On the way to his hotel, the word came to him again. He was debauched. He had been aroused. He had held the Indian girl in his arms in that dusty room. Without being able to put the emotion into words, he felt he belonged here and could not remember how long he’d been in Mumbai or when he was supposed to leave, and didn’t care.
He was debauched, that was the word for how he felt—a corrupt man trifling with a teenage whore. It was bad enough that she was so young, somehow much worse that she could actually dance expertly—she knew the steps; she could have performed in a dance troupe, becoming brilliant. Instead she danced to titillate and seduce the greedy American who’d given her money.
It had been a colossal setup: the older, overfamiliar woman, the children he’d happened upon, seemingly by chance, the old man playing his role as an indignant and self-righteous pedestrian. Dwight, who thought of himself and his lawyer’s skills as shrewd, had been snared, fooled by this cheap trick, this ragged band, and he had gone the rest of the way, allowed himself to be lured into the room.
He was ashamed, but his shame did not overcome his wish to see the girl again. He felt sick with a need for her. He told himself she was poor, desperate, helpless, and the only way he could help her was by seeing her, letting her dance, making love to her, giving her money. The money mattered most; it was a kind of philanthropy—gift-giving, anyway—and might save her. If she had some money, she’d be able to give up the sex trade and be a dancer. He would tell her this.
“You are looking fit,” Shah said at the meeting the next day, but he peered a little too long and inquiringly.
They took their places at the table, and that was the first time Dwight raised himself from his chair and glanced down from Jeejeebhoy Towers to the Gateway of India for a look at the people milling around it.
The meeting with Shah and the suppliers was like an interruption of the day. Dwight endured it, approved the terms as quickly as they were set out, glanced over the draft contracts, and sighed when Shah began to quibble over the subsection of a clause.
“I would like to invite you to dine at my home,” Shah said. “It will be a simple meal, but you will understand better the custom of my people, the Jain.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve got some paperwork to attend to.”
He wished Shah had not invited him, because when he went in search of the old woman and the children later that day, he kept thinking of the purity and innocence of Shah’s earnest invitation. A simple meal. And here he was, pursuing a pimping old hag and those corrupted children, not her own but obviously kept by her to make money, and he was as corrupt as they were.
He waited until almost sunset before he began to stroll past the Gateway of India and the drink sellers, the peanut vendors, the ice cream men, the people hawking children’s toys, the balloon sellers. He knew that he would not find the woman—it was she who’d find him. And so it happened.
“Hello, my friend.”
She winked at him. She knew why he was there. She didn’t even ask him to follow her. She kept walking, and he was a step behind her. He hated himself, hated the thought that she knew him so well, but he told himself that it was necessary. He did not want to speak to her, and it was not until they reached the lane and stepped onto the porch of the stone house that she said, “Sumitra.”
“But no dancing.”
“As you wish.”
The girl’s dancing, the singularity of it, the glow of her soul in her whitened face, had upset him. He had not expected such seriousness, such concentration, such formality. The whole performance and the piercing notes of the music broke his heart and made her seem hopeless, using this brilliant skill to attract him for sex and money.
He gave the old woman a thousand rupees in an envelope, reminded himself that it was twenty dollars, and let her show him upstairs. As she left him at the door, he tried to read her face. He suspected that she despised him, but she gave nothing away.
The room was the same: the mattress, the tape player plugged into the wall under the portrait of the fierce, toothy, blackish-faced deity. Dwight waited, shuffling, too nervous to sit, and then the far door opened and Sumitra appeared and stepped forward.
She did not smile. She looked summoned, a little reluctant, like someone sent on an errand, which Dwight thought was exactly the case. But this time she wore a headdress, a sort of lacy veil, and her makeup was more carefully applied. She was barefoot and her anklets jingled as she came over to him. He leaned to kiss her.
“No,” she said, and averted her eyes, moved her head sideways with a pinched face, as though reacting to a bad smell.
She started the music and stood, one leg crooked, her arms upraised, to begin her dance.
“What are you doing?”
“I am dance,” she said.
“No dance.” He took her by the hand and set her down at the edge of the mattress, wishing that her anklets did not sound so merry. He had another envelope of money ready. He placed it in her hand.
Sumitra stared at him and tucked it into a fold of her thick skirt where there must have been a pocket.
No “thank you,” hardly an acknowledgment, just a sullen blinking of her yellow eyes within a shadow of mascara and a little nod of her head. How many other men had sat here and done this?
He had planned to give her the money and leave, but with her sitting next to him, her knees drawn up, her head bowed, the powder of her makeup prickling on his arm, she was like a cat in his lap. He could not get up, could not bear to abandon her.
The warmth of her body warmed his hands, the slightness of her figure aroused him. He fumbled with her clothes, to hold her. She squirmed slightly, and he guessed that she was resisting him, and he almost apologized. Then he saw that she was letting down the shoulder straps of her bodice, baring her small breasts for him. After that, he felt her hands on him, in a routinely practiced way, like someone feeling an obscure parcel, squeezing it to reveal what’s inside. Even though he recognized how mechanical an act this was, and despised himself for sitting through it, he was aroused. He let her do what she did well; she was intent, and silent, and then she spat on the floor.
“See you again,” the old woman said when he went downstairs.
The other children were staring at him in the vestibule. He said nothing, he was too ashamed, he thought, Never again , and was nauseated by the stinging reek of urine and cow dung in the narrow lane.
All through the following day he reminded himself that he was corrupt and weak. He felt sorrowful whenever he thought of Sumitra, her yellow eyes and small shoulders and thin fingers with the chipped polish on her fingernails. This sad and sentimental feeling penetrated him with the sense that he belonged in India and nowhere else, that he had begun to live there in a way that he could not explain to anyone.
“That man Blunden,” Shah said.
What man Blunden? Dwight thought. He had paid no attention to business these past few days. The name rang no bell.
Seeing his vagueness, Shah explained, “American man. He wanted information on outsourcing for his housewares catalogue. Pricings for commodities and products.”
“Yes?”
“He was Rishikesh side.”
“And?”
“A happenstance has occurred.”
“Can’t we do something?”
“He has met with accident.”
“Serious?”
“He has left his body.”
That was the Indian surprise. India attracted you, fooled you, subverted you, then, if it did not succeed in destroying you with the unexpected, it left you so changed as to be unrecognizable. Or it ignited a fury in you, as it had in Sheely, who hated the very name of the place, and spat when he said it. Or it roused your pity and left you with a sadness that clung like a fever. Even the simplest sight of it. He had watched an American woman enter the Taj lobby weeping after the drive from Mumbai Airport, her first experience of India, those five or so miles, the stretch of shanties, that had once shocked Dwight.
Читать дальше