Theroux Paul - A Dead Hand - A Crime in Calcutta

"Better," she said, leaning over me. "But I can still feel tightness here and here."

"Good."

"Not good," she said.

"So I'll have to come back."

"If you want to."

"I want to."

"Are you sure?"

This testing was a little like the massage — a questioning pressure, a tentative flirting, a deeper return, that teased me and gave me pleasure.

"Please."

When had I ever pleaded before? But I meant it. Nothing else seemed to matter. Her silence was also a form of pressure.

"This place is magic," I said, to encourage her to speak to me.

Her muted laugh, more like the contraction of a muscle, made me wary, almost fearful of what she'd say next.

"You don't even know where you are," she said with the energy of that same suppressed laughter. "And you don't know me."

"I want to know. I want to come back." I must have sounded like an overeager child. I lay naked and oily on the table.

"I know exactly what you want," she said. I did not see her move, though she must have because the flame of the oil lamp had begun to shimmy.

She put a robe over my shoulders, and I slipped off the table, stood unsteadily, and tied the cords. She, who had loomed over me and had seemed so powerful, now stepped aside, looking almost fragile.

I wanted to convince her of my sincerity and my worth, but I was out of ideas. I knew I was in subterranean Calcutta, but above ground the chaos in the city echoed the chaos in my mind. Perhaps that was why I wanted to come back to this vault. I yearned to see her again. This need gave me a vague sense of obligation, as though I owed her for her good will, the close attention of her hands. She had touched me. I wanted somehow to repay her so that I could return.

"What's the name of the hotel?"

"The hotel?"

"Where Rajat had the problem."

"Where Rajat claims he had a problem," she said, correcting me and putting her hand on my arm, a mother's caress of consolation. She went on, "Never mind that. It's Rajat's affair. I'm sure you have plenty of more important things to do."

"I have some spare time." I wanted to say more, that I had nothing but time, that I was grateful for her attention precisely because I had failed to make anything of my visit, that I had nothing to write about, nothing in my head, and only the slightest desire to make notes. Looking at the hotel would help me kill one of my vacant hours.

She saw the earnest, perhaps pathetic willingness on my face and looked almost pityingly at me.

"You'd be doing Rajat an enormous favor," she said.

"I want to do you a favor too."

"We're a happy little constellation," she said. "You could be part of it."

"I'd like that."

"It's, um, a shabby little hotel called the Ananda, behind New Market — the Hogg Market."

"The corpse just turned up in the room?"

"I have no idea. Rajat was hysterical. He'd been traumatized. All I know is that is what he told me, that he saw the dead person and he ran."

"When did this happen?"

"It was three weeks ago. Charlie and I were out of Calcutta then. That's why Rajat was in the hotel. He was waiting for us to come back."

"So you don't know more than that?"

Her obstinate smile of disapproval had never looked brighter.

"Don't you see?" She was beaming at my stupidity, pushing the door open to take me back to the lobby of the mansion and the waiting car. "That's why we were counting on you."

All this kindness and consideration — the car, the driver, the masseurs, Mrs. Unger's surprise appearance, the massage, the teasing conversation about the hotel, then the car again, the driver again — seemed so generous and helpful, anticipating my desires.

But when it was over and I was back on my verandah with (at Mrs. Unger's suggestion) a glass of mango juice, I realized that I'd been manipulated. Every move had been planned, and I had allowed myself to be exposed — manipulated in every sense, exposed in every sense.

When you're alone in a distant city, floating as foreigners do, and someone is kind, the kindness is magnified and so is your gratitude. If you're a man and that kind person is a woman, you might feel you've been touched by an angel.

A first-time traveler might have been smitten. I was not. I had been traveling too long not to be suspicious of such attention. I had not forgotten that this had all come about because Mrs. Unger had asked me a favor. She had been specific at first, but had gotten me to the Lodge and into her hands by a deft series of moves, the way someone might try to sell you something expensive — in the very manner an Indian might sell you a carpet. "Have a cup of tea, sir. No need to buy, just look…"

I was almost persuaded. But some people are so smooth, their very persuasiveness is suspect, again like the Indian in the carpet emporium who marshals so many arguments in favor of the value of the thing he's trying to sell you, you are convinced it's a fake.

It was hard for me in the midst of this to see Mrs. Unger as an American. The finely draped sari and the meticulous henna tattoos on her feet impressed me, but I'd seen other Americans with that studied appearance. Her haughtiness and her decisive manner made me listen, but something else bothered me — her presumption. She wanted me to do her a favor; she, like her Indian counterpart, wouldn't take no for an answer. And there was the sequence of events, from the drink at the Oberoi to today, her hands on me. She had planned everything, as an angel might, as someone diabolical too, and she'd thought I hadn't noticed her calculation.

The very skill of the manipulation made me doubtful, the way the sweetest words can make you shrink in fear. I won't hurt you can sound terrifying. I did not want to fall too fast. Mrs. Unger seemed to know a lot about me. Your friends at the consulate. She knew my work and where I lived, and she probably knew that I was living hand-to-mouth. But what she didn't know, because wealthy people never seemed to know this, was that I had all the time in the world. I didn't want to be possessed by her.

I did not hear from her after that. Not a word. After the imploring letter, the pleasant meeting, the magic fingers — nothing. She had occupied two full days of my time in Calcutta and now I spent a day waiting, feeling uncomfortable, in suspense and sensing rejection.

She had teased me, made me feel helpless, invited me to the inner room of her strange mansion, which I thought of as Mrs. Unger's vault; and now she was inaccessible. I know what you want was a tease, but truthful. It put me all the more in her power, because she knew, because she denied me.

That night I made some notes, something to the effect that the first infatuation of a love affair is a delusion of possession. Nothing else matters. And about how I enjoyed the feeling for its making me youthful. But I also knew that it made me obvious and foolish, even ridiculous, because I was middle-aged and out of ideas.

With time on my hands, I decided to investigate her request by paying a visit to the Ananda Hotel.

The Ananda was one of many narrow, decaying four-story hotels on a side street off New Market. A persistent beggar, a woman with a baby, pleaded with me, dogging me for a whole block, moving as quickly in bare feet as I did in sturdy shoes. I was reminded of Howard's story of the nanny who used her boss's child for begging. I got rid of her with five rupees, and seeing my money a tout shouldered me aside, chanting, "Shawls, pashminas, scarves — for you, sir, shahtoosh," while another tout with a skinny sweaty face howled, "What you want, sir? Anything!"

What I wanted was to get a clear view of the Ananda as I dodged oncoming traffic and the march of pedestrians. Approaching the hotel, I was spotted by a man sitting in front of the Taj Palace, another flophouse, who said, "Try here, sir. Best price."