Paul Theroux - The Elephanta Suite - Three Novellas

“Your fault,” the first man said.

Alice said, “You want me to drop the charges so that Amitabh can go ahead with his arranged marriage?”

“That’s the idea.”

“Does this woman know he’s a rapist?”

“The charge will never be proven, so why waste your time?”

“That poor woman,” Alice said. And without her being conscious of their leaving, the men simply disappeared.

Priyanka was waiting for her at the far side of the pavilion, near the statue of Saraswati balancing her sitar. She took Alice’s damp and anxious hands in hers and said, “We’re concerned that you have so many visitors.”

“I can’t help it. I don’t invite them.”

Priyanka released Alice’s hands and took a step back, a self-conscious move, like a formal dance step, as though she’d rehearsed this.

“The committee has met and decided”—she tilted her head, another affectation—“with regret, that you’ll have to leave.”

“When?”

“Forthwith. Oh, we can suggest some other places where you’d be comfortable.”

Alice had begun to walk away. Without turning, she said, “I don’t want you to know where I’m going.”

Her rucksack that had been such an awkward burden months ago was now much smaller. She’d given away all her cold-weather clothes. She had her saris, some T-shirts, the shawls. Since the assault, she had become obsessed with covering herself.

There was one place for her to go—in a sense, the only place, but logical: the last place.

From her tiny room above the stable she could hear the snorting of the elephant. And she saw the gateway leading to the lane where she had stood the previous day, her pack on her back, a plastic bag in her hand—carrots for the elephant. The elephant had seen her first, had trumpeted, then nodded and tugged at his leg chain. He rocked to and fro on his great cylindrical legs. Hearing him, the mahout had appeared, and smiled when he saw Alice, and approached her. He grasped her predicament in an instant. He didn’t need language or explanation. He worked with animals. He did not need to be told when one was lost.

He gestured decisively with his hand, clawing the air, saying “Come” with it, using his head, too, to be emphatic.

Alice smiled to show him she understood, and when she shrugged, seeming helpless, the mahout became active, began talking in his own language, and called to an open window. A woman stuck her head out, probably his wife, and she listened to what the mahout was saying.

Wiping her hands on a blue towel, the woman swept out of the ground floor door, her legs working quickly but invisibly under her sari, and went straight to Alice. She did not offer a namaste. She took Alice in her arms, enfolded her, and Alice began to sob.

She also thought, Is it so obvious that I look pathetic? How friendless I must seem.

She valued her own strength, she believed she was tough—too tough, she often thought—and here she was, weeping in the arms of a stranger.

That was what the assault had done to her—turned her into a wreck. People say, You’ll be stronger for it, but I will never be strong again.

He has broken me, she thought. She had not dared to think it in the ashram, where they’d seen her as a tough American—tough enough to be turned into the street. But here, among these kind people, in the presence of the nodding elephant, she could admit to being what she had become, a weakling, in tears.

The woman took her to a sink and put a piece of soap into her hand and urged her to wash her face. Then she sat Alice at a wobbly table and brought her a dish of rice, a bowl of dhal, some okra, some yogurt, a sweetish paste, a lump of glistening pickle.

“I hadn’t realized how hungry I was,” Alice said.

The woman was smiling, as though at her daughter. She understood Alice’s gratitude. She brought out a framed photograph, a young woman in a cap and gown, a graduation picture.

“Mysore,” the mahout said.

Their daughter, obviously, looking proud, holding a rolled-up diploma. Working in Mysore, probably Alice’s age. Their own daughter’s absence made them sympathetic.

The mahout stood at a little distance, bandy-legged, in torn trousers and sandals, a turban knotted on his head, watching Alice eat.

Afterward, the woman brought a bowl of warm water for Alice to wash her hands, a small towel, a broken piece of soap.

All this ritual, shuffling and serving, and then, snatching air with her hand, the woman gestured for Alice to follow her. When Alice bent to pick up her rucksack, the woman waved her away. The mahout called out the window, and a young girl hurried into the room, hoisted the rucksack, and unsteadily mounted the stairs behind them.

Up the flight of stone stairs there was a small room overlooking the courtyard, where the elephant was chained. The bed was on a low frame, near the wall sat a table and chair, and above them hung a colored picture of a seated god—perhaps Shiva, with a cobra hovering over him. On the floor a pale pink rug, at the far wall a bookshelf: most of the books in English, biology, organic chemistry, physics textbooks. Of course, the daughter’s room, the daughter’s books. She was studying—what?—medicine? nursing? dentistry?

The old couple had no language to explain any of this, but no explanation was necessary. They had between them summed up Alice’s predicament, and they knew when to leave her alone in the room. Alice showed them some money, a purse of rupees, but they made motions of refusal and backed away.

So she lay for a while on the hard bed, the clean sheet, her head empty, feeling stunned. Time did not advance, it rotated, twisting around her, defying her to name the day or month, as though she were in suspension. She may have dozed, for when she next looked at the window, night had fallen. The elephant stood still, his broad back and the dome of his head gleaming in the moonlight.

Alice went downstairs to thank the woman. She was offered another meal, some of which she ate. Then she went to bed again and slept until dawn, when she became conscious of the warm animal odors, which were like freshly baked bread—the elephant under her window.

In the crowded, traffic-ridden city of frenzied millions, this courtyard and stable was hidden and peaceful, smelling sweetly of new straw and elephant dung.

I’m so lucky, Alice thought. In this enormous hostile city, where her life had been threatened, she had found rescuers—well, she’d seen the elephant first, and after that, the people. At breakfast, she gave the woman an envelope of rupees, about four hundred, not even ten dollars. The woman made a show of refusing it, a ritual of indignation, but Alice insisted she take it, and when she did, Alice felt better, for now there was a kind of contract. She would have time to think. It was easier among strangers.

The days that followed were dream-like and wonderful. She spent the mornings spraying the elephant with the hose—directing the nozzle into his mouth, into the pink nose holes in his trunk, and watched him spray himself, blowing water onto his back. She fed him, using the hayfork to make a stack of fodder, and she marveled at his eating. He could eat all day, shifting his weight from foot to foot, occasionally kicking the chain.

I have found friends, Alice thought. Once again she lost the sense of time passing, and she realized this was so because she was content. India was not the huge country and the crowded streets and the stinks and the racket; it was this stable yard, and this food, and these kind people, and this elephant.

She could tell that the mahout liked her from the way he cheerfully involved her in the work of caring for the elephant, finding ways to please her.