The City of Joy

by Dominique Lapierre

  they were laid off once and for all. This was what had just happened to Stephan Kovalski's neighbor.

  This sturdy man, with the muscles of his legs, chest, and shoulders strengthened by hard labor, began to waste away, before Kovalski's very eyes, and in the space of a few weeks. He shriveled up like a dried fruit. His stomach racked with hunger, he walked miles each day around the industrial suburbs of Calcutta in search of any available means of earning a crust of bread. In the evening, worn out, he would enter the priest's room and sink down, without a word, in front of the picture of the Sacred Shroud of Christ. Sometimes he would remain there for an hour, seated in the lotus position before the face of the man he so resembled. "Poor Mehboub," Kovalski was to say. "While you were praying in front of my icon, I was revolting at the Lord, just as I had done about little Sabia's agony. I found it so difficult to accept that He could allow such injustices to occur."

  The seven members of that family soon had to survive on the twenty rupees (two U.S. dollars) that Nasir, the eldest boy, earned each month in the sweat shop where for twelve hours a day, he dipped the clips for ballpoint pens into a chrome bath. Despite the fact that all day long he inhaled toxic vapors from the metal under electrosis, Nasir was a sturdy lad, which in fact, was not really surprising. In poor families the food was always kept for the one who was working. The others were left with the crumbs. Nasir supplemented his wages with the ten rupees that Kovalski gave him. Every morning at dawn he took a tin full of water and lined up for the priest at the latrines, then came running back to tell Stephan when his turn had come.

  One evening, after meditating in front of the picture of Christ, Mehboub invited the priest to come into his home. The room measured barely six by four feet. Two thirds of it was taken up by a low platform made out of planks which served as a table by day and a bed by night, when it was covered over with a patchwork of rags. The last born slept between his mother and his grandmother on the "table bed," while Nasir and his two elder sisters slept underneath it. As for Mehboub, he stretched out on a mat outside, under the porch roof. The only other piece of

  furniture consisted of a metal trunk in which the clothes for the feast days of the Muslim calendar were religiously preserved, carefully wrapped in cinema posters taken from the walls of Calcutta. Like millions of other Indian women, Selima fed her chula with cakes of cow dung and cinders gleaned from the ballast of the railway track. Their hovel with no window, no water, and no electricity was nonetheless meticulously clean, so much so that the floor of beaten earth was just like marble. No one would have dreamed of treading on it without first removing his shoes.

  The more extreme the destitution, the warmer was the welcome. No sooner had Kovalski entered under their roof than his neighbors eagerly offered him tea, jelebis* and other sweetmeats of which the Bengalis are so fond. In a matter of seconds they had used up their resources for several days, just to honor him in this way.

  Naturally Stephan Kovalski wanted to help this family, but how could he do so without falling into the trap of becoming a foreign Santa Claus? A relatively minor incident provided him with a solution. One morning, as he was cooking rice on his paraffin stove, he burned his hand. He used his clumsiness as a pretext to ask his neighbor's wife if, in the future, she would prepare his meals. In payment for his board he offered her three rupees a day (thirty U.S. cents), a princely sum by slum standards. For the Pole it was actually an opportunity to try out an experience on which he had set his heart. He insisted that the young woman prepare exactly the same food for him as she did for her family.

  4 'How could I share faithfully the living conditions of my brothers in the City of Joy without knowing their most fundamental anguish," he was to explain, "the anguish that conditioned every instant of their lives: hunger—Hunger with a capital 'H'—the hunger that for generations had gnawed away at millions of people in this country, to the point where the real gulf between the rich and the poor existed at the level of the stomach. There were the dobelas who ate twice a day, the ek-belas who ate only once, and the others who could not even be sure of one daily meal.

  ♦Small syrupy fritters shaped like coils.

  As for me, I was a three-te/0, the almost unique representative of a species of consumer unknown in the slums."

  The neighbor's wife looked with astonishment at the Pole.

  "You, a Father SahibV she protested. "You, who people say are one of the richest men in your country, you want to eat the food of the poor? Stephan Daddah, it's not possible. You must be out of your mind!"

  "Selima, little sister, how I wanted to beg your pardon!" Stephan Kovalski was later to say. "How indeed could you understand even for one second, you who lived among the refuse, who never saw a bird or the foliage of a tree, you who sometimes had not even a scrap to offer your children, you who could feel another little innocent stirring inside you, a child who tomorrow would hang from your empty breasts screaming famine, yes, how could you understand how anyone could be mad enough to exchange a karma in paradise for this infernal slum and come to share your poverty?"

  "I mean it, little sister," confirmed Kovalski. "From tomorrow onward, you'll be the one to feed me, if you'll do me the kindness."

  Next day at noon, one of Selima's daughters brought him a plate with his food for the day: a ladle of rice, a little cabbage and turnip, some dal —the lentils which often provided the poor of India with their only protein. For the other ek-belas of the slum this would have been a princely portion. With his European appetite, more accustomed as it was to alimentary excesses than Indian frugality, the Pole prepared to gulp his meal down in two minutes. As he had feared, however, Selima had remained true to Indian tradition which required that all food should be inflamed with chilis and other incendiary spices. He had no alternative but to absorb each mouthful slowly and cautiously. Having one day protested in front of an Indian doctor against this custom which, he thought, took all the flavor away from the food, Kovalski was to discover the real reason for this culinary practice. Because it releases perspiration, stimulates blood circulation, and accelerates assimilation of food, chili is first and foremost a means of duping the hunger of millions of undernourished people.

  And it makes it possible to swallow absolutely anything, even the most rotten food!

  Not having to undertake any strenuous physical activity, the Pole put up with his new diet quite valiantly for the first two days. Whenever he felt the pangs of hunger, he would go and drink a cup of sweet tea from the old Hindu's shop across the way. On the third day, however, things became different. Violent cramps accompanied by dizziness and icy sweats began to gnaw at his stomach. Hardly had he eaten his one meal, than he had to crawl onto his mat, brought down by the pain. He tried to pray but his spirit seemed as empty as his stomach. Throughout the next day and the days that followed it, his hunger gave him no respite. He was ashamed. So few people were lucky enough to have even once a day a plateful of food like the one Selima cooked for him. He noted his body's reactions. His pulse was considerably faster, and so was his breathing. "Am I going to be able to hold out?" He worried, humiliated at finding himself already reduced to a limp rag while his companions in wretchedness managed to carry on, pulling carts or carrying loads more fit for beasts of burden, on far fewer calories. After a few days, however, his troubles disappeared and the sensation of hunger faded as if by magic. His body had adapted itself. Not only did he no longer suffer, but he even experienced a certain feeling of well-being.

  It was then that he made a fatal mistake. A visitor from France having brought him a tin of quenelles from Lyon and a Camembert cheese, he went to offer these delicacies from his former adopted homeland to the neighbors who had so little. Mehboub would accept them only on condition that his friend shared in the treat. The result was disastrous. It awoke the Pole's appetite in a way that was completely uncontrollable. The nausea, cramps, and attacks of sweating and dizziness reappeared with increased vigor. Kovalski felt himself becoming weaker daily. His mu
scles wasted visibly. His arms, thighs, legs, and pectorals were as if emptied of all substance. He lost several pounds more. The slightest task, even going to fill his bucket at the fountain, took immeasurable effort. He had difficulty staying upright for half an hour. He suffered from

  hallucinations. Nightmares haunted his sleep. He even began to bless the chorus of rats that woke him at the point when, in his dreams, an endless procession of emaciated men was bearing down upon him. He was physically living the curse of hunger in his flesh. Physically and mentally, Stephan Kovalski had joined the ranks of the majority of the occupants of Anand Nagar—and thus he had achieved his objective.

  Yet he was no fool. He knew the exact range of his experience, and its limitations. "I was like those volunteers in survival who know that they will be rescued after a certain amount of time. Whereas the real tragedy of the truly poor is despair. I knew that if my hunger exceeded bearable limits, I had only one gesture to make to eat as much as I wanted. I knew that if I were to be struck by the slightest ailment, thirty-six people would rush to my rescue.

  "Mehboub and all the other occupants of the City of Joy were real castaways. To the cries of their empty stomachs was added the anguish of those who had no hope of rescue. And so their dignity seemed all the more admirable. Not a single complaint ever issued from the mouth of my neighbor. He allowed his turmoil to show only when his youngest daughter cried with hunger. Then only did his fine face become stricken with pain. But he reacted always quickly. He would take hold of the little girl, sweep her up onto his knee, tell her a story, and sing her a song. Soon the child would begin to laugh. Forgetting her hunger, she would tear herself from her father's arms to go and play once more in the alleyway. There were times, however, when nothing would stop her tears. Then Mehboub would take his daughter in his arms and go into the neighboring courtyard to beg a piece of chapati. A poor person would never close his door on him. That was the law of the slum."

  With his gray polo shirt, his beige linen trousers, and his leather sandals, Musafir Prasad was quite unlike the other human horses. After twenty years of toiling between the shafts of a rickshaw, he had moved on to the side where the money was. At forty-eight, this onetime peasant immigrant from Bihar had become a boss. He was the man who held the trust of Bipin Narendra, the old rickshaw owner whom people referred to as "the Bihari." Beneath his black wavy hair, shiny with mustard oil, his brain functioned just like a computer. This man with protruding ears and a nutcracker chin ran the empire of three hundred and forty-six carriages and some seven hundred human horses who pulled them; and he did so without either pencil or paper—for the very good reason that he could neither read nor write. Yet nothing escaped the diabolical vigilance of this phenomenon who was gifted with the quality of ubiquity. No matter whether it was a hundred and ten degrees in the shade or the monsoon was raging, he would cover several dozen miles a day on his squeaking bike. Because of his slightly bandy legs and the way he waddled as he pedaled, the rickshaw pullers 132

  had nicknamed him "the Wader." And, strange as it might seem, everyone in the streets of this inhuman city liked the Wader.

  4 'When the Old Man summoned me to hand it all over," he recounted, "I thought God was bringing the sky down on my head. For the twenty years I had been working for him he had always confined me to the subordinate tasks, such as repairing the rickshaws, palavering with the cops, accidents, odd jobs, and so on. But the sacrosanct collection of the daily hiring fees was his task and his alone. He never missed a single day, even when he was up to his thighs in water. He was the only one who knew all the ins and outs, for although the majority of rickshaw pullers paid for the hire of their vehicle by the day, there were others who settled their accounts on a weekly or monthly basis. Some paid at a cheaper rate than others because repairs were their responsibility, or because their rickshaw was operating without a license. Since there were two men to each carriage, that made about seven or eight hundred fellows to be managed. An enormous task which only the Old Man's fat head, it seemed, could control. But one day the Old Man began to feel the burden of his years. 'Listen to me, Musafir,' he said to me. 'You and I, we've known each other for many years. We are both Biharis and I trust you. You will be my representative. From now on you will collect the money and bring it back here each evening. For every rupee I will give you five paisas.' The Old Man was not someone with whom you discussed things. I prostrated myself, touched his feet, then raised my hands to my head. 'You are the son of the god Shiva. You are my master,' I replied, 'and I shall be eternally grateful to you.'

  "Next day I got up at four because I wanted to go to the latrines and the fountain before the other people in my neighborhood. The four companions with whom I lodged in a shack near the Old Man's big house, were still asleep. They too, worked for the Old Man as bus driver, mechanic, rickshaw puller, and joiner. They too were Biharis, and they too had left their families behind in their villages to come and earn a living in Calcutta.

  "At four-thirty, I straddled my bicycle and pedaled straight to the temple of Lakshmi, our goddess of prosperi-

  ty, behind the Jagu Bazar. It was pitch dark and the Brahmin priest was still asleep behind his grill. I rang the bell and eventually he appeared, whereupon I gave him ten rupees and asked him to celebrate a puja just for me so that the day might begin under the best of auspices. I had taken with me a coneful of rice, some flowers, and two bananas. The priest deposited my offerings on a tray and we entered the interior of the sanctuary. He lit several oil lamps, then recited mantras before the divinity. I repeated some prayers. The puja filled me with intense joy and the certainty that from that day onward I was going to earn a lot of rupees. Solemnly I promised Lakshmi that the more money I had, the more offerings I would bring her.

  *'After the puja, I cycled off in the direction of Lowdon Street, near the Bellevue clinic nursing school, where the Old Man had six rickshaws. Because of the early hour, all the pullers were still there. They were asleep on the canvas seats with their legs dangling in midair. Most of the pullers had nowhere else to live. Their vehicle was their home. Where they were two to a cart, there were quarrels which I was supposed to arbitrate. It wasn't easy to tell one that he could sleep in his old rattletrap, and not the other!

  4 'Next I made for Theatre Road where the Old Man had a dozen carriages. Then I cut down Harrington Street, a pretty, residential road with fine mansions set in gardens and buildings where rich people and foreigners lived. Outside the gate to one of these houses there were always uniformed guards and an American flag. The Old Man had at least thirty rickshaws in that sector. Because it was a wealthy neighborhood, it was also a problem area. There were always one or two characters who'd had their carriages pinched by the cops under some pretext or other. And the cops asked for a lot of baksheesh because they knew the men earned a better living there than elsewhere. You had only to look at the sidewalk along the police station in Pfcrk Street, opposite Saint-Xavier's College. It was permanently cluttered with a column of confiscated rickshaws slotted into each other and chained together. They stretched for more than a hundred yards. That first morning I had to go and bow and scrape and grease the brutes' palms with more than sixty rupees for the release

  of a number of carriages, a formality which invariably complicated my accounts because I had subsequently to make sure that the dues from the pullers concerned were raised for a prescribed number of days.

  "After Harrington Street I set off as fast as I could for the rickshaw stand in front of the Mallik Bazar, on the corner of the great intersection of Park Street and Lower Circular Road where, of the thirty or forty carriages parked there, a good twenty were again the property of the Old Man. Before this next call, however, I pulled up on the corner of New Park Street to drink a cup of tea—tea that was nice and hot and strong, with plenty of sugar, as only Ashu, a fat Punjabi installed on the pavement, knew how to make it. His was the best tea on the pavements of Calcutta. Ashu mingled the milk, sugar, and tea in his kettle w
ith as much solemnity as a Brahmin carrying out Arati* I envied him the way he spent his days, seated on his ass, lording it over his utensils, being appreciated and highly thought of by his customers.

  4 'My pedaling took me next to the fish, meat, and vegetable market on Park Circus, next to which a good fifty carriages were always parked. As I progressed through my rounds, the corner of my shirt into which I stuffed the notes swelled up to create a bulge at my waist. Sporting a fat belly in Calcutta was in itself a strange sensation but for the fat belly to be compiled of a cushion of bank notes belonged to the realms of make-believe. By this time many of the pullers were already carrying a fare or cruising the streets ringing their bells on their shafts to attract the attention of customers. That meant I had to scour half the city. At midday, however, I recouped myself outside the area's schools and colleges, where hundreds of rickshaws concentrated twice a day. Taking the children to school and back was, in fact, a speciality of the corporation and the only opportunity to earn a regular income, since each kid usually had his regular puller. This arrangement was called a "contract" and by becoming the beneficiary of one or more daily contracts a puller could double or even triple the amount of the money order he sent each month to his