Theroux Paul: A Dead Hand: A Crime in Calcutta

She talked about her business — textiles and fabrics, being funny about how she was overcharged, lied to, and always having to bribe customs officials — while I looked closely at her and at her attentive son and his Indian friend.

Her opinionated humor and energy made her seem generous. She had a lovely creamy complexion, not just the smoothness of her skin but the shine, a glow of good health that was also an effect of the warm Calcutta evening, a stillness and humidity on the hotel verandah. That slight dampness and light in her face from the heat I found attractive, the way she patted her cheek with a lace hanky, the dampness at her lips, the suggestion of moist curls adhering to her forehead, the dew on her upper lip that she licked with one wipe of her tongue.

"I don't mind the heat," she said. She seemed to know what I was thinking. "In fact, I like it. I feel alive. Saris are made for this weather."

She wore the sari well, the way it draped lightly — her bare arms, her bare belly, her thick hair in a bun. She had kicked off her sandals, and I noticed that one of her bare feet was tattooed in henna with an elaborate floral pattern of dots.

She was a beautiful woman. I was happy to be sitting with her, flattered, as men often are, that a lovely woman was taking notice. The very fact of such a woman being pleasant and friendly made it seem she was bestowing a favor.

That was how I felt: favored. I was relieved too. I had come here because of her urgent letter, and now there was no urgency, just this radiant woman and the two young men.

Charlie said something about shipping a container to San Francisco.

"I don't want to think about shipping," she said. "Fill the whole container and then we'll talk about shipping."

The Indian had gone silent, so I said, "Do you live here?"

"For my sins, yes," Rajat said. "I live in Tollygunge. I'm good for about two weeks in America and then I start to freak out."

"Poor Rajat, you're such a love." Mrs. Unger extended her arm as he was speaking and touched his shoulder, letting her hand slide to his arm, his side, her fingertips grazing his thigh, a gesture of grateful affection. And she smiled, more light on her face, the glow in her eyes too.

"I could spend the rest of my life in India," Charlie said.

"But Calcutta is a powder keg," Rajat said.

Mrs. Unger said, "Don't you love it when Indians use those words?"

"The city is toxic." And I heard Mrs. Unger murmur the word as doxic. "When I was young," Rajat said, "I had terrible skin. It was the sweat and dirt of Bengal. I'm from Burdwan, about two hours from here. My face was a mess. My father got a job teaching in Calcutta, and as soon as I got here my skin cleared up."

"You were going through adolescence."

"I was ten!" he shrieked. "I hate dirt. The last time I was in America my skin broke out."

"What you needed was a salt scrub and some pure food. Your mother should have known better. I'll take care of you."

"My poor mother," Rajat said. "All she did was fuss around my father and try to please him. He was a typical spoiled Indian man who couldn't do anything."

"And you're not?"

"Obviously I am living my own life in my own fashion," Rajat said.

He spoke a bit too loudly, in a broad accent, too assertively, and then in his echo in a broader accent.

Merrill Unger said, "I never had that problem with Ralph Unger."

"Ma had him killed," Charlie said.

Mrs. Unger smiled and said, "It was not of my doing. He simply popped off. There is justice in all events."

"But he thought Ma was poisoning him."

"He had a rich imagination," Mrs. Unger said. "His great fault was that he was an Anglophile. That's why he hated India. But he couldn't live in England either — Anglophiles never can. He sat around complaining that the empire was finished."

"I think I might have liked him," Rajat said.

"You are a deluded and perverse young man," Mrs. Unger said with a smile, and I noticed that sarcasm always brought out her brightest smile. "Ralph's other fault was his diet. Know-it-alls and bullies eat so badly. He was a big carnivorous lout, a rather sad man, really, if you looked at him objectively, something I never did. I watched him eat himself to death. Is that insensitive? He never listened to me. He thought I was frivolous and faddish. He didn't realize that he could have saved himself." She leaned over to look at my eyes, my whole face. "Most people don't realize it."

"I try to be a vegetarian here," I said, feeling that a reply was expected of me.

"It's way beyond that. Have you seen an Ayurvedic doctor and had a thorough checkup?"

"I've been pretty busy."

"I keep forgetting you're a celebrated writer."

"Just articles. I keep meaning to write a book."

"You need creative energy for that. Have you done anything about your kundalini?"

Charlie said, "Isn't mother a doll?"

Rajat shook himself in his chair like a shivering girl, seeming to giggle with his body, and said, "I'm one of those people who does all his reading on the Internet. But I've seen your magazine articles all over Charlie's flat."

"You don't know what you're missing," Mrs. Unger said to Rajat, so firmly as to sound like a reprimand. She turned to me. "I've learned so much from you. I'm so grateful."

"Very kind of you to say so."

She said, "If only I could give something back to you. I'd be so happy."

"This is enough," I said. "Sitting and talking like this. If I hadn't met you, I'd probably have just stayed in my room, read a little, and gone to bed early."

They stared at me as though I were being insincere, and my statement hanging in this silence began to droop the way exaggerations do.

"But I thought there was another reason for my being here," I said.

As I spoke, Mrs. Unger seemed to swell — to straighten, anyway — and Rajat to shrink. In growing smaller he became darker, more distinct and brittle and conspicuous. All the while a kind of suppressed and silent hilarity trembled through the three of them, a tension, as just before someone breaks out laughing in intense and mirthless embarrassment. As Rajat's face tightened, his knees together, the shrinking man twisting his hands, Charlie looked bored and slack. He stuck his legs out so they touched the table and jarred the pot of flowers and a carafe of water.

"Do you want to tell him," Mrs. Unger said, "or shall I?"

Rajat twitched a little, as if at a spectral buzzing around his head, then said in a thin voice, "Go ahead."

"Rajat believes he has a little problem," she said in a soothing voice.

"Not so little," Rajat said in a whisper, clutching his knees.

"May I continue?" Mrs. Unger said, smiling her severe smile. She went on in a breathy, actressy way that was just short of satire. "Rajat had an unfortunate experience, and as a result he did a very silly thing. Am I right?"

He nodded and looked at his hands, his fingers crooked around his bony knees. Charlie reached over to pat his shoulder, as Mrs. Unger had done earlier.

"What was the unfortunate experience?" I asked, though I remembered some details from the letter and the words "dead boy on the floor."

"He found something in his room, didn't you, love?"

"Found it?"

"It turned up in the night," he said.

"You woke up and there it was?"

He rotated his head in the Indian way, meaning yes, biting his lip, looking fearful.

"Tell him what it was," Mrs. Unger said.

Rajat moistened his lips and said, "Body."

The word bhodee spoken by this Indian sounded sacred and awesome in its density, like a slab of terrifying meat.

"What was the silly thing you did?" I asked.

"He ran away," Mrs. Unger said, and then quickly, in a practical voice, "I don't blame him. I would have done the same myself. And I would have found myself in the same position Rajat is in right now." She smiled at him. "In a pickle."