Song of Kali

Chapter Nine

That night I dreamed of corridors and caverns. Then the dream location shifted to the wholesale furniture warehouse on the near Southside of Chicago where I had worked during the summer of my sophomore year in college. The warehouse was closed but I continued to wander through an endless series of display rooms all crowded with furniture. The air smelled of Herculon fabric and cheap wood polish. I began to run, dodging through the tightly packed displays. I had suddenly remembered that Amrita and Victoria were still in the store somewhere and that if I didn't find them soon, we would all be locked in overnight. I didn't want them alone there, waiting for me, locked into the darkness. I ran, shouting their names, moving from room to room, shouting.

The phone rang. I reached for our travel alarm clock on the bedside table but the sound continued. It was 8:05 A.M. Just as I figured out that it was the telephone making the noise, Amrita came in from the bathroom and answered it. I dozed during her conversation. The sound of the shower running brought me up out of sleep again.

"Who was it?"

"Mr. Chatterjee," Amrita called over the running water. "You won't be able to pick up Das's manuscript until tomorrow. He apologized for the delay. Other than that, everything's all set."

"Mmmm. Damn. Another day."

"We're invited to tea at four."

"Hmmm? Where?"

"Mr. Michael Leonard Chatterjee's. He'll send his car. Do you want to go down to breakfast with your daughter and me?"

"Mmm." I pulled the extra pillow to my face and went back to sleep.

It seemed five minutes later that Amrita came through the door carrying Victoria. A waiter in white followed her with a tray. The travel clock read 10:28.

"Thank you," said Amrita. She set the baby on the carpet and tipped the waiter several rupees. Victoria clapped her hands and threw her head back to watch the man leave. Amrita picked up the tray, balanced it on one hand, and put a finger under her chin while executing a graceful curtsy in my direction. "Namastey and good morning, sahib. The management wishes you a wonderful and pleasant day although most of it is, alas, already gone. Yes, yes, yes."

I propped myself up in bed and she dusted off my lap with a napkin and carefully set the tray in place. Then she curtsied again and held out her hand, palm up. I dropped a sprig of parsley in it.

"Keep the change," I said.

"Oh, thank you, thank you, most generous sahib," she sang while backing away in an obsequious series of bows. Victoria put three fingers in her mouth and watched us dubiously.

"I thought you were going sari hunting today," I said. Amrita pushed back the heavy curtains and I squinted in the gray glare. "Christ," I said, "is that really sunlight? In Calcutta?"

"Kamakhya and I have already been shopping. Very nice shop. Quite reasonable, actually."

"Didn't find anything?"

"Oh, yes. They'll deliver the material later. We each bought yards and yards. I probably spent your entire advance."

"Damn." I looked down and made a face.

"What's the matter, Bobby? Is your coffee cold?"

"No, it's fine. Very good, in fact. I just realized that I missed my chance to see Kamakhya again. Damn."

"You'll survive," Amrita said and placed Victoria on the bed to change her.

The coffee was good, and there was more in a small metal pot. I uncovered the plate to reveal two eggs, buttered toast, and . . . marvel of marvels . . . three strips of real bacon. "Fantastic," I said. "Thanks, kid."

"Oh, it was nothing," said Amrita. "Of course, the kitchen had been closed for hours, but I told them that it was for the famous poet in Room 612. The poet that stays out most of the night swapping war stories with the boys and then comes home chuckling to himself loudly enough to wake his wife and baby."

"Sorry."

"What was that conference about last night? You were mumbling to yourself in your sleep until I nudged you."

"Sorry, sorry, sorry."

She taped Victoria's new diaper in place, disposed of the old one, and came back to sit on the edge of the bed. "Honestly, Bobby, what revelations did Krishna's Mysterious Stranger come up with? Was he a real person?"

I offered her a wedge of toast. She shook her head no and then lifted it from my fingers and took a bite. "Do you really want to hear the story?" I asked.

Amrita nodded. I took a sip of coffee, decided not to give a blow-by-blow synopsis, and began talking in a light, slightly sarcastic tone of voice. Pausing occasionally to give my opinion of certain parts of the tale by shaking my head or making short remarks, I managed to retell Muktanandaji's three-hour monologue in less than ten minutes.

"My God," said Amrita when I was finished. She seemed distracted, even disturbed.

"Well, anyway, it was a hell of a way to end my first full day in beautiful downtown Calcutta," I said.

"Weren't you frightened, Bobby?"

"Good God, no. Why should I be, kiddo? The only thing that worried me was getting back to the hotel with my billfold still on my person."

"Yes, but . . ." Amrita stopped, went over to Victoria, returned a dropped pacifier to her hand, and came back to the bed. "If nothing else, I mean, you spent the evening with a madman, Robert. I wish . . . I wish I had been there to interpret."

"Me too," I said truthfully. "As far as I know, Muktanandaji spent the entire time reciting the Gettysburg Address over and over in Bengali while Krishna made up the ghost story."

"Then you don't think the boy was telling the truth?"

"The truth?" I repeated. I frowned at her. "What do you mean? Corpses being brought back to life? Dead poets being resurrected from river mud? Hon, M. Das disappeared eight years ago. He'd be a pretty wasted zombie, don't you think?"

"No, I didn't mean that," said Amrita. She smiled, but it was a tired smile. I should never have brought her, I realized. I'd been so worried that I would need an interpreter, someone to help me out with the culture. Dumb shit. "I just thought maybe that the boy might have thought he was telling the truth," she said. "He could have tried to join the Kapalikas or whatever they're called. He might have seen something that he didn't understand."

"Yeah, that's possible," I said. "I don't know. The kid was a mess — red eyes, lousy skin, a mass of nervous mannerisms. He might have been on drugs, for all I know. I got the idea that Krishna was adding or changing a lot of things. It was like one of those comedy routines where the foreigner grunts and the interpreter chatters on for ten minutes. Know what I mean? Anyway, it could be that he tried to join this secret society and they played spooky games to impress him. But it's my guess that it was Krishna's idea of a scam."

Amrita took the tray and carried it to the dresser. She rearranged the cup and silverware in various patterns. She did not look at me. "Why is that? Did they ask for money?"

I pushed the sheet away and walked to the window. A streetcar moved down the middle of the street, discharging and collecting passengers without stopping. The sky was still painted with low clouds, but there was enough sunlight to throw shadows on the cracked pavement. "No," I said. "Not in so many words. But Krishna ended the evening with a cute little epilogue — very sotto voce — explaining how his friend had to find a way to get out of the city, to get to Delhi or somewhere, possibly even South Africa. He left no doubt that a few hundred American dollars would be welcome."

"Did he ask for money?" Amrita's weighted British vowels were sharper than usual.

"No. Not in so many words —"

"How much did you give them?" She showed no sign of anger, only curiosity.

I padded over to my suitcase and began pulling out clean underwear and socks. Once again I realized that the greatest argument against marriage, the absolutely irrefutable argument against living with one person for years, was the destruction of the illusion of free will by the spouse's constant recognition of one's total predictability. "Twenty dollars," I said. "It was the smallest traveler's check I had. I left most of the Indian currency with you."

"Twenty dollars," mused Amrita. "At today's exchange rate, that would be about a hundred and eighty rupees. You made it out to Muktanandaji?"

"No, I left it blank."

"He might have a hard time getting all the way to South Africa on a hundred and eighty rupees," she said blandly.

"Goddammit, I don't care if the two of them go buy nose candy with it. Or use it to start a charity account — Save-Muktanandaji-From-the-Wrath-of-the-Kapalikas-Fund. Tax-deductible. Give now."

Amrita said nothing.

"Look at it this way," I said. "We can't get a sitter, go into Exeter to see a bad movie, and go to McDonald's afterward for twenty bucks anymore. His story was a lot more enjoyable than some of the films we've driven to Boston to see. What was the name of that silly kiddie film we spent five dollars to see with Dan and Barb right before we left?"

"Star Wars," said Amrita. "Do you think you'll be able to use any of his story in the Harper's article?"

I belted my bathrobe. "The rendezvous and the coffee house, yes. I'll try to work in how surreal and absurd some of the characters were in my . . . what did Morrow call it? . . . my quest for M. Das. But I won't be able to use Muktanandaji's ravings. Not much, anyway. I'll mention it, but the whole Kapalika thing is just too weird. That sort of killer-goddess crap went out with the last of the movie serials. I'll check into the gang stuff — maybe the Kapalikas are sort of a Calcutta Mafia — but the rest of it's just too damn weird to put in a serious article about a fine poet. It's not just morbid, it's —"

"Perverted?"

"Naw, they wouldn't mind if I wrote about a little healthy perversion. The word I was thinking of was trite."

"God save us from cliches, is that it?"

"You got it, kiddo."

"All right, Bobby. What are we going to do next?"

"Hmmm, good question," I said. I was playing peek-a-boo with Victoria. Both of us were using part of the sheet as a hiding place. Each of us would giggle when I lifted it like a curtain from between us. Then Victoria would cover her eyes with her fingers and I would look around in bewilderment, trying to find her. She loved it.

"I think I'll take a shower," I said. "Then we're going to get you and the Little One here on this afternoon's flight to London. So far, there's been absolutely no need for you to translate anything but the porter's mumblings. I'm tired of paying for all those extra mouths to feed around here. There's no reason for you to stay an extra day even if I have to wait around for Chatterjee to get his act together. Today's Saturday. You could stay awhile in London, visit your parents overnight, and we could arrive in New York at about the same time . . . say, Tuesday evening."

"Sorry, Bobby. Impossible for several reasons."

"Nonsense," I said. "No such word as impossible." Victoria and I discovered each other and giggled. "Name the objections and I'll shoot them down."

"One, we have high tea at four o'clock with the Chatterjees —"

"I'll offer your regrets. Next?"

"Two, the material from the sari shop hasn't arrived yet."

"I'll bring it with me. Next?"

"Three, Victoria and I would miss you. Wouldn't we, Precious?" Victoria looked away from the game long enough to gape politely at her mother. Then she changed the rules by pulling the end of the sheet over her head.

"Sorry, three strikes," I said to Amrita. "You're out. I'll miss you guys, but maybe with you gone I'll be able to make time with your friend Kamakhya. I think there's a two P.M. flight to London today. If not, I'll stay at the airport with you until a later flight."

Amrita picked up some of the baby's toys and put them in a drawer. "There is a fourth problem," she said.

"What's that?"

"BOAC and Pan Am have canceled all flights out of Calcutta except BOAC's 6:45 A.M. layover from Thailand. Baggage-handling problems, the man said. I called last night when I was bored."

"Shit. You're kidding. Damn." Victoria sensed the change in tone and dropped the sheet. Her face puckered toward tears. "There must be some way out of this stinking shithole of a — excuse me, Little One — this city."

"Oh, yes. All of the Air India in-country flights are going out. We could transfer to Pan Am in Delhi or to any of the overseas airlines there or in Bombay. But we've missed today's early New Delhi flight, and all of the others have horrendous layovers. I'd rather wait for you, Bobby. I don't want to travel in this country without you. I did enough of that as a child."

"Okay, hon," I said, and put my arm around her. "All right, then, let's try to make the Monday-morning BOAC flight. Christ, six-thirty in the morning. Well, at least it'll be a breakfast flight. Okay if I go ahead with my plan to shower?"

"Yes," said Amrita while picking up the baby. "I checked with the BOAC people and there's no problem with you showering."

That afternoon we went through the motions of sightseeing. I tucked Victoria into the backpack carrier, and we were out into the heat, noise, and confusion. The temperature and humidity both hovered near the 100 mark. We had a better than decent luncheon at a place called Shah-en-Shah's and then took a taxi up Chowringhee to the Indian Museum.

A small sign outside proclaimed ABSOLUTELY NO YOGIC EXERCISES PERMITTED IN GARDENS! The inside was very hot, the display cases were dusty, and the building was surprisingly empty except for a loud and obnoxious tour group of Germans. I was mildly interested in the anthropology displays on the first floor, but it was the exhibit of archaeological art that finally caught my eye.

"What is it?" asked Amrita as she saw me bending over a glass case.

The tiny black figurine was labeled Representation of Durga Goddess in Kali Aspect: circa 80 B.C. It fell short of being frightening. I saw no sign of a noose, skull, or severed head. One hand held what looked to be a wooden bough, another an inverted egg cup, a third what might have been a trident but looked more like an opened Swiss Army knife, and her last hand was extended palm up, offering a tiny yellow doughnut. As with all the statues of goddesses I'd seen in the museum, she was high-waisted, firm-breasted, and long of ear. Her face was scowling, her many teeth were sharp, but I could make out no vampirish canines or lolling tongue. She was wearing a headdress of flames. Much more fierce, to my eye, was a statue marked Durga that stood in a nearby case. This supposedly more benign incarnation of Parvati had ten arms, and each hand was filled with a weapon more fierce than the last.

"Your friend Kali doesn't seem too terrible," said Amrita. Even Victoria was leaning forward from the backpack carrier to look at the display case.

"This thing's two thousand years old," I said. "Maybe she's grown more hideous and bloodthirsty since then."

"Some women just don't age gracefully," agreed Amrita and moved on to the next display. Victoria seemed to enjoy a large bronze idol of Ganesha, the playful, elephant-headed god of prosperity; and for the rest of our time in the museum we made a game out of finding as many representations of Ganesha as we could.

Amrita would have liked to visit the Victoria Memorial Hall to see artifacts of the Raj, but it was getting late and we contented ourselves with driving by in the taxi and pointing out to the baby the imposing white structure that we told her was named after her.

We entered the hotel in a torrential downpour, changed clothes quickly, and came back out to find Chatterjee's car waiting and the rain stopped.

I was wearing a tie for the first time in several days, and as the car pulled out into traffic I sat uncomfortably, tugging at the knot and wishing my collar were looser or my neck smaller. My short-sleeved white shirt had already soaked through the back and I was suddenly aware how scuffed and stained my faithful Wallabees looked. All in all, I felt wrinkled, tousled, and soaked in sweat. I glanced sideways at Amrita. She looked — as she always did — cool and contained. She was wearing the white cotton dress she had purchased in London and the lapis lazuli necklace I had given her before we were married. By all rights her hair should have been hanging down in limp strands, but it fell full and lustrous to her shoulders.

We drove for the better of an hour, a trip which reminded me that Calcutta was larger in area than New York City. Traffic was as insane and haphazard as ever, but Chatterjee's silent driver found the fastest route through the confusion. My concern about the traffic wasn't overly allayed by the large white signs in Bengali, Hindi, and English that sat in the center of several chaotic traffic circles we negotiated: DRIVE MORE CAREFULLY! THERE HAVE BEEN ___ DEATHS ON THIS THOROUGHFARE THIS YEAR! The boxes were filled with the kind of nail-up number panels one used to see in old-time baseball parks. The highest number we saw on this trip was 28. I wondered idly whether that included that entire section of road or just those few square feet of pavement.

At times we sped down a highway bordered on each side by great chawls — those incredible slums of tin roofs, gunnysack walls, and mud-path streets — which extended for miles and were terminated only by gray monoliths of factories belching flame and unfiltered soot toward the monsoon clouds. I realized that sweeping philosophical convictions such as ecology and pollution control were luxuries for our advanced industrial nations. The air in Calcutta, already sweetened by raw sewage, burning cow dung, millions of tons of garbage, and the innumerable open fires eternally burning, was made almost unbreathable by the further effusion of raw auto emissions and industrial filth.

The factories themselves were huge artifacts of worn brick, rusted steel, rampant weeds, and broken windows — pictures from some grim future when the industrial age had gone the way of the dinosaur but left its rotting carcasses sprawled across the landscape. Yet, smoke rose from the most tumbledown ruin, and ragged human forms came and went from the black maws of the darkest buildings. I found it almost impossible to imagine myself living in one of those floorless hovels, working in one of those grim factories.

Amrita must have been sharing similar thoughts, for we rode in silence, each watching the panorama of human hopelessness pass by the car windows.

Then, in a space of a few minutes, we crossed a bridge over a wide expanse of railroad tracks, passed through a transitional neighborhood of tiny storefronts, and were suddenly in an old, established area of tree-lined streets and large homes guarded by walls and barred gates. The thin sunlight glinted off countless shards of broken glass set atop the flat walls. At one place there was a yard-wide swath cleared on top of a high wall, but the mud-colored masonry was smeared with dark streaks. Well-polished automobiles sat at the end of long driveways. The iron-spiked gates bore small signs warning Beware of Dog in at least three languages.

It took no great insight to realize that this once had been a British residential section, as separate from the pandemonium of the city and its natives as the English governing class could make it. Decay was evident even here — the frequently filthy walls, unshingled roofs, and crudely boarded windows — but it was a controlled decay, a rearguard action against the rampant entropy which seemed to govern Calcutta elsewhere; and the sense of dissolution was ameliorated somewhat by the bright flowers and other obvious attempts at gardening that one glimpsed through high entry gates.

We pulled up to one of these gates. The driver bustled out and unlocked a padlock with a key from a chain on his belt. The circular driveway was lined with tall, flowering bushes and drooping tree limbs.

We were greeted by Michael Leonard Chatterjee. "Ah, Mr. and Mrs. Luczak! Welcome!" His wife was also standing by the door next to a toddler whom I first took to be their son but then realized must be a grandson. Mrs. Chatterjee was in her early sixties, and I revised her husband's age upward. Chatterjee was one of those smooth-faced, perpetually balding gentlemen who reach fifty and seem to stay at that age until their late sixties.

We chatted on the front step for a moment. Victoria was duly complimented, and we praised their grandson. Then we were shown through the house quickly before being led through another door to a wide patio overlooking a side street.

I was interested in their home. It was the first chance I'd had to see how an upper-class Indian family lived. The first impression was one of juxtaposition: large, formal, high-ceilinged rooms with paint flaking from begrimed walls; a beautiful walnut sideboard covered with scratches on which was displayed a stuffed mongoose with dusty glass eyes and molting fur; an expensive, handmade carpet from Kashmir set atop chipped linoleum; a large, once modern kitchen now liberally cluttered with dusty bottles, old crates, crusted metal pans, and with a small, charcoal fireplace set squarely in the center of the floor. Smoke streaked a once white ceiling.

"It will be more comfortable outside," said Chatterjee, and held the door open for Amrita.

The flagstones were still wet from the last rainshower, but the cushioned chairs were dry and a table was set for tea. Chatterjee's grown daughter, a heavy young woman with lovely eyes, joined us long enough to chat with Amrita in Hindi for a few minutes and then to depart with her son. Chatterjee seemed bemused by Amrita's linguistic abilities and asked her something in French. Amrita answered fluently, and both of them laughed. He switched to what I later learned was Tamil, and Amrita responded. They began exchanging pleasantries in simple Russian. I sipped my tea and smiled at Mrs. Chatterjee. She smiled back and offered me a cucumber sandwich. We continued smiling at each other through a few more minutes of trilingual banter, and then Victoria began fussing. Amrita took the baby from my arms, and Chatterjee turned to me.

"Would you like more tea, Mr. Luczak?"

"No, thank you, this is fine."

"Perhaps something stronger?"

"Well . . ."

Chatterjee snapped his fingers and a servant quickly appeared. A few seconds later he reappeared with a tray laden with several decanters and glasses.

"Do you drink Scotch, Mr. Luczak?"

Is the Pope Catholic? I thought. "Yes." Amrita had warned me that most Indian Scotch was atrocious stuff, but one swallow told me that Chatterjee's decanter held only premium whiskey, almost certainly twelve years old, almost certainly imported. '' Excellent.''

"It's The Glenlivet," he said. "Unblended. I find it rather more authentic than the blended premiums."

For a few minutes we discussed poetry and poets. I tried to steer the conversation around to M. Das, but Chatterjee was reluctant to discuss the missing poet beyond mentioning that Gupta had arranged the details for tomorrow's transfer of the manuscript. We settled on discussing how hard it was for a serious writer in either of our countries to make a decent living. I got the impression that Chatterjee's money had come down through the family and that he had other interests, investments, and incomes.

Invariably, the talk steered to politics. Chatterjee was most eloquent about the relief the country was feeling after the ouster of Mrs. Gandhi in the previous election. The resurgence of democracy in India was of great interest to me and something I'd hoped to work into my Das article.

"She was a tyrant, Mr. Luczak. The so-called Emergency was merely a ruse to hide the ugly face of her tyranny."

"So you don't think she will ever reenter national politics?"

"Never! Never, Mr. Luczak."

"But I thought that she still has a strong political base and that the Congress Party is still a potential majority if the current coalition was to falter."

"No, no," said Chatterjee and waved his hand in dismissal. "You do not understand. Mrs. Gandhi and her son are finished. They will be in prison within a year. Mark my words. Her son is already under investigation for various scandals and atrocities; and when the truth comes out, he will be lucky to escape execution."

I nodded. "I've read that he alienated many people with his drastic population-control programs."

"He was a swine," Chatterjee said without emotion. "An arrogant, ignorant, dictatorial swine. His programs were little more than efforts at genocide. He preyed on the poor and the uneducated, although he was an essential illiterate himself. Even his mother was frightened of the monster. If he were to enter a crowd today, they would tear him apart with their bare hands. I would be pleased to take part. More tea, Mrs. Luczak?"

A car moved down the quiet side street beyond the iron fence. A rew raindrops pattered on the broad leaves of the banyan tree above us.

"Your impressions of Calcutta, Mr. Luczak?"

Chatterjee's sudden question caught me off guard. I took a drink of Scotch and let the warmth spread for a second before answering. "Calcutta is fascinating, Mr. Chatterjee. It's far too complex a city even to react to in two days. It's a shame we won't have more time to explore it."

"You are diplomatic, Mr. Luczak. What you mean to say is that you find Calcutta appalling. It has already offended your sensibilities, yes?"

"Appalling is not the correct word," I said. "It's true that the poverty affects me."

"Ah, yes, poverty," said Chatterjee and smiled as if the word had deeply ironic connotations. "Indeed, there is much poverty here. Much squalor by Western standards. That must offend the American mind, since America has repeatedly dedicated its great will to eliminating poverty. How did your ex-President Johnson put it . . . to declare war on poverty? One would think that his war in Vietnam would have satisfied him."

"The war on poverty was another war we lost," I said. "America continues to have its share of poverty." I set my empty glass down, and a servant appeared at my elbow to pour more Scotch.

"Yes, yes, but it is Calcutta we are discussing. One of our better poets has referred to Calcutta as that 'half-crushed cockroach of a city.' Another of our writers has compared our city to an aged and dying courtesan surrounded by oxygen tanks and rotting orange peels. Would you agree with that, Mr. Luczak?"

"I would agree that those are very strong metaphors, Mr. Chatterjee."

"Is your husband always so circumspect, Mrs. Luczak?" asked Chatterjee and smiled at us over his glass. "No, no, you should not be concerned that I will take offense. I am used to Americans and their reaction to our city. They will react in either one of two ways: they will find Calcutta 'exotic' and concentrate only on their tourist pleasures; or they will be immediately horrified, recoil, and seek to forget what they have seen and not understood. Yes, yes, the American psyche is as predictable as the sterile and vulnerable American digestive system when it encounters India."

I looked at Mrs. Chatterjee, but she was bouncing Victoria on her lap and seemed not to hear her husband's pronouncements. At the same instant Amrita glanced at me, and I took it as a warning. I smiled to show that I was not going to get argumentative. "You may well be right," I said. "Although I wouldn't presume to say that I understood the 'American psyche' or the 'Indian psyche' — if there are such things. First impressions are necessarily shallow. I appreciate that. I've admired Indian culture for a long time, even before I met Amrita, and she's certainly shared some of the beauty of it with me. But I admit that Calcutta is a bit intimidating. There seems to be something unique . . . unique and disturbing about Calcutta's urban problems. Perhaps its only the scale. Friends have told me that Mexico City, for all of its beauty, shares the same problems."

Chatterjee nodded, smiled, and set down his glass. He steepled his fingers and looked at me the way a teacher looks at a student who may or may not be worth investing more time in. "You have not traveled extensively, Mr. Luczak?"

"Not really. I backpacked through Europe some years ago. Spent some time in Tangiers."

"But not in Asia?"

"No."

Chatterjee dropped his hands as if his point had been amply demonstrated. But the lesson was not quite over. He snapped his ringers, fired a command, and a moment later the servant brought out a slim blue book. I could not make out the title. "Please tell me if you find this a fair and reasonable description of Calcutta, Mr. Luczak," said Chatterjee and began to read aloud:

He stopped, closed the book, and raised his eyebrows in polite interrogation.

I had made no great objection to continuing to act as a straight man if it amused our host. "It has its relevant parts," I said.

"Yes." Chatterjee smiled and held up the book. "This, Mr. Luczak, is a contemporary account of London written in the 1850's. One must take into account the fact that India is only now embarking on its own Industrial Revolution. The displacement and confusion which shocks you so — no, no, do not deny it — these are necessary by-products of such a revolution. You are lucky, Mr. Luczak, that your own culture has gone beyond that point."

I nodded, and resisted the impulse to tell him that the description he'd read would have been apt for the neighborhood on the Southside of Chicago where I'd grown up. I still felt it was worth one more effort to clarify my feelings.

"That's very true, Mr. Chatterjee. I appreciate what you say. I was thinking something similar on the ride here today and you've clarified the point very well. But I have to say that in our brief time here, I've sensed something . . . something different about Calcutta. I'm not sure what it is. A strange sense of . . . violence, I guess. A sense of violence seething just under the surface."

"Or insanity perhaps?" asked Chatterjee flatly.

I said nothing.

"Many would-be commentators on our city, Mr. Luczak, make note of this supposed sense of all-pervading violence here. Do you see that street? Yes, that one there?"

I followed his pointing finger. A bullock cart was moving down the otherwise empty side street. Except for the slowly moving cart and the multi-trunked banyan trees, the scene could have been in an old, well-worn section of any American city. "Yes," I said. "I see it."

"Some years ago," he said, "I sat here at breakfast and watched as a family was murdered there. No, murdered is not the correct word. They were butchered, Mr. Luczak, butchered. There. Right there. Where the cart is passing now."

"What happened?"

"It was during the Hindu-Muslim riots. There had been a poor Muslim family that lived with a local doctor. We were used to their presence. The man was a carpenter and my father had used his services many times. Their children had played with my younger brother. Then, in 1947, they chose the tensest time of the riots to emigrate to East Pakistan.

"I saw them come up the street, five of them counting the youngest child, a babe in her mother's arms. They were in a horse-drawn wagon. I was eating breakfast when I heard the noise. A crowd of people had intercepted them. The Muslim argued. He made the mistake of using his braid whip on the leader of the mob. There was a great surge forward. I was sitting right where you are, Mr. Luczak. I could see very well. The people used clubs, paving stones, and their bare hands. They may well have used their teeth. When it was over, the Muslim carpenter and his family were stained bundles on the street. Even their horse was dead."

"Good God," I said. And then, into the silence, "Are you saying that you agree with those who say there's a streak of insanity in this city, Mr. Chatterjee?"

"Quite the contrary, Mr. Luczak. I mention this incident because the people in that mob were . . . and are . . . my neighbors: Mr. Golwalkar, the teacher; Mr. Sirsik, the baker; old Mr. Muhkerjee who works in the post office near your hotel. They were ordinary people, Mr. Luczak, who lived sane lives before that regrettable incident and who returned to sane lives afterward. I mention this because it shows the folly of anyone who singles out Calcutta as a bedlam of Bengali insanity. Any city can be said to have such 'violence seething just under the surface.' Have you seen the English-language newspaper today?"

"The paper? No."

Chatterjee unfolded the newspaper that had been lying near the sugar bowl. He handed it to me.

The lead story was datelined New York. The previous evening there had been a power failure, the worst since the 1965 total blackout. Almost as if on cue, looting erupted throughout the ghettos and poorer sections of the city. Thousands of people had taken part in seemingly mindless vandalism and theft. Mobs had gathered to cheer while entire families smashed store windows and ran off with television sets, clothing, and anything portable. Hundreds had been arrested, but the mayor's office and police spokesmen admitted that the police had been powerless in the face of the scope of the problem.

There were reprints of American editorials. Liberals saw it as a resurgence of social protest and decried the discrimination, poverty, and hunger that had provoked it. Conservative columnists acidly pointed out that hungry people don't steal stereo systems first and called for a crackdown in law enforcement. All of the reasoned editorials sounded hollow in light of the perverse randomness of the event. It was as if only a thin wall of electric lighting protected the great cities of the world from total barbarism.

I handed the paper to Amrita. "That's a hell of a thing, Mr. Chatterjee. Your point is well made. I certainly didn't want to sound self-righteous about Calcutta's problems."

Chatterjee smiled and steepled his fingers again. His glasses reflected gray glare and the dark shadow of my head. He nodded slightly. "As long as you understand that it is an urban problem, Mr. Luczak. A problem exacerbated by the degree of poverty here and by the nature of the immigrants who have flooded our city. Calcutta has been literally invaded by uneducated foreigners. Our problems are real but are not something unique to us."

I nodded silently.

"I don't agree," said Amrita.

Both Chatterjee and I turned in surprise. Amrita set the paper down with a quick flick of her wrist. "I don't agree at all, Mr. Chatterjee," she said. "I feel it is a cultural problem — one unique in many ways to India if not just to Calcutta."

"Oh?" said Chatterjee. He tapped his fingers together. Despite his smiling aplomb, it was obvious that he was surprised and irritated at being contradicted by a woman. "How do you mean, Mrs. Luczak?"

"Well, since it seems to be the time to illustrate hypotheses through the use of anecdotes," she said softly, "let me share two incidents that I observed yesterday."

"By all means." Chatterjee's smile held the tense undertones of a grimace.

"Yesterday I was having breakfast in the garden café of the Oberoi," she began. "Victoria and I were alone at our table, but there were many others in the restaurant. Several Air India pilots were at the next table. A few feet from us, an Untouchable woman was cutting the grass with hand clippers —"

"Please," said Chatterjee, and the grimace was visible now on the smooth features. "We prefer to say Scheduled Class person."

Amrita smiled. "Yes, I'm aware of that," she said. "Scheduled Class or Harijan, 'Beloved of God.' I grew up with the conventions. But they are mere euphemisms, as I'm sure you are well aware, Mr. Chatterjee. She was 'Scheduled Class' because she was born out of caste and will die there. Her children will almost certainly spend their lives performing the same menial jobs as she. She is Untouchable."

Chatterjee's smile was frozen but he did not interrupt again.

"At any rate, she was squatting, cutting grass a blade at a time, moving across the yard in what would be, for me at least, a very painful duck walk. No one took notice of her. She was as invisible as the weeds she was trimming.

"During the night, an electric line had fallen from the portico. It dropped across the courtyard lawn, but no one had thought to repair it or to shut off the current. Waiters ducked it on their way to the pool area. The Untouchable woman encountered it in her clipping and went to move it out of her way. It was not insulated.

"When she touched it, she was knocked backwards violently; but she could not let go of the wire. The pain must have been very great, but she let out only one terrible cry. She was literally writhing on the ground, being electrocuted before our eyes.

"I say 'our,' Mr. Chatterjee. The waiters stood by with their arms folded and watched. Workmen on a platform near the woman looked down without expression. One of the pilots near me made a small joke and turned back to his coffee.

"I'm not a quick-thinking person, Mr. Chatterjee. All of my life I've tended to let other people carry out even the simplest actions for me. I used to beg my sister to purchase train tickets for us. Even today, when Bobby and I order a pizza to be delivered, I insist on his placing the telephone call. But when half a minute had elapsed and it became obvious that the men in the courtyard — and there were at least a dozen — were not going to prevent this poor woman from being electrocuted, I acted. It did not take much thought or courage. There was a broom near the door. I used the wooden handle to move the wire from her hand."

I stared at my wife. Amrita had mentioned none of this to me. Chatterjee was nodding in a distracted way, but I found my voice first. "Was she badly hurt?"

"Evidently not," said Amrita. "There was talk of sending her to hospital, but fifteen minutes later she was cutting the grass once again."

"Yes, yes," said Chatterjee. "That is quite interesting but should not be taken out of context —"

"The second incident occurred only an hour or so after that," Amrita continued smoothly. "A friend and I were shopping for saris near the Elite Cinema. Traffic was backed up for blocks. An aged cow was standing in the middle of the street. People shouted and honked but no one tried to move it. Suddenly the cow began urinating, pouring a powerful stream into the street. There was a girl on the sidewalk near us — a very pretty girl, about fifteen years old, wearing a crisp white blouse and red kerchief. This girl immediately ran into the street, thrust her palm into the stream of urine, and splashed some on her forehead."

Leaves rustled in the silence. Chatterjee glanced at his wife and looked back at Amrita. His fingertips were tapping silently against each other. "That is the second incident?" he asked.

"Yes."

"Surely, Mrs. Luczak, even though you have been out of your country — India — since your childhood, you must remember the respect we bestow upon cows as symbols of our religion?"

"Yes."

"And you must know that not all people in India have the Westerner's . . . ah . . . horror at the idea of class differences."

"Yes."

"And did you know that urine . . . especially human urine . . . is thought by many here to have strong spiritual and medicinal properties? Did you know that our current Prime Minister, Mr. Moraji Desai, drinks several ounces of his own urine each morning?"

"Yes, I know that."

"Then, in all honesty, Mrs. Luczak, I do not see what your 'incidents' reveal except perhaps culture shock and a revulsion at your former culture's traditions."

Amrita shook her head. "Not just culture shock, Mr. Chatterjee. As a mathematician I tend to view different cultures rather abstractly, as adjoining sets with certain common elements. Or, if you will, as a series of human experiments as to how to live, think, and behave toward one another. Perhaps because of my own background, because I moved around so much as a child, I've felt a sense of some objectivity toward different cultures I've visited and lived in."

"Yes?"

"And, Mr. Chatterjee, I find some elements in India's set of cultural mind-sets that few other cultures have — or, if they did possess them, have not chosen to retain. I find in my own country here an ingrained racism that is probably beyond current comparison. I find here that the nonviolent philosophy which I was raised in — and feel most comfortable with — continues to be shattered by deliberate and callous acts of savagery by its proponents. And the fact that your prime minister drinks several glasses of his own urine each day, Mr. Chatterjee, does not commend the practice to me. Nor to most of the world. My father often reminded me that when the Mahatma went from village to village, the first thing he would preach would not be human brotherhood or anti-British stratagems or nonviolence, but the basics — the absolute basics — of human hygiene.

"No, Mr. Chatterjee, speaking as an Indian person, I do not agree that all of Calcutta's difficulties are simply a microcosm of urban problems everywhere."

Chatterjee stared at her over his fingers. Mrs. Chatterjee stirred uneasily. Victoria looked up at her mother but did not make a noise. I'm not sure what would have been said next if the first large raindrops had not chosen that second to begin falling around us like moist cannon fire.

"I think we would be more comfortable inside," said Mrs. Chatterjee as the full force of the storm broke around us.

The presence of Chatterjee's driver inhibited us during the ride back to the hotel, but we did communicate through elaborate codes known only to married couples.

"You should have worked for the United Nations," I said.

"I did work for the U.N.," said Amrita. "You forget that I worked there one summer as an interpreter. Two years before we met."

"Hmmm, start any wars?"

"No. I left that to the professional diplomats."

"You didn't tell me that you saw a woman almost electrocuted during breakfast."

"You didn't ask."

There are some times when even a husband knows when to shut up. We watched the passing slums through shifting curtains of rain. Some of the people there made no effort to get out of the downpour but squatted dully in the mud, heads bowed under the onslaught.

"Notice the children?" asked Amrita quietly. I hadn't, but I did now. Girls of seven and eight stood with even younger children on their hips. I now realized that this was one of the most persistent images from the past couple of days — children holding children. As the rain came down they stood under awnings, overpasses, and dripping canvases. Their ragged clothes were brightly dyed, but even the brilliant reds and royal blues did not hide the dirt and wear. The girls wore gold bracelets on their emaciated wrists and ankles. Their future dowries.

"There are a lot of children," I said.

"And almost none," said Amrita so softly that it was almost a whisper. It took me only a few seconds to realize that she was correct. For most of the youngsters we saw, their childhood was already past them. They faced a future of rearing younger siblings, heavy labor, early marriage, and rearing their own offspring. Many of the younger children we could see running naked through the mud would not survive the next few years. Those that did reach our age would greet the new century in a nation of a billion people facing famine and social chaos.

"Bobby," Amrita said, "I know that American elementary schools don't teach mathematics very seriously, but you did have Euclidean plane geometry in your secondary school, didn't you?"

"Yeah, even American high schools teach that, kiddo."

"Then you know that there are non-Euclidean geometries?"

"I've heard nasty rumors to that effect."

"I'm serious, Bobby. I'm trying to understand something here."

"Go ahead."

"Well, I began thinking about it after I mentioned alternate sets and experiments to Chatterjee."

"Uh-huh."

"If Indian culture was an experiment, then my Western prejudices tell me that it's a failure. At least in terms of its ability to adapt and protect its people."

"No argument there."

"But if it's just another set, then my metaphor suggests a much worse possibility."

"What is that?"

"If we think in terms of set theory, then I'm convinced that my two culture sets are eternally incompatible. And I am the product of these two cultures. The common element in two sets without common elements, as it were."

"East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet?"

"You see my problem, don't you, Bobby?"

"Perhaps a good marriage counselor could —"

"Shut up, please. The metaphor made me think of a more frightening analogy. What if the differences we're reacting to in Calcutta are the result of the culture's not being another set but a different geometry?"

"What's the difference?"

"I thought you knew Euclid."

"We were introduced but never got on a first-name basis."

Amrita sighed and looked out at the industrial nightmare through which we traveled. It occurred to me that this was Fitzgerald's industrial wasteland imagery from Gatsby taken to the tenth power. It also occurred to me that my own private literary references were beginning to be contaminated by Amrita's mathematical metaphors.

I watched as a man squatted by the roadside to defecate. He lifted his shirt over his head and prepared a small bronze bowl of water for the fingers of his left hand.

"Sets and number theories overlap," said Amrita. I suddenly realized by the tension in her voice that she was very serious. "Geometries don't. Different geometries are based on different theorems, postulate different axioms, and give rise to different realities."

"Different realities?" I repeated. "How can you have different realities?"

"Perhaps you cannot," said Amrita. "Perhaps only one is 'real.' Perhaps only one geometry is true. But the question is, What happens to me — to all of us — if we've chosen the wrong one?"

The police were waiting for us when we returned to the hotel.

"A gentleman has been waiting to see you, sir," said the assistant manager as he handed me our room key. I turned to the lobby expecting to find Krishna, but the man who rose from the plum-colored sofa was tall, turbaned, and bearded — obviously a Sikh.

"Mr. Luck-zak?"

"Loo-zack. Yes."

"I am inspector Singh of the Calcutta Metropolitan Police." He showed me a badge and a faded identity photo behind yellowed plastic.

"Inspector?" I did not offer to shake hands.

"Mr. Luczak, I would like to speak to you concerning a case which our department is investigating."

Krishna's got me into some sort of trouble. "And what is that, Inspector?"

"The disappearance of M. Das."

"Ah," I said and gave the room key to Amrita. I had no intention of inviting this policeman up to our room. "Do you need to speak to my wife, Inspector? It's time for our little one to eat."

"No. It will take only a minute, Mr. Luczak. I am sorry to interrupt your afternoon."

Amrita carried Victoria to the elevator and I looked around. The assistant manager and several porters were watching curiously. "What do you say we go into the License Room, Inspector?" This was the Indian hotel euphemism for a bar.

"Very good."

It was darker in the bar, but as I ordered a gin and tonic and the Inspector asked for just tonic, I was able to take time to appraise the tall Sikh.

Inspector Singh carried himself with the unselfconscious authority of a man who was used to being obeyed. His voice held the echo of years in England, not the Oxbridge drawl but the clipped precision of Sandhurst or one of the other academies. He wore a well-tailored tan suit that fell just short of being a uniform. The turban was wine-red.

His appearance confirmed what little I knew about Sikhs. A minority religious group, they made up possibly the most aggressive and productive segment of Indian society. As a people they tended to understand machinery, and although the majority of Sikhs inhabited the Punjab, they could be found driving taxis and operating heavy equipment throughout the country. Amrita's father had said that ninety percent of his bulldozer operators had been Sikhs. It was also the Sikhs who made up the upper echelons of the military and police forces. From what Amrita had told me, only the Sikhs had capitalized on the Green Revolution and modern agricultural technology to make a go of their extensive cooperative farms in the north of India.

It also had been the Sikhs who were responsible for many of the massacres of Muslim civilians during the partition riots.

"Cheers," said Inspector Singh and sipped at his tonic water. A steel bracelet rattled against his heavy wristwatch. The bracelet was a constant symbol of his faith, as was the beard and a small ceremonial dagger he would be carrying. A security guard at the Bombay airport on Thursday had asked a Sikh ahead of us in line, "Are you carrying any weapons other than your sabre?" The rest of us had submitted to body searches, but the Sikh had been passed through after his negative grunt.

"How can I help you, Inspector?"

"You can share any information you have about the whereabouts of the poet M. Das."

"Das has been missing for a long time, Inspector. I'm surprised you're still interested."

"M. Das's file is still open, sir. The 1969 investigation concluded that he was most probably the victim of foul play. Does your country have a statute of limitations on murder?"

"No, I don't think so," I said. "But in the States we have to produce a body for it to be a murder."

"Exactly. That is why we would appreciate any information you could share with us. M. Das left many influential friends, Mr. Luczak. Many of these people are in even more respected positions now, eight years after the poet's disappearance. We would all be relieved to conclude this investigation."

"All right," I said, and proceeded to tell him of my involvement with Harper's and the arrangement with the Bengali Writers' Union. I debated telling him about Krishna and Muktanandaji, and then decided that such a fantastic story would only cause complications with the police.

"So you have no confirmation that M. Das is alive other than the poem which you may or may not receive through the Writers' Union?" asked Singh.

"That and the letter Michael Leonard Chatterjee read at the meeting with the executive council," I said. Singh nodded as if he was well aware of the correspondence.

He asked, "And you plan to pick up the manuscript tomorrow?"

"Yes."

"Where will this take place?"

"I don't know. They haven't told me yet."

"At what time?"

"Again, they haven't told me."

"Will you meet with Das at this time?"

"No. At least, I don't think so. No, I'm sure I won't."

"Why is that?"

"Well, all of my requests to meet with the great man and actually confirm his existence have met with a stone wall."

"A stone wall?"

"Negative response. A flat refusal."

"Ah. And you have no further plans to meet with him later?"

"No. I'd hoped to. My article certainly needed an interview. But to tell you the truth, Inspector, I'll be just as happy to get the damned manuscript, take my wife and child with me out of Calcutta tomorrow morning, and leave it to the literary experts as to whether M. Das wrote the poem."

Singh nodded as if this was a reasonable enough attitude. Then he jotted a few things in a small spiral notebook and finished his tonic. "Thank you, Mr. Luczak. You have been most helpful. Again, I apologize for taking up your Saturday evening."

"Quite all right."

"Oh," he said, "there is one thing."

"Yes?"

"Tomorrow, when you go to pick up the alleged Das manuscript, would you have any objections to police officers from the Metropolitan Force discreetly following you? It might help us in our investigation."

"A tail?" I said. I sipped at the last of my drink. If I objected, I might cause trouble for myself, and the cops would almost certainly still follow us. Besides, having the police nearby might allay some of the anxiety I was feeling about the rendezvous.

"Your associates need not know," added Singh.

I nodded. Personally, I didn't give a damn if Chatterjee, Gupta, and the whole Union became implicated. "All right," I said. "That would be fine. If it would help in your investigation. I have no idea myself whether Das is really alive. I'd be happy to help."

"Ah, excellent." Inspector Singh rose and we shook hands at last. "Have a good trip, Mr. Luczak. I wish you luck with your writing."

"Thank you, Inspector."

The rain continued falling for the rest of the evening. Any lingering thought Amrita and I had of spending Saturday night out on the town was squelched by the sight of mud, monsoon, and squatting misery we would glimpse when we opened the curtains. The tropical twilight was a brief transition between the gray, rainy day and the black, rainy night. A few lanterns glowed from under canvas across the flooded plaza.

Victoria was tired and fussy, so we put her down in her nest early. Then we called down to Room Service and waited an hour for dinner to arrive. When it did show up, it consisted mostly of a lesson to me never to order cold roast-beef sandwiches in a Hindu country. I begged some of Amrita's excellent Chinese dinner.

At nine P.M., while Amrita was showering before bed, there was a knock at the door. It was a boy with the fabric from the sari shop. The youngster was dripping wet, but the material was safely wrapped in a large plastic bag. I tipped him ten rupees, but he insisted on exchanging the bill I gave him for two five-rupee notes. The ten-rupee bill was torn slightly, and Indian currency evidently became non-negotiable when damaged. That exchange put me in a less than pleasant mood, and when Amrita emerged in her silk robe she took one look in the bag and announced that it was the wrong fabric. The shop had switched her bolts of material with Kamakhya's. We then spent twenty minutes going through the phone book trying to find the proper Bharati, but the name was as common as Jones would be in a New York directory and Amrita thought that Kamakhya's family probably didn't have a phone anyway.

"To hell with it," I said.

"Easy for you to say. You didn't spend over an hour picking out the material."

"Kamakhya will probably bring your stuff by."

"Well, it will have to be tomorrow if we're leaving early Monday morning."

We turned in early. Victoria awoke once, sobbing slightly in some baby's dream that made her arms and legs paddle in frustration, but I carried her around the room for a while until she drifted off to sleep, drooling contentedly on my shoulder. During the next couple of hours the room seemed alternately too hot and then chilly. The walls rattled from various mechanical noises. It sounded as if the place were honeycombed with dumbwaiters, each being pulled laboriously by chains and pulleys. An Arab group two doors away shouted and laughed, never thinking to move the party into their suite and close the door.

At around 11:30 I rose from the damp sheets and went to the window. The rain still pelted the dark street. No traffic moved.

I opened my suitcase. I had brought only two books along: a hardback copy of my own recent publication, and a Penguin paperback I'd picked up in a London bookstore of M. Das's poetry. I sat down in a chair near the door and snapped on a reading lamp.

I confess that I opened my own book first. The pages fell open to the title poem, Winter Spirits. I tried to read through it, but the once sharp imagery of the old woman moving through her Vermont farmhouse and communing with the friendly ghosts in the place while the snow piled in the fields did not go well with the hot Calcutta night and the sound of the heartless monsoon rattling the panes. I picked up the other book.

Das's poetry immediately captivated me. Of the short works at the beginning of the book, I most enjoyed "Family Picnic," with its humorous but never condescending insight into the need to patiently suffer the eccentricities of one's relatives. Only the passing reference to ". . . the blue, shark-sharpened waters of the Bay of Bengal / Unclouded by sail or smoke of distant steamer" and a quick description of a ". . . Mahabalipuram temple / sandstone worn with sea age and prayer / a smooth-cornered plaything now / for children's climbing knees and Uncle Nani's / snapshots" placed the locale in Eastern India.

I came to his "The Song of Mother Teresa" with new eyes. Less visible to me now were the academic echoes of Tagore's influence in the hopeful theme and more apparent were the blunt references such as ". . . street death / curb death / the hopeless abandonments she moved among / a warm infant's plaint for succor / against the cold breast of a milkless city." I wondered then if Das's epic tale of the young nun who heard her calling while traveling to another mission, who came to Calcutta to help the suffering multitudes if only by providing them a place to die in peace, would ever be recognized as the classic of compassion I felt it was.

I turned the book over to look at the photo of M. Das. It reassured me. The high forehead and sad, liquid eyes reminded me of photographs of Jawaharlal Nehru. Das's face had the same patrician elegance and dignity. Only the mouth, those slightly too-full lips upturned at the corners, suggested the sensuality and slight self-centeredness so necessary in a poet. I fancied that I could see where Kamakhya Bharati had received her sensuous good looks.

When I clicked off the light and crawled in next to Amrita, I felt better about the coming day. Outside, the rain continued to tear and batter at the huddled city.