Paul Theroux - The Elephanta Suite - Three Novellas

“Where do you live?”

“Just here. Hanuman Nagar.”

“Your village?”

The old man exploded with information. “Township of Hanuman Nagar is substantial, with a market and textiles weaving and sundry spheres of commercial enterprise, including iron mongeries, pot-making, clay-baking, for house tiles, kilns and enameling.”

“No one mentioned a town,” Audie said.

“As well as fruit and nut trees. I myself am wholesaling nut meats. Also, as mentioned, Hanuman eshrine. Ancient temple. I bid you good evening.”

With that he stepped into the darkness. The Blundens walked up the road in the opposite direction, remarking, as they went, on the poise of the old man, his self-possession, his pedantry. How easy it was to jeer at him, yet he had told them several things they hadn’t known: the town, its industries, the Hanuman story, the temple business. He was faintly ridiculous, yet you couldn’t mock him—he was real. What they had been thinking of as simply Monkey Hill had a history, and drama, an Indian name, and now on that lower slope a neighboring settlement.

“Did you understand what he said about the mosque and the temple?”

Audie shrugged and said, “Beth, you get these Indians talking and they flog a dead horse into dog food.”

They had a surprise walking back up the road to the lodge. They passed through a large gateway. They had seen the gateway coming down, but they had not seen the signs: Right of Entry Prohibited Except by Registered Guests and No Trespassing and Authorized Vehicles Only.

“This means you!” Audie said, shaking his finger into the darkness. “Get your happy ass out of here!”

“You’re awful, Butch,” Beth said, and giggled because it was dark and they were in India, on this broken road, alone, dust in their nostrils, the obscure sense of smoky air, a smell of burning cow dung, a rocky hillside, and here he was making a joke, being silly. His unruly behavior was usually a comfort; she had loved him for it and regarded it as a form of protection for more than thirty years of marriage. She felt safe in his humor.

Beyond the gateway they saw the lights of the lodge and Agni itself, the former maharajah’s residence, a baronial mansion, and in the bamboo grove the spa buildings, the pool, the palm trees, the yoga pavilion, glowing in spotlights, the whole place crowning the summit of the hill he had been told was Monkey Hill, though it had a local name too, the one that old Indian had used that they found impossible to remember.

Staff members passing them on the path pressed their hands in prayer and said namaste or namaskar , and some of the Tibetans, in an attractive gesture, touched their right hand to their heart. Audie did the same in return and found himself moved by it.

At the entrance to the restaurant, Beth saw an Indian couple smile at them.

“ Namaste,” she said, and clapped her hands upright under her chin.

“Hi there,” the Indian man said. He was quick to put his hand out and pumped Audie’s reluctant hand. “I’m Rupesh—call me Bill. This is Deena. Looks crowded tonight.”

The Indian girl at the door said, “Very crowded. There’s a wait, I’m afraid. Unless you wish to share a table.”

Audie smiled at the girl. The nameplate pinned to her yellow and white sari was lettered Anna. She was lovely—he’d seen her at the spa in the white pajamas the massage therapists wore.

“No problem here,” the Indian said.

“If you don’t mind,” Beth said.

“I could seat you quicker if you sat together,” the Indian girl, Anna, said.

Audie tried to catch his wife’s eye to signal “we’ll wait”—eating with strangers affected his digestion—but she had already agreed. He hated to share. He hated the concept, the very word; he had spent his life in pursuit of his own undivided portion of the world.

Within minutes of their being seated, the Indian (Bill?) had told him that he lived in Chevy Chase, Maryland; that he owned a company that leased vending machines (“bottled and canned beverages and mineral waters”) and his budget projections had never been better; that he had an acre of warehouse space and a large house; that his elderly father lived with them, and he had two children, one attending Georgetown, a boy, economics major, and a daughter, a Johns Hopkins graduate, now a stock analyst for Goldman Sachs, doing very well, loved her work. This was their second day at Agni. They had family in Dehra Dun, one more day and they’d be back in Delhi, preparing to take the direct flight to Newark, a new service, so much better than having to make stops in Frankfurt or London.

“Very spiritual here,” he said after an awkward pause, having gotten no response from Audie.

Audie smiled. How was it possible for people to talk so much that they were oblivious of their listener? Yet Audie was relieved—he didn’t want to give out information about himself. He did not want to lie to anyone, and knew that if anyone asked a direct question he would give an evasive or misleading reply. Talkative people made it so easy for him to be anonymous.

“What do you do for a living?” he was sometimes asked.

“Whole bunch of things,” he would reply. “I’ve got a bunch of companies. I’m involved in some start-ups and rebrandings. We’re in housewares. Hard furnishings. White goods. We used to do a lot of mail order, catalogue inventory, and now it’s mostly online.”

The Indian woman said to him, “Where do you live?”

“Tough question,” Audie said. “This time of year we’re usually in our house in Florida. We’ve got an apartment in New York. We mostly spend our summers in Maine. We’ve got a condo in Vermont, ski country. Take your pick.”

But the woman wasn’t listening to him. She was talking about her daughter, who lived in New York City and was now twenty-seven and a little overdue to be married. They—mother and father—were in India to meet the parents of a boy they hoped would be a suitable husband. The boy happened to be living in Rochester, New York, where he taught engineering.

“Arranged marriage,” she said. “Best way.”

She seemed to be twinkling with defiance, challenging Audie to question her adherence to the custom of arranged marriage. He enjoyed hearing her overselling it.

“Rupesh and I were arranged by our parents. Americans find it so funny.” She shrieked a little and wobbled her head. “I didn’t know his name. Only his horoscope. He was almost stranger to me. Almost thirty years together now!”

While insisting on her approval of the custom of arranged marriage, she was also presenting herself as an antique, if not an oddity, and wished to be celebrated that way. She lived in the USA; she had shocked her American friends with this sort of talk and was defying Audie to be shocked. But Audie decided to defy her in return by smiling at her.

“Beth was a stranger to me when we met, too,” he said. “Picked her up in a bar.”

He overheard the Indian man—Bill? Rupesh?—say, “vas vesting away” and “his own urine”—and he turned away from the man’s disappointed wife.

“My father,” the man said, glad for another listener. “He was in intensive care at Georgetown Medical Center. They said they couldn’t do any more for his condition, which was inoperable cancer of pancreas. ‘He will be more comfortable at home.’ They were abandoning him, no question. He was wasting. As last resort we saw a yogi. He prescribed the urine cure. My father was instructed to drink a beaker of his own urine first thing in morning. He did so. After a week he grew stronger. Appetite came back. Hunger was there. Thirst was there. Second week, my God, he began to put on weight. Skin better, head clear. Third week he was walking a bit. Balance was there. Two months of this, drinking urine, and body was clear. Doctor said, ‘Miracle.’”