Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
listlessly with my fingers. I do not know when I noticed the rajkumar
standing silently over me. He had a way of appearing without noise
or warning, and he watched me eat with interest, as if observing a pet,
without saying a word, even in response to my greeting. At length I
told him that if this was a bad time to have come, if he was too busy, I
could always come back later in the year . . .
He smiled a rather deranged and lopsided smile at the suggestion,
then said, 'You know, if I didn't want you to leave this place, you
never could.' With that, he vanished in the direction of the royal
ladies quarters.
He was dead right, I decided, feeling distinctly uneasy. I was not
remotely hungry now, and I left the thing on my plate, fully expecting
it to jump up and run off howling into the night. I went back to my
bed to read. This proved difficult beneath the creaking fan and a
haze of flies, but I tried to lose myself in the mystery novel. Before
long, I began to suspect the behaviour of the handsome gamekeeper.
When I awoke, I noticed two things: the fan and light no longer
functioned, and something red-hot, with teeth, was gnawing its
way through my bowels: I needed a toilet -
fast
. My watch claimed
it was 2:30 a.m. The palace lay unnaturally dark and eerily silent
around me. Oblivious of anything beyond the searing pain down
below, I padded back through the labyrinth of corridors in my
underpants. I should have unravelled a thread on the way in . . .
Once I made it beyond the
purdah
quarters a high-wattage moon
illumined the stone maze sufficiently for me to grope my way back
to the rajkumar's personal bathroom. I wondered what everyone
else used. Finally squatting down over its pit, feet in the slimy
footprints on either side, I stifled banshee howls as a torrent of what
felt like lava almost propelled me through the roof. Not even the
incessant patter of very tiny feet all around could disturb the relief
earned through enduring the alternating bouts of agony.
What happened next, however, definitely did: I heard the heavy
door scrape open and saw the bulky silhouette of the deaf-mute
manservant peer in, as if searching for something. His eyesight
obviously wasn't in much better shape than his other senses, because
he soon withdrew and I heard the door close. This was followed by
the sound of a massive bolt being drawn across the outside.
