Serpentine

by Thomas Thompson

  Barbara shook her head. “What are you referring to?” she asked politely.

  Anthony poked around in his papers trying to find where she “deliberately lied.” It took him several minutes, while everyone waited in modest suspense. “Ah,” he said. “You testified that you went up to Room 315 and found Alain and Monique unpacking some drugs. That isn’t true, is it?”

  “It’s not a lie. I stated this before the magistrate.”

  “But in your original statement it is not there.”

  “I don’t know why,” said Barbara. “I said it.”

  Charles Sobhraj leaned into Anthony’s ear and spoke urgently. But the lawyer was so annoyed at the witness that he snapped at the defendant, “Please let me do the questioning, sir!” And beside his witness, the P.P. was aglow, like a boxing coach whose challenger was standing up to the most devious punches of the title holder. Now and then he patted Barbara on the back. Judge Nath took exception to none of this.

  Anthony changed directions again. Perhaps he could so sully the reputation of the witness that her testimony would smell like tainted meat. Official India does not care much for the hippies who wander through her arteries in search of drugs and mystical revelations.

  “How long have you been on the road? Without funds?” he asked.

  “I had all my money stolen in June 1976, in Bombay—at the Apollo Guest House.”

  “Did you make a report to the police?”

  “No. It wouldn’t have done any good.”

  “From June 1976, you were living off of Alain?” asked Anthony, making it sound as if Barbara was an expensive concubine.

  “I suppose so,” she agreed. “I was working for him.”

  “Before June, who supported you?”

  Barbara did not hesitate. “A friend.”

  “One of those platonic friends of yours?” sneered Anthony. “What was his name?”

  “Paul.”

  “Paul? Did he have a surname?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Anthony smiled knowingly, glad to have a minor victory, anxious for the judge to understand that here was a girl who lived off men, who took lovers whose last names she did not bother to learn. Anthony told the judge, “Please put in the record that she does not even know this Paul’s surname.” The judge nodded. He, too, appeared troubled by a young woman who drifted so hedonistically through his country.

  “How much was he giving you a day, this Paul?”

  “I don’t know. A few rupees to eat.”

  Again Anthony’s eyebrows reached for the ceiling. “How much? My dog costs me fifteen rupees a day.” This was an astonishing statement in a country where millions of people—some of whom are magistrates—earn less than that a day.

  “You have a very lucky dog,” parried Barbara appropriately.

  Anthony would not let the question go, even though it drenched him with condescension. “Come on. How much? How much did this lover with no last name pay you for your favors?”

  “Five rupees a day, perhaps.”

  “Five rupees!” exclaimed Anthony in disbelief. “And you ate on that? Will you be my shopper?” He extended his finger and shook it at Barbara once more. “I put it to you that you were living by prostitution in Bombay.”

  “Rubbish!” Barbara’s eyes had newly lit fire.

  “Charles told you to ‘make up’ to the Frenchman, according to your testimony. What was the purpose?”

  Barbara shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Was the purpose to murder?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “Was the purpose to drug him? Or rob him?”

  “No.” Judge Nath rolled these answers around in his head and dictated an answer that was favorable to the defense. The judge told the court clerk to type down: “It is correct to say that there was no purpose to murder him or drug him or rob him.” Barbara started to protest. Her answers had been misconstrued. She meant that from her point of view there was no mission of murder. She had not meant to clear Charles of intent or deed. But she realized it would take more patience than she possessed at this moment to sort it all out. “I thought to myself, To hell with them all,” she would say later.

  Anthony asked the witness if she remembered seeing the bits and pieces of pills that had been introduced the day before. Barbara nodded. These were supposedly the ones that Charles gave her to administer to Jean-Luc Solomon.

  “Why didn’t you return these to Alain?” demanded Anthony.

  “Because I had told Alain I gave them to Luc.”

  “Then you lied to Alain?”

  “Not really. I just didn’t want to give Luc anymore pills. He was staggering.”

  Suddenly Marie-Andrée, who had been silent most of the morning, began to make a whimpering noise. Charles squeezed her arm and she stopped. When he took his arm away, there were angry red marks from his powerful fingers.

  “What were those tablets? Barbiturates?”

  “I have no idea,” said Barbara.

  “Do you take Mandrax?” said Anthony, invoking the name of a potent sleeping pill made from mandrake root.

  “No.” The judge dictated: “It is incorrect to say that I am in the habit of taking Mandrax.”

  Anthony found the answer unacceptable. “Come on, Miss Smith. I read American magazines. You people on the road get high on many drugs.”

  Barbara opened her mouth to deny, but Anthony wasn’t finished. He needed to establish the girl as a sophisticate in drug use. “What is Mandrax? You would be a great disservice to your tribe if you did not know.”

  “I know a lot of people take it for insomnia.”

  “You saw Luc naked, didn’t you?”

  Barbara nodded. “Yes.”

  “And you did notice that he had a series of hypodermic needle marks on his arms?”

  “No.” Barbara looked puzzled. What was Anthony driving at?

  “Did you know he was a drug addict? Hard drugs?”

  “No, I didn’t know that.”

  Anthony was tired. His face showed the wrath of age that had not been present when this day began. He had hammered at Barbara for hours and had, it seemed, accomplished very little. In a quiet and weary voice he made one last attempt to defame her.

  “Weren’t you traveling on a false passport?” he asked.

  “No,” said Barbara, laughing merrily. She knew she had won.

  “That’s all,” said Anthony, exhausted, washing his hands of the witness. He slumped in a chair while a junior man hurried out for a glass of sweet tepid tea to revive the greatest lawyer in India.

  But Barbara was not quite done. Another lawyer wanted a crack at her. Charles had engaged a new advocate to supplement the indefatigable Rupi Singh, who seemed to have been downgraded to the role of gofer. The new man, S. K. Sharma, was ferociously handsome with a scar curving around one eye like a scimitar. During Barbara’s long stay in the witness box, Charles had made notes on his FIR copy. Now he gave them to his new lawyer and instructed Sharma to attack.

  Barbara returned to the dock, her hair newly festooned with fragrant white blossoms. Someone in the corridor had given them to her with a compliment for her strength. She looked fresh, and very pretty, and proud of standing up to Anthony.

  Sharma began softly. “I believe you took some pills in a suicide attempt in May,” he said, sympathetically.

  “Yes,” said Barbara. It was no secret matter. Delhi’s papers had been full of it.

  “How many?”

  “Seventy-five or eighty.”

  “Where did you obtain them?”

  “From the dispensary of the jail. Female department.”

  Lawyer Sharma launched into a rambling, demeaning little speech about how he did not blame her for trying to end her life. Since she had told “so many lies,” obviously her conscience must have been inflamed and festering. Judge Nath tolerated a few minutes of this before he turned uncharacteristically stern. He had let Frank Anthony wander all over the lot. But to Sharma
he said brusquely, “Do you have a question, sir? Then ask it.”

  Sharma asked the obvious, “Why did you take seventy-five or eighty barbiturates?”

  Barbara was ready. “I took the tablets because I was very depressed … I had spent one endless year in jail, and it was horrible.”

  The judge nodded in understanding. He rearranged her answer for the record: “And as the conditions in jail were unacceptable to me, they brought on depression and I attempted suicide.”

  Sharma’s voice suddenly lashed out, harsh and cold. “I put it to you that you had made so many false statements that your conscience was hurting you.”

  Barbara glared at the menacing new lawyer. “No, sir. That is not true.”

  “Well, then, after you were arrested by the police at Wheels discotheque, how many days were you kept in the police lockup undergoing interrogation?”

  “Mmmm. About a week.”

  “During that week, how many police officers came into contact with you?”

  “Many.”

  “And did not every police officer ask you to become a witness for the prosecution to save your skin?” Sharma was shouting. Judge Nath held out a steadying hand in suggestion that he turn the volume down.

  “No.”

  “No?” The lawyer echoed the girl’s answer in disbelief. Sharma circled around Barbara for almost an hour, attempting to put across a new theory. Charles Sobhraj and Jean-Luc Solomon were speaking in French, weren’t they? Then how could Barbara have known what was being discussed during the notorious chicken curry dinner. Perhaps they had been talking about stomach problems. Perhaps Charles asked the French tourist if he wanted the colorless liquid added to his meal to forestall dysentery. Perhaps Charles was performing an act of kindness toward a new friend.

  Barbara listened patiently to the lawyer’s hymn to fellowship but she finally had to laugh. “Not bloody likely,” she said, so softly that no one else picked up on it.

  “All right,” said Sharma, as Charles purred in his ear. “Miss Smith, if you knew the contents of this bottle would make a man sleep, did you warn Mr. Solomon?”

  “No.”

  “During this entire dinner, did you ever mention anything to Solomon about this liquid?”

  “No.”

  The next question logically would have been, “Why not?” But Sharma, of course, dared not ask it because the answer might have been, “Because Charles told me not to.” Instead Sharma rushed hurriedly to Room 125, where Solomon died. “When you went with Luc to Room 125, did he tell you he was feeling sleepy?”

  Barbara said that was correct.

  “And at that time, you and Luc were the only persons in the room?” Again, Barbara nodded.

  “But you did not tell Luc that he was sleepy due to the effects of a drug?”

  “No.”

  “Luc went to sleep immediately after that?” asked Sharma, as his client nodded behind him.

  “Yes,” said Barbara, fumbling. “But wait …”

  She had more to tell, but Sharma stopped her. He wanted to leave it right there, with Luc passing out, not discussing the previous testimony that Charles came into the hotel room with more pills. Barbara got stubborn. She would not permit herself to be extinguished without shedding a little more light.

  “My answer, sir,” she said quickly, “is that Luc laid down on the bed feeling sleepy, then he got up to take a shower. Charles came in at that point with more pills, and then Luc went to sleep.” The words raced out, so pell-mell that the judge asked her to repeat them. They thus had a double impact. Charles’ face blazed with irritation. He bent into Sharma’s ear again.

  “Do you or do you not know that there were some medicines recovered from the baggage of Jean-Luc Solomon?” the lawyer asked.

  “I do not know.” The question seemed unimportant, as few Western travelers would brave the East without some medication in their toilet kit.

  “Do you know that Luc Solomon was addicted to drugs and aphrodisiacs?”

  “Aphrodisiacs?” echoed Barbara, trying to keep from breaking up. “No, I did not know.”

  Sharma frowned and looked at the judge, suggesting that the bench chastise the witness for impudent laughter. “Now, Miss Smith,” he finally went on, “I say to you that Mr. Solomon took tablets and aphrodisiacs on his own.”

  “I did not see him do that. On his own.”

  Judge Nath, a little nervous in this swamp of sex and drugs, dictated her answer as “I did not see Luc take drugs and aphrodisiacs.” At that, the P.P. rocketed out of his place and reminded the judge that he had omitted the key phrase “on his own.” This was important. Had the record stood without the addition of the three little words, it would have indicated that Barbara had not seen Solomon take any “drugs or aphrodisiacs.”

  Sharma decided to try and paint Barbara as the whore of Babylon, even though Anthony had failed miserably. “I put it to you that you had sex with Jean-Luc Solomon—for money,” he said.

  “I did not,” said Barbara indignantly. Now she was showing streaks of anger.

  “Isn’t it a fact that in your country and other Western countries, young people consume aphrodisiacs and stimulants to enhance sex?” Sharma sounded as pious as a preacher.

  “I don’t know,” answered Barbara.

  “It may be true?” suggested Sharma.

  “Perhaps,” agreed the witness.

  Sharma got down in the dirt. “Isn’t it a fact that when Mary Ellen came to wake you up the next morning, you were scantily dressed?”

  “No,” said Barbara.

  “You were naked, weren’t you!” thundered the scar-faced lawyer.

  “No,” said Barbara calmly.

  “Half naked?” countered Sharma, sounding like a haggler in the bazaar making a counteroffer.

  Barbara smiled rather coquettishly. “I had a few things on.”

  Judge Nath considered these exchanges and put them through his prudish mill. It came out, as he dictated to the clerk, “It is a fact that when Mary Ellen Eather came to awaken me, I was only half dressed.”

  Sharma was defeated, but he threw one last weak punch.

  “What ‘talks’ did you have with Solomon when you first met him?” he asked, the question suggesting that their conversation dealt with the price of sex.

  “I don’t know,” answered Barbara. “… general conversation.” The blossoms in her hair had wilted in the steamy courtroom and they were dropping onto her khaki blouse.

  Sharma repeated her answer for the judge, pressing him to dictate a distorted version of her answer. Sharma wanted the record to read: “I cannot tell the subjects of our conversation.”

  Barbara was irritated. “Wait,” she said, “I’m thinking.” The P.P. leaped up again and attempted to protect his witness. “She is thinking, sir, she is not refusing to tell the subjects of this conversation. The record cannot reflect the false statement that she refuses to tell.”

  Barbara spoke again. “We were just talking about the various countries we had visited. Just general talk.” The P.P. nodded happily. Though vague, this was a far better response for the record.

  A gloom had clearly settled over the defense. The bombast and legal cunning of Frank Anthony, the meanness of Sharma with Charles at his ear, none of these had tarnished the English girl with the creamy cheeks and enormous brown eyes. They were all silent for a few moments before Charles whispered one final innuendo in his lawyer’s weary ear. Sharma nodded.

  “Is it not a fact that on the next morning, when Mary Ellen Eather came to Room 125, you would not open the door fully?”

  “I opened it halfway,” said Barbara.

  Sharma nodded as if he knew the reason. “I put it to you that the reason is you and Luc had a very high and hot night together.”

  “A what?” asked Barbara.

  “That you had sex several times.”

  At that Barbara could no longer dam up her amusement. “No,” she said. “No. No.” The last two negations were smot
hered in laughter.

  “That’s all,” sighed Sharma, as the judge primly dictated: “It is incorrect to say that Luc and I had sex several times.”

  Outside the chamber, on a wooden bench where two babies slept fitfully while their mother defended herself in another courtroom, Barbara sat down gratefully and reflected on her moment. “I did it,” she said. “I put a price on my head, but I don’t give a damn … I never stood up for anything in my whole life until now … I wanted to tell the judge more, but how could he understand what it’s like to be twenty years old and a little lost and broke and all caught up in the madness of India?” She rambled on, like an actress unwinding, the matrons beside her listening but not caring, nor understanding all that much. Her thoughts were of the most mysterious and maddening word in the language, if. “If I hadn’t lost all my money in Bombay, and if it hadn’t rained that day and ruined my passport, and if I hadn’t gone to the cafe at the very moment that Charles was there … I’ll never understand why our paths crossed. Did fate really want it to happen this way?”

  She accepted a cigarette and lit it gratefully. “Do you want to know what I should have told the judge? I should have said that the whole experience was like a movie. It didn’t seem real. I never thought anyone would get hurt. I thought the blood would be catsup. I thought Solomon would only pass out for a while and Charles would ‘borrow’ his valuables. He told me that the boy could easily get a new passport from his embassy and his traveler’s checks would be reimbursed … I wouldn’t hurt anyone. Pain is abhorrent to me. When I heard that Solomon had died, I was horrified. I wept for him …”

  The matrons took her by the elbows and began to escort her to the black bus parked below. She would be returned to the prison where Charles and the others lived. “It’s Bye-Bye Barbara, I suppose … somebody will kill me now … But I did it! I told the truth. I didn’t break. Maybe a life is worth something if a person stands up one time and does the right thing.”

  She looked across the crowded corridor; Charles was departing the courtroom, surrounded again by guards and weapons. Through a crack in the wall of khaki she saw him. And he saw her. He was smiling, the mocking smile of terrible menace.

  “I hope the bastard hangs from the highest tree in Asia,” she said, but the eternal cries of India drowned her curse.