A Dead Hand

by Paul Theroux

  "Why do you call her the Goddess?"

  He didn't answer. He was talking to the driver. I noticed that we were on a slight incline, a sloping road lined with shops and the usual monsoon drain, dry in this season but filled with heaps of paper and plastic trash. Beyond the shops the light was brighter, the sky higher, as though there was a valley on the other side.

  I saw distant houses and a brown, deeply scored, stony embankment like a hillside.

  "Ganga," Mr. Ghosh said.

  This excited Howard, who said, "Where are the ghats?"

  "Ghats are there. Pujas are there. See garlands in river."

  I saw thick stone piers, pitted with age, porous as bone, worn by the sloshing of the river, and beneath in the slow slip of the water a scum as of garbage and orange peels, sodden castoff marigolds and festering lilies.

  "Where are the factories?" I said.

  "Temple first. Vindhyachal. Presiding deity Vindhyavasini Devi."

  "I don't want to see the temple," I said.

  Howard said, "Why don't we let Mr. Ghosh...?"

  "I want to see the American factory."

  "Two American factories," he said. "Obeetee is major exporter. Long history. Handlooms. Dhurries. Woolen druggets. You are wanting druggets?"

  "I am not wanting druggets," I said, and hearing a shriek in my voice tried to calm myself. "I want to see the other one."

  "They are abundant," Mr. Ghosh said.

  "The Goddess. Why do you call her the Goddess?"

  "She is making puja at Kali Khoh temple."

  "That's the only reason?"

  "And when the business was cracked down, she prevailed over adversity."

  "Why the crackdown?"

  "Hullaballoo," Mr. Ghosh said. "We go later. In meantime we will visit handloom shop at Obeetee."

  Of course for a visit to one of these shops he got baksheesh, and when we bought something he would find out what we paid and would get a commission.

  Howard began to say something, but I interrupted.

  "We have very little time," I said. "I want to see the American woman's factory. I want to see the carpets. Maybe I'll buy something there and you'll get some rupees."

  "They are not proffering commission," he said. "See temple."

  "No temple."

  Howard said, "How far is the temple?"

  "Factory," I said.

  "Hotel Janhavi is adjacent. You can book in, bathe body, take some few breakfast eatables."

  "Factory," I said.

  "You are chiding, sir."

  "I am not chiding."

  Mr. Ghosh sighed, and with great reluctance he gave the driver a whispered order.

  "What my friend means, Mr. Ghosh, is that we'd like to see the factory first, and then we'll look at the temple," Howard said.

  "Temple is treasure of Mirzapur. Many yatris come to see Vindhyachal. Then to Astabhuja for goddess Mahasaraswati puja. Then to Kali Khoh for Maa Kali puja. This is holy place! Not merely weavings and carpets and floor coverings and whatnot. It is historical. Thousands of years."

  He spoke resentfully, as if he did not want to take us where we wanted to go—my only reason for being in Mirzapur. And, thwarted in doing what he wanted to do, which was to be in charge, he sulked and said nothing while we crawled through traffic. As in Calcutta, traffic was also cows, pushcarts, wagons drawn by oxen and buffalo, auto-rickshaws, and old men on bikes, too maddening to be picturesque.

  "Where are we?" Howard asked.

  "Station road. Embankment. As requested."

  Mr. Ghosh made it clear that he was taking us under protest. The car turned into a side road, and now the river was near enough to bulk in the air as a strong sewer smell. The light was gauzy in this openness. The city fell away at the littered and weedy bank of trampled mud. Beyond the stretch of water was another bank, low houses at the edge of it. Mr. Ghosh groaned and nodded as the car labored in the ruts and the wheels thumped into the potholes.

  He said something to the driver. Then, as the car slowed down, "Better we pass on foot."

  "How far?"

  Instead of answering, he gestured vaguely with the back of his hand. He gathered his umbrella and briefcase, and sighed as he got out of the car.

  Ahead was a stucco wall about eight feet high with shards of glass embedded in the top, bristling like crude spikes. The gate was a pair of high steel doors, painted green and stenciled with a number. As I kicked along the dusty path, stumbling on tussocks and loose rocks, I thought: Mrs. Unger comes here?

  A man in a heavy suit of fuzzy brown wool like an old-fashioned army uniform stood at the gate. He wore a black beret and carried a shiny black club that he brandished like a truncheon. He had a brass plate pinned to his shirt, official-looking, like the chowkidar at the Lodge.

  Mr. Ghosh spoke to him in what I supposed was Hindi, first a greeting, then what sounded like a hectoring explanation.

  "Not possible," the guard said in English.

  Mr. Ghosh rested on his umbrella, using it as a cane. He spoke again.

  The guard made an ambiguous head-bob and repeated, "Not possible."

  Mr. Ghosh turned to us and said, "Not open to public."

  "Wait a minute," Howard said, becoming decisive. He briskly approached the guard and looked him in the eye. He took out his passport and, nudging Mr. Ghosh aside, held it open the way a policeman shows his badge. He said, "I am from the United States consulate general in Calcutta. Do you see this? We are here on official business. Please open the gate and let us in."

  The guard looked at Howard's diplomatic passport. He muttered and then withdrew. After a few minutes another man appeared, this one in shirtsleeves, and he examined the passport. Satisfied that it was genuine, he backed away, and the next sound I heard was the hasp being lifted and the steel bolt shot. The door swung open.

  "Coffee, tea?" the man said.

  I said no. Howard said yes. We had tea in the man's office. Howard whispered to me that since we were lucky to have gained entry, we had to observe the courtesies.

  The man said his name was Joshi. Born in Ahmedabad, he had come to Mirzapur to learn the weaving trade. He was about forty or so, potbellied, with thin arms and a string around his wrist. "I am plant manager. Supervise, yes, I can do. Imitate I cannot. Weaving is very demanding," he said, wagging his head to indicate the depth of his seriousness.

  "I suppose it's very technical," Howard said.

  "So technical," Mr. Joshi said. "First, design is made. Then master plan, each knot specified. We are having rooms where designers toil. They are pukka artists, no doubt. The weavers read designs. We have yarn, hand-spun. Dyeing vats. All facilities."

  "Do any of your carpets look like this?"

  I showed him the patch of carpet.

  "It seems one of ours," Mr. Joshi said. "We have specific naksha for this. That is, master plan. This pile I recognize too."

  "It is like signature, I tell you," Mr. Ghosh said, not to be outdone. "I have informed the American gentlemen of this."

  Mr. Joshi worked his thumbnail into the pile. He said, "Not first quality," and smiled. "Not valuable. Not collectible. Third quality. Parlor unit."

  "How would this carpet be sold?"

  "As export item. Machine-spun yarn. Not vegetable color. Chemical dye. Standard naksha." He flipped it over. He dug his nail into it again, as though determining whether it was edible. "This piece is export only. You found in America?"

  "Calcutta," I said.

  He stared at the fragment in his hands, then he smiled. "Not possible."

  "What if it was taken without your notice, or stolen by an employee?"

  "Our employees are living on site. On premises thieving is minimal."

  "By some miracle, this carpet ended up in Calcutta. It found its way to a hotel, where it was cut into pieces. That's where I came across it."

  "I have no knowledge of this unauthorized usage," Mr. Joshi said.

  Howard said, "We'd like to see your workshop."
<
br />   "Not possible," Mr. Joshi said.

  "We'd like to meet your employees."

  "Not available." He pretended to be impassive, but I could see he was adamant.

  Even Howard, the soul of politeness, hated to be rebuffed. He said, "You are the supervisor, Mr. Joshi?"

  "Yes, sir. Plant manager."

  "Who is your boss?"

  "The sahib, sir."

  "We want to meet the sahib."

  Mr. Joshi's face became waxen, and he swallowed hard as he seemed to make a rapid calculation that showed in his glistening eyes.

  "Sahib very busy, sir."

  "Give him this card." Howard handed Mr. Joshi his business card from the consulate, with the American eagle embossed in gold on it. "Please tell him we want a word with him."

  Mr. Joshi fingered the card, studied it with his lips.

  "Chowkidar has passed me this card already," he said, and then wagged his head, the wobble that meant yes.

  After Mr. Joshi left the room, Mr. Ghosh said, "Chap is doing level best."

  Howard simply shrugged. "We've come all this way. Why not give it a shot?"

  We sat in the tiny office, tired from the long night in the train, weary from the rebuffs. It was hotter here than in Calcutta, the slimy heat of the river thickening the air. We had not washed. We had hardly eaten.

  "Better we go to Hotel Janhavi and make telephonic inquiries from there," Mr. Ghosh said.

  We did not reply. I was not sure what to do, though what Mr. Joshi had said reassured me. The carpet was definitely from this factory. It had arrived at the Ananda rolled around a dead child and had turned up in Rajat's room. So, some of the pieces fit in some larger scheme, but the scheme itself was a mystery. Who was the boy? Where had he come from? Why had he been brought to the Ananda, and why did the poor boy have no fingerprints? Perhaps the loss of fingerprints was associated with his weaving, as Dr. Mooly Mukherjee had suggested.

  All these disjointed speculations should have prepared me for anything, yet I was not prepared for what happened next.

  A series of bangs, each one louder than the one before, seemed more jarring in the heat. A door slammed in the hallway, then Mr. Joshi's door was flung open. Charlie Unger stood before us, very red in the face, his white kurta spotless.

  "What are you doing here? What do you want?"

  A person reveals his true personality in a show of temper. Charlie had never been more than a smirking shadow before, seeming to resent my being with his mother; or he had sulked and been oblique, but always enigmatic. All his talk of liking my writing had not convinced me. Now he was fussed and furious, hands on hips, defying us—defying me, his hating eyes dancing in anger, his lips twisted in disdain, the real Charlie.

  "We'd like to look at your factory." It was just an assumption that it was his, but he didn't deny it.

  "Does Mother know you're here?"

  "In a way, she sent us here."

  "That's crap. She would have called." He turned to Howard. "Who are you?"

  "You have my card," Howard said. "I'm from the consulate."

  "You have no business here."

  "As Mr. Joshi probably told you, we want to look around."

  "Listen, doll, take your friends and leave. Go back to wherever you belong. You don't belong here."

  Howard visibly stiffened at this, yet when he spoke he was calm and exceedingly polite. "Please have another look at my card. You'll see I'm public affairs officer at the consulate. I am answerable to the State Department for the activities of all Americans in my area. Mirzapur is in it, and so is Calcutta. That would include you."

  "I have news for you, doll," Charlie said, trying to interrupt.

  But Howard continued: "If you want to go on doing business here, you'll show us your factory, your workshops, and your employees. We're not leaving until we see them."

  "We're proud of what we're doing. My mother created this whole business from nothing."

  "That's admirable."

  "We're not breaking any laws."

  "Good. Now would you mind showing us around?"

  "We're one of the biggest carpet exporters in Mirzapur. We're supporting a lot of families."

  He flounced out of Mr. Joshi's office and we followed. Hurrying beside him, Mr. Joshi opened doors and stood aside as Charlie said, "Design room—color plates are made here," and on a low platform a dozen men worked over large sheets of paper tacked to boards, inking patterns in bright colors.

  In the next room, men were transferring the colored patterns onto a large piece of graph paper, one square at a time.

  "Each square represents one knot," Mr. Joshi said.

  The men smiled hello from their workstations, waving shyly as we left, hands on hearts.

  "Why is this door locked?" I asked as we walked farther down the narrow corridor.

  "Looms," Mr. Joshi said. "The weaving room." And he opened the padlock on the tongue of the hasp. He eased the bolt and opened the door.

  "I don't care what you think. We're not ashamed of this," Charlie said.

  The door gave onto a large, high-ceilinged room. It could have been a school. I sensed a sudden hush, even over the rattle of the wooden looms. My first thought was that it was a schoolroom, the children small and attentive, all of them barefoot, climbing on benches, clinging to the big looms, some of them knotting yarn or stringing the vertical warps, others crouching, fastening knots, still more hammering, beating the interlocking strings and knots.

  That was my first impression, little scholars, silenced by the entrance of the headmaster. But I quickly saw their solemnity, their fear, the intensity of their concentration—they were cowed and compact, like prisoners. It was a prison, a labor camp, filled with wooden frames and clattering; it was a mass of loose ends; it was a confusion of small souls toiling with tiny hands.

  "Children," I said. "They're all kids."

  I walked over to a loom, and when I approached a boy of ten or twelve he left off plucking at a knot and held up his hands to cover his face, as though he expected me to hit him.

  I smiled and stepped back. I said softly, "I know your name."

  "Yes, uncle."

  "I've forgotten what it is."

  "Jyoti, uncle."

  The self-possessed boy I had met at the Lodge, mouse face, bat ears, tiny head, narrow shoulders, the little soldier, broken now. Ma is our mainstay. I reached to shake his hand. He extended his hand and I held it softly and turned it so that I could see his fingers. His hand was claw-like, his fingers reddened, the fingertips rubbed raw.

  "He has no fingerprints."

  But Charlie was smirking, standing next to Howard at the doorway.

  "Go away or else I'll call security. Then I'll have you screaming the place down."

  "I'm reporting you," Howard said.

  "I told you, doll. It's all within the law."

  "No, it's not," Howard said.

  Charlie said, "Then tell us the names of anyone in this country who's been convicted of using kids. Ha! Get out, doll."

  19

  FROM THE BEGINNING, my first visit more than six weeks earlier, I had regarded the Lodge of Mrs. Unger in Alipore as a refuge, a place of safety, of health and joy, where she was the protector, the guiding light, the mother of it all—Ma, great soft bosom in this itchy city of sharp edges and contending voices.

  Now I saw the Lodge as a dangerous and unhappy place, and Mrs. Unger as the sinister force that tyrannized over it. The smell of it was the smell of the sacred river, in India an odor of sanctity, which was also a whiff of stagnation, an odor of life and of death.

  I had come to the Lodge unannounced, but she was waiting for me on the stone porch behind the cracked balusters, flanked by the worn, rain-pitted, almost featureless lions. I tried to imagine what this great neoclassical mansion might have looked like in its heyday, but I could not see it, could not re-create it from this cracked façade and exposed brick, from the burrs and bruises on its fluted columns. It was both monument
al and ruinous, like Calcutta, with the same human face, gaping windows, cheeks of fissured stucco, a mouth-like door, open in a hungry appeal like the beggars at car windows at street corners.

  "I've been expecting you," Mrs. Unger said. "I thought you'd be here yesterday."

  "I had some business to attend to."

  Whenever I was away from her, I forgot how lovely she was, her feline features, the cast of her face, her high cheekbones, her full lips, made fuller by her slightly protruding teeth. She was beautiful, stately as a priestess. She had a broad forehead, a tipped-up nose, and greeny gray eyes (depending on the light), and her hair was going prematurely silver in places—though she was younger than me, she seemed much older. Her body so slender in her silken sari, her narrow bony feet stippled with henna.

  But this beauty today looked devilish, her smile—her teeth—frightening. Her two side teeth—eyeteeth, I suppose—bulged against her lips when she frowned, and glistened, looking more sinister, when she smiled. She was not tall, but she stood erect and gave the impression of height, and so she seemed dominant.

  "I take it you've been successful," she said. "Come inside."

  In the Lodge the sounds of children's laughter unnerved me, as if they were at play, scampering at the edge of a precipice.

  "I'd rather sit in the garden," I said.

  "But I owe you a treatment."

  The word struck fear into me now. How easily everything was reversed. Her beauty repelled me; the promise of a treatment was like a threat.

  "I look forward to it," I said, hoping she'd believe me.

  "Bijoy, bring some tea," she said to an apprehensive servant I had never seen before.

  We walked together down the staircase to the side of the house where the garden was luxuriant. The pale trunks of the banyan trees twisted into the brick wall, the insinuating fingers of the long roots, the knuckles of the fatter wrinkled ones, the mossy stones, the gurgle of the fountain—the garden had seemed fertile before, a source of life. Now it was sinister, all of it, the sound of the falling water like a repeated warning.

  "Sit," she said, patting a bench.

  This moss-covered statuary I had seen from the downstairs lobby, the damp bricks, the paved paths, the fountain at the pool—a marble cow's head at its center, spewing water through its rounded mouth. Mrs. Unger smiled, drawing her lips back, showing her teeth, letting her tongue loll hungrily.