The Elephanta Suite

by Paul Theroux

  "Coffee, sir? Madam?"

  "I'm going to do without the toxins," Beth said.

  "Good idea."

  They left the veranda restaurant holding hands, feeling grateful—to have each other, to be in India, to be staying in this wonderful place.

  "Another week, Tugar?"

  They walked through the gardens and up the slope to the lobby of the main building to signal their intention to stay another week.

  The clerk they spoke to stood up at his desk and faced them. "You must see the manager, sir."

  "He's at the restaurant," Audie said.

  "Yes, sir."

  "So what do we do?"

  "Come back later, sir."

  They had a nap by the pool, in the shade of the overhanging trees, and at four, yawning, they made their way back up the slope for the formality of requesting another week.

  A man they had never seen before met them on the stairs of the main building, greeting them but also obstructing their way. He was smiling broadly, though his eyes had a glaze of unblinking vigilance.

  "You're not the manager," Audie said.

  "Acting manager."

  "Where's the manager?"

  "He has been put on indefinite leave," the man said. "How may I help you?"

  "It's just, here we are again. We're staying another week."

  There was a head-wagging that meant "yes," a wobble that meant "certainly," but this man's head did not move, and he went on staring. Then his mouth tightened. He said, "Sorry, sir."

  Audie said, "What do you mean?"

  "Fully booked, sir. From tomorrow, sir."

  "We've been doing this week to week. We've never had a problem. You can fix us up."

  Beth added, "We'll take anything you've got."

  "Nothing available, sir." He had begun to smile, which made his intransigence the more baffling.

  "The place is practically empty," Audie said. "What are we going to do?"

  "Departure time tomorrow morning time is eleven, sir. Bags will be picked up. Car will be waiting."

  "What about Doctor Nagaraj? He might be able to help," Beth said. "We hate to leave—"

  "Yes, madam."

  "Maybe we can get another treatment," Audie said. Though he had spoken to Beth, the man said, "Spa is closed until further notice, sir."

  "What are we going to do?"

  "Settle bill, sir. Paperwork, sir. All charges to date."

  "You mean now?"

  "If you please."

  Their excessive politeness now seemed to the Blundens like a form of excessive rudeness of an old-fashioned kind. Audie handed him his credit card and then sat with Beth in the garden among the hibiscus bushes, listening to the Indian musicians who played in a corner of the garden, seated in an open pavilion.

  From here, above the music, they heard loud voices, scolding, possibly the owner—it was a tone they had never heard before at peaceful Agni. There were sounds of scurrying, the whir of golf carts coming and going, the important slamming of car doors. It was a suggestion of turbulence, turmoil anyway, the sort of thing they'd seen in the lower world of Hanuman Nagar.

  "Someone's getting his nose bitten off," Audie said. "Glad it's not me."

  He took Beth's hand, and from the pressure of his fingers she knew he was rueful. He didn't want to leave, nor did she. Yet Audie, who hated not getting his way, seemed content. They sat, feeling relaxed, with a glow of health, the harmony that they had hoped for penetrated by the light of peace that made them feel almost buoyant, loving each other.

  "I don't really want to see anything more of India," Beth said, still holding his hand, as though answering a question he was asking with his fingers.

  They skipped dinner and went to bed early—too early perhaps, because neither of them could sleep. Beth kept seeing Satish's toothy face saying, I will see you tomorrow, and now it sounded like a threat. Audie wondered what Anna was going to do with the money and regretted giving her so much. He had made that mistake before. They lay wakeful, face-saving in their separate beds, too chagrined to confide their feelings, yet they knew, without conferring bed to bed, that they had been rebuffed. Nothing available was just a lie, one of those obvious lies intended to humiliate you. But they were not sorry to leave. It was India, after all—at least the lower slopes of Monkey Hill counted as India—and they were headed home. They were dimly aware that they were being cast out, banished from Agni, sent below.

  The morning was smokier than usual, a haze hanging over Agni, seeming to rise from the town. Sniffing it, they decided that they were glad to leave. When they put their bags out to be picked up, they saw the golf cart parked at the entrance, the porter standing beside it. So they rode with their bags to the main building.

  They had expected one of the white Mercedes from the Agni fleet to be waiting, but instead saw a tubby black Ambassador parked in the porte-cochere. The car's hood was secured with a piece of rope that dangled over the radiator. No driver in sight, nor was there anyone from Agni to see them off. After more than a month of Indian effusiveness and thanks they were leaving in silence. They were used to the sendoffs at luxury hotels: Please do come back and see us again. But there was nothing, and even the golf cart driver had gone after putting the Blundens' luggage in the trunk of the Ambassador.

  As Audie began to complain, he heard Beth say, "Hello, stranger," in a grateful way.

  Dr. Nagaraj had approached the car and was opening doors for them. Now Audie noticed that the car had side curtains, a flourish that made it look older and somehow grubbier.

  "My wee-ickle," Dr. Nagaraj said.

  "You're taking us?

  "Why not?"

  "Where's the driver?"

  "Not available."

  Yesterday's lame excuse. And though Beth had already gotten into the back seat, Audie was puzzled. "I don't get it. Why no drivers?"

  "They were lodging complaints about road conditions."

  All these uncooperative people, and the sense of being banished, made Audie cross; he showed it by seating himself next to Beth and slamming the door hard.

  "I will drive you to the airport for the first Delhi flight."

  They could see from the way he clutched the steering wheel and labored with his forearms that Dr. Nagaraj was a terrible driver, stamping on the brake, thumping the clutch, and mashing the gears. Audie mumbled, "Grind me a pound."

  Down the drive, through the gate, past the sign Right of Entry Prohibited Except by Registered Guests, Audie winked at Beth and knew what was in her mind: Who cares?

  Now Dr. Nagaraj was taking the curves amateurishly, veering too far over at each bend, cutting into the oncoming lane. Audie was going to tell him to be careful but realized he didn't have to, because when he spoke to him, Dr. Nagaraj slowed down to reply.

  "Anyway, what's wrong with the road conditions?"

  "Main road is closed," Dr. Nagaraj said, riding the brake. "Blockage and stoppage. Rasta roko, we say."

  "Is that unusual?"

  "It is usual. People are angry because of Hanuman temple. Muslim people. That is the snag. The blockage is on the main road."

  "Which way will you go?"

  They were approaching the junction where the main road continued downhill and the road to Hanuman Nagar turned to the right, leveling off.

  "Just here. Cart Road."

  Beth recognized the name. "That's the road that goes past the temple. If there's a mob there, won't it be dangerous?"

  "I will guide you," Dr. Nagaraj said.

  Audie smiled at Beth and said, "Tugar, you actually know the name of this road?"

  As he spoke, the road constricted and India seemed to shrivel around them, the stony slopes rushing up to the windows of the car, not just a pair of stray cows and the poorer shops at the edge of the town but a family of monkeys looking up from where they were picking through a garbage pile. This sense of walls closing in was made weirder by the absence of any people—not a single soul on a road that had been crowded with bikes
and buses the last time they'd been on it, heading to the shatoosh seller.

  "Where is everybody?"

  This empty road in India had the familiar desolation of a road in an absurd dream that you woke from sweating.

  Dr. Nagaraj, snatching at the steering wheel, rounded another curve and spoke in Hindi, slowing down. A multicolored barrier lay in the distance, a head-high barricade.

  No, it was a solid mass of men jammed together like a wall across the narrow road. They were waving sticks, perhaps the men were shouting too, but there was no sound. The windows of the car were shut, and what the Blundens saw resembled the India they had seen from the car on their first day. But these men were bearded and angry, and the sunlight made it all much worse.

  "Turn around!" Audie shouted.

  Shocked into his own language, Dr. Nagaraj was yapping with fear. He slowed the car and struggled with the steering wheel, attempting a U-turn. But the road was too narrow, and seeing he could go no farther, he began to jiggle the loose gearshift. When he looked back to reverse the car, his face was close to the Blundens', gleaming in terror.

  "Get us the hell out of here!"

  "Oh, God." Dr. Nagaraj winced at the pock-pock of stones hitting the car, the sound on its metal as of teeth and claws.

  The Gateway of India

  1

  On these stifling days in Mumbai, when a meeting dragged on, Dwight hitched himself slightly in his chair and looked at the spot where his life had changed. From the height of the boardroom on the top floor of Jeejeebhoy Towers, where Mahatma Gandhi crossed Church Gate, he could see down the long table and out the window, to marvel at it and to reflect on how far he'd come. He loved the Gateway of India for its three portals, open to the sea on one side, land on the other. He regarded it as something personal, a monumental souvenir, an imperial archway, attracting a crowd—the ice cream sellers, the nut vendors, the balloon hawkers, the beggars, and the girls looking for men.

  Eight Indians sat at the gleaming conference table, four on either side, and he, Dwight Huntsinger, visiting American, lawyer and moneyman, was at the head of it.

  "You are a necessary evil," M. V. Desai, the industrialist, had joked.

  Objecting to the preening boldness of the man, Dwight smiled, saying, "You bet your sweet ass I am."

  The man was worth millions. Everyone at the table winced, but Dwight's remark was calculated: they would never forget it.

  An assortment of roof tiles were scattered on the table—samples, to be manufactured somewhere in Maharashtra. Also a bottle of water and a glass with a paper cap at each place, a yellow pad, pencils, dishes of—what?—some sort of food, hard salty peas, yellow potato lumps, spicy garbanzos, something that looked like wood shavings, something else like twigs, bundles of cheese straws.

  "It's all nuts and cheese balls at this table," Dwight had said the first day, another way of responding to M. V. Desai, another calculation. They had stared at him as though they'd just heard bad news. None of the food looked edible. Although it was his second trip to India, he had not so far touched any Indian food. He did not think of it as food; all of it looked lethal.

  Get me out of here had been his constant thought. India had been an ordeal for him, but he had chosen it in a willful way, knowing it was reckless. It was deliberate. Recently divorced, he had said to his ex-wife in their last phone call, "Maureen, listen carefully. I'm going to India," as if he were jumping off a bridge. It was the day he received her engagement ring back—no note, just the diamond ring, sent by FedEx to his office—and he was hoping she'd feel bad. But as though to spite him, she said, "It'll probably change your life," and he thought, Bitch!

  That was the first trip, a week of Indian hell—a secular hallucinatory underworld of actual grinning demons and foul unbreathable air. He had dreaded it, and it had exceeded even his fearful expectations—dirtier, smellier, more chaotic and unforgiving than anywhere he'd ever been. "Hideous" did not describe it; there were no words for it. It was like an experience of grief, leaving you mute and small.

  The worst of it was that Indians never ceased to praise it, gloating over it, saying how much they loved it. But it was a horror, and here was his discovery: the horror didn't stop; it went on repeating; he turned a corner and went down a new street and his senses were assaulted again, the sidewalks like freak shows.

  "You seem a good deal disappointed," Mr. Shah said. Shah, the point man, was his guide in everything.

  "Not disappointed," Dwight said. "I'm disgusted. I'm frightened. I am appalled. Don't you see I want to go home?"

  In this world of anguish he felt physically hurt by what he saw. But it continued for the days he was there and did not stop until he had gotten back on the plane and left the smell of failure, of futility, of death and disease, returning to Boston with another discovery: in all that misery, there was money.

  "I can't believe we closed the deal," he said to Shah. "My clients are very happy."

  Shah smiled and said, "I am at your service, sir."

  "They're either at my throat or at my feet," he'd e-mailed to Kohut back at the office after the deal had been made. "And then they're biting each other's ankles."

  But there was another deal to be done. After two days of fighting the misery, he'd stopped going out. He stayed in his hotel until it was time to meet the car, then he went to Jeejeebhoy Towers and the meeting, ate nothing, and returned to his hotel in the car. He ate bananas in his room—bananas were safe. But a diet of bananas and bottled water blocked him solid. There's a headline, he told himself. But it was something to report.

  "You get sick?" It was the usual response to his saying he'd just been to India.

  "I was constipated."

  Second trip, the life-changing one. At first he had refused. He had taken his risk; Maureen didn't care. He had pleaded with Sheely to take the assignment. Sheely had been to India once and was allowed to say "Never again" because he was a senior partner, but he didn't stop there.

  "Go to India?" Sheely raged. The very name could set him off. "Why should I go to India? Indians don't even want to go to India! Everyone's leaving India, or else wants to leave, and I don't blame them. I understand why—I'd want to leave too if I lived there. Which I don't, nor do I ever want to go to that shitty place ever again. Don't talk to me about India!"

  Kohut too had seniority. Instead of pleading, Dwight thought: Extreme measures. He brought a supply of tuna fish, the small cans with pop-off lids, and crackers, and Gatorade. It was like a prison diet, but it would be bearable and appropriate for his seven days of captivity in Mumbai. These he would spend in the best room of the best hotel: the Elephanta Suite at the Taj Mahal Hotel, just across from the Gateway.

  Yet he was ashamed of himself, standing in his hotel bathroom of polished marble and gilt fittings, leaning over the sink, eating tuna fish out of a can with a plastic fork. Three days of that, three days of Shah's saying, "You must see Crawford Market and Chor Bazaar. Perhaps Elephanta Caves, perhaps side trip to Agra to see Taj? What you want to see?"

  "The Gateway of India."

  "Very nice. Three portal arches. Tripulia of Gujarati design. Not old, put up by British in 1927. But..." Shah widened his mouth, grinning in confusion.

  "What?"

  "You can see it from here."

  "That's what I like about it."

  India was a foreign country where he'd been assigned to find outsourcing deals, not a place to enjoy but one to endure, like going down a dark hole to find jewels. He worked in the boardroom, wrangling with manufacturers; he sat in his suite and watched CNN. His grimmest pleasure was looking through the classifieds of the Hindustan Times, the pages headed "Matrimonials," and he smiled in disbelief at the willingness in the details, the eagerness of the girls desperate to be brides, the boys to be grooms. His disillusionment with marriage was compounded by his misery in India. He suffered, and the firm was grateful, for India proved to be outsourcing heaven.

  "I had a query from a potential cl
ient at a hotel near Rishikesh, my brother's place," Shah said. "One Mr. Audie Blunden. He owns a mail-order housewares catalogue. He wants prices on power tools."

  "The question is whether they'd meet the codes."

  "Meet and surpass codes," Shah said insistently. "You can make anything in India."

  They were in the boardroom, waiting for Mr. Desai and his entourage.

  "Kinda wood is this table?" Dwight asked.

  "Deek," said Manoj Verma. "You want some? I can arrange consignment."

  "That some kinda Indian wood?"

  "Deek? You don't have in Estates?"

  "Never heard of it."

  But you can make anything in India, he remembered. He was thinking of it now as he looked past portly, confident Mr. M. V Desai, his assistant Miss Bhatia, their lawyer Mr. R.R.K. Prakashnarayan in a thick cotton knot-textured jacket, Manoj Verma the product analyst, Ravi Ramachandran on the right-hand side munching wood shavings, Taljinder Singh in his tightly wound helmet-like turban, Miss Sheela Chakravarti taking notes, and last Mr. J. J. Shah—indispensable Shah—also a lawyer, who was a master of postures and faces, scowling in disbelief, distrust, his defiant smile saying, No. Never. Prove it. Shah always had the right answer. He said enigmatically, I am Jain, sir. Dwight, trying another joke, said, And I'm Tarzan. And he looked past the end of the table, the empty chair, out the window, below the level of the stained rooftops, the rusted propped-up water tanks, to the Gateway of India, where he could see the people milling around, promenading, as Indians seemed inclined to do at the end of the day, near the harbor, the gray soupy water, the people just splotches of colored clothing, but he knew that each of them was there for a purpose.

  "Do you not agree, Mr. Hund?" Shah asked. In a country where anyone could say Vijayanagar and Subramaniam, "Huntsinger" was unpronounceable. So he said, "Call me Hunt. All my friends do." But "Hund" made him smile.

  The way the question was framed was a kind of code, meaning that Shah approved of the terms of the deal and the answer had to be yes.