Read Online The PuppetMaster by Andrew L. MacNair - Free Book Online
Authors: Andrew L. MacNair
Tags: suspense mystery
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sun. Beggars hobble with out-stretched palms. Snakes-charmers play reedy melodies. Women slap-wash cloth and men pray while the buildings rise and fall again. All of India comes to the river, as they have for six thousand years. It is a city teeming with life. And it is a city of death. People come to there to die.
I cranked Ugly Bike’s wheel sharply to the right and snapped on the brakes. A bull, large enough to regard with some caution, was meandering—bulls meander in Varanasi—up the gully. I swore out loud, knowing this podgy obstruction was going to likely delay my arrival at Devi’s. Jumping off, I wedged myself into a rank niche in the wall and expelled the air from my lungs. The bull clopped past with a bovine grunt, lifted its tail, defecated, and then wandered casually up the walkway.
I stepped cautiously down the slimy lane to Master’s house. His, like mine, had a rear courtyard bordered by a tall, glass-encrusted wall and a thick-planked gate in the center. From the lane it was impossible to peer into the rear yard. For three years I had parked Ugly Bike just inside the gate and entered through the kitchen for afternoon lessons. An hour and a half each weekday, Master and I would sip tea, eat pakoras, and discuss conjugations, compounds, and poetic significance. I would sit cross-legged on a thin mat while he reclined in a cushioned rocker. Mirabai, his wife of fifty-six years would bustle in to serve or remove cups in decorous silence. On rare occasions I’d encounter their daughter, Sukshmi, as she moved quietly about the house. Usually she would draw her sari demurely across her face while I stammered a shy namaste. During recent months, I hadn’t seen her at all as she’d been at the university in Mumbai, but gupchup had it she was now back home between semesters
And it was Sukshmi that I ran into, literally, as I burst through the kitchen door in my attempt to be seated punctually in the parlor. I sent Ugly Bike careening rider-less across the courtyard to fall where she would, ascended the steps in a single leap, and then caught my toe inelegantly on the threshold. I stumbled directly into Sukshmi’s backside, which at that moment was pushed out like an offering from the fruit vendor as she searched for some object in a lower cabinet.
“Oh shit.” Second mistake, I never swore in Masterji’s presence, much less in the presence of his beautiful daughter. “I…I…I’m sorry. I didn’t. . .” My tongue locked like a rusted gear. Three golf balls materialized in my mouth. Then I heard the most delightful sound of the week, her laugh. It gave me just enough courage to find my voice again.
“I didn’t see you. Really, I’m so sorry.”
She turned, and with a self-assured smile, studied the crimson in my cheeks. “Your apology is accepted, Vidyarthi, unnecessary, but accepted.” I was looking into the most stunning eyes in the city, curved pools of black and emerald, and right then they were filled to the lids with amusement.
Devi’s raspy voice called from the salon, “You are late, Bhim. Forty-three seconds so.”
I was ready to offer my second apology of the morning when Sukshmi called out, “Oh no Papa, he has been standing on the porch telling me what a wonderful teacher you have been to him.”
This was answered with a skeptical snort. “Yes? And how long has he been in the house?” I pictured him consulting his watch, calculating.
“I have detained him for four minutes at least, asking him how he can do so much Sanskrit with you and still have time to write to his own father.” Then she looked at me with eyelashes any western woman would kill for, or at least pay large sums of money to acquire. And winked.
“So, is Bhim going to join us today, or is he going to chat with my defiant daughter all morning?” I knew then that some thorny issue had come between them just before my arrival.
Leaving Sukshmi smiling in the kitchen, I stepped into the
I cranked Ugly Bike’s wheel sharply to the right and snapped on the brakes. A bull, large enough to regard with some caution, was meandering—bulls meander in Varanasi—up the gully. I swore out loud, knowing this podgy obstruction was going to likely delay my arrival at Devi’s. Jumping off, I wedged myself into a rank niche in the wall and expelled the air from my lungs. The bull clopped past with a bovine grunt, lifted its tail, defecated, and then wandered casually up the walkway.
I stepped cautiously down the slimy lane to Master’s house. His, like mine, had a rear courtyard bordered by a tall, glass-encrusted wall and a thick-planked gate in the center. From the lane it was impossible to peer into the rear yard. For three years I had parked Ugly Bike just inside the gate and entered through the kitchen for afternoon lessons. An hour and a half each weekday, Master and I would sip tea, eat pakoras, and discuss conjugations, compounds, and poetic significance. I would sit cross-legged on a thin mat while he reclined in a cushioned rocker. Mirabai, his wife of fifty-six years would bustle in to serve or remove cups in decorous silence. On rare occasions I’d encounter their daughter, Sukshmi, as she moved quietly about the house. Usually she would draw her sari demurely across her face while I stammered a shy namaste. During recent months, I hadn’t seen her at all as she’d been at the university in Mumbai, but gupchup had it she was now back home between semesters
And it was Sukshmi that I ran into, literally, as I burst through the kitchen door in my attempt to be seated punctually in the parlor. I sent Ugly Bike careening rider-less across the courtyard to fall where she would, ascended the steps in a single leap, and then caught my toe inelegantly on the threshold. I stumbled directly into Sukshmi’s backside, which at that moment was pushed out like an offering from the fruit vendor as she searched for some object in a lower cabinet.
“Oh shit.” Second mistake, I never swore in Masterji’s presence, much less in the presence of his beautiful daughter. “I…I…I’m sorry. I didn’t. . .” My tongue locked like a rusted gear. Three golf balls materialized in my mouth. Then I heard the most delightful sound of the week, her laugh. It gave me just enough courage to find my voice again.
“I didn’t see you. Really, I’m so sorry.”
She turned, and with a self-assured smile, studied the crimson in my cheeks. “Your apology is accepted, Vidyarthi, unnecessary, but accepted.” I was looking into the most stunning eyes in the city, curved pools of black and emerald, and right then they were filled to the lids with amusement.
Devi’s raspy voice called from the salon, “You are late, Bhim. Forty-three seconds so.”
I was ready to offer my second apology of the morning when Sukshmi called out, “Oh no Papa, he has been standing on the porch telling me what a wonderful teacher you have been to him.”
This was answered with a skeptical snort. “Yes? And how long has he been in the house?” I pictured him consulting his watch, calculating.
“I have detained him for four minutes at least, asking him how he can do so much Sanskrit with you and still have time to write to his own father.” Then she looked at me with eyelashes any western woman would kill for, or at least pay large sums of money to acquire. And winked.
“So, is Bhim going to join us today, or is he going to chat with my defiant daughter all morning?” I knew then that some thorny issue had come between them just before my arrival.
Leaving Sukshmi smiling in the kitchen, I stepped into the
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