Main Road Revisit
There is a sodium moon at Thana Dora crossing that lights up every evening at six.
Under its corrosive glow, two men passed each other in the night.
One stops and in that terrible pause, asks himself: where have I seen that face before.
Wheeling abruptly he hurries after the receding figure, plucks at a sleeve. Excuse me, do you have a light.
There is some urgency in the question.
The other man turns, smiles a slow chemical smile. His bones jut under a black coat of seedy elegance. His is the angular grace of the stalker.
You already know who I am. Here, a light. For your cigarette and for you to to see me more clearly by.
Recognition scuttles across your face like a crab.
It does not matter anymore, for we are travellers and I have followed you down the centuries to this, the beginning of the end.
In the flare of the Ronson, your yellow smile twists uneasily in rememberance.
Do you remember the Iron King.
Do you remember the frown of the Damsang Fort over Pedong.
Do you remember Chel.
I was much bigger then: I could eat a whole bullock in a morning. It was foretold that because of this my body would slowly turn into iron. Afterwards, I would rule the world.
The ferrous dusk crept up from my feet.
Your masters trembled. Even as they sat in secret council, my scrotum, belly, my sternum, my ribs, arms, all hardened into steel, armouring me like a black rhinocerous.
They sent in vassalage, as a peace offering, the Three Assasins bearing white scarfs and fermented wine. To serve me; to stop me.
You carried a byanphok then, doctor, you were seldom without it. You were renowned for your deadly surgery then as you are known for your compassion now.
With your two friends you served me faithfully for a year. A year almost loo late. Only my neck and head still remained of flesh and bone.
Like the gods, I was almost invincible.
As you stand here on Main Road linked to me by flame, the fateful night comes back to you like a surge.
One of you held the basin.
One of you poured the water.
You lifted the black blade behind the curtain, your mouth bloody with paan. My hair, long, wet, straight.
The byanphok is a swift soughing arc.
My headless body leaps of its own violition about the room. Great crimson patches on the ceiling.
You had a good memory then, doctor. You do not forget the monks´ warning — let not the head join the trunk. Gibbering the ancient mantras, you snatch it up in a bag.
Do you remember:
i the flight through the avenue of pines;
ii the clank of my decapitated body in hot pursuit:
iii hurling my head in the grinning whirlpools;
iv the white-fanged waters of Chel;
v a metal carcass scrambling down the banks in silent despair.
The other Assasins intercept me, I am drawn and quartered and drawn and quartered again into a thousand trembling pieces until the very stones above the ford are bubbling with blood.
My eyes watchedyou through the waters. They watch you now through flame.
For years after, travellers coming from your country learned to dread the crossing at Chel. Some of them survived.
Then the monks came, red robed, smelling of rancid butter, carved magic runes into the rocks around the ford. The wayfarers chanted the spells before crossing — I was thwarted.
I bided my time, doctor, I did. Watched and waited down the years that became decades that became centuries.
Three years ago I caught up with the two Assassins — hosted their heads in the park one gray morning.
They called it political killings. I prefer that.
But for you old friend, I have something more… special.
Come let us walk you and I down Main Road.
Where I break upon you like the flood filling this moment with everyone of your memories. Until it comes to you with unbereable clarity that one does not love, one only remembers.
And next I am gone, receding bit by bit from your head bleeding you of all recollection while you stand helplessly like a lake emptying in the sea.
For you can do nothing about it. Except savour the slow and exquisite agony that you are losing all of your mind.
As for the pain, it will stay long after I´ve gone, for no one forgets pain.
And I cannot bring myself to bid you farewell.
The next day I lunched with a friend, a learned professor, who assures me that there is no legend of the Iron King of the Lepchas. He adds that the Bhutanese built the Damsang Fort only in the last century.
Perhaps he is right.