Paul Theroux - The Elephanta Suite - Three Novellas

He went to his mother, who nuzzled him and hugged him. The other women cooed, as if to soothe the boy.

The women were opposite Alice in the six-seat compartment, occupying the three seats on one side, the children dawdling at their legs. And they stayed there, facing Alice in the corner seat on her side, two empty seats beside her. An invisible frontier ran down the compartment, not a racial barrier, Alice told herself, but a cultural divide.

She crouched, feeling wounded, hating the journey, sorrowing, feeling like an amputee. A cleaner entered the compartment with a whiskbroom and a sack for rubbish. The Indian women tossed in the ice cream wrappers and used tissues and orange peels. Alice twisted the Hindustan Times and tucked it into the sack of garbage.

Later, Alice was grateful for the women ignoring her. She slept soundly for short periods and was awakened only when the train screeched and halted at stations. Then she dozed again as the train continued into the afternoon.

She said nothing when the women and children pulled out their bags, turned their backs on her, and got off at a station where more boys were shouting. Aching with fatigue, she found she could not wake up properly, so she locked the door by working the bolt. She pulled down the tin shutter and slept deeply for a period of time, an hour perhaps, and was jolted awake—alarmed, gasping—when the door slid open.

“Bangalore City,” the conductor said.

She went tentatively to the ashram, where she was welcomed in a subdued way, gently, almost obliquely, as though she were fragile and had been injured. Alice thought, It shows on my face, it shows in the way I walk, in my whispers.

All topics unrelated to the assault seemed frivolous, and only Priyanka and Prithi dared ask about her experience. They seemed excited by her story. While seeming to commiserate, they wanted details.

“I have to see Swami,” Alice said, as a way of deflecting their curiosity.

In the past he had rebuffed her, but now it seemed that he too knew what had happened to her. Perhaps everyone knew. The devotee at Swami’s gate did not ask her name. He nodded, made a namaste with his hands, and said, “You may pass.”

Touching Swami’s feet, Alice knelt before him. He placed his fingers on her head covering and murmured prayers. He was smiling when she sat back and clasped her hands.

“Something terrible happened to me,” she said.

Swami was still smiling, his head slightly inclined, one of his familiar expressions, as though to indicate that he knew something she didn’t.

“My dear child. You have seen devotees walking on hot coals?”

She nodded. Early on, they’d arranged it. She had been invited. The fire walkers had made an elaborate business of it, praying before they set forth on the glowing coals, chanting as they hurried across, giving thanks when they were done.

“Their hearts were not burned. Feet only.”

But it was some sort of trick. Fire walking was a con. There was a scientific explanation for not scorching your foot soles, nothing to do with heat. Anyone who was sufficiently confident could do it without getting burned. And Swami was using this as a parallel for that fat bastard trapping her and dragging her into the field?

“Swami, I’m sorry, I don’t see the point.”

“You must separate body from mind. Mind must meditate and find peace. Body must be occupied with work. That way you will overcome tribulation.”

“I was injured,” Alice said.

“Injury is in mind. Rid mind of injury. Prayer will do it. Work also.”

“Have you ever seen a big suffering elephant chained to a post? That’s how I feel.”

“That is a good thought. But take it further. What if elephant keeps very still?” He held his hand before her to represent the standing elephant. “If elephant is still, elephant is free, not chained to post. Elephant is Lambodar.”

“Lambodar?” she asked.

“One with Protruding Belly. Ganesh.”

Swami twinkled at his own neat piece of wisdom, as though Alice had handed him a limp ribbon and he’d tied it into a bow. He was so pleased with himself he began praying over her, using his hands, murmuring sticky-sounding words.

“That is Ganesh mahamantra,” he said. “It comes from Ganapati Upanishad. It is used for beginning anything new in your life. If hindrances are there, hindrances are removed, and you can be crowned with success.”

Alice bowed and thanked him, she touched the hem of his orange tunic, and, still bowing, she backed away.

Crap, she thought.

“Swami is the answer,” Priyanka said. “Always, Swami sees to the heart of things.”

Alice agreed because she did not want to be cast out, but what Swami had said seemed like a libel on her only friend, the creature at the stable, who was not Ganesh at all, not a god, but hathi , just a nameless elephant trapped by a chain.

She visited the elephant. At a vegetable stall on the way, she bought a bag of carrots. The elephant wrapped the tender end of his trunk around each carrot and fed himself, crunching them, working his lower jaw, extending his trunk for more.

The mahout allowed her to spray him with the hose and, cooled by the water, the elephant danced back and forth, tugging his chain. If elephant is still, elephant is free, not chained , Swami had said. But the truth was that such an elephant, big and restless, was never still. It was always conscious of the grip on its leg, the clank of the chain, so what Swami had said was meaningless. The elephant could only be free without the shackle.

Alice stood, beholding the elephant’s eye, which was like the eye of a separate being, the eye of someone inhabiting the elephant’s body, someone like Alice herself. The words trailed in her head: I will never be the woman I was before—horrible, that fat man has changed me forever. She sorrowed for the innocent woman, trapped and frightened on that narrow Indian road.

“No, no,” the mahout cried out, rushing toward her, appealing to her, looking tormented and helpless, because for the first time since the awful thing had happened, Alice had begun to cry.

She had not gone back to Electronics City, had not even called Miss Ghosh. She knew she’d be unwelcome. She was stained, scandalous, an embarrassment, the subject of an investigation. But what did “fast track” mean? There was no sign of a hearing, only more paperwork—visa questions, a reprimand, and a warning because she’d put down that she was a teacher at InfoTech and she had no work permit. More official forms were sent, with detailed questions about places she’d visited, people she knew, Indian citizens she’d met—names, addresses, specific locations. Attach additional sheets if necessary. She was under suspicion. She had come to India to be free, and now she was under scrutiny and hated it. Everyone knew, of course they did. Only the elephant and his mahout still smiled at her as before.

She wondered, Should I leave? But she did nothing. The weather had grown hot, no rains yet, dust hanging in the air, particles of it on her lips. She languished in the soupy lukewarm air of the ashram, where time was so clouded it was measured in months.

Miss Ghosh’s secretary called her on the ashram’s emergency number, the only one she had, and passed on Miss Ghosh’s complaint that intrusive strangers were trying to get in touch with Alice. People who claimed they wanted to help were wasting InfoTech’s time. You couldn’t be more despised in India than being told by someone’s secretary you were a problem. Letters and printed e-mail messages were forwarded in bundles to the ashram. Using a phone card and the phone across the road at the ramshackle shop, Alice responded to the offers of help.