My Lady of the Bog (11 page)

For Vidya was a stranger in a strange country; it was my duty to protect her. Jai would have wanted me to. And there arose in me a wondrous energy: masculine, mustachioed and patriarchal.

And anyway, I was in love with her by then.

Chapter 15

T
he Chiswick stationhouse was not what I’d expected, which was something more circus-like and Runyonesque: arguing prostitutes posed in doorways, telephones ringing, bearded men in inexplicable pink pinafores, weeping. It wasn’t like that. It was one of those modern amalgams of brick, glass and metal so abhorred by the Prince of Wales that manage to look too new for the neighborhood and rundown at the same time.

Vidya was, incredibly, still wearing her bloodstained sari. She reminded me of Jacqueline Kennedy, following her husband’s assassination, in that pink suit with black piping. The difference was that Jackie had a nation’s sympathy while Vidya, apparently, had none but mine.

My statement wasn’t long. I wrote down exactly what had happened with two key omissions: our passionate encounter and the bloodstained book. After that, I waited a very long time.

Finally, Houlihan appeared. He looked pissed off. “Girlfriend’s gonna be a couple more hours.”

“Not my girlfriend.”

“Yeah, you told me. Why don’t I believe you?”

“The real question is: how you can think she had anything to do with that? Christ, man, you know splatter. You cut someone up like that, you end up looking like a Jackson Pollack. But except for some transfer, her clothes are clean.”

Houlihan remained profoundly unmoved. “Coulda changed them.” He leaned in so close I could smell his cologne. “Knew this lady once, ‘porter for the
Post?
Did a story on this maniac what chopped up a waitress and afore you know it, she’s trumpetin’ his cause. I said, ‘Fuck is this, Margaret, you think this guy’s
innocent
? They found him, right? He’s walkin’ down a country highway, waving
body parts
at passing cars. Where he get Susan Radford’s
arm
, he didn’t do it?’ Know what she says? ‘
I know his heart better than you ever will and he never could have done such a thing.’
And that was that. Evidence don’t matter. And this was
not
a stupid lady. So you see?
Denial
. Hell of a thing.”

Jai’s solicitor arrived around noon. I left the station and took a cab to the hotel. I wanted to bathe, not my flesh so much as my mind and memory, to delete from it the sight and smell of Jai’s body. Then I’d return for Vidya.

But once in my room, the emotional force of the morning’s events finally hit me, and I wept like I hadn’t wept in years. It didn’t feel like grief so much as pure emotion, as though Jai’s death and Vidya’s kiss had unstoppered my heart and the precious oils of
all
my feelings—feelings of love, feelings of horror, feelings I hadn’t known were there—were spilling out.

They scared me. They were overwhelming. I really couldn’t handle all of them now. Even my sudden love for Vidya, while intoxicating, felt frightening. If I let it in, where would it take me? Where would it lead, if I let myself go? And yet I also felt an animal alertness. For someone close had just been murdered and Houlihan’s vibe had a dangerous edge.

I showered, shaved and was getting dressed when Vidya rang. Her questioning was over with and, for now at least, she was free to go.

I returned to the stationhouse. A policewoman accompanied us to the apartment, where Vidya was allowed to remove her sari (which was impounded) and to pack her toiletries, along with several changes of clothing and, from the safe, her jewels, which she refused to leave. As the flat was a crime scene, she could not remain, and I insisted she return to my hotel, at least until we could sort things out.

We hailed a cab. No sooner had we entered my room and the door shut behind us than Vidya reached into the folds of her
salwar kameez
—a loose-fitting tunic emblazoned with miniscule mirrors over drawstring pants—and brought out the ancient book.

Her presence of mind to snatch it from beneath the noses of the cops was impressive. And I found myself moved that, in the midst of all her hurt and horror, she’d extended herself for me this way.

“So . . .” I said, “they give you a hard time?” It was the first chance we’d had to speak privately.

“
Rah-tha
.”

“What did you say?”

“The same thing I’d said before. Not that they believed me. The
leftenant,”
she added, “claimed that you had ‘spilled your guts.’ And that if I didn’t ‘come clean,’ I was ‘going down.’ I wasn’t certain what any of that meant, but it
did
sound disagreeable. Jai’s solicitor advised me not to answer. He accused them of trying to coerce a confession. But I didn’t mind. I told them there was nothing to which
eye-tha
of us would confess, as there was nothing criminal
eye-tha
of us had done.”

I nodded. “Thank you for your vote of confidence. So, if we didn’t do it, who do you think did?”

She shook her head.

“Because it doesn’t look like a robbery, Vidya. And I find it hard to believe it was some kind of fluke. I mean, could it be . . .
political
?”

“Such as . . . ?”

“I don’t know. Was Jai . . . a
spy
or something?”

This was not so far-fetched as it sounds. For years, anthropology was practically a subsection of the national intelligence agencies, for who better than an anthropologist has a reason to wander about the remote parts of a foreign land? And if on the way to your site, you happen to pass a military convoy or snap a wonderful desert view (with an atomic facility in the background), well, of course, you’re going to share it with your government, especially since it’s helping finance the dig.

“I met Jai seven weeks ago. You were his friend for many years. You would know far better than I. Jai was an intensely private man. Even on holiday, he spent many hours alone on some project. He could have been colluding with double ought seven, for all I know.”

He certainly could have. Though more likely it would turn out to be not that way at all, but one of those tragedies that make life look like a crapshoot, with snake eyes rolled in the form of the super’s son on leave from the bin who just happens to be visiting his dad that evening, bringing with him all his homicidal urges.

Yet even this scenario was preferable to another. For what if Jai weren’t the intended target? What if, because of her past, her beauty, or something about her that I didn’t yet know, it was
Vidya
—and Jai had simply been in the way?

I laughed, nervously. “You’re not a spy yourself, are you?”

“For whom?
Kenya?”

Put that way, it did seem doubtful.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know you mean well. I’m just—knackered. Let me make some calls, and I’ll be out of your hair.”

“Vidya,” I said. “You’re not leaving. There’s plenty of room here. I’ll sleep on the couch.”

“You’re kind, but I won’t intrude. Anyway, this is the last thing you need. These scandals have a way of . . .”

“I’m not concerned about scandal. I’m concerned about you. The last thing you need right now is to start schlepping yourself all over London, looking for a place to stay.”

“Look,” she said, and took a breath, dropping into a deeper gear. “I’ve thought about this thing . . . with
us
, I mean. I don’t know why that happened as it did. But whatever the reason, now is not the proper time . . . what with . . .
everything
else that’s going on.”

“Thank God, “I said. “Someone, at least, has their wits about them. I couldn’t agree with you more. Our timing was so . . . disrespectful. I’m sorry . . . I . . .”

She waved me silent, while coming closer and clutching my open shirt with her hand. “It was both of us. And the shock. But no one would understand that. Everyone else is bound to see it as the purest perversity—or some sort of desecration.”

“Well, of course, they would. And who could blame them?”

I took her hand and removed its clutching fingers. They made me tense—though I failed to let them go.

Vidya cocked her head and looked at me then with such an appealing sweetness that I shivered. “Well,” I said. “I’m glad that’s settled. I feel better already.”

“Yes,” she agreed, “and so do I.” And she gave a pained, unhappy sigh.

What happened next, I’m tempted to pass over. For our bodies suddenly snapped together, as though compelled by a
force majeure
. I covered her face and throat with kisses. I found her mouth and unlocked the vault of her throat with my tongue.

There was nothing cool or regal about her. She made sounds out of Africa and left bite marks on my shoulder.

And in the midst of it all, it began to storm. Lightning flared. Thunder rattled. The rain came down in wind-whipped sheets. Afterward, lying on the rug beside her, listening to the violent wind and weather, I felt content—and, despite Jai’s murder, happy—for the first time in my life.

While Vidya dozed, I opened my laptop. A new e-mail from Jai gave me a shock, until I saw it was sent the previous evening. There was no message. Yet it contained Jai’s parting gift to me: his translation of the ancient codex. And so I opened up the attachment and read:

Sikandar Shah Nama

Or

The Adventures of Sikandar Shah

Oddly or not, Sikandar’s name was the eastern edition of my own.

Glory be to You

Who raised me up,

Whose greatness knows no limitations.

The loveliness of the girls in all the worlds,

including those in Heaven
’
s harem,

are rose petals

scattered in the dust of the road

that leads to the Garden of Your Infinite Beauty.

The paths of Scholarship & Religion

are vanishing goat-tracks

in the desert of Your Being;

Poetry, one impoverished village

in the infinite country of Thy Name.

This is the story of Sikandar ibn Musa Khilji al-Hind,

Prince of Hindustan.

It is the report of a Caravan

From the Palace of Splendor

To the Tavern of Ruin

Made by the Caravan Master
’
s slave,

(God bless him!)

Who cries:

“I would give up

the thrones of

Samarkand and Rome

for the black mole

on my Beloved’s thigh!”

I invite you, Reader, to drink of this cup.

It will cost you nothing.

The grapes & I have already paid for it

with our lives.

I found this invocation rich and inviting. Yet before proceeding further, I checked on Vidya. She was sleeping deeply. Happy to see that, I returned to my computer and crawled through the monitor and into the tale, though had I known what I know now, I would have thought two or three times, surely, before slipping in that digital door.

It was daybreak in Rajasthan when, leaving my companions swaddled in sleep and the smoky shawls of cooking fires, I rode out with ‘Abd al-Wali Mirza to reconnoitre the Indore border in preparation for the evening’s raid. It was rough, high desert. The air was thin, and in the elbows of the creeks and streams there were hot white boulders. We saw few people, save for some poor villagers. And so when we encountered the mysterious tower
brimming
with soldiers, we dismounted swiftly, in amazement and alarm, and hid behind a nearby hill.

But though we watched for half a
ghari
¹
, the sentries’ heads never flinched, blinked, turned, or spoke to one another, but stared relentlessly off at the surrounding hills.

It was not until ‘Abd al-Wali passed me the glass, the illusion was dispelled. For by its grace, I could make out now that the soldiers’ heads were carved from stone, and rising and striking the dust from our
kurtas
, we went down the mountain to the ground on which the tower stood.

But as we approached, I received another shock, for the heads were not the work of art—or magic. No. They were the
heads of men
, severed at the neck and implanted in the masonry in parallel rings. I had heard of such “pillars of victory” before, but had never seen one, this being my first campaign, and circling the tower in the auspicious manner
²
, I inspected the heads more carefully. They were Rajputs
³
one and all, and were filmed with a fine grey grit. It was this that had given them the illusion of stone.

I studied one: the head of a boy no older than myself with a moustache like black down. His cracked and swollen lips were puckered as in a kiss and his eyes closed as though he were dreaming.

Above him, set into the crest of the tower, its architect proclaimed:

Jafir Bahadur Ghazi,

Ruler of the Universe,

Shadow of God on Earth,

Chief of the Circumcised,

Cherisher of the Poor,

Light of this World,

Lord of the Islands,

Raised this Pillar

To commemorate

His Victory over

The Infidel Wretch

And Son of Misfortune

Mul,

King of Indore.

Clearly, my brother Jafir had been here.

1.
Translator’s Note: a
ghari
equals twenty-four minutes

2.
pradakshina
: circumambulating clockwise

3.
Rajput
: the dominant warrior caste of Rajasthan

Chapter 16

T
he memoir had such a gruesome gravitation, I had to pull myself away. Though, even then, the hideous pillar continued to disquiet my imagination. The scene of the action, Rajasthan, was in the Indian northwest, not far from two archeological digs I had worked across the Pakistani border. The question was, what did the book have to do with my Lady? Rajasthan was 6,000 miles from Dorset.