Frank De Felitta - For Love of Audrey Rose

Janice nodded, but the suddenness caused a strange vertigo. Somehow, she had never thought that any kind of escape was possible, not now, and not in the future. Guiltily, she realized how she hungered for a few days’ liberty. She needed it the way a drowning animal needs air.

Suddenly Des Artistes did not feel so dark, so cold. The sight of her packed luggage was a visible symbol of a new possibility: a resurgence of hope. She checked and rechecked her itinerary. Brussels, Marseilles — and now Elaine had added the Israeli market. The passport on her desk, the letters of introduction, her confirmed hotel reservations made hope not only real, but imminent. Late at night, she spoke one last time with Dr. Geddes.

“Perfectly appropriate idea,” Dr. Geddes said. “I’ve told you that. You need a break.”

“But what if something happens? Suppose he calls for me?”

“I doubt very much that Bill will be calling for anybody in the near future. Except Ivy.”

It was shortly after the Brussels conference that the idea came to her. Back in her hotel room, she raced to her luggage and pulled out her battered leather address book. There was a name, a name that had known Hoover, though she could not remember it.

Halfway through the address book, she found, simply: Mehrotra, Sesh. Hindu University Benares (Varanasi), U.P. She recalled very well that after Ivy died, she had written to Hoover, to explain to him her feelings. It was to Mehrotra that the letter was sent.

As the warm spring night drifted in, she thought of Hoover. She thought of his pale, almost recessive eyes, eyes that were handsome except that they had seen too much suffering. Pale skin and a burning sincerity that swept everything away — reason, logic, normalcy — in one tidal wave of charisma. It was Hoover who had told her Ivy was in danger. It was Hoover who could have saved her child. If Juanita was, in some way — if Juanita could be in a god-awful but logical way — Ivy, then Hoover would know.

I’ll get help for you, Bill.

Janice cabled Elaine from Tel Aviv, asking for another five days. Elaine quickly agreed. A half day at a branch of the Chase Manhattan finally produced a draft for nearly a thousand dollars.

The travel agent looked up, his tie loosened, an ashtray bulging with half-smoked cigarettes.

“I’d like to go to India, please,” Janice said softly.

“Where would you like to go? India is a big place.”

“I must go to Benares.”

“Ah. You’re one of those pilgrims,” he said, smiling. “It’s Varanasi now. Not Benares. Though to everyone, it is still called Benares. You will transfer in New Delhi.”

That night, Janice watched the concrete runways glide by as she walked toward the gleaming steps of an Air India jet. It was all a dream, she thought. Life had become a series of disconnected dreams. The engines roared into life, there was a terrific pull at her stomach, and she seemed to wake up in some mysterious way. She was truly flying to India.

Below, a series of white lines, in immense parallel curves, came quickly to view. Beige sand. Dark green of tropical plants. Wide roads, where trucks carried clouds of white dust. Then an immense continent, so large it seemed to bend with the earth, dark and mottled, glinting with small patches of moist ground, paddy fields, and tiny rivers. It was India. It looked like an untended world, violent and crude.

Janice swallowed. It was really India. Anxiety overcame her. She drew back into her seat, away from the window. There was no escape. The idea that she should have come so far, so suddenly, to look for Elliot Hoover, seemed obscene. Nervously, she checked for the hundredth time that Sesh Mehrotra’s address was still in her travel bag, though she had long ago memorized it. She tried to imagine Mehrotra. She tried to imagine Elliot Hoover. All she saw was a kind of nervous cloud, where everything was unclear, turbulent, unformed.

Taxi? Taxi? You like a taxi?” said six men together, running up to her.

“Yes, I—”

“Come. You come with me. Cheap.”

“Please, miss. Beautiful Buick. You come with me.”

“Lowest price. No detour. Come on, miss.” Distraught, Janice fumbled in her purse for the card upon which was printed the name of her hotel. In that instant, three drivers grabbed for her suitcase; one was successful and, alarmed, Janice ran after him. The lucky driver opened the trunk of a small black Ford, dropped in her suitcase, and slammed the lid. He turned to her and smiled.

“Where to?” he asked, proud of himself.

Janice had no choice but to show him the card.

“Varanasi Palace Hotel,” he read slowly. “Number one in city. Get in, please.”

Janice’s heart was racing so fast, she felt the pulse in her throat. There was no retreat, no going back. The highway raced forward to glide under the wheels of the taxi. To the sides were patches of mud and clumps of grass, littered with white paper and broken bottles. Filthy goats stood by mud ridges and chewed, unblinking, at pieces of fabric.

By the time the taxi entered the outer reaches of Benares, Janice’s face was covered in perspiration. It plastered her blouse to her skin, her hair to her scalp. Dust and grime coated her shoes and even her fingernails. Exhausted, she stared out at the city that rapidly approached.

The highway was filled with groups of old men wearing absolutely nothing but loose, skimpy loin cloths. They seemed not to be casually walking but to have a mission, a barely concealed energy behind their movements.

“They have come to Benares to die,” said the driver in a gentle English. “It is blessed to die in Benares.”

“Benares,” Janice whispered to herself. The sound of the city conjured frightful images. The Ganges, she knew, flowed through the city, and it was holy — and it would be noisy, and somewhere deep in the outskirts perhaps, at a study center or in a small home, was Elliot Hoover. It was as if she were keeping a rendezvous. Was he waiting for her, too, in some disturbing, almost occult foreknowledge? Or would he close his door in her face?

The Varanasi Palace Hotel was small, only five floors, and it was old. It was located at the edge of the “containment,” or residential compound once built for the British and still mostly Western in character. The avenues were straight, clean, but the noise of Benares submerged the elegant palm trees in a turbulence of sound: a thousand bulls lowing, ten thousand men shouting, and everywhere, clanging through the sky, the hundreds upon hundreds of temple bells, some heavy as gongs, some light as tinkling glass, making a cacophonous music that shook the city.

The taxi came to a halt in front of the doorman. Under the awning, a turbaned Punjabi slowly opened the door for Janice and waited for the driver to take the suitcase from the trunk. She paid, took a brisk look at the spare lines of the Varanasi Palace, and followed the doorman into the hotel.

“To the desk, please,” the Punjabi said, pointing.

Inside, lazy black fans turned high overhead against white ceilings. Enormous red rugs covered the floor, and the couches and chairs were also red, so that the interior looked like a huge Matisse. Glass chandeliers glittered in regular sequences through the lobby. A gentleman in white cloth read a newspaper with the aid of a magnifying glass. Janice walked slowly to the desk.

“Yes, please?” inquired a short, dark-haired clerk with a red coat.

“Mrs. Templeton. Arriving from Tel Aviv.”

Fingers the shade of cocoa rapidly skimmed through a rolling file. Then he looked up, smiling, and raised an eyebrow in the direction of an aged porter. The old man immediately hobbled to the desk. There was a brisk command and then the clerk smiled obsequiously to Janice.