The City of Joy

by Dominique Lapierre

  'The memory of the old happy days, when I used to follow the slow progress of the buffalo through the rice field, came through my mind. Then, as if out of a dream, I heard a voice, 'Rickshaw wallah! 9 I saw a young girl with two long braids down to her waist. She was wearing the white blouse and navy blue skirt of the girls from a nearby school. Clambering into my rickshaw, she asked me to take her home. Realizing that I hadn't the faintest idea where her street was, she gave me directions. I shall never forget those very first moments when I suddenly found myself in the middle of traffic. It was quite insane. I was like a man who had thrown himself into the water to get away from wild animals, only to find himself surrounded by a herd of crocodiles. The bus and truck drivers led the dance. They seemed to derive a malignant satisfaction from terrorizing rickshaws, charging them like wild bulls amid the noise of their horns and engines. The wildest of all were the minibus drivers and the turbaned taxi drivers. I was so terrified that I moved forward at a walking pace, my eyes on the lookout to left and right. I concentrated on trying to keep the vehicle in balance, on finding the exact place to put my hands, in order to distribute the weight most effectively. It was more easily said than done in the middle of bumpy thoroughfares, ditches, holes, ruts, the mouths of open drains, streetcar lines. You had to be a real acrobat! But Ganesh's trunk was watching over my rickshaw during that first run. It steered me through the obstacles and brought me to the girl's house safe and sound.

  M 'How much do I owe you?' inquired the girl as she

  stepped out of my carriage. I hadn't the faintest idea. 'Give me whatever you think/ She looked in her purse. There's three rupees. That's more than the usual price, but I hope it brings you luck.'

  4t I took the notes and put them next to my heart, thanking her effusively. I was deeply touched. I kept my hand on them for a while, as if to imprint myself with that first money earned in the skin of a Calcutta rickshaw wallah. Feeling those notes between my fingers brought me a sudden surge of hope, the conviction that by working hard I could actually achieve what my family were expecting of me and become their feeding bird, the one who would distribute food to all the starving fledglings in our village hut.

  "In the meantime it was to my wife and children that I wanted to present the money from that first journey. I rushed to the nearest vendor selling fritters and started to run for the pavement where we were camping, with a bag of fritters as my only passenger. My arrival instantly attracted a crowd. The news that a pavement dweller had actually become a rickshaw wallah had spread from one end of the street to the other, like the sound of a firecracker at Diwali.* It did not matter that my old heap was one of the most common vehicles to be found in Calcutta; kids crawled up its wheels to sit on the seat, men felt the weight of the shafts, and women looked at me with admiration and envy. Arjuna going off in his chariot to the great war of our Mahabarata could not have made more of an impression. To all those poor people who, like us, had left their rice fields, I was a living proof that there was always grounds for hope.

  'That reception spurred me on more effectively than a whole plateful of green chilis. I set off again and had barely covered a few yards before two enormous matrons hailed me to take them to the Hind Cinema in Ganesh Avenue. They must have weighed four hundred pounds between them and I thought my ramshackle carriage was going to give out at the first turn of the wheels. The hubs

  ♦The Hindu festival of light when Lakshmi, goddess of prosperity, is venerated.

  squeaked heartrending creaks, and the shafts shuddered in my palms like reeds on a stormy day. In vain I strained; I simply could not manage to find the right balance. I was like a buffalo harnessed to a house.

  My two passengers must have sensed my incompetence because one of them ordered me to stop. As soon as they had gotten out, they hailed another rickshaw. I don't know what chilis that puller had eaten that day but I watched him trot away with no more difficulty than if he had been carrying two statuettes of Durga to the Ganges.

  "After such bitter humiliation, I felt a burning need to redeem myself. I was ready to pick up literally anyone, even free of charge, just to show what I was capable of.

  "The opportunity presented itself on the corner of Park Street, a wide road in the city center flanked by arcades. A young man and a girl coming out of a pastry shop with ice-cream cones in their hands signaled to me to pick them up. The boy asked me to put up the hood and fix up the linen screen that is used during the monsoon or to protect Muslim women from indiscreet eyes. Unfortunately, I didn't possess that accessory! All I could suggest was that they used my spare loin cloth. The young man helped the girl in and directed me to go around the block. I was intrigued but without any further question I fixed the material on to the hood and there we were, off on a journey with no destination. Hardly had I turned the corner than frantic jolts nearly made me lose my balance. Clinging onto the shafts to keep my course, I soon understood the reason for the jerking. My old jalopy was serving as a love nest.

  "Calcutta, you are no longer a cursed city. Quite the opposite, let me bless you for having given me, a poor peasant exiled from Bengal, the opportunity to earn seventeen rupees on this first day. And let me bless you too, dear Ganesh, for having kept all snares and dangers from my carriage and harness, and for allowing me to complete seven runs without problem or accident. I decided to devote a part of my earnings to the purchase of one accessory that is the emblem of rickshaw pullers. The peasant's trade also has its noble tools, like the plowshare

  and the sickle used to harvest the rice. These instruments are feted at the great puja of the god Vishwakarma.*

  "The instrument I was intent on buying was the bell that the rickshaw pullers carry, slipping their right index finger into its thin strap and thus using it to attract clients by jangling it against a rickshaw shaft. Bells come in all different shapes and sizes, and at a variety of prices. They range from the most ordinary gray scrap iron ones to superb copper bells that shine as brightly as the planet Brihaspati. Some of them exude sounds like that of a crested crane fishing on the surface of a pond. Others are more like the call of a kingfisher pursuing a dragonfly. It was from a puller in Park Circus that for two rupees I bought my first bell. It had a fine leather strap which I fastened to my index finger next to my moonstone ring. With such jewels on my fingers, how could I fail to feel good energies welling up inside me? How could I not believe in the generosity of my karma?

  "It would not take long for me to be disenchanted. Next morning when I awoke, my arms, legs, back, and the nape of my neck hurt so much that I had great difficulty in getting up on my feet. My friend Ram Chander had warned me—you don't turn into a human horse overnight, even if you are of good peasant stock. The prolonged effort involved in pulling, the brutal jolts, the exhausting acrobatics entailed in keeping the thing balanced, the violent and sometimes desperate stiffening of the whole body in order to stop in an emergency—it all gives you a brutal shock when you've hardly eaten for months and your body is already pretty worn out.

  "In vain I followed Ram's advice to massage myself from head to toe in mustard oil, like the wrestlers on Howrah Bridge before a fight. I was quite incapable of taking up the shafts of my rickshaw. I could have wept. I entrusted the machine to the care of my wife and dragged myself off to the Park Circus stand. I was absolutely set on giving the five rupees for the day's rental to the owner's representative. I would have gone without food, I would have taken my moonstone to the mahajan just to pay off

  *The god of working tools.

  those five rupees. It was a matter of life and death; thousands of other starving peasants were waiting to get their hands on my rickshaw.

  "At Park Circus I ran into Ram. He had just gotten his carriage back after his clash with the police the other evening. He thought it was a joke to see me shuffling along, bent over like an old man."

  "You haven't seen anything yet!" he jeered at me. "Before three months are up you'll be coughing red too."

  "That's how I
discovered that my friend, who always seemed so hearty and sure of himself, had an infection of the lungs.

  "Are you taking any medicine for it?

  "He looked at me in surprise."

  "You must be joking? You've seen for yourself the lines at the dispensary. You get there at dawn and by evening you're still there. You're better off treating yourself to a nice bit of pan every now and then."

  "Pan?"

  "Certainly. To camouflage the enemy. When you cough, you don't know whether it's blood or betel. That way you don't worry so much."

  "Thereupon, Ram suggested that we go visit our coolie friend in the hospital. It was two days since we had been to see him. So much had happened during those two days! Taking pity on the state I was in, Ram offered to transport me in his rickshaw. It made quite an entertaining spectacle. The other pullers at the stand were hugely amused to see the pair of us going oflf like that. They didn't have that many opportunities for a laugh.

  "It was a very strange sensation for me to find myself suddenly in the position of passenger! It was even more terrifying than being down in between the shafts. All those buses and trucks whose metal panels almost brushed your face! I was in the prime position to see everything, including the taxi bearing down on us like a stampeding elephant, which forced Ram into a pirouette at the very last second. And the heavily laden telagarhi emerging from the right that nothing, not even a wall, would have been able to stop. I admired the virtuosity with which Ram changed the position of his hands on the shaft so that the

  wheels took all the weight of the load. With his bell, you might have taken him for a Katakali dancing girl.

  "The trek to the hospital was a long one. All the streets were blocked by processions with red banners, which completely obstructed the traffic. In Calcutta such processions seemed to be part of the general decor. I had already seen a number of them. Here the workers were organized and kept parading all the time for their demands. That sort of thing didn't go on in the villages. Who were we supposed to go and demand anything from in the country? You can't march in protest against the sky because it hasn't yet sent the monsoon. Here there was a government to take your dissatisfaction to.

  4 'We stopped in a bazaar to buy fruits. This time I was the one who paid for it with the money left from the previous day. I also bought a pineapple that I had the vendor peel and cut up into wedges. That way we'd be able to eat them with the coolie.

  "The hospital was still overflowing with people. We went straight to the building where we had last seen our friend. Before we did so, Ram chained a wheel of his rickshaw to a streetlamp and took with him the contents of the locker. The same attendant was still watching over the patients who'd been operated on, and he let us in without any difficulty after we'd slipped two rupees into his pocket. There was still that appalling smell that seemed to grab you by the throat. We picked our way between the rows of beds to our friend's cot at the far end, near the window, next to the burned child whom I'd fed the orange. As I was having difficulty walking with my stiffness, Ram was quite a way in front of me when he called out, 'He's not there anymore!'

  "Our friend's bed was occupied by an old Muslim with a goatee, whose body was covered with bandages. He couldn't tell us anything, nor could the attendant. I should say that we didn't even know the name of the injured coolie. Perhaps he had been moved elsewhere? Or perhaps they had simply discharged him to make room for someone else? We explored several wards. We even managed to get into the room adjacent to the one where they performed operations. Our friend was nowhere to be found.

  "As we were coming out of the building we saw two male nurses carrying a body on a stretcher. We recognized our friend. His eyes were open; his cheeks were sunken and gray with stubble. His lips were not closed. It was as if he were trying to say something to us. But for him it was all over. I couldn't help wondering whether there'd be more handcarts for him in his next incarnation, or whether he'd be a sardarji behind the wheel of a taxi.

  "Ram questioned the nurses to find out where they were taking our friend. 'He's an indigent,' replied the elder of the two. 'He'll be thrown into the river.' "

  The death of young Sabia changed the attitude of Stephan Kovalski's neighbors. It dispelled their reticence. Even the most mistrustful now greeted the priest with "Salaam, Father!" The children squabbled over who was to carry his bucket on the way to the fountain.

  Then came another event that served to complete this transformation. A few doors away from his room lived a girl of fifteen who had become blind as a result of a virus infection. Her eyes were purulent and she suffered so much that she cursed the world and everything in it. Her name was Banno and she had long braids like a princess in a Mogul miniature. One day her mother came and stood before Stephan Kovalski, her hands joined together in a gesture of supplication.

  "Daktar* for the love of God, do something for my little girl," she implored.

  How could he cure an infection of that kind when all he had in the way of drugs were a few aspirin tablets, a little paregoric, and a tube of some sort of pomade? All the same, Stephan Kovalski decided to apply a little of the

  ♦Doctor.

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  pomade on the girl's eyes. Three days later the miracle had occurred; the infection had been stopped, and by the end of the week young Banno had recovered her sight. The news spread like wildfire. ''There's a white wizard in the neighborhood."

  This exploit earned the Pole his final certificate of acceptance and a degree of notoriety which he could well have done without. Dozens of sick people and invalids wended their way to 49 Nizamudhin Lane. He was compelled to procure other medicines. His room became a haven of refuge for those in the very direst straits. It was never empty. One morning two bearers set down a bearded man whose shaggy hair was covered with ashes. He was attached to a chair. He had no legs and no fingers on his hands. He was a leper, yet his young face radiated a joy that was astonishing in one so disinherited.

  "Big Brother, my name is Anouar," he announced. "You must look after me. As you can see, I'm very sick."

  His gaze alighted next on the picture of the Shroud of Christ.

  "Who is that?" he asked, surprised.

  "It's Jesus."

  The leper looked incredulous.

  "Jesus? No, it can't be. He doesn't look like he usually does. Why does your Jesus have his eyes closed and look so sad?"

  Stephan Kovalski knew that Indian iconography reproduced images of Christ in abundance, but those of a Christ with blue eyes, triumphant and brightly colored, like the gods of the Hindu pantheon.

  "He has suffered," said the priest.

  The Pole sensed that further explanation was necessary. One of Margareta's daughters translated his words into Bengali.

  "His eyes are closed, so that he can see us better," he went on. "And so that we, for our part, can look at him more readily. Perhaps if his eyes were open, we wouldn't dare to, because our eyes are not pure, not are our hearts, and we carry a large share of the responsibility for his sufiFering. For if he is suffering it's because of me, you, all of us; because of our sins, because of the evil that we do.

  Still he loves us so much that he forgives us. He wants us to look at him. That's why he closes his eyes and those closed eyes invite me, too, to close my eyes to pray, to look at God inside me... and inside you too. And to love him. And to do as he does and forgive everyone and love everyone, especially those who suffer like him, they invite me to love you who are suffering like him."

  A little girl in rags who had remained hidden behind the leper's chair came forward and planted a kiss on the picture, caressing it with her small hand.

  "Aj Koshto! How he must suffer!" she murmured, after touching her forehead with three fingers.

  The leper seemed to be deeply moved. His dark eyes were shining.

  "He is in pain," Stephan Kovalski went on, "but he doesn't want us to weep for him, but rather for those who are suffering today, because he suffers in them, in the bodies and he
arts of the lonely, the abandoned, the despised, as well as in the minds of the insane, the neurotic, and the deranged. You see, that's why I love that picture. Because it reminds me of all that."

  The leper nodded his head thoughtfully. Then, raising his stump in the direction of the icon, he said, "Stephan Daddah, your Jesus is much more beautiful than the one in all our pictures."

  "Yes, you are beautiful, Jesus of the City of Joy," Kovalski was to write that evening in the notebook he used as a diary, "as beautiful as the crippled leper you sent me today with his mutilated body, his sores, and his smile. It was you I saw in him, you who are the incarnation of all pain and anguish, you who experienced Gethsemane, who sweated blood, who knew what it was to be tempted by Satan, abandoned by the Father, brought down, discouraged, hungry, thirsty—and lonely.

  "Jesus of Anand Nagar I tried to care for that leper. Every day, I try to share in the plight of the poor. I bow my head with those who are crushed and oppressed like 'grapes in a press and their juice has squirted onto my garments and my clothing has been stained.' I am not

  guiltless, nor am I a saint. I am just a poor fellow, a sinner like all the rest. Sometimes I am crushed or despised like my brothers in the slum but with this certainty deep in my heart—that you love me. I also have another certainty— that no one can take away the joy that fills me, because you are truly present, here in the depths of this wretched slum."

  "With his pudgy fingers covered with rings, his shirt bursting open over his rolls of fat, and his hair shiny with perfumed oils, my first client of the day was frankly repulsive," Hasari Pal recounted. "And so arrogant on the top of it. But I was too hard pressed to treat myself to the satisfaction of refusing to take him. He was a marwari.* No doubt he was used to rolling about in a taxi. He was in a hurry. 'Faster!' he kept calling out and, in the absence of a whip, he bombarded my ribs with kicks that were particularly painful because he was wearing slippers with hard, pointed toes.