Dan Simmons - Song of Kali

Outside, the air seemed even heavier and more moist than in the steaming terminal. Searchlights illuminated a silver sign above the terminal doors. "Dum-Dum Airport," I read aloud.

"Yes, yes. It is here they made the bullets until they were outlawed after World War Number One," said Krishna. "This way, please."

Suddenly we were surrounded by a dozen porters clamoring to carry our few bags. The men were reed-thin, bare-legged, draped in brown rags. One was missing an arm. Another looked as if he had been in a terrible fire: his chin was welded to his chest by great wattles of scar tissue. Evidently he could not speak, but urgent sounds gurgled up from his ruined throat.

"Give them the luggage," snapped Krishna. He gestured imperiously as the porters scrambled over one another to get at the bags.

We had to walk only sixty feet or so along the curved drive. The air was weighted with moisture, as dark and heavy as a soaked army blanket. For a dizzy second I thought it was snowing, as the air appeared to be swirling with white flecks; then I realized that there were a million insects dancing in the beams of the terminal spotlights. Krishna gestured to the porters, pointed to a vehicle, and I stopped in surprise. "A bus?" I said, although the blue-and-white van was more of a jitney than a full-fledged bus. The legend USEFI was printed along its side.

"Yes, yes, yes. It was the only transport available. Quickly now."

One of the porters, agile as a monkey, clambered up the back of the bus to the roof. Our four bags were handed up and secured to the luggage rack. As they tied down a strip of black plastic over the luggage, I wondered idly why we couldn't have taken them in the bus. Shrugging, I fumbled out two five-rupee notes to tip the porters. Krishna took them out of my hand, gave one back.

"No. It is too much," he said. I shrugged again and helped Amrita to get aboard. Victoria had finally awakened at the shouting of the agitated porters and was adding her shrill cry to the general confusion. We nodded at the sleepy driver and took the second seat on the right. At the door, Krishna was arguing with three of the porters who had carried our bags. Amrita did not understand all of the cascade of Bengali, but she picked up enough to tell me that the porters were upset because they could not divide five rupees three ways. They demanded another rupee. Krishna shouted something and went to close the door of the bus. The oldest porter, his face a maze of deep gullies forested with white stubble, stepped forward and blocked the folding door with his body. Other porters drifted over from their place near the terminal doors. Shouts turned to screams.

"For Chrissake," I said to Krishna, "here, give them a few more rupees. Let's get out of here."

"No!" Krishna's gaze swept my direction, and the violence there was no longer restrained. It held the gleeful look one sees on the faces of men at a blood sport. "It is too much," he said firmly.

There was a mob of porters at the door now. Suddenly hands began slapping against the side of the bus. The driver sat up and adjusted his cap nervously. The old man in the doorway had stepped up onto the lowest step as if to enter, but Krishna put three fingers against the bare chest and pushed firmly. The old man fell backward onto the sea of brown-garbed forms.

Gnarled fingers suddenly gripped the partially opened window next to Amrita, and the porter with the burned face pulled himself up as if he were on a chinning bar. Inches from us, his mouth worked frantically, and we could see that he had no tongue. Saliva spattered the dust-streaked window.

"Goddammit, Krishna!" I rose to give the porters the money. At that moment three policemen appeared out of the shadows. They wore white helmets, Sam Browne belts, and khaki shorts. Two of them carried lathi sticks — the Indian version of a cop's nightstick — three feet of heavy wood with an iron core in the business end.

The mob of porters continued shouting, but melted back to let the police advance. The scarred face dropped away from Amrita's window. The first cop banged his stick on the front of the bus, and the old porter turned to shout his complaints. The policeman raised his deadly club and screamed back. Krishna took the opportunity to swing the handle that closed the door of the bus. He snapped two syllables to the driver and we began to move, accelerating quickly down the dark driveway. There was a loud clang as a thrown rock struck the rear of the bus.

Then we were out of the airport and swinging onto an empty four-lane road. "VIP Highway," called Krishna from where he still stood by the door. "Traveled only by very important persons." A pale billboard flashed by to the right. The simple message — in Hindi, Bengali, and English — read WELCOME TO CALCUTTA.

We drove without headlights, but the interior lights of the bus stayed on. Amrita's lovely eyes were set with circles of fatigue. Victoria — too exhausted to sleep, tired of crying — made mewling noises from her mother's arms. Krishna sat down sideways on the seat in front of us, hawk nose in profile, his angry countenance illuminated by the overhead bulbs and an occasional street light.

"I went to university in the States for almost three years," he said.

"Really?" I said. "That's very interesting." I felt like smashing the stupid son of a bitch's face in for creating such a mess.

"Yes, yes. I worked with blacks, Chicanos, red Indians. The oppressed people of your country."

The marshy fields of darkness that had bordered the highway gave way suddenly to a jumble of shacks that came right up to the shoulder of the road. Lanterns glowed through burlap walls. In the distance a bonfire showed sharp silhouettes moving jerkily in front of yellow flames. Seemingly without transition we were out of the country and winding through narrow, rain-filled streets that twisted past blocks of derelict high-rises, miles of tin-roofed slums, and endless vistas of decaying, blackened storefronts.

"My professors were fools. Conservative fools. They thought that literature was composed of dead words in books."

"Yes," I said. I had no idea of what Krishna was talking about.

The streets were flooded. Water stood two and three feet deep in places. Under tattered canvas, robed figures sat and slept and squatted and stared at us with eyes that showed only white in orbs of shadow. Each alley gave a glimpse of open rooms, starkly lit courtyards, shadows moving within shadows. A frail man pulling a heavy cart had to leap aside as our bus roared past, throwing a curtain of water across him and his load. He shook his fist, and his mouth shaped unheard obscenities.

The buildings seemed ancient beyond age, decayed remnants of some forgotten millennium — some pre-human age — for the shadows, angles, apertures, and emptinesses did not fit the architecture of man. Yet, on every second or third floor there were open-windowed glimpses of humanity inhabiting these druidic shambles: bare bulbs swinging, bobbing heads, peeled walls with plaster rotting off the white rib-bones of the building, garish illustrations of multi-armed deities clipped from magazines and taped crookedly to walls or window-panes, the cries of children playing, running, fleeing through the knife-blackened alleys, the wail of infants half heard — and everywhere the random movement caught in the corner of one's vision, the sibilant rush of the bus's tires on wet clay and tarmac, and the sight of sheeted figures lying like corpses in the sidewalk shadows. A terrible feeling of déjà vu came over me.

"I quit in disgust when a fool of a professor would not accept my paper on Walt Whitman's debt to Zen Buddhism. An arrogant, parochial fool."

"Yes," I said. "Do you think we could turn off these inside lights?"