The Waiting Land

by Dervla Murphy

  Four other police officers followed us back here on foot – two clad in shabby uniforms and two in vivaciously striped pyjamas. It was not clear to me which pair were the senior officers; one could interpret the wearing of pyjamas while on duty either as a privilege reserved for higher ranks or as a mark of lowliness in the force – and none of these five men seemed to have any authority over the other four. However, they all revelled in the crime and went prowling around Sigrid’s bedroom with preposterously exaggerated caution, taking great care to wrap towels around their hands before touching the woollen curtains; but in the end it was Sigrid who observed the many burnt matches on the cupboard shelves and the floor, though neither she nor I – much less the police – was able to make any astute deduction from this clue.

  We next went outside, to gaze on the place of entry, and innumerable photographs were laboriously taken with a gigantic camera that almost creaked. Then the police departed – ‘to be pursued by investigations’, as the interpreter put it; but the investigations were so obviously incapable of ‘being pursued’ constructively that Sigrid at once telephoned an influential Nepalese friend – and we soon received a message summoning us back to the police station.

  There we found that a lavishly-uniformed and very tough-looking young Senior Officer had been sent from Police Headquarters at Singha Durbar to take charge of the case – and already his presence had transformed the atmosphere. Whenever this formidable youth moved a finger everyone gave a series of palsied jerks which were probably the local version of coming to attention, saluting and clicking heels; yet I can’t say that from a practical point of view the efficiency of the establishment was noticeably higher. However, we did have our fingerprints taken, which was perhaps an advance in some direction; and then we were all questioned about our movements yesterday, while Lavish Uniform sat looking threateningly at his subordinates and listening to us without comment.

  It soon became evident that the local police, unnerved by His Nibs’ presence, were intent on proving Donbahadur the culprit. Sigrid and I simmered furiously as they persistently tried to trip him up; we would as soon suspect each other as Donbahadur, who has been on the verge of tears all day because his ‘Memsahib’s nice things gone’. Yet our angry intervention would not really have helped, so we confined ourselves to directing indignant or sympathetic looks at the officers or their victim.

  It was almost five o’clock when we left the police station, having been dismissed by His Nibs as though we were a pair of rather unpromising recruits. Immediately Donbahadur suggested that we should consult a Hindu soothsayer who lives nearby and we agreed that this might be more – and couldn’t be less – helpful than consulting the Patan police. After a complicated drive through narrow alleyways we stopped at the entrance to an untidy, shrine-crowded courtyard and found the Brahmin priest sitting cross-legged in a corner of his first-floor room. Before him stood a low table, covered with geometrical signs, and when Donbahadur had briefly explained our problem the soothsayer picked up a handful of dry earth, scattered it over the table, consulted a dog-eared book that had been lying on the ground beside him and began to draw or write in the earth with a four-inch glass cylinder. Meanwhile an old woman who was threshing rice in another corner went on tossing her trayfuls of grain, ignoring us, and the setting sun turned the chaff to a golden cloud.

  Looking at Donbahadur, standing near the soothsayer, I was reminded of a European going to the doctor with some minor ailment, describing his symptoms, and then trustfully awaiting the scribbled prescription. This was magic in action, yet the atmosphere was utterly prosaic.

  The Brahmin did not spend more than four or five minutes on his calculations. Then he laid down the cylinder and announced matter-of-factly that the stolen articles would not be sold immediately, but would be kept hidden in the thief’s Patan house. He added that a young man who habitually wears black Western trousers and occasionally visits Sigrid’s office had been implicated in the crime; and he concluded by foretelling that this young man would openly visit Sigrid’s house at midday tomorrow. Donbahadur then paid the Rs. 1/- fee and followed us downstairs, translating the Brahmin’s remarks when we reached the courtyard; and even he had to admit that this consultation had not got us very far.

  2 OCTOBER

  Yesterday, at 12 p.m., a young man in black pants walked into the living-room with a message for Sigrid; and he does go to her office occasionally on business, though he has never before been to her house. His appearance in the doorway made me feel a little odd for a moment, as black Western trousers are not commonly worn here, and Donbahadur, when called from the kitchen to take the message, concealed his agitation very inadequately; but the snag is that one can’t have a man arrested on this sort of ‘evidence’.

  There were no other robbery developments until this afternoon. Today, being Saturday, Sigrid spent her time in the bazaar, doing private detective work, and as I was reading in the garden Lal Rana came rushing excitedly towards me. When he heard that Sigrid wouldn’t be back until dinner-time he hurriedly explained that there was a suspect now loitering in the road just outside the gate and that he very much wanted to know if this man had been seen around the house or garden in the recent past. I immediately stood up – too quickly for comfort – and was already half-expecting an extension of the coincidence when I came face-to-face with Black Trousers outside the gate. By now I felt too addled even to try to sort any of it out. Though the young man greeted me most effusively I fancied some awkwardness in his manner; yet I firmly told myself that this was probably imaginary and, on returning to the garden, I merely reported his innocuous visit yesterday. Whereupon the interpreter departed, saying that he would return later to interview Sigrid again.

  One result of Black Trousers’ appearance at midday yesterday has been the complete restoration of Donbahadur’s faith in the soothsayer; last evening he went to him twice for more high-powered consultations, and in consequence the case is now being given the full magical treatment. Yesterday an image of dough was baked and today the Brahmin is busy chanting sinister incantations over it – these being calculated to make the thief shake violently and incessantly until he has been arrested. (Donbahadur has of course warned the police to look out for a man who can’t stop shaking.) Yet if Black Trousers is the culprit something must have gone wrong – either with the baking or the chanting – since he was quite unshaky this afternoon.

  The other part of the campaign is being conducted here; inside Sigrid’s bedroom cupboard a big bowl of incense has been smouldering aromatically all day, and over both the cupboard door and the room door strangely-inscribed pieces of paper have been nailed to the wall. No doubt this is the ultimate in childish superstition: yet it is evident that both Sigrid and I are suffering from an excessive responsiveness to atmosphere and are taking the puja much more seriously than either of us would admit, even to the other.

  By now the whole police investigation has acquired that patina of unreality which characterises most aspects of life in Nepal; if the circumstances were different one could thoroughly enjoy this weird kaleidoscope of improbable police-stations, detectives clad either in pyjamas or much-beribboned uniforms, uncannily accurate soothsayers, archaic equipment, boyish enthusiasm, blatant corruption and utter inability even to attempt to find a thief.

  At present Kathmandu’s weather is the only pleasant feature of life. The nights are refreshingly chilly and every morning the valley is filled with a thick grey mist that recalls autumn at home. All day the light has a glorious, exhilarating clarity, and towards evening it is especially lovely. At half-past six today, when the valley was already dark, two billowing masses of cloud to the east were still glowing a deep pink – and beyond them in the far distance the world’s highest snow-peaks were also lingeringly pink against a starry, royal-blue sky.

  4 OCTOBER

  For the past eight days the whole country has been celebrating Dasain (also known as the Durga Puja) and by now we foreigners are really feeling t
he draught. The GPO has shut down completely; three days ago the electricity supply expired and we were informed that it could not be revived until 6 October; Singha Durbar has put up its shutters, leaving various Top-Level negotiations in a state of internationally inconvenient suspension; and almost all servants, peons and chokidars are chuti, making communication extremely difficult – only now do we realise how much we depend on peons delivering chits when the telephones are unwell. The whole thing is irresistibly enchanting and I am particularly taken by the idea of a capital city where the GPO closes down uncompromisingly for days on end to give everyone a chance to say their prayers; one wonders if there is any other capital in the world so immune to the practical pressures of modern life.

  My rib-injuries have been stationary, at a rather painful stage, during the past few days. At first I had attempted to cultivate a stiff-upper-lip disdain for painkillers, but I have long since come down from that particular high horse and am now devouring them greedily every three hours. Today I took a double dose at 5.30 a.m. before setting off with Sigrid and Donhabadur to watch the annual sacrifice to Durga at the Kot; yet I soon realised that this precaution had been unnecessary, since the ceremony to placate the Black Goddess of Destruction is a more effective painkiller than any number of tablets.

  There is a certain flavour peculiar to Nepalese functions that I can never define in a word; it is made up of casualness, gaiety, indiscipline and a wonderfully unsophisticated spontaneity – which mixture might be expected to provoke among Western spectators a patronising amusement. Yet somehow it doesn’t, because in spite of everything these functions are adequate. The Nepalese are not trying to do something and failing – they are just not trying. And the chief impression received is of an elated unconcern and freedom – probably nothing will go according to plan, but anyway the plan didn’t matter much in the first place, so who cares?

  The setting of the Durga Sacrifice is unexpectedly drab; on three sides the Kot – a military square – is surrounded by new concrete army buildings, lamentably roofed with that corrugated iron which so often disfigures the Kathmandu scene. We sat on one of these roofs, looking towards the ancient slum house that forms the fourth side of the quadrangle; half its tiled roof collapsed long ago, and an eager crowd was watching the scene from the top floor. Under the long verandah on our left a shoddy strip of striped matting had been placed beneath a sofa and two armchairs; these were covered in a spectacularly repulsive chintz, as though they had come direct from a refined seaside-resort guest-house, and beside them were placed three slick ‘contemporary’ occasional tables, each supporting a peacock blue tin ashtray. On either side of this suite stood rows of plain wooden chairs – completing the arrangements made for the reception of HM The King and assorted members of the Royal Family, who were expected to arrive at any moment.

  An uneven line of twelve soldiers faced the Royal Enclosure, each holding a bugle. At irregular intervals these youths bugled what sounded vaguely like signals – but nothing specific ever seemed to happen as a result of their odd noises. Despite the fact that this is an exclusively military occasion everyone was in mufti apart from these buglers, and a group of soldiers on the flat roof to our right who formed a brass band.

  By seven o’clock the scene was set on the parade-ground. Innumerable very young bullock-calves and frisky kids had been led or carried into the arena, and many of these sacrifices were now being stroked soothingly and fed with greenery to make their last hour a happy one. Three rows of furled flags were standing upright, some twenty yards apart, and enigmatic chalked signs had been drawn on the ground around them. There were no statues or other religious emblems in evidence, and one had the impression, when the sacrifices started, that they were being made directly to the flags. Strong wooden killing-posts stood at about a yard’s distance from each row of flags and beside these were heaps of dry clay for scattering on the ground when it became too slippery with blood. There were a number of other foreigners sharing our roof-top, and already the women among them had begun to wail sentimentally about the poor little darling kids who were soon to be so cruelly slain. How unrealistic can you get! I’m perfectly certain there wasn’t a single person there who had ever declined a plate of roast lamb.

  On the ground, at the base of the flagstaffs, men were laying circular trays piled with fruit, vegetables, eggs, bread, grain, flowers, leaves, little mounds of red and yellow powders – and sometimes a sod of earth from which young rice was sprouting. These men were of every sort, from ragged beggars and peasants who brought tiny tin trays, meagrely laden, to prosperous merchants and senior Government officers whose enormous brass trays were almost too heavy to be carried single-handed.

  Donbahadur had told us that the King himself would kill a white calf at seven o’clock, thus opening the ceremony; but at half-past seven we decided that His Majesty must have remembered another engagement. By then three young privates, clad in off-white singlets and blue denim shorts, were busily beheading calves at each post, using a larger and less curved edition of the ordinary kukri. The animals’ heads were tied to the posts and held steady by one man, while another gripped the hindquarters; personally I would have been very nervous indeed were I holding the head, and seeing that fearsome weapon flashing down so swiftly within inches of my own neck. Yet in the course of over fifty killings we didn’t see even one slight miscalculation, each head being severed with a single clean stroke. As the heads fell they were thrown towards the bases of the flagstaffs, where for moments they lay with ears violently twitching and mouths opening and shutting – a sight which slightly unnerved me at first, as I am not accustomed to watch sacrifices. All the bodies were dragged around the flags in a circle, with blood spurting, and when they had been brought back to the slaying-post they were flung together beside the heap of clay. Many of these carcasses continued to move for an astonishingly long time after death – and they were not merely twitching, but kicking so vigorously that it was difficult to drag them on the ritual round. I longed to be able to experiment by leaving one on its feet after decapitation; probably it could have walked quite a few steps before collapsing. Stories about perambulating, headless bodies have never previously convinced me, but now I find them quite credible.

  Shortly before the slaying started the buglers and the brass band had begun to play different tunes simultaneously; one could just discern that each was murdering a popular European march, yet the musicians themselves were obviously being reduced to paroxysms of joyful pride by their own performances.

  At about 7.45, when the three privates had got well into their stride and lots of blood was flowing smoothly, a Very Important Person wearing horn-rimmed spectacles and a benign expression came wandering alone into the arena. At once the killings stopped and everyone began to salute wildly, like so many toy soldiers gone mad. Then twenty men who had been mingling with the crowd, clad in ordinary Nepalese costume, plus swords, agitatedly began to unsheath their weapons – and as these no-longer-bright swords were held aloft in a crooked row one could see that at some stage the dew had rusted them. The brass band now stopped playing and while the buglers blew a fanfare the VIP, looking faintly embarrassed, solemnly turned to salute the empty sofa and chairs. Then, as the fanfare blasted its uncertain way to its ragged end, the swords were lowered and the VIP lit himself a cigarette and sauntered over to talk to a group of men just below us.

  Now the tempo of the ceremony quickened, as more and more animals were led in for sacrifice and the kukris flashed faster and faster and gory men ran around the flags with their carcasses, instead of walking, and piled trays almost obscured the flag-staffs. Then, to augment the excitement, two members of the brass band exchanged their instruments for ancient muskets which they frequently fired deafeningly in the air – while their colleagues and the buglers continued to vie with each other by massacring Sousa.

  Smells are always a prominent feature of Nepalese events, and this morning these were cumulative. When we first arrived at the Kot i
t was permeated merely by the everyday stench of stale urine: but then people began to burn incense on tall, bronze stands beside each row of flagstaffs, and soon we couldn’t decide which was the worse – urine or urine intermingled with incense. Next came the pleasant pungency of clouds of gunpowder smoke and, as the ceremony proceeded, steaming rivulets of fresh blood thoroughly confused the issue. Yet – oddly enough – by that time the total effect was quite appetising.

  An old Rana army officer was sitting beside me, looking gloomy, and when I made some enthusiastic remarks about the general scene he said curtly that this ceremony is not what it was. During the Rana regime it had been compulsory for every citizen of Kathmandu to sacrifice something – if only a pigeon or sparrow – in honour of the Goddess Durga, but now tiresome democratic ideas have infected the atmosphere and the King has announced that only those who really wish to placate the goddess need do so. Possibly she is feeling a little peeved as a result, because it is estimated that the number of sacrifices has dropped to about 25 per cent of the pre-1951 figures; yet she may realise that this is a consequence of prices rising, rather than of devout fear diminishing. In 1950 a chicken cost half a rupee, but now an egg costs three-quarters of a rupee and a chicken twelve or fifteen rupees.