The Complete Mystery Collection

by Michaela Thompson

  And if I can’t? “All right.”

  As they descended the hill, the first rays of sun flooded the landscape. She did not dare look at the dark blur that was their destination. She kept her eyes just a few yards ahead of where she was, willing herself to go at least that far. Her legs continued moving. The sun rose higher, its rays pouring on her head like hot liquid.

  After a long time she stumbled, and Vijay said, “You would like to stop and rest?”

  “I’m afraid to. I might not be able to start again.” There was a bitter taste in her mouth.

  “We will stop a moment.” Vijay led her to the shadow of a boulder. When she sat down, the earth seemed to undulate, and she dug her fingers in the sandy soil to steady herself. She retched violently, her body heaving and producing nothing. Eventually the retching eased, and she sat still. “You should go on,” she said. “Leave me. Go as fast as you can, and send somebody back for me.”

  “I will not do that, Marina. We will go or stay together.”

  They kept walking. Vijay took her bag and, when her knees started to give, he supported her with his arm around her shoulders. She forgot to look a few yards ahead and then was not conscious of looking at anything at all. She was aware of the blinding sun, a bitter taste, and Vijay. At some point he took off his shirt and draped it over her head, and put his handkerchief over his own. You’ll burn, she wanted to say, looking at his smooth brown shoulders, his thin undershirt. You’ll burn, you’ll burn. “I’m burning,” she whispered.

  She saw Catherine. Are you dead or not, Marina demanded. Catherine smiled slowly, frighteningly, and melted into a pool from which a sleek, shining cobra emerged.

  Something brushed her face, and she cried out. Looking up, she saw leaves. Her face had been brushed by leaves, leaves that dappled the sun on Vijay’s shoulders. Down a slope she saw two women standing in a slow, muddy stream, their saris tucked up around their calves. The laundry they had been pounding on the flat, wet rocks hung in their hands as they looked up. She opened her mouth to say something, but her knees buckled and she whirled away.

  39

  The rhythmic thumping sound had been going on a long time. It insinuated itself behind Marina’s eyes, trying to force them open, but they did not want to open. The light behind her eyelids was a rich yellow-orange.

  While listening to the thumping she became aware of an earthy, not-unpleasant smell of smoke, cut vegetation, cow dung. Soft voices exchanged a word or two. She tossed, momentarily frightened, and realized that she was lying on a cot of some sort, under a rough coverlet. She remembered swallowing something hot with a strong taste, seeing firelight dance in the lenses of Vijay’s glasses, feeling something cool pressed against her forehead.

  She tossed again, and the thumping stopped. The voices spoke, and she heard rustling. She was able to open her eyes. Squinting, she found herself looking into the brown eyes and round dimpled face of a woman bending over her. Sunlight poured through a doorway behind the woman, illuminating another woman bent over a stone pestle. The thumping had been the women grinding grain. The light hurt Marina’s eyes, and she closed them again and slept.

  She awoke fully later, to the smell of hot oil and the sound of a small child wailing. Through the doorway, she could see that it was dusk. Outside, one of the women squatted next to an open hearth, feeding the fire. A toddler, crying, clutched at her sari. Marina raised herself on her elbow, looking around her at mud walls, rolled mats, round clay water jars, sacks containing, she supposed, some kind of grain. From outside came the lowing of animals and masculine voices. She wanted water.

  A little girl holding a baby on her hip came and stood in the doorway. The baby gobbled at its fist as the girl came a step closer. Marina moved her mouth to say “Hello,” but no sound emerged. The girl fled back outside, and Marina saw her whispering to the woman. The woman glanced toward Marina and then spoke to the girl in an authoritarian tone. In a few moments the girl was back, followed by Vijay.

  Rumpled, his hair uncombed, he looked completely different from the fastidious Bombay “minor functionary” who had introduced himself at the Hotel Rama. He knelt beside her and put his hand on her forehead. “The fever is gone, I think. How do you feel?”

  “Thirsty.”

  He left. He came back with water in a gourd dipper, and she drank. “I must have slept all day,” she said.

  He smiled. “All day and another day. It was yesterday that we reached this place.”

  Yes, she remembered seeing firelight on Vijay’s glasses. That must have been last night, and now it was almost night again. “What happened?”

  “You have been ill, with high fever. The nearest doctor is half a day’s ride by bullock cart. I wanted to go, but they said they would give something to you, and they made a medicine. I was worried for you to take it, but you were so bad I gave permission to go ahead.”

  “Who are these people?”

  “They are the family of Nathu Dada. They farm the bits of land that can be cultivated here. They own it themselves, which means they are better off than many small farmers. There is Nathu Dada, whose wife is dead, and two sons with their wives and children.”

  “What’s the name of this place?”

  “It has no name. We are far from cars or telephones. The closest village, Goti, is where the doctor is— half a day in the bullock cart, which is the only transport they have. For the moment, we are stranded.”

  “Who did you tell them we are?”

  “I said only that you were ill and we were in desperate trouble. You see, it is as it was at the house of Baburao. Our religion is full of stories of gods in disguise who knocked on doors and asked for help. The visitor, even unknown or unexpected, must be welcomed.”

  “Has anyone come looking for us?”

  “Not yet. We will not be easy to locate. But it worries me very much that Nagarajan, or whoever is pursuing us, might find this place. I do not want these people to be hurt, and neither do I want to frighten them with warnings of danger.”

  “Then we have to get out of here.”

  “Yes. I will discuss the matter of our departure with Nathu Dada. And you must recover as best you can. Can you eat something? I think you must try.”

  The dimpled woman brought her a bowl of cooked grain, and Marina scooped it up with her fingers. She was relieved not to feel her stomach heaving in rebellion. Later, she lay watching the firelight flicker while the family and Vijay ate their evening meal. Before they finished, she was asleep again.

  The next morning when she woke, Vijay was sitting beside her. “How are you?” he asked.

  “Better.” She was shaky and weak, but no longer feverish. “Much better.”

  “It is decided,” Vijay said. “The bullocks are needed today for farm work, but tomorrow we will travel to Goti in the bullock cart with Nathu Dada and his son. They will buy and sell at the market, but also they have heard that Baladeva will be there.”

  “Baladeva? The dacoit?”

  “Yes. For some of these peasant people he is a hero. He will hold darshan, something like a royal audience, and they will give him an offering. Possibly they hope this will remind him that he should rob the rich, and not their farm.”

  “If he comes out in the open, won’t the police arrest him?”

  “He will have his gang with him, well-armed. And who is to say the police do not admire and fear Baladeva as well? I hope we shall avoid all that. There will be a telephone at Goti. The bus comes there too, and perhaps there will even be a car for hire.”

  They would go back tomorrow. They would tell Mr. Curtis about Nagarajan, and about their abduction, and that would start an investigation. She would insist on knowing the truth.

  That afternoon she had improved enough to take a short walk with Vijay. The farm compound was surrounded by a mango grove which bordered a river. Not far away was a rutted track that would lead back to the world she knew. After she got up and bathed, Nathu Dada’s daughters-in-law indicated with g
estures that they wanted to wash her filthy clothes. When Marina indicated that she had nothing else to wear, one of the women brought out a sari and offered it to her. Marina was wondering how to refuse when she remembered that she had bought a sari, at the emporium back in Halapur. She found her bag, took out the package, and unwrapped it. With the help of the giggling daughters-in-law, she was soon dressed and draped.

  Marina had never worn a sari before. Catherine wore saris. Catherine had known this feeling of the cloth brushing against her legs when she took a step, the fluttering when a slight breeze caught at it.

  She walked with Vijay on the river bank, looking out over the slowly eddying water. He told her about his conversations with Nathu Dada and his sons. “They like that I tell them about Bombay,” he said.

  “What do they think of it?”

  “It is something they have not dreamed. I told them of the tall buildings, and they asked me how those people could keep their bullocks up so high.”

  When they reached a bend in the river they turned back. Vijay said, “Seeing you in a sari— it is very odd.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yes. You will think I am foolish. It makes you more strange and more familiar at the same time.”

  Tenderness for Vijay welled through her, cool and delicate, washing over his black hair, his glasses, his stained clothes. She put her hand against his face and kissed him.

  She felt his lips quicken. She had wanted to kiss Vijay for a long time, she realized. “I love you, Vijay,” she said, and the words floated away as if they’d been spoken by someone else.

  “I love you, Marina, and I have desired you very much,” Vijay said. She felt him breathe deeply. Then he stepped back. “It isn’t the time to speak of this now. Please, let’s agree.”

  “All right.” What more, in any case, could they say? He helped her up the bank, and together they walked back to the compound.

  40

  The next morning started before dawn, with a flurry of preparations. Feeling badly rested and apprehensive, Marina dressed once again in the sari. That she should wear the sari instead of her Western clothes had been Vijay’s suggestion. “With this Baladeva about, it would be best not to call attention to yourself,” he had said. “With the sari you will blend into the crowd more easily.”

  In the cool half-light she rolled up her T-shirt and skirt as small as she could and stuffed them in her shoulder bag.

  At the first light, Nathu Dada, a taciturn, white-haired man, clucked to the bullocks and the cart lurched forward as its massive wooden wheels began to turn. Sitting next to Vijay in the back, Marina waved good-bye to the family whose kindness had saved her life. One of Nathu Dada’s sons was accompanying them, riding opposite Marina and Vijay. As they moved away, dust filmed Marina’s view of the people, the house, the mango grove. Only when all had shrunk into invisibility did she turn her face forward.

  The journey was arduous— bone-rattling, dusty, and hot. Swaying in the back of the cart, the end of her sari shading her head from the sun, Marina gazed at mile after mile of tumbled rock. She wondered what had happened to their captors. She scanned the horizon. It was empty.

  After several hours, they began to see other travelers— people on foot or bicycle, bullock carts, a truck painted with bright designs whose rear-view mirror was hung with garlands of flowers. “Everyone is coming to see Baladeva,” Vijay said.

  In midafternoon, after a brief stop to eat on the side of the road, they approached Goti. The village was located in a curve of a slow, meandering river— the same one, Marina guessed, that flowed by the Nathu Dada farm. The cluster of huts and low buildings seemed alive with activity. Nathu Dada maneuvered the bullock cart to a stone temple, in front of which was the market— blankets spread on the ground, makeshift stalls selling batteries, plastic combs, oranges, guavas. A loudspeaker blared music. After the quiet of the farm, the scene seemed feverishly alive.

  At a corner of the market, Marina saw two flatbed trucks pulled up in front of a circle of huts surrounded by a low wall. Next to the wall a man wearing a loose-sleeved, thigh-length shirt and baggy cotton trousers, a rifle slung over his shoulder, was speaking into a walkie-talkie. A crowd milled about in the enclosure. She pointed and said, “Baladeva?”

  “Yes, that will be where he is having darshan. If you ask the people there, they will tell you he never touches anyone who has less than ten lakhs of rupees, which means they are very rich. They will say he gives money to temples and to the poor, that he pays no attention to barriers of caste but treats all alike.”

  “Is it true?”

  “I don’t know. People have a great need to believe such things.”

  Nathu Dada and his son tied the bullocks, and Marina and Vijay climbed down from the cart. Nathu Dada accepted their expressions of gratitude with a grave nod, and in answer to Vijay’s query pointed out the way to the police station.

  When they found the office of the district police, however, it was locked and deserted. “I should have thought,” said Vijay. “Of course they will not be here, with Baladeva in town. They will be patrolling far from here. We must find a telephone elsewhere.”

  A little farther down the street they came to a building slightly larger than the rest with a drooping flag hanging over the door. “This will be the office where the village administration is located,” Vijay said. “Here there will be a telephone.”

  The office was manned by a clerk who seemed prepared to negotiate with Vijay indefinitely over the use of the telephone. Even after Vijay produced his identification, the clerk regarded his rumpled appearance with obvious scorn and, as Marina interpreted his demeanor, professed continued reluctance to let Vijay touch the old-fashioned black instrument at his elbow. After a final exchange in which Marina hoped Vijay had been insulting, the clerk placed the telephone within Vijay’s reach and turned ostentatiously back to the papers on his desk.

  There followed twenty minutes or so of Vijay trying to contact the operator without success, reaching someone and shouting to make himself heard, being cut off, and starting the process over again. Eventually he carried on an extended conversation and hung up.

  “What did they say?” asked Marina.

  “It was the operator only. I have asked to place the call to Bombay, and she says it will be perhaps an hour or two before the call can go through. She will ring back.”

  “An hour or two?”

  He nodded. “I see you have not had much experience with our telephone system.”

  Marina felt weak, exhausted, and hungry. It had been a long time since their lunch in the shade of the bullock cart. “Should we go out and get something to eat, and come back to wait for the call?”

  “Better not. She says two hours, but she may call back in five minutes. It’s impossible to know. We must simply wait.”

  They sat side by side on a bench. Marina watched the slowly turning ceiling fan. The clerk shuffled his papers, bustled out, and did not return. The telephone did not ring.

  Finally, Marina said, “I’ll go find something to eat and bring it back. You wait here for the call.”

  “Yes, go. But be careful, please.”

  “I will.”

  The market was busier than before. Marina bought oranges from a toothless old woman, then drifted on until she saw a man selling peanuts roasted in the shell. He measured them in a balance, then put them in a cone made from the page of a magazine and gave them to her. As she paid him, a flash of something bright caught the corner of her eye.

  A woman across the market was adjusting her sari over her head, pushing back long yellow hair that had caught the sun. The woman’s face was hidden. Her hand and arm were fair, her sari red and white.

  “Catherine!” Marina cried, but her voice was lost in the babble of the market and the blare of the loudspeaker. The woman was moving away from Marina, weaving her way among the throng. Marina shoved after her, the peanuts she had just bought dribbling from their makeshift holder.

 
; “Catherine!” she called again, but her throat had closed. The red-and-white sari moved farther away as a bullock, his tail lashing at flies, crossed Marina’s path. When Marina caught sight of her again, the woman had reached Baladeva’s compound. The guard glanced at her and nodded. As the woman disappeared behind one of the huts, Marina pressed desperately forward.

  41

  The oranges she had bought rolled around Marina’s feet as she pushed her way to the entrance of the compound. She could no longer see the yellow-haired woman in the red-and-white sari. At the gate a legless beggar sitting in the dust cried for alms. Beyond him, inside the compound, people stood in groups and children chased each other.

  As she hurried through the gate the guard with the walkie-talkie called out. She hesitated as he approached. “You’ve got to let me in!” she cried. “The woman who just came through here is my sister!”

  The guard looked at her impassively. As she took a hopeful step forward he said, “You must wait.”

  Seething with frustration, scanning the area, she stood by while he spoke into his walkie-talkie. He finished his conversation just as a wiry man with a camera hanging around his neck approached. Holding out an identification card the man said, “Chatterjee. Times of India.”

  “What do you want here?” the guard said to the man.

  “To speak with Baladeva.”

  “And why? All of you print nothing but lies. What is this camera? Baladeva does not allow himself to be photographed.”

  “My editor is prepared—”

  Marina sped through the gate in the direction she had seen the woman take, around the side of the nearest hut. She found herself in an open area in the center of which was a hearth. A large pot over the fire filled the air with a pungent smell. More armed men. They lounged against the walls of the huts or lay on string cots scattered around the courtyard. Two stood guard outside a hut where the crowd was largest — petitioners or offering-bearers, Marina assumed, waiting to see Baladeva. She did not see the red-and-white sari. The woman could be in any of the five or six huts scattered about the compound. She would have to search.