Ghost Letters (11 page)

“Here's one that might interest you,” he said. “I've got a complete collection of stamps from the kingdom of Ajeebgarh, which no longer exists. It's part of India now. The maharajah issued his own postage until the British forced him to stop. I got interested in Ajeebgarh because that was where Ezekiel Finch had his tea estates. He died there in 1879. Among our family papers we had a lot of his old letters that carried these stamps and I've been able to put together a complete collection.”

Nargis nudged Gil with her elbow and the two of them exchanged startled glances. Most of the stamps in the album had pictures of the maharajah on them. Gil recognized his profile from the postage on the genie's envelope.

“Maharajah Lajawab Singh II,” said Prescott. “He was an interesting man, who wanted to turn his kingdom into a modern state. The post and telegraph office in Ajeebgarh was one of the most efficient in India. Lajawab Singh II had all sorts of trouble with the British, who thought he was an upstart, full of dangerous
ideas. He insisted on issuing his own postage and brought the telegraph to Ajeebgarh. Supposedly, Lajawab Singh was also negotiating with the Russians to export his tea. Eventually the British invaded Ajeebgarh and took over the kingdom by force. It's sometimes referred to as the Postage Stamp War.”

Staring down at the page full of stamps, Gil could barely contain his excitement. When he looked across at Nargis, he could tell she too was thinking about Sikander.

Prescott stopped himself for a moment and pointed to the picture on the wall, an etching of a battle scene.

“Here you go,” he said. “I found this in an antiques shop a couple years back. It's a picture from the
London Illustrated News
that shows the siege of Ajeebgarh. This was printed in 1896. You can see the maharajah's palace in ruins.”

Gil and Nargis squinted at the old print, which showed a lot of British officers waving their swords about and cannons spewing clouds of smoke. One of the maharajah's soldiers was trying to fight back, but he was wounded and had fallen to one knee. Reminded of Sikander again, Gil shuddered and wondered if he was all right.

Picking up the magnifying glass, he studied the jewels on the maharajah's turban and the way his moustache curled up at the ends. It was definitely the same man pictured on the stamp on the genie's envelope. Hesitating, Gil reached for the letter.

“Grandpa …,” he said,“I found this today.”

Prescott took it from him, ignoring the address and training the magnifying lens on the stamp instead.

“Look at that!” he said with excitement. “It says 1896. The
cancellation mark is smudged, but you can tell by the sash he's wearing. Where did you get this?” Prescott fixed his eyes on Gil.

“Um … this morning, it arrived through the mail slot while you were away …”

His grandfather stared at him suspiciously, then turned back to examine the stamps.

“Actually …,” said Gil, swallowing hard. “There's something inside the envelope you might want to see.”

Prescott still looked confused. He opened the paper, flattening it on the green baize surface of the desk.

“What's this?” he said with an interested frown, recognizing the verses.
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
. He began to read the lines: “ ‘Awake! for Morning in the bowl of Night / Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight … '”

Gil waited for something to happen but there wasn't any explosion or puff of smoke. When Prescott finished reading the poem, he shook his head and smiled, then went back to examining the stamp. No genie had appeared, and Gil exchanged a puzzled glance with Nargis. He took the letter and held it up to the light. The ink remained fixed to the page.

Ezekiel Finch kneels beside the slate-lined tank and watches the tiny fingerlings swarming through the clear, cold water. The sight of their tapered bodies wriggling against the gentle current fills him with a feeling of satisfaction and regret.

Late last year, on a bright November day, before he sailed from Hornswoggle Bay, Ezekiel had cast his fly line into the ice pond near his house. A fat brook trout took the fly and he played her into shore. She was full of roe, and when he held her over a basin and squeezed her belly, the eggs had squirted out like seeds from an overripe tomato. After collecting these, he released the fish back into the pond and cast again. The autumn colors in the trees were as full of gold as a pharaoh's tomb. Within an hour, Ezekiel had landed twelve trout, most of which were ready to spawn. Finally, he had hooked a male brook trout that leapt on the surface of the pond, in a fierce struggle to throw the hook. Holding the line firmly, Ezekiel drew the fish to shore. The male trout was smaller than the others, a bright orange and
mottled green, its spawning colors as gaudy as the maple leaves. In the basin, hundreds of clear trout ova were mixed with white milt from the male, just as they might have been fertilized in the pebbled shallows of the pond.

Later, the eggs were transferred into three glass jars, full of water and gravel, which were taken aboard the
Moorish Queen
. Throughout the long voyage to India, Ezekiel had the water siphoned out and replaced each day to keep the eggs alive. Ezekiel himself had turned his back on New England, with a sad, stern look on his face. He was a hardy, self-made man, not given to outward emotions, but as he sailed beyond the headland and caught a last glimpse of the high slate roof of the Yankee Mahal, his eyes glistened with remorse.

Stone by stone, he had built that house, dreaming of carrying Camellia over the threshold one day. It was to be a home in which they raised a family and lived in contentment for the rest of their lives. But the dream had frozen over as quickly as the surface of the ice pond in December. Ezekiel had nothing left to live for there. His ships, with their cargo of tea and ice, had made him a wealthy man, but none of that mattered, now that Camellia had refused to give him her hand in marriage.

The only thing Ezekiel took with him from Massachusetts, to remind him of bright autumn days like this, was the brood of fish eggs. In the foothills of the eastern Himalayas above Ajeebgarh, he planned to stock a pond with trout. Everything else he left behind, his house with all its furnishings, his horses, his orchards, his land. Never again would he see the foliage turn gold in autumn, or feel the crunch of snow
beneath his boots, or touch Camellia's soft brown hair. Instead, he sailed away to a lonely exile in the East.

And now, as he kneels beside his fish hatchery, watching the fingerlings swimming back and forth, he realizes how far he's come. Ambital is no bigger than the ice pond—a secluded lake in the mountains above the tea estates he owns. Unlike the European brown trout (
Salmo trutta
), brought by the British to other parts of India, these American brook trout are a different species—
Salvilinus frontinalis
. Ezekiel will release the fish halfway around the globe, as a tragic reminder of his loss and a wriggling testament of thwarted hopes.

Leaving Prescott to his stamp collection, Gil and Nargis took the poem and went out to the garage. Leaning against Prescott's Volkswagen, Gil shook his head.

“I swear, the last time I read this poem, a genie appeared. I can't figure out why it didn't work.”

Nargis took the paper from his hands and began to read the verses aloud. As soon as she reached the last line, there was a muted explosion and the ink disintegrated into a whirligig of smoke. Dropping the paper, Nargis jumped back, almost tripping over a lawn mower.

“At your service m'lord!” said the genie.

Gil swallowed hard. “Why didn't you appear when my grandfather read the poem?”

The genie shrugged. “I was off duty,” he explained. “Elevenses.”

Nargis stared at the apparition that hovered inside the garage, like a cloud with a human face.

“What do you mean?” said Gil. “I thought you were supposed to be here whenever I need you.”

The genie took a pocket watch out of his waistcoat and wound the knob.

“Well, that's true, sir. But we genies operate on a strict schedule, negotiated and agreed upon by common consent. You see, I break for breakfast from eight to nine, then elevenses at eleven o'clock, of course. Lunch is from half past noon to two o'clock. Afternoon tea: three to four thirty. Dinner is six to nine
PM
. After that I'm off until seven
AM
.”

“That doesn't leave you much time to work,” said Gil.

“We also get Saturdays and Sundays off, as well as bank holidays,” said Aristo, polishing his watch and returning it to his pocket.

Nargis didn't like the genie much. After the first shock of seeing him rise up off the page, she found him pompous and condescending. Though he greeted Nargis with formality and called her “m'lady,” he seemed much more interested in talking with Gil, as if girls were a waste of his time. He had an annoying way of sniffing when he spoke, and his hands were always making dismissive gestures in her direction. For all his mysteriousness and magic, Nargis could tell that Aristophanes Smith was a very ordinary genie who liked to put on airs.

Before going back into his envelope, he insisted on reciting “Kubla Khan” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan

A stately pleasure-dome decree:

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran

Through caverns measureless to man

Down to a sunless sea.

So twice five miles of fertile ground

With walls and towers were girdled round:

And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills

Where blossom'd many an incense-bearing tree;

And here were forests ancient as the hills,

Enfolding sunny spots of greenery …

The first part of the poem was all right, but after that it got long-winded as Aristo droned on until the end. While reciting the poem, he tucked one hand between the buttons of his waistcoat and the other he waved about like an orchestra conductor. During this performance Nargis nudged Gil's arm and rolled her eyes.

After the poem was finished, Gil nodded, then asked Aristo to explain how he'd got into the envelope in the first place.

“With the help of a calligrapher's pen,” said the genie. “Naturally—or supernaturally as the case may be—there are certain things I can't reveal, but suffice it to say that my existence depends upon a process of versification and reversification, if you know what I mean.”

“No, I don't,” said Gil.

“Well, sir. Since your grandfather is a poet, I would imagine you understand the power of language and metaphor …”

Gil shrugged.

“And you're familiar with the literary theory of relative correlatives?”

“No …”

“It's really nothing more than that …”—Aristo flicked his wrist—“along with a few secret ingredients in the calligrapher's ink. You could say I'm the soul of the poem, the spirit of the words rising up off the page. Omar Khayyam's lyrics are translated into English and therefore, ergo, I am an English genie. If the
Rubaiyat
's quatrains had been written in the original Farsi, I would have been a Persian genie. We can be translated into any language you like—except Latin or Sanskrit, which have been recently discontinued.”

“The envelope was addressed to Cairo,” said Gil. “Was that where you were supposed to go?”

“Indeed. My original assignment was to serve an eminent Egyptologist, who was trying to uncover the secrets of Queen Hetshepsut's tomb. I was sent to help him decipher the hieroglyphics, but he was caught smuggling mummies out of the country and had to leave abruptly, before my letter arrived.”

“What happened after that?” asked Nargis.

“Well, I kicked around Cairo for a while—nice city but difficult to enjoy if you're trapped inside an envelope. Eventually, someone sent me off to a nonexistent postbox, here in Massachusetts. It was a false address the Egyptologist used, to keep the authorities off his trail.”

“And then?” said Nargis impatiently. Aristo looked at her in disdain, polishing his fingernails on his lapel.

“Well, that was it!” he said. “I was trapped inside a dead letter. Address Unknown. End of the road.”

“But how did you get delivered here?” Gil asked.

“Oh, that?” he said. “It's a secret.”

“Come on!” said Nargis. “You can't tell us this whole elaborate story, then keep the end to yourself. I don't believe a word of what you've said.”

The genie looked at Gil as if expecting help, but Gil shook his head.

“All right …,” said the genie at last. “But this has got to be between us. Super-confidential. Top secret. For your ears only.”

“Go on,” said Nargis.

“I was delivered by hand …,” whispered the genie.

“Whose hand?” said Gil.

The genie shuddered.

“A rather revolting hand, if you ask me,” he replied, still under his breath. “A bony, shriveled hand without any skin or flesh. Just a skeletal hand on its own, with an absolutely nauseating smell.”

November 11. Veterans Day. Gil was surprised when his grandfather suggested they go to the parade in Carville.

“I thought you were a pacifist,” said Gil.

“Sure,” said Prescott. “But that doesn't mean I can't go and watch the parade. A lot of my friends are veterans, or were …”

At nine thirty that morning, Lenore came across to join them and they drove down and parked near the town hall. It was an overcast, blustery day, and the parade didn't take more than half an hour. There were a couple of Humvees from the National Guard and a line of antique cars full of men in old uniforms with medals on their chests. Some of the veterans drove past on motorcycles and the crowd clapped and cheered. Three men in colonial uniforms played “Yankee Doodle” on drums and pipes. The Stars and Stripes was raised over the town green, and everyone sang the national anthem. Nargis and her parents had also come to watch the parade.