The SONG of SHIVA

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The SONG of SHIVA Page 15

by Michael Caulfield


  In recent years, almost half the patients admitted with open wounds requiring emergency surgery anywhere on earth developed xanthromyicin resistant staphylococcus aureus or XRSA. Pronounced “zersa”, the lethal bacillus, now endemic in modern hospitals, was no more than the common staph bacillus, which had first surmounted methicillin, then vancomyicin, and most recently, xanthromyicin, the medical profession’s most potent antibacterial. Discovery of XRSA anywhere but in a limb, which could be amputated, was a death sentence. The wound Lyköan had suffered was an open invitation. Admission to even the best hospital in town posed hazards and Mongnaki General was hardly Bangkok’s best.

  Whitehall had stopped by the apartment on his way home, hoping, as he later explained, “to smooth the ruffled feathers of our less than amiable parting.” Once he learned what had happened, he had contacted Gordon and Narayan. It was the two Innovac executives who had insisted that Lyköan be transferred immediately to Bumrungrad Hospital, a world-class institution generally regarded as Bangkok’s finest.

  The immediacy of that evening’s events would eventually be lost in the clinical chart. The actual experience, Lyköan recollected, had been anything but memorable. Lying on his back as ceilings filled with recessed fluorescents flashing by, but without direction or sense of motion. In the background, muffled voices and colored lights. For a brief instant, in a distracted sort of way he thought: This is really quite a powerful image; no wonder it makes its way into so many movies. He had experienced only the slightest twinge of impending mortality, but it wasn’t at all troubling, more like some third person observation. No fear. In fact, he remembered thinking at the time, not a bad way to go. He couldn’t remember any pain, only a sort of dull, full body exhaustion.

  A more uncomfortable sequence of pointless nightmares followed, absent even unstructured plots ― not a single image of which remained. Then the recovery room, looking down at his feet and realizing he couldn’t move them. He panicked. No matter how much he concentrated, forced or willed it, no sensation, and no control. Blind terror. Am I dreaming? Please, make this a dream. He had strained to awaken.

  When compared to the pain that emerged in the recovery room after the subdural wore off, however, that initial panicky fear that he might be paralyzed had been a respite in paradise. Pain that even mainlined fentanyl had barely touched. Before being wheeled into a private room, including a balcony he never had a chance to enjoy, he had already received his first dose, which provided tolerable relief for about thirty minutes. When it began to wear off and he asked for another he was politely informed that the next dose could not be administered for another five and a half hours. About then the abject pleading commenced, as the pain grew from intolerable to scream-inducing. He had stared at the clock, time in suspension, convinced survival was unlikely and certainly not preferable to the agony.

  Two catheterizations and an equal number of days later he had walked out of the hospital under his own power. Aside from their inability to provide any genuine palliative, the medical staff had been wonderful and annoyingly efficient through the whole ordeal. After insurance, the bill had come to a miniscule 45,330 baht, which Innovac-Primrose had promptly paid in its entirety.

  Three weeks later here he was, rocking to the soothing syncopation of Wessex Rail, rolling through the English countryside. He felt himself drifting, audio buds playing softly in his ears.

  How incredibly lucky he’d been. To still be alive. Of the half dozen slugs the cops had dug out of his apartment building, only one had found its intended target. His American-trained surgeon had explained that belly wounds were usually bowel-piercing, messy septic affairs. By contrast, his wound had been clean. Miraculously so. In its course through his innards it had failed to sever any major arteries. Although it had nicked his large intestine, there had been no perforation or damage to a single organ en route to its final resting place, nestled up cozy against his spine. Even there he’d been incredibly fortunate. The slug had never actually struck bone. Painful as hell, but even though he’d bled like the proverbial stuck pig, the surgery had been uncomplicated by serious damage to internals.

  If I hadn’t been bent over trying to pull Blossom into the apartment I’d have made the perfect target and, the first three slugs ― bam! right through my chest. Of the rest, even if I’d jumped behind the wall upright, I’d still be a bullet-riddled corpse right now. As it turned out, I couldn’t have picked a better angle if I’d chosen it myself.

  Idly, he watched as a single shivering rivulet dashed madly across the window, pushed back by the rushing wind and then dragged earthward by gravity, connecting with other random drops, scoring its meaningless route upon the glass, disappearing into the watertight seal at the bottom of the pane. Mesmerized for a frozen eternity by its devious course, he watched in fascination as it made its random run towards oblivion.

  The ten-carriage train had left London’s Paddington Station at 10:13 A.M, dragging itself from the city’s bowels through ancient soot-covered tunnels and under rusting viaducts, rolling west, its first stop Reading, passing drab sidings, derelict rail docks and abandoned stations, stark proof that the British Empire’s glory days had passed. Crumbling infrastructure and conspicuous neglect abounded, dredging up imperfect memories of the similarly neglected Erie Lackawanna commuter line Lyköan had patronized, fresh out of college, working in lower Manhattan. Living in the Jersey suburbs, commuting from Hoboken for more than a year via PATH to the World Trade Center ― years before he had met Karen.

  Was that the same life? Am I the same me? Those days certainly felt further from today than could possibly be accounted for by the mere passage of years.

  Rolling through the urban decay and out into the open country, he had seen the same rabble of scrub and weed, the same dreary web of overhanging wires sagging in a similar leaden sky, sidings filled with long lines of empty coal cars and drab row houses stretching for miles towards a similar low horizon ― graffiti-tagged walls the only splashes of color. London seemed old and forgotten ― behind the times and inconsequential.

  The dull navy and red Wessex coaches, well past their prime, were no longer a money-making proposition unless any number of corners were cut. Of those, maintenance was the first to suffer. When the train had slowed to a stop only minutes out of Reading and idled on the tracks for half an hour Lyköan suspected that lack of maintenance was more than likely the reason. The unscheduled stop was punctuated occasionally by repetitious apologies from the conductor, barely intelligible over the train’s crackling intercom.

  “We are experiencing technical problems with the point system that we hope to correct shortly. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause our passengers.” Anywhere else on the planet this would have been followed by, “Thank you for selecting Wessex” or another similar affront. To his credit, the conductor had not embellished his apology.

  The delay hadn’t bothered Lyköan in the least. That’s what the luxury of six hours without a deadline will do for you, he grinned. I could get used to it.

  The problem, whatever it had been, was eventually resolved and they were now barreling through open country at the maximum allowable track speed, thirty-five minutes late, but finally approaching their next scheduled stop, Newbury.

  Leaving London had been a relief, the automatic weapon-toting police positioned at every street corner. Airports, railroad and tube stations, all public buildings for that matter, broadcasting repeated warnings that unattended baggage and packages of any sort would be removed by the authorities and immediately destroyed, CCTV surveillance cameras ubiquitous, protruding from every building corner and traffic signal. Their constant panning at uneven intervals had been distracting for Lyköan, but totally ignored by the native population. And though he hadn’t seen any, he knew that ever since The London Incident two years before, explosive “sniffers” were on guard at the entrances of most major buildings. A six block expanse in Bloomsbury, near where London University had once stood, was still off l
imits and uninhabitable.

  Hope the police state doesn’t extend into the countryside, he thought.

  After calling at Newbury and Hungerford, the train headed west along the River Kennet to Pewsey where the Innovac limousine would be waiting. From Pewsey, he’d be traveling through the successively smaller hamlets of Upavon, Netherdean, and Haldon Heath. The Pandavas estate stood a mile or so beyond the last, nestled along a country stream that flowed directly into the Avon. Continue down the road out of Haldon Heath and it was still a good ten-mile jaunt to Tilsbury, itself no more than a speck on even the most comprehensive map.

  An attractive young woman passed his seat, heading towards the kitchen carriage. He stared wistfully after her. London’s current fashionable hair colorings had changed dramatically since his last visit. Other than shock white, which never seemed to go out of fashion, the former favorites of coal black and rust red had been replaced by peacock blue and emerald green. From every angle this woman’s iridescent reptilian highlights sparkled in the appealingly cropped cut, even more pronounced in her eyebrows and lashes.

  Lyköan was happy to see that the English tart look was back in vogue ― and with a vengeance. Tight jeans designed by master engineers to produce the most provocative contours of feminine locomotion stirred him just as the designers had intended. But sadly, all the gorgeous young things with their shapely legs, poured into denim pants or soft skin exposed, extending from short pleated woolen skirts, seemed so cold and remote. Pouting full-lipped glossy mouths and just enough eye-catching décolleté plunging behind a diaphanous lacey ruffle to prove provocative, conjuring up a symphony of impure thoughts. He harbored no illusion that his yearning response was precisely the underlying fashion intent. Woefully unrequited, here and always.

  Once she had passed to the next carriage he leaned back and closed his eyes. To sleep, perchance to dream...

  The sun was high in the sparsely-clouded summer sky at 1:09 P.M. when the train rolled to a stop in the sleepy village of Pewsey. A black Rolls limousine stood by the curve in the station road, obviously out of place in the scattering of tiny silver wedge-shaped Vauxhalls and Fords that occasionally made their way down the town’s narrow streets. A uniformed driver stood at ease next to the vehicle observing the train without expression. As Lyköan stepped out of the car, the conductor warned, “Mind the gap.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Anchor to a Dream

  The world at bottom is not bright and carefree at all, not like God’s own heart, but dark and desperate, evil and somber, and when the woods rustle, they do so, not out of joy, but in fear.

  Halcyon Camber : The Baker’s Dream

  Lyköan reined down hard, turning the horse’s head, forcing her to an ambling canter. High in the cloud-flecked sky, the afternoon sun was beating down fiercely. Dragging an open palm across his forehead, he leaned forward and rubbed the perspiration on the coarse saddle blanket. Once upright again, relaxing the reins, he let the mare have her head. She responded by immediately prancing off willfully across the emerald grass. He bore down harder, forcing the spirited animal to a halt.

  Gulping down another lungful of autumn air, he expelled it forcefully. “What a hoot! Have to admit, I can’t remember anything so breathtaking since...” He paused, finishing the sentence with the first words that came to mind, “...I took that bullet back in Bangkok.” A self-conscious laugh followed. “I mean in taking my breath away,” he stumbled. “They’re not at all similar otherwise. Couldn’t be more different ― this one as exhilarating as the other was terrifying.”

  It had been years since he had felt such exhilaration. Had the hasty addendum clarified the initial remark’s inane comparison? He was totally enjoying himself, the afternoon, all of life right now ― for the first time in a long time. Pulling alongside the other rider, a vision of flushed and breathless beauty, as ethereal as the scenery that surrounded her, he saw no hint of annoyance. Good.

  Pictures like this deserve to be taken, he thought, ignoring the unintended double entendre. What I wouldn’t give for a camera right now. He didn’t trust memory, had had too much experience with it and knew how easily it altered the moment, diffusing sensory data into a subjective pattern of neurons and locked synaptic transmitters. The whole process was sure to lose clarity over time ― and never improve upon even a single detail of the present reality’s perfection.

  And it was perfect, except that his incision was killing him ― far worse than the dull ache on the train earlier in the day. God, I hope I didn’t pull a stitch. Although he hadn’t, the horserace from the brook below had not been run without consequence.

  ‘Pride surely cometh before a fall,’ he thought with a grimace. ‘Least I didn’t completely embarrass myself – fall off my horse or something. But damn it, I did lose.

  “I gained the summit first, Mr. Lyköan,” Nora crowed, using his surname as an added barb. “What was our bet? Something about deflecting the spotlight tonight?”

  “Sabotaging the circuit breakers, m’lady?” he replied, adding an exaggerated bow and sweep of his arm. “I might be able to handle that,”.

  “That wasn’t the bet now, was it?” she reminded him.

  Lyköan allowed the horses to walk a few paces before replying. Wrinkling his brow in mock confusion, he asked, “There was a bet?”

  “Mr. Lyköan!” There, she’d said it again. “You’re a man of the world. I’m sure you’re familiar with the old adage that ‘it’s not a real horserace without a wager’.”

  “Must have missed that one in all the―”

  The syllable hung in the air. Lyköan whistled two notes softly. He and Nora had been locked eye-to-eye for awhile, playfully sparring, oblivious of the grass covered hilltop ahead. What had stopped him in mid-sentence had looked like a natural rock outcropping from the crest of the hill, but as they approached now, turned out to be something else entirely ― a superlatively impressive Neolithic monument. Sometime in the distant past an enormous grey capstone had been raised and balanced delicately upon a triad of ten-foot tall bluestone pylons to loom imposingly at the summit of this hill.

  An ocean of ideas begged for expression, but a whispered, “Extraordinary,” was all Lyköan managed to get out. It had been one feeble word too many. And the full palette of the English language wielded by an army of Shakespeares would have been too few.

  Probably some great stone age chieftain’s burial monument, cleft and raised by hands that never held a metal tool. His name, even his tribe, Lyköan thought with genuine sorrow, irretrievably lost. The monument had eclipsed the man, leaving only this vague suggestion of forgotten glories.

  ‘O hear me, mortal. Know that fame is fleeting. Wealth and power dissipate. Beauty fades. The scattering winds blow ceaselessly into oblivion. Only Time and Space endure.’ Hecataeus had it right, Time eventually erases everything.

  Lyköan felt weak, as though he had been cast adrift, all at once circling the rim of some mighty whirlpool, peering fearfully into its ravenous maw. And at the very bottom of the vortex lay universal sorrow.

  Nora responded silently with a nod, acknowledging everything he hadn’t said. She too sensed that another word would disturb the silence ― be somehow sacrilegious. The colossal capstone cast a deep shadow upon the turf, filled with a cool darkness that she found strangely inviting. Completely transfixed, she imagined the breeze blowing through the apertures, playing the dolmen like an enormous instrument, the pitch of its single note far beyond the reach of human ears, yet appreciated by some other sense, one rarely stimulated in the modern world.

  As she drew closer, a feeling of déjà vu welled up inside her. Had she seen these stones somewhere before? In a book or on television?

  This seems so familiar, she thought, like I was standing right next to or walking past these very stones ― and recently. But the light’s not right or something.

  Trying to adjust the angles of sunlight and shadow, she slowly circled the megalith. Lyköan followed a few
lengths behind her, rapt in the details of his own musings. Neither of them spoke, each attempting to resolve personal questions the structure had raised.

  Creeping into the hill’s lengthening shadow in the distance and far below, the other members of their party meandered single file along a tree-flanked stream. Although well within sight, Nora felt she was watching them through the wrong end of a telescope, this remoteness the difference between a thousand yards and five thousand years.

  Beyond the line of riders, miles of rolling English countryside stretched to the horizon. Turning into the welcoming breeze, she let her sweat-slicked mount graze idly beneath her. Lyköan rode up to her side. They inhaled deeply, almost in unison. A flock of cackling starlings swept overhead and rushed down the slope of the hill. Fragrant nuances filled the air.

  There’s still at least one corner of English Elysium left, Nora thought. I’m glad I got this chance to see it.

  Lyköan was mulling thoughts about the place himself. The perfect spot for a bodice-ripping romance. I can see the cover already, ‘The tawdry story of a winsome microbiologist and a delusional import-exporter.’ Some spell had obviously been broken. The thoughts that followed those of universal sorrow had somehow irrationally descended rapidly down this puerile ladder, becoming ever more salacious with each lower rung. While an entertaining and by no means worthless journey, it was a construct Lyköan couldn’t maintain for long.

  Well, it might work as farce, he thought with a rueful shake of his head. Trying to separate the antipodes of cynicism from reverence and walk the narrow path of the latter was difficult enough, but entirely ignoring the former was impossible. Besides, cynicism was definitely the more amusing course. It also satisfied some essential element in his nature that reverential perception couldn’t approach. Buddha help me, ’cause I can’t help myself. He had known since adolescence that if nobility existed anywhere in his nature, it was alloyed with some baser material. If not, he reasoned, it would never have proven durable enough when put to the test. While hardly an original idea, it perfectly described the man he knew he was. No sense in trying to avoid who you are. Better that cynicism be nobility’s alloy than one of the capital vices. Well, that was the theory.

 

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