Skillful Death (35 page)

“Wait!” exclaimed Tara. “Come here.”

The tall man lowered his knives and crossed the room to Tara.

“Come closer,” she said, motioning.

Dom watched the tall man lean down closer, bringing his stunning green eyes to within Tara’s reach. She lifted her arms and he allowed her to unwrap the scarves from his head.

“Your eyes are so green,” she said as she unwound the scarves.

“When I heard the news of your death, I climbed through the snow to the monastery, to live a life of silence. The snow blinded me and burned my eyes to green. I couldn’t stay up there. My eyes just kept getting worse. With all the light reflecting from the snow, I couldn’t see to do my chores. The monks finally sent me home a month ago.”

Tara pulled the last scarf away from his face and she slumped to the floor.

“Lha-mo,” she said.

“Yes, ghost of my betrothed. I thought your spirit eyes already recognized me.”

“You are Lha-mo? The boy to whom her soul was promised?” Dom asked, coming closer despite the man’s knives.

“You are unlike any man I have ever seen,” Tara said. “You’ve grown so tall and strong, and your eyes are so green. You are unlike any man I have ever seen.”

“But we sent her soul back to you. You don’t have any claim to Tara’s body,” Dom said.

“How did you die, my love?” Lha-mo asked. “They told me you had an accident, and showed me the blood on your promise box. How did you die?”

“I asked Dom, and he killed me,” Tara said.

“A bear?”

“No,” she said. “Dom.” Tara pointed to Dom (Torma).

Lha-mo raised his knives.

D
OM
BACKED
AWAY
AS
the tall man with the knives advanced. Deeper in the house, he heard people shouting, trying to find weapons and formulate a plan. Dom backed through the front room and stepped back onto the balcony, until his hands pressed against the railing.

“She told me that her soul was betrothed to you, and she must have it cleaved from her body,” Dom said.

Lha-mo moved his long knives to different positions, as if deciding which way to divide Dom.

“At her request, we separated her soul from her body and sent it back in the promise box. Jetsan sent it. When the messenger returned, Tara and I were married. We have a daughter.”

Lha-mo didn’t advance, but neither did he acknowledge that he heard Dom’s explanation.

Tara arrived behind Lha-mo and grasped his scarves, holding herself up.

“Do you have my soul with you?” she asked. “My body cannot survive without it.”

“You told me that you are already dead,” Lha-mo said. “And look at you. You’re nothing but a phantom.”

“I am nearly dead,” Tara said. “That’s why we sent after my soul.”

Lha-mo lowered his knives and turned to Tara. “Please, tell me what happened. I received your box with news of your death. Then two men appeared and said you needed your soul back. You look dead, but this bear, Torma, says you have a child with him. What has happened here?”

Tara explained. “I thought I wasn’t supposed to marry you because the blind woman from the cave said I that my husband would be a man, tall and strong, unlike any I’d ever seen. I thought that was Dom, so we cleaved my soul, sent it to you, and I married him. But I cannot live without my soul. And now that I’ve seen you, I realize my mistake. When I left, you were never so tall, and strong, and handsome. What have I done? Have I ruined everything?”

“No, my precious love,” Lha-mo said. “I’ve come for you. Your marriage to this man is not valid because they lied to me and said you were dead. I never relinquished our promise.”

Lha-mo dropped his knives and pulled Tara into an embrace.

“Your soul is with me, and you can be whole again,” Lha-mo said.

Several of Dom’s workers burst through the door to the balcony. One held a hammer, one a sharp rod of metal, and the others held stout sticks. They brandished their weapons and formed a semicircle around Lha-mo and Tara.

“This is ridiculous,” Dom said. “Our marriage was presided by all the town officials, and conducted in the presence of Tara’s guardians and the law. She married me legally and willingly, and we have a family. Tara, this nonsense about your soul needs to stop this instant. I should have told you before, but I didn’t perform any cleaving ceremony on your soul. I don’t have the slightest idea how to do such a thing. I just invented all the stuff on the rock, and the blood was from my hand. I still have the scar.” He held his hand up to her wide eyes. Her arms began to drop from Lha-mo’s sides.

“What you’re experiencing is a perfectly normal depression that all young mothers suffer. Haven’t all the attendants told you so? This man before you has no hold on you. You have no life with him. You and I have a family. We have a beautiful daughter.”

Lha-mo began to reach down to the floor for his knives, but Dom’s (Torma’s) employees raised their weapons towards him and he stopped.

“Come with me, Tara,” Lha-mo said. “We’re supposed to be together. My father has bequeathed me part of his estate as soon as you and I are married.”

“Dom’s right,” Tara said. “I have a family with him.” She shrank down to the stone floor of the balcony.

“You cannot reject me,” Lha-mo said. “I will cast myself from this ledge and end my life.”

“Don’t do anything crazy,” Dom said.
 

Tara propped her head with her hand and didn’t bother to look up at Lha-mo.
 

“It’s not high enough for you to end your life,” Tara said. “At worst, you’ll break your ankle.”

Lha-mo ignored them, turned his face to the sky, and shouted, “My destiny has been destroyed!” He swept his eyes over the semicircle of men and then threw himself over the balcony. Lha-mo screamed as he fell, but his scream ended immediately when he hit the rocks of the performance circle. Replacing his scream was a low moan.

“Please help me,” Lha-mo called up from below.

Dom motioned for his men to go help Lha-mo. He stayed on the balcony and knelt next to Tara. “Come, darling, let’s get you inside.” He reached out to Tara.

She took his hand in both of hers and turned his palm upwards. She traced a finger over the scar on his palm.

“You really invented the whole ceremony?” she asked.

“Yes,” Dom said.

“Why would you do that? Don’t you understand that my soul has a commitment? Don’t you believe that my soul has an obligation to fulfill?”

“No,” Dom said. “And I don’t believe your aunt believes those things either. She sent news to Lha-mo that you died. She knew that he would never accept your soul in a box as payment for your promise.”

“But why would you lie to me?”

“Because you believed your soul needed to be cleaved. I was honoring your belief.”

“That’s not honor. You were humoring me, like you would a child with a strange obsession. Is that what I am to you? I’m a child who doesn’t know better?”

Dom sighed and looked at his hands. Below, in the circle, Lha-mo cried out as men helped move him towards the house.

“No. Never. But what am I to do? I love you and I wanted to help you fulfill an obligation that you should have never been burdened with. How could I let the woman I love return back to a relationship dictated by her deceased parents? You clearly wanted to stay here with me. As much as it wasn’t my privilege to remove your obligation, it was not theirs to commit.”

“Our marriage—is it even legitimate?”

“Of course,” Dom said.

“Don’t be so blithe. Where I’m from, a young woman may not engage in her own contract while she is already bound by another. If Lha-mo thought I was dead, then he certainly never gave his permission for our union.”

“And where we live now, the guardians of a girl can break such contracts and agree to new unions. Your aunt possessed the authority to shift your promise to me.”

“Then who is right?” Tara asked.

“Ask your heart,” Dom said. “My heart belongs to you and our daughter. Can you not reciprocate that love?”

“I don’t know,” Tara said. “My soul knows.”

T
HE
FOUR
ACTORS
IN
Dom’s play lived in adjacent rooms. Dom kept the marital room, which adjoined to his daughter Diki’s nursery. Across the hall, Tara took up residence in a room next to Lha-mo, who was recuperating from a broken tibia. Dom wondered which would recover first: his wife’s heart, or his rival’s leg. Regardless, he planned to send Lha-mo back into the mountains as soon as possible. He would send two men carrying him on a litter if required.

Tara continued to care for Diki, but she did so without talking to Dom. Diki grew fast, pulling in the world from all sides. Dom was sure that the little baby would grow so fast and beautiful that she would absorb everything, including him. Dom watched Tara feeding their daughter and he wondered if his wife would ever forgive him. He always thought the lie was something they shared. Like co-conspirators, they had plotted and then executed a plan to release Tara from her mountain obligations so they could marry, or so Dom had thought.

Lha-mo, on the other hand, was more than willing to talk to Dom.
 

“I know I must be a terrible burden on your house, but I do hope that you’ll allow me to maintain my dignity by letting me heal enough to walk out of here on my own two feet,” Lha-mo said, almost daily. Dom didn’t like having his rival under his roof, but his obligation in this respect was indisputable. And although he dreamed of sending Lha-mo away on a stretcher, carried by indifferent, rough-gaited fools, he merely provided the best care available and hoped Lha-mo would feel up to traveling soon.

Diki cried all night when she got her first tooth. Tara, who had been gaining weight and looking better each day, looked gaunt again. Soon, Diki stopped feeding from Tara, and Dom had to bring in a wet nurse and yak milk to satisfy his girl’s hunger. Dom caught Lha-mo walking in the halls, but the man’s atrophied leg still didn’t look up to the task of carrying him up into the mountains. It seemed that everyone was in flux.

Tara didn’t lose the hollows in her cheeks, but she wore looser dresses as her appetite returned. She still wouldn’t talk to Dom. It was just as well, since his ears were devoted to his daughter. Diki laughed, or giggled, or complained, almost every instant of the day and night.

Dom cursed his own single-minded attention to his daughter when he woke one morning to find his house had two fewer occupants.

“Where is my wife?” Dom demanded of the wet nurse. He didn’t know her name. Because he hated the midwives, he normally refused to talk with any of the baby’s nurses. He replaced them as often as he could find a new one. Dom didn’t want his daughter to become attached to any of them.

“You have a wife?” she asked. She kept her voice low. Diki was dropping off to sleep.

“Yes, of course I do,” Dom said. “She lives in the room right across the hallway.”

“Excuse me, sir, I thought you were a widower,” the wet nurse said. “The pregnant woman is your wife? She was always with that tall man.”

“What?”

“The tall man? With the green eyes?”

“They left together?”

“I believe so.”

“Why do you think she was pregnant?”

The wet nurse seemed confused by the question. She answered slowly. “I do not assume anything. She was simply pregnant.”

“But I haven’t been with her. Not since my baby was born.”

“Perhaps her husband—the man with the green eyes—impregnated her?”

“
I
am her husband!”

“I’m so sorry, I forgot. You never talk with her, I thought she was a former employee. I saw that woman talking with your maid. Perhaps she knows where she went?”

Dom ran out of the room to find the maid.

“Where is Tara? Where is my wife?”

“She said you knew!” the maid said. “She said that you sent her back to her village with Lha-mo.”

Dom hired four trackers to work in pairs and follow the two likely paths the lovers would take into the mountains. One of the men was the messenger who originally took word of Tara to Lha-mo. Dom chose him because he would know how to deal with any lingering bad weather, and because he had met Lha-mo on his previous trip.