by Indra Das
By the time we reached the shore, I was rigid with pain from trying to keep from falling off Gévaudan. But I felt more tranquil during that crossing than I had for all the days since I met Fenrir.
“My feet are numb. How can you not be cold?” I muttered, not really asking him, as we walked away from the river, our feet sinking into the cool mud. He didn’t look the least bit bothered despite being soaked. He walked around dripping in the morning chill, his hair clinging to his face and his cloak and furs stinking like the coat of a wet dog.
He turned and bent down in front of me. I stepped back, but he took his cloak in his hands and wiped my ankles with it. The cloak itself was wet, so it did nothing but smear cold water over my skin, but he pried my left foot off the ground and cradled it in his cloak-clad hand as if it were a brittle toy, and wiped it down, and then did the same for my right foot. The coarse cloak left a cool and not unpleasant itching across the soles of my feet. As he let the cloak fall from his hands, I noticed how white and delicate his hands looked, how small compared with his height and bulk. He had long nails, which had blushed a dark purple against his pale cuticles because of the swim. His plump, tapering fingers and smooth knuckles were unlike Fenrir’s hands, which had been massive and thick, rough like sandpaper against my skin when he had touched me. Abruptly, Gévaudan got up and squelched ahead, breaking me out of my daze. I would have thanked him for his unsettling, gentle gesture, were he anybody else.
It was a ten-minute walk from the river’s edge to the campsite. It didn’t look like a campsite. There were no traces of fire, or anything, really, to indicate that anyone had camped there. I wondered if Gévaudan was mistaken.
“Are you sure this is it?”
“Yes,” he said with a grunt as he squatted. He got on all fours and peered at the wet ground. To be honest, there were other things on my mind at this point.
“Who are you?” I asked him.
He looked up at me with vague curiosity. “Have you forgotten my name already? I know it’s hard for you to say, but you’ll have to make some effort here.”
“You know what I mean, Jevah-dan. No man can swim across the Yamuna in the dead of winter with another perched on his back, no matter how strong he is.”
He spit on the ground and shrugged. “I’m not a man.” He said this as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
“Fenrir would talk like this also. You both keep talking like you’re not human. What are you then? What are these tribes you come from?”
“That’s a long story, for later.”
“Who are you people? Does your madness give you strength? Are you some kind of white faqirs?”*2
Gévaudan fished the bloodstained piece of my dupatta out from under his cloak and began smelling it again. I shivered before I could stop myself. He looked like a white man I’d once seen in a caravanserai, snorting a rag soaked in opiates as if it were the only thing keeping him alive.
Then he started digging. He used his hands, which looked even whiter with dark soil on them, the bone-white hands of a ghost. His long fingernails became black as he shoved clods out of the ground and tossed them aside, his face fixed in a frown. I watched mesmerized, wondering what purpose this ritual would serve now, surprised as I was at every turn by him.
He pulled a man’s head from the hole he’d made in the ground. Sheathed as it was in a skin of watered mud, I thought it was a rock at first, until I saw the smaller white pebbles of its teeth glittering in the rising sun. They sat in the bubbling hole of the mouth, breathing out the gases that dead flesh produces.
I don’t remember if I screamed or gasped, but I do remember that I kept my wits about me. I observed Gévaudan’s face, managing to surmise that he wasn’t digging up this gruesome trophy to scare me, or to serve as a prelude to violence. In fact, he barely seemed aware of me, wiping the sopping earth from the stiff features of the dead face that stared up at him.
Gévaudan laughed, and then suddenly turned serious again.
“The sentimental bastard. He buried Makedon,” he grumbled.
“What. What are you doing?” I stammered. “What is that?” I asked in a weak voice, despite myself. I felt nauseous, though I had eaten only some dry fruit to break my fast since I had woken up.
“Cyrah, meet Makedon. A mutual friend of mine and Fenrir’s.” He turned the head a bit so it faced me.
It was the third traveler who had walked in the caravanserai along with Fenrir and Gévaudan. I recognized the curly black hair, though it was mired in dirt and clotted blood.
“Why? Why is his head there?”
“I killed him. And Fenrir, idiot that he is, wasted time burying him.”
I felt the sour cud of eaten fruit rise up my throat and spatter on to the ground, frothing in the ground by my feet. Retching, I staggered a few steps backward.
“Calm down. He deserved it. And he was about to kill your Fenrir.”
Even light-headed with nausea I reacted to that, spitting the bile from my mouth so I could speak. “He’s not my Fen—whatever his bastard name is! He’s your friend, and he’s fucked things up for me and run off, all right? Which is the only reason I’m following you around while you dig up heads and Allah knows what else. He’s not my anything, your wretch of a friend.”
Gévaudan gazed at me, steady-eyed, head in his hands. “Right. Well. Anyway.”
“Anyway,” I confirmed, wiping my mouth.
“We had a fight,” he said, looking at the head like he was talking to Makedon and not me. “That’s why we all split up. Well, Fenrir and I. Not this one, obviously. Things got ugly. Makedon was about to kill Fenrir, so I had to cut his throat.”
“What were you all fighting about?”
Gévaudan smiled, running his thumbs across Makedon’s blackened lips. “You.”
“What do you mean, me?”
“Well, I wasn’t involved, not directly. But Makedon had a problem with Fenrir going out and doing what he did, with you.”
I swallowed another wave of sickness, feeling faint.
“Makedon wasn’t a moral creature. He wasn’t worried about you, if that’s what you’re thinking. It’s just that Fenrir, what he did, it’s forbidden. Like if you fucked a pig. Makedon wanted him to atone by giving his life.”
“You’re mad, you people. Allah forgive me for talking to your friend, and to you. Allah forgive me for not turning away when I could.”
“When all’s said and done, I’m sure your god will forgive you, if he’s the sensitive sort. Not your fault, is it? You’re just lambs, you people. What Fenrir did to you was wrong. He preyed on you, hunted you, but he left you alive. It’s unnatural.”
“It’s you and he that are unnatural. And you know nothing about my god. You are a godless people, I can tell.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. Many of our tribes worship the same gods you humans do, or at least recognize them as gods; some don’t do either; some even claim to be your precious gods, and others your devils. Many among your kind think we are such, believe it or not. But honestly, we’ve no need for gods or devils ourselves. That’s what I think.”
I sat down, not caring if I soiled my shawl on the earth. Pushing my hands against my face, I shook my head.
“I don’t think your own god much favors women whoring themselves to men out of wedlock, no? I’m pretty sure it’s all there in his holy book. So I wouldn’t take too much of a stand against my godlessness if I were you, lest hypocrisy also be considered a sin under your religion.” He laughed softly.
I gritted my teeth and closed my eyes. I could say nothing, and didn’t want to admit that I’d never read the Quran. My mother had told me about it, and recited from it, but I knew little of what was actually in it. I tried not to think about it, telling myself Allah would forgive the way I had to make my living because I’d had so little choice since I was born.
I wiped my eyes, not wanting to start that debate in my head again. “Fen-eer told me what you said, that it was fo
rbidden among your tribes. To lie with a human. I thought he was just talking nonsense,” I said.
“Not nonsense. It was foolish of him to do what he did to you. He can be most cruel. Though he scarcely knows it.”
“Foolish,” I repeated, and laughed. “And are you not cruel, Jevah-dan? What are you doing, holding your so-called friend’s head in your hands? Bury it and let him be. Has he not been punished enough by being killed? Let him be, for God’s sake, and let us leave his resting place.”
“You want to keep going?”
“Yes, I want to keep going. What did you think? The petty fights of your people are of no concern to me. I don’t want to know about your friend Makedon and how you two killed him, or what you fought about. I want to leave this desecrated grave and find Fen-eer like you told me you would. I have words for him, and I will say them no matter what. He can’t run from me.”
Gévaudan smiled and dropped Makedon’s head in its hole. It landed with a horrible slap. “Spoken like one of us,” he said. I don’t know if he meant for me to hear that. He probably did. Why else would he say it in my language?
* * *
*1 Persian garden divided into four parts.
*2 A Muslim Sufi ascetic who has taken a vow of poverty. Faqirs, often incorrectly stereotyped as Hindu ascetics (a popular image of the faqir, or fakir, being that of a turbaned man sitting on a bed of nails), were believed to have developed miraculous abilities and powers from renouncing the material world.
Night fell quickly, a cloak draped across Shah Jahan’s lands. The day had passed like an eternity, with me not talking to my fellow traveler, though he felt like no fellow of mine at all. I kept remembering Fenrir telling me he was a foreigner in all the lands he traveled in because he didn’t know where he had been born. I didn’t believe him when he had said that, and I still don’t believe it, but it made a stupid kind of sense. I’d never met anyone who felt as foreign to me as Fenrir and Gévaudan, even though they spoke my language as well as I did. There were a thousand questions brimming at my lips, but I kept them sealed as we traveled along the tangled wilderness that clings to the edges of the Yamuna, using the river as a path. I wondered if Gévaudan was staying close to the shore for my benefit, or whether he was following Fenrir’s trail. He always kept his friend’s blood close, tying the rag around his right hand and occasionally raising it to his mouth. I couldn’t see properly, but he might even have licked it, for all I knew.
On the other side of the river, I could still see a few lights from Mumtazabad in the distance. I felt no fear to be out there in the dark and the wild with this unknowable man. I only felt a deep, sickening excitement, which distracted me from my fatigue and hunger (I had finished all the dried fruit and nuts I had carried with me).
Finally, Gévaudan decided to stop and camp for the night, probably realizing that I was tiring. It was too dark to tell anything from his face, not that I could fathom much from it anyway.
“Has Fenrir been traveling this way? Are you following him?”
He nodded, shrouded in shadow. “I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you.”
“I’m not worrying, just asking.”
I sat down, pebbles and moisture attacking my rear through the shawl that I had wrapped around myself.
“Can we make a fire? It’s cold.”
“No. A fire can be seen from miles away,” he said, gruff, and took off his cloak. I wondered why that mattered—who he thought might be watching. He walked behind me and draped his cloak across my back, his hands firm on my shoulders through the coarse fabric. I took the edges and pulled it around me. It was very thick and very warm, unlike anything I’d worn before. I assumed it was so heavy (like some great animal’s skin had sloughed off on top of me) because Europe has colder winters that make rivers freeze. He tramped around me and walked away, facing the river.
“Thank you. I can barely see anything, though,” I said, shivering in the sudden warmth. The cloak smelled of dirty hair, and I wondered if it had lice. It probably did, but I didn’t much care at that point.
“There’s nothing you need to see. I can see everything for us,” he said. I wondered what he meant by that. Everything.
“I’m going to go get you some food.”
“In the dark? Don’t you have food in those big bags?”
“I do, but nothing you’d want to eat, trust me. And like I said, I can see just fine. I’ll be back soon. Don’t move, don’t make a fire. Just stay here.”
It felt wrong to feel afraid. I should have felt afraid to be around Gévaudan, not afraid that he was leaving me alone. It made me feel ashamed, disgusted at myself. I said nothing, not daring to give myself away.
“I’m going to undress,” he said bluntly, whipping off his clothes and pelts. The bone trinkets clattered in protest. His fardels fell heavily to the ground.
“Why? Why are you doing that?” I asked, alarmed.
“It’s how I hunt.”
“It’s cold, why on earth…”
“Will you stop going on about the cold? It doesn’t bother me. I’m not asking you to strip, am I? This is how I hunt,” he said, firm, harsh. His voice sounded hoarser.
He peeled off his boots. I was thankful for the darkness, though his naked body was so pale I could see enough even in the dark, making me realize that I was still looking at him. I turned away quickly, looking at the far-off lights of human life instead.
I heard the patter of his piss hitting the ground, and I gritted my teeth, wondering if I should even bother to ask. I held the cloak over my mouth and nose as a burning smell clawed its way into my head.
“Don’t touch my things unless you want to die. I’ll know, trust me,” he said. And I heard the slap of his bare feet on the ground recede, become faster, until it sounded like he was running on all fours. I kept looking away until I could no longer hear him.
—
I dreamed that something came to me while I lay there between river and forest. A slouching thing that crept until it was close, and pushed its long fingers into my hair, scraped with one dirty claw so that a line was drawn through my scalp, beaded with blood. Its breath like scalding desert air against the back of my neck, its tongue a swamp snake hot with life, slithering between my salt-smeared roots until its blind head was at the thin wound. I felt it taste the cut, tongue-snake squirming its way across the line of my blood and swallowing the scent of my scalp, felt the crown of the beast’s great fangs quiver around my head. I felt tiny, as if the beast grew in size with each passing moment, until it loomed like a mountain over the river, blotting out the night sky. I crouched on the ground under its cavernous maw. Its tongue-serpent was huge and engorged, sliding across my face and through my hair.
I couldn’t move, through any of it. I felt something pass between my body and that of the beast, slow, almost imperceptible. My life, perhaps; it could be I was dying at that moment, that it was licking away my will to live from that thin little wound. I couldn’t tell. I drifted off into a (second?) sleep until that sleep gave way to my awakening.
I bolted upright into the insect-torn air, the pests colliding with my skin as they hummed around my head, ants crawling all over my skin, somehow having found their way under my clothes. My scalp was burning, my face sticky. I stuck my fingers in my hair and felt the narrow, rough tissue of a long cut underneath it. I looked at my fingertips, coughing at the stench of something pungent on them. No blood, as far as I could tell. Just a scratch—I wondered if an animal had clambered out of the forest and clawed me, or if I’d just cut my head on a pebble or rock as I slept.
The darkness had thickened, clouds obscuring most of the stars and the moon. It felt like I was in some limbo, especially because I had no idea how long I’d slept.
I could smell him.
“Jevah-dan?”
“I’m here,” he said. My eyes adjusting, I could tell that he was sitting about five feet away from me. As far as I could tell, he wasn’t naked anymore.
�
�Did you sleep?” he asked.
“I, yes, I did. Not very well.”
“Come closer and eat.”
I waved away the insects stinging at my face, raising the cowl of the cloak and tucking it close under my throat. Holding the cloak tight to me, I clambered closer to him in the dark, feeling completely at a loss.
“What did you find?”
“A couple of rabbits. I hope you eat meat.”
“I do. But we need a fire now, don’t we? To roast them?”
“We don’t. Your ancestors ate flesh raw, and so can you.”
“What? I can’t do that.”
“So you think. It’s all in your mind.”
“I can’t eat a rabbit raw, even if you can. It’s unclean. It will sicken me.”
Gévaudan didn’t say anything. He was entirely a thing of shadow and dream in that dead light from the covered moon, reflected off the sleeping world. I saw the shape of the rabbits, one hanging limp from his hand, another on the ground.
“You need to eat.”
“I’ll be fine. I’ll find some berries or nuts tomorrow. Or make a fire during the day.”
My stomach rebelled at the thought, growling. I hoped that Gévaudan hadn’t heard it over the deafening chirping of the insects and the lapping of the Yamuna not too far from us.
“You’ll eat now. You’ve barely eaten all day. I can’t have a sick and starving human straggling along with me. I’m not going to take care of you.”