by Ranjit Lal
‘No.’ He smiled back.
‘Maybe you should make Miss Raveena your girlfriend. She likes you too.’
‘Oh. But I still like Zara.’
‘I mean,’ she said slowly and carefully, ‘once you know if Zara still likes you or not. If she doesn’t, then you should go for Miss Raveena.’
‘Okay, I’ll keep that in mind.’ He glanced at her. ‘What do you want to be when you grow up? Apart from being a special agent, of course.’
She shrugged. ‘I would have liked to be a space explorer and a gymnast like Nadia Comaneci, but Dr Narayan said I should first get well and then see. I feel well, so I’m already practising being a gymnast. What do you want to be?’
‘I suppose I’ll be an artist of some kind.’
‘So you can draw funny pictures of people?’
‘Yeah. I used to get into trouble in school for doing that. I drew the principal once and they nearly threw me out when they saw it.’
‘You’re kidding!’ she grinned. ‘But you drew Zara beautifully. Is her hair really like that?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then you better make up with her.’
How would he ever do that? For his sake and Rani’s he had to… Those bastards – they had it coming. ‘Do the clouds gather here very often?’ he asked Shroom.
‘Every day, sometimes for quite long.’
‘Shroom, listen very carefully to what I’m about to say…’ He took a deep breath.
‘What?’ she asked excitedly.
‘I might need to meet you here – in complete secrecy – over a period of several days maybe. Savita and Gudiya must not know and must not come along – that’s very important.’
Shroom’s eyes got bigger and rounder. ‘Oh… why?’ she whispered. ‘Are you carrying out a secret assignment?’
‘I can say no more; my lips are sealed. If you can make it here at 0600 hours every morning, I will be able to explain the true nature of my assignment – who I have to kill and why.’
‘Really? Wow! Do I come from tomorrow?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you the signal. You know Morse, don’t you?’
‘Of course! But how did…? Oh, you had seen my message!’ She was thrilled.
Gaurav nodded. ‘You see the signal, you acknowledge; we rendezvous the next morning here and I’ll give you the dope. But Savita and Gudiya must not know! Do they sleep in your room?’
‘No, they’ve started sleeping just outside. I’m not allowed to lock the door.’
‘So how will you get out without them knowing?’
‘I’ve climbed out of the window and down the creeper many times. They’ll never know. And they both snore so loudly.’
‘Okay. We’ll leave it at that for the time being. But remember, this is our secret. Actually,’ he added, ‘I might have to call you at any time – it could be morning, afternoon or evening. And I’ll tell you myself or send you a coded message or flash it by Morse. Whatever it is, you will have to acknowledge it. Got it?’
She was beaming. This was Special Agent Shroom’s dream come true. She flung her arms around him and kissed his cheek. ‘Thank you! I’m so glad you came here, Taklu!’
‘Don’t get too excited,’ he warned. ‘It might be a while before I give you the signal. At least ten, maybe fifteen days.’
Her face fell. ‘Why so long?’
‘Several matters have to be sorted out.’ Especially in his head. Was he going completely crazy? But somebody had to teach them a lesson… He gave her a faint smile. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, squeezing Shroom’s hand as he felt a sudden rush of affection for her. ‘We can meet normally before that. In fact, that would allay suspicion. Come on now. I think we should go back.’
When they got to the guardhouse, Shroom nudged Gaurav and cupped her hands around her mouth. ‘Send the message quickly,’ she whispered. ‘I’m dying to know.’ She sneaked a sideways glance and planted a quick kiss on his cheek.
He nodded, aware that the Gurkha and the chap in plainclothes were watching them. ‘I will, as soon as I can.’
Then he strode off along the track, feeling restless. He decided to take the higher path. It would be more strenuous and he needed to burn off some energy. He scrambled up the track that joined the two – where he had heard the leopard the previous night – and soon got on to the narrow upper path.
On a whim, he turned and walked back in the direction of Shroom’s Perch. And then he stopped in surprise as he looked at the cliff.
Up on the ledge, the two researchers were crawling into the cleft one by one even as Gaurav watched. What the hell were they up to? The place was empty. Maybe he’d missed something in the dark last night; maybe there was a nest in the darker recesses. Whatever… Those guys were nuts.
He turned around and made his way back. He was tempted to take the route that would lead him past the rest-house, and he wondered what the girls would be doing. But maybe it was better he stayed away. Besides, another armada of dark clouds was sailing through the passes – more rain was on the way.
When he reached the estate he was surprised to find Raveena and Monica playing with Mihi on the carpet while they chatted with his mother and Megha.
Only Rani and Zara were missing…
TEN
In the days that followed, Shroom firmly established a routine. At seven-thirty every morning, she was at the dining hall of Emerald Estate, tucking into breakfast while impatiently waiting for Gaurav. Soon they set off for her house, followed by her chaperones. Often, Tinku accompanied them.
Every day Shroom pressed Gaurav to tell her whom he wanted to kill, and every day he made excuses. It was, he thought bitterly, like waiting for an exam whose date and time you did not know but whose question paper you had set yourself. And it was an exam he simply had to take.
He left Shroom at the guardhouse – she had to be home for her tuition – and depending on who her tutor was for the morning, Gaurav decided his return route. If it was Monica’s turn, he trudged back via the higher path, sometimes going all the way to Shroom’s Perch and gazing at the mountains and waterfall, wondering if he would ever be able to carry out what he had planned. If it was Raveena’s day, he took the lower path by the stream, knowing full well that he would meet her on her way to the house. Somehow he found her easy to talk to – she was completely neutral and seemed concerned about him. He could just talk on while she listened, though often it was the other way round.
When she met Gaurav the third time, Raveena realized it was no coincidence. Monica had never mentioned running into him on her way to the house, so it was obvious that he hung around waiting for her.
‘You’ve walked Shroom back home?’ she asked him.
‘Yes. She turns up every morning in the dining hall and insists I walk back with her. I… I can’t say no to her, you know.’
‘She is obviously very fond of you,’ Raveena smiled. ‘Do you mind it?’
‘No,’ he replied. ‘She’s a smart kid.’
‘Vijaya’s hoping she’ll get over her secret-agent fad. After she fell ill she discovered Ian Fleming and James Bond. But at least she could still read.’
Gaurav walked with Raveena for a bit, mostly keeping silent while she chattered on.
‘So have you blown any more raspberries on your sister’s tummy?’ she asked one morning.
‘Err… no,’ he mumbled, turning red.
‘Maybe you should; it’ll crack her up and might make you feel better… seriously.’
Some mornings after breakfast, Gaurav trekked up to Shroom’s Perch and sat there with his sketchpad. He’d ripped up most of his destructive caricatures and started a series of striking pen-and-ink sketches of Zara. He worked from memory – remembering the way her eyes crinkled up when she smiled, the shape of her slightly prominent cheekbones, and her dark wild hair. There was a brooding beauty about his drawings, lightened by the impish humour in her eyes and that teasing smile. At the same time, he’d started a series of rath
er savage if maudlin caricatures of Shroom and himself – both tragic baldies – sitting at Shroom’s Perch or standing at the very edge with their arms outspread like crucifixes: martyrs to the hilt.
In the afternoons they sat on the perch, side by side, Taklu and Shroom, waiting for the leopard or following the mad flight of the slatey-headed parakeets or red-billed blue magpies over the forest canopy. Sometimes, if it had just showered, a huge rainbow arced over the forests and valleys, making them catch their breath. Behind them, at a respectful distance, Gudiya and Savita hunkered down, raincoat and umbrella at the ready.
‘I wish the clouds wouldn’t keep coming over,’ Shroom complained one afternoon, after they had waited for the leopard for an hour. ‘That’s why he isn’t coming.’
‘Look, but I drew him, with you.’ Gaurav showed Shroom a sketch of her crouching, looking at the leopard sprawled regally on another rock.
‘You made my eyes look just like his!’ she said, peering at it. ‘Do you think I look like him?’ She was happy.
‘Those are your special agent eyes,’ he said. ‘Maybe he’s Special Agent Leopard.’
As she handed back the pad to him, a sheet of paper slipped out and floated onto her lap. She looked at it, her eyes widening. ‘Is this… is this Rani?’
It was an old charcoal sketch of Rani looking at Gaurav in her usual alert way: ears pricked, brow creased, head cocked just a little to one side, looking slightly indignant as if she had just caught him and Zara in a clinch again.
‘She’s beautiful,’ Shroom murmured.
‘Yes…’ he said, suddenly reminded of what he had to do for his dog. He looked at her. ‘She was a gorgeous dog.’
Shroom gave him a hug. ‘I’m sorry about what happened to her,’ she said, looking up at him. ‘I really am.’
‘It’s all right,’ he said gruffly, ‘it’s not your fault.’ But you will pay the price for it, for it is the law of nature – the price is always paid by the innocent. The guilty too will suffer though; that is the only way they can be made to both suffer and understand.
It was beginning to rain more frequently now. On the mornings when it poured, Shroom was not allowed out, but Gaurav took an umbrella and set off anyway – when it was Raveena’s tuition day.
‘What’s up, Rave?’ Monica asked her sister. There was a hum of suppressed excitement about Raveena on the days she went to teach Shroom, and she dressed carefully on those mornings. ‘You’ve been brushing out your hair and doing your eyes for the last half an hour. What’s going on?’
‘Nothing. There are just so many knots in my hair…’
Monica walked around her sister, eyeing her critically, a smile twitching on her face. ‘You’re meeting him, aren’t you? I’ve noticed you’ve been leaving earlier than you really need to.’
Raveena was never good at keeping secrets, especially her own. ‘What can I do, Mona?’ she cried. ‘He’s always there, sitting on a rock or walking down the path, with that basset hound expression of his.’
‘Do you mind it?’
‘How can I mind it?’
‘Okay, so do you like him?’
Raveena shook her head in exasperation. ‘I don’t know!’ she said. ‘I feel terrible for him. He’s eating himself up from the inside out. He needs help or he’ll crack. It’s… it’s like he’s drunk this bottle of acid and it’s burning him up from inside. You have to be blind not to see that.’
‘And being the softie you are, you want to help him…’
‘Yes,’ she squeaked, wondering why she had a sudden lump in her throat. ‘Yes, I do!’
‘Just watch it – he’s only a kid, after all, and he already has a girlfriend. Besides,’ Monica added, ‘Shroom has a major crush on him.’
‘I know!’ Raveena exclaimed. ‘You should just see them walking side by side, Shroom holding his hand and gazing at him.’
‘Her eyes light up when she talks about him. She says he can’t be her boyfriend because they’re professional partners. And they have,’ Monica made quote marks with her fingers, ‘“long, important secret talks and meetings” at Shroom’s Perch almost every afternoon. She said he’s waiting for some important information.’
Gaurav was there again that morning, standing where the path forked steeply up the cliff through the boulders to join the one above. Monica had been quite right about Raveena leaving earlier – she started from the rest-house around eight-fifteen and would have a good twenty, sometimes even thirty, minutes to spare and spend with Gaurav on her way.
‘Hi,’ she smiled at him. ‘How’re you doing? How’s your secret agent girlfriend?’
He gave her a self-conscious grin. ‘She’s in good form. She’s been devising cunning strategies to give her minders the slip again.’ So that she could meet him alone when he gave her the signal.
‘You know she has a crush on you…’
‘What?’
‘You heard me.’ Raveena grinned at his startled expression. ‘She has a crush on you.’
‘Oh, shit. Should I stop, er, seeing her?’ He recalled their conversation on the day the clouds had come over.
‘No,’ Raveena said, ‘I don’t think that is necessary. Just don’t… err… encourage her in that direction, or give her the brush-off. She’s been through hell already. Just keep it friendly, big brotherly. She’ll get over it after a while.’
‘I hope so.’ He looked a little unsettled.
She took his hand. ‘Come on, let’s take the upper track for a bit.’ They scrambled up and she stopped between two huge boulders that towered above them, halfway up. ‘So tell me,’ she said, panting slightly, her cheeks pink with exertion. ‘Have you heard from your girlfriend?’
‘Zara? No – I don’t know what’s happened to her or where she is. My mails to her just bounce back. I… I can’t imagine… She wouldn’t split up with me just like that. We brought up Rani together. She knows I’d never do anything to put Rani in danger.’ He looked at Raveena sadly. ‘Rani used to be a sort of chaperone – a kind of canine censor board, or nanny dog if you like. She used to get annoyed if she caught us, you know. She danced around, barking madly, and jumped up at us. It became a sort of game with us.’
‘If Zara is the kind of girl you’re saying she is, she’ll get in touch somehow. Her parents must have taken her somewhere.’
He rummaged in his satchel and took out his sketches. ‘Here – that’s Zara.’
‘My god, she’s beautiful, and what a smile! Such lovely hair! You’re a very good artist, you know?’
‘It doesn’t matter now. Anyway, sorry for boring you and thanks for listening.’
‘Don’t be silly!’
‘No one really listens any more, you know. You’re the first person who has.’
She smiled, and then glanced at her watch. ‘I’d better get going now. Shroom will be waiting at the guardhouse with her hands on her hips.’
‘I know. You should see the look on her face when I’m late reporting to her. All she needs is a Walther PPK on her hip.’
A few stones bounced down the cliffside and Gaurav looked up. They could hear male voices on the upper path.
‘It’s just those bird guys again…’
‘Oh! They must be going to their owl nest. Inside that opening on the cliff.’
‘I crawled inside it the other night. There was nothing there.’
‘What?’ She stared at him in surprise. ‘They said they left a mike and mini-camera inside.’
‘Oh. Well, maybe I missed them – it was pretty dark and that cleft is quite large.’
‘Probably. Come on, we’d better go back down.’
Gaurav left Raveena on the path and made his way back towards the estate. He felt lighter after talking to her. He’d also made his peace with Mihi. Last evening, when his mother and Mariamma weren’t around, he had blown a big loud raspberry on Mihi’s tummy. And, as always, she had loved it. She waved her arms and legs, cackling away. He had never realized that just by making hi
s baby sister laugh in that ridiculous way, he could feel so happy. Also, he was getting increasingly intrigued by Shroom. The more time he spent with her, the more he admired her sheer pluck and gumption. She claimed to have felt no pain during her long treatment and yet, during her rare vulnerable moments, he could see the fear clearly in her eyes. She did remember, and had been and still was afraid, but was too proud to admit it. Amazing kid…
Here he was again, weakening in his resolve, willing to let things pass, willing to let Rani’s death drift away with no one paying for the consequences. He kicked a rock viciously. That would not do. He needed to be like those Nazis, who were made to rear pups and then kill them on command. Besides, how would he live with himself? Eventually they would go back to Delhi and Shroom would become a ghost of the past. He’d probably never see her again. And he’d be left with the same hollow feeling of having achieved nothing. And most ironically, Shroom would never have let such an event pass unavenged. Come what may, he had to do it. That was the only way he’d be able to let go and move on with his life. Too bad Shroom was who she was – too bad it had to be her.
At the big house, Vijaya had got quite used to having her breakfast alone now. But it was heartening to see how her granddaughter had bounced back. She was obviously pain-free and happy, engaged as she was in her secret agent intrigues with her strange new friend. Vijaya had watched them together. It was surprising that a loutish teenager like him had the patience to spend so much time with Shroom. There was something about his eyes that disturbed her. But Rukmini was thrilled by his company. Vijaya had asked Savita and Gudiya to keep a sharp eye on them, and so far all they had said was that the two usually sat at Shroom’s Perch and he showed her his drawings or listened to her while Rukmini baby chattered on. Once or twice she had hugged him and he had been taken aback, but there had never been any hint of impropriety in his conduct. ‘Bilkul seedha ladka hai, madam,’ Gudiya had informed her, ‘he is a decent boy.’
