Song of Kali

Chapter Fifteen

Calcutta would not let us go. For two more days the city held us in its fetid grasp.

Amrita and I would not leave Victoria alone with them. Even during the police autopsy and the undertaker's preparations, we waited in nearby rooms.

Singh told us that we would have to remain in Calcutta for several weeks, at least until the hearings were completed. I told him we would not. Each of us gave a deposition to a bored-looking stenographic clerk.

The man from the American Embassy in New Delhi arrived. He was an officious little rabbit of a man named Don Warden. His idea of dealing with the unhelpful Indian bureaucrats was to apologize to them and explain to us how complicated we had made things by insisting on taking our child's body home so quickly.

On Saturday we rode to the airport for the final time. Warden, Amrita, and I were crowded into the backseat of a rented old Chevrolet. It was raining very hard, and the inside of the closed vehicle was hot and very humid. I did not notice. I had eyes only for the small white hospital van we were following. It did not use its emergency lights in the heavy traffic. There was no rush.

At the airport there was a final delay. An airport official came out with Warden. Both were shaking their heads.

"What's the matter?" I said.

The Indian official brushed at his soiled white shirt and snapped out several Hindustani phrases in an irritated tone.

"What?" I said.

Amrita translated. She was so exhausted that she did not raise her head and her voice was almost inaudible. "He says that the coffin we paid for cannot be loaded on the aircraft," she said wearily. "The metal airline coffin is here, but the necessary papers for the transfer of . . . of the body . . . were not signed by the proper authorities. He says that we can go to the city hall on Monday to get the necessary papers."

I stood up. "Warden?" I said.

The embassy man shrugged. "We have to respect their laws and cultural values," he said. "I've thought all along that it would be much easier if you would agree to having the body cremated here in India."

Kali is the goddess of all cremation grounds.

"Come here," I said. I led the two men back through the doors into the office next to the room where Victoria's body lay. The Indian official looked bored and impatient. I took Warden by the arm and led him to one corner of the room.

"Mr. Warden," I said quietly, "I am going to go into the next room and transfer my daughter's body to the required coffin. If you come into the room or interfere with me in any way, I will kill you. Do you understand?"

Warden blinked several times and nodded. I walked over to the official and explained things to him. I did so quietly, my fingers gently touching his chest as I talked, but he looked into my eyes and something he saw there kept him silent and immobile when I finished speaking and walked through the swinging doors into the dimly lit room where Victoria waited.

The room was long and almost empty except for some stacks of boxes and unclaimed luggage. At one end of the room, already opened on a counter next to a conveyor belt of metal rollers, was the steel airline coffin. At the far end of the room, on a bench next to the loading platform, was the gray casket we had purchased in Calcutta. I walked over to it and, without hesitating, unsealed the casket.

On the night Victoria was born, there was one part of the prepared ritual that I had been nervous about for weeks. I had known that the Exeter Hospital encouraged the new fathers to carry the newborn infants from the delivery room to the nursery next door for the obligatory weighing and measuring prior to returning the baby to the mother in the recovery room. I had worried about this for some time. I was afraid I might drop her. It was a silly reaction, but even after the excitement and exhilaration of the birth, I found my heart pounding with nervousness when the doctor lifted Victoria off Amrita's stomach and asked if I would like to carry my little girl down the hall. I remember nodding, smiling, and feeling terrified. I remember cupping her tiny head, lifting the still-damp-from-birth little form against my chest and shoulder and making the thirty-step trip from the delivery room to the nursery with a growing confidence and joy. It was as if Victoria was helping me. I remember grinning stupidly at the sudden and total realization that I was carrying my child. It remains the happiest memory of my life.

This time I felt no nervousness. I gently raised my daughter, cupped her head, held her against my chest and shoulder as I had so many times before, and made the thirty-step walk to the steel airline coffin with its small bed of white silk.

The plane was delayed several times before takeoff. Amrita and I sat holding hands during the ninety-minute wait, and when the big 747 did finally begin its take-off roll, we did not look toward the windows. Our thoughts were on the small transport coffin we had watched being loaded earlier. We did not talk as the plane climbed toward cruising altitude. We did not look out as clouds obscured the last view of Calcutta. We took our baby and we went home.