The Assassins

by Jeremy Trafford

  ‘Look out, Max, you’re in danger of knowing more about Hinduism than most Hindus!’ he’d said laughingly. Still, I’m really glad about your growing knowledge and admiration.’

  ‘I love its amazingly affirmative attitude to sex,’ Max had replied. ‘I really admire its veneration of the yoni as well as the lingam, the symbols of female and male genitalia. What I admire most, though, are the ideas in the Bhagavad Gita, which you and Subramaniam prompted me to read.’

  ‘It’s said to be the glory of Hindu thought.’

  ‘I compare it to the Sermon on the Mount, with its inspiring if difficult ethical ideals. I’d love to be strong enough to be indifferent to worldly success and failure, to be all-forgiving, invulnerable to adversity and beyond despair.’

  ‘All this is possible… if one follows the path of light and avoids that of fire, with its greed and unrest.’

  ‘Yes, but the way of fire also includes human desire, which I’m not quite so keen to be above.’

  This brought Max to think of Rick, who’d always been so wonderfully accepting of his sexuality, and he wondered when he’d hear about the tests. He felt his dread about what could happen to Rick like a shadow over his happiness with Narayan. Rick was the first of the three loves of his whole life, and Max could never forget those impassioned, if confusing, times together.

  Narayan appeared to be in a disturbed mood when he woke in the morning, and Max asked him what the matter was.

  ‘I hate myself when I get these downers,’ Narayan told him. ‘I suppose I’m scared.’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘The future… what it holds for us. You don’t know the enormous pressure to marry we Indians live under… and the prejudice against gay love.’

  ‘The future is whatever we make of it,’ said Max simply. ‘We have to fight the prejudice. We’ve every right to be happy.’

  Narayan didn’t reply directly. Max put his hands to his head, squeezing it slightly as if he could impress upon the brain within something of the tenderness that nagged him. He loved their mental intimacy, which always instilled in him a desire for a physical equivalent. Narayan responded in kind to the feelings he uttered, the words infusing their kisses with a growing warmth and then a sudden release of passion. Max loved how his climax was beyond his control, and the sense of freedom that paradoxically always gave him.

  Later, Max again challenged Narayan’s anxieties. He laughed at them, knowing how Narayan found reassurance in the humour.

  ‘So I’m bound by convention, am I?’ Narayan replied. ‘The oppressive concept of normality? Is it worse than the caste system? Oh yes. It’s every bit as bad as colour prejudice. My God, think of all the taboos we’re breaking, Max: race, religion, sexual orientation. It must be quite a record, in its way.’

  ‘If the taboos are wrong, they should be broken.’

  ‘Not by shouting one’s defiance from the rooftops, as least not unless you want to be turned into a martyr, and I’m afraid I don’t. You mustn’t expect too much of me. I’m not as strong and independent as I give out, and I don’t want to see you hurt.’

  ‘I won’t get hurt, whatever happens,’ Max said, expressing his words with a certainty he didn’t feel.

  Narayan had a friend at the ashram, a Bengali woman named Mohini. They’d met at the university, where she’d been a lecturer in politics. Mohini joined them at the ashram the next morning. Max reckoned she was in her late thirties. She had a pale complexion and determined eyes. She’d got permission for Max to bring his camera and, as she showed them around, he took photos of people sitting at their spinning wheels and hand looms, of cows and buffaloes being milked by hand, of the shrine of the saddhu, which was densely covered with flowers, and of the disciples prostrating themselves with a reverence Narayan seemed to share.

  Max found himself thinking about Narayan’s divided allegiances: to the luminous world of Western science on the one hand, and to his cherished Hindu faith on the other. Could he maintain a balance, or would the insistent, solemn demands of his deep-rooted culture reassert themselves and overcome Western influences?

  Max thought that Mohini came across as a somewhat divided spirit too. She was enthusiastic about the traditional values of the ashram, but, like Vijaya, she was determined not to be perceived as old-fashioned and submissive. Unlike Vijaya, though, she allowed a certain defensiveness to colour her initial attitude towards Max.

  ‘So you’ve come to have a laugh at our quaint ways? We had an English writer here last year, full of simplistic condemnations and determined to find India a catastrophe. He decided the ashram was really a bit phoney, the swami a sort of spiritual conman. When your own clever-clever book appears, I trust you won’t be following his example!’

  ‘Why the attitude?’ Max asked, taken aback.

  ‘Well,’ retorted Mohini, shrugging, ‘we do get quite a bad press in the West at times. It’s usually something along the lines of how fascinating the ancient culture is but, with a few ultra-technical exceptions, what a corrupt old mess of a modern country.’

  ‘No one thinks the West is so marvellous that we can’t learn from both your old traditions and your modern country,’ countered Max.

  Mohini nodded.

  ‘I realise the West is losing its over-confidence,’ she said. ‘People are worried about fossil fuels and global warming, and taking up the fibre diet of poor Asian peasants so you don’t die too early from heart attacks as a result of scoffing all that rich food.’

  Max continued to find her style of argument abrasive, but Narayan came to her defence.

  ‘How annoyed we are by how Westerners overreact to our country. We don’t want to be embarrassingly gushed over, but we also don’t enjoy being told what an area of darkness India now is and how beyond all salvation it is.’

  Narayan showed enthusiasm when Mohini pressed them to attend the ashram’s dawn meditation, an experience she hoped they would be open to.

  ‘The swami will appear upon his balcony. There will be no noise… just the sound of the sea. We will watch the sun rising. You stand there as the swami sings… that’s all you do. And let your own inner peace come through.’

  ‘What first brought you to the ashram,’ Max asked her.

  ‘I suppose the Gandhian belief in non-violence. I’m a widow, which probably explains why I’m so self-reliant and so independent of conventional middle-class prejudice. I’ve sacrificed none of my individuality in joining the ashram. Much as I admire the swami’s principles, I make my own decisions in my life.’

  Max and Narayan had to be at the ashram for the meditation session at five o’clock the following morning. When the alarm clock went off beside the bed, Max opened his eyes and glanced at it. It was ten past four. He turned on the light and gently woke Narayan.

  ‘It’s time to get up,’ he whispered to him. ‘I hope you’ve had a good sleep,’ he said, a little louder.

  ‘I had a dream,’ said Narayan, stretching. ‘I still feel I’m in the middle of it.’

  ‘What was it about?’

  ‘There was this mountain… covered in trees that bore both fruit and blossom. The juice from the fruit was running down into the sea… and the waves were rolling in.’ Narayan paused and smiled at Max. ‘You were kissing me,’ he said. ‘And then you woke me up. All very symbolic, I’ve no doubt. But, please, no cold and reductive psychoanalysing, if you don’t mind. Hey, let’s have a swim before we go.’

  ‘A swim?’ asked Max, bemused.

  ‘Yes!’ exclaimed Narayan, getting up. ‘Why not?’

  He began pulling and pushing Max playfully before they leapt out of bed, got dressed and set off in the darkness.

  On their way to the beach, their mood changed, and they began talking about Subramaniam’s beliefs, which so fascinated both of them.

  ‘He’s a bit of a pantheist,’ suggested Max, ‘and he believes in eternal life. I don’t think I do, though.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ answered Narayan, ‘he sees eternity in t
he waves and clouds. He believes in forgiveness and compassion above all. He thinks Gandhi would’ve forgiven his murderer. He also thinks Venkataraman would’ve forgiven that mad boy, but I’m not so sure.’

  ‘What was it Saint Augustine said? Something about hating the sin but loving the sinner?’

  When they reached the beach, the sea was high and racing, and the air was filled with salty spray. They ran into the crashing waves. The sun trembled on the edge of the turning world, and Max was moved to hope that a new dawn was slowly breaking in his life too. When they later got dressed to go to the meditation, Max sensed a disturbance. It seemed to him that when Narayan put on his Indian clothes – the loose, hand-loomed cotton garments he’d recently come to favour – he also adopted an identity that was different to the one he possessed when naked in Max’s arms, or swimming with him far out to sea, or in any other place where they were marvellously alone together.

  The place of meditation was beside the sea. When they joined the group below the balcony, it was as if Max had emerged from the warm, private world he shared with Narayan and joined a public one with colder claims on him. Mohini was there, and she greeted them both with particular friendliness. She positioned herself right next to Narayan, and Max found himself separated from them by two young men with reverently expectant looks. A few metres away, a man on crutches – a woman and a young child standing next to him – glanced at Max.

  People came from all directions and silently gathered near the balcony and on the windy beach. The sky was lightening. Swollen clouds, veined with threads of turquoise, were massing to the east. A shaft of sunlight broke from the horizon as if it were escaping from the unseen world beyond and threw its pale dazzle on the early-morning sea.

  At last, the swami appeared on the balcony. The dawn sunlight touched his face as he began to pray. His prayers were murmured at first, but they soon swelled into a delicate, humming chant that floated across the beach as the people began to participate. A flock of wild geese were passing overhead, honking loudly, and a chorus of cockerels greeted the new day with enthusiastic crowing. These noises fused with the swami’s chant, which was spreading fast among the crowd. Max noticed that the crippled man had picked up the child and was now holding her in his arms. His eyes were shut, his lips trembling with fervour. The woman was praying with equal devotion, but she had her eyes open and she was gazing at the man and the child.

  Max looked at Mohini and Narayan, now standing closely side-by-side. They shared a look of quiet reverence, about which Max – thinking about all his secret jokes with Narayan, their irony and fun – felt distinctly ambivalent. He concentrated on the spreading chant and on the rapt people. He prayed for Clare’s happiness with Tammy, although he found this difficult. It was easier to pray for Rick, although he wasn’t at all sure who or what he was praying to. As he glanced again at Narayan and Mohini, he realised he was starting to feel excluded and even jealous.

  When the chant came to an end, the swami prayed quietly for a while. A profound silence descended on the crowd. Then the swami lifted one arm in a solemn gesture of benediction before he slowly retreated and disappeared from view.

  The crowd began to break up. Max was about to depart with Narayan and Mohini when the cripple, the woman and child at his side, awkwardly approached them. Narayan spoke with him in Tamil. Max had suspected it was the same cripple he’d seen once before, and the one that Clare had talked about seeing, and indeed it was. Narayan translated for the cripple, who spoke directly to Max.

  ‘I want to say how grateful we are to your wife for saving our child from being injured. She’s the light of our lives, our only child.’

  ‘Our little girl’s always been very thin and stunted,’ his wife added. ‘We haven’t been able to feed her properly because of our poverty. I’ve just been praying to the Lord Shiva on her behalf. I was also praying for your good wife.’

  She began to cry, wiping the tears from her cheeks quickly as if embarrassed at showing such emotion in front of Max. He was moved by her forthrightness and by the timid smile that creased her face. She glanced devotedly at her child and at her husband; they all bowed their heads and put their hands together, which Max reciprocated. They moved away and were soon lost in the dissolving crowd.

  ‘It’s strange that he’s revealed himself when he’s wanted by the police,’ Max said to the other two. ‘I suppose I should report it to Veerapan, but I feel the man has trusted me. I hate the idea of betraying his trust.’

  ‘He should be punished, to stop him doing anything similar again,’ said Mohini. ‘Society needs protecting from its killers.’

  ‘As the mastermind, he was as much a killer as the boy,’ Narayan added. ‘If not even more so, despite having this redeeming side – his care for his wife and daughter.’

  Nodding, Max sent a text message to Veerapan, telling him where he was and who he’d seen. The Inspector texted back immediately to let Max know he was sending around two police officers. They’d be unlikely to find the man, Max supposed. By the time they arrived, the crowd would have broken up and the cripple gone back into hiding.

  He turned to Narayan.

  ‘What will they do if and when they catch him?’

  ‘The newspapers are saying the surviving accomplices to the assassination must be caught and hanged. Death sentences are sometimes handed out in India, though they’re rarely carried out.’

  ‘I don’t support capital punishment,’ said Mohini. ‘It contradicts the doctrine of ahimsa – no violence of any kind.’

  Narayan nodded at this.

  ‘I’m worried,’ Max said quietly.

  ‘What about, exactly?’

  ‘I’m worried they might decide the cripple’s wife is an accessory to the murder. If they do, she too might be sentenced to be hanged, which would be terrible.’

  Clare was with Tammy in his hotel room in Sandeha when she heard a noise. It was like someone tapping on the ground outside. A quick look out of the window showed it to be only Subramaniam’s walking stick; he had wandered out to look at the night sky. He was murmuring to himself and vaguely sighing, as if at the infinite scatter of stars.

  ‘The enormous size and age of the universe is a thing to marvel at, not feel belittled by,’ he had said to Clare a day earlier. ‘What does space matter? Or time? The lifeless aeons have negligible importance in the eyes of God when compared with the sentient creatures on his living earth.’

  Although keen to dismiss her anxieties, Clare was fairly certain she’d seen the cripple and his wife feeding their child outside that little eating place. She was disturbed to think he could still be here in Sandeha. Had he stayed behind because he wanted to make another attempt on Tammy’s life? She realised her level of anxiety could be higher because she was now so very much in love with Tammy.

  She suggested they should go for a swim. It would be the first time since his accident, so they agreed they wouldn’t swim out very far. They walked down to the beach, where the waves came hissing down in delicate loops and crescents. As they approached the temple, it seemed to soar above them like a haunting apparition, insubstantial and yet curiously peaceful. It was almost as if the ruined building had been suspended in the air, remote and dissociated, luminous and beautiful. As Clare gazed up at the striated stonework, she became aware of the headlamps of a car approaching.

  She waded into the water with Tammy, who was hesitant at first. Clare thought this understandable, given his last experience in the sea. They began to swim together. A little way out they came to a sandy ledge under the water, where she found she could stand with the water just waist-deep. Tammy held her in his arms, kissing her mouth, fondling her breasts. He put his arms around her and lifted her upwards. She wrapped her arms around his neck and drew herself up to him. She felt the wind on her skin as he felt between her legs to stimulate her, all the while kissing her mouth. His foreplay was deep and prolonged, but he finally entered her, moving slowly. She tightened as she felt him come, such was
her sense of his seed within her. She exulted in her acceptance of it and in the downward rippling that seemed to strike her lower spine and then course upwards, as in some inexorable motion that seemed to pulse almost against her skull.

  Satiated, Tammy gently lowered her back down in the water, and they embraced for a while longer. Then Clare happened to glance at the shore. She could make out two figures, visible because of the whiteness of their clothes. They were standing at the sea’s edge, as though confronting them.

  For a moment she was immobilised with horror. They could shoot them down in the water; they could murder them!

  ‘Oh my God,’ she breathed. ‘Tammy!’ she shouted, then dived, hoping he would do the same.

  He did. Their movements took them into deeper water. In her panic, she found herself swimming wildly against the undertow. She recalled the puffs of dust on the temple stonework. She imagined the bullets hitting him this time, cruelly piercing the flesh she’d come to love. Terrified, she broke the surface of the water, gasping and spluttering. She twisted her body, looking for Tammy.

  ‘Clare!’

  It wasn’t Tammy’s voice. It was Max, and he was wading out to her. The figures she’d mistaken for the assassins were Max and Narayan. She felt immense relief, like a burst of happiness. And then it dawned on her that things must now come to a head. Narayan would be appalled if he’d seen her and Tammy making love, as he surely must have. Narayan stayed on the beach, but Max was swimming out to join her.

  ‘Clare!’

  This time, it was Tammy calling. She’d been separated from him by the undertow, and was about ten metres away. Max had reached her by now. She was touched by the fact he’d come out to her. When Tammy joined them, the three swam back to shore together. It was then she noticed a third figure on the beach but assumed it was some harmless fisherman.