Serpentine

by Thomas Thompson

  Mary Ellen had a coup de grâce. She held up a can of insect repellent also smuggled out of the prison hospital. Its name, appropriately, was Finit. They drank the foul liquid.

  “I never hurt anyone,” murmured Barbara.

  “I know,” whispered Mary Ellen. She smiled and held out her hand to the English girl.

  “God have mercy on us,” gasped Barbara.

  “He will,” promised Mary Ellen. Her eyes were heavy. She forced them open. They needed to be awake in case a bed check was made. Oh hurry, she begged. Please hurry. Come and see us and go away and leave us to die.

  Both women had written farewell notes, chiefly complaints about the inhumane conditions of the prison and proclaiming their innocence. And now, at one figurative minute to midnight, Barbara remembered something she wanted to add. Lurching across the cell to where the notes rested, she found a pen. At the bottom of her letter she scrawled, “P.S. Charles Sobhraj is a goddamned ass hole.”

  Then she fell, and the cries of a hungry baby somewhere down the line and the screams of the lunatic women in the insane asylum were her serenade.

  She felt warm. It was as if her mother had at last found her, cleansed her, hugged her to her breasts.

  Surrender.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  On July 4, 1977, children rode a great elephant around the parking lot of the United States Embassy. A Ferris wheel turned slowly, propelled not by a motor but by the nimble feet of Indian servant boys. A man dressed as Uncle Sam strutted about a playing field, and on the sidelines, an orchestra fit for Queen Victoria played stiff marches. Hot dogs sold for one rupee (ten cents) and the crowd was huge, swelled by legions of the backpack set who came running for the cheap food and the fellowship of home. At dusk, an awesome and ear-shattering display of fireworks filled the skies with smoke and color, and at least one American remarked that it seemed improper for the wealthiest country on earth to spend thousands of dollars on pyrotechnics when citizens of India dropped dead each day from starvation.

  But the conversation was not of hungry people, nor the surprising defeat of Indira Gandhi and the rumor that she would soon be charged with corruption. It was of the murder trial of Charles Sobhraj, which had finally begun on this American holiday, and which promised tempting revelations of sex and murder. One American woman was heard to say, “I hear the man looks rather like Sabu, the Elephant Boy. Remember him?” But her companion disagreed. “The picture I saw he looked like Alain Delon. Yum.”

  After a year of dribbles and drabs, of coming into court, and going back out again after five minutes, of pleadings, shouts, anger, hysteria, and so much confusion that no one seemed to know the precise status of anybody’s case, Charles Sobhraj, Marie-Andrée Leclerc, and Jean Dhuisme finally went on trial for the murder of French tourist Jean-Luc Solomon. The original estimate by the bench was that the case would take a month, perhaps six weeks. A long twelve months later, the judge was making the same prediction. The trial would become one of the longest and most tempestuous in modern Indian history, though it would hardly compete with others down through the centuries. One case has been pending in the Indian courts for—incredibly!—almost one thousand years, having been initiated in the tenth century.

  When the British left India in 1948, the founders of the new nation moved quickly to make their country their own again. Much of the British system of common law was kept, but the tradition of a jury trial was thrown out. “Twelve men are too susceptible to bribery and corruption,” explained one of the framers of the new code of law. Responsibility was shifted to one judge. “Of course it is impossible to bribe a single judge,” muttered one of India’s leading advocates, the wryness in his voice unhidden.

  Proceedings in the Charles Sobhraj matter were transferred to the Tis Hazari Courts of Old Delhi, a temple of pandemonium, to the Western eye the most crowded, confusing hall of justice extant. An old, huge, rambling stone barracks of a building, its corridors were dark in the full blaze of noon and swarming with tens of thousands of defendants and their families and lawyers and the curious jostling through the halls in search of their appointed rooms. Beggars slept on benches or the cement floor, naked babies laughed or wailed while waiting for their fathers (or mothers) to be condemned, or returned. Men on the precipice of madness—and many in the gorge below—clutched sheaves of documents that contained tortured life histories and bureaucratic assaults, begging attention from anyone who would listen. Men with no legs dragged themselves through the mobs selling orange soda, and an occasional raven flew mistakenly in an open window and—like a condemned prisoner—flapped in terror to escape.

  “And now we begin,” murmured an attorney named S. N. Chowdhury, one of two locally engaged by the Canadian lawyer d’Aoust to represent Marie-Andrée. Young, appealing, with a kind face that would well suit a priest, Chowdhury was apprehensive over what he suspected would become a carnival. “I hope the world is not watching us today,” he said, “for no one else could possibly understand the confusion and tumult of our system of justice. Particularly since Charles Sobhraj is bent upon turning this room into a stage for his performance. The Indian Government has never cared too much about the dispensing of justice. It is society’s stepchild. Parliament has always been far more important in the view of government.”

  A stir outside the courtoom caused Chowdhury to stop talking and defer to a dominant figure making grand entrance. “The star has come,” he said, speaking not of the defendant but of a celebrated lawyer named Frank Anthony, his co-counsel in the defense of Marie-Andrée. One of the most vivid and imperious men in India, Anthony was slim, silvery, and articulate, with dark circles about his eyes like the kohl of a heavily made-up woman. Anthony had not bothered very much with the case during the year of pretrial hearings; indeed he was scantly familiar with the details. But it did not matter if he had only read the case file in the taxi on the way to court. Anthony’s brilliance was beyond argument. He was a slasher, a specialist in ripping, savage cross-examination, in picking out tiny flaws in the state’s case that might be exploited or, better yet, ridiculed. Few if any surprises are to be found in an Indian murder trial. When a major crime has been committed and an arrest made, the police and prosecutor’s office prepare what is known as a First Information Report, or FIR. It contains everything presumably discovered in the matter and often runs on for hundreds of pages. The FIR has statements from the accused, from witnesses, pathologists, police, a list of evidence, trivia, even unsubstantiated gossip—all bound in a ragged bundle and tied with string like a manuscript that an author has been trying for years—unsuccessfully—to get published. If a lower court magistrate decides that enough evidence exists in the FIR to establish a prima facie case, then what corresponds to an indictment is delivered by the bench. And by the time trial begins, everybody and his brother have read the FIR—lawyers on both sides, the press, even the defendants. Charles Sobhraj of course obtained an early copy and studied it so ardently that it was almost in shreds, vividly marked in red ink where he discovered passages that might be turned to his advantage.

  The defense does very little research. Rarely are private investigators engaged to run about looking for surprise witnesses or new pieces of evidence. Rather, the accused’s lawyers concentrate on attempting to devastate the prosecution’s case as detailed in the FIR. That was Frank Anthony’s forte, and everyone assembling in the small, fetid courtroom anticipated a crackling good show. “The court has three heads,” commented Rupinder Singh, lawyer for Charles and the man who once went to Saigon in search of Sobhraj the Tailor and found the old man rich and dying. “They are the judge, the prosecution, and the defense. All three heads study the case, the precedents, the evidence—and all three heads reach a conclusion. Three brains are at work here, so it is not the burden of one man. Theoretically, that is.”

  Rupinder, or Rupi as he was known by everyone around the courthouse, had been fired by Charles on several occasions, but he refused to accept his termination. Stand
ing rail thin in his dusty French-cut blazer and peacock blue turban, his eyes both hidden and amplified behind thick magenta-hued glasses, Rupi looked like a magician in search of a booking. He knew that this was a major case that would shower publicity on all the participants. He also sensed that there was money to be made, and if gold fell on the courtroom floor, he was going to be there scrambling. As it would turn out, Charles used attorneys like ventriloquists used dummies.

  The defendants entered to the music of clanking chains, boots, and guns. The first was Jean Dhuisme, blinking and bewildered, looking like an owl awakened at midday. Those near the case had a modicum of sympathy for the Frenchman with the melancholy face and the floorwalker’s mustache. Even Inspector Tuli commented to a newsman that Dhuisme’s role was minor. But Dhuisme was misfortunate enough to have been around when Jean-Luc Solomon died, and now he had to pay the check. When a lawyer asked during these opening moments if he was ill with influenza, for he appeared pale and clammy, Dhuisme shook his head. “No,” he said. “I have a disease called ‘being tried for murder.’ There is no pill you can take to feel better.”

  Marie-Andrée’s appearance disappointed those who anticipated a femme fatale of romantic dimension. Small, bird-like, she seemed to have wandered mistakenly away from a tour group of spinsters. Her hair was freshly dyed an unconvincing shiny black (perhaps due to the bitchy comment of a Canadian woman journalist who wrote that ‘Mademoiselle Leclerc is 31 but looks 50 and acts 16.’). Unlike the other defendants, she was not handcuffed or chained. From a distance, she seemed fresh, wholesome if not pretty, but face to face, the former medical secretary was hard. Aging. Once again the wallflower. No more was she the glowing youth on her passport, the one that smiled contentedly when so long ago she had flown to Asia on a first fling at impulsive adventure. On this crucial morning, she fingered a dangling ivory cross about her neck and carried a book by Billy Graham. Her face was grave and lined, in contrast to the festive green and yellow long skirt and skinny-ribbed yellow sweater that was stretched across breasts of modest proportion. Hovering ever behind her were two motherly matrons in military saris on which were sewn the red insignia of sergeants. They permitted the prisoner to roam freely about the room, but they were never more than an elbow away.

  Then came Charles.

  He could not be glimpsed until the phalanx of guards parted and funneled him toward a chair. With chains and manacles draped about his limbs, he looked like a monkey on a leash. Small, haggard, his French clothes having become shredded or torn by guards, he faced the bench on this day in jeans and a polo shirt, hugely embarrassed to be so commonly garbed. The night before, he had written his last will and testament and mailed it to Félix d’Escogne in Paris. Was the man at last fatalistic? Was he resigned to doom? Or was this a new charade? Probably the last, for he calculatedly slipped the news to a reporter, perhaps hoping for a gift of sympathy.

  Charles looked quickly about the room and sized it up. Small, barely thirty paces from one wall to another, an elevated section at one end was dominant where the judge and his clerk would sit.

  The presiding judge, Joginder Nath, a stocky man with a wide, coppery face who resembled the actor Ed Asner, took his seat with an attitude of bewilderment over the commotion in his chambers. At this moment he did not realize the magnitude of the case, but he would soon learn. Judge Nath was not celebrated for the brilliance of his legal mind—no one would accuse him of being a scholar—but he was at least respected for honesty. “That’s something in a country where the magistrate judge is paid forty-five dollars a month and the sessions court judge—like Nath—gets a hundred fifty,” remarked attorney Chowdhury during the first recess. Many of India’s judges are little more than a joke to competent lawyers. The pay is so low that few men of excellent capacities accept an appointment. The positions are supposedly plums, but the government usually has to scout around looking for some lawyer willing, or badly off enough, to accept the fruit.

  The trial lurched into life. No rap of a gavel. No clearing of an official throat. The judge simply nodded casually at the public prosecutor, a man whom, no matter what his real name, would be referred to by his job’s initials, “P.P.” The P.P. bowed in respect and in a small, metallic voice announced his first witness.

  It was a shock.

  Into the courtroom strolled Barbara Smith. She had not died from her intended last meal of sleeping pills and insect repellent. In fact, she looked terrific.

  On that fateful night in May when the two girls attempted suicide, a night guard had routinely strolled past their cell. The guard liked the two approvers and called out to them, as was her custom. When she received no response, the guard quickly unlocked the cell and hurried to the crumpled forms. They seemed quite dead, and the Resident Medical Officer at the prison hospital doubted if there was the slightest ember of life worth fanning. But he rammed a nasogastric tube down their nostrils and into the esophagus, then washed out stomachs with saline solution. “Five minutes later and it wouldn’t have mattered,” he said, pleased and surprised as signs of life crept slowly back—and annoyed that he had not suspected Mary Ellen when he caught her redhanded coming out of the medicine room. By the next morning, both girls were alive. On the second day they were out of danger, and on the third fully conscious but disappointed that death had been stolen from them.

  Within a week, both were returned to the cell and warned that the government might lodge charges of attempted murder, of themselves. “That’s justice!” snapped Barbara. “Here we promise to help convict the most notorious criminal in Asia, and we may wind up getting ten years in Tihar for trying to do our bloody selves in.” As the girls recovered, an investigation was conducted. Naturally the initial reaction was that someone else had poisoned the approvers. When Tuli heard the news, he swore and slammed his fist against his desk. “Somehow Charles got to them,” he told an associate. “We should have had somebody watching those women twenty-four hours a day.” Even when the revelation came that the would-be suicides had been just that, Tuli was not altogether convinced that the seed of the poison flower had not been planted by a gardener named Sobhraj.

  The waltz with death had a profound albeit varying effect on Mary Ellen and Barbara. During the next several weeks, Barbara hardened her resolve to testify against Charles et al. But Mary Ellen was having second thoughts. A few days before the murder trial began, the Australian nurse attended a pretrial hearing and informed the bench that her statement had been “coerced” and contained errors. As she spoke, she suddenly began to shake as if in the grip of palsy. She began to scream. “I can’t take this much longer!” She continued screaming until she was led in collapse from the courtroom. Tuli was present, and he wondered if the chaotic events of the girl’s life had so rattled her that she could no longer distinguish fact and fantasy. And would she affect Barbara’s resolve?

  “What is your name?” asked P.P., whose name was Daljit Singh. He was gnome-like, with a plodding, unspectacular personality.

  “Barbara Smith.” The witness stood in the center of a football huddle. Before the judge she was the core of a crescent moon that contained all the lawyers, leaning in, trying to hear over the hum of ceiling fans that simply moved hot sticky air around a little, while at the same time drowning out speech. The decorum associated with Western courtrooms was totally absent. In its place was a legal free-for-all, lawyers squabbling, the witness trying to be heard, the defendants standing directly beside her, close enough to touch, clearly able to cajole or whisper. Above them sat the judge, at this point more of a referee than a Solomon, trying with courtesy and a pained expression to listen to everybody.

  Most curious, testimony was not taken down in a fashion remotely approaching verbatim. Instead, the judge’s custom was to listen to the witness’s answer, then he repeated it by dictation to the court clerk, a Sikh in a scarlet and gold turban and with a fierce-looking pocked face. The clerk then pounded out the judge’s version on an ancient typewriter that added to
the clamor. Often what the witness actually said and what eventually filtered through the babble and the judge and the ancient typewriter were not only different but substantially different. The judge considered it his franchise to edit, censor if the testimony was too spicy for his prudish ears, and to paraphrase. The Western observers at the trial were flabbergasted by the cavalier handling of the official record. But it is the Indian way. And it is their country. “In America, a case might be overturned because of a misplaced comma,” said a visiting attorney from New York. “Here the witness is fortunate if seventy-five per cent of the testimony is taken down exactly as it is uttered.”

  The P.P. led Barbara through a brisk series of biographical questions before the judge announced, not surprisingly, that he could not hear. Would the witness please move closer to the bench and take it all again, from the top? Nodding, Barbara moved sideways and forward, standing now in a puddle of water, close enough for Charles Sobhraj to reach out and pinch. He was half an arm away. His eyes bore meanly at her and she must have felt their heat. But she did not look at him; she appeared unafraid. More than one reporter marveled at her spunk.

  “When did you first meet Charles Sobhraj?” asked P.P., wiping a film of sweat from his brow. The social and economic dichotomy between the government counsel and the defense lawyers was delineated by what they wore. The P.P. had on baggy white trousers that threatened to fall to his knees, a black cotton coat with perspiration marks striping his back, and a blue turban mottled with dampness. The other side, to a man, wore splendidly tailored gray striped trousers, black coats, and white flapping choirboy collars. And they managed to look cool, as if their caste did not tolerate public perspiration. In particular Frank Anthony looked elegant enough for presentation to the Queen. In his early sixties, he was exceptionally fair, unlike the darker faces around him. As the prosecutor worked with Barbara, the waspish Mr. Anthony sat sidesaddle below the judge, on a long shelf, and delivered a running barrage of acidulous remarks—sarcastic, often condescending, all directed at no one in particular save some legal god to whom he regularly raised his eyes. They were decidedly intrusive, but the judge did not tell him to shut up. Anthony was, after all, a founding father of the new India and an author of the constitution. He was a man to whom respect was paid.