The PuppetMaster (8 page)

Devi groaned. “We will do no such thing, C.G. You and I, with the help of our brilliant technical expert here, will determine the age from the language itself. And we will do the translation right here without a horde of water buffalo tramping through our cave. I will hire a guard.” Brilliant? I had become brilliant. Master was correct though. The writing was the best method of determining the age.

The Ayur Veda is India's great medical treatise. Immense and old, it is divided into very detailed sections. Normally it would be easy to establish the origin by style and references. Normally. The challenge we were faced was that our discovery was closer to the trunk than the twigs—very old, uncharted territory.

While the pundits discussed security measures, I thought about how I could re-photograph the parts I'd missed when my batteries died. It would mean another trip to the cave as soon as possible.

Mirabai came in to clear our trays, and we made plans to re-convene the following morning. Besides being the official photographer, I was now conferred the weighty title of Keeper of the Notes and Photographs. Taking my new role seriously, I made a few notes about getting it all onto the computer and the jump drive correctly, then set everything into the inner pockets of my backpack.

As I stood, Master patted my hand with a thank you and instructed me to arrive punctually the following morning. The rest of the afternoon was mine to enjoy.

In the kitchen I paused to thank Mirabai--my Jewish grandmother in a sari--for lunch. Never left her house with an empty stomach. I glanced about, hoping to offer a bashful thank-you to Sukshmi, but she was nowhere to be seen, so I strolled to the courtyard where the midday heat blasted me like a shore wave.

Ugly Bike lay where I’d left her--twisted like a bull in the center of a bullring. I shouldered my pack and hefted her with a little bounce to scatter the dust from her rims. As I patted off the seat and rolled her towards the gate, I heard a whispered hiss. “Bhim!” It came from the small shack near the back corner of the wall, a hut that usually had a few tools and bags of grain for the chickens that clucked about the yard. Today the door was open just enough to see the long braid and flashing eyes of Sukshmi. I rolled Ugly Bike toward the opening with a trembling that was surely being registered on a seismograph somewhere. As I went to step onto the kickstand, from inside the house, I heard Master call out. “Sukshmi!”

Stretching out her hand, she darted past me in a bright flash of blue silk. A trace of pink drifted to the ground at my feet. I bent and picked up the folded note and slipped quietly through the wooden door in the wall.

Twelve

The joie de vivre that was torn from me when Lilia died left a void in my heart. And make no mistake; that is where the pain pitches its tent when love dies, that wheel in center of the chest. In the months following her death I ached in that space more than I thought physically possible, slept in fitful spurts, and wept at the tiniest suggestion of her departure. I wrapped my arms about that space in futile attempts to hold in a withering spirit. I whispered her name in the dark. Then, little by little, I stopped whispering. Silence stole across my spirit. Friends and family tried every method of intercession and salvation, but I only slipped further. Eventually only one option remained. To leave. I opted for an itinerary to another country and another life. It was my only choice, to seek another life. I crossed that threshold like a wraith, voiceless and alone.

But there were people on my path that refused allow me to sink further. That is the way it is in a land like India; people sustain you on your path, often done in return for nothing.

There was Sahr, who coaxed me in her incredibly hardheaded manner into talking about Lilia. She got me to smile again.

And Devamukti, who understood that I needed full baptism in the language we both loved.

There were good and erudite people along that path, a physician who saw me through fever and dysentery and recognized my deeper illness. Perceptive vendors, cabbies, and philosophers I met in the city. Tutors and healers who encouraged me to speak, when I was willing. It took time, two years worth. Most sensed that my former existence wasn’t something I could discuss, so they kept it to the present.

In the final analysis, I came to see that it wasn’t a process that would have worked in the West. It required a lonely cleansing and the harsh elixir of a city like Varanasi.

The fool, the ones who pressed thoughtless questions upon me--where I came from, why had I left the life of money and surf and glitter--those I turned my backside to.

In some odd way, I believe I even owed Soma’s dead husband gratitude. Had the young groom not tumbled from the roof of the train and bled to death, she would not have become the banished widow she was, and I wouldn’t have come to understand that others also could feel the same depth of pain. But as I began my daily lessons with Devi, I saw her sweeping the kitchen with unchecked tears, and from Mirabai I learned her story.

The irony was that we never spoke directly of our losses, Soma and I. We embarked on timid conversations about the tidbits of life, drifted like castaways on a sea of mundane. I asked her about village life, she asked me about radios. She assumed incorrectly that Master Bhim knew everything, asked how the voices sang from the front. Telling her what little I knew, I saw a curiosity and aptitude that would sprout like flax given correct nutrients. She asked about the river, the snows from which it sprang and the ocean to which it flowed. She had only seen the one, but all three she imagined beautifully. I saved my newspapers, taught her letters, and she began to read. Step by step we came to a place where we could talk in roundabout ways of ill-fortune.

In addition to everything else, Lilia’s death had left me agonizingly shy with members of the opposite sex, certainly any close to my own age.

Now I stood outside Master’s back gate, in a gully that smelled of cow dung, urine and cooking oil, holding a note from the most beautiful woman in Varanasi. The paper trembled in my fingers. Somewhere down the alley, a woman’s voice rose, an eerie, pitching soprano, and melded into a melody of flute and tablas. I looked at the folded paper and hesitated. The heart needs so much time to heal. With a sigh, I unfolded the scrap. In neat cursive it demanded, “HAROON’S 8:PM SHARP!!

I swore. Sukshmi had evidently picked up one annoying practice from her father. I swore again. I really didn’t like Haroon’s, especially at eight in the evening.

Thirteen

My ears caught the low thumping of the bass woofers three hundred meters away. Reason number one for disliking the loudest—possibly the only--night club in Varanasi, I was usually left hearing impaired for an hour after I quit the place. Decent conversation, scholarly or otherwise, during music hours was unachievable. And, under no circumstances, did I enjoy techno music. Dancing to it was the furthest thing from my mind.

Haroon’s was trendy. That was another reason I avoided it. Fashionable young Indians swarmed in at dusk, drank far too much coffee or gin, smoked too much tobacco, and discussed politics ad nauseum. It was the gathering place for itinerant foreigners, and middle-class Varanasi wannabees--the aspiring young semi-wealthy who craved anything Western. You could make a fat stack of rupees selling Abercrombie blue jeans in Haroon’s. There was even steak on the menu—try getting that in rural India—with the preposterous description of ‘charbroiled, round-up cowboy style.’ In my opinion, the place had only two redeemable features. First, it was air-conditioned, and second, Haroon himself was an astute gentleman with a delightful sense of humor.

It also happened to be where I picked up my mail once a month, sparse as it was. My mother’s events-of-home letter, and a trust fund check, arrived the third Wednesday of each month. I would slip in during the early afternoon quiet hours, chat with the owner over a cold smoothie, gather my envelope, and slip discreetly out before locals and tourists arrived.

Maumed Haroon was as affable a nightclub owner as one could imagine. He memorized the names of each customer that entered his establishment, especially blond European or American girls, and called out to them in cheery fashion the instant they crossed his doorstep. For the young and trendy Varanasis who desired a modern identity, the hailing of their names was a delight that kept them coming back night after night. Haroon would spin jokes with the perfect mix of bawdiness and good timing, serve iced coffee and neon colored cocktails, while slapping large amounts of money into his two cash registers every night of the week but Tuesday.

“Bhim!!” Maumed called as I entered. I looked over to the indelible smile. It was seven fifty-five on a Monday evening and the place was already humming. The DJ, fortunately, was on a break, and I, already filled with Sahr’s succulent saag pilau, wanted only a mango shake. In the semi-light of the wall sconces, I watched as he waved me over, re-set a blender, and deposited two iced gins in front of a neatly dressed young man leaning jauntily against the rail that ran the length of the bar. Haroon was demonstrating his capacity for multi-tasking with a single objective, the accumulation of money.

“And how is my favorite Sanskrit scholar this evening? It has been too long since you have visited. And not your unusual hour. So, My Friend, are you ready to publish your Bhavabuti play and make us ten thousand crore rupees?” Haroon’s hand popped out at me from an embroidered silk sleeve. He wore light-gray slacks and a long-wasted salmon-colored kurta that announced both worldliness and homeland tradition--the secret to his style, displaying chic in two cultures.

I gave his hand a familiar press. “Not quite, Maumed. I’m still reworking the last scene, and pretty certain the hard-cover sales won’t lift it onto a best seller list when I’m done.”

He grinned. “But it has all the makings of a money-making story. Love, jealousy, death, and plenty of sex.” Without taking his eyes off me, he flashed four fingers, a fist, and a V to a helper standing in front of a row of blenders. The assistant, interpreting the signals, began mixing four rum daiquiris.

“That may be, Maumed, but I don’t think even the loosest poetic license will allow me to reinterpret the sex and violence our modern world seems to want these days.”

He chuckled. “So, we release it as a farcical screenplay with a caste of silly characters and find a Bollywood producer to make the whole thing. Still make enough money for our Club Med vacation.”

Haroon’s idea of heaven on earth was a month’s stay at any resort where bikini clad women actually shaved their legs. Somewhere in his office I knew he had a cache of brochures from Super Club Hedonism II, Sandals, and a dozen others. For some reason he’d decided that I was acquainted with them all and would be his spiritual guide in a quest to find the best one. I hadn’t the heart to tell him otherwise.

“Believe me, Maumed, if you find a producer for this, I will happily sign the contract.”

“And then we can go to Sandals?”

“Then we can go to Sandals.” While Maumed personally prepared my mango shake, I looked around at the complex, and it was just that, a complex of six connected rooms of various size and shape that Haroon had acquired as his wealth had grown and his neighbor’s had diminished. Eight large tables, a bar, and a disc jockey’s stage formed the center. Spinning out from the hub were four smaller spaces designed for privacy and intimate conversation, though most evenings patrons had to yell like soccer fans to be heard. The largest was the last space. The dance floor.

Nearly every table was filled with young, college-aged Indians. A few ferenghis were scattered about. Two travel-weary young women with massive backpacks propped against their chairs looked my way, but no one hailed me. That was good. As inviting as it was for the hipsters of Varanasi, it made me panicky--too many people and too many decibels. I was there on the pretext of a quasi-date with a beautiful woman. The whole thing petrified me. Like the two women with the blond hair staring at me, I was carrying some hefty baggage. Mine just didn’t show so much.

Haroon was offering his opinion on the most recent bombing and 'this Sutradharak fellow' when he looked over my shoulder to the door. His voice boomed, “Jatana!” I turned. And there was Sukshmi, or rather an exceedingly modified version. Dressed in a mid-length lavender crinoline skirt, purple silk blouse and ridiculously high-heeled shoes, her hair was draped in a part-up, part-down style. Heading the entire outfit was a pair of large, round, tinted sunglasses. I nearly dropped my mango shake onto Haroon's polished floor.

I hoped the light was dim enough to hide the disappointment. It often came to me when a beautiful Hindu woman embraced Western appearances. The mystique of India, delicate and old, dissipated with the shift. Too much was revealed, and like an exposed movie plot, I experienced a sense of disillusionment. Sukshmi, in modern attire, looked stunning, but . . . she was no longer the Sukshmi I peeked at shyly as she drifted furtively through the quarters of her father’s house. Evidently she had learned more at University than anyone realized. I just hoped no one had taught her to smoke.

“Bhim, I am so pleased you have come, and so punctual.” Damn if she didn’t look at a little pink watch on her wrist. Behind the glasses, her eyes sparkled with amusement at my expression. “You were perhaps expecting someone different?”

I hesitated, trying to regain a semblance of composure, and with a tiny stutter replied, “Wwell, I guess I was wondering what Jatana has done with Sukshmi.” I shuddered. That was the best I could come up with?