Paul Theroux - The Elephanta Suite - Three Novellas

“Please take some more dhal,” Mrs. Shah said. “It’s a family recipe. Tarka dhal—very creamy, you see.”

She was a lovely woman, younger than her husband, with a smooth serious face and a slightly strained manner, a kind of concern that Dwight understood as the effort of being hospitable to a big American stranger who had a reputation for bluntness. Shah must have warned her, but Shah was much more confident these days.

“And this,” she said, serving him with silver pincers what looked like a flattened muffin, “this is my mother’s uttapam.”

“Delicious,” Dwight said. “I’m not eating meat ever again.”

“Thank you,” Mrs. Shah said. She rang a bell and a young woman entered with a bowl of rice. As the woman stood next to Dwight, serving him, he had one thought in his mind. These days, when he met a woman in India, he thought, Would I? To this one, he nodded and smiled, thinking, Yes, I would.

“My father was a businessman,” Shah said, glancing at the framed photograph as he spoke. “He started as an accountant, then created a firm and eventually had a huge business—bought his building, branched out into real estate and investment. He did very well. My brother and I had a privileged upbringing. But as he got older he prepared himself, and at last he embarked on his journey.”

“Where did he go?”

“Not where, but how, is the question. He walked, he slept on the ground. He begged for alms, holding bowl. He wished to be come a saint. It was his aim.”

“Renounced everything?”

“Completely,” Shah said. “Not so, my dear?”

Mrs. Shah tipped her head in regret.

“Obeying the mahavratas,” Shah said. “The big vows. No injury. No lying. No stealing. Chastity. Lacking all possessions. Meditation and praying only. And walking to the shrines, day and night, begging for food.”

Now Dwight looked at the picture of the wealthy investor, who out of piety had reinvented himself as a beggar. Dwight said, “It’s quite a trajectory.”

“Jain trajectory—Buddhist too,” Shah said. “My brother and I looked after my mother. And my turn will come.” He suddenly became self-conscious and smiled at his wife. “Then my son will look after my wife. It is our way.”

“In this other picture he’s wearing a mask,” Dwight said.

“So as not to breathe in microbes and fleas.”

“So as not to get sick?”

“So as not to kill them. Ahimsa. Not killing a life, even flea’s life.”

“I get you.”

“I will share with you some literature about our beliefs,” Shah said. “We are not extreme—not like the Digambara, who are sky-clad.”

“Sky-clad, meaning …?”

“Nakedness. They go about mortifying themselves in the nakedness state. No one on earth could live more simply. But we are Svetambara. We follow the tenets of our faith. It is ancient, I tell you—older than your Christianity, from long before.”

“Maybe you can tell me about it sometime.”

“We have sweetened curd for dessert,” Mrs. Shah said, ringing the servant bell again.

“I anticipate being a saddhu myself—giving up the world. Just wandering, as my father wandered. He was so contented.”

“I guess that’s an Indian solution to life.”

“No. It was penance. He was not pure previously. I am not pure.” He smiled at Dwight, who read in Shah’s smile, And you?

Dwight saw himself with a wooden staff and a loincloth and a turban, striding down a dusty road in the sunlight in sandals, eating an apple—did they eat apples? Birds sang, a fragrant breeze cooled his face, he carried a bowl full of flower petals. He smiled, mocking himself with this image, knowing that he would be visiting Indru later.

Shah’s apartment was luxurious, with gilt-framed mirrors and brocade cushions on a white sofa that could have held five people, a thick carpet—he’d left his shoes at the door—windows like walls with panes of glass that went from floor to ceiling, and a balcony that gave onto Mumbai, from this height a magical-looking city of twinkling lights and toy cars.

The food could not have been simpler, yet it had been served on the thinnest porcelain; even the bell that Mrs. Shah rang to summon the serving girl looked precious. The colored portraits on the walls could have been deities, objects of veneration, as well as a valuable collection of paintings.

All this time, Shah was talking about Jainism, atonement, penance, poverty.

“Nirjara —process of atonement,” he said. “Ahimsa —respect for all living things, great and small, all jiva , all life and soul.”

The mention of living things great and small made Dwight think of his partners in Boston. He said, “Have you given any thought to my proposal? I’ve cleared it with the firm. They’re pretty excited.”

“I have reflected deeply on it,” Shah said. He kept a studied tone of reluctance in his voice that Dwight recognized as an eagerness he didn’t want to show. “I will accept. I will do my level best.”

To match Shah’s tone, Dwight was subdued when he quietly thanked him, but inside he was rejoicing. He wouldn’t have to make the long trip back to Boston. Shah would be perfect for the business seminar.

Leaving Shah’s apartment, plunging back into the city, he was reminded that it had been the second time he’d been inside the house of a wealthy Indian. Like the big soft apartment of Winky Vellore, it was a refuge. All of India had been shut out, more than from the fastness of the Elephanta Suite. At Shah’s, India almost did not exist, except in the paintings and photographs of Shah’s father, the wandering holy man, and the talk of atonement. The apartment had shone with polished silver and white porcelain and crisp linen on the gleaming table.

Now Dwight recalled that music had been playing softly, the sounds of string instruments, the soft chanting, the odd and irregular harmonies. And the big glass doors had been shut so that Mumbai was its lights and shadows, and it had sparkled, silent and odorless, far below. What floor had they been on? It seemed that they’d hovered at a great height in the splendor of a glass tower. And he knew he would always remember the experience for its comfort, the softness of Mrs. Shah, the beauty of the serving girl, the glint of the silver in the candlelight. Mumbai had looked like a city of crystal.

Now he was at Indru’s, in the stew of stinks and harsh voices from the lane, in the cement stairwell—his secret, his hiding place. Approaching the building, he’d heard a groan and looked aside and saw a cow, visible because of its pale hide, sounding human and helpless in its distress.

He kicked the stairs as he climbed, to scatter the rats, and when he got to Indru’s landing he tapped a coin on the iron bars of the outer door.

Padmini scuffed forward, unlocked the door, held the round brass tray with the oil lamp flickering in its dish. On tiptoes the small thin girl stretched to apply the mark with her thumb.

“Never mind that.”

She stared, her eyes shining in the firelight. On the days she worked at the salon her hair was lovely, her makeup like a mask, her nails thickly varnished.

“Where’s Indru?”

Padmini hesitated, then said, “Brother come.”

Dwight shut the door. He lifted the tray from Padmini’s hands. In the sounds of the traffic, the yakking voices of television sets, car doors slamming, the loud blatting of motorbikes, he heard the moaning of the cow suffering in the alley.

He waved his hand at the dark insects and white moths strafing the naked bulb above his head. He shot the bolt in the door, and when he turned Padmini was gone.

“Where are you?”

From deep in the far room, “Here, sir.”