The Assassins

by Jeremy Trafford

  ‘Clare and Max were very good to me there,’ Narayan answered. ‘I had a wonderful time. I love its beaches, the sunshine, the surfing and the marvellous art galleries. Anyway, the wickedness you think is there is mainly unreal: all these dream-filled soap operas, science fiction films and Westerns, full of pseudo macho heroes. In a weird sort of way, it’s all very childlike.’

  ‘Well, children can be pretty fiendish sometimes, as we unfortunately know,’ Maria asserted.

  The infant had been put to bed, much to his disgust when there were so many fascinating people to climb over and explore. His howls of complaint had become pathetic whimpers aimed at getting his own way, although Maria turned a resolutely deaf ear to them.

  ‘Your tinsel paradise has one of the highest crime rates in the world,’ Maria went on. ‘Really, Narayan, America was just an exotic adventure for you, not more than a romantic fantasy. Oh you Indians, you’re slaves to strict convention in your actual lives but revolting romantics in your dreams. Look at your Bollywood films, which are so unreal and fanciful.’

  ‘Look,’ interjected Tammy, in mild protest, ‘people need unreality at night to make up for the grimness they have to face by day.’

  They went into the garden. Clare was thinking about those two young men. She felt distanced from Max, or she might perhaps have told him. Her hurt had put up a wall between them. She’d already taken Tammy aside, wanting to speak with him alone. She had to tell him about the boy in the garden the man on the motorbike. It was no one’s business but theirs, a danger temporarily driving them together. They shared this as they shared the horror of the murder and the mystery of the cripple, and she felt the need to keep it to themselves.

  As she walked across the lawn, the palm trees towered in the darkness. The moon hung in the sky, a disc of icy brilliance. She reached the end of the garden, and gazed down the lane beyond. It seemed empty save for the moon shadows of the eucalyptus branches. The two youths wouldn’t be lurking here, but where would they have gone? The boy’s appearance by the garden hedge had presumably been his own idea and his accomplice had now taken him away. Had the boy intended merely to frighten her? She recalled his laughter as the bike sped away, and it had seemed innocent enough. He’d appeared even more dominated by the older youth, good humoured though it was. So what were their intentions? Were they preparing to rid themselves of her and Tammy, but waiting for less risky time to strike?

  Tammy would be sceptical about what she was about to tell him, but she knew she must stay cool and appear reasonable. Behind her, she could hear chattering and laughter, but as she kept walking and the happy noises died away. She knew Tammy had followed her, and then realised that she hadn’t told him about Vijaya yet. She wondered how he’d take the news, and her own decision.

  A dog was howling somewhere, a mournful outcry on the wind. Clare heard Tammy call her name but didn’t turn, staring instead at a snake delicately moving across the path. She wasn’t scared of it; she was more in awe of its beautiful, patterned skin, and with the unhurried dignity it displayed as it proceeded on its solitary way.

  The wind was whispering in the eucalyptus branches as Tammy came up close. Clare did turn then, determined to tell him of her resolve as well as of the danger she thought might threaten them. But he was the first to speak.

  ‘What happened in the kitchen?’ he asked.

  ‘Vijaya broke down. She wept. I felt terrible.’

  ‘Clare, darling, please…’

  Tammy tried to take her in his arms, but she flinched. She knew he was too shy to thrust himself upon her, though. She wouldn’t need to fight off his physical advances. If only they were all she must resist.

  ‘I’m sorry, Tammy. From now on we mustn’t see each other alone. We must put an end to this.’

  ‘Put an end to what?’

  ‘This must be the last time,’ Clare said, steeling herself.

  Tammy said nothing. He just stood, listening. Waiting.

  ‘I think you’re wrong about the boy on the motorbike after the dance performance,’ Clare told him. ‘I think he was the assassin, and he’s since been lurking round us. I saw him in the garden after you had left. I saw them both ride off on a motorbike together. Thank God we leave Chennai tomorrow to go to Sandeha. But, please, can’t you get Vijaya to come too?’

  ‘I love you,’ he replied, total conviction in his voice. ‘I’m not going to marry Vijaya. I’ve finally decided that and I’m telling her tomorrow.’

  ‘Don’t, for God’s sake,’ urged Clare.

  Her voice had gone hard as a form of defence. She told herself that she hadn’t known Tammy long, and she wasn’t in love with him. She’d been wrong in allowing that brief and foolish kiss.

  ‘Tell her that,’ she said, ‘and I’ll be the one to have destroyed her.’

  ‘You’re being dramatic. Vijaya’s much tougher than you think. Not marrying me will not destroy her.’

  ‘You should’ve seen her this evening,’ Clare said, the memory of Vijaya’s desperate sadness coming back to her. ‘I wouldn’t want to witness that, or her to experience it, again. She’s an attractive woman, Tammy, with intelligent, strong beliefs. We heard her articulate them this evening. She’s amusing and she’s loved you for years.’ Clare paused, just for a moment. ‘Is that the trouble? Has it gone on for too long? Has it become stale? Do you feel trapped? Did your family force you into it?’

  ‘I admire and respect her very much,’ Tammy said quietly. ‘I’ve just never loved her.’

  ‘I wish to God you did. I don’t want you loving me. I fear I’ll hurt you. We need to return to the others. We need to go now.’

  Abruptly, Clare started to walk away. She glanced back, and saw him standing in a forlorn and stricken attitude. Her looking back induced him to come up to her, although she’d not intended this.

  ‘I can’t stop loving you,’ he said. ‘I can’t get you out of my wretched mind.’

  He tried to pull her gently towards him, his face moving close. Clare knew he wanted to kiss her, to express his tenderness, but she would not allow it. She could not allow it. She raised a hand, warning him to keep his distance. He had begun to weep, and she hated to see the pain she now caused him.

  She walked resolutely on till she reached the garden. The others had gone back inside. Clare thought she heard the noise of the sea in the distance, but perhaps it was the wind. She heard the howl of that dog again. A bat swung out of the darkness, twisting, looping in the air. Another came hurtling from the sky and seemed to pause an instant in the air before, with a tremor of its delicate wings, it skated with a flash into the night.

  I’ve loved Max too much and for too long, she thought. I’ll always be in love with him. Tammy was behind her, but she refused to turn this time. He whispered something to her imploringly, but she didn’t catch what he said and found herself uncertain what to do.

  Max had come back outside and was calling her name. She could see the shadow he cast upon the lawn. She thought he sounded really anxious. As she moved towards him, leaving Tammy alone again, she felt as if she were returning from some foreign, dangerous country to one whose claims on her were still far too compelling.

  The following morning, as the party prepared to depart for Sandeha, Clare glanced out of an upstairs window and saw the man with the moustache sitting astride a stationary motorbike. He was about to put on his crash helmet. She picked up her binoculars to observe him more closely as he forcefully kick-started the engine. It roared and the headlamp glowed, a menacing bright eye in the morning light.

  The boy appeared and ran towards the motorbike, giving the impression that he feared being abandoned. He began pleading with the older youth and seemed close to tears. The man affectionately patted him on the shoulder and, laughing teasingly, beckoned him to climb up behind him. They rode off together on that great machine, the stutter of his engine vibrating stridently. The boy, himself laughing now, had his arms tightly around his companion’s waist, tenaciously cli
nging on.

  Max had gone downstairs with their light luggage. Narayan was loading up his car. She met Tammy in the hallway.

  ‘You haven’t changed your mind about getting Vijaya to come with us?’ she asked him anxiously.

  ‘No,’ he solemnly answered. ‘I’m just about to tell her what I said I would.’

  ‘I can’t bear to think how she’ll react… what she’ll be feeling.’

  ‘I’ll do it kindly, I promise you.’

  ‘I wish to God you wouldn’t do it at all.’

  He went upstairs, and she heard him walk along the landing to Vijaya’s room. She felt sick with dread at what he was about to say to her. She walked outside and, to her astonishment, found the cripple waiting, smiling apologetically. He approached, looking deeply concerned, and handed her a note. Before she had a chance to speak, he made the gesture of Namaste and swung away hurriedly, as if he wanted to get away before she read it.

  The note was in English, and brief.

  My wife and I have not forgotten you saved our dauhter.

  Do not wory.

  We wil not harm you.

  Clare took a deep breath and looked up at the sky, trying to decide what to do next. Should she tell Tammy? She decided in an instant that she wouldn’t. The note didn’t mention him at all, so she thought it likely he was excluded from the reassurance and still at risk. Even if she did tell him, he would scoff at the prospect of there being any danger to his life at all. Besides, they were leaving for Chennai, in ten minutes. She decided to call Inspector Veerapan from her mobile.

  As she waited for the Inspector to pick up the phone, Clare resolved to tell Max too. He would feel a lot easier to know that she at least would not be harmed. The phone clicked through to an answerphone. Clare felt impatient as she waited for the recorded greeting to end.

  ‘Inspector,’ she began, ‘it’s Clare. I’ve seen the assassins again. They’re definitely following Tammy and me. I’ve seen the cripple too. He came up to me and gave me a note in English. It says they won’t harm me but it doesn’t mention Tammy. So I don’t think he’s safe at all. I’m only safe because I saved the man’s daughter from being crushed and trampled in the crowd. He’s obviously grateful. We’re going to Sandeha now. Bye.’

  It suddenly occurred to Clare that the cripple had taken quite a risk in giving her the note. His handwriting could surely help to identify him. But then she realised he could’ve got a professional scribe in the bazaar to write it. He didn’t seem to have much English after all. Although the spelling had been poor, the note hadn’t been all that badly worded.

  She thought of Veerapan’s solicitous determination and gentle manners, which lent her reassurance, although she couldn’t help incongruously still supposing his hair was too impeccable to be naturally his own.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Max found the journey to Sandeha uneventful, or perhaps he had too much on his mind to fully to take it in. On their arrival they booked into a hotel that was sufficiently modest for his liking. Sandeha, this place of the sea temple and the rock carvings, was a hundred miles south of Chennai. Subramaniam had told him that Sandeha meant doubt in Sanskrit. The old man had decided to come along, but Vijaya had not. He hadn’t seen the temple for fifty years and wanted to see it one more time before he died. An hour later Max went down to the sea alone, with his camera, leaving Tammy, Maria, Narayan and Clare back at the hotel. The temple, about twelve metres in height, was much smaller than the one at Madurai. The waves were throwing themselves against the rocks around it, sending up a delicate thin spray, flecks of which just reached the stonework of the temple, with its eroded vestiges of carvings.

  As he stood watching the waves, Max found his thoughts turning to Clare, as they always did. He’d seen her moods fluctuate in last few days: sometimes she was remote and hard, other times vulnerable and nervous. He didn’t really understand what was happening. Why that strange scene with Vijaya when they’d left? Was there something wrong between her and Tammy? Max hadn’t wanted to ask and didn’t want to appear suspicious. Anyway, he had other things pressing heavily on his mind. Just before leaving Chennai that morning, he’d had a long text message from Rick.

  Ben was dead. He’d died in Rick’s apartment. Rick had brought him there when they knew the end was near. They’d had a small party the week before, during which they’d drunk a lot of Californian champagne, which had helped Ben to laugh at Rick’s ribald jokes. It was not Ben’s inevitable death that hit Max so hard but what Rick wrote later in the message:

  I hope I’ll have Ben’s courage if things go bad for me as well. I’ve lost weight, you see, and I’ve got this little scabby growth on my shoulder. The treatments are much improved these days, I know. I shouldn’t be complaining, but I’ve lost Mike for good now. He’s got someone else. He can’t bear being alone in life. I don’t blame him.

  I’m having some tests next week. I’ll let you know when I get the results back. Don’t worry in the meantime.

  Good luck with your research! Rick. x

  ‘The phenomena of this world are all one vast, mysterious illusion,’ Subramaniam had once said to Max. ‘Time and space are all illusory. They are without form or significance until experienced inside a human mind, or an animal mind for that matter, or even, according to the Jains, the mind of an insect.’ Max wondered, though, if they’d include, in their all-embracing veneration, a virus that attacked the defences of a body and brought a human life to cruel destruction.

  ‘Hinduism has an actual god of destruction,’ Subramaniam had gone on. ‘Shiva the Destroyer. But Shiva’s also the Preserver, doubtless the reason for his being a god of sexuality. He’s venerated in the lingams, those phallic symbols you see in the temple sanctums.’

  Destruction. Sexuality. Preservation. Death.

  These ideas moved around in Max’s mind, in painful contradiction and confusion. The waves beat on. The rain fell and the winds blew. On either side of the temple, which had been scoured away for centuries, the beach stretched away into the distance, with the odd piece of driftwood brought in by a high tide, stranded now among the shells and piles of seaweed.

  Max set off in search of the bas-reliefs, some two hundred metres away. On the huge rock surface was carved a group of elephants, with noble, heavy heads and curling trunks, figures of gods and goddesses and depictions of ceremonial cattle. The light fell on the surface and shimmered in the heat so that the carved rocks took on a curious, insubstantial quality. It was as if their enormous presence was as elusive and transient as the clouds dissolving in the sky above him. Max sensed the passing of time, which sometimes seemed to have gone by with extraordinary speed, as in a sudden disturbing burst of wind, and sometimes with a silent gathering enchantment, as in the solemn coming of a summer dawn.

  Enchantment? He thought of the enchanted times of his own life… with Clare… with Narayan… with Rick. The future was unknowable. He tried to imagine living with Narayan in Chennai, or back in Los Angeles, with his marriage broken up and Clare gone from him. Clare gone and irretrievable! The idea froze him, but he had to confront the fact that he had a choice to make – in fairness to Clare, to Narayan and indeed to himself. Life without Narayan seemed like a kind of death in life, but life without Clare felt like non-existence.

  Would Rick live on for years? Or would he, like Ben, become very sick and need someone to look after him? The thought of his dying was devastating. Max thought of his old feeling for Rick and the memories it conjured up. He remembered being kissed by him in a foam of bubbles in a jacuzzi one night. At Clare and Max’s wedding reception, Rick had crooned, in mock romantic fashion, one of those old thirties songs that satirised the painful claims of half-requited love. How vibrant the memories of him seemed, with his jokes and songs, his tearaway rebelliousness and masculine wild charm. The sacrifice he’d made for Ben, giving up Mike so he could devote himself to Ben, touched Max with an appalled sorrow at the possibility of his own destruction.

  Max ha
d asked Subramaniam about pointless death, with both Rick and Ben on his mind. The old man had gazed at him through his small, round spectacles.

  ‘You think of life as merciless and fearful,’ said the Professor, with that sense of tranquillity that Max yearned for in himself but mainly failed to find, ‘attended, in the end, by pain and fear and death. But these will not endure. Death is like a dream that’s quickly over. These things vanish like shadows in the rising sun, when our lonely souls are ours no more.’

  The remembered voice now died away, like the temple life had died away. Max tried to imagine the temple full of worshippers, with their urgent prayers and the blare of trumpets. It was now empty and alone, the mournful cries of gulls echoing around it, subject to the crashing of the never-ending waves.

  A bell clanged. Max looked around and saw a little, whitewashed temple not far away. A sadhu, with a gaunt face and emaciated body, approached. He whispered for alms. Max gave him some money, thinking of the traditional Hindu attitude to material possessions: the sanctity of poverty, such as Jesus and Saint Francis had also preached. He imagined with dread the thinness that might overtake Rick’s body.

  The bell tolled again. Max took hold of himself. Worrying like this would be the last thing Rick would want him to be doing.

  And then he saw Narayan approaching. He strode with casual vigour, the sea glittering behind him. He waved at Max in his impulsive way, seeming so very physical, so substantial. Max gazed again at the rock carvings, in all their beauty and solidity, and wondered about his quest for happiness. But what about the happiness of spiritual tranquillity?

  ‘All is maya, illusion,’ he recalled the old man saying. ‘Look at this material world. What can it signify?’

  Max reflected that the bas-reliefs – those images of gods and elephants and holy cattle – were part of maya too, yet they had lasted a good twelve hundred years.