The Devil's Mistress

Chapter 4

It would be dark in some time but still she did not feel the urge to go back inside the estate and talk to the person who was trying to murder her. Calysta felt at that moment that she needed to go somewhere and something was calling her but she could not understand what was that.

“Nina I would like to go out to the market now, would you accompany me?” asked Calysta in a weird tone.

“My lady, I shall love to accompany the market with you. But my lady the funeral proceedings are tomorrow and there are a lot to be done still now..and my lady, you yourself should not be going alone to the market that too now it is evening. I don’t like the idea of you going to the market alone after the sunset and that too on the Samhaian , my lady,” replied Nina.

“I would really second what she says my lady because you need to be ready for tomorrow as well. After everything is over tomorrow we can all go to the market to take whatever pleases you Mistress,” said Frederick.

“It is not possible to keep this off after tonight. I need to go and I need to go now. Nina and Frederick both of you keep up with the work and I shall be back in few hours. Don’t worry about me because I shall be fine,” said Calysta before walking towards the gate and moving on towards the road.

“My lady you should take a car and the chauffeur along with you. How are you going to walk the whole way to the market?” asked Nina feeling incredulous at what Calysta was saying.

“The place where I stayed for the past three years I did not own a car Nina, but it did not stop me from living. Well go back to the estate and continue with the work and I shall be back before nightfall,” said Calysta and did not even look back once at them.

As she walked forward and the gates opened she felt relieved for the first time in the day when she had entered the estate. She knew from the memory of her childhood where she needed to go. She did not feel the least afraid not thinking that if she would lose the way or she will fall in the hands of wrong people.

Calysta kept on walking and found that the west sky to be on fire, the red and the burning orange and a few streaks of golden and purple hue here and there and she felt that this was the music of nature, something which her mother had never appreciated because she could not find music in colours but for her colours and music were entwined together like a vine. Gradually the mauve hues took over the burning colours and overcast the sky like a lover’s embrace in the shroud of darkness.

Sometime later Calysta reached the place where no sane and good looking girl would dare to venture alone because it was the roach infested slums of the prostitutes of Greece, where drugs and s*x and alcohol flowed like blood in the veins the men and women and children who displayed their wares on the streets. She knew that somewhere in this hell was a piece of heaven which she needed to trace. The stone and cobbled paths were dirty with drunk and passed out bodies on the sides of the streets and she would not be surprised to find a few of them dead amongst on that count as well. In front of her she found a man slapping girl brutally that she turned over and hit her head on the wall, but the man did not relent at that, he grabbed her hair and again picked her up to punch her again but this time the girl when she got up had a broken bottle in her hand and stabbed the man in his thighs with full might making him howl with pain, the girl did not give him another chance and stabbed the man the man in the neck killing him for good. Calysta just wished that her mother had done the same thing when she had the chance rather than killing herself. She crossed the group which was now crowding over the dead body.

A few more gulleys later she finally reached the seedy bookshop where she had visited in her childhood. This was the only place where the old man who was the owner of the shop sold unpublished manuscripts of the authors about whom the world had never come to know about and was not interested also but Calysta had read them and knew that there was Elysium hidden within some of the pages of a few books.

The same man was sitting in the same place where she had seen him last sitting seven years back with skin as tough as leather and hair and beards as white as the clouds that floated in the sky at autumn and a twinkle in his eyes which was normally whores reserved for their priciest customers.

“I see you have filled your bookshop with the trash that the Americans try to sell,”said Calysta opening the hood of the trench coat she was wearing and offering both her hands to the shopkeeper and revealing her face.

“Madamesoielle, I never thought you would return back here. But see I was wrong, you proved me wrong. I am so glad that you did,” he said taking bother hands and kissing them multiple times.

“Do you have something good to offer to me or I just wasted my time walking and finding the way?” asked Calysta smiling.

“Oh Madame!!!You hurt me so bad, of course I have a lot for you but you know what I now keep my treasure hidden because the police came and ransacked my shop taking away all my books and locking me up in the prison for nine days, they said that I was a thief stealing things from other people’s house,’ said the man.

“Well do you?” asked Calysta.

The man winked at the pretty girl standing in front of him and said,” Who wants to know that when you get your hands on things which no one will ever look at. The dead people have no use for their books, so I take them and sell them. You tell me Madame, is that stealing? Who steals from the dead people? Dead people are not going to complain about their things being taken away by others, isn’t it?”

Hearing the old man chatter she laughed out loud and said,”Alright enough of your confessions, now show me what you have got.”

The man went inside the store and brought out a few stacks of paper and handed them over to her.

“These I retrieved back last week from the house of an old man who was dying. These were written by his daughter who committed suicide taking overdose of drugs a few years back. The man guarded these till the final breath like a man possessed,” described the shop-keeper.

Calysta shuffled through the sheafs of papers and found that the girl was a patient of depression and had developed a habit of taking drugs in order to cope up with the s****l abuse she faced at the hands of her uncle who visited them every week when her father was at the factory working.

“This has only pain in it and it is the truth. But for the first time I am feeling that you need to get this book published, because everyone needs to know the dark truth that the women face from their childhood,’ said Calysta with ice in her voice while she was looking around the shop she noticed a leather bound small volume on the floor.

“And what would that thing be?” she asked pointing at the small volume.

“Oh that is just a historical story book written by some mad man, a passerby last week sold that to me for a few coins. I did not think that it was worth showing you but see, you noticed it,” said the man taking up the leather bound diary and placing it in the outstretched hands of Calysta.

Calysta felt something moving inside her as she touched the book. It felt as if she was waiting for this book for this long and she opened the leather strap and found it was a handwritten thing which looking like a diary but it seemed that the author was very secretive about his privacy and nothing else other than his name was written in the first page in a beautiful cursive lettering and the rest was a story which she intended to read as soon as she went home.

“I shall take this one for one. How much for this?”asked Calysta.

“Oh!! For this you can pay me whatever you want because I never even thought that this one would sell!!”said the shop-keeper.

Calysta felt something amiss and looked at him carefully and said,” As far as I remember you were the one with the heart of Shylock, what happened suddenly that you are now giving me this for any cost? It feels that you are trying to get rid of this one.”

The shopkeeper looked up in the eyes of Calysta and she saw a hint of fear in his eyes and he said,” Madame, somethings are meant to frighten you and this really does.”

“Why?” asked Calysta.

“Madame, in my whole life I have seen so many things, so many deaths but never ever I was so scared of something like this, because…”

“Yes tell me …why did you stop?”

“Madame,just open the book and look at the year of the diary. The incident on which the whole story is written by the author did not happen at the time when he wrote it,” said the man.

“Oh!!! What is there to be frightened of in this case? This is a story, isn’t it?”

“Madame, you do not understand what I am trying to say to you. This book is written about something which happened after this book was written. And almost in the next year the same things happened which he has described,” said the man.

Calysta just looked at the man and thought that he was bull-shitting but then she thought that if there was smoke then there must be fire burning somewhere or the other.

“I shall take the book,” said Calysta and opened her purse and gave him five dollars.

“Madame is too kind,’ said the man giving her a toothy smile.

“I shall take the other manuscript of the girl as well,” said Calysta and handed him five more dollars. That was probably the first income of the day for the shopkeeper and he silently sent a prayer in the name of this unknown young woman who paid him so much money for the trash that he collected from the dead people’s homes.

The man packed the book and the manuscripts in a paper and handed it over to Calysta in a cheap paper bag. The weight felt good in her hands, she knew that she was carrying something which had been written by people who are not anymore on this earth but definitely they are living on by the works which they had produced in their short life-spans, such waste of talent.

Calysta pulled up the hood of her trench coat and bid farewell to the shopkeeper amidst requests to come back soon for the treasures that he will keep collected for his patroness.

She went outside the seedy area once more and found that Frederick was standing there with the car and she was surprised at how he knew that she was in this area.

“Freddie, don’t mind but I am going to call you Freddie henceforth,” said Calysta getting inside the car.

“You can call me anything you want Madame, but never think that I am going to leave you unguarded or unprotected anymore. And Mistress, the lawyer was screaming at the top of his lungs when I last left the estate,” said Frederick with a smile and crease between his brows.

“Oh I have really good plans of what can be done with the lawyer. Take me home Freddie,” replied Calysta with a smile.