The Elephanta Suite (6 page)

"I know him," Dr. Nagaraj said in a tone that suggested: I am a doctor, how could a mere shatoosh seller be a friend?

Walking to the main gateway, Audie had said, "The doc gets a kickback. That's how these things work. The driver will get something too. Everyone's on commission here."

The road had leveled off at an intersection, the wider road continuing to descend, the narrower one traversing the slope. The car turned into this narrower road, into the glaring afternoon sun, which dazzled them. They averted their eyes, and when they were in shadow again it was the shadow of a row of roadside huts and shops, where there were plodding cows and two boys kicking a dusty blue ball.

This was the talked-about town, the town they had smelled and heard, the town of the smoke. And now that they were in it they could identify the sounds—not just the laboring buses and trucks, but the wail of music, shrieking songs.

Dr. Nagaraj said nothing. The Blundens sat horrified, as they had been on the way from the airport, at the squalor, the crowds of people. They drew level with a bus stop where people had gathered near a rusty Tata bus that was shuddering and letting off passengers. Beyond it the road became a main street of one-story shops set shoulder to shoulder above storm drains.

"What's that?" Beth asked.

Up ahead there was a pile of soot-blackened rubble inside the sort of walled courtyard she associated with holy places and private villas.

"Eshrine," Dr. Nagaraj said.

"Are they tearing it down?"

"No. Building it up."

Audie smiled at the confusion. It was impossible to tell whether the place was in the process of being destroyed or put up.

"Formerly it was mosque. Before mosque it was Hindu temple. Back to Hindu temple now."

Smoke swirled behind the fortified gates.

"Who are those people?"

"Yatris.
Pilgrims. Holy people. They are venerating the site. Also some people protecting the site."

"Protecting it against who?"

"Goondas.
Rascals, and Muslims.
Badmashes,
you know?"

Now they could see occupiers and protesters, both sides carrying signs, all of them shouting. Few noises in India were more frightening to the Blundens than these human voices, barking in anger.

"How can you tell they're Muslims?"

"Beards are there."

"Is this a problem?"

"It is situation," Dr. Nagaraj said.

"What if it gets out of hand?"

"Not possible. Though this is a Muslim area, so to say, Muslim people are outnumbered in this town. This is historic town. This town is mentioned favorably in Atharva Veda. This is Hanuman town, where he seized mountain of medicinal herbals to heal the sickly Lakshman."

As he lectured them, Beth saw that a detachment of uniformed policemen had lined up and were holding four-foot sticks against a crowd of men—the men shouting and shaking their fists at the men inside the enclosure, where a bonfire blazed, sending smoke into the air high above the town.

"I think I mentioned how I led my friend among the elephants," Dr. Nagaraj said, hardly seeming to notice the people peering into the car, the motorcycles and handcarts vying for space in the road, their own furiously honking driver, whom Beth hated for drawing the attention of bystanders to their car.

"I seem to recall it," Audie said, but he thought: Which version?

Beth was only half listening. She could feel the tension of the town in her body like a cramp; she could smell it and taste it. It was dreadful and disorderly, yet she was roused by its truth, as the revelation of something that had lain hidden from her but was hidden no longer—no one hiding, no one groveling, the sight of smoke and fire and open conflict. She was shocked and excited by it. It was India with the gilt scraped off, hungry India, the India of struggle, India at odds with itself. She had seen Indians at Agni, but they didn't live there. This was where Indians lived, in the smoke and flames of Hanuman Nagar.

"I was devastated," Dr. Nagaraj said. He was still talking about his friend, dead among the elephants. "I could not stop sobbing at his funeral."

They had come to the shop. Beth could see the stack of shatooshes on the counter, the welcoming shopkeeper pushing people aside so that they could alight. They entered the shop and were shown to plastic chairs. The shopkeeper then pulled a wooden shutter, as though to conceal the transaction. With some ceremony he unfolded a shatoosh and presented it to Beth to admire. Before she could register her pleasure, he gave her another one.

"His grandmother took me aside. She said, 'Do you know the story of Vishnu, who rode on the great bird Garuda to the House of the Gods?'"

"Feel. It is
chiru,"
the shatoosh seller was saying, unfolding one piece after another and draping some of them on the counter and thrusting others into Beth's hands.

"As Vishnu and Garuda entered the House of the Gods they saw a small bird at the gateway. The Lord of Death also entered, and he smiled at the little bird. Garuda was so shocked at this he seized the little bird in his beak and took him fifty kilometers away, to save him from the Lord of Death. And by the way," Dr. Nagaraj said, "these are first-quality shatoosh. Made from chin hairs of very rare Tibetan antelope. Woven in Kashmir. This man is Kashmiri himself."

Audie said, "Is that the end of the story? The little bird was saved, right?"

In their experience Dr. Nagaraj never said yes or no. He considered Audie's question and said, "When ultimately they left the House of the Gods, Vishnu said, 'Where is the little bird?'"

Beth turned to him and saw that he had kicked off his sandals, that though he was still speaking, he was admiring the stacks of unfolded shatooshes. He had turned his back on the Blundens, yet speaking into the shadows of the shop, where a naked child was slapping the tiles with a plastic drinking cup, he sounded more composed and oracular.

"Before Garuda could reply, Lord of Death said, 'I smiled to see little bird here, because he was supposed to be fifty kilometers away, to meet his death.'"

Hearing this, Beth was stricken, as if Dr. Nagaraj had pinched her, and without thinking she said, "We must be going." She was overcome by the mustiness of the shop, the incense that seemed a mingling of perfume and cowshit, the imploring shatoosh seller—the illegality of what he was doing—and within earshot the yells of the men at the shrine, the smell of its smoky fires. She picked up two scarves and said, "I'll take these two."

"I told him you are not tourists, you are
yatris
yourselves, doing
puja
at Agni."

"That's us," Audie said.

"I will deal with money. You know it is some thousands of dollars?" Dr. Nagaraj said. "You can pay me later. I will find you in the car."

They made their way to the car through the crowd that had gathered at the shop to gape at them. Dr. Nagaraj got into the front seat, and they were soon driving back down the main street of the cracked and littered town. It was a whole town, spread as though broken and scattered on the side of Monkey Hill, out of sight of Agni. Dirty, busy, poorly lit shops selling shoes and saris, one shop with barred windows selling beer and whiskey, chaotic, so full of life it suggested death, too.

"Monkey temple?" Audie said as they passed the shouters, the fires, the sign carriers, the policemen.

"Hanuman temple," Dr. Nagaraj said.

"How long has this mob scene been going on?"

"Some years now."

Beth sat stunned and heard Audie inquire in a reasonable voice, "Would you mind explaining your story? Maybe I'm stupid. But I don't get it."

"Listen, my friend. Grandmother of Sanjeev said to me, 'Don't be sad. Garuda guided the little bird to his death unknowingly, as you guided Sanjeev. You were meant to deliver him.'"

They continued on to Agni in silence, and at each curve in the road a little of Hanuman Nagar was lost, first the sight of it, then the sound of it, and at last even its smoke. When they entered the Agni gate, it was gone.

"'Maybe this is your purpose in world,' she said." As soon as the car slowed down, Dr. Nagaraj began speaking. "'To guide people to their fate. You are wee-ickle.' Better we stop here."

After Dr. Nagaraj dismissed the driver, the three walked the rest of the way up the hill. Audie asked the cost of the scarves. Dr. Nagaraj seemed relieved and mentioned the price, and he smiled as five thousand dollars was counted into his hand.

"A great bargain, sir. And you are so lucky. This antelope is almost extinct."

The shock of the day, and her excited fear, gave her perfect recall. At yoga the next morning, during a massage—hot oil, slippery fingers—inside the pavilion, by the pool, she remembered everything. She was not able to rid herself of the images of the town of Hanuman Nagar: the cows, the bus stop, the shops, the cracks in the old walls, the paper advertisements peeling from the walls, the thick bars on the windows of the liquor store, the mocking boys like little fearless old men, the overworked women, the secretive shatoosh seller, the whole weary town held together by rusty wire and wooden braces. One oblong pothole in the street had looked to her like an open grave—she could have fitted in it.

Most of all the confusion at the monkey temple. Audie had explained it over breakfast. A mosque had been built centuries before on the site of an ancient Hindu temple, and protesters had besieged it and reclaimed it, torn the mosque apart, and built a shrine to the monkey god. The Muslims were angry and protested the occupation, but the Hindus were defiant, chanting and stoking their fire.

She remembered details she had only glimpsed at the time, chief among them the sight of idle monkeys scampering among the occupiers and protesters, snatching at bags, biting each other, swinging up the trees and onto the parapets of the shrine itself.

Now, in the stillness of Agni, she believed that she could hear the loud voices from the town, the straining of car engines, music, fugitive laughter, the pinching smell of smoke. Or was that a sense of life from the other world, the sounds from the hidden place, another illusion?

"Amazing story, eh?" Audie said.

She stared at him.
What story?
was in her smile.

"About that guy Sanjeev. The Lord of Death. Kind of an Appointment in Samarra thing."

Beth said, "I didn't know what he was talking about. Anyway, didn't you say he was a quack?"

"It doesn't really matter if he's a quack. He makes me feel better."

"You said his story keeps changing."

"I like that he could talk a dog off a meat wagon," Audie said. "And I sometimes think I'm a quack. When I was on a board, I never wanted to admit when I was wrong. Lots of times I thought: I'm a phony."

She stared at him again, distancing herself with a smile.

He said, "Don't you ever think that?"

"About you?"

"About yourself." Normally he became hot and impatient when he needed to clarify something obvious to her—she could be so slow sometimes. But he wasn't impatient now; he was sympathetic and mild.

"Never," she said. And she thought: I have never believed I was a phony. If anything, I felt more real than anyone ever took me for. There was more to me than they realized or cared about. To those people who looked at her and thought
wife
or
woman,
she wanted to say,
I am more than anything you see.

 

Now it was early afternoon. She was reading by the pool, on the platform under the trees, hidden by a hedge from anyone who happened to be in the lounge chairs—but there was no one there, or at the pool. And Audie was at a treatment. She had ordered a lemonade and a grilled vegetable sandwich, but had only sipped at the drink and eaten just a bite of the sandwich.

With an accompanying thump, something landed behind her, the sandwich was snatched, and she flinched, raising her arms, and saw the monkey bound away. In her instant memory it was a monkey; at the moment of muddled confrontation she had seen the thing as a hairy hostile child—like one of the mocking boys she'd seen at Hanuman Nagar—and she was too panicked to scream, though her hands were raised to protect her face and breasts.

After leaping into the biggest of the trees, the monkey found a branch, grasped it with his feet, and began to gnaw at the sandwich, scattering vegetables. These were seized by other monkeys—six or seven—no, more, maybe a dozen, big and small, more insolent than afraid, with a malevolent patience, a defiance that she identified—just a hunch, something about the set of their jaws, the biting faces—as the courage of hunger.

They moved toward her without a sound, scarcely seeming to touch the deck boards in their tumbling, noiseless flowing at her, their wicked faces twitching. She opened her mouth to shout but could not make a sound.

Their hair prickled on her body, the dampness itched as it scraped at her legs. They had pinched more of the loose vegetables that had been lying on the deck, poked them into their mouths, yet kept their eyes on her.

She knew they wanted to eat her face, push her legs apart and knock her over, squat on her breasts and stink. The stink was in the air, preceding them as they pushed toward her.

She covered her face with one arm, flung her other arm across her breasts, and went numb from the waist down, as in a dream where she found her legs so slow as to be crippled. She wished she could scream as she saw that the monkeys, perhaps twenty of them now, were about to overwhelm her with their dirty paws and wet teeth.

The crack of something landing in their midst—a heavy clattering stick—startled her, and the monkeys fell back. Then another stick landed with a thump, and a man hurried past Beth shouting, "Shoo! Shoo!" Holding his sandals in his hands, the man waved his arms, still shouting, physically thrusting the creatures away, into the trees, finally picking up the sticks he had thrown and flinging them again, until at last the monkeys retreated and were out of sight.

As the man had advanced, Beth had stepped back, recovered her strength, and climbed the stairs to the apron of the pool. She found that she was out of breath, her chest tight, and panting from the simple effort of backing up. But she was still afraid.