by Paul Theroux
My mouth was dry from having uttered the little girl's name. I lay on the hard mattress, in the dusty air, in the smell of the mildewed carpet, the chipped paint on the chairs, the scratched varnish of the desk, the accumulated fur on the wardrobe mirror, the threadbare curtains, the grime on the blue petals of the plastic flowers on the dresser, my cheese sandwich souring on its plate, the bread warping as it went stale. Even in the darkness the room was warm with decay, every item of furniture giving off its distinctive smell, and with all that there was the insistent stink of the street. The whole of Calcutta lay hot and ripe against my face.
The smells kept me awake, and in this density of bad air there was the burned-toast hum of old cigarette smoke. Twisted on my bed like a castaway, my nerves alight, I was hungry and yet disgusted by the thought of food. The furniture, picked out in its smells and its shadows, shimmered too from the sulfurous yellow of the street lamps at the corner of Sudder Street.
That was why, when I saw the door of the wardrobe flicker forth—the long narrow mirror on the door catching the light from the street—I took it to be just another nightmare effect of those yellow lamps. But no, the mirror was still moving in one direction, catching on its edge the reflection of my pale popeyed face. I didn't breathe, I didn't move. My body was convulsed with anxiety, tangled in the damp sheets. I was still fully clothed. The mirror glinted, seemed to wink at me, swung out wider, and then came the tuneless clang of the wire hangers inside the wardrobe, like cheap wind chimes stirred by a light breeze.
Swelling like blobby ectoplasm—the sight was unearthly—a crouching shadow bobbed and rippled toward the door of my room as I watched in horror. I'd double-locked the door after Ramachandra left so that I wouldn't be interrupted in my writing. That seemed so innocent now. The handle resisted with a click, the shadow grunted, then whined, frustrated air straining in its sinuses, another little whinny of regret. Something in those sounds spoke of weakness.
I sprang out of bed and rushed at the figure, which was half shadow, half substance, and easily knocked it down with a thump. I was prepared to push again, but the lumpy shadow began pleading in a shrieky girlish whisper.
"Please don't hurt me. Please."
It was a male voice. My eyes were used to the dark; his were not. He lay tumbled to the floor like a small bundle.
"What are you doing here?"
He was still pleading through his fingers, his hands over his face. I pulled at his hands and his cell phone dropped to the floor. I knew it was a cell phone because it had opened when I snatched at him, and it was lit and lying at a convenient angle on the floor to illuminate Rajat, curled into a ball and whimpering.
"I'm hurt. I've broken something."
But he wasn't hurt. He was cowering, afraid that, standing over him, I'd kick him, which was what I wanted to do.
"Please let me go."
He spoke with an odd decorum, and rather softly, because he did not want to rouse anyone in the hotel. He remained on the floor, obstinate, stupid in fear. I switched on the overhead light, and under the shadows of the turning fan blades Rajat lay, so like a scrawny carcass that I was at once reminded of my mission: identifying the small body in the other hotel room.
"Tell me why you came here."
He covered his face and whimpered into his fingers.
"Never mind. I know. You're looking for any incriminating evidence that I've found. You suspect I've got something on you."
"No." It was less a distinct word than a groan of misery, something like Aw.
"You invited me to visit the Lodge to see Mrs. Unger so you'd have time to come here and search my room."
That Aw again, more anguished.
"But you didn't count on my coming back early—" I stopped myself before telling him that my session with Mrs. Unger was a turnoff that left me so doubtful and suspicious I'd hurried back to my room. Now I had a whiff of mothballs rising from him.
"You must have been in that wardrobe a long time."
"Please don't tell Ma."
"That you came here?"
"Or that you found anything to implicate me. I know it looks bad, but"—he rolled over and groaned into the floor—"I did not murder that child."
"Who did?"
He began to speak, he choked up, then he squealed, "I do not know. I had no hand in it."
"Was it Mrs. Unger?"
"Absolutely not," he said, shaking off his tears. "She is pure. She is steeped in nectar!"
Even in the heat, in this harsh light, with Rajat on the floor beneath me, I smiled at this statement, and in my reflex of disbelief I kicked him in the arm.
"Sorry. I couldn't help it."
"Ma helps these poor children," he said, his voice strained from my kick. "She is their mother." He had become a little calmer—was it my kick? "You saw the child when you arrived."
"The little girl being taken away," I said. "Her name is Usha."
"I don't know her name. I only know that she was being taken."
Now I understood. I said, "You wanted me to witness that. You wanted me to watch the American woman take her away from Mrs. Unger."
He didn't say no. He seemed to grow smaller on the floor. He was whimpering again. It seemed that every time I mentioned Mrs. Unger's name he grew fearful.
"It happens all the time," I said. "Mrs. Unger sells them. Doesn't she?"
"There are many," he said. "It is her greatness."
Rajat, still contracting, now a tiny bundle with a head, began to cry.
"You knew I'd see that, and you knew I'd be so preoccupied with Mrs. Unger that you'd be able to search my room. Who did you bribe to get in here?" But he didn't reply. He was still sniveling. "I came back early. I surprised you, and so you hid in the wardrobe. You're lucky I didn't hit you harder, you little shit."
My bullying him made him cry more miserably, and I began to feel sorry for him. He was murmuring "Please."
"I want you to tell me everything you know about Mrs. Unger." I stood over him. His murmuring had grown urgent, as though in a kind of panic he thought I was going to kick him again. This made me feel like a monster, and while it gave me a sense of power I had never felt before, it both embarrassed me and made me feel reckless.
"Ma is good. Ma is generous."
"You're afraid of her, afraid she'll hear you."
"Ma hears everything."
The way he said that made him seem pitiful. I said, "She can't hear you now."
"It is Ma's power," he said, turning his smeared face upward to the light.
"So why did you come here?"
"I wanted"—he swallowed and started again—"'I only wanted to save Charlie."
"From what? From whom?"
But he sniffed and turned his face to the floor.
"You wanted to save yourself. You're a sneak and a liar."
"Yes, I am a sneak. I have taken advantage of you by invading your room. But, sir, I am not a liar."
"Get up," I said.
He struggled to his feet. His face shone with tears and saliva. His greasy hair was pushed sideways, giving him a look of insanity, and his clothes—he was always so neat—were rumpled and twisted.
"Empty your pockets."
I was sorry I asked. What Indians carried in their pockets was so sad: an ID card showing his startled face, a torn bus ticket, a receipt ("From chemist shop, for my acne"), a tube of acne cream, some folded rupees, a few coins, a key chain holding three old keys, a small brass Ganesh on a loop, some gray pills of lint.
"Please don't report me."
"All I care about is the truth," I said. It was the echo of what I'd said to him in the lobby when we were having tea, and it sounded more pompous now. I was glad there was no one around to hear me.
"There is no god higher than truth," Rajat said. I stared at him, smiling again, amazed that he'd managed to say something more pompous than what I'd just said. Even standing bedraggled and defeated in my room, almost clownish in a tragic way, he was capable of being s
uperbly sententious. And he became more serious. "But you will never find the truth here."
"Then why did you break into my room?"
"I wasn't looking for the truth. I was trying to find all those lies that people are telling about me."
"And what about that little girl Usha? Isn't it true that I saw her taken away?"
"I don't know what you saw."
"I could call the police now."
"I beg you not to," he said, and actually assumed the cringing posture of a bhikhiri, a beggar.
"Put that stuff back in your pockets," I said, and as he picked it up, pinching at the lint, I added, "Now get out."
I unbolted and unlocked the door, and, wincing, he slipped out. But he held on to the doorjamb with his skinny fingers, hesitating.
"Please, sir, come with me to the entrance or they will suspect that I broke in. It will make me look so disgraceful."
Surprised by his sudden impudence, I laughed and followed him downstairs to the lobby and the front door, to make this little sneak look honest. The chowkidar was asleep, barefoot in his khakis, his truncheon like a pillow under his head. Rajat thanked me by bowing, making a namashkar with his prayerful hands, and then he fled into the yellow glare of the alley.
He hadn't found the dead hand that I had hidden in the space behind the bottom drawer—I checked this as soon as I got back to the room. He couldn't have found the carpet because it was in Dr. Mooly Mukherjee's lab. But I knew that he had been looking for any evidence I had of the corpse in his room, and to destroy it. He knew that I was on to him.
He had also done me a favor—but why? Though he denied it, he obviously wanted me to see the small girl Usha being taken away. And his saying "There are many," spoken in praise, was really an implied indictment of Mrs. Unger.
What impressed me most in all of this was that in my every encounter with Rajat, he had never said a single negative thing about Mrs. Unger. Not a word of criticism, out of respect, or fear, or both; only the most elaborate gratitude.
I slept badly, and when I woke, gasping in the heat of early morning, I remembered one other drawer I hadn't checked—my desk drawer, where I kept my notes, letters, and receipts in a folder. The letter from Mrs. Unger that had started me on this quest—handmade paper, purple ink, Dear Friend—was gone. Somehow Rajat had thieved it.
In this uncertain time, a few days after that encounter with a darker Mrs. Unger, the dramatic adoption of Usha, and the intrusion of Rajat, I had a call from Howard at the consulate.
"Dr. Mooly Mukherjee has been trying to reach you."
"I'll give him a call."
"I'm kind of curious about the result," Howard said. "That is, if you feel like sharing it."
"I'll let you know."
"I mean, the figure in the carpet."
"Right."
I called Dr. Mukherjee. He said, "It would be a lot easier if you came to HQ."
"Can't you tell me over the phone?"
"I'd rather not."
"Are there bloodstains?"
"As a policeman I have learned not to be too comfortable on the telephone," he said. He pronounced it tellyphone. "Telephones are leaky."
We arranged a time to meet for the following morning. I did not report this to Howard. He called me—somehow he knew about the appointment. He said, "Mind if I come along?" I couldn't refuse: he had helped me find Dr. Mooly Mukherjee.
Dr. Mukherjee welcomed us. "Tea or coffee?" He remarked on the weather. The monsoon was due any day now. He spoke of his family, his daughter's wish to study in the United States, altogether chatty and inconsequential in the Bengali way. At one time I would have felt he was trying to distract us because he had nothing to report. But now I knew that he wanted to engage us because he had something important to say. He was chatting because he wanted our full attention.
The piece of carpet lay in a plastic pouch on his desk like a laboratory specimen, an inked-in label stuck to the outside.
"My youngest, Shona, wants so earnestly to go to America," he was saying, stroking his mustache. "Postgraduate study. Lawrence, in state of Kansas." He said estudy and estate. "I am hoping that Mr. Howard will ask powers-that-be to look favorably on her visa application."
"Dr. Mukherjee has four brilliant daughters," Howard said, avoiding a direct answer.
"With my good wife and my dear mother, that is six women in the household. Petticoat government, you could say."
Bursting to ask, I said, "What did you find on the piece of carpet?"
"Ah, yes, the material evidence," he said, as though he'd forgotten. But his delay was an attempt to be dramatic. He picked up the plastic pouch. He held it in two hands. He said, "This is the curious incident of the dog that didn't bark in the night. You know the reference?"
"Sherlock Holmes."
"'Hound of the Baskervilles'?" Howard said.
"No," Dr. Mukherjee said, and looked delighted. "'Silver Blaze' story. Another clue is the curried mutton. About a racehorse."
"I haven't read that one," I said.
"Interesting not for what is there but for what is not there."
"Bloodstains?"
"No blood. No substantial DNA. Traces of human hair, we think."
"That's all?"
"Food. Oil. Bits of dirt and grit. Better ask"—he tugged at his mustache with his free hand—"what is not there?"
Howard said, "Okay. What's missing?"
Dr. Mukherjee manipulated the plastic pouch so that we could see the edge of the carpet, which was its true edge, with a design and a double-stitched seam. Because this was not the small fragment that Mina had sent me but the bigger stained piece I'd taken from the floor of the closet, it had a complete design and seemed altogether more identifiable.
I said, "Do you mean you can make out the whole design of the carpet from this piece?"
"Of course, but so what?" he said. "Carpets are standard designs. This is floral. Also vines. Maybe a bird on an arbor in the figure." He twitched his mustache as if to reject the notion that the design was important. "Maybe some curry gravy or ghee butter on top side." He showed me the stain. "Vegetable matter."
I was smiling at the expression, and Howard winked, as Dr. Mukherjee turned the carpet over.
"Observe seam."
"I don't see anything."
"Exactly. You see nothing." He was triumphant. "But look closely and you see double stitch and coupon stub."
"Coupon stub?"
"Strip of cloth where label has been torn off."
"Ah, the label's missing," Howard said. "So what does that tell us?"
"That someone doesn't want carpet to be identified," he said. "But they were hasty. Large piece of label is missing. Coupon stub remains in stitching. This strip."
Now he put the plastic pouch down and opened a large manila envelope. He took out a black-and-white photograph that showed a strip of pale cloth with a stitch running through it and smudges of ink beside it.
"What are those squiggles?"
"Squiggles are Devanagari script that has been cut in half by hasty removal of label from stitching."
"But bigger."
"Lab has enhanced script with photographic process. Basic forensic work, nothing special."
"So it tells the manufacturer?"
"Not manufacturer, regrettably. But see—"
He placed another piece of paper next to the bisected script and completed the word.
"—it matches."
"What does it say?"
"Place of origin."
"And that would be?"
"Mirzapur. In U.P."
I frowned, as though in frustration, so as not to reveal the panic I felt.
"You are right to make such a face, sir," Dr. Mukherjee said. "Very many carpets are made in Mirzapur. Mirzapur is carpet mecca."
"So it's a wild goose chase."
"I think otherwise. Useful chase. Some weeks ago you showed me a body part with no fingerprints—all prints abraded. I offered my opinion that this c
ould have been the hand of a brickmaker or a worker in clay."
"I remember."
"It could also have been the hand of a carpet weaver. Making the knots all day, a person can lose his fingerprints. Perhaps the two are related."
Afterward, Howard said, "You seem a little downcast by the news. He didn't find bloodstains. Isn't that a good thing?"
"He found something more important—to me, at least. The Mirzapur connection. And the link with that hand."
"Tons of carpets are made there. You heard him."
"News to me."
"Mirzapur is full of sweatshops."
"I need to go there."
"Tell me why." When I hesitated he said, "You said you were doing a favor for a friend. Is this about the favor?"
"About the friend."
17
WE HIGH-STEPPED past squatting groups of men who were bright-eyed with fatigue, clawing with skinny hands at their bowls of food, yellow gravy and blue, gluey-looking vegetables—Howrah station again, the Night Mail to Mugalsarai and Mirzapur. Howard led the way, excusing himself in chatty Bengali, past the men who were licking their fingers and lapping their palms with gummy tongues. Seeing us, perhaps hoping for a tip, the conductor showed us to our compartment. Howard was efficient in using the available space—the hooks, the shelves, the water-bottle holder. We sat facing each other across the little table, and the coach jumped with a clang, shoving us against the cushions, then settled and slid clicking past the platform and into the suburbs.
"Ever read Nirad Chaudhuri?" Howard asked. "He's great on Calcutta. He talks about how the land around the city looks 'poisoned to death.' And the countryside is like 'a mangy bandicoot bitten by a snake.'"
I was staring out the window at the small battered tenements on the mudflats, wondering how to begin.
