The Ninth Buddha (14 page)

He shaved, cutting himself twice, and combed his hair, but he still felt untidy: there was a section of his head he could not bear to touch with the comb.
 
Downstairs, he paused just long enough to drink a cup of black tea and eat some buttered chap atis
 
The boy, Lhaten, looked at him oddly, but said nothing.
 
The house was almost empty the caravaneers had gone off that morning early as planned, but Christopher had fallen into a disturbed sleep by then and had not heard them leave.
 
The place seemed dull without them.

As Christopher was leaving, Lhaten approached him nervously.

“Are you all right, sahib?
 
The doctor-sahib said you had an accident last night.
 
He said you fell on the stairs.”

Christopher nodded.

“Yes,” he said, ‘that’s right.
 
I fell on the stairs.
 
I’ll be more careful tonight.”

A look of concern passed across Lhaten’s face.

“Yes, sahib.
 
You must be careful.
 
Call me when you come tonight. I’ll be awake.”

Christopher sensed that the boy either guessed or knew more than he said.

“Thank you, Lhaten, I’ll remember that.”

Lhaten flashed a smile and vanished towards the kitchen.

Christopher heard the shrill voice of the Lepcha woman.

Outside, the sun was shining and the air smelt fresh and clear.

Perhaps the world was clean after all, Christopher thought;

perhaps he carried the dirt around inside himself.

To his left, he heard the voice of the mysterious girl singing her bhajan.
 
He turned and saw her, sitting on the ground with her back towards him.
 
Long black hair fell gracefully down her back.
 
Her head moved gently from side to side in time with her singing.
 
He could just see that she was working with something on the ground in front of her.

An ekdm shamero at bangs hi bejechilo kanone.

One day that flute of the dark lord’s Played again in the forest.

Something pulled him towards her.
 
He wanted to see her face, to watch her mouth as she sang, to watch her fingers move at her work.
 
Softly, so as not to frighten her, he walked past her, then, several paces away, turned.

She did not see him looking at her.
 
All her attention was focused on the object in front of her.
 
She went on singing, like an angel whom nothing can distract from song.
 
But her face was appalling in its ugliness, and misshapen legs stretched out in front of her like bent sticks.
 
One eye was stitched tightly closed, and long scars disfigured her left cheek.
 
Her skin was sore and blistered on face and arms and legs equally.
 
But none of this horrified Christopher quite so much as the sight of what she was doing with her hands.

He thought it had been a dog, but he could not be sure.
 
The knife she was using was blunt and rusted, and the work of butchery was painfully slow.
 
The passers-by averted their gaze, shunning the girl and the meat she was preparing; but Christopher stood as though transfixed, unable to tear his eyes away from her.
 
She sang gently as she worked, and Christopher realized that she was crooning to the dead animal in her lap.
 
Her fingers were covered in blood, and the cuffs of her long sleeves were smeared with it.

Turning away, Christopher set off down the narrow, crowded street.
 
Behind him, the mad girl’s voice rose and fell in an unending supplication of the beast.
 
He remembered the dogs he had heard in the night, remembered their voices tearing the darkness.

He walked to the hospital through streets crowded with men and animals.
 
The blind beggar was there on his spot in the bazaar again, muttering prayers beneath his breath.
 
Christopher hurried it past, ignoring his cries.
 
Out of an opening on his right, a small group of singing men came into the main street.
 
They were Bauls, members of a wandering cult that sought God outside the rituals and ceremonies of organized religion.
 
They carried simple musical instruments in their hands and played and sang as they walked.

As they approached him, Christopher recognized suddenly the song they were singing it was the same song the girl had been singing a few minutes earlier.

Bondhur bangs hi baje bujhi bipine Shamer bangs hi baje bujhi bipine He felt hemmed in, like someone in a nightmare, and ran on, the voices of the men ringing in his ears, and beneath them the girl’s voice, unforgettable and cold.

The hospital stood next door to the Government Dispensary, to which it was connected.
 
It was a small place with only twenty eight beds, but it was smart and well kept.
 
The small, white painted entrance hall was empty when Christopher stepped inside.

On the wall, a varnished wooden plaque commemorated the opening of the hospital and dedicated it to the glory of the Christian God.
 
Beside it stood a two-tier dressing trolley holding several kidney dishes, a saline irrigator, and a pair of Cheatle’s forceps in a glass jar.
 
In a white enamel basin, a blood-stained bandage intruded on the surrounding sterility.
 
Above the trolley, a blonde haired Jesus, smug as a new pin, smiled down, surrounded by hordes of bright-faced, laughing children, none of whom looked remotely Indian.

“Kot hat,” Christopher called, his voice echoing in the stillness.
 
A smell of ether drifted towards him.
 
Somewhere, someone called for assistance and fell silent again.
 
Someone else began to cough with a dry, racking sound that ended in vomiting.
 
Metal banged against metal.

A peon appeared from nowhere.
 
He was dressed in a starched white uniform with a tightly wound pugaree that bore the badge of the hospital.

“Did you call, sahib?”

“Yes,” said Christopher.

“I’d like to see Dr.
 
Cormac; he’s expecting me.
 
He said I would find him in his bungalow.
 
Can you show me the way?”

“When you go out the main entrance, sahib, turn left.
 
You will come to a row of deodars.
 
There is a gate.
 
Follow the path to the third bungalow.
 
I would be happy to take you, sahib.”

What he meant, of course, was that he would be happy to keep an eye on Christopher.

“No, thanks.
 
I’ll find the way myself.”

Without waiting to see if the man would follow him, Christopher went back into the sunlight.
 
A dome was sweeping the gravel path in front of the building; back and forwards, back and forwards the long brush swept as he moved down the path, as though he had been walking there all his life.
 
He looked up as Christopher came out, then away again, averting his gaze in case the sahib might find it unclean.

There was a stretch of neatly trimmed doob-grass beside the hospital, then the deodars, their broad branches sweeping low towards the lawn.
 
The gate bore a small sign, painted in stark black letters on a white board: “Out of bounds to Native Staff.”

Christopher raised the latch and passed through.

There were six bungalows in all, nestling together beneath another row of deodars.
 
The path up to Cormac’s was flanked on both sides by rows of potted chrysanthemums, mainly red and pink.
 
There were still traces of water at the bases of the pots: the hospital was probably nearby Christopher doubted that Cormac would have his own men to do the work of gardening.

He knocked on the door three times and waited.
 
There was no reply.

Perhaps the whiskey had been a bit much for Cormac after all.
 
Christopher knocked again, more loudly this time.
 
No-one came.
 
That was odd.
 
He had formed the impression that Cormac was not the sort of man to keep much of a household, but surely he would need one or two servants.

The door was unlocked.
 
Christopher stepped inside and closed it behind him.
 
He found himself in a small cream-painted entrance vestibule.
 
From floor to ceiling, the walls were hung with glass cases containing hundreds upon hundreds of brightly coloured butterflies.
 
Nearby Sikkim was famous for them, a paradise heavy with their drugged and painted wings.
 
Here, in the little hall of Cormac’s house, they lay silent and still, as though fresh from the miracle of chloroform.
 
Bright scarlet trails traversed their wings like wounds on purple flesh.

He called Cormac’s name, but his voice echoed flatly in the empty hallway and was swallowed up by the silence.

He opened a second door.
 
Beyond it lay the main room of the bungalow.
 
Pale light filled it, dappled and watery on the sparse furniture.
 
A few cane chairs and a small table, a battered desk rented furniture from a go-down in Darjeeling, worth a few rupees a year.
 
A faded linen table-cloth from Belfast, photographs of school and university groups on the walls, an oar bearing the names of some forgotten eight, a black and gold tasselled rugby cap gathering dust, some medical textbooks on clumsily built shelves.

Like the butterflies in the entrance hall, the fragments of Martin Cormac’s past hung on his walls as though they too had just been lifted by thin and ragged wings from the killing-bottle.
 
Or perhaps this was the killing-bottle: this room, this bungalow, the hospital, Kalimpong.
 
A transparent bottle of concentric rings through which a dying man could look out and watch the stars.

He was not sure when the buzzing first became audible.
 
It had been there from the moment he entered the room, of course, but so low his ears had not at first picked it up.
 
He stood for a moment, listening.
 
It was a deep, angry sound, like the wings of huge insects hovering in the heat of summer, like the buzzing of large flies above a slaughterhouse, drawn by the smell of blood in the last days.
 
But it was winter: there should not be flies.

The noise came from behind a door at the far end of the room.

The door was partly open, but from where he stood, Christopher could not see into the room beyond it.
 
He called out again, almost frightened by the sound of his own voice.

“Cormac, are you there?
 
Is anyone there?”

But there was only the buzzing.
 
The buzzing and a smell that seemed familiar, but so faint it was impossible to place.

He approached the door cautiously.
 
Narrow shafts of light fell through a slatted blind.
 
In the thin golden strips, specks of finely scattered dust spun freely.
 
Christopher’s heart tightened within his chest.
 
He felt blood leap in his veins, felt it pound in his already aching head.
 
The room was full of flies.
 
Hot, buzzing flies in a dense swarm that shook and shimmered in the shifting golden light.
 
Wave upon wave of them, black, violent, moving in dark battalions, circling, droning, their wings alight.
 
He felt nausea rise in him, he recognized the smell.
 
He wanted to run, but his feet moved towards the door instead.
 
It was winter: there should not be flies.

He entered the room, shielding his face with his hands, half blinded by the moving forms that circled through the light and the darkness.
 
In one corner, white curtains hung, huge and diaphanous, across the edge of the blinds, lifting and falling in a fine breeze, speckled with the coarse black bodies of blowflies.
 
Above his head, the insects had gathered like a thick carpet on the punk ah hanging from the ceiling.
 
On the floor, his feet crushed the bodies of dead flies, staining the floorboards with purple.

The bed was a seething mass of flies, as though something living was moving there, straining to take on form in the half-light.

Keeping himself away from the bed, Christopher moved to the window and pulled the cords that operated the blinds.
 
He raised them a little, not too far, but far enough to allow more light into the room.
 
He had to force himself to turn and look at the bed.

It was Cormac all right.
 
The flies had congregated mainly on the body, where the blood was.
 
He could make out enough of the face to recognize the man.
 
His throat had been sliced through from side to side as he slept.
 
On the pillow, Christopher saw the scalpel that the killer had used, bright and shining and stained with blood.

The body had not moved much in its last agony.
 
One arm had twisted back, the hand reaching for the torn throat, the fingers pale and bent, drained of blood.
 
Cormac had died early that morning, possibly within an hour or two of falling asleep.
 
The blood had congealed and dried, the limbs had begun to stiffen.

Christopher turned away from the bed and the seething carapace of flies and blood that moved on it.
 
He opened the window and breathed in lungfuls of fresh, clean air.
 
Behind him, the droning of the flies echoed in the small, fetid room.
 
He wanted to be sick, to rid himself of the clinging, sweet smell.