Dan Simmons - Song of Kali

"You?" I said.

"I decided then that I wanted to live in a country where I would see no ghosts."

"I hate to break it to you, kiddo," I said, "but Great Britain and New England are famous for having their share of ghosts."

"Perhaps," said Amrita and rose with Victoria secure in her arms. "But I can't see them."

At nine-thirty P.M. I was sitting in the lobby, nursing a growing headache from heat and fatigue, feeling queasy from too much bad wine at dinner, and going through various excuses to give to Krishna when he appeared. By nine-fifty I had decided to tell him that Amrita or the baby was sick. At ten P.M. I realized that I didn't have to tell him anything, and I had risen to go upstairs when suddenly he appeared, disheveled and distraught. His eyes looked red and puffy as though he had been crying. He came forward and shook my hand solemnly, as if the lobby were a funeral home and I the bereaved next of kin.

"What is it?" I asked.

"Very, very sad," he said, and the high voice broke. "Very terrible news."

"Your friend?" I asked. I felt a sense of relief in the sudden hunch that his mysterious source had broken his leg or been run over by a trolley or collapsed of a coronary.

"No, no, no. You must have heard. Mr. Nabokov has passed away. A great tragedy."

"Who?" Through the dialect I had heard only another rattling Bengali name.

"Nabokov! Nabokov! Vladimir Nabokov! Pale Fire . Ada . The greatest prose stylist in your native language. A very great loss for all of us. All men of letters."

"Oh," I said. I had never even got around to reading Lolita . By the time I remembered my resolve not to go with Krishna, we were outside in the humid dark and he was leading me to a rickshaw where a gaunt, wizened little rickshaw-coolie dozed in a red seat. I pulled back. Something in me rebelled at the thought of being pulled through filthy streets by this human scarecrow. "Let's take a cab," I said.

"No, no. This is reserved for us. It is a short ride. Our friend is waiting."

The seat was wet from the evening rains but not uncomfortable. The little man jumped down with a slap of his bare feet, grabbed the twin yokes, jumped into the air with a practiced agility, and came down straight-armed, balancing our weight expertly.

The rickshaw had no running lights, only a kerosene lantern that swung on a metal hook. It did not reassure me that the trucks and cars that swerved around us, horns blaring, also ran without lights. The trolleys were still running, and the sick, yellow pall of their interior bulbs showed sweaty faces crowded behind wire-mesh windows. Despite the late hour all of the public transit was loaded, buses swaying from the weight of people hanging from barred windows and outside grips, passing trains showing innumerable heads and torsos protruding from the black carriages.

There were few streetlights, but alleys and half-glimpsed courtyards glowed with that pale, decaying phosphorescence I had seen from the air. The darkness had not brought any relief from the heat. If anything, it was warmer now than it had been during the day. Heavy clouds could be seen just above the overhanging buildings, and their moist weight seemed to reflect the heat of the city streets back to us.

Anxiety rose in me again. It is hard even now for me to describe the nature of this tension. It had little to do with a sense of physical danger, although I felt absurdly exposed as we rattled over loose paving stones, heaps of garbage, and trolley tracks. I realized that I still had two hundred dollars' worth of travelers checks in my billfold. But that was not the real source of the nervousness that rose in my throat like bile.

Something about the Calcutta night worked directly upon the darkest regions of my mind. Brief clutches of an almost childlike fear tugged at my consciousness and were forced down again by the adult mind. The sounds of the night held no threat in and of themselves — distant shouts, sibilant scrapings, an occasional muffled snatch of conversation as we passed the sheeted figures — but they had the same gut-wrenching, attention-getting effect that the sound of someone breathing under your bed at night would generate.

"Kaliksetra," said Krishna. His voice was soft, barely audible over the panting of the rickshaw-coolie and the slap of bare feet on pavement.

"Excuse me?"

"Kaliksetra. It means 'the place of Kali.' Certainly you knew that this is where the name of our city has originated?"

"Ahh, no. That is, I may have. I must have forgotten."

Krishna turned toward me. I could not see his face clearly in the darkness, but I could feel the weight of his stare. "You must know this," he said flatly. "Kaliksetra became the village of Kalikata. Kalikata was the site of the great Kalighat, the most holy temple to Kali. It still stands. Less than two miles from your hotel. Certainly you must know this."

"Hmmm," I said. A trolley had turned the corner at high speed. Our rickshaw-coolie suddenly swerved across the tracks, avoiding the tram by less than a yard. Angry shouts followed us out onto a wider, emptier street. "Kali was a goddess, wasn't she?" I said. "One of Siva's consorts?" Despite my interest in Tagore, it had been many years since I had read any of the Vedas.

Krishna made an incredible sound. At first I thought it was an explosive burst of derision, but then I turned to look. He was stopping one nostril with his finger and loudly blowing mucus into his left hand. "Yes, yes," he said. "Kali is the sacred sakti of Siva." He inspected the contents of his hand, nodded as if satisfied, and flicked his fingers over the side of the rickshaw.

"Certainly you know her aspect?" he asked. From one of the shadowy, dilapidated buildings we had passed came the sound of several women screaming at each other.

"Her aspect? No, I don't believe so. She . . . the statues . . . they have four arms, don't they?" I looked around, and wondered if we were almost at our destination. There were fewer shops here. I found it hard to imagine a coffee shop among these ruins.

"Of course! Of course! She is a goddess ; obviously she has four arms! You must see the great idol in the Kalighat. It is the jagrata , the "very awake" Kali. Very terrible. Beautifully terrible, Mr. Luczak. Her hands show the abhaya and vara mudras — the fear-removing and boon-granting mudras . But very terrible. Very tall. Very gaunt. Her mouth is open. Her tongue is long. She has the two . . . what is the word . . . the teeth of the vampire?"

"Fangs?" I gripped the wet seat cover and wondered what Krishna was going on about. We turned down a darker, narrower street.

"Ah, yes, yes. She alone of the gods has conquered time. She devours all beings, of course. Purusam, asvam, gam, avim, ajam . She is unclad. Her beautiful feet tread on a corpse. In her hands she holds a pasa . . . a noose, khatvan-ga . . . what is the word? . . . A stick, no, a staff with a skull, khadga . . . a sword, and a severed head."

"A severed head?"

"Certainly. You must know this."

"Listen, goddammit, Krishna, what is all this —"

"Ah, we are here, Mr. Luczak. Step down. Quickly, please. We are late. The coffee shop closes at eleven."

The street was little more than an alley filled with sewage and rainwater. There was no sign of any storefronts or shops, much less a café. The walls were unlit except for the dim reflection of lanterns glowing from one of the upper windows. The rickshaw-coolie had dropped the traces and was lighting a small pipe. I remained seated.

"Quickly please," said Krishna, and snapped his fingers at me in the way I had seen him deal with porters. He stopped over a sleeping man on the sidewalk and opened a door that I hadn't noticed. A single bulb illuminated a steep, narrow staircase. Faint undertones of conversation drifted down to us.