by Dan Simmons
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, colorcoded, 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 unselfconscious 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 children, 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 fr
ont 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.
