My Lady of the Bog (8 page)

But Strugnell indicated there was none. As I rose, he called me back to confide that he’d been to a hypnotist, a local woman, to relive his encounter with the drowning girl and to try to circumvent his amnesia. He asked me if I’d care to listen and before I could answer, tapped a button on his mobile phone, activating an audio file on which a woman’s soothing voice was saying: “Sit back now and close your eyes. I’m going to ask a few questions. Don’t edit. Just say the first thing that comes to mind. Ready? So, you try to save the drowning girl. She puts her arms around your neck and starts to pull you under. What happens?”

There’s a long, searching silence. Then Strugnell’s voice says, “She’s pointing at the bottom. I can . . . see a light. Way . . . far away . . . . I’m having no trouble breathing.”

“And the girl?”

“Her arm’s around me . . . . She’s . . . guiding me down.”

“Down where?”

“Well, it takes a while, doesn’t it? The water’s getting colder, darker. I turn and look back up at the surface; it’s the size of a bleedin’ . . . postage stamp! Then . . . we’re at her house. It’s charming. The light is good. She . . . offers me something . . . I think it’s wild honey.”

“You eat it?”

“Oh, no. Fairy food, innit?”

“And then . . . ?”

“She shows me her bed. She wants me to . . . lie down with her.”

“And?”

“I’m . . .
afraid
.”

“Afraid of what?”

“Of her . . . of who . . . and what she is.”

“And who is that?”

“Someone who . . . she
knows
things . . . about the crops, the beasts and stars.”

“What happens then?”

“She’s hurt and angered by my refusal. She begins to cry. Just like any woman. And then . . . she
curses me!
” he says, surprised.

“Curses you? How?”

“I . . . don’t know. She’s . . . angry! Super
naturally
angry!”

A full fifteen-second silence follows, at the end of which he sighs and says, “Returning now. Breaking the surface. Ah, but the air is sweet! Blinking. Sun’s in me eyes.” He taps the phone, as the audio stops.

“And who
was
this creature?” I ask him now.

“You know who. Your Lady Albemarle.”

“And why did
you
see her? Was it by chance?”

“Oh, no. She called me. The way she’s calling you.”

“
Me
? I see. And why is that? Why
us
, I mean?”

“Don’t be an idiot! You know damn well!” He looks at once furious and frightened. “We gave her her freedom. When we removed the bloody stakes!”

Part II

JAI

In traditional Hindu medicine
a fairy tale giving form to his particular problem
was offered to a psychically disoriented person,
for his meditation. It was expected that
through contemplating the story
the disturbed person would be led to realizing
both the nature of the impasse
and the possibility of resolution
.

—Bruno Bettelheim
The Uses of Enchantment

Chapter 10

J
ai Prasad was one of the world’s foremost authorities on ancient Indic life and culture. His early work had transformed the course of Vedic scholarship, even if his rivals could credibly claim that Jai’s success was due more to his predecessor’s incompetence than to his own native wit. For all Jai had done was to translate the ancient verses
correctly
, pointing out along the way, in wry asides disguised as footnotes, the numerous errors made by the eminent Wilbur Liebecker, Stanhope Professor of Dead Languages at Ball State, in his translations of the admittedly difficult texts. Liebecker’s sin, Prasad had shown, was that he had no understanding of the spiritual system from which the verses sprung—without which his exceedingly literal translations were as cryptic, naïve, ungrammatical and bizarre as those instructions in English accompanying Chinese radios.

Strive, break, O spotted, Tv
ā
sthar!

As to me, Bull, with the Moon

He pours upon the six conjoined
,

Him increasing in his home
,

Brilliant like the sun
,

Serpents entwined in everlasting!

Identifying this translation from the
Rig Veda
as typical of much of Liebecker’s work, Jai had pronounced it (and the many more like it)
unintelligible
, as anyone could plainly read (but no one had had the nerve to say before), claiming, further, that only an unconscious contempt for the ancient peoples of the East would make one think their greatest bards and mystic seers had written such appalling
barf
, memorized it, and taught it to succeeding generations for the next three thousand years. “Him increasing in his home,”
indeed!

Then Jai had posed a provocative question: Would such a translation of
Western
religious literature be seriously offered? It was, he asserted, tantamount to translating the opening lines of the Bible’s Gospel of John as:

Word was at start, Deity is
,

Was Word, and with Word Deity was

Not cognizant of

Envelope of darkness
,

Which was eating, not knowing . . .

and then remarking, drily, upon the primitive obscurity of early Christianity.

Of course, if Jai was controversial, this was only to be expected in one whose career was a lifelong effort to pry prehistory from the Western-centric grip of American and European scholars—the nearsighted vision that relegates anywhere south of Crete and east of Baghdad as the rim of the universe, and credits the East (and the Chinese, at that) with a mere
two
of the planet’s billion inventions: gunpowder. And
noodles!

London was . . . well,
Loondun
, full of, among other things, many beautiful and stylish women. Just as all Gaul, according to Caesar, is divided into three parts, so womankind, to my way of thinking, is divided into two: those you would go to bed with and those you would not. I have always prided myself on the extreme restraint that allows the vast majority of human females to pass into the latter column. Though as I’ve grown older, I’ve watched my sense of discernment erode—either that or the girls are getting better looking—for the number in the first category increases yearly.

In fact, if viewed with a certain eye and distance, London is a continuous feast. There are so many delicious foods to taste, splendid and handsome clothes to buy, books for sale, people to meet, historic and elegant places to see, and comely women to make love to. Why then couldn’t I walk through its streets continually tasting the best of everything, continually filling my senses with bliss?

I don’t know—but I couldn’t.

I checked into a boutique hotel in Chiswick. It wasn’t a place one stayed for long on a research fellow’s earnings, but then again, I didn’t intend on remaining there, or a research fellow, long. I showered, changed into a summer tuxedo, the nicest suit of clothes I owned, and walked through the old-rose-gold and platinum twilight to Jai’s flat. Once, I thought I was being followed, but chalked it up to a gibbous moon playing peek-a-boo between the buildings, rather like a pink balloon being drawn on a long, invisible string.

Jai’s bride greeted me at the door. “It’s Xan, isn’t it? My husband asked that I fetch you the
instant
you arrived.” She paused, then added with a shy, disarming smile, “I’m Vidya,” and offered me a golden hand at the end of an arm as thin, bare and graceful as a tendril. She had bangles on her wrists, rings on her toes, and hands and feet inscribed with elaborate temporary henna tattoos, traditional for a Hindu bride: fronds, fruits and burgeoning leaves—symbols of fertility.

All in all, she was unbelievably lovely: sinuously sexy yet obviously refined. Her black hair, a dozen strands of it oddly braided with twisted strips of colored twine, swarmed around her brown shoulders like bees, and her eyes were the color blue that certain works ascribe to paradise. A yellowish diamond, small, but flawless, studded her nostril, while a thumbnail-sized emerald, green as Eire, sparked at her throat. It was a formal dinner and the new Mrs. Prasad was dressed for the occasion in a magnificent gold-embroidered
Kanjeevaram
sari worn in the most daring high fashion without the underlying
choli
, the fitted brassiere. The sari hid the front of her breasts, to be sure, but left bare their sides, exposing one almond shoulder and the delicate fluting of her ribs—so that while the other young beauties were equally uncovered, flaunting low-cut gowns with deep cleavages, it was Vidya’s tan and tender sides that drew the men’s stares and the women’s daggers.

“What a bizarre fashion,” a dowager whispered as Vidya and I passed by.

The new bride, who might easily have ignored the dig, flashed at the woman a smile of such wattage that the old lady froze like a deer in the headlights. “Oh, not at all,” Vidya laughed, “it’s
traditional
, really. It was the missionaries who made us wear
cholis
, so as not offend their Victorian tastes. Before that we were quite content with jewels (
jew-ells
) in a few strategic places.”

Having defended both her dress and her countrywomen with an argument of such boldness and impeccable political correctness it could not be touched, she bowed graciously, threw me a grin, and, confident I was right behind her, headed off toward the den where Jai was holding court.

A vigorous, handsome, white-toothed man of extraordinary personal charm and charisma, Jai Prasad stood out in the world of academia like a movie star. At the conferences we attended several times a year, his entrance made the coeds’ pulses quicken and sent shivers of excitement running through the hall. His lectures were always SRO—for if, as a scholar, he was controversial, as a teacher he was mesmerizing. Later, you would ask yourself what the hell it mattered if you now knew that
hag
had meant originally
holy
(as in
hag
iography, the life of a saint) and was applied to a woman at menopause when her “wise blood” was no longer lost, and that it was only much later—with the church’s efforts to break the power of these “witches”—that it took on its current derogatory spin. Still, listening to Jai, it seemed to matter
vitally
, as if you were on the cusp of uncovering some secret set of correspondences that would connect all the dots and explain
everything
. Later, in the rheumy blue eyes of the crone who sold the evening paper, you saw someone staring back at you you’d never seen before.

The dean of students was speaking with Jai as Vidya smoothly inserted me into the conversation, saying, “Xander, I hear, is Jai’s star pupil.”

“He’s more than that,” Jai corrected her evenly. He gave me a warm and affectionate hug. “I’m grooming him to be my spiritual heir, and yet . . .”

“And yet?” the dean queried.

“Obviously, we’re still in process. The training for that is still going on.”

I was surprised by Jai’s answer. Something was up, though now was not the time to pursue it.

Sensing the awkwardness, Vidya slipped her arm through mine, declaring there were a dozen guests to whom she
had
to introduce me, and whisked me off, employing for her purpose that excessively cheery neo-British manner we Americans so deplore.

And yet I found myself enchanted by her, and more than willing to stay by her side. She spoke a lovely, lilting colonial English, with a cadence less clipped and musically richer than London speech. Nor was she strictly
Indian
. Her family, I learned, were ex-patriots in Kenya, a part of the Asian community there. They were, I gathered, part of one of those clans who appear on the surface more British than the raj itself—with splendid, impeccable nineteenth-century manners and a father who is managing director of a firm that manufactures motor cars; and whose home in Mombasa is tastefully done in rattan and
vrai
bamboo with zebra throws and wildebeest heads, and pictures of an adorable, adolescent Vidya and the twin boys standing on a reviewing stand beside Lady Mountbatten in the African sun. Yet, if one ventured deeper into the house, one came across a grand
amma
sitting on the floor, chanting in Hindi before a
p
ū
ja
displaying the family deity, Kali, who brandished a sword while dancing on the body of her dead husband, Shiva, amid a welter of
kumkum
, smashed coconuts, burning camphor and sacred leaves.

At one point I followed Vidya out onto the balcony. The sunset over the River Thames, the soaring steeple of Christ Church and the unexpected lowness of the railing—or maybe it was the odor of Vidya’s perfume, my manic mood or the three big whiskeys I’d just gulped down—made me nearly pitch into the street before steadying myself and ducking inside.

“Arranged marriages,” someone clucked over dinner. (It was the crone who’d disparaged Vidya’s outfit.) “I didn’t know such things were permitted nowadays.”

Vidya stiffened, as if a rod were lengthening in her spine. “Actually, it’s quite civilized. Much more civilized than basing it solely on passion, don’t you think? Look what happens. The passion fades, the marriage founders. And then it’s the children who suffer.”

Everyone nodded over their mulligatawny. For how could one not, without seeming to favor the suffering of children? Jai, who had spent a lifetime defending his culture, nodded proudly.

Mrs. Vidya Prasad, I remember thinking, was going to make one hell of a faculty wife.

Most of the Indians I had known before Jai were physicians, newsstand owners, or computer engineers who had turned their backs on “superstition.” What was different about Jai is that while he was a thoroughly modern fellow who dressed like a preppie in Gap work shirts, chinos, and kelties by Cole Haan—or, this evening, in a white silk Bijan tux that had cost
some
body three or four grand—he truly believed in the wisdom of the culture that had raised him.

Which was why he’d submitted to the apparent lunacy of an arranged marriage, I suppose; though I was beginning to think, gazing at Vidya, that his submission had the lunacy of genius.