The Mystic's Miracle

by Noah Alexander

  To make matters worse, since everyone was dressed in black, Maya stood out in her soiled and bloodied white blouse and skirt, it felt like she had arrived here straight from a pub brawl, just the sort of picture that people wanted, to confirm their suspicions about her.

  “Nadia!” the whispers began almost immediately, “That’s her, is it not? The girl who ran away…”

  “Look who’s here!”

  Maya put her head down and desperately searched for Natasha, who stood near the grave with a person she least wanted to see. Happy Billy, Harold’s younger brother and the circus clown, had changed in appearance since she had seen him last. He looked much thinner, his tall frame had slacked noticeably, and his head had a lot more gray and white than black. He was also missing his left eye.

  Happy Billy was not particularly happy to see her. He scratched under his eye patch and shifted a few steps away from Natasha to fix his one eye firmly on the priest reading the prayer beside the grave. His face had turned almost ashen and his lips had set tightly against each other as if he was trying hard not to scream. Natasha, whose eyes were red but who was no longer crying, held Maya’s hand in hers and continued to gaze at her father’s coffin. Maya was grateful for her grasp, it made her feel warmer and gave her some courage to ward off the inquisitive glances that were still being thrown at her by all the people around.

  The whole ritual continued for around fifteen minutes after which the coffin was lowered into the grave. The priest then took a handful of earth and threw it in the grave. This being the cue, others repeated the ritual, at the end of which the gravediggers came forward with their shovels to fill up the hole and sentence Harold Wilson’s corpse to an eternity inside the ground.

  Maya, wary of the questions and glances from others, was the first to scurry out of the cemetery. She heard a few people call her name, trying to stop her but she walked straight out of the wrought iron gate and behind the tamarind tree. She then lit a cigarette and stood smoking peacefully even as others began to flit out. The last to emerge was Natasha who looked like she might fall from fatigue and misery. Seeing no one else around her Maya cantered to her cousin to console her.

  “I knew you would come,” Natasha said upon seeing her, “whatever differences between you and father, I am sure you never stopped loving him.”

  Maya nodded, though she wasn’t sure if that was entirely true.

  “When did you come to Anthill?” asked Maya.

  “Two weeks ago,” said Natasha, “The circus has set camp near the northern edge of the city. We had planned to do shows for 3 or 4 months here. More, if the response was good. The first show was scheduled to start next week but then this misfortune befell.”

  Maya patted Natasha’s shoulders.

  “Do you live in Anthill now?” Natasha asked, “And why did you run away so suddenly. I figured it had something to do with father and his crossness and I heard that you had an altercation with Billy but no one knew the exact reason. You could have at least told me before making the decision.”

  This was a surprise. It seemed like Harold and Bill had not revealed the complete story to the circus folks. This made it easier in a sense and worse in others. They would be desperate to know the full tale.

  Maya tried to smile without succeeding, “It happened so suddenly. I just decided I needed to move ahead,” she said simply, “I now live in Cardim and work at a Detective Agency.”

  “Detective work?” Natasha exclaimed, “Is that where you got your injuries from.”

  “Oh no,” Maya brushed her concern aside, “these are nothing. I just happened to fall down. I was in Anthill regarding some work. Now it is finished and I must head home.”

  Natasha was not pleased.

  “No, you will not,” she said firmly, “we have just met, and I have a lot to talk to you. Anyway tomorrow is Saturday and Monday is a holiday, so you cannot have work for three days. I would not let you go. You have to come to the circus. Seeing you would be a welcome change for the circus folks. God knows the last three days have been miserable.”

  A part of Maya wanted to protest and run away but another, deep down, close to her heart, longed to return back to the place she had grown up in, to see the faces which had made up her childhood.

  In the end, Natasha didn’t even wait for her sister’s decision. She tugged at her hand and pulled Maya in the direction, she had resolved, 7 years ago, never to return.

  EIGHT

  Policemen Not Allowed

  Ernst’s opinion of Anthill had always been rather unfavorable. Or at least the opinion that he had of the place courtesy of his parents. He had previously only been here with his parents and that too when he was a child and expected to agree to everything that they felt or believed.

  On his first foray to this native township alone, Ernst had to agree that at least this time his parents’ opinions were not exactly misplaced. The name of the town described it aptly. It was no more than an anthill. A mound of houses nestling one atop the other on top of a small hillock nestling between two streams of the river Kali. Though only about a few square miles in size, it housed more than three million people, one-fifth of the population of Cardim city. Most of its inhabitants were native migrants from all parts of India who could not afford to live in Cardim and instead found abode in shabby shanties, mud houses, and hutments in this place.

  Not all the houses in the town were run-down though, nor all the people impoverished. Interspersed between sprawling slums of the city were magnificent bungalows and villas with towers, domes, and gardens fit for kings. These houses stood out in the bright October sun as Ernst stepped out of the ferry onto the pier extending into river Kali. It was 11 in the morning and Ernst had until 9 in the evening to find his father and bring him back. He had to go to work tomorrow and the last Ferry from Anthill to Cardim left at 9. There was also the added motivation of not spending more time than necessary in this place. As soon as he had stepped onto the sandy bank his nose had been bothered by a decaying smell. He found the reason soon enough. A huge garbage dump, large enough to accommodate half a dozen villages, lay a couple of hundred yards from the pier. Stray cows and dogs, even vultures loomed into the rubbish foraging for food. Ernst covered his nose and walked straight to a line of carriages waiting on the bank. He didn’t have to bother much to find a carriage to the ashram of Guru Ramdas. Apparently, it was one of the most popular destinations for all the people getting off from the ferry and more than half a dozen carriages were going exclusively to that place. Ernst boarded the cab which felt the cleanest and the most likely to hold up through the journey. He was slightly surprised to see that most visitors to the ashram of a Hindu guru were actually white men. Some of them had to be quite wealthy going by their appearance.

  Ernst had tried to get a bit of a background on Guru Ramdas before starting for Anthill. He had reportedly spent 27 years attaining salvation in the Himalayas and had come to Anthill just over six months ago. He had started preaching under a Banyan tree near the town center and had instantly found fame among the natives. The newspapers that Ernst had studied had quoted eye-witnesses saying that the Guru was the son of God and was endowed with miraculous powers. He could levitate in the air, see the future of his devotees, produce food out of nothing, cure small-pox, and whooping cough by throwing dust over people's faces, and even transport his followers mentally to heaven. No wonder then, that his fame had soon spread outside the town to the white folks in Cardim, with whose financial help, he had built an Ashram for himself.

  “Seeing you after a long time,” said a middle-aged man in a grey suit to a bald man with thick bushy mustaches as soon as the carriage lurched to a start.

  “I was out to Bombay on business,” said the other man, “Returned yesterday after a month there. I couldn’t wait a day to visit the ashram.”

  “A month,” the former exclaimed horrified, “my wife and son wanted to go on a hunting trip to the jungles in the south. It would have taken all of two weeks, but
I said no. Business, I told them, but it was the ashram. Can’t see how I could have survived three weeks without the Guru.”

  Ernst scratched his chin.

  If the conversation that the men were having was anything to go by, it would be an uphill task to convince his father to come back. That is if his father even agreed to hear what he had to say. Ernst reasoned that he could use his position as a High Guard to forcefully get him evicted from the place. Increasingly that seemed like his only hope.

  There were a couple of ladies in the carriage as well. Dressed in expensive silk, who whispered into each other’s ears and giggled. Ernst spent the rest of the twenty-minute trip wondering what was so special about this Guru and his ashram that these men couldn’t live a week without it.

  He hadn’t been able to figure it out when a large white building, easily the largest in Anthill, swam into view. The sprawling boulevard in front of the mansion was littered with horse carriages and buggies. A little farther down was a line of what seemed like beggars and homeless men. Some hawkers selling hats, candies, and popcorn wandered around the crowd. Ernst disembarked from the carriage and tried to form a plan of action. He had envisaged a small collection of huts with topless bearded sages going about blessing people, but this operation was on a completely different scale. The ashram building was large enough to hold more than a few thousand people at a time and going by the crowd gathered outside, it regularly filled its capacity. There were two gates to the ashram. One, where his own carriage had stopped, which was apparently used by the more wealthy of the Guru’s devotees as it cost some money to gain entry, while the other gate, some hundred yards down the road, was for the homeless and the poor. They had made a line which was easily the longest that he had ever seen. It snaked from the gate all the way down the road and out of sight.

  The ashram opened its gates to the devotees at around 12 which meant there was still half an hour before the public was let in. He could only imagine what the crowd would be like at that time. Ernst took a deep breath, took out his constabulary card, and marched confidently towards the gate. He was a High Guard and he didn’t need to wait in queues like ordinary people.

  He shoved his way through the crowd shouting “High Guard” all the way to the large wrought iron gate. The gate was manned by four burly men draped in khaki coats and bearing a grim expression upon their faces. Ernst shoved his hand through the gate and produced his card in front of the smallest looking man.

  “I am Lieutenant Ernst Wilhelm,” he shouted above the din, “my father is inside the ashram, I need to get him out.”

  The man looked at the card, then at Ernst.

  “Policemen not allowed,” he said simply.

  “But my father is inside. I need to get him out, my mother is worried about him.”

  “He went there on his own he will come out on his own,” said the man and pushed Ernst's hand back outside the gate, “Now go away.”

  Ernst felt his temper rising. First of all, he couldn't understand why and how policemen were not allowed inside this building, and second, he had never heard someone talk this rudely to him, not when he had proclaimed that he was a Lieutenant anyway. His own director, who had a reputation for being harsh, did not talk to him this way.

  This man needed to be taught a lesson.

  “Sir,” he said to him in as authoritative a voice as he could muster, “you are trying to stop a Lieutenant of the Cardim High Guards from doing his duty. I must warn you that this offense is punishable by law and I intend to make sure that you pay for your insolence unless you correct your course and let me in.”

  The man looked at Ernst with an expression that the High Guard couldn’t quite tell was of submission or aggression. He soon found out, as the guard called a man dressed just like himself but much larger.

  “This is a policeman, Sir,” he told his chief, “he doesn’t understand that he is not allowed inside.”

  “Listen,” said the man to him, “Policemen are not allowed inside. We don’t want to trouble you. So why don’t you go away.”

  “Manu,” said Ernst reading the name of the large man on a badge on his chest, “I need to see my father. And you cannot keep a High Guard out of your premises.”

  “Well sir, we can,” said Manu and opened the gate. He held Ernst by the collar, heaved him up from the ground, and carried him past the crowd to the pavement on the other side of the road. Once there, he lifted him up even higher and threw him down on the ground with the force of an angry elephant.

  “This is not Cardim,” he told Ernst, “this is Guru Ramdas’s ashram and it is out of bounds for everyone but his devotees. Now get lost.”

  The man turned and left, leaving Ernst on the ground, his frame brown with dirt and face red with humiliation

  NINE

  The Biggest Show on Earth

  The Golem Traveling Circus and Menagerie claimed to be the biggest show on Earth. (If you've seen this. You've seen it all)

  When Maya had left 7 years ago, it certainly was one of the biggest circuses in India. Over 50 artists and more than 3 dozen exotic animals from all parts of the world were a part of the circus. They were probably the only circus to have anacondas from South America, comodo dragons from Dutch East Indies, as well as birds from pacific islands with beaks as long as an elephant's trunk and fishes which looked like they had come straight from hell. Apart from the animals, there was also a queer selection of circus freaks - feet tall dwarfs, Siamese twins, children with tails on their backs and horns on their heads, singers who could shatter glasses by their songs, and fighters who could lift a grizzly bear by the paw and chuck it in a cage 20 feet away. In Harold Wilson, the circus also had a director who knew what made the audience jump in awe. The Golem Circus did shows in all the major cities of India – Cardim, Bombay, Madras, Pune, and half the city they had camped in, turned up to see their shows.

  But as Maya entered the circus camp, Natasha beside her, she couldn’t help but feel that it had regressed considerably. The circus had set camp in a large dusty ground at the western extreme of Anthill, beyond which lay sweeping wilderness – hardly a prime location for a circus. The red and gold tents in the middle of the ground were old and patched. They seemed to be the same ones that the circus had been using before she left. There was very little activity around the place, which was surprising given the show was scheduled in a week.

  “The circus is not doing too great,” Natasha said when she noticed Maya looking at the battered tents, “We haven’t been making any profits for close to two years now and we are chin deep in debt. I believe that is what drove father to commit suicide.”

  Maya thought Natasha might cry again, but she held herself together. The two had now come close to the main gate and a bust of a red and gold dwarf clown welcomed her.

  A young boy, who Maya did not recognize from her time here, was pasting advertising bills on the boundary wall beside the gate. The chief attractions, Maya noticed, were also the same as when she had left.

  Bon Bon: The missing link between Monkeys and Humans.

  General Lion: He has spent his life in the jungles of Africa leading a pride of lions. Now he is in your city.

  Mr. Mountain: Watch the most powerful man on Earth lift a carriage with his little finger.

  The Human Cannonball: You might have seen a shooting bullet or a shooting star. Have you seen a woman shoot from a canon?

  “I don’t remember the circus having the Human Cannonball when I was here," Maya said, “Is that a new act.”

  Natasha sighed.

  “Well it was new,” she said, “Father spent a lot of money to hire that girl and that canon equipment for one season but she left when we couldn’t pay her. I had asked Robert not to paste that advertisement but he must have forgotten."

  She instructed the boy to remove all the bills featuring the Human Cannonball and the two moved inside.

  The menagerie tent, where the animals had to be put up on show, was being set up on the right of
the main tent while the animals themselves, lions, elephants and bears, as well as colorful tropical birds, were kept in numerous small cages which littered a corner of the ground. Most of the animals lazed around in their cages oblivious to the fact that their master was dead. The workers, a majority of whom were circus artists who had acts of their own, were also too busy to be in a state of mourning.

  “We are much behind schedule,” Natasha said, “The first show is in a week and we cannot afford to postpone it, the creditors will suck our blood. Without father, it’s hard to see how we’ll manage it.”

  “Oh we will manage it fine, dear,” came a familiar voice behind them and Maya turned around to find Helena beaming kindly at her. Helena didn’t feel like she had aged at all in the last seven years. Perhaps there wasn’t much scope, she seemed to already be as old as any human could possibly get. In her younger days, which must have been quite a long time ago, Helena was a corde lisse artist - she did acrobatics on ropes, but ever since Maya remembered she had been responsible for the circus kitchen. To feed the workers when there were no shows and to run the snack stall during shows. Maya was particularly fond of her Black Bean Pudding.

  “How are you, Helena?” Maya asked, “Do you remember me?”

  “Of course, dear. How can I forget my little Nadia,” she locked Maya in a tight embrace, “Where have you been all these years?"

  "Here and there," Maya said trying to dodge her question.

  "You cannot imagine how shocked we were when we found out about your sudden disappearance," Helena continued, "We still talk about it when other topics of discussion are scarce. You cannot imagine all the rumors that did the rounds when you left. Some said that the circus lion had eaten you – bones and all, and, believe me or not, that wasn’t even the strangest of all the suggestions.”

  Maya understood that this was meant more as a question to her than a general comment. Since Bill and Harold had kept the real story behind her escape a secret, she was certain that her disappearance was still a mystery that many old-timers in the circus wanted to have knowledge about. Helena more so than others. Maya knew her to be the chief gossiper in the circus, the one who made sure news moved from one mouth to the other. And she took her job seriously, eavesdropping on people’s conversations, trying to pry open people’s secrets with bribes of good puddings or at times, a bottle or two of painstakingly procured gin.