The Assassins

by Jeremy Trafford

  Max was taken aback by this admission. Shortly afterwards, having bought a bandage in the drug store, he swabbed Narayan’s wound and tied the bandage around it. Their physical proximity as he tended to him caused him a stab of both tenderness and desire, curiously commingled. He recognised his attraction to Narayan was growing rather than diminishing. His feelings were enhanced by Narayan’s unexpected words of encouragement, however casually he’d uttered them.

  Had he spoken them out of emotional loneliness? Was it because he genuinely liked Max’s admiration of him, just as long as nothing sexual followed? Max really had no idea but, as he drove home that evening, he suffered a sharp attack of conscience over Clare. He summoned up the memory of her beautiful face in an effort to counteract, to somehow erase, the handsome face of Narayan, a vision that threatened to haunt him equally with its very different but equally immense appeal.

  Max rang Rick, saying he wanted to discuss some problems, but Rick had more urgent matters of his own to attend to. After countless affairs, Rick had settled down with an older man, Mike, who proved, with his stable ways, a perfect foil for Rick’s mercurial temperament. Rick told Max that they had agreed to have a HIV test and Rick had found himself to be HIV-positive. He’d taken this badly at first, and it had required patient persuasion from Mike to restore his confidence.

  Max was much depressed by Rick’s news at first, but he knew something of the advances in medication and he decided to find out more. He recalled his affair with Rick with nostalgic tenderness and regretted that he’d ended it so badly. He was glad they’d never had penetrative sex, although he didn’t feel at all self-congratulatory about it; he worried far too much about Rick’s condition.

  ‘I have a photo session to complete in San Francisco,’ Max told him.

  ‘What did you want to talk about?’ Rick asked. ‘I can still listen and offer advice, you know… if you need it.’

  Max sighed deeply.

  ‘Oh, nothing,’ he lied. ‘Nothing that can’t wait until I get back. I’ll be thinking of you.’

  ‘You sure you’re okay?’

  It felt absurdly wrong to burden a man recently diagnosed with HIV with more to worry about, least of all the complexities of Max’s own love life.

  ‘I’m okay,’ he said.

  The time in San Francisco afforded Max the opportunity to think things through as he was working. He decided to donate a large sum of the money inherited from his father to an AIDS charity. His father would undoubtedly have disapproved, but he didn’t let that worry him.

  When he got back to Los Angeles, he was still torn about his feelings for Clare and Narayan. He called Clare often, loving the sound of her voice, reassured by its closeness and intimacy. Even so, his charged relationship with Narayan continued. Every other evening, they swam in the pool together or went surfing.

  When Clare phoned from London to say she was catching a plane, she sounded strained. It was understandable, given that she’d stayed behind to look after Violet. When Max met her at the airport she broke down in his arms and told him that Violet had died. He held her tightly, desperate to console her.

  ‘Why didn’t you tell me on the phone?’ he eventually asked.

  ‘I didn’t want you to worry,’ she said. ‘You didn’t need to attend the funeral.’

  ‘Didn’t I?’

  She didn’t respond to that.

  ‘I felt guilty about Violet… I still do,’ she said.

  Max admired her honesty but felt sorrow for her pain, and her vulnerability again intensely moved him.

  At the party Max had arranged to welcome Clare home, he wanted to introduce Narayan to her straightaway, but he didn’t arrive until very late. Max discovered later that he’d thought it amusing to slip into the pool, unobserved. When Max saw Narayan’s floodlit face surfacing in a stream of bubbles, he recognised an involuntary surge of delight and hope inside himself, and it alarmed him.

  It was partly that rush of feeling that prompted him to leave the party with Clare and to drive out to Malibu. Of course, he wanted to be alone with her and to help with her grief. Getting away from Narayan, and from the turmoil his presence provoked, was not his primary motive though. He knew driving fast to the coast always raised Clare’s spirits. When the whale had surfaced, invoking awe and some degree of fear, the lovemaking that followed had been extraordinarily intense for both of them. It was the memory of this that allowed Max to feel unthreatened by any feelings for Narayan when they spoke on the phone the next day.

  ‘Hey, Max,’ Narayan greeted him. ‘Why leave last night as soon as you set eyes on me? People might’ve thought I was an interloper.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I hope you’re not too sore at me.’

  ‘I’m so sore, it’s really hurting. There I was, dripping from the pool, and all those smart people staring at me, wondering who is this mysterious, dusky stranger. A terrorist perhaps, sabotaging the swimming pool? Like in one of those wild soap operas. I mean, what with you rushing off in your swanky, high-tech car in the very middle of your own party. Such a dramatic style of life you have. It’s no wonder I find you so peculiar.’

  ‘And what about your own peculiar behaviour?’ Max asked. ‘Secretly entering the pool to thrash around like a zombie! Clare thinks you’re definitely cracked.’

  ‘So when are you going to allow me to meet her properly, so she knows I’m not cracked. From the glimpse I caught of her at the poolside, she looks a gorgeous broad.’

  ‘You don’t say “broad”, Narayan,’ Max chided. ‘All this low American slang you’re picking up, you must learn to use it a bit more accurately. I wouldn’t overdo it or people might think it was my vulgar influence.’

  ‘Then you must teach me classy correct American. If you come out to India, I’ll be helping you with classy Tamil, after all. You will be coming out to India sometime, yes?’

  ‘Oh yes, I’m sure we shall. Sometime.’

  ‘That doesn’t sound too enthusiastic. I’m not starting to bore you with my endless chatter and idiotic antics, am I? Or are you just too busy now that Clare’s here?’

  ‘Of course not,’ said Max. ‘I really want you to meet her. Would you be free this weekend?’

  Clare took to Narayan immediately. He behaved with all the easy courtesy that seemed second nature to him. He talked with her about Max, saying what a good friend he had become, and how open-minded and full of curiosity about India.

  ‘So,’ she began, after he left, ‘I like your new buddy. So you met at your gym? What started you off getting to know him? His being Indian, I assume.’

  ‘I’ve always been intrigued by India. Look, let’s go there some day.’

  ‘I’d love to.’

  ‘Narayan can help us when we’re out there. He knows a lot about his country and he’s a practising Hindu. And he’s a really nice guy.’

  ‘I can see that. And, unlike some of your sports freak friends, he’s not just about macho vanity and self-absorption. It’s good he has a soul. When are you inviting him again?’

  Max asked Narayan over two days later, and soon he was coming round at least twice a week. Eventually, Max broached with Clare the idea of their working together on a book about India. She thought it an excellent idea, and soon they started a course in Indian civilisation, offered by a university department. After a while Clare asked for a sabbatical from her job, and she and Max provisionally planned to go out to India the following year; they would stay with Narayan in Chennai.

  Max continued to be disturbed by reluctant erotic fantasies of Narayan’s hard male body. He would often visualise that body swimming underwater in the pool or shooting in on a breaker, thighs flexed, plunging down the wall of a toppling wave. Max tried to confine these fantasies to a corner of his attention, admissible but unthreatening, concentrating instead on the reality of his sex life with Clare and the undiminished fulfilment she would always give him.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Max and Clare drove back to Chennai, three hundr
ed miles north of Madurai. Clare felt some relief as soon as they reached the huge city, where it was far less likely the assassins could track them down. Although Veerapan had cautioned Clare and Tammy about a possible risk and Tammy had discounted it, Clare was torn between their conflicting attitudes. She knew she could not go on worrying about the problem, as it would ruin their time in India. They had to focus on what they’d come out to do: research the book that was so important to them both. She believed the shared endeavour might help their marriage. She could insist they went home to Los Angeles, away from the assassins as well as from Narayan. But that would be cowardly and evasive. It was better to stay, despite the possible danger. She moved away from thoughts of being attacked, instead focusing on the gratitude and concern the cripple had directed towards her. There was no faking that, she thought. It had been real.

  She and Max were looking forward to going to a performance of classical dancing. A Professor Subramaniam, an elderly relative of Tammy and Narayan, had invited them. The Professor was a retired historian in his late eighties. Narayan had phoned to say he was working late at the university and couldn’t come. Clare wondered if he was putting off seeing Max and, if he was, what the reason might be.

  Tammy took them in a taxi to pick up the Professor, who seemed delighted to meet Clare and Max, en route to the theatre. The theatre had a balcony upstairs, with an ornately carved, gilded balustrade, and a wide aisle. The Professor, leaning on a stick, chatted with them amiably as they walked to their front-row seats. The place was crowded.

  The faded velvet curtains eventually parted to reveal a dancer already in position. The musicians sat alongside their stringed, big-bellied instruments. A rapid rhythm was being beaten out on little drums. A song began, and the dancer started to move.

  Professor Subramaniam leant across to whisper rather loudly in Clare’s ear.

  ‘This is Radha, and she’s complaining to the Lord Krishna.’

  The song rose in pitch. The neck and head of the dancer moved from side to side, and she stamped her feet with mounting vehemence. The notes of the sitar swelled, vibrating loosely, and then trembled into silence.

  The dance ended, and the audience began to applaud in a respectful, even mildly reverent, way. The dancer stood still, her face flushed, panting. She stared into the spotlight, the mascara around her eyes giving her a somewhat ferocious look.

  ‘An Indian love dance,’ said Subramaniam, delicately rearranging a tiny fold in his dhoti. He smiled reassuringly.

  ‘This is the Bharata Natyam, the classic dance of India. And now she returns. I shall explain it all, don’t worry.’

  The dancer recommenced, slowly and imperiously, with a touch of condescension, as if she wasn’t quite sure her audience deserved it. The Professor leaned forward with one hand cupped to his large, whiskery ear. He spoke again in a resounding whisper.

  ‘Her mood is different. She is very sad.’

  The dancer glared at him for an instant, in his vulnerable position in the first row. But she was soon again transported into her mythic world, evincing a fierce passion that didn’t entirely suit the plaintive, gentle words he ascribed to her.

  ‘She is saying, “My mind is restless. I can’t sleep when my brave lord is away.” Ah, but he does not come to her, the Lord Krishna. She says, “Come, sweetheart”, but he does not come… he will not come.’

  ‘Please sir, it is your kindness not to talk,’ said a woeful voice from behind, but Subramaniam, perhaps intent on not hearing it, seemed determined to go on.

  ‘Now the amorous Radha says, “The sun goes down and still my Lord Krishna does not come. Come, beloved. My blue god.” He is blue, always is shown as blue. It’s a mark of his very passionate nature. But still, the blue god Krishna does not come.’

  There was considerable shushing from the rows behind. The old man gazed around for a moment, with an air of bewildered innocence, as if surprised by all the fuss and somewhat pained by it. Meanwhile, the dance continued, the dancer in a state of lofty ecstasy now, the drumming frantic but then falling into a more delicate beat that eventually faded out.

  The performance ended. The audience clapped with greater determination. The dancer responded in a trance-like manner, just about able to notice the acclaim before gliding off in a majestic daze.

  The evening continued with several performances by other dancers, but the Professor remained quiet during these.

  ‘Tammy and Narayan have asked me to tell you something of our religion and our history’ the Professor said to Max and Clare as they walk out of the theatre. So. Well, it’s nice to have Tammy back from UK. Good to have Narayan back from USA. All these young men going to their wonderful foreign parts, and I am eighty-eight and have never been. Oh no… I’m eighty-seven,’ He chuckled warmly. ‘I’m so ancient I even forget my age. Anyway, what is age? Does it really matter? When you think of the aeons that have gone and are yet to come.’

  ‘That’s a good way of looking at it,’ Clare said. ‘I’ll remember that when I next forget my age myself.’

  ‘Very funny for one so wonderfully young. So, what are you thinking of our Indian classic dance? The love of Radha for Krishna is so very touching, is it not?’

  Clare made some appreciative comment, but she hadn’t really enjoyed the subject of the dance – a woman fruitlessly pining for her lover – because it had intensified the numbness she was feeling at the thought of Max being in love with someone else. The hurt still pierced her from time to time, and she felt jealousy and anger.

  ‘I see Krishna as a figure of myth indeed,’ said Subramaniam, responding to a question from Max as they reached a waiting taxi. Tammy helped the old man into it. ‘But one who feels to me a living presence. So near and so consoling. A god with many aspects, often surprisingly at variance with each other. A handsome youth, full of mirth and mischief, stealing the clothes of milkmaids when they bathe in the river. But then, in contrast, Krishna’s love for Radha is often thought of as symbolising the pining of the soul for God. In the Bhagavad Gita, he counsels us on our duties to society, and on the elimination of our bad, imprisoning desires. He’s playful and amorous but also very serious and wise.’

  The old man waved his long, thin fingers in the air. They rose and fell as he carried on speaking. Max and Clare were grateful for his help with the background for their book, especially as he’d been an active member of the Congress Party during the struggle for independence from the British. He had even been a witness to Gandhi’s assassination in 1948. Venkataraman’s assassination in the present had horrified him.

  Clare therefore supposed he could be of some support to her and Tammy. On their return to Chennai, Tammy had been contacted by Inspector Veerapan, he of the wig-like hair and doleful manner. Tammy was wanted for another identification parade as the police had come under increasing pressure from the government and the media to identify the assassins. Clare couldn’t bear to think of the knife thrust and the pain Venkataraman must have felt, not just the physical pain but the terror of the realisation that his life was ebbing away, with all his aspirations and goals now never achievable. She felt great empathy, as she’d done with her dying father, who’d been similarly frustrated, and it now occurred to her that her horror at Venkataraman’s death owed something to that devastating loss eight years ago.

  The taxi drove along the seafront, prompting Subramaniam to speak.

  ‘Over there you will see Saint George’s Fort. You British, who called this town Madras, built it. In the eighteenth century, the British and French fought for domination in Tamil Nadu, turning it into a battleground. Thousands of Tamils were killed. There was a Tamil uprising, but it was crushed, and the temple enclosures were filled with Tamil prisoners. We rejected the name Madras because of its imperialist associations and began to use an old Tamil name, Chennai.’

  ‘So this was where the British Raj began?’ Clare asked.

  ‘Yes, oh yes,’ Subramaniam replied. ‘But the British Raj was very wrong. Fo
rgive me, but I’m afraid it was. It depressed the spirit of us Indians. It damaged our self-respect, our dignity. The British, with some rare exceptions, learnt little of our feelings and thoughts. They knew little of our ancient holy books, our Rig Veda, which is older than your Bible, or of the Mahabharata, our national great epic, which contains the Bhagavad Gita, the glory of Hindu speculative thought.’

  ‘And then there’s the Ramayana,’ Max interposed.

  ‘A wondrous story,’ said Subramaniam, smiling. ‘It tells of Rama and his beautiful wife, Sita, who was abducted by the demon king of Lanka. The monkey god Hanuman flew with his monkey army to get her back, the reason, no doubt, for our partiality for monkeys, mischievous as they can be. The Divali festival is in honour of Rama and Sita. Some of the Mughal emperors found the Ramayana fascinating, even though they were Muslims. But the British? They weren’t interested in our religion.’

  ‘Surely some of us were,’ Clare said.

  ‘The majority saw Hinduism as superstitious and idolatrous. It was so arrogant and ignorant of them,’ said Subramaniam, raising his hands in a quiver of protestation. ‘No wonder they lost their empire. I mustn’t be angry about it, though. I was when I was a young freedom fighter, but even then I had some kind friends among the British. It’s just I hated the insensitive imperialism…’

  His voice trailed off as he stared out of the taxi window, but he suddenly became animated again as something caught his eye.

  ‘We’re passing the aquarium,’ he said. ‘At one time, there were seahorses in there but now I think they’ve gone. I saw them sixty years ago, when I first married. My wife was just fourteen. She thought them marvellous. Little tiny horses from the sea, so very touching.’

  He sighed as if to imply that even though the world went on without them, they had been a wondrous detail in it. Clare felt he saw his young wife as wondrous too. Sadly, she had passed away.