The Thing About Thugs (22 page)

They step out of the pub in such different ways: Shields looks around surreptitiously, turns up his collar and snuggles his head into his coat; Jack steps onto the pavement briskly, stopping just short of a cab that jolts its way past. The driver curses; Jack curses back. The horse neighs and the carriage disappears into the night.

The street is dimly lit and deserted. As they proceed, saying very little to one another, Shields suddenly clutches John May’s arm. May shakes himself loose. Shields grabs his arm again and drags them into a dark alley. ‘Hush’, he says, ‘hush. They are following us.’

He has done this before. He often suspects others — Peelers, bobbies, vindictive beggars, ghosts — of trailing the trio, seeking vengeance or justice. John May is about to shake him off and step back into the street again, when he spots a woman walking out of the shadows. She does not seem to be trailing anyone, but she does pause, either in thought or to investigate.

Shields gasps as she passes them. ‘I told you. I told you they are looking for us.’

John May knows the reason for Shields’ conviction. It is a woman they have seen before; at the opium den, where they killed their first victim. It is a woman who would recognize them. John May does not believe she has been trailing them. But he knows that Shields will be even more jittery now.

Shields is tugging at his sleeve again. ‘See, see, what did I say...?’

John May looks at Jack. Jack is following the full walk of the woman, her sturdy, shapely back, her rounded hips as they recede into the shadows. He is whistling softly.

The great stench from the Thames forces Amir Ali to wrap his shawl around his face, muffling his nose and mouth as he used to in India when he went out on summer afternoons. Only, this time, the air is not hot and dusty; it is cold and it smells of putrefaction, caulking tar and fish. There are smoking houses in the distance. And the sun, which was only slightly stronger all day than a full moon in India, has long set.

Fetcher, noticing Amir’s gesture, laughs and says, ‘Eau de Thames, guv’nor, Eau de Thames. Bin known to get ’em lords in tha’ Parli’ment up there to leave t’umping the’r tables and dis’pear fasta ’n wizard-man headin’ for a bafu. But tell-ya-wha, guv’nor, there’s money in the Thames and the cesspits, and je’ll’ry too. Ask ’em Toshers. Real guld in this spicy sancocho. If ya’ve the nose for’t, guv”.

And pointing to his own broken, smudged nose, he lets out a whooping laugh that echoes past the dilapidated buildings, past the steps leading down to the waterside, and slithers like some sea-monster over the slimy surface of the Thames before disappearing into the night. ‘Watch’t, guv’, says Fetcher. ‘Good thing the fog’s aint stronga tonight. T’way.’

There is an old cesspit, one of the two million that serve the inhabitants of this bloated city, and next to it, a sewer opening. Fetcher looks around, steadies the bag slung over his shoulder, and suddenly ducks into the sewer. As Amir hesitates, he hears a muffled whisper from inside: ‘C’mere, tis shorta and no bobby on t’way. Bin clogged for cent’ries, guv’nor.’

The sewer doesn’t smell much worse than the Thames. Fetcher brings out and lights a Davy lamp. Its yellow light is just sufficient to show them the way. They wade through a couple of inches of filth; the sides of the sewer are dripping. Fetcher hoots on seeing Amir’s revulsion: the laugh goes echoing into the tunnel and splinters into many eerie sounds. ‘Thought ya Indoo-laska’s were used to ev’rythin’ ‘n all’, Fetcher sniggers. ‘Good I talked ya into making ’em leggin’-csizma, no, guv’? Chapplis won’t do ere.’

Fetcher is as restless and talkative underground as he is above it. Along with instructions and warnings — watch yer ead, guv’nor — he comments on everything, including the large rats that stand on their hind legs, watching the two men pass. Some are as big as cats, and Amir has no trouble believing the stories Fetcher tells of hordes of rats attacking and devouring injured or sick men in the sewers and tunnels.

‘Let the beasties smell blood, and yer a goner, guv’nor. Lor, look at that ’un. Wish I had a trap; win me a dozen fights, that monsta there. Worth five d au moins. Look at ’im; look’t ’is whiskas. That one’s chapard beseff, guv’nor.’

But rats, Fetcher adds, are not the only animals in the tunnels and caverns of London. There are entire herds of pigs, run wild; there are big cats; there are fugitives and criminals; and there are — here Fetcher’s voice drops to a whisper — ‘them. They are human, Fetcher avers, but no, they are not from above, not beggars, escaped prisoners or homeless Londoners. They never even go above. They were born and reared in the tunnels under London. Not ghosts, not ghouls; they are human, or half-human. Of that, Fetcher — like others who repeat similar tales — is almost certain. These people can see in the semi-darkness, they know the underground like the back of their hand. They could be next to you anywhere in the tunnels and you wouldn’t know, unless they want you to discover them. Small secretive people, albinos. Like a gusano blanco, some say. Who knows? They never go outside; light blinds them. The lost tribe of London, Fetcher whispers. Mole People.

John May is against it. He is whispering, since the pub they walked into is still full of workers who were paid their wages in the pub and, except for two who were dragged away by their prescient wives, are spending a substantial part of their salaries there.

‘It was a coincidence’, he says.

Shields shakes his head.

John May looks at Jack. The tall man is smiling. ‘A comely wench, she was’, he says in reply. And then he adds, licking his lips, ‘She can rec’nize us, squire. Shields ere is right ’bout that.’

‘She won’t come across us again. It was a coincidence’, John May hisses back.

‘They are tracking us, I tell you, John May. I have sensed it in the small of my back for weeks now, the small of my back. They are watching us...’

John May is going to ask in exasperation, and for the hundredth time, who ‘they’ might possibly be, but One-eyed Jack interrupts him. ‘You don’t have to come with us, squire’, he says. Then he adds, and for the first time John May detects the steel of a threat in his tone: ‘It is a free country, after all, ain’t it, squire?’

They have been walking for at least fifteen minutes now, squeezing through openings that are just large enough for one man, hunching through arches of brick, once cutting across a catacomb with lead coffins warped and twisted like paper with time, darkness, humidity, some of them leaking viscous pools of ichor. Some tunnels are dry and some wet, in some there is a draught that makes Amir shiver under his coat and shawl, but all seem to lead away from the Thames.

A couple of times, the darting, rambling Fetcher has come to a sudden halt and hissed Amir into immobility too. They stand still for a minute, Fetcher dimming his lamp until the tunnel is dark and eerily silent. Had it been daytime, Amir is sure he would have heard the bustle of the city above, the clatter of wheels, the hooves of horses. But even such sounds of familiarity are absent at night.

When this happens for the second time, and they start scuttling through the tunnel again after their minute of stillness and silence, Amir asks Fetcher the reason for it. Fetcher lowers his voice. ‘Them...’ he whispers, ‘they’ve got their checkpoints. Ojo, ojo ev’rywhere. No one comes ere without the permission of the’r king...’

‘You are joking’, Amir replies.

‘Oh no, guv’nor, cross my heart. I seen ’un sometime back.’ Fetcher is adamant, though his voice is still a whisper.

Yes? What did he look like?

‘Naked as Adam; stark nu. ’N schwartz, blacker ’n me — except that it was earth, filth, kul dust. God knows what was unnerneath. ’Is ’air was mostly reddish, I think, ’n his eyes, guv, lor’ his eyes...’

It is difficult for Amir Ali to follow Fetcher’s conversation, not just because of the way he speaks but also because of the sediment of other languages — all that have ever been deposited in the nooks and crannies of London — swirling around in the muddy torrent of his English. Amir has never been able to figure out how many of these are languages Fetcher understands, at least in bits and pieces, and how many are just sounds, embedded like gold nuggets in the stream of his conversation.

‘Like a hvid sheet. Pale, guv’nor, pale. Y’see,
them
people can’t take much light. They aint have t’eyes for’t. Not outside, that is, guv’nor. But ’ere: they know what’s goin’ on. Ev’rythin’, guv’nor, they ’ear ev’ry footstep. ’Tis the’r kingdom, this ’ere. Who do ya think has connected all the sewers ’n tunnels we bin walkin’ thru’? The’r kindom, guv. And ya gotta show ’em some izzat.’

Amir recalls a conversation on this same subject during one of the rare gatherings at Captain Meadows’ house: a lady had said they were a prehistoric people, and an officer laughed at that and said that they were just idle beggars with nowhere else to go. Amir is more inclined to agree with Captain Meadows, who considers the Mole People to be a tall story concocted by those who live mostly on the surface of cities.

At that moment, the tunnel they are walking through comes to an end. It is blocked by rubble. But Fetcher is not put out; he starts scrambling up the rubble heap. Right at the top, he gropes around and opens what Amir later realizes is a trapdoor. Then he pulls himself up through the door and stretches out a hand for Amir.

Amir finds himself in a dry room, paved with stones and bricks, with low brick arches. There is a candle burning in it and a slight draught that indicates some sort of connection to the world outside. The candlelight is enough to reveal the extent of the room, but not enough to dispel the shadows lurking all around, the darkness obscuring the roof.

‘It’s Fetcher, Ustad, it’s Fetcher that’s fetched ya ’nother hazraan cust’mer.

‘Out, out, you spawn of Satan’, comes a rasping voice from the shadows in a corner of the room. ‘How did you get in here, you incubus of Iblis? Out. I told you, I do not want anyone to know where I live.’

‘Aw, Ustad, it’s me, Fetcher, yer fav’rit, an’ I got a cust’mer fra yer own land, yer watan. He aint know where you live; we come longlongway, unnerground...’

A string of curses in Urdu and Farsi follows.

‘An’ what’s endnu mere, ustad, he is nob’lity fra yer watan.’

There is a silence; suddenly, an old man, almost spectral, darts out of the shadows from where the curses ensued. For a moment, perhaps because of a similarity in age, voice and posture, Amir thinks it is Mustapha Chacha, risen from the dead in the bowels of this foreign city. But this is another man, a man whose resemblance to Amir’s murdered uncle has long been twisted into something else, something bitter and underground. The man, Ustad, is dressed in a long flowing robe, once white. He is completely hairless, bald and without whiskers. His face and body are tiny, as though shrunk, and there is a mad glitter in his eye. For a moment, it occurs to Amir that Fetcher’s image of the Mole People is based on this pale old man.

The man thrusts his face close to Amir’s, and Amir has to make an effort not to turn away from the sweet stench. Then Ustad spits into a corner and murmurs: ‘Jis sar ko gharur aaj hai yaan taajwari ka...’

Amir cannot help completing the sher for him: ‘Kal us pe yehin shor hai phir noha gari ka.’

‘Ah’, says the old man, grimacing, ‘no nawabzada I am sure, what would a nawabzada do here, but educated, cultured. Even that is rare in these godforsaken parts.’

Then, turning to Fetcher, Ustad curses him again: ‘Shaitaan ki aulad! Spawn of Satan, son of a dozen fathers, I will do it just once. I will make the papers for your man — but it will be expensive.’

‘He can afford it, Ustad; he is amir, that’s ’is name, guv’nor: rich.’

Ustad laughs. ‘Cultured and rich? Now that is even rarer. What is the world coming to!’

He moves away to turn up two lamps and Amir sees that he is in a bare room, with cold, stone walls, bleak and austere. But the walls are covered with the most intricate calligraphy, lines from the Quran and verses from Persian and Urdu poets mixed together, couplets and stanzas and entire poems flapping around and around the walls, dipping like birds, blossoming like flowers, ebbing like the sea.

The mad old man’s eyes gleam with an unearthly light as he observes Amir Ali. ‘They cannot stop me’, he says, lighting a third lamp. ‘They have tried. They have done everything they could to stop me. But I have cheated them. Here, I still do what I was born to do, what I am capable of. They would have me do this and that. They would stop me. They would have me do other things, the servants of Shaitaan who infest these lands and are always taking over the world. And when that doesn’t work, they tempt me with money. They send to me people like you, to distract me from my work. But I cheat them. Always I cheat them. I take their money when I need to, and I cheat them. Always I go back to my real work. Look around you, you pimps and devils, look around and despair of victory. Even here I am what I was: the greatest calligrapher east of Samarkand. Behold, devious stranger, behold my master work and despair!’

He holds the lamp closer to the walls and roof, and Amir is startled to see that even the ceiling is covered with reams and reams from the Quran and from the work of poets such as Mir Taqi Mir and Wali Mohammed Wali: the beautiful cursive script in silver and white and gold, spreading its wings on the stone and plaster, fluttering like a bird caught in a net, filling the room with silent noise. Elaborate fragments from lost cultures that have coalesced to create this aviary of shrieking, silent alphabets, shored against the ruin of a mind, and somehow still preventing Ustad’s glittering eyes and bony hands from being exposed in full madness on the streets above, mouthing obscenities, casting stones.

Jaanam,

Sometimes you ask about my night in prison. Perhaps it reminds you of the fate of your mother, the mother you do not recollect but who you know was imprisoned and deported. And I hesitate to tell you the story. You assume that it is because I do not want to recall an unpleasant experience.

But that is not really true. There is another reason I do not wish to talk of those hours.