gandhi knew that it’s only hope and trust that really work with people, darling, whatever our modern cynics say.’
Mohini stayed a month in Chennai. Max sometimes wondered about the endearments she used when talking to Narayan – the dears and darlings. Were they merely her way of insisting on her emancipated spirit? Indeed, she would often kiss him lightly on the lips, in amused violation of India’s strict code of public manners. On their last night together, she and Narayan had a particularly lively dispute, which they both equally enjoyed.
‘Instead of giving tractors and medical aid to Third World countries, the West sells them tanks and military aircraft to plunge them even further into crippling debt,’ said Mohini, hardly pausing to catch her breath.
‘She’s off again!’ exclaimed Narayan in mock alarm. ‘Having another go at the exploitative, crafty West. Pretend not to hear, Max. With any luck, she’ll stop.’
‘Max is too open-minded to want me to stop,’ said Mohini. ‘Unlike some people, who are jealous because my views aren’t hidebound by majority opinion.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Narayan, smiling. ‘I’m so jealous of your political views, I’m thinking of taking a course in basic anarchism. All we need is for the military to be abolished, and then universal brotherhood would burst out overnight. No arms! No army! No police! No sectarian violence and no civil riots, either. All we’d need then, you see, would be a million ashrams with a Mohini in each and every one, ruling over them.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t parody my opinions, Narayan dear,’ said Mohini. ‘What’s more, in the ashram I’m loosely attached to, I keep a very low profile.’
‘Only so you can get your own way more subtly, wrapping that old swami around your little finger, then doing exactly what you want.’ Narayan turned to Max. ‘She’s always been like that, you know. An undercover power freak; a real manipulator with far more than her fair share of nerve.’
‘I’ll forgive you for that,’ Mohi
ni laughed. ‘I may have a touch of modest confidence, but I’m not pushy and conceited, am I, Max?’
‘Of course not,’ Max told her. ‘Anyway, I like confident people.’
‘Always so reassuring, Max dear. Unlike your friend here, with his little cracks about me. Oh well, we must pity the poor thing, I suppose. All that foreign gallivanting and scientific wizardry. When it comes to the crunch, though, he’s so pathetically unthinking, he hardly knows what life in the new millennium is all about.’
Narayan opened his mouth to say something but found he couldn’t and burst out laughing instead.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Three days after Mohini left, Max received a long email from Rick. ‘The growth is Kaposi’s sarcoma,’ he wrote. Max’s pulse raced as he read on. ‘It’s been excised but this means I’ve developed full-blown AIDS. Isn’t it ironic this should happen just when I became so respectably monogamous? Well, they’re making medical advances all the time. You and Clare are not to worry. Concentrate on getting your book written.’
They decided to put the book on hold for the present and to return to LA.
‘I want to offer Rick support, moral and financial, when we get back,’ Max said to Clare. ‘We also need to set our divorce proceedings in motion so you’ll be free to marry Tammy.’
‘I don’t want to talk about that possibility yet,’ she said. ‘It’s a bit soon.’
‘Well, I’ll try to persuade Rick to come back with us to India for a while, if he’s well enough, when we return to complete the research on the book. He’s got no one now it seems, and you’ll remember how wickedly amusing he can be. He’s been such a loyal friend to me for years.’
For a day or two, Max moped around in a state of dazed sorrow. This seemed to correspond to Narayan’s mood; he was missing Vijaya and Mohini. He appeared uncharacteristically remote. So it was with mixed expectations that Max went to visit Narayan on their last night in India. They kissed, but their kiss lacked the excited expectation of the past. Narayan looked very nervous.
The Assassins Page 19