Chapter 7:: Strings, Unfurling

He landed into the platform, breathing heavily from the exertion of taking three steps on the staircase in each stride, just in time to see the end of the train disappear into the tunnel. Trying to stop the train wasn't worth it, he reasoned, especially since the next one was due in ten minutes, and the effort would have made him feel unpleasantly drained out. He wasn't in a rush to go anywhere anyway.

Settling down instead in one of the wrought-iron seats at the emptied-out underground platform, Mark Middleton zipped open a pouch in his backpack and proceeded to take out the harmonica he had purchased minutes ago from an antique shop up on the road. It was a beautiful instrument, with the cover plate carved in intricate details. Gazing admiringly for some time, Mark brought the harmonica to his lips and softly breathed a note. Moments later, as his surroundings dissolved in music, he let his eyelids close and his mind wander down the spiralling flow.

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A week had passed since he left the hospital, and he had been lodging at one of the many nondescript hotels in the city. He went out everyday, roaming aimlessly through the city, getting himself accustomed to its life and ways, and hoping – in a vague sort of way – to come across something or someone that might stir some memory of his past. Nothing did. The only striking incident had taken place on the very first day, minutes after he had walked out of the public restroom, but he couldn't yet decide if it was of any significance in the larger scheme of things. As he was making his way down the footpath, taking in the novelty of the sights and sounds around him, a shady street dweller had suddenly leapt at him, almost out of nowhere.

"Back into business, eh sonny?" the haggard man had grinned at him, gripping Mark's shoulders tightly as he tried to evade the assault, surprised and more than a little irritated.

The man was skinny and clothed in rags and looked, Mark felt, somewhat older than himself. His hair and beard were matted with dirt, and made his face almost indistinguishable. As he spoke he looked Mark directly in the eye, and even from under the hood that shadowed the upper part of his face Mark could see a pair of minuscule red stars twinkling at him, which he thought were disturbingly menacing.

"A completely clean slate I see," the madman nodded, approvingly, inspecting him. "Good, good, good. We all could do with a bit of spring cleaning once in a while, eh? Ha ha ha!" Then an expression of mock concern came over his features, "And lookit how they've ruined your pretty face too, what a thoughtless thing to do! I doubt even I could do something to get that nose back into shape!"

"Look, you…" Mark caught the long, filthy finger of the man before it could touch his face and pushed it away from himself, anger welling up inside him. That grin was starting to creep him out.

"Never mind!" the man swatted his words with a wave of his bony hand. "Since you are still my charge, so as to say," here he winked conspirationally at Mark, and pulling his repulsive face close to his ear, dropped his voice to a whisper, "let me give you a few words of wisdom, man-to-man, haha!"

"I don't…" started Mark, but the man ignored him and continued. "Number one, never let your little head worry about money, your pockets will always have enough for what you need. Although discretion would be the key here, right?" Again that grin, again that twinkle in the eye, and a little encouraging pat on the back of his shoulder.

"Number two, and this is very important," the man raved on, "never play such games with them as might permanently alter their fates. You remember what Big Uncle has to say about the matter, I hope?" One more time the mocking little laughter that made Mark's skin crawl with disgust.

"Language will never deter you happens to be number three, but you must have figured that out already, clever little boy as you are. And don't take to fortune-telling, though I doubt you'll be able to do that any time soon," the man laughed away happily as Mark finally managed to free himself from his grasp and backed away a foot, looking around for help. A few men and women – mostly local shopkeepers and passers-by – had stopped to watch the fun, and as Mark mumbled accusatively at them, some people managed to grab the madman and started dragging him away.

"Oh and I was almost forgetting, where are my manners!" the madman was still looking back at Mark and grinning as four people tried to steer him away towards another part of the pavement. "If you manage to make some time out of your soon-to-be busy schedule, do pay some visits to our local counterparts and convey my humble greetings to them, haha! Solidarity is the way to go, eh, sonny boy?"

And then he was gone. Unsettled sufficiently by the encounter, Mark struggled to straighten himself up as comments like "Don't worry brother, just a madman!", "God knows what rubbish he'd been babbling… How dare these people come up to gentlemen these days!" floated around from a bunch of people still vaguely lingering around the spot. Someone brought Mark a plastic mug of water to clean up the filth on his clothes. Someone suggested an earthen cup of tea at a nearby stall would soothe his nerves and Mark sat on a roadside bench and drank the sweet concoction and paid up in small change, thanking the people, and went his way.

Mark Middleton had been completely wary of madmen in the street since that day, though no further attack had happened. One madman controlling the traffic at a busy road junction had merely waved a battered slipper at him one evening. But even that had made him wince and quickly leave the spot. No more madmen shall he have.

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He finished the tune and opened his eyes and the world swam back into focus. It had been more than ten minutes and a few more trains had passed in both directions. Slightly self-conscious, Mark put the harmonica back into its case and tried to put it into the backpack.

"Why not another one? I haven't heard someone play like that in a long time." Mark turned his head to look at the young woman sitting next to him, whose face broke into a smile, "Coming to think of it, I have never heard anyone play like that."

She looked as if she was in her late twenties – dressed in a blue-white salwar kameez, her hair pulled back into a braid, a practical-looking brown bag on her lap. She was not exceptionally beautiful, and indeed she looked as if she had taken the pains to look inconspicuous and succeeded rather well. But there was an overall comeliness to her features that one would miss if one did not look for it, and Mark Middleton always looked, so he noticed.

"Very kind of you to say that," he smiled back at her.

"It was beautiful. There were mountains and forests in it, and fields and little villages… and the north wind howling all through the night, and candles flickering at the windowsill. There was the primitive joy in the hearts of large shadowy beasts that start their hunt at nightfall… and little fears and little hopes in the hearts of shepherd children as they sleep huddled together in the huts at night. Is it like that where you come from?"

"You have a very vivid imagination, madam," replied Mark, carefully. The images found a resonance inside his head as well, but he could not point a finger to exactly what. He had put the harmonica to his mouth without thinking, and the tune had just flown out by itself. Her words had made her feel inadequate – as if he was merely a vessel for a much larger story, all worked out, of which he had not an inkling. But of course, there was no need to let this girl know all that.

"I think I have seen you before," said the girl, looking intently up at him. There was no admiration in that gaze, Mark noticed with a mild discomfort, only a sharp dispassionate inquiry. He wasn't used to young women looking at him like that. "Aren't you the man who was in the newspapers a few months back, whose memory was wiped out in a mysterious aeroplane accident?"

"You have a very good memory too it seems. Yes, I am he," he said. The smile must not waver.

The girl smiled. It was an easygoing smile, he told himself, not a threat. "Then your name must be… wait," she screwed up her eyes for a few moments, "Mark. Mark Something."

"Mark Middleton," he answered, trying to be his charming best. "And does that give me the right to ask for your name, if you wouldn't mind? It seems only fair."

"I am too uninteresting to be in the newspapers for anything," she shrugged, looking distracted already. "But since you asked, my name is Mala. Mala Das. Nice to meet you. You play music quite well."

She got up from the seat, lifted the bag to her shoulder and started walking towards the edge of the platform, into the crowd. The next train was entering the station.

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