Devil's Rock - Chris Speyer [53]
‘Why write music on a bracelet?’ Zaki asked.
‘Probably decoration. In India we learn to play drums by chanting the rhythms, not by reading music. Ah ha! But you need a demonstration!’ Mr Dalal sprung up from the table and rubbed his hands together, delighted with the opportunity to perform. ‘I will show you.’
‘You might ask our guest if he wants a demonstration!’ protested Mrs Dalal.
‘Of course he wants a demonstration,’ declared her husband, selecting a long, double-ended drum from the collection in the corner of the room and slinging it around his waist.
‘No stopping him now!’ Anusha laughed.
‘You must excuse me, I am really a tabla player but, since I think the bracelet is from Sri Lanka, I am going to play the yak bera. It’s the drum they use to accompany the Devil Dances.’
Mr Dalal began to chant and as he chanted his hands flicked and slapped and tapped the tightly stretched skins on the ends of the long drum, echoing back the rhythms and tones of the chanted syllables: ‘Dhin-dhin,’ he chanted. ‘D-hin-d-hin,’ sang the drum. ‘Dha-ge-ti-ra-ki-ta, ta-na, ka-ta, dha-ge, ti-ra-ki-ta . . .’ Faster flew the hands, faster and faster; driving the rhythm into ever more complex configurations, drawing out deep bass notes over which exploded cascades of high, staccato beats that he struck from the very edges of the skins. To Zaki it seemed as if a whole band of drummers had entered the room; it was impossible that one person could produce the intricate crossings of rhythms and tones.
Quietly, Mrs Dalal rose and opened one of the larger instrument cases. She lifted out her cello and her bow and tightened the bowstring. Soon, the cello’s sonorous voice joined the cavorting dance of the drum, filling the whole room with its resonance. Sitting a few feet away, it seemed to Zaki that the cello’s strings were within his body and that every note, every change of pitch and rhythm, vibrated through every living cell.
Now a third voice joined the other two and Zaki turned to see that Anusha had her violin. The fiddle’s bow rocked and sawed across the strings, sending a flurry of notes to skip lightly around the cello’s measured steps. Then the cello swept its counter melody between and around the fiddle and drum. Zaki was flying again, but not as a seagull, not as a hawk. The music lifted and carried him. Occasionally, he would become aware of the musicians, see the looks that passed between them, and he understood how this family had developed its wordless method of communication.
Looking up, Zaki’s eyes fell again on the grotesque mask that hung on the wall. Now all the light seemed to drain from the rest of the room and the colours of the mask to glow with greater intensity in the surrounding gloom. As Zaki watched, the eyes of the mask bulged, swelling out from their sockets like boils about to burst. The protruding teeth twisted into a ghastly grin, the nostrils flared and a snake wormed its way out of one ear and proceeded, tongue flicking, to coil itself around the hanging head. The cacophony of voices that Zaki had first heard in the cave, and then again in Curlew’s cabin, burst in, drowning out the music; a press of faces, some painted, all streaked and shining with sweat, crowded in around the grinning mask. Zaki’s nose, mouth and lungs filled with the choking smell of wood smoke. Then the awful voice that had first growled the name ‘Rhiannon’ two nights before on the dark street spoke again: ‘No! You will not drive me out. Time for you to die!’
Zaki would have screamed if someone else hadn’t screamed first. The sudden, shrill cry broke the spell and all was bright and normal in the room, except that Anusha was pointing excitedly at the bracelet on the table and shouting, ‘Look, everyone! Look!’
The etched inscriptions on the rim of the bracelet, instead of being dark lines and curls, now shone as if lit from within, shone with the intensity