The City of Joy

by Dominique Lapierre

  "Good morning, Father!" cried the latter amicably, before the inevitable, "Do you like your tea with or without milk?"

  This time Kovalski was full of hope. The babu began by popping into his mouth a wad of betel that he had just made up for himself. After several efforts at mastication, he got up and headed for a metal cabinet. Straining at the handle, he had to make a number of attempts at opening it before he actually succeeded. When the door finally did turn on its hinges, the cabinet expelled an avalanche of files, ledgers, notebooks, and different documents, almost burying the unfortunate official altogether. Had there not

  been a human life at stake, Kovalski would have burst out laughing, but the urgency of the issue preserved his calm. He rushed to the victim's rescue, bent on extracting him forcefully from his ocean of paper and procuring the immediate surrender of the parcel of medicines. He was not quite familiar with the sometimes subtle ploys of local bureaucracy. In his haste, he tripped over a coconut that another babu had deposited on the floor next to his chair, to quench his thirst during the course of the morning. Fortunately there was no shortage of papers to soften the Pole's fall.

  As it happened, the incident had a positive effect. The official with the glasses began to thumb through the pages of several ledgers that had spilled out of the cabinet. Kovalski watched him for a while, fascinated. The man was running his fingers down a confusion of boxes and columns in search of some cabalistic mantra scrawled in almost illegible ink. Suddenly he saw the babu's finger stop on a particular page. He leaned forward and could hardly believe his eyes. In the midst of all this geological subsidence of paperwork and records, one single entry brought all the chaos back into touch with a living, palpable, indisputable reality. What he read was his name. This bureaucracy was not quite as ineffective as even the Indians themselves claimed.

  The discovery propelled the official in the direction of another section of the sea of papers that looked as if it might totally engulf him at any second. With all the dexterity of a pearl fisher, he fished out a yellow-covered file on which Kovalski deciphered his name for a second time. Victory! A few more moments of patience and Bandona's protegee could have her first injection of the saving serum. However, as if exhausted by the effort of his find, the babu straightened himself up, consulted his watch, and sighed, "Father, we'll continue after lunch."

  That afternoon the babu looked more forbidding. "The information on the ledger does not correspond to that on the slip you were sent," he announced. "It'll have to be verified in other ledgers."

  "Only the expression of sincere regret on the official's

  x x

  face prevented me from bursting into a rage," Kovalski was to say.

  The sixth and seventh days passed without their being able to find the correct ledger. On the eighth day, the babu claimed forty rupees from the priest to assign two additional employees to the search for the right references. Another whole week went by. Bureaucratic disaster was systematically swallowing up even the very best of intentions. Stephan Kovalski had given up all hope when, after six weeks, he received by post a further notice inviting him urgently to come and clear his parcel. By some miracle Bandona's protegee was .still alive.

  The babu received his visitor with all the transports of affection befitting an old friend. His joy at seeing Kovalski again was very real. He asked for another thirty rupees for the purchase of revenue stamps and took charge of a pot of glue and a brush with four remaining bristles. Liberally he brushed the place reserved for the stamps, but in the meantime the stamps, caught up in the whirlwind from the fans, fluttered away. Kovalski was compelled to produce another thirty rupees for three new stamps. Then he was invited to fill in a series of forms to establish how much duty he was to pay. Working this out, and also computing the amount owed for the various taxes took nearly all day. The final sum was exorbitant: three hundred and sixty-five rupees, three or four times the declared value of the medicines. But then there was no price to be put on a human life.

  "Even then my difficulties weren't altogether over," the Pole would sigh. "The customs office wasn't permitted to receive direct payment of the duty it proscribed. The duty money had to be cleared by the central bank which would then issue a receipt. This meant one more day wandering from counter to counter in that tentacular establishment."

  At last, clasping the precious receipt to his chest, Kovalski ran back to the customs office. By this time he had become such a familiar figure that everyone welcomed him with a cheery "Good morning, Father!" His babu, however, displayed an unaccustomed reserve. He refrained from even examining the document and instead asked the priest to accompany him. Together they went down two

  floors and entered a storeroom where mountains of parcels and crates from all over the world were piled high on shelves. The babu asked one of the uniformed customs officers to go and fetch the package of medicines. Moments later, Stephan Kovalski at last confronted the precious dispatch, a box hardly bigger than two packs of cigarettes. "It was like a mirage, a vision of life and hope, the promise of a miracle. The long wait, all that time spent in fruitless activity, all that desperate effort was at last going to result in the saving of a life."

  He held out his hand to take possession of the parcel.

  "I'm sorry, Father/' apologized the uniformed customs official. "But I can't let you have it."

  He pointed to a door behind him on which hung a sign with the words, "Goods incinerator."

  "The date for your medicines expired three days ago," he explained, making for the door. "We're obliged to destroy them. It's an international regulation."

  The babu, who until now had remained silent, intervened swiftly, grabbing hold of the tail of the man's shirt.

  "This Father is a holy man," he protested. "He works for the poor. He needs that medicine to save the life of an Indian woman. Even if the date has run out, you must give it to him."

  The uniformed customs officer surveyed Kovalski's patched shirt.

  "You work for the poor?" he repeated respectfully. Kovalski nodded. Then he watched as the customs officer crossed out the word, "perished."

  "Father, don't say anything to anybody, and may God bless you."

  Despite the medicine, Bandona's protegee died four weeks later. She was twenty-eight years old, a widow, and she left four orphans. In an Indian slum, such a qualification didn't really apply to any children. When parents died, and God knows that happened often enough, they didn't leave orphans behind; other members of the family— an elder brother, an uncle, an aunt—or in the absence of any relatives, neighbors would adopt them at once.

  XX

  The young woman's death was very quickly forgotten. That was another characteristic of the slum. No matter what happened, life went on with an energy and vigor that was constantly renewed.

  Scintillating serpents suddenly spattered the sky, as a burst of fireworks exploded over the slum. Diwali, the Hindu festival of light, was celebrated on the darkest night of the year and marked the official arrival of winter. In a country where all is myth and symbol, it represented the victory of light over darkness. Illuminations commemorated one of the greatest epic stories of the legend of Ramayana, the return of the goddess Sita, brought back by her divine consort Rama, after her abduction to Ceylon by the demon Ravana. In Bengal, it is also thought that the souls of the departed begin their journey on this date in the year, and lamps are lit to light their way. It is also the festival of the goddess Lakshmi, who never enters a dark house, but only the houses that are brightly lit. And, since she is the goddess of wealth and beauty, she is venerated in the hope that she will bring happiness and prosperity. Finally, for many Bengalis this is also the festival of Kali, the somber divinity who symbolized the dark trials through which man must pass in order to attain the light. For the inhabitants of the City of Joy, Diwali is, above all, the hope at the end of the night. 184

  Like other households in Hindu India, the hovels in the slum were the setting that night for frenzied c
ard games. The festival perpetuated a custom born of another legend, that of the famous dice game in which god Shiva wins back the fortune he has lost during a previous game against Parvati, his faithless wife. To achieve this victory the god enlisted help from his divine colleague Vishnu, who conveniently materialized as a pair of dice. Thus the festival of Diwali was also a form of homage to gambling.

  Every Hindu gambled that night, be it at cards, dice, or roulette. They played with ten-, five-, or one-rupee notes, or even with just a few paisas. When they had no money, they played with a banana, a handful of almonds, a few sweetmeats. It mattered not what they played with, just that they played. Even Kovalski could not escape the ritual. For, despite the fact that it was occupied by Muslims, even Nizamudhin Lane had its wild spark.

  The old Hindu from the tea shop invited his foreign neighbor to join in a heated game of poker that went on until dawn. As in the legend, Shiva's devotee was allowed to win back the twenty rupees his opponent had taken from him, in the very last round.

  It was as he was returning home that morning that Stephan Kovalski heard the news. Selima, the wife of his neighbor Mehboub, who was seven months pregnant, had disappeared.

  The young Muslim woman had been discreetly approached by one of her neighbors three days earlier at the fountain. With her face pockmarked from smallpox, the portly Mumtaz Bibi was something of a mystery figure in this world where promiscuity rendered everybody transparent. Although her husband was only a simple factory worker, she enjoyed a certain opulence. She lived in the alley's only brick house and it was not exactly a hovel. From her ceiling hung a rare and wondrous ornament: an electric light bulb. It was said, too, that a number of rooms in the surrounding compounds were her property, yet no one was able to specify precisely where her money came from. Malicious tongues had it that outside the neighborhood Mumtaz exercised occult powers. The local Mafia godfather had been seen going into her house. There was talk of

  traffic in bhang, Indian marijuana, of the clandestine distillation of alcohol, of prostitution, and even of a network for buying up little girls for brothels in Delhi and Bombay. No one, however, had ever managed to support such slander with any proof.

  4 'Stop off at my house on the way back from the fountain," she said to Selima. "I have an interesting proposition for you."

  Despite her surprise, Selima did as she was asked. The poor woman had become little more than a shadow since her husband had lost his job. Her beautiful smooth face now looked haggard, and the small stone in her nostril had long since tumbled into the usurer's coffer. She, who had always carried herself with such dignity in her worn sari, now walked like an old woman. Only her belly remained unaffected, a belly that was swollen, taut, superb. She carried it with pride, for it was all she had. Two months later she would give birth to the tiny being that stirred inside her—her fourth child. Mumtaz Bibi had prepared a plateful of tidbits and two small cups of tea with milk. She motioned her visitor to sit down on the low platform she used a§ a bed.

  "Are you set on keeping that child?" she asked, pointing at Selima's belly. "If you'd agree to sell it to me, I could make you a good deal."

  "Sell you my child," stammered Selima, flabbergasted.

  "Not exactly your child," the fat woman corrected her, "only what you've got inside you at the moment. And for a good price: two thousand rupees (two hundred U.S. dollars)."

  The opulent dowager of Nizamudhin Lane was carrying on the very latest of Calcutta's clandestine professions: the sale of human embryos and fetuses. The mainsprings of the industry were a network of foreign buyers who scoured the third world on behalf of international laboratories and institutes for genetic research. The majority of these buyers were Swiss or American. They used the embryos and fetuses either for scientific work or in the manufacture of rejuvenating products for a clientele of privileged people in specialized establishments in Europe and America. The demand had provoked a fruitful trade for which Calcutta

  was one of the central sources. One of the recognized providers of this unusual merchandise was an ex-pharmacist named Sushil Vohra. He obtained his supplies from several clinics that specialized in abortions, and he looked after the packaging of the consignments which left for Europe or the U.S.A., via Moscow on the Soviet airline, Aeroflot's, regular flight.

  The most sought-after fetuses were the most developed ones, but these were also the most difficult to come by, a fact which accounted for the high sum offered to Selima, compared with the less than two hundred rupees paid for an embryo that was only two months old. In fact, it was very rare indeed for a woman who had reached her sixth or seventh month of pregnancy to part with her child. Even in the poorest of families the birth of children is always greeted with joy. They are the only riches of those who have nothing.

  Mumtaz assumed a maternal tone.

  "Think good and hard about it, little one. You already have three children. Your husband's out of work and I've heard it said that your family doesn't eat every day. This is not perhaps the time to add another mouth to your household. Whereas, you know, with two thousand rupees you can fill plenty of plates of rice."

  Poor Selima knew that only too well. Finding a few peelings and scraps to put on her family's plates was her daily torture.

  "What's my husband going to say when I come home with two thousand rupees and nothing in my... ?"

  The dowager gave her a smile of complicity.

  "That doesn't have to be a problem. I'll give you the two thousand rupees in small installments. Your husband won't think anything of it and you'll be able to buy something to feed your family every day."

  The two women parted on these words, but just as Selima was leaving, Mumtaz called her back.

  "There's just one thing I'd forgotten," she added. "If you agree, you needn't have any fears about yourself. The operation is always carried out under the very best conditions. What's more, it only takes a few minutes. You'll only be away from home for three hours at the most."

  Strangely enough the idea of danger had not even crossed Mehboub's wife's mind; to a poor woman from the slums death was of no real concern.

  All day and all night the wretched woman was haunted by that visit. Every movement she felt inside her seemed like a protest against the horrible exchange that had just been suggested to her. She could never agree to what amounted to murder, not even for two thousand rupees; but then there were other voices too that haunted Selima in the night, the familiar voices of her three other children crying out with hunger. At dawn she made her decision.

  It was all fixed for two days later. As soon as he got the news, the trafficker Sushil Vohra prepared a large jar of antiseptic fluid. A seven-month-old embryo was almost the same size and shape as a newborn baby. He took the container to a small clinic where the operation was to take place. The festival of light posed a few problems. The usual Hindu surgeons had all gone off to play cards or dice, but Sushil Vohra was not one to allow such obstacles to stop him. Undaunted, he sent for a Muslim surgeon.

  The medical establishment into which Mumtaz directed Selima had few pretensions to the title of clinic. It was a kind of dispensary made up of a single room divided in two by a curtain. One half served as a reception and treatment area, the other as an operating room. The surgical equipment was of the most basic kind: a metal table, a fluorescent light, one bottle of alcohol and another of ether standing on a shelf. There was no sterilizer, no oxygen, and no reserve supply of blood. There weren't even any instruments. Each surgeon had to bring his own personal case.

  Disturbed by the smell of ether that had impregnated the floor and walls, Selima sank down on a stool that constituted the only piece of furniture. The act that she was bracing herself to have performed seemed to her progressively more monstrous, yet she approached it with resignation. "This evening my husband and children will be able to eat," she kept telling herself. Between her blouse and her skin she could already feel the friction of the first bills Mumtaz had given her: thirty rupees, enough
to buy almost twenty-five pounds of rice.

  The surgeon called for the operation was a man in his fifties with a receding hairline and large hairy ears. He asked Selima to lie down on the table and examined her attentively. Behind him, the trafficker was growing impatient. The Aeroflot plane was due to take off in four hours. He would only just have time to take the jar to Dum Dum Airport. He had alerted his contact in New York. The transaction would earn him about a thousand U.S. dollars net.

  "What are you waiting for, Doctor?"

  The surgeon took out his instrument case, slipped on a gown, asked for some soap and a basin to wash his hands, then steeped a large piece of cotton in ether and placed it over Selima's nose and mouth. He toyed nervously with his mustache while the young woman lost consciousness, then took up his lancet. Twenty minutes later, mopping up with gauze compresses the blood flowing from the uterus, he placed the fetus with the placenta in the hands of the trafficker. The child would have been a boy.

  It was after he had cut the umbilical cord that disaster struck. A reddish bubbling issued from Selima's womb, followed by black dots, and then a veritable torrent of blood spurted forth in a single gush. In a matter of seconds the floor of the room was covered in it. The surgeon tried to compress the lower abdomen with a very tight bandage, but the red tide continued to escape. He undid the dressings and tried to feel out the position of the abdominal aorta. Applying his fist to the vessel, he pressed with all his might in an attempt to stem the hemorrhage. Without the assistance of a massive dose of coagulants, however, all his efforts were in vain. He tried to find her pulse, but Selima's wrist was already showing only the most imperceptible and irregular beat. At that point, he heard a door bang behind him and turned around. The trafficker had left with the jar. Mumtaz Bibi, the dowager, did likewise, having first swiftly recovered her thirty rupees from her victim's bodice. The surgeon spread the old sari over the dying woman. Then he took off his blouse soaked in blood and carefully folded it up. He arranged his instruments in their box and put everything into his canvas attach^ case. And he too left.