Dan Simmons - Song of Kali

I belted my bathrobe. "The rendezvous and the coffee house, yes. I'll try to work in how surreal and absurd some of the characters were in my . . . what did Morrow call it? . . . my quest for M. Das. But I won't be able to use Muktanandaji's ravings. Not much, anyway. I'll mention it, but the whole Kapalika thing is just too weird. That sort of killer-goddess crap went out with the last of the movie serials. I'll check into the gang stuff — maybe the Kapalikas are sort of a Calcutta Mafia — but the rest of it's just too damn weird to put in a serious article about a fine poet. It's not just morbid, it's —"

"Perverted?"

"Naw, they wouldn't mind if I wrote about a little healthy perversion. The word I was thinking of was trite ."

"God save us from cliches, is that it?"

"You got it, kiddo."

"All right, Bobby. What are we going to do next?"

"Hmmm, good question," I said. I was playing peek-a-boo with Victoria. Both of us were using part of the sheet as a hiding place. Each of us would giggle when I lifted it like a curtain from between us. Then Victoria would cover her eyes with her fingers and I would look around in bewilderment, trying to find her. She loved it.

"I think I'll take a shower," I said. "Then we're going to get you and the Little One here on this afternoon's flight to London. So far, there's been absolutely no need for you to translate anything but the porter's mumblings. I'm tired of paying for all those extra mouths to feed around here. There's no reason for you to stay an extra day even if I have to wait around for Chatterjee to get his act together. Today's Saturday. You could stay awhile in London, visit your parents overnight, and we could arrive in New York at about the same time . . . say, Tuesday evening."

"Sorry, Bobby. Impossible for several reasons."

"Nonsense," I said. "No such word as impossible." Victoria and I discovered each other and giggled. "Name the objections and I'll shoot them down."

"One, we have high tea at four o'clock with the Chatterjees —"

"I'll offer your regrets. Next?"

"Two, the material from the sari shop hasn't arrived yet."

"I'll bring it with me. Next?"

"Three, Victoria and I would miss you. Wouldn't we, Precious?" Victoria looked away from the game long enough to gape politely at her mother. Then she changed the rules by pulling the end of the sheet over her head.

"Sorry, three strikes," I said to Amrita. "You're out. I'll miss you guys, but maybe with you gone I'll be able to make time with your friend Kamakhya. I think there's a two P.M. flight to London today. If not, I'll stay at the airport with you until a later flight."

Amrita picked up some of the baby's toys and put them in a drawer. "There is a fourth problem," she said.

"What's that?"

"BOAC and Pan Am have canceled all flights out of Calcutta except BOAC's 6:45 A.M. layover from Thailand. Baggage-handling problems, the man said. I called last night when I was bored."

"Shit. You're kidding. Damn ." Victoria sensed the change in tone and dropped the sheet. Her face puckered toward tears. "There must be some way out of this stinking shithole of a — excuse me, Little One — this city."

"Oh, yes. All of the Air India in-country flights are going out. We could transfer to Pan Am in Delhi or to any of the overseas airlines there or in Bombay. But we've missed today's early New Delhi flight, and all of the others have horrendous layovers. I'd rather wait for you, Bobby. I don't want to travel in this country without you. I did enough of that as a child."

"Okay, hon," I said, and put my arm around her. "All right, then, let's try to make the Monday-morning BOAC flight. Christ, six-thirty in the morning. Well, at least it'll be a breakfast flight. Okay if I go ahead with my plan to shower?"

"Yes," said Amrita while picking up the baby. "I checked with the BOAC people and there's no problem with you showering."

That afternoon we went through the motions of sightseeing. I tucked Victoria into the backpack carrier, and we were out into the heat, noise, and confusion. The temperature and humidity both hovered near the 100 mark. We had a better than decent luncheon at a place called Shah-en-Shah's and then took a taxi up Chowringhee to the Indian Museum.

A small sign outside proclaimed ABSOLUTELY NO YOGIC EXERCISES PERMITTED IN GARDENS! The inside was very hot, the display cases were dusty, and the building was surprisingly empty except for a loud and obnoxious tour group of Germans. I was mildly interested in the anthropology displays on the first floor, but it was the exhibit of archaeological art that finally caught my eye.

"What is it?" asked Amrita as she saw me bending over a glass case.

The tiny black figurine was labeled Representation of Durga Goddess in Kali Aspect: circa 80 B.C. It fell short of being frightening. I saw no sign of a noose, skull, or severed head. One hand held what looked to be a wooden bough, another an inverted egg cup, a third what might have been a trident but looked more like an opened Swiss Army knife, and her last hand was extended palm up, offering a tiny yellow doughnut. As with all the statues of goddesses I'd seen in the museum, she was high-waisted, firm-breasted, and long of ear. Her face was scowling, her many teeth were sharp, but I could make out no vampirish canines or lolling tongue. She was wearing a headdress of flames. Much more fierce, to my eye, was a statue marked Durga that stood in a nearby case. This supposedly more benign incarnation of Parvati had ten arms, and each hand was filled with a weapon more fierce than the last.

"Your friend Kali doesn't seem too terrible," said Amrita. Even Victoria was leaning forward from the backpack carrier to look at the display case.

"This thing's two thousand years old," I said. "Maybe she's grown more hideous and bloodthirsty since then."

"Some women just don't age gracefully," agreed Amrita and moved on to the next display. Victoria seemed to enjoy a large bronze idol of Ganesha, the playful, elephant-headed god of prosperity; and for the rest of our time in the museum we made a game out of finding as many representations of Ganesha as we could.

Amrita would have liked to visit the Victoria Memorial Hall to see artifacts of the Raj, but it was getting late and we contented ourselves with driving by in the taxi and pointing out to the baby the imposing white structure that we told her was named after her.

We entered the hotel in a torrential downpour, changed clothes quickly, and came back out to find Chatterjee's car waiting and the rain stopped.

I was wearing a tie for the first time in several days, and as the car pulled out into traffic I sat uncomfortably, tugging at the knot and wishing my collar were looser or my neck smaller. My short-sleeved white shirt had already soaked through the back and I was suddenly aware how scuffed and stained my faithful Wallabees looked. All in all, I felt wrinkled, tousled, and soaked in sweat. I glanced sideways at Amrita. She looked — as she always did — cool and contained. She was wearing the white cotton dress she had purchased in London and the lapis lazuli necklace I had given her before we were married. By all rights her hair should have been hanging down in limp strands, but it fell full and lustrous to her shoulders.

We drove for the better of an hour, a trip which reminded me that Calcutta was larger in area than New York City. Traffic was as insane and haphazard as ever, but Chatterjee's silent driver found the fastest route through the confusion. My concern about the traffic wasn't overly allayed by the large white signs in Bengali, Hindi, and English that sat in the center of several chaotic traffic circles we negotiated: DRIVE MORE CAREFULLY! THERE HAVE BEEN ___ DEATHS ON THIS THOROUGHFARE THIS YEAR! The boxes were filled with the kind of nail-up number panels one used to see in old-time baseball parks. The highest number we saw on this trip was 28. I wondered idly whether that included that entire section of road or just those few square feet of pavement.