by Paul Theroux
“Tell Jenny about maya,” I said.
He lifted one finger, the way bores do when they lecture you, and he said, “We Hindus believe the whole material world is maya—illusion. The secret lies in letting go of things.”
Jenny merely stared at him, her head slightly tilted in disbelief.
Indoo was trying to look pious. He held his glass primly and in a soulful voice said, “I myself believe this is so.”
“Then what’s that in your hand?” Jenny asked. “Is that whiskey or an illusion?”
Indoo laughed slowly and insincerely. “Jolly good,” he said. “I like that. I forgive you for that.”
It seemed to me that this little get-together was not working at all.
Finally, Indoo said—as though for the first time—“I tell you what I would like to do very much indeed. White-water rafting on the Ganges. Bring your bathing costumes. I shall provide a hamper and all other requisites.”
“That’s an interesting idea,” I said.
“Yes,” Indoo said. “I will collect you in my car early in the morning—say, four or four-thirty. We will drive northward to Hardwar. There we take a back road to my agency’s camp on the Ganges. The river is very swift at that place. I have four chaps onsite who will take us downriver. You put on life jackets and paddle like hell through the rapids. I tell you, it is jolly exciting, especially when raft twists and turns in water. Adventure travel is the thing these days. This is a full day’s adventure. What do you say?”
This produced a silence, and then Jenny said calmly, “Excuse me, are you talking to me?”
“Indeed,” Indoo said, and I saw he was miserable—just the way he tried to wink at me made him seem pathetic. “What about it? White-water rafting on Mother Ganga.”
Jenny smiled at him. She said, “You must be joking.”
But she agreed to go with us the next day as far as Hardwar, where she got out, holding Murray’s Guide.
Indoo and I had breakfast at the camp. He seemed to relax as soon as Jenny was gone. Was it because she was my wife and he had had to keep a pretense of formality? Or was it that he felt part of a deception? I was surprised that he had any reaction at all, since I had always taken him for a fairly easygoing hypocrite.
“It is better this way,” he said, buckling on his life jacket. “Women are not at home on rubber rafts, you know.”
He paddled just behind me in the rear seat, shouting and screaming in the rapids and yelling to his men to go faster. When we came to the reach in the river where we had seen the corpse, he laughed and said, “Remember?”
The water brimmed where we had buried the bones. After seeing that I lost my taste for the rapids and couldn’t paddle very hard. I wasn’t grieving—I simply became heavy and thoughtful, and I kept looking back, as though in burying those bones I had buried something of myself.
I wanted to tell Jenny this when we met her later in the afternoon at the bridge in Hardwar. But I did not want to burden her with a lugubrious thought: she was smiling, she was happy, she said she had had a wonderful day. I’d tell her tomorrow.
“We must see Roorkee,” Indoo said, but he forgot to tell the driver, and he was sleeping when we came to the turnoff, so we kept on the direct road to Delhi. Indoo slept crookedly beside the driver, his head at an unnatural angle, and it flopped forward, waking him briefly, each time the driver touched the brake.
I told Jenny about the white-water rafting. I did not mention the corpse; only the rapids, the cold water, the hike afterwards.
“I would have hated it,” Jenny said. “You know who you sound like? One of those boring scoutmasters, always rabbiting on about fresh air. One of those tedious middle-aged men who walk around in shorts showing their knobbly knees. The next thing you’ll say to me is that I need more color in my cheeks!”
But this was mischief, not malice. She was hugging me as she spoke, and then she kissed me.
“I’m glad I came,” she said. “And I’m glad you had a good time. You don’t really need me to hold your hand, do you?”
“How did you spend the day?”
“I wandered around Hardwar. I had a cup of tea and then I had lunch at a filthy little place. The food was quite decent. I took some pictures and looked at the temples. You know Hard-war is a holy city? Then I got a taxi and went across the river to Rishikesh. Do you remember how the Beatles used to go there, to see the Maharishi? I wasn’t expecting much—I was prepared to mock it. I walked around and watched the people praying and washing in the river and”—there was a catch in her throat—“don’t laugh, but I felt a kind of holiness come over me.”
She stopped, suddenly self-conscious in the jogging car.
“Go on,” I said, holding her.
“I looked at all the skinny people traipsing round the town, and I began to cry—from the sheer joy of seeing them. They looked so innocent, and their happiness made me happy. It wasn’t pretty, but there was a logic to it all. They had found a way of being happy in this strange world. I was thinking about there being order in the spirit of things, that holiness was order, and it all seemed so far from my accounting in London. The sun was slanting into the river, and I thought how your friend”—she nodded at the crumpled, sleeping figure of Indoo—“called it Mother Ganga.”
She paused again, and swallowed, and I thought she was going to cry.
“I was moved,” she said. “I felt like Mrs. Moore in A Passage to India—something wonderful and weird was happening to me. Maybe this is what people call a religious experience, except that it sounds so bloody pompous. But I loved it without even understanding it. I didn’t want to leave. I just wanted to stay and see those people washing themselves and praying, and the children praying, and that glorious late-afternoon sun striking the river.” She made an odd honking noise and I realized that she was laughing. “I kept thinking, ‘I want to go on living.’ ”
“That’s good,” I said. “I love you.”
“You don’t have to say that. Just show me that you do.”
Soon after, Indoo woke and insisted on stopping for ice cream.
“I enjoy going on these trips,” he said. “It means I can eat whatever I want.” He ordered a Campa Cola and a chocolate bar and a vanilla ice-cream cone. “I never eat this stuff at home. My wife doesn’t like it.”
Did he remember that he had told me that before? I doubted it. When people repeated things to me it made me feel that they didn’t know me—didn’t remember—didn’t care who they were talking to. They existed and I didn’t.
Indoo was smiling in a way that irritated me and made me feel that he could be very stupid. I looked out of the window, but I could not make any sense of the mass of rough stars that cluttered the sky. They were so bright they deflected my eyes to the thick blackness that surrounded them. The road turned dusty and what looked like rising fog was this same dust, with lights glaring in it, and those shaky orange headlights that always seemed to belong to old dangerous buses.
“It’s been a perfect day,” Jenny said at the hotel after we made love.
I agreed, but I also thought of Eden and felt that I had somehow to explain my absence to her. What better time than late at night when everyone was fast asleep? What better place than by the marble fountain in the lobby of this hotel, on hotel notepaper? But after I mailed it and was on my way upstairs I could not help feeling that I had spoiled the day.
8.
When I suggested taking the Janata Express to Agra the day after we arrived back in Delhi, Jenny said, “What’s the hurry? We haven’t seen Delhi properly. I want to see the Red Fort again. You didn’t tell me that Shah Jahan built it, and his daughters built mosques all over the old city. And we British built New Delhi. Don’t you think I have a right to be interested in that? And there’s a tomb here that was a sort of clumsy prototype for the Taj Mahal.”
“Humayun’s Tomb.”
“That’s the one,” she said, and snatched up the guidebook and read, “ ‘Its plan was that afterwards
adopted at the Taj, but used here without the depth and poetry of that celebrated building.’ So don’t put me off. I’m doing my homework. And what about this?” She flipped one of the page-marking ribbons and read, “ ‘The erotic carvings are notorious but possess religious significance for Hindus. Visitors need not see them if the attendant is discouraged from pointing them out.’ ”
“Where are they?”
“Benares,” she said, and laughed. “Bad luck!”
She was a patient and thorough sightseer. If the guidebook called attention to the scrollwork or the screens, or if it said, There is a unique Persian inscription in Kufic in the mihrali, she was on her way. “Which way to the mihrali?” I heard her asking a bewildered Indian at one of the Delhi mosques. She evaluated the guidebook’s praise and once, scrutinizing some carved flowers on a gateway glanced into the guidebook and said, “ ‘Unusually good’ is a bit much, I think.”
We stayed two more days and worked through each tomb and tower, each mosque and church, paragraph by paragraph. I found myself in such circumstances distracted from the architecture by the crows or by picnickers, and at the Qutub Minar Jenny said, “Notice the corbeled balconies and angular flutings” as my eye traveled down the flutings and fixed upon a black and scabby cat that scuttled among the ancient russet flagstones. I preferred looking at tourists to looking at ruins. Jenny did not mind, nor did she lecture. “I’m sure I’ll never want to come back here,” she said, “that’s why I want to be thorough and see everything now.”
Late on those hot afternoons I went to Connaught Circus and haunted the antiques shops. I was more acquisitive than I had been on my previous visit because a painted wall-hanging (of Rama and Sita on a swing fixed to a mango tree)—one that I had wanted to buy—had been sold. That disappointment had made me decisive. I bought another wall-hanging—inferior to the one I had wanted, but it was the best they had; a silver bracelet; a brass head of a goddess; and a dagger for Jack.
Jenny reluctantly accompanied me one evening when I was debating whether to buy an old decorated door from Orissa. It had four panels and was carved and in fine detail was painted with scenes from the Ramayana.
“If you think you need a door,” she said, “then by all means buy it.”
“This isn’t any old door,” I said.
“I think I’ll buy some postcards,” she said, and when she saw me hesitating she said, “Oh, buy the silly thing if you want it, but for God’s sake stop asking my opinion. Do you think you need my permission?”
“I suppose I secretly suspect that you disapprove.”
“Of course I disapprove,” she said. “You have so much that you don’t need. You’ve got two houses and they both look like museums. I’ve never seen so many carpets and statues and carvings. I hate people who are always snaffling up trifles and saying ‘This is a nice piece’ or ‘It’s very old—there’s a story behind this door.’ ”
“People are staring at you.”
“Let them stare,” she said. “Look, you want to know my opinion? I think people who go in for buying antiques and surrounding themselves with ancient junk are very insecure and desperately acquisitive, and all of them—for some reason—hate kids. If you don’t like my opinion, don’t ask for it.” Then, in a tone of suffering and apology, she added, “Christ, I’m hot.”
I decided not to buy the door from Orissa. It wasn’t only Jenny’s scorn that put me off. It was also because I couldn’t face the tedium of making out shipping orders in triplicate. It was simpler to walk away. This had a chastening effect on Jenny, slightly shaming her for making her think that she had discouraged me.
Deeper in the bazaar that last day we passed Ismail’s shop. I paused at the window, where the yak bones and the carvings were arranged on pedestals.
Jenny was frowning at them. She said, “Do you think they kill animals especially to make this stuff?”
Inside the shop Ismail was beckoning, moving his arms in a conjuring motion, as though trying to call up spirits from the deep.
“Come in. You are welcome. Please. Maximum value.”
I followed Jenny into the shop, but already Ismail had opened the drawer. He took out a necklace of dark stained bones and held it up. Then, facing Jenny, he slipped it over her head.
“It is yours, Madam.”
Jenny went rigid, her neck stiffened, her arms straightened at her sides, and her fingers began to curl inward.
“Take that thing off my neck,” she said.
The yellow in Ismail’s eyes was the color of his fear. He hesitated, and winced, and then he obeyed.
The train was hotter and more crowded than I had remembered it, and it seemed much slower and dirtier too. India was full of unexpected delights, and the people were capable of grace and generosity; but this particular train contained everything that was to be detested in the country—bad tempers, filthy floors, poisonous toilets and dust, and the poorest food imaginable. It was a microcosm of the worst in Indian life, even to the way it seemed to petrify time.
Jenny said, “Is this the only way to get to Agra?”
“It seemed a good idea—get to know the people,” I said. “ ‘Janata’ means ‘people’ in Hindi. This is the Janata Express.”
“It’s dreadful,” Jenny said, almost in disbelief at how bad it was, and she looked around the coach with a look of curious loathing. She then became apologetic. “I’m sorry for complaining. It must be such a bore for you. But if another person treads on my toes I’ll scream.”
She got up and paced, and I followed her. I wondered whether she would scream. She didn’t—on the contrary, she became quieter and more compact in an attempt to endure this strenuous trip. She sat and scowled for a while, and when I looked up (we were passing through Muttra—I was reading about it in the guidebook) she was smiling. Across the aisle an Indian woman was holding a small baby on her lap. Jenny was watching, half in envy, half in bliss.
“Look,” she said.
The baby was a small, scalded-looking creature, pink from yelling. It wanted to be picked up and hugged. That was the instinct of a human baby, because it was so fearful and helpless. The human mother’s instinct was to respond, as probably the father’s was as well. Why didn’t I want to do anything to soothe this baby? Perhaps the instinct was exclusive, and we were so selfish and competitive as humans that we were indifferent to other people’s children—I was, at any rate.
I told Jenny this. I added, “I can’t think about children in the abstract.”
“But babies are so sweet,” she said. “Look at it.”
“You don’t even know whether it’s a boy or a girl,” I said. “It’s odd, you know. If you asked me whether I liked babies I think I’d say no.”
“You used to make such a fuss over Jack.”
“Ah, my own baby—that’s different.”
She became quiet once more, seeming to concentrate on the Indian baby.
“What if we had more children?”
She was ambiguously talking to herself: it wasn’t a question.
“I’m still young enough for it,” she said. “Maybe you want someone younger. There are lots of women who would marry you. You could raise another family. Jack wouldn’t even miss you. He’s old enough to understand.”
She looked piercingly at me.
“Why don’t you?” she said.
I said, “Maybe I prefer you.”
“I’m such a shrew.”
“But you don’t mean it,” I said.
“I really don’t, you know.”
“It’s only bad when people overhear you,” I said. “It sounds awful. You sound terrible sometimes.”
“Poor Andy,” she said.
“I love you,” I said.
“Do we have to tell each other that?” she said, and then added, “Sorry. I reckon we do.”
We held hands after that, but hers grew damp and drifted away from mine.
At nightfall, with the darkness a mood descended on us. I imagined that we we
re all old in that railway carriage. The lights didn’t work. There was no water. There were no empty seats. We sat in the dark, very tired; and it was too noisy from the rackety wheels for anyone to hold a conversation. It was a spooky ride, all of us silent people riding into the dark, as though we had turned into spirits on this ghost train.
So deeply had the mood taken hold and possessed me that when we arrived at Agra Station I had the strong sense that I had never been there before. Unmesh was nowhere in sight, though I had counted on seeing him—missing him was also a part of my feeling of alienation.
We took a taxi to the hotel—the same hotel—and Jenny said, “It looks posh.”
We had a room with two single beds. I lay in mine considering her provocative question on the train, Why don’t you? I wondered why I didn’t choose.
Unmesh was at the hotel the next morning. That name perfectly suited this faltering, ramshackle man. I was expecting him. I had sent a message through the bell captain, a vast and murderous-looking Sikh whose yellow gloves matched his turban, and before I finished breakfast I was sent word (a note delivered on a silver plate) that Unmesh was waiting for me in front, At your service.
He greeted me like an old friend, pumping my hand and smiling wildly, perhaps terrified that he might be going too far in this familiarity. It was a sort of sideways reunion, and his expression was that of a man who at any moment thinks he might be rebuffed. Yet he was chattering the whole time. He brought greetings from his wife. He had told his daughter Vanita all about me. She wanted to go to America. She wanted to see me. She was at school. The driver—Unmesh never used the poor man’s name—remembered me, Unmesh waved at him, and he stepped forward, jerking his head, and trying to show me that he was pleased to see me.
Jenny appeared on the hotel steps in a white dress, the sun blazing in her blonde hair. Visitors to hot countries—women especially—seemed either much older or much younger than they were—something about the light, or the way they responded to the heat; some wilted, others bloomed. Jenny seemed even younger than the thirty-eight that she was.
