Paul Theroux - The Elephanta Suite - Three Novellas

“I must hasten home,” Shah said. “We meet tomorrow.”

It was not like Shah to exclude him from a negotiation. And it was absurd that Shah had taken the initiative to give Dwight five days’ unpaid work while he shepherded the Harvard team around Mumbai. And Dwight was his boss! Yet Dwight was grateful. For those five days he had worked at this menial task. He had not gone to a club. He had not called Indru or Padmini. He had hardly thought of them. He had felt not virtuous—he was certainly not virtuous—but serious, and he understood the fatigue that creates a passivity that empties the mind and gives access to spirituality, the trance state induced by routine that helps in the practice of meditation.

“Many thanks,” Shah said the next day at Jeejeebhoy Towers before the usual meeting—a parade of eager manufacturers with ring binders of products, a lining up of contracts.

Shah was his old submissive self, deferring to Dwight and calling him “Mr. Hund.”

The last deal of the day involved a process for applying a rubberized coating to metal roof racks—not just the pieces that were fixed to the car, but kayak cradles, bike holders, attachments for skis and ski poles. This created an enormous inventory, since many of the racks and clamps were unique to a specific model of car.

Shah itemized the list of attachments and fittings, wetting his thumb and moving through the clipboard of papers. Two companies would be involved, a steel fabricator and the rubber coater. Shah knew about carbon quotients, potential bruising, the matrix of the rubber solution, even the windage—resistance of the carrier on the car roof.

Dwight looked on in admiration, forgiving Shah for putting him to all that trouble with the rice shipment, which was obviously a dodge—Shah didn’t want him to meet the Harvard team, for whatever reason. Never mind. Dwight was grateful to him for the days of pious mindless toil. He had almost forgotten his debauchery.

At the end of the day, Shah saw the businessmen to the door. Then he turned to Dwight and said, “Now we will go on our spiritual journey.”

“What’s that?” Dwight asked when the driver opened the trunk of the car. It was early morning, just after dawn, a sourness of damp streets, women scraping twig brooms in gutters. Out of the corner of his eye, Dwight saw two girls with enormous backpacks walking up the driveway. They had stringy hair and sandals. One was very pretty, the other one heavy, with a beautiful smile, saying, “This is unreal.” American girls: he envied them their innocence and wondered what their Indian surprise might be.

“Sack of rice,” Shah said. “Symbol of gift. Remainder will go by train.”

“Will go where?”

“Mahuli,” Shah said. “Adjacent to Mahabaleshwar.”

“Is that where we’re going?”

“Indeed so. We take luncheon at Poona and proceed to Mahabaleshwar, for Mahuli. You have checked out of hotel?”

“I’m going to miss that suite.”

Then they were on the road, sitting side by side in the back seat of the small car. The driver fought the other cars, jockeyed for position in the traffic, and once they were clear of Mumbai—it took over an hour—he struggled to pass the big filthy trucks that hogged the road, staring at Horn Please. Living in Mumbai could be horrible, but nothing was worse than a journey like this.

On the first open stretch of road, Dwight’s head cleared. He was able to recall the obvious thought that had occurred to him in the confusion of the previous day.

“You didn’t introduce me to those Harvard people.”

“Chappie?”

The silly name sounded even sillier the solemn way that Shah uttered it. Dwight said, “And his team.”

“They will prove to be excellent partners. Don’t think of Harvard as a mere college. It is a billion-dollar business, a tremendous source of contracts and expertise. Pay dirt. And skill sets, my God!”

Something he has just found out, and is preaching, is something I’ve known since I got into this business, Dwight thought. Yet he was glad for Shah’s enthusiasm, because that always implied willingness, and “pay dirt” made him smile.

“But you didn’t introduce me.”

“They were so busy, tied up most of the time. And they went sightseeing. Chor Bazaar. Crawford Market. Towers of Silence. Elephanta Caves. Side trip to Agra. They much enjoyed themselves.”

All the things he had never seen, while his own interest had been elsewhere. He said, “You thought I’d corrupt them.”

“Not at all,” Shah said without conviction. He said nothing more, and because Dwight was looking closely at him, he saw Shah’s nostrils widen—a breath instead of another denial, but it was the more telling for being a deliberate breath.

Now Dwight was surer of himself. He said, “You were afraid I’d lead them astray.”

Without blinking, Shah took another breath, flaring his nostrils again. He was a spiritual soul, his pieties were obvious in the office, yet he had the manner of an accountant—discreet, overcautious, revealing nothing, but giving off a distinct hum of repressed fuss. Something of the Indian businessman informed the spiritual man, with his credit and debit columns in the ledger of karma.

“You heard something,” Dwight said.

Anyone new to India would not have detected the slight head-wobble, or would have assumed it to be an involuntary twitch, a sideways nod on a bad stretch of road. But Dwight knew it was not a pothole. It was Shah’s acknowledgment; that tilt of the head was an emphatic yes.

“What did you hear?”

Shah did something with his lips, his mouth, and compressed his lips, another subtlety, as though he’d tasted something unpleasant, while at the same time, out of politeness, refraining from showing his disgust.

He said, “Are you knowing Cape Cod in Massachusetts?”

“Very well. I grew up not far from there. We spent our summers in Chatham.”

“Exactly. When I visited Harvard to pursue that research angle of business, they took me by road to Cape Cod. We visited lovely towns. Saw Kennedy compound from road. Went for a fine walk on expanse of beach. An impressive place with many vivid sights.”

Get to the point, please, Dwight thought, staring hard to speed him up. Shah had the Indian businessman’s way of speaking (and it had also been Winky’s way), which seemed designed to force you to submit, to cry uncle. But this manner was his strength in the firm.

He raised a skinny finger. He said, “One sight was more vivid than any other that day. Can you guess?”

“Maybe one of those big sailboats in Hyannis harbor?”

“Not at all,” Shah said.

“Kennedy compound?”

“Not.”

“I can’t guess.”

“It was me,” Shah said.

“You were the sight?”

“I was the sight. That day, in that place, I was indeed the most unusual feature. There were no other Indians anywhere we went—none in the restaurant, none in the museum. At the botanical gardens in the town of Sandwich. With this face and these hands”—now he looked at Dwight; until then he had been looking away—“I was the most visible.”

Wisible was also how Dwight had felt in his shame.

“I get it,” he said.

But Shah went on, saying, “Had I drunk beer in a bar, or gone about with a woman, or given money …”

“I said I get it.”

“In India, we see everything. We hear everything. And if you are visible …”

“Please stop,” Dwight said. He put his head in his hands. He saw himself, a big white goon, at the Gateway of India, at the charity ball with Winky Vellore, talking to Indru, whispering to Padmini, sneaking off to their flat, kicking the sand at Chowpatty Beach. Wisible.