Paul Theroux - The Elephanta Suite - Three Novellas

I’d like to leave my body, Dwight thought. He was a lost soul, but he was also reminded that for the past two days he had conquered his fear of India—in fact, felt possessed by it, weirdly vitalized, with something bordering on obsession. His body was a stranger he inhabited, but a risk-taking stranger.

I can’t help myself, he wanted to tell Shah. But Shah was pious; he would be shocked, as a family man, a Jain, someone who had never allowed himself to be led into a dingy room for sex with a skinny girl.

But what did Shah know of passion? Dwight could not explain how he was both attracted and repelled, like a drunkard with a bottle, sick from the pleasure of it, knowing the thrill, knowing the consequences. But no consequences could outweigh the ecstasy of the drink; no anticipated shame could prevent him from seeing the girl again. So there was shame in his desire, but his desire was stronger.

He couldn’t help himself. He drifted back to the Gateway of India at nightfall, and he loitered with the peculiarly unhurried walk of someone trawling for a woman, someone going nowhere. The old woman was not there. He felt sick at the idea that she’d found another man, yet that had to be the case. He was disgusted and gloomy, his vision clouded by his distress. He felt sorry for himself and for the girl Sumitra. He almost said aloud, “I should have given her more money.”

A young woman was staring at him. She wore a white dress, knee length, like a nurse’s, with a white belt and white shoes and knee socks. She did not look away when he stared back at her; she came nearer.

Instinctively he clapped his hands to the pocket where he kept his money, suspecting a thief. They worked in pairs, he knew that; and he knew how elaborate their scams were—some threw shit, some carried razors. Where was this one’s pimp? What was her ruse? The lump of his wallet on one side, the diamond wedding ring in its purse on the other—there was a safe for valuables in his suite, but he had not broken the habit of carrying the rejected ring.

He bought a bottle of Thums Up so that he could delay and have a look at the girl. The soda wallah seemed to recognize him, greeted him heartily, and then hissed at the girl. But she shrugged, and though she walked a few steps away, Dwight could see that she was lingering.

Using the bottle as a prop, he carried it to the edge of the walkway beyond the Gateway and pretended to be interested in the boats in the sea, their bows to the wind. He sipped and was calmed by the setting sun, the light breeze, the smell of roasted nuts on braziers, the sight of strolling families, the popcorn trolley, the energy of the boys jumping from the parapet into the frothy water. Lost in the rhythms of this activity, he felt his need for Sumitra leaving him.

“Please, sir.”

The girl in the white nurse’s uniform was next to him, putting on a pained pleading face. Why was she wearing this white dress and not a sari? Her hair was plaited into a long braid that lay against her back.

“Give me money, sir.”

She was neither a girl nor a woman, seventeen maybe, older than Sumitra anyway, attractive and primly dressed, an unlikely beggar, more like a hospital worker or a dental assistant in her knee socks and white shoes.

“What is your country, sir?”

Dwight turned away, feeling self-conscious. He wanted her to keep walking so that he could examine his diminishing ardor for Sumitra. He had come to search for her, and now he had concluded that the old woman had found someone else.

“I am hungry, sir.”

“What’s your name?”

“Indru, sir.”

“Do you work at a hospital?”

“Hair and nail salon, sir. But my money is gone.”

“Here,” Dwight said, and handed his bottle of Thums Up to her.

As though disgusted, she stepped back and shook her head.

“Why not?”

“You have taken some, sir. I cannot take from selfsame bottle.”

He was not offended but impressed that she would not share the same bottle: she was both a beggar and a chooser!

“I must have my own bottle,” she said.

“If I buy you a drink, what will you give me?”

He said it without thinking, without knowing what he meant. It was reckless, but he was in India. Who cared? On fine days, walking to the office, he had often encountered panhandlers on Boston Common, sometimes women, now and then young and attractive, if a bit grubby. He would never have dared to engage one in conversation or ask for something.

Indru smoothed her dress and said, “What is it you want, sir?”

“Think about it.”

He gave her some money for a bottle of soda, a hundred-rupee note—he had nothing smaller. Handing it over, seeing her become submissive and polite, bowing to him, he felt powerful and at the same time annoyed with himself for even caring.

Yet he sat on a bench and watched Indru buy a bottle of soda, and he was not surprised when she returned and sat next to him.

“Where do you live?”

“Far from here.”

“Where are your parents?”

“In village, sir.”

“Why is everyone always asking for money?”

“No work, sir.”

“But you work in a salon.”

“Casual work, sir. Not enough.”

“What kind of work can you do?”

“I can do anything, sir. What you like?”

He knew he had gone too far. As he raised his bottle and prepared to toss it into a trash barrel, the soda wallah hurried over—he must have been watching—and lifted it from Dwight’s hand. Just then, looking up, he saw across the road, four floors up, his Elephanta Suite, and in the distance, looming above the other buildings, the big bright windows on the top floor of Jeejeebhoy Towers. He got up and started to walk away.

“Where are you going, sir?”

“Got work to do.”

He walked quickly past the Gateway crowd, through the taxi rank and the traffic, then onto the sidewalk, where there was a guardrail. People plucked at his sleeve, not just beggars but shopkeepers—“In here, sir. All kinds of electronics”—but he kept walking. He passed a movie theater displaying a big colored poster of a fat woman with stupendous breasts and purple talons for fingernails. He was thinking: It wasn’t me. She was the one who’d asked.

“What is it you want, sir? Come inside,” a man in shirtsleeves demanded at the doorway of a curio shop.

Crossing a busy rotary of honking traffic, he began to notice the heat. He was perspiring now, but he would not let it slow him: he needed to go on walking. The sights, the shops, the churches made it easier for him—and wasn’t this a Christian church in the English style? He thought of going inside, but he saw a padlocked hasp on the front door.

Farther on he saw an emptier street, less traffic, just a few pedestrians, and heading there he found himself among lanes leading to another part of the harbor. He saw warehouses, a market with empty stone tables, the stalls vacated at this time of day.

Its emptiness looked attractive in this overcrowded city. He turned into the lane. He could see to the end, another warehouse, and water. Sensing movement, he looked down and saw a rat. He kicked at it, but the rat was unperturbed, big as a cat, nibbling at the husk of a coconut.

While he had been walking the sun had gone down. He walked under the afterglow in the sky, streaked with pink and gold. At the far end of the covered market was the warehouse, shuttered and dark, and stacked against it were great coils of rope and a partly rubbed-away sign, on which he could read the words Jute Mills.

He was near enough to the water to see the glimmer of the sea. He found a place to sit and drew a breath, thinking how odd it was in such a populous city to be where there were no people.