My Lady of the Bog

by Peter Hayes

  Sikandar Shah Nama

  Or

  The Adventures of Sikandar Shah

  Oddly or not, Sikandar’s name was the eastern edition of my own.

  Glory be to You

  Who raised me up,

  Whose greatness knows no limitations.

  The loveliness of the girls in all the worlds,

  including those in Heaven’s harem,

  are rose petals

  scattered in the dust of the road

  that leads to the Garden of Your Infinite Beauty.

  The paths of Scholarship & Religion

  are vanishing goat-tracks

  in the desert of Your Being;

  Poetry, one impoverished village

  in the infinite country of Thy Name.

  This is the story of Sikandar ibn Musa Khilji al-Hind,

  Prince of Hindustan.

  It is the report of a Caravan

  From the Palace of Splendor

  To the Tavern of Ruin

  Made by the Caravan Master’s slave,

  (God bless him!)

  Who cries:

  “I would give up

  the thrones of

  Samarkand and Rome

  for the black mole

  on my Beloved’s thigh!”

  I invite you, Reader, to drink of this cup.

  It will cost you nothing.

  The grapes & I have already paid for it

  with our lives.

  I found this invocation rich and inviting. Yet before proceeding further, I checked on Vidya. She was sleeping deeply. Happy to see that, I returned to my computer and crawled through the monitor and into the tale, though had I known what I know now, I would have thought two or three times, surely, before slipping in that digital door.

  It was daybreak in Rajasthan when, leaving my companions swaddled in sleep and the smoky shawls of cooking fires, I rode out with ‘Abd al-Wali Mirza to reconnoitre the Indore border in preparation for the evening’s raid. It was rough, high desert. The air was thin, and in the elbows of the creeks and streams there were hot white boulders. We saw few people, save for some poor villagers. And so when we encountered the mysterious tower brimming with soldiers, we dismounted swiftly, in amazement and alarm, and hid behind a nearby hill.

  But though we watched for half a ghari1, the sentries’ heads never flinched, blinked, turned, or spoke to one another, but stared relentlessly off at the surrounding hills.

  It was not until ‘Abd al-Wali passed me the glass, the illusion was dispelled. For by its grace, I could make out now that the soldiers’ heads were carved from stone, and rising and striking the dust from our kurtas, we went down the mountain to the ground on which the tower stood.

  But as we approached, I received another shock, for the heads were not the work of art—or magic. No. They were the heads of men, severed at the neck and implanted in the masonry in parallel rings. I had heard of such “pillars of victory” before, but had never seen one, this being my first campaign, and circling the tower in the auspicious manner2, I inspected the heads more carefully. They were Rajputs3 one and all, and were filmed with a fine grey grit. It was this that had given them the illusion of stone.

  I studied one: the head of a boy no older than myself with a moustache like black down. His cracked and swollen lips were puckered as in a kiss and his eyes closed as though he were dreaming.

  Above him, set into the crest of the tower, its architect proclaimed:

  Jafir Bahadur Ghazi,

  Ruler of the Universe,

  Shadow of God on Earth,

  Chief of the Circumcised,

  Cherisher of the Poor,

  Light of this World,

  Lord of the Islands,

  Raised this Pillar

  To commemorate

  His Victory over

  The Infidel Wretch

  And Son of Misfortune

  Mul,

  King of Indore.

  Clearly, my brother Jafir had been here.

  1.Translator’s Note: a ghari equals twenty-four minutes

  2.pradakshina: circumambulating clockwise

  3.Rajput: the dominant warrior caste of Rajasthan

  Chapter 16

  The memoir had such a gruesome gravitation, I had to pull myself away. Though, even then, the hideous pillar continued to disquiet my imagination. The scene of the action, Rajasthan, was in the Indian northwest, not far from two archeological digs I had worked across the Pakistani border. The question was, what did the book have to do with my Lady? Rajasthan was 6,000 miles from Dorset.

  I ordered up dinner, but Vidya didn’t touch her seafood salad. “Look, I can order something else . . .”

  “It’s brilliant. It’s just . . . I don’t think I’ll ever be hungry again.”

  I studied her. God, she was lovely. Her face had the sheen of beaten gold, a hint of the Timurid or Hun in the cheekbones, and a dramatic Indian nose that flared like a sail and led her face like the prow of a ship. It had a daring yet delicately thin and hawk-like line, almost Egyptian in its profile.

  Now she produced a battered pack of Silk Cuts. I lit one for her and she sat for a while, smoking, saying nothing, staring off at Turnham Green, letting the smoke drift from her lips to her flared nostrils. It was something I believe is called “French inhaling.”

  “Where’d you learn that?”

  “What? Oh,” she said, dashing out the butt. “A stupid trick. At convent school.”

  “You’re Catholic?”

  She shook her head. “It was the best school in Nairobi.” She looked apologetic. “I don’t smoke—anymore. I just threw these in my bag.”

  I laughed. “You mean, they belong to some cop?”

  She smiled wanly.

  “Let me ask you something.”

  “You may ask,” she said, stabbing another cigarette between her lips in a way that did not promise an answer.

  “When did you find Jai?”

  “Midnight,” she said without hesitation, pluming the smoke past my ear.

  “So you weren’t at the ‘after’ like you told the police?”

  She looked surprised. “You don’t really think I go out drinking alone until four o’bloody clock in the morning.” She gave me a look that said if I did, I was an idiot. “I was there for a moment round hof eleven.”

  “But why do that?” I said. “Lie, I mean?”

  I waited. No answer was forthcoming. Finally, I asked, “Are you sure of the time you got back home?”

  “The clock in the hall was striking twelve.”

  “And . . . ?”

  Again, I waited for some explanation about why she’d lied, or what had happened next, but she offered none and finally—it was like pulling teeth—I asked, “And what were you doing between midnight and the time you called?”

  She paused, then stubbed out the half-smoked fag. “I’m afraid I cahn’t tell you.”

  I found this retort incomprehensible, considering how critical her answer was. Was I expected to take her innocence on faith, without even a clear and convincing explanation? I thought for some moments. “Can you give me a hint?”

  She held my gaze steadily, then looked away. “Whilst in Mumbai, we stopped at a shop for antiquities. The shopkeeper was an old mate of Jai’s. There was the usual palaver and the sipping of chai. And that’s when Jai brought out the book.”

  “Book?”

  “The one you sent him.” She looked me in the eyes. “The enchaunted one.”

  I looked into hers. “You mean, enchanting, don’t you?”

  She sat back, looking half-amused. “My dear man, I am not some villager whose first language is Gujarati. I am well aware of the different meanings connoted by its past and present participles.”

  “And how would a book become enchanted?”

  “How? By chaunting over it, I presume.”

  I felt a sudden strange frisson. She reminded me of an urban archeological dig. At street level stood a modern building with elevator b
anks and computerized lighting, but if you went to the cellar and dug in the foundation, you came across nameless ritual objects, the buried bones of sacrificed sows, stone phalluses and other bizarre, primordial things.

  “And what did the dealer say?”

  “He looked it over carefully. He even prized out a jewel and examined it beneath a lens. In the end, he pronounced it quite authentic.”

  “Authentically enchanted?”

  She didn’t smile. “The authentic memoirs of an Indian prince.”

  “I have the translation. Jai e-mailed it to me last night.”

  “You’ve read it?”

  “Just a bit.”

  “Ah, do,” she requested. “And now, if you’ll excuse me.”

  “Tonight,” I pronounced, “we cross the border to Indore.”

  Ghazil raised his eyes; concern deepening his brow. “Our orders,” he said, “are to proceed due south.” He turned and squinted off at the horizon. “Even your brother went no further than this.”

  “I know,” I said. “I saw his mark.” And I described to him then the pillar of victory.

  “Ah, ha!” Ghazil said with a sudden bark, as though recalling something marvellous. “I haven’t seen one of those in years!”

  “It’s a barbaric custom that was almost lost. Happily, it is being revived by our family.”

  Ghazil savoured my insolence. Then he intoned, “Such things serve a purpose.”

  “Yes,” I said, “to nauseate.” For the smell of the heads wouldn’t leave me alone.

  “So you think it is wise? Raiding Indore, I mean?”

  I turned in its direction. Star sapphires, pigeon-blood rubies, emeralds of the finest water, amethysts, carbuncles, garnets and gold were all mined from her rich, dry waste, so that if one had possessed that enchanted collyrium, which allows one to view the treasures of the earth, instead of a desert—tan and severe—you would have seen streams of Indian silver and frozen underground rivers of gold flowing through a glittering jewel-studded garden! Indore was, as the poet said, “a hell full of good things.”

  On the one hand, I couldn’t blame Shri Ghazil. As my vizier, it was his office to question whatever I did, so that thought would be brought to our least endeavours. Still, it annoyed me. Just once I would have loved to hear him respond, “Yes, a wonderful idea!” But Ghazil is not like that and never will be.

  And anyway, the true goal behind our entry to Indore was, I knew, neither jewels nor intelligence. Nor was it ivory, silks, silver, gold nor moonfaced maidens of a marriageable age to adorn my father’s court and harem. Its purpose was even more pure and primeval: to cover ourselves with blood and glory, so we could ride like the wind, feel the night in our hair, test our mettle, flesh our swords and enact our youth upon the plains of Hindustan the way Ghazil had enacted his upon the sands of Aragon. The problem with Ghazil was that he was always attempting to find rational reasons to support the instinctual.

  The nature of a hawk is to soar through the ether. You may say, if you wish, that it is gathering intelligence on the disposition of the pigeon population—but its wings, lost in the joy of their soaring, know no such thoughts or bounds.

  Chapter 17

  Say what you will about death, it’s empowering. Tragedy, like some great, black Germanic banner, unfurls eagle wings in the sky of your life, obliterating, for a time at least, the dust-gray rags of everyday existence.

  This, at least, is how I felt upon waking: as if, while I’d slept, the world had been dipped in a liquid significance. It was a feeling I hadn’t had since the night that we’d recovered my Lady. Then I realized it was more than just Jai’s death that had touched me; it was love. For Vidya.

  I got up, showered, dressed and went down to the lobby. I wanted to read what the newspapers had to say about the murder, but after buying several, as I was turning to go . . .

  “Morning,” Houlihan said right behind me. “Widow awake?”

  “Let the poor girl sleep. She’s done in. What’s your problem, Lieutenant?”

  “S’not me with the problem. It’s her. See, nobody remembers her at the ‘after’, except for a minute or two around eleven when she come in to use the phone. No one remembers her after that. And that ain’t possible. Or are you telling me this babe, dressed in a gold robe, wearing a dot between her eyes, sat four friggin’ hours alone at a table and nobody approached her? Nobody tried to pick her up? If ya think that, fella, you’re not fully aware of the effects of testosterone and are a lost soul in a strange world.”

  I sighed. “What does it matter when she got home? She didn’t do it.”

  “Odds say she did. Murder takes place at the victim’s residence between midnight and six a.m.? Spouse did it—usually. While the second most likely person is the one who phoned it in.” He grinned.

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Time of death’s been established ’tween eleven and three. She got a reasonable alibi for those hours, we’d like to hear it. So as we can cross her off our list, get on with our investigation. Then again, we’d like to hear yours: ‘Asleep alone in my hotel room’ don’t really cut it.

  “Anyway it is now, she had plenty a time to go home, do the dirty, lose the weapon and after cleaning up and calming down, decide she didn’t want to spend the rest of her life staring out a window in the British equivalence of Kerhonkson, New Yawk or Shawangunk or some other godforsaken upstate facility. Don’t blame her; wouldn’t wanna neither.”

  “Listen,” I said, “if she were going to kill her husband, why would she do it like that? With a six-hour hole that she can’t account for?”

  He thought for a moment. “Maybe it was your idea.”

  “Me?” I said. “And what was my motive?”

  “Girl like her, some guys want so bad they go a little crazy. I mean, hell, I’m sure you thought about it—what it’d be like. And I don’t mean just between the sheets, though I can’t say that would hurt too much, eh?

  “With a woman like that, the world treats you different. Guys look you over twice, and all the chicks wanna know what you got in your pocket ’cause you must be hot, be with a babe like her. Walk in a joint? Hey, you’re guaranteed a table. Maître d’s love dolls like her: gives a place tone. Then again, she’s loaded. You aware of this?” He sighed, as if the fact depressed him. “Yeah. Thought maybe she’d knocked him off for his shekels, but it’s her has got the dough.”

  “How much could she possibly have?”

  He looked at me. “Sorry. I can’t divulge that information.”

  “Lieutenant,” I said, with as much composure as I could muster, “why don’t you go back to Coney Island? Leave this thing to Scotland Yard.”

  “Can’t. I got another three weeks . . .”

  I turned on my heel.

  “Hey,” he said, stopping me with his fingers—a thumb and a pointer that closed on my shoulder like a vise. “Be nice.”

  “You be nice,” I said, removing his hand and starting off again.

  “Donne,” he shouted after me, “you sleeping with her?” The concierge and several of the hotel’s guests paused in midbusiness to await my reply.

  “Lieutenant, if I were, you’d be the last to know.”

  “Well, if you are,” he said, “or planning on it, sleepin’ with her, I mean, lemme give ya word a warning.”

  “No, thanks.”

  He gave it, anyway, to my back. “Sleep lightly.”

  Chapter 18

  Vidya was awake and had ordered breakfast: coffee with heated milk, rolls and sweet papayas. Despite it all, it was a lovely morning and I didn’t wish to spoil it by uttering Houlihan’s unholy name. The sunlight, pushing past the blowing curtains, was hot on our faces, and where it touched the crystal glasses, little brilliant rainbows fell. We ate, talked, and sipped for hours, cried about Jai and laughed over nothing, immersed in that joy that comes to new lovers—a joy made all the more precious by our awareness we were on an island in the stream of time and would soon have to fa
ce the bloody mess all around us. Yet despite the past and our threatened future, in those moments, taking breakfast with Vidya, drinking in the wine of her presence, I felt happy—truly happy—for the second time in my life.

  Now, as she rummaged for something in her wallet, I noticed a photo of a younger, plumper Vidya Prasad standing by a lake backdropped by snow-capped mountains. She was dressed in a wool suit quietly tailored to her curves, her shoulders shawled by one of those intricate, brilliantly printed Hermès silk scarves. “Which one’s Everest?”

  “None—as they happen to be the Swiss Alps.” She paused. “This photo was taken at Montreux—on Lake Genève.”

  “And what were you doing in Switzerland at the time?”

  “Posing for this picture.”

  “Before and after the picture was shot.”

  “Attending university.”

  “Really,” I said, jumping upon this crumb of information. “What school was that?”

  “I was studying,” she said, “political science.” She waited a beat. “I had this dream—fantasy, really—I could do some good for my country, Kenya.”

  “And . . . ?”

  “My efforts were met with incredible resistance.”

  “What kind of resistance?”

  “Oh. Racialism. Extortion. All manner of red tape.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as HIV-positive air force colonels who demanded I bonk them before they would grant me a certificate of occupancy for a one-room native school.”

  “You sound bitter.”

  “Yes? Well, I’m not.” And with a quick kiss to both my cheeks, she disappeared to shower and dress.

  I spent another several minutes drinking in the love I felt for her. It felt divine. Then I opened up the papers and my happiness departed. For in one was a story by a celebrated “Irish” New York writer, whose hard-boiled, somewhat schmaltzy style conveyed what he called “the human side of the headlines.” Today’s was entitled:

  CLUELESS

  The Professor In the Study With the Knife