by Dan Simmons
The poet's lipless grimace was a cruel imitation of a smile. "Why, it must be obvious to what end my poor powers have been spent," said Das. "I am the poet of the goddess Kali. Unworthy as I am, I serve her as poet, priest, and avatar."
During this entire conversation, a portion of me experienced the detached observation that Das had mentioned. It seemed as if a part of my consciousness were hovering near the ceiling, watching the entire exchange with a cool appraisal bordering on indifference. Another part of me wanted to laugh hysterically, to cry out, to turn the table over in raging disbelief and to flee from that vile darkness.
"That is my story," said Das. "What do you say, Mr. Luczak?"
"I say that your disease has driven you insane, Mr. Das."
"Yesss?"
"Or that you are quite sane but must play a role for someone."
Das said nothing, but the baleful eyes glanced quickly to the side.
"Another problem with the story," I said, amazed at the firmness of my own voice.
"What is that?"
"If your . . . if the body was discovered only last year, I doubt if there would be much to find. Not after almost seven years."
Das's head snapped up like a nightmare jack-in-the-box. There was a scraping sound in the curtained darkness.
"Oh? Who said that the discovery occurred last year, Mr. Luczak?"
My throat constricted. Without thinking, I began talking. "According to Mr. Muktanandaji, that was when the mythical resurrection took place."
A hot breeze stirred the flame and shadows danced across Das's ruined face. His terrible grin remained fixed. There was another stirring in the shadows.
"Ahhh," exhaled Das. His wrapped and mangled hand scraped across the table in an absent gesture. "Yesss, yesss. There are . . . from time to time . . . certain reenactments."
I leaned forward and let my hand fall next to the stone. My gaze searched out the human being in the leprous hulk across the table from me. My voice was earnest, urgent. "Why, Das? For Godssake, why? Why the Kapalikas? Why this epic obscenity about Kali returning to rule the world or whatever the shit it's about? You used to be a great poet. You sang songs of truth and innocence." My words sounded insipid to me but I knew no other way to say it.
Das leaned back heavily. His breath rattled through his open mouth and nostrils. How long can someone live in this condition? Where the flesh was not ravaged by the disease, the skin looked almost transparent, fragile as parchment. How long had it been since this man saw sunlight?
"There is a great beauty in the Goddess," he whispered.
"Beauty in death and corruption? Beauty in violence? Das, since when has a disciple of Tagore sung a hymn to violence?"
"Tagore was blind!" There was a new energy in the sibilant whisper. "Tagore could not see. Perhaps in his dying moments. Perhaps. If he had been able to then, he would have turned to her, Mr. Luczak. We all would turn to her when Death enters our night chamber and takes us by the hand."
"Fleeing to some sort of religion doesn't justify violence," I said. "It wouldn't justify the evil you sang of it — "
"Evil. Pahhh!" Das spat a gob of yellow phlegm on the floor. "You know nothing. Evil. There is no evil. There is no violence. There is only power. Power is the single, great organizing principle of the universe, Mr. Luczak. Power is the only a priori reality. All violence is an attempt to exercise power. Violence is power. Everything we fear, we fear because some force exerts its power over us. All of us seek freedom from such fear. All religions are attempts to achieve power over forces which might control us. But She is our only refuge, Mr. Luczak. Only the Devourer of Souls can grant us the abhaya mudras and remove all fear, for only She holds the ultimate power. She is power incarnate, a force beyond time or comprehension."
"That's obscene," I said. "It's a cheap excuse for cruelty."
"Cruelty?" Das laughed. It was the rattling of stones in an empty urn. "Cruelty? Surely, even a sentimental poet who prattles of eternal verities must know that what you call cruelty is the only reality which the universe recognizes. Life subsists on violence."
"I don't accept that."
"Oh?" Das blinked twice. Slowly. "You have never tasted the wine of power? You have never attempted violence?"
I hesitated. I could not tell him that most of my life had been one long exercise of control over my temper. My God, what were we talking about? What was I doing there?
"No," I said.
"Nonsense."
"It's true, Das. Oh, I've been in a few fights, but I've always tried to avoid violence." I was nine, ten years old. Sarah was seven or eight. In the woods near the edge of the forest preserve. 'Take down your shorts. Now!'
"It is not true. Everyone has tasted the blood wine of Kali."
"No. You're wrong." Slapping her in the face. Once. Twice. The rush of tears and the slow compliance. My fingers leaving red marks on her thin arm. "Only unimportant little incidents. Kid stuff."
"There are no unimportant cruelties," said Das.
"That's absurd." The terrible, total excitement of it. Not just at the sight of her pale nakedness and the strange, sexual intensity of it. No, not just that. It was her total helplessness. Her submission. I could do anything I wanted to.
"We will see."
Anything I wanted to.
Das rose laboriously. I pushed back my own chair.
"You will publish the poem?" His voice rasped and hissed like embers in a cooling fire.
"Perhaps not," I said. "Why don't you come with me, Das? You don't have to stay here. Come with me. Publish it yourself."
Once, when I was seventeen, an idiot cousin dared me to play Russian roulette with his father's revolver. The cousin put the single cartridge in. He spun the chamber for me. In a second of pure, mindless bravado I remember lifting the gun, putting the barrel to my temple, and squeezing the trigger. The hammer had fallen on an empty chamber then, but since that day I had refused to go near guns. Now, in the Calcutta darkness, I felt I had again lifted a barrel to my head for no good reason. The silence stretched.
"No. You must publish it. It isss important."
"Why? Can't you leave here? What can they do to you that they haven't already done? Come with me, Das."
Das's eyes partially closed, and the thing before me no longer looked human. A stench of grave soil came to me from its rags. There were undeniable sounds behind me in the blackness.
"I choose to stay here. But it is important that you bring the Song of Kali to your country."
"Why?" I said again.
Das's tongue was like a small, pink animal touching the slick teeth and then withdrawing. "It is more than my final work. Consider it an announcement. A birth announcement. Will you publish the poem?"
I let ten heartbeats of silence bring me to the edge of some dark pit I did not understand. Then I bowed my head slightly. "Yes," I said. "It will be published. Not all of it, perhaps, but it will see print."
"Good," said the poet and turned to leave. Then he hesitated and turned back almost shyly. For the first time I heard a note of human longing in his voice. "There is . . . something else, Mr. Luczak."
"Yes?"
"It would mean you would have to return here."
The thought of reentering this crypt after once escaping it made my knees almost buckle. "What is it?"
He gestured vaguely at Winter Spirits still lying on the table. "I have little to read. They . . . the ones who care for my needs . . . are able to get me books occasionally when I specify titles. But often they bring back the wrong books. And I know so few of the new poets. Would you . . . could you possibly . . . a few books of your choice?"
The old man lurched forward three steps, and for a horrifying moment I thought he was going to grasp my hand in his two rotted ones. He stopped in midmotion, but the raised and bandaged hands seemed even more touching in their imploring helplessness.
"Yes, I'll get some books for you." But not come back here, I thought. I'll give some books to your Kapalika friends
, but to hell with that return crap. But before I could phrase the thoughts out loud, Das spoke again.
"I would especially love to read the work of that new American poet, Edwin Arlington Robinson," he rushed on quickly. "I have read only one new poem of his, 'Richard Cory,' but the ending is so beautiful, so perfectly applicable to my own situation, to my own ambitions, that I dream about it constantly. If you could bring such a work?"
I could only gape. That new American poet? Finally, not knowing what else to say, terrified of saying the wrong thing, I nodded. "Yes," I managed to get out. "I'll try."
The sad and twisted form turned and left the room. A second later so did I. The black curtains clung to me for a second as if restraining me, refusing to let me escape, but then I was free. Free!
Calcutta looked beautiful to me. Weak sunlight filtering through the clouds, crowds of people, the riot of afternoon traffic — I looked at it all with a joyous sense of relief that added a glow to the scene. Then I remembered Das's final comment and doubts assailed me. No, I would think about that later. For now I was free.
The two Kapalikas had been waiting at the bottom of the stairway. Their services as guides were needed for only a few minutes to lead me through the chawl to a main street where I managed to wave down a taxi. Before leaving me, one of them handed me a soiled card with the note In front of Kalighat — 9:00 scrawled on it. "This is where I'm to bring the books?" I asked the thinner man. His nod was both affirmation and farewell.
Then the black-and-yellow cab was poking through barely moving traffic and I spent ten minutes just reveling in my release from tension. What a goddamn experience! Morrow would never believe it. Already I found it hard to believe. Sitting there, probably surrounded by crazy Calcutta street thugs, talking to what was left of one of the world's great poets. What a goddamn experience!
This kind of story would never work for Harper's. The National Enquirer, perhaps, but not Harper's. I laughed out loud, and the sweaty little cabdriver turned in his seat to stare at the crazy American. I grinned and spent several minutes writing potential leads and weighting the story so it would have the proper dried and cynical attitude for Morrow. Too late I realized that I should have been noting my location, but by then we were miles from where I'd hailed the cab.
Finally I recognized the large buildings that meant we were near the center of the city. About two blocks from the hotel, I had the driver let me out in front of a dilapidated storefront with a large sign proclaiming MANNY'S BOOKSELLER. The interior was a maze of metal shelves and tall heaps of books, old, new, some thick with dust, most from English publishers.
It took me about thirty minutes to find eight books of good, recent poetry. There was no collection by Robinson, but a Pocket Book of Modern Verse had "Richard Cory" as well as "The Dark Hills" and "Walt Whitman." I turned the yellow paperback over in my hands and frowned at it. Could I have misunderstood Das's message? I thought not.
Deciding nothing then, I nonetheless spent several minutes choosing the last two books just on the basis of their size. As the bookseller was counting out my change in odd-shaped coins, I asked him where I could find a drugstore. He frowned and shook his head, but after several attempts I explained my needs. "Ah, yes, yes," he said. "A chemist's." He gave me directions to a shop between the bookstore and the hotel.
It was almost six P.M. when I got back to the Oberoi Grand. The Communist pickets were squatting along the curb, brewing tea over small fires. I waved at them almost cheerily and reentered the air-conditioned security of another world.
I lay half dozing while Calcutta moved into evening. The buoyant excitement and relief had drained away to be replaced by a weight of exhaustion and indecision. I kept replaying the afternoon's encounter, trying in vain to lessen the incredible horror of Das's disfigurement. The longer I denied the images that flickered behind my closed eyelids, the more terrible their reality became.
" . . . so beautiful, so perfectly applicable to my own situation, to my own ambitions, that I dream about it constantly."
I did not have to open the newly purchased paperback to know the poem of which Das had spoken.
"And Richard Cory, one calm summer night, Went home and put a bullet through his head."
Simon and Garfunkel had made that particular image accessible to everyone in their song of the previous decade.
I dream about it constantly.
It was almost seven p.m. I changed my trousers, washed up, and went downstairs for a light dinner of curried rice and fried dough that Amrita had always called poori but that the menu referred to as loochi. With the meal I drank two cold quart bottles of Bombay beer and felt less depressed by the time I went back up to the room an hour later. As I came down the hall I thought I heard the room phone ringing, but by the time I'd fumbled out my key the sound had stopped.
The brown sack was where I had tossed it on the closet shelf. The .25-caliber automatic was smaller than I had remembered. Perhaps the very toyness of the little pistol helped me to determine what to do next.
I removed the package of razor blades and the bottle of glue from the chemist's sack. Then I tested three of the larger books for size, but only the hardback of Lawrence Durrell's poetry seemed right. I flinched before beginning; all of my life I've hated the thought of damaging a book.
It took me forty minutes of hacking away, always worried that I was going to slice a finger off, before I could say I was finished. The wastebasket was half filled with shredded paper. The interior of the book looked as if rats had chewed at it for years, but the little automatic fit perfectly in the space I had hollowed out.
Just seeing it there made my pulse pound. I continued to tell myself that I could always change my mind and throw the thing in an alley somewhere. Actually, the book would be a clever way to get it out of the hotel so I could toss it. Or so I told myself.
But I took the pistol out of its nest and gingerly pressed the loaded clip until it clicked and locked. I searched but could find no safety. Then I set the pistol back in the book and carefully glued the pages together at several points.
I dream about it constantly.
I shook my head and packed the books in the brown bag lettered MANNY'S BOOKSELLER. The Durrell went third from the bottom.
It was 8:50. I closed up the room and moved quickly down the hall. That was when the elevator doors opened and Amrita stepped out carrying Victoria in her arms.
13
"And midnight, bestial cries . . .
Who is enemy to whom, who —
In the ferocity of this false city?"
— Siddheswar Sen
Bobby, it was dreadful. The one o'clock flight was delayed until three. We
sat there and sat there, and the air conditioning wasn't working much
of the time. The stewardess said that it was a mechanical problem, but
a Bombay businessman next to me said the pilot and the flight engineer were having some sort of feud. He said this had happened several times in the past few weeks. Then they brought the plane back to the terminal and we all had to get off. Victoria had spit up all over me and I didn't have time to change into the other blouse I'd packed in the carry-on bag. Oh, it was dreadful, Bobby."
"Uh-huh," I said and glanced at my watch. It was just nine o'clock. Amrita was sitting on the bed, but I still stood by the open door. I could not believe that she and the baby were actually there. Damn, damn, damn. I had the urge to grab Amrita and shake her fiercely. I was dizzy with fatigue and confusion.
"Then they told us to board another flight to Delhi that stopped in Benares and Khajuraho. I would have just been able to make the PanAm connection if it had left on time."
"But it didn't," I said tonelessly.
"Of course not. And our luggage was never transferred. Still, I was planning to take the seven-thirty flight to Bombay and fly BA to London, but the incoming flight from Bombay had to go to Madras because of a problem with the landing lights at the Calcutta airport. They rescheduled th
e flight for eleven but, Bobby, I was so tired, and Victoria had been crying for hours . . . "
"I understand," I said.
"Oh, Bobby, I called and called but you weren't in. The manager promised to give you my message."
"He didn't," I said. "I saw him when I came in, but he didn't say anything."
"That matyeryebyets," muttered Amrita. "He promised." Amrita never indulged in cursing unless she could do so in the anonymity of another language. She knew that I didn't speak Russian. What she did not know was that this particular obscenity had been my Polish grandfather's favorite Russian word to describe all Russians.
"It doesn't matter," I said. This changes everything.
"I'm sorry, but all I could think about was taking a cold shower, being able to feed Victoria, and leaving with you tomorrow."