‘Four here, one more to come.’
‘All right. Find your own way up.’
They dragged their kits up a steep, straight, very narrow flight of stairs which was walled in with bare brick. The room at the top was big and completely unfurnished. Two small square window holes in one wall, under the eaves of the house, let in light and air. Numerous stains and splotches discoloured the splintered wood floor. A patch of dried mud-plaster covered the wood in one corner. A heap of grey ash, and the dark smoke smudged on the wall, and the bricks lying ready for use as pot rests, showed that that was the cooking place. Loosely joined tiles paved a second corner; there a drain hole made by removing two bricks from the outer wall denoted that it was the washing place. William did not ask where the toilet was; that, he knew, would be anywhere in the stable yard or along the alley.
The Jemadar threw his belongings down in the middle of the floor. ‘This’ll do. Phuh, the whole place smells of women. Piroo won’t like that -- he’s terrified of ‘em. Leave room for him, by the way.’ He pulled a small mirror out of his saddlebag and hung it on a nail that stuck out from between the bricks. He got out a pair of tweezers and began to prune his upper lip. He said, speaking with his mouth twisted to one side. ‘We’ll stay here a week. It’s a good town to rest up and get information about who and what is moving on the roads. We’ll have the feast on our last day, the Friday -- ow! -- and women afterwards. There’s a woman waiting for you, my old friend!’ He grinned at William and put away the tweezers.
There’s a woman waiting . . . William thought of Mary, who waited for him in Madhya, and sewed, and got up, and sat down again, and listened to every sound inside and outside the bungalow, and waited for him to ripen in her womb. He thought of the woman who waited at the pyre beside the Seonath, and did not move, and listened, and hoped.
Yasin laid the pick-axe on the floor, turned it until its head pointed north, then unrolled his blanket over it and put his saddlebags over all. The Jemadar watched respectfully and, when Yasin was ready, said, ‘Are you coming out? I want to see about selling these nags and getting some others a little less good-looking.’
‘All right.’
‘You?’ The Jemadar turned to William.
‘I don’t think so, Jemadar-sahib. I’ll rest here a while.’
‘Me too,’ Hussein said.
The other two left the room. William listened to the Jemadar’s riding slippers clack down along the long stair. He watched through a window until the men had crossed the yard and gone out of view.
He turned to Hussein. ‘Piroo won’t be here for an hour or so yet, will he?’
‘No, not till after dark.’
‘Good. I’ll get on with the first instalment of my report. Tomorrow you or I can go out and bury it outside the town.’
He got out the fine sheets of paper, lay down on his stomach under one of the windows, and began to write against the uneven surface of the floor, using a short pencil and forming the letters as small as he could. He had much to record, much that would help the world and his superiors to understand the Deceivers, even if he himself did not live to write another word. He licked his lip, licked the end of the pencil, and struggled on.
After half an hour Hussein, whom he had realized as a silent, vaguely unhappy presence in the room, blurted, ‘What do you think you’re going to do with those notes?’
William put the pencil down carefully, rubbed his eyes, and looked up. ‘I told you. I’m going to take them outside the town and bury them, and pick them up later when we’ve finished this -- expedition.’
Hussein’s face was compressed with misery. ‘You’re never going to use any of those notes against the Deceivers.’
‘Of course I am,’ William said, growing unreasonably angry.
‘You’re not, because you are a Deceiver, from this dawn on for ever. A strangler. Only stranglers may stand on the blanket: you stood on it. Only stranglers may take the consecrated sugar of communion: you took it. It doesn’t matter what a man thinks he is. When he eats consecrated sugar, on the blanket, in front of the pick-axe, he is a strangler, because Kali enters into him. It has happened before that men with no training or aptitude have got on the blanket by mistake. Always Kali gives them the skill and the strength they need.’ He took his head in his hands and groaned. ‘Now you are a strangler. Now you will never return to your office. Now I will never be a chuprassi. We could not help it,’ he finished, suddenly resigned. ‘Kali wills it, so it is.’
William said furiously, ‘You’re talking the rankest, most idiotic superstition!’ In himself he did not think so, and was frightened, and uncannily elated. He went on, ‘Besides, you had eaten the sugar before, when you first became a Deceiver, and you had given up your old ways.’
‘Had I? Had I? That’s what I thought! Did you see me last night?’
Hussein came close and pushed his contorted face down into William’s. William remembered a traveller across the fire last night, listening dreamily to the zither; Hussein’s sharpened nose and drawn-back lips; the traveller’s bolting eyes. He was silent.
Hussein continued urgently, ‘Gopal, do you realize that not one Deceiver’s wife in a hundred knows what he is? That the Deceivers have homes and places in society? That they leave their homes, and travel as if on ordinary business, and come back? That their children never know, unless a son is initiated into his father’s band? I think perhaps I have been a servant of Kali even in my treachery to her, when I preferred the woman to her, and ran away, and at last found you. Why couldn’t you be a Deceiver? Why not? The Saint Nizam-ud-Din was one, The Rajah of -- oh, many great men for hundreds of years past. Why not you? You travel, don’t you? You meet travellers who seek the protection of your convoys. We Deceivers could find men for all your staff, all your police, clerks, bungalow servants, jailers, chuprassis.’
William sprang to his feet. ‘You dirty murderous filth! Hold your tongue! I am not a strangler. I never will be. I am not going to kill, whatever happens. I’m not going to! Do you understand?’
Hussein said again, ‘You are a strangler. You cannot help yourself now.’
William raised his hand to strike, but Hussein was not angry, only sad. Shivering a little, William tucked away his papers and pencil and left the room.
For a time he wandered about the streets, now sunless and grey in the hour before the lamps were lit. From the foot of the town he heard the scream of an elephant and a faint, faint human cry, caught up at once in the shrill, formless cacophony of a crowd. They had spent a long time in the lovely sunset glow beside the lake, and the ordinary little thief had given them good night.
William stood in a place where the street widened. A few small boys had forgone the execution for the equal thrill of watching a newly arrived troupe of travelling conjurers set up their pitch. The leader of the troupe led a dancing bear round and round on its chain and called shrilly to the people to come and see the wonders of his show.
‘See the bear that dances like a girl! O come and see! See the cut rope that heals itself! O come and see!’
He looked straight at William as he passed and held out his bowl for alms. The bear sniffed at William’s feet and whined, but the man gave no sign that he had ever seen William before. William turned and hurried back to the room above the house of the harlots.
On the morning of the feast, a Friday six days later, William and Hussein were appointed as ceremonial assistants to Yasin. The preparations were an endless rite, hedged about with exact instructions which had come in the beginning from the mouth of the goddess herself. Generations of Deceivers had passed on the sacred words, and Yasin knew them all; that was why he was the priest of the band.
While Piroo and the Jemadar went round the town completing their purchases and gossiping with merchants and travellers, the other three worked hard. In the morning they walked into the fields and brought back covered baskets of earth and cow dung and pitchers of water; with these materials they plastered twenty square feet in the middle of the floor and let it dry. That work was a token; usually the Deceivers held their feasts on the ground level, where the whole earth floor would have to be so prepared.
At noon Yasin covered the windows with blankets, swept out the room, and stowed the baggage neatly in one far corner. Afterwards he mixed turmeric and lime together and with the powder drew lines on the dried plaster of the floor, enclosing a square of one-cubit sides. Then he damped some of the same powder with water, slipped out to the landing, and rapidly painted an eye on the outside of the door, to frighten away idle visitors. Then he put rice to boil in great pots. There was not enough water, and he said briefly, intent on his sacraments of preparation, ‘You two, go and fetch more water. Hurry!’
William and Hussein took the pitchers and hastened down the stairs. It was hot in the mid-afternoon sun, and they went quickly to the wells beside the lake and drew water. The women there giggled at them because the fetching and carrying of water was women’s work, but they did not laugh and the women fell silent. They stumbled back up the steep street, the sweat running down their foreheads into their eyes, and came to the stable yard.
William set down his pitcher and wiped his forehead with his hand. Flies buzzed about his ears, and dung beetles rolled away huge balls of treasure under his feet. He saw a flicker of white in the stable, and the hindquarters of a pony that had not been there before. He turned to pick up the pitcher. Here strangers could be no concern of his. This was a whore-house, and anyone had a right to come.
Hussein stared into the stable, his eyes wide and his mouth drooping open. The stranger in there hummed to himself, muttered, ‘Move over, you!’ in a pleasant, hoarse voice to his pony. The sun glared down on the dried filth in the yard. Under the stable roof it was black, but William looked hard, and the stranger’s face came a little clearer.
William walked forward. A dreadful unease ruled in his stomach and he did not know what it was. He passed into the stable beside the horse farthest from the stranger. The stranger heard him and stopped humming and cried softly, ‘Greetings, Ali, my brother.’ William answered over the horses’ backs, ‘Greetings to you, O brother Ali,’ and slipped under the head ropes, approaching the stranger. They stood close at last, beside the pony’s head in the half darkness, and the stranger said, ‘Whose band?’
‘Khuda Baksh’s.’ William’s voice was hoarser than the stranger’s, and quavering. The light contracted as Hussein came into the stable, and spread again. The stranger’s eyes were flecked brown; his shoulders wide; his forehead broad and low under the turban. He looked at William and said slowly, ‘Who -- who in the name of Kali are you?’
William’s unease concentrated in one swooping lurch of his bowels. It was himself that he saw in the expanding grey light. This face stared at him from the cracked mirror when he plucked his whiskers. This face reflected his own face, and reflected too the panic in his eyes. The stranger stepped back, stumbled over a saddlebag in the dirt, and began to fall. He fell, and the light snapped in his brown eyes, and William saw understanding there, and death. The single flash stabbed him, strangled, garroted, broke his joints, drove a stake through his belly, through all love, through Mary, through all sacrifice and success, through life. The stranger was himself, and failure, and Death. He was Death. The rumal came to his hand, the rupee in the knotted corner swinging easily. He stepped forward as Gopal the weaver began to fall. He kicked at Gopal’s crotch. Gopal turned away and began to say, ‘Ali. . .’ William’s rumal swung. The sound mewed like a hungry cat and choked off.
The weighted end of the rumal flew into William’s left hand with a precise and simple mastery. His wrists met, he jerked them in and up against the side of Gopal’s neck, under the ear.
The silver rupee bit into his hand through the cloth. Gopal’s head snapped sideways. His neck cracked.
William stood up. The rumal swung free in his right hand. He found his left hand streaming it through the palm to straighten out the creases, caressing the coarse woven texture. A wonderfully pure warmth flooded him. He had only seen it once, to watch closely. He had never practised it. Now, when everything depended on it, and at his first attempt, he had killed cleanly, single-handed.
Hussein crouched beside the body, an emanation of light from the corpse itself limning the misery in his face.
William exulted softly, ‘I did it! We’re safe!’
Hussein looked down at the body of Gopal the weaver, then up at William. William’s exultation drained away and left him trembling. He said, ‘I had to. Don’t you see? Everything depended on it -- our own lives -- that the people we didn’t save last night should not have died for nothing. That -- that. . .’
‘Yes, I saw. You had to. I told you.’
‘O Christ Jesus our Saviour, forgive me, forgive me! I had to!’
‘You had to. I told you. Come on, quick.’
‘Where?’
‘On top of the wall, up there. Push him under the eaves. And his saddlebags. We’ll bury him tonight, after the feast, here.’
They strained and heaved and it was done. William wiped his face and leaned against the wall. ‘What about the pony?’
‘Feed it. Leave it. We’re off tomorrow.’
William turned quickly and retched and retched but could not vomit. In his mouth he tasted sugar.
Hussein said curtly, ‘Come on.’
They went out, lifted the pitchers of water, and slowly climbed the stairs.
Yasin greeted them cheerfully. ‘Well done, stranglers! That was quick work. I’m nearly ready here.’ He took the water from them and set it on the fire to boil. William stood in the middle of the room, looking at his hands, until Hussein kicked his shin in passing and said, ‘Salt, Gopal, and cloves! Get them out.’ William started, and hurried to do what he was told.
Piroo and the Jemadar came in. They mentioned the strange pony in the stable and asked if anyone knew who it belonged to. William, dared not speak, but Hussein said, ‘Heaven knows! Nothing to do with us, anyway.’ The Jemadar shrugged.