The Assassins

by Jeremy Trafford

  ‘I don’t believe your friend was really shot at,’ he said, turning to Clare. ‘You were confused by the sun, I think. It shone into your eyes, perhaps, and dazzled you. We shall keep this young man to guard you for a time, but, in view of the cripple’s note, I believe there’s little for you to fear.’

  ‘For me, perhaps,’ Clare conceded. Then she frowned. ‘But what about Tammy?’

  Veerapan finished polishing his spectacles, as if he felt they’d never be clean enough. He gave them his melancholy smile. As he drove off to the helicopter, he waved at them with a gesture of encouragement that contained just a hint of caution.

  That evening the five of them gathered in Tammy’s room, a blandly furnished, anonymous hotel room but one that had a wonderful view of the sea.

  Subramaniam gazed at Tammy, who was sitting in a chair now, dressed in a long loose shirt and baggy trousers, a bandage around his head.

  ‘Tammy, my good fellow, what have you learnt from your Muslim friend,’ the old man asked.

  ‘Mutual understanding in particular. Non-Muslims tend to think of jihadis as fundamentalist Islamic warriors. But Shahpur taught me that, at a personal level, jihad means the struggle against resistance to the divine law within us. In the Koran, wars of aggression are condemned. Allah is compassionate and merciful. Islam and Hinduism could, in theory, be combined.’

  ‘The Emperor Akbar founded a religion of his own with that intent,’ Subramaniam replied. ‘He invited Christian priests as well as Hindu gurus to attend his court. But, Tammy, don’t entirely forget you were born a Hindu and a Brahmin.’

  ‘Why should I be the Brahmin I was born as? These caste divisions… how I hate the system! The outcasts, the Dalits as we now term them… at one time they weren’t allowed to sit down in the presence of Brahmins or even to enter temples. That was monstrous.’

  ‘That was in the bad old days. ‘Gandhi called them the harijans,’ Subramaniam insisted. ‘The beloved of God.’

  ‘Yes, but they’re not the beloved of the other castes. In the remoter villages they’re still made to have their own inferior wells. All right, we’ve laws against it, and we keep on hypocritically insisting that caste discrimination doesn’t exist, yet there’s still great prejudice against their marrying people from higher castes.’

  ‘I too hate the idea of people being outcasts,’ Narayan interjected, ‘but it’s not an essential part of Hinduism. Look, I don’t think we ought to keep strictly apart as religious groups, but surely we’re allowed to keep a sense of our identity.’

  Tammy and Narayan continued arguing. It seemed amiable enough, but Max did wonder if anything further lay behind it. It was the second day after Tammy’s accident, and Narayan’s possible increased wariness troubled Max. Clare’s distress at the time of Tammy’s accident had perhaps made Narayan wonder about the nature of the feelings underlying it.

  Max now understood more about those feelings. He’d seen the look on her face as they’d resuscitated Tammy, and it had seemed to be a reflection of his own grief at the prospect of losing Narayan. With great difficulty, he at last spoke to Clare.

  ‘Tell me, are you in love with Tammy?’

  ‘Yes, I am, Max,’ she said with some caution, ‘and he loves me back.’

  ‘I’d thought this was coming, but it’s still a shock,’ Max said. He found his hands were shaking.

  ‘It’s something you’ve absolutely no right to resent,’ she answered, but her voice was softer than before. ‘You have no right whatever, not in view of you and Narayan.’

  ‘I know it’s caused you enormous anguish. I couldn’t have felt more guilty.’

  She smiled.

  ‘And I couldn’t feel more grateful to you both for what you did in saving Tammy’s life.’

  Max leant forward and kissed her on the cheek, a gentle kiss that began to heal the breach between them.

  It was getting late now. Subramaniam was chanting faintly under his breath. He stirred, opening his watery eyes. His voice grew firmer for a while before his eyelids trembled and began to droop, and the delicate chant fluttered and died out. Tammy was still condemning the caste system:

  ‘Those youths shot down the other day were probably Dalits. All right, Gandhi called them the beloved of God, but they felt more humiliated than beloved no doubt, and humiliation festers and corrupts. They were as much the victims of poverty and prejudice as of their own embittered bloody thoughts, and so more easily suborned to do this crime.’

  Narayan seemed on the point of objecting but Tammy wasn’t quite finished.

  ‘I say this in attempted explanation not excuse.’

  There was a long pause. The sea broke on the shore with a rushing surge. The old man’s head was bowed in sleep. His breath came sighing from him as though in sleep he sighed his life away. Then he suddenly woke and began to speak.

  ‘That young man who assassinated Gandhi… one of a group of Hindu fanatics. He killed him because he stood up for the Pakistanis, resisting hatred of our Muslim brothers. But Gandhi would’ve wanted us to pray for the assassin’s soul. He’d never have approved of our hating him in return… for his being hanged.’

  He lay back as if about to hover on the edge of sleep again, to experience some uplifting dream of reconciliation.

  ‘Come on. Off to bed,’ Maria said as she put her hand on Tammy’s head to ruffle his hair. ‘No more discussion, Tammy dear. You must be quite worn out.’

  Tammy helped Subramaniam to his feet. Before he went to bed, Max thought of their visit to the ashram fifty miles away, and he thought about his time with Narayan.

  ‘I’ll stay behind in Sandeha to be with you,’ Tammy said to Subramaniam.

  ‘I’ll stay as well, said Clare. ‘If that’s all right.’

  Max was happy with this arrangement, since he wished to have some time alone with Narayan to talk about their future. Narayan spoke so inconsistently of this.

  ‘Life without you is inconceivable. But where would we spend our life together?’ he’d once said.

  Max had been worrying about Clare’s safety. However, he felt less anxious after what Inspector Veerapan had said, and what Clare had told Max about the reassuring note the cripple had given her. And, of course, they now had a police guard.

  Max knew Clare wanted to be alone with Tammy, which both concerned him and made him feel better about his going to the ashram with Narayan. He and Clare were sleeping in single beds in the same room, and he stretched out a hand across the gap to touch her and felt her accept his touch. He knew she’d come to resent him, to hate him even, just as she’d come to resent and hate Narayan, but her attitude to them both had undergone a miraculous reversal since the two of them had swum out to save Tammy’s life.

  Max couldn’t pretend that Clare’s love for Tammy didn’t make him feel deprived and insecure, but he was trying to accept that she loved Tammy. What he felt for her was a deep-rooted tenderness that had once allowed his sexual passion its full head.

  The memory of her reaction to Tammy on the beach was becoming easier to contemplate. He recalled being on top of the temple with Narayan, with a dizzying drop either side. His fear of heights meant he’d had to force himself to climb it, which he’d done only for Narayan’s sake. He’d felt a liberating sense of exhilaration as he’d stood next to Narayan and watched the sun streaking the sea with a blaze of light.

  The memory changed. He was with his father. His mother had died a month before, and he was trying to get to know his father better, as if he could somehow fill that appalling gap. His father had been devoted to her, doubtless resenting Max’s extreme attachment. However, he’d stumbled into a bitter argument with his father about the invasion of Iraq.

  ‘Bush lied about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction. The enormous cost of the war should be paid for by increased taxation of the very wealthy. But Bush is cutting taxation to enrich his cronies. Paying for the war by borrowing money will have dire fiscal consequences later on.’

  Th
is had provoked an explosion of anger from his father.

  ‘I worked my balls off for the money I’ve paid for you and your education. I haven’t noticed you refusing to accept it. You’re wasting your time trying to be a writer and photographer. You ought to settle down to a proper job. You’ve achieved nothing and are getting nowhere. And you have the fucking nerve to talk of high taxation of the rich. My God, you’re such a lousy hypocrite!’

  This touched Max’s vulnerable point. He did feel hypocritical taking advantage of his father’s money and did indeed feel he’d achieved very little. He blamed himself for blundering into that futile row, especially since his father’s health was failing. He’d craved his father’s encouragement and affection. Clare had been in London at the time, and Max had longed for her return. Their love had seemed all he had to keep him going.

  He reached out for her again. He still loved her: a changed love but a strong one, which he still didn’t think he could ever do without. He began to speak about Rick.

  ‘I’m really worried that he’ll develop AIDS… as his former lover did.’

  ‘But there’ve been all these new advances,’ she reassured him. ‘Things are so much better with this combination therapy.’

  This slightly encouraged him when he thought about Rick, but the idea of the disease becoming so widespread in the Third World, affecting women too, filled him with a sense of frustration and dismay. He recalled asking Subramaniam about the pointlessness of so much suffering and death and the answer he had ventured with its quiet equivocal assurances.

  ‘Why worry about what happens in this confusing world, which often seems so cruel and merciless? Do the seabirds worry? Do the strange seahorses care? Humankind feels pain and fear and passion, but all these things will disappear very soon… like a noise in the quiet night that wakes one from a sleep… or a distant cry that disturbs a peaceful dream.’

  As Max began to fall asleep, he heard the surf roll in the distance, and from the room next door came the sound of the old man singing. His voice rose and fell, sometimes high and sweet, sometimes low and solemn. Was his song a hymn of exultation at the mystery of things… or a gentle call for his deliverance? But then the singing died slowly out, and there remained the noise of the endless waves.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Max and Narayan had departed for the ashram, leaving Clare behind with Tammy. They were now in bed together, and she pulled his sleeping head against her breasts. She thought about the sea temple and how he’d fallen from it, and remembered Max and Narayan courageously diving in, swimming through the beating waves to seize his body and tow it to the shore. Her renewed admiration for Max and Narayan had wiped away the rancour and jealousy she’d felt. She even felt a strange, vicarious satisfaction over his love of Narayan, which allowed her to feel free about returning Tammy’s love.

  These reflections helped her put things into perspective: the tall cripple, the bullets striking the temple’s surface. Sometimes she believed she’d definitely seen him in that little group upon the beach. At other times, the figure of the cripple in his various and conflicting aspects – cruel and tender, sinister and piteous – almost seemed to be a figment of her troubled imagination.

  After Veerapan had left, she’d seen in the village a little girl who’d much resembled the cripple’s child. Clare had been sitting at a table outside a ramshackle little roadside eating place, where a man and a woman were taking turns at feeding the child; this had surprised Clare because she’d assumed that was exclusively the woman’s role. It suggested the man was particularly fatherly, the impression she’d had of the cripple when she’d seen him and his daughter together back in Madurai. Had she seen a pair of crutches lying near him on the ground? She could not be certain this was the same man, because he’d worn dark glasses and a large dilapidated hat that had partly hidden his face. She couldn’t recall his wife’s features all that well either; the woman had been in floods of tears the only time she’d seen her. All she could remember clearly was that she had a worn and honest face, and looked rather old to have so young a child; the same could also be said about this woman. Clare might have approached to get a closer look, but she hadn’t known how to do that without seeming intrusive.

  She told Tammy about it later.

  ‘If the cripple tried to kill me to stop me witnessing against the youths, their now being dead would remove any further motive for his trying again,’ he said, sounding irritated.

  The deaths of the assassins had been announced on the radio and television, although this hadn’t satisfied the public demand that their mastermind accomplice should be caught and punished.

  The police guard continued to protect them, prowling around the premises with his bleeping headset, and seizing every opportunity for one of his formidable salutes.

  ‘You have no rational cause to feel fear,’ Tammy insisted. ‘And you have no reason to feel guilt about Vijaya.’

  Clare wanted to talk about Vijaya. Tammy did so reluctantly in an effort clear her troubled conscience.

  ‘When I got engaged to Vijaya I hadn’t really known what love could be. I used to suspect it was a fiction, a romantic myth to induce men and women into marrying each other. I’d never quite believed in its reality… until I fell for you.’

  As soon as he had uttered those words, he reverted to their better-charted channel of discussion.

  ‘Oh these interminable problems of the country: poverty, disease, rural dispossession and unemployment. And then there’s sectarian bigotry and the spread of further prejudice and violence.’

  ‘Come on, Tammy!’ Clare objected. ‘This is too much gloomy disillusionment and not enough realistic hope.’

  He grinned and then talked of the growth of high technology.

  ‘Computers, satellites and the seemingly ubiquitous mobile phones are breaking down the isolation of rural life. Mobile clinics now visit the villages. The vans contain small laboratories that test for typhus, malaria and other diseases that could otherwise be fatal.’

  ‘You’re starting to sound dangerously optimistic,’ she joked. ‘You’d better watch it.’

  ‘Well, all right, I may often seem a bit of a doomster. I see many improvements but also many things that need to be made so much better. And now I feel you’ve come into my rather dismal life and made me feel there’s enormous, vital point to it. Maybe it sounds disgustingly sentimental but, in spite of all the poverty I see, I’ve never felt such hope in all my life.’

  The next day he received another text message from Shahpur:

  ‘Kalyani has finally run away from her family to marry Shahpur,’ he told Clare. ‘They’ve left Kolkata and gone to Mumbai, where he hopes to get a job. It’s very brave of her, since her father is thought to be in furious pursuit. Her mother’s doing her best to stop him. God knows if he’ll ever track them down.’

  ‘How lucky we are by comparison.’

  ‘Exactly. I hope to God nothing stops their getting married. That manic religious prejudice won’t prevent it.’ He paused before adding: ‘As I hope that nothing stops my marrying you when you’re divorced from Max.’

  This was the first time he’d spoken of marrying her. She was amusedly delighted by his eccentrically indirect proposal, but she was also perplexed and undecided. She’d discussed with Maria the marriage she seemed about to be giving up. The nearer she got to abandoning it, the more it reasserted its gentle hold with little surges of nostalgia.

  ‘You know, when I was very young, I was afraid I’d never fall in love. And suddenly there was Max, and within a month I wanted him so much I couldn’t imagine the world without him. And now I suppose what’s happened is a sort of semi-transference of that to Tammy… and my promise to myself about Vijaya…’

  ‘Is something to be tactfully forgotten,’ Maria interrupted. ‘I forbid you to torment yourself about it. All is surely fair in love and war.’

  Maria continued to do all she could to reassure her, but then seized the opportunity to re
veal further details of her own love life and the possibility of its resumption.

  ‘I’ve had another text message from The Animal. He claims he’s about to leave the Innamorata, and I’m not at all displeased by this development.’

  Overflowing with robust goodwill, she counselled Clare.

  ‘Don’t feel so bad about Tammy and Vijaya that you give him up yourself with some revolting gesture of self-sacrifice. You and Max are both so impossibly high-minded. Frankly, it makes one feel like throwing up at times. Look, you resisted temptation for longer than is proper, and now it’s high time you had some decent self-respecting fun.’

  Maria went on to recount an especially implausible anecdote about an incident in Rome.

  ‘The Animal got more drunk than usual and made outrageous passes towards the singer in his favourite restaurant. She had a face like an ape and a voice like an inebriated corncrake. Of course he only did this to provoke my jealousy, which he never thought sufficiently Italian and dramatic.’

  Maria roared with laughter, indulging in her wild exaggerations, which sometimes made Jean wonder about the veracity of some of her stories. So when she described how she’d poured a glass of Frascati over Antonio’s swollen head and had bruised one of his wandering, lustful eyes, Clare was sceptical about whether he too existed, save as a much embellished figment in Maria’s exuberant imagination, which she didn’t really expect to be believed. [I don’t think this paragraph adds anything. Delete?]

  Max and Narayan drove to the ashram, which was farther down the coast. It was late when they arrived. They were given a little room with two separate beds, but they managed to sleep together in one of them.

  Max kept half-waking, his mind coloured with the vestiges of passing dreams. One dream was of a lingam, anointed and garlanded, in a temple sanctuary. A woman was bowing before this phallic symbol, praying for fertility. When she turned around he saw that it was Clare, and he wished it was his child she longed for. Another dream was of the sea temple, now carved with embracing figures. A man was wading out of the sea. When Max woke he recalled reading in the Shiva Purana about how the ocean assumed the form of a man and how the seed of Shiva came to rest in the holy waters of the Ganges. He’d spoken to Narayan of this particular myth, but Narayan had never heard of it.