Song of Kali

by Dan Simmons

  I propped myself up in bed and she dusted off my lap with a napkin and carefully set the tray in place. Then she curtsied again and held out her hand, palm up. I dropped a sprig of parsley in it.

  "Keep the change," I said.

  "Oh, thank you, thank you, most generous sahib," she sang while backing away in an obsequious series of bows. Victoria put three fingers in her mouth and watched us dubiously.

  "I thought you were going sari-hunting today," I said. Amrita pushed back the heavy curtains and I squinted in the gray glare. "Christ," I said, "is that really sunlight? In Calcutta?"

  "Kamakhya and I have already been shopping. Very nice shop. Quite reasonable, actually."

  "Didn't find anything?"

  "Oh, yes. They'll deliver the material later. We each bought yards and yards. I probably spent your entire advance."

  "Damn." I looked down and made a face.

  "What's the matter, Bobby? Is your coffee cold?"

  "No, it's fine. Very good, in fact. I just realized that I missed my chance to see Kamakhya again. Damn."

  "You'll survive," Amrita said and placed Victoria on the bed to change her.

  The coffee was good, and there was more in a small metal pot. I uncovered the plate to reveal two eggs, buttered toast, and . . . marvel of marvels . . . three strips of real bacon. "Fantastic," I said. "Thanks, kid."

  "Oh, it was nothing," said Amrita. "Of course, the kitchen had been closed for hours, but I told them that it was for the famous poet in Room

  612. The poet that stays out most of the night swapping war stories with the boys and then comes home chuckling to himself loudly enough to wake his wife and baby." "Sorry." "What was that conference about last night? You were mumbling to yourself in your sleep until I nudged you."

  "Sorry, sorry, sorry."

  She taped Victoria's new diaper in place, disposed of the old one, and came back to sit on the edge of the bed. "Honestly, Bobby, what revelations did Krishna's Mysterious Stranger come up with? Was he a real person?"

  I offered her a wedge of toast. She shook her head no and then lifted it from my fingers and took a bite. "Do you really want to hear the story?" I asked.

  Amrita nodded. I took a sip of coffee, decided not to give a blow-by-blow synopsis, and began talking in a light, slightly sarcastic tone of voice. Pausing occasionally to give my opinion of certain parts of the tale by shaking my head or making short remarks, I managed to retell Muktanandaji's three-hour monologue in less than ten minutes.

  "My God," said Amrita when I was finished. She seemed distracted, even disturbed.

  "Well, anyway, it was a hell of a way to end my first full day in beautiful downtown Calcutta," I said.

  "Weren't you frightened, Bobby?"

  "Good God, no. Why should I be, kiddo? The only thing that worried me was getting back to the hotel with my billfold still on my person."

  "Yes, but . . . " Amrita stopped, went over to Victoria, returned a dropped pacifier to her hand, and came back to the bed. "If nothing else, I mean, you spent the evening with a madman, Robert. I wish . . . I wish I had been there to interpret."

  "Me too," I said truthfully. "As far as I know, Muktanandaji spent the entire time reciting the Gettysburg Address over and over in Bengali while Krishna made up the ghost story."

  "Then you don't think the boy was telling the truth?"

  "The truth?" I repeated. I frowned at her. "What do you mean? Corpses being brought back to life? Dead poets being resurrected from river mud? Hon, M. Das disappeared eight years ago. He'd be a pretty wasted zombie, don't you think?"

  "No, I didn't mean that," said Amrita. She smiled, but it was a tired smile. I should never have brought her, I realized. I'd been so worried that I would need an interpreter, someone to help me out with the culture. Dumb shit. "I just thought maybe that the boy might have thought he was telling the truth," she said. "He could have tried to join the Kapalikas or whatever they're called. He might have seen something that he didn't understand."

  "Yeah, that's possible," I said. "I don't know. The kid was a mess — red eyes, lousy skin, a mass of nervous mannerisms. He might have been on drugs, for all I know. I got the idea that Krishna was adding or changing a lot of things. It was like one of those comedy routines where the foreigner grunts and the interpreter chatters on for ten minutes. Know what I mean? Anyway, it could be that he tried to join this secret society and they played spooky games to impress him. But it's my guess that it was Krishna's idea of a scam."

  Amrita took the tray and carried it to the dresser. She rearranged the cup and silverware in various patterns. She did not look at me. "Why is that? Did they ask for money?"

  I pushed the sheet away and walked to the window. A streetcar moved down the middle of the street, discharging and collecting passengers without stopping. The sky was still painted with low clouds, but there was enough sunlight to throw shadows on the cracked pavement. "No," I said. "Not in so many words. But Krishna ended the evening with a cute little epilogue — very sotto voce — explaining how his friend had to find a way to get out of the city, to get to Delhi or somewhere, possibly even South Africa. He left no doubt that a few hundred American dollars would be welcome."

  "Did he ask for money?" Amrita's weighted British vowels were sharper than usual.

  "No. Not in so many words — "

  "How much did you give them?" She showed no sign of anger, only curiosity.

  I padded over to my suitcase and began pulling out clean underwear and socks. Once again I realized that the greatest argument against marriage, the absolutely irrefutable argument against living with one person for years, was the destruction of the illusion of free will by the spouse's constant recognition of one's total predictability. "Twenty dollars," I said. "It was the smallest traveler's check I had. I left most of the Indian currency with you."

  "Twenty dollars," mused Amrita. "At today's exchange rate, that would be about a hundred and eighty rupees. You made it out to Muktanandaji?"

  "No, I left it blank."

  "He might have a hard time getting all the way to South Africa on a hundred and eighty rupees," she said blandly.

  "Goddammit, I don't care if the two of them go buy nose candy with it. Or use it to start a charity account — Save-Muktanandaji-From-the-Wrath-ofthe-Kapalikas-Fund. Tax-deductible. Give now."

  Amrita said nothing.

  "Look at it this way," I said. "We can't get a sitter, go into Exeter to see a bad movie, and go to McDonald's afterward for twenty bucks anymore. His story was a lot more enjoyable than some of the films we've driven to Boston to see. What was the name of that silly kiddie film we spent five dollars to see with Dan and Barb right before we left?"

  "Star Wars," said Amrita. "Do you think you'll be able to use any of his story in the Harper's article?"

  I belted my bathrobe. "The rendezvous and the coffee house, yes. I'll try to work in how surreal and absurd some of the characters were in my . . . what did Morrow call it? . . . my quest for M. Das. But I won't be able to use Muktanandaji's ravings. Not much, anyway. I'll mention it, but the whole Kapalika thing is just too weird. That sort of killer-goddess crap went out with the last of the movie serials. I'll check into the gang stuff — maybe the Kapalikas are sort of a Calcutta Mafia — but the rest of it's just too damn weird to put in a serious article about a fine poet. It's not just morbid, it's — "

  "Perverted?"

  "Naw, they wouldn't mind if I wrote about a little healthy perversion. The word I was thinking of was trite."

  "God save us from clichés, is that it?"

  "You got it, kiddo."

  "All right, Bobby. What are we going to do next?"

  "Hmmm, good question," I said. I was playing peek-a-boo with Victoria. Both of us were using part of the sheet as a hiding place. Each of us would giggle when I lifted it like a curtain from between us. Then Victoria would cover her eyes with her fingers and I would look around in bewilderment, trying to find her. She loved it.

  "I thi
nk I'll take a shower," I said. "Then we're going to get you and the Little One here on this afternoon's flight to London. So far, there's been absolutely no need for you to translate anything but the porter's mumblings. I'm tired of paying for all those extra mouths to feed around here. There's no reason for you to stay an extra day even if I have to wait around for Chatterjee to get his act together. Today's Saturday. You could stay awhile in London, visit your parents overnight, and we could arrive in New York at about the same time . . . say, Tuesday evening."

  "Sorry, Bobby. Impossible for several reasons."

  "Nonsense," I said. "No such word as impossible." Victoria and I discovered each other and giggled. "Name the objections and I'll shoot them down."

  "One, we have high tea at four o'clock with the Chatterjees — "

  "I'll offer your regrets. Next?"

  "Two, the material from the sari shop hasn't arrived yet."

  "I'll bring it with me. Next?"

  "Three, Victoria and I would miss you. Wouldn't we, Precious?" Victoria looked away from the game long enough to gape politely at her mother. Then she changed the rules by pulling the end of the sheet over her head.

  "Sorry, three strikes," I said to Amrita. "You're out. I'll miss you guys, but maybe with you gone I'll be able to make time with your friend Kamakhya. I think there's a two P.M. flight to London today. If not, I'll stay at the airport with you until a later flight."

  Amrita picked up some of the baby's toys and put them in a drawer. "There is a fourth problem," she said.

  "What's that?"

  "BOAC and PanAm have canceled all flights out of Calcutta except BOAC's 6:45 A.M. layover from Thailand. Baggage-handling problems, the man said. I called last night when I was bored."

  "Shit. You're kidding. Damn." Victoria sensed the change in tone and dropped the sheet. Her face puckered toward tears. "There must be some way out of this stinking shithole of a — excuse me, Little One — this city."

  "Oh, yes. All of the Air India in-country flights are going out. We could transfer to PanAm in Delhi or to any of the overseas airlines there or in Bombay. But we've missed today's early New Delhi flight, and all of the others have horrendous layovers. I'd rather wait for you, Bobby. I don't want to travel in this country without you. I did enough of that as a child."

  "Okay, hon," I said, and put my arm around her. "All right, then, let's try to make the Monday-morning BOAC flight. Christ, six-thirty in the morning. Well, at least it'll be a breakfast flight. Okay if I go ahead with my plan to shower?"

  "Yes," said Amrita while picking up the baby. "I checked with the BOAC people and there's no problem with you showering."

  That afternoon we went through the motions of sightseeing. I tucked Victoria into the backpack carrier, and we were out into the heat, noise, and confusion. The temperature and humidity both hovered near the 100 mark. We had a better-than-decent luncheon at a place called Shah-en-Shah's and then took a taxi up Chowringhee to the Indian Museum.

  A small sign outside proclaimed ABSOLUTELY NO YOGIC EXERCISES PERMITTED IN GARDENS! The inside was very hot, the display cases were dusty, and the building was surprisingly empty except for a loud and obnoxious tour group of Germans. I was mildly interested in the anthropology displays on the first floor, but it was the exhibit of archaeological art that finally caught my eye.

  "What is it?" asked Amrita as she saw me bending over a glass case.

  The tiny black figurine was labeled Representation of Durga Goddess in Kali Aspect: circa 80 B.C. It fell short of being frightening. I saw no sign of a noose, skull, or severed head. One hand held what looked to be a wooden bough, another an inverted egg cup, a third what might have been a trident but looked more like an opened Swiss Army knife, and her last hand was extended palm up, offering a tiny yellow doughnut. As with all the statues of goddesses I'd seen in the museum, she was high-waisted, firm-breasted, and long of ear. Her face was scowling, her many teeth were sharp, but I could make out no vampirish canines or lolling tongue. She was wearing a headdress of flames. Much more fierce, to my eye, was a statue marked Durga that stood in a nearby case. This supposedly more benign incarnation of Parvati had ten arms, and each hand was filled with a weapon more fierce than the last.

  "Your friend Kali doesn't seem too terrible," said Amrita. Even Victoria was leaning forward from the backpack carrier to look at the display case.

  "This thing's two thousand years old," I said. "Maybe she's grown more hideous and bloodthirsty since then."

  "Some women just don't age gracefully," agreed Amrita and moved on to the next display. Victoria seemed to enjoy a large bronze idol of Ganesha, the playful, elephant-headed god of prosperity; and for the rest of our time in the museum we made a game out of finding as many representations of Ganesha as we could.

  Amrita would have liked to visit the Victoria Memorial Hall to see artifacts of the Raj, but it was getting late and we contented ourselves with driving by in the taxi and pointing out to the baby the imposing white structure that we told her was named after her.

  We entered the hotel in a torrential downpour, changed clothes quickly, and came back out to find Chatterjee's car waiting and the rain stopped.

  I was wearing a tie for the first time in several days, and as the car pulled out into traffic I sat uncomfortably, tugging at the knot and wishing my collar were looser or my neck smaller. My short-sleeved white shirt had already soaked through the back and I was suddenly aware how scuffed and stained my faithful Wallabees looked. All in all, I felt wrinkled, tousled, and soaked in sweat. I glanced sideways at Amrita. She looked — as she always did — cool and contained. She was wearing the white cotton dress she had purchased in London and the lapis lazuli necklace I had given her before we were married. By all rights her hair should have been hanging down in limp strands, but it fell full and lustrous to her shoulders.

  We drove for the better part of an hour, a trip which reminded me that Calcutta was larger in area than New York City. Traffic was as insane and haphazard as ever, but Chatterjee's silent driver found the fastest route through the confusion. My concern about the traffic wasn't overly allayed by the large white signs in Bengali, Hindi, and English that sat in the center of several chaotic traffic circles we negotiated: DRIVE MORE CAREFULLY!

  THERE HAVE BEEN |------| DEATHS ON THIS THOROUGHFARE THIS YEAR!

  The boxes were filled with the kind of nail-up number panels one used to see in old-time baseball parks. The highest number we saw on this trip was 28. I wondered idly whether that included that entire section of road or just those few square feet of pavement.

  At times we sped down a highway bordered on each side by great chawls — those incredible slums of tin roofs, gunnysack walls, and mud-path streets — which extended for miles and were terminated only by gray monoliths of factories belching flame and unfiltered soot toward the monsoon clouds. I realized that sweeping philosophical convictions such as ecology and pollution control were luxuries for our advanced industrial nations. The air in Calcutta, already sweetened by raw sewage, burning cow dung, millions of tons of garbage, and the innumerable open fires eternally burning, was made almost unbreathable by the further effusion of raw auto emissions and industrial filth.

  The factories themselves were huge artifacts of worn brick, rusted steel, rampant weeds, and broken windows — pictures from some grim future when the industrial age had gone the way of the dinosaur but left its rotting carcasses sprawled across the landscape. Yet, smoke rose from the most tumbledown ruin, and ragged human forms came and went from the black maws of the darkest buildings. I found it almost impossible to imagine myself living in one of those floorless hovels, working in one of those grim factories.

  Amrita must have been sharing similar thoughts, for we rode in silence, each watching the panorama of human hopelessness pass by the car windows.

  Then, in a space of a few minutes, we crossed a bridge over a wide expanse of railroad tracks, passed through a transitional neighborhood of tiny storefronts, and
were suddenly in an old, established area of tree-lined streets and large homes guarded by walls and barred gates. The thin sunlight glinted off countless shards of broken glass set atop the flat walls. At one place there was a yard-wide swath cleared on top of a high wall, but the mud-colored masonry was smeared with dark streaks. Well-polished automobiles sat at the end of long driveways. The iron-spiked gates bore small signs warning Beware of Dog in at least three languages.

  It took no great insight to realize that this once had been a British residential section, as separate from the pandemonium of the city and its natives as the English governing class could make it. Decay was evident even here — the frequently filthy walls, unshingled roofs, and crudely boarded windows — but it was a controlled decay, a rearguard action against the rampant entropy which seemed to govern Calcutta elsewhere; and the sense of dissolution was ameliorated somewhat by the bright flowers and other obvious attempts at gardening that one glimpsed through high entry gates.