What Maya Saw

by Shabnam Minwalla

  Veda took a deep breath. ‘Maya, listen carefully for a moment. I already had 10 books on my library card. So I made a temporary card in your name and checked out the diary. I forgot to tell you last evening.’

  Maya’s knees turned to water.

  ‘You mean …’ she gulped.

  ‘Well, I don’t know for sure,’ Veda said, ‘but if the Shadows checked the library register, they may think that you have the diary. Just thought you should be aware.’

  Maya didn’t reply. A sentence echoed ominously in her head. ‘Bruises turn purple.’

  CHAPTER 14

  Tyrone Saldanha had been the chief librarian of St Paul’s College for 32 years. He was more powerful and popular than almost anybody else on campus. He had a loud, booming voice and a bagful of politically incorrect jokes.

  He also had an encyclopedic knowledge about his beloved library and a Feviquik memory.

  Tyrone—he insisted that all the students called him Tyrone—lived in Dadar near Portuguese Church. He spent every summer in Goa. Only the worst kind of news could have dragged him away from the sea breeze and pork vindaloo. ‘He’s flown back just for two days because of Wagle,’ Veda told Maya on Sunday morning. ‘He’s not at all keen to meet us.’

  ‘It’s very awkward,’ Maya agreed. ‘Especially as we can’t even tell him about the silver box and Shadows and stuff. He’ll think we are odd and heartless to be chasing him about an assignment at a time like this.’

  The two girls were standing outside Bombay Hospital, waiting for Tyrone to emerge. He’d agreed to meet Veda for precisely three minutes and the girls watched the hospital doors carefully. The automatic doors whooshed open every few seconds, releasing gusts of antiseptic air and worried people.

  Maya was taut with fear. She wondered what had possessed Veda to dress in daffodil yellow, a colour that almost punched passers by on the nose. There was no question of merging into the somber background.

  Maya kept glancing over her shoulder, but nobody seemed the least bit interested in them. ‘Couldn’t Aadil come?’ she asked. She didn’t love Aadil. But three was safer than two.

  ‘I haven’t been able to speak to him at all,’ Veda said. ‘His phone keeps ringing. Maybe the battery’s run out. Or maybe he’s forgotten it in his bag. That’s typical Aadil. I hope Tyrone hasn’t given us the slip.’

  She slumped, then suddenly sprang to attention and nudged Maya. ‘There,’ she foghorned. ‘In the blue shirt.’

  Maya looked around and spotted a middle-aged man with bootpolish-black hair, a round face and round tummy. He was talking to a young woman with red eyes and a crumpled salwar- kameez, who dabbed her eyes and then headed back into the hospital.

  ‘Tyrone, Tyrone,’ Veda trotted up to the librarian. ‘How is Wagle?’

  ‘Difficult to say,’ Tyrone replied. ‘Those bloody doctors are up to their usual monkey tricks. Wait and watch, they keep saying. What are we paying them money for if all they are doing is sitting on their grandmothers’ sofas and waiting and watching? Chhaaa. Poor Wagle.’

  ‘But what do you want Veda? What can be so important that you leave your loving family on a Sunday morning?’

  For once, Veda looked discomfited. ‘This is my friend Maya,’ she said. ‘We just have one question, Tyrone. For our research for the Summer School. You remember Father Lorenzo’s memoirs that you showed me some months ago?’

  Tyrone remained still. But something in his face shifted and he was suddenly attentive. ‘LoRENZo,’ he said almost under his breath. ‘Could be.’

  Veda ploughed on. ‘We had one question. Where was the diary stored before it was shifted to the library? What I mean is, where was it found? In Father Lorenzo’s room? In his office? Or in the chapel?’

  ‘That diary is a record of how he designed the college and the chapel. Why he chose certain stones, certain Biblical scenes, all of that. Lots of wisdom about trefoils and quatrefoils and rose windows if you get my drift,’ Tyrone said dismissively. ‘For many, many years the diary lay in the chapel. Nobody knew it existed. Then about five years ago, Father Furtado found it and brought it to me.’

  ‘Where in the chapel did he find it?’ Veda asked.

  Tyrone gave her a searching look. ‘Have you seen the carved, wooden screen behind the altar?’ he asked. ‘Father Furtado was polishing the screen one morning when he realised that one of the panels hid a small drawer. In the drawer was this book. Anyway, time up. I have to go meet the bloody police. Another bunch of useless buggers sitting around and scratching their backsides. One priest who can hardly walk goes missing. One assistant librarian is brutally attacked. And you know what these policemen are saying?’

  ‘No,’ Veda and Maya said in perfect unison.

  ‘They’re asking about drugs and morals on campus,’ Tyrone said. ‘They’re saying that they have seen girls smoking on campus and wearing sleeveless. Veda, so tomorrow you decide to wear sleeveless you will also decide to kidnap an old priest? Tell me? This makes any sense?’

  Dripping indignation and sweat, Tyrone plodded towards a blue car, parked at an alarming angle. He sat in the driver’s seat and then stuck his head out of the window. ‘Wagle had a torn scrap of paper crumpled in his hand when they found him. It had the word RENZ written with a blunt pencil. I don’t like it at all that you are now meddling with Father LoRENZo’s diary. But I know enough about you youngsters to know that you will do exactly the opposite of what I suggest. So I am saving my breath.’

  Maya and Veda stood on the pavement till the blue car drove away.

  ‘Okay,’ Veda said finally. ‘Our question was answered. Father Lorenzo’s diary was in the chapel, so it must be part of the clues that he has left. The only problem is that there are no obvious leads in it so far.’

  ‘How much have you read?’

  ‘Almost half. You try reading it any faster. The handwriting is small, slanted and faded. I have to use a magnifying glass half the time. In my opinion we should go to the chapel and take a proper look around. College is just a 10-minute walk away. Let’s go now.’

  ‘No, no,’ Maya whimpered, and her eyes filled with sudden tears. ‘I can’t bear to go there. I’m afraid. I don’t want to see where he fell. I just can’t.’

  She stood stock still on the pavement, like a mutinous two-year-old.

  Veda responded with a tantrum of her own. ‘You think I want to go? Well I don’t. But we don’t have too many options, do we? Either we act. Or we sit back and let them come for us and for the diary. The Shadows could be all around us even now. Come on Maya. Don’t you want this to end?’

  Maya looked stubborn, but Veda grabbed her elbow and marched her through leafy lanes towards Metro Cinema. Maya remembered the black-and-white photographs that Professor Kekobad had shown them. Once, this area had been full of lowslung military barracks. It was a long time ago, but Owais and Amara and that Girl with the Green Eyes might actually have been around then. They might have heard the soldiers blowing horns and marching – or doing whatever else soldiers did.

  It was an unnerving thought.

  Maya and Veda crossed the road in a combative silence. Minutes later, they were at St Paul’s. Maya had imagined that the place would be crawling with policemen. But the quadrangle was deserted. A brownish splatter was all that remained of Friday’s tragedy.

  Maya turned her head away and raced towards the chapel. She pushed open the heavy wooden door and entered the cool, serene space. Veda entered seconds later and walked to a spot in front of the church, about 10 feet away from the altar.

  ‘Father Lorenzo was standing here when he said that the answers were in front of him,’ she said. ‘What was he referring to?

  ‘What do you see?’ asked Maya.

  ‘A chapel,’ shrugged Veda. ‘Do you see anything else?’

  Maya stood next to Veda and looked straight ahead. She gazed through the dimness. A few shafts of light fell through incandescent stained-glass windows. Enough to reveal objects while cloaking their de
tails.

  ‘The altar.’

  ‘A screen with carvings and a secret drawer that once held a diary.’

  ‘Five stained-glass windows with scenes from the Bible and Latin phrases.

  ‘Two wrought-iron lamps.’

  ‘The stone wall. The yellow stone floor. A strip of decorative mosaic in the wall.’

  ‘A piano.’

  ‘Of course, the silver casket in a niche in the wall.’

  ‘A door in the wall, that connects the chapel with Professor Kekobad’s office.’

  ‘What I mean is, do you see any clues?’ Veda asked impatiently. ‘I can see all that as well, you know.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Maya exploded. She was sick of being Mild Maya and being heckled and bullied. ‘Almost anything could be a clue here. I have no idea what we’re looking for. How on earth am I supposed to know?’

  ‘Do you think you can pull yourself together?’ Veda sniffed. ‘We need a plan, not hysterics.’

  Maya bristled, but Veda was right. ‘Tell you what. I’ll take pictures and look at them carefully when I get home. You read the diary. But please, let’s leave quickly. There’s something creepy about being here alone.’

  ‘Hardly alone,’ Veda objected. ‘The priests are in their quarters. The canteen boys must be around. And the hostelites.’

  ‘Fine, have it your way,’ Maya muttered, pulling out her phone. ‘The college is heaving with people. But I’m taking these pictures and leaving. You do what you want.’

  Fuelled by anger and nerves, Maya worked fast. In 10 minutes, she took about 30 pictures. Then she shoved her phone into her bag and started walking out of the chapel. Veda followed her. ‘We’ll exchange notes in the evening,’ she instructed. ‘Bye Maya.’

  Maya slid into a taxi and sank back into her seat. She felt exhausted but also a teeny bit exhilarated. She’d always loved puzzles. She’d always seen the bits and pieces more clearly than others. When she was a toddler, she’d solved jigsaws quicker than adults. If this had been just a treasure hunt—well, a key hunt—she would have enjoyed herself. But this was not a game. The brown splotches in the college quadrangle testified to that.

  In her green satchel with pink emojis—exhumed from her cupboard by Lola just yesterday—her phone vibrated. A message from the 8787 number. Gritting her teeth she clicked on it.

  ‘Give it to us. We will help fulfill your greatest desire.’

  Without thinking, Maya replied: ‘I don’t have it.’

  The answer came seconds later: ‘Liar, liar, pants on fire.’

  And then: ‘Keep looking over your shoulder. We could be anywhere.’

  Cold fury swept over Maya, and she slammed out her reply: ‘No problem. Because I can see you.’

  CHAPTER 15

  Maya hated Sunday evenings. Everything about them was drab, depressing and draggy. The Monday Morning Blues were nothing compared to Sunday Evening Browns.

  At least on Monday mornings you had buses to catch and new challenges to meet. On Sunday evenings all you did was check that homework was done and then worry about Monday.

  On this Sunday evening, though, Maya was a girl on a mission. By 4.20 p.m., she was marching back from Ready Steady Xerox, with a stack of warm, ‘high quality, precision’ printouts. As she hurried past Sahakari Bhandar and a florist with a penchant for blue flowers, she felt a rush of affection for her city.

  Her classmates talked endlessly about how they planned to ‘study abroad’. About how they couldn’t wait to get away from hot, dirty Mumbai to Vancouver, to San Francisco, to Melbourne. But Maya wondered whether there were many other places in the world where you could step out of your house on a Sunday evening, and minutes later return home with a sheaf of high quality printouts. Or an arrangement of blue roses interspersed with twirly silver sticks.

  Back in her room, Maya divided the photographs into piles. Stained glass. Screen. Mosaic. Lamps. Altar. Piano. Then she eyeballed the stacks of A4 sheets.

  They stared back blandly. Maya pulled out her magnifying glass and trusty yellow pad and examined each photograph. At the end of 30 minutes, she had little to show for her efforts besides aching eyes, a few untidy notes and sketches on the pad.

  Certainly no aha moment.

  Dispirited, she turned to the notes.

  Mosaic pattern – very familiar – red on black about six inches wide

  Greek pattern I think – to check

  Altar – seems like a plain flat stone on wooden stand – geometrical carving – with star pattern – meaning??

  Piano – regular piano?

  Wooden screen behind altar – about 5 feet high – densely carved with flowers and leaves – need to examine closely

  Lamps – two matching – wrought iron – pretty pattern

  Stained glass windows – five – long, narrow arch-shaped – all seem to have images of saints doing stuff – check which saints

  Windows 1 and 2 – to the left

  Window 3 – centre

  Windows 4 and 5 – to the right

  Latin phrases – find translation

  ‘More questions than answers,’ Maya thought, feeling flat.

  She was about to phone Veda when her father popped his head into the room. ‘Shall we go to the club for dinner?’ he asked. ‘You’ve been working all day. All work and no play makes Maya a glum girl.’

  ‘Pepper chicken?’

  ‘Two plates. And Chocolate Fondue.’

  ‘In that case …’

  Mr Anand turned to leave the room when he spotted the violet circles under Maya’s eyes. She looked tired and anxious. Wishing that Maya could spend her holidays playing cricket and carrom and climbing trees, Mr Anand asked, ‘Is this Summer School getting too much for you? Can I help in any way?’

  He leaned over Maya’s desk, scanned the scatter of printouts on the messy surface and chuckled, ‘Saints and more saints. It’s not easy to get your picture up on a church window. You have to slay dragons and chop off heads. Or be pierced by 200 arrows.’

  Maya laughed. ‘How do you know anything about saints?’ she asked. ‘Even in Italy, you went into the bars when we went into the churches.’

  ‘Oh you know, you pick up facts from here and there,’ Mr Anand proclaimed in a loud-American-tourist voice, and then guffawed. ‘Actually Anthony Gomes in my office has a calendar with pictures and stories about saints. I was looking through it the other day. Not much else to do, given the way work is these days.’

  ‘Oh,’ Maya said, and an idea popped into her head. ‘Do you think your friend would be able to identify these saints?’

  ‘Better than I could anyway,’ Mr Anand said. ‘If you wanted information on cricket or beer or the tucked-away bars in Italy, I would be the man in demand. I’m waiting for the day that you’re old enough to join me for a Bira Blonde. Anyway, we’re leaving for the club in half an hour. The big boss asked me to tell you.’

  Maya found the clearest images of the stained-glass windows, stapled them and handed them to her father. ‘Please ask him,’ she said, as he left the room. ‘Don’t forget.’

  Maya had a quick shower and slipped into a denim skirt and cheesecloth top from Pile 3 (Can stay on condition of good behaviour and for when you are hanging out with other supergeeks). Then she looked at her meager notes once more and decided to start filling in the blanks one by one till it was time to leave for dinner.

  First she searched for ‘Mosaic Patterns’.

  Ever obliging, the computer threw up lists of websites boasting about their fabulous collections of mosaic tiles and flooring. Nothing remotely helpful.

  Outside Maya’s bedroom, cupboards were being locked and car keys being collected.

  ‘My last attempt for the day,’ she decided, and changed the search to Mosaic Border Patterns. The first website she entered displayed the border from the St Paul’s Chapel. But it was identified only as Border No 8. Which was not much help.

  The second website she found was called Mosaic Marble.
She scrolled down rapidly. Then she paused and stared. Her eyes bugged out, cartoon-character style.

  Then she jumped off her cane computer chair and did a jig.

  The mosaic border in the chapel had a name.

  It was called the Greek Key Design.

  From across a chasm of 60 years, Maya could feel Father Lorenzo’s presence. She could sense a ghostly arm on her shoulder. A wispy pat on the back.

  With a flourish she wrote on the last page of her yellow pad, ‘Mosaic – Greek Key Design’.

  CHAPTER 16

  Maya had more than enough to worry about.

  She’d just found out that she had an uncanny gift. That she was surrounded by zombie-like creatures with evil intentions. That she was stuck in the middle of a Da Vinci Code-style nightmare.

  What reduced her to blathering panic on Monday morning, though, was a footwear crisis.

  The black tank top looked great with the swirly pink skirt and plump metal owl. Maya even managed to clip her hair like Lola had taught her. But none of her shoes or slippers worked with this new look. Not the yellow flip-flops with the blue straps. Not her sensible, battered sports shoes. And certainly not her shoe-bite-giving beige ballet flats – what the shopkeeper called bellies.

  So Maya did the only possible thing she could. She sent Lola a panicky SOS.

  Lola wrote back 30 seconds later. ‘Black sandals,’ she suggested. ‘Black flats. Funky slippers. Even colourful juttis. Your Bucket List is growing fast!’

  ‘Thanks,’ Maya typed in response.

  ‘U have any?’ popped up on the screen.

  ‘Maybe green slippers,’ Maya typed. ‘Bought for a school play ages ago. Going to hunt.’

  Five minutes later, Maya retrieved the forgotten pair of green beaded slippers, dusted them and slipped them on.

  Mrs Anand watched with tight-lipped disapproval and a running commentary.

  ‘We are 15 minutes late,’ she said. ‘Maya, what are you doing?’

  Climbing eyebrows.