Song of Kali

Chapter Fourteen

If I had found a taxi sooner . . .

If I had gone straight to the hotel . . .

It took me the better part of an hour to get back to the hotel. At first I staggered from street to street, staying in the shadows, freezing when I saw anyone walking my direction. Once I jogged through an empty courtyard to get to a wider avenue from which came the sound of traffic.

A man lurched out of a shadowed doorway at me. I yelled, jumped back, and threw up my fists in an instinctive gesture. I screamed again when my little finger tried to bend with the rest of my left hand. The man — an old man in rags with a red bandana around his forehead — stumbled back in the act of saying "Baba" and let out his own scream of fear. The two of us left the courtyard in different directions.

I came out onto the avenue to see trucks passing, private cars swerving around cyclists, and, most welcome of all, a public bus moving slowly down the street. I banged on the side of the moving vehicle in my eagerness to board it. The driver stared as I dumped a pocketful of coins at him. Along with the required paisas there must have been several days' worth of his salary in the American money I dumped there.

The bus was crowded, and I squeezed through the standing passengers to find a position less visible from the street. There were no straps. I grabbed a metal bar and hung on to it as the swaying bus ground through gears and lurched from stop to stop.

For a while I fell into a half-dream state. The overload of the past few hours had left me drained of everything except the desire to stand there and be safe. Many blocks had passed before I realized that a wide space had been opened around me and that the other passengers were staring.

Haven't you ever seen an American before? I thought at them. Then I looked down at myself. My clothes were soaked and reeking from the unmentionable filth I had waded through. My shirt was ripped in at least two places and no one could have guessed that it had once been white. My bare arms were caked with scum and my right forearm was still redolent from my own vomit. The little finger on my left hand protruded at an impossible angle. From the way my brow and forehead felt, I had the beginning of a spectacular bruise there, and caked blood still adorned my brow, eyelid, and cheek. No doubt my hair and expression looked wilder than Krishna at his wildest.

"Hi," I said and gave a limp wave at the group. Women raised their saris over their faces, and the entire huddle pressed back until the driver shouted at them not to crowd him.

A thought occurred to me then. Where the hell was I? For all I knew, this might have been the nightly express to New Delhi. At the very least, the odds were great that I was going the wrong way.

"Does anyone here speak English?" I asked. The staring passengers pressed even farther away from me. I bent and peered out the barred windows. A few blocks passed before I saw the neon-lit facade of some sort of hotel or café. Several black and yellow cabs were parked out front.

"Hold it!" I called. "I'll get out here." I pressed through the quickly parting throng. The driver screeched to a halt in the middle of the street. There was no door to be opened. The crowd made way to let me pass.

I argued with the drivers for several minutes before I remembered that I still had my wallet. The three drivers had taken one look at me and decided that I was not worth their time. Then I remembered to take out my wallet and hold up a twenty-dollar bill. Suddenly the three were smiling, bowing, and opening their car doors for me. I settled into the first cab, said "Oberoi Grand," and closed my eyes. We roared away through rain-slick streets.

Several minutes later I realized that I was still wearing my watch. The dial was difficult to read, but when we passed a lighted intersection I could make it out. It said 11:28 . . . that was impossible! Only two hours since the car had brought me to Das? A lifetime had passed since then. I tapped the crystal, but the second hand continued pulsing steadily.

"Hurry!" I said to the driver.

"Atcha!" he called back happily. Neither of us had understood the other.

The assistant manager saw me enter the lobby and watched me with an expression of horror. He raised his hand. "Mr. Luczak!"

I waved at him and enterd the elevator. I did not want to talk to him. The adrenalin and mindless euphoria were wearing away to be replaced by nausea, fatigue, and pain. I leaned against the wall of the elevator and held my left hand steady. What would I tell Amrita? My thoughts stirred sluggishly and I settled on a simple tale of being mugged. I would tell her the rest of the story someday. Perhaps.

It was midnight, but there were people in the hall. Our room door was open and it looked as if a party were going on. Then I saw the Sam Browne belts on the two policeman and the familiar beard and turban of Inspector Singh. Amrita called the police. I said I'd be back in thirty mintutes.

Several people turned to watch me approach, and Inspector Singh stepped toward me. I began inventing details of the mugging — nothing serious enough to keep us in Calcutta an extra day! — and waved almost jauntily at the police. "Inspector! Who says there's never a policeman around when you need one?"

Singh said nothing. Then the scene registered on my exhausted mind. Other hotel guests were milling around, staring at the open door of our room. The open door.

I pushed past the Inspector and ran into the hotel room. I do not know what I expected to find, but my racing heart slowed as I saw Amrita sitting on the bed, speaking to an officer taking notes.

The relief made me sag back against the door. Everything was all right. Then Amrita looked at me; and in the pale, controlled calm of her absolutely expressionless face, I could see that everything was not all right after all. It might never be all right again.

"They've taken Victoria," she said. "They've stolen our baby."

"Why did you let her in? I told you not to let anyone in. Why did you let her in?" I had asked the same thing three times before. Amrita had answered three times. I sat with my back against the wall where I was slumped to the floor. My forearms rested on my raised knees and my broken finger jutted whitely. Amrita sat very straight on the edge of the bed, one hand lying primly atop the other. Inspector Singh sat nearby in a straight-backed chair, scrutinizing the both of us. The door to the hall was closed.

"She said she had brought the material back," said Amrita. "She wanted to exchange it. You and I were leaving in the morning."

"But . . . aw, Christ, kiddo —" I stopped and lowered my face.

"You didn't say not to talk to her, Bobby. I knew Kamakhya."

Inspector Singh cleared his throat. "Yet it was very late, Mrs. Luczak. Did this cause you any concern?"

"Yes," said Amrita and turned toward Singh. "I kept the chain hooked and asked her why she had come so late. She explained . . . she seemed embarrassed, Inspector . . . she explained that she had not been able to leave the house until her father was asleep. She said that she had called twice earlier."

"And had she, Mrs. Luczak?"

"The phone did ring twice, Inspector. Bobby had told me not to answer it. I didn't."

They both looked at me. I met Singh's gaze. I could not meet Amrita's.

"You are sure that you do not require medical assistance, Mr. Luczak? There is a doctor on call with this establishment."

"No. I'm sure." After the first few minutes, when Singh had asked what had happened to me, I had blurted out the entire story. It could not have been very coherent, but I omitted nothing but the fact that I had been the one who gave the pistol to Das. Inspector Singh had nodded and taken notes as if he heard such stories every evening.

It did not matter.

He turned back to Amrita. "I'm sorry to make you go back over this again, Mrs. Luczak, but can you estimate how long you were out of the room?"

Amrita trembled a bit through her icy control, and I could see the pit of hysteria and grief that lay under the surface. I wanted to go to her and take her in my arms. I did nothing.

"A minute, Inspector. Perhaps not that long. I was speaking to Kamakhya when suddenly I felt very dizzy. I excused myself, went into the bathroom to splash cold water on my face, and returned. Perhaps forty-five seconds."

"And the child?"

"Victoria . . . Victoria was asleep there. On the bed near the windows. We use . . . we use the pillows and cushion as a kind of . . . she likes to nestle, Inspector. She likes her head to be against something. And she won't roll off with the cushion there."

"Yes."

I pushed myself to my feet and walked to the foot of Amrita's bed. Anywhere as long as I didn't have to look at the other bed with it's empty circle of pillows and Victoria's blue and white blanket, still crumpled and moist where she had pulled it against her face in her sleep.

"You've heard all of this before, Inspector," I said. "When are you going to quit asking questions and get busy hunting for . . . for the person who has our baby?"

Singh looked at me with dark eyes. I remembered the pain in Das's gaze, and I understood a little better now that there might be no limit to hurting.

"We are searching, Mr. Luczak. The entire Metropolitan Police Force has been notified. No one in the hotel saw this woman leave. People on the street do not remember seeing such a person carrying a child or a bundle. I have sent a car to the address which Mrs. Luczak remembers from the sari shop. As you see, we have extended extra phone lines from the adjoining rooms so that we can receive communications while your line remains open."

"Remains open? Why?"

Singh glanced down, ran a thumb along the sharp crease of his trousers, and looked back. "For a ransom demand, Mr. Luczak. We must assume that there will be a ransom element to this kidnapping."

"Ah," I said and sat down heavily on the bed. The words had cut through me like sharp metal tabs that had to be swallowed. "I see. All right." I took Amrita's hand in mine. It was cold and limp. "But what about the Kapalikas?" I asked. "What if they're involved?"

Singh nodded. "We are checking into that, Mr. Luczak. You must remember that it is very late."

"But I gave you the description of the factory area where I met Das."

"Yes, and that may prove to be very helpful. But you should understand that there are scores of such places near the Hooghly in Old Calcutta. Hundreds, if you count warehouses and dock areas to the north. And all of them are private property. Many are owned by foreign interests. Are you sure, Mr. Luczak, that this place was near the river?"

"No. Not positive."

"And you remember no landmarks? No street names? No easily identifiable references?"

"No. Just the two chimneys. There was a slum —"

"Was there any sign that this was a permanent location for these men? Any sign of long-term habitation?"

I frowned. Other than Das's meager shelf of belongings, there had been no such sign. "There was the idol," I said at last. "They used the place as a temple. That idol couldn't be too easy to cart around."

"The idol that walked?" asked Singh. If there had been the slightest hint of sarcasm in his voice, I would have gone for him then, broken finger and everything.

"Yeah."

"And we do not know that they are involved, do we, Mr. Luczak?"

I cradled my hand and glared at him. "She's M. Das's niece, Inspector. She's bound to be involved somehow."

"No."

"What do you mean, 'no'?"

Singh took out a gold cigarette case. It was the first time that I had even seen anyone in real life tap a cigarette against a cigarette case before lighting up. "I mean, no, she is not M. Das's niece," he said.

Amrita gasped as if someone had slapped her. I stared.

"You said, Mrs. Luczak, that Miss Kamakhya Bahrati was the niece of the poet M. Das. The daughter of Das's younger sister, according to her own account. Is that correct?"

"Yes."

"M. Das had no sisters, Mrs. Luczak. At least, none who survived infancy. He had four living brothers, all farmers, all citizens of the same village in Bangladesh. You see, I have been case officer on the disappearance of Mr. M. Das for eight years. I am well acquainted with his circumstances. If you had mentioned being contacted by this woman when we spoke, Mr. Luczak, I could have informed you of this fact." Singh exhaled smoke and removed a shred of tobacco from his tongue.

The phone rang.

We all stared. It was one of the extra phones. Singh answered it. "Ha?" There was a long silence. "Shukriya," he said at last, and added, "Very good, sergeant."

"What is it?" I demanded.

Inspector Singh stubbed out his cigarette and stood. "There is little else we can do tonight, I am afraid. I will return in the morning. My men will be in the adjoining rooms through the night. Any call to your room will be monitored by an officer at the switchboard downstairs. That was my sergeant on the phone. The address Kamakhya Bahrati gave the shop was a false one, of course. She had returned to the shop to pick up the fabric in person. It took some time for my men to locate the street number she had given the store, since the address is in a location where there are few buildings." He hesitated then and looked at me. "The address she gave is a public laundry park," he said. "A laundry park and cremation grounds."

Amrita was by far the braver and the smarter of the two of us during the hours and days that followed. I might have remained sitting on the bed for hours after Singh left if Amrita had not taken charge, gotten me out of my reeking clothes, and set the broken finger as best she could using a small toothbrush holder as a splint. I threw up again when she tugged the finger into place, but there was nothing left to vomit and the dry heaves would have soon turned to sobs of fury and frustration if Amrita hadn't thrust me under the shower. The water was tepid and under-pressured, but wonderful. I stood there for half an hour, actually falling asleep for a while, allowing the flow of water to pound away memories and terrors. Only a fierce core of sorrow and confusion continued to burn through my fatigue as I dressed in clean cotton and joined Amrita for a silent vigil.

Tuesday morning arrived as we sat together watching the Calcutta sunrise throw a wan, gray light through the open curtains. Temple bells, trolley bells, vendors' cries, and random street sounds came to us with the first light. "She'll be all right," I would say at intervals. "I know she will, kid. She'll be all right."

Amrita said nothing.

At exactly 5:35 A.M., the telephone rang. It was the room phone. I lunged across the room at it.

"Hello?" I thought I could hear an extra hollowness to the line. It was as if I were talking into a cave in the earth.

"Hello? Hello? Mr. Luczak, hello?"

"Yes. Who is this?"

"Hello? This is Michael Leonard Chatterjee, Mr. Luczak."

"Yes?" Are you the go-between? Are you involved, you bastard?

"Mr. Luczak, the police came to my home during the night. They told me about the disappearance of your child."

"Yes?" If this was going to be just a sympathy call, I would hang up. But it was not a sympathy call.

"The police awoke me, Mr. Luczak. They awakened my family. They came to my home. They seem to think that I am somehow involved in this event. They interview me in the middle of the night, Mr. Luczak."

"Yeah? So?"

"I am calling to strongly protest this aspersion on my character and invasion of my privacy," said Chatterjee. His voice became higher and shriller as he began to shout. "You should not have given them my name, Mr. Luczak. I am a person of some stature in this community. I will not have such aspersions cast on my character, sir. You have no right."

"What?" It was all I could do to get the single syllable out.

"You have no right, sir. I warn you, any accusations you might make, any mention of my name, any involvement of the Writers' Union in your personal problems, Mr. Luczak, will result in legal action from my barrister. I am warning you, sir."

There was a hollow clunk as Chatterjee hung up. The line continued to hiss and crackle for several seconds, and then a second crash came as the policeman at the switchboard hung up. Amrita was standing next to me, but for a second I could not speak. I remained standing there, squeezing the receiver as if it were Chatterjee's neck, my rage reaching the point where blood vessels burst or tendons snap.

"What!" demanded Amrita, shaking my arm. I told her.

She nodded. Somehow the phone call vitalized her into action. First, using one of the extra lines, she called her aunt in New Delhi. Her aunt knew no one in Bengal, but she had friends who had friends in the Lok Sabha, one of the houses of government. Amrita simply told of the kidnapping and asked for help. I could not fathom what form that help could take, but the mere fact of Amrita's acting made me feel better.

Next she phoned her father's brother in Bombay. Her uncle also owned a construction company and was a man of some influence on the west coast of the subcontinent. Although he had been awakened from a sound sleep by a niece he had not heard from for a decade, he promised to get on the next plane to Calcutta. Amrita told him not to — not yet — but did ask him to contact any Bengal authorities who might help. He promised to do so and to keep in touch.

I sat listening to the elegant Hindi phrases and watched my wife as I would a stranger. When she later told me the substance of the calls, I felt the reassurance that a child knows when hearing adults confer with other adults over important matters.

Before Inspector Singh arrived at eight-thirty that morning, Amrita had called Calcutta's three main hospitals. No, no American children or light-skinned children fitting that description had been admitted overnight.

Then she called the morgue.

I could never have made that call. I could not have stood there as she did, back straight, voice steady, and inquired of some sleepy stranger as to whether the body of my child had been brought in during the dark Calcutta night.

The answer was no.

Only after she thanked him and hung up did I see the trembling begin in her legs and move up her body until her hands shook and she had to cover her face with them. I went to her then and took her in my arms. She did not release her tense control, not yet, but she bowed her head into the hollow of my neck and we rocked back and forth together, saying nothing, rocking together in the shared pain and ache of it.

Inspector Singh brought no news.

He sat and drank coffee with us around the small table in the room. Men in helmets came and went, delivering papers, receiving instructions.

Singh told us that security officials at the airport and train stations had been notified. Did we have a photograph of the child? I did. It was two months out of date. Victoria had much less hair then. Her face was less distinct. Beneath her dimpled legs I could see the orange blanket, a forgotten artifact of that distantly carefree Memorial Day picnic. I hated to give up the photograph.

Singh asked more questions, gave reassurances, and left us. A thin police sergeant poked his head in and reminded us in broken English that he would be next door. We nodded.

The day passed. Amrita had lunch brought up. Neither of us ate. Twice I took long showers, the door left open so that I could hear Amrita or the phone. My flesh still smelled of the previous night's foulness. I was so tired that I felt disconnected from my body. My thoughts circled around and around like a loop tape.

If I had not gone.

If I hadn't got in the car.

If I had returned sooner.

I turned off the water and slammed my fist into the tile.

By three P.M. Singh had returned with two other officers from the Metropolitan Force. One spoke no English. The other had somehow acquired a cockney accent. Their report was not helpful.

No one named M. T. Krishna was teaching at the University. Five instructors named Krishna had taught there during the past decade. Two had retired. Two were now in their mid or late fifties. One was a woman.

There was no record of any Krishna affiliated with the United States Education Foundation in India. Indeed, there was no USEFI office in Calcutta. The nearest branch was in Madras. Phone calls had been placed, but no one in Madras had any information about a Krishna or Sanjay. No one had been sent to meet us at the Calcutta airport. USEFI had no idea I was in the country.

There had been many students named Sanjay at Calcutta University. None contacted so far fit the description that I had given the police. Officers were working on it, but it might be several weeks before all of the currently registered Sanjays were contacted. It was, after all, a midterm holiday.

It had been confirmed that a Jayaprakesh Muktanandaji had been a student there, but he had not registered during the previous term. A waiter at the University Coffee House, however, had seen Muktanandaji there only two days ago.

"That's after I met him there," I said.

So it seemed. Muktanandaji had shown his waiter friend a rail ticket he had purchased. He said that he was going home to his village of Anguda. The waiter had not seen the young man since. Singh had telephoned the Commissioner in Jamshedpur, who would telegraph the provincial constable in Durgalapur. The constable would go to Anguda to find Muktanandaji and bring him back to Durgalapur for questioning. They should be hearing from him by late Wednesday.

"Tomorrow!"

"Yes, Mr. Luczak. It is a remote village."

There were many Bahrati families in the Calcutta phone book. None contacted had a daughter in her twenties with the name of Kamakhya. The name, after all, was quite unusual.

"How is that?" I asked.

"I will explain later," said Singh.

There had been contacts made with informers in the goondas underground. No useful information had been forthcoming, but overtures continued. Also, the police would be questioning members of the Beggars' Union.

My stomach turned over at those words. "What about the Kapalikas?" I asked.

"'Ow's that?" asked the other inspector.

Singh said something in Bengali and turned back to me. "You must understand, Mr. Luczak, that the Kapalika Society remains — technically — a myth."

"Bullshit," I said. "It was no myth that someone was going to kill me last night. It's no myth that our little girl is missing."

"No," said Singh. "But we have no hard evidence yet that the thugees, goondas, or the so-called Kapalikas are involved. It is also complicated by the fact that various criminal elements often call upon a corrupt, Tantric form of mysticism, frequently invoking local deities — in this case, Kali — in order to impress their initiates or to frighten the common people."

"Uh-huh," I said.

Amrita crossed her arms and looked at the three men. "So you have no real news for us?" she asked.

Singh glanced at the other two. "No progress, no."

Amrita nodded and picked up the phone. "Yes, hello, this is Room six-twelve. Would you please put through a call for me to the American Embassy in New Delhi? Yes. It is very important. Thank you."

The three men blinked. I saw them to the door while Amrita waited by the phone. In the hall, the other two officials moved away while I detained Singh for a moment. "Why is Kamakhya Bahrati's name so unusual?"

Singh stroked his mustache. "Kamakhya is . . . not a common name in Bengal."

"Why is that?"

"It is a religious name. An aspect of . . . of Parvati."

"Of Kali, you mean."

"Yes."

"So why isn't it common, Inspector? There are enough Ramas and Krishnas around."

"Yes," said Singh and flicked lint from his cuff. The steel bracelet on his wrist caught the light. "Yes, but the name Kamakhya, or its variant, Kamaksi, is associated with a particularly unattractive aspect of Kali once worshiped in the great temple at Assam. Some of their ceremonies were very unwholesome. The cult was outlawed some years ago. The temple is abandoned."

I nodded. I did not react to the news. I went back to the room and calmly waited for Amrita's call to be completed. And all the while the mad laughter built inside me and the screams of rage rattled their cage to be freed.

Around five P.M. on that endless day I went down to the lobby. A sense of claustrophobia had grown in me until I found it hard to breathe. But the lobby was no better. I bought a cigar in the gift shop; but the clerk kept glancing at me, and the sympathetic stare of the assistant manager approached resentment. I imagined that a Muslim couple in the lobby were whispering about me, and it was not my imagination when several waiters stepped out of the Garden Café to point and crane my way.

I hastily retreated to the sixth floor, jogging up the stairs to release energy. The English custom of calling the second floor the first gave me an extra flight of exercise. I was panting and sweating freely when I emerged into the hallway of our floor. Amrita was hurrying toward me.

"Something?" I asked.

"I just remembered something important," she said in a rush of breath.

"What's that?"

"Abe Bronstein! Krishna mentioned Abe Bronstein to us when we were leaving the airport that first night. Krishna must have some association with USEFI or somebody."

Amrita went to talk to the police sergeant in 614 while I had a call put through to the States. Even with the policeman expediting things at the switchboard, it was thirty minutes before they got an overseas line. Something in me came close to pulling apart when I heard the familiar growl from New York. "Bobby, good morning! Where the hell are you calling from? It sounds like you're calling from the moon on a cheap CB."

"Abe, listen. Listen, please." As quickly as I could, I told him about Victoria's disappearance.

"Aww, shit," moaned Abe. "Shit, shit, shit." Even through ten thousand miles of bad connection I could hear the deep pain in his voice.

"Listen, Abe, can you hear me? One of the suspects in this thing is a guy named Krishna . . . M. T. Krishna . . . but we think his real name is Sanjay something. He met us at the airport last Thursday. Can you hear me? Good. This Krishna said that he worked for USEFI . . . that's the American Education Foundation . . . yeah . . . and that he picked us up as a favor for his boss. Neither Amrita nor I can remember what he said his boss's name was. But he also mentioned your name, Abe. He specifically mentioned your name. Hello?"

"Shah," said Abe through the hollow echoes.

"What?"

"Shah. A. B. Shah. I cabled him right after you left for London and asked him to give you a hand if you needed it."

"Shah," I repeated, writing quickly. "Great. Where can we get hold of him, Abe? Is he in the Calcutta directory?"

"No, Bobby, he's not in Calcutta. Shah's an editor of the Times of India, but he also works as a cultural advisor for USEFI in New Delhi. I knew him several years ago when he taught at Columbia. I never heard of this Krishna son of a bitch."

"Thanks, Abe, you've been a lot of help."

"Damn, Bobby, I'm so sorry. How's Amrita holding up?"

"Beautifully. She's a rock, Abe."

"Ahhh. It'll be all right, Bobby. You gotta believe that. They'll get Victoria back for you. She'll be okay."

"Yeah."

"Let me know when things work out. I'll be at my mother's. You've got the number, right? Let me know if I can help. Aww, damn. It'll be all right, Bobby."

"Good-bye, Abe. Thanks."

Amrita had not only informed Singh, but was on the phone to the third of Calcutta's three large newspapers. She snapped out instructions in peremptory Hindi.

"We should have done this earlier," she said when she got off the phone. "Now they won't appear until tomorrow's editions." Amrita had taken out a half-page ad in each of the papers. Runners would pick up copies of the photograph we had loaned the police. There would be a $10,000 reward for any helpful information regarding the case; $50,000 for the safe return of Victoria or any information leading to her safe return, no questions asked.

"Jesus," I said stupidly, "where will we get fifty thousand dollars?"

Amrita looked out the window at the evening chaos on the street. "I would have offered twice as much," she said. "But that would have been almost a million rupees. This amount is more believable somehow, more exciting to the greedy."

I shook my head. I hadn't seemed able to think of anything. I quickly called Singh and gave him the information about Shah. He promised to follow up on it immediately.

I dozed for an hour or so. I hadn't meant to. One minute I was sitting in the chair near the window, watching the last of the gray eveing light fade, and the next minute my head snapped up and it was night outside with heavy rain banging at the glass. One of the police lines was ringing. Amrita came in from the hall, but I beat her to it.

"Mr. Luczak?" It was Inspector Singh. "I was able to get through to Mr. A. B. Shah at his home in New Delhi."

"And?"

"Indeed it was he who received your Mr. Bronstein's cable. Mr. Shah has great respect for your friend and immediately dispatched a Foundation subordinate of his, a young man named R. L. Dhavan, to travel here to offer his services to you as a guide and interpreter."

"Dispatched? From Delhi to Calcutta, you mean?"

"Exactly."

"So where is he?"

"That is what Mr. Shah was beginning to wonder. That is what we wondered. We took a very careful description of the gentleman's appearance and clothing when last seen."

"And?"

"And, Mr. Luczak, it seems that Mr. R. L. Dhavan has been with us all along. His body was found stuffed in a trunk at Howrah Station last Thursday afternoon."

There was a power failure shortly after ten P.M. The monsoon storm outside had entered some realm of ferocity beyond my experience. Lightning slashed the night every few seconds and did a better job of illuminating the room than did the two candles a porter had brought. The streets were flooded within minutes of the initial deluge, and the frightening downpour grew worse by the hour. No lights were visible up Chowringhee. I wondered how the squatting millions in their burlap huts and the hutless street people survived nights like this.

Victoria is out there somewhere.

I moaned out loud and paced the room. I picked up one phone and then the other to call Singh. The phone lines were dead.

The assistant manager came up to explain to the sleepy policeman next door and to apologize to us. Thousands of phones in the area were out of order. He had sent a runner to the telephone company, but the offices were closed. No one knew when service might be resumed. Sometimes it took days.

When the clerk left, I removed our clothes from the closet and hung them on a shower rod in the bathroom.

"What are you doing?" asked Amrita. Her voice was slightly slurred. She had not slept in over forty hours. Her eyes were dark and weary.

I said nothing, but pulled out the heavy round wooden dowel that had served as a rod for hangers. It was almost four feet long and felt agreeably solid in my hands. I propped it behind a chair near the door. Outside, lightning crashed nearby and caught the flooded scene in a second's stroboscopic clarity.

At ten minutes after eleven, there was a heavy knock. Amrita startled awake in her chair while I stood and hefted the dowel. "Who is it?"

"Inspector Singh."

The Sikh wore a pith helmet and a dripping black raincoat. Two soaked policemen stood in the hall. "Mr. Luczak, we would like you to come with us on an important matter."

"Come where, Inspector?"

Singh shook water from his helmet. "To the Sassoon Morgue." At Amrita's involuntary intake of breath, he hurried on, "There has been a murder. A man."

"A man? Does this relate to whatshisname? Dhavan?"

Singh shrugged. Water fell to the carpet. "We do not know. The . . . style of the murder has connotations of the goondas. The Kapalikas, if you will. We would like your help in identifying the body."

"Who do you think it is?"

Again the shrug. "Will you come, Mr. Luczak? My car is waiting."

"No," I said. "Absolutely not. I'm not leaving Amrita. Forget it."

"But for identification to be made . . ."

"Take a photograph, Inspector. Your department has a camera, doesn't it? If not I'll wait for close-ups in the morning paper. Calcuttans seem to enjoy viewing corpse photos the way we get a kick out of comic strips back in the States."

"Bobby!" said Amrita. Her voice was raw. We were both exhausted. "The Inspector is only trying to help."

"Yeah," I said. "Tough. I'm not leaving you again."

Amrita picked up her purse and umbrella. "I'll go too."

Both Singh and I looked at her.

"The phones are out," she said. "No one can call us. It's been twenty-four hours, and there has been no ransom demand. No contact of any kind. If this can help, let us do it now."

Lightning illuminated the boarded windows and the two rain-pelted stone lions left over from some earlier, more innocent era. The morgue entrance was reached by a rear drive that curved between dark, dripping buildings and heaps of garbage which were melting in the downpour. A crumpling overhang sheltered the broad doors to the Sassoon Morgue.

A man in a rumpled suit met us in an outer office. Even there, the air was thick with the high-school-biology scent of formaldehyde. Kerosene lanterns threw shadows behind filing cabinets and tall stacks of folders on every desk. The man steepled his fingers at me, bowed perfunctorily, and released a veritable tirade of Bengali at the dripping Inspector.

"He says that Mrs. Luczak can remain here," translated Singh. "We will be in the next room."

Amrita nodded and said, "He also said that the morgue needs an emergency generator, Inspector. He invited the politicians at City Hall to get off their asses and come down here to sniff the roses. Is that right? It was an idiom."

"That is correct," said Singh and surrendered a grim smile. He said something to the morgue official, and the little man blushed and led Singh and me through swinging doors and down a short, tiled hallway.

A hanging lantern showed an area which might have been Jack the Ripper's idea of an operating room. It was filthy. Papers, cups, and various detritus lay everywhere. Knives, scalpels, and bone saws were scattered across stained trays and tabletops. A huge dish of a light — inoperative now — and the gleaming steel table with open drains confirmed the purpose of the room. That and the body which lay exposed on the table.

"Ah," said the Inspector and stepped closer. He beckoned impatiently for me to join him. The morgue official lifted the lantern from its peg on the wall and hung it from the bar of the curved operating-room light. The swinging light threw swirls of patterns on the slick steel.

When I was a child my parents had invested in a set of Compton's Pictured Encyclopedias. My favorite section was the chapter on the human body. There were pages there of translucent overlays. You started with the whole body, skin and all, and as you flipped the delicate pages you descended farther into the mysteries of the body's crowded interior. Everything was neat, color-coded, and labeled for reference.

The body before me now was the second page — MUSCLES & TENDONS. From the neck down the skin had been flayed open and pulled back. It lay bunched under the corpse like a moist and wrinkled cape. But there was no neat labeling of muscles here, only a human being looking like raw meat, greasy fluids catching the light; thick, white fibers disappearing into raw, pink striations; and yellowish tendons stretched like bloody thongs.

Singh and the other man were looking at me. If they expected me to cry out or be sick they were to be disappointed. I cleared my throat. "You've already begun the autopsy?"

Singh translated the other's brief sentence. "No, Mr. Luczak. This was the way he came in two hours ago."

I reacted then. "Jesus! Why would anyone kill and then skin a human being?"

Singh shook his head. "He was not deceased when he was first seen. He was on Sudder Street. Screaming. Running, according to witnesses. He fell. Sometime later the screaming stopped. Eventually someone sent for a police wagon."

I took two involuntary steps back. I could hear my mother's voice echoing from the third-floor landing on Pulaski Street. Robert Luczak, you come in here this minute before I skin you alive. It was possible.

"Do you know him?" Singh asked impatiently. He gestured for more light. The corpse's head was thrown back, frozen in final agony by the grip of early rigor mortis.

"No," I said through gritted teeth. "Wait." I forced myself to step into the tight circle of light. The face was untouched except for the distorted features. Recognition hit me like a fist.

"You do know him," said Singh.

"Yes." I had said his name. Dear God, I had said his name when talking to Das.

"It is Mr. Krishna?"

"No," I said and turned away from the bright table. I had said his name. "It's the glasses that are missing. He wears glasses. His name is Jayaprakesh Muktanandaji."

Amrita and I slept until nine A.M. We did not dream. The roar of rain through the open window obliterated dreams. Sometime around dawn, the electricity and air conditioning must have come on, but we were not aware of it.

At 11:00 Singh sent a car to bring us to police headquarters. Any phone call to the hotel would be transferred to us there. The police center was another dark and cavernous room in another dark and labyrinthine building. Great mounds of file folders and yellowing documents obscured the desks and almost hid the faceless men hunched over typewriters that looked to have been used in Queen Victoria's day. Amrita and I spent several hours going through huge books of photographs. After hundreds of women's faces, I began to wonder if I would recognize Kamakhya Bahrati if I saw her. Yes, I would.

There was only one discovery. After scrutinizing a dark and faded photograph of a heavy man in prison gray, I tentatively identified him as the Kapalika in khaki who had broken my finger.

"But you are not sure?" asked Singh.

"No. He was older, heavier, longer hair."

Singh grunted and gave the photograph and instructions to someone. He never told me what the man's name was or why he had once been jailed. The sound of brittle plastic breaking.

By early afternoon we returned to the hotel and were amazed to find that there had been over a hundred calls to the police-line number we had given in the newspaper ads. None of the calls had yielded hard information. The few that reported seeing the child here or there were being followed up, but the sergeant was pessimistic. Most of the calls were from men or women willing to sell us an infant for the price of the reward.

I slammed the door and we lay on the bed together and waited.

The late hours of that Wednesday are largely lost to me. I remember images clearly, but they seem unrelated to one another. Some I cannot separate from the dreams that have haunted me since those days.

Sometime around eight P.M. I got up, kissed Amrita goodbye as she dozed, and left the hotel. The solution to everything had become quite clear to me suddenly. I would go out into Calcutta, find the Kapalikas, tell them that I was sorry, that I would do whatever they wanted, and then they would give our baby back. It was simple.

Failing that, I would find the goddess Kali and kill the bitch.

I remember walking for many blocks, but at some point I was riding in a cab, watching faces on the sidewalk, sure that the next one would be Kamakhya. Or Krishna. Or Das.

Then the cab was parked under a banyan tree, waiting, waiting while I climbed a sharp iron gate and loped, half crouching, up a flower-lined drive. The house was dark. I rattled shutters. I pounded on doors. "Chatterjee!" I screamed. The house was dark.

At another time I was walking on the river's edge. The Howrah Bridge loomed above me in that last twilight before true darkness. Paved streets gave way to muddy lanes and dark slums. Children danced around me. I threw them all of my change. I remember looking back once and no longer seeing the mob of children but several men following me. Their mouths moved, but I heard nothing. They made a half-circle and began approaching me cautiously, arms half raised.

"Kapalikas?" I said hopefully. I think I said it. "Are you Kapalikas? Kali? Kapalikas?"

They hesitated and glanced at one another for courage. I looked at their rags and their lean-hungry bodies — muscles wound tight with anticipation — and I knew they were not Kapalikas. Or thugees. Or goondas. Only poor, hungry men ready to kill for a foreigner's money.

"All right!" I cried then. I was grinning. I could not stop grinning, although I felt that something sharp was cutting a hole in me while I grinned. The past few days, the night, Victoria — everything was contracting into a tight knot of pure joy at this.

"All right!" I shouted. "Come on. Come on. Please." My arms opened wide. I would have embraced them. I would have hugged them close in a sweaty, locker-room embrace while I joyously ripped their taut throats out with my teeth.

I think I would have. I do not know. The men looked at one another, backed away, and disappeared in the shadowed lanes. I almost cried when they had gone.

I don't know whether it was before or after my encounter with the men that I was in a small, storefront temple. There was a clumsy statue of a kneeling black cow with a red and white necklace. Old men squatted and spat into the smoky dimness and stared in horror at me. An ancient scarecrow repeatedly pointed at my feet and gabbled at me. I think he wanted me to remove my shoes.

"Fuck that," I said in a reasonable tone. "That doesn't matter. Just tell them that they win, okay? Tell them that I'll do whatever they want. All right? I promise. I really promise. I swear to God. Scout's honor." I think I began crying then. At least I watched through a prism of tears as an old man with most of his front teeth missing grinned vacuously at me, patting me on the shoulder as he rocked back and forth on his skinny haunches.

There was a great wasteland of shacks and old tires lying in the rain, and I waded through the mud for miles toward the tall chimneys and open flames that cast a red hue over everything and which receded from me no matter how I struggled to close the distance. I believe that this was a real place. I do not know. It has been the landscape of my dreams for so long now.

It was in the first false light of dawn that I found the little girl. She was lying in the street — in the mud path that passed for a street there. She was no more than five. Her long black hair was tangled, and she was curled under a thin tan quilt still wet from the night's showers. Something in her unself-conscious commitment to sleep drew me to her. I dropped to one knee on the muddy path. People and bicycles were already beginning to move, swerving to avoid us in the narrow lane.

The girl's eyes were closed tightly, as though in concentration, and her mouth was slightly open. Her small fist was curled against her cheek. Soon she would have to wake, tend the fire, serve the men, care for the younger chidren, and face the end of a childhood she had barely known. Soon she would become the property of a man other than her father, and on that day she would receive the traditional Hindu blessing — "May you have eight sons." But for now she had only to sleep, her fist curled, her brown cheek against the soil, her eyes closed tightly against the morning light.

I shook my head then and looked around me. It was almost dawn. The air had been swept almost clean by the rain, and there was the painfully perfect smell of fresh blossoms and moist earth.

I clearly remember the rickshaw ride back to the hotel. Sounds and colors were so clear that they assaulted my senses. My mind was also clear. If anything had happened while I was gone . . . if Amrita had needed me . . .

It was just dawn, but Amrita met me in the hall. She was wringing her hands with joy, and there were tears in her eyes for the first time since it had all begun.

"Bobby, oh Bobby," she said. "Inspector Singh just called. He's coming to get us. He'll be here in a minute. They're taking us to the airport. They've found her, Bobby. They've found her."

We sped along the almost empty VIP Highway. Rich streams of horizontal light threw everything into bold relief, and the shadow of our car kept pace in the moist fields.

"You're sure she's all right?" I asked.

"Yes, yes," said Singh without turning around in the front seat. "We only received the call twenty-five minutes ago."

"You're sure it's Victoria?" asked Amrita. We were both leaning forward and resting our arms on the back of the front seat. Amrita's hands would unconsciously fold and refold the Kleenex she was holding.

"The security guard believes so," said Singh. "That is why he detained the couple going through with the baby. They do not know that they are being detained. The chief security officer told them that there was a slight irregularity in their travel visa. They believe they are waiting for an official to arrive to stamp their visas."

"Why not just arrest them?" I asked.

"For what crime?" asked Singh. "Until the child is positively identified, they are guilty of nothing except attempting to fly to London."

"Who spotted Victoria?" asked Amrita.

"The security guard I mentioned," said Singh and yawned. "He saw your advertisement in the newspaper." There was a faint hint of disapproval in Singh's deep voice.

I took Amrita's hand, and we watched the now familiar countryside roll by. Both of us were mentally trying to make the little car go faster. When a herdsman blocked the wet pavement with his sheep for a long moment, we both shouted at our driver to honk, to drive through. Then we were shifting up through gears, passing a rumbling cart piled high with cane, and alone in our left lane again. Gaudy trucks sped by to our right, headed into town, white-shirted men waving brown arms at us.

I forced myself to sit back and take several deep breaths. The richness of the sunrise would have been wondrous at any other time. Even the empty, scarred high-rises and lean-tos in the muddy fields seemed cleansed by the sun's benediction. Women carrying tall bronze pots threw ten-foot shadows in the verdant ditches.

"You're sure she's all right?" I asked again.

"We are almost there," said Singh.

We swept up the curved drive past black and yellow taxis with their rooftops diamonded by raindrops, their drivers sprawled sleeping across front seats. Our own car had not quite stopped when we flung open the doors.

"Which way?"

Singh came around the car pointing. We moved quickly into the terminal. Caught up in our impatient rush, Singh jogged around the sprawled and sheeted forms sleeping on the filthy tiled floor. "Here," he said, opening a scuffed door marked AUTHORIZED PERSONS ONLY in English as well as Bengali. An Untouchable woman squatted in the corridor, sweeping dirt and paper into a small dustpan. Fifteen steps took us to a large room broken up by partitions and counters. I could hear teletypes and typewriters clacking.

I saw them immediately, the Indian couple, huddled in a far corner; the young woman holding the baby to her chest. They were strangers, little more than children themselves. The man was short and shifty-eyed. Every few seconds he would raise his right hand to brush at his unsuccessful attempt at a mustache. The girl was even younger than the man and plain to the point of homeliness. The scarf she wore did not hide stringy hair nor the smudged crimson dot which marked the center of her forehead.

But as we stopped twenty feet from them, Amrita and I had eyes only for the heavily wrapped bundle the woman was rapidly rocking. The child's face was not visible. We could see only a pale hint of cheek.

We walked closer. A great ache began in my diaphragm and rose to my chest. I ignored it. Inspector Singh motioned to the uniformed security guard who had snapped to attention. The guard brusquely said something to the young man, who immediately rose from the bench and walked nervously to the counter. As he stood, the girl shifted to let him pass and we caught a glimpse of the baby's face in the thick folds of the shawl.

It was Victoria. Sleeping, pale almost to the point her skin glowed, but beyond any doubt it was Victoria.

Amrita let out a cry then, and everyone moved at once. The young man must have tried to bolt, because the security guard and another man from behind the counter rapidly pinned his arms back. The girl slid across the bench into the corner and clutched the baby to her breast while she began rocking quickly and babbling something that sounded like a nursery rhyme. Amrita, the Inspector, and I advanced quickly together as if to cut off any escape route the girl might consider, but she only turned her face to the green wall and began wailing more loudly.

Singh tried to restrain Amrita then, but she took three quick steps forward, pulled the woman's head back sharply by her hair, and removed Victoria from her grasp with a sweep of her left arm.

Everyone was shouting. For some reason I took several steps back as Amrita lifted our daughter high and began unwrapping her from the filthy purple shawl.

Amrita's first cry cut through the rest of the noise and reduced the room to silence. I continued backing up until I struck a counter. As Amrita's screams started, I turned away in slow motion and lowered my face and clenched fists to the cool countertop.

"Awww," I said. It was a soft noise and it came up out of my earliest childhood. "Awww," I said. "Aww, no, please." I pressed my cheek tight against the countertop and struck my fists again my ears, but I could plainly hear when Amrita's cries turned to sobs.

I still have the report somewhere — the copy of the one Singh sent to Delhi. Like everything else in India, the paper is cheap and inferior. The type is so faint as to be almost transparent, a dull child's idea of a secret message. It doesn't matter. I do not need to see the report to recall its exact wording.

22.7.77 C.M.P.D./D.D.A.S.S. 2671067

SECURITY GUARD JAGMOAN (YASHPAL,

D.D.A. SEC. SERV. 1113) PROCESSED THE

COUPLE IDENTIFIED BY PAPERS AS CHOW-

DURY, SUGATA AND DEVI, TRAVELING WITH

INFANT TO LONDON, U.K., FOR PLEASURE,

AT 04:28/21.7.77. SECURITY GUARD JAG-

MOAN DETAINED THE COUPLE AT CUSTOMS

SECTION B-11 BECAUSE OF POSSIBLE RE-

COGNITION OF SAID INFANT AS MISSING

AMERICAN LUCZAK INFANT, REPORTED

KIDNAPPED ON 18.7.77 [RE: C.M.P.D. CASE

NO. 117, dt, 18.7.77(S.R. SO/) SINGH.]

INSPECTOR YASHWAN SINGH (C.M.PD. 26774) AND

LUCZAKS (ROBERT C. AND AMRITA D.)

ARRIVED TO CONFIRM INFANT'S IDENTITY AT

05:41/21.7.77. INFANT WAS POSITIVELY

IDENTIFIED AS VICTORIA CAROLYN LUCZAK b.

22.1.77. UPON FURTHER INSPECTION BY

CHILD'S MOTHER, IT WAS DISCOVERED

THAT INFANT VICTORIA C. LUCZAK HAD

BEEN DECEASED FOR SEVERAL HOURS.

COUPLE IDENTIFIED AS SUGATA AND DEVI

CHOWDURY SUBSEQUENTLY WERE PLACED

UNDER ARREST AND TRANSPORTED TO

C.M.P.D.H.Q. CHOWRINGHEE: SUSPICION OF

CONSPIRACY TO KIDNAP, CONSPIRACY TO

MURDER, AND ATTEMPTING TO TRANSPORT

STOLEN GOODS ACROSS INTERNATIONAL

BOUNDARIES. AUTOPSY REPORT [RE: LUCZAK —

C.M.P.D./M.E. 2671067/21.7.77] CONFIRMED

THAT THE LUCZAK INFANT HAD BEEN

DECEASED FOR A PERIOD OF NO MORE

THAN FIVE (5) HOURS AND NO LESS

THAN TWO (2) HOURS AND THAT SAID INFANT'S

BODY HAD BEEN USED AS A DEPOSITORY

TO TRANSPORT STOLEN MERCHANDISE: LIST

AND VALUE ESTIMATES APPENDED:

RUBIES (6) RS. 1,115,000

SAPPHIRE (4) RS. 762,000

OPALS (4) RS. 136,000

AMETHYST (2) RS. 742,000

TOURMALINE (5) RS. 380,000

FURTHER DETAILS CONTACT SINGH (YASH-

WAN C.M.P.D. 26774). END REPORT.