"I shall keep this one," I said.
Holmes took the portfolio and, removing the sketches, threw them into the fireplace. I felt my eyes mist over as I watched the rice paper curl black, the flames quickly turning it to ash.
"At least tell me something about the remaining one," I said grimly, as I handed it over to him.
"You have chosen well, Watson, if I say so myself. It is indeed probably the best of the lot. Less stiff than the others, and the detail is quite clear," he remarked clinically.
"The temple is of course that which is known as Changu Narayan," he continued. "It lies a few miles north and east of Katmandu in Nepal, atop a hill. It has rarely been visited by Europeans. Your choice has historical significance as well, since the temple was damaged by an earthquake after I executed the drawing. This may be as accurate a portrait of it as we shall have. There is also a tale concerning it which you may want to add to your Oriental chronicles."
His pipe refused to light and, putting it down to rest, he smiled, knowing full well my interest in everything that he had done while abroad.
"You owe me at least that, Holmes, after destroying the sketches."
"My humble apologies, my dear Watson. I had no intention of causing you undue pain. In any case, the incidents occurred shortly after the banishment of Hodgson"s ghost from Katmandu."
I watched him closely and saw the by now familiar pattern as he readied himself for his narration, the gleam in his eyes, the hands brought together at the tips in front of his face, and the slight pause as he ordered the events through which he had lived.
"For a time, I continued to live in Nepal as Pandit Kaul of Kashmir. My disguise had begun to wear thin, however, after I aided the Maharajah, albeit indirectly, in rounding up and forcibly removing from Katmandu the remaining criminal elements that had been allowed to nest in his country over the previous decade. I took great satisfaction in this. Like stray wild dogs, these criminals were collected and taken in chains to the Indian border town of Raxaul, where they were released upon taking a solemn oath never to enter Nepal again upon pain of death. A new edict was then promulgated by the Maharajah, under which the number of foreign visitors permitted to enter was further limited, and almost entirely to those who had official business with the Government."
"Shortly after this, Mr. Richardson announced his departure with his daughter for England. Lucy had prevailed upon him to leave in order to regain his health, and she also hoped for a reconciliation between her parents, despite the gravity of their past difficulties. Once the Viceroy authorised the Resident"s leave, father and daughter left for Calcutta."
With no business pressing, said Holmes, he prepared his own departure. His next destination was to be Benares, followed then perhaps by Calcutta. He was slow to leave the comfort of Gorashar"s hotel and the beauty of the Katmandu Valley, however. It was already late April, and he had no great desire to experience the torrid heat of the Indian plains. Gorashar therefore easily prevailed upon him to stay a few weeks longer, at least until the advent of the cooling monsoon rains, since Gorashar wished to show him some of the artistic treasures of the Valley that he had not yet seen himself. Gorashar had been some nineteen years in Tibet and so long away from his own country that he felt the pressing need to make an extended pilgrimage to its chief shrines.
Except for these visits to the countryside, Holmes"s own days were idle. He had only his edition of Petrarch with him, and the few libraries in Katmandu contained little of interest. He had exhausted Gorashar"s small shelf of books on Nepal. He continued to visit the pandits at the Residence, however, and it was they who suggested that on his tour with Gorashar he collect rubbings of the ancient Sanscrit inscriptions of the Valley. And so, Gorashar, and Holmes, still as Pandit Kaul, added long walks through the Valley to Balambu, Kisipidi, Dhapasi, and other ancient sites which had hitherto never come to historical notice.
"I had no idea that you have any knowledge of Sanscrit," I interrupted. "How truly foolish I feel now when I think of the remark in my earliest chronicle that your knowledge of languages was nil."
Holmes again took up his recalcitrant pipe and smiled as he placed it between his teeth. "You were quite right, Watson, when you made your a.s.sessment. At the time that we met, I did not know a word of Sanscrit, or any other foreign language for that matter. And as for Sanscrit, I no longer know it. Your use of the present tense, therefore, is inappropriate."
"But surely, Holmes, you cannot have forgotten it all," I retorted.
"It is hardly a matter of forgetting, Watson, for this implies a mental action uncontrolled by the will and reason. As you know, I am a brain. The rest of me is a mere appendix, and it is the brain that I must serve. And I must serve it well. It would be foolish, as I have often remarked in the past, to a.s.sume that the brain is a place of infinite s.p.a.ce. A better image is of a small atelier, where the craftsman or artist keeps the tools necessary for the work at hand. The rest he must store in the recesses of the mind, ready for the instantaneous recall that necessity might demand. The dormant subjects thus are no longer known in the ordinary sense of the word, but reappear only when use is imminent. Sanscrit will have little if any use in the solving of crime in metropolitan London, and so it is stored safely with other Asiatic subjects in the remote instance that it need be resurrected. In the Orient, however, one would be foolish to attempt success in my line of endeavour without the language fresh for use, and so I cultivated it, until my travels took me to parts of the globe where it was totally unknown and therefore quite useless."
I was about to comment, but Holmes rose to his feet and began pacing back and forth, his hands together behind his back, a slight smile on his lips as he recalled the tale that he continued to narrate to me.
One morning at dawn, Gorashar and he left for Changu Narayan, stopping first at Bhaktapur, an ancient town some nine miles from Katmandu which he had not previously visited. He found its preservation, in both its architectural and human aspects, most remarkable. It is a town, he observed, that preserves in precise detail a medieval way of life now lost in almost all parts of Europe. Gorashar arranged for them to spend the night there at the house of a close relative, a Taladhar merchant. The following morning, again at dawn, they began the walk from Bhaktapur to Changu.
The temple lies at the end of a long ridge that begins north of Bhaktapur. Holmes found it a pleasant walk, and they reached the temple at around eight. Gorashar spoke almost constantly as they walked, telling Holmes in detail what he knew of its history.
"Here we shall see the oldest inscription in Nepal, one that has not been read fully as yet," he said. "It is perhaps fifteen hundred years old and records the mysterious death of one of our ill.u.s.trious kings, a great and religious man by the name of Dharmadeva."
Dharmadeva died quite suddenly, according to Gorashar, and no one knows how or why, but it is still believed by some that he was killed by his wife and son, Manadeva, who immediately succeeded him to the throne. His wife was said to have arranged the murder with the aid of the king"s brother. But the full truth was not known.
"As Gorashar spoke, Watson," said Holmes, "I of course became most interested, since I now had before me a possible murder, a royal one, that had not been resolved for fifteen hundred years. Perhaps, I thought, I should solve it."
"And add it to your sensational annals," I said laughing. "I never cease to be amazed at how these things fall your way. You no doubt thought immediately of parallel murders, in Riga, or St. Louis . . ."
Holmes grinned at my last remark, but then he said almost somberly, "On the face of it, one can indeed feel a certain astonishment at how similar cases arise. But upon reflection, Watson, one sees that, whatever the time and the place, good and evil are linked in some inextricable way. They are perhaps drawn to each other by some third force, the nature of which is inevitable but barely discernible. One can only hope that in the battles that ensue, the forces of good are strong enough to prevail. Having chosen to do what I do, I have found it only natural that cases fall across my path, whether from antiquity or the present. All I must do is wait and the inevitable happens."
It was, in any event, with added enthusiasm, he continued, that he arrived with Gorashar at Changu Narayan. While his friend performed his religious rituals with the priests, Holmes attended to the business at hand, a minute examination of what he found before him: a magnificent edifice, adorned with metal and wood carvings, and a courtyard filled with some of the finest sculpture to be seen anywhere.
At first the temple appeared as if filled with a jumble of deities thrown everywhere. Its surface had no unfilled s.p.a.ce. All was covered in ornament and design. It was only after one observed it closely, therefore, noted Holmes, that one realised that all was in order and that the shrine itself was an ill.u.s.tration in wood, brick, and metal, of the Hindoo"s belief in the interconnectedness of all things, the harmony and illusion of the universe that he conceives and, to a large degree, shares with the Buddhist. The temple was, according to Holmes, one of the supreme achievements of Gorashar"s people, the Newars.
"No other people on earth, Watson, has produced such intricate beauty in as small a s.p.a.ce as the Valley of Katmandu. One trenchant observer has described it best as a kind of coral reef, built up laboriously over the centuries by unrecorded artisans. As a human achievement, it ranks with the creations of Persia and Italy."
"Good Lord, Holmes, and no one even knows of its existence!"
"Let us not say "no one." A few, including myself, have been fortunate enough to see and to observe it. But permit me to continue, Watson. I returned to Katmandu with Gorashar that afternoon, but not without securing from the temple priests permission to return and read the pillar inscription. In this, Gorashar"s help was invaluable, particularly his pledge to supply gold leaf for the roof of the temple. With this promise, the suspicious priests became my allies and promised every courtesy and help. It took me seven long trips to the temple to record what you have in front of you in that sketch."
The pillar had drawn Holmes"s immediate attention. It was some twenty feet high, and the writing on it was in most places as clear as the day it was carved, a most singular case of preservation from the ancient world. At the top of the pillar sat a metal crown, a large disc of burnished gold, about two feet in diameter. It had a penumbra of flames, and was no doubt a representation of the sun itself. At the bottom, Holmes noted to his frustration that the writing on the pillar extended below the ground in which it was placed. Unless it were dug up, that part of the inscription would remain unknown. Holmes spoke to the head priest about excavating the hidden portions. The priest became incensed, refused to discuss the matter, and said that Holmes would be limited, as all observers, to what was above ground. Holmes made no more of the matter.
The reading of the inscription fully occupied the next several weeks. So engrossed did Holmes become that he decided to stay for an extended time in a nearby village, in the mud and thatch hut of a Brahman who lived across the river to the west. The Brahman provided his meals and a clean bed. This saved the long daily trip to Katmandu and allowed him to view the temple and its pillar from morning to night. It was during this long stay that he finished the recording not only of the inscription but of the chief features of the temple and the artistic remains around it.
It was then too that he began to take note of what until then had been entirely hidden from him: the connections between the temple and the natural world, connections that led him to renewed wonder at the achievement of the Newars. One day, as he sat copying the last few lines of the pillar inscription, he looked up and observed that the sun, now beginning its descent in the west, had been caught in reflection by the golden disc atop the pillar. The beam thus created was redirected into the temple courtyard. His eye followed it quickly to a large statue of Vishnu, where it came to rest brightly on a jewel placed in the G.o.d"s forehead. From there the light moved once again, coming to rest this time on the right hand of a small statue of Ganesh, the Elephant G.o.d. The light rested in this way for only a few seconds and then disappeared. As soon as it faded, a young boy, half naked and clothed only in rags, appeared and effortlessly scaled the pillar. Upon reaching the top, he gave the disc a slight push, slid down, and disappeared silently.
"This must be the beam," I said, pointing to Holmes"s rendition of it in his drawing.
"Yes, you may imagine it hitting the third eye of Vishnu and the hand of the Elephant G.o.d just outside the drawing. But, as in many instances, Watson, here again you have seen but not observed."
Holmes took the drawing from my hand and said, "Look again, my good doctor."
I took the drawing back and stared at it. This time I noticed that a portion of it had been folded over and secured to its back. So carefully had this been done that one hardly saw that the picture could be extended from behind.
"Let me undo it, Watson. The hidden portion is secured in a particular Nepalese way, and your tugging at it may harm it."
Holmes held the entire picture up to me, and it was now even more wondrous than I had thought previously. The light from the sun, visible only as a brightness in the sky, flowed in reflection directly from the golden disc to its two recipients, Vishnu and Ganesh, all rendered with the greatest beauty in the extended picture.
"Extraordinary, Holmes. What is the meaning of this? And what of the boy?"
"More of him later, Watson. Suffice it to say that he appeared periodically during my remaining visits, scaled the pillar, touched the disc, then slid down and left."
Holmes said that he studied the beam of sunlight very closely, noticing how it struck the same places on the statues and then faded away almost immediately. In this, there was obviously some as yet hidden significance. He gave it little thought at the moment, for he was preoccupied with recording the inscription itself.
On completing his record, he found that Gorashar"s account of the death of King Dharmadeva was substantially correct, if incomplete. The inscription stated that the unfortunate king had gone to his pleasure garden, where he was found dead by his wife, Rajyavati. She sent news to her son, Manadeva, who was at once declared king. She herself planned to die on the funeral pyre of her husband, but her son, pleading with her, prevailed upon her to retire into widowhood. And so, like the celebrated Arundhati of Indian legend, she remained alive but in the seclusion of chast.i.ty.
Written much after the events and at the order of Manadeva himself, however, the pillar recorded none of the persistent doubts about the mysterious way in which his father had died. The rest of the inscription merely recorded King Manadeva"s own exploits and said nothing more about his father, Dharmadeva.
"An odd business, Holmes," said I, "rather at odds with Hindoo custom, I would think. A king who dies suddenly and unexpectedly, a wife who does not follow the usual rites of suttee, and a son who suddenly becomes king and explains nothing."
"Yes, Watson, a story so lacking in detail that any interpretation could be given to it. But I must confess that I had begun to tire of the work. I suddenly felt the need to leave Nepal and to move on. Gorashar had completed his pilgrimages, and I had seen more than enough of temples and sculpture. The monsoon had begun, and the rains were unusually heavy so that the most recent trips to Changu had become very difficult. And with the sun blocked by the clouds, I could not further my investigations of the mysterious reflections of its rays."
Without prolonged study of the temple, he continued, he did not think that he could solve the mystery of the death of good King Dharmadeva. And so he put his things in order to be ready for the first break in the rains, bade good-bye to the pandits in the Residence, and spent his last days in seclusion in Gorashar"s establishment.
In a short time, the sun came out from behind the clouds and the sky cleared. Holmes decided to leave, still in the guise of the pandit through whose ident.i.ty he had become known, and to change only when he had crossed the border into India.
On the evening before he was about to leave, however, he found a note addressed to him from a scholar visiting from Paris. It read: My dear Pandit Kaul, I have learned through the offices of the Maharajah Deb Shamsher and the Rajguru of Nepal of your presence here in the Valley. I understand that you are performing some philological tasks for Grierson. I would like very much to meet you and to share your knowledge of the country and its history. I myself am investigating the ancient inscriptions of the Valley, and if you have come across any in your wanderings, I would be most grateful for your information and advice. At present, I am the guest of the Maharajah and am staying in the guest house at Thapathali. If I do not hear otherwise, I shall call on you tomorrow morning at seven. With my most distinguished sentiments, (Prof.) Sylvain Levi Holmes received the note too late to inform Levi of his imminent departure, and so the following morning at seven he found myself unavoidably at tea with the learned French savant. Levi was, according to Holmes, a most entertaining fellow, very much aware of his intellectual gifts. In his late thirties only, he had already published learned articles on Indian history and religion. He proudly presented him with copies of two of his works, La Notion du Sacrifice dans les Brahmanas, and Le Theatre Indien, neither of which particularly took Holmes"s fancy, but for which he thanked the good professor. In turn, Holmes handed him his rough reading and translations of the Sanskrit inscriptions he had found in the Valley, including the one at Changu. He no longer had any use for them. Levi thanked him profusely for them, but noticing the latter, he remarked, "I have no need of this one. I already have it-and more."
Holmes continued pacing back and forth, his hands together behind his back, a slight smile on his lips as he recalled the tale that he continued to narrate to me. Levi was an intelligent man, he said, but he showed a strong disdain for the local population that made his presence at that moment unpleasant. He criticised the government and its officials, and the priests of the country, especially those at the temple at which he was pursuing his scholarly investigations.
"These ignorant priests have tried to thwart me at every turn," he said. "My greatest desire has been to read the pillar inscription of King Manadeva that stands in front of the temple of the G.o.d Changu Narayan. Manadeva was one of the great kings of antiquity, but little is known of him. As you may know, there is a portion of the inscription that lies below the surface, buried and unread for centuries. I tried in a friendly way to convince the priests that I be able to excavate and read the inscription in its entirety. They refused. They would not even allow me into the temple area, saying that as a foreign barbarian I would desecrate and pollute it. Sacre bleu! Can you believe in such ignorant superst.i.tion? I finally convinced the Maharajah of the importance of my work, and he sent several soldiers into the temple to dig it up. The priests were furious, but there was nothing they could do. In a few hours, I had a complete rubbing of the inscription, including the buried portion. It is mon triomphe!"
Levi"s eyes glowed with a sense of victory, and Holmes remarked that he was very fortunate to have arrived at the time that there was such a maharajah as this one. But Levi scoffed and said that anyone would have helped him, knowing that he was the best of European Sanscritists.
""And I have still not been allowed into the temple compound to study its treasures. The family jewels of Manadeva are reportedly there, hidden somewhere. But I shall find a way. Ah, ces pretres."
Holmes had soon begun to tire of this gentleman. He stood up, extended his hand, and bade him adieu. Levi took his leave, and Holmes went about his affairs, his departure now delayed by a day. He spent the rest of the afternoon with his friend Gorashar, who had promised that he would accompany him to Bhimphedi, the last post in the hills before one descends to the Tarai and the plains of India.
"It was early the following morning, as I prepared to depart, that I received an unexpected visitor. Lakshman, my servant, scrambled up the five flights of stairs to my room and announced breathlessly that there was a messenger from the Maharajah, who insisted on delivering a note himself. I told Lakshman to accompany the messenger to my room. Soon I was face-to-face with a member in full regalia of His Majesty"s Royal Guard."
The soldier handed Holmes an envelope that bore the official seal of the Maharajah, Deb Shamsher Jang Bahadur Rana. The note was short and was written in what he took to be the Maharajah"s own hand: M. Sylvain Levi, the French scholar, has disappeared without a trace. He left his quarters late yesterday afternoon and has not been seen since. Please come at once since I believe that you may be of a.s.sistance in locating him.
Deb Shamsher J.B.R.
The messenger told Holmes that he was ordered to accompany him without delay. And so, his departure thwarted once again, he found myself on another, most unexpected adventure.
The trip from the hotel by carriage to Thapathali, the Maharajah"s residence, was normally of very short duration, but this time it took almost a full hour. The monsoon had struck again that morning, and the roads of Katmandu were flooded and thick with swirling mud. They pa.s.sed through the imposing gates of the palace and rode through the front gardens to the veranda.
The Maharajah Deb Shamsher stood there waiting, surrounded by servants and umbrellas to protect him from the rain, but as soon as the carriage stopped he jumped forth and pulled the door open himself, escorting Holmes inside.
It was Holmes"s first taste of this kind of Oriental splendor, and he found it most impressive. They walked through a large receiving hall filled with the luxuries of every country of Europe, then through a room that marked the love of the hunt, the shikar of the Ranas. The remains of tigers, leopards, and antelope, the great beasts of the southern jungles, were everywhere. They pa.s.sed from there into a small room, which Holmes a.s.sumed to be the Maharajah"s own study.
""I know who you are, Mr. Holmes, and that is why I summoned you. Your secret is safe with us, however."
Holmes was taken aback at first by his statement, but he realised that it would have been foolish of him to think that he could maintain his secret indefinitely. The Maharajah"s agents had probably overheard his name at the Residence.
"I believe that it is indeed time for me to leave Nepal," he said.
Holmes watched him closely to see the effect of my answer. He was a small dark man, but with an enormous head upon which played a roundish face that had more of intelligence in it than the cruelty usually a.s.sociated with his kinsmen. His eyes narrowed as he spoke.
"You are, as usual, correct. It is indeed time for your departure," said he, "and I will see that you are aided on your journey. It is probable by now that some of your worst enemies know of your survival, and so I deem it best that you leave. But you will always be welcome here. We are indebted to you for your service to us in the recent matter at the Residence, and in the a.s.sistance which you gave to us in ridding our country of a number of unwanted pests. There is now, however, the rather delicate problem of the missing Frenchman. I am distressed to tell you that my agents have failed to locate him, and therefore I must enlist your aid, even if it means postponing your departure once again. His disappearance is an embarra.s.sment in itself, but even more so because the French amba.s.sador to India, Monsieur Bertrand, is due to arrive in Katmandu tomorrow with Prince Henri of Orleans, on an important diplomatic visit. The recognition of our independence by France is one of my chief goals, Mr. Holmes, and I can hardly tell the Prince and his amba.s.sador on their arrival that the greatest Sanscrit scholar of France is unaccounted for."
Holmes asked him what information his agents had been able to unearth.
"What my agents have uncovered, Mr. Holmes," replied the Maharajah, "is that after his return from his visit to you yesterday, Monsieur Levi lunched with his wife here at my guest house. Madame Levi then retired for an afternoon nap. When she awoke, she found that her husband was not there. She questioned the servants, who said that he had left alone at about three. This was in no way unusual, for she was used to his habits of work, which left her to her own devices for the better part of the day. "Mon pauvre mari travaille toujours," she had said to me on their arrival. She only became alarmed at nightfall, when he had not returned. That is when she notified me of his absence. My agents learned that he travelled by rickshaw to the great Buddhist shrine at Bodhnath, where he was observed transcribing Tibetan inscriptions. He wore, as he has regularly since his arrival, local attire, including the Nepalese black cap, or topi. He was last seen before dusk leaving Bodhnath on foot through the great southern gate."
""What chances are there that he was abducted to embarra.s.s Your Highness?" asked Holmes.
""This is always possible, of course, but we should have been made aware of this by now by his abductors. I doubt this, therefore. My men have entered every house at Bodhnath. As you know, the inhabitants there are almost all poor peaceful Tibetans and would have little reason to harm him. No, something unexpected has happened that has put him beyond my spies. Mr. Holmes, we must find him. I can a.s.sure you that in this you will have my every a.s.sistance. You may have as many of my men as you need."
"I shall do my best," he said, "but I shall work alone. I should like, however, to visit Madame Levi, before I depart."
He was led directly to the guest house, where he found Levi"s wife staring mournfully out the window. As he entered with the Maharajah, she began to weep. She was not a pretty woman, but one of rather coa.r.s.e features and of a kind of stoutness that one a.s.sociates with French peasant stock. It was clear as soon as one saw her eyes, red and swollen from her fits of grief, that she had nothing to do with her husband"s disappearance. Because her English was poor, they spoke in French. She said that she knew no more than what she had told the Maharajah, that her husband returned from his visit with Pandit Kaul, mentioned to her that he had much work left before their departure, and after lunch retired to his desk to work, where he was when she retired to take her afternoon rest.
Holmes then asked her permission to examine Levi"s desk and the work that he was doing before he left. There were no notes to his wife of any kind, no messages, nothing to indicate where he had gone. But he had indicated to Holmes in their conversation that he was still preoccupied with Changu, its treasury, and its pillar inscription. As Holmes looked at his work, however, he noticed that he had placed a large exclamation point next to a line in the inscription, a line that he remembered, and a question mark next to one that he had not seen before, one which must have been found in the excavated portion of the pillar. It seemed that he had most emphatically understood the first, but not the second.
Holmes paused for a moment. "I must risk boring you, Watson, for the words here are important to the solution. The line with Levi"s exclamatory mark read in Sanscrit in part: . . . raja udyanam iva tridivam gatah.
These words mean literally, "the king went to the other world as if he had gone to the pleasure garden."
"How odd," I said, not a little confused, but amused as well, as the strange words rippled off his tongue mellifluously.
"But the line questioned by Levi," he continued, "read: ahsevinahsenagartihb ahsevarpunhsivrihab "Its meaning? Well, my dear Watson, I was for the moment baffled. It made no sense, and appeared almost as a meaningless series of syllables. So supple and flexible is Sanscrit, however, that, with enough time, a variety of translations might be possible. In any case, I surmised that Levi had seen a connection between the two lines and that he had gone to Changu to investigate. I also reminded myself of a general truth that had become apparent to me during my stay in Nepal: that nothing there was simple."
By this time my mind was reeling from the complexity as well as the speed of Holmes"s account. That part of it was in Sanscrit did not rea.s.sure me in my attempt to understand what was happening.
"I am more than a bit confused, my dear Holmes. A king was apparently murdered fifteen hundred years ago, and a French scholar has disappeared before your eyes. Yet somehow their fates are intertwined. And somehow the fate of both men is buried in some difficult lines of an inscription in Sanscrit."
"Excellent, Watson, excellent. You have seen through to the crux. In the first line, Levi had seen something that no previous commentator had seen.
"And what was that? Perhaps the king merely died of natural causes, and it means only that he died as if he had been at play, at perhaps some wanton sport," I ventured.
"And that is the way it was often construed in Nepal. But Dharmadeva was a paragon of virtue, probably incapable of the kind of vice that would do him in. Still, there was something strange about the words, I thought, as if through their very strangeness the poet were pointing to something unusual. Perhaps there was a clue to his death in this phrase, perhaps a pun, a dual meaning. All of this, however, I retraced in my mind when I saw the words marked in Levi"s ma.n.u.script. Had he realised something that I had not? As to the other line, he had not deciphered it, nor could I!"
And yet, the inscription and his notes to it were the only clues Holmes had. He took the paper with his notes from his desk, folded it and put it in his pocket for further study.
"I should say here, Watson, that I had in that piece of paper all that I needed to locate Levi, but I had not seen through to the end. Without knowing where it would lead, I decided to go to Changu, following what in my best judgement might have been Levi"s footsteps. Rea.s.suring the frightened Madame Levi, I left the guest house and walked directly north, taking a path that led me through the ancient communities of Hadigaon and Bishal Nagar."
By now the heavy rains had subsided, and the sky began to clear. In his mind"s eye, Holmes went over Levi"s appearance in their meeting. He also reviewed his words, recalling particularly those concerned with the jewels of the ancient Nepalese kings. Perhaps greed, coupled with his outspoken contempt for the temple priests had placed Levi in an awkward, even dangerous, position. Had he found the great treasure house that he had mentioned? Had he entered it?
Crossing several streams, Holmes arrived at the Buddhist site of Bodhnath, his first place of inquiry. Here he questioned some beggars as to whether they had seen a foreigner. They said that indeed they had, that he was dressed in Nepalese clothes, and that he was walking east along the main road when they last saw him. This corroborated the Maharajah"s information and extended it a bit. Holmes was overjoyed, for he knew that his decision to proceed to Changu was the correct one.
By now, it was close to sunset, and he quickened his pace. The road entered the Gokarna Forest, which was strangely empty, silent except for the sounds of monkeys and birds. Light flickered from the hearth of several small houses, and knew that the road would be plunged into darkness before reached his destination. He pushed on, confident now that if he were to find Levi, he would find him, dead or alive, at Changu.
Just after a sharp turn in the main road, where it continues north to the small town of Sankhu, he took a fork to the right. This path, if memory served, led directly to the Manohara River and eventually to the Changu temple. He climbed a sleep hill, then descended past a small village. All was dark, and the village appeared as if suddenly deserted.
When he reached the river, Holmes could see across it to the hill atop which the temple sits. The river was greatly swollen by the rains, and it was only with a great deal of effort that he managed to cross it. The water was warm but thoroughly unpleasant, for it was filled with all sorts of debris brought down from the mountains by the rains. Things of all sizes and shapes, of all consistencies, touched and flowed into him. Thoroughly wet, soaked to the skin, he staggered across and, without stopping even for a breath, began the steep ascent to the temple.
It was almost dark, but even in the ensuing twilight, Holmes was soon aware that a large number of people were ahead of him on the path, and that pilgrims were streaming into the temple. The villages he had pa.s.sed through were dark and deserted for a reason: their inhabitants were on their way to Changu with everyone who lived nearby. Something of importance was about to transpire.
In the darkness, Holmes fortunately pa.s.sed unnoticed. Once at the top of the hill, he worked himself slowly into the crowd that now sat tightly arranged around the temple. The priests, in white robes, their heads newly shaven, were leading a chant that he recognised at once as an ancient funeral hymn. Indeed, a cremation pyre had been prepared in the front of the temple. The priests, three in number, had opened the inner sanctum of the temple, exposing to view the golden image of the G.o.d of Changu Narayan himself. As they chanted, several men carried in an effigy of a man, dressed in Nepalese attire, amazing at first look in its likeness to a human figure, but one that was clearly a mannequin made of straw. The figure was brought to the priests, who chanted over it in Sanscrit for a number of minutes. Then it was placed in a supine position on the pyre, its hands crossed as if in prayer. It was only when the figure was lying down that Holmes noticed that it wore on its face a pair of European spectacles, very much like those that the French savant had worn to their meeting. It was the first clue he had upon his arrival, one which made him fear that he had arrived too late.
The crowd grew silent at this moment and stretched forwards, not wishing to miss even the smallest detail of what was then to take place. Large drums began a slow, steady rhythm, and the priests continued their chant. Then, one of the men who had carried the figure to the pyre stepped forwards and, walking over to the head, smashed its face, including the spectacles, with a rock. Then, taking a torch from a member of the crowd, he lit the pyre. The straw figure went up in flames almost in seconds, and in a moment nothing at all was left.
Having watched the fire devour its victim, the crowd vanished silently into the night. Holmes remained behind, crouched in the dark behind a wooden door from which he could watch the priests. The three priests, placing the idol of Changu back in its sacred location, closed the inner sanctum. Then, pa.s.sing a few rupees to the men who had carried the straw effigy, they each left by a different gate. The men, counting their wages, also quickly dispersed, and Holmes was left alone on the temple grounds.
Very much aware now that all might be lost, he feared that he might have lost the track to Levi. The ritual he had just watched was disquieting, for it was an unusual one, obviously marking a death, and, if his suspicions were correct, the death so marked was that of Sylvain Levi.
The moon was bright, almost overhead now, and he could see clearly. There was almost no sound, except for the bats that flew everywhere, hovering constantly near his head.
As he debated his next move, he suddenly heard soft footsteps and the sound of voices from behind the temple. He moved slowly in the dark to where he could see to the other side. There in the dark he made out an old man and woman in Nepalese dress walking towards the pyre. The woman carried something in her arms, possibly an infant. The man, lame in his right leg, staggered slowly forwards. He was a.s.sisted by a half-naked boy, the one whom Holmes had seen scaling the pillar. He could see from a distance that there was something wrong with the man"s left arm as well, for it hung from his shoulder loosely. Having come to the front of the temple, the man sat on one of the temple steps. Holmes could see now that the woman was carrying a child. Handing it to her companion, she began poking and sifting through the still burning embers left by the cremation. Few words were exchanged between them, and occasionally a soft cry came from the infant.
"I recognised them all now," said Holmes. "These were, I had come to know from my previous visits, a family of untouchables, known as Chame, persons who must scavenge to live. Forced to subsist at the margins of Hindoo civilisation, they were also known by the Sanscrit term sandhyaloka, "people of the twilight," those who appeared in the evening and disappeared at dawn, performing their a.s.signed tasks all but unseen and unheard in the half light of morning and the half dark of night."
A piece of good fortune, he thought, for these people well might be his last hope of discovering what had happened to Levi. If his calculations were correct, Levi had arrived in the vicinity of the temple just at sunset the day before. A bit of luck and they would have seen him.
"When she had finished her task, the woman took the few pice (rupees) that she had found amidst the ashes and turned them over to her companion. Taking the child once more, they began to retrace their steps, leaving the temple by its eastern or back gate. I followed them quietly. When they had proceeded about fifty yards down the slope, I overtook them and, seizing them both from behind, firmly but not so roughly as to harm them or the babe, I forced them to the ground. So surprised were they that they both let out a cry, which I was able to cut short by a quick rea.s.surance that I meant them no harm. The boy tried to run off, but I grabbed him by the arm, and he stopped."
"They spoke in an archaic form of the Nepalese tongue," said Holmes, "filled with those pathetic forms of respect that mark the great fear that the illiterate outcasts have for their literate superiors. In a short time, however, they were sufficiently rea.s.sured by my repeated words that I meant them no harm that they were able to devote some of their attention to my inquiries. I also had placed several silver coins in their hands, more than they had seen in a lifetime of scavenging, and this too had the needed calming effect.