Paul Theroux - The Elephanta Suite - Three Novellas

The man’s fluent reply was a reproach to her clumsy and patronizing attempt at broken English.

“Say the twenty-ninth.”

The man tapped his computer and peered at the screen.

“Down-train, departure is seven-thirty in the morning, arrival Chennai Central at two P.M., give or take. What currency are you proferring?”

Alice paid in dollars, a little more than five, which she counted into the man’s hand. She received her change in rupees, with a freshly printed ticket.

“Have a nice day,” the man said.

She smiled at him, grateful for his efficiency, his effort to please, the accent even, which seemed like a favor to her, the man being himself.

But it wasn’t a pleasure trip to the coast, as it had probably seemed to the clerk. She had told Priyanka and Prithi that the journey to Mahabalipuram was more in the nature of a pilgrimage, and so it was. The elephant carvings on the wall and the great rocks at The Penance of Arjuna awaited her. It was not a comfortable summer-camp-like place, protecting her, as the ashram was—Swami in charge, the devotees like cultists and counselors—but rather a quest. She was not looking for shelter and ease; she sought revelation and inner peace. Stella had found an easy option with Zack. The devotees at the ashram were complacent in their piety, as the workers at InfoTech were boringly ambitious. And as for their mimicry—putting their education and achievement to use by making phone calls to the United States, something American housewives and college students had done as part-time workers in the past—these InfoTechies were making a career.

It is not my career, Alice vowed. She was sad that the employees were satisfied with so little, but of course if they asked for more, if they demanded to be fairly paid, they would not have jobs.

She told Miss Ghosh that she would be taking a week off.

Miss Ghosh made an astonished face, her lovely dark eyebrows shooting up. “You have applied for leave?”

“I guess you could say that’s what I’m doing now.”

“This is rather sudden. We must have ample notification.”

Alice smiled at her, gladdened that Miss Ghosh was confounded.

“I am a casual worker, as you said. I can be dropped from the roster at any time, without prior notice. I have no medical benefits. I’m not even paid very well.” She smiled again, to allow what she said to sink in. “And you tell me that I am obliged to give you ample notification?”

“We take a dim view of irregular shed-jeweling practices.”

“It’s called a vacation. I haven’t had one.”

The woman had spoken to her in the tone of a headmistress, and it was odd how quickly the tone had changed from the other day. Just when you thought you had a friend in India, you looked up and saw a rival.

“The normal procedure is that one builds up leave over time.”

“But I’m casual labor, and on the lowest pay scale.”

The woman, Miss Ghosh, merely stared at her.

“So I guess I owe you everything and you owe me nothing.”

“May I remind you that this is a company and not a charitable institution. What if everyone did what you are proposing to do?”

“I don’t believe this. Does this mean you’re refusing me permission to take a week off?”

“What it means,” Miss Ghosh said, picking up a pencil and tapping its point on her green blotter, “is that because of the precipitate nature of your request for departure, I cannot guarantee that your job slot will still be vacant on your return.”

This was the same grateful woman who had said, You have worked wonders. I think you are being modest about your achievements.

“What is your purpose in this holiday?”

“Excuse me?”

“Where are you going, may I ask, and who with?”

Alice said with a hoot of triumph, “With all respect, I don’t understand how that is any of your business.”

And she knew in saying that, in seeing Miss Ghosh’s face darken—the prune-like skin around her sunken eyes, the way Indians revealed their age, and the eyes themselves going cold—that she had burned a bridge.

Things went no better at the ashram. She did not need to seek permission to leave—after all, she was a paying guest. Yet when she broke the news to Priyanka, who, because she spoke Hindi, held a senior position as a go-between and interpreter with the ashram staff, Priyanka became haughty and said in the affected way she used for scolding, “I am afraid that Swami will not be best pleased.”

“It’s only a week.”

“Swami is not happy to see people using his ashram as a hostel, merely coming and going willy-nilly.”

“One week,” Alice said, and thought, I have never heard an American utter the phrase “willy-nilly.”

“But you are requesting checkout.”

“I’m not requesting checkout, as you put it. I just don’t see any point in my paying for my room and my food if I’m not here.”

Priyanka turned sideways in her chair and faced the window. She said, “If you like, I will submit your request. You will have to apply in writing, in triplicate. I will see that your request is followed up. But I’m not hopeful of a positive result.”

“Well, what’s the worst that can happen? I’ll leave my backpack in the storeroom and get it when I come back. And I’ll hope there’s a room available.”

“Ashram cannot assume responsibility for your personal property, as though we are Left Luggage at a station. This is a spiritual community.”

Alice said, “Swami has personal property. People give him money. He has a house. He has a big car. He has another house in Put ta parthi. Are you kidding me?”

Priyanka pursed her lips and said in a stern and reprimanding way, “Swami is our father and teacher. It is not for us to question him. He is the embodiment of love. He is a vessel of mercy.”

“Then obviously such a paragon of virtue won’t have the slightest problem with anything I say or do. He’ll forgive me and give me his blessing.”

As soon as she said it, she realized it sounded too much like a satire of Swami. Priyanka fell silent. Alice knew she’d gone too far.

Another bridge in flames. She went to see her last friend in Bangalore. He looked miserable. His leg dragged at the chain, and then she saw the stain running beneath his eye, gleaming on his rough hide. The mahout, Gopi, clasped his hands and with pitying eyes urged Alice to back away.

She boarded the Super Express to Chennai in a mood of triumphant farewell. Although Priyanka had said it was impossible for her to leave her bag behind, Alice found a devotee who was willing to lock it in a storeroom. She knew Priyanka was being destructive. Perhaps Priyanka saw that she was being left behind. Whose fault was that? She was the one who refused to travel on Indian Railways. Alice was leaving Bangalore, the ashram, and the job at Electronics City, but she was well aware of her slender resources. Eventually she might have to return and negotiate and be humble, but she hoped not.

The uncooperative people of the past few days only strengthened her, as Stella had done. I’ll show them, she thought. I don’t need them.

Though these Indians were difficult, India was not hostile. It was indifferent, a great, hot, uncaring mob of trampling feet in an enormous and blind landscape, damaged people scrambling on ruins. But why should anyone care about me? The country was so huge and crowded that if anyone seemed to care—to try to sell her something, as the hawkers were doing now in the train—it was because she was a foreigner and probably had money.

“Nahi chai hai,” she had learned to say. Leave me alone.

She had come to understand what the solitary long-distance traveler learns after months on the road—that in the course of time a trip stops being an interlude of distractions and detours, pursuing sights, looking for pleasures, and becomes a series of disconnections, giving up comfort, abandoning or being abandoned by friends, passing the time in obscure places, inured to the concept of delay, since the trip itself is a succession of delays.