The Complete Mystery Collection

by Michaela Thompson

  As she approached, he placed his palms together and bent his head over them. “Namaste, I greet you,” he said. She could not guess his age. In the indirect light his face looked completely unlined. The one thing that was different from the retouched photograph was a mottled, puckered scar, a bit larger than a quarter, on his neck near his collarbone.

  “Before I speak, I always stand out on my own to watch,” he said. “I see the people who rush in, eager for what I may offer. Their faces cast a pale light— the light of need. Other faces cast other lights. Often I see the wavering light of fear. On yours”— he peered at her—”on yours, I think I see the harsh light of doubt.” His smile broadened. “Am I correct?”

  “You’re correct.”

  He clapped his hands, seeming delighted. “You see, I read these faces very well. I must read them to see what they are bringing me. Then I will know what to return to them.”

  Marina tried to marshal her thoughts. Could she ask him about Catherine, get him to loosen his hold? “My sister—” she began.

  He went on as if she hadn’t spoken. “People bring me what they are looking for, and what they find in me is what they have brought. That is a paradox, do you think? But true all the same.”

  “Why do people— my sister— give themselves up—”

  “It is what I have said. They come to fill their lack with me. They find in me what they already have, yet it seems to come from me.” He laughed again. “It amuses me very much.”

  “For them it’s serious.”

  “To be serious is their need. Am I myself serious? That is another question.”

  “You mean this is all a sham? A trick?”

  He shook his head vigorously. A faint, pleasant, spicy smell wafted to her. “Dear lady, you have not understood. I am Nagarajan, the king of the cobras, the dweller in the deep well, the keeper of the great treasure.”

  “You just said—”

  “I said perhaps I am not serious. But I am Nagarajan.” He cocked his head to one side. “It puzzles you? You will come, you will understand.” He put his palms together and bowed again, then turned and walked swiftly away from her and disappeared through a door in the side of the building.

  What had she expected? Marina wondered as she watched him go. A fanatic, harsh and humorless. Not that trace of mockery, that undeniable attractiveness.

  She stood in the back of the auditorium. It was not full. The Bay Area had had quite a dose of the wisdom of the East already, and Nagarajan was an unknown newcomer. In front of the curtain, softly lit, was a low divan-like structure furnished with pillows, a gold-painted cobra umbrella fanning out above it. In front of the divan was a microphone. Indian music, complex and sinuous, played softly.

  An American wearing white trousers and a knee-length shirt with loose sleeves came out and began to lead the crowd in a singsong chant: Guru Nagarajan, Parama Sukhadam. Guru Nagarajan, Chrana Shranam.

  The crowd had begun tremulously, but the sound grew in volume and confidence as more voices joined in. Marina could still reproduce the chant in her head without even stopping to think about it. Guru Nagarajan, Eternal giver of happiness. Guru Nagarajan, We take refuge at his feet. The auditorium resounded, vibrated. At the height of it, the light that had been trained on the divan went out and, when it came back up, brighter and whiter than it had been, Nagarajan was seated underneath the cobra umbrella. There was a collective catching of breath, and Marina felt her own throat open and close. Then the audience broke into wave after wave of applause.

  Marina remembered little of what Nagarajan had said that evening. The message was not in the words, but in the modulations, the gestures, the projection of wisdom accompanied by an undercurrent suggesting strange and infinite possibilities.

  “You tell me the world is full of pain,” Nagarajan said, “and I tell you pain is a veil. Suffering is a veil. We must pierce it, we must pass through it, we must leave it. We feel that we carry burdens, without knowing that our burdens are ourselves. What we carry is not separate from us, but we are our own burdens. We must leave ourselves behind.” Although he did not use his smooth, distinct voice theatrically, it seemed to tremble with harnessed power. Marina kept reminding herself that what he was saying was standard mystical fare, yet she felt intently focused on every word.

  When he finished, the applause was frenzied. Marina was exhausted. A white-haired woman near her was weeping silently. Nagarajan continued to sit beneath the cobra umbrella, and the crowd moved down the aisles toward him.

  From her place in the back she could see Catherine, in her sari, hovering near him with a little knot of other Westerners in Indian clothing. She was too far away for Marina to see her face clearly, but Marina could guess that it was alive with joy. She turned and left the auditorium.

  Marina was not surprised when, a few days later, Catherine told her she wanted to return to India with Nagarajan.

  “Absolutely not. Not until you finish school.”

  Catherine twisted an end of her sari around her finger. “You don’t understand.”

  “I do. I went to one of his talks.”

  Catherine’s eyes widened. “You did? Then you can see—”

  “I can see that he’s extremely good at manipulating crowds. I can’t see that you should go to India with him.”

  “He’s starting an ashram near Bombay. I’d be in at the beginning.”

  “What’s he using to finance this ashram? Don’t tell me. Contributions from his disciples.”

  “What if he is?”

  “We have enough money for you to finish college. We can’t use it to finance somebody’s ashram.”

  “I don’t care about college.”

  “Catherine, no is no.”

  So, as Marina supposed she had known she would, Catherine took the money and left anyway. And Marina, full of rage at being deserted and fear of Nagarajan and his power, went after her.

  Then, she had been full of conviction. Now, she was convinced of nothing. The request to buckle seat belts came over the loudspeaker. She brought the back of her seat upright and prepared for landing.

  Part II

  India

  18

  Marina descended the steps of the airplane into the heat of the Bombay night. She waited on the tarmac with the other passengers for the bus to the terminal, wondering how she could ever have forgotten what the air was like: the omnipresent faint smell of spices, smoke from outdoor cooking fires, the suggestion of salt water. Her jacket, which had been inadequate against San Francisco’s foggy chill, was too heavy now. She took it off and rolled up the sleeves of her blouse. The dingy hall where she had her passport stamped, cleared customs, and changed money was filled with chatter and confusion. She moved from place to place in a daze of weariness, shoving forward whatever document was required. Finally, her suitcase reclaimed, she straggled with her fellow passengers through glass doors into a maelstrom of dark, eager, searching faces and outstretched hands. “Baksheesh, madam. No mama, no papa, no money.” “Postcard, madam? Look. Very beautiful.” “Madam, you have hotel? You want good hotel? I take you, madam?”

  She had made no arrangements, but had never doubted where she would stay. “Yes, yes, I have a hotel.” She gave her suitcase to one of the several porters vying for her attention. “Taxi.”

  He moved off at a jog trot, and Marina hurried after him to a line of taxis, yellow with black tops, and smaller, open-sided minicabs with fringed roofs. She paid the porter, and when the turbaned, beak-nosed driver turned to her she said, “Hotel Rama.”

  Obviously, she must stay at the Rama, the hotel where Catherine had stayed, the hotel the phone call came from. The cab careened through the night, passing minicabs, people on bicycles, decorated trucks, bullock carts. As they neared the city, the roadside was built up with lean-tos of canvas or woven screens housing families of squatters. Shadowy figures crouched near small fires.

  Soon, the sea smell was stronger, mixed with a hint of sewage. Huge billboard
s advertising films loomed over the streets. They passed Haji Ali’s mosque, which in the dark seemed to float on the ocean like a minareted boat. When the car stopped at a traffic light a leprous child pressed his face to Marina’s window, holding up stump-fingered hands: “No mama, no papa—” The driver spoke sharply, and the child drifted back into the night as the light changed.

  Now they were passing Chowpatty Beach, its orange-gold sand and the trees growing out of it luridly illuminated by electric bulbs strung overhead, its bhel puri stalls as busy as if it were noon. When they reached Marine Drive, with its curving line of posh hotels, towers of glass overlooking the seawall, the driver turned inland into a warren of streets and she lost all clue to where she was.

  They wound slowly down a narrow, badly illuminated street. In open-fronted shops men smoked cigarettes and talked. Next to a food stand with sweetmeats piled in conical mounds a vendor squatted on the sidewalk with his tray of beedis, loose cigarettes. The driver stopped in front of a building with latticed porches on the upper floors. An electric bulb illuminated a signboard on which was painted “Hotel Rama.” Beneath the sign, the front door stood open. Along with the faint light that shone from it came the piercing voice of a woman singing what might have been a highly charged lament. Marina paid the driver and carried her suitcase inside.

  The sound was even louder in the lobby, which was furnished only with a worn-looking blue sofa and a straight-backed chair sprung in the seat. A poster advertising Elephanta Island and its cave temple curled from the wall. A brown plastic radio, the source of the singing, sat on the check-in desk. Behind the desk leaned a sleepy-looking young man wearing a short-sleeved polyester shirt printed with a colorful design. Marina immediately noticed the antiquated-looking telephone switchboard. That was where the call had come from.

  She approached the desk. “I’d like a room.”

  The man yawned and turned the radio down a fraction. “You have reservation?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  He leafed slowly through the yellowing pages of the registration book. “You wish to stay how long?”

  “I’m not sure. Several days, probably.”

  He sucked his breath in through his teeth, still turning pages. Marina leaned wearily against the desk. She had no doubt there was a room, and also no doubt that he must finish his routine before he gave it to her. “Let me see, let me see.” He ran a finger down a page. “Yes. Number eleven is free.”

  She signed the register, the wail of the radio cutting into her brain. She thought vaguely that she might start her inquiries now, but dismissed the idea. The desk clerk hit a bell, and a bent old man emerged from somewhere and picked up her suitcase. She followed him up a flight of creaking stairs and down a gloomy hall that smelled of dust with a strong overlay of insecticide. The sound of the radio had receded only slightly by the time they reached the door marked eleven.

  The lobby had given her an idea of what to expect. A narrow iron bed, sagging in the middle, stood in a corner, its thin pad of a mattress covered with a threadbare blanket. A dressing table listed on spindly legs under a cloudy mirror. The room was lit by a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. Wires protruded from the socket intended for a twin bulb. The porter put down her suitcase and turned on the light in the bathroom. She glanced in for a ritual inspection. A rust-stained sink, a toilet, an open shower with no curtain or stall, and a red plastic pail and dipper for those who preferred to bathe Indian style. A cigarette butt floated in the toilet bowl. “Fine,” she said. She tipped him and he left, murmuring, “Memsa’ab.”

  She undressed, stood under the tepid trickle of the shower, dragged her nightgown from her suitcase and put it on. The bed gave a raspy twang as she crawled in. The radio was still playing what seemed to be the same song when she fell asleep.

  19

  The next morning the radio was silent. Sunlight slanted through the lobby, catching motes of spinning dust. Although Marina could smell something frying, and occasional clatters and raised voices indicated that the hotel was not completely deserted, the lobby was empty. She studied the Elephanta poster for a few moments, then wandered to the desk. The registration book lay on the counter where it had been the night before. She reached out and let her fingers rest on its cracked black cover. Still nobody. Why not? She slid the book around so it faced her, glanced over her shoulder, and opened it.

  It didn’t surprise her to discover that the Hotel Rama’s bookkeeping system seemed haphazard. It was difficult to tell, though, because many of the guests had signed the register in Indian languages, or what she guessed were Indian languages. Only occasionally was something written in English. The Miss Cloud call had been made on January fifteenth. Here was January. Even if I can find January fifteenth, that’ll only tell me who checked in on that day. The person who made the call could have been here a week beforehand. Could even live here.

  Suppose it was Catherine. She might walk in now; this minute I could see her. She might have been badly burned, be terribly scarred, wear a veil over her face to hide it. It could be she doesn’t want to show herself to me because of that, and that’s why she’s been so mysterious.

  She found January fifteenth and stared at the scribbled, wavering lines, at least half of them written in characters she couldn’t begin to decipher. Somebody could decipher them, though. If I had a copy and a little time. She raised her head and looked around again, her hand at the same time going into her canvas bag and closing around the hard plastic case of her little camera.

  It took her only seconds to move the book into better light and shoot the pages she wanted. As she closed the book and readjusted it in its former position she heard a sound. Peering at her from a doorway on the other side of the desk was a bent old woman with sunken cheeks and gray hair.

  Marina couldn’t control a start of surprise, but she got hold of herself and said, “Can you help me? I’m looking for someone who can help me.”

  The old woman disappeared. As Marina wondered whether to wait or not, a heavily pregnant woman in a red sari, her blue-black hair braided down her back, entered through the same doorway. “Madam?” she said.

  Surely the old woman hadn’t had time to say she’d seen Marina photographing the registration book— if she had seen. Act businesslike. “I’m looking for someone who telephoned me in the United States. The call came from this hotel. The message wasn’t clear, unfortunately, and it was important. Can you help me?”

  The woman said, “Telephone?”

  Her English, Marina realized, was limited. “Telephone.”

  “No telephone now.”

  “No, I don’t want to make a call. I want to know—”

  “You see Raki. Telephone.”

  “Raki? Where is Raki?”

  “Not here. Later.”

  “How much later? When?”

  “Later. See Raki. Telephone.” The woman inclined her head with an air of finality and left the room.

  There seemed to be no choice but to see Raki later. She was hungry. Despite the pervasive cooking smell the Rama seemed to lack any sort of restaurant or dining room for guests. She walked outside to get her bearings.

  The sunlight was hot and brilliant in the shabby street. Near the sweetmeat stand two boys crouched on the sidewalk tinkering with an ancient motorcycle. The beedi vendor squatted near a huge film billboard depicting a buxom, sari-clad woman with a huge tear on one cheek, and, behind her, a handsome man staring at her with a yearning expression. A wooden cart pulled by two bullocks, bells clinking around their necks, made its laborious way through the cars, bicycles, and minicabs that crowded the street. Two men passed by, carrying stacks of wicker cages in which green birds fluttered. Under the billboard was a small establishment whose sign proclaimed it to be the Kumkum Cafe. Maybe she could get breakfast there.

  She could. She bought the Times of India and read it while she ate chapatis and vegetable curry that made her mouth tingle. A government scandal was brewing; a woman had been doused w
ith kerosene and set on fire by her husband’s family because her dowry wasn’t large enough; a dacoit, or bandit, who claimed to be India’s modern Robin Hood, was terrorizing villages south of Bombay; a follower of Gandhi had died. Putting the paper aside, she sat over a last cup of tea and planned her next move. She should visit the consulate, in case they knew something that could help. They wouldn’t welcome her, but they never had. She paid her bill and went to look for a taxi.

  20

  She got out of the taxi and shaded her eyes against the glare reflected off the consulate’s white walls. I can’t do it. I can’t go in there again. The taxi moved away. A line of Indians waiting for something, probably a turn at the visa office, straggled down the block.

  The building had been a maharajah’s palace. She remembered how overwhelmed she had been at age twenty-two, climbing the steps practically on tiptoe, creeping along the corridors, an unwanted, bothersome supplicant. I can’t. It’s too much.

  Her legs felt like overstretched elastic. They would never carry her up those steps into a past she would do anything to avoid. Maybe if I lean forward almost far enough to fall, I’ll move. She moved. She started to climb.

  The office to which she was eventually shown had half-closed blinds and a ceiling fan, but the man behind the desk was not the man she remembered, Mr. Hayes. Marina wondered where Mr. Hayes had been posted. Maybe he had retired. She remembered sitting in a hotel room with an anguished little group of Americans, survivors of the other two disciples who had died, while he explained the details of the U.S. government’s protest about the Palika Road incident. He read the text of the message and said, “We’re vigorously pursuing the investigation, but in a case of mob violence it’s almost impossible to isolate the guilty parties. Few Indians will talk at all, and those who will say either the crowd was after Nagarajan and didn’t realize he was in jail, or they thought the ashram was empty after his arrest and were burning it in symbolic protest.”