The Schedule of Víhaan

John Clark Smith

A Novel in Verse by John Clark Smith

3 Poison

 

Wherein we learn of hidden weapons,

the message in Devanagari alphabet,

Carina and Hután escaping the pirates,

the shame of wounding marble,

the seven possibilities and five signs,

how Carina and Aaron viewed Pitworthy,

the deadly tubes,

and the many ways to kill Hután.

 

He recorded each inch of the room with the belief George

might spot with its undistracted lens what eyes might ignore.

As Hután was filming, he focused more than usual

on the subject and noticed first, in the long straight sections

of the counter, the girth was much deeper than in the curved

sections and under these straight sections was a covering,

a camouflaging material that looked like marble.

When he focused on a section in front of him, he saw

—so that he could never miss it—an aesthetic blemish,

a mark like a wound on the skin of a lovely woman,

and the sight bothered him because he saw marble as skin,

and who would want to “scar that beautiful skin, smooth as the finest

marble?”[1] yet someone had etched marks in this obvious place

—obvious to someone sitting where he was now sitting—

on the corner of the counter, with a cutting device,

possibly a dinner knife, thick hair pin, or a nail file,

—like the nail file he had used when pirates took Carina and him

aboard and tied them up and she secretly transferred it

to Hután as they sat in the brig and before they took

her up on deck, removed her clothes, and quickly demanded

she sing “Happy Birthday” nude to their captain, this event

proving to him three things. (Here begins one of many lists

that anyone who worked with Hután had to tolerate,

for such was his mind that never only one choice occurred

to him.) First, that Carina had a pleasant singing voice,

Second, what an ideal escape nakedness and a song

could offer, and Third, Herodotus’ titillating tale

of how Gyges obtained the throne of Sardis could be true,[2]

since Carina warned the quite fearsome but superstitious

crew before she sang that, if the captain saw her naked,

either they must murder their captain or they would all die.

Later, after they both escaped by jumping overboard,

the ship and all crew were reported as missing at sea.

Perhaps not a nail file, but the markings were fresh, no doubt

because someone somewhere on its way was doodling on it.

But on George’s examination the etching was shown

to display Devanagari not Latin alphabet,

which led him to Carina, since Carina often wrote

in Spanish using that script, a habit he often found—

though an effective system, combining different scripts—

an annoying and strange approach. In the unexpected

original invitation, which of course at the time

he assumed came from Pitworthy, Carina agreed to meet

him on the island to scheme how they would rescue Víhaan,

whom she assumed Hydra or Dvorak now was holding.

Next Hután transcribed the letters and uncovered some Spanish words,

“Mire para un pescado o bama,” which would mean

“look for a fish or bama,” which was a simple code for

both Gillian of Dvorak and Selma of Hydra—

Alabama in the United States was her home state.

But the cryptic note left unexplained when and how and why

did Carina get to scratch these letters into the long black

marble counter unless she had already arrived here

and had taken the time to laser for him the letters

with her favorite handy pocket laser tool shaped like

a lipstick holder; a doubtful event unless she learned

or gained what she sought already from within the castle

and had to leave suddenly; unlikely too since she would

never desert her team without a reason; or she arrived,

had an urgent call elsewhere—perhaps someone or something

drew her away—alerted Mustfarris she’d join Hután

later somehow, somewhere. Other options would make less sense

unfortunately, unfortunate because it involved

for him at least seven different possibilities,

each with its own dilemma. The First, that Mustfarris was late

already without an indication how long Hután

must wait; the Second, proceed perhaps without expecting

Carina at all, realizing she may be handling

something urgent, leaving the war to Mustfarris and him—

he intuitively could see signs of a coming war,

or at least a struggle by how deserted the room was

and the absence of a Remnant colleague and Pitworthy—

with hope that Carina or one of his team arrives soon;

the Third, that despite Hután’s tacit approval of her,

Carina’s ethereal beauty—which some compared

to Botticelli’s Venus, whom Florentines then called

the most beautiful woman, while others, like Mustfarris, the artist

among them, compared her to any of Robin Eley’s

hyper-realistic portraits, since there was an unreal

angelic yet enigmatic aspect to Carina

wrapped in an earthy, sexual, and threatening charisma.

Mustfarris, as lover of Asian literature, saw

three sides to Carina: acting like Daiyu in her love

for Hután with waif-like appearance, yet with Baochai’s strength

and character that fooled many an avid opponent,

plus a third side like the quick-tempered manager of men

and “perfect beauty” Jinlian, minus Jinlian’s hearty lust.[3]

If not for her astounding skills, intelligence, and gifts,

her magnetism could often be ineluctably

a strong distraction, a potent allure that could derail,

delay, if not reverse the success the team might achieve.

The Fourth, the expected and common communication

between the members hadn’t happened and nobody else

had received an invitation. The Fifth, since his blood was

here, Mustfarris could be here, and if signs of blood were here,

he could be bleeding here, though Hután found blood nowhere else,

and Carina did ask Mustfarris to come directly

to the island. The Sixth, Carina had met Pitworthy,

had experienced Pitworthy’s groping—she once stabbed him

in the arm with a hairpin at a public gathering

in Hong Kong after a drunk Pitworthy had said, I own

you, and pinned her up against a wall, reached to unbutton

her blouse while climbing his hand up her skirt when she shouted,

touch me and you’ll burn.[4] And Seventh, suppose Carina never

came to the island and somebody used or knew of her

secret way of writing and was trying to confuse him.

All of the seven possibilities were troubling him,

any could happen here but none was supposed to happen.

But regardless of these dilemmas Hután felt certain

a battle was imminent or perhaps had already

been fought, since The Schedule and Víhaan warranted a war,

and Pitworthy seemed in no rush to see him—where was he?—

though Pitworthy, he had to admit, would usually

ask for Aaron, one of Pitworthy’s favorite movie

stars, while Aaron explained often and firmly to Hután

he had no wish ever to be important or a friend

to a man such as Pitworthy, from whom, Aaron had said,

importance may sometimes be purchased too dearly,[5] and asked

instead that Carina, Hután, Mustfarris, or someone

else deal with Pitworthy—none, especially Carina,

would have ever wanted to socialize with him—plus he

was a patron; agents never befriended a patron,

for no patron could have any knowledge of their real work

or how any of them came to join. But even Aaron’s

disdain for Pitworthy would never hold back Aaron

if he had foreseen either the cause or the likelihood

of a battle. He waited on Hután’s confirmation.

Yet besides these possibilities there were certain signs:

the First, that nothing was proceeding according to plan,

a serious problem for anyone, but even more

for Hután whose life depended upon accurately

forecasting future patterns, recognizing catalysts

and obstacles and preparing for workable answers.

The Second, he honestly now expected a conflict,

but an encounter within his plan not despite his plan.

The Third, that completely new and unstable elements

were appearing—death by counter slime poison—as if there

was another plan within which he now was a factor.

The Fourth, that he was alone, and when he felt truly alone

or isolated, someone usually was planning

an attack of some sort and was at least a step ahead.

And finally, the Fifth, that too many of his comrades

were at least implicated, which led to one conclusion,

as if it was not obvious to his intuition:

a potential conflict was brewing or an already

tragic event had transpired. Neither of them would Hután

avoid or ignore but only wish he had prepared more

and not assumed first that this invitation might only

be a routine meeting. Beyond these obvious factors,

he noticed when George saw small holes underneath the counter,

each in carefully hidden equidistant locations—

how much this intruder must have despised this black marble

to deface the incredible stone—and when examined,

these holes had tiny devices, accessories, and tubes

attached to them, paraphernalia that, when he came

close enough and opened the tubes, an odd odor seeped out

—Wink his ever-alert dog quickly barked a loud warning—

which George identified as a curry that reminded

him of his mother’s stew, but this distraction about his

mother was temporary, since the more he inhaled this smell

and heard Wink bark, the more another image of pungent

curry aroma arose—from a small empty London

flat on Queens Gardens where the Pakistani internal

security leader met him—Wink accompanied

Hután—to ask about a new leak in security

that led them to London, to Hután, to a secret meeting

with an embassy employee who was a liaison

with international security for Great Britain,

to ask Hután the question security officials

everywhere asked, Why do you keep turning up?, while the smell

of curry from an open pan on the empty kitchen

counter wafted and as his mind wandered to Proust

and pondered the singularity of odor[6] and its

many questionable sources and connections, he snapped

to the present and the long marble counter, saw Wink rush

to the windows, closed the tubes, ran to the window, opened

it to its fullest extent, and stuck out his head as far

as possible to clear his nostrils, lungs, eyes, skin, and brain

of an acrid smell that—he could never forget—masked

an undetectable drug that either would induce sleep

and then, while sleeping, the victim helpless, calmly at peace,

slowly paralyzes the lungs until the poor victim

could no longer breathe; or slowly kills them, as it killed

Rohan at the San Sebastian fountain. When Hután’s air

was fresh, he complained to himself that he to Pitworthy

was a poor stand-in for Aaron. (Aaron he would fete,

Aaron he would ask advice.) Yet this train of thought was

false, he realized, since Pitworthy wouldn’t have knowledge

of the effects of this smell and the slime on the counter

or even the green liquid, at which point he hurried back

to the counter—Wink was fine and had escaped the odor—

and tried to use George to vitiate all the devices

and burn off the slime, hoping that another member had

not preceded him and fallen victim to the Devil

and his ways to get others to do his scandalous work

—as Goethe cautioned about the witch’s brew: “It’s true,” he

wrote, “the Devil taught her, but the Devil cannot make it”—[7]

Though someone did concoct a curry poison so potent

that it wouldn’t dissipate easily by George’s attempts,

so potent that Hután again rushed to the window—Wink

had never left—to fill his lungs with fresh air, his soul

with fresh virtue, and his mind with fresh insight, till the smell

left and he stared intently at the full glass of green juice

sitting on the counter, a juice he hadn’t requested

or wanted, and though he never intended to drink it,

he decided, after the odor had finally left

the room, to return to the long black counter and let George

analyze it. George confirmed it contained, besides lime, gin,

and apple juice, snake venom and, so as not to blunder,

an appropriate amount of hydrochloric acid,

a drink, with different fruits for color and taste, that was

the favorite lethal cocktail invented by Hydra,

the group that lived by its own rules, and later more often

a poison of that other nemesis of the Remnant,

the cartel Dvorak, named for its leader Nicholas

Dvorak, who preferred the factitious royal title

Benchin II, even though there never was a Benchin I

or even a Nicholas—his birth first name was Farley—

a name he adopted from Charles Dickens’ character

Nicholas Nickleby, a puzzling choice indeed for those

who have bothered to read the novel, since this Nicholas

Dvorak ran his affairs more like the Nicholas I

of Russia and in character like Chaucer’s Nicholas

or Dickens’ Wackford Squeers.[8] Dvorak did use this potion

to eliminate rivals and those suspected of real

or potential betrayal, though some believed advisors

used it against him, or that’s what some people suspected

originally when Nicholas disappeared for a month;

either Nicholas was quite alive—most people assumed

he had simply retreated because he was very ill,

needed some surgery and then rehabilitation,

or roamed about in some disguise to mix with the hoi

polloi, like Pope John the XXIII did—or that someone

was using his modus operandi with the green juice,

all of which led to one thought, that Hután had been a fool

and target long enough, and this castle hall, always used

as a platform of humiliation by Pitworthy,

dreaded by anyone doing business or conferring

with him, had clearly morphed into something more portentous

and predatory, a staging for something quite deadly,

with the odor and the counter slime and the green liquid,

perhaps to kill Hután himself and if so, they must be

be observing or nearby; but in the end, regardless

who was responsible for this scheme, Hután was the bait

in this game of death, each step brought another step toward doom.

Hután’s first concern was for his team—he quickly texted

each of them—though Carina almost certainly had been

in this room, had lasered her message, and then decided

she had to leave, escaped, or someone had defeated her—

a most doubtful event because Hután had never seen

anyone, even the skilled warrior Mustfarris, beat

her one on one—assuming she could leave; and if someone

did leave or escape, he’d remain as long as necessary

to know what happened, let the plan roll out, react in time

hopefully, though he sensed The Schedule and Víhaan were now

at the heart and he was almost certain that Dvorak

or Hydra had arranged it, leaving only one question:

if Hydra or Dvorak did lure him to the island,

why here, why this island of Pitworthy, and, as he asked

himself the question, he had an answer; because only

three powers on earth knew of the island’s significance:

Dvorak, Hydra, and The Schedule. Only they would choose

to defeat the Remnant in its most special and historic

place where they had many meetings and established their goals

and principles. Hután was betting now the ultimate

source was The Schedule, leading to the final query,

more like a tocsin: how would someone know what The Schedule

knows unless Víhaan had informed them, a prospect that made

Hután at first ask himself if any choice was only

the result of fortunate circumstances or bad luck.

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[1] Othello says this of Desdemona’s skin in Shakespeare, “Othello,” Act 5, Scene 2.
[2] Herodotus (ca. 484-425 BCE), Histories, Book I.
[3] Daiyu and Baochai are two female characters from the novel Hong Lou Meng (Dream of the Red Chamber) (mid-18^th century). Jin Lian (Gold Lotus) is from the novel Jin Ping Mei (The Plum in the Golden Vase)(late 16^th century).
[4] From “Helen of Troy Does Countertop Dancing” by Margaret Atwood (1939 -  ).
[5] From Jane Austen (1775-1817), Pride and Prejudice, end of Chapter 26.
[6] The importance of smell is a key device in Proust’s novel, À la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time).
[7] From Goethe (1749-1832), Faust, Part 1, vi.
[8] See Canterbury Tales, “Miller’s Tale,” by Chaucer (ca. 1343-1400), and Nicholas Nickleby by Dickens (1812-1870), where Wackford Squeers appears.

 

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Setu, May 2025