My Lady of the Bog (9 page)

Several times over dinner, I tried to get him to talk about the book. He wouldn’t. In this way he was your typical Eastern trader. You couldn’t just pay him and walk off with the goods; that would have been too simple and insulting. Instead, you had to sip endless cups of steaming
chai
, chatting about everything under the sun but the one thing you were interested in before you could begin to get down to business.

When I pressed him on it, Jai demurred. “You don’t really want to talk shop tonight, do you, Xan?”

“Shop? We’re speaking about what could be one of the more significant archeological discoveries to come out of England in years.”

“Oh, it’s that, all right!”

I looked at him, at once heartened and maddened. “Can’t you at least give me a hint?”

But Jai was as indifferent to my desire as the Lord Buddha was to his own. He only smiled graciously and shook his head.

“When?”

“Later. Now I have guests.” And he returned to his soup and Beaujolais.

With the appearance of the duckling, brilliantly spiced with ginger and soy, the discussion moved to other ancient traditions such as the
svayamvara
, in which suitors vie for the princess bride’s hand. Everyone agreed it was “gender-empowering.”

“And then there’s human sacrifice,” I said, unable to resist lobbing a verbal grenade.

“Well,” Vidya said, “and what’s wrong with that?”

There was a dumbfounded silence, in the midst of which I raised my eyes. “You can’t be serious, Miss Vidya,” I said.

“Oh,” she laughed,
“Americans
. You think if everyone has
enough to eat
and
a decent education
, they’ll behave like good little boys and girls. Well, rot! Human beings, as you may have noticed, have an insatiable need for violence and gore. They
love
blood, love to see it spill and run. The Germans were fairly well-educated chaps, as were the Romans, Moguls and Brits. Didn’t stop any of them from trying to conquer the whole bloody world and killing anyone who stood in their way. At least public human sacrifice channeled that need so that it didn’t come out in less acceptable ways. After all, what would you rather (
rah-tha
)? A handful of criminals sacrificed to the gods, or several hundred innocent children shot to death in Brooklyn?”

There was another longish pause, during which Vidya challenged me with her eyes.

“Well, then,” I said, raising my glass. “to arranged marriages. And to human sacrifice. All those in favor, say ‘aye.’ ”

“Here, here . . .”

I turned to Vidya to make sure she was not offended. Her glass was raised like all the others, and she was looking straight at me with a cool blue gleam of pure amusement—or was it interest?—in her eyes.

Chapter 11

I
t was midnight. We were alone in Jai’s study with snifters of brandy, sans the cigars. Jai was seated. I was standing. On the wall beside him was a wooden rack displaying half a dozen antique swords.

“So?” I asked.

Jai looked up but still said nothing.

“The
codex
, Jai. What is it?”

“Language? Old Gujerati with some Chagtai, Persian and even a smidgeon of Middle English.”

“Ah! And what’s it about?”

“Memoirs. Of an Indian prince.”

“I see,” I said, feeling somewhat deflated, for my hope had been it was about my Lady.

“Yes, you will see. I’ve translated it.” He nodded. “It’s practically all I’ve done for the past six weeks.”

Again my interest flared, for I still hoped between the book and the body there must be
some
connection.

“Actually, Xan, I know a bit more about all this business than you suppose. Sir August rung me. Claims you lifted the book from a royal find, disturbing the sequence and context of the remains.” He frowned. “Did you? And why would you do a thing like that?”

“Like
what
?” I bristled. “Anyway,” I said, “the entire treasure was filched that night. In actual fact, I
saved
the damn thing.”

Jai sat back and thought for a moment. “I also hear you blackmailed your way on to the Royal Commission. Threatened Rumple with a god-awful stink.”

“Well?” I said. “I had to do
something
. He didn’t seem to know who the hell I was.”

Jai only smiled and in the silence that followed, I wished I could have taken my last remark back. His face darkened. “Listen to me, Xan: Until now, you’ve had it easy. Everything you’ve wanted has come your way: position, recognition, opportunity, acclaim. And it isn’t that you don’t deserve it. But there’s a downside, too, to that kind of good fortune. You begin to think life owes you it. You’ve never had to face—or wait out—adversity.” He held up a hand. “Don’t interrupt. Then there are your chronic complaints about being single. But you’ve given precious little that I’ve ever seen to any woman who’s wanted to change that. You forget I
know
you, Xan. I’ve seen you disappear into some trench in Crete whenever a woman has tried to claim you. Or are you still pining over that prima donna? Christ, Xan, that was
years
ago!

“Anyway, that’s
your
business. But now, with this last bit, you’ve crossed a line. You claim to
‘love’
anthropology, but don’t submit to its most basic laws. Bloody Christ, you know it’s about
context:
not
what
you find, but
where
you find it; what it’s next to, above, below.

“And your sense of entitlement! Unreal! The police call you in to view a dead body and from that moment on, you, apparently, believe that the body now belongs to
you
. How dare the bloody
Queen of England
appoint a commission to study it that doesn’t include you—and you’ve no hesitation in applying whatever measures are needed to get your way.”

“It’s called hardball, Jai—as opposed to cricket.”

“Yes? Well, don’t be fooled by Sir August’s manner. He didn’t become a Knight of the Realm by being a wuss.” Jai pressed on. “Then there’s the matter of a fourteenth-century manuscript that you so blithely dropped into the post—without anyone’s prior knowledge or consent. You’re a bleedin’
Yank
, Xan! What makes you think you can dispose of England’s archeological treasures as you deem fit? Did you know it took me the whole of two mornings, a barrister’s counsel, and all my powers of eloquence and persuasion to prevent the Yard’s antiquities squad from clapping you in jail?”

I hadn’t. No. Jai held up a hand.

“Happy to do it. After all, you’re
my son
. I
love
you, Xan. And that’s my point. When you love someone, you don’t count the cost. You do for them whatever you have to do.” He paused to let his words sink in. “Love is
sacrifice
, Xan. That’s the whole of the Vedas—and the Bible to boot.”

I rolled my eyes, but Jai only pushed back coldly and said, “Of course, that’s something you don’t understand because you’ve never sacrificed anything for anyone, have you? And you know why? I’ll tell you why. Because you lack greatness, kingship,
largesse
. And if you stay that way, it’s going to be your ruin!”

I looked up. I had no idea what to say. Jai had never, ever spoken to me this way before.

“I thought you were . . . compassionate, Jai.”

“This
is
my compassion,” Jai hissed back, ramming the volley back down my throat.

I was too stunned to even feel hurt. I thought for a moment. “What can I do?”

Jai sat back and smiled for the first time. “Well,” he said, “you can change.”

Chapter 12

I
won’t pretend that what Jai said that evening hadn’t been said to me before. I
will
say
this
time I could not so readily dismiss it. For Jai was one of the few people I loved. In fact, when I was younger, I’d worshipped him. It was not just his brilliance, but his personal style—a zest and an elegance that had set him apart. Even in his poorest days as an instructor, he had managed to drive a Mercedes coupe, and he’d sometimes worn an ascot (or “foulard” as he called it, the only man I’d ever seen on whom it didn’t look asinine). And as marvelous as Jai was with people, equally marvelous was the way he handled
things
.

Once, he went shopping and returned with a single, forty-dollar silver teaspoon. It was all he could afford, but it was beautiful, lustrous and heavy as a trowel. He would take it from his pocket, wrapped in a handkerchief, and use it to eat his institutional meal. When he was done, he would dip it in his water glass, wipe it dry and replace it in his pocket. Jai claimed that next he would buy a fork, and then a knife, until he had acquired the entire eighty-piece set.

His superb library was ordered—not anal-compulsively, but in a most natural, logical way—and he didn’t, therefore, spend hours, like me, looking for lost and misplaced texts. Though we were equally poor, Jai wore clothes of the finest fabric, and they were always clean and always mended, even if they were old.

He neglected nothing. Once when I remarked on this, he said, “I was taught that if something’s yours, it’s your duty to preserve it.” And he went back to whatever it was he was doing, something I would never do in a million years: oiling the toaster or polishing a bowl.

Later he told me, “My family worships Vishnu. Vishnu is the preserver of the universe. He’s not its creator or destroyer, but its sustainer. There’s something wonderful about taking care of things, don’t you think?”

“You mean
maintenance
?” I cried, in disbelief. “You mean getting your shoes shined, cleaning the refrigerator and washing the goddamn eighth-story windows? Are you
mad
?”

He smiled at me kindly. “I mean . . .
conservation
.”

It got to the point where I loved to watch Jai handle
things
, almost anything. Just to see the way he picked it up and laid it down made you want to do the same (although when you did, it was nothing special, just a scarf of gray Irish wool, nice and all, but hardly the sensual treasure it had seemed to be between Jai’s fingers).

Then there were Jai’s ideas, which weren’t like anyone else’s. He’d once defined government as “the science of punishment,” referring to the ancient secrets of statecraft by which a rajah rules his kingdom—and prevails.

And his most recent declaration, “Love is sacrifice.” It wasn’t a remark I myself could have made—springing, as it did, from a worldview as alien to me as it was venerable and old, one that harkened to the caves of Lascaux, Father Abraham, burnt offerings and flaming oblations of
ghee
and gold. Nor was Jai’s wisdom book knowledge only. Born in Mumbai, schooled in London, he had traveled widely with a father in the Indian diplomatic corps. Young men tend to define themselves by what they’ve experienced, and I was envious of his many exotic (and erotic) adventures. Jai had not only sampled the girls of a Turkish brothel (one whore, Jai claimed, had slipped a pillow beneath her buttocks, something which at the time had seemed to us the nadir of depravity), but had spent a night in meditation in a Maharashtrian cremation ground.

“Someday, when my work is done, I’ll retire to the forest,” Jai once told me.

“What forest, Jai? Muir Woods?”

He laughed. “Hardly. I doubt the National Park Service would permit me to wander around it skyclad.”

“You mean
nude
?”

“I mean clothed only in the wind and ether,” he’d said, spoofing himself.

Despite his tone, I sometimes wondered if he wasn’t serious. I imagined the distinguished professor emeritus wandering the woods bare-ass naked, living on roots and tubers. It was certainly a different model of retirement than that advanced by the Marin County Chamber of Commerce.

Now, for the first time, I considered what I’d done. It’s true I’d disturbed the integrity of the trove—but the manuscript had flared before me in the dark, an archeological wonder I could have for the taking. I didn’t think of myself as “entitled” and “indulgent,” only “special” and “lucky,” which were just other words for the same damn thing. Somewhere along the way I’d lost my humility, focus and perspective. Jai was daring me to get it back.

Then there was Vidya, whose face and form had haunted me since the party—though here, at least, I was fully aware of my pattern of attraction to unavailable women. The girls who’d loved me—and there’d been a few—never seemed to evoke in me that same wave of cosmic connection that the ones who hadn’t did, and do. And I saw now it was an emotional trick to keep me from becoming involved with a real, live, flesh and blood woman instead of her romantic imago. I thought, now, too, how that was a part of my Lady’s attraction: she was real, and she wasn’t—and her demands were few. High class, low maintenance. Just the kind of girl I adored.

Part III

VIDYA

A similar experience befell Menippus,
a disciple of Demetrius the Cynic.
For as he was going from Corinth to Cenchreae,
he met one in the form of a beautiful foreign girl,
apparently very rich,
who said that she was smitten with love for him,
and in a friendly manner invited him to go home with her.
He in his turn was taken with love for her
and lay with her often and even began to think about marriage,
for she had a house decorated in a royal fashion.
But after Apollonius had examined everything in that house,
he exclaimed that she was a Lamia
who would quickly devour the young man entirely,
or afflict him with some notable injury
.

—
Nicolas Remy
Demonolatry

Chapter 13

I
n the early morning hours of July thirtieth, I was awakened by a phone call from Vidya Prasad, informing me that Jai was dead. She gave no details, only asking that I come to their apartment “straight away.”

Ordinarily, I would have been skittish about walking the streets of London alone at that ungodly hour, but the spirit of death that had slithered through the wires accompanied me, its rod and its staff keeping lesser anxieties at bay.

I’d expected to see an ambulance or police, but the street before their mews was empty. Vidya answered their apartment door. She was stunningly dressed in a sheer white, gold-embroidered sari. There was blood on her hands. To my look of astonishment, she lowered her eyes. A bloodstain on her shoulder was in the shape of the state of Florida. The hall inside was overbright.