Paul Theroux - The Elephanta Suite - Three Novellas

“The Sai Baba people don’t like you at all,” he said.

“That’s not true.”

“It is a fact. They believe you’re selfish.”

It stung her, for though she denied it again, she knew there was some truth in what he said.

“You look at India and see people everywhere and it seems like a mob,” he said. “But it’s not—it’s like a family. We know each other. There are no secrets in India. Hey, this isn’t China! Everything is known here. And where a ferringi is concerned it’s all public knowledge.” He was smiling at her, then he opened his mouth to laugh and she got a whiff of the hot stink of his breath. “It’s funny how people come here from overseas—Americans, like you—and don’t realize how we are in constant touch with each other. We’re always talking. You have no idea what we’re saying. Because we speak English so proficiently, you have no need to learn Hindi. We know what’s going on!”

Alice had vowed not to listen to him or to follow his argument, and yet she was intimidated by what he said, understood it in spite of herself.

“Please leave me alone,” she said.

“Gimme a chance.”

She was so disgusted by his saying gimme , she did not reply.

“I can help you.”

She prayed for a station so that she could see how far it was to Chennai.

He read her mind, and that frightened her. He said, “This is Tiruvallur. Twenty more minutes to Chennai. Not far.”

She slid out her train ticket, which she’d used as a bookmark, and palmed it. The arrival time was printed on it, 1445.

“See? I’m right.” He was smiling again. “And I’m going back with you. You can ignore me, but we’ll be sitting right here, day after tomorrow.”

She was suddenly angry. She said, “It’s against the law for private information to be given out. Your friend at the ticket counter is going to be in big trouble.”

“Alice, want to know something? Huh?”

She went hot again with anger. She hated him. She feared she might cry, not from sadness but with frustration at his spoiling something she’d looked forward to, one she paid for. He had no right to force himself on her.

He was still smiling and said, “A lot of people in India think it should be against the law for women to be walking around alone. Wearing shorts! They think it’s immoral.”

“Then they have a problem,” she said, and became self-conscious because she was wearing shorts.

“Alice”—she hated his using her name—“listen, most things that people do in India are against the law. That’s how we survive. We’re too poor to obey the law. You can bribe anyone, you can do anything if you have money. That’s why we hate foreigners. We know they always bend the rules too, just like us, except they always get away with it.”

Against her will he had gotten her attention. She had found herself listening to him and was disgusted by his logic and wanted to stop listening.

“Hey, but not me. I don’t think like that. I know that foreigners have given us a lotta investment. My job, for one. I’m real grateful. I got so much to be thankful for.”

That last sentence, in his American accent, mimicry from one of her own lessons, turned her stomach. She got up and went to the door of the compartment, but when she slid it open, she could not move. A man in a gray uniform was standing inches away from her, the conductor.

“Chennai coming up, madam.”

“This man,” she said, gesturing at Amitabh, but without turning her head, “this man is pestering me.”

“Passenger making nuisance, madam?”

“He is talking to me.”

The conductor spoke in Hindi—perhaps Hindi, how was she to know?—and his tone was familiar and almost friendly. Amitabh replied as though bantering, exactly as he had described earlier, like a family member.

“Making unwelcome advances, madam?”

The conductor seemed unconvinced. It was like a conspiracy.

“No. But I wish he were sitting somewhere else.”

The conductor beckoned with his hole puncher for Amitabh’s ticket, which he examined.

“Passenger is holding valid ticket for this place, madam.”

“Never mind,” she said. She grabbed her bag and squeezed past him. She made her way to the end of the coach, where the vestibule door was open to the trackside.

The clicking of the tracks slowed, the wall of a culvert was visible, and soon the backs of houses, laundry hanging on poles protruding from windows. She heard the echo of clattering wheels and a sudden muffled rumble as the train drew into the station.

She leaned out the door and hopped off before the train came to a stop, and so she stumbled slightly and almost fell, drawing the attention of the bystanders, mostly porters in red shirts and ragged turbans. She hurried down the platform, following the exit signs, to the front of the station, where she was set upon by frantic men.

“Taxi, madam!”

“Taxi, taxi!”

They struggled with each other to be seen by her. They had hot frenzied eyes and red-stained teeth.

“I’m looking for the bus,” she said, pushing through them.

“Where going?

“Hotel, hotel!” another man was chanting.

“Bus. Mahabalipuram.”

“Take taxi, madam. Special price.”

She kept walking through the mob, resolute, yet fearing that someone would touch her.

“Bus is not there,” a voice said into her ear, mocking her. “Bus station is Mylapore side. I take you. Taxi just here.”

“Oh, God.”

She turned to escape this man and saw a crush of men in ragged shirts watching her and blocking the way. The heat here was heavy with humidity. Her clothes clung to her. Her face was already wet with perspiration. She wiped her face with her forearm and was bumped by the man saying “Taxi.”

“Fifty rupees, madam.”

“Forty,” she said.

“Okay, forty-five.”

A dollar. He hurried in a new direction while she followed, the other men falling back. He led her into the glare of the sun, a parking lot, and not to a taxi but an auto-rickshaw. It was too late for her to change her mind—she needed to get away from this station immediately.

She was glad for the breeze in her face, but the driver was talking incomprehensibly and sounding his buzzing horn. She was stifled by the fumes of the other vehicles and jostled by the sudden braking. At last he bumped through a gateway where, among food sellers and people with suitcases, she saw rusted and brightly painted buses parked in bays, facing a low building.

“Bus to Mahabalipuram,” she said to a man sitting on a crate.

The man was eating peanuts out of a twist of newspaper. His mouth was full, his lips flecked. He pointed to a bus.

“Where buy ticket?”

He swallowed and chewed again and said, “Ticket on bus.”

She walked quickly to the bus he had indicated and was relieved when she found a seat. Within minutes—anxious minutes for her—the bus filled with passengers carrying bags, some men with children in their arms, weary-looking women in saris, boys in baseball caps. Sooner than she expected, the bus shuddered and reversed out of its bay, slowly turned, and swayed and banged through the gateway.

The bus was overheated and made of loud metal, and when its sides flapped and clanked it seemed like a big old-fashioned oven with people cooking inside it, too many of them pressed together, sputtering and dripping. Alice’s discomfort verged on physical pain, but the sight of pedestrians out the window jostling on the sidewalk, the density of traffic, made her glad she was inside this contraption rather than at risk in the street. All she had to do was relax and practice the yoga breathing she’d learned at the ashram, and before long—a couple of hours, a woman told her—she’d be at the temple by the sea, safe among elephants.