Paul Theroux - The Elephanta Suite - Three Novellas

“When we have some inkling of his whereabouts we will do so with dispatch.”

“‘Inkling of his whereabouts’? What’s the matter with you? I told you he has a return ticket to Bangalore,” she said, sitting forward, trying to shout. “I’ve already written my statement and I’ve answered those questions.”

“We have incomplete knowledge,” the man said, stonewalling.

“I spoke to your people!”

The man said mildly, as if to a child, “When was the first time you met this man?”

Alice did not want to answer, but the man was attentive, his eager patience unnerved her, and the truth would come out in any case. There was no point in withholding what in time would become well known.

“I met him on the train to Bangalore in March.”

“How did you meet him? Were you introduced?”

“He introduced himself.”

“Just like that. ‘Hello, how are you?’” The man had begun to write on a pad.

“He was in my compartment.”

“What class of travel.”

“Sleeping compartment.”

“First-class AC?” he asked, still writing, but faster than before, scribbling as he asked questions distractedly, breathing hard, his head tilted toward the privacy curtain at the side of the room, as though he were listening not to Alice but to something else. Or perhaps calculating, as they all seemed to do.

“So you have enjoyed the acquaintance of the named person for some three-over months?”

Alice decided to say nothing. Everything she said seemed to incriminate her, as if she were guilty of allowing it all to happen.

But fury overcame her, and she said, “Look. I was traveling on my own. He followed me. He had somehow found out my plans. You people seem to have ways of getting all sorts of private information.”

The man cocked his head and then shoved at the desk and stood up.

Alice said, “When do I get a chance to tell my side of the story?”

“Excuse me,” the man said, seeming to go meek. He crumpled the statement into his canvas briefcase and looked at once very stern and very frightened, as though emboldening himself—yet indifferent to Alice’s watching him. He screwed up his face and squinted, like a stiffened animal in the dark.

“Listen to me!” she said, her voice breaking.

But he had become an utter stranger in just seconds. He turned his back on her and pushed the curtain aside and was gone. She did not even hear the sound of his footsteps, a noiseless departure, another vanishing. From being a big persuasive presence he had become small and finally left without a sound, swallowed up.

That was what was most foreign to her now, the way people came and went, as they did in dreams. Indian vanishings, of which the elephant blocking the road had been an example. If the elephant hadn’t been there, she’d have gotten away. Always it seemed insulting and disorienting, with dream-like irrationality—people showing up when she least expected them, people dropping from view.

Alice felt cheated again. It was worse than an interruption. It was first an intrusion, and to make it worse, the man had turned his back on her and seemed to flee—another abandonment.

She slumped and put her head in her hands, heavy, bereft, sorrowful in the empty room. She had never felt farther from home, and the India she had known slipped away and became not just unfamiliar—ruins and shadows—but hostile.

When she heard a sound, the rings on the curtain rod scraping again, she lifted her head and was startled to see a woman, a nurse, the one she’d spoken to earlier, and behind this woman a man in a khaki uniform. They stood just outside the privacy curtain, holding it open, peering in, the man holding a briefcase.

“Are you all right?” the woman asked.

“No,” Alice said.

“The inspector wishes to speak with you.”

“It won’t take long,” the man said.

Alice saw on the man’s face a look of pain. He seemed awkward, even sheepish, unwilling to step beyond the curtain.

“All you’ve got are questions,” Alice said. “How about some answers?”

“I will be as quick as I can,” the man said. He entered the room and took a seat at the table while the nurse stood to one side. He opened his briefcase and slipped out a pad and pen. He said, “We have requested a fast-track hearing. It can be held in Bangalore, in the first instance, if you approve.” He clicked the pen and stuck out his elbow, as left-handers often did. “How well did you know the accused?”

“I’ve just told you,” Alice said.

“I’m sorry, I don’t follow.”

“I told your man.”

“What man do you mean?”

“The other policeman. The young one. That just left here.” The inspector turned accusingly to the nurse and said something fierce—it might even have been English, it certainly was a reprimand, but it remained incoherent to Alice. Yet she could tell that something had gone wrong, that there was tension between the policeman and the nurse in which her own misfortune, her pain, did not figure.

“I don’t get it,” Alice said.

“We have no other man. I am assigned to your case.”

“So who was I talking to just a little while ago?”

The policeman had been facing away from her all this time, staring at the serious face of the nurse. He was still looking at the nurse, and now she looked appalled.

He said, “Let’s pray it wasn’t one of these journalists.”

The story appeared the next day in the Hindustan Times. The policeman who accompanied her to the station handed the paper to her, folded, but why would he give it to her if there was nothing in it? Alice saw the story on the third page and began to read it. When she came across “I met him in February on the train in my compartment,” she averted her eyes and turned the paper over on the seat so that she would not have to look at the headline: “Alleged American Rape Victim Knew Her Assailant.”

She sat in the Ladies Only coach with three other women and two children. One of the children was a chubby boisterous boy who tugged at his mother’s sari and then climbed onto a seat and jumped noisily to the floor, clamoring for attention. Alice disliked the fat boy and disliked the woman for her placidity. The big pale mothers indulged the spoiled child, taking no notice of the small girl, who sat wincing at the boy’s disruption.

Only a few days before, Alice would have struck up a conversation with the women; she had believed such women to be strong, holding India together. She now saw them as complacent and hypocritical, bullies and nags to everyone except their sons, allowing them to rule. My mother calls me Bapu. It means Dad.

These women had betrayed her. That selfish pushy boy would grow up to be a tormentor.

“Katapadi,” one woman said, seeing a station platform appear at the window.

Skinny sharp-voiced food sellers hovered at the open windows, calling to the women, holding teapots and trays of nuts and cups of ice cream.

The fat boy wailed for an ice cream and got one. He had a devilish face, and though he could not have been older than six or seven he seemed to Alice like a wolf child, with a shadow of hair on his cheeks, a low-growing hairline on his forehead, and a slight mustache. His fingernails were painted pink—Alice could see that they were chipped. His legs were hairy too. He sat down with a thump next to her and poked her with his elbow.

Alice felt violent toward him and wanted to poke him back, slap his hairy cheek. She said, “You’re dripping ice cream on my bag!”

She knew she’d made an ugly face and shouted for effect, to insult the mother. The boy scowled at her and lapped at his ice cream.

“Rupesh,” his mother said, calling him wearily.