City of Ghosts (22 page)

The man cleared his throat and asked Gurdial what he thought happened to the rajah.

‘I don't know,' replied Gurdial. ‘Part of me thinks that the rajah became as rich as he desired, and part of me thinks that it was a trick – for why would he be asked to wait until the tribe had left before opening the sack?'

The storyteller smiled. ‘Your suspicion serves you well,' he said. ‘But you still cannot see the point clearly enough. My great-grandfather did not trick the rajah. That old fool cheated himself. Remember, we, the Irula, are snake catchers without compare. Each day we catch snake after snake. But no matter how many snakes we catch, we remain at the bottom of the well and our people still die trying to save the lives of others. What does that tell you about the rajah and his request?'

Gurdial shrugged. ‘I don't know.'

‘
Look
at us!' demanded the man. ‘We build houses
with dung and wear the clothes of our parents; our children cannot read or write and often we have no food to eat.'

Gurdial thought hard but it was no use.

‘If the
nagmani
truly existed,' the storyteller said, exasperated, ‘wouldn't the Irula be the most powerful and wealthy people on earth?'

The other men in the room burst into laughter. Outside the hut their women followed suit. Even Gurdial's guide smiled.

‘The rajah was a fool,' said the storyteller. ‘Don't let yourself become one too.'

Gurdial looked across at his guide. She smiled warmly and told him that they had to leave. ‘Finish your tea,' she added.

‘Are we going back?' he asked her.

She shook her head. ‘Not yet. There is more that you need to see.'

This time they did not suddenly appear at their next destination. The woman took Gurdial to Madras by elephant, bullock-drawn cart and train. From there they caught another train, this one full to the rafters with people, and headed north towards Delhi. The journey took them across the vastness of India, and along the way they made frequent stops. Each time they broke their journey it was to speak to yet another group of people about Gurdial's quest. The woman told Gurdial to listen carefully.

‘But I don't understand,' he complained. ‘Why are you taking me to all these places?'

‘To show you,' replied the woman. ‘To help you to understand.'

‘Understand what?'

‘Life.'

They met rich people and poor people and asked them about the nature of wealth. They spoke to farmers and merchants; young people and old. At one stop the woman took Gurdial to meet a Buddhist monk who lived beside a Hindu holy man. Neither of them really helped Gurdial. Instead they spoke to him in riddles that he had neither the intellect nor the patience to unravel. He learned about money, wealth, fame and love but still found nothing concrete that he could take back for Sohni's father.

On their arrival in Delhi they made their way to a tenement where three children lived in a one-room shack with their desperate mother. The children were thin with hunger and their bones showed beneath their dusty skin. They spent much of their time playing in the open sewers, chasing away rats and stray dogs. And each evening their mother would feed them what little food she had bought and then sing them to sleep. The woman – at times barely able to stand – cared nothing for herself. Her only concern was the welfare of her children.

Gurdial's guide asked him what he thought of the children's mother.

‘She is a saint,' he replied without hesitation. ‘The love she gives to her children is so pure, so true.'

She nodded. ‘Do you know how she earns her money?' she asked him.

‘How can I? I don't know her.'

‘She is a whore,' the woman revealed. ‘Each day, as soon as the children have left the house, she begins her work. Each night, after they have gone to sleep, she continues. There is no limit to the number of men who have sought something from between her thighs. They abuse her and beat her, and when they are done, she begs them for more because she needs money to feed her brood. She is also very, very sick; within a year she will be dead.'

Gurdial's face fell.

‘Is she still as pure and true in your eyes now?' asked the woman.

He shook his head. He didn't know what to say. The smiling, caring, selfless mother was also a cheap whore. It was yet another riddle to grapple with.

‘Will Karma dictate that she returns in the next life in better circumstances?' added the woman. ‘Or will they be worse?'

‘I do not know,' admitted Gurdial. ‘I just want to find the thing I need to win Sohni's hand.'

‘The most precious thing in India is a mirage,' the woman told him. ‘It is whatever a person wants it to be. For you it would be the hand of Sohni, would it not?'

Gurdial nodded. ‘Yes,' he replied. ‘There is nothing more precious to me.'

The woman clicked her fingers and transported them through time and space to a Punjabi village. Gurdial found himself looking in on a Sikh couple and their son. He felt a surge of energy flow through his body, from his toes to the top of his head. He felt warm, as though he had been wrapped in a woollen cocoon.

He turned to his guide. ‘Where are we now?' he asked her.

‘Look around, Gurdial,' the woman replied. ‘See what you can see; feel what you can feel.'

The house was small – two rooms and a courtyard encircled by a low mud wall. All around the perimeter stood shrubs, their flowers resplendent in pinks and purples and blues. At the far end of the courtyard he saw two water buffalo tethered to a gnarled wooden post. The couple were doting on their baby son; the mother rubbing his pale skin with citrus-scented oil, the father telling him how big and strong he would grow. It was an idyllic scene; a dream of happiness that Gurdial had often had. That was when he realized where the woman had brought him. He was the baby and the couple were his parents.

‘Would you give up Sohni?' asked his guide. ‘Would you give her up for a mother's love?'

Tears burst uncontrollably from Gurdial's eyes as he fell to his knees. He turned to the woman, took hold of her legs and began to sob and wail. For a full ten
minutes he continued until at last she pulled him to his feet and embraced him.

‘I can never have them back,' he said to her. ‘They are gone for ever . . .'

‘Yes, they are,' replied the woman, soothing him. ‘But their love will never die. And nor will your love for Sohni. That is why I brought you on this journey: to test you. You
know
why I have to make sure that Sohni is truly safe with you.'

Gurdial nodded.

‘Life, Fate – they will do as they please,' she added. ‘My task is to make sure that you look after the girl.'

‘But I cannot have her,' Gurdial cried. ‘It is too late and I have missed my deadline. I was due to meet Sohni's father on the day of Vaisakhi.'

‘Oh yes . . . that,' replied the woman dismissively. ‘Don't worry; we'll get you back there.'

Gurdial threw up his hands to the heavens. ‘But we've been gone for too long! We've missed Vaisakhi.'

‘You haven't missed a thing,' she told him. ‘Take a look.'

Gurdial raised his head from her bosom and wiped his eyes. He saw the familiar sights of Amritsar's market and heard the voices he had known since he'd arrived in the city.

‘You haven't even been gone,' the woman told him. ‘This is the exact time at which we met, on exactly the same day. Vaisakhi is tomorrow and you can still meet your deadline.'

Gurdial looked down at the upturned wooden crate on which he'd been sitting. The woman was right: even though it felt as if they had been gone for an age, they were right back where they'd started.

‘I know who you are,' he told the woman.

‘Yes,' she replied. ‘I'm aware of that. But do you know what to
do
?'

Gurdial nodded. He did not know how or when the realization had dawned, but it had. He knew clearly what his task would be. The woman bent down and pulled something from behind the crate that Gurdial had been using as a seat. She handed it to him.

‘You know what to use this for?'

‘Yes,' he replied. ‘I know . . .'

The woman smiled.

‘What will
you
do?' Gurdial asked her.

‘I have an old foe to catch up with.' She smiled.

Gurdial scratched his head. ‘How is it that I know everything about you and yet you never once told me?'

The woman laughed. ‘The magic – when you can
feel
it, when it flows right
through
you, then you do not need to be told. You just
know
. . .'

‘Thank you,' Gurdial whispered.

The woman hugged him and he closed his eyes to savour her touch. ‘No need for thanks,' she told him. ‘What else would a mother do?'

Gurdial felt her let go. He waited a moment and then opened his eyes. The woman was gone, and in her place, fluttering about his head, was a small blue butterfly.

Darshana Kaur sat in her kitchen and dreamed of ways in which she could take her husband's life. As she did so, she used a smooth grey stone to sharpen the edge of her dagger. It was a fine weapon with a gilt-edged handle set with blue and red stones – the same knife she'd used to kill her daughters in their infancy. How apt then that it should also take the life of Gulbaru's daughter, Sohni, followed by his own. She smiled to herself as she remembered their early years together, before her teeth began to rot and her body took on a foul stench.

For two years Gulbaru had been loyal to his wife, Heera, and eventually she gave birth to Sohni, as beautiful a child as Heera was a woman. But the birth had been complicated. After pulling Sohni from her mother's womb, the midwife watched helplessly as the womb followed in a torrent of blood. While Heera lay in that curdled mess, Gulbaru was busy drinking with his friends, prematurely celebrating the birth of his first son. Upon returning home he found that he had been too hasty and flew into a rage. Not only had he been given a daughter but his wife lay stricken and unable to bear any more children.

Gulbaru's rage did not subside for nearly five days, all of which he spent drinking and gambling and cavorting with whores. It was on the final night of this marathon of sin that he met Darshana. Very quickly they became inseparable, the cloth merchant and his beautiful lover. Darshana had shone back then; a true gem, rivalled in
looks only by Heera herself. But whereas Heera's heart was pure, Darshana was a schemer, just like Gulbaru. Together they cooked up their plan to remove Heera, marry and live with the riches that Gulbaru would inherit after the death of his wife.

And so it was that Darshana found herself hiding in the very same kitchen in which she now sat. It was a cold night and the stars were bright in the sky. As she waited in the dark, Gulbaru ushered his unsuspecting wife towards her doom. As soon as Heera entered the kitchen, Darshana pounced, using a knife she'd been given by Gulbaru to slit her rival's throat. Once Heera was dead, the two of them cut her body into pieces, and little by little, over the next week or so, took them out and fed them to the stray dogs that roamed the streets.

The only piece of Heera that they saved was her left hand with her wedding band on it. Gulbaru took this with him to the police station to report his wife's murder. She had been set upon and kidnapped, he told the officers. A ransom demand had been made and money paid. But the kidnappers had killed her anyway and left her hand at the front door as proof. The police officers had believed every word, and soon the rest of Gulbaru's neighbours and friends accepted the story too. And throughout the whole drama, it had been Darshana who had comforted Gulbaru and helped look after his only child.

They had been so successful in fooling everyone that, six months after Heera's death, when Gulbaru married
Darshana, there were only one or two dissenting voices; one of them had been Mohni, the old servant whom no one listened to anyway. Darshana and Gulbaru began their new life together. And that was when Darshana's body began to fall apart.

‘But I'll outlast them all,' she said to herself just as the Chinaman walked through the door.

‘I'm ready, mistress,' he told her.

‘Good,' she replied. ‘The bitch should be back anytime now.'

Mohni hurried across when he saw Sohni arrive at the gate. He wanted to reach her before Darshana did but he wasn't quick enough. She ushered the girl into the living room with a sly smile.

‘I've left some clothes in the kitchen,' she told her stepdaughter. ‘And there are dishes too. Make sure everything is done before you go to bed.'

Sohni nodded and went wearily into the kitchen. When she saw the pile of clothes to be washed, she sighed. It would take her all night. She sat down and wondered where Gurdial was and what he was doing. Just then, there was a knock at the back door. Sohni got up and opened it, smiling when she saw Mohni standing there.

‘The old witch has given me a mountain of chores,' she said.

‘Never mind!' whispered Mohni. ‘We don't have time for that.'

‘But why are you whispering?' asked Sohni.

The old man put a finger to his lips. ‘S
shh!
We must get you away from here!'

Sohni was about to question him further when the door burst open and the Chinaman appeared, his eyes blazing. He wore his evil intent openly: in his left hand was a large knife. He shrieked at Sohni in his own language before lunging at her. He was quick but Sohni managed to dart through the door and slam it behind her.

‘
This way!
' shouted Mohni. ‘
Hurry!
'

He pulled her along the garden path towards the back gate and the dark alleyway beyond. He threw it open, and urged Sohni on. But Darshana had already cut off their escape route. She stood in the alley, dagger at the ready. Before Mohni could blink, she slashed at his face, catching his cheekbone, tearing through the flesh. He screamed but still managed to push Darshana aside as Sohni came out into the alley, stumbling through the overgrown weeds. Mohni followed her and the Chinaman gave chase.