Vikram Chandra - Red Earth and Pouring Rain

Sanjay turned, brushing past Abberline, and was at the door pulling at the knob, which would not turn. He held it with both hands and then it suddenly gave way, and he fell forward into the room, past Abberline’s arm which came in through the window, he had reached in and pulled back the bolt, and Sarthey was still intent on what he was doing. Sanjay had the sword-stick out and was thrusting but Sarthey turned and took it from him easily, plucked it from the air and twisted it away, reversed it, Sanjay scrambled back but Sarthey fixed him easily with a stab that caught him through the middle, he sat down suddenly, the blade through him. Sarthey raised a finger at him, admonishing, and Abberline was behind him, swinging a cosh, which made a solid thumping noise on Sarthey’s head, who turned and lifted the inspector off his feet with a swing of his arm and bounced him off the wall to collapse slowly. Sarthey stepped over his shins, to the door, which he shut quietly, when he turned Sanjay saw his eyes, brilliant and calm, and Sarthey stepped back to the bed, from his bag he lifted an implement, a long knife that Sanjay remembered. Sarthey bent over and worked, Sanjay heard small shifting liquid sounds, then Sarthey lifted something up, holding it in both cupped hands, and Sanjay shut his eyes but the image remained and it was useless, he opened them and Sarthey was staring at the thing in his hand (a piece of somebody, somebody, Sanjay thought), a wet knot of tissue and blood and fluids, Sarthey was muttering, ‘Heat, heat, heat,’ an expression of exultation and joy on his face, then what was in his hands began to glow, to burn not with flame but an inner radiance brighter than a thousand suns, it seared the room white and Sarthey flung it away into the fireplace and clutched at his eyes, smoke between his fingers, and yet the radiance grew brighter and then it was unbearable to look at and Sanjay turned his face away. When he looked again there was nothing in the fireplace but a blackened and melted utensil of some kind, and Sarthey was kneeling near the bed, his head in his hands, he raised his head slowly and his eyes had become black craters, burnt and bleeding, but it was the skin on his hands that Sanjay watched with horror, because it was spotting, where it had been hard and uncreased it now grew wrinkled, it loosened and grew old. Across the room Abberline was watching, his mouth working, pressed against the wall, and now Sarthey’s face was changing, his hair was vanishing, his cheeks fell, sores appeared on his neck, and his shoulders lost their bulk and he grew old. Finally he slumped to the floor and lay twisted, his clothes puddling around the shape of the thin limbs, and his face, with its charred holes, gazed straight upwards with a look of insulted and indignant surprise.

Sanjay pushed himself to his feet, and worked at the sword-stick until it fell to the ground, and the clatter it made seemed to start Abberline from a daze: he jumped up, scooped up the weapon, and brought it down in a huge overhead sweep onto Sarthey, and the blade passed through Sarthey’s neck with a dry rustle, easily, and the head rolled to one side, there was no blood, only a little arid exhalation of wind, the fingers on the hand that Sanjay could see crumbled, and collapsed into a fine dust, the body disappeared and the white shirt lay flat on the ground, the fine leather boots lay empty, and still the lips on the head worked, the creased skin jumped back and forth, the nostrils expanded and contracted, and the eyes yet seemed to be staring blindly.

Abberline covered his face with his forearm, and wept: ‘What is this? What is this?’

Sanjay shook his head. ‘He cannot die.’

‘Why?’

‘He has found what he wished for.’

‘What? What was that?’

‘Eternal life.’

The cold air rushing down Sanjay’s neck made his new wound ache, but he felt as if its frigid flow were the only thing holding him back from the black precipice of exhaustion; they were in a dog cart speeding towards the edges of the city, with Abberline driving, and the black bag under the seat with its unspeakable burden, next to a shovel. After what had happened, it seemed to Sanjay that Abberline’s return to practicality was quick to the extreme and therefore hugely admirable: he had muttered under his breath, wiped his face a couple of times, and then he was suddenly walking about the room taking charge; he had stuffed the rags back into the broken window, he had gathered up the sword-stick and its sheath, he had opened the bag and swept up all of Sarthey’s instruments into it, he had lifted the clothes on the floor without flinching, and finally he had brought himself to nudge the head into the open bag, which he then clicked shut. All this time Sanjay had stood with his face to the wall, trying not to look at the woman on the bed, shaking, and when Abberline had tapped him on the shoulder he burst out, ‘Who is she?’

‘Mary Kelly, I presume.’

‘Yes, but who is Mary Kelly?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Yes. We must be out of here.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Yes. Are you hurt badly?’

‘I will be all right. But I’m sorry.’

‘I understand. Come.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Will you shut your mouth and come?’

Sanjay let himself be led out; Abberline picked up a key from the table and locked the door behind them, and then they were fleeing, and Sanjay said nothing more but the same words repeated themselves endlessly in his mind: I’m sorry. Now they were on a dark road, with Abberline going recklessly fast, and Sanjay heard another whisper, a succession of words, and he couldn’t tell if it was real, or if his mind was conjuring it up out of the drumming of the wheels, clean, it said, the world must be clean, clean, clean; Sanjay was tired of listening, and thinking, and he wanted to sleep, but he knew it wouldn’t come yet.

They stopped next to an enormous iron gate, and Abberline led the way over a fence; once on the other side Sanjay could feel grass underneath his feet.

‘What is that smell?’ he said.

‘It’s a cemetery.’

The odour lay over the ground thickly so that there was no escape from it; when Sanjay covered his nose he could feel it burning in his throat, and it was the effluvia of flesh rotting away, the slow dissolution of the tissues and muscles, of the ground permeated by the gasses from human bowels; it made Sanjay’s eyes stream and his stomach clench. They emerged from the bushes, and Sanjay saw the darker shape of a church against the dark sky, its steeple and the soaring reach of the towers; finally Abberline stopped, next to a large mausoleum, and began to dig close to one of its walls, and Sanjay stood looking at the elegant outline of the church, tracing it from one end to another, anything to keep back the memory of the room at Miller’s Court, and he kept his hand over his nose, but all his attempts were useless, and his mind skittered along the edge of madness and rot.

‘Help me,’ Abberline said. He had the bag at the bottom of the hole, and now they pushed the earth back in, and tamped it down, and yet Sanjay heard the voice whispering, clean, clean, clean, but he knew now that he was dreaming it, because the thing in the bag was buried, and that he wanted nothing more than to be away. Finally Abberline finished, and they hurried away, and the horse was shivering against the fence; as they got in Abberline caught Sanjay by the elbow. ‘Is it finished.’

‘It is.’

‘I saw the blade go through you, and yet you are not dead. What are you? What was he?’

‘We were, we were just ordinary people. We were changed by something.’

‘What?’

‘It was distance, I think, and a kind of dream.’

‘Magic? Do you mean to say, over there? In India?’