The Stolen

by T. S. Learner

  ‘Uncle, I bring you some honoured visitors who wish to explore the Shiva temples and some of the unusual geological features of our wonderful land,’ he told him in English.

  The man, tall and plump, in his late fifties, seemed to assess both Matthias’s strength and size as well as his potential wealth. He didn’t even bother to look at Helen. He swung back to the driver and barked something in Hindi before disappearing into the doorway of the town hall. The other men remained stock-still and silent, and even the children stopped chattering to melt away as fast as they had appeared. Matthias glanced at the policeman.

  ‘They are suspicious of you, so the next guy we have to impress,’ Helen said softly under her breath. A second later the man re-emerged, escorted by an even taller and fatter man with a magnificent handlebar moustache and a bright yellow silk turban who was also wearing gold earrings and rings. Immediately a wave of reverence ran through the waiting men and the driver bowed in respect.

  ‘Arjun Rama Singh, these visitors are waiting for your honourable guidance and advice.’ He tilted his head towards Matthias. ‘Arjun Singh is the leader of our village. This is an honour.’

  ‘You have come to see the Shiva temples?’ Arjun Singh stepped out from the shadow of the doorway and now Matthias could see he was younger than he’d thought. He also spoke perfect English with a public-school accent. Heartened by the sophistication of his English and the faint smile that played behind the enormous moustache, Matthias moved forward.

  ‘Actually, I want to explore an interesting geological formation known as the Ramgarh Structure – have you heard of it?’ He fished into his pocket and brought out the fragment from the statuette and held it up, the blue-grey surface catching the sunlight like a beacon. ‘I think this might have come from it.’

  It was as if the temperature had suddenly dropped. The reaction to the appearance of the metal fragment was instant: several children covered their eyes and turned away as if they had been caught looking at something that was sacrosanct. The holy man who had been sitting in the gutter was now on his feet, staring over, his eyes glazed as he rocked himself, chanting a mantra.

  Arjun Singh reached out and closed Matthias’s hand over the fragment. ‘Please, put this away; it does not belong out here under the open sky.’

  ‘So you have seen it before?’ Matthias’s voice was harsh with excitement.

  Arjun Singh, frowning, brushed a fly from his face, failing to disguise his fury.

  ‘The Ramgarh Structure does not exist. It is a fiction made up by greedy developers who wish to destroy our culture. I trust you are not one of these?’

  The hostility was palpable.

  ‘No, I’m not. Nevertheless I would like —’

  ‘Nevertheless,’ Singh interrupted him, ‘we will be happy to show you the Shiva temples tomorrow, under the auspices of our official guide,’ he indicated the policeman, ‘but in the meanwhile I insist you experience the gracious hospitality of the Ramgarh Hotel and tea garden.’ He pointed to a ramshackle building across the road – plaster effigies of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were mounted on two pillars that framed the front gate and a landscaped garden that had seen better days stretched behind it. Beyond that the hotel entrance peeped out between two palm trees. Just then a white, balding peacock strutted out between the pillars.

  Liliane had made her mind up; in fact she’d made her mind up the moment she finally heard what her mother had said out loud only seconds before her death. And no matter how she tried to dismiss the plan as too dangerous or too audacious it had stayed there, growing in strength. But it had only been later in the afternoon that she remembered Destin’s gun she’d left hidden at Willi’s squat.

  She glanced over at Keja. Her grandmother was sleeping, her face pinched in pain, framed by an embroidered bedspread. Momentarily overcome by the spreading cancer, she had taken to her bed. But Liliane was determined. She would leave first thing in the morning – she had no choice – not if she wanted the ghosts to leave her alone.

  The ceiling fan spun slowly, the only respite from the stifling heat. Matthias collapsed in a cane armchair while Helen emptied her rucksack.

  ‘We can go out ourselves – there have to be some geological features we can spot that will lead us to a potential site,’ she said cautiously, having tactfully managed to navigate Matthias’s darkening mood for the past hour.

  ‘Maybe, but I suspect we’d risk getting murdered by the local constabulary. Did you see how people reacted when I produced the fragment of the statuette? We’re close, I know it – obviously there’s been some local mythology built up around the crater site, negative by the looks of it – even the men seemed scared.’

  She stopped, a T-shirt half-folded in her hands. ‘What would be the long-term effect of the ore on the environment? Would it affect people living around it?’

  ‘Possibly. Remember the Kalderash attributed both positive and negative powers to the statuette itself.’

  ‘Whatever the reason, whatever the myth, everyone seems petrified here.’

  They were interrupted by a loud tap on the balcony door that led onto the grounds of the dilapidated but once grand hotel. A man stood at the window, his painted face pressed hopefully against the glass – a grotesque mask. He gestured for them to let him in.

  ‘Jesus Christ.’ Startled, Helen dropped her clothes. Matthias sprang up from the armchair.

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s just that man who was sitting in the gutter – the holy man.’ He opened the balcony door.

  ‘Thank you, professor, thank you.’ The holy man stepped in. Near naked, with just a loin cloth around his groin, his hands and feet hennaed red, his ribs a gaunt bone cage, he wore a rosary of wooden beads about his neck and strands of thin grey hair dangled from his dusty orange and yellow turban. ‘You seek the ring of rocks known as the Ramgarh Structure?’

  ‘You’ve heard of it?’ Matthias asked.

  ‘Everyone has heard of it in this village – every family over the generations has been touched by its wrath. But we call it something else, professor.’

  ‘How do you know I am a professor?’

  ‘I know that you are a professor and the Messenger. I have been waiting for you.’

  ‘Waiting for me?’ Matthias glanced at Helen, concerned that the man might not be in full control of his mental faculties.

  ‘As soon as you held up a piece of her flesh-made-stone I knew. Please, do not be worried, I am a Sadhu, a follower of the Kalika Purana on the path to purification. My name to you is Ravi, and I am a very good judge of character. I have learned to read people.’ He reached over and took Matthias’s hands, turning them palm up. ‘Also your hands, they are soft, not a working man’s hands, so I know you are a scholar. I am not afraid of the goddess, I am her devotee and we all carry our birth and death within us all our lives; we cannot run from this – better we race towards it with real joy. My time has come. You are to be my heir; I feel this as sharply as the sun on my skin. The signs are in the sky. It is time the goddess woke.’

  ‘The goddess?’ Helen stepped forward.

  ‘Kali, Bhavatarini, redeemer of the universe, goddess of birth and destruction, of the infinite beyond and before Light itself.’ His voice echoed like the trapped peal of a bell around the hotel room. Matthias watched him, an idea forming in his mind.

  ‘Ravi, is there a hidden temple, part of the Ring of Ramgarh?’ he asked softly. ‘A temple dedicated to Kali.’ He held out the fragment. ‘Perhaps the walls are made of this?’

  Smiling beatifically the holy man turned to Helen. ‘You see, he is the Messenger – he knows all before it is spoken.’

  ‘As the Messenger I command you to take me there,’ Matthias ordered, trying to sound as authoritarian as possible.

  The holy man clasped his hands in prayer, touched his own mouth and heart, then placed his fingers on Matthias’s mouth and heart.

  ‘At first light I will take you and your woman, and you will wake the goddess, as
is written in the sky.’

  The small private propeller plane shuddered to a halt on the flat field doubling up as an airfield just south of Mangrol. Janus unfastened his seat belt and leaned forward to peer out of the window. Meanwhile, sitting behind him, Olek crossed himself and thanked God for the safe flight. Outside, long grass edged the airfield and a line of cardboard shacks – slum dwellings – were visible beyond the marshland. Janus hated India: the chaos, the blind superstition and the relentless swell of humanity. But it had its secrets, powerful secrets. He’d learned that decades ago from Ulrich, but perhaps he hadn’t listened closely enough to his old comrade. He knew one of his weaknesses was to go for the obvious, the literal, the immediate pay-off. Was he now paying the price? He looked at the man sitting opposite him, the man whose banal diatribes on geology and the importance of meteorites had bored him for the long flight from Zürich. The man who had sold his loyalty for a price – and Janus hated disloyalty almost as much as he hated narcissists; this man was both.

  ‘How long will it take us from here?’ Janus asked.

  ‘From Mangrol, not long,’ Jorges Hatiwais replied. ‘But we should leave in the morning; the road is dangerous in the dark.’

  ‘We leave tonight.’

  TWENTY-NINE

  Keja was still curled up in the twilight of the caravan, her snore a gentle purr. Outside it was dark, although the clock said seven a.m. Liliane dressed as quietly as she could in her school uniform, leaving the traditional gypsy clothes in a neat pile at the end of the bed. Matthias had left her Swiss francs, but she would hitchhike to the city then walk to Willi’s. She knew the gun was loaded; after that it would only be a question of time. At the door of the caravan she paused for a moment, staring back at the sleeping woman, and this microcosm of a world in which she fitted and in which she did not; instinct telling her it would be the last time she would be there.

  The mid-morning sun had begun to beat down. They reached the apex of the rocky incline they’d been hiking up for the past two hours; Matthias judging it to be about eleven in the morning. Helen, gasping for breath, leaned against a sapling, disturbing a couple of brightly coloured parrots that flew squawking into the lilac sky. Matthias wiped his brow; the only person seemingly unaffected by the steep trek was the holy man himself, despite the fact that Matthias had seen neither food nor water pass Ravi’s lips since they’d left the hotel.

  The holy man stood resting on a long gnarled root he’d been using as a walking stick, one foot hooked on the knee of the other leg, watching the foreigners with some amusement – even the flies seemed to stay away from him, Matthias noted ruefully.

  ‘How much further now?’ Matthias asked.

  Ravi laughed, a full throaty chuckle, his head tilted back.

  ‘You must learn to use your eyes, professor. Do you not recognise where you are?’

  He pointed to the top of the embankment with his stick. Matthias, following the direction the root was aimed at, scrambled up, trying to balance on the rocky rubble under his feet. Finally he reached the top and looked down. A whole panorama suddenly opened up: two small lakes lay in the crater catching the reflection of the crimson disc of the sun in their mirrored surfaces. Outcrops of trees and undergrowth fringed them. As if sensing Matthias’s gaze, a flock of brightly coloured waterbirds flew up from the greenery, swinging as one through the air below them. To either side he could clearly see the curvature of the crater and the valley the meteorite had made upon impact. Helen scrambled up beside him.

  ‘My God, it’s so beautiful.’

  ‘And it’s a crater, Helen, perfectly formed by the impact and the velocity of a meteorite. Somewhere down there, probably buried below the lake itself, is what we’re looking for.’

  The holy man joined them and pointed with the tree root down to the centre. ‘There was once a village, over there by the temple.’ Matthias peered in the direction Ravi was pointing; now he could see a small part-ruined temple in the centre of the crater, its sand-coloured stone pillars catching the light. ‘The temple is dedicated to Lord Shiva, but the villagers followed him only as the husband of Kali,’ Ravi said.

  ‘When was this?’ Helen asked excitedly.

  ‘A long, long time ago, daughter, before there was written history. The villagers were true to the goddess – they lived by her laws, they feared neither death nor the passing of time, but lived for each moment of temporal life. Then the invaders came and these people fled, leaving the big temple and the little temple,’ the holy man answered, smiling.

  ‘That would be around the third century…’

  ‘The century the Ur-Rom left India,’ Helen murmured. ‘Is it possible?’ It was a statement made more to herself than the others.

  Matthias swung back to the holy man. ‘There is another temple?’

  ‘The secret hidden heart. Lord Shiva’s body covers and hides the true soul of his wife the goddess Kali, which is how the ancients saw it. And it is into that soul that I am taking you now.’

  It had been easy to get into Willi’s squat. He lived, with the other band members, in an old storehouse by the river just off Utoquai. They were used to Liliane arriving and leaving at bizarre times of the day, and they tended not to read newspapers or take much interest in the daily affairs of Zürich unless they involved the music world. So when Liliane turned up that morning in a slightly torn dishevelled school uniform with strange marks around her wrists and neck they merely opened the door and mumbled something about Willi still being asleep up in his ‘nest’. Willi’s part of the warehouse, partitioned off by plasterboard, served as a rehearsal room and place to store the band’s instruments. He slept atop a platform that doubled as a roof, in an alcove he’d painted black with one wall covered in black vinyl, the centrepiece of which was the cover of the band’s first single – like a shrine. A fifteen-foot ladder led up to the bed. Beneath the platform, crowded in like unwanted party guests, were a variety of instruments the band used for special occasions: a ukulele, an early synthesiser, a strange instrument made from horsehair and a packing box, and an ancient drum kit. Ignoring Willi – still prone, sleeping and no doubt hungover, his large feet draped over the edge of the platform clad in dirty fluorescent green socks – Liliane went straight to the drum kit. Inside the bass drum, wrapped in old cloth, was the gun she’d stolen from the Frenchman’s apartment. She picked it up and slipped it into her pocket.

  ‘The crater has two small lakes fringed by forest in which live fantastic wild birds. There is also a temple, very ancient, more than a thousand years old, maybe you like to see this?’ The guide, who looked little more than a child to Janus, chatted enthusiastically, as he sprinted up the narrow rocky path, while the others walking behind struggled to keep up.

  ‘Just get us there,’ Janus grunted irritably. It felt like hours since they’d arrived at the base of the steep incline that seemed to curve back towards the horizon on either side.

  ‘The incline is an illusion,’ Jorges explained, whistling and striding out energetically in front of Janus and Olek. ‘We are actually climbing the lip of the crater. Fascinating, isn’t it?’

  Janus, uncomfortably hot, grunted in the sweltering heat; he’d begun to regret his decision to hunt Matthias von Holindt down personally. There were four of them in the party: the young guide who led up front; Jorges, Janus himself, and Olek. Janus glanced back at the Russian. Sweating, sunburn scorching a red path across his shaven scalp, Olek shrugged back. He looked as if he too were struggling in the heat, but the sight of the mercenary was comforting to Janus. He knew the man carried both a revolver and a silencer, his loyalty and professionalism unquestioning.

  They scrambled up a particularly steep incline and the view opened before them as if they’d stepped through some magical peephole. Without a word the guide pointed down to the circular lake and the clear interior of the crater.

  ‘You are here. I leave you now,’ he announced firmly and started to turn back.

  Janus grabbed his w
rist. ‘I paid you to take us all the way.’

  ‘You do not understand, sir. Great evil down there, plenty people get sick there. I will not go.’ He yanked his arm away. Jorges spoke in Hindi but the guide still shook his head and replied rapidly in the same language.

  ‘He says this is a bad place, and that strange things have happened because of what’s buried below the lake. Trees bursting into flame, floating rocks…’

  Olek glanced anxiously at Janus. ‘Maybe he’s right?’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. It’s just local superstitious nonsense,’ Janus snapped back, then lifted his binoculars to his eyes. ‘But it sounds like we’re on the right path.’ He scanned the opposite bank but could see nothing but a few trees and scrub. He turned to the guide. ‘I’ll pay you ten times the original fee if you take us down there.’