The Devourers (3 page)

“You're welcome. Now go home, Professor. It's late, and you've listened enough,” he says.

“I don't know about that. Will I see you again?” I ask.

“I don't know. Would you like to see me again?”

“Yes. I want to hear the end of the first story.”

He closes his eyes and takes a deep drag. His lips are still ruddy from whatever it was that he put on them while I was in his storytelling trance, despite being washed in milky tea. “You and your endings, Professor. They'll be the end of
you,
someday.”

“You started it,” I say.

“And I'm still living it,” he says, and wipes his mouth. “Tomorrow. Oly Pub. Five thirty.”

“I'll be there.”

We walk over to a parked taxi nearby. The driver looks at us suspiciously and demands an extra fifty rupees this time.

“The price is going up, I see,” I tell the stranger. “Can't you hypnotize him into not charging me extra?”

The stranger says nothing, and I'm embarrassed. “Do you want to share the cab? I'm heading toward Jodhpur Park. Where do you live?”

The stranger hitches with a silent laugh. “That's all right. Get home safely, Professor.”

“Thank you. For the stories,” I say, opening the taxi door and getting in.

The stranger smiles his red smile and walks away, sleeping kitten cradled in one arm, joint in the other hand. I almost don't notice this. I could have sworn the kitten was gone. I feel very far from the present. As the taxi rolls down Ballygunge Circular Road and its overhanging canopy of trees, past the yellow walls of the army base, I look back and lose sight of the stranger. Heart thundering, I wait to get home. Ever-present, the dogs watch from the sides of the road, their eyes throwing back the headlights.

A
new day. I take the metro, emerge at Park Street station, and walk down the street to Oly. Park Street is the Times Square of Kolkata. Any devout Kolkatan will tell you this. That doesn't mean it's anything like Times Square, of course. But for a quiet man like me, it's enough. It's not as if I have a lot of friends to go bar-hopping and dancing with, or anything like that. So if you haven't been there already, imagine a wide street (well, compared with the usually narrow streets of this city), adorned with restaurants and stores and coffee shops and stalls and bars that have barnacled the smog-stained remnants of colonial British architecture. Add more recent buildings that stand shoulder-to-shoulder with these reformed mansions, and fill the whole place with people. That's one thing Park Street does have equal to Times Square—people. On the street walking side by side with passing cars, on the pavement rubbing shoulders like the buildings around them. They're everywhere, as you would expect in one of the most densely populated areas of the planet.

I am there, on Sunday, in the twilight that forms between the buildings of cities when the sun is too low to shine directly on the asphalt. The streetlights have come alive, but day still clings on. I've lived here so long, but meeting someone who claims to be more than human makes me see everything differently, like at the dhaba last night. My eyes linger on every street dog, curled by the passing feet of pedestrians or exploring the footpaths, so different from their predatory nocturnal incarnations. But more than the dogs, it's the people, the city that suddenly seems strange, yet not strange enough. Everything feels like a comedown from a trip, an intense high—so much so that it's physical, a headache growing behind my skull and promising to break at the notes of the stranger's voice.

I keep to the footpath, avoid the streaks of odorous water and garbage clotting the gutters. Steamy food-shacks offer passing clouds of warmth from winter's chill, the heat of open-air cooking trapped under blue plastic tarpaulins stretched over the sidewalks to shelter their customers. I pass hawkers selling snacks, sachets of supari, cigarettes, perfumes and colognes, pirated movies, discounted books and magazines, condoms both imported and not—all operating right beside less ephemeral retail outlets and eateries with glass walls that look into different worlds.

Everywhere, the behavior of our different packs and clans and tribes on display. Beggars hover close to the transparency of storefront windows in the hope of absorbing some of the opulence within. I pass the well-lit glitz that hovers around the entrance to Park Hotel and its fashionable discos and restaurants, edging by young men and women emerging from chauffeured cars, bodies musked with cologne. I'm careful not to touch any of the girls by accident (I hesitate to call them women), as I don't want to attract the ire of their well-groomed male companions. A pimp, probably on the lookout for hotel patrons, asks me in flamboyant English if I'd like to spend the night with a college girl, and I shake my head and keep walking. Not too far from there, I reach the popular refuge of the firmly middle classes, Oly Pub. It looks plain and weathered next to the higher-profile stretch of pavement real estate by the hotel, though the building does hint at a faded grandeur. I make a quick supper of a chicken and egg roll at Kusum's Rolls and Kebabs right next door, and head into the pub.

I nod to the doorman who probably recognizes me, and duck into the fluorescent-lit gloom. I go upstairs to the windowless sanctum of the air-conditioned section, hoping that the stranger will also go there. A cigarette haze hangs over the Formica tables, as if the winter mist has followed me inside.

I search the faces in the room till a waiter gives me a grumpy glance, pointing out the fact that I'm standing in the middle of the carpeted thoroughfare without saying a word. The stranger isn't here. My aching head feels heavier at his absence. Though it's still light out, Oly is already crowded. I find a table in the corner and order a whiskey double with water, hoping it will calm the headache. The same waiter brings me the drink and takes a while doing it. I bide my time, sipping my watered whiskey and nibbling at the pile of dirty-yellow daalmoot in the little plastic plate by my glass, feeling more and more guilty for taking up an entire table all by myself while the pub fills up.

—

But he does show up.

He appears by my table without warning, half an hour later. It looks like he's wearing the same flimsy kurta and worn jeans he wore yesterday, and his hair tumbles down to his shoulders again, the ponytail he left with last night abandoned. He's carrying a dusty blue-and-black JanSport backpack that makes him look younger. Like one of my students, except for those quivers of gray in his hair.

“Professor. I trust you weren't waiting long?” He takes off the backpack and slides it under the table with one foot. He's still wearing those sandals.

“Oh no. I was just, you know,” I say.

“Waiting?”

“Yes. No, I mean, it hasn't been that long. Please, sit. Thanks for coming.”

He pulls up the chair opposite and sits down. I blush, and am thankful for the smoke and dim lighting. I get the feeling that he knows I've been waiting a long time and likes it. Nervous sipping has almost emptied my glass of whiskey, so I feel tipsy and inclined to forgive him. I'm just glad that he actually showed up, and more grateful than I feel comfortable being. The sound of his voice is an uncanny placebo for the throb behind my eyes.

“Would you like a drink?” I ask.

He nods and waves his arm. To my amazement, the waiter shows up immediately. He isn't any less grumpy, but I've never been able to make a waiter at Oly Pub show up in fewer than five minutes. The stranger orders two whiskey doubles. I feel flattered, both by his taking the liberty to order me another and by his appropriation of my choice for his own drink. I have to stop myself from thanking him again.

“The haunt of heroes,” he says, leaning back and looking around. I assume he's referring to the pub's original—now truncated—name, Olympia.

I wonder how to respond. The stranger folds his hands on the table and looks straight at me, making eye contact. I have no idea what to say to him, what we're going to talk about, how to start a conversation with him, why in hell I even wanted to meet him again.

“Did you keep the kitten?” I ask him.

“I ate it.”

I stare at him.

“A poor joke. Forgive me and pull down your eyebrows. The kitten's safe, with a saucer of milk all her own. She's taken quite a liking to me. Or perhaps just to not being terrorized by stray dogs.”

“I'm glad you kept her.”

“So here we are, and you still haven't told me your name.”

“Oh. I'm sorry. I'm Alok. Alok Mukherjee.”

“I'm very pleased to meet you, Alok,” he says and licks his teeth. There's something fidgety about him today, not like the calm of that old half werewolf I met yesterday.

“What's your name?” I ask, after waiting awkwardly.

“Professor—you don't mind if I still call you Professor, I hope—my name hardly matters.”

“Why's that?”

“You
haven't
been listening.” The refusal to play his part in this human ritual disturbs me. The waiter appears with his bottle of Royal Stag, a glass, and his bronze peg measure, and pours us both doubles. I wait.

“What should I call you, then?” I ask the stranger once the waiter's gone. The rims of our glasses meet sharply.

“You can call me anything you want. Anything at all.”

I find this an unwieldy suggestion. “Are you still saying you're part werewolf?”

“Isn't that why you wanted to meet me again? To find out more? Alok,” he lilts. “What do you want to know?”

“I—I don't know.”

“I'm aware of that. I'm asking what you do want to know.”

“I know what you're asking,” I tell him, irritated. For all his effort to project immortal wisdom, there's something childish about his way of engaging with me. I look into my glass. “You're interesting. That's why I—” I clear my throat. “That's why I agreed to meet you again.”

“How kind,” he says.

“I want you to finish the story you started yesterday.”

“Ah. Professor.” He leans forward, placing his elbows on the table.

“You're clearly an intelligent man. I want you to know that. I'm not trying to best your intellect with an elaborate prank here.”

“That's good, I guess. You don't have to keep calling me Professor.”

He smiles. “I find you interesting, too, though you might not believe it. We're not the same at all. We're not even close to the same age. But if we're to talk like adults, you're going to have to take a leap of faith that quite frankly isn't possible for a human being in this day and age, not one in your social and environmental circumstances.”

“You're telling me I'm going to have to believe whatever you say,” I say.

“You don't have to believe me. But you're going to have to act like you do. For the sake of this play we've both walked into. You agreed to be in it, yesterday night. If you abide by that agreement, we can talk.”

“And why do you think I'll do that?” I ask.

“Because you followed me out of the mela. Because you came here today,” he says.

I nod slowly, unable to refute that. “Okay. Why are
you
here, then?”

The stranger takes a drink. “Yesterday I told you stories. You called it hypnotism. Say it is that. Say I'm hypnotizing you. That it's an illusion. A magician still needs an audience, doesn't he.”

“If you're that good a magician, why find one person in a crowd. Why not charge people, fill an auditorium.”

“Because that would be tawdry. Sometimes intimacy is the only way real magic works.”

“Intimacy,” I say, and rub my forehead. “I don't know your name.”

“Get out of here, then,” he says. I look up. “You're not my prisoner, Professor Mukherjee, and don't pretend that you are. Leave, if you think the only way to achieve intimacy is dry custom, the exchange of facts and labels, names and professions. Intimacy lies in the body and the soul, in scent, in touch and taste and sound. A man whose name you don't know can tell you a tale to move you to tears, just by filling and emptying his lungs, by moving his tongue and lips, his fingers. Even after, you might never know him.”

His voice doesn't rise. But I feel my heart beat faster, my headache thumping with it. I look at my unsteady hands, relish the whining note of my headache.

“Tell me something. Are you going to ask me for money after the evening's done?” I ask.

“No. I'm not a hawker.”

I put the glass of whiskey and melting ice against my forehead.

“Magicians don't work for free.”

“Metaphors only go so far. I'm not a magician, either. Just tell me, Alok. Do you want to hear more? You wanted to, last night. Do you still want to?”

I close my eyes, feel moisture trickling off the glass and down my head. I nod.

“You're more open-minded than most historians, then?” he asks. I open my eyes.

“Again with the generalizations. I'm not even sure where you got that one from.”

“Very well. For one thing, I'm not going to finish the story I told you yesterday.”

“Why not?” I ask.

“Because it's not important right now. It did what it was supposed to, and it'll come back when and if it needs to.”

His face goes vacant as he looks at one of the resident rats of this dank Olympia. It scampers between the tables, darting over the crimson carpet and looking for crumbs to scavenge, unafraid of the many human feet around it. I remember the dead rat by the stranger's feet last night. The stranger looks young again, unlike yesterday night after he finished the stories. The unruly hair, the smirk. The familiar combo of jeans and kurta. For a second I think that maybe he actually is one of my students, playing an elaborate joke to humiliate me once it gets out on campus. That I've somehow failed to notice him in my classes, or failed him, and this is some kind of revenge.

“What
did
you do to me yesterday?” I ask, if just to stifle this thought.

“What you saw or felt has its provenance in your own head.”

“It's absurd that you would even say that, after introducing yourself in the way you did. And it's not like I've never been told a story before. I felt something else. Like—” I stumble on the word, but force it out. “Like magic. Like you said.”

He waits, as if for me to make a point.

“I've honestly never felt anything like it in my life. It felt like you shared a bit of lost time with me, shared the memories of something that can't—shouldn't—exist, like you had it hidden under that kurta of yours and just, I don't know, gave it to me.”

A flash of teeth. “How eloquent.”

“You're being facetious, but it's true. The more I think about it, the more I feel that you did something impossible yesterday night. If it's a trick, it's one I've never seen or heard of before.”

He is silent for a moment.

“Well, Professor, I'm glad you liked my ‘trick.' I have something to give you,” he tells me.

He takes a gulp of his drink and pulls a large, mustard-yellow manila envelope out of his backpack. He places it on the table. I notice that his glass is almost empty already.

“You want to know more. Here is something more,” he tells me, one hand on the envelope.

“What is this?”

“This is history. History most people—humans—aren't aware of, in particular. As a professor of history, I thought you might appreciate that.”

“Can I open it?”

“Of course. I brought it here for you.” He removes his hand from the envelope. I take it and open the flap to look inside. It's a plain black hardbound notebook, filled with slanted handwriting. Black ink and the smudged gray of pencils. From the first to the last, the pages (which have no lines on which to write, though the penmanship is straight and true) are crammed full. I catch fragments, written in English. In the middle, I find the skeleton of a leaf, which wisps out to float to my lap. I pick it up and put it back in the notebook.

“You want me to read this?” I ask.

“Yes. Take it with you,” he says.

“What is it?”

“I suppose you could call it a journal, from another time. A voice from the past.”

“Whose voice?” I ask.

“You'll find out when you read it.”

“This is because you say you've—because you've lived a long time. That's why you have access to this?”

“Yes,” he agrees.

“This doesn't look very old.”

He smiles. “Very observant. I translated them from the original source. I doubt you can read the languages the source contains. Either way, I can't just go around giving historical artifacts to strangers, can I?”