A Thorn for Miss R.: Book I: The Night Watchman

by Sakiv Koch

  A husky voice mingled with and rose above the clink of the cup.

  Her hair is black,

  her eyes twinkle and shine,

  her lips are ripe,

  and her cheeks are in bloom.

  But I sing of her in vain,

  ah! she is not mine,

  for her is all the joy,

  for me is all the gloom...

  The crude song dissolved into a sigh, a sigh as deep as Akilina’s had been a short while ago. She saw a faint glow of light move behind a copse of trees.

  "Help me!" she called out. The light started to stray around in all directions.

  "Where are you?" the unseen person asked. "Hello!"

  Akilina remained silent, now sorry that she had attracted the stranger’s attention to herself. The singer continued to call out to her, but he was getting farther away from her. Akilina’s mouth had remained open after calling out for help and she hadn’t moved a muscle to close it. A berry dropped from a branch overhead and fell directly into her throat, making her gasp and cough violently.

  "There you are!" the voice cried, coming nearer at a run. A form carrying a lantern loomed over her. The figure set its lantern down and kneeled beside her.

  "Thank goodness I found you! Do you have something stuck in your throat? There, there, easy. Sit up and spit it out."

  The man put an arm behind Akilina’s shoulders and raised her to a sitting position.

  "I’ve some water. Drink it slowly, though."

  Akilina took a sip and spurted out all of the water. Her insides were strung so tight with her explosive coughing she felt sure they’d snap in another instant.

  "Easy, easy," the man said again, rubbing her upper back gently. "I am going to lift you off the ground and place you against a tree so that I can chafe your hands and feet. I hope you’ve not got severe frostbite."

  "Lea-ve m-me—!” Akilina snapped, coughs splitting her single command into several parts. The man was in the act of gathering her in his arms. He stopped and peered into her face, appearing to freeze with puzzlement.

  Several moments passed, during which the force of Akilina’s coughing abated enough to allow her to produce a more or less continuous stream of words.

  "Don’t help me," she said harshly. “Just leave me here.”

  "How can I...leave you here?...you’ll die...I don’t understand," murmured the man, speaking hesitantly. "Didn’t you call out for help yourself?"

  "I did," Akilina said. "I want you to help me—help me—," she faltered, "to scratch my ankle. That itch is so intense, so-so demanding. Just scratch my ankle and let me—let me die."

  The man looked at her somberly for a moment before laughing out loud.

  "If I were to shake you, old mom," he said, "I am sure I’d hear something rattle in your head. Your brains are unhinged and rolling about, and that’s a truth as plain as the paint on my face."

  Akilina narrowed her eyes and saw that the man’s face was indeed covered over with grease paint and powder. He wore an enormously small hat—tied under his chin with wide ribbons—upon his enormously large head. She next noticed the huge, multicolored, lapels of his coat and the patchwork inside that went for a shirt.

  "You’re a clown," she mumbled.

  "Illya the Bumbler, at your service," said the man falteringly, bowing his head in courtesy. Illya then stood with a grunt, elevating the frail old woman in the air with him.

  "Put me down, Fool!" Akilina said with a mix of astonishment and irritation.

  "Why?" asked Illya, blinking rapidly. “Are you concerned with the Fool’s being tired of carrying you, or is it because the Fool stinks?"

  He then began to pirouette and sing:

  He fumbles, he falters, and he blinks,

  O, how can you stand a clown who stinks?

  Akilina squealed with fright and smiled with delight at the same time. She relaxed and placed her head against Illya’s shoulder. A familiar smell caused her nostrils to flare.

  "A baby wet your shirt," she stated matter-of-factly.

  "Ha, ha! She did! She always does!" returned Illya, huffing and puffing dramatically, although he was not out of breath. "I will pick her up along with you and juggle the two of you together – you’d go down when she comes up. Round and round would the old and the young go merrily."

  Akilina suddenly jerked forward toward her ankle. "But your itch!" exclaimed the clown and finally placed her back down on the ground. Akilina scratched her ankle feverishly for a long moment. When she straightened, she saw that although a wide grin was painted over the clown’s mouth, his eyes had left streaks of tears in the same paint, wounding the artificial smile in several places.

  "What are you doing in this wilderness?" Illya asked her.

  "I was traveling by water in my boat. Came ashore for a little business this evening. Lost the boat at some point when I wasn’t looking at it," Akilina answered. “I would have died by now, had you not come along. What are you doing here, by the way?”

  "I am with a touring circus," Illya said, speaking in a serious voice, without bantering or stammering. "Our caravan is camping a few versts from here. I wandered here to gather some berries…and to be alone for a little while. Please come with me to our camp. You can rest there until we leave for Myshkin in a couple of days."

  Akilina sensed the clown’s raw grief. She felt a strange kinship with the strange man. A pocket of warmth and strength came alive in her cold and dark being. It drove away her desire to die and helped her reembrace the will to live.

  They walked through the jungle in silence until they came to a large clearing near the river. Akilina saw several tents ranged along the shore. Three huge bonfires danced in the middle of the camp. A number of people stood or sat around the fires. Some talked amongst themselves, some sang, some gazed silently into the flames, and some cooked food or boiled water in large pots and pans.

  Behind the people, on the edge of the firelight, was a queue of huge wagons, sleds, and carts. Knots of horses and ponies stood a few yards away from the wagons, their heads lowered into large tubs of fodder. Their ears twitched suddenly. Some younger horses and ponies looked up in alarm and whinnied in fear. Akilina, too, felt as though a transient paralysis had gripped her body, froze it for a moment, and left it weaker, trembling. She leaned closer to Illya.

  "It’s Ramayev, the Royal Bengal tiger, roaring in his cage," Illya said, pointing toward a spot in the shadows where many large cages lay. "Fire makes him nervous. Besides, he must be hungry."

  Akilina stood mesmerized at the edge of the clearing. She tried to absorb all the merry sounds and all the colorful sights on offer. She went toward the cages and saw the animals: lions, bears, tigers, leopards, chimpanzees, monkeys, and giraffes. She looked away, toward the bonfires, and saw a team of dogs near a group of men. And then she heard a curious, thrilling sound from a new direction.

  "Elephants," she whispered in awe, seeing a number of the majestic beings silhouetted among trees, swaying their trunks as they picked up bales of grass and put them into their mouths.

  She wanted to go near the elephants, but Illya stopped her.

  "I have to get back to my tent," he said. "The girl I requested to look after my baby has to go elsewhere now. Please come, let me give you some food and show you where you can sleep."

  Akilina entered Illya’s tent with him. A lone candle filled the small space with cheerful yellow light. A ruddy-cheeked young girl stood holding an infant awkwardly in her arms. Akilina stepped toward the young woman. As she took the baby in her arms, the old woman’s heart lurched suddenly. Her spine tingled and her mouth went dry.

  "Where—, where is her mother?" she asked Illya. Her voice broke. She pressed the tiny girl to her breast more firmly than she intended to. The baby began to cry.

  "Careful!" cried Illya, "Careful there, old mom. Don’t you see how little, how delicate, how precious she is?"

  "Where is her mother?" Akilina demanded again.

  "Her m
other is dead," Illya said sorrowfully. "I found the baby lying beside a dead woman in the boatman’s hut by the Volga in Tutayev. It was a stormy night and we were camping in the fields behind..." he trailed off. Akilina wasn’t listening to him.

  She was kneeling on the floor, crying as loudly as the baby she was rocking back and forth.

  "Oh, oh," Akilina moaned, kissing the baby’s face profusely. “There’s still joy left on earth. There’s still hope in the world. Yes, there is hope. She is hope. She is Nadya. My Nadya."

  Chapter 11: Indestructible

  Before it spluttered and died, the last ray of the candleflame glinted off the hilt of the knife stuck in Sohan Singh’s back. He lay half-draped over a table. For the first time that night—that unending, nightmare-engendering, terrible night—I screamed. I screamed with rage, agony, and terror.

  I screamed with such force that my eyes bulged and my throat convulsed. I lifted my lathi over my head and ran to the window where Sohan Singh had stood a moment ago, the window where he had stood alive and well just now. I began pounding the windowsill blindly in my madness, hammering it with such force that it jarred my arms and stabbed my shoulders with jolts of pain. But I continued to scream and to shower blows upon the window.

  I wanted to get to the killer outside and, at the same time, keep him from coming in. My savagery, committed on the senseless and innocent window, was my shield. It was my desperate and ineffective barrier against whoever waited outside with another dagger in his hand.

  A still-functioning lantern hanging somewhere outside the drawing-room sent in a backwash of weak but steady light. I couldn’t think at that time that I made an easy mark as I stood outlined in the window. I doubt I could have acted any differently even if I could see such a possibility.

  I neither stopped my frenzy nor ducked below the window when I saw a flash in the darkness outside, felt something whir by my ear, and heard the earsplitting report of a gunshot along with the sound of shattering glass in the hall. Then, in rapid succession, came the clicks of an empty gun and once more, just the thud of my club on the concrete of the wall.

  Everything else seemed to have come to a standstill, everything else except for my tiring and paining arms, except for my club which was splintering at the end and loosening in my grip. I carried on crazily until I could lift the lathi no more, until my voice faltered and failed. My legs began to fold beneath me. I sank to the floor sobbing and moaning. I didn’t dare to turn around and look at Sohan Singh, but it felt like desertion to have turned my back upon him.

  I wriggled on the floor like a worm, having no strength left in my body to rise even to my hands and knees. Directly ahead, shrouded by her hair that melded with the darkness, lay the corpse of the Rani. My fingers crept into the marsh of drying blood that surrounded her. A shudder ran through my body. I scrambled onto my feet again.

  There was nothing for me to do but to look on at Sohan Singh’s half-recumbent body. A stream of blood still oozed out from around the blade thrust in his back. There was nothing for me to do but to silently live that horror and to wait for whatever way I would join the numbers of the dead. Numbness, weariness, and a certainty of my own death in a minute or two ate up the last reserves of my strength. My hold upon my club broke. It fell onto the floor with a twang that vibrated against the walls and felt loud enough to rouse the dead.

  It was then that I saw the door open soundlessly. A shadow crept in. It halted for a moment at the entrance and then came forward swiftly. It stopped again, on the other side of the table on which Sohan Singh lay. It was clad in black from head to foot, with a mask covering half its face. Its lips twisted in a smirk.

  "Your turn," the man said to me in English. His voice was icy cold. He stepped around Sohan Singh’s table. Expending more effort than it had ever taken me to leap over hurdles and walls, I lifted a foot and took a step back, and then another. I moved backward as the man bore down on me. Something gleamed in his hand. My fingers, which had held the watchman’s club for so long, curled in upon empty air.

  I crept back until my shoulders touched a wall. The man also stopped. His bestial smile still contorted his mouth. He advanced his left arm – the knife was in his right hand – and grasped my collar.

  "Will you tell me the whereabouts of Sanjay?" he asked before twisting my shirt so powerfully that my collar bit into my throat and throttled me. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t breathe.

  "Looks like you’ll tell me nothing," he surmised and placed the point of his knife against my heart. "I can allow you to live, though," he added, "if you scream and dance and beat up the poor windowsill senseless as you were doing a minute ago. Mad little rascal! Ha! ha! ha!"

  I was dimly conscious of the refined way in which the man spoke, employing a mix of Hindi and English to convey his questions, offers, and judgments. I had heard some ‘Oxford/Cambridge-educated’ gentlemen speak in this manner at the Gymkhana club where my parents performed sometimes.

  I could neither move nor speak. I stood so still, my mouth was shut so inexorably I couldn’t have told him my name to save my life even if he had asked kindly.

  "Very well," the sophisticated masked man said. "There are other ways of watching macabre dances and drawing out shrill screams. In any case, I am all for the genuine articles when I can get them." He lifted the knife a short way off my chest. My eyes shut tight and my head swung sideways reflexively in preparation for the un-prepare-able.

  I lived-died for the space of a breath in that never-wracking anticipation of its being my last breath. But the serrated steel hovering over my ribcage hadn’t plunged into my heart yet. I heard a gurgling sound. My eyes opened to slits.

  The blade was stopped—straining forward—an inch from my chest. The hand holding the knife was gripped in another, much bigger hand. The killer’s throat had a huge arm encircled around it, choking him. And behind his masked face was the face of Sohan Singh, itself wearing a mask of agony.

  I watched the two men and their struggle in utter bewilderment, not thinking to get out of my potentially-fatal position until it was too late. Or, just a little less than too late, I guess, depending upon one’s perspective.

  "Get—," Sohan Singh gasped through gritted teeth. I began to move sideways just as the masked man’s hand broke free of Sohan Singh's hold. The knife jerked forward. Its blade slashed the side of my left arm, slicing cloth and skin. I screamed. Sohan Singh exerted his remaining strength for the last time. The two men staggered back together and then crashed against the table behind them.

  I felt nothing for a split second. A searing pain followed. Someone invisible was passing a white-hot flame back and forth over my arm. And then a powerful anesthetic, produced by raw fury, suppressed my agony. I was madder than I had been during the windowsill episode. I sprang toward the club, picked it up, and rushed at the masked man.

  He writhed like a living fish tossed onto a heated rock, exerting his utmost to free himself from Sohan Singh’s death clutch. Sohan Singh’s lifeless, bulging eyes were turned toward the ceiling. His head was tilted back and his mouth hung open. One of his arms was still wound around the killer’s neck. His left hand crushed the killer’s left palm in an inexorable grip. However, the masked man’s right arm was free. His knife was still clasped in his right hand.

  “Your turn,” I informed the killer, throwing his own phrase back at him, and raised my club in the air. He started squeaking like a rat and whining like a dog.

  "Please, please, don’t," he pleaded.

  A hesitation arose and diluted my determination to kill him outrightly. The images of the men who had already died at my hand recently materialized before my eyes. My conscience was tender, but my rage was ungovernable. I stepped around to the man’s right side, raised the lathi in the air, closed my eyes, and hit his knife-arm with all my strength.

  Bones ground together and snapped. The resultant crackling sound nauseated me. The man howled in pain. The knife fell from his hand. I pulled the lathi back, sc
rewed my eyes tighter, and swung again. More bones broke. The man’s shriek grew in volume. The bile in my stomach rose higher and stung my throat.

  Something that had been pure and untouched in me at that day’s sunset had turned malignant, ugly. I opened my eyes and looked full at the terror-stricken, pain-maddened man. I looked at his twisted, shattered arm, hanging half-limp, half-convulsing by his side.

  My eyes stayed open as I raised my club overhead once again. I didn’t hit out blindly this time. I took deliberate aim at the man’s wrist. The lathi fell from my hand after this last, lustiest blow. I picked up the club and ran out doubled over, vomiting and crying as I went, leaving the masked man entrapped in Sohan Singh’s unyielding death-snare.

  The wound in my arm pulsed with redoubled agony. As though the pain had a life of its own, it had awakened infuriated from its short, disturbed sleep. My lathi was slippery with my blood. Surpassing the fire in my arm was the bottomless dread of finding my father and mother with knives stuck in their backs.

  I ran out of the house to the veranda where Sohan Singh had related his story to me. The pitch-black of the night had deepened since we had entered the bungalow’s death-field (drawing-room) such a short while ago. I stumbled on the veranda’s steps and fell beside the huge pots of plants standing silent and invisible there. A small pebble lay beneath my fingers. Touching it made me cringe. I moved my hand a little and touched another little stone, identical to the first one in size, shape, and feel.

  These were, I realized with sorrow and loathing, Sohan Singh’s teeth, which had been knocked out with his fall on these very steps earlier in the evening. I put the teeth in my pocket reverentially and sat up.

  I felt so weak with shock and blood-loss that even holding my head straight took considerable effort. A weak shaft of light spilled out from one of the bungalow’s windows like a little white stream emptying into an infinite black sea. I climbed to my feet with difficulty, using my lathi as a staff, and walked back toward the house. I had two compulsions to go in there despite a great antipathy towards entering that pit of death again.