The Master of Deadlines

 

He is there again, by the fire. He does not warm his hands, which are always cool. His clothes are immaculate His hair and mustache are glossy with pomade. His eyes are black holes.

 “I hope you have not forgotten our arrangement.” His words fall like cards on green baize. His accent is perfect Oxbridge, a little dated, the kind a maharajah might have spoken at Royal Ascot or the tennis club before the fall of the Raj. “You haven’t brought me a fresh story since yesterday, even though we have agreed that you will continue to live in your present body only as long as you tell stories that entertain me.”

I protest that his demand is unreasonable. A fresh story a day is hard to deliver. Worse, the bargain reeks of plagiarism. “I am not Scheherazade,” I point out.

“And I am not a minor monarch in an Arabian fairytale, my dear. Nonetheless, a story a day is the requirement. You used to say that you like impossible deadlines. I am the master of deadlines.”

I tell him, “I am not afraid of you.”

For an instant, he lets his gentleman’s guise shimmer. I see through it, to the terrible, mountainous form he is given in temples that rise from steaming jungles and peeling tenements in the East. I bind him with my will to the playboy maharajah guise. If I cannot choose where I will meet Death, I can still insist that he wears the costume I choose. No lolling, multiple ayes and arms, no tusks or butcher’s knives, no bouncing skulls.

He opens his dinner jacket to reveal the noose that is swinging from his cummerbund.

“I just delivered a story,” I shift my approach. “It is a story about you. It helped her.” I indicated the sleeping form of the lady in the window seat of the airplane. “She is going to Bangalore because the doctors told her that her mother is dying. I told her that you can be a great healer and teacher. I made you sound like the mentor they make you out to be in the Katha Upanishad, the giver of the Nachiketas fire.”

The flames around him flare up. None of the dormant passengers in the cabin notice. The flight attendants in the galley go on snacking and gossiping.

 “I came because I heard my name. But you did not tell it to my face. Begin again. And make sure you come up with fresh words.”

I have written many stories about my encounters with Yama, most of which will remain in my journals. You will find a longer and memorable one, "A Storytelling of Crows" in my book Mysterious Realities.