Theroux Paul - A Dead Hand - A Crime in Calcutta

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A Dead Hand: A Crime in Calcutta: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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Jerry Delfont leads an aimless life in Calcutta, struggling in vain against his writer's block, or 'dead hand,' and flitting around the edges of a half-hearted romance. Then he receives a mysterious letter asking for his help. The story it tells is disturbing: A dead boy found on the floor of a cheap hotel, a seemingly innocent man in flight and fearing for reputation as well as his life.
Before long, Delfont finds himself lured into the company of the letter's author, the wealthy and charming Merrill Unger, and is intrigued enough to pursue both the mystery and the woman. A devotee of the goddess Kali, Unger introduces Delfont to a strange underworld where tantric sex and religious fervor lead to obsession, philanthropy and exploitation walk hand in hand, and, unless he can act in time, violence against the most vulnerable in society goes unnoticed and unpunished.
An atmospheric and masterful thriller from "the most gifted, the most prodigal writer of his generation"
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The night at the Ananda Hotel had interrupted my writing schedule, yet I was able to resume working on the pages of "A Dead Hand," advancing my description of Mrs. Unger and the stories of her philanthropy. She could easily have remained in New York or Palm Beach — she had the money. She could have spent all her time in pure idleness, among the wealthy, going to charity events, looking glamorous. She could have done what Mother Teresa did — hobnobbed with the stars, pretending to be a saint, dining out on her horror stories. But instead, Mrs. Unger, who shunned publicity, was in Calcutta anonymously, enduring the heat and the noise, the unending mob, the crowded sidewalks, the traffic, the squalor. She chose to devote all her energy to neglected children.

This was my subject. While debating whether to visit her unannounced, I kept writing "A Dead Hand."

"Gentleman to see you, sir." I looked up and saw Ramesh Datta, awaiting further instructions.

I didn't want anyone to see me writing. I considered it my secret and my strength, especially these pages.

"I'll be right down."

I assumed it was Howard with news of Dr. Mukherjee's forensic report. But it was Rajat. He'd been sitting in a wicker chair. The chair screeched as he leaped to his feet, recklessly, like a schoolboy when a teacher enters a room.

"I happened to be passing. I thought I'd say hello."

This could not have been true. He'd never dropped in on me before. What was on his mind?

"Nice to see you. Would you like a drink?"

"A cup of tea only."

Ramesh Datta had been standing by listening. He signaled to Ramachandra, who hurried forward.

"Two teas, sir?"

I said to Rajat, "You want a samosa?"

"I am not taking."

"Tea cake?"

"I am not taking."

"Biscuit?" I was asking just to torment him and say the odd words and hear his refusals. "Milk Bikki? Fancy biscuits? Gulabjam? Sweetmeats?"

"I will take unsalted nuts."

"Mineral water for me." I sat down, and Rajat returned to his wicker chair, sitting at the edge of the cushion, his elbows on his knees.

"How are you getting on here?" he asked. "You seem to find the city congenial."

"I like seeing Mrs. Unger. I think you can understand that."

"A gracious and distinctly formidable woman," he said.

Victorian, Howard had said of the Bengalis. I was by now able to take their florid and slightly pretentious phrasing in stride.

"Oh, yes," I said. But I was thinking, She's much more than that.

"I know she charged you with vindicating me," he said. "Have you made any headway?"

He seemed terribly nervous, so nervous he could not manage to be subtle; he was without any guile. He'd come straight to the point.

"I don't see my job as vindicating you."

"What then?"

"I think something like searching for the truth."

I knew this was pompous, but pomposity was a normal mode of discourse in Calcutta. Don't be audacious , Parvati sometimes said to me. Rajat began to speak, but seeing Ramachandra bringing the tea tray, he held off, smiled at the waiter, and did not speak until we were alone again.

"It was the worst experience of my life. Can you imagine waking up in a strange hotel room with a human corpse?"

Instead of answering, I said, "I'm wondering if you made the right decision in running away."

"The alternative was much worse — being implicated in a murder."

"Why do you say murder?"

"That's how it would have been viewed by the law here." His knees were pressed together. He held his teacup with precisely poised fingers. "And I fear scandalmongery. People would spread malicious tales and calumnies about me."

"Why didn't you mention the carpet to Mrs. Unger? Or to me?"

"Was there a carpet? I didn't get a proper look. I told you I was using my cell phone as a torch."

"But the carpet was right there on the floor of your room."

He put the cup down. He said, "When you see a dead person, you don't see anything else. I was transfixed."

That at least made sense.

"Was there any blood?"

"Had I seen blood, it would have obtained a lodgment in my memory," he said. When he was nervous he spoke this way. "But I didn't touch the body. I simply bolted."

"Your big mistake. It makes you look responsible for the death."

"What would you have done?" He picked up his cup, though seemed merely to use it as a prop; he didn't drink.

I thought hard before I answered, because I had been in the Ananda, and I now knew what a spooky place it was, the hot stifling rooms, the menacing corridors, the angry Mr. Biswas with his crow-like face.

"I don't know. But I would have put my trust in Mrs. Unger to get to the bottom of it."

"That's what I have done," he said, his voice breaking. "I don't think she wholly believed me, or else why did she charge you with looking into the case?"

He had not counted on Mrs. Unger's getting in touch with me. And though I had hoped for a lucky break, I had not counted on Mina Jagtap's giving me all this timely help — the dead hand, the fragment of carpet — had not counted on Chitra's recognizing the carpet. All this because of my earlier visit and Mr. Biswas's slapping Mina's face and firing her.

"I'm sure everything will be fine," I said. Only when I spoke did I hear the doubt in my voice. I didn't believe this at all.

"I have to go. I'm supposed to meet Charlie at the Lodge. Thank you for the tea."

He had put sugar in the tea the waiter had poured. He had stirred it. He had even lifted the cup to his lips. But he hadn't drunk any of it. He had not touched the bowl of unsalted cashews. This both annoyed me and made me suspicious. I am uneasy at meals where guests pick at their food or don't eat. I think: Why are they here?

Rajat had not simply dropped in; he had planned this meeting. He was trying to find out what I knew.

"Why don't you come along?" His eyes glistened as his gaze became a kind of pleading.

He was smallish, mousy, with a softness to him; weak and compliant, almost feminine, with large dark eyes — soft and fearful, deep-set with girlish lashes. Yet he was stubbornly like a girl too, unforthcoming. Now and then I asked him a question and he wouldn't reply, just stared, and I thought of old girlfriends. He had slender hands and tiny breakable wrists. In his fragility he reminded me of Mrs. Unger's lost children, the bat-eared boy Jyoti who had been so animated and whom I had looked for my last time at the Lodge. "He has moved on," Mrs. Unger said. "We're so proud of him."

"Is Mrs. Unger there?"

"Oh, yes. She'd love to see you. I'd try her on my mobile, but the battery's flat."

"Ma is not fond of surprises," I said.

"This is a pleasant surprise." He clawed his cuff from his wrist and looked at his watch. "We really should go."

Just the thought of her in her vault sensitized me, made me tremulous. And the Calcutta heat helped too. The day was stifling, the humidity like a cloak, but in the way it slowed me and made me breathless, it was like a foretaste of desire, the same heaviness, the same pulse of blood in my head, a flush of eagerness that I could taste — as though right before a great risky leap — and a dampness on my skin and eyes.

As Rajat talked, more urgently than I'd seen him before, we ambled to the street, where I hailed a taxi. When one pulled up, we got in and Rajat gave directions. After that he fell silent. He began gnawing a finger in misery, his knuckle under his nose.

"Won't she mind this? Our arriving together?"

His eyes, set close, gave him the look of a rodent contemplating cheese on a tray — eager yet hyperalert, the same nibble and the twitching nostrils. Yet his tight smile made him the fidgety embodiment of contradiction.

"Not at all. She of course likes you immensely."

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