Dharma Sutra

by David Pugh

  ‘Sylvia, Edgar, behind you!’ I screamed down the phone, ‘Bob’s in room five!’

  I cursed myself and slipped down the ladder, leaving the Barrett, I had to get to block A. My mind was racing, I got to the main house door, directly opposite block A’s fire exit. I’d drawn my UN-issued handgun, expecting to shoot my way to the door but no, silence had descended. Bouba and Amdou must have got Bob’s officers; the remaining boys were running through the gate. The battle was over but the war could yet be lost! The fire door was bolted from the inside; the window shutters still locked intact, the only way in was through the roof, like Bob. I scrambled up; the aluminium sheeting had been torn badly by the grenade. I dropped silently into room five; it was empty, I opened the door to room four; I saw no one, heard nothing. The compound door to room three opened, Bob was dragging out Edgar, gun to the boy’s temple. I saw this through room four’s sniper hole, shit, I’d miscalculated. What to do? If Amdou was still in place, he was probably a good enough shot to take Bob in the head, but the hunting rifle might not be powerful enough to get through Bob’s helmet or full-body armour. Amdou hated Bob enough to try but would rather have seen the man get a slow death.

  Bob shouted out, ‘I want the woman here outside, I managed to sneak up on her pup, and he’ll die if she doesn’t come out in the next twenty seconds!’

  ‘You are bluffing, bastard!’ Amdou shouted down in Jola, ‘The boy is your ticket out of here, come face me, man to man, the old way!’

  ‘Fuck you, Jungle Bunny!’ Bob replied in English.

  The door to room three again opened, Sylvia stepped out, ‘This is between you and me, Bob, let my son go!’

  ‘Oh no, Chink, I’ll have both of you!’

  ‘You mean have me like this?’ she started removing her body armour, then her clothing, as she took ever closer steps towards her enemy.

  She was down to her underwear, Bob was mesmerised, now would be the time for Amdou to try a shot but time had frozen. Sylvia was down to her pants and slipped them off her hips.

  ‘You’ve always wanted to see my “hairless cunt”, haven’t you? Now is your chance!’ Edgar was looking away, Bob was like the rabbit in the headlights.

  She was very close to him, ‘Look, I’m even wearing your gris-gris for you!’

  Fuck no! I saw what she was going to do; she was wearing the hippo detonator around her neck! She embraced Bob, there was a muted explosion, two bodies fell to the ground and Edgar screamed,

  ‘Muuummm! No!’

  The boy embraced his naked mother; a massive bloody hole below her navel, her body going into trauma.

  I ran out, past the screaming Bob, clutching his bloody groin, I pointed my pistol at his head, a hand restrained me,

  ‘Leave him to us!’ Bouba had appeared.

  I fell to my knees, watching the life drain from probably the only woman I had ever loved. I had seen wounds like this before, there was nothing to be done, and it was not my place to interfere in those last moments with her child.

  ‘I’m sorry it had to end like this, my sweet boy, I had to protect you, I couldn’t see any other way…’

  ‘Molefi!’ Edgar looked at me with some desperate hope left in his eyes, ‘Do something, you’re a fucking professional, help her!’

  I shook my head, still on my knees, ‘Too late, I’ve failed; I should have got to Bob first.’

  Sylvia looked at me, ‘Thank you for staying, my Tswana…you are a good man.’

  She turned her whitening face back to her son, the red Gambian earth taking on a deeper crimson shade.

  ‘Let your father know what has happened and don’t blame him for running out on you.’

  She was failing fast, ‘No matter how long a couple have been together, we come into this world alone and leave it alone.’

  She’d reached that point when the pineal gland in the brain releases its massive dose of dimethyltryptamine, what has been described as the white light, the pain reliever, the gateway to the next life. Her husband had discussed this with me back in the day; we both had this similar take on death. In those last moments my lovely lady would be looking down from above on the scene of her passing, free from pain but still able to control her lips,

  ‘We all choose our own path, one door closes, another opens, see you around the bend…’ the lips sealed into a smile.

  A vulture circled overhead, Amdou took aim at it.

  ‘No, not that one!’ I commanded, ‘Madam Sylvia is using that bird to take her soul on its next journey.’

  ‘I thought you were the confirmed atheist?’ Bouba remarked.

  ‘Oh I am, I follow no religion, serve no gods or demons, but I believe that we humans can live forever if we so choose,’ the brothers stared incredulously.

  ‘Cover madam up,’ I ordered, ‘soon more vultures will come, so can I suggest you stake this fucker to the ground for them.’

  I kicked the writhing Bob in the place where his tiny cock used to be, ‘Let the vultures eat him alive, if they have the palate for him!’

  ‘I’m sure they will love him, he was walking carrion!’ Bouba joined his brother in staking down their squirming enemy. They used safari tent pegs to pin his hands and feet to the floor of that killing ground.

  ‘Look!’ Edgar said, ‘Another bird has joined the first one, they look as if they are talking.’

  Chapter 68: Same Time, Another Place

  Jeffrey’s Journal, Puri, India

  Issa took my hand, ‘You need some distraction, I know the perfect place.’

  The perfect place was Swargadwar cremation grounds; he sat me at the top of the concrete gallery steps and asked me for 500 rupees.

  ‘This is your distraction, it’s hardly cheery,’ I felt embarrassed watching the families of strangers saying goodbye to their loved ones.

  Issa came back with a carrier bag containing two bottles of Tuborg Strong and a full bottle of Officer’s Choice, along with some disposable plastic cups.

  ‘Sorry about this,’ he said.

  ‘You mean the plastic cups, not very eco-friendly, are they?’ I hated the squidgy things.

  ‘Shit man, this is bloody India, look at the crap all around us, waiting to be burnt!’ I hoped Issa wasn’t including the five corpses neatly swaddled and lined up for their pyre.

  ‘I meant the Tuborg Strong; it’s all the off-shop had left, thirsty work burning the dead.’

  Three bodies were already ablaze, surely he wasn’t going to play the game of whose legs fall off first. A young man had unwrapped the face of his father to give him one last kiss. I thought of Edgar, wondering what hell he was going through right now, I knew something dreadful was happening. I was feeling a seismic wave of remorse and fear coursed through me. Issa was opening the OC, he had also produced a small packet of grey powder from my jeans, which he seemed to have taken permanent possession of.

  ‘If that’s what I think it is, I really don’t need it!’ I protested.

  ‘Yes, you do,’ he then mixed the whole 8gms of Orissa’s finest psilocybe cubensis in with the OC, ‘you need this today.’

  ‘I see you’re not taking any, this stuff makes my shoulders ache afterward,’ I downed it in one, I was eager to alter my current state.

  ‘I make my own psilocybin,’ Issa tapped his head.

  ‘Obviously, you don’t produce your own beer, so have my Tuborg, it is bloody awful!’ I gave him my bottle.

  ‘I enjoy the taste of beer; I can’t quite remember when I first tried it, my timeline is a bit erratic. I kinda slip in and out of time zones, man, it’s a bit like cosmic jet lag.’

  ‘Groovy, man, tell me more,’ my eyes were riveted on a new corpse just combusting, quite a whoosh.

  ‘Just look at us all as time travellers, who knows where these people are now going, past or future?’ Issa roughly indicated the queue of the dead.

  ‘Everything is down to personal development during their recent incarnation, the Buddhist thing. My God, Siddhartha was the best. The tr
ouble is people are too stuck within the belief of their own family, wanting to spend eternity in some heavenly picnic. What naïvety and what arrogance, they desperately want to keep hold of the self, not realising that they are a small but important part of the whole. During one’s earthly life, one should try to paint at least one little panel to add to the Great Tapestry, leaving a small token of one’s learning behind and then letting go. The ego is the enemy of creation but at the same time a necessary part of the process of expanding human consciousness. We all play our part and go, that’s the simple plan, but too many want the glory of finding the better way. You are guilty of this yourself, Jeffrey; your arrogance has been your greatest enemy and simultaneously your closest friend. What part are you going to play in the great plan?’

  I was losing the ability to concentrate, I was hallucinating Steven Spielberg style, blue ghosts leaving the burning bodies, swirling around and taking off heavenward.

  ‘You are not really seeing blue ghosts; you spent too many years as a SF comic artist, it’s interfered with your true perception. You’re going to have to make better use of your imagination,’ Issa looked accusingly at me.

  ‘One thing, Issa, before I lose all sense of reality,’ my eyesight was really playing tricks on me, Issa’s face was becoming more female, ‘Jesus and Buddha taught chastity, temperance, tolerance, compassion, love and the equality of all living beings, right?’

  ‘So why are we getting continually stoned and why do I find you so terribly attractive?’ Issa led me to the auto-rickshaw rank.

  The tuk-tuk dropped us outside the Lakshmi Lodge; Issa helped me up the stairs. My landlady was looking disgusted with me and muttered something to her husband in Oria.

  I asked Issa to translate, ‘She said look at that one and he’s brought a woman back.’

  I opened my padlocked door and closed it behind us, to face the most beautiful lady I had ever seen in my life, her face was shimmering, a moment I thought it was the Sylvia, then Rinzen, then Lhamu, I struggled with my senses; the woman spoke to me,

  ‘Time now to let go of everything, here is your chance to embrace the ideal of every woman you have known, who you will know and the ones you never had the chance to know. Come lie in the arms of Jesus,’ the universal voice of womanhood spoke to me.

  ‘I can’t!’ I stammered, ‘I know you are really a man, Issa!’

  ‘Well, if you believe that you haven’t learned much, Jeffrey,’ the ultimate woman embraced me and drew me onto the bed.

  Chapter 69: I Can’t Remember If We Said Goodbye

  Jeffrey’s Journal, Puri, India

  I awoke nearly a week later alone, feeling a deep sense of gratitude but also shame. Someone had been attending to me, keeping me clean and somehow fed and watered. It was as if I had been in a coma. I opened up my netbook, checked my email and there they were, the words I was dreading made reality.

  "Dear Dad,

  There’s no easy way to say this, I’m devastated to have to tell you that Mum is dead and she died protecting me. The situation in The Gambia had got completely out of control. I can’t believe how it ended; it was the most intense day of my life and the most sickening. We haven’t been in touch for some time and I’m sorry for that, you and Mum had gone different ways. The battle for the 4H seemed like an impossible dream, it was like being in a fucking Western! Mum’s grave inside the compound is a daily reminder that it really did happen, it was a war, dozens of young men died and no one in authority questioned it, everything has been hushed up. Bob was killed and a lot of men in high places are glad that he’s gone. Jatta hired these innocent beach boys and made them race into our guns; mine too, I killed seven of them myself, and I’m haunted by each of their faces.

  You probably don’t know about anything that has been happening here and that was because you didn’t want anything to do with that sicko, Bob the Bastard. Bob hired that Molefi guy, the drunk we met in the Gaborone Hotel bar, how he found out about him or located him I don’t know. You could see that Mum fancied him, and I know you didn’t like it but Bob used the situation to get him to move in on Mum and settle the 4H ownership. I never trusted Molefi, but he saved the 4H and the rest of us, except Mum. The battle for the 4H was inevitable from the moment Mum snatched Bob’s gris-gris, and I know you didn’t approve and wanted her to walk away. What she did was her choice, the first real choice she made in her life, and it did cost her life but for her it was the right thing. I think that for a few years she was truly happy and truly alive.

  She had been most of her life in a relationship where the other person routinely made all the important decisions, so she lost the effective ability to decide on things – major or trivial. When she did approach a decision she doubted herself, quickly assuming bad judgment and backtracked into the decision process, quietly clutching a multitude of options like open tabs on an internet browser. Through this conditioning of being with such a “fussy” partner, decisions became a painful process for her, so much so that she dreaded decision-making. Her idea of herself as a woman who hadn’t achieved her idea of potential meant she became content to settle with her lot and not push herself. A life where the decisions were already made for her bred aimlessness, caused confusion and lacked purpose. She needed to rehabilitate a purposeless soul and limit her perpetuation of frugality and to not ignore her wants. Being frugal and economical extended to every part of her life, until she was very sparing with her wants and desires and lost the scent of who she was. You were after greater things in life; she was after simplicity; there was an apparent divide.

  Mum had a simple plan for the 4H; she had her garden to attend and her then lover’s family to employ. Remus has disappeared by the way, Bob sent him to India to find you and I think kill you. I never thought much of the man, but I could never see him killing anyone, then I should have said the same about myself until this last week. Mum’s dream has cost me dear, but I’m going to stick with it; Molefi has gone, Jeneba, Jack and John are keeping the place running. I’ve got a live-in girlfriend; Susy came over a few months ago for two weeks with a Jungle Stays party, we had a passionate fling and kept in touch. When she heard about Mum, she just turned up, gave me a hug and asked if she could stay a while, so now we’re in the big house, looking down at the repair work being done to the battleground. Julbrew have sent over a new hippo statue, the old guy was another victim of battle.

  I don’t know how you’ll be taking this news and how it will affect you; I wish you were here to give me a hug, I’m feeling like an orphan. You should have no problems finding your sannyasin path, you did your best for us but you were always a bit self-centric.

  Your loving son,

  Edgar"

  Chapter 70: If I Couldn’t Lift the Veil and See Your Face

  Jeffrey’s Email Reply, Puri, India

  "Dear Edgar,

  I’ve read your email over and over, each time through a denser veil of tears, how has this happened? How could have things escalated so much? Molefi turning up could only take things to a dangerous conclusion. Molefi deals in death, we steered clear of him in Botswana but twice he tracked us down. He was so pissed with us for not wanting his friendship but he was too dangerous, too volatile. I warned your mother that she had made an enemy for life in Aboboulaye Jatta, but how could her life be cut so short? I should have stayed with her and fought that bastard with her, though if someone like Molefi couldn’t save her, what use would I be? Molefi’s involvement in this tragedy is almost unbelievable. I think we told Remus about Molefi, in fact I’m sure it was me, I was joking with him one night about how he had given Sylvia a taste for black men. Remus wanted to know all the details I could remember with particular attention to me catching Molefi with his hand in Sylvia’s pants. I think Remus was a bit jealous, I must have painted a very detailed picture for him, if he even remembered it was in the Gaborone Hotel. God, that was only four years ago, she’s really gone! I knew exactly when she died; I felt something change in the world.

&
nbsp; If I wasn’t working six days a week on comic book adventures, I could have spent more time with her. Thirty years of marriage getting staler by the day, and Remus steps out of a jungle clearing and changes everything. Fifteen years with very little sex, then bang, we both start craving sexual relations with other people, just when most couples our age are happier to have a full English breakfast. I’ve come to look at sex as a good thing, a simple exchange between two human beings, happy in the knowledge that they are alive in that moment and may never see each other again. I now have to ask myself is sex a demon that can possess and destroy us? Jesus, that sounds like a thought implanted by my mother, but your mother is dead, did sex destroy her? I’ll have to ask a close friend I have found about that one. Your email was right, boredom and frugality were destroying her, she wanted the African adventure but it was all too brief. I really should have been able to say goodbye to her properly, I just didn’t imagine I’d never see her again when I left The Gambia in a huff, about her buying the hotel behind my back.