Sary and the Maharajah's Emeralds

by Sharon Shipley

  When I regained my balance I tensed, knees bent, hands out, the room thick with a fetid smell, like a swamp, yet my nose detected another scent overpowering all, a cloying perfume overlaying moist, none-too-clean flesh, like meat left overlong in the sun.

  “Is—is anybody here?” I muffled through my palm to keep the odor at bay, whirling. Ponderous footfalls like the shuffling of an old elephant thumped behind me. I could almost feel the marble floor shake.

  A disembodied giggle accompanied a rustle of cloth. The swishing of my sari betrayed me. The wet chuckle now came from a different direction.

  By a stirring of fusty air, I knew the gurgling presence sidled closer, sensing moist heat close to my arm, a whiff of breath on my face. More dead meat smell. The stench was indeed old perfume overlying body odor; it was as if I had entered a cave of bats. I noiselessly swerved aside, still sensing the presence ponderously seeking me out.

  The reek was worse. There was a faint stirring of warmth on my shoulder as the heavy being shuffled past in the dark. Scarce breathing, I clutched my elbows, making myself small, making myself silent. Not daring to flounder for fear I’d stumble into whatever it was, I picked up a strangled chuckle like grease poured down a drain, and a coarse rasping like mighty thighs brushed together. The unseen thing in the silent war of hotter/colder tracked me in a dance of blind man’s bluff, accompanied by a whistle of strangled windpipes.

  My heart stopped. Somehow the…he…it had circled.

  I backed.

  The thing collided with something. Furniture, judging by curses and scrape of wood on marble.

  A splinter of light striped my face. I ducked to keep from view, sending something crashing. The male, I assume, got my bearings with pig-like snorts of disgruntlement.

  I let the midden smell of body odor and heat sidle past, then—a hint of fresh air! Movement from a stirring tapestry! I groped toward it. Almost there. Flatten—slip through…too late.

  A round shape manifested in the gloom. A moist, squishy hand gripped my upper arm. The hand, nearly slipping off, squeezed harder, drawing me inexorably nearer. The fatty hand, a firm grip for all its puffiness, slip-slid to my wrist. Fingers dug into my other arm, snagging at my sari. I earned a phlegmy chuckle, flooding me with hot sticky breath, sour and garlicky.

  The moist squishy hand, bristling with coarse hair and with mountainous weight behind it, pulled me up wide shallow steps with angered snorts and wheezing. My knees and shins bumped along painfully. It…he… was losing patience and no longer chuckling.

  I lost the battle, yanked headlong into a fever-hot body as if I sank into risen bread dough, soft, puffy, yeasty with body odor.

  One slippery hand fumbled for my face, grasping my chin. In turn, using a free hand, I wedged it between us, forcing the man’s chin up, feeling wobbly flesh slip-slide beneath my palm.

  Muttering curses, greasy lips smeared my cheek, seeking my mouth…a blubbery hand tangled with mine as I blindly flailed. I tried to punch him but only succeeded in sinking a fist in blubber. Then I heard him speak.

  “Kuttiya!” The epithet needed little translation.

  I felt a shock to my toes as one hand gripped my breast, slicking off my now damp silk, while the other yanked my long hair painfully back, tearing it loose from its pinnings. The unseen creature attempted to reach my face again. I prized at fingers—fat slugs of iron—as the man dragged me toward himself. I skidded, clawing the hands. The remarkable thing was that, beyond the one curse, we still warred silently.

  I eeled away, leaving my hair in his fist. I desperately wanted to reach those draperies. I must see this thing—then he swung me through and I got my wish.

  A garish lantern barely piercing inner gloom caused a sickish glow through inset gems, enough however, to catch the first glimpse of my adversary.

  My knees turned to pudding, frozen by the vision of the corpulent man before me, barely my height but as wide as he was tall.

  Some short garment left open across a pendulous chest and bulbous belly barely covered the man’s dignity. What grotesquery was he trying for? Seductive innocence? Confidence? Was he truly ignorant of his appearance? The fatty chest, perched shelf-like atop a belly mottled with a black pelt, glistened with perfumed oil.

  Patchouli, I vaguely thought. Its thick reek sickened.

  I looked off, not before the pumpkin face split into a randy grin, bunching pocked cheeks and jowls where a sketchy beard sprouted in clumps and the eyes—the eyes fixated on me like carrion birds.

  The man clumsily backed me to a bed the size of a small park. I suddenly became aware of sharp pricks on my arm. I looked down. His fingers were clad in sharp ornamental points that scraped my skin.

  That was the tipping point.

  I did not care what happened.

  I was fighting for, if not my life, then my dignity, or whatever you call “sand.” I screamed, using my voice as a weapon, sharp and brittle as strands of glass.

  The meaty arm twirled me about, his belly to my back, clamping my mouth and part of my nose with the other hand. “Saali kutti! Bloody bitch!” He muttered in English, in case I failed to recognize the insult.

  I did not wait to smother but bit hard, gagging, sensing the fleshy palm would taste and feel like uncooked rotted meat.

  He screamed, high-pitched and childish. The slippery hand released so suddenly I tumbled to my knees. I felt behind me, watching him suck the heel of his hand.

  The back of my knees bumped into the bed. I stared wordlessly at the depression in it, as if a body habitually sank into its depths. I imagined myself beneath such a weight, taking the place of the mattress, enveloped by that globular body—for surely that was his intent—suffocated, if not crushed to death.

  I sprang from the bed as if I were a cat and it was a tin roof in August.

  But he had other plans…

  I saw the blur too late.

  The arm with its sagging dumpling flesh slashed out—I heard the swishing as if an ax cut the air.

  I ducked. Fear lent power behind my own blow, surging down my shoulder to my palm and connecting in a stinging wallop, jolting my entire body, sickening me as the wobbly jelly of his cheek slid sideways.

  My blow did not move the mountain. I drew my smarting hand back, yet I felt tremors of rage—or simply dislodged fat. The space reverberated with the high scream of unaccustomed pain, reminding me of a small child’s temper tantrum.

  The vast brass-and-wood door exploded open.

  Sentries poured in like palmetto beetles, from bright light. In the sudden brilliance, I caught a sad snapshot, as from a Kodak Brownie, of a very ugly man, purple-faced, half-clothed, and diminished. Only his insane rage gave the man status—that, the bowing, scraping guards, and rough handling of myself. He must be a king or something. No. In India, they call them maharajahs.

  I viewed him in full as they dragged me before him. The matted chest, a gold satin kimono that would do nicely for a circus tent—sashed, barely, about the corpulent waist by a garish leopard belt, one paw dangling. Fortunately, the robe covered whatever inadequacies cowered beneath. No doubt his choice of wardrobe had been meant to be seductive, even rakishly boyish.

  Yet the most telling ornament was a flaming handprint on his jowls. Eyes half hidden in smug folds now spoke volumes. It was a death warrant.

  I tried to speak, to explain, cajole, flatter, anything! My tongue stuck to my teeth. My lips felt wooden.

  As guards looked on, he drew back a wobbly arm and plunged his fist into my chest and, swiveling with the grace of a ballet dancer, jammed his elbow into my stomach and stood heaving, red-eyed and triumphant, spraying the words, “Kuttiya! Rundi Ki bachi!”

  Then, as if I wouldn’t understand—oh, I did, if not words, the intent—he repeated in English, “Bitch! Daughter of a whore!”

  A guard snickered.

  That was low. I may have been a bitch, but certainly not the daughter of a whore.

  Paralyzed from the first blow
and retching, I had desperately opened my mouth to suck air when the second blow came—nothing moved now, not my diaphragm, lungs, or heart. It stopped mid-beat. Tiny squares enlarged. The hiss of jubilation was my last sensation as I floated to earth…

  Chapter Three

  Prison Most Foul

  I rubbed my nose and scrubbed my face. My nose wrinkled up with stench, but not like before. This was damp and mildew. Dirt and grit rolled under my body where I lay curled with my knees under my chin.

  They’d heaved me in, the night before, regardless of where I landed on slimy stone felted with something spongy, like layers of rubbish slightly moist with what I didn’t wish to contemplate. I was terribly thirsty.

  Propped on one elbow, I detected a plash of water somewhere, aware my mouth was glued shut.

  To cry is defeat. I cannot cry! And I was afraid I could not stop, once started.

  I prodded my ribs. Not broken. Bruised. It felt good, nevertheless taking a deep breath, even sucking in the mildew.

  “Best move,” I muttered.

  Move about, where? my imp asked. As I scanned the space, my eyes took in what my head would not. A dismal cell, about eight feet by ten. Dirt floor. One door with a grille inset. A tiny window thankfully open to the air. A bucket in the corner, a pile of jute sacking in the other.

  Oh, yes? my evil imp inquired. The window is so small. How can you get through that?

  My imp nudged me. Cat got your tongue? So is this a dungeon?

  “No. Dungeons do not have windows. They are underground.” I railed at myself.

  Same thing, sniffed my imp.

  Wanting to stop crazed imaginings, I hobbled over to where water dripped from a banana palm outside. Drops bounced off leaves. I pressed my cheek to the bars, then put my tongue out in an attempt to catch rivulets dripping from the fronds.

  I studied my cell in the greenish light, sensing it would rain tomorrow at the same time. It was something. I sagged below the small opening and, for the first time, wondered how long I would be here.

  “I did something unforgivable. But how could I do else?” I asked myself forlornly.

  I heard my imp. A short stay—means execution? A kangaroo court, it is called. No judge. No jury…taken out at dawn…

  “Oh, shut up!”

  I tensed for footsteps of coming executioners, relaxing when I heard nothing but the drip and soughing of banana palms.

  In a corner sat a bowl by the bucket.

  Not good!

  However, not bad, either.

  Unless they want you healthy for your execution, my imp carped. You did strike the maharajah, didn’t you? The supreme ruler over all things living? You did strike him most grievously!

  I angrily shook the imp off as I would a leech sucking the lifeblood of all hope, sinking back under the bars, where a ray of sun dyed my platinum hair silver.

  I didn’t eat that night.

  ****

  Rolling thunder pushed rain through the bars, blood-warm and soothing—still, it dragged me from healing sleep.

  I willed my eyes open to watery dawn. My long hair was dripping and muddy now as I lay on the bare ground. The wet under me was a puddle. Chronic damp crawled the walls. I finger-combed my hair, twisted the water away, and knotted it on top. I gathered rainwater, finger-scrubbed my teeth, then scrubbed my face and lady parts. Ablutions completed, I waited.

  Footsteps and a metal clicking! A bowl of chickpeas and a chapatti thrust through a slot under the door I had not seen.

  So much for rushing a guard, my imp chortled. I fell on the food, too stunned to call out and too hungry to care.

  Two days…

  My ribs did not sting now. I inspected the bruise between my breasts and midriff. The purple had turned a dirty yellow-gray, another marker of sorts. Bruises healed in about two weeks, I thought.

  “I might be here long enough to escape—or at least to plan for it.”

  My imp woke up. Hopeless. One door? A window small enough for a monkey, perhaps? Thick walls? They feed you through a slot! Really? You suppose you will escape?

  “I can try!”

  It rained again.

  I brushed fingers along moist walls. Were they crumbly? I had already chipped away flaky plaster, thinking they might be frangible, yet they seemed solid beneath the first crumbly wetness. I traced where unknown beings had scratched names in green and black scum down to bare brick.

  All names were feminine sounding.

  “Who are you?”

  I could see them, digging fingernails to the quick through moss.

  I was here. My name is…

  “How long before I scratch my name?”

  I am here. My name is Sary. I resisted the urge to dig my fingernails into the green scum.

  ****

  Gazing past drawn knees, I viewed dirty toes, with their faint tracery of red henna still showing; I drew my feet tighter under my grimy once-peach sari as filmy as poppy petals. Ten days of scratches were on the wall behind me.

  I whimpered, sorry for myself. I smell bad. Hurts. Glad I slapped him. Glad!

  Sensing the ache in my clamped jaw, I vowed, “I will not cry. I will not!”

  As I did each morning, after guzzling gray tea and soggy naan shoved through the door, I called out to retreating footfalls and grumbled spiteful comments when they did not answer. I paced off ten steps, fifty times, wall to wall. I performed pushups against the door. Then I slumped with my head back in the beam of sun, drearily surveying the squalid room and preparing for one more day.

  Boredom seemed worse than hunger. I explored every inch. If there were other inmates, they were ghosts. I heard not a whisper but from palm fronds, except when whoever brought food and water, and took my bucket. Each day a butterfly or a bird’s trill was cause for joy and speculation.

  As I sat in misery, sweating in the humid cell, I had time to ponder. “I am in India…somewhere. I know that much. This place I am in is more than a rich man’s home or fancy hotel, far more than that. Almost a town enclosed in a wall.” With its own zoo. For I heard animal roars.

  That repulsive man is the key. An important man, with soldiers and servants thick as thieves. He has to be—must be—a king, or a maharajah as they call them here. If so, why on God’s green earth had he decided to torment me? Yet every time I thought I could leap over that wall of forgetfulness, it was as if something in my head skidded to a stop and I ran smack into it.

  Rarely, the tiny window in the door slicked open and a face looked in. Each time, I creaked up, appalled at my condition. I had no strength, my legs growing stiff from damp and inaction, despite my efforts at exercise.

  “Arrey! Hello!” I banged on the door. “Kya aap meri madad kar saktey hain? Can you help me?”

  I did not wonder how I knew the words. I had ceased caring long ago.

  I even enjoyed a cold corn porridge shoved under the door that night as a reward. Frightened, I looked forward to the small treat. A highlight, after becoming used to deprivation. At times, I panicked. Am I forgotten? I looked anxiously at the food slot. What worried me was that, for two days in a row, I had not even been given tea for breaking my fast.

  “Get up!” I commanded myself. “Walk, you useless lazybones!”

  “But I can’t. I am hungry! I am hurt!” I answered myself.

  “Yes, you must. Back and forth twenty times, stretch—push against the wall. Stand in that patch of sun! Scrub your teeth!”

  I hardly noticed I talked back to myself now. It was soothing to hear a voice.

  “Later,” I grumbled. “Let me rest in this dry patch where the sun reaches me. It only comes once a day!”

  I awoke to the scrape of metal as a pan was shoved through the usual gap, the source of food—and nightly discomfort, for wind whistled under the door when I fitfully tried to escape reality.

  This time, though, it was a step up from the sticky rice and gray tea with scum on top or red beans and naan. I crawled over. Lentils with slivers of
hot peppers and some kind of meat. Goat, I thought, with a tiny ball of rice and a chapatti, tasteless but surprisingly fresh. I made it last, recalling all the food I had shoved aside, half-eaten, not wondering at my good fortune.

  Dark again.

  ****

  I scratched green walls. Thirty-two lines and cross hatches, now. I allowed warm rain to lash my face. Almost an appointment. Time to take my bath. I scrubbed my hair and removed the stained silk each morning and twisted away brown water between my hands until it was rags.

  I awoke one night, preternaturally attuned to the slightest noise.

  Something slid back! That was different.

  Galvanized, I leaped-crawled-stumbled to the door as if to press to the other side. Dropping, I craned to see underneath, frightened I would scare them off. Nothing—no shifting of light. No feet. And nothing slid through the bottom. Only the breeze soughing through palms. The sound came from the little door and grille at the top, along with jasmine-scented breeze. Suddenly unnerved, I tensed.

  “Have you had enough…?”

  I tumbled back on my bottom. The voice was in my head.

  “Have you had enough?”

  No. It was real, and the words in English.

  I scrambled up, pressing the door.

  “Yes. Yes! I have!”

  Silence.

  “Please, answer! Please, don’t go away. Please don’t!”

  A sighing sound as if someone outside sucked a quick breath.

  I stood tiptoe to peer through where it didn’t fit tight, and viewed a sliver of hall; by shoving at it, I, and possibly others, had loosened one side.

  No one was ever there.

  And no one was there now.

  “Have you had enough?” It reverberated in my head until I wasn’t sure I heard it.

  The next night, along with the gruel—Christmas! The Fourth of July! My birthday!—a small package was thrust through the slot, wrapped in a strip of cloth that I recalled.

  “Asha…” I breathed. That small girl with the burn scar, that first day. A strip from Asha’s sari, with its distinctive elephant border. I recalled it well.

  The bundle held three balls of sugary sweetness. Fighting tears of gratitude, I did not eat them. I held them to my nose, fondled, and licked them before taking tiny nibbles. Too soon gone.