Dan Simmons - Song of Kali

"Look there," ordered Chatterjee, pointing to our right. A large temple was painted in Technicolor glory. "The Jain Temple. Very interesting."

"The Jain priests will take no life," said Amrita. "When they leave the temple, they have servants sweep the walk so that they won't inadvertently step on an insect."

"They wear surgical masks," said Chatterjee, "so that they will not accidentally swallow any living thing."

"They do not bathe," added Krishna, "out of respect for the bacteria which live on their bodies."

I nodded, and silently speculated on whether Krishna himself honored this particular Jain code. Between the usual Calcutta street smells.the reek of raw sewage, and Krishna, I was beginning to feel a little overwhelmed.

"Their religion forbids them to eat anything which is living or was living," Krishna said happily.

"Wait a minute," I said. "That rules out everything. What do they live on?"

"Ahh." Krishna smiled. "Good question!"

We drove on.

Rabindranath Tagore's home was in Chitpur. We parked on a narrow sides street, walked through a gate into an even narrower courtyard, and removed our shoes in a small anteroom before entering the two-story building.

"Out of reverence to Tagore, this home is treated like a temple," Gupta said solemnly.

Krishna kicked off his sandals. "Every public monument in our country becomes a temple sooner or later," he laughed. "In Varanasi, the government built a structure housing a large relief map of India to educate the ignorant peasants about our national geography. Now it is a holy temple. I have seen people worship there. It even has its own feast day. A relief map!"

"Quiet," said Chatterjee. He led us up a dark stairway. Tagore's suite of rooms was empty of furniture, but the walls were lined with photographs and display cases showing off everything from original manuscripts that must have been worth a fortune to cans of the Master's favorite snuff.

"We seem to be alone," said Amrita.

"Oh, yes," agreed Gupta. The writer looked even more like a rodent when he smiled. "The museum is usually closed on Sundays. We are privileged to be here only by special arrangement."

"Great," I said to no one in particular. Suddenly, from speakers on the wall, there came recordings of Tagore's voice, high and squeaky, reading excerpts of his poetry and singing some of his ballads. "Marvelous."

"M. Das's representative should be here shortly," said Chatterjee.

"No hurry," I said. There were large canvases of Tagore's oil paintings. His style reminded me of N. C. Wyeth's — an illustrator's version of impressionism.

"He won the Nobel Prize," said Chatterjee.

"Yes."

"He composed our national anthem," said Gupta.

"That's right. I'd forgotten," I said.

"He wrote many great plays," said Gupta.

"He founded a great university," said Chatterjee.

"He died right there," said Krishna.

We all stopped and followed Krishna's pointing finger. The corner was empty except for small balls of dust. "It was 1941," Krishna said. "The old man was dying, running down like an unwound clock. A few of his disciples gathered here. Then more. And more. Soon all of these rooms were filled with people. Some had never met the poet. Days passed. The old man lingered. Finally a party began. Someone went to the American military headquarters . . . there were already soldiers in the city . . . and returned with a projector and reels of film. They watched Laurel and Hardy, and Mickey Mouse cartoons. The old man lay in his coma, all but forgotten in the corner. From time to time he would swim up out of his death sleep like a fish to the surface. Imagine his confusion! He stared past the backs of his friends and the heads of strangers to see the flickering images on the wall."

"Over here is the pen that Tagore used to write his famous plays," Chatterjee said loudly, trying to draw us away from Krishna.

"He wrote a poem about it." continued Krishna. "About dying during Laurel and Hardy. In those last days he dated his poems, knowing that each one could be his last. Then, in the brief periods between coma, he wrote down the hour as well. Gone was his sentimental optimism. Gone was the gentle bonhomie that marked so much of his popular work. For you see, between poems, he now was facing the dark face of Death. He was a frightened old man. But the poems . . . ahh, Mr. Luczak . . . those final poems are beautiful. And painful. Like his dying. Tagore looked at the cinema images on the wall and wondered — 'Are we all illusions? Brief shadows thrown on a white wall for the shallow amusement of bored gods? Is this all ?' And then he died. Right there. In the corner."

"Come this way," snapped Gupta. "There is much more to see."

There was indeed. Photographs of Tagore's friends and contemporaries included autographed images of Einstein, G. B. Shaw, and a very young Will Durant.

"The Master was a strong influence on Mr. W. B. Yeats," said Chatterjee. "Did you know that the 'rough beast' in 'The Second Coming' — the lion body with the head of a man — was drawn from Tagore's description to Yeats of the fifth incarnation of Vishnu?"

"No," I said. "I don't think I knew that."

"Yes," said Krishna. He ran his hand over the top of a dusty display case and smiled at Chatterjee. "And when Tagore sent Yeats a bound edition of his Bengali poetry, do you know what happened?" Krishna ignored the frowns from Gupta and Chatterjee. He dropped into a crouch and wielded an invisible weapon with both hands. "Why, Yeats charged across his London sitting room, grabbed a large samurai sword which had been a gift, and smote Tagore's book thus . . . Ayehh!!"

"Really?" asked Amrita.

"Yes, really, Mrs. Luczak. And Yeats then cried out, 'Tagore be damned! He sings of peace and love when blood is the answer!'"

The tape recordings of Tagore's music stopped abruptly. We all turned as a poorly dressed boy of about eight stepped into the room. The boy carried a small canvas bag, but it was too small and too irregular to hold a manuscript. He looked from face to face until he came to me.

"You are Mr. Luczak?" The words sounded memorized, as if the boy did not speak English.

"Yes."

"Follow me. I take you to M. Das."

A rickshaw waited in the courtyard. There was room beside the boy for Amrita, Victoria, and me. Gupta and Chatterjee hurried to their car to follow. Krishna seemed to lose interest, and stood by the door.

"You're not coming?" I shouted.

"Not now," said Krishna. "I will see you later."

"We're leaving in the morning," called Amrita.

Krishna shrugged. The boy said something to the rickshaw wallah , and we moved out onto the street. Chatterjee's Premiere pulled out behind us. Half a block back, a small gray sedan also pulled away from the curb. Behind it, a bullock cart lumbered along with half a dozen ragged people in it. I amused myself by imagining that the bullock cart driver was the Metropolitan Policeman assigned to following us. The boy yelled a sentence in Bengali and the rickshaw-coolie shouted back and broke into a faster trot.

"What'd he say?" I asked Amrita. "Where are we going?"

"The boy said, 'Hurry up,'" said Amrita with a smile. "The rickshaw man said that the Americans are heavy pigs."

"Hmmm."

We crossed Howrah Bridge in a mass of brawling traffic that made all previous traffic jams I'd seen pale in comparison. There was as much pedestrain movement as wheeled traffic and it jammed the two levels of the bridge to capacity. The intricate puzzle of gray girders and steel mesh stretched more than a quarter of a mile across the muddy expanse of the Hooghly River. It was a child's Erector Set version of a bridge, and I took Amrita's Minolta to snap a picture of it.