Part 7 (1/2)

”I shall keep this one,” I said

Hol the sketches, threw them into the fireplace I felt my eyes mist over as I watched the rice paper curl black, the fla it to ash

”At least tell rimly, as I handed it over to him

”You have chosen well, Watson, if I say so myself It is indeed probably the best of the lot Less stiff than the others, and the detail is quite clear,” he remarked clinically

”The teu Narayan,” he continued ”It lies a few miles north and east of Katmandu in Nepal, atop a hill It has rarely been visited by Europeans Your choice has historical significance as well, since the te This may be as accurate a portrait of it as we shall have There is also a tale concerning it which you may want to add to your Oriental chronicles”

His pipe refused to light and, putting it down to rest, he s that he had done while abroad

”You owethe sketches”

”My hu you undue pain In any case, the incidents occurred shortly after the banishhost from Katmandu”

I watched him closely and saw the by now faleaether at the tips in front of his face, and the slight pause as he ordered the events through which he had lived

”For a time, I continued to live in Nepal as Pandit Kaul of Kashun to wear thin, however, after I aided the Maharajah, albeit indirectly, in rounding up and forcibly re criminal elements that had been allowed to nest in his country over the previous decade I took great satisfaction in this Like stray wild dogs, these criminals were collected and taken in chains to the Indian border town of Raxaul, where they were released upon taking a soleain upon pain of death A new edict was then pron visitors permitted to enter was further limited, and almost entirely to those who had official business with the Government”

”Shortly after this, Mr Richardson announced his departure with his daughter for England Lucy had prevailed upon hiain his health, and she also hoped for a reconciliation between her parents, despite the gravity of their past difficulties Once the Viceroy authorised the Resident's leave, father and daughter left for Calcutta”

With no business pressing, said Holmes, he prepared his own departure His next destination was to be Benares, followed then perhaps by Calcutta He was slow to leave the comfort of Gorashar's hotel and the beauty of the Katmandu Valley, however It was already late April, and he had no great desire to experience the torrid heat of the Indian plains Gorashar therefore easily prevailed upon hier, at least until the advent of the cooling monsoon rains, since Gorashar wished to show him some of the artistic treasures of the Valley that he had not yet seen himself Gorashar had been so away fro need to e to its chief shrines

Except for these visits to the countryside, Holmes's own days were idle He had only his edition of Petrarch with him, and the few libraries in Katmandu contained little of interest He had exhausted Gorashar's small shelf of books on Nepal He continued to visit the pandits at the Residence, however, and it was they who suggested that on his tour with Gorashar he collect rubbings of the ancient Sanscrit inscriptions of the Valley And so, Gorashar, and Holh the Valley to Balambu, Kisipidi, Dhapasi, and other ancient sites which had hitherto never come to historical notice

”I had no idea that you have any knowledge of Sanscrit,” I interrupted ”How truly foolish I feel nohen I think of the rees was nil”

Holain took up his recalcitrant pipe and sht, Watson, when you made your assessment At the time that we n language for that er know it Your use of the present tense, therefore, is inappropriate”

”But surely, Holotten it all,” I retorted

”It is hardly a , Watson, for this implies a mental action uncontrolled by the will and reason As you know, I am a brain The rest of me is a mere appendix, and it is the brain that I must serve And I must serve it well It would be foolish, as I have often remarked in the past, to assume that the brain is a place of infinite space A better ie is of a small atelier, where the craftsman or artist keeps the tools necessary for the work at hand The rest he must store in the recesses of the ht deer known in the ordinary sense of the word, but reappear only when use is i of crime in metropolitan London, and so it is stored safely with other Asiatic subjects in the remote instance that it need be resurrected In the Orient, however, one would be foolish to attee fresh for use, and so I cultivated it, until lobe where it was totally unknown and therefore quite useless”

I was about to co back and forth, his hands together behind his back, a slight smile on his lips as he recalled the tale that he continued to narrate to u Narayan, stopping first at Bhaktapur, an ancient town some nine miles from Katmandu which he had not previously visited He found its preservation, in both its architectural and human aspects, most remarkable It is a town, he observed, that preserves in precise detail a medieval way of life now lost in aled for theht there at the house of a close relative, a Taladhar an the walk frou

The teins north of Bhaktapur Holmes found it a pleasant walk, and they reached the teht Gorashar spoke al Holmes in detail what he knew of its history

”Here we shall see the oldest inscription in Nepal, one that has not been read fully as yet,” he said ”It is perhaps fifteen hundred years old and records the reat and religious man by the name of Dhar to Gorashar, and no one knohy, but it is still believed by some that he was killed by his wife and son, Manadeva, who immediately succeeded hied the 's brother But the full truth was not known

”As Gorashar spoke, Watson,” said Holmes, ”I of course became most interested, since I now had before me a possible murder, a royal one, that had not been resolved for fifteen hundred years Perhaps, I thought, I should solve it”

”And add it to your sensational annals,” I said laughing ”I never cease to be aht ia, or St Louis”

Holrinned at my last remark, but then he said almost somberly, ”On the face of it, one can indeed feel a certain astonishment at how similar cases arise But upon reflection, Watson, one sees that, whatever the tiood and evil are linked in some inextricable way They are perhaps drawn to each other by some third force, the nature of which is inevitable but barely discernible One can only hope that in the battles that ensue, the forces of good are strong enough to prevail Having chosen to do what I do, I have found it only natural that cases fall across my path, whether from antiquity or the present All I must do is wait and the inevitable happens”

It was, in any event, with added enthusiasu Narayan While his friend perforious rituals with the priests, Holmes attended to the business at hand, a nificent edifice, adorned with s, and a courtyard filled with some of the finest sculpture to be seen anywhere

At first the temple appeared as if filled with a jumble of deities thrown everywhere Its surface had no unfilled space All was covered in ornan It was only after one observed it closely, therefore, noted Holmes, that one realised that all was in order and that the shrine itself was an illustration in wood, brick, and metal, of the Hindoo's belief in the interconnectedness of all things, the harmony and illusion of the universe that he conceives and, to a large degree, shares with the Buddhist The te to Holmes, one of the supreme achievements of Gorashar's people, the Newars

”No other people on earth, Watson, has produced such intricate beauty in as small a space as the Valley of Katmandu One trenchant observer has described it best as a kind of coral reef, built up laboriously over the centuries by unrecorded artisans As a human achievement, it ranks with the creations of Persia and Italy”

”Good Lord, Holmes, and no one even knows of its existence!”

”Let us not say 'no one' A few, including h to see and to observe it But permit me to continue, Watson I returned to Kat from the temple priests permission to return and read the pillar inscription In this, Gorashar's help was invaluable, particularly his pledge to supply gold leaf for the roof of the temple With this promise, the suspicious priests became my allies and pro trips to the temple to record what you have in front of you in that sketch”

The pillar had drawn Holh, and the writing on it was in ular case of preservation from the ancient world At the top of the pillar sat a old, about two feet in diameter It had a penumbra of flames, and was no doubt a representation of the sun itself At the botto on the pillar extended below the ground in which it was placed Unless it were dug up, that part of the inscription would re the hidden portions The priest became incensed, refused to discuss the matter, and said that Holround Hol of the inscription fully occupied the next several weeks So engrossed did Holmes become that he decided to stay for an extended tie, in the mud and thatch hut of a Brahman who lived across the river to the west The Brah daily trip to Katmandu and allowed hiht It was during this long stay that he finished the recording not only of the inscription but of the chief features of the temple and the artistic rean to take note of what until then had been entirely hidden from him: the connections between the temple and the natural world, connections that led him to reneonder at the achieve the last few lines of the pillar inscription, he looked up and observed that the sun, now beginning its descent in the west, had been caught in reflection by the golden disc atop the pillar The beam thus created was redirected into the tee statue of Vishnu, where it cahtly on a jewel placed in the God's forehead Fro to rest this tiht hand of a sht rested in this way for only a few seconds and then disappeared As soon as it faded, a young boy, half naked and clothed only in rags, appeared and effortlessly scaled the pillar Upon reaching the top, he gave the disc a slight push, slid down, and disappeared silently

”Thisto Holine it hitting the third eye of Vishnu and the hand of the Elephant God just outside the drawing But, as in ain you have seen but not observed”

Holood doctor”

I took the drawing back and stared at it This time I noticed that a portion of it had been folded over and secured to its back So carefully had this been done that one hardly saw that the picture could be extended from behind

”Let me undo it, Watson The hidden portion is secured in a particular Nepalese way, and your tugging at it may harm it”

Holmes held the entire picture up to ht previously The light frohtness in the sky, flowed in reflection directly froolden disc to its two recipients, Vishnu and Ganesh, all rendered with the greatest beauty in the extended picture

”Extraordinary, Hol of this? And what of the boy?”

”More of him later, Watson Suffice it to say that he appeared periodically duringvisits, scaled the pillar, touched the disc, then slid down and left”

Holht very closely, noticing how it struck the same places on the statues and then faded away almost imnificance He gave it little thought at thethe inscription itself

On co his record, he found that Gorashar's account of the death of King Dharmadeva was substantially correct, if incoone to his pleasure garden, where he was found dead by his wife, Rajyavati She sent news to her son, Manadeva, as at once declared king She herself planned to die on the funeral pyre of her husband, but her son, pleading with her, prevailed upon her to retire into hood And so, like the celebrated Arundhati of Indian legend, she remained alive but in the seclusion of chastity

Written much after the events and at the order of Manadeva himself, however, the pillar recorded none of the persistent doubts about the mysterious way in which his father had died The rest of the inscriptionmore about his father, Dharmadeva

”An odd business, Holmes,” said I, ”rather at odds with Hindoo custo who dies suddenly and unexpectedly, a ho does not follow the usual rites of suttee, and a son who suddenly beco”

”Yes, Watson, a story so lacking in detail that any interpretation could be given to it But I un to tire of the work I suddenly felt the need to leave Nepal and to es, and I had seen un, and the rains were unusually heavy so that the u had become very difficult And with the sun blocked by the clouds, I could not further ations of the ed study of the temple, he continued, he did not think that he could solve theDhars in order to be ready for the first break in the rains, bade good-bye to the pandits in the Residence, and spent his last days in seclusion in Gorashar's establishment