“What do I write?” said Gil.
“Anything you like,” said Nargis.
It was cold in the graveyard and Gil shivered as a sharp wind blew in off Hornswoggle Bay. His fingers were shaking so badly he didn’t have to try to make his handwriting messy, scribbling a few lines on the page. In the dark, he could barely make out his own words:
Roses are red,
Violets are blue,
Everyone’s dead,
And so are you.
Tearing out the page, Gil handed it to Nargis, who put the piece of paper inside the trap.
“Okay, let’s get out of here,” she said. “Tomorrow morning, on my way to school, I’ll check and see if we’ve caught anything.”
Gil’s hands still smelled from the lobster trap, and the knees of his jeans were wet as they headed toward the gate. He pulled the collar of his parka up to his chin, then started to laugh, first a snicker, then louder, as if he’d just heard a hilarious joke.
“What’s wrong with you?” said Nargis, starting to laugh herself, both of them giggling with nervous relief.
Gil tried to catch his breath but the laughter made it impossible for him to speak. Nargis too was in hysterics now and both of them were doubled up, as if they’d just done the stupidest thing in the world, setting a lobster trap for a ghost. Nargis was laughing so hard, she had tears streaming down her face, and Gil felt as if he was going to collapse. Then, all at once, they stopped.
A clattering noise came from the direction of Camellia’s grave. It sounded like somebody rattling a door. Nargis and Gil were still gasping from their laughing fit, but now they were seriously scared. The grin on Gil’s face turned into a mask of horror as Nargis grabbed his arm so hard it hurt. The noise grew louder and more insistent, a frenzied knocking and banging followed by a clatter.
“We’ve caught it!” Nargis said in a choked whisper. Slowly, she let go of Gil’s arm.
“N-no way …!” he stammered, trembling from the soles of his feet to his scalp.
Though it was the last thing either of them wanted to do, the two turned back and started running in the direction of the sound. When they got to Camellia’s grave, there was no sign of the trap. Farther down, near the lower wall of the cemetery, they heard a loud crash and a cracking sound, as if someone were breaking a chair. Without thinking, they hurried down the hill, dodging tombstones and trying to locate the sound. By the time they reached the bottom, everything was silent. In the shadowy moonlight, the two of them looked around, eyes wide with fear, terrified at what they might find.
Feeling as if his legs had turned into rubber bands, Gil saw something lying in the grass. It was part of the trap, two slats of splintered wood and frayed bits of rope. Farther on, Nargis found shredded pieces of paper on which Gil had scribbled his poem. The palms of her hands were sweating even though it was freezing cold. Near the cemetery wall were more scattered remains of the lobster trap. It looked as if it had been torn apart by some kind of wild animal, mangled pieces of wood and wire ripped apart in a furious rage.
31
The Siege of Ajeebgarh
A loud explosion rocks the walls of the house. Sikander lies under his bed, where he has taken shelter, along with his mother and sister. He wonders where his father must be, afraid to think what might have happened to him. As one of the maharajah’s bodyguards, Sikander’s father must be facing the full brunt of the British assault. Another shell bursts near the house and the ground trembles. Fighting has been going on since dawn and Sikander guesses it must be noon. The air is full of smoke and he can hear the rustle of flames from one of the houses nearby.
Unable to bear it any longer, Sikander squirms out from under the bed. His mother calls to him, but he tells her not to worry. He will find his father, he says, don’t be afraid. Pushing aside the table that barricades their front door, Sikander sees the carnage outside, a neighbor’s house burned to the ground. Another home has been destroyed by an artillery shell, its roof collapsed and the windows shattered. There is no one on the street. By now the sound of gunfire has subsided to a distant crackling from the northern quarter of the city.
As he makes his way toward the palace, Sikander sees nothing but destruction: a timber merchant’s shop on fire, billowing black smoke; a carriage overturned, no sign of the horse; two men carrying a wounded figure to safety; a body slumped across a doorstep.
Ducking as he runs, Sikander moves from the cover of a shattered wall to the flimsy protection of a fallen awning. With a sudden clatter of hooves, two donkeys run past in panic, braying loudly. The sky is dark with smoke, even though it is midday and the smell of burning fires has a sour stench. With a whistling sound, another shell comes in over the rooftops, bursting in the square and leaving a smoldering crater eight feet wide.
Sikander dashes across to the railway station. One of the domes has been destroyed, but the clock is still intact and reads twenty minutes past twelve. Taking a lane into the spice bazaar, Sikander sees bags of red chilies and yellow tumeric spilling into the gutter. Many of the buildings have been ransacked, but the calligrapher’s shop remains untouched, its front door sealed with a heavy padlock. Usually the street is crowded with people. Today it is deserted, except for a man who has been wounded. He sits on the ground, staring into space. When Sikander stops to ask if he can help, the man shakes his head as if in a trance and waves the boy away.
But more disturbing than anything he has seen until now are the ruins of the Central Post and Telegraph Office. The whole building has collapsed, smoking like a volcano. Nothing is left of the pillared verandas, the broad steps, or the ornate brickwork along the roof, the high ceilings and the polished brass grilles. All is gone, as if this were the target at which every gun had been aimed. The telegraph wire has snapped off and lies tangled in the rubble.
Sikander has no time to stop. He races toward the river. The bridge has been badly damaged, but enough remains for him to cross over. Another half a mile and he reaches the palace. Here he can see line upon line of armed men in red uniforms—British troops. The firing has stopped and the palace has been captured. Maharajah Lajawab Singh II has surrendered, his flag torn down. The façade of his palace, which once shone pristine white with marble balconies and terraces, is pockmarked with bullet holes and streaked with soot. A group of soldiers are dragging a burning piano out of a door as another group leads a dozen prisoners across the parade ground. Sikander gives a start as he sees his father in the group. Mehboob Khan walks with his head held high. His shirt is bloodstained and his hands are tied behind his back. Sikander begins to shout but stops himself just in time. He knows his father is alive, but there is nothing he can do to help.
Rushing home to tell his mother and his sister, he finds them tending to a neighbor whose house has burned next door. The injured woman lies on a couch as Sikander’s mother gives her water to drink and ties a bandage around her bleeding arm. Now that the guns have fallen silent, Sikander can hear wailing throughout the town, voices crying out the names of those who are lost. When he tells his mother that his father has been taken prisoner, she sighs with relief because he is alive, but does not smile.
Feeling helpless and afraid, Sikander slips away to his room. Above their home, pigeons are circling through the smoke. While he was running through the streets, he had been able to hold back his fear. Now that he is home again, he finds his whole body shaking, as if the aftershock of war is worse than the battle itself. From under his pillow he takes the blue bottle. Today, even the bright color of the glass looks dull. With an unsteady hand, he opens an ink pot and picks up a pen. On the back of the note that Gil has sent, Sikander writes a desperate reply, telling his friend that all is lost. Ajeebgarh has been destroyed.
32
More Rhyme Than Reason
You still haven’t told me why you got thrown out of school, Grandpa,” said Gil.
Prescott looked up from his plate, where the spaghetti had formed a horse’s mane against a sunset of
tomato sauce.
“What was that?” he asked.
“Why did you get expelled from McCauley?” Gil repeated.
“Oh, that…,” said Prescott, taking his fork and turning the noodles into a slippery tornado. “It was a number of things I’d done. The teachers didn’t like me very much—‘too rebellious, not enough school spirit,’ they told my parents. As far as I was concerned McCauley Prep was a pretentious pile of …”—he hesitated for a moment before finishing the sentence—“…horse manure. But the thing that really ticked them off were some of the limericks I wrote about the headmaster and the teachers. That’s what finally got me kicked out of school.”
“For writing limericks?” said Gil. “That’s nothing.”
“Well …,” said Prescott, taking a bite of food. “These were pretty rude limericks for 1953. Things were a bit more conservative back then. I can’t remember all of them, but the headmaster was Archibald Newmann. We called him Starchy Archie, among other things.” Pausing a moment, Prescott recited the limerick:
“There once was a headmaster called Newmann,
Whose mind was more floral than human.
While picking his nose,
He dug out a rose,
Crying, ‘Egads! My brain is a-bloom’n!’ ”
Gil laughed. “What does ‘Egads’ mean?”
“It’s an old-fashioned expression that Newmann always used, like ‘Oh geez!’ ” Prescott shook his head. “I can’t believe I still remember these limericks. I wrote them more than fifty years ago, when I was your age. We passed them around the school, until one of the teachers found a copy and I was hauled up in front of Newmann. There was a whole series, one about each of the teachers. Here’s another that’s coming back to me, about our math teacher, who was completely off his rocker:
“There once was a teacher named Bentnick,
Whose behavior was more than eccentric.
When his name was announced,
Bentnick pronounced:
‘I’m a few sandwiches short of a picnic!’ ”
“They must have got angry,” said Gil, “but writing limericks still doesn’t seem serious enough to get you thrown out of school. I mean, it’s not something like plagiarism, is it?”
Prescott glanced up at his grandson with a sympathetic expression.
“Maybe not. But I suppose there are worse things than plagiarism too,” he said. “What made you do it?”
Gil shook his head, slurping up a forkful of spaghetti before answering.
“I hate writing,” he said. “I know what I did was wrong, but I just couldn’t write a poem of my own.”
“Stealing words isn’t quite like stealing money,” Prescott said. “But it’s still cheating.”
“Yeah,” said Gil. “I guess I learned my lesson.”
“Why do you hate writing?” Prescott asked.
“It’s hard. Whatever I write always sounds stupid.” Gil shoved his plate aside impatiently. “I mean, for you it must be easy being a writer. But for me, every word I write is painful, like squeezing a zit.”
Prescott pointed a finger at Gil and smiled. “If you wrote down what you just said, it would be a great sentence. Squeezing zits is a lot like writing, even for those of us who don’t have acne anymore.”
“Yeah, but …” Gil shook his head in frustration. “It takes so long to write a whole page. Before I even start, it feels as if I’ll never get to the end. And then the teachers make us rewrite everything, which is even worse.”
“I know what you mean,” said Prescott, “but there’s a lot of satisfaction in filling a page and knowing those words are yours and nobody else’s.”
“Maybe,” said Gil.
“Poetry is even harder than prose,” said Prescott.
“Because you’ve got to make it rhyme and stuff?” Gil asked.
“Partly that, but you’ve also got to use fewer words and try to say twice as much in half the space,” Prescott explained. He’d finished most of his meal but there was still some food left on his plate. “I mean, look at this spaghetti. How would you describe it in three words or less?”
Gil thought for a moment. “Worms in sauce,” he said.
Prescott shook his head. “That’s too easy. Not good enough. I want to see it through your eyes and hear it in your words. Try to describe this plate of spaghetti in a way that nobody has ever described it before. Take a minute to think about it.”
Gil stared at the smeared red sauce and the long strands of pasta curled together in tangled shapes. He tried to think what it looked like.
“Blood and guts,” he said.
Prescott frowned at him. “No. That’s a dead metaphor. All you’re doing is falling back on words and phrases you’ve heard before. I want something completely fresh. Surprise me. Make me visualize it through your imagination.”
Gil blew out his cheeks in frustration. “It’s hard!”
“Of course it is,” said Prescott. “But just think how you came up with that simile of squeezing zits. I don’t think anybody has ever described the act of writing in exactly those words.”
The half-eaten spaghetti stared back at Gil, as if it were a puzzle he had to solve, a riddle without a definite answer.
33
Special Delivery
Shifting gears as she pedaled uphill, Nargis leaned forward, trying to make it to the top without slowing down. As soon as the dirt road descended again, she let herself relax and coasted until she came to a patch of muddy water. Though Nargis could have easily avoided it, there was something satisfying about bicycling straight through a puddle. After another short climb, she skidded around a corner and came to a stop in front of Trash Hill. It was a gray, overcast day, and the mountain of garbage and dead leaves looked like a ruined pyramid. The mailbox stuck out at an angle, its red flag raised.
As Nargis climbed over a pile of broken cinder blocks and the gutted remains of a box spring, she wished that Gil had come with her. She wasn’t sure if she really wanted to open the mailbox again. Being alone didn’t usually bother her, but today she felt more than a little spooked.
A couple of seagulls circled overhead, their wings catching the air currents off the ocean. Don’t be a chicken, Nargis said to herself. It’s probably empty. She sniffed carefully to see if there was any trace of the spinster’s hand, but all she could smell was a wet, muddy odor of moldering leaves. As far as she could remember, the red plastic flag had been lowered the last time they were here. Now it stood up like a warning.
Quickly, before she lost her nerve, Nargis reached over and flipped open the front of the mailbox. This time it wasn’t empty, but instead of the skeletal hand, she discovered three letters inside. They were stacked neatly side by side, as if someone had carefully arranged them there for Nargis to find. After glancing around to see if anyone might be watching, she took them out and read the addresses. The first was a large, cream-colored envelope. The handwriting was perfect, the graceful lines of each letter flowing together like an ornate design.
From: Camellia Stubbs
4 Hyslop Lane
Hornswoggle Bay
To: Mr. Ezekiel Finch
Upper Finch Tea Estate
Ajeebgarh, India
By the kind hand of:
Captain V. Tobbler
The second envelope was completely different. It was crumpled and badly stained. The handwriting looked childish, as if it were written by an eight-year-old boy who couldn’t spell:
URGINT
Frum: Nun o’ yer bisniss
To: Mr. Rodrick Sleemin Esq.
Upp’r Finch Tee Estate
AJeebgurh
The third letter was a plain, rectangular envelope, with the address neatly typed.
Confidential
From: Hermes
To: Lt. Col. W. T. Shepherdson
None of the letters had ever been opened, each envelope firmly sealed. There weren’t any stamps, though they all seemed to have been carried through time and hist
ory. Holding them in her hands, Nargis felt a strange sense of possessing secrets kept for years. Tucking the letters into the front pocket of her sweatshirt, she scrambled back onto her bike and headed straight for the Yankee Mahal.
Gil was outside in the front yard, helping his grandfather trim the yew bushes near the front steps. The first snowfall of the year had long since melted, though the grass was turning brown. Prescott held a pair of pruning shears, while Gil was piling the cuttings into a wheelbarrow. Kipling lay asleep on the front steps. He lifted his head drowsily when Nargis arrived.
“Hey!” said Gil. “What’s up?”
“Nothing much,” said Nargis, though he could see from the expression on her face that she was dying to tell him something.
Prescott nodded to his grandson. “I’ll finish up here. You can go inside.”
The two of them went around to the kitchen door and straight upstairs to the study with the rolltop desk. Nargis put the three letters down triumphantly.
“What’s this?” asked Gil.
“These were in the mailbox on Trash Hill,” she said.
“You’re kidding.” Gil cautiously picked them up.
“No, I’m not.” Nargis grinned. “I just came from there. We should open them.”
“I don’t know,” said Gil. “We don’t want to find any more genies, do we?”
“Yeah, but these are obviously meant for us. They must be letters that never reached the people they were written for. I’m sure the spinster’s hand left them.” Nargis reached for the letter opener that lay in one of the pigeonholes inside the desk. The miniature scimitar shone in her hand.
“Which one first?” asked Gil.
“This one. It’s from Camellia Stubbs. Check out her handwriting …”
“Yeah, but if we open it, maybe her hand will come after us.”
“I don’t think so,” Nargis said, taking the envelope and slicing it open before Gil could stop her. When she took out the letter, it was covered in the same handwriting, but before they could read what was written, a lock of brown hair fell onto the desk. It was tied with a pale pink ribbon.
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