Skillful Death (41 page)

“Don’t be in such a rush to grow up,” Dom said. “You’ve got a lot to enjoy before then. Let’s talk about the trip home tomorrow. Do you want to leave right when the sun comes up and then we’ll stop and eat along the way?”

“Yes,” Diki said.

♣
   
♢
   
♡
   
♠

When Dom woke, the sky was only starting to grow pink around the edges of the mountains in the east. Diki was not at his side. Panic crept in around the edges of his mind. Then he saw her, spinning in a circle near the big rock.

He rubbed his eyes and watched her. She spun with her arms outstretched until she started to stumble a little. She bowed to herself, laid down, and placed her hands flat on the ground, next to her hips. She raised her limber legs straight up, held them for a second and then started to lower them back towards the ground. On her third repetition, Dom pushed himself up to a seated position.

“What are you doing?” Dom asked.

“Shhh!” Diki said. “I’m doing my exercises. My friend showed me. I’m trying to make sure I remember.”

“What friend? What exercises?”

“When you were asleep. My friend, the old monk, showed me five exercises.”

Diki rolled over and pushed herself into a kneeling position. She stretched her arms along the ground until her face was pressed into her knees.

Her voice was muffled by her position. “There’s a sixth one, but I’m not supposed to start it until later. He said you used to do the exercises, until you forgot. Why don’t you do them with me?”

“No!” Dom shouted. He jumped up and scrambled over to his daughter and jerked her to her feet by her armpits. “No! You’re never to do those exercises. Never!”

“Daddy, that hurts,” she said, moaning.

“Do you hear me? Never. Do you hear me?”

“Yes, please, you’re hurting me.”

His anger faded and he saw the pathetic face of his darling daughter. Huge tears squirted from her eyes and trailed down her dusty face. He released his grip and set her down on the ground. She hugged herself and dropped to her knees.

Dom returned to the bed and stuffed their blanket into the bag they had already packed.

“Come,” Dom said. He walked away from the rising sun.

Diki didn’t respond. She fell in behind her father.

♣
   
♢
   
♡
   
♠

For breakfast, Diki faced away from her father and sniffled as she ate. She hardly spoke a word, giving only one-word answers to his questions.

♣
   
♢
   
♡
   
♠

At lunch, Dom apologized.

“I can’t explain why, but those monks frighten me. I’m scared to think what would happen to you if you kept doing those exercises the old man showed you.”

“Can we go now?” was Diki’s only response.

♣
   
♢
   
♡
   
♠

The next morning, Dom woke with a gasp. Diki wasn’t by his side. He exhaled slowly when he finally saw her little shape, a few arm-lengths away from him. They camped in the foothills, down from the cool mountain air, and the night was warm to his thick blood. Dom didn’t know if his daughter still held a grudge, or if she had just grown too hot next to him.

He had his answer when she stirred.

“Good morning, Daddy,” she said. “Will we get home today?”

A relieved smile spread across Dom’s face.

“Yes,” Dom said. “If we walk fast, I believe we’ll be home by afternoon. Perhaps it will be warm enough to go for a swim.”

“I want to go to sleep in my own bed,” Diki said. “I’m tired of sleeping on rocks and grass.”

“As am I.”

Dom was right. They reached their little village in the heart of the warm afternoon and walked by a lake full of summer swimmers. A couple of Diki’s friends waved to her from the water, but she kept walking. She wanted nothing more than to curl up in her own bed.

As his daughter slept, Dom cleaned the dust from Denpa’s little house.
 

Pemba arrived with the sweet evening breeze. Dom and Pemba sat in Denpa’s back yard and chatted while Diki napped.

“Tell me of your journeys. Did you achieve all your goals?” Pemba asked.

“I suppose. The monks do not say what they mean.”

“They lied to you?”

“I don’t know,” Dom said. He leaned back and looked at the sky. Low clouds swept across the sky. They would have damp fog tonight if the clouds descended any farther. “Tell me what they say about those monks in the mountains. Why have they withdrawn to the caves?”

“They seek enlightenment, right?” Pemba asked. “When they’ve studied everything they can down in the world, they climb as close as they can to the sky so they can continue their ascension, physically and then mentally.”

“Do you think that’s the whole reason?”

“I haven’t much thought about it. I’ve heard that they share secrets up there. They have secret rites, passed down between the monks. Nobody outside their cabal can know of their traditions.”

“They taught Diki exercises. She’s not a part of their cabal,” Dom said.

“She charmed them, I’m sure. Diki charms everyone,” Pemba said, with a broad smile. “She’s way too sweet to be the daughter of a lummox like you.”

“I hope you’re not suggesting that I’m not her father.”

“Forgive me,” Pemba said. “It was a poor choice of words. You know I adore you and Diki.”

Pemba let his apology settle, and then he brought the conversation back on track. “You seem troubled by what happened in the mountains, Dom. You went seeking peace, and you’ve come back with more turmoil. What happened?”

Dom described the trip, and meeting the monks, and how they’d hunted and lived off the land to trigger Dom’s memory.

“So you remember your childhood?” Pemba asked.

“A lot of it, yes. I grew up mostly on my own, in a forest. Eventually, I was tossed in a river and left for dead,” Dom said. His brief summary opened a deep line of questions from Pemba, which Dom answered as completely as he could. Some memories swelled back to fill in the gaps in his narrative. Others remained just out of reach, so Dom shook his head and apologized before moving on.

“Where was this forest? How did you come to where Denpa found you? Why did you lose your memory?”

“If you believe the silent monk, there was a lot in between.”

“How would he know?”

“He says he knew me then,” Dom said.

“This monk knew you after you were thrown in the river and before Denpa found you? So you were up in the mountains then, or did he know you somewhere else?”

“I don’t know for sure. I don’t remember any of that part. Well, maybe I do, but it’s very unclear. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“Nothing about your life has been bound by sense. You were a boy with no family and a terrible name. You became one of the richest men around, and married the most beautiful woman. Then you lost everything. Now you’re richer than before, but everyone considers you less than a peasant. You’re a living contradiction. Why would you expect your childhood to make any sense?”

“The monk said that I came to him a withered old traveler, but I left as a boy.”

Pemba sat for a moment and thought about this statement.
 

“Those monks do have quite a disorderly arrangement with aging.”

Dom fished around in his robes and untied a small bag which was tied around his waist. From the opening, he shook the piece of green candy.

“The monk gave me this candy. He said that when I was ready to remember the rest, this would help.”

“So eat it,” Pemba said, rising up. “What are you waiting for?”

Dom shook his head. “When I was talking with the monk, I lost several hours. What if Diki needs me and the candy has incapacitated me?”

“I’ll be here with Diki. I can stay the night. Who’s going to miss me? My maid? My cook?”

“No,” Dom said. “I cannot take the chance.”

“Daddy,” Diki said from the doorway, “my arm hurts.” She pointed to her upper arm where a deep purple bruise blossomed.

“I’m sorry, darling. Let me fix you some tea,” Dom said. He left Pemba in the back yard while he got Diki some tea and settled her back in her bed. When he returned, Pemba was smoking pungent tobacco from a long pipe.

“What happened to her arm?”

Dom sighed and rested his chin on his chest for a second.

“I grabbed her too hard. She was doing these special exercises the monks taught her, and I got angry.”

“Were they the same crazy moves that you did when you were a boy?” Pemba asked.

“Yes, I think so,” Dom said.
 

“I remember that. Denpa would catch you spinning, or raising your legs into the air, and he’d try to whip the life out of you. That’s the only thing I ever saw the old man get truly angry about. He would shout about black magic, and evil spells, and he’d whip you until you stopped doing the exercises.”

“And you rescued me,” Dom said. “Back then I couldn’t remember things for more than a few seconds at a time, but I remember that. You ran to Denpa and grabbed his whip.”

“Everyone was just watching him beat the little foreign boy, the damaged boy who couldn’t speak. I couldn’t let that continue.”

“You were just a boy yourself,” Dom said.

“So you saw Diki doing the same exercises and you beat her?” Pemba asked.

“No,” Dom said. “I didn’t beat her. I just squeezed her arm too hard. It was an accident.”

“Maybe you were with the monks, then. You knew the same exercises that the monks taught Diki, right?”

“I suppose.”

“Eat the candy and find out,” Pemba said. “I’ll eat the candy. Do you want to split it with me?”

“No, I can’t.”

H
E
TALKS
FOR
HOURS
and sometimes he just stands up and walks away. It gives me a chance to stand up, stretch, and rest my fingers for a bit. I’ve always been a decent typist, and I’m good at taking notes. Something in my brain just shuts off and I stop processing the information. It just flows right from my ears to my fingers. I wonder if court reporters experience the same thing.

When he comes back, he has a bowl of chocolate. I let a couple dissolve in my mouth. They sweeten up the coffee aftertaste lingering there.

“Did you ever eat the green candy?” I ask.

“I told you, I have to tell the story in my order,” he says.

“I know, I’m just curious. You have great recall of all this stuff, but you’re still playing it like there’s a big blank spot. I’m just wondering if Dom ever remembered that stuff, or if Bud did, or if you have yet to remember it.”

“You’ll find out as we continue.”

“Sure,” I say. I’m not done messing with him though. It’s not often that I have a chance to try to rattle my boss, and I relish the opportunity. I’ve been hanging onto a few pieces of information for a while, and I’m interested to see if they’re at all valid. “So are you going to talk about how you established a new trade route between Oman and India?” I ask. I keep the smile off my face, but when he looks in my eyes, I’m sure he sees it. He hasn’t talked about the time between growing up in the forest and when he became a plumber in Tibet, but he mentioned a couple of things that align with what I heard from a psychic. I’m not sure where she got her information, but it seems like it must have been a good source. So far, everything she told me works well with everything my boss has just asked me to record. I’m guilty of a little impishness. It’s fun to possess information you’re not supposed to know yet.

The good-natured gentle expression he always wears is gone. His mouth is a thin, flat line and the sparkle fades from his eyes. His eyes bore into me until I have to look away. I’ve clearly hit a nerve.

“Who do you work for?” he asks. His voice is toneless, like the words were scraped across concrete before they hit my ears.

“I work for you,” I say. “I was just joking around, trying to startle you. Apparently, it worked.”

“Tell me what you know or you won’t leave this room alive,” he says. He looks dead serious.

“Whoa, hey, slow down a bit,” I say. “You pay me to see around corners, remember? No fair training me to do a job and then getting angry when I do it well.”

His expression doesn’t soften, but he hasn’t done anything yet, so I can tell he’s processing my argument.

“I had a psychic last year. You probably don’t remember because I send you reports on a lot of psychics. For this one, I actually did field work. Ring a bell?”

“Perhaps,” he says.

“I told you in my report that she regurgitated a bunch of personal information, but didn’t bother to schedule a controlled test?”

“Okay.”

“Well some of that personal information was about you, I just didn’t write it down. If it was true, I didn’t think you would want a record of it. I talked to you about it last fall. You said you were busy and we should talk again. Do you remember that?”

“Yes. I remember.”

“So do you want me to bring up my notes, or are you going to threaten my life again?”