Paul Theroux - The Elephanta Suite - Three Novellas

From his first encounter at the Gateway of India, when the canny woman had tricked him with the elaborate scam involving the old man and the children, Dwight had seen India differently, accommodated himself to it, and begun to live a double life. He had sunk to the bottom and entered a new level of the Indian experience—the low life of the truly desperate. Although Shah said, “I ring you at your hotel last night—you not there,” Dwight explained that he had shut off his phone, and he was certain that Shah did not know he was elsewhere, living his other life in the grubby flat in Chowpatty. And he was glad, because he was not able to explain what he was doing and who he had become. His relationship with Indru in the two tiny rooms was equally unexplainable.

When you could not explain your absences, when you were living your secrets and were happier living them than you’d ever been, you were leading a double life. He knew that. He also knew that in living this way you had to accustom yourself to telling lies and remembering them and building on them, so that a whole world of obvious and gabbling falsehood was a front for the hidden and wordless reality. Something else he discovered about the double life: you began to lose track of your identity—at least he did. Someone said, “Huntsinger!” and his instinctive reaction was to think, Who?

How had it happened? Was it the sex, the young women, all the layers of living in India—the rooms, the religion, the castes, the crowds, the city of twenty million? His first visit to India had been a suspension of his life. Most Americans he knew went to India holding their nose, did what had to be done—found a contractor who would produce goods for one-fifth the U.S. price—and returned home, resumed living, fearing to be called back. That had been him once.

But he had found a life in India, or rather two lives: Indru’s little flat and the Elephanta Suite, the life of hidden, vitalizing sexuality that he was still learning and the boardroom existence he knew well, the world of contracts, competitive pricing, manufacturing, and outsourcing, the easy task of finding people who could produce good-quality samples—that is, copy the American sample at their own expense—and then signing them up, saying, “We’ll grow together.”

The most recent deal was with a maker of blue jeans in Poona—he looked so hopeful, so eager to please, with suitcases of swatches and samples. Look at pocket formation, look at seams, quality, double stitching. We can supply unlimited units. It is a good pant.

“What about a buck twenty-nine a pair, delivered,” Dwight said.

Shah conferred with the man and then turned to Dwight. “He can manage. Do you not agree, Mr. Hund?”

“Deal.” And later he said, “It’s like shooting tuna fish in a can.”

Shah smiled in bewilderment—how did you explain?—and Dwight was reminded of the days when he had feared Indian food, how he’d come with a case of tuna fish in cans with pop-off lids, which he’d eaten standing over the sink in his hotel bathroom.

Now he ate the food, most of it, not just the enamel plates of it that Indru and Padmini prepared, which they ate sitting on the floor of her little apartment, but also the dishes that Shah habitually ate. Adhering to the Jain rule of not eating any living thing, keeping to leaves and grains and lentils, Dwight had not been sick once. The idea was to keep it simple—no fish, no meat, no roots. He liked the okra dishes that Shah called bindi, the channa and gram, the rice cakes, the chapatis, the pooris. He ate no cold food, nothing from the street, nothing that had sat uncovered, no salads, nothing that had to be washed. Lettuce was fatal, so was water—water was a source of illness in India. Fruit that he had not peeled himself he didn’t eat.

He and Shah usually presided over a ceremonial meal in a restaurant as a way of sealing a contract. The deal with the blue jeans manufacturer was one of these, in a restaurant called the Imperial, a pleasant place near Church Gate. Dwight was asked to order first, and he glanced at the menu. Dine Like a Maharajah , it said. Chunks of mutton steeped in a savory broth and Slow-roasted chicken in a clay tandoor oven and Thick fillet of pomfret, Kerala style, with coconut milk in a spicy sauce. He clapped the menu shut and handed it to the waiter.

“Just a dish of dhal makni, some yogurt, and rice.”

“Will that be all, sir?”

“Unless you have bindi.”

The waiter wagged his head yes.

And someone at the table said, “Mr. Shah, you are a bad influence on our friend from America.”

“Oh, yes, exceedingly bad.”

Everyone except Dwight and Shah ordered from the menu.

“The sali boti is justifiably famous. Mutton and fried potatoes. Much talked about.”

Shah made a pained face.

“The prawns here are also very good, I’m told.”

“I don’t take prawns,” Shah said.

“I understand they raise their own chickens.”

“I don’t take.”

“The fish is flown in fresh from Kochi.”

Shah smiled as the men were served enormous portions of meat and fish, while he and Dwight dabbed at their simple portions like a pair of monks.

Dwight was complimented on his choice of diet, which was seen as a way of life, not as an affectation; it was a humble and healthy way of experiencing India. Almost without realizing it he’d become dependent on the food.

“No coffee for me,” he said at the end of the meal.

“Nor me,” Shah said. He frowned, as though preparing to deliver unwelcome news. “Doxins.”

Dwight nodded in agreement, feeling at ease and slightly superior to the meat-eating Indians. He looked around the overdecorated restaurant. It was elegant, but a gamy aroma of roasted meat hung in the air, along with the incense and the mildewed air conditioning. He looked closely at the other tables and noted with satisfaction that he was the only non-Indian in the place.

He tried to imagine what Maureen would say had she seen him looking so at home in the Imperial. “I’m going to India” didn’t sound suicidal anymore; it meant “I don’t need you.” Had Sheely or Kohut been in the restaurant with him they’d be wigging out—frightened, rigid with culture shock, dying to go back to the hotel, or on their cell phones reconfirming their flights home so as not to have to stay a moment longer. Beyond the dumb arrogance of mere bigotry, they would be terrified and angry, hating the place and the people. Dwight knew: he had once felt that way himself, like India’s victim.

That memory shamed him. How could a prosperous American lawyer with a first-class plane ticket feel that way, surrounded by the poorest people in the world?

Yet his partners would never have done what he was doing—sitting among Indian businessmen, scooping dhal with the torn-off ear of a flaky poori, spooning yogurt, nibbling the slippery bindi. He did not know anyone in the office who would have sat so comfortably here. He was pleased with himself; he’d proven to be strong. India no longer scared him—rather the opposite: it aroused him, made him feel engaged with the world, most of all made him feel powerful.

In that confident mood after the dinner at the Imperial he shook hands with the businessmen. He could look them in the eye and tell them that he was enjoying himself in India and mean it.

“You are welcome, sir,” one of them said.

“I’m learning so much,” Dwight said. “And I feel I have a lot to offer, too.”

After the men thanked him and left, Shah said, “Shall we walk?”

“I was going to get a taxi.”

“Taj Hotel is just that side.”

But Dwight had not planned to go to his hotel. He was headed to Chowpatty, to see Indru as usual. All through dinner he had imagined her waiting for him, lying in the charpoy, watching the little TV set he’d bought for her, Padmini squatting nearby, their faces bluish in the light from the screen.