• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 103 0

had been embalmed and stuffed to look lifelike or had had their pelts removed and stretched out upon the walls under a forest of antlers and the mounted heads of glass-eyed stags. I tried to avoid looking up at them: I did not enjoy the sensation of being watched, accusingly I thought. 'The men in the family were great hunters,' my guide said, as if explanation were needed, and I could detect neither apology nor pride in his voice because he kept it as low as if we were in a mausoleum. I decided it was merely respectful so I too tried to look respectful but must have failed: my father had also been a hunter in his days and I had not liked to look on his trophies or hear about his exploits which sounded boastful and made my mother cringe. I probably looked merely blank as I stared at the scalloped and scaly skin of a crocodile or of a python, mottled and moth-like, one resembling broken rubble, the other faded netting. I turned to the clerk, who had his hands behind his back and his head uplifted to these specimens he was set here to guard, and indicated I wished to hurry on. But, before leaving this chamber of death, I had to pass a large, pot-like object by the door. From its folds and wrinkles and the massive flattened toenails, I discerned it to be the foot of an elephant. In case I missed the point of this dismemberment, some umbrellas had been placed in it, their cloth covering frayed and their tin ribs exposed.

Unfortunately the next chamber was one of stuffed birds and they did little to improve my spirits. If anything, the glass eyes set in grey sockets were even more accusing and I was certain that their faded, iridiscent feathers were creeping with parasitic life.

The only living creatures visible in these chambers were the spiders that spun their webs to make shrouds for the birds and the geckoes that probably fed on the spiders. I saw one lizard flattened against the wall, immobile, a pulse beating under its nearly transparent skin to show it was just waiting for us to leave, for night to fall, so it could come to life again. In one doorway, a gecko caught by the slam of the door had left its fragile skeleton splayed against the plaster like a web spun by one of the spiders, to stay till it peeled.

'Is this,' I demanded, 'is this the young master's collection?' If there was sarcasm in my tone, it was intentional.

My guide, proving aware of it, quickly responded, 'No, no, no. No, this was left to him by his ancestors. Now we will go to see his collection.' And, to my huge relief, we came out into a corridor completely bare of trophies, one side opening onto a courtyard where a marble goddess stood in the shallow basin of a waterless fountain. Her limbs were broken at the joints and lichen had crept up her sandalled feet to the hem of her robe. This stretch of corridor evidently led to the wing that held the items sent to the estate by the absconding master in containers that had created such a stir in the district and a legacy for the inheritors—if any.

And now my guide produced the ring of keys from behind his back because we had come to a door that was locked. Choosing one extraordinarily long key from the ring, he inserted it into the lock and turned it with a great sense of drama. I followed him in with some trepidation and impatience: how many more hunting trophies and murdered spoils was I to be shown? The heat of the day was gathering in these closed, unventilated rooms, and although it must have been noon by now, there was very little light here.

Except, I was astonished to find, what the collection itself radiated. The chamber we had entered was hung, draped, laid and overlaid with rugs in the splendid colours of royalty—plum, wine, mulberry and pomegranate—woven into intricate patterns. I hesitated to step on one, they were surely precious and, besides, had not been touched in ages by hand, still less by foot. Only a raja might recline on one, with his rani, while listening to the music of sitar and sarod, tabla and tanpura. I could imagine these invisible potentates and pashas lifting goblets