Dan Simmons - Song of Kali

"'Yes, yes,' said the attendant. 'Except the death certificate. I can make that out.'

"'Aghhh,' breathed Sanjay. 'The cost?'

"'A mere fifty rupees,' smiled the attendant. 'Then there is the matter of the rent.'

"'Rent?' I repeated, speaking through my shirt.

"'Yes, yes, yes. We are very crowded, as you can see. There is a fifteen-rupee per day rental fee for space provided.' He consulted the clipboard. 'Your cousin Samar's rent comes to 105 rupees.'

"'But he's only been here one day!' I cried.

" True, true. But I fear we must charge for the entire week because he received special facilities because of his . . . ah . . . advanced stage. Shall we look to your Cousin Kamila now?'

" This will cost us almost two thousand rupees!' exploded Sanjay. 'For each body!'

"'Oh yes, yes,' said the morgue man with a smile. 'I trust that the rug business in Varanasi is healthy these days?'

"'Come along, Jayaprakesh,' said Sanjay as he turned to leave.

"'But what about Cousin Kamila?' I cried.

"'Come along !' Sanjay said and pulled me from the room.

"There was a white truck outside the morgue. Sanjay approached the driver. "The bodies,' he said. 'Where do they go?'

"'What?'

"'Where do the unclaimed bodies go when they're taken from here?'

"The driver sat up and frowned. 'To Naidu Infectious Diseases Hospital. Most of them. They dispose of them.'

"'Where is that?'

"'Way out on Upper Chitpur Road.'

"It took us an hour to get there by streetcar through heavy traffic. The old hospital was crowded with people hoping to recover or waiting to die. The long hallways, overflowing with beds, reminded me of the morgue. Birds came in through the bars on the windows and hopped among the tousled sheets, hoping to find stray crumbs. Lizards skittered across the cracked walls and I saw a rodent scurry under a bed as we passed.

"A mustached intern suddenly blocked our path. 'Who are you?'

"Sanjay, taken by surprise, gave our names. I could tell that his mind was working furiously to concoct an adequate story.

"'You're here about the bodies, aren't you?' demanded the intern.

"We both blinked.

"'You're reporters, aren't you?' asked the man.

"'Yes,' agreed Sanjay.

"'Damn. We knew this would get out,' growled the intern. 'Well, it's not our fault!'

"'Why not?' asked Sanjay. From his skirt pocket he removed the battered old notebook in which he kept records of the Beggarmasters' payments, our laundry bills, and our market lists. 'Would you care to make a statement?' He licked the end of a broken pencil.

"'Come this way,' snapped the intern. He led us through a ward of typhoid patients, into an adjoining kitchen, and outside past heaps of garbage. Behind the hospital there was an empty weeded field that covered several acres. In the distance were visible the burlap lean-tos and tin roofs of a growing chawl . A rusting bulldozer sat in the weeds and against it leaned an old man with baggy shorts and an ancient bolt-action rifle.

"'Heeyah!' screamed the intern. The old man jumped and shouldered the rifle. 'There! There!' cried the intern and pointed out into the weeds. The old man fired and the sound of the shot echoed off the tall building behind us.

"'Shit, shit, shit!' yelled the intern and bent quickly to rise with a large stone in his hand. Out in the weeds, a gray dog with prominent ribs had raised its head at the sound of the gunshot and now stared at us. The scrawny beast turned and loped off with its tail between its legs and something pink in its mouth. The intern threw his stone, and it dropped into the weeds halfway between him and the dog. The old man at the bulldozer was wrestling with the bolt of the rifle.

"'Damn,' said the intern and led us out across the field. There were scars and mounds of dirt everywhere, as if the bulldozer had pawed at the earth here for years like a huge house cat. We stopped at the edge of a shallow pit where we had first seen the dog.

"'Ay!' I said and backed away. The rotting human hand that rose out of the moist soil had brushed against my sandal and touched my bare foot. Other things were visible. Then I noticed the other pits, the other dogs in the distance.

"'It was all right ten years ago,' said the intern, 'but now, with that industrial basti coming so close . . .' He broke off to throw another rock at another pack of dogs. The animals calmly trotted into the bushes. Behind us, the old man had succeeded in ejecting the spent cartridge and was levering another bullet in.

"'Were these Muslims or Christians?' asked Sanjay. His pencil was poised.

"'Hindus, most likely. Who knows?' the intern spat. The crematoria do not wish to have unpaying customers. But the damned dogs have been digging them up like this for months now. We were willing to pay until . . . Wait. You have heard about what happened today? That is why you're here, is it not?'

"'Of course,' Sanjay said blandly. 'But perhaps you would like to tell us your side.'

"I was barely listening. I was too busy looking around, noticing the other bits and pieces rising from the churned soil like dead fish rising to the surface of a pond. From what I could see, there seemed little hope that Sanjay and I could find an intact offering here. Ravens circled overhead. The old man had sat down on the metal tractor tread and appeared to be dozing.

"'There have been many complaints about today's business,' said the intern. 'But we had to do something. Make sure that you report that the hospital was prepared to pay for the cremations.'

"'Yes,' said Sanjay and wrote something down.

"We began walking back to the hospital building. Families of patients were camped in makeshift tents and huts near the mountains of garbage. 'We had to do something,' said the intern. 'The power outages, you know. And with the dogs we couldn't just go on as we've done over the years. So we paid the Municipal Corporation to transport them, and this morning we loaded thirty-seven fresh from the cooler to be taken to Ashutosh Crematorium Grounds. How were we to know that they would use an open truck and that it would be stuck in traffic for hours?'

"'How indeed?' said Sanjay and scribbled something.

"'And then, to make it worse, after the load was dumped on the cremation grounds, there was the festival crowd.'

"'Yes!' I said. 'The Kali Puja begins today.'

"'But how were we to know that the ceremony was to draw ten thousand people to that cremation park?' the intern asked sharply. I did not remind him that Kali was the goddess of all cremation grounds and places of deaths, including even battlefields and non-Hindu burial places.

"'Do you know how long it takes for a full and proper cremation, even with the new electric pyres in the city?' asked the intern. 'Two hours,' he answered himself. 'Two hours each .'

"'What happened to those bodies?' asked Sanjay as if the subject held little interest for him. It was already early afternoon. Ten hours until midnight.

"'Ahh, the complaints!' wailed the intern. 'Several of the worshipers fainted. It was very hot this morning. But we had to leave most behind. The drivers refused to return here or to the Sassoon Morgue through afternoon traffic with a full load again.'

"'Thank you,' said Sanjay and shook the man's hand. 'Our readers will be pleased to know the hospital's point of view. Oh, by the way, will your guard be here after dark?' Sanjay nodded toward the sleeping old man.

"'Yes, yes,' snapped the sweating intern. 'For all the damned good it will do. Heeyah!' He shouted and bent to find a stone to throw at the slavering dog dragging something large into the bushes.

"We drove to the Ashutosh Crematorium Grounds at ten o'clock that night. Sanjay had arranged to borrow one of the small Premiere vans that the Beggarmasters used to take out and collect their crippled charges. The narrow compartment in the back was windowless and it smelled very bad.