The Sultan's Tigers (13 page)

Suresh pointed out the halfway mark, an old tree covered in red paint. Only a hundred and fifty steps to go.

Above, awaiting us, I could see the high walls enclosing the temple, and the decorations on the structure itself, hundreds of statues standing in lines, all the way up to the lopped-off triangle at its peak. As we came closer, I could see that the statues were figures, but I couldn't make out whether they were gods, people, or animals.

Beggars were sitting on the stairs, holding out their hands, asking for coins. One was blind, his eyes milky-white, his hand reaching in my direction, his grubby fingers fluttering through the air. Another had no legs, the stumps sticking out of her frayed trousers, angled on the ground like two bits of wood. “Money,” she moaned. “Please, sir, give me money.”

I wished I could help, but I didn't have any cash. I muttered an apology and hurried after Suresh. Uncle Harvey would have been proud of me. Was he really right? Wouldn't it be better to give money to one or two beggars, even if you couldn't pay them all? You're never going to solve everyone's problems, but shouldn't you help one or two if you could? As we went past more and more beggars, some missing limbs, others blind or deformed, I felt worse and worse about having nothing to give them. Once we found the tiger and sold it, I'd come back here and hand out some money, sharing my good fortune with these beggars.

At the top of the steps, we came to a high gate, the entrance to the temple.

“You must take off your shoes,” said Suresh.

“Why?”

“This is the rule.”

We placed our shoes on a wooden rack. Alongside the rows of other people's grubby leather sandals and plastic flip-flops, my sneakers looked very white, clean, and modern.

“Will anyone take them?” I asked Suresh.

“No. This is temple. There is no stealing.”

I hoped he was right. I didn't want to go home barefoot.

We walked under another doorway and into a large, square courtyard with gates on all four sides leading to different parts of the temple. Hundreds of people were milling around. Most of them were staring at me. That's what it felt like, anyway. Maybe they didn't get many foreigners here, or especially foreign kids. I saw some of the sadhus that Uncle Harvey had told me about. Old men in yellow or white robes, their heads shaved, sitting cross-legged on the floor, chatting and laughing.

There were statues everywhere: attached to the walls, carved on the pillars, clinging to the tower, looking down on us. There might have been thousands of them, all different shapes and sizes. As far as I could tell, they were all supposed to be human, or semi-human. Some had the heads of animals. Many more had extra arms and legs popping out of their bodies, waggling and waving. A few were white, but most of them had been painted the most garish colors, bright pinks and greens and yellows and blues, as if they'd put on their craziest clothes for a fancy-dress party.

I followed Suresh across the courtyard and through another gateway. A man blocked our way, wearing nothing but a little strap of white cloth around his middle. He grinned toothlessly at me and stretched out his hand, begging for money. I dodged past and sprinted after Suresh.

We came to a square pool with steps leading down to the murky water. Men stood at one end, women at the other, splashing water over themselves. The women went in fully clothed, their saris clinging to their skin, while the men wore nothing more than underpants. The pool was big enough, and must have been deep enough, but no one was actually swimming.

A couple of monkeys were playing in the trees. One of them jumped down and scampered across the courtyard, heading for a pile of bags. His little head turned frantically from side to side, checking to see if he had been noticed. He slid his paw inside one of the bags and yanked out a banana.

An old man waddled out of the pool, water dripping down his legs, shouting and waving his arms, but the monkey had already raced away and now was high above him, squatting on a branch, peeling the banana. He ate the whole thing and, as if he couldn't resist one final insult, tossed the peel into the pool.

I would have been happy to watch the monkeys for hours, but Suresh was already walking across the courtyard to a doorway guarded by four men. They were dressed in simple white uniforms and carrying thick bamboo poles, about the length of their arms. They watched us carefully as we went past, as if they were searching for weaponry or evil intent.

One of the guards tried to stop me, but Suresh came back and spoke to him in their own language, and I was allowed inside.

Moving from the brightness of the sunlit courtyard to the gloom of the temple, I was blinded for a few seconds, but my eyes soon adjusted and I could see we were walking through a large, square room. The walls were covered in carvings and several women were sitting on the floor, chopping fruit and putting the pieces in wooden bowls. Suresh handed a few coins to one of the women and took two bowls. He gave one to me.

“For the gods,” he said.

“The gods like fruit?”

“The gods must eat. Come, we will find them.”

The fruit looked like a cross between a mango and a melon, and smelled delicious. I wanted to try some. Would the gods mind if I nibbled their dinner?

I felt bad Suresh had bought my fruit. When I got my hands on some money, I'd have to pay him back.

We came to an elephant. He was chained to a thick pillar. Bright colors had been painted over his tough gray skin. He was standing so still that I thought he must be an amazingly realistic statue, then he turned to look at us, blinked his big sad eyes, and stretched out his trunk, the soft end twitching and reaching for our hands.

Next we passed a man standing on one leg. His other leg was bent back and tucked into his groin. I've tried standing on one leg for as long as possible and I can usually last a couple of minutes, but this guy was rock solid. He didn't even wobble.

We went through another door and crossed a room paneled with pale wood, then around a dark corridor and under an archway, and came to the heart of the temple, the innermost room, a quiet place bathed by candlelight and sweet incense. Only one other person was in there, an old bald man who was sitting cross-legged on the floor. I didn't know if he was a priest or a worshiper or some kind of guard, but he gave us a big grin and clasped his palms in front of his chest. Suresh made the same gesture back again.

“Is namaste,” he explained to me in a whisper.

“Namaste?”

“Yes. You try.”

I placed my palms together as if I was praying and bowed my head.

The bald guy grinned and made the same gesture back to me.

“Good,” said Suresh.

We turned to face the heart of the temple, a black rock glistening with oil or water, surrounded by garlands of flowers and thirty little wooden bowls filled with an offering of milk, honey, sliced mango, or peeled and chopped bananas.

Candle smoke trailed upward, curling and twisting past more orange and yellow flowers hanging from jutting-out rocks, past more statues, past more carvings of cross-legged men with animal heads and dancing women with four arms and four legs, and up toward the top of the temple, where a small hole let in a thin shaft of blinding sunlight.

As my eyes adjusted to the light, I noticed hundreds of niches carved into the walls. Some were filled with yet more flickering candles or little wooden bowls of offerings. Others held statues of muscular men and curvaceous women and impossible gods with plump bellies and writhing arms.

In the middle of the room there appeared to be a hole in the ground, covered with a few old bricks and some pieces of timber. More candles sat there and more bowls, too, filled with fruit.

“Come,” said Suresh.

I pointed at the hole. “What's that?”

“For the god,” he said. “For eating.”

“No, not the bowls. That hole. What's down there?”

“It is the home of the god.”

“He lives down there?”

“It is his home. Here, come. You must put that down.”

He went forward and placed his bowl on the timber, then gestured for me to do the same.

I placed my bowl on the ground.

“Now, pray.”

Suresh kneeled, clasped his hands together, and closed his eyes.

I'm not used to praying. I don't usually go to church. I wasn't even sure what to do. So I just copied Suresh, kneeling like him, putting my hands together, and closing my eyes. I felt silly. I thought everyone would be looking at me, and I opened my eyes a couple of times to check, but no one seemed to be at all interested in what I was doing. I closed my eyes again and wondered what to pray for. I probably should have prayed for Suresh's mom, but I'd never even met her, so that would have felt strange. I really wanted to pray that something bad happened to Marko, but I thought gods probably didn't like those sorts of prayers. So I prayed for Uncle Harvey's legs instead. I prayed that we'd find the tiger and sell it for a load of money so he could pay off his debts. I felt a little guilty, praying for money, so I added a promise of my own.
If we do get the money,
I said to myself,
I'll give some of it away. Some will go to Suresh for his mom. And some will go to the beggars that I keep seeing in the street.
Of course I'd keep some for myself too. I wanted a new bike and a new computer. But I wouldn't keep it all for myself. I couldn't imagine anyone was listening to me, but if they were, that was my promise, and that was my prayer.

I half opened my eyes and snuck a look at Suresh. He was still kneeling, eyes tight shut, his lips moving. I didn't want to disturb him, but I was beginning to feel uncomfortable. I wasn't used to kneeling for such a long time. Trying not to make any noise, I shifted my legs, sat down fully, and looked around. I stared at the hole in the ground. It was like something from a movie: I could imagine an ogre or a troll sneaking up and snuffling up all the fruit in the wooden bowls.

Wait a minute. A hole in the ground. A shrine. Could it be . . . ?

Why not?

The more I thought about it, the more sense it made.

I waited for Suresh to open his eyes. Then I pointed at the hole. “Does the god ever come out of there?”

“For special moments only.”

“Like when?”

“I don't know.”

“When was the last time?”

“I don't know.”

“You've never seen him?”

“No.”

“Have you ever been down the hole?”

“No!” Suresh laughed, his eyes wide, as if I'd suggested something disgusting.

“So no one goes down there?”

“No one.”

“Never?”

“Never.”

Hmm. Interesting.

The god lived in the hole. No one went down there. No one knew what you might find down there. Which meant that if something had been down there for a couple hundred years, no one would know anything about it.

I still had Horatio's letter
in my pocket. Making an excuse to Suresh, I moved to the back of the room and stood under a candle, using its light to read a few lines.

 

To my astonishment, I found a small shrine on the top of the hill. Someone had indeed been here before me. India is full of such places. The Hindoos have the strangest love of bizarre gods.

This pagan shrine was no more than a few golden bricks built around a hole in the ground. A dried-up well, perhaps, or a shelter from the sun, over which some Hindoo had placed this shrine and come to worship one of his strange gods.

I had already wrapped my tiger in my second-best shirt. Now I pushed aside the bricks and lowered myself into the hole.

I found a place there to hide the tiger. No one will find him. No one but you, my sweet wife.

 

This was it, I thought. It had to be. When my great-etc.-grandfather parked his horse at the bottom of the hill, there hadn't been a line of steps leading to the top, let alone a temple full of pilgrims and statues, but things change a lot in two hundred years. This was the hole. This was the shrine. And if I was lucky, the tiger would still be down there, just where Horatio put it.

I looked at the statues on the walls and the bowls around the altars and the people in here with me, the pilgrims, the priests, whoever they were, and tried to imagine how I was going to get down that hole. Obviously I couldn't just climb down there. How could I distract their attention for long enough to pull the bricks and timbers aside, then slither into the hole, carrying a flashlight or a candle, find the tiger, and bring it out again?

I should go back to the restaurant and talk to Uncle Harvey. He'd know what to do.

Of course it would be much better to get the tiger without his help.

But how could I do that?

I could wait till I was the only person in the temple. They'd have to shut it up at night. I could hide somewhere. A cupboard. A bathroom. Then I could sneak out once the temple was empty and grab the tiger.

But I was the only white guy in the place. I stood out a mile off. How was I supposed to hide?

“Mister Tom?”

Suresh was standing before me. He'd brought a friend over, a guy who was barely taller than me but must have been twenty or thirty years older. He was bare-chested and wore nothing but a white cloth wrapped around his waist like a skirt. A piece of string ran diagonally across his chest. Some dirt was dabbed on his forehead. What did it mean?

“This is Ram,” said Suresh. “He is one chief priest here. You have questions, he will answer.”

“Hello, Mister Tom,” said Ram.

“Hi. Nice to meet you.” I smiled in a way that I hoped made me look like a goofy tourist who hardly knew how he had gotten here, not a thief who was trying to work out how to steal the temple's most precious possession. “You work here, right?”