by Paul Theroux
"Absolutely," Dwight said, but his gaze returned to the window, the stone arch far below, the shuffling people.
He had stopped following the negotiation. He had a stomach for details, but not Indian details—minutiae, escape clauses, fine print, subsections of clauses. His presence was important to the meeting, but not his participation. In fact, he had discovered that his saying little added to his mystique and gave him more power for his seeming enigmatic. He had learned early on in Indian business deals that the power brokers were men of few words, well known and even revered for their silences. Underlings could be talkers, chatterers, hand wringers, anguished in their bowing and nodding. He had seen a man in a diving attempt to touch Mr. M. V Desai's foot in a show of respect, which was another reason for his saying, You bet your sweet ass I am. Touching his foot!
Anyway, the deal was apparently done. They had found a supplier, they had agreed to a price structure, they had approved the samples—the ribbed, composite roof tiles of fibrous plastic that looked so odd on the lovely table, identical to the ones made in Rhode Island at eight times the price, same quality, no liabilities, no restrictions on the noxious fumes such plastic-making produced—a class-action lawsuit was pending in Providence. The idea was to encourage the Indian tile maker to build inventory, to keep this supplier desperate and backed up and hungry, one or two payments in arrears. Shah would handle that.
Dwight's attention had drifted from the boardroom to the promenade at the Gateway of India, where he'd been walking off his three days of jet lag, enjoying the late-afternoon coolness, the breeze from the harbor, and a bit fearful away from his suite.
"Ess crim. Ess-ess."
He almost bought an ice cream, then remembered that he might poison himself. Instead he bought a soda, something called Thums Up. As he'd paid for it, a woman had approached him.
"Sir," the woman said. She clasped her hands and bowed.
He was moved by her politeness, her submissiveness. He half expected her to touch his foot. Yet he resisted her. She was smiling—seeing into his suspicious eyes.
She saw that he was looking past her at the lovely building, and she seemed to read a question in his mind.
"Taj Mahal Hotel, sir. Best hotel. It is dop of line."
Walking to the rail at the harbor's edge, he saw that she was following him. What struck him was that the woman was stout and gray-haired, not destitute-looking, decently dressed in a blue sari and shawl, carrying a tidy straw bag. She was not a beggar but someone's granny. An echo in his head, something to do with the woman saying dop, made him think: Deek—Verma was saying "teak."
He said, "I can't give you anything."
"Sir!" the woman exclaimed. "I am wanting nothing."
But that put him on his guard. In business here, in business generally, someone who said he wanted nothing was suspect. Who wanted nothing? Always someone who was untruthful, who had a plan, who wanted to negotiate for something specific. Never say what you want—this was a tactic he had learned from Shah on his first morning in India.
He was still walking, while eyeing the woman sideways.
"What is matter, sir?"
"Nothing," he said; but he knew he was lying. He was wary of this big confident woman.
"Your first time in India, sir?"
"Second," he said.
"Second! We are honored. You have made return journey."
"Thank you."
Now he didn't look at her. He was walking along the perimeter of the railing, honking traffic on one side, bobbing boats in the harbor on the other, and also uncomfortably aware that the woman was keeping pace with him. Why hadn't he brushed her off? Why had he thanked her? Because she wasn't a beggar. She was a plump housewife, a granny maybe; not indigent. She wore gold bangles.
Probably an evangelist, he thought. She's going to hand me a religious pamphlet. If not Hindu then something Christian, with Bible quotations. One of those busybodies. Are you saved? And when he said no, she would set about to save him.
Without slackening his pace he said, "What do you want?"
She laughed a bit breathlessly because he was walking fast and she was trying to keep up and failing. "Only to bid you welcome, sir."
"I appreciate it."
"You are a kind man, I can see."
That was another giveaway: only someone who was angling for something would say that.
"I'm a very busy man," he said.
But if I were so busy, he thought, why would I be swigging a Thums Up and sauntering along this seafront, yapping to this woman at four in the afternoon? And he knew she had detected the same idleness in him.
"As you wish, sir. I will not detain you further."
She dropped behind. He kept walking to the end of the promenade, where there was no shade and the only people were some boys fishing with bamboo poles at the revetment below the rail.
He glanced over his shoulder and saw that the woman had stopped walking and was sitting on a bench, though was still watching him, perhaps to give him his privacy, having abandoned any thought of talking to him. Had he been rude to her?
Continuing to the end of the promenade, he was startled by a commotion ahead, some children being loudly threatened by an Indian man in a white suit. The man was old, white-haired, and fierce, waving a cane at them, swiping the air just above their heads and shouting.
Dwight summed it up. The children, Gypsy-looking, had obviously asked him for money—a young boy in shorts, a small girl in a red dress, a taller girl in colorful skirts. But they were skinny and poor and probably persistent; the man had taken offense and was screeching at them to go away. The stick looked wicked in the man's furious grip, and he struck with it again, just missing the taller girl, who seemed terrified.
"Hey!" Dwight called out. "You!"
The man swung around, and seeing Dwight he stepped back, looking chastened. Dwight saw just where he could snatch the cane and disarm the man, and maybe elbow him in the gut. But the man's anger left him, and as he dropped his guard, Dwight went nearer.
"Leave those kids alone!"
The man made a conciliatory gesture with his hands and backed away.
"Acha. Acha." And, still muttering, he moved quickly, now using the cane to propel himself into the street and amid the traffic.
"Thank you, sir," the tall girl said, and she knelt and touched Dwight's shoe, as the underling had attempted to do with M. V. Desai.
The girl had large famished eyes, and though she was child-sized he could see she was the eldest, probably sixteen, not wearing a sari but rather a white blouse with long sleeves and traced with embroidered flowers; a thickness of red, slightly tattered skirts; and gold satin shoes, like dancing pumps. She did not wear gold jewelry, but instead colored bangles and orange beads, and had a marigold pinned in her hair.
All this Dwight took in because the two smaller children seemed so drab and fearful, the girl in the dress, the boy in shorts, both of them twelve or so. But who could tell the ages of hungry children? They might have been older, but stunted.
"Be careful," Dwight said. "That old man could have hurt you."
But at that point the children had begun looking past him, and he turned to see the old woman in the blue sari hurrying forward, her basket bumping against her side.
"You are a good man," she said. "You have protected my children from wrath of that wicked person."
"These are your kids?"
"I am their auntie. I have come to meet them." She had taken the small boy's hand, the small girl pressed herself against her, and the Gypsy girl smiled and seemed to skip. The woman was walking and still talking, not looking back. "Now you will come and have cup of tea with us."
Dwight followed them into traffic to the other side of the street and past the Taj Mahal Hotel, into narrower streets and sudden, reeking lanes. All the while he was thinking of how he had reacted—his anger, defending the children, defying the man—and had never doubted that he could have snatched the stick and used it to b
eat the man. He imagined the gratitude of a woman who had just witnessed her children being rescued.
A ten-minute walk took them through crowded streets and more smelly lanes and a recumbent cow near a row of parked motorbikes. Ahead, he saw the woman enter a seedy porch at what looked like a shop front. Yet it was not a shop, nor did it seem to be a café. The porch led to the vestibule of an old building near the dead end of a lane.
"Cup of hot tea, sir," the old woman said.
Dwight took a seat at the table just inside the door. He said, "Got any coffee?"
"Indeed."
The children sat at the table with their cups of tea. Dwight's coffee was instant, but it was scalding hot—it had to be safe. He sipped it and marveled. Just a little while ago he had been alone at the Gateway of India, and now he was sitting with this strange little family on this dead end, the children watching him, the old woman fussing. The taller girl had sat herself next to him. She had thin downy arms, chipped pink polish on her fingernails, and yellowish eyes.
"Thank you, sir," she said when she saw he was staring.
"What's your name?"
"Sumitra."
The old woman said, "Tell uncle what is your speciality."
The girl pressed her lips together, took a nervous breath, and said, "I am dance."
Now he saw in her not starvation but a dancer's skinny build, a dancer's delicate hands, and a dancer's upright neck.
"That's nice," Dwight said. "Who taught you?"
"Auntie."
"She want to make dance for you," the old woman said.
Dwight folded his arms and sat back on his chair and thought: I can leave now, and that will be the end. I will be the same man. Or I can stay, and follow the old woman's suggestions, and see it through, and something will happen that can't be undone.
He drank his coffee, which had cooled a bit and tasted weak and muddy. He knew he was being watched. For a reason he could not explain, he thought of the Elephanta Suite, the bathroom shelf of pop-open cans of tuna fish, and he disliked the idea of going to that empty place and hiding himself.
The old woman was talking. Had she been talking all this time?
"—because you saved these children from harm," she was saying.
He thought, Dance? He looked at the children again, and then around the small vestibule, and was relieved that no one seemed to be watching him, that he was hidden from the people who were walking past the porch on this narrow lane.
"Where?" he said, hardly knowing what he was asking.
"Upstairs. Second floor, back. Last door on right."
The woman was precise, but he must have made a face.
"It is clean, sir."
"How much?"
"No charge, sir. You have helped us, sir."
Now the girl reached beneath the table and put her hand on his knee. She had to slump in her chair and lean awkwardly to do this, and that made her seem small. But still she kept her gaze on him, and he was fascinated by the glint of her yellowish eyes.
"Name a price," he said, because he feared the ambiguity of her gratitude and a shakedown afterward.
"One thousand rupees," the old woman said, and as she spoke the number, for the first time since he'd met her he felt he understood her. In naming the price he heard her true voice, and he knew her: shrewd, firm, a bit impatient, a practical pimp attaching a fluttering price tag to the girl.
"Let's go."
He followed the girl up the stairs, losing count of the flights, until she led him to a landing and down a hall. He was fearful of meeting someone, but the building was empty and hot and stifling. The girl found a key on a dirty string somewhere within her skirts and turned it in a locked door. He saw a window that was almost opaque from its film of dust, a couple of chairs, a mattress on the floor, a large framed picture of a Hindu god, and on the floor with a trailing cord what looked like a radio. It was an old tape deck. The girl snapped a cassette into it and switched it on. Music filled the room and made it more bearable.
Gesturing for Dwight to sit, the girl went through a door. He heard water running. He went to the window and drew the curtains. When the girl reentered the room, Dwight was sitting in one of the chairs. He could see that she was wearing fresh lipstick, she had powdered her face, she looked doll-like and delicate, and then she raised her arms, sending her bangles sliding to her elbows, and she cocked one leg. She began to dance in the shadowy room to the aching music.
2
That night in the Elephanta Suite he had lain on his bed, staring at nothing, feeling fragile; the slightest sound jarred his ears. He was exhausted and empty—sorrowful, but why? Perhaps for the young submissive girl, who had shocked him by being so deft, for understanding so much, for her gift of anticipation. How could she know all that?
Her dancing had held him with its formality and precision, the way she lifted her knees and crooked her arms and made fans of her fingers, the way she twirled her skirts. Without hesitating, she had looped her thumb under one shoulder strap and slipped it sideways, and then the other, and soon she was dancing barebreasted, barefoot, lifting her gauzy red skirts with her knees. At certain points in the music she seemed to move in a trance-like state, oblivious of him, her yellow eyes upturned to the portrait of a fierce and blackish Hindu god, whose legs were similarly crooked and who wore a necklace of human skulls.
Unhurried, pacing, turning, reaching upward with her skinny arms, she had danced to the music that twanged in the hot dusty room. Her face was a powdery mask, her cheeks rouged, her lips red. She had brought him to the room like a servant girl, but reentered with her makeup—the white powder that made her face purplish, her lips larger and sticky red—with bangles clattering at her wrists, silver earrings, and some sort of bells tinkling on anklets. Soon she was half naked, with small breasts, with sallow skin, and she was not a servant girl anymore but an object of desire, with flashing eyes, stamping feet, twirling and skipping until the music stopped.
He lay in his suite in the same posture as on the mattress in the upstairs room, watching the girl Sumitra kneeling beside him.
"Can you take this off?" he whispered, touching the thickness of her full skirts, and now he could see they'd been sewn with sequins, tiny round mirrors of mica.
She had stood and unfastened her skirts with a cord and stepped out of them. Then she'd folded them, placed them on a chair, and returned to him naked, kneeling, as he lay watching her, her long eyelashes, her lips, her arms, the powder clinging to her hair. But when he touched her, trying to encourage her, she resisted.
She reached beneath the mattress. "Condom," she said, and tore the small package open with her teeth.
He lay back and closed his eyes, and from time to time she released him and leaned aside and spat.
He did not want to remember the rest, but there was more, his shame like sorrow, the bold conspiratorial woman who bantered with him afterward, asking him for baksheesh. And at last, as he left the place, pausing in the coolness of the lane to get his bearings, he'd seen the old man from the promenade, still in his white cotton suit, carrying his cane. The man who had been shouting at the children looked mild and elderly now. He didn't smile, hardly acknowledged Dwight, probably resented him for being a debauched white man in India, though (Dwight was walking quickly away) hadn't the old man schemed with the pimping woman?
On the way to his hotel, the word came to him again. He was debauched. He had been aroused. He had held the Indian girl in his arms in that dusty room. Without being able to put the emotion into words, he felt he belonged here and could not remember how long he'd been in Mumbai or when he was supposed to leave, and didn't care.
He was debauched, that was the word for how he felt—a corrupt man trifling with a teenage whore. It was bad enough that she was so young, somehow much worse that she could actually dance expertly—she knew the steps; she could have performed in a dance troupe, becoming brilliant. Instead she danced to titillate and seduce the greedy American who'd given h
er money.
It had been a colossal setup: the older, overfamiliar woman, the children he'd happened upon, seemingly by chance, the old man playing his role as an indignant and self-righteous pedestrian. Dwight, who thought of himself and his lawyer's skills as shrewd, had been snared, fooled by this cheap trick, this ragged band, and he had gone the rest of the way, allowed himself to be lured into the room.
He was ashamed, but his shame did not overcome his wish to see the girl again. He felt sick with a need for her. He told himself she was poor, desperate, helpless, and the only way he could help her was by seeing her, letting her dance, making love to her, giving her money. The money mattered most; it was a kind of philanthropy—gift-giving, anyway—and might save her. If she had some money, she'd be able to give up the sex trade and be a dancer. He would tell her this.
"You are looking fit," Shah said at the meeting the next day, but he peered a little too long and inquiringly.
They took their places at the table, and that was the first time Dwight raised himself from his chair and glanced down from Jeejeebhoy Towers to the Gateway of India for a look at the people milling around it.
The meeting with Shah and the suppliers was like an interruption of the day. Dwight endured it, approved the terms as quickly as they were set out, glanced over the draft contracts, and sighed when Shah began to quibble over the subsection of a clause.
"I would like to invite you to dine at my home," Shah said. "It will be a simple meal, but you will understand better the custom of my people, the Jain."
"I'm sorry. I've got some paperwork to attend to."
He wished Shah had not invited him, because when he went in search of the old woman and the children later that day, he kept thinking of the purity and innocence of Shah's earnest invitation. A simple meal. And here he was, pursuing a pimping old hag and those corrupted children, not her own but obviously kept by her to make money, and he was as corrupt as they were.
He waited until almost sunset before he began to stroll past the Gateway of India and the drink sellers, the peanut vendors, the ice cream men, the people hawking children's toys, the balloon sellers. He knew that he would not find the woman—it was she who'd find him. And so it happened.
