Skillful Death (27 page)

“Twenty-five percent of profit, or I’ll go hungry,” Dom said.

“You understand that I’ll be fronting all the money to improve your wardrobe and your reputation, yes? How am I to earn on my investment at twenty-five percent?”

“You will earn nothing if I starve to death in one-hundred days of giving half my profit to you.”

“I will not take you on at a salary, if that’s what you expect,” Tashi said. “You would not have any incentive to excel if you’re simply salaried. You can go back to the mines, if that’s what you expect.”

Dom thought about his savings, and his future. After seeing Tara again, and having dinner with her family, he’d decided quickly to abort his plan to leave. Regardless of the box she carried, and regardless of the promise she’d made to the boy in the mountains, Dom wanted to see what the future held with her. He’d considered not working at all—living from his savings as he attempted to court Tara—but he knew that no girl would respect him if he was unemployed. That’s why he’d gone back to the mine to try to beg his job back.

But the mine would leave him little free time for courting. Working there, he would always be sore and tired whenever he got the chance to see Tara. If he went back to plumbing, he would have more time and energy to spend on her. This could be the opportunity Dom was looking for, but he didn’t want to become a slave to Tashi. Men like him, with their luxury and wealth, earned their money from the sweat of people like Dom. Tashi didn’t want to pay a salary, and Dom didn’t want to see all his profit disappear into Tashi’s newspapers and pastries.

“I understand you want to recover your investment, but I would rather take a salary at the mine than watch half my profit disappear forever.”

Tashi’s face began to harden at the center as he spoke. “With a word to the management of the mine, I can relieve you of the choice.”

“No need,” Dom said. “You don’t need to go to the trouble. I have another proposal. You’ll take seventy-five percent of profit.”

Tashi’s face began to soften in preparation for a smile.

“Until your initial investment is completely recovered,” Dom said. “And then, once the debt is satisfied, you’ll receive twenty-five percent of profit and a commission for each new job you refer.”

“You have a shrewd mind for business, Torma,” Tashi said. Dom tried to imagine the name belonging to him, and failed. He still thought of himself as Dom—the bear. “I accept your terms, but at thirty-five percent after the investment is recovered.”

“Thirty,” Dom said.

“Deal.”

I
N
THREE
SHORT
DAYS
, Dom found his life transformed. He carried a ledger—a duplicate of a ledger carried by Tashi—which showed all the expenses he’d incurred. He had wildly underestimated how much money the transformation would require, and despaired at the thought of how long it would take to pay back.
 

The results were indisputable. Dom found himself with professional clothes. He looked like half businessman, half magician. His professional tools were efficient and shiny instead of the weathered tools he kept in an oily pouch. He had a new, powerful name. Tashi re-introduced him to Chogyal, and suddenly the man became proud of the fixtures in his house.
 

Tashi took Dom (Torma) and Chogyal to lunch with a few new prospects, and Chogyal praised the wonders of modern plumbing as he ate and drank on Tashi’s account. Dom’s new clients received the information about plumbing as if they were being granted the secret to accessing a wonderful new world. They plied Dom (Torma) with questions, not about the technical details of installation, but only of the benefits of fresh water. It seemed they had already sold themselves on the idea, and were bolstering the arguments that they’d present to their neighbors and wives.

With all the expensive meals required to lure new customers, the ledger grew long and worked its way into Dom’s dreams. The dreams competed with those he still had about Tara. Beautiful Tara, for whom he’d decided to stay, remained somehow outside of his grasp. He hadn’t seen her once since their dinner. All his time went into meetings with clients and Tashi, and endless shopping trips. The ledger grew and grew.

On the fourth day after his dinner with Tara’s extended family, Dom (Torma) found himself working as an upscale plumber. He didn’t have any materials yet, but he had his tools, so he worked to prepare the giant house for the new pipes.
 

At Tashi’s direction, Dom (Torma) didn’t arrive at sunrise. When he’d worked as a plumber before, he would always arrive as soon as the morning light found the windows. Tashi informed him that only servants arrived at dawn. Professional men arrived after they’d slept in and eaten a leisurely breakfast. Dom dressed in his fancy clothes and sat on his bed until Tashi’s appointed time and then found his way to the client’s house. He arrived just as the man of the house left to attend to his business. They passed in the house’s garden, as if they were colleagues headed to separate meetings. The man was dressed in his business suit and Dom (Torma) wore his fancy clothes, carrying his carved box of shiny tools.

At Tashi’s direction, Dom (Torma) was careful to keep himself neat and clean during the day. He stopped to sweep up any dust, always brushed off his knees when he stood, and never left a room unless it looked as good as when he’d arrived. With this new process, getting anything done took forever, but he found himself enjoying the role. He took his lunch on the patio, and the woman who worked in the kitchen brought him lemon water to accompany his meal.
 

In the late afternoon, when other business people began to return home, Dom (Torma) cleaned his final area and said his goodbyes. While still dressed in his fancy clothes, he stopped at a specialty shop and chose a pouch of tobacco that the clerk said was “Exquisite.” Dom had the clerk affix a tasteful black bow and then he walked to Tara’s aunt’s house. Tashi would receive a healthy reward for his help, but Dom had not yet thanked Jetsan, Tara’s uncle.
 

Dom waited in the foyer while Chodren fetched the man.
 

Jetsan led him into the front room and offered him a seat.

Dom perched, rather than sat. He didn’t want to stay and impose himself on dinner.
 

“I want to thank you for helping me establish my business and linking me with Tashi,” Dom said. He held out the small pouch of tobacco. “I hope you’ll enjoy this gift.”

Jetsan took the small pouch and bounced it in his hand.

“Thank you, Dom,” Jetsan said. “I appreciate the gesture, but it’s completely unnecessary. As for Tashi, I’m not sure you will thank me in the end. The man is quite shrewd, and you’ll be lucky to gain more than stature, being linked with him. He’d sooner scale a mountain than share a penny.”

“Oh,” Dom said. His agreement with Tashi suddenly felt complicated and unsettled. He clutched his ledger closer to his side.

Jetsan smiled.

“You have other, more pressing business at my house?”

“Pardon?”

“You’re here to pay attention to my wife’s niece, yes?”

“Oh,” Dom said, “I hadn’t planned on anything. I merely wanted to thank you and present you with my gift.” He looked for the pouch of tobacco. It had somehow left Jetsan’s hand and found its way to a side table.

“Yes,” Jetsan said. “But you need to pay attention to my wife’s niece. Do you understand? When a girl invites you to dinner, she expects that she’ll hear from you again the following day. ‘Thanks for the invitation. May I take you to a performance sometime?’ type of thing.”

“Oh!” Dom said. “I’ve just been so busy with Tashi. It didn’t occur to me.”

“Yes,” Jetsan said. His tight lips made a straight line of his mouth. “As to the history of your visit today? Let’s assume that you came by to wish Tara well and invite her to a performance. We’ll say that you sought my permission first. My answer was yes, of course, as long as you both remember her promise. Do we agree?”

“Yes, of course,” Dom said. He jumped to his feet. “Thank you!”

Jetsan nodded and sighed as he left. Dom stood and wondered if he should have followed Jetsan out of the front room.
 

He was moving towards the doorway when Tara appeared, holding her box to her chest. Dom spoke quickly so he might impart his message before she filled the silence with her voice.
 

“I’ve come to thank you for inviting me to dinner and ask if you might go to a performance with me.”

Tara smiled and paused. Then she filled the silence. “There’s a performance? Are you talking about the one in the circle near the lover’s rock? I’ve heard much about this performance, but I haven’t been to it. I’ve heard that you must go in a couple, and I haven’t had a partner. We must leave straight away if we’re going to get a good view. I’ll have Chodren alert my Aunt. Are you going to be dressed in your work clothes? I suppose you are; when would you have a chance to change? You have a little dust on your elbows, but I suppose you’re presentable. You certainly look better than you did before. I had to hold your hand the other day so that people wouldn’t think I was walking alongside a beggar.”

She held her box to her chest with one hand and brushed at Dom’s clothes with the other. After Tara spoke with Chodren, she pulled Dom towards the door.

Once they were underway, out on the path, she felt free to speak again. “I’ve heard from my aunt’s husband that you have been quite busy with Tashi, establishing your new business.”

Now, perhaps because he no longer looked like a beggar, she didn’t move to hold his hand. He would have reached for hers, but she clutched her box below her breasts with both hands. Dom settled for walking close to her with his hands behind his back. They moved slowly towards the west side of town where public performances were held in the evening.

“In my home in the mountains, we have the same legend of star-crossed lovers. Of course, we have a real cliff for them to have leapt from. Well, the boy leaps, after throwing the girl to her death. Do you know the story? We have two versions, one for the children, and one for adults. In the children’s story, the boy believes that his beloved means to run away with another, so he throws her to her death. In the adult version, she has been unfaithful, carrying the child of her lover. Either way, the boy goes mad and tosses her from the cliff. After she’s gone, he realizes that he was the lover, and she was going to shirk her obligation to be with him. With that discovery, he flings himself from the cliff.”

Dom had never heard the story before. Denpa didn’t spend any time with fiction, and he treasured life too much to hear of it marginalized. Dom wondered why such a terrible tale would be reenacted and why it would be so popular that it lived in Tara’s village as well.

“In the adult version, he dies immediately, but in the children’s version, the woman dies and the boy is blown by a strong gust of wind against the cliff wall and he survives. Well, he mostly survives. He is injured so much that he exists in the region between living and dead, unable to move on or reincarnate. He walks the betwixt region and you can hear him moaning and wailing when the wind is on the cliffs.”

Dom slowed down as he listened to the story, and Tara elbowed him to keep up. They arrived in time to find a good rock to sit on where they could watch the performance unfold. It replayed many of the elements Tara described, but the murder and suicide were changed. They didn’t have much of a cliff on the west side of town. The rocky scree simply slid down towards a small stream. So, instead of throwing his lover from a cliff, the boy bashed her head in with a rock. Upon learning of her innocence, the boy returned and slit his own throat. In the version they saw, the boy didn’t quite die, but lived to haunt the circle.
 

When he was younger, Dom always wondered why neither Pemba, nor any of the other boys, would play near the circle on the west side of town. If they had to cross the circle, they would do it only during the day. Even then, tradition held that the boys would spit on the soles of their feet before they crossed. Pemba spoke of a curse, but the performance was the first decent explanation that Dom heard. He wondered if even Pemba knew the story, or if he was simply afraid of the circle because everyone else was.

Dom and Tara stayed on their rock as the children left and the performance commenced a second time. The rock was sloped, and Tara sat uphill of Dom. She allowed herself to slip down enough so that her hip touched his. This version was slightly different, but the boy still didn’t die at the end.

At the end of the second performance, Tara rose gracefully, and moved the box to a spot under her arm. She waited for the rest of the audience to move off, and then she placed her hand in the crook of Dom’s elbow.
 

“My aunt said that I may be allowed to return to work again this autumn. There’s very little to do at the house, compared to where I grew up, so I’ve been dying with boredom all summer. I would like to work at a restaurant, or in a kitchen. I’ve always wanted to understand how they cook on such a scale. When I cooked for my family, we only had three mouths. I don’t know how they calculate how to expand their recipes. Isn’t it something?”