Richard forgot about the conversation and in time, about the entire episode. It was only brought back to him when six years ago, a fishing trawler off the coast ran into difficulties not far from RAF Valley.
Richard by that time had retired, but he remained in close contact with the younger members of the old team who were still doing their bit. He heard of the incident a couple of days after it happened.
A helicopter had been called out to rescue the crew of a trawler. Happily the mission was a successful one. They pulled all the fishermen safely from the stricken vessel without any loss or injury. The stern had been damaged and the ‘Lady Lucille’ had taken on a great deal of unwelcome water when its nets had suddenly snagged on something large on the seabed, almost stopping the fishing vessel in her tracks with a great jerk. An operation was launched to investigate the potential hazard and a Navy diver discovered the object in question, still wrapped in the torn nets, was the wreckage of a crashed Folland Gnat that had been down there for a good few years.
The diver who found it had to report that unfortunately the pilot was still trapped in the jammed cockpit. Even after so many years in the cold dark waters, his moustache was still as grand as it had ever been.
Whether following their careful removal from the old wreckage, the remains were stored in a certain refrigeration unit in the morgue; or if indeed that container’s seals have ever been broken, is something to which I don’t have an answer.
It was a question Richard chose not to ask.
THE OLD BRICK HOUSE
Jayaprakash Satyamurthy
Sometimes, destiny is what you deserve, what you’ve always been a part of. Sometimes, it is just something you cross paths with by chance and can’t shake off. That’s the possibility that worries me the most.
The plaque on the boundary wall said ‘Dunroamin’ but I always thought of it as the dump. It was a tiny old Victorian cottage that was surely destined for demolition in the near future. It had once been a delightful two-storey red brick structure with a pretty garden; when I saw it, someone had painted the brickwork over in a sickly yellow that was faded and flaking. The roof had fallen in at various points, the windows were shuttered and the whole front garden smelled of stale urine and rotting vegetables. It was no better inside—dust and cobwebs had settled over everything, and I could see the turds and footprints of rats all over the floors. The heavy, wooden furniture seemed to have stood up fairly well over the years, but any upholstery was long gone, rotted or chewed away. On the other hand, there was still running water, the cottage had been electrified sometime in the 1970s and the wiring still worked, even if the lights were given to flickering. Once the cleaning lady was through with the place, it was just about bearable. Well no, not really. It had all the cosiness of a very small, dingy catacomb. But the four-poster bed was spacious and, once equipped with a new mattress, comfortable enough. The huge, lion-clawed brass tub in the bathroom was the only other feature of the cottage that met with my approval.
I didn’t enjoy living there. I was used to bright, modern gadget-stuffed homes. I’d spent my childhood and teens in Hong Kong where my father worked as a manager in a mall. Even when I’d had to move back to the dreary old motherland for college I’d stayed in a flat in a plush new residential complex in Bangalore, which was then experiencing its first IT boom courtesy of the Y2K scare. I did an MBA in Australia afterwards, and then came back to Bangalore, where my father had arranged an internship for me at a friend’s investment consultancy. My parents’ flat had been let out and my father, planning for his retirement, insisted that he needed the lease money so I was forced to look for a place that I could afford on a fresher’s salary. I stayed in a couple of single-room hellholes in working men’s hostels for a few months before I begged my employer to help me find something a bit larger, which was how I wound up in the dump. He said it was an old family property that he hadn’t got around to renovating or demolishing yet and that I would find it ‘quaint’. That was when my heart started sinking. It well and truly plummeted to the depths of despair when I saw the place, but it was too late. I had been offered the dump free of rent as long as I paid the bills and it would be churlish to back out without at least giving it a shot.
So there I was, adrift in Dunroamin, spending my free time at the internet parlour up the street looking for another place to stay, another job, another life. My work was dull and sparse; I soon realised that investment consultancy was not my employer’s primary occupation. I never did find out what his real business was, but the few accounts I was assigned were low in value and interest. I had a lot of time to stare idly into the middle distance, trying not to think too much about anything at all, least of all about the glowing arcades and malls of Hong Kong, the lavish bachelor parties of my college days, the wild nights in the hostel in Sydney, even less about my current circumstances, about the dump. After a while, this blankness became a familiar, comfortable state, one I could easily access whenever I wanted to.
That was why I thought she was a hallucination. I thought I had crawled too far back into my head and I was starting to crack up. Certainly, the first time I saw her, I didn’t think of checking if she was real. It was just too far-fetched.
It was a Sunday morning and I had just finished bathing. I pulled on jeans and a t-shirt and stepped out into the first-floor corridor. I was standing there, feeling the blankness slide over my thoughts, when I saw a woman standing with her back to me. She was dressed in black jeans and a grey sweater-vest worn over a black shirt. Her hair was dark, glossy and tied in a high ponytail. She was standing a few feet away from me, her arms at her side, shoulders moving a little. She turned around, and I could see that she was crying. I stood aside as she walked past me and then turned to see where she was going. She had disappeared. I suddenly felt cold, but I ascribed it to the fact that I was still damp from my soaking in the old brass tub and must have been standing in a draught. I took a few tentative steps in the direction she’d taken. There was nothing there except a solid brick wall at the end of the corridor, so I gave up.
I saw her again a few times, always in that first-floor corridor, standing and crying, then turning around and walking away. Eventually, even in my numbed state of mind, I started to wonder what she was crying about, who she was walking away from and what she was walking towards. But mostly I just assumed it was a trick of my own mind and tried not to dwell too much on it.
Then, I got the letter. A firm in Dubai had accepted my long-shot job application. I was to join their marketing team in a month. I accepted and turned in my resignation at my father’s friend’s company. A week before I was to fly out of Bangalore, I called some of my college friends who were still in town and a couple of my colleagues over for a farewell party.
It was late at night and we’d downed several bottles of booze when one of my guests, Ajith, started telling a story. We’d all been fairly loud and raucous, but something in his voice quieted us down and compelled our attention.
***
The Story in The Old Brick House
There was once a temple here, it doesn’t matter to which god. It was rumoured that an ancient king had buried a treasure deep under the temple as an offering to the deity. Once a year, the idol was taken out of the sanctum and paraded through the streets by the junior priests before being brought back to the temple for a grand ceremony. Once, a group of desperate men decided to take advantage of this festival to find the buried treasure. There were three of them: Ranga, a veteran thief, past his prime but the brains of the operation, Gopi, slow in the head but tall and strong and Jehangir, the son of a deceased accomplice of Ranga’s. They waited for the junior priests and devotees to leave on their procession before sneaking inside. Jehangir, who had never been inside a Hindu temple before, was taken by a sudden access of superstitious fear. God was one thing, but what if the creatures these infidels worshipped were actually djinns or efrits? He confessed his fears to Ranga, who grinned from ear to ear. ‘A dreamer, like
your father. But he never let his dreams stand in the way of the task at hand. Honour his memory and be bold, son.’ This little speech had the desired impact on Jehangir, who treasured his scoundrel father’s memory and feared the respectable, dull shop assistant’s life his mother had planned for him just a shade more than he feared the supernatural. ‘Of course,’ he replied. ‘Did you ever doubt I would?’ ‘Then you won’t mind being the first to enter?’ asked Ranga. ‘I was hoping you’d ask!’
So it was that Jehangir, only a yeoman thief, was the first to enter the temple that day. He crept in like a professional, making no sound and leaving no tracks. It was only inside, when a flicker of lamplight within the sanctum seemed to cast a menacing shadow on the walls, that he remembered his fears. Even then, he remained focussed on his task—to subdue and restrain the one man left in the temple, the aged high priest. He did this quickly and silently, although not as efficiently as one would have wished—but more of that later.
Once he had bound the old man, Jehangir whistled out to his comrades. Ranga and Gopi sneaked in, carrying their equipment. As the strongest, it was Gopi who would do the digging. Ranga had intuited that the treasure, if it existed, would be directly below the stone throne on which the idol usually sat. The three of them pushed aside the throne and smashed the tiles below it to reveal the earth beneath. Gopi set to digging. After what seemed an eternity to Jehangir, Gopi’s spade hit something hard. He climbed out of the pit and Jehangir held a lamp directly over the pit as Ranga climbed in to investigate. He unearthed a large wooden chest. Jehangir threw down a rope. Ranga tied it around the chest and then climbed out. The three of them joined together in pulling it out, impelled by their excitement, even though Gopi’s own sinews would have sufficed.
The trunk was locked. Ranga picked the lock and opened the lid. A glimpse of the glittering treasure within was enough to let him know their gamble had paid off. He slammed the trunk shut and then stuffed it into a gunny sack. Gopi heaved the loaded sack up onto his back and they were preparing to leave when it happened. The old man had managed to struggle out of his bindings—Jehangir’s knots were not nearly as strong as they needed to be—and he surprised the thieves just as they were about to make their getaway. He would have raised an alarm if Gopi, thinking unusually quickly if not especially wisely, had not flung the sack, trunk and all, at him. It hit the old man with a dull thud and brought him down to the ground, his head pinioned under its weight. His limbs thrashed for a moment and then he was still. ‘That’s done it,’ Ranga said. ‘Don’t just stand there staring, get that sack off him and let’s take a look.’ He gazed into the stricken priest’s eyes, bulging out of the shattered, bloody head, felt for a pulse and put an ear to the old man’s chest, but the verdict was obvious. ‘Dead,’ he said, unnecessarily. ‘What do we do?’ asked Jehangir. ‘Why, bury him, of course,’ replied Ranga, eyeing the hole Gopi had just dug. Gopi and Jehangir carried the body to the hole, dropped it inside and started filling the hole in while Ranga, determined to make their getaway swifter, divided the treasure into three sacks. The other two finished burying the priest and joined him. They slung their sacks over their shoulders and left the temple in different directions, having decided to meet at a rendezvous point outside town that night. They weren’t sure how soon people would find that the priest was missing and it was best to avoid being seen in a group with a suspiciously large burden if the priest’s absence was discovered before they had left town.
The streets were packed with devotees and it seemed as if the three would easily be able to mingle with the crowds and make good their escape. Only, they mingled too well. Time and again they found themselves drawn along with its momentum, their steps inexorably directed back towards the temple, the one place where they least wished to return. Gopi struggled the hardest, attempting to head down one detour after another, only to find the streets twisting and bringing him back to the procession. Ranga soon gave in to a sort of fatalism, ready to meet whatever fate had in store for him. Jehangir also gave up quickly, crying silently but keeping a tight grip on the hilt of a dagger concealed within his clothing.
They found themselves walking side by side, at the head of the procession. Ranga nodded at his accomplices, a devil-may-care grin dawning on his disreputable old face. Gopi nodded back, his face damp with sweat, eyes bloodshot. Jehangir tried to duplicate Ranga’s grin, but it sat awry on his slim, young face. By now the crowd had stopped and the din of its chanting and drumming ceased as everyone stared at the three men who were entering the temple ahead of them. Cautiously, a few of the priests followed the trio, and then the rest of the crowd started to jostle their way in. Inside, the three men bowed down before a dark figure. The ceremonial flame had been lit and it leapt high and fierce, its restless light picking out details intermittently. The throne lay on its side, overturned and there was a great mound of earth where something had been dug up, or had dug itself out of the earth. The glow of the flame picked out the dark form in a sudden spotlight. It was the high priest, but his robe was covered in mud and his head was horribly malformed, pulped and bloody. Still, his eyes flickered in that livid light, keen and intent. He stood with his arms on his hips in a triumphant attitude as the three thieves started to crawl forward, still kneeling down. He began laughing when they dragged themselves into the flames one after the other, the assembled crowd staring in rapt horror, unable to speak or intervene. The old priest laughed for a long time; as long as it took for the screams of the dying men to subside. Then, he collapsed to the ground. Suddenly able to move again, the crowd rushed in.
The old man was dead.
Every man who had been there that day there would remember the priest’s laughter and the cries of the burning men for the rest of his days.
***
‘What the heck?’
A clamour of voices rang out, asking Ajith where he had heard such a story, and why he had told it to us.
‘What story?’ he asked. At first we thought he was having us on, but it soon became clear that he was deadly earnest—he had no recollection of having told us the story and his voice had subsided to its usual nondescript timbre, no trace left of the resonant, mesmerising tone in which he had been speaking. We decided that we were all a lot more drunk than we’d realised and the party broke up soon afterwards.
I left for Dubai the following Saturday. My father retired and settled down in our Bangalore flat. I flew back and spent holidays with my parents a few times. When my father passed on, my mother went to live with my married brother in New York and we sold the flat. I put all thoughts of Bangalore, old brick houses, vengeful priests, disappearing women and the whole blank, pointless life I had lived far, far behind me. But Bangalore is not the sort of city you can completely shake off; it has a way of creeping back into contention. Nearly two decades after my time in Dunroamin, I was invited to participate in a seminar in Bangalore. My firm offered to pay all expenses, so I went.
I’d been told it was a fifteen minute drive from the airport to the hotel I’d been put up in. As my taxi drew nearer to my destination, it struck me that the area was familiar. I recognised a roundabout and a flyover. We passed a statue of some medieval king and it all fell into place. This was the same area where Dunroamin had stood! The taxi reached the hotel where I was to stay and I realised that this was the very street I used to live on. My father’s friend must have sold Dunroamin at last, and someone had consolidated it with a number of other plots to build a lavish five-star hotel. There was a small shrine in a corner of the hotel compound—a noticeboard outside it informed me that the remains of a nineteenth-century temple had been found while the hotel was being built.
The conference was interesting enough, as these things go, and I made a lot of good contacts. On the penultimate day of my stay, I decided to have dinner in an open-air café in an extended terrace on the first floor of the hotel. It was reasonably early and there weren’t many diners there yet. On a table a few feet away from me, a young Indian man i
n a light linen suit could be seen deep in conversation with an attractive blonde. I admired her until the waiter brought me my food. A while later, while I was wondering if my waistline could bear some dessert, I heard voices raised in anger. I looked up. The blonde woman’s face was flushed and she was shouting at a person who was standing at her table, facing away from me. The man in the linen suit was nowhere to be seen. After a while, the person the blonde was shouting at turned around. She was a young woman dressed in black jeans and a grey sweater vest worn over a black shirt. Her dark, glossy hair was tied in a high ponytail. She was crying. I stared after her as she walked away from the café. I was sure I had seen her before, but the memory was vague and inconclusive.
The last day of the conference was a more relaxed affair—a few summing-up sessions, a closing ceremony and mixer. It was going to be a less taxing day and I was ready to unwind a bit. I should have been at a downtown nightclub with some of the crowd from the seminar, but I wanted time to myself, to recharge my batteries. If I hadn’t been so determined to just relax, I would probably have thought things over a little more, until I had teased out the memory of the disappearing woman in Dunroamin. As it was, the waiter came back to my table and I decided to order a fruit salad and a gin and tonic. I was tossing back my second gin and tonic when I heard another outcry. Everyone was standing up, staring in horror. I looked up to see what had caught their attention. The young woman I’d seen earlier had climbed out onto the balcony of a room a few floors above the café, and set off to one side. As the voices around me rose in volume and desperation, she climbed out over the balcony railing and threw herself off. I ran to the edge of the terrace and looked down. I saw her lying on the paving stones below, spreadeagled like a tossed ragdoll, blood streaming from her head. I looked away, horrified, then looked back. Just for a moment, I thought I saw a ceremonial platform with a sacrificial flame at its centre. An old man in a filthy robe stood beside the flame, his head a bloody pulp in which the eyes could still be seen bulging from their sockets. A shadowy form emerged from the young woman’s body and crawled towards the flames. The old man’s shoulders heaved. He was laughing.
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