Paul Theroux - The Elephanta Suite - Three Novellas

He had stopped following the negotiation. He had a stomach for details, but not Indian details—minutiae, escape clauses, fine print, subsections of clauses. His presence was important to the meeting, but not his participation. In fact, he had discovered that his saying little added to his mystique and gave him more power for his seeming enigmatic. He had learned early on in Indian business deals that the power brokers were men of few words, well known and even revered for their silences. Underlings could be talkers, chatterers, hand wringers, anguished in their bowing and nodding. He had seen a man in a diving attempt to touch Mr. M. V. Desai’s foot in a show of respect, which was another reason for his saying, You bet your sweet ass I am. Touching his foot!

Anyway, the deal was apparently done. They had found a supplier, they had agreed to a price structure, they had approved the samples—the ribbed, composite roof tiles of fibrous plastic that looked so odd on the lovely table, identical to the ones made in Rhode Island at eight times the price, same quality, no liabilities, no restrictions on the noxious fumes such plastic-making produced—a class-action lawsuit was pending in Providence. The idea was to encourage the Indian tile maker to build inventory, to keep this supplier desperate and backed up and hungry, one or two payments in arrears. Shah would handle that.

Dwight’s attention had drifted from the boardroom to the promenade at the Gateway of India, where he’d been walking off his three days of jet lag, enjoying the late-afternoon coolness, the breeze from the harbor, and a bit fearful away from his suite.

“Ess crim. Ess-ess.”

He almost bought an ice cream, then remembered that he might poison himself. Instead he bought a soda, something called Thums Up. As he’d paid for it, a woman had approached him.

“Sir,” the woman said. She clasped her hands and bowed.

He was moved by her politeness, her submissiveness. He half expected her to touch his foot. Yet he resisted her. She was smiling—seeing into his suspicious eyes.

She saw that he was looking past her at the lovely building, and she seemed to read a question in his mind.

“Taj Mahal Hotel, sir. Best hotel. It is dop of line.”

Walking to the rail at the harbor’s edge, he saw that she was following him. What struck him was that the woman was stout and gray-haired, not destitute-looking, decently dressed in a blue sari and shawl, carrying a tidy straw bag. She was not a beggar but someone’s granny. An echo in his head, something to do with the woman saying dop , made him think: Deek—Verma was saying “teak.”

He said, “I can’t give you anything.”

“Sir!” the woman exclaimed. “I am wanting nothing.”

But that put him on his guard. In business here, in business generally, someone who said he wanted nothing was suspect. Who wanted nothing? Always someone who was untruthful, who had a plan, who wanted to negotiate for something specific. Never say what you want—this was a tactic he had learned from Shah on his first morning in India.

He was still walking, while eyeing the woman sideways.

“What is matter, sir?”

“Nothing,” he said; but he knew he was lying. He was wary of this big confident woman.

“Your first time in India, sir?”

“Second,” he said.

“Second! We are honored. You have made return journey.”

“Thank you.”

Now he didn’t look at her. He was walking along the perimeter of the railing, honking traffic on one side, bobbing boats in the harbor on the other, and also uncomfortably aware that the woman was keeping pace with him. Why hadn’t he brushed her off? Why had he thanked her? Because she wasn’t a beggar. She was a plump housewife, a granny maybe; not indigent. She wore gold bangles.

Probably an evangelist, he thought. She’s going to hand me a religious pamphlet. If not Hindu then something Christian, with Bible quotations. One of those busybodies. Are you saved? And when he said no, she would set about to save him.

Without slackening his pace he said, “What do you want?”

She laughed a bit breathlessly because he was walking fast and she was trying to keep up and failing. “Only to bid you welcome, sir.”

“I appreciate it.”

“You are a kind man, I can see.”

That was another giveaway: only someone who was angling for something would say that.

“I’m a very busy man,” he said.

But if I were so busy, he thought, why would I be swigging a Thums Up and sauntering along this seafront, yapping to this woman at four in the afternoon? And he knew she had detected the same idleness in him.

“As you wish, sir. I will not detain you further.”

She dropped behind. He kept walking to the end of the promenade, where there was no shade and the only people were some boys fishing with bamboo poles at the revetment below the rail.

He glanced over his shoulder and saw that the woman had stopped walking and was sitting on a bench, though was still watching him, perhaps to give him his privacy, having abandoned any thought of talking to him. Had he been rude to her?

Continuing to the end of the promenade, he was startled by a commotion ahead, some children being loudly threatened by an Indian man in a white suit. The man was old, white-haired, and fierce, waving a cane at them, swiping the air just above their heads and shouting.

Dwight summed it up. The children, Gypsy-looking, had obviously asked him for money—a young boy in shorts, a small girl in a red dress, a taller girl in colorful skirts. But they were skinny and poor and probably persistent; the man had taken offense and was screeching at them to go away. The stick looked wicked in the man’s furious grip, and he struck with it again, just missing the taller girl, who seemed terrified.

“Hey!” Dwight called out. “You!”

The man swung around, and seeing Dwight he stepped back, looking chastened. Dwight saw just where he could snatch the cane and disarm the man, and maybe elbow him in the gut. But the man’s anger left him, and as he dropped his guard, Dwight went nearer.

“Leave those kids alone!”

The man made a conciliatory gesture with his hands and backed away.

“Acha. Acha.” And, still muttering, he moved quickly, now using the cane to propel himself into the street and amid the traffic.

“Thank you, sir,” the tall girl said, and she knelt and touched Dwight’s shoe, as the underling had attempted to do with M. V. Desai.

The girl had large famished eyes, and though she was child-sized he could see she was the eldest, probably sixteen, not wearing a sari but rather a white blouse with long sleeves and traced with embroidered flowers; a thickness of red, slightly tattered skirts; and gold satin shoes, like dancing pumps. She did not wear gold jewelry, but instead colored bangles and orange beads, and had a marigold pinned in her hair.

All this Dwight took in because the two smaller children seemed so drab and fearful, the girl in the dress, the boy in shorts, both of them twelve or so. But who could tell the ages of hungry children? They might have been older, but stunted.

“Be careful,” Dwight said. “That old man could have hurt you.”

But at that point the children had begun looking past him, and he turned to see the old woman in the blue sari hurrying forward, her basket bumping against her side.

“You are a good man,” she said. “You have protected my children from wrath of that wicked person.”

“These are your kids?”

“I am their auntie. I have come to meet them.” She had taken the small boy’s hand, the small girl pressed herself against her, and the Gypsy girl smiled and seemed to skip. The woman was walking and still talking, not looking back. “Now you will come and have cup of tea with us.”