Killers Are My Meat

by Stephen Marlowe

  When I finished, Banerjee mopped the sweat off his face and said, “The police found you in the Indian lounge at the Conference Building. Ranjit Ambedkar, they were told, had subdued you. The gun that had killed the holy man was in your hand. Lady Mojindar was hysterical, but not hysterical enough so she couldn’t accuse you of trying to rape her and shooting the sadhu when he walked in on you. As I said, you had to be taken here to the Darjeeling Gate Station in an armored car.”

  Marianne said, “I’d just arrived to give my statement about last night.” She shuddered, and smiled a little. “They’re giving both my men a rough time.”

  “How’s Wally?”

  “Out of danger, thank God. He needs rest. Plenty of rest.”

  I turned to Banerjee. He stood near the cot, an anxious frown on his swart face. Manbir sat on the edge of the cot, a bent old man in white dhotis who looked as if he were asleep sitting up. “They’ve got us up the creek without a paddle,” I said. “If you manage to save my skin, but if there’s no way of proving I didn’t kill the sadhu, the extremists will probably win their way at the Conference.”

  Banerjee nodded glumly. “Tonight’s session has been canceled. Tomorrow morning’s session will be crucial. Crucial.”

  “On the other hand,” I said, “if they bust in here and hang me from the nearest pipal tree—”

  “How,” Marianne demanded, “can you even talk about it like that?”

  “—then the Western Observers will have to go home because it will be too dangerous for them to stay in Benares.”

  “We could not manage to ‘save your skin,’” Banerjee said. “The collector is upstairs now trying …”

  His voice trailed off. Upstairs, something thudded heavily. There was a roar of voices, and a second thud. More glass broke, several pair of feet pounded on a wood floor, and a high tenor voice shouted exultantly in Hindi above the roar of the crowd.

  Percy Machari, looking very British Colonial in jodhpurs and a sweat-stained white shirt, came pounding down the stairs.

  “Have you made up your mind, Collector?” Banerjee asked him.

  The collector ignored the question. “Ten minutes,” he mumbled. “Perhaps five. They’re having a go at the door with a battering ram.” His eyes, blue eyes they were, caught mine. “If I knew for certain you really did it, Mr. Drum, I daresay I’d strangle you with my own hands.” He looked away, shocked at his own lack of restraint.

  “If you keep Drum here,” Banerjee said, “they’ll kill him.”

  “Yes, they’ll kill him.” The collector showed his teeth in a smile, but his blue eyes were bleak and hopeless. “And if I permit his escape?”

  The battering ram thudded. Banerjee said: “They’d break in here and tear us apart with their bare hands.”

  Percy Machari groaned. Thud went the battering ram.

  Banerjee paced back and forth. He wore boots, and the leather creaked. “There’s another way,” he said at last. “We can all get out. They’re rioting all over Benares, Collector. We have four able-bodied men upstairs and there are the three of us down here. Waiting for the mob, with or without Drum, we’re worse than useless. But there are seven of us—to fight elsewhere if we’re needed.”

  “And Drum? And the girl?”

  Banerjee turned to me. “Collectors,” he said. “We’re still called by the old name, the name of the police under British rule. Tax collectors, Mr. Drum. Hardly popular—in India or any country.”

  I didn’t know what he was driving at. The battering ram thudded again and for the first time there was the sound of splintering wood. Four frightened men, swart and sweating and carrying lathis and .45’s which they hadn’t used probably because they feared the lynch mob might get the idea too, came running down the stone steps to cluster around the collector and jabber nervously in Hindi.

  “Since this is an old collector station,” Banerjee told me with a wry grin, as if he too had been fed an overdose of rauwulfia and felt somehow euphorically aloof from what was happening, “it has been provided with what all tax collecting agencies everywhere ought to have—an escape hatch.”

  Upstairs, wood splintered again. The strident tenor voice was loud, triumphant—and very close.

  Marianne’s hand groped for mine. She was trembling. The collector, with a great-white-father expression on his Anglo-Indian face, was listening to his worried subordinates. Every time the battering ram thudded and wood splintered, Manbir looked up sleepily, his eyes slits, his small bony fists clenched. I had the notion that if the time came Manbir, for all his apparent lethargy, would not sell his life cheaply.

  I stood up lighting another of Banerjee’s harsh cigarettes. Dizziness washed over me in waves, but this time I didn’t need Manbir to support me. I said, “We going to use your escape hatch?”

  Banerjee asked the same question of Percy Machari. The great-white-father expression fell off the collector’s face, to be replaced by a look of uncertainty and indecision. “If only,” the collector muttered, half to himself, “we had time to sit down and discuss this like proper gentlemen.”

  Over gin and tonics, no doubt, I thought. Banerjee gave me a look of disgust and swung around away from me. There was a holster on his hip with the big black handle of a Webley .45 automatic protruding. I lifted it out and pointed it in the right direction and told the collector: “Move.”

  The four policemen from upstairs were armed. Banerjee said hastily, “He wants us to lead him to safety. To safety!” They never dropped their guns. They never tried to use them.

  It was Banerjee who slid the cot to one side and moved the rug under it. If there was a ring in the floor I didn’t see it, but in another moment Banerjee had a square trapdoor gaping. One at a time we went down a wooden ladder. Even Percy Machari didn’t protest now: he’d wanted someone to make the decision for him.

  Banerjee, the last one down, pulled the trapdoor shut and left us in darkness. First, though, I had heard a final splintering of wood upstairs as if the door had finally yielded. Banerjee slid a bolt home and came down the ladder after us.

  We felt our way along a dry cool passage with a musty underground smell. Marianne held my hand, our bodies brushing now and then in the darkness. I remembered another time, on a strand of beach at night along the Ganges, when we had walked like that. Events to fill a lifetime had happened to both of us since then.

  Banerjee’s voice said in the darkness: “Somewhat less than a mile, Mr. Drum. It lets us out on the river. We police will return to the city, where we are needed. And you?”

  Marianne laughed nervously. “We’ll keep on walking until we reach New Delhi or Calcutta or somewhere safe.”

  I told Banerjee: “I’m a murderer. I’ll remain a murderer unless someone can find Aruna, the sadhu’s girl.”

  He said nothing. Marianne’s breath caught.

  “Will you take Miss Wilder with you?” I asked Banerjee.

  “The heck with that, Chester Drum!” she cried. “You left me behind once before, and look what happened.”

  I didn’t argue. It must have been the rauwulfia.

  “You’re going after Aruna?” Banerjee wanted to know.

  “Yeah. I’ve got to.”

  “You don’t have to. You can flee. There’s a boat on the river, always waiting.” But he knew what my answer would be.

  I surprised him by saying, “We’ll take the boat.”

  A breeze stirred ahead of us. The darkness was less intense. Then all at once we were on hard clay and the river lapped and reeds rustled in the night wind. The collector suggested that we ought to accompany the police, but he suggested it neither loudly nor insistently. A hand grasped mine. It was Banerjee’s. “Then you’re going after her?”

  I said I was.

  “Once again, Mr. Drum, I offer you my hand.”

  The collector and his men tramped away down the river bank. Banerjee and Manbir parted the reeds at the edge of the water and found the boat for us. It was a round oxhide vessel with a singl
e paddle. I helped Marianne in, climbed in after her, and took the paddle.

  “They will also realize the importance of finding the girl Aruna,” Banerjee said. “She holds the key to—everything.”

  “To everything,” I said.

  Banerjee pushed the boat out into the water. I had his gun and his good wishes and a paddle. I began to paddle.

  21.

  I KNEW ONLY of one place to start looking for Aruna, so that’s where we went. For a long time there was only the steady dip of the paddle, the receding sound of rioting in Benares, oddly like the hum of a swarm of bees with an occasional frenzied cry rising clear and distinct above it, and the rustle of wind in the dry riverbank reeds. Marianne, hunkered down in the round oxhide boat, was a darker shadow against the gleam of starlight on Ganges water. We didn’t speak at first. Then Marianne whispered: “What’s that?”

  A fire glowed on the bank a couple of hundred yards ahead of us. I paddled the oxhide boat out into deeper water, then lifted the paddle so we’d drift by. The hymn to Ram floated across the Ganges like the wail of a tormented soul.

  We passed two more campfires before I paddled the boat back toward shore. The little vessel had no draught at all; I beached it on a stretch of damp sand and helped Marianne out.

  “Maybe you ought to stay here,” I said.

  “I won’t argue about it. I’m going with you.”

  “Scared?”

  “Let me tell you. But it’d be worse staying, not knowing.”

  I felt the weight of the heavy Webley automatic in my jacket pocket. I took the paddle and carried it over my shoulder. We climbed up the sandy embankment and went through a field of wild oat grass. In a little while we reached the Panch Kosi. It was deserted. For twenty minutes we walked north, looking for the Panch Kosi Sadhu’s hill. Then I decided we had paddled too far upstream, so we turned around and walked back along the Pilgrim Road. Trays of arati, the sacred evening fire of the Hindus, burned like red eyes in the pilgrim shrines along the way. Once a covey of startled birds burst into flight twenty yards ahead of us. Marianne sobbed and clutched my hand. We kept walking.

  “There it is,” Marianne said at last.

  The hill loomed on our right, blocking off starlight. The huge pipal tree stood like a gnarled, many-armed giant frozen in an attitude of perpetual prayer, twisted body bent, limbs straining upward. We went up the hill.

  We didn’t see the campfire until we were almost upon it. The coals had burned low and the fire had been built in a depression in back of an outcropping of rock fifty feet beyond the pipal tree. Tainting the still night air was the acrid odor of burning dung. A heavy man with a robe which looked white in the starlight on one side and saffron in the glow from the dung fire on the other lay huddled near the fire.

  I went the last twenty feet alone and I went on hands and knees. He stirred once restlessly, moaning in his sleep. Then he sat up suddenly and stared intently across the fire. I shoved the muzzle of the Webley against his ear and said: “It’s a gun. Don’t move.”

  His shaved head, gleaming in the firelight, turned. His eyes reflected the firelight. He had a white crescent on his forehead.

  His mouth opened, but he didn’t speak. Marianne came up, carrying the paddle. I let him see the gun.

  I said, “We’re looking for the girl. Aruna.”

  “Gone. With the sadhu. You … Englishman. I knew you would bring nothing but trouble.”

  “The sadhu is dead.”

  “Fool! Don’t you think I know? Don’t you see that all his other disciples are gone? Gone?” His lids lowered. At first I thought he had fallen asleep sitting up, but then his lips moved and he said very softly, “The sadhu will return. It is his karma. Don’t the fools know? In another body, young, strong, healthy—the sadhu will return. I await a sign. I will have a sign. The fools! The blind …”

  He went on, droningly, burrowing into a trance. I slapped his face, hard. His head jerked back and his eyes opened wide.

  “The girl,” I repeated. “The sadhu’s girl, Aruna. We’ve got to find her. Do you understand that? Her life’s in danger. She saw them murder the sadhu. She knows who did it. Did she come here?”

  “… And if they kill her?” he said musingly, softly. “Worlds after worlds. Cycles of worlds. Can you doubt she will be born again, born better each incarnation, that soul among souls, until she achieves moksha, until the peace that surpasseth all understanding … under the laws of karma … can you doubt it?”

  “Get up,” I said.

  He got up, flinging a handful of sand. Marianne cried out. I hit him coming up and felt a knuckle on my left hand jump out and into place again. He swayed but did not go down. His eyes in the firelight were like red glass.

  “They’ll hurt her,” I said. “She’ll die violently.”

  “Aruna? You are mad. Aruna? Shanti Aruna. With great peace. Fool. English fool. You should be on the ghats or at the shrines praying to Siva with ashes on your head. Fool who will be reborn an ass or a pig among men. Leave me in peace, you with your talk of the violence of men, as if this world matters …”

  “The sadhu thought it mattered. The sadhu left his tree and went into Benares.”

  He sighed. “I tried to talk. I wanted to tell him. An ox stood heavy on my tongue and I could not speak. That the world is one, he said. It must be known, above everything, that the world is one under the great World Spirit.” He was trembling.

  “They were going to kill her. I saw. I was there. She ran screaming from them.”

  “I wanted to speak. I … Aruna? The mute one? The shanti child, the little one of peace? But she could not talk, she could not scream. How can this be?”

  “They shot him. Dying, he protected her with his own body. Don’t you see, he wanted her to get away. He wanted her to live.”

  For a long time the Siva man did not speak. The ashes of the dung fire hissed and settled. Far away across the river a wild dog howled.

  “If she were hiding, if she feared for her life …” he mused. And, with wonder in his voice: “If she is no longer mute …”

  “I heard her scream.”

  “… then it is because the sadhu wishes her to carry his message.”

  “You know where she’s hiding?”

  “I can guess.”

  “Then take us there.”

  “But it is a forbidden place.”

  “Where?”

  Abruptly he asked: “Who killed the sadhu?”

  He went to the fire and kicked sand on it with his bare feet. Darkness settled over us like a pall. He could have made a break for it then. He must have known that, and must have known I knew it too.

  “Why,” he said, “did they have to bring their worldliness to Benares?”

  “You could have asked the sadhu. The sadhu thought it was important.”

  “The sadhu is dead. Who killed him?”

  “An organization that wants to isolate Asia from the rest of the world, and maybe India from Asia. If they have a name, I don’t know it. The sadhu thought what they wanted was wrong.”

  “Who, Englishman? Who are they?”

  “They killed the sadhu. They made it look like I did it.”

  His shadow moved in the darkness. He said, very slowly, very clearly, “Did you?”

  “Would I be looking for Aruna?”

  “Yes. You say they’re looking for her.”

  I didn’t say anything. Neither did he. We’d come as far as we could, talking. Down on the Panch Kosi, the trays of sacred fire were like fireflies. Far to the south, almost at the limit of vision, the sky glowed. Benares, City of the Dead, where all Asia waited. In the darkness I gave the Webley .45 to the Siva man. I waited, then said:

  “All right. You have the gun.” I heard Marianne’s breath catch. “Now take us.”

  Something prodded my hand. It was the butt of the Webley. I took it.

  “I will show you the way,” the Siva man said, “if you name them.”

  “I know only
three of them. Sumitra Mojindar. And two men who work for the Indian Embassy in America: Ranjit Ambedkar and Rukmini.”

  His voice hissed like a snake preparing to strike. “The Malabar woman,” he said. “I know her. Yes, yes, I will lead you. The fools. The violent ones. Don’t they know that the only way is the way of peace, the Mahatma’s way, the satyagraha?” He snorted like an animal emerging from water. “As if I can talk.” I wondered if he was smiling. I wondered if he ever smiled. “Yes,” he said at last. “They would know where to look for her. Come. Hurry.”

  Behind the pipal tree of the Panch Kosi Sadhu the land dipped and went level through fields of oat grass and hill bamboo, then began to climb steeply through dense wild growths of thorny berry bushes. The Siva man, now that he was committed, moved like a swift silent wind and more than once had to wait impatiently while we caught up with him. I don’t know how high we climbed nor how far we went. It seemed to take a long time. There was no road, not even a cattle path.

  The clumps of berry bushes became sparse; jagged outcroppings of rock replaced them, and over these the Siva, man went as surefooted as a goat. Here in the high hill country a wind sprang up. The Siva man’s robe billowed in it like a sail.

  My breath rasped, my lungs burned, and the last half-hour or so I had to help Marianne climb the steeper rocky hills. Finally we reached a road. It was unpaved, hardly more than a cow track. Tirelessly the Siva man began to trot along it. I took Marianne’s hand. She gasped, and ran with me.

  The road followed the shoulder of a bluff. It was a terrace between lower and higher hills. It was a treadmill on which I ran with Marianne, and always had been running, and always would run. It was the path from death to death, through the follies of life, that the Indian mystics traverse.

  Marianne let go of my hand and collapsed to her knees. “Chet … go … I can’t.…”