The Assassins

by Jeremy Trafford

  Tammy arrived then. He’s brought Maria, a colleague from the university. Clare had met her briefly before the expedition. Maria was fat and jovial, with a wide mouth that was plastered with crimson lipstick, and black curly hair that tumbled down to her shoulders. She’d brought her baby boy along, and occasionally suckled him when among her friends. This didn’t always put a stop to the infant’s vociferous complaints, although they were generally replaced by appreciative little burps and gurgles of delight.

  Tammy had picked up Maria and her baby on his way back from the identification parade, about which he now complained.

  ‘None of the young men in the line-up bore the faintest resemblance to the assassins. Some were too old, with balding heads and heavy paunches. Others were obviously chosen only because of their scowling looks. Well, I’m not as impressed as you are, Clare, by the Inspector. Sorry about that, since I know you wish to believe in his effectiveness.’

  Tammy looked unsettled, which could have been because, that morning, he had received a long email of his Muslim friend Shahpur, saying he’d had a bitter row with his Hindu girlfriend’s father, who’d forbidden his daughter Kalyani to see him any more. The father threatened to turn her out of the house if she persisted. This had caused his wife to break down in tears. She was in timid rebellion against his patriarchal despotism, regretting Kalyani’s love for a Muslim but wanting to keep her beloved daughter in the family. Near to despair, Shahpur was trying to persuade Kalyani to go off with him without her father’s blessing, and she was painfully undecided.

  Maria kissed Vijaya before taking the hand of the old man as she coaxed her reluctant child towards him.

  ‘Professor Subramaniam, you once told me you love little children.’

  ‘Did I say that, dear lady?’

  ‘Yes, you said that was the bit you liked most in all the Christian gospels, about not getting into the kingdom of heaven unless one became like a child. But Jesus had no children, so how could he really know what they are like?’

  ‘He was a great moral teacher, one we Hindus enormously admire,’ said the Professor. ‘We especially love his sermon on the mount. Christians see him as the third part of God, like our Hindu trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva – all different aspects of the same divinity. What Jesus said about the little children, I think he meant that as a metaphor.’

  ‘How do you mean?’ asked Maria.

  ‘I mean our minds are too full of adult confusions: rivalry, vengefulness and greed. Surely, Jesus meant one needs to have the simple mind of a little child to enter heaven, although our idea of heaven is very different from your Christian one, with its separate souls. For us, it’s a state without individual desire and suffering, all our souls being merged into one great spiritual union.’

  ‘Children can be even greedier than adults and often just as vengeful,’ Maria murmured, before turning to Clare to ask her about her trip.

  Clare was about to answer but her attention was captured by the old man, who was smiling at the inquisitive, roly-poly infant, whose hands were making little grasping motions. The child reached for Subramaniam’s spectacles; frustrated in his attempts to seize them, he began to whimper ominously.

  ‘The infant’s too hot, which always makes it cross,’ Maria commented, forgetting that she’d just asked Clare a question. ‘It really can be quite ferocious sometimes, in which respect it takes after Antonio, not me.’

  ‘You shouldn’t call him it,’ said Vijaya. ‘He’s him.’

  ‘Oh, for me it’s usually it. I love to think of this as my little thing, all warm and cuddly, which won’t grow up into some lustful and deceitful male, leaving its fat, old mother in the lurch.’

  ‘Antonio?’ asked Clare.

  ‘Its horror of a father,’ Maria sighed. ‘I see I’ll have to tell you the gruesome story. I left the brute in Rome. I really couldn’t take him any more.’ She lowered her voice, and leant over to whisper in Clare’s ear. ‘He’s got more sexual stamina than is probably desirable, but he’s not so well endowed with other talents, such as the ability to resist other women. In fact, he’s an animal of monstrous promiscuity. So he remained in Rome and I came here.’

  Maria was interrupted by a bellow from the child, who had a plastic toy in his hand, raised menacingly above his head. Apparently, it was just about to be hurled at someone. The old man smiled with determined benignity, but Maria remained blithely unperturbed.

  ‘You mustn’t allow it to annoy you, Professor,’ she said. ‘Non-violent resistance may’ve been fine when dealing with the faintly civilised British, but it shouldn’t apply to savage little children.’

  The infant began to howl in an agony of frustration. Maria, with a martyr’s sigh, scooped him up, still grimly clutching his toy missile. After an interval of not very tuneful crooning, she went on to tell Clare something of her recent life, while thumping the infant lovingly upon his back to deter the aggressive belch he threatened to emit. She spoke with a cheerful lack of reticence and possibly a certain exaggeration for the sake of the narrative appeal.

  ‘I’m Italian-American in origin,’ she declared. ‘I read Italian and French literature in the United States. When I graduated, I went to sacred Italy. I lived with the profane Antonio, who abandoned me six months after I bore his child, a man-child, from his very loins. Such tears, such sentiment, such treachery. He was lured away by a predatory female, loaded with disgusting lucre. She was captivated by his physical charms but had no idea how generously he offered them around. I ceased repining after a while and applied for work at the university here, which is where I’ve been for the last six months.’

  The infant had wriggled his way out of his mother’s arms. He threw the missile down on the floor in a fury of displeasure and squirmed against Maria with redoubled energy.

  ‘It’s still too hot,’ Maria said. ‘Let’s get its clothes off. It always behaves better when it’s innocently nude. Give me a hand, Vijaya darling.’

  Vijaya moved to help her, holding the boy as still as she was able to.

  ‘Ah, there’s its little cock,’ Maria said as she removed the infant’s little yellow pants. ‘Trés charmant but inclined to be so unpredictable.’

  Maria talked about being abandoned by her man in spite of the demon he’d turned out to be.

  ‘I should’ve known from his eyes, so glistening and predatory. But I refuse to be maltreated by a man ever again. I’ll forget about that brutish egotist and find some selfless Indian who’s quiet and contemplative, and who rises above all temptations of the flesh – apart from mine, of course! I’ll find someone who’ll dedicate his life to my total happiness. You’re looking sceptical, Clare.’

  Clare said nothing.

  ‘You don’t think such a being could exist in raw reality?’ pressed Maria. ‘Not even in miraculous, sweet India?’

  She heaved a mockingly self-piteous sigh. She held her infant close, and then patted his pink bottom with her ring-encrusted hand before opening her dress and offering him one of her large, blushing breasts.

  ‘I believed in suckling till very late. I’m convinced most of the neuroses of the modern West sprung from being torn from the breast too early.’ Clare wondered if they could also spring from having it thrust upon one for too long, but she kept that opinion to herself.

  Across the room, Tammy and Narayan were drifting into an argument.

  ‘I think it’s down here in Tamil Nadu that Hindustan is at its purest,’ said Narayan.

  Tammy sighed impatiently.

  ‘Tanjore, the capital of the Chola Empire, was the Athens of India, with its bronzes, its frescoes and its literature. Our kings undertook huge irrigation schemes. They sent armies to Sri Lanka and as far north as the Ganges.’

  ‘Our country is called India, not Hindustan,’ said Tammy, greatly annoyed. ‘We also have Muslims, Sikhs, Jains, Christians and Parsees. With 1.2 billion people, we’ve a greater diversity of language, race and religion than any other country in the world. We st
ay together, despite separatist extremism in Kashmir and the Punjab, and the regional prejudice of the sort you’re sentimentally expressing.’ He seemed moved by an intensifying frustration. ‘The Cholan Empire’s bloody well over. All this ancient history, it’s so divisive. Your whole attitude’s so fucking backward looking.’

  Surprised by his own outburst, Tammy looked around in some embarrassment. Vijaya lowered her face while Subramaniam gazed at him reproachfully.

  ‘You shouldn’t use such horrible words,’ said the old man, ‘especially in front of gentle ladies.’

  ‘He only uses them because he feels so strongly,’ Clare said.

  ‘Nonetheless, he shouldn’t use them in front of ladies,’ Subramaniam insisted. ‘I, too, have felt strongly about Indian unity. I, too, don’t call India Hindustan. Thinking that way makes for faction and for strife, such as tragically happened over the long years. Those Partition riots that Gandhi tried to stop by fasting… I’ll never forget when he was assassinated.’

  ‘Narayan tells me you witnessed it,’ said Max.

  ‘Yes. One moment he was walking among us in his garden, his nieces on either side of him. And then this man appeared out of nowhere: a mad extremist who hated Gandhi’s attempts at reconciliation with the Muslims. He bowed and made the gesture of Namaste before he shot him. People tried to go to Gandhi’s aid, but it was too late: the wound was a fatal one. The news spread like wildfire. People of every faith were weeping in the streets. The assassin was hanged, something Gandhi himself would never have approved of.’

  Subramaniam paused a moment, then looked at Clare as he spoke again.

  ‘This young assassin the other day. He seems to have come out of nowhere too. Nobody knows what his motives were.’

  ‘Unlike when Indira was assassinated,’ said Tammy. ‘She was also shot down in a garden because she ordered the storming of the Sikhs’ Golden Temple. Indira had become a bit of an autocrat, suspending democracy in the Emergency of seventy-four.’

  ‘An autocrat?’ said Subramaniam, shaking his head. ‘Nonsense, my dear fellow. She was mainly a good woman… her father’s daughter. But she’d tragically lost her elder son, and the emergency was a temporary mistake. Our democracy recovered. It has the largest electorate in the world, which is most marvellous. Yes, the storming of the Golden Temple was very wrong but to be shot by her Sikh bodyguard? That was most terrible.’

  ‘It caused widespread revenge against the Sikhs,’ said Tammy. ‘Thousands were massacred. All this mass, knee-jerk retaliation! It’s appalling.’

  Subramaniam nodded in agreement.

  ‘All these assassinations in our recent history. Indira’s second child, Rajiv, cruelly blown up… and by a suicide woman! Just imagine. Murder and suicide together… that was something we never had before. It’s a terrifying feature of our times. And now Venkataraman, knifed to death by a mere boy. Why did he do it? He must’ve been hired. He must be punished when he’s caught, but I hope he won’t be hanged like Gandhi’s assassin. Ahima means respect for all living things. It’s wrong to kill, and two wrongs never make one right.’

  ‘He was obviously pressured into it,’ Tammy replied. ‘He can’t be held entirely responsible. As one of the oppressed and dispossessed, he had nothing in the world to lose. Great poverty drives the really desperate to crime and terrorism.’

  ‘You seem to think all crime is the result of poverty,’ Narayan objected strongly. ‘That’s utter nonsense. Most poor people don’t resort to crime and terrorism. If they did, society could not exist at all. Everything would be violence and murderous confusion.’

  ‘Societies with extremes of wealth and poverty have far more crime than those with more equality,’ Tammy answered. ‘The new affluence is largely confined to the top twenty per cent of the population, drawn mainly from the upper castes. There are still four hundred million without electricity. What’s spent on public health is among the lowest in any country anywhere: only 1.2 per cent of GDP. Compare that to the world average of 6.5 per cent. Opportunities for the lower castes are better now than they were, but they need to be enormously improved.’

  ‘I know it’s your profession, but how you hold all these figures in your head amazes me!’ Subramaniam exclaimed. ‘But violence is no answer to social unfairness and oppression. The answer for my generation was non-violent resistance to British rule. Perhaps it could be for your generation too, in resistance to all these inequalities. We Congress people used to lie down in the streets to stop the soldiers marching. And we lay on the railways tracks to stop the trains. The British put me in prison for sedition. I spent six months in solitary confinement.’

  ‘Did they allow you books?’ Clare asked.

  ‘Yes. I read the Bhagavad Gita many times. I read Tolstoy’s The Kingdom of God is Within You. Its basic Christianity greatly influenced our Gandhiji; it told us to control our natural egotism, our pride and rivalry. He believed Hindus and Muslims should never fight each other. Muslims should know more about Hinduism, and Hindus should know more about Islam. I think it’s a beautiful religion, though it’s not mine. The Koran acknowledges Abraham, Moses and Jesus. It says that our God and your God is one and the same. I’ve known Muslims say that if Mohammed had known about Hinduism, he’d have included our sages too. Islam should be regarded with respect and not misgiving.’

  ‘It’s surely the world’s number one problem,’ Max said. ‘It’s a problem that there’s this ignorance and fear of Islam, and that it should be so mixed up with politics and power.’

  ‘Indeed, indeed,’ the old man continued. ‘We never expected to have three leaders murdered for political-religious reasons… and now a fourth in Venkataraman. He was probably killed for his brave opposition to political corruption… all this terrible corruption.’ His voice rose. ‘It is so destructive of good government, so demeaning of our high ideals.’

  Subramaniam paused to control his indignation, which seemed to have rather taken him by surprise. ‘It wasn’t always like this,’ he went on, his voice calmer. ‘The times we knew… the good people who have gone. How fast the years have sped by, how sadly vanished.’

  He looked a touch exhausted by his fervour and slumped back against a cushion with a little sigh. Tammy began to speak.

  ‘When I came back from Cambridge, I felt so rootless and cut off. I went everywhere, wanting to feel I really was an Indian. Shahpur and I slept on rope beds in the open. He carried a small prayer mat for worshipping the single God he loves so loyally. Yet he also loyally loves this Hindu woman, who worships many gods. He says one God or many, they come to the same thing in the end: our endless search for spiritual light.’

  ‘I don’t agree,’ said Narayan. ‘The two religions are fundamentally so different.’

  ‘You think so? Anyhow, we slept one time in a converted buffalo shed in a poor little Hindu village in Rajasthan. Some of the younger villagers accepted him as a Muslim, but their elders didn’t. India is still seventy per cent villages, you know. Most of them have open drains and intermittent, unreliable electricity. The women are so beautiful, though, and move so gracefully. And the children are so high-spirited. We walked through fields of yellow mustard to the local primary school, where they were taught to be proud of being Indian, to be proud of being citizens of an undivided country.’

  Maria’s child had now finished suckling, and had mercifully fallen asleep in her arms, judging by the end of his feisty burps and dulcet snores. She handed him over to Vijaya, who began to rock him in her arms.

  ‘You’re going to make a wonderful mother, Vijaya dear,’ Maria said. ‘You’re going to have fabulous children, you and Tammy. But when oh when is Narayan going to show interest in another woman? It’s the sweetest brother and sister relationship I’ve ever seen, but he’s so wrapped up in you that no other woman can get a look in.’

  Clare was surprised Maria could be this outspoken. Vijaya clearly was too, for she looked quite disconcerted. Clare wondered if this could be part of the reason
for Narayan’s responsiveness to Max. Had there been no other woman in his life apart the sister he adored so much? As she sipped her neat whisky, she found herself wondering how she might dispose of some it other than by drinking it, without offending Vijaya’s over-generous ideas of hospitality. Max had already drunk half the contents of his glass, but then he had a harder head for alcohol than Clare had.

  ‘Hindu prayer must be very different from Christian prayer,’ Max said to Subramaniam, ‘in view of their different ideas about the godhead.’

  ‘Some pray to an elephant god,’ Subramaniam replied, ‘and some pray to a monkey god. They all worship an aspect of the divine that has a wonderful infinity of forms. God is in an elephant and in a monkey. It makes us feel tenderness towards animals when we know there are animals in God as well.’

  Clare gazed around the room at Vijaya’s carvings: a frieze of Sarasvati being bathed by two fat little elephants, their coiling trunks raised up above her head, Hanuman, with his monkey paws stretched out, symbolising loyalty. Luminous in the glow of the oil lamps that Vijaya treasured, the figures threw shadows around the room.

  The old man continued.

  ‘You are asking me how I pray, Max. I imagine the world and God as being one and the same. I am part of the same. There is no separation between the world and me, so there is no desire, no striving, and no frustration. There is no further passion; there is only peace. I feel myself in God and I feel God in me. Death and destruction don’t exist at all.’

  He sat back. There was a long pause before Tammy replied with some impatience.

  ‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘But it’s attitudes like yours that drain away our energy and effort. Desire and need cause us to struggle and improve our lot. Passion and frustration are what make us strive and live. The spiritual passivity you’ve just described encourages mere enervating dreams.’

  Subramaniam nodded sharply.

  ‘In a purely secular society, one that worships only science, all is greed and material go-getting. Death will kill all this when it comes. Oh my dear boy, you may know a lot about your economics and statistics, I am sure, but what is life without some form of spiritual dimension?’