A Dead Hand Read online

  That night back at the Hastings, I called Howard on his cell phone. He said he was working late at the consulate.

  "You still here?" he asked.

  I knew he was teasing me, but I was bothered by the seriousness that lay beneath his teasing, because I could not easily explain why I had lingered in Calcutta. I had given him the idea that I was going to make my way south and then eventually west to Mumbai, where I'd be catching a direct flight back to the States.

  "Doing a little work," I said. This much was true. I'd written those lines about the air in Calcutta reminding me of the times I'd emptied a vacuum cleaner bag; I'd made those notes about Mrs. Unger's opinions; I'd started a journal that might form the basis of a story, one of those idle, meandering, time-filling, and self-important diaries that love-struck people keep when they have no one to console them. Calcutta Diary I'd written on the lozenge-shaped front label, hoping it would enliven my dead hand.

  Howard said, "Parvati was asking about you."

  The gifted Parvati, another inaccessible woman, whose very presence was a reminder that I was old and pale and out of ideas.

  "How is she?" I asked, hoping I sounded interested.

  "Why don't you ask her?"

  Just hearing her name, and talking to Howard, I realized how much I had to conceal. In the four days since seeing Howard and Parvati, a great deal had happened: the letter from Mrs. Unger, the meeting with her and her son and Rajat at the Oberoi Grand, the massage at the Lodge, the rebuff at the Ananda, and my gloom caused by (I guessed) thwarted desire.

  "Anyway, it's nice to hear from you," he said.

  "I had a question."

  "Shoot."

  I said (the big lie I had rehearsed), "I had an e-mail from someone in the States saying that I should look up a certain American in Calcutta. I was wondering if you'd heard of her."

  "Try me."

  "Mrs. Unger. I think her name is Merrill."

  "Philanthropist," Howard said. "With all that that implies."

  "Please don't be enigmatic."

  "I am being enigmatic. I am indulging in ambiguity. And you notice I am using the historical present, Bengali style."

  "So do you know her?"

  "Only heard about her. Bossy, wealthy, motherly, famous for her saris. I had the idea that she came here originally to work with the Missionaries of Charity, Mother Teresa's outfit. But that might be wrong. I know she has her own outfit, mainly humanitarian. She works with street kids, orphans. She relates to Indians—that's the secret of her success. Other people find her unapproachable."

  "So she's well known."

  "Well known for her independence. She avoids us."

  "Why would that be?"

  "Low profile. It's not odd for Americans in India. Lots of them come here to connect, or to indulge themselves for all sorts of reasons. A lot of them are looking for outsourcing, joint partnerships, high-tech ventures, cheap labor. And some are looking for spirituality, even sainthood. Maybe a few are looking for both."

  "I thought you had to keep tabs on Americans here."

  "Mrs. Unger is entirely self-funded. Famous for not asking for donations. She doesn't have to file a financial statement because she isn't accountable to anyone. So we have no idea how extensive her foundation is. That's one way of keeping secrets—pay for the whole thing yourself. It's also one way of being a saint."

  I had begun to scribble some of this on a piece of paper, thinking I'd add it to my diary, and I'd become so preoccupied, I'd fallen silent.

  "Are you there?" Howard asked. "How long are you going to be around? Maybe we could get together."

  "Not sure. I'll let you know," I said, and I knew I sounded as squirmy and evasive as I felt.

  I hung up, regretting that I'd told him anything. To my shame, I now knew how desperate I was, how badly I needed to talk to someone, just to reassure myself that I wasn't dreaming.

  Infatuated, needy, helpless: I was a middle-aged fool, but I didn't know how to rid myself of the feeling except by seeing Mrs. Unger again. I'd even begun to think of her as Ma. From what Howard had said, she seemed almost unknowable, deliberately secretive; but that was part of her attraction for me. A woman with secrets suited me and seemed to represent a kind of sensuality I craved. Perhaps I was one of her secrets. She certainly was one of mine.

  All these speculations were time killers. Another full day went by without my hearing a word from her. A full day in Calcutta in a cheap hotel, with nothing to do, was like a week anywhere else. I stewed and, interrupting my reverie, Parvati called.

  "Howard said you were still in Calcutta."

  "I have a little work to do." The same lie, sounding lamer.

  "You were asking about Mrs. Unger, he said."

  Now I really hated myself for having called him.

  "Someone in the States was inquiring about her. I was just passing on the message." Blah-blah.

  "She's rather controversial."

  "Oh?" But this was not what I wanted to hear.

  "Some people think she's practically a saint."

  "Really."

  "And some don't."

  "I'm sure the answer lies somewhere in between."

  Parvati laughed. "This is Calcutta. Both could be true. What say we meet?"

  I hesitated. I said, "I've got this work..."

  She became intensely self-conscious, as though I'd rebuffed her—and I suppose I had.

  "I shouldn't have been so forward. You're busy, I understand. It's an unwarranted intrusion on your time. I'm so sorry. Believe me, I know all about filling the unforgiving minute."

  One of the aspects of Indians I loved most was that they had the language for every occasion. It was still possible to be subtle, even sinuous, in a conversation, probably as a result of the weirdly Victorian verbosity, using politeness and amplification and elaborate excuses and courtesies.

  I was sure of this when, unable to stand the silence any longer, I went to the Oberoi and prowled around, hoping to see Mrs. Unger. I would have gone to the Lodge, except that I had no idea where it was: I'd gone in her car, been driven there through the maze of streets, and been driven back. I didn't recognize any landmarks, and so the location of her villa was yet another of her secrets.

  As I crossed the lobby on my way out, I glanced at the armchairs on the verandah and saw Rajat sitting alone over a drink. He recognized me but hardly reacted.

  "I was looking for—" I didn't know how to finish. I stammered at saying her name. I said, "The grande dame."

  "Ma."

  He looked small and miserable. I wanted to see Mrs. Unger, but I could also tell Rajat about my visit to the Ananda. Feeling lucky from my encounters with Mrs. Unger, I was disposed to help him, out of superstition, for my luck to continue.

  In his bewilderment, Rajat reminded me of how I had felt on the day I'd received the letter from Mrs. Unger, when I'd had nothing in my head—no ideas, no desire, just a vacancy of spirit. I wasn't sad; I was too insubstantial to be possessed even of sadness. I didn't matter, I'd felt invisible, and everything I'd done in my life had seemed pointless. I had kept myself from making any kind of commitment because of my writing, and now I had no writing. I'd sacrificed for nothing. Mrs. Unger had rescued me. I could return the favor by doing something for Rajat.

  I knew that bewilderment and sense of being lost. By a series of deliberate choices and a horrible accident—if the corpse story was true—he'd arrived nowhere and saw nothing ahead of him but emptiness. It was like a grim parable of recognition, the time in your life when you feel there's a corpse in your room—and it's you. With my sense of having a dead hand, this morbidity suited my mood.

  "I've been to the Ananda," I said.

  He hung his head. "I know what you must think—a terrible place."

  It was exactly what I'd thought. A dump, just the sort of hotel where you'd find something shocking in your room. He saw the acknowledgment on my face.

  "It's not as bad as it looks," he said. "Charlie rec
ommended it to me. He was on a buying trip with Ma and he suggested I stay there while they were away. He doesn't like me to stay at his flat at the Lodge."

  "You stay there?"

  "Now and again. When Ma's away."

  I did not ask the obvious question: When Ma's away? I sat down.

  "He seems a nice guy."

  "He's fantastic."

  I did not pursue that either. A waiter approached. I waved him away. I said, "Rajat, tell me exactly what happened at the hotel."

  He looked at his shoes and did not speak for a full minute, one of those silences you take to be obstinate and pathological, or perhaps tactical. A minute is a long time. I was on the point of saying "Look, forget it" when he took a deep breath and began to speak.

  "I put off checking in as long as I could, because I really didn't want to stay there alone. That New Market area is colorful if you're with someone, but when you're on your own it's scary—noisy, full of boisterous people, heavy traffic. I finally checked in around five-thirty."

  "What day was this?"

  "The eighth. It was a Saturday. The manager looked darkly at me. He was glowering."

  "Any idea why?"

  "Probably because I had no luggage. Just a little shoulder bag with hardly anything in it. He asked how long I was going to stay. I said, 'I'm not sure,' because Ma hadn't given a return date."

  "Did you register under your own name?"

  He didn't reply at once. Another of those silences that seemed stagy until he began to speak and sounded tormented.

  "It's a little complicated. We never use our names when on foundation business. It's Ma's idea. So many people want to pry into her affairs. They're jealous of her humanitarianism and good works."

  "What name did you use?"

  "My usual one. Krishnaji."

  I tried to recall if I'd seen such a name on the register. "What room were you in?"

  "I honestly don't remember."

  "How many flights up?"

  "One, I think. The first floor. A good-sized room facing the rear of the building. It was noisy and the stifling air kept me awake for a long time."

  "So you managed to fall asleep?"

  "Yes. I don't know for how long. It was still dark when I woke up. I opened my mobile phone to see the time. It was four-something."

  "You saw that on your phone?"

  "Phone gives day and time. And that was when—see, mobile phone is also like torch. It's adequately bright. I sensed something in the room. Something strange. I shone the phone around, walked a bit, and tripped over a bundle, or so I thought."

  Reliving the moment made him pause.

  "And?"

  "And I shone the light down and saw the body."

  "Describe it."

  "Small, pale, naked—a boy of about ten or eleven. It was terrifying. His eyes open, his mouth open."

  "You knew he was dead?"

  "No question. Limp. Lifeless. Looking like clay, a bluish color. Or that color may have been an effect of my light."

  "Any blood?"

  "None that I could see."

  "Did you turn on the light?"

  "No, I was too scared. I had my mobile phone as torch, as I said."

  "What did you do next?"

  "Gathered up my things from the bathroom, put them in my little bag, and went downstairs. No one at the desk, just a chowkidar at the door. I slipped out and went to the market, where some people were setting up their stalls for the day ahead. It was still dark."

  "Did anyone see you?"

  He shook his head and said, "As far as I know." But he had become ashen. "You can't imagine what it's like to find yourself in the same room as a dead person. I was so terrified I called Charlie. He was with Ma in Uttar Pradesh. He was wonderful. Ma too. They came back to Calcutta that same day."

  "But you didn't tell the police."

  "It would have been much worse if we had. We didn't tell anyone. I had no idea that you knew until you showed up that night here. To be honest, I was a little surprised that Ma told you."

  I didn't say so, but I was surprised myself. Why had she told me? I was a writer who sits at home inventing crimes, not someone who goes into the wider world encountering them.

  And then Rajat smiled. But he was not smiling at me. He was looking past me. I turned and saw Charlie walking toward us. He greeted Rajat by bending toward him and giggling, and then he glanced at me and said hello, just that one word.

  "I was asking Rajat about the hotel."

  "The drama," Charlie said in a disbelieving tone. "You have no idea, doll. Shall we go?"

  Rajat got up from his chair, but I stayed seated. It was clear that they had business elsewhere and that I was superfluous.

  "How's your mother?" I asked.

  "Fabulous, as always."

  I wanted to ask him more, but his tone indicated that he had no interest in me—perhaps guessed that I was desperate. But here I was, trying to help his friend Rajat with a problem his mother had suggested I solve. Why didn't they ask me to join them? They had been so friendly when I'd been with them with Mrs. Unger present. But she had been different too.

  Sitting there in this awkwardness while they stood over me, I felt perversely that Charlie did not in the least resemble his mother. He was dark, she was light; his hair was curly, hers was straight. Though she was slight and small-boned, she gave the impression of power; he was tall, yet he seemed weak and tricky to me. I resented him, especially this offhandedness. The social inferiority that I'd felt as a child in New York resurfaced in India, with all its snobbish inversions and semipolite rebuffs. I began to hate these two young men looming over me—Rajat too, for the way he had brightened seeing Charlie. To me he had shown only his bewildered gloom, and I had been fool enough to care about him.

  "Ma is probably at the Lodge," Rajat said.

  But of course I had no idea where it was, and I was too insulted to ask them directions.

  "Thanks for your help," I said, meaning Up yours.

  I guessed Charlie was being competitive, resenting my interest—another of Mother's friends trying to monopolize her time, maybe interested in her money. He had behaved like a rival with barely disguised aggression. So I watched them walk out of the verandah and through the lobby. And I thought, as I had many times in my life: What am I doing here?

  Humiliated, I decided to leave Calcutta. This was all a horrible mistake. I had been misled and was feeling like a fool. I'd been away too long, I'd begun to drift, I needed to either put myself to work or accept the fact that some travel yields nothing but unrewarding repetition. I had overstayed my visit, and in the unreality of being in such an odd place I had gotten a little sentimental and susceptible. This was often the case—go far enough and something happens, a transformation, the traveler's pleasure and dilemma, an effect of solitude and strangeness. You begin to turn into someone else.

  5

  AND THE CITIES change too—or rather, after a time they reveal themselves. Calcutta, I came to understand, was a city that anyone could see had been made by human hands. Other cities are well cemented and engineered, all seamless surfaces. Calcutta was roughly plastered and painted; the Corinthian columns, the Ionic capitals, the rounded balusters and porticos, and much else that seemed like marble was really whitewashed wood. It was not beautiful but its handmade look gave it a human face, which is also a look of impermanence, if not frailty. The handiwork was evident in its patches, its irregular bricks, the botched painting, the clumsy flourishes in the carpentry, like the sad lacy panels on some house fronts, the lopsided designs, the mismatched joints, the tottering staircases. Nothing was square, nothing was plumb. Peering closely at this bulging and buckling city, I saw the hasty joinery, the hardened putty, the rusty nails, and I thought: A barefoot man did that with an old hammer in his skinny hand.

  There was one other thing I had not seen at first, something that had slowly come into focus over this spell of living at the Hastings. It was a revelation I'd never had at the
five-star hotels where I usually stayed free in return for writing about them. Nothing was new in Calcutta, at least nothing looked new, because every structure in this huge handmade city looked skeletal. Nothing new that worked: no new buildings, no new roads, even the street signs on the renamed roads looked ancient—Free School Street was Mirza Ghalib Road, Wellesley Street was Rafi Ahmed Kidwai. The city went on growing, yet it still looked rickety and ruinous, and in areas of faded elegance and dramatic misery a bad smell lingered, haunted and human.

  I wondered whether I should leave, to be myself again. In order to ponder this, to think clearly, I took long walks down the side streets and alleys, zigzagging to the river by Eden Gardens, or making my way northward in the maze that lay to the east of Chowringhee, the motley neighborhood called Taltala. I had the pleasure, rare in the world, of strolling in a baroque antiquity. But more than strolling: enveloped by a kind of revisitation that I had known only in dreams, of living in India's past, part Raj, part ruin, which was the present in this unreconstructed city.

  Solitary, looking for companionship, or simply to sit among like-minded drinkers, I stopped in bars. Indian bars, usually all male, and dark, could be depressing, and the rattle of the air conditioners lowered my spirits further. But I circulated and found some that cheered me up. The Oly Pub on Park Street I liked for being scruffy, and its seediness matched my mood. I indulged myself in that most un-Indian of activities, something that would have shocked Mrs. Unger, eating the Oly's famous beefsteak. It pleased me to watch the way they poured me a whiskey by measuring it in large or small jiggers, the barra peg or chota peg. Upstairs among the younger clientele there were sometimes women drinkers, which would have been unheard of in New Delhi or Madras but not in the Calcutta I had begun to find congenial. Now and then I would see a rat in the Oly, and one night I saw two huge rats crossing from one side of the room to the other, showing no more hurry than any of the drifters or drinkers there.

  On the first floor of the Roxy Cinema, behind the Oberoi Grand, where I'd first met Mrs. Unger, was the Roxy Bar, where there was no chance of meeting her and where in the evenings I listened to live music from Bollywood films. The drinkers here, a step down from the Oly's, were mainly lowly clerks and drudges, people with little education but with enough extra money for a bottle or two of beer. The waiters in bow ties and white shirts were the only formal aspect of the Roxy. In my self-dramatizing way, I fantasized that it would be a good place for someone like me to have a secret rendezvous.