Dan Simmons - Song of Kali

"Cheers," said Inspector Singh and sipped at his tonic water. A steel bracelet rattled against his heavy wristwatch. The bracelet was a constant symbol of his faith, as was the beard and a small ceremonial dagger he would be carrying. A security guard at the Bombay airport on Thursday had asked a Sikh ahead of us in line, "Are you carrying any weapons other than your sabre?" The rest of us had submitted to body searches, but the Sikh had been passed through after his negative grunt.

"How can I help you, Inspector?"

"You can share any information you have about the whereabouts of the poet M. Das."

"Das has been missing for a long time, Inspector. I'm surprised you're still interested."

"M. Das's file is still open, sir. The 1969 investigation concluded that he was most probably the victim of foul play. Does your country have a statute of limitations on murder?"

"No, I don't think so," I said. "But in the States we have to produce a body for it to be a murder."

"Exactly. That is why we would appreciate any information you could share with us. M. Das left many influential friends, Mr. Luczak. Many of these people are in even more respected positions now, eight years after the poet's disappearance. We would all be relieved to conclude this investigation."

"All right," I said, and proceeded to tell him of my involvement with Harper's and the arrangement with the Bengali Writers' Union. I debated telling him about Krishna and Muktanandaji, and then decided that such a fantastic story would only cause complications with the police.

"So you have no confirmation that M. Das is alive other than the poem which you may or may not receive through the Writers' Union?" asked Singh.

"That and the letter Michael Leonard Chatterjee read at the meeting with the executive council," I said. Singh nodded as if he was well aware of the correspondence.

He asked, "And you plan to pick up the manuscript tomorrow?"

"Yes."

"Where will this take place?"

"I don't know. They haven't told me yet."

"At what time?"

"Again, they haven't told me."

"Will you meet with Das at this time?"

"No. At least, I don't think so. No, I'm sure I won't."

"Why is that?"

"Well, all of my requests to meet with the great man and actually confirm his existence have met with a stone wall."

"A stone wall?"

"Negative response. A flat refusal."

"Ah. And you have no further plans to meet with him later?"

"No. I'd hoped to. My article certainly needed an interview. But to tell you the truth, Inspector, I'll be just as happy to get the damned manuscript, take my wife and child with me out of Calcutta tomorrow morning, and leave it to the literary experts as to whether M. Das wrote the poem."

Singh nodded as if this was a reasonable enough attitude. Then he jotted a few things in a small spiral notebook and finished his tonic. "Thank you, Mr. Luczak. You have been most helpful. Again, I apologize for taking up your Saturday evening."

"Quite all right."

"Oh," he said, "there is one thing."

"Yes?"

"Tomorrow, when you go to pick up the alleged Das manuscript, would you have any objections to police officers from the Metropolitan Force discreetly following you? It might help us in our investigation."

"A tail?" I said. I sipped at the last of my drink. If I objected, I might cause trouble for myself, and the cops would almost certainly still follow us. Besides, having the police nearby might allay some of the anxiety I was feeling about the rendezvous.

"Your associates need not know," added Singh.

I nodded. Personally, I didn't give a damn if Chatterjee, Gupta, and the whole Union became implicated. "All right," I said. "That would be fine. If it would help in your investigation. I have no idea myself whether Das is really alive. I'd be happy to help."

"Ah, excellent." Inspector Singh rose and we shook hands at last. "Have a good trip, Mr. Luczak. I wish you luck with your writing."

"Thank you, Inspector."

The rain continued falling for the rest of the evening. Any lingering thought Amrita and I had of spending Saturday night out on the town was squelched by the sight of mud, monsoon, and squatting misery we would glimpse when we opened the curtains. The tropical twilight was a brief transition between the gray, rainy day and the black, rainy night. A few lanterns glowed from under canvas across the flooded plaza.

Victoria was tired and fussy, so we put her down in her nest early. Then we called down to Room Service and waited an hour for dinner to arrive. When it did show up, it consisted mostly of a lesson to me never to order cold roast-beef sandwiches in a Hindu country. I begged some of Amrita's excellent Chinese dinner.

At nine P.M., while Amrita was showering before bed, there was a knock at the door. It was a boy with the fabric from the sari shop. The youngster was dripping wet, but the material was safely wrapped in a large plastic bag. I tipped him ten rupees, but he insisted on exchanging the bill I gave him for two five-rupee notes. The ten-rupee bill was torn slightly, and Indian currency evidently became non-negotiable when damaged. That exchange put me in a less than pleasant mood, and when Amrita emerged in her silk robe she took one look in the bag and announced that it was the wrong fabric. The shop had switched her bolts of material with Kamakhya's. We then spent twenty minutes going through the phone book trying to find the proper Bharati, but the name was as common as Jones would be in a New York directory and Amrita thought that Kamakhya's family probably didn't have a phone anyway.

"To hell with it," I said.

"Easy for you to say. You didn't spend over an hour picking out the material."

"Kamakhya will probably bring your stuff by."

"Well, it will have to be tomorrow if we're leaving early Monday morning."

We turned in early. Victoria awoke once, sobbing slightly in some baby's dream that made her arms and legs paddle in frustration, but I carried her around the room for a while until she drifted off to sleep, drooling contentedly on my shoulder. During the next couple of hours the room seemed alternately too hot and then chilly. The walls rattled from various mechanical noises. It sounded as if the place were honeycombed with dumbwaiters, each being pulled laboriously by chains and pulleys. An Arab group two doors away shouted and laughed, never thinking to move the party into their suite and close the door.

At around 11:30 I rose from the damp sheets and went to the window. The rain still pelted the dark street. No traffic moved.

I opened my suitcase. I had brought only two books along: a hardback copy of my own recent publication, and a Penguin paperback I'd picked up in a London bookstore of M. Das's poetry. I sat down in a chair near the door and snapped on a reading lamp.

I confess that I opened my own book first. The pages fell open to the title poem, Winter Spirits . I tried to read through it, but the once sharp imagery of the old woman moving through her Vermont farmhouse and communing with the friendly ghosts in the place while the snow piled in the fields did not go well with the hot Calcutta night and the sound of the heartless monsoon rattling the panes. I picked up the other book.

Das's poetry immediately captivated me. Of the short works at the beginning of the book, I most enjoyed "Family Picnic," with its humorous but never condescending insight into the need to patiently suffer the eccentricities of one's relatives. Only the passing reference to ". . . the blue, shark-sharpened waters of the Bay of Bengal / Unclouded by sail or smoke of distant steamer" and a quick description of a ". . . Mahabalipuram temple / sandstone worn with sea age and prayer / a smooth-cornered plaything now / for children's climbing knees and Uncle Nani's / snapshots" placed the locale in Eastern India.