The Oriental Casebook of Sherlock Holmes (20 page)

I watched him closely and saw the by now familiar pattern as he readied himself for his narration, the gleam in his eyes, the hands brought together at the tips in front of his face, and the slight pause as he ordered the events through which he had lived.

“For a time, I continued to live in Nepal as Pandit Kaul of Kashmir. My disguise had begun to wear thin, however, after I aided the Maharajah, albeit indirectly, in rounding up and forcibly removing from Katmandu the remaining criminal elements that had been allowed to nest in his country over the previous decade. I took great satisfaction in this. Like stray wild dogs, these criminals were collected and taken in chains to the Indian border town of Raxaul, where they were released upon taking a solemn oath never to enter Nepal again upon pain of death. A new edict was then promulgated by the Maharajah, under which the number of foreign visitors permitted to enter was further limited, and almost entirely to those who had official business with the Government.”

“Shortly after this, Mr. Richardson announced his departure with his daughter for England. Lucy had prevailed upon him to leave in order to regain his health, and she also hoped for a reconciliation between her parents, despite the gravity of their past difficulties. Once the Viceroy authorised the Resident’s leave, father and daughter left for Calcutta.”

With no business pressing, said Holmes, he prepared his own departure. His next destination was to be Benares, followed then perhaps by Calcutta. He was slow to leave the comfort of Gorashar’s hotel and the beauty of the Katmandu Valley, however. It was already late April, and he had no great desire to experience the torrid heat of the Indian plains. Gorashar therefore easily prevailed upon him to stay a few weeks longer, at least until the advent of the cooling monsoon rains, since Gorashar wished to show him some of the artistic treasures of the Valley that he had not yet seen himself. Gorashar had been some nineteen years in Tibet and so long away from his own country that he felt the pressing need to make an extended pilgrimage to its chief shrines.

Except for these visits to the countryside, Holmes’s own days were idle. He had only his edition of Petrarch with him, and the few libraries in Katmandu contained little of interest. He had exhausted Gorashar’s small shelf of books on Nepal. He continued to visit the pandits at the Residence, however, and it was they who suggested that on his tour with Gorashar he collect rubbings of the ancient Sanscrit inscriptions of the Valley. And so, Gorashar, and Holmes, still as Pandit Kaul, added long walks through the Valley to Balambu, Kisipidi, Dhapasi, and other ancient sites which had hitherto never come to historical notice.

“I had no idea that you have any knowledge of Sanscrit,” I interrupted. “How truly foolish I feel now when I think of the remark in my earliest chronicle that your knowledge of languages was nil.”

Holmes again took up his recalcitrant pipe and smiled as he placed it between his teeth. “You were quite right, Watson, when you made your assessment. At the time that we met, I did not know a word of Sanscrit, or any other foreign language for that matter. And as for Sanscrit, I no longer know it. Your use of the present tense, therefore, is inappropriate.”

“But surely, Holmes, you cannot have forgotten it all,” I retorted.

“It is hardly a matter of forgetting, Watson, for this implies a mental action uncontrolled by the will and reason. As you know, I am a brain. The rest of me is a mere appendix, and it is the brain that I must serve. And I must serve it well. It would be foolish, as I have often remarked in the past, to assume that the brain is a place of infinite space. A better image is of a small atelier, where the craftsman or artist keeps the tools necessary for the work at hand. The rest he must store in the recesses of the mind, ready for the instantaneous recall that necessity might demand. The dormant subjects thus are no longer known in the ordinary sense of the word, but reappear only when use is imminent. Sanscrit will have little if any use in the solving of crime in metropolitan London, and so it is stored safely with other Asiatic subjects in the remote instance that it need be resurrected. In the Orient, however, one would be foolish to attempt success in my line of endeavour without the language fresh for use, and so I cultivated it, until my travels took me to parts of the globe where it was totally unknown and therefore quite useless.”

I was about to comment, but Holmes rose to his feet and began pacing back and forth, his hands together behind his back, a slight smile on his lips as he recalled the tale that he continued to narrate to me.

One morning at dawn, Gorashar and he left for Changu Narayan, stopping first at Bhaktapur, an ancient town some nine miles from Katmandu which he had not previously visited. He found its preservation, in both its architectural and human aspects, most remarkable. It is a town, he observed, that preserves in precise detail a medieval way of life now lost in almost all parts of Europe. Gorashar arranged for them to spend the night there at the house of a close relative, a Taladhar merchant. The following morning, again at dawn, they began the walk from Bhaktapur to Changu.

The temple lies at the end of a long ridge that begins north of Bhaktapur. Holmes found it a pleasant walk, and they reached the temple at around eight. Gorashar spoke almost constantly as they walked, telling Holmes in detail what he knew of its history.

“Here we shall see the oldest inscription in Nepal, one that has not been read fully as yet,” he said. “It is perhaps fifteen hundred years old and records the mysterious death of one of our illustrious kings, a great and religious man by the name of Dharmadeva.”

Dharmadeva died quite suddenly, according to Gorashar, and no one knows how or why, but it is still believed by some that he was killed by his wife and son, Manadeva, who immediately succeeded him to the throne. His wife was said to have arranged the murder with the aid of the king’s brother. But the full truth was not known.

“As Gorashar spoke, Watson,” said Holmes, “I of course became most interested, since I now had before me a possible murder, a royal one, that had not been resolved for fifteen hundred years. Perhaps, I thought, I should solve it.”

“And add it to your sensational annals,” I said laughing. “I never cease to be amazed at how these things fall your way. You no doubt thought immediately of parallel murders, in Riga, or St. Louis . . .”

Holmes grinned at my last remark, but then he said almost somberly, “On the face of it, one can indeed feel a certain astonishment at how similar cases arise. But upon reflection, Watson, one sees that, whatever the time and the place, good and evil are linked in some inextricable way. They are perhaps drawn to each other by some third force, the nature of which is inevitable but barely discernible. One can only hope that in the battles that ensue, the forces of good are strong enough to prevail. Having chosen to do what I do, I have found it only natural that cases fall across my path, whether from antiquity or the present. All I must do is wait and the inevitable happens.”

It was, in any event, with added enthusiasm, he continued, that he arrived with Gorashar at Changu Narayan. While his friend performed his religious rituals with the priests, Holmes attended to the business at hand, a minute examination of what he found before him: a magnificent edifice, adorned with metal and wood carvings, and a courtyard filled with some of the finest sculpture to be seen anywhere.

At first the temple appeared as if filled with a jumble of deities thrown everywhere. Its surface had no unfilled space. All was covered in ornament and design. It was only after one observed it closely, therefore, noted Holmes, that one realised that all was in order and that the shrine itself was an illustration in wood, brick, and metal, of the Hindoo’s belief in the interconnectedness of all things, the harmony and illusion of the universe that he conceives and, to a large degree, shares with the Buddhist. The temple was, according to Holmes, one of the supreme achievements of Gorashar’s people, the Newars.

“No other people on earth, Watson, has produced such intricate beauty in as small a space as the Valley of Katmandu. One trenchant observer has described it best as a kind of coral reef, built up laboriously over the centuries by unrecorded artisans. As a human achievement, it ranks with the creations of Persia and Italy.”

“Good Lord, Holmes, and no one even knows of its existence!”

“Let us not say ‘no one.’ A few, including myself, have been fortunate enough to see and to observe it. But permit me to continue, Watson. I returned to Katmandu with Gorashar that afternoon, but not without securing from the temple priests permission to return and read the pillar inscription. In this, Gorashar’s help was invaluable, particularly his pledge to supply gold leaf for the roof of the temple. With this promise, the suspicious priests became my allies and promised every courtesy and help. It took me seven long trips to the temple to record what you have in front of you in that sketch.”

The pillar had drawn Holmes’s immediate attention. It was some twenty feet high, and the writing on it was in most places as clear as the day it was carved, a most singular case of preservation from the ancient world. At the top of the pillar sat a metal crown, a large disc of burnished gold, about two feet in diameter. It had a penumbra of flames, and was no doubt a representation of the sun itself. At the bottom, Holmes noted to his frustration that the writing on the pillar extended below the ground in which it was placed. Unless it were dug up, that part of the inscription would remain unknown. Holmes spoke to the head priest about excavating the hidden portions. The priest became incensed, refused to discuss the matter, and said that Holmes would be limited, as all observers, to what was above ground. Holmes made no more of the matter.

The reading of the inscription fully occupied the next several weeks. So engrossed did Holmes become that he decided to stay for an extended time in a nearby village, in the mud and thatch hut of a Brahman who lived across the river to the west. The Brahman provided his meals and a clean bed. This saved the long daily trip to Katmandu and allowed him to view the temple and its pillar from morning to night. It was during this long stay that he finished the recording not only of the inscription but of the chief features of the temple and the artistic remains around it.

It was then too that he began to take note of what until then had been entirely hidden from him: the connections between the temple and the natural world, connections that led him to renewed wonder at the achievement of the Newars. One day, as he sat copying the last few lines of the pillar inscription, he looked up and observed that the sun, now beginning its descent in the west, had been caught in reflection by the golden disc atop the pillar. The beam thus created was redirected into the temple courtyard. His eye followed it quickly to a large statue of Vishnu, where it came to rest brightly on a jewel placed in the god’s forehead. From there the light moved once again, coming to rest this time on the right hand of a small statue of Ganesh, the Elephant God. The light rested in this way for only a few seconds and then disappeared. As soon as it faded, a young boy, half naked and clothed only in rags, appeared and effortlessly scaled the pillar. Upon reaching the top, he gave the disc a slight push, slid down, and disappeared silently.

“This must be the beam,” I said, pointing to Holmes’s rendition of it in his drawing.

“Yes, you may imagine it hitting the third eye of Vishnu and the hand of the Elephant God just outside the drawing. But, as in many instances, Watson, here again you have seen but not observed.”

Holmes took the drawing from my hand and said, “Look again, my good doctor.”

I took the drawing back and stared at it. This time I noticed that a portion of it had been folded over and secured to its back. So carefully had this been done that one hardly saw that the picture could be extended from behind.

“Let me undo it, Watson. The hidden portion is secured in a particular Nepalese way, and your tugging at it may harm it.”

Holmes held the entire picture up to me, and it was now even more wondrous than I had thought previously. The light from the sun, visible only as a brightness in the sky, flowed in reflection directly from the golden disc to its two recipients, Vishnu and Ganesh, all rendered with the greatest beauty in the extended picture.

“Extraordinary, Holmes. What is the meaning of this? And what of the boy?”

“More of him later, Watson. Suffice it to say that he appeared periodically during my remaining visits, scaled the pillar, touched the disc, then slid down and left.”

Holmes said that he studied the beam of sunlight very closely, noticing how it struck the same places on the statues and then faded away almost immediately. In this, there was obviously some as yet hidden significance. He gave it little thought at the moment, for he was preoccupied with recording the inscription itself.

On completing his record, he found that Gorashar’s account of the death of King Dharmadeva was substantially correct, if incomplete. The inscription stated that the unfortunate king had gone to his pleasure garden, where he was found dead by his wife, Rajyavati. She sent news to her son, Manadeva, who was at once declared king. She herself planned to die on the funeral pyre of her husband, but her son, pleading with her, prevailed upon her to retire into widowhood. And so, like the celebrated Arundhati of Indian legend, she remained alive but in the seclusion of chastity.

Written much after the events and at the order of Manadeva himself, however, the pillar recorded none of the persistent doubts about the mysterious way in which his father had died. The rest of the inscription merely recorded King Manadeva’s own exploits and said nothing more about his father, Dharmadeva.

“An odd business, Holmes,” said I, “rather at odds with Hindoo custom, I would think. A king who dies suddenly and unexpectedly, a wife who does not follow the usual rites of suttee, and a son who suddenly becomes king and explains nothing.”

“Yes, Watson, a story so lacking in detail that any interpretation could be given to it. But I must confess that I had begun to tire of the work. I suddenly felt the need to leave Nepal and to move on. Gorashar had completed his pilgrimages, and I had seen more than enough of temples and sculpture. The monsoon had begun, and the rains were unusually heavy so that the most recent trips to Changu had become very difficult. And with the sun blocked by the clouds, I could not further my investigations of the mysterious reflections of its rays.”