In the Shadow of Crows

by David Charles Manners

  “What shame is there in thought and action founded in integrity?” Bindra smiled, in return for the shawl I had offered as a covering. “What shame is there in sky or earth? In fire or air or water? What shame is there in the elements from which this old flesh and these old bones are made?” she chuckled, as she conceded to lay the cloth across her lap for my comfort, rather than her own.

  I had heard such thoughts before.

  As I moved to sit behind her, I noticed the intricate markings tattooed onto Bindra’s mottled skin. The dark, interlocking triangles on her empty breasts, the concentric circles on her belly. The symbols inked onto her haggard limbs that, to my astonishment, I recognised.

  “Mataji, where is your home?” I asked, as I began to trace the grooves of harshly protruding bones with my neem-oiled fingertips.

  “Parvatme,” she replied. “In the mountains.”

  “These mountains?” I pried.

  “No, no,” she answered. “Far from here.”

  I gently smoothed the thin, dry skin of her shoulders and tried to estimate her age beneath the mask of malnutrition, sun, exertion and disease. I doubted whether she would even know the answer. This was a culture that did not mark birthdays, nor count the years. Past, present and future were considered only subjective divisions imposed by man’s limited viewpoint on the perpetual cycles of life.

  I was about to press further for her place of birth when Aarti, who had been whispering to her big pink balloon, joyfully announced, “Baby wants Uncle to sing!”

  I claimed to know few songs, but with the chorus of insistence that rose not only by proxy from the balloon baby, but also from Sushmita, all three of her daughters and my patient, I could but concede.

  I cleared my throat.

  The giggling settled into an expectant hush.

  I began:

  “Resam phiriri, resam phiriri udera jauki darama bhanjyang, resam phiriri ...”

  Bindra turned to stare at me and grasped my arm between her wrists.

  “Timi Nepali bolchau!” she gasped.

  It was my turn to stare and repeat her exclamation, “You speak Nepali!”

  Our faces were suspended in shared astonishment.

  “Then you are no longer Mataji, but Ama!” I declared in her mother tongue, instinctively bowing towards her for ahashis.

  “And you are no longer sah’b . . .” she began.

  But finding herself unable to speak another word, she drew me towards her to kiss my head, onto which she had begun to sob.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  As humid weeks sweltered into blistering months, the change in Bindra’s feet and hands astonished us all. The daily round of careful cleaning and honey dressings in knuckle stumps, in deep ulcers and open holes where once toes sprouted, had steadily removed all sign of infection, banished all symptoms of fever. Where once there had been exposed bone and foul decay, there was now new flesh and skin - new life.

  Nor was Bindra the only one to benefit from the unsophisticated attention I offered in the forest colony. Every day, communal cheers sounded as dressings were removed and seemingly miraculous changes revealed. Every day, tender arms tightened their embraces around my waist. Every day, lips pressed tireless kisses to my cheeks and hands.

  Whilst Bhim Vir continued to insist that the slum colony remained too dangerous for us to visit, a new confidence in his isolated companions had become evident. They were now openly defying the slum Collectors, by applying directly to us for the provision of all their medical needs. The relief began to afford me a new peace in what had long been deeply troubled sleep.

  In addition, Ben and I had been invited to speak at the town’s only private boys’ school. The old British institution was directed by a formidable maharani, who kept her privileged pupils in a blissful bubble of utterly-utter cricket-and-polo poshness. It was for this reason that the house master had requested we “broaden the social viewpoint” of his temporary sons, to whom he was devoted. Inspired by our well-attended lectures on the realities of leprosy in twentyfirst-century India, he concocted the notion of mass tree-planting in the already leafy forest colony, as a school “social work” project. We redirected his well-meaning enthusiasm instead towards the provision of fresh food, vegetable seeds and gardening implements to the isolated leprosy colony in the slum.

  When I warned the altruistic master about the “mafia” who had threatened to cut our throats due to our intervention, he shrugged.

  “We know who’s who and what’s what,” he assured me. “Those Collectors who work the slum are mostly teachers from that charity of yours.”

  I could barely breathe.

  “But every hoodlum is the underdog of another,” he continued nonchalantly. “And some of the high-ranking hoodlums are really quite important people. I know,” he emphasised, “because I educate their sons.”

  ***

  It is impossible to say what caused the initial sickness.

  Perhaps the water, despite its boiling, or the raw milk that curdled into yoghurt in our tea. Perhaps the rancid ghee that doused chapatis grilled on the hearth fire by Sushmita and fed to me at the end of every day to address my troubling loss of weight.

  One afternoon, I sat on the ground and leant against Bindra’s doorframe. I had just finished the daily cleaning and rebinding, when I found myself too exhausted to stand. Both Aarti and Poojita climbed into my lap. They laid their sweet-scented heads against my chest and sang a gentle tune “to make Nepali Uncle well.”

  I asked Bindra if I might rest on her charpai before attempting the long walk back through the trees to my room. I caught the fleeting look of concern she shared with Sushmita.

  I fell onto the slack jute-twine, so loose that it hung like a lopsided hammock. My head was adrift in such a restless sea that I attempted to steady myself by staring into the wide eyes of the silver “ghost” lizard that kept an attentive watch from the ceiling.

  I longed for the relentless heat to lessen. The crippling cramps in my belly to ease. The surging nausea to abate.

  Bindra and Sushmita drew close to lay their damaged, shrunken hands on me, tenderly stroking my head, shoulders, arms.

  “The least that we can offer, for all you do for us!” they declared, in defiance of my breathless protestations.

  “Shall we sing for you, Uncle?” Aarti asked, but her mother had already guided all three girls from the room before I had found the words to answer.

  Bindra sat beside me, perched on the bowing edge of the anthollowed bed.

  “Close your eyes,” she whispered in Nepali. “You’ve been working too hard for us. Every day, far too hard, mero ramro, dayalu, shashi keto,” she gently smiled. “Now rest yourself, my good, kind, brave boy.”

  She tenderly stroked my fevered forehead, until my eyelids shut out inquisitive lizard, demented flies and luminous quills of dust that spiralled into the stifling shadows.

  Until all I could hear was the soft mumble of her mantras.

  Until all I could hear were the crows.

  ***

  I woke shivering and wet.

  Tongue swollen, stuck fast to my acrid mouth. Spine and joints so painful that I cried out as I tried to turn.

  I was in my room, and yet had no memory of being carried by Ben and his companions along the forest path. No memory of day or night.

  A solitary figure stealthily drew into partial focus. Thick-rimmed spectacles. The cloying tang of stale sweat.

  “Ben?” I rasped. “Where’s Ben?”

  The blurred spectre approached my bedside, so close that I could smell his tobacco-tainted breath. So close that I could see the dark labyrinth of capillaries that webbed across the gelatinous yellowing of his unblinking, dilated eyes.

  “Naughty Naughty,” an unfamiliar voice hissed, “do what you’
re told and no trouble is coming. Be persisting in your naughtiness and all consequences are your own.”

  “Where’s Ben?” I tried again, but my words submerged beneath another swell of bitter nausea.

  “Time for your medicine, Naughty Naughty,” Doctor Dunduka quietly replied.

  ***

  Ben was frightened.

  I thought it had only been a couple of days. He swore it had been well over a week.

  “I can’t get the doctor to come from town!” he choked. “I’ve tried everything! I’ve pleaded with him, bribed him. He just won’t come out here! I’ve tried the Governor’s office and even the house master and his maharani, but they’re all ‘out of station’, gone to the Hills for the hot season. There’s no one left . . .”

  I had begged him to keep the charity doctor away from me and to destroy the five different sets of tablets I had been prescribed. Even in my fever, I recognised that Doctor Dunduka was treating me with the standard blend of illegal medication he forced on his unwitting patients amongst the saal trees. He was treating me as though I had leprosy.

  “The colony,” I tried. “Bindra . . .”

  My breathing had become so shallow and erratic that I now struggled to form intelligible sounds. Ben poured a little water into my desiccated mouth.

  “Don’t worry about any of them,” he pressed, wiping perspiration from my cheeks. “I’m there every day. I’ve tried to follow what you’ve done with the wound clinic, and they’re doing their best to tell me. I’m managing the cleaning and bandaging, and I’ll go back to do more this afternoon.”

  “Bindra?” I asked again.

  “She’s fine. You mustn’t worry,” he affirmed. “Look, she sent little Aarti with these.”

  He lifted into my eyeline a handful of scarlet hibiscus flowers.

  My cracked lips flickered into a smile.

  “Kali Ma,” I whispered.

  ***

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  The stench in the room was foul.

  Tap. Tap. Tap.

  I opened sticky eyes and struggled to focus on the metal mesh across the door, at which a solitary crow was rhythmically striking.

  “What is it kaag?” I strained to whisper. “What wisdom . . .?”

  Suddenly the mesh turned dark and two figures pushed through. One kicked at the bird to deter it from hopping into the room ahead of them. They paused to cover their noses for a moment.

  “Oh, dirty Naughty!” a voice spat. “Dirty heart, dirty bedclothes!”

  “Leave me alone!” I tried in defence, but the words made no sense as they struggled out into heavy, foetid air.

  One of the figures moved quickly. He opened a tatty briefcase and placed a selection of plastic bags on the little table. My eyes flickered to his companion, who remained a silent silhouette against the door-mesh.

  “Ben! Where’s Ben?” I attempted, fearful that he might have already left the colony in search of some distant army cantonment he had mentioned, in the hope of procuring a military physician.

  “Look how sweaty and skinny he’s grown!” the shrill voice sneered, drawing nearer. “So, why are you shaking?” it barked in reprimand. “Why are you panting in that ridiculous fashion?” it scolded.

  “I’m sick!” I tried in explosive exasperation.

  “And no one to blame but you!” came the satisfied reply.

  I looked back to the door in ripening alarm, to the vaguely familiar, military bearing of a motionless outline that impeded the light.

  “All your doing, Naughty Naughty,” the voice persisted, “coming over here uninvited. Not attending morning service. Thinking you can be doing this and that. Eating this and that . . .”

  “Ben!” I tried to cry out.

  “Your foolishness! Your wilfulness!” the figure shouted to silence my efforts. “Your fault!”

  My determined attempt to sit up caused me to retch violently, partially into the bucket by my bedside.

  “You see! No time for wasting, Naughty Naughty,” the voice announced. “Only time for treating your chronic hypertension!”

  I recoiled as he clumsily searched for a vein in my right arm. He pinched. He slapped. He dug his bloated fingers deep into my flesh.

  “No line! No line!” the voice bellowed, as if I were being purposely awkward.

  Moist hands threw off sodden, soiled sheets. They pointlessly pressed the cold pad of a stethoscope to my shoulders, my tender belly, my trembling thighs.

  “No soundings!” the voice roared. “You’re a yogi!” it angrily announced, as though in accusation. “You’re damn well stopping your heart! Enough of your wicked sorceries, Naughty! Enough!”

  A pause.

  A muttered word.

  A movement at the door.

  Searing pain as a long, thick syringe needle twisted deeply into my wrist.

  I attempted to struggle, but was too slow. I fought to resist, but all too late.

  And the figures were gone.

  I lay writhing on the damp foam mattress, my wrist swelling, swelling, ready to split.

  I tried to cry for help.

  I tried to stay awake.

  Tried to focus on the return of the Tap. Tap. Tap.

  ***

  The bright darkness of a full moon.

  Another night so hot, so still, that my lungs seemed to remain empty even as I gasped for life.

  I thought I called out, but the skin of Ben’s naked shoulders in the bed beside me remained unmoved, glistening with his every breath.

  I closed my eyes, defeated by delirium. My skull a scalding sea of seething foam. My bones a viscous slick of melting marrow.

  I was dangerously dehydrated. My body was failing, I knew it. Every organ had grown so frail, so tired that I felt as though, if I were to allow my will to fade, I could slip into a quiet, easy death.

  Again I fought for absent air.

  And then, beneath the resonating tremor of heat-mad insects, a rhythmical voice. The murmur of mantra, the Words of Power.

  “Aung kring hung hring dakshine ...” I opened my eyes.

  It seemed as though Bindra was beside me, slowly moving unbound, umbral hands in full-fingered mudras.

  “Kalike kring hring hung svaha Aung ...”

  I knew these bijas. The jhankri at Lapu basti had once taught their meaning, invoking the forces of dedicated action, purpose and awareness. The forces of change.

  Bindra touched her pubis, navel, heart and head. She smiled into my eyes and bent to place her mouth on mine. To share my breath. To take my fever.

  To initiate my healing.

  ***

  I woke to the song of familiar birds. Bulbuls and drongos, bee-eaters and babblers.

  I turned my head to the bolted door and opened my eyes wide in search of light.

  I turned my head towards the shuttered window and took a deep breath in search of trees.

  I sat up without pain, without fever.

  The echoes of a febrile dream still resonated. The shadow of a woman in the room. Of Bindra.

  “Aung kring kalikaye namah-aung,” I whispered to the dawn.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  I stepped off the forest path.

  I moved slowly in the morning incalescence on legs that, since the fever had lifted, were not yet my own. I sought respite from daylight blaze in the dapple of dense trees. I sought reprieve from dust in the sweet humus of hot-season-deciduous.

  The forest was not quiet. It bustled with the beat of butterflies, the hum of hornets, the mischief of monkeys. The listless canopy flared with golden woodpecker and emerald parakeet. The deeply furrowed bark glistened with fierce jewels of iridescent beetle.

  And then - a sudden, combustive caw of crows. An e
ruption of onyx feather, ebony claw.

  I stopped.

  No avian air. No simian chatter. No vespine bumble.

  Between the tall, straight trunks of saal, I caught a flash of red. A flash of bright red running that prompted in me a sudden premonition.

  “Nepali Uncle, aaiye!” a child’s voice cried. It was Aarti, panting with effort. “Please come, Uncle! Mataji is calling your name. She says it’s time!”

  “Time for what, choti behen?” I asked my anxious “little sister”. Even as I said the words, my heart quickened with inexplicable anticipation.

  “You must come now, Uncle,” she insisted, ignoring my question. “For Mataji!”

  Such was her urgency that I tried to lift her into my arms, but found myself too weak. Instead, Aarti grasped my hand and together we hurried into the trees.

  ***

  The hut was quiet.

  Poojita and Dipika were standing still, stick-doll abandoned to the wood pile, their mother squatting beside the charpai on which Bindra lay.

  “He’s here,” Sushmita whispered, as though in secret.

  I bowed low to let Bindra place slow, bandaged hands upon my head in ahashis. She raised her face to smell my hair.

  “What is it, Ama?” I asked, breathing heavily.

  “So many days without you,” she sighed, “without my good, brave boy.”

  “You know, I had a dream, Ama,” I revealed with a chuckle. “A dream of you that made me well. And here I am! All better! Here to stay!”

  She rocked her head and smiled, watery eyes held firm on me. She touched her heart and then my chest, and mouthed, “Kalike kring hring hung svaha Aung.”

  My smile faltered.

  “So many days without you,” she repeated. “So many days without my good, brave boy.”

  Bindra stretched out a hand to stroke my face.

  A sudden, threatening rasp and she was straining to draw in air. Her thin arms slumped to the charpai.

  I looked to Sushmita, who shook her head.

  “What has happened, Ama?” I asked. “Are you sick?”