PART THREE
Calcutta My Love
A sharp deceleration thrust him backward in his seat. The wing of the Boeing had just tipped toward the ground, unveiling a lush landscape of cultivated fields and coconut palms. After flying for two hours over the parched expanse of central India, it seemed to Max Loeb as if he were arriving in the middle of an oasis. Everywhere there was water: canals, shimmering pools, stretches of marshland covered with wild hyacinths and looking like floating gardens retained by narrow dikes. He thought of the Everglades of Florida and of the Mexican marshland borders of Xochimilco. The somber shapes of a host of buffalo emerged from out of the green. Then the airplane righted itself, revealing in one swoop the city.
It was an enormous city, devoid of either limits or horizon, traversed by a brownish colored river on which the ships at anchor looked like petrified ducks; a city with contours rendered indistinct by the shroud of smoke that blanketed its entanglement of roofs. The glittering outline of a gasoline tank, the silhouette of a crane on the
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riverbank, the metallic structure of a factory, pierced through the thick layer.
As the hostess announced that the aircraft was about to land in Calcutta, Max could just make out the Gothic bell tower of a cathedral, the stands of a racecourse, and red double-decker buses moving along an avenue set in the middle of a parte. Finally the Boeing drew level with the runway and landed.
As soon as the door was opened—the furnace outside surged into the plane. "I felt as if I was being hit by a blast from a giant hair dryer," the American was to recount. "I recoiled under the shock and for a moment found myself struggling to get my breath back. When at last I did get onto the gangway, I was blinded by fierce reflection and had to hang on to a rail."
A few moments later, in the confusion of the arrival terminal, Max spotted a garland of yellow flowers held aloft. It was Kovalski, brandishing the welcoming garland bought to welcome the American visitor in traditional Indian style. The two men recognized each other instinctively. Their greetings were effusive but brief.
4 'I suggest I take you to the Grand," said Kovalski, climbing into a taxi. "That's the local luxury hotel. Fve never actually set foot inside it but I imagine it's a more suitable place than the City of Joy for a first encounter with the realities of this dear city."
The young American was perspiring more and more heavily. "Unless, of course, you want to plunge straight in," Kovalski added with a wink. "And I really mean plunge. The sewer workers are on strike again. You realize that what you're coming into isn't exactly Florida!"
Max checked a grimace. He was just considering the proposed alternatives when his gaze fell on his companion's arm. "What have you got there?" he asked, indicating the skin covered with scabs.
"I caught scabies."
The young doctor grunted. No doubt Kovalski was right: it would make better sense to take a little time to acclimatize himself. To go straight from a millionaire's playground to the depths of hell might well do irreparable
damage. Max was realistic enough to be wary of that sort of traumatic shock. How many hulking men from the Peace Corps had had trouble adjusting to real poverty! It would be wiser to adapt himself bit by bit, in the comfort of an air-conditioned room, and with the help of a few generous glasses of Scotch and some mellow Montecristo cigars. After all, there was no real rush.
After a moment, however, Max turned abruptly to his companion. "I'd rather come with you to Anand Nagar," he announced.
An hour later, the new friends were facing each other across a table, under the flickering light of one of the slum's eating places. A fan, apparently on the point of expiring, was stirring up a torrid atmosphere, heavy with the smell of frying.
"Buffalo stew?" asked the American, daunted by the looks of the strange mixture one of the young serving boys had placed in front of him.
"Not real 'stew,' " corrected the Pole, mopping greedily at his plate. "Just the sauce. There isn't any meat in it. But the bones, skin, marrow, and gelatine have been so well simmered that it's full of protein. It's just like eating a New York sirloin. And for thirty paisas (three U.S. cents) you can hardly expect them to serve duck and olives, can you?"
Max made a face that spoke eloquently of his repugnance.
"I think you should realize that we were lucky to get a table," added Kovalski, eager to portray his slum in the best Dossible light. "This is actually the Maxim's of the neighborhood!"
The American stopped frowning but he continued to examine his plate, the squalor of the decor, and the clientele. About twenty or so customers were engaged in eating their meals amid the din of voices. They were all factory workers without families, or employees from the workshops, condemned to live near their machines because of power cuts. The establishment belonged to a fat, bald-headed Muslim called Nasser, who presided over his steaming caldron like a Buddha behind an incense burner. Nasser was the leader of the local Marxist-Communist
party cell. No madness of the thermometer could shift him from his observation post. He oversaw a dozen employees, who called the Pole "Father," "Uncle," or "Daddah Stephan." Five of them were slum children, the eldest no more than eight years old. They worked from seven in the morning till midnight for their food and a monthly salary of ten rupees (one U.S. dollar). Barefooted, dressed in rags, they ran to fill buckets at the well, wash the tables, clean up, chase the flies away, serve the meals, sort out the customers. They were tireless and ever joyful little men. Three others in charge of cleaning the vegetables were mentally deficient. Nasser had picked them up when they were begging on the Great Trunk Road among trucks that only narrowly avoided flattening them. They lived on the restaurant's premises, sleeping on perches their employer rigged up for them out of planks suspended from the bamboo of the building framework. A blind man and a one-eyed man presided over the washing up. The blind man sported a small white goatee and sang verses from the Koran. Kovalski never went past the restaurant without going over to talk with him. "Like Surya, the old Hindu in the tea shop, that man had the gift of recharging my batteries. He gave off good vibrations."
How could anyone bring all these nuances to the attention of an American who had just landed from a different world? Kovalski knew from experience that the City of Joy was a place that had to be discovered in homeopathic doses—and which had, above all, to be deserved. It would be a long and difficult undertaking.
An exceptional event was to take place that first evening, however, which would accelerate the process and plunge Max Loeb into the very heart of his new surroundings. The Pole had given his companion a dessert to sample—a piece of barfi, the delicious Bengali nougat eaten in its thin sliver of silver paper—when a small man burst in, rushed over to Kovalski, threw himself at his feet, and spoke to him in Bengali, his hands joined together in a gesture of supplication. There was an air of urgency and deep emotion about him, and Max Loeb noticed that several fingers were missing from both his hands.
"How much do you know about obstetrics?" asked Kovalski as he got to his feet.
The American shrugged his shoulders.
"Only what I learned at school... not much."
"Come on! It's got to be better than nothing. It seems our friends here have been keeping a little welcoming surprise in store for you."
The American's astonishment delighted the Pole, "Yes, Doctor, they want to give you a brand-new baby!"
"And I'm supposed to help?"
"How did you guess?"
They hurried off behind the messenger, who was growing impatient in the street. Wading up to their calves through sludge, they moved cautiously forward. From time to time they stumbled on something soft—the carcass of a dog or a rat. Darkness falls early in the tropics and the night was as black as ink.
"Try not to fall into one of the main sewers," observed Kovalski, alluding to the six-foot-deep gutters that ran through the slum.
"It'd be one good way of making me miss the Florida beaches!"
"Provided you came out alive! In this filth, you'd die in seconds because of the gas."
For half an hour they picked their way along, past the astonished gazes of people who obviously wondered where these two sahibs might be going, through the muck, at such an hour.
"Duck your head!"
This warning saved the American from cracking his skull against a fat bamboo beam.
"You'll have to get used to bending down around here . . . Just bear in mind how good it is for your humility!"
Max bent his large body to enter a courtyard full of people; they were chattering noisily but the arrival of the two foreigners brought silence. With the fugacious light of a candle, the American made out noseless faces, the stumps of limbs moving about like marionettes. He realized that he was in the leper quarter.
The worst aggressor was the smell, an indefinable odor
of rotten meat, of putrefying flesh. Like Stephan Kovalski on his first visit, Max could hardly believe his eyes. At the feet of those mutilated bodies, children were playing, splendid chubby children who looked as if they'd stepped straight out of an advertisement. A gray-haired old man led Kovalski and his companion toward a miserable room from which feeble groans were issuing. As they were about to cross the threshold, two very wrinkled old women tried to block their way, a flood of invectives bursting from their betel-reddened mouths.
"Midwives," explained the Pole, turning back to Max. "Our arrival is an insult to them."
The old man pushed the women unceremoniously out of the way and led the visitors inside. Someone brought a candle, whereupon Kovalski discovered a pale face with deep-sunken eyes that he recognized.
"Meeta!" he exclaimed, astonished.
The young wife of his crippled friend looked exhausted. She was bathed in a sea of blood. Only with difficulty did she open her eyes, but when she saw the turned-up nose and familiar forehead with its receding hairline above her, her mouth formed a faint smile.
"Stephan, Big Brother!" she sighed feebly.
Her withered hands reached out for him, as Max removed the rags that served as a compress.
"We'll have to hurryl" the American declared. "If not, they've both had it!"
Between the thighs of the leper woman he had just discovered the tip of a small blood-covered skull. The baby was wedged half-way out of the uterus. Its mother could not manage to push it out. Possibly it was dead already.
"Have you got anything to sustain her heart?" asked Max as he tried to find the young woman's pulse. Kovalski foraged in the bag that was his constant companion, in which he always carried a few emergency medicines, and took out a bottle.
"I've got some Coramine."
Max grimaced. "Nothing stronger? An intravenous cardiac stimulant?"
The question seemed so incongruous to the priest
that, despite the circumstances, he could not help laughing.
"What do you think I am, a Miami drugstore?"
The American apologized with a slightly forced smile, and Kovalski asked for a cup of water into which he poured the medicine. Kneeling at the bedside of the young leper woman, he supported her head and helped her to drink slowly, involuntarily adding to her cup the droplets of sweat pouring off his own forehead. It was at least a hundred and ten degrees inside the hut.
"Tell her to start pushing again, as hard as possible," Max ordered.
Kovalski translated this into Bengali and Meeta contracted her body, panting with the effort. Tears of pain rolled down her cheeks.
"No, not like that! She's got to push down."
"Tell her to take a deep breath first and then push hard as she breathes out. Hurry!"
Max was dripping with sweat. He mopped his face and neck. A rancid taste rose up in his throat. Was it the heat, the buffalo stew that wouldn't stay down, the stench, or the sight of all those mutilated bodies? He was gripped by an incoercible desire to vomit. Seeing him turn as white as a sheet, Kovalski emptied the remainder of the bottle of Coramine into the cup from which the leper woman had just been drinking.
"Get this down quickly!"
Max started at the sight of the receptacle.
"Are you out of your mind?"
"You've no choice. They're all looking at you. If you show your revulsion, they might turn nasty. You never know with lepers."
Seeing Max turn more livid in color, however, he said, "There's nothing to worry about. You can't catch her sort of leprosy. It's not contagious."
Max raised the cup to his lips, closed his eyes, and drank the contents down in a gulp. A little girl with black eyes made up with kohl came and fanned him with a piece of cardboard. He felt better. Bending over to examine the woman in labor more closely, he could see that the child was coming out the wrong way. It wasn't the upper part of
the head that was emerging but the nape of the neck. Max knew that there was only one way of extricating the baby: he would have to turn it.
4 'Do you think the baby's still alive?" Kovalski asked.
4 'How can I tell without a stethoscope?"
The young doctor put his ear to the leper woman's stomach. He straightened up with an expression of disappointment.
"No heartbeat. But that doesn't mean much. He's turned the wrong way. For God's sake, tell her to push harder!"
The Coramine was taking effect; the leper woman's contractions were coming with increased vigor. Max knew that he must take advantage of every thrust. There could be no doubt about it; this was his last chance.
"Go around the other side," he said to Kovalski. "While I try to turn the baby, you massage her stomach from top to bottom to help the downward motion."
As soon as Kovalski had stepped over the body, the doctor slid his hand in behind the baby's neck. Meeta groaned at the movement of his fingers.
4 'Tell her to breathe deeply and to push evenly, without jerking."
All the leper woman's muscles tightened. Her head thrown back, her mouth contorted, she made a desperate effort.
What happened next might well seem improbable. The American's hand had just reached the baby's shoulder when two balls of fur brushed against his head and rebounded on the stomach of the mother. In the framework of the hovel, some of the rats had survived the heat wave. They were as large as cats. In his surprise, Max withdrew his hand. Was it his abrupt movement or the shock of the creatures' landing? One thing was certain: the baby's body righted itself.
"Push, push, push!" cried Max. Ten seconds later, a bundle of flesh enveloped in mucus and blood passed into his hands. He lifted it up like a trophy.
It was a magnificent boy weighing at least six pounds. He saw the baby's lungs inflate and his mouth open to let
out a cry that unleashed an amazing echo of joy in the courtyard of the compound. One of the midwives severed the cord with a sharp blow and tied it off with a piece of jute. The other brought a basin to begin the ablutions.
The American's heart missed a beat at the color of the infant's clothing. "This people must be tougher than steel," he thought to himself. Since no Brahmin would agree to enter into a leper compound, the honor of undertaking the first rite that follows the birth of a child fell to Stephan Kovalski. Suddenly he felt someone touching his feet and, looking down, found Anouar who had just arrived on his piece of wood on wheels. Having wiped the dust off Kovalski's sneakers, the crippled man then raised his stumps to his forehead as a mark of respect. He looked overjoyed.
"Stephan, Big Brother, you've given me a son! A son!" Paralyzed with anxiety, Meeta's husband had kept out of the way until this triumphal moment. Now he brought a bowlful of grains of rice. Wedging it between his stumps, he raised it up as an offering to the priest. "There," he said, "put the rice next to my boy, that the gods may grant him a long and prosperous life." Then he took an oil lamp from one of the midwives. According to ritual, its wick must burn without interruption until the following day. If it went out, the newborn baby would not live.
In his first letter to his fiancee, Max Loeb would report of
the demonstrations of enthusiasm that followed. "All the lepers were overwhelmed with joy. It was impossible to restrain them. Withered hands flung themselves round my neck. Pitted faces embraced me. Cripples brandished their crutches and clapped them together like drumsticks. 'Daddah, Big Brother, God bless you!' the people cried. Even the midwives joined in the celebration. Children brought biscuits and sweetmeats which we had to eat on pain of breaching the rules of hospitality. I was suffocating, nauseous. The smell of decay was even more unbearable in the courtyard than inside the hovel. Yet Stephan, my companion, seemed completely at home. He grasped the fingerless hands held out to him, while I confined myself to joining mine together in this beautiful gesture of greeting that I had seen people use at the airport. The cries of that newborn baby filled the night—my first night in Calcutta."
' 4 There aren't just tigers and snakes in the jungle of Calcutta," mused Hasari Pal. "You also meet lambs and doves there, even among taxi drivers." The latter were generally real villains who had no sympathy whatsoever for human horses. Riding along like rajahs in their black-and-yellow motor palanquins, they never missed an opportunity to assert their superiority.
One day in a traffic jam, one of these "rajahs" had nudged Hasari and his carriage into a gutter. It was then that the miracle occurred. The driver, a small, bald man with a scar around his neck, actually stopped to apologize. This was no sardarji from the Punjab, with a rolled beard,, a turban, and a dagger, but a Bengali like Hasari, originally from Bandel, a little place on the banks of the Ganges, some twenty miles from the Pals' village. He hastened to help Hasari extricate his rickshaw from the gutter and even suggested sharing a bottle of bang la with him. Next day he turned up during a torrential downpour. Abandoning their respective vehicles, the two men took refuge in a dive at the back of Park Street.
The City of Joy Page 32
