Theroux Paul - A Dead Hand - A Crime in Calcutta

"Call it a safe haven," she said.

It was serene and orderly and swept clean. The place actually worked.

We had arrived at the back of the mansion, a room I remembered that gave onto the garden. From here and around the rear courtyard I recognized as the spa area — the massage room I'd been in, the steam room, the showers and plunge baths, and on an upper balcony some lounge chairs where, after the exertions of a massage or a scrubbing or a sauna, a person could lie down and snooze.

Two men lay sleeping there, their faces covered with towels, their legs stretched out. They were as still as corpses.

"Charlie and Rajat," Mrs. Unger said. "I love to see them together."

That first evening I'd met her, she'd said, "I never know what I ought to do," and "They're in charge." And I'd seen her as the uncertain mother, being gently bossed by her son and his friend. Now I knew better, but I was more than ever touched by her kindness.

Here as elsewhere in the mansion were men in white pajamas standing like orderlies, or like sentries. They greeted Mrs. Unger with a show of respect, not looking her in the eye but, in a habit of esteem, half bowing — and I would not have been surprised to see them drop to their knees and abase themselves, touch the hem of her sari and bleat in submission. I thought this because one of them actually made as if to do it, startling me as he knelt and rolled his whole body forward at her feet in genuflection.

"The garden," she said, stepping past the servant, extending her arm, indicating palms and bushes and red lilies and thick, pale tree roots surrounding a pool of glittering water.

"The massage rooms are down there, aren't they?"

"That's right. Bottom of the stairs."

"I really enjoyed the experience," I said.

She smiled, but vaguely. Had I interrupted her train of thought? She said without much emotion, "I'm so glad."

"I kind of thought we were headed there."

"All in good time," she said.

Was she teasing me? It was hard to tell. It was not as though this tour was frivolous. The more I saw, the more I was convinced that this was a large project — the size of the house, the number of children, the order of it, both as a school and a refuge, entirely self-sufficient, with a clinic and a spa.

She had said, I want you to know me. At the time her words seemed like procrastination. But now I'd seen enough to know that she was someone of real substance. She was an idealist, and she was kind; she was motherly, yet she had the efficiency and command of a businesswoman — all the qualities of a nurturer.

We had arrived at a downstairs lobby that fronted onto the garden. The moss-covered statuary, the damp bricks on the paved paths, the pool with its fountain — a marble cow's head spewing water from the pipe at its rounded mouth, a gurgling that seemed to cool the garden.

"Tea?" Mrs. Unger said.

"Perfect." But I would have said that to anything she suggested.

"It's herbal. One of our own blends. Mint and neem paste."

"I'd love some. Maybe with ice."

"We never use ice."

"Oh?"

"Think what ice would do to your system," she said, and before I could reply, she went on, "Traumatize it." A man in white pajamas was hovering. "Two pots of tea."

"Yes, madam."

"You run the whole place alone?"

"Charlie and Rajat are an enormous help."

"I'm amazed that you have no outside funding."

"I could use more funding, but I don't want the strings. It would mean interference. This place runs smoothly because I'm alone."

She talked about the running of the house, the staffing of the clinic, the spa, the school; but as always I was distracted by her beauty, her fresh face, her full lips, the way her eyeteeth bulged against them, her thick dark hair drawn back and held in a braid, the dangly gold hoops attached to the lobes of her tightly rolled ears, her long neck, her breasts that were defined even in the mass of twisted silk of her sari and shawl. Her hands — the arousing hands that had brought me to a pitch of delirium. Her words had never meant as much to me as her hands; her words were so abstract or esoteric as to be meaningless. But her hands had been all over me, every bit of my body, inside me. She had remade me with her hands, made me her own.

I was listening to her describe the work she did as a philanthropist, and I marveled, but I could not erase from my mind the pleasure she had given me as I'd lain naked under her hands. Yet she had not alluded to the episode. She'd given me no relief, only filled me with a kind of desire I'd thought was unattainable.

"I've never met anyone like you," I said.

"That could mean anything."

"I'm trying to compliment you."

"Thank you. It may seem an odd thing for me to say, but I don't think anyone is really able to know another person completely. We try, but — maybe it's best that way."

"You said you wanted me to know you. You wanted to know me."

"Know me better. Know you better. Not know completely. That's hopeless."

"What's the point?"

"Isn't it fun trying?"

"Frustrating," I said.

The tea had come; the servant had been noiseless. Mrs. Unger didn't say anything more. She allowed the man to pour us each a cup of the fragrant tea.

Forming in my head was the line I was looking forward to your healing hands — your magic fingers. It sounded pathetic and corny as I silently rehearsed it. But it was what I felt. I wanted more. Sitting there in dumb yearning for her, I felt like a monkey, with a monkey's hunger.

But I said, "You sent me a letter, remember? It was about a dead body in a hotel — very dramatic. I thought you wanted me to help you."

I couldn't tell her that I'd talked to Rajat, that I had paid two visits to the Ananda Hotel: I had no results. Next to this accomplished woman I felt inept, and I had no news.

"I was wondering if you remembered the letter."

"How could I forget it? I still have it — an actual letter, not an e-mail. Purple ink on handmade paper. Are you sorry you sent it to me?"

"Not at all." She spoke with utter certainty.

"Then what do you want me to do?"

"Ask no questions."

"Then what?"

She stared at me, looking triumphant, as though she'd trapped me. And of course she had.

"No more questions," I said.

"I was wondering if you were planning to stay in Calcutta."

No questions. I said, "I'll do whatever you want me to do."

"Nothing more today," she said, and with a gesture she signaled for Balraj to drive me back to the Hastings.

You might think — I certainly thought — her cool smile and distant manner would put me off and perhaps rebuff me to the point where I'd develop another social circle in Calcutta, or (as I had briefly planned) leave the city altogether. The opposite was the case. At the outset, she'd said that she knew I was close to the consulate. Though she didn't know Howard, she probably believed I was another consulate partygoer. She imagined that I mattered to those people.

Yet I'd seen them less and less because of her, and her days of remoteness had made me more dependent on her. Her not mentioning the letter made me memorize it; her distance had kept me in suspense. I had longed for her to call me. I had not been able to call her, nor could I lurk near her Lodge, because I had no idea where it was in this city of lanes and back alleys. I had desired her, she had been inaccessible, and I had been helpless — a pathetic way for a grown man to behave, and something new to me.

I had told myself that I didn't want her love, that I saw no future for us, that I thought her son and his friend were a little odd and off-putting. What did I want, then?

I was lying in bed that night, tuning my shortwave radio, trying to get the news from the wider world. I surprised myself by speaking out loud.