A Dead Hand (2 page)

S
HOULD
I
HAVE
BURNED
the letter? I didn't. I kept it. I reread it. I was, as jokers say about wines, amused by its presumption.

Even with the boasting, the bad grammar, the clichés, and that awful word "parameters," I was flattered. The handmade paper, the letterhead, the handwriting, it all fascinated me. Had it been a man's letter, I might have tossed it aside. But it was from an American woman, with the lovely name Merrill, in Calcutta like me, offering me a story. And I was far from home with time on my hands, needing a story. My lectures were done: "Your time is your own from now on," Howard, the public affairs officer, said. It seemed like a hint that I should pursue Parvati. She was lovely and gifted, but her whole life lay ahead of her, and mine was mainly in the past.

Yet it seemed that a little vacation had opened up, with the uncertainty and emptiness—and, I felt, pointlessness—of holidays, which in foreign places always left me at loose ends. Because the consulate had sponsored my talks at Calcutta schools and colleges, I had been looked after up until now. I didn't like the thought of having to fill my days with occasions. Why not have a drink with this Mrs. Unger?

I was not persuaded by the letter; it seemed too colorful not to be a setup. But I was curious. I had nothing else to do. This was a blank period in my trip, and in my life. My hand had gone dead too; after that arresting opening about the atmosphere having the tickle and itch of a bulging vacuum cleaner bag, I could not continue. I'd thought I had something to write. I'd never had a dead hand before. I assumed that any day now the mood would strike me, but so far my head was empty. I endured the racket of the city from my cheap hotel and fantasized about places like the Oberoi Grand, and I smiled and didn't write and felt mind-blind.

At my age, after all that hack work, it was possible that my condition was permanent. The young feel an affliction but always assume they'll overcome it: a young person encounters an obstacle or a block yet never believes it can last, in fact cannot even imagine extinction or utter failure. I had felt that, but no longer felt the warmth of this hope. Now I knew that the climacteric occurs and there is no going back, you're losing it, it's downhill all the way. Your poor eyesight does not improve, there is no hope of your ever matching your earlier stride, and you won't regrow that hair. For the writer I was, there was a chance that the barren period would continue, that I was written out, that I had nothing more, and worse, because the work I had done was not much good, I'd never have a chance to redeem myself. It was probably over.

This sense of diminishing hopes had been with me ever since I'd come to India, when Howard had asked, "What are you working on?" I hadn't the heart to say "Nothing." I said, "I've got an idea," and that brought me low—my lying always made me sad and self-pitying. Why was I telling him a lie? Because the truth would have shamed me. Obviously having an idea mattered to me or else I wouldn't have concocted a lie. I was not fatally wounded; it was simpler and a lot less dramatic than that: I had nothing to say, or if I did have something, I had no way of saying it. "Dead hand" was a devastating expression for writer's block, but in my case it seemed a true description of what I was facing, a limpness akin to an amputation.

One of my writer friends, a real writer, a writer of good novels, knew Nelson Algren, the great chronicler of Chicago. No one talks about him now, but his books were celebrated once, and electrifying to me. Just the sonorous titles—
The Man with the Golden Arm, A Walk on the Wild Side
—I heard these titles and thought he had to be a writer to his fingertips. Algren was a Chicagoan himself. He'd had an early and voluptuous success. He'd had an affair with Simone de Beauvoir, in effect making Jean-Paul Sartre a cuckold. He was a great gambler. He was a lone wolf. He'd had an enviable career. He lived simply in a small apartment, but even so he invited my friend and his wife to stay with him on their visit to Chicago.

On the first morning, seeing Algren sitting alone at his kitchen table having a cup of coffee, reading the newspaper, the wife said, "Are you one of these writers who gets up early and does all his work before breakfast?"

Algren smiled sadly and said, "Nope. I'm one of these writers who doesn't write anymore."

I dialed the number of Mrs. Merrill Unger's cell phone.

"Mrs. Unger's line." A young man's voice, not Indian, but a bit put-on and overformal, making me feel like a petitioner. "Who is calling?"

I told him. He seemed even less interested, did not reply with a word, merely grunted.

"It's for you, Ma," I heard him say.

"Good. You got my letter. When can we meet?"

Her first words—no greeting, all business, a bossy-sounding woman with a deep ensnaring voice.

I said, "I'm staying at the Hastings."

"I have no idea where that is. Why don't you come over to the Oberoi tonight? We can have a drink and go on from there."

This was all too urgent and stern for me, much too insistent. I also felt—like a kind of echo—that she had an audience, some people listening to her auntyness, and that her tone was meant to impress them as much as to dominate me, taking charge and making me do all the work. The Hastings was a comfortable enough hotel; it was snobbish posturing on her part to dismiss it.

Though I had nothing to do, I said, "I'm pretty busy. Tonight's out of the question."

"Tomorrow, then." That same bossy, overconfident tone.

I almost said
Forget it.
"I'll check my diary."

"What are you waiting for? Check it, then."

I didn't trust myself to say anything except "I'm looking."

"He's checking his diary," I heard her say to her listeners, with a note (so I felt) of satire.

My diary was blank. I smiled as I looked at the empty pages and said, "I'm not free until five," and thinking she might be a bigger bore than she sounded, I added, "I might have something to do later."

"Five, then. We'll be on the upstairs verandah."

She hung up before I did, leaving me angry with myself for having weakened and called her. Looking again at the letter, I found it irritating, and I was further irritated by my own curiosity. I was sure I was wasting my time with this bossy old woman. She was not the first person who'd said to me,
I have a story for you.
In every case I replied,
This is a story you must write yourself. I can't help you. I'm sure you can do it justice.

So I was breaking one of my own rules, giving in to this temptation. I told myself that her letter justified my interest. It didn't have the insubstantial scrappiness of an e-mail. It was written in purple ink on heavy paper; it was old-fashioned and portentous. And I had nothing else to do.

Before I told them who I was and why I'd come, the staff at the Oberoi seemed to know me: the saluting Sikh doorman, the flunky in a frock coat ushering me across the lobby to the colonnade lined with palms in big terracotta pots, and more welcomers—the smiling waitress in a blue sari, the man in white gloves holding a tray under his arm, who bowed and swept his arm aside in an indicating gesture, his glove pointed toward the far table where a woman sat like a queen on a wicker throne, a courtier on either side of her.

I was relieved that she was pretty and slim. I had thought she'd be big and plain, mannish and mocking and assertive. One of the young men was an Indian, and for a moment I thought the woman was an Indian too—she wore a sari, her hair was dark and thick. But when I came closer and she greeted me, looking happy, I realized I was wrong. She was an attractive woman, younger than I'd imagined, much prettier than I'd expected, much better natured than she'd sounded in her letter or on the phone.

"At last," the woman said. "It's so wonderful to meet you. I'm thrilled. I'm so glad you came."

She sounded as if she meant it. I thought, She's nice, and was reassured: it might be bearable.

And at that moment, as she smiled and held my hand and improved the drape of her sari by flinging a swag of its end over her shoulder with her free hand, as Indian women did, I realized that she was not just attractive but extremely beautiful—queenly, motherly, even sexual, with a slowness and elasticity in her manner and movements, a kind of strength and grace. I did not feel this in my brain but rather in my body, as a tingling in my flesh.

"Please sit down. I thought you might not come. Oh, what a treat! What will you have to drink?"

The waiter was hovering.

"Beer. A Kingfisher," I said.

"One more of these," one of the young men said.

"I'm fine," the other said—the Indian.

"My son, Chalmers."

"Charlie," he said. "And this is my friend Rajat."

"Should I have another drink?" Mrs. Unger asked. "I never know what I ought to do. Tell me." She winked at me. "They're in charge. I just take orders."

"Go on, Ma," Charlie said.

"It's only
jal,
water with a little cucumber juice," she said. "One more." The waiter bowed. "This is Sathya. He is far from home. He knows that I am far from home. Maybe that's why he's so kind to me.
Onek dhonnobad.
"

"
Dhonnobad, dhonnobad.
Kindness is yours, madam," Sathya said. He was a gnome-like figure in a blue cummerbund, and round-shouldered with deference. He bowed again, then hurried off sideways, as though out of exaggerated respect.

"Ma babies him," Charlie said. I was still turning "Chalmers" over in my mind. "He loves it."

"I'm the one who's infantilized," Mrs. Unger said. "That was the great mistake the British made in India. They thought they had the whip hand here. They were waited on hand and foot. They didn't notice that the servants were in charge. It took awhile for the servants to realize they had the power. And then the flunkies simply revolted against the helpless sahibs."

Rajat said, "Our love-hate relationship with the British."

"Why on earth would you love these second-rate people?"

"Institutions," Rajat said. "Education. Judiciary. Commerce."

"India had those institutions when the British were running around naked on their muddy little island."

"Road and rail system," Rajat said, but ducking a little. He was a small, slightly built man in his twenties with fine bones and a compact way of sitting. "Communications."

"Self-serving, so they could keep India under their thumb," Mrs. Unger said. Seeing Sathya returning with a tray of drinks, she said, "Ah!"

Sathya set down her glass of juice and the beer.

Charlie said, "They make their own whiskey. That's a great British institution."

"When Morarji Desai was PM he closed down the breweries and distilleries. They turned to bottling spring water," Rajat said.

"Desai had his own preferred drink," Charlie said. "A cup of his own piss every morning." He stared at me. "Did you know that, doll?"

"Chalmers is trying to shock you," Mrs. Unger said.

Rajat said, "Some people think it has medicinal properties."

"I am one of those people," Mrs. Unger said. "I'm surprised Chalmers doesn't know that."

"Ma is a true Ayurvedic. You won't believe the things she eats and drinks."

"But I draw the line at tinkle, efficacious though it may be. I don't quite think my body is crying out for it."

"Ma has healing hands."

"Magic fingers for Ma," Rajat said.

"I try," Mrs. Unger said. She lifted her slender hands and gazed at them in wonderment, as if seeing them for the first time.

She told me about her earliest visits to India, recalling cities and experiences, but because she didn't drop any dates I could not work out her age. Charlie was in his mid-twenties. I took her to be in her late forties—younger than me but forceful, assertive, more confident and worldly, so she seemed older. Charlie did not look like her at all. He was pale, beaky, floppy-haired, languid, his lopsided mouth set in a sneer.

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.