Slow Waltz in Cedar Bend

by Robert James Waller

  Outside the protection of a large Indian airport, no rules applied. Touts, hundreds of them, pushing whatever could be imagined. Maybe a few rupees could be bilked from the tall white guy with the knap-sack. Except he looked a little roadwise, no luggage, looked like a hard traveler. It would be better to move on to someone with a little more fat. Thousands of people were milling around, coming and going, many of them simply hung on for the entertainment value provided by a major airport. The cops kept most of them outside the airport, where they pressed their faces against dusty glass and waited for passengers to exit.

  A tourist desk in the lobby was actually open for business, which was a new twist. India was apparently working harder at getting gringos to come and leave some foreign exchange on their way through. On Michael’s earlier visits, he had the clear sense nobody cared whether you came or didn’t, whether you died in the customs line or went home.

  The man at the desk spoke understandable English. Michael said he wanted to go to Pondicherry. The man told him it was a three-hour ride by car if the traffic was heavy and would be happy to arrange a car and driver for Michael. He quoted a price of $30 U.S. That sounded steep for India, and Michael said as much.

  “Oooh, but you see, it is a six-hour round trip for the driver, since he must go to Pondicherry and come back empty. So you must pay for both ways.”

  Michael knew better. He knew the driver would hang around Pondicherry and maybe get a fare back to Madras. How about the guys outside with their cabs?

  “Oooh, yes, sir, they will say they will take you for quite a lower price. But, sir, they are not quite reliable and may just take your money on the way, leaving you stranded.” Michael knew the man was speaking with some accuracy.

  How about buses? Trains? The tourist official rambled on, running his finger up and down grimy, complicated schedules, and Michael started thinking, C’mon, Tillman. For chrissake, what are you doing? You’re here in a panic to find Jellie Braden, and you’re standing around haggling over a few bucks. For a moment, the spurious masculine pride in cutting the sharp deal, which seemed to lie throbbing in the hormones until called upon, had caused him to lose his way. As it usually did.

  The official arranged a car and driver, telling Michael to wait by the tourist desk. Michael asked the man if he had a guide to Pondicherry, maps, anything at all. The man produced a torn little magazine from under the counter, which he claimed was his only copy (Michael believed him) and started looking through it. A lecture on Pondicherry followed concerning the famous ashram founded there by a mystic-philosopher-poet-patriot named Sri Aurobindo, about hotels and restaurants and the beauty of the seawall.

  Was there a city map in the booklet? Yes, there was one, indeed, sir, a very nice map. Michael laid a five-dollar bill on the counter, keeping most of it covered with his hand, and said he’d very much like to take the Pondicherry guide with him. It was Michael’s in less than a second, and his driver in a smudged white outfit came up to the counter, smiling.

  Outside, the sun was a hammer. Other taxi drivers swung open their doors and said they would take Michael to wherever he was going for half of what the fellow in the smudged white uniform was charging. Michael said thanks, but he’d already booked a car. After that they stopped smiling and were not his friends anymore.

  As Michael’s car pulled away from the airport, the driver began rubbing his thumb and forefinger together in the universal symbol for legal tender and pointed at his gas gauge, all the while saying, “Petrol.” Indian taxi drivers were always running on empty, and he needed an advance. On Michael’s last trip, two drivers had run out of gas while he was riding with them.

  Impatient, Michael tapped his foot while the tank was being filled. He noticed a fruit stand nearby and bought three bananas and two oranges, which he stuffed into the side pockets of his knapsack. Back in the car he waited for the driver. A ragged man bent down and looked in the window, displaying the grisly stump of an arm severed just above the elbow. Michael gave him five rupees. The man touched his forehead and backed away.

  Finally they were rolling through the noise and smoke and dust that was India and would always be India. Michael’s nose was still adjusting to the thick odors—smoke from factories and open cooking fires, leaded gas, excrement from humans and animals, all of it mixed together and forming the dense and penetrating smell defining India. He never completely lost that smell. Michael noticed when he watched a travelogue on India back in Cedar Bend, his brain immediately pulled up those old India smells from wherever the memories of smells are stored. No other country had drilled its odors into him in the way India had.

  The women. He’d temporarily forgotten how beautiful were the Indian women, even the poorest ones. It was easy to fall in transient love every few seconds in India. A superb gene pool, male and female alike, maybe the best gene pool in the world when it came to physical appearance. Orange saris and green saris, red ones and blue ones, and gold upon their bodies, bracelets on their arms and combs in their hair. The women were lithe and walked just above the earth, so it seemed. Some with gold or silver chains running from nose to ear.

  He watched them as the driver constantly honked at goats and cattle and people, weaving through traffic, waved on by cops standing on small pedestals at the busier intersections. Into the countryside on a two-lane, severely bruised blacktop. Ashok and Tata trucks with workmen riding on top, their headwraps blowing in the wind. Buses careening around the curves, bullock carts in front of them, an old woman pedaling a wheelchair contraption in the other lane, people walking, herds of goats crossing.

  The driver turned up his radio, giving him and Michael the sound of a flute and drummers playing complex rhythms on tablas beneath it. He pounded the horn and made the occult Indian hand signals telling other drivers what his intentions were. India: moving… moving… tablas and flutes and dust, the road in front looking like a ragtag caravan put together with all the travelers and vehicles from the last five hundred years.

  Michael held a banana over the front seat. The driver took it and gave Michael a flash of perfect white teeth, leaned on his horn, and peeled the banana, hot air roaring in through the open windows. They entered a town, and Michael unfolded his map of India. Must be Chengalpattu. They’d be going slightly southwest to Madurantakam and then would make a southeast turn at Tindivanam, where a small blue line ran over to Pondicherry on the Bay of Bengal.

  Michael thumbed the five-dollar Pondicherry guide, looking at confusing street maps, reading the town’s history. It was a union territory, a city-state much like Washington, D.C. The state of Tamil Nadu on its west, the bay on its east. Settled by French traders in the seventeenth century, returned to India in 1954. Jellie, are you there along the streets of Pondicherry? On the off chance she had ridden with this same driver to Pondicherry, if she had gone to Pondicherry at all, Michael took out her picture and handed it to the driver.

  The driver looked at it, turned his head, and grinned, shouting over the wind and flute music, “Pretty lady. You go see her in Pondy?”

  Michael worked back down into pidgin English. “Lady ride this car?” He pointed at Jellie in the photo, then at the driver and the interior of the car. Michael said it again: “Pretty lady ride this car?”

  It took the driver a second, but he got the meaning and shook his head. “No, no see lady.” Michael nodded and put the photo back in his bush jacket.

  The guide said Pondicherry had a population of 150,000, but Michael knew that was probably a best guess, far under the true count. Where to start? Like all Indian cities, he figured it would be a maze of little streets and complex buildings tied in with one another via walkways and alleys. Even if she was in Pondy, it was not going to be easy. The ashram attracted people from all over the world who came to study the teachings of Sri Aurobindo and his consort, a French woman known only as “the Mother.” Both of them were dead. But, according to the guide, the ashram flourished. A visionary settlement called Auroville, also known as the C
ity of Dawn, supposedly fashioned around the teachings of Aurobindo and the Mother, had been developing for over a decade just outside of Pondicherry. The guide quoted Mother: “Auroville will be a site of material and spiritual researches for a living embodiment of an actual Human Unity.”

  That sounded like Jellie. Anthropologists, many of them, at least, had a strong inclination toward matters of the spirit, something to do with their trade. If Jellie was running and seeking spiritual guidance, the ashram and Auroville might be a good place to start.

  He’d need a place to stay and looked at advertisements in the guide as the driver swerved and honked and signaled.

  Ajantha Guest House—An Oasis of Luxury

  Hotel Aristo—A Touch of Class, Truly an Aristocratic Experience

  Hotel Ram International—It’s a Whole New World

  To the Western eye and ear, Indians had a penchant for overstatement, not to mention hyperbole, and Michael discounted heavily what he read. Not that he was fussy. He’d stayed many nights in small Indian hotels where a hole in the floor worked as a toilet and the shower was cold, if there was a shower at all. After a few nights, however, he’d forget there was any other way than cold showers and a hole in the floor, and it all worked just fine. A hot shower, in traditional south Indian terms, would justify the claim “Truly an Aristocratic Experience.”

  He concentrated on Jellie, thinking hard about her ways and what he knew of her preferences. Where would she stay? The Park Guest House was part of the ashram and had a Spartan attitude toward smoking, liquor, and human weaknesses in general. Jellie had come to think things over, according to her cable, and the guest house with its gardens, vegetarian restaurant, and meditative overtones spoke to that way of life.

  Initially Michael thought that finding Jellie, if she was in Pondicherry, would not be all that difficult. White skin stood out in most of India. But it was a much larger town than he’d anticipated, and the guide stated many Westerners came to bathe in the rarefied spirit of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother. And, as Michael had already considered, it was easy to get lost in India if that’s what you wanted. India could present a silent, impenetrable face when it chose, leaving you on the outside with no view to the interiors. Jellie was an old India hand, apparently with good connections, and would know how to conceal herself if she made up her mind to do that.

  If you were in a hurry, India could be infuriating. The driver decided lunch was in order at Madurantakam. He pulled over and went up to an outdoor food stand. Michael wasn’t hungry but drank a cup of tea and ate one of the Snickers he’d bought in Heathrow. People gathered around him at a respectful distance and stared; routine curiosity, nothing more.

  The sun was high and hard at noon. He clumped the old cotton hat on his head, fending off the kids who were less circumspect than their elders and wanted something, anything, from him. He bought some more oranges and handed them around, though the kids would have preferred something more wondrous, such as a cheap ballpoint pen from America. Sweat soaked through his shirt, ran down his chest and back. Michael was wiping his face and neck with a red bandanna when the driver signaled it was time to leave.

  Forty-five minutes later they made the turn at Tindivanam and headed southeast toward Pondicherry, running along a rough surface in worse shape than the road they’d just left. This was semiarid land, palm trees arching over the road. People were spreading stalks of grain on the pavement, drying the grain, and letting vehicle wheels act as kind of a primitive threshing machine.

  Outskirts of Pondicherry. The map fastened in the back of the city guide indicated they were coming in on Jawaharlal Nehru Street, apparently one of the main thoroughfares. Michael decided against staying at the ashram’s guest house, mostly because he wasn’t sure how Jellie might feel if he suddenly showed up. If she saw him before he saw her, she might retreat with whatever secrets she carried and become impossible to find once she knew he was here looking for her.

  The Grand Hotel d’Europe at Number 12 Rue Suffren was in the same general area as most of the ashram’s workshops and not far from the guest house. It was run by an old Frenchman, a Monsieur Maigrit, according to the guide. Michael suspected the food would be continental, which suited him fine, since he tended to burn down pretty fast on a straight Indian diet.

  Michael motioned for the driver to pull over and showed him the map. The driver had trouble reading it, started talking rapidly, pointing ahead. Michael let him go on, and they halted at a busy street corner where two hundred bicycles waited for a green light. The driver got out with the map and talked to several men standing in front of a tea shop. Arms waved, heads shook, hands pointed. All of this went on for a minute or two before the driver returned. He said something Michael didn’t understand, zigzagging his hand, which Michael took to mean they should work their way through the city and then turn right.

  That seemed to fit, based on the map. They plowed up the busy main drag of Pondy and eventually hit a dead end at Rue St. Louis. The driver got out, went through the arms-head-hand language again, and came back to the car. A right turn, then skirting a large park on whose benches sat both Indians and aging French Legionnaires by the looks of their caps. A few blocks farther on another right, then a left. Painted on a building were the words Rue Suffren. Number 12 came up a half block later.

  Michael knocked on the high wooden gate. An old Indian man in tan shorts and a white headwrap peeked out. Michael said, “Room?”

  The gatekeeper glanced at the car and driver, then back at the tall American with wrinkled clothes and no luggage except a knapsack. Almost reluctantly he swung the gate open and indicated Michael should come into the courtyard. It was an old building, covered with vines and bougainvillea. Maigrit, Michael assumed it was him, came out of a doorway. Michael bowed slightly. “Do you have a room for a tired traveler?”

  Maigrit looked at him, said nothing. Michael had arrived without prior reservations, which was probably considered a serious breach of decorum. Michael didn’t speak much French, having forgotten most of what he’d learned as part of his Ph.D. language requirement. But he smiled the good midwestern smile that seemed to get him by in most of the world and gave it a try: “Je voudrais une chambre?”

  Maigrit smiled back, recognizing incompetence but approving of the effort. Yes, a room was available for 150 rupees, about 9 dollars a night. Michael figured with advance reservations and a little haggling he could have knocked it down about a third or maybe half, but he was tired, and the location suited him.

  Maigrit informed him the daily afternoon water shutoff was in progress, so a bath was not possible, but the boy, who was about seventy-five, would bring a small bucket of water if Monsieur Tillman wanted to wash up. Michael thanked him and said that would be appreciated. And was laundry service available? Shirts could be washed, ironed, and returned in four hours for double the normal price. The regular price was six cents a shirt.

  The boy delivered water, took the shirts, and Michael washed his face, then lay down on the bed and thought. Home was forty-six hours behind, though his internal abacus lied and said it was longer, years maybe. A week ago he’d been sitting in his apartment waiting for Jellie to return from Syracuse. Ten days ago she lay naked on his kitchen table while he rubbed red wine over her breasts. “Jellie, are you somewhere on the other side of these walls, close by, living out what you never want me to know?”

  Ten

  Michael awakened a little before six when the old man rapped on his door. He’d slept for nearly four hours and got up feeling hot and stiff and road weary. He opened the door, took the shirts, and gave the man a tip. The old man bowed and left, looking back at Michael over his shoulder.

  Michael checked the faucets. The water had come back on, and he was a little surprised when the left tap gave him a warm stream. He ran a small tub, shaved, and got himself presentable with a clean body, clean shirt, and fresh pair of Levi’s.

  The proprietor was on the veranda, reading a French newspaper. What Mi
chael needed first was flexible transportation, a motorcycle. He’d seen a number of smaller bikes when the driver brought him through town. Yes, a small motorcycle could be rented at a location on Mahatma Gandhi Road. Mai-grit had the gatekeeper call a bicycle rickshaw for Michael and spoke in Tamil to the rickshaw man, giving him the address. Maigrit said the ride would cost a quarter, and a dime tip would be about right.

  Michael watched the bulging leg muscles of the man pedaling him through the streets of Pondicherry. Unlike some Westerners who had never traveled in these places and frowned on the use of rickshaws as something next to slavery, Michael didn’t see it that way. If you asked the rickshaw man how he felt about it, he wouldn’t understand the question. It was how he made his living, and he was quite happy to deliver you somewhere for a fee. It was called participating in the local economy. As Michael once told a colleague who disdained such colonialist behavior, “Pay the rickshaw man New York cab fare, maybe it will make you feel more politically correct.” Taxi or rickshaw, it was all a matter of muscle power with differences in the degree of it used.

  India was, in many ways, an evening country. The heat and dust settled down late in the day, and the streets were crowded. Merchants stayed open late. Time then for long, leisurely dinners and laughter in the cafes, commencing around nightfall. The rickshaw man turned left on Sastry Street, pedaling a straight line toward MG Road. Michael sat there feeling exposed, not wanting Jellie to see him coasting along through the streets of Pondicherry.

  Christ, he thought, how strange this is. Here I am looking for a woman with whom I’ve made love, a woman who rolls in pleasure beneath my touch and says over and over again how much she loves me. Yet I’m worried about her seeing me. It’s a curious world, Michael Tillman. That’s what he said to himself as the rickshaw bumped along through the south India twilight.