Skillful Death (34 page)

“Wait, what?” I ask.

“I’m interested in finding a man who was attacked by an enormous snake. The person would also have fought an elephant, have an unearthly skill, and carry a particular radioactive signature.”

“Pardon?” I ask. See, I could have asked him to, “Wait, what?” again, but I didn’t. You can’t use that type of thing too much. Besides, it would be lost on the boss. He doesn’t watch much TV.

“A radioactive signature,” he says. “Some areas have concentrations of radioactive isotopes. If you’ve got the right device, you can detect which isotopes a person has in their body by the decay of particles. It’s pretty simple.”

“I would think so,” I say. “So you were using the radioactive signature of this kid to find out if he’d ever been bitten by an enormous snake?”

“Yes, in a way. Bitten or attacked.”

“And fought an elephant?”

“Yes. Fought, and won the fight.”

“Well, it seems pretty obvious they won the fight if you were looking for someone alive.”

“Perhaps,” he says.

“May I ask why you were looking for someone who’d been attacked by a giant snake, fought, and won against, an elephant, and had a radioactive signature?”

“Don’t forget the skill.”

“Right, and had an unearthly skill.”

“And chased away a lion. Did I mention that?”

“I don’t think you did, no. It’s pretty obvious, but I’ll add it to the list. So, can you tell me why?”

“That’s a long, long story,” he says.

“Ah, good. Is it the same long, long story as to why you’re so paranoid now?” I ask. Now I’m really convinced that he does want to tell me this story. I just need to give him an excuse. He seems calm enough talking to me. I’m less worried about the arsenal he’s amassed.

“It’s roughly the same story,” he says.

“Perhaps you should go ahead and tell me?”

“I can’t stress enough—it’s a long, long story.”

“I have time.”

“I’ll tell it to you, but I only want to tell it once. I’m going to start with what I know about the very beginning of my life, and then you’ll understand what’s going on here. Do you think you could write it down?” he asks.

“Like a memoir?”

“Yes, I suppose,” he says.

“I will, but I have a couple of rules.”

T
ARA
BECAME
PREGNANT
AS
Dom shifted his attention from installation to manufacturing. He promoted three more apprentices, and sent them to neighboring villages to spread his business. Dom spent his days at the foundry, as his workers began to turn out their first products.
 

In this beginning, his copper was mealy and his brass brittle. Frustrated, Dom fired his metallurgist and hired a respected man from his manufacturer. It was an enormous risk, since the manufacturer immediately stopped shipping supplies, and Dom (Torma) had to buy stock at inflated prices from smaller resellers. Dom (Torma) also purchased ingots of raw copper and zinc so he could prove his factory independent of the materials provided by the mine.
 

The mine responded by promoting Pemba to oversee their quality. The move was calculated to play on Dom’s loyalty, and it worked. Fortunately, for once in his life, Pemba found himself in a position he was actually good at. The quality of the raw materials improved, Dom’s new metallurgist arrived, and soon the factory produced superior parts, built to order. Dom turned his satellite businesses into franchises and took even more profit by selling his parts.

His business thrived.

Tashi’s cut of the profits only included those from Dom’s original plumbing business. Since Dom focused on manufacturing, Tashi’s revenue didn’t increase at the same rate as Dom’s. On a bright summer day, when Tara was still pregnant, Dom offered to buy out his contract with Tashi, and the man accepted. The deal was too lucrative for Tashi to ignore, and it gave Dom a feeling of freedom which was priceless.

That same day, Dom returned home to find his wife weeping on the patio.

“What’s wrong, my dear?” Dom asked, crossing to Tara. She was stretched out on a low couch with her feet elevated. She held one hand across her giant belly and the other pressed a cloth to her red eyes.

“I have no mother or sisters to come help me with my birth,” Tara said.

“But we’ve hired you the best attendants in the village. They’re here to help you through this process,” Dom said. Their house employed two midwives, but Dom refused to let anyone call them that. They had to refer to the women as “attendants.”

“It’s not the same,” Tara said.

“What about your aunt? Have you sent word to her?” Dom wanted to reach out to the aunt, but Tara had begged him to let her handle the communications.

“She knows how far along I am, but she doesn’t come to me. She’s ashamed of me.”

“That can’t be true,” Dom said.

“I’m going to be all alone with this child.”

“I’ll be here.”

“You work constantly. You are Torma more than you are Dom.” Tara spread the cloth across her face, hiding her eyes.

“Darling, I love you more now than ever. You’re beautiful carrying our child. You can’t fault me for wanting to provide as much as I can for my beautiful wife and our precious child, can you? You know how far we’ve come in the past year. We went from nothing to all this. We are richer than your aunt’s husband, and our fortune grows every day. Our hearts will be wealthier by tenfold when our child comes.” He placed his hand on her belly.

“You think I’m crazy,” Tara said.

“Not at all.”

“Dom, I’m not sure it ever grew back.”

“Pardon?”

“My soul. I don’t think my soul ever grew back. Do you think you could purchase it back for me? Do you have enough money for that?”

Dom sat down and tried to think. One of the traits which made him so successful was his ability to guess what something was worth. This calculation she presented was tricky. He didn’t know his buyer and he’d never heard of a transaction of this type. Surely any monetary offer would be more worthwhile than the possession of a soul. What profit could one expect from a soul?

“If it will make you happy, then I will buy back your soul,” Dom said.

Dom didn’t sleep that night. He lay awake, looking at the bulging form of his wife and thinking about the nature of happiness. He considered himself to be very happy. His business thrived and his gravid wife glowed. How much of that happiness would be placed at risk if he sought to purchase back her soul? Would her body remain married to him, or would her soul be inclined in a different direction? Would the soul cost so much that he would lose his working capital and doom his business to flounder? Would fulfilling this demand lead to more, where she forced him to spend more time being Dom and less time as Torma?

In the morning, he wrote a careful letter to Tara’s former betrothed, and sought a particular pair of men to deliver it. He chose one of his designers—a man who could glance at a part once and then return to his bench to draw a perfect replica of the item. The second man was tall, strong, and known to strike fear into those who crossed him.

Dom sat them down in his front room and explained their mission. The men would take the letter along with a sum of money and ask to see the box. They would negotiate. Then, if necessary, intimidate. If all else failed, the pair would replicate the box. Dom sent the men off that day.

While the men were gone, Tara gave birth to their perfect baby girl, Diki.

Dom set aside his previous understanding of the word happiness, and lived each day to look into the wide, curious eyes of his precious baby girl. Her black hair, rich skin, and delicate features, were the reflection of her mother’s beauty. To Dom, her every wail was music. When he was not allowed to hold her, he haunted her room, watching her tiny fingers clutch at her blankets or her mother’s hair.

Tara performed her motherly duties, but asked Dom several times each day if the men had yet returned with her soul. She felt she couldn’t fully bond with her daughter until she had her soul back.

One day, the attendants pushed Dom from Diki’s room and he found himself on the balcony. Tara stood there and looked down at the performance circle below.

“I don’t understand why they forbid me to stay with my own daughter,” Dom said.

“She needs her sleep, not a panting bear hovering over her all the time,” Tara said. She looked at Dom with weary eyes, heavy with insomnia.

Dom sat on a bench and looked at his haggard wife. She had not eaten much since she gave birth and slept even less. Her skin hung on her bones like a cheap, ill-fitting robe.
 

“Haven’t you heard from those men yet?” she asked.

“No. You must give them time. It’s a long way to travel.”

“I traveled the same route when I was just a young girl. And it didn’t take me so many weeks to do it.”

“You are
still
a young girl,” Dom said. “And you didn’t have to go both directions. And it’s easier to travel down from the mountains in the summer. I’m sure the snow is creeping into the passes by now. Plus, you had a guide.”

“Why didn’t you send them with a guide?”

“I don’t know. It didn’t occur to me, I guess.”

“Dom, do you see the rock down there? The rock where you performed the sacred ceremony to cleave my soul from my body?”

“Of course.” It occurred to him for the first time that perhaps he could end her obsession if he revealed that he had invented the ceremony.

“That’s the last time I was a complete person. You used the knife and sent my soul back to my betrothed. I didn’t realize it until I had a child growing within me how empty I was. I think that Diki’s presence within me made me believe that I could feel whole. Now that she’s gone, I know that I cannot.”

“She is not gone. She is right there in her room,” Dom said. He half rose to verify that his assertion was true.

“Gone from me,” Tara said. She turned to him and he saw pure despair in her eyes. “I have nothing in me now.”

“Listen, Tara,” Dom began. He decided to tell her the whole story about the cleaving ceremony. She would hate him for a while, but then she could move on. He changed his mind just before the words left his mouth. “We will get your soul back, don’t worry. And we can have more children as well. We can keep you constantly full of life.”

Tara ran from the balcony.

D
OM
’
S
MEN
RETURNED
TO
his door while Diki was down for a nap. They returned at knifepoint. Dom rushed to his foyer at the news. He found his men on their knees on his polished tile floor. Behind them, holding a long knife to each of their backs, a giant man stood. He was wrapped from head to toe in tattered scarves. Only his piercing green eyes shone out from his headdress.

“Who are you?” Dom asked.

“I might ask you the same,” the man said.

“My name is Torma,” Dom said, using his business name to command respect. “And this is my house. Why do you hold my men at knifepoint?”

“Because they’re either liars, or thieves, or both. I do not suffer either.”

“Who are you?” Dom demanded.

“They tell me you’ve stolen my wife.”

“I have done no such thing,” Dom said.

Tara, having received the news, pulled herself through the doorway, and propped herself against a wall. She looked as frail as a ghost haunting the body of a dead woman.

“So, it’s true after all,” the man said, looking at Tara. “You have died here.”

“Yes,” Tara said. “I’m afraid I have.”
 

Her eyes tried to make sense of the giant man holding his knives to the backs of the kneeling men. The men on the floor didn’t say anything, they just clasped their hands to their chest and awaited their fate. The miles they’d trudged through the mountains showed on their faces and their cloaks.

“My betrothed has died. After I kill you, Torma, I will join her,” the man said.