The Thing about Thugs

by Tabish Khair

  In one corner of the room, smoking in an armchair, half hidden by the shadows cast by the candles, sits a stoutish man. His lips are parted in a fixed smile, the leer of a satyr.

  When he hears John May enter, he gets up, and I can see that he is at least middle-aged, though quite well-preserved, and dressed in such a careful manner, with a fur collar and a hat of substantial size and weight under one arm, and in such expensive fabrics, that John May shrinks visibly and brushes invisible indignities off his own clothes with his free hand. The lack of a hat makes him feel naked in front of this elegant satyr.

  But no, this is no mythological beast: I can see that his face is a mask. One of those masks that the young have started favouring for certain fancy parties. It is a mask twisted into a permanent smile.

  ‘You are late’, says the stout gentleman, for there is no doubt that here we have the real item, a gentleman from birth and by deportment; even the mask cannot hide that. John May, who had spoken rather clear English to the barman, apologizes in an accent burdened by the inferiority of some impossible-to-identify dialect.

  ‘It is difficult to find Things, especially after the affair of the Italian boy, and you, M’lord, want only part of them and on certain conditions...’ There is a timid effort to bluster on the part of John May.

  ‘I, sir, pay you five times what you would get for all the — what do you call them — Things, and I neither ask how you procure them, nor what you do with the remains.’

  John May’s incipient bluster vanishes; his voice turns servile.

  ‘M’lord, I am grateful; I am your devoted servant, I am, sire, I assure you. It is just that not only is this business difficult — there was a time when a lifter carted a Thing in a bag to this place, this pub, and left it lying under the table while they bargained over the price...’

  ‘I would rather not have the details of your noble profession’, the gentleman interrupts, his mask not concealing the distaste in his voice. ‘All I want to know is whether you have got the, the Thing, you promised me.’

  ‘I ran into problems, sire. He is not... I can explain...’

  ‘Would another ten crowns enable you to overcome the problems, my good man?’

  The cold steel of this interruption is not lost on John May. A crafty look passes across his regular — not unhandsome, but perhaps callow — features. He takes out a large handkerchief and wipes his face. He replies with much eagerness, the words falling too glibly from his lips, which he constantly moistens with his tongue, licking them between sentences: ‘M’lord, sometimes graveyards are watched as closely as banks, strange though it...’

  ‘I told you, sir’, the gentleman interrupts again, this time with greater asperity, ‘I told you I am not interested in the details of your noble profession. Quote the price and fetch me the Thing.’

  ‘Fifteen crowns would cover it quite neatly, M’lord.’

  The gentleman drops fifteen crowns on the table, one at a time, each coin spinning and glinting in the candle flame, the clink of metal on wood suddenly loud between them.

  ‘But I need the, ahem, the top of the Thing before the next meeting of my Society, ready to be exhibited. Do you understand? Ready to be exhibited and demonstrated, and as exceptional as you have made me believe.’

  ‘I assure you, M’lord’, gushes John May, gathering up the coins from the table, the tip of his tongue darting over his lips like a lizard behind a stone, ‘I assure you, it will be done. Have I ever given you reason to doubt my character or judgement?’

  He looks up for the gentleman’s answer but the room is empty. The candle throws mute shadows that probe the corners, the grimacing animals, the heavy wooden furniture, and flee like wisps of cloud across the carpet. But for the cold coins in his hand, M’lord might have been a figment of his imagination, a ghost.

  3

  Night envelops the streets of London, shrouding even the immensity of Newgate Prison and the courthouse, and the two men — John May and the gentleman who has employed him to procure the ‘Thing’ — depart in different directions. The gentleman walks a short distance and takes out a whistle when he turns the corner. He blows three sharp notes on it and a fly, evidently waiting for him further down the street, appears out of the darkness and the fog. The gentleman boards it without looking around or taking off his mask.

  John May, after another pint of half-and-half, and a round of rum hot with the one-armed barman and two other acquaintances, hails a common cab ‘towards Virginia Row’ in a moment of extravagance. But he has second thoughts and gets off a little earlier, just before the point where going further into the squalid areas of East London would double the cab fare. Then he proceeds on foot, occasionally jangling the new coins in his pocket. It is cooler now.

  If night and the industrial fog of London did not prevent us from seeing either John May or the surrounding buildings and occasional passers-by, not to mention the bundled figures here and there, under arches and on doorsteps, evading the policeman on his nightly patrol, the policeman whose job it is to ensure that those who have houses sleep secure in their possessions — which may only be done by evicting from the city limits those who do not have houses — we would have noticed that John May gets taller and better dressed with every step he takes into the grosser quarters of London. Perhaps, from where I watch him, a hat appears on his head by the time he reaches his meagre house. And why not? Stranger things have happened in this city.

  Jolting along in his smart fly, driven by a man of huge proportions and gypsy looks, so fiercely moustachioed and beetle-browed that the flaxen wig on his head seems unreal, and pulled by a horse that is conscious of its superiority on these streets, our stoutish gentleman undergoes no such metamorphosis. He is made of metal that cannot be altered by time and place. He remains what he is everywhere: superior in the cut of his clothes, the tone of his voice, the fashion of his views, in the very colour of the blood that pulses through his veins and that has pulsed through the veins of his ancestors for twelve generations, all bearing with absolute conviction the self-knowledge of one family name and many honorary titles.

  What do we call this gentleman? John May calls him M’lord. The heavy portals of his city house swing open almost at the very moment he alights from the fly, as if his servants keep vigil all through the deepening night, and the servant who holds the door open also has no other name for him but ‘M’lord.’ No name could be more appropriate for him, and dare we decipher from the family arms on the door of the house he alights at, the name that his equals employ to address him?

  For, standing across the road of time, we are not his equal, we who live in denuded times; we are the passers-by who raise our hats at him and receive, if anything at all, a gracious nod in reply; we are, at worst, the sweeper-boy who cannot tell the family arms from an alphabet, let alone dare to take the family name in vain; we are, at best, those faceless, vote-less citizens on whom he and his equals seek to bestow the benefits of science and religion. For the time being, what can we, what dare we call him but M’lord?

  There are more gaslights on this street than in any other part of London, but not all the spheres of gas can unite to penetrate the stolidity of its buildings. For the light from these sputtering spheres contends not just against the darkness of the night and the fog of London, it also beats against the severity of the mansions lining the street. These are houses that are determined not to condescend to liveliness: the black doors and windows, the ironwork and winding stone stairs, the polished knobs and the empty parks behind them, all conspire to impose a solemnity of purpose, a high-mindedness on all who are capable of such sentiments. As for those who are not, say, the passing sweeps, the occasional raw maidservant from the counties, an ayah or two brought over from the colonies, all such are struck dumb on this street and in its mansions.

  Their silence echoes down the centuries. Even in my grandfather’s library, I do not need to strain my ears to hear their muteness.

  M’lord enters the highest-min
ded in appearance of all the mansions on this dry and massive street, while his fly and horse are led to the echoing mews behind the buildings. Up the winding stony staircase of the house he proceeds. He has already taken off his mask; he had done so in the fly. In the lighted halls and staircase, he reveals a long, broad face, pale, with spreading brown sideburns, and eyes a strange shade of green, blue and grey-yellow. His thin lips and nostrils accentuate the length and breadth of his aristocratic face.

  Now, slowly, he divests himself of his attendants: the massive coachman at the door, the doorman in the hall, the cook and housekeeper, who hesitantly enquired if M’lord wished... and was discarded with a gesture, on the stairs. He climbs up the cold marble steps, he walks past the portraits of ancestors, such stolid faces, subtle mirrors of his, with the certainty of a man who knows all the shadows around him, until he reaches a heavy door, a door so massive and padlocked that it stands out even in this mansion.

  With great care, M’lord draws out a bunch of three keys from a secret pocket in his waistcoat; with precision, he unlocks each of the three locks on this massive door; with a practised movement in the darkness to which the groaning door has admitted him, he finds a candle and lights it. Then he lights another candle and another, each candle appearing to magically reproduce itself all over the room, for it is full of mirrors and glass cases. With what pride and scientific interest M’lord now looks around this room of a thousand and one flames and surveys its precious hoard of skulls: long skulls and short skulls, skulls of bone and cast skulls, skulls as smooth as marble and skulls knobbly as old oak, small skulls and big skulls, skulls on tables and skulls in glass showcases, all labelled and catalogued. And here we stand, by him, in this massive house wrapped in the fog of a London night, admitted to a temple that few outside the London Society of Phrenology have been admitted to, allowed to gaze on the great scientific project of M’lord, his indelible contribution to the glory of his race and family name, his proposed Theatre of Phrenological Specimen. Above all, the theatre would be his answer, not to those who scoffed at head reading, for they had long been answered by Daniel Bell and Dr Gall and Johann Spurzheim and H.C. Watson if they only cared to listen (or read), but his answer to the followers of that Scottish upstart, George Combe, who had, M’lord was convinced, done as much to harm phrenology as to champion it. With the finished Theatre of Phrenological Specimen, M’lord would stop the mouths of the Combians in the London Society of Phrenology, and see the mark of defeat stamped on the effeminate features of that Captain William T. Meadows who had, since his return from India with his reprieved thug Amir Ali, taken society by such storm.

  4

  [WILLIAM T. MEADOWS, NOTES ON A THUG: CHARACTER AND CIRCUMSTANCES, 1840]

  ‘No, sahib, I have no hesitation in relating the full account of my life, for, as you say, you intend it for the delectation of your own people, and for their education as to the ways and beliefs of the benighted people of Hindoostan. I came to you when you lay in bed at the Firangi hospital in Patna, and many a dusty mile had I walked to get there, for word had gone out as far as Gaya and Phansa that in your illness you wished to hear the account of a real Thug, perhaps even a famous Thug, the full murderous account on condition of a full pardon, and if necessary, were the approver untainted by blood himself, you would take him with you to Firangheestan, the better to inscribe his tale and cause it to be printed on the miraculous machines you have in that land. And so it has transpired, for here I am, your devoted servant, in London, the city of cities, having served you for twelve months now, first in Hindoostan and then during the passage over the Black Waters, and I have told you all about the atrocious rites of my race, so that now all I have left to narrate is the story of my own life, which you say will be the last and shortest chapter of your book.

  ‘Life, sahib, is dear to everyone; to preserve mine, which was forfeited by the act of denouncing all my old confederates and revealing to you the nature and number of their heinous crimes, which I beheld and helped in, but only as a lookout, sahib, only as a young boy taken along by older men, I serve you now and hasten to tell you all you wish to hear. But unlike so many other approvers, I came to you on my own, and in my face and in my voice, and wonderfully from my skull, as you still lay recovering in Patna, you read, with the acuity that all sahibs are blessed with, the truth of my narrative. For others had come to you before me, attracted by the word in the bazaar that you had promised a large reward, and you had driven them away as braggarts and liars. But something in my narrative, and I still wonder at the wisdom of Solomon that sahibs possess, made you listen and recognize that what I said was nothing but the truth...’

  ‘It is indeed true, Amir Ali’, said I, ‘but it was not the wisdom of Solomon that I exercised; it was the guidance of Reason, which is a God unknown to your race, for when the others came and spoke their lying stories to my face, all I did was listen, and Reason told me not to believe them.’

  ‘But sahib, surely it takes a blessed being to hear a God, even if the name of that God is neither one of the hundred names of Allah, nor one of the million names for Bhowanee, and surely sahib is blessed to hear the voice of his God...’

  ‘Alas, Amir Ali’, I replied, ‘I despair of making you understand, for you who grew up among men not afraid of killing other men, nay, having practised that crime as other people practise an art, you have learnt from the selfsame men to frighten yourself with painted dolls and empty Arabic words. Reason is not a tyrannical God like Allah, or a bloodthirsty demon like Bhowanee; Reason does not speak in my ears but gives me ears to listen with. For some came and told me of the murders they had committed or participated in, and I asked them about the cult of Thugee and they feigned ignorance or gave differing explanations, and hence I knew they were dissembling, for Reason told me that in the land of Hindoostan all is built on the scallold of superstitious faith. And others came and spoke of being Thugs and of the cult of Thugee, but claimed to have wandered into that murderous profession. They maintained that they had once been farmers, before the drought burnt all their crops, or that their fathers were carpenters or weavers, and Reason told me they lied because in the land of Hindoostan sons follow in the footsteps of their fathers as surely as the mango tree grows out of the stone of a mango, and a cat gives birth to kittens.’

  ‘Forsooth, sahib, but to an ignorant man like me, this is the veritable wisdom of Solomon, for we Thugs are master inveiglers, and know how to make a man look at the stars the better to pass the knotted scarf around his neck, and we are master scouts, watching out for passing witnesses to our murders and able to throw dust in the eyes of the wayfarer, but all this is nothing compared to the wisdom of your God, Mighty Reason, who makes material truths out of insubstantial words, and teaches you to verify them by reading the skulls of men, which you did after hearing me out on the first occasion in that hospital in Patna. Truly, sahib...’

  ‘Enough, Amir Ali’, said I. ‘There are matters your race cannot comprehend, or not yet, and perhaps it is best so. Let us not waste time; proceed with the story of your life.’

  ‘Forgive me, sahib. I will not tarry any more in regions you know so much better than my deluded intellect can ever comprehend; I shall proceed, like an arrow shot from the bow, straight to the target of my tale. My first memory, though somewhat dim as all memories of childhood are to the likes of us, is that of kites in the sky...’

  ‘Kites, Amir Ali? Birds?’

  ‘Oh no, sahib, kites of paper and wood, which we used to fly like children sometimes do in parks in London, the mother of cities, the jewel of the empire...’

  ‘And what was the significance of that, Amir Ali?’

  ‘Significance, sahib? Oh, I see what you mean. Being a superstitious race, sahib, we flew those kites in honour of our Gods and Goddesses, and it was then that I first heard the name of Bhowanee, the guardian deity of Thugs, both Muslim and Hindu...’

  5

  Jaanam,

  There used to be kites in the air
, pinned against the grey-blue skies brushed with the white whisk of clouds. Kites of many colours. Red, blue, yellow, two-coloured, multi-cofoured. We had names for each kind. Kites with tails and kites without. Sometimes suspended in the breeze, almost immobile, a window in the sky. Sometimes dipping and twisting and turning, impelled by the wind, or manipulated by the flyer in the field or on the roof, in his bid to reach the string of another kite and cut it. And then the shout would go up, woh katee, katgayee re, giree, giree, giree, gireeee and we, the young boys and girls, would rush to catch the drifting kite, the kite that was now helpless without the guidance of the string that moored it to earth.

  I had always admired Hamid Bhai’s ability to guess where the cut kite would alight, just as I admired his capacity to hold his breath for so long during our games of kabaddi. ‘Mind over matter, Amir’, he would say to me, laughing. ‘What’s bigger: the brain or the buffalo?’ But then, he was a few years older than I was and I suppose his seniority was a factor in my hero worship. That, of course, was before Hamid Bhai was sent to Patna.

  We started flying kites around Dussehra and kept flying them till Hofi the next year, all of us, Hindus and Muslims of various sects and castes. if there was religion involved in this flimsy hoisting of paper in the air, it had long slipped from our memory. But of course, my moon-faced one, that is not something I mentioned to our mutual and, I must add, gracious employer, Kaptaan Wafi Mian Khet-Khaliyaan, as we used to call him (behind his back) in Hindustan, or Captain William T. Meadows, as he is known here. I discovered, a long time ago, even before I offered him my stories and was pressed into his service, that truth and credibility are two different things most of the time.

  Mustapha Chacha was wrong about truth. I never met a man who was wrong so often, but always because he was too right for this world of ours. His wrongness was a sign — though I did not realize this until it was too fate — of a greater disorder in the scheme of things. He was wrong because truth and credibility might well be beyond reconciliation in our world. But I am anticipating myself; these are thoughts that came to me only gradually and with time.