Song of Kali

Chapter Eleven

The apparition in the mirror was a mess. His hair was in disarray, his shirt was torn, his white cotton slacks were filthy, and there were fingernail tracks across his chest. I grimaced at myself and tossed the ruined shirt on the floor. I grimaced again as Amrita applied a cotton swab soaked with peroxide to my cuts.

"You didn't make Mr. Chatterjee or Mr. Gupta very happy," she said.

"It's not my fault that there wasn't a Bengali version of the manuscript."

"They would have liked to have had more time to study the English version, Bobby."

"Yeah. Well, they can catch excerpts in Harper's or wait for the spring edition of Other Voices. That is, if Morrow's experts decide it is a Das manuscript. I have my doubts."

"And you're not going to read it today?"

"Nope. I'll look at it tomorrow during the flight and study it when we get home."

Amrita nodded and finished swabbing the cuts on my chest. "Let's have Dr. Heinz look at these when we get home."

"All right." We went into the other room and sat on the bed. The electricity was out, the air conditioning had failed, and the room was a steam bath. Opening the windows only served to let in the noise and stench from the street below. Victoria sat on her quilt on the floor. She wore nothing but diapers and rubber pants and was wrestling with a big ball with bells in it. The ball was on top and appeared to be winning the match.

I had surprised even myself by not reading the manuscript immediately. I had never been known for either stifling my curiosity or deferring gratification of any sort. But I was tired and depressed and had a strong and completely illogical aversion to even looking at the manuscript until the three of us were safely out of the country.

Where had the police been? I had not seen the gray sedan again and now had my doubts as to whether it had ever actually followed us. Well, nothing else had appeared to work efficiently in Calcutta. Why should the police force be an exception?

"So, what do we do today?" asked Amrita.

I flopped back on the bed and picked up a tourist guide. "Well, we can see impressive Fort William, or view the imposing Nakhoda Mosque — which, by the way, was modeled on Akbar's tomb, whoever Akbar was — or go back across the river to see the botanical gardens."

"It's so hot," said Amrita. She had changed into shorts and a T-shirt that read A WOMAN'S PLACE IS IN THE HOUSE — AND THE SENATE. I wondered what Chatterjee would think if he saw her dressed that way.

"We could go to the Victoria Memorial."

"I bet they don't even have fans there," she said. "Where would it be cool?"

"A bar?"

"It's Sunday."

"Yeah. I've been meaning to ask. Why is it that every place closes down in a Hindu country on —"

"The park!" said Amrita. "We could go for a walk on the Maidan near the racecourse we saw from the taxi. There should be a breeze."

I sighed. "Let's try it. It's bound to be cooler than this place."

It was no cooler there. Small groups of beggars, a painful reminder of the morning's folly, flocked to us everywhere. Even the frequent and violent bouts of rainfall did not discourage them. I had long since emptied my pockets of change, but their insistent clamoring only grew louder. We paid two rupees to duck into a zoological garden in the park. There were only a few animals caged there, miserably swatting their tails back and forth to keep away clouds of insects, tongues hanging out from the heat. The zoo smell mixed with the heavy sewer sweetness of the river tributary that flowed past the park. We pointed out a tired tiger and some sullen monkeys to Victoria, but the baby wanted only to nestle against my damp shirt and sleep. When the rains struck again we found shelter in a small pavilion which we shared with a six- or seven-year-old boy who was watching over an infant lying on the cracked stone. Occasionally the boy would wave a hand to shoo the flies which hovered above the baby's face. Amrita tried talking to the youngster, but he continued to squat silently and stare at her with his large brown eyes. She pressed several rupees and a ballpoint pen into his hand and we left.

The electricity was on at the hotel, but the laboring air conditioner had not cooled the room appreciably. Amrita showered first and I had just pulled off my soaked shirt when there was a heavy knock at the door.

"Ah. Mr. Luczak! Namastey."

"Namastey, Mr. Krishna." I remained standing in the doorway, blocking it.

"You had a successful conclusion to your transaction?"

"Yes, thank you."

The heavy eyebrows went up. "But you have not read Mr. Das's poem?"

"No, not yet." I braced myself for a request to borrow the manuscript.

"Yes, yes. I do not want to bother you. I wish to give you this in anticipation of your meeting with Mr. M. Das." Krishna handed over a wrinkled paper sack.

"I have no plans to meet with —"

"Yes, yes." Krishna shrugged from the waist up. "But who is to know? Good-bye, Mr. Luczak." I shook Krishna's extended hand. Before I could look in the sack he was gone, whistling down the corridor toward the elevators.

"Who was that?" called Amrita from the bathroom. I sat on the bed.

"Krishna," I said and opened the sack. There was something wrapped in a loose bundle of rags.

"What did he want?"

I stared at the thing in my hands. It ws an automatic pistol: metal, chromed, tiny. It was as small and light as cap pistols I'd played with as a boy. But the muzzle opening looked real enough, and when I figured out how to slide the small clip out, the jacketed cartridges were all too real. Tiny lettering above the handgrip read GUISSEPPE .25 CALIBRE. "Goddamn it to shit," I said softly.

"I said, What did he want?" called Amrita.

"Nothing!" I yelled and looked around. Four steps took me to the closet. "Just to say good-bye."

"What did you say just now?"

"Nothing." I stuffed the pistol and clip in the bag separately, wrapped them tightly in rags, and tossed the bag as far back as I could on the wide shelf above the hangars.

"You mumbled something," said Amrita as she emerged from the bathroom.

"Just trying to get you to hurry up," I said and pulled a green knit shirt and tan slacks from the closet and closed the door.

We made arrangements for a cab to take us to the airport at 4:45 A.M. and then we turned in early. I lay there for hours, watching the silhouettes of furniture slowly materialize as my eyes adjusted to the darkness.

It would have been an understatement to say that I felt dissatisfied with myself. I lay there in the moist Calcutta night and realized that my actions during the entire time I'd been in the city had been either pointless or hesitant or both. Half the time I had behaved like a brainless tourist, and the other half I had let the locals treat me like one. What the hell was I going to write about? How had I let a city frighten me for no real reason? Fear . . . nameless, asinine fear . . . had controlled my reactions more than any attempt at logic.

Krishna. That insane son of a bitch. What is the gun for? I tried to convince myself that the present of the gun was another one of Krishna's senseless, melodramatic gestures, but what if it was part of some elaborate scam? What if he contracted the police and told them that the American was carrying an illegal firearm? I sat up in bed, my skin clammy. No. How the hell could that benefit Krishna? Are handguns illegal in Calcutta? For all I knew, Calcutta was the home office of the N.R.A.

Sometime before midnight I arose and turned on the tiny table lamp. Amrita stirred but did not wake. Victoria was asleep with her rump raised under the light blanket. The catches on the briefcase made a soft click in the silence.

The pages were yellowed, tattered, and strewn about the inside of the briefcase, but they were also numbered with bold strokes of a fountain pen and it took me only minutes to set them in order. There were over five hundred pages, and it made for a heavy stack of poetry. I smiled ruefully as I thought of any American magazine editor being confronted with five hundred pages of verse.

There was no cover page, no title, no cover letter, and no author's name on the pages. If I hadn't know that the massive work was purported to have been written by M. Das, there would have been no way to guess from the manuscript.

The first page looked like a poor carbon copy. I leaned closer to the light and began reading.

Several more stanzas of this rough verse painted a grisly picture of the demon Mahishasura, a powerful, malevolent thing which threatened even the gods. Then, on page 3, the meter and "voice" changed drastically. I translated a scrawled marginal notation as Kalidasa: Kumarambhava 400 A.D. new trans.

I yawned. "A fearful flock of evil birds." God help me when I give this to Chet Morrow. Nothing could help me if I brought this as my "new Das epic" to Abe Bronstein. I skimmed through several pages of similar turgid verse. The only reason I didn't put it down then was a vague curiosity as to how Parvati was going to beat the apparently invincible Demon Mahishasura. Stanza after stanza described the opening of the battle between the gods and demons. It was vintage Homer via Rod McKuen.

I could identify with that. Still, I continued reading. Things looked bad for the goddess Parvati. Even with the assistance of the great god Siva, she could not best the mighty Mahishasura. Parvati was reborn as the warrioress Durga, ten hands brandishing weapons of battle. Millennia passed as the struggle progressed, but Mahishasura could not be conquered.

The gods retreated from the field to review their options. Mere mortals petitioned them not to abandon the earth to the less than tender mercies of Mahishasura. A grim decision was made. The will of all the gods was bent to dark purpose. From Durga's forehead leaped a goddess more demon than divine. She was power incarnate, violence personified, unfettered even by the bonds of time which held other gods and mere men in check. She strode the heavens wrapped in darkness deeper than night, casting fear into the hearts of even the deities who had brought her forth.

She was called to battle. She accepted the call. But before opposing Mahishasura and the rampaging legions of demons, she demanded her sacrifice. And it was a terrible one. From every town and village on the young earth, men and women, children and elders, virgins and depraved were brought before the hungry goddess. Das's marginal note, only just decipherable, read: Bhavabhuti Malatimadhava.

That would have been enough for one night, but the next line kept me in my chair. I blinked and read on.

And then, without transition, the style reverted to the fifth-century sambhava.

All this was mere prelude as the poem unfolded like some dark flower. Das's strong poetic voice would appear occasionally, only to fade and be replaced by a classic Veda or a piece of news raised from archives or the banal tones of journalism. But the song was the same.

For ages beyond time, the gods conspired to contain this black power they had created. It was circumscribed, propitiated, and hidden in the pantheon, but its essential nature could not be denied. It alone — she alone — grew in strength as other divinities faded from mortal memory, for she alone embodied the dark underside of an essentially benign universe — a universe whose reality had been forged through the millennia by the consciousness of gods and men alike.

But she was not the product of consciousness. She was the focus and residue of all the atavistic urges and actions which ten thousand years of conscious strivings had hoped to put behind.

The poem unfolded through countless small stories, anecdotes, and folk tales. All had the indefinable taste of truth to them. Each story reflected a rip in the sense-deafening fabric of reality, a rip through which the Song of Kali could be faintly heard. People, places, and points in time became conduits, holes through which powerful energies poured.

In this century the Song of Kali had become a chorus. The smoke of sacrifice rose to the clouded dwelling place of Kali, and the goddess awoke to hear her song.

Page after page. Sometimes entire lines were gibberish, as if typed out by someone using fists on the keys. Other times, whole pages of scribbled English were indecipherable. Fragments of Sanskrit and Bengali interrupted clear passages and crawled up the margins. But random images remained.

— A whore on Sudder Street murdered her lover and greedily devoured his body in the name of love. The Age of Kali has begun.

— Screams are torn from the dead bellies of the slaughtered millions of our modern age; a chorus of outrage from the mass graves which fertilize our century. The Song of Kali now is sung.

— The silhouettes of children playing etched permanently on a shattered wall when the bomb flash instantaneously scorched the concrete black. The Age of Kali has begun.

— The father waited patiently for the last of his four daughters to come home from school. Gently he placed the revolver to her temple, fired twice, and placed her warm body next to those of her mother and sisters. The police find him crooning a soft lullaby to the silent forms. The Song of Kali now is sung.

I quit with only another hundred pages left to read. My eyes had been shutting of their own accord, and twice I'd awakened to find my chin on my chest. I clumsily stuffed the manuscript in the briefcase and checked my watch on the dresser.

It was 3:45 A.M.. In a few minutes the alarm would go off and we would have to get ready for the ride to the airport. The flight home, counting the London layover, would be a 28-hour marathon.

I groaned with exhaustion and crawled into bed next to Amrita. For the first time, the room seemed pleasantly cool. I pulled up the sheet and closed my eyes for just a few minutes. A few minutes to doze before the alarm went off and we had to get dressed.

Just a few minutes.

I awake elsewhere. Someone has carried me here. It is dark but I have no trouble knowing where I am.

It is the Kali Temple.

The goddess stands before me. Her foot is raised over empty air. All four of her hands are empty. I cannot see her face because I am lying on the floor to one side of the idol.

I am not afraid.

I realize that I am naked. It does not matter. There is a rush mat under me and it is cool against my skin. A few candles illuminate the statue. The air smells of musk and incense. Somewhere men's high voices chant softly. Or perhaps it is only the sound of the moving water. It is not important.

The idol moves.

Kali turns her head and looks at me.

I feel only wonderment. I marvel at her beauty. Her face is oval, perfect, flushed. Her lips are full and moist. She smiles at me.

I stand. My bare feet feel the parallel weave of the mat. A breeze sends a shiver up my bare abdomen and belly.

Kali stirs herself. Fingers move. Her arms bend and balance her. Her foot comes down on the pedestal and she stands lightly on both legs. Her luminous eyes never leave mine.

I close my eyelids, but vision persists. I see the soft light on her flesh. Her breasts are high, full, heavy with promise. The broad nipples rise from the soft circles of their areolae. Her waist is high and impossibly narrow, widening to full hips made to cradle a man's thrusting pelvis. Her lower belly is a soft, protruding crescent, throwing shadow into the pubic darkness below. The dancer's thighs do not touch, but curve sensuously inward at their juncture. Her feet are tiny and high-arched. Bracelets circle her ankles. They jingle as she moves. Her legs part and I can see the folds in the triangle of shadow; the soft, inward-curving cleft.

My penis stirs, hardens, and rises stiffly into the night air. My scrotum pulls tighter as I feel the power flow through me and center there.

Kali lightly steps down from her pedestal. Her necklace clicks softly, the bracelets on her ankles jingle faintly, and her bare soles make soft, fleshy sounds on the stone floor.

She is five paces from me. Her arms move in silhouette, sensuous reeds weaving to an unfelt breeze. Her whole body sways to the pulsing music-beat of the lapping river and her left knee rises, rises, until it touches the elbow or her cocked arm. A woman scent rises from her perfumed flesh and enfolds me.

I want to go to her, but I cannot move. My pounding heart fills my chest with the drumbeat of the chanting. My hips begin to move of their own accord, thrusting involuntarily. All of my consciousness is centered at the base of my throbbing penis.

Kali swings her left leg around and down.

She steps toward me. Her anklets tinkle.

Unnala-nabhi-pamke-ruha sings the river, and I understand it perfectly.

Her four arms sway in a silent dance. Fingers curl, touch fingertips, move gracefully through the sweet air toward me. Her breasts bob together heavily.

Victory to the face of the Daughter of the Mountain.

She takes another step forward. Her fingers sway, caress my cheek, glance lightly against my shoulder. Her head is thrown back, eyes half closed with passion. I see the perfection of her features, the flushed cheeks and trembling mouth.

Kamakhya?

Iva yenavabhati Sambhur' api

Jayati purusayitayas'tadananam 'Saila-kanyayah

Kali's next step brings her arms around me. Her long hair flows down over her shoulders like rivulets on a soft hillside. Her glowing skin is lightly perfumed, and sweat glistens in the tender valley between her breasts. Two hands hold my upper arms while a third softly caresses my cheek. Her other hand moves upward to gently cup my testicles. Her tapered fingers move up the length of my stiff penis, curve lightly around the glans.

I am Sambhu-Siva appearing as Visnu

The lotus and its stalk rise from my navel

I cannot stifle a moan. My erection touches the cusp of her belly. She looks down, and then her beautiful eyes turn up wantonly at me through heavy lashes. The wiry softness of her mons veneris moves against me, withdraws, comes again.

Finally I can move. My arms immediately go around her while she encloses me. Soft breasts flatten against me. Hands slide up and down my back. Her right leg rises, crooks itself around my hip, fingers guide, and she mounts me. Her ankles clasp beneath my thrusting buttocks.

Kali, Kali, balo, bhai

The chanting fills the world with the rhythm of our movement. Her warmth scalds me. She opens her mouth wetly against my neck, slides to find my tongue. I grip her, lift her. Breasts move across my chest on a cushion of sweat. My feet are arching, my calves straining in the effort to strike more deeply inside Kali.

The universe focuses on a circle of flame growing in me, rising in me, exploding through me.

"Sweet Jesus!" I sat up in bed. The sheets were soaked with my sweat and my pajama bottoms wet from the growing stain of an ejaculation.

"Oh, Christ." I cradled my aching head in my hands and rocked. Amrita was gone. Heavy sunlight poured through the curtains. The travel clock said 10:48.

"Goddammit to goddam hell." I went into the bathroom, flung the pajamas into a bag of dirty laundry, and scrubbed myself under a pounding shower. My hands and legs were still shaking when I emerged fifteen minutes later. My head hurt so fiercely that small dots danced in the periphery of my vision.

I dressed quickly and took four aspirin. Dark stubble stood out against my pale cheeks, but I decided not to shave. I came out of the bathroom just as Amrita returned with Victoria.

"Where the fuck were you?" I snapped.

She froze, her smile of greeting slowly fading. Victoria stared at me as at a stranger.

"Well?"

Amrita's back straightened. Her voice was level. "I went back to the sari shop to get Kamakhya's address. I tried to phone but the lines have been dead. As long as we're staying another day, I wanted to exchange the material. Didn't you see my note?"

"We're supposed to be almost to London by now. What the hell happened?" My voice was harsh, but the anger was already beginning to flow away.

"What do you mean, Bobby? Just what do you mean?"

"I mean what happened to the damn alarm, the cab we'd arranged, the BOAC flight? That's what I mean."

Amrita moved briskly to set the baby down. She crossed to the window, jerked the curtains back, and folded her arms. "The 'damn alarm' went off at four. I got up. You refused to wake up, even after I shook you. Finally, when I did get you to sit up, you said, 'Let's wait another day.' And all this was because you sat up all night reading."

"I said that?" I shook my head and sat down on the edge of the bed. The world's worst hangover still throbbed and threatened to make me throw up. Hangover from what? "I said that?"

"You said that." Amrita's voice was cold. In our years of marriage, I'd cursed at her very few times.

"Damn. I'm sorry. I wasn't awake. That damned manuscript."

"You said you were going to wait to read it on the plane."

"Yeah."

Amrita uncrossed her arms and went over to the mirror to replace a strand of hair that had come loose. The color was coming back to her lips. "That's all right, Bobby. I don't mind staying another day."

An urgency rose in my throat. My voice sounded strange to me. "Goddamn it, I mind. You and Victoria aren't staying another day. What time are the Air India flights to Delhi?"

"Nine-thirty and one o'clock. Why?"

"You're taking the one o'clock flight and catching the evening Pan Am flight out of Delhi."

"Bobby, that will mean . . . What do you mean 'you'? Why aren't you going? You have the manuscript."

"You two are going. Today. I have to finish something relating to this stinking article. One more day will do it."

"Oh, Bobby, I hate to travel alone with Victoria —"

"I know, kiddo, but it can't be helped. Let's get your stuff repacked."

"It's still packed."

"Good. Get Victoria ready and the bags together. I'll go downstairs and arrange for a taxi and a porter." I kissed her on the cheek. Normally there would have been an argument at any attempt by me to be dictatorial, but Amrita heard something in my voice.

"All right," she said. "But you'd better hurry. You can't reserve tickets over the phone in India, you know. You just have to show up early and stand in line."

"Yeah. I'll be right back."

"Mr. Gupta?" The phone in the lobby was working.

"Hello. Yes. Hello?"

"Mr. Gupta, this is Robert Luczak."

"Yes, Mr. Luczak. Hello?"

"Listen, Mr. Gupta, I want you to arrange a meeting with M. Das. A private meeting. Just him and me."

"What? What? This is not possible. Hello?"

"It had better be possible, Mr. Gupta. Make whatever contacts you have to and tell Das that I want to meet with him today."

"No, Mr. Luczak. You do not understand. M. Das had not permitted anyone to —"

"Yes, I've heard all of that. But he'll meet with me, I'm sure. I urge you to expedite this, Mr. Gupta."

"I am very sorry, but —"

"Listen, sir, I'll explain the situation. My wife and baby are leaving Calcutta in a few minutes. I'm flying out tomorrow. If I have to leave without seeing Das, I'm still going to have to write an article for Harper's. Would you like to hear what that article is going to say?"

"Mr. Luczak, you must understand that it is impossible for us to arrange for you to meet M. Das. Hello?"

"My article will say that for some reason known only to themselves, the members of the Bengali Writers' Union have attempted to perpetrate the biggest literary fraud since the Clifford Irving hoax. For some reason known only to themselves, this group has accepted money in exchange for a manuscript they claim is the work of a man who has been dead for eight years. And what is more —"

"Completely untrue, Mr. Luczak! Untrue and actionable. We will press charges. You have no proof of these allegations."

"And what's more, this group has despoiled a great poet's name by producing a pornographic paean to a local demon goddess. Authoritative sources in Calcutta suggest that the Writers' Union may have done this because of contacts they have with a group called the Kapalikas — an outlawed cult involved in the city's crime world and reputed to offer human sacrifices to their demented goddess. How do you like it so far, Mr. Gupta? Hello, Mr. Gupta? Hello?"

"Yes, Mr. Luczak."

"What do you think, Mr. Gupta? Shall I go with that or shall I interview M. Das?"

"It will be arranged. Please call back in three hours."

"Oh . . . and Mr. Gupta?"

"Yes."

"I've already mailed one copy of my . . . ah . . . first article to my editor in New York with instructions not to open it unless I'm delayed in my return home. I hope that it won't be necessary to do that version. I'd much rather do the Das story."

"It will not be necessary, Mr. Luczak."

All cabs to and from Dum-Dum Airport were driven by veterans of the '71 Indo-Pakistani War. Our driver had scar tissue covering his right cheek and a broad, black patch over his eye that made me speculate idly about monocular vision and depth perception as we weaved in and out of heavy traffic on VIP Highway.

It was raining again. Everything was the color of mud — the clouds, the road, the burlap-tin hovels piled on one another, and the distant factories. Only the red and white stripes painted around the occasional banyan tree near the roadside added color to the scene. Near the edge of town there were new apartment buildings going up. I could tell they were new by the bamboo scaffolding girdling them and the bulldozers parked nearby in the mud, but the structures looked as decayed and age-streaked as the oldest ruins in the center of the city. Beyond the bulldozers were clusters of lean-tos occupied by huddled forms. Were these the families of construction crews or new residents waiting to occupy the buildings? Most likely the shacks were just the nucleus of a new chawl; the growing edge of 250 square miles of unrelieved slum.

To our left was the white sign I'd glimpsed at night. This side read —

CALCUTTA WISHES YOU

GOOD-BYE

GOOD HEALTH.

A woman with pans and a large bronze jug stacked atop her head squatted in the mud beneath the sign.

The airport was crowded, but not as insanely so as the night we arrived. The Delhi flight was already filled but there had just been a cancellation. Yes, the Pan Am flight would leave New Delhi at ?P.M. It should be possible to get tickets.

We checked the luggage through and wandered through the terminal. There were no empty chairs, and it took awhile to find a quiet corner where we could change Victoria's diaper. Then we went into a small coffee shop to have a soft drink.

We said little to each other. Amrita seemed lost in her own thoughts and my head still ached abominably. Occasionally I would remember fragments of my dream, and the muscles in my gut would clench in tension and embarrassment.

"If worse came to worst," I said, "and you missed this evening's Pam Am connection, you could stay overnight with your aunt in New Delhi."

"Yes."

"Or stay at a good hotel near the airport."

"Yes, I could do that."

A Belgian tour group squeezed into the coffee shop. One of them, an incredibly ugly woman wearing open mesh trousers, was carrying a large plaster statue of the elephant-headed god Ganesha. They were all laughing uproariously.

"Call Dan and Barb when you get to Boston," I said.

"All right."

"I should be there the day after you. Hey, are you going to call your parents from Heathrow?"

"Bobby, I really wouldn't mind staying another day. You might need help . . . with the translating. It's about the manuscript, isn't it?"

I shook my head. "Too late, kiddo. Your luggage is already loaded. You could do without any clothes, I suppose, but we'd be doomed without the extra disposable diapers."

Amrita did not smile.

"Seriously," I said and took her hand, "I've just got to do some follow-up work with Gupta and those clowns. Hell, I just don't have enough stuff to put into an article yet. One day should do it."

Amrita nodded and tapped my ring. "All right, but be careful. Don't drink any unbottled water. And if Kamakhya comes by to exchange my material, make sure she gives you just the material . . ."

I grinned. "Yeah."

"Bobby, why didn't you let the maid in?"

"What?"

"To clean the room. Right before we left you told her to wait until tomorrow."

"The Das manuscript," I said quickly. "I don't want anyone nosing around."

Amrita nodded. I drank the last of my warm Fanta, watched a small ghekko scurry across the wall, and tried not to think about the .25-caliber automatic on the shelf of the hotel room closet.

The plane was ready to board and I had kissed both of them farewell when Amrita remembered something. "Oh, in case Kamakhya doesn't come to the hotel, would you drop by her home to get the material?" She began rummaging through her purse.

"Is it that important?"

"No, but I'd appreciate it if it works out."

"Why didn't you just exchange her material at the shop?"

"It was all cut to length. And I was certain we would see her again. Darn, I was sure I had the slip here. Never mind. I remember the address." Amrita took out a book of matches she'd picked up at the Prince's Room and jotted the address inside the cover. "Only if you have time," she said.

"All right." I would not have time. We kissed again. Victoria twisted between us, confused by the crowd and noises. I cupped the baby's head in my hand, feeling the infinite softness of her hair. "You two have a good trip. I'll see you in a couple of days."

There were no enclosed boarding ramps at Dum-Dum Airport. The passengers crossed a wet expanse of tarmac and climbed a stairway into the waiting Air India jet. Amrita turned and waved Victoria's pudgy arm before disappearing into the French-made Airbus. Normally I would have waited for the plane to take off.

I checked my watch and walked quickly back through the terminal to a stand of telephones. Gupta answered on the fifth ring.

"It is arranged, Mr. Luczak. Here is the address . . ."I fumbled for my notebook but came up with the matchbook Amrita had given me. I jotted the street number next to Kamakhya's address.

"Oh . . . and Mr. Luczak . . ."

"Yes?"

"This time you will come alone."

The rain had stopped when I stepped out of the taxi. Vapor rose from the streets and drifted between the old buildings. I had no idea where I was. The address Gupta had given me was a street corner in the old section of the city, but I had seen no familiar landmarks on the way there.

The streets and sidewalks were filling up with people after the rainstorm. Bicycles glided by with bells jangling. The steamy air was thickened further by the fumes from motorcycles. An old bullock, its back a mass of scabs and open sores, lay down heavily in the center of the busy street. Traffic swerved around it.

I stood and waited. The sidewalk there was actually a a four-foot-wide strip of pockmarked mud between the gutter and the walls of old buildings. There were three-foot gaps between the buildings, and after being assaulted by a terrible smell, I walked over and peered into one of the narrow apertures.

Garbage and organic wastes rose eight to twelve feet high down the length of the long alley. It was obvious that the residents had thrown their refuse out the upper windows for many years. Dark shapes moved through the stinking heaps. I quickly moved away from the opening and stood by the stream of rainwater and sewage that marked the separation of street and sidewalk.

I watched every face in the moving crowd. As in any large city, the pedestrians had set their faces in masks of hurried irritability. Many of the men wore stiff polyester shirts and bell-bottomed polyester slacks. I marveled that — in a nation which produced some of the world's best and least expensive cotton clothing — the sign of middle-class prestige was the more expensive, unbreathable polyester. Occasionally a sweaty face under oiled black hair would glance my way, but no one stopped except some children, naked except for filthy khaki shorts, who danced around me for several minutes calling "Baba! Baba!" and giggling. I handed out no coins, and after several minutes they ran off splashing through the gutter.

"You are Luczak?"

I jumped. The two men had come up behind me while I was watching the traffic go by. One of them was dressed in the usual polyester, but the other wore the stained khaki of the service classes. Neither looked especially bright or pleasant. The tall, thin one in a print shirt had a wedge-shaped face with sharp cheekbones and a narrow mouth. The man in khaki was shorter, heavier, and dumber-looking than his friend. There was a sleepy, disdainful look about his eyes that reminded me of all the bullies I'd ever known.

"I'm Luczak."

"Come."

They moved off through the crowd so quickly that I had to jog to catch up. I asked several questions, but their silence and the uproar of the street convinced me to keep quiet and follow them.

We walked for the better part of an hour. I had been lost to start with, but I was soon terminally disoriented. Because of the omnipresent clouds, I couldn't even use the sun for dead reckoning. We went down crowded side streets no wider than an alley and actual alleys crowded with people and debris. Several times the two led the way through short tunnels into courtyards of residential buildings. Children ran, squealed, and squatted everywhere. Women pulled their saris half over their faces and watched with dark, suspicious eyes. Other tunnels led to other courtyards. Old men hung over rusted iron railings and looked down with glazed expressions. Babies screamed. Cooking fires burned on concrete landings and smoke hung in the foggy air.

Another short tunnel brought us out into alley which was several blocks long and more crowded than most American main streets. This led to an area where buildings had been razed, but tents and impromptu shelters sat between mounds of rubble. One large pit, perhaps a basement in some previous time, had been flooded by monsoon rains and the filthy drainage. Scores of men and boys splashed and shouted in the water while others leaped from second-floor windows in buildings surrounding the brown pool. Nearby, two naked boys laughingly poked sticks at what appeared to be a drowned and bloated rat.

Then we were out of the residential buildings completely and into a chawl of loosely piled rock walls, gunny sack apartments and multi-leveled condominiums constructed of old billboards, sheets of tin, and bleached scrapwood. An empty lot held twenty or thirty men squatting to defecate. Farther on, young girls sat on a rocky terrace behind their younger siblings, carefully pulling lice from matted hair. An occasional scrawny dog slunk away as we passed, but none seemed to possess any territorial instincts here. Human eyes watched from the deep shadows of the hovel doorways. Every once in a while a child would run out, palm extended, but a shout from an unseen adult would quickly call him back.

Suddenly, incense filled the air and stung the eyes. We passed a ramshackle green building which from the sounds of bells and atonal singing rising from an inner courtyard gave the impression of being a temple. Outside the green temple, an old woman and her granddaughter scooped heaps of cow dung from a large basket and kneaded them into hamburger-sized fuel patties for the evening fire. The temple wall was coated for thirty feet with rows of round and drying chunks of finger-patterned dung. Across the mud path of a street, several men were working on a bamboo frame of a hut no larger than a big backpacking tent. The men stopped their good-natured shouting and watched silently as we passed. If I had retained any doubt that my two guides were Kapalikas, it was dispelled by the wake of silence we left in our passing.

"Is it much farther?" It was beginning to rain again, and I'd left our umbrella back at the hotel. My white slacks were muddy halfway to my knees. My tan Wallabees would never be the same again. I stopped. "I said, Is it much farther?"

The heavy man in khaki turned and shook his head. He stabbed a finger at a wall of gray industrial buildings visible just beyond the sea of shacks. We had to climb a muddy hillside for the last hundred yards and I went down on my knees twice. The top of the hill was guarded by a high mesh fence with overhanging barbed wire. I looked through and saw rusted oil barrels and empty railroad sidings between the buildings.

"Now what?" I turned to admire the view of the chawl. The tin roofs were held down by countless rocks, black on gray. Here and there open flames were visible in dark doorways. Far off in the direction from which we had come, tenements stretched out of sight into the heavy drizzle. Smoke rose from a hundred sources and blended into the gray-brown sky.

"Come." The thin, hatched-faced man had peeled back a section of fence.

I hesitated. My heart was pounding from more than the climb up the hill. I was filled with that exhilarating, stomach-clenching lightness that one feels approaching the end of a high diving board.

I nodded and stepped through the fence.

The factory area was silent. I realized how I had grown used to the constant sounds of conversation, of movement . . . of people in this crowded city. Now, as we moved from one dim alley to the next, the silence grew as thick as the moist air. I could not believe that this factory complex was still active. Small brick buildings were almost overgrown with weeds and vines. Far up a wall, a window that had once held a hundred glass squares could now show only ten or twelve intact. The rest were jagged black holes through which small birds occasionally flitted. Everywhere were the empty oil drums — once a bright red, yellow, blue, but now scabrous with rust.

We turned into an even narrower alley, a cul-de-sac. I stopped abruptly. My hand went to the lower right pocket of my safari shirt and to the heavy, palm-sized rock I had picked up on the hillside. Incredibly, I felt no fear now that I was here, only a strong curiosity as to what the two men would do next. I glanced over my shoulder to make sure my back was clear, mentally traced a retreat through the maze of alleys, and turned back to the two Kapalikas. Watch the heavy one, a part of me warned.

"There." The one in khaki pointed up a narrow outside wooden stairway. The door at the top was a little higher than a normal second floor would be. Ivy matted the brick wall. There were no windows.

I did not move. My hand closed around the stone. The two men waited a long moment, glanced at each other, and turned on their heels to walk back the way we had come. I stepped to the side with my back against a wall and let them go. I could tell that they did not expect me to follow. Their footsteps on gravel were audible for a short while, and then there was only the sound of my own heavy breathing.

I glanced up at the steep stairway. The high walls and narrow strip of sky made me a little dizzy. Suddenly a flock of pigeons exploded from some dark cavity under the rooftop and wheeled away, wings flapping like rifle shots, circling into the heavy sky. It seemed very dark for 3:30 in the afternoon.

I walked back to the junction of alleys and looked both directions. Nothing was visible for at least a hundred paces. The rock in my hand felt cool and properly heavy, a caveman's utensil. Red clay still clung to its smooth surface. I raised the stone to my cheek and looked again at the door thirty feet up the overgrown wall. There was a pane of glass in the door but it had been painted over long ago.

I closed my eyes a second and let my breathing slow. Then I dropped the stone into my shirt pocket and climbed the rotting staircase to meet whatever waited there.