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A policeman, especially a sahib, is a dangerous person to kidnap in Calcutta, and so there are only two kinds of people who could do it: a reckless fool or a planner with nerves of steel.
Guess which one took me?
The best part of opium is the first inhale. The second-best part is the part that comes before, when it’s being heated and stretched, readied it for you, and your whole body relaxes because finally, finally, for a little while at least, you’re going to be all right. During this time, I like to close my eyes and take a few deep breaths, savoring it.
Unfortunately, this leaves me about as open to attack as a turtle on its back. So I should not have been surprised when the woman preparing the opium reached over while my eyes were closed and plucked my gun from its holster. I shouldn’t have been surprised when a pair of men burst from the closet behind me, grabbed me, and hit me over the head.
It’s what I would have done.
He was a consummate local, short and bony, but possessed of the intensity one expects of high holy priests or complete lunatics. A zealot in wire-frame eyeglasses. I never got his name. He was sitting in front of me when I woke up, tied and gagged, in somebody’s basement.
We stared at each other for a while, and then he said, “You may be inclined to cause trouble in the belief that there are a great many policemen looking for you, and that any clues you can give them would be helpful. This is simply not true. Your death was unfortunate, but straightforward. While staggering home from an night of opium, you were the subject of an attempted robbery turned murder; the killers panicked and tried to burn your body. Being complete amateurs, they did not build strong enough a fire, but they buried what remained of you, along with your gun, in a garden. The clues were obvious. I’m sure you will be found quickly.”
In no uncertain terms, I told him he could go to hell. The gag got in the way, but I think he got the gist.
“It could be worse,” he said. “You could be the body in the garden.”
This was true. Still, I was less than enthusiastic.
“If we wanted to kill you, Captain Wyndham, you would already be dead. You have a use, still. Until that time comes, kindly behave yourself. As I say, nobody is coming for you.” Then he yawned widely, which I thought was rather rude.
Day one was pretty simple. Clambering awkwardly up onto a stack of crates in the corner, I smashed in a narrow, high window, then used the jagged edge of glass to saw through the rope round my wrists. My hands got badly cut, but I had about fifteen seconds of near-freedom.
For my troubles, I got hit over the head again. When I woke up, I was in handcuffs, ankles bound in rope, wearing the same gag as before. I was also dreadfully thirsty. I wasn’t too worried. They had boarded the window up, though, so from then on, I didn’t know how much time had passed.
They only took off the gag so that I could eat. I tried shouting a few times, but it had no effect except to gain me a scolding and some kicks from one of the surlier guards who seemed to live upstairs. It didn’t hurt much. He would have been terrible at football.
Later on, they took off the gag entirely, which was good, because I certainly would have choked to death on my own vomit otherwise. It’s not the fall that’ll kill you, it’s the landing. It’s not the opium that’ll kill you, it’s the withdrawal.
Withdrawal from O hits its peak about three days after it starts. It’s your whole body aching, shivering, feeling sick, retching, pounding headache, la la la la la. The shivering, the sweating. The anxiety. It’s also quite good for weight loss.
Withdrawal from alcohol is much the same as O in timing and symptoms, except for the added bonus of hallucinations. Some people get hallucinations, like nightmares, that are quite fantastical: hordes of spiders, talking dolls, all manner of storybook terrors. Real Lewis Carroll material.
My imagination is rather limited, it turns out; no spiders for me, hardly any dolls. But my brain compensated by drawing on its ample supply of memories, and I spent many an hour vibrating between trench and morgue, with the occasional jaunt over to my wife’s deathbed.
Happy days.
At some point, they re-instituted the gag, not that it did me any good. You can stop the sound from coming out, but you can’t stop a man from screaming his throat raw.
When men think they are going to die, or when they’re in pain past all endurance, they start begging. You would be surprised. I’m not proud of this, but I have thorough knowledge about it from both observing and experiencing it. Atheists beg for help from gods they don’t believe in, victims beg for mercy from tormentors they know are merciless, and practically everybody under the sun begs for their mother.
My mother died so young that I never once believed she was coming to save me. To my father, I was an inconvenience, and he rid himself of that inconvenience as quickly and efficiently as I could. He was never coming to save me. I had never believed anyone in my family was coming to save me. I had never believed anyone in the army was going to come save me, at least not after the first couple months. The officers were no more in control than I was. I don’t even think the generals were much more than cogs. God was real, but largely indifferent, until he wasn’t even real anymore. Sarah, I might have begged for Sarah, but she had faded in my memories until I no longer knew what of her remained and what was only stories I told and re-told to myself. In all of Europe, there was nobody I had any faith in to come and save me.
I didn’t think there was anybody in India I had faith in, either. But as it turns out, there was one.
I’m grateful they gagged me.
I didn’t die.
The tricky thing about unbearable pain is that it is, by and large, actually bearable. As in, you don't get much of a bloody choice whether or not to bear it. The lungs will go on breathing. The heart will keep on pumping. And, no matter how endless the days seem, eventually you will either get worse or get better. I happened to get better. It was the only way I knew how to keep track of time, down there in the dark. But as the physical problems receded, as the hallucinations receded, reality found new variations on shitty. For one thing, there was the boredom. And then there was the curious nature of skin.
If you don’t count the times I got hit, the only times that any of them touched me was when they were dealing with the gag so that I could eat. Once, one of my captors brushed by my ear in re-tying the gag, and I shivered.
There was something I found tremendously funny about that at the time, but now I forget what it was. It had to have been funny, I know that much.
I missed a lot. I missed being able to move my legs so that my ankles were more than a couple inches apart, I missed the way that Sandesh would always make my morning omelette with extra chilis, I missed the baleful glare Taggart would give me right after he’d had himself a good five-minute shout, I missed the way Annie would turn up with an arch smile whenever a murder was at its most dizzying, I missed knowing whether it was day or night, I missed the sticky W key on my typewriter, I missed hearing the sound of my own voice when I talked. And also, I missed other things.
Just when things were beginning to look up—I had slept for a few hours, I managed to keep down some soup—things took a sharp turn towards the unpleasantly interesting.
If they wanted information from me, they could have had it. I had offered them all kinds of information, just a couple days earlier, if they’d only give me what I needed. But no, they waited until I was nearly a man again, and then one of them came in and beat me while asking me questions I knew nothing about. For about an hour afterwards, I wallowed in the usual musings about gods, curses, et cetera, and then it occurred to me that I hadn’t seen the zealot in the wire-frame glasses in quite some time. He was far and away the most eloquent of my captors, and I had always assumed that he was the leader. If he was gone, then perhaps the plan was gone, and if the plan was gone, where did I fit in? The fellow that beat me had been very enthusiastic about it, but he hadn’t asked the questions with any coherence. That also seemed to indicate that things were not going well for my friends upstairs.
Before I could figure out whether I was pleased or not about this turn of events, I fell unconscious.
When I woke up, the best course of action seemed to be not moving whatsoever. The theory was, if I stayed perfectly still, perhaps the pain would forget about me and piss off.
Did I see any point in going on? No. Did I want to die? Yes. Was I going to die? Debatable. Was I absolutely sure that nobody would look for me, much less find me, much less overcome the houseful of delights upstairs?
I should have been, but I wasn’t.
If you live long enough, you’re bound to be vindicated at least once. And I was fucking due.
I was trying to sleep when the first board came away, and the sudden burst of light irritated me so much that I said a few things about it into the gag before the second board came away, and I realized what was happening. And then the third board came away, and I squinted with weak eyes into the light and saw a familiar face.
Surrender-not smiled when he saw me, and though he couldn’t see it, I smiled back, like a madman. Then he let himself in, dropping in through the space where the boarded-up window had been, hanging for a moment, landing lightly on his toes with a soft thump.
"Sam," he said, or at least I think he said it. Probably not. He rarely used my Christian name, and anyways the sudden burst of city sounds from the open space where the window used to be was startling, even overwhelming, after so much silence.
While he was cutting free my ankles, I was craning my neck trying to get a better look at his face. While he was cutting free my mouth, it was all I could do not to push my cheek against his hand, knife be damned. I felt like if I did not catch hold of him, I could blink and he would be gone. (In my defense, this had more or less happened several times already.)
“Captain, listen to me. Can you run?” he said.
“Yes,” I said. “Yes.” I was shaking. I was also possibly lying, but he didn't need to know that.
It was late evening, close to the edge of night, but that wasn't enough. And there was no cover, only an inadequate bin that was barely enough to crouch behind. And I could hear the shouting.
“We’re sitting ducks,” I said.
Surrender-not checked his watch. “Two more minutes.”
“Until what?”
“You’ll know it when you hear it. And don’t worry about me, just run south as fast as you can. There will be a car.”
“What does that mean?”
Surrender-not pointed. “South is that way.”
“The sun is setting, I know—what do you mean, ‘don’t worry about me?’”
He didn’t look at me. “I’m still a policeman, Captain. There’s criminals to arrest.”
I wish there was something else I could say about all of this, some wry twist that could dull the sting into something bearable. But the truth isn’t like that, and believe it or not, I do still care about the truth. I still crave it, I still seek it, I still guard it when I can find it and mourn it when it’s lost forever. This may be a truth like a boot to the ribs, a truth like screams better left muffled, but I paid for this truth in both my blood and his, and I am not quite cowardly enough, not quite miserly enough, not quite wretched enough to let it go.
I wish this truth had come easier, but I guess, no matter how I came by it, it was always going to hurt.
When my mind buckled, I begged for him.
When I had nothing, I wanted him.
When there was no reason to expect a rescue, I expected him.
And he found me.
There’s nothing else I can say. Nothing else, I realized then, looking at him, I could say.
So I kissed him. He yielded to me—he more than yielded to me, he wound the fingers of his free hand in my hair and panted into my mouth and kissed me back, openmouthed, and after God knew how long I had spent alone it was so overwhelming I had to fight back the tears from my eyes. His mouth was hungry but his thumb on my cheek was gentle, so gentle, and I clutched at him as though that would be enough, as though I could stop him from going, though I knew better. When he tore away, I crowded into him, sought him again, our noses brushing, barely heard him say, "Two minutes are up, Sam."
"Not yet," I said, but he was already gone.