Kingdom (7 page)

‘I’ve asked for some tea. Now, I called the head of the Foreign Press Corps to ask them to lodge a complaint with the government, and I have also made a further official complaint, on behalf of the newspaper, with the Minister of the Interior’s office.’

‘Thanks,’ said Nancy. ‘I’m just glad to be out of there.’

‘Can we get you something to eat? You must be hungry. I doubt they gave you any sustenance in the police station after all . . .’

‘I would love something, thanks . . . Just anything . . .’

Moments later, a woman appeared from the adjacent room carrying a tray with a large glass of water, a cup of chai and two fresh samozas. Nancy tucked in hungrily. Krishna had pulled up a chair and was watching her eat with an anxious look on his face, occasionally sipping his cup of tea. He waited for her to speak. She wiped her mouth with a napkin and tried to marshal her thoughts.

‘Krishna, thanks so much. Sorry if I seem a little weird . . .’

‘Don’t be ridiculous. Do you want anything else?’

‘No, no, that was perfect. What I would like to do is find out more about Anton Herzog.’

Krishna nodded cautiously. She continued.

‘Can you help?’

He looked uncomfortable, as if he would much rather she had asked for a tour of Delhi, some advice on where to buy her groceries or where to eat out, or some other such triviality.

‘Well, what exactly do you want to know?’

‘You worked with him closely. Of everyone, you must know his habits, his predilections, what he was up to.’

‘Not as well as you might think. Yes, it’s true I’ve worked with him for years.’ He paused, hoping that she would change the subject, she thought. But she didn’t, instead she waited patiently for him to give her something more.

He shifted in his chair and muttered, ‘Listen, Anton is a funny character.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘Well, he loves India, there’s no question of that. He believes in India, he desperately wants to tell the world about India and make sure that we get a fair hearing . . . But he’s not an easy man to get to know. He can be a little cold . . .’

‘Cold?’

‘No. Not cold. That’s not the right word. I’m sorry – I’m not explaining myself very well. I don’t mean he wasn’t friendly – he was – I’ve lost count of the times I’ve enjoyed his hospitality, and it was he who trained me. I have nothing but praise for the man; he was an excellent boss. But there was something – well, you might say unknowable about him. That is the only way I can think of to express it.’

‘Why do you think he’s disappeared?’

‘I don’t know. That is what I’m trying to tell you. I don’t really know him that well, despite all his kindness and despite having sat only a few yards away from him for all these years.’

‘Didn’t he ever talk about his private life?’

‘No. Not his feelings, not his past, not his family. I can tell you his hobbies, where he drank, which section of the
Trib
he read first each morning, how he would abandon coffee for three months and then drink it constantly for another three. All his foibles and rituals. But his inner self was closed to me. Right at the beginning of his time here, just after I arrived at the office, was the only time that he ever mentioned his family to me at all. He said his father had died before he was born – that he had been killed at the battle of Stalingrad towards the end of the Second World War and that his mother had emigrated from their hometown of Munich to Argentina. After that, he never mentioned anything further, and certainly I never felt I could press him.’

Krishna rearranged some of the piled-up papers on the desk, revealing a tarnished silver frame containing a pale black and white portrait photo of a woman.

‘That’s his mother there: Anna Herzog.’

Nancy leaned forward and studied the photo in fascination. The woman’s blonde hair was in a bun. She had a white shirt done up to her neck. She was middle-aged in the photo: beautiful with dark eyes and high cheekbones, and very pale, translucent skin. Nancy took the photo from Krishna.

Bad luck to lose your husband before your child is even born, she thought. What must it have been like to be looking after a tiny baby, with your husband gone and the whole of Europe on fire? She must have been tough, that was for sure. She looked it, under her delicate beauty and pearly skin. But then so many people were in the same position; people’s expectations of life must have just become much more modest: survival and retreat from the horrors of war. One day at a time. The greatest victory was to live. Nancy put the photo back down on the table.

Krishna continued. ‘The funny thing was that even though he had no memories of Germany at all and had only spent the first few weeks of his life there, he was still German really . . .’

Krishna got up and walked over to Herzog’s desk, which was farcically strewn with papers, as if he had tipped his files everywhere shortly before his most recent departure.

‘Here: Goethe,
The Complete Poems
. Schiller:
The Complete Poems.
Nietzsche,
Thus Spake Zarathustra
.’

Nancy stood up and took a closer look. It was true: well-worn copies of the German classics littered the desk. It looked like the desk of someone who was homesick – she could imagine him listening to Bach’s cello suites and reading Goethe’s
Faust
, sitting at this desk late into the night, imagining himself far away from the heat and dust of India.

Krishna continued, warming to his task, as if he had momentarily forgotten whatever it was that Dan Fischer had told him. ‘And it wasn’t just the books – I suspect he had a German soul and a German temperament. In fact I think that Anton had all the good qualities associated with Germans: passion, rigour and such enthusiasm – he was like a force of nature when he was discussing something he believed in. And when he spoke about the universe and mankind’s place in the world, he sounded like a Hindu guru.’ Krishna looked up and smiled at her: ‘Only a German can do that! And he was musical, very musical. He was a concert-standard pianist.’

Nancy was nodding to herself. Life could be so hard on people, she thought, constantly displacing them and their families and forcing them to leave their roots far behind. Herzog was so many people’s hero, not just her own, but looking at his cluttered desk, with the sad photo of his mother and the collection of German books, she saw the human side of the myth, and she had the growing feeling that he might have been a deeply troubled man.

‘Did he have a partner?’ It was strange asking these questions about someone she had always revered.

‘No. I don’t know. No one serious.’

She waited for a moment, but Krishna didn’t seem to want to go further than that.

‘Never?’

‘He wasn’t gay if that’s what you mean. He had girlfriends, sometimes – no one special. I wouldn’t say they were intellectual companions. And there were other women too.’

She sighed heavily. It was all perplexing enough. Anyway, what had Anton’s Germanness or otherwise got to do with the fact that she had been dragged off to a cell and accused of being in league with him, accused of spying? A sad old man, a loner with a passion for Tibet; what more was there to learn? Perhaps nothing. Then suddenly her eyes fell on a particularly well-worn book that took pride of place in the centre of the desk. It looked as if it had been thumbed with almost religious regularity.

‘What’s that one?’

Krishna looked at her:

‘That is the
I-Ching
–
The Book of Changes
as it is called in English. He used it every day without fail.’

‘I’ve heard of it, it’s a book of riddles isn’t it?’

‘No. It’s certainly not just a book of riddles. It’s more like the bible of Asia.’

Now Nancy was embarrassed. She was painfully aware of her relative ignorance of Indian and Asian culture.

‘Really?’

‘Yes. It’s a seminal book.’

‘How? What’s it about?’

Krishna paused for a moment and then said definitively:

‘Its not “about” anything. It’s the Oracle.’

She could scarcely hide her scepticism:

‘The Oracle? So it helps you see into the future? Is it like a horoscope?’

Krishna was clicking his tongue in disapproval, and Nancy realized it was clearly held in far higher esteem than horoscopes were in the West.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said quickly. ‘Forgive my questions.’

Krishna smiled:

‘Well, those who use it swear by it. It is a very powerful force in contemporary Eastern life. The Japanese government often consult it in times of difficulty and all the leading businessmen in Hong Kong and Singapore use it all the time. I think it is even becoming more popular in the West.’

‘But that’s extraordinary.’

It was incongruous to imagine successful, besuited businessmen and politicians using a fortune-teller – but then again there were plenty of politicians in the West who did just that, though they normally didn’t advertise the fact.

‘May I have a look?’

Krishna picked the book up and passed it to her. Trying to suppress her scepticism, Nancy flicked it open at a random page. At the top was a strange diagram made of six straight lines, stacked on top of each other, each about two inches long. Some of the lines were unbroken; some had a small gap in the middle. Beneath the diagram was a name and beneath the name was a passage of cryptic text that reminded her of riddles she had learned as a child. Krishna leaned forward and pointed at the diagram.

‘That is called a hexagram. There are sixty-four possible combinations of six broken and unbroken lines, which makes a total of sixty-four possible hexagrams in the universe. Each one has a name. Each hexagram represents one of the sixty-four stages in the endless cycle of change that affects all things in the cosmos. At any point in time, you can determine what point in the cycle of change we are at by creating a hexagram and consulting the oracle for its definition. You see, the text printed underneath the picture of the hexagram explains the meaning of the hexagram. If you want to consult the Oracle, first you ask it a question then you create a hexagram. In the old days, this was always done by tossing forty-nine yarrow stalks onto the floor. Depending on how they fall, they represent one of the sixty-four possible hexagrams. But nowadays people often just toss a coin six times; that’s what Anton would do, every morning: a head is a broken line and a tail is an unbroken line. It’s much easier.’

‘But I wonder why he used it. It’s a strange thing to do if it is not part of your own culture. And where did he come across it?’

‘I don’t know. But he wouldn’t do anything without first consulting it. People find its guidance very reassuring.’

‘But its guidance is based on random patterns, isn’t it?’

‘Well, that’s not really true. Nothing in nature is truly random. If you think of the flow of water, or of the pattern in the grain in a plank of wood, it appears to be random but in fact it is ordered in a way that is beyond our perception. It is “ordered chaos” – its rules escape us but they do not escape the Oracle. The ancient Chinese called this underlying order within disorder “Li”. Some people say that the Oracle simply translates “Li” into words, so that you can then understand where you are in the constant process of cosmic change and then act accordingly. So in a way, when you listen to the Oracle, you are listening to the voice of the universe. Or at least that’s what the sages say . . .’

Krishna shut the book and then looked up at her.

‘Anton is very knowledgeable about oriental culture, particularly Tibetan and Chinese. He would have known about “Li” and so the Oracle would have made sense to him. I suppose someone must have introduced him to it on his travels.’

A truly strange man, thought Nancy. Strange, but also quite intriguing; her own self-identity was so clear-cut, she had no doubts about where she came from or what culture she was at home in, but Herzog seemed to be a composite. One might put such a magpie-like tendency down as a sign of insecurity or lack of innate character if it wasn’t for the fact that he was the very opposite of that: he was hugely charismatic; he had a massive, powerful, dominating personality that made an instant impression on everyone he met. But did anyone at the
Trib
know what he was really like? She studied the hexagram before her. Could it tell her what the future held? Could there be any truth in its utterances?

Nancy frowned.

‘And Anton really used it every day?’

Krishna nodded. Nancy looked down and studied the worn-out leather cover of the strange book. In silence, she returned the Oracle to its place in the middle of Herzog’s desk as if she was putting down a sleeping animal and she was afraid that it might wake up. When she had replaced the book, Krishna stood up.

‘There is something I can show you that might help you understand Anton a bit better. It’s a piece of video footage that he shot some time ago. I have it next door on DVD. Let me get it . . .’

As soon as Krishna had stepped out of the room, Nancy’s gaze was drawn back to the book. It had somehow captured her imagination – she was sorely in need of help in working out what to do next. The idea that the Oracle would give her access to some inherent voice of the universe was incredible to her, yet compelling. At that moment, she had forgotten about her ordeal with the police and she wasn’t even thinking about the fate of Anton Herzog. All she wanted to know was whether or not the Oracle might really work. What harm could it do? she thought to herself as she sat down in Herzog’s chair and placed the
I-Ching
in the middle of the desk. She laid her left hand on the front cover of the book as if she was sitting in the witness box of a courtroom and she was taking an oath on the Bible. Very slowly she thought out her question in her head.

Oracle, do you really work? Do you really have access to the truth of the world?

Then she proceeded to follow Krishna’s instructions, flipping the coin six times and then marking the results on a piece of paper until she had created her first hexagram. She studied it for a minute. It meant nothing to her, just a little stack of broken and unbroken lines. So she turned to the chart and studied it carefully until she found her hexagram.