by Anna Tambour
“Yes ma’am.” He bent and touched his striped railroad conductor cap. “No offence meant.”
She smiled graciously. “Then there is none taken.”
He turned to her husband again. “Conductor Guru . . . uh . . . Mister Conductor. Would you please hijack this train?”
Of course the very idea of Mr Sandeep Guruprasad hijacking a train was repugnant to that model citizen, but 7 members of the group were adamant. They wanted to continue their trip, and they didn’t care where they went. Indeed, “Anywhere!” several said at once, while one said “Anywheres!”
John Cooper, the group leader, had left them weeks ago, deserting them on that last unscheduled stop, not that they knew any more whether a stop was scheduled or not. Mr Cooper, a man for whom Sandeep Guruprasad had immense respect (Cooper had memorised the entire 1985 Indian Railways Timetable), had said that, to his knowledge, this town first appeared on maps five years ago. And that line, See it? The one to the south. That line hasn’t been used for at least twelve years.
The 7 passengers wanted, of course, to take the line that hadn’t been used for at least twelve years, a crazy idea that only train enthusiasts like them would warm to.
Guruprasad tried reason.
Then, “This isn’t like your model railways,” he said. “If this ends with us plunging off a bridge that someone forgot to fix . . . ” He rolled his eyes, calling upon their imaginations. Guruprasad couldn’t budge them, though he wondered briefly if they were deficient in imagination or were just stubborn as a rusted lock. Whatever the reason, their collective mind was completely inflexible. We want to take that line on that map, south.
Mrs Guruprasad, as the model wife she was, took no part in the conversation. In this subject he was the authority. She was ready, of course, to impose his authority, so she kept an ear out but otherwise exercised an aura of gentle passivity as she read.
“I must consult,” announced Guruprasad. “Please wait outside.”
The 7 others filed out and he closed the door.
Priyanka Guruprasad put down her book and rose. She put her hands on her husband’s head and massaged his scalp.
“Such bliss,” he said, allowing his neck to become floppy as a baby’s.
“There is a school of thought that bliss cannot last,” she said.
He tsked. “Western romanticism! This is what comes from being unbalanced.”
“What are you going to decide, Sooey?”
“I only wish I knew.” This was the sign that she must do her wifely work.
“There are seven votes to one,” she said.
“My little Badam!” He pinched her waist lovingly. She is not as supple here as she once was, but she has a most flexacious mind.
She didn’t need to say another word. Their mutual love for democracy decided it.
Mutiny!
But before action, a detail: He whispered, “Are we packed?”
Three seconds later, she nodded Yes.
The time, by Mr Sandeep Guruprasad’s watch, was 2:00 and thirty seconds.
The jail is filled
The procession of four that roamed the centre of the town of L—— attracted some attention, and more admiration. The group was obviously visitors, the two uniformed workers obviously belonging to a train and thus not warranting any notice, but the man and woman leading this group were notable. That she walked the streets in that flimsy patriotically red outfit and he wore the most inappropriate garb for this weather and seemed to relish his light costume, was evidence enough for all who saw them to conclude that here were members of the famous Moscovian Icebergs, on national tour—being escorted, as was proper, so that they didn’t stray into places that weren’t suitable for them. The railway unit team would have an itinerary, and one passerby expressed a wish that the itinerary would include the female Iceberg standing in front of Party Headquarters in a naturalist pose.
As was expected of visitors, the procession soon entered the police station, not the best place for onlookers to watch, so no one noticed the exact time they entered, but at the noon siren, they were still inside.
They found Savva in the police station, sitting on a wooden seat by the door. As soon as she saw him, Galina gasped in delight. He hadn’t been carted off to an asylum. He wasn’t even in jail.
“Galina!” he whispered. But he did not leap to embrace her.
They were lucky that the jail was full and that he had been placed in the only location that Vladimir Shukov, acting police chief, could use for incarceration.
Although the Omniscient had been confident of his ability to find Savva and get him released, the chief train driver had been bold enough to speak to the distinguished but misguided tourist (the Omniscient) (as train employee to passenger), pointing out that Savva, as a member of Railway Work Unit 675645, was his, the chief train driver’s responsibility.
His decent soul rejoiced that he didn’t have to subject the old man to humiliation. He was no exhibitionist, neither with words nor his rock-hard muscles—and he cringed when he had to restrain anyone, even obnoxious drunks. So he only had generous thoughts when the old man followed but did not interfere. First they looked in the hidey holes that Galina thought Savva might have fled to. When they were Savva-less, he followed his hunch, and that’s when they found Savva slouching on that bench in the police station.
The chief train driver stepped forward, leader of this delegation.
“He is a model unit worker,” he swore, and since the chief train driver was himself a model worker with a badge to show it, that should have done the trick. Five minutes later Savva should have been happily flipping the carpet in 3C, the train should have been happily singing, and (the chief train driver’s heart bled to think it) the happy lovers would have been united.
But this was not the case.
The acting chief of police said that the chief train driver was completely correct as to responsibility. He agreed that on the train, this “model worker” (he sneered) “is your responsibility, but as this is not a train, the last time I looked”—now he looked around him as if magic could have occurred, but hadn’t—“I’m sorry to inform you. This is still a police station. The prisoner is mine.”
Galina shoved the head of her work unit aside. “The next time you are a passenger,” she said to the man who had smiled at the chief train driver’s badge. “I hope to serve you with pleasure.” She smiled as he had smiled. She hadn’t actually said “poison” instead of “pleasure”, so there was no crime to charge her with, but. And she had only just begun.
At first the acting chief of police Vladimir Shukov was startled, but his lips twitched. After all, he was famous for his sense of humour. He was one of those men whose nose tells how much he appreciates a joke, by its colour. Galina’s insults were rich with innuendo, though she wasn’t speaking with any deliberation. Pure passion was spewing from her lips, and her armaments, head and breasts pushed to the fore—fully loaded. At first, Shukov’s nose flamed red in combined amusement and sensual appreciation— such an audacious mouthful! She’d be like living with an unguided torpedo—a dangerous thrill. But there are limits. As his rational parts pushed aside his sensuality and his famous sense of humour, his brain took over.
The tip of his nose had just turned white when his mouth opened and “Perhaps . . . ” someone interrupted, in a voice as rich and comforting as cream.
The Omniscient stepped to the fore.
Spirit of adventure
“GO, GIRL!” Nick cheered, but no one heard him.
Nick could hardly tear his eyes from Savva. Who could think that could be so capable, so romantic, so bloody creative?
Nick stood out proudly on Galina’s face, his colour blazing, as she defended her love.
She did all she could do, and as fearlessly as a lobster leaping into a pot.
Now it was in the old boy’s hands, whoever he is.
Nick wished him luck. “No”, he corrected. “I wish us luck.”
The sce
nt of onions
“DEFACING THE PRESIDENT is a criminal offence,” said acting chief of police Vladimir Shukov, feeling that he must sound like an amateur actor. He was so rattled, he wasn’t sure he could say, “I am not a pickled cucumber” convincingly.
“I should think so, Comrade,” agreed his interrogator, known to us as the Omniscient.
“So there we have it,” Shukov laughed, infinitely relieved. In his famous style, he announced, “Case closed,” and banged a stapler on the counter. But he didn’t let the citizen off without playfully wagging a finger in his face. “And here I thought we were playing chess.”
He and this confusing citizen had been discussing the prisoner for several minutes, but had seemed to have difficulties understanding one another’s position. As Shukov turned away, he burped in anticipation of a long, well-deserved lunch.
“I’m afraid not. No criminal offence has occurred.”
“And who might you be?” he blustered. He wished his superior wasn’t holding a private lunch with the Governor that day, and wished even more that his superior hadn’t filled the jail with those tins, and that crate. It was a habit that was getting on Shukov’s nerves. He needed the jail for criminals, but that was an old- fashioned concept to his comrade superiors. Now that he had a criminal on his hands whose case had, it seems, already attracted attention, where could he be put? Shukov felt hard done by, and instead of glaring at the audacious criminal who should not have been seen nor heard, he had to be on his guard.
“Remember the Tsukochevsky Affair?” the man who had stated that ridiculous denial said leadingly. Shukov didn’t, but this man surely did.
“I have been on holiday,” frowned the mystery citizen. “He was my attendant.”
He sounded like a prosecutor. And that fancy waistcoat, almost as fine as the shirt that the police chief gave to the Governor, the one hundred per cent silk with the tropical flowers. And he doesn’t wear a coat.
A woman pushed up beside the man who must be a Moscow prosecutor, and this woman was breathtakingly intimidating. The final intimidating factor hit Shukov like a club. They aren’t wearing coats. His terrible circulation had always been a secret shame.
“What do you mean ‘no criminal offence’ when a criminal offence has clearly occurred?” he said. The more ashamed he felt, the more pugnacious he became.
“Please quote the offence,” said the Omniscient.
“This isn’t a court.”
“I demand that you detail the charges.” The Omniscient’s voice was quiet with authority.
Shukov frisked the room with his eyes. The place was stuffed with police, all at lunch. Two of them were cutting onions. He was on his own.
“You should be able to quote it yourself, comrade,” he smiled, “when a citizen defaces a leader, especially the president.”
“And what was the nature of this defacement?”
“You don’t know?” Shukov asked, narrowing his eyes to a look that screamed “Watch out or I’ll arrest you, too.”
“Please tell me the nature of this defacement,” said his interrogator.
Only someone very sure of himself would willingly enter a police station. And Shukov had never been treated like this by a person on the other side of the counter.
“Tell me exactly,” said the man who had made Shukov sweat. “Code, section. And I’m onto you. Cease your diversionary tactics, or . . . ”
Shukov wasn’t sweating any more. It was obvious that this old man hadn’t actually been witness to any act. How could he have, being a passenger in the train? The mural must have already been refaced when this man emerged, angry at the samovar going cold or something, or at not having his private stock of caviar served on ice.
Shukov pointed to the prisoner. “Your model citizen there painted a birthmark on the President’s face.” That should have done it. He turned away to have his lunch.
“Doesn’t the President have a birthmark?”
Shukov gasped. No one talks of such things in such a place.
“Come now,” said the man. “Does or does not the President have a birthmark on his face?”
Shukov’s lips formed a thin hard line.
“I shall return,” said the daring senior citizen, raising a finger in the policeman’s face, “with the truth.”
The terrible bush
SO MUNIFER THE MAKER of the Great Timursaçi’s saçiness, travelled home to his workshop with the bag of virgin hair that he had been forced, through no fault of his own, to purchase—in a Quarter of Ill Repute, no less.
He set to making the great moustache, though there were new steps he had to take this year, in crafting this anomalous hersutity. The bag was as mixed a bag as a cat catcher’s. He sniffed as he pulled out the contents—no silken flow of lustrous black, such as he was used to from that special secret village-of-no-name (designated by the Great’s mother) where this year all the virgins had inconsiderately died and everyone else had fled or died except one old woman with hair like peed-on cotton.
These flaming red and gold and mousy brown hairs couldn’t be used without being treated. Munifer hunted till he found the perfect tincture. He bought the recipe for the powerful stuff from a blind dyer in the town of G————. When Munifer found him, the man was curled like a dried prawn, lying in filth in a hole of the wall surrounding the dyer’s quarter. The dyer’s lips were black with oncoming death. Munifer paid him by promising to pay for a funeral, complete with professional mourners, and a singer named Honeylips. As Luck would have it, the dyer was a man of high morality, if not business sense. The recipe was a complex and surprising one, and the dyer was a perfectionist. His last breath lasted long enough for him to say, “And don’t get it in your eyes.”
As for the silken flow of hair that Munifer was used to, this lot was puffed out with kinked, curly, and wavy locks. So he tamed it, using a recipe that was so harsh that no hair could last longer than a year, but no hair needed to.
Finally, he applied his special stiffening polish of waxes and gums to shape and shine the moustache out to its Great span. His hands moulded hair as expertly as a potter works clay. Moulding and stretching, thickening and thinning down to authoritative points, he employed a last sure-fingered flourish as his arms stretched the twin horns to their furthest span.
He stepped away, then walked closer. He inspected the moustache from the left side, then the right, then at the angle of a petitioner, gazing up at it from the floor. Only then could he smile grimly. Magnificent! he allowed himself to think. That damned village couldn’t stop him from producing, yet again, a masterwork that would fool those who knew no better—and who knew better than he?
No one, he hummed, will be the wiser.
Night had dyed the sky black, and bright stars glowed upon it like a net of diamonds—but he was in no mood for poetic similes, let alone solitude. He locked his secret workshop and strode, tapping out a lively rhythm with his stick, to the nearest Quarter of Ill Repute where he lived for a week, his arms festooned with girls. His wealth was a source of hope (and speculation as to its origins).
But his Greatness’s appointment loomed, so Munifer cut his pleasure short.
He set out as an unlucky man, the sort of man you want to keep far from, lest the evil eye stray from him, to you. Munifer had packed the moustache in its crafty old travelling case, one of those hideous eelskin things that itinerant long-horn players tote, and what long-horn player isn’t an unlucky itinerant?
As he walked, he murmured praises to Providence, the dropper of the Curse upon that inconvenient village for the luck of him. No longer would he have to take that exhausting trip, climb up any rugged mountains, or go anywhere at all. He could send for a hag from the closest Quarter of Ill Repute and buy a bag of virgin hair from her—and she would not even be curious why.
And furthermore—this thought came to him as he reached the last hill on the night before he reached the Great City where, in seven days, he was dated by the calendar first set by th
e Great Timursaçi’s mother, to present and fit Timursaçi’s great moustache, known by only the Great’s mother, Timursaçi’, and Munifer himself to be not grown in the soil of the Greatness’ face. As he stopped and put down his case, the thought exploded in his head with such power that he reeled. Why use virgin hair at all?
He had to sit, and not being a philosopher, he almost fell over with the effort of making his unexercised brain work at thinking this out. I, a master wigmaker, which was why I was chosen in the first place, could make the moustache from anything. Horsehair. Wheat stalks. Mouse spit!
He almost cried, such was the sadness he felt over all those wasted years of going to that cursed village, coming back, going, coming. Aghhh. And what made him think that anyone but him would be able to recognise virtuous fine virgin hair from any other?
It was only Fortune that led him to Desperation, that led him to the Quarter of Ill Repute, where he was only too aware that the virgin hair would be like anything that you can buy—of lesser worth. But then he was a master of disguise. Why haven’t I matched my wits to my skills?
He looked forward on the path, and back—and saw no one. So, in a transport of thankfulness, he threw himself in the dust and gave thanks. He did not ask Why? That just tempts the Evil One. And then he hid behind the nearest cedar, and slept.
He was just slapping a servant girl for splashing a drop of wine on his face as she poured it into his mouth, when he woke. Cold, stinging drops continued to hit his face. A spring shower.
“Cursed rain.” The night was black. He pulled his cloak over his head.
He half-woke to the call of, he supposed, swallows, the drone of bees or other small winged things, and the crick crick crick of something else. Nature’s music put him to sleep again as the sun came out above and dried the tears of invisible nymphs from their leaf seats in the trees, as stories say.
Even the air was fragrant with promise.