Murder on Christmas Eve

Imitiation, Bhikku, will not get you salvation. But sometimes, it is fun. And that should count for something.

-- The Diary, December 24th, 505 BC

The clock had just struck eleven when I heard the knock. It was an odd hour for a visit, but I was an odd man to visit. My mother calls me Donny, but to everyone else, I am d'Onald, Super Sleuth. I am a paid hound. Sometimes I track down criminals for people. Some other times, I track down people for criminals. Always, I do it for cash: fifty greenbacks per hour. Travel, food and Jack Daniels are extra. That's for the tracking down. Violence costs more: 250 per small bone, 300 for medium and 350 for large. Death is a coupla grand. Regular body disposal is five grand, premium is ten. Silence is free. In my line of business, you talk today, you sleep with the fish tomorrow. It's a tough life, but I'm a tough man.

The caller entered. He was thin. That was the first thing you noticed about him. The second thing was that he was stupid. Very, stupid. His age was difficult to tell: it was 34 years and anywhere from 21 and 24 weeks. He wore an English bowler hat (black), a waistcoat (lavender) and brown pants in the baggy style. The belt was was half a slot too loose, ditto the Rolex. The watch and the horn-rimmed monocle spelt R-I-C-H-D-A-D-D-Y. So did the smell of expensive wine. Funny folk, these rich people. They drink their stuff after first letting the horse piss in it. You might wonder why. I don't. In my line of business, you get paid to ask only the right questions. It's a curious life, but I'm not a curious man. This stupid rich man had probably lost a puppy, a gift from his aunt last Christmas. I prepared for a dog-hunt. Business had been dull, and the blonde was high-maintenance. It is a dog's life.

"What-ho, old bean! Are you the sniffer, or are you the sidekick?"

The voice was surprisingly gruff. I pictured Dick Cheney dressed up for Gay Pride day. This was going to be difficult, doing business with this imbecile. I eyed him coldly. The trick was to unbreak the ice. In my line of business, you make friends today, you make the obituary column tomorrow. It is a loner job, but I am a loner man.

"I am Detective d'Onald, Private Eye. Can I help you?"
"You can do better, my lad. You can save my life."
"Yeah?"
"Postively"
"Oh yeah?"
"Scout's honor, old man. May the pants come loose at the Annual Ball if I speak aught but the truth."
"Listen, bud! What say you cut out the lingo and cut to the chase? What duyya want?"
"Ah! The American spirit. Onward, ho, to business. Shoulder to the wheel. Eye on the ball." I growled. "Well, as you say. Business it is. Quite. You see, my man, I've lost my brother on these strange shores. The lad's gone. Vanished. Disappeared. Evaporated. Poof."

This nut's brother? This was going to be much worse than the gift puppy. I winced. Inwardly, of course. The face was a mask. In my line of business, you show emotion today, tomorrow they'll be scraping your small intestine off Canal Street.

"When didya last see him, this brother of yors?"
"Ah, the facts. The background. The pieces of the puzzle. The clues. You are a lark that knows its tune. Capital, old boy! Wait till I tell the blokes at the club."
"I said, when didya last see yo' brother?"
"It must have been last summer. I was at the races and the chap was cooing to Maggie. The lad was in love. Dangerous stuff, love, particularly if you are in the habit of writing poetry, as the flesh-and-blood was. Made a right nuisance of himself. Why, that day, he was saying Maggie's eyes cleft his soul in twain. Some rot about he was unable to decide whether they looked like olives from Eden lying on virgin Swiss snow, or black diamonds smouldering afloat the river of her soul's white fire. A lot of rot, if you ask me. If Maggie's eyes looked like anything at all, they looked like a dung-beetle thrashing about in a cube of rotting cheese. But try telling that to the lad. Do not get me wrong. I'm second to none when it comes to fraternal feeling and blood-thicker-than-water and all that, but I draw the line at sunsets. Sunsets ought to remind a chap of dinner. But put the cove within half a mile of a sunset, and he would spout rot about the colors of the bridesmaid's dress at an angel's wedding, after the best man had unwittingly spilled Pinot Rouge on the her clothes--the bridesmaid's, you see, not the bride's--while they were dancing to Chopin after an apple pie. Details, he used to say. That's what poetry is about. Anyhow, the lasses always right fell for it. Keep encouraging him to coo his ghastly stuff into their ears. Why, some even ask him to repeat the rot about dew and cherubim's tears.

Ah, but I digress. To the point, of course. L'espirit Americain! Quite. As I was saying, the lad was cooing to Maggie at the races. Was blocking my view, as a matter of fact. Didn't matter, of course. My mare was walking backwards. Would have finished third in the previous race. Say! What an idea. Might get ten bob for that one. Free association, my man. That's the word. The steaming ideas of the unconscious breaking out in wild waves of free association and what-not, just like an underground sewer suddenly flooding all of Picadilly. What-ho, for the Joyce of the stream of consciousness! Got that? Joyce of the stream of consciousness. Ha, ha! That's a killer."

"You mean," and here I was screaming. Second time in my career. The first time was when Black Jack Big Mac had his dog lick my ears for two hours to find out who wanted his real name so bad. I didn't sing, if you're wondering. In my line of business, you sing today, tomorrow a friendly jackknife might ask for an encore from your vocal chords. It's not a musical life, but I'm not a musical man. "You mean he has been lost for a year?"

"Why, you're an odd bird. A foul fowl, in fact. You think I'd wait one year before seeking trained help? The lad's only been lost three hours. We were both dipping into the same trough at seven just this evening, as a matter of fact."

"I thawt you said you haven't seen him since last summer?"

"Of course I haven't. Not the sort of chap you want to see very often. The beauty quota of our family ran out with yours truly. The cove's an eyesore. I try to look the other way. Feel like I've seen him too much already. I'm too much i'the sun, as Shakeaspeare would put it. You read Shakespeare? Capital chap. Full of beans. How was that again? Oh, that this too too solid flesh would melt and all that. Splendid bloke. Nothing quite like him to build the apetite. Particularly if your Butler is serving Bacon for dinner. Ha,ha! You got that? Butler serving Bacon for dinner. Old Gussie's crack. Capital chap, that Gussie. Bit sad about his cook. He eloped with the housekeeper, you know. Gussie sort of fancied her. Say, old boy, think you can find them too? I'll throw in five bob extra."

"Get out"

"I say, you have all you need, eh? What-ho! The scent's on the deer's tail, and the wolf's on the deer's trail. Let me say, my man, that I have the utmost admiration for your methods. The psychology of the individual. The missing link. The inconsistent detail. The dog that did not bark. The wrong color of tie. The snot in summer. The boils in winter. The nukes in Baghdad. Gaze not upon me with such astonishment, you old duffer. Not spring's brightest flower am I, but I am the Gardner at many Holmes. I may lack your spark, you sharp kettle of fish, but let no man say old B is slow to catch on. Why, it wasn't a .."

Abruptly, my trusty 0.38 Wesson let out a cough, and the sweet sound of silence filled the room. Business was still dull and the blonde still wanted a gift for Christmas. Some would have said this was not the season for killing clients. But there are times when a man has got to do what a man to do. Even if there's no cash in it. Christmas is mostly about internet shopping, but there is something in the program about Good Samaritan acts.

The night was cold, the fish were hungry, and the body was still warm. Did I tell you that down in the Hudson, they think of me as Robin Hood? I like to see the fish rush in when the body breaks the surface. Sometimes, I cut the limbs apart before throwing it in. Makes it easy for the fish to bite chunks off. Avoids competition and violence. It is a sentimental thing to do, but I'm a sentimental man.

A Tale of Two Loves

"A good monk loves all of Creation. A good woman loves just one man. Both erase and remould the self for their love. Neither makes a distinction between high and low, good and bad. And who is to say which love is the nobler emotion?"

-- The Diary, a Tuesday in January, 507 BC

They fell in love, the poet and the woman. It was a glorious spring. The gulmohar and the laburnum decked up in fire and gold just for them. Every morning, the sun rose only to add another day to their joy. The ducks swam out to greet the returning sun, one eye on their newborns bobbing clumsily up and down behind them, and another on the poet rushing to meet her after a night's unbearable separation. The lakeside dew glistened, and in its golden glimmer, it seemed to be laughing gently at the impatiently approaching poet.

Spring turned to summer. The laburnum and gulmohar shed their passionate colors and settled to a subtler green. The mangoes ripened, and so too did their love. It was sure-footed now, and free from passion, jealousy and fluctuation. They did not need physical closeness any more, but seemed to see each other reflected in all that was beautiful and noble in the world. When he saw a crying child or a playing dog, he thought of her and felt a sudden burst of joy he could hardly bear. When he hotly debated politics with friends or frowned fiercely while playing chess, she smiled and longed for them to be alone so she could smooth his unruly hair. When they went out to a play, she fretted about the door (had she locked it), the fire (had she put it out) and the mice (would they get the food again), till he asked her to shut up, the pressure of his hands on hers belying the harshness of his words. When he recited his poetry, she stood still, lost in the music and beauty of the words and scarcely even looking at him. He liked her best in these moments, for she seemed to love not just him, but the essence of him which was much larger than him.

And then it all ended. War was afoot, men were needed, and poets in love weren't exempt. Bravely the poet went forth to fight, foolishly he charged, and easily he was captured. Months passed, the war ended. Some more months passed, and cold officialdom indifferently released him. Eagerly, the poet made his way back to his hometown and went straight to her house.

She wasn't there. They told him she had married another man. Everyone had thought him dead. The poet was struck dumb. His shock slowly became anger. He rushed to her husband's house, barely knowing what he wanted or hoped to achieve.

She opened the door and let out a cry of surprise, joy and some dismay. Her husband came out, and immediately understood. She had told him about the poet. He welcomed the poet and offered to leave them alone. They both refused. The husband asked the poet to stay for dinner. The poet refused, but she insisted and he relented.

The poet soon saw her husband was a good man, but a prosaic trader, a stranger to poetry and beauty. His grief soon turned to pity for her. What was she without her love of beauty, and what joy would this man give her when he couldn't fathom the core of her being? He was ashamed of his earlier self-pity. He had only lost his love, but hadn't she lost her soul's craving? He watched her keenly, a mellow sorrow in his heart. He expected to see a defeated pain in her eyes.

But what he saw made him recoil in disgust. She looked at the poet with warmth, but when she turned to her husband, the old tender glow lit up her eyes. She listened to the poet talk about his imprisonment, tears welled up in her eyes, and her voice broke as she replied. But when her husband spoke of the most trivial business matters, she seemed to come to life. She asked questions and probed. She chided her husband for his ignorance of basic economics and mocked his clumsy account-keeping, but her tone was playful and her voice quivered with a passion that once could be ignited by poetry alone. It was as though her soul were a harp, and someone had changed its strings so it now resonated to a lower, earthier note.

The poet left her house late that evening and the town early the next morning. He couldn't bear to stay on and see the lake and the birds and the trees and the plays, recalling what they had had felt earlier, and knowing that she probably didn't even remember anymore, and was indifferent to whatever she did remember.

He wandered aimlessly for a few days. His initial bewilderment turned first to bitterness and then contempt. He saw that what she had felt for him and for his poetry, like what she felt now for her husband and his business, was not love. It was shallow sentimentality, mere animal delight in the self. Like an amateur's copy of a Master's painting, it was pleasing to the senses but devoid of spirit and soul. His contempt slowly turned outward. He saw that most human relations were but base self-gratification. Art and poetry were an elaborate ritual of delusion, designed to keep man from seeing the pettiness of it all.

The poet withdrew from the world. He stopped writing. He wandered far and wide. He learnt to medidate. Slowly, his contempt for the world withered away. He almost forgot her. He passed into ever deeper states of meditation, and often lost consciousness of the self for days together. But the self eventually did return, and with it came emptiness. He had gone deeper and deeper into himself and while he had escaped the coldness of cynicism, he hadn't found the warm fire of life.

One day, he chanced to see a monk seated atop a rock on a hillock. It was early May. A bird was flying in and out of dense tree-cover, probably fetching food for its babies. The monk was watching it intently, as though it were a play whose end he couldn't wait to find out. There was something about his pose that broke the poet's resolve. He approached the monk, sat at his feet, and without any preface, calmly narrated his story. When he finished, he looked up at the monk, childishly hoping that he would show him the way with just a word or gesture. The monk's eye shone with empathy, but he said nothing.

The poet stayed with the monk. They both roamed the country, never staying anywhere for long. They seldom talked. They medidated alone, hardly seeing each other for days together. But like soldiers, there was a brotherhood that tied them. Often, they stopped at villages, and while the monk preached, the poet watched. The monk liked to play with children. The poet watched with an amused smile. The poet sometimes wrote again. He sang about the monk's love of all Creation. He sang of the empathy that made his heart tremble with every passing whiff of breeze, as though he were spring's tenderest new leaf. The monk listened and said, "I don't understand poetry. It must be good, since you say so." But his eyes twinkled as though he were playing with children again.

The poet observed the monk carefully. It seemed to the poet that liberation, the spark of life, which he so desparately craved, came easily to the monk. Perhaps, thought the poet, he couldn't conquer the self because he tried too hard. Or perhaps, he hadn't found peace because he did not really want it, deep down. He was still seeking self-fulfillment in some subtle way. He mentioned this to the monk, but the monk merely smiled and waved it away.

Suddenly, a storm approached. The poet and the monk took refuge in a village. They barely survived. When the storm cleared, the two saw that the village had been devastated. Hardly a house remained standing. Children had died, cattle swept away. People were too shaken by death to rebuild life. The monk gathered the villagers around. He wanted to talk about the Illusion of earthly existence and salvation through the end of attachment. Instead, he ended up talking about rebuilding, preserving those who had survived. The crowd was mobilized. The monk led the reconstruction, guiding the villagers, tending their children. He even lent a hand at manual labour, though he wasn't any real use. If the monk was the spirit of the reconstruction, the poet was its heart, muscles and legs. His poet's heart had been touched by the suffering around him. He was everywhere at the same time, exhorting, singing, cheering and even putting to use things he had learned in the army. In a few weeks, all the houses had been rebuilt.

The poet and the monk left. They had been walking a few hours, when the monk pointed to a tree that had half fallen, but now seemed to be growing almost horizontally, its roots hungrily gripping the earth like the greedy sinewy arms of a mountain climber. The monk said, "Strange, isn't it, how life changes shape and breaks its own rules to cling on somehow? Maybe that's what they call love, the complete forgetting of the self in the business of life itself. Why, we haven't medidated in nearly two months, and yet I hardly noticed." He smiled, and went his way to medidate.

Startled, the poet looked after the monk. Maybe he had wanted to solve the mystery, or maybe he had just made a casual remark. The poet looked at himself. Maybe he had finally found the spark in the village, or maybe he had just lost himself in the moment. He thought of her. Maybe she had been a sentimental man-hunter, or maybe she had known the Truth all along. Who was to know what really happened? And at any rate, what did the facts matter?

With an unspeakable joy welling up in him, the poet started his search. He wasn't looking for Liberation or Love. He just wanted a quiet place to medidate in.

---

Note to Comrade WS^5: This stinks. You told me so. I know. But temptation, it's a bummer. You know?

Note to any other reader: Strange but true, this meandering piece actually had a point. I lost it somewhere along the way, but I had more or less pilfered it straight off The Darling by Anton Chekhov. Read the original. It'll be worth your time.