The Assassins

by Jeremy Trafford

  The first threat came about by accident. Max had given the fake Mayan head pride of place in his collection. When one of his friends dropped by he immediately spotted the new addition and picked it up, subjecting it to his sharp scrutiny. Jimmy, a corpulent, shaven-headed man with wandering eyes, thought he knew more than Max about Mexican art, and a knowing smile spread across his glossy face. Narayan smiled in return, pleased that his present had been singled out for such attention. Max stiffened slightly. He knew what was coming, and he dreaded it.

  ‘Of course,’ Jimmy said, ‘you know this is a fake, Max, don’t you?’

  The air grew strained. Max changed the subject swiftly, not answering the question but instead bringing the subject around to the proposed visit to India. Jimmy, realising he’d made some sort of gaffe, tried to make amends.

  ‘I visited India ten years ago,’ he said. ‘I loved the Buddhist murals at Ajanta, and the erotic carvings at Khajuraho were incredible. I remember well the noble, painted elephants, not to mention the quite impossibly handsome people.’

  The strained atmosphere was not alleviated. Jimmy concocted some reason to be elsewhere and hurriedly said his goodbyes to the two of them. As soon as he’d gone, Narayan turned to Max, his eyes flashing with hurt pride.

  ‘You knew it was a fake, Max, didn’t you?’ he exploded.

  ‘Yes, but I like it,’ Max conceded. ‘Fake it may be, but I genuinely like it.’

  ‘You didn’t respect me enough to tell me.’

  ‘How does my not telling you it’s fake show disrespect?’

  ‘It means you don’t think I can take the truth,’ Narayan said. ‘You kept it from me to protect my wretched feelings.’

  ‘And what’s so wrong about protecting your touchy feelings?’

  ‘It’s patronising. It’s treating me like a child.’

  ‘Oh, for fuck sake,’ said Max, exasperated. ‘At the present moment you’re acting very like one.’

  ‘Damn you, Max! How dare you say that! I loathe all this pretence and secrecy, our horrible false positions. Why couldn’t you be bloody straight with me at once?’

  Narayan quickly left and drove away. In his desire for independence, he had bought a second-hand car that was ancient, noisy and unpredictable. Max was left alone, staring at Narayan’s present, which he fancied was staring back as if it mocked him. The row, he thought, was surely of his own making.

  ‘I guess I overreacted,’ said Narayan, when Max turned up on his doorstep the next day. ‘It’s bad enough deceiving Clare. I couldn’t bear you deceiving me as well, even over something pretty trivial. I dislike myself for giving in to trivial grievances. If only I could wipe them completely from my mind.’

  ‘But it was stupid of me,’ admitted Max. ‘I did always want us to be honest with each other.’

  ‘Honest with each other, but not with Clare,’ Narayan pointed out. ‘That’s not very noble of us, is it, Max? You’re not going to get to heaven for that, and I’ll probably come back as something really daunting, possibly a fat, lascivious warthog.’

  ‘What makes a warthog lascivious?’ Max asked, relieved they found refuge so quickly in their joking fantasies. ‘What’s the sex life of a warthog like, do you suppose?’

  ‘Rather scratchy, I imagine. The faces of warthogesses, with all those warts, and whiskers, and nasty little tusks! Frankly, they don’t seem all that seductive. Anyway, thanks to you, I’ll probably be a gay warthog.’

  ‘There might be gay warthogs for all we know,’ said Max.

  ‘Seriously, Max, the dreadful things you’re doing to my soul. There’s nothing in the Hindu scriptures against being gay, I think, but the Hindu ideal is renounce the world and lust, despite the Kama Sutra, and you don’t exactly encourage me in either. I mean, look at you.’

  ‘Look at me?’

  ‘Look at you, Max, with your terrible and conspicuous consumption. It’s madness that I’ve fallen for you a bit. Your lifestyle is so materialistic: jacuzzis and swimming pools, supercharged aggressive sports cars and noisy, fuel-guzzling speedboats. This decadent obsession with flashiness and speed, wilfully ignoring the dire effects on the environment.’

  ‘I get your point,’ Max said, taken aback a little. ‘So you’ve fallen for me a bit. Well, that’s good news.’

  ‘No, it’s pretty bad news really. I was taken in at first by your being so sexy and self-assured. I was seduced by your wicked, superficial charm. There was I, an innocent young Indian, whose virginity you robbed so cunningly. Oh well, when you come out to India, I shall lure you into an ashram, where everyone takes vows of poverty and chastity, like with your Saint Francis. It’ll do wonders for your consumerist persona.’

  There were only three months left before they were due to leave for India. A fortnight Jimmy’s visit, he discovered from Clare that Narayan had given Max the fake. He rang Max.

  ‘I’m really sorry for making such a gaffe the other day. I didn’t know Narayan had given you that fake and thought it genuine. But how delightful to be given a fake in such a manner! I wish I’d been given one or two by someone with such good looks and charm.’

  Max found him funny, and blurted out what he maybe should not have said.

  ‘I’m kind of in love with Narayan. Clare doesn’t know yet. So for God’s sake be discreet about it.’

  Max didn’t know how difficult Jimmy found discretion, and indeed Jimmy was soon unable to resist telling one of his most reticent of friends, who’d expressed curiosity about Narayan. Within a week, a group of the most discreet people knew about it, and one of them approached Narayan in the gym.

  ‘I’m giving a gay party next Saturday, to which you’ve very welcome. Jimmy will be coming. Do bring Max along if you so wish.’

  Max and Narayan had agreed to go surfing again next day. They met on the beach, where the wind was blowing hard. Narayan angrily told him about the invitation.

  ‘You shouldn’t have told Jimmy about us. That’s something absolutely private. Look, I don’t mind being thought of as having a few homosexual feelings. But I loathe being seen as the underhand destroyer of your marriage. I’d lose all dignity in other people’s eyes. And I’ll lose all dignity and all self-respect.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous. You’re being paranoid.’

  ‘I resent that. Why can’t you be honest with Clare about us?’

  ‘It could destroy our marriage. What the hell do you expect?’

  ‘She ought to know. If you don’t tell her, I think I shall myself.’

  Max was horrified by the threat.

  ‘That’s emotional blackmail,’ he said. ‘If you feel like doing a lousy thing like that then let’s not meet any more.’

  ‘I agree,’ said Narayan. ‘It’s not fair for you to go on cheating on her like this. It’s all so hole in corner… so degrading and contemptible.’

  Max momentarily lost his temper, even raising his hand as if to hit Narayan. Although Max immediately controlled himself, Narayan was incensed by this reaction. They left the beach, neither of them feeling in the mood for surfing. Max felt ashamed but was too proud to say so in the face of Narayan’s hostile stare.

  ‘I won’t be seeing Narayan for some time,’ Max told Clare later. ‘He feels he’s spent too little time on his research, and he needs to concentrate more fully on all that.’

  ‘Have you quarrelled with him, darling?’ she incredulously asked.

  ‘To be honest, yes,’ said Max. ‘I have slightly. He gets over-sensitive.’

  ‘Much better than getting under-sensitive,’ she quipped. ‘What was it about?’

  ‘That business over the fake Mayan head. He’s a bit thin-skinned and can have real downers from time to time.’

  ‘Don’t we all? I hope you’ll make it up. You don’t lose friends easily. You’re so loyal and tenacious, like with Rick.’ Clare paused. ‘Incidentally, how is Rick? Any more news?’

  Such had been his involvement with Narayan that Max had not been seeing Rick as much as he
’d intended, but now he contacted him again.

  ‘I’ve taken up visiting AIDS victims in hospital,’ Rick told him. ‘I met a former lover of mine there. Ben. It was quite a shock.’

  Max remembered Ben from the past.

  ‘Can I come with you on one of your visits?’

  Ben at first seemed more cheerful than Max had remembered him, telling various blue jokes and risqué stories, a habit he’d obviously picked up from Rick, although he lacked Rick’s multicoloured imagination. When Rick left the room to visit someone else, Ben spoke.

  ‘I appreciate Rick and I were only together for six months, and that was three years ago, but none of my other lovers have kept up with me. Rick comes every other day, but I don’t want to become too dependent.’

  Max felt ambivalent about this. The intensity and depth of Rick’s emotional life impressed him. Although he knew he could develop AIDS himself, he refused to avoid awareness of its realities. On the one hand, Rick’s involvement with Mike and his care for Ben encouraged Max, who was working through feelings he’d imagined he’d suppressed, and made him yearn to see Narayan again, despite his conscious resolution not to. On the other, and although he felt no shame at all about loving his own sex, Rick’s commitment to his former lover, difficult and brief as it had to be, inspired Max to devote himself exclusively to his marriage with Clare, which was far easier and more enduring.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  As soon as the taxi reached Narayan and Vijaya’s seaside house on the outskirts of Chennai, Subramaniam announced that he would like to have a siesta. ‘I get tired a lot these days,’ he’d said before retiring.

  The others went into the living room. The room was long and dark, with shutters covering the windows to keep out the heat. The house was very old – Narayan described it as ‘trembling on the verge of dilapidation’. On the walls hung ancient wooden carvings, impressively worn and fissured. A sideboard had a rough crack in the middle, as if to boast about its dilapidation too.

  ‘A evening raga,’ Vijaya announced, holding a sitar. She plucked at a string, allowing the note to swell in quivering vibration. Her finger slid on the string, its delicate resonance diminishing. She played for a just little while, with Max listening intently.

  ‘I really loved that,’ said Max. ‘Please play more.’

  ‘Max is really keen on Ravi Shankar,’ added Clare. ‘Back in Los Angeles he bought a couple of CDs of his concerts. He was always playing them and I enjoyed them. But my ear is not as finely attuned as his.’

  ‘Indian classical music is perhaps a bit of an acquired taste for you,’ Vijaya suggested.

  ‘A taste I much want to acquire,’ Clare replied. ‘Yes, do go on.’

  ‘I shall play more later,’ Vijaya replied. ‘Narayan will be here in a jiffy,’ she added, her smile lighting up her soft features. Unlike Narayan, she spoke with a sometimes old-fashioned English slang, but her idiosyncratic humour was not dissimilar to his. She’d made the charming gesture of Namaste when she’d finished playing, something Narayan had resumed after his year in the America.

  ‘Narayan loves to hear me play,’ Vijaya went on. ‘He loves Indian music, as he loves most things Indian. All that time with you in super-modern Los Angeles, and yet he’s kept his roots here in his country. Of course I’m mad with envy of his time there. I feel my own life’s been so narrow and constricted.’

  Clare was only half-listening to the discussion. She had only partly recovered from the shock of the threatened knifing incident an hour ago. She was not convinced by Tammy’s supposition that the youth had been merely out to slice the watch from his wrist. Why inspect his face so closely just beforehand? But if it had been a murder attempt, the rider must have followed them from the dance performance, making her wonder if they were constantly being followed? Had the cripple been following them ever since his appearance in that small hotel? Given that she and Tammy had been marked as prime witnesses, why would the youths risk carrying out another killing unless they were under some new and urgent pressure?

  The police were certainly under increasing pressure. Commentaries on the television and in the press were demanding that greater efforts be made to capture the assassins. Venkataraman was being lauded as a lost leader, whose assassination put the Indian democratic process at risk. His party was offering a huge reward to anyone who could provide information that led to a conviction. He’d been known as a politician determined to combat corruption at every level of Indian society: among licensing officials, traffic policemen; he even included school headmasters, who were normally held to be paragons of rectitude. A newspaper article had hinted at a shady industrialist and his association with a politician known to be highly venal, and one whom Venkataraman had started to investigate. But the article had not implied any connection between them and the assassination, for a lack of hard evidence as well as fear of being sued for libel.

  Clare recalled something Tammy had said: ‘The assassins could’ve been prompted by some bitter sense of communal oppression, such as those that motivated earlier political assassinations, as well as by the crushing poverty in which they probably live. This makes them vulnerable to being seduced into being potential hit men. But of course there’s no firm proof of any of this.’

  Sometimes Clare longed to have the whole terrible affair forgotten. But she remembered Veerapan’s resolve to find the assassins, fuelled by his belief that corruption and terrorism were the scourge of modern times, his sharp determination consorting oddly with his scrupulous manners and soft melancholy. She hoped that the killers would not be panicked into any further killing by all this publicity and pressure.

  At Veerapan’s request, Tammy was now at the police station, a grim concrete structure overlooking the sea front; he’d pointed it out to her the previous day. He had been asked to take part in an identification parade. Before he went, he’d asked them not to tell Vijaya of the knifing incident. He didn’t want her to worry, and Clare was impressed by his concern for her.

  Vijaya began showing them her temple images. Before they’d gone to Madurai, Max had asked her to find some piece for him, and she gestured towards the four-armed image of Shiva on the sideboard.

  ‘It’s Shiva in his cosmic dance,’ she declared. ‘One hand is in a gesture of fearlessness, while another points at his foot, symbolising freedom and release. It’s a very inspiring image. Narayan found it for you. It’s a nineteenth-century reproduction. The original dates from Chola times, a golden age of Tamil art.’

  ‘It’s magnificent,’ said Max. ‘I’m over the moon about it.’

  ‘Good, good! That’s exactly what I said to Narayan! And there was Narayan, such a bag of misery.’

  ‘A bag of misery?’ questioned Max.

  ‘Yes,’ Vijaya went on. ‘You left on the trip to Madurai, and he wasn’t able to go with you because of his interminable lecturing. He was really in the dumps. He was looking everywhere for something for your collection. He kept saying that we must give you something special from Tamil Nadu. Shiva is much venerated here.’

  ‘How do you mean, give me?’ asked Max. ‘Naturally, I’m paying for it.’

  ‘Oh no,’ Vijaya said, shaking her head. ‘This is a present from us both.’

  ‘But I commissioned you, as it were, to find something for my collection. It was a professional arrangement. I wouldn’t dream of accepting it as a present.’

  ‘But you must, or we might dream of taking it back again,’ Vijaya said, the tone of her voice jokey but determined. ‘We don’t understand what you mean about a professional arrangement. We only know that we’re your friends. Narayan’s always saying you’re his best friend, his buddy. There’s no question of paying. That would be too awful.’

  ‘But it must have cost a real bomb.’

  ‘Really? But I’ve no idea what real bombs cost!’ Vijaya laughed, smoothing her sari. ‘So tell me, anyway, will this go well with your collection? The trouble Narayan went to in order to find something good enough for yo
ur top-notch collection… he worried himself crazy over it. But now, let’s look at this, which Narayan gave me for myself.’

  She pointed to a figure of a woman suckling an infant.

  ‘This is the infant Krishna being suckled by Yashoda. It’s an unusual subject. I find it rather moving.’

  The child was reaching for Yashoda’s breasts with tranquil expectancy, and Clare found the image moving too. She was moved also by Narayan having given it to his sister, who was doubtless yearning to have a child with Tammy. Clare was saddened to think how little he wished to marry her. She felt an involuntary stab of guilt lest she were in part the cause of this, despite her reluctance to return his feelings.

  ‘When’s Narayan coming back?’ Max asked, breaking into her thoughts.

  ‘Oh,’ breathed Vijaya, thinking a moment. ‘Ah, he said that he may be held up at a faculty meeting, where they’ll be discussing too many things, no doubt. What chatterboxes people are, especially all these clever-clever scientists.’

  ‘But did he definitely say it was a present?’

  ‘Oh no, what he really said was “Max is to give me a million dollars for it, and I want it in ready money, please!”’ She laughed delightedly. ‘Look, what a chatterbox I am myself, and such a dreadful hostess. I must get you your whisky, or else you’ll pack your bags and run off in a huff. Narayan got some in for you. He says you couldn’t survive without your swigs of whisky.’

  ‘I’m not sure we’re quite as bad as that,’ said Max.

  ‘I’m only joking. I’m a dreadful tease. Narayan’s made me become a tease in self-defence. He’s always pulling my leg and laughing at me. Now, I must be off to get the drinks.’

  Vijaya left the room, and Max turned to Clare as if appealing to her. Telling her of his feelings for Narayan seemed to have released him from the reticence she’d hated, from the inhibiting unease between them. His sympathy for her being in possible danger had also made him far more open with her, and she was glad at least for this small mercy. He decided to tell her more.