by Dan Simmons
We pulled up to one of these gates. The driver bustled out and unlocked a padlock with a key from a chain on his belt. The circular driveway was lined with tall, flowering bushes and drooping tree limbs.
We were greeted by Michael Leonard Chatterjee. "Ah, Mr. and Mrs. Luczak! Welcome!" His wife was also standing by the door next to a toddler whom I first took to be their son but then realized must be a grandson. Mrs. Chatterjee was in her early sixties, and I revised her husband's age upward. Chatterjee was one of those smooth-faced, perpetually balding gentlemen who reach fifty and seem to stay at that age until their late sixties.
We chatted on the front step for a moment. Victoria was duly complimented, and we praised their grandson. Then we were shown through the house quickly before being led through another door to a wide patio overlooking a side street.
I was interested in their home. It was the first chance I'd had to see how an upper-class Indian family lived. The first impression was one of juxtaposition: large, formal, high-ceilinged rooms with paint flaking from begrimed walls; a beautiful walnut sideboard covered with scratches on which was displayed a stuffed mongoose with dusty glass eyes and molting fur; an expensive, handmade carpet from Kashmir set atop chipped linoleum; a large, once modern kitchen now liberally cluttered with dusty bottles, old crates, crusted metal pans, and with a small, charcoal fireplace set squarely in the center of the floor. Smoke streaked a once-white ceiling.
"It will be more comfortable outside," said Chatterjee, and held the door open for Amrita.
The flagstones were still wet from the last rainshower, but the cushioned chairs were dry and a table was set for tea. Chatterjee's grown daughter, a heavy young woman with lovely eyes, joined us long enough to chat with Amrita in Hindi for a few minutes and then to depart with her son. Chatterjee seemed bemused by Amrita's linguistic abilities and asked her something in French. Amrita answered fluently, and both of them laughed. He switched to what I later learned was Tamil, and Amrita responded. They began exchanging pleasantries in simple Russian. I sipped my tea and smiled at Mrs. Chatterjee. She smiled back and offered me a cucumber sandwich. We continued smiling at each other through a few more minutes of trilingual banter, and then Victoria began fussing. Amrita took the baby from my arms, and Chatterjee turned to me.
"Would you like more tea, Mr. Luczak?"
"No, thank you, this is fine."
"Perhaps something stronger?"
"Well . . . "
Chatterjee snapped his fingers and a servant quickly appeared. A few seconds later he reappeared with a tray laden with several decanters and glasses.
"Do you drink scotch, Mr. Luczak?"
Is the Pope Catholic? I thought. "Yes." Amrita had warned me that most Indian scotch was atrocious stuff, but one swallow told me that Chatterjee's decanter held only premium whiskey, almost certainly twelve years old, almost certainly imported. "Excellent."
"It's The Glenlivet," he said. "Unblended. I find it rather more authentic than the blended premiums."
For a few minutes we discussed poetry and poets. I tried to steer the conversation around to M. Das, but Chatterjee was reluctant to discuss the missing poet beyond mentioning that Gupta had arranged the details for tomorrow's transfer of the manuscript. We settled on discussing how hard it was for a serious writer in either of our countries to make a decent living. I got the impression that Chatterjee's money had come down through the family and that he had other interests, investments, and incomes.
Invariably, the talk steered to politics. Chatterjee was most eloquent about the relief the country was feeling after the ouster of Mrs. Gandhi in the previous election. The resurgence of democracy in India was of great interest to me, and something I'd hoped to work into my Das article.
"She was a tyrant, Mr. Luczak. The so-called Emergency was merely a ruse to hide the ugly face of her tyranny."
"So you don't think she will ever reenter national politics?"
"Never! Never, Mr. Luczak."
"But I thought that she still has a strong political base and that the Congress Party is still a potential majority if the current coalition was to falter."
"No, no," said Chatterjee and waved his hand in dismissal. "You do not understand. Mrs. Gandhi and her son are finished. They will be in prison within a year. Mark my words. Her son is already under investigation for various scandals and atrocities; and when the truth comes out, he will be lucky to escape execution."
I nodded. "I've read that he alienated many people with his drastic population-control programs."
"He was a swine," Chatterjee said without emotion. "An arrogant, ignorant, dictatorial swine. His programs were little more than efforts at genocide. He preyed on the poor and the uneducated, although he was an essential illiterate himself. Even his mother was frightened of the monster. If he were to enter a crowd today, they would tear him apart with their bare hands. I would be pleased to take part. More tea, Mrs. Luczak?"
A car moved down the quiet side street beyond the iron fence. A few raindrops pattered on the broad leaves of the banyan tree above us.
"Your impressions of Calcutta, Mr. Luczak?"
Chatterjee's sudden question caught me off guard. I took a drink of scotch and let the warmth spread for a second before answering. "Calcutta is fascinating, Mr. Chatterjee. It's far too complex a city even to react to in two days. It's a shame we won't have more time to explore it."
"You are diplomatic, Mr. Luczak. What you mean to say is that you find Calcutta appalling. It has already offended your sensibilities, yes?"
"Appalling is not the correct word," I said. "It's true that the poverty affects me."
"Ah, yes, poverty," said Chatterjee and smiled as if the word had deeply ironic connotations. "Indeed, there is much poverty here. Much squalor by Western standards. That must offend the American mind, since America has repeatedly dedicated its great will to eliminating poverty. How did your exPresident Johnson put it . . . to declare war on poverty? One would think that his war in Vietnam would have satisfied him."
"The war on poverty was another war we lost," I said. "America continues to have its share of poverty." I set my empty glass down, and a servant appeared at my elbow to pour more scotch.
"Yes, yes, but it is Calcutta we are discussing. One of our better poets has referred to Calcutta as that 'half-crushed cockroach of a city.' Another of our writers has compared our city to an aged and dying courtesan surrounded by oxygen tanks and rotting orange peels. Would you agree with that, Mr. Luczak?"
"I would agree that those are very strong metaphors, Mr. Chatterjee."
"Is your husband always so circumspect, Mrs. Luczak?" asked Chatterjee and smiled at us over his glass. "No, no, you should not be concerned that I will take offense. I am used to Americans and their reaction to our city. They will react in either one of two ways: they will find Calcutta 'exotic' and concentrate only on their tourist pleasures; or they will be immediately horrified, recoil, and seek to forget what they have seen and not understood. Yes, yes, the American psyche is as predictable as the sterile and vulnerable American digestive system when it encounters India."
I looked at Mrs. Chatterjee, but she was bouncing Victoria on her lap and seemed not to hear her husband's pronouncements. At the same instant Amrita glanced at me, and I took it as a warning. I smiled to show that I was not going to get argumentative. "You may well be right," I said. "Although I wouldn't presume to say that I understood the 'American psyche' or the 'Indian psyche' — if there are such things. First impressions are necessarily shallow. I appreciate that. I've admired Indian culture for a long time, even before I met Amrita, and she's certainly shared some of the beauty of it with me. But I admit that Calcutta is a bit intimidating. There seems to be something unique . . . unique and disturbing about Calcutta's urban problems. Perhaps it's only the scale. Friends have told me that Mexico City, for all of its beauty, shares the same problems."
Chatterjee nodded, smiled, and set down his glass. He steepled his fingers and
looked at me the way a teacher looks at a student who may or may not be worth investing more time in. "You have not traveled extensively, Mr. Luczak?"
"Not really. I backpacked through Europe some years ago. Spent some time in Tangiers."
"But not in Asia?"
"No."
Chatterjee dropped his hands as if his point had been amply demonstrated. But the lesson was not quite over. He snapped his fingers, fired a command, and a moment later the servant brought out a slim blue book. I could not make out the title.
"Please tell me if you find this a fair and reasonable description of Calcutta, Mr. Luczak," said Chatterjee and began to read aloud:
" . . . a dense mass of houses so old they only
seem to fall, through which narrow and tortuous
lanes curve and wind. There is no privacy here
and whoever ventures in this region
find the streets — by courtesy so called —
thronged with loiterers and sees, through half
glazed windows, rooms
crowded to suffocation . . . the stagnant gut
ters . . . the filth choking up dark passages .
. . the walls of bleached soot,
and doors falling from their hinges . . . and
children swarming everywhere, relieving them
selves as they please."
He stopped, closed the book, and raised his eyebrows in polite interrogation.
I had made no great objection to continuing to act as a straight man if it amused our host. "It has its relevant parts," I said.
"Yes." Chatterjee smiled and held up the book. "This, Mr. Luczak, is a contemporary account of London written in the 1850s. One must take into account the fact that India is only now embarking on its own Industrial Revolution. The displacement and confusion which shocks you so — no, no, do not deny it — these are necessary by-products of such a revolution. You are lucky, Mr. Luczak, that your own culture has gone beyond that point."
I nodded, and resisted the impulse to tell him that the description he'd read would have been apt for the neighborhood on the Southside of Chicago where I'd grown up. I still felt it was worth one more effort to clarify my feelings.
"That's very true, Mr. Chatterjee. I appreciate what you say. I was thinking something similar on the ride here today and you've clarified the point very well. But I have to say that in our brief time here, I've sensed something . . . something different about Calcutta. I'm not sure what it is. A strange sense of . . . violence, I guess. A sense of violence seething just under the surface."
"Or insanity perhaps?" asked Chatterjee flatly.
I said nothing.
"Many would-be commentators on our city, Mr. Luczak, make note of this supposed sense of all-pervading violence here. Do you see that street? Yes, that one there?"
I followed his pointing finger. A bullock cart was moving down the otherwise empty side street. Except for the slowly moving cart and the multitrunked banyan trees, the scene could have been in an old, well-worn section of any American city. "Yes," I said. "I see it."
"Some years ago," he said, "I sat here at breakfast and watched as a family was murdered there. No, murdered is not the correct word. They were butchered, Mr. Luczak, butchered. There. Right there. Where the cart is passing now."
"What happened?"
"It was during the Hindu-Muslim riots. There had been a poor Muslim family that lived with a local doctor. We were used to their presence. The man was a carpenter and my father had used his services many times. Their children had played with my younger brother. Then, in 1947, they chose the tensest time of the riots to emigrate to East Pakistan.
"I saw them come up the street, five of them counting the youngest child, a babe in her mother's arms. They were in a horse-drawn wagon. I was eating breakfast when I heard the noise. A crowd of people had intercepted them. The Muslim argued. He made the mistake of using his braid whip on the leader of the mob. There was a great surge forward. I was sitting right where you are, Mr. Luczak. I could see very well. The people used clubs, paving stones, and their bare hands. They may well have used their teeth. When it was over, the Muslim carpenter and his family were stained bundles on the street. Even their horse was dead."
"Good God," I said. And then, into the silence, "Are you saying that you agree with those who say there's a streak of insanity in this city, Mr. Chatterjee?"
"Quite the contrary, Mr. Luczak. I mention this incident because the people in that mob were . . . and are . . . my neighbors: Mr. Golwalkar, the teacher; Mr. Sirsik, the baker; old Mr. Muhkerjee who works in the post office near your hotel. They were ordinary people, Mr. Luczak, who lived sane lives before that regrettable incident and who returned to sane lives afterward. I mention this because it shows the folly of anyone who singles out Calcutta as a bedlam of Bengali insanity. Any city can be said to have such 'violence seething just under the surface.' Have you seen the Englishlanguage newspaper today?"
"The paper? No."
Chatterjee unfolded the newspaper that had been lying near the sugar bowl. He handed it to me.
The lead story was datelined New York. The previous evening there had been a power failure, the worst since the 1965 total blackout. Almost as if on cue, looting erupted throughout the ghettos and poorer sections of the city. Thousands of people had taken part in seemingly mindless vandalism and theft. Mobs had gathered to cheer while entire families smashed store windows and ran off with television sets, clothing, and anything portable. Hundreds had been arrested, but the mayor's office and police spokesmen admitted that the police had been powerless in the face of the scope of the problem.
There were reprints of American editorials. Liberals saw it as a resurgence of social protest and decried the discrimination, poverty, and hunger that had provoked it. Conservative columnists acidly pointed out that hungry people don't steal stereo systems first and called for a crackdown in law enforcement. All of the reasoned editorials sounded hollow in light of the perverse randomness of the event. It was as if only a thin wall of electric lighting protected the great cities of the world from total barbarism.
I handed the paper to Amrita. "That's a hell of a thing, Mr. Chatterjee. Your point is well made. I certainly didn't want to sound self-righteous about Calcutta's problems."
Chatterjee smiled and steepled his fingers again. His glasses reflected gray glare and the dark shadow of my head. He nodded slightly. "As long as you understand that it is an urban problem, Mr. Luczak. A problem exacerbated by the degree of poverty here and by the nature of the immigrants who have flooded our city. Calcutta has been literally invaded by uneducated foreigners. Our problems are real but are not something unique to us."
I nodded silently.
"I don't agree," said Amrita.
Both Chatterjee and I turned in surprise. Amrita set the paper down with a quick flick of her wrist. "I don't agree at all, Mr. Chatterjee," she said. "I feel it is a cultural problem — one unique in many ways to India if not just to Calcutta."
"Oh?" said Chatterjee. He tapped his fingers together. Despite his smiling aplomb, it was obvious that he was surprised and irritated at being contradicted by a woman. "How do you mean, Mrs. Luczak?"
"Well, since it seems to be the time to illustrate hypotheses through the use of anecdotes," she said softly, "let me share two incidents that I observed yesterday."
"By all means." Chatterjee's smile held the tense undertones of a grimace.
"Yesterday I was having breakfast in the garden café of the Oberoi," she began. "Victoria and I were alone at our table, but there were many others in the restaurant. Several Air India pilots were at the next table. A few feet from us, an Untouchable woman was cutting the grass with hand clippers — "
"Please," said Chatterjee, and the grimace was visible now on the smooth features. "We prefer to say Scheduled Class person."
Amrita smiled. "Yes, I'm aware of that," she said. "Scheduled Class or Harijan, 'Beloved of God.' I grew up with the convention
s. But they are mere euphemisms, as I'm sure you are well aware, Mr. Chatterjee. She was 'Scheduled Class' because she was born out of caste and will die there. Her children will almost certainly spend their lives performing the same menial jobs as she. She is Untouchable."
Chatterjee's smile was frozen but he did not interrupt again.
"At any rate, she was squatting, cutting grass a blade at a time, moving across the yard in what would be, for me at least, a very painful duck walk. No one took notice of her. She was as invisible as the weeds she was trimming.
