On the second day, a young Muslim woman in a black tunic and veil placed a baby wrapped in a piece of rag on Max's table. Fixing on the doctor a wild look, she unfastened her tunic, bared her chest, and cupped her two breasts in her hands.
"They're dry!" she exclaimed. "Dry! Dry!"
Then her gaze fell upon the calendar hanging on the wall. At the sight of the chubby baby displayed on the piece of cardboard she let out a shriek. "Nestle makes your children healthy," the slogan on it read. The young mother hurled herself at the calendar and tore it to shreds. At that moment another woman burst in. Pushing aside the young Muslim mother, she rushed at the American and thrust her baby into his arms.
"Take him!" she wailed. "Take him away to your country! Save him!"
It was an inconceivable action that translated the enormity of the despair these mothers felt. "For nowhere
*Dr. C. Gopalan, "The Nutrition Factor," Indian Express, January 9, 1983.
else," Kovalski would say, "had I seen women adore their children in quite the way that they did here, where they deprived themselves, sacrificed themselves, gave their life's blood that their infants might live. No, it was not possible: so much love could not be lost."
As for Max Loeb, he was sure that for the rest of his life he would see "those flames of distress burning in the eyes of the mothers of the City of Joy, as they witnessed impotently their children's agony." That evening Calcutta provided him with yet another unforgettable memory. "Calcutta
DOCTORS BRING A TESTTUBE BABY INTO THE WORLD"
announced with a huge headline a local newspaper.
''They saythe cobra always strikes twice," Hasari Pal was to recount. "In other words, no disaster occurs on its own. I already had the red fever in my lungs. And now it was another blow. Early one morning, I was awoken by the noise of an engine and the grinding of a caterpillar. TU bet those bastards have come,' I said to my wife as I got up."
Adjusting his longhi, he rushed outside. Already the whole slum was in an uproar. For several days there had been rumors about eviction. The "bastards" had indeed arrived: a bulldozer and two vans bursting with policemen armed with lathis and teargas cylinders. A black Ambassador car arrived to join them, out of which stepped two babus in dhotis , wearing waistcoats over their shirts. They conferred with the police officer in charge and then, after a moment, advanced upon the group of slum dwellers.
The elder of the two, who was holding some papers in his hand, was the first to speak. "The municipality has directed us to carry out the destruction of your settlement," he announced.
"For what reason?" asked a voice.
347
The babu appeared disconcerted. He was not accustomed to the poor asking questions.
"Because your settlement is impeding construction work on the future subway line."
The inhabitants looked at one another, flabbergasted.
"What is this 'subway'?" Hasari asked his neighbor Aran, who claimed to have traveled as far away as Afghanistan.
Aran was compelled to admit that he did not know. The babu consulted his watch and began to speak again.
"You have two hours to get your things together and leave. After that..."
Without going to the trouble of providing more expansive explanations, he gestured toward the bulldozer. The official had spoken without raising his voice, as if he had come to communicate the most banal information. Hasari observed his neighbors' responses. They said not a word, and the silence was so surprising that even the babus appeared embarrassed by it. Without a doubt, they had anticipated protestations, threats, some kind of reaction. "But no. They had come to chuck us out just as you would turn out rats and cockroaches, and we—we said nothing," would recall Hasari. "True enough: no one could really miss the slum. All the same, in the pyramid of disaster, that heap of shacks was a better bargain than the pavement. Here at least people had a piece of canvas and some scraps of cardboard over their heads."
In fact the lack of reaction was due to quite another reason. "We simply had no more resources," Hasari would add. "This city had finally broken our capacity to react and in this rotten tenement we had no one to come to our defense—no union, no political leader. As for those thugs of the Mafia who had managed so well to extract rent from us, they were nowhere to be seen. And why not admit it also: we had all been hit by so many blows that one blow more or less didn't really matter. That vicious wheel of karma never lost its grip."
The two babus joined their hands in farewell and got back into their car, leaving the occupants alone to face the police and the bulldozer. It was then that something totally astonishing happened. Hasari saw his neighbor Aran grab
the bamboo beams that supported the roof of his shack and run at the forces of law and order. With this signal something snapped; the initial stupor lifted, everyone felt a sense of rage wash over them. One by one, the shanties collapsed as a deluge of building materials hit the police. Several policemen fell to the ground, whereupon the fury of the assailants redoubled. They fell on the policemen, beating them with planks, bricks, and tiles. Women and children cheered the men on. Hasari saw someone take a nail and puncture the eyes of an injured policeman. He saw one of his neighbors sprinkle another with a bottle of kerosene and set fire to him. Some of the cops tried to shoot at the mob before retreating to their vans, but other occupants of the slum ran after them with bottles of gasoline; the police vans took fire. Then someone threw a bottle at the bulldozer and it exploded. A cloud of blackish smoke enveloped the battlefield. When the fighting finally stopped, people paused to survey the extent of the disaster. Several badly burned policemen lay huddled in the middle of the chaos that defied description.
As for the slum itself, it was as if a cyclone had reduced it to dust. There was no need now for a bulldozer; the anger of the poor had done the job, and work on the subway could begin as planned.
Hasari, his wife, and children prepared a hasty escape before the police returned in full force. They had lost virtually everything. Hardly had they reached the first junction when the shriek of whistles and sirens filled the sky. Like hundreds of other fugitives in search of a patch of pavement, Hasari and his family could do nothing now but hope for the mercy of the gods. "But that day the gods of Calcutta had run out of ears."
All morning they wandered through the city before they eventually ended up near the portal of a church, on the pavement in Lower Circular Road, There, a makeshift settlement of several families belonging to an Adivassi tribe lived. The Adivassis, who came from the North of India, were the country's aborigines, and their plight was a particularly wretched one. The site in question had the
advantage of being near to a fountain. Above all, however, it was close to Park Circus, where Hasari went to pick up his rickshaw each morning. The puller with whom he shared his vehicle was a young Muslim with fuzzy hair who came from Bihar. His name was Ramatullah, and around his neck there hung a miniature Koran on a small chain. He worked from four until midnight and sometimes even later if he could find passengers. In order to save as much money as possible for his family, he slept on his carriage, his head and legs dangling over either side of the shafts. It was not very comfortable, but at least while he was doing that, no one could steal the rickshaw.
Ramatullah was a marvelous companion. Ever since he had seen Hasari coughing and spitting blood, he had made frequent gestures of friendship. If Hasari did not turn up in the morning at the usual time, he would run all the way to Harrington Street to collect the two children his friend was supposed to take to school every day, because he knew that to lose a "contract" like that, so sought after by the other pullers, would have been a catastrophe. In the afternoons he would come a little earlier to save Hasari the fatigue of a last run, and each time he did so, he gave the sick man the money he had earned in his place.
By the frightened look with which Ramatullah greeted him that morning, Hasari understood he must have really harbored a dejected expression. He told Ramatullah about the b
attle in the slum and the eviction of its residents; but nothing, it seemed, would divert the compassionate eyes of the Muslim from his friend's face.
"You ought to go and see a doctor at once," Ramatullah said. "You're as green as an underripe lemon. Go on, get in the rickshaw. Today, you are the first marwari of the morning!"
"A featherweight marwari! You're in luck," observed Hasari, settling himself on the seat.
Ten minutes later, the Muslim steered his Hindu friend into the cramped shop of a specialist in Ayurvedic medicine in Free School Street. Two other patients were already waiting on a bench. The doctor, a fat, bald man in an impeccable white dhoti, was seated at the rear of the room in an armchair. It was as if a zamindar or a rajah were
giving an audience. On shelves that ran around the room, all the pharmacopoeia of India's Ayurvedic medicine, a range of jars and bottles full of herbs and powders, were on display. After each consultation the doctor would get up, select several jars, and go and sit at the table behind a set of scales similar to those used by jewelers, where, after weighing each ingredient with meticulous care, he made up mixtures.
When it came to Hasan's turn, the physician considered him with a skeptical air and scratched his bald head. All he asked Hasari was how old he was. Then he took down at least ten jars from his shelves. It took him a long time to work out his different preparations. In addition to various pills and tablets, he also concocted a potion to restore Hasari's strength. In payment he asked for twenty rupees. This price was considerably more expensive than a pavement quack's would have been, but Ramatullah assured his companion that there could be nothing better than the drugs of this man of science when it came to getting rid of the red fever. He knew two friends who had been cured by him. "I pretended to believe him, but in the bottom of my heart, I knew there was no cure for the red fever. The fact that it had taken a diehard like Ram Chander was proof enough."
On his way back to Park Circus, Hasari heard the squeak of tires beside him. It was Son of Miracle who had been driving past in his taxi. He had a wild expression on his face, as if he had just downed three bottles of bangla. "When you can hardly stand up and your morale is really bottom low, suddenly meeting up with a familiar face smiling at you is as comforting as seeing Surya's ball of fire appear after a week of monsoon," Hasari was to say.
"Just the person I was looking for!" his friend called out. "I've got great news for you, but first you'll have to buy me a drink."
Son of Miracle swept Hasari and Ramatullah into an alley behind Free School Street where he knew a clandestine drinking den. There he ordered up two bottles of bangla. After his first glass his eyes began to sparkle.
"One of my neighbors is leaving my slum and going back to his village," Son of Miracle said at last. "So his
room will be free. It's a solidly built room, with a real roof, walls, and a door. I thought of you right away..."
"I didn't even hear the rest," Hasari would remember. "My vision suddenly blurred and rickshaw bells began to jangle furiously in my head. Then I saw the blurred shape of a man burning like a torch and I felt my skull knock against something hard. I don't know how long it lasted, but when I opened my eyes, I was stretched out on the ground and above me I saw the crimson faces of Son of Miracle and Ramatullah. Their heavy hands were slapping me as hard as they could to bring me back to life."
Of all the animals and insects with which Max Loeb had to share his new lodgings, he found none more repugnant than the cockroaches. There were hundreds, thousands of them—creatures that managed to resist all insecticides and devoured absolutely everything, including plastic. By day they remained more or less inactive, but as soon as night fell they came out in full force, moving about at breathtaking speed, zigzagging in all directions. They had no respect for any part of your body, not even your face. Hardiest of all were the black beetles. They had a more elongated shape and a smaller girth than the fat brown cockroaches. Their only enemies were the giant hairy spiders that clung like octopuses to the most substantial pieces of bamboo in the framework.
On the second evening Max was able to witness a performance that was to become one of his main sources of evening entertainment. By the light of his lamp he spotted a lizard as it launched itself onto a beam in hot pursuit of a beetle. On the brink of capture, the insect made a fatal mistake and took refuge under a spider's stomach. Max then saw the spider seize the intruder with
353
its legs and sink the two hooks with which its abdomen was armed into the beetle's body. In a few minutes it had emptied the beetle like an egg. Executions of this kind were frequent. Every morning Max had to shake his pajamas to rid himself of the empty carcasses of beetles that had fallen on him in the course of the night.
Shortly after his arrival, Max Loeb was to be the victim of an incident that would enable him to get to know his neighbors far better than if he had spent a whole year with them. One evening he was sprawled out on his string bed reading, when he noticed a small creature, slightly bigger than a grasshopper, moving swiftly down the pise wall next to him. He hardly had time to leap to his feet before the little beast had sunk its stinger into his ankle. Max let out a shriek, more of fear than of real pain, and crushed the aggressor with his sandal. It was a scorpion. He immediately put a tourniquet around his thigh to prevent the poison spreading, but the precaution had hardly any efFect. Overwhelmed by violent nausea, icy sweats, shivering, and hallucinations, he collapsed onto his bed.
"I can't remember anything about the hours that followed," he would recount. "All I can recall is the sensation of a damp cloth on my forehead and the vision of Bandona's almond eyes above me. The young Assamese girl was smiling at me and her smile was very reassuring. There was a crowd in my room and it was broad daylight. People were busy all around me. Some were massaging my legs, children were fanning me with pieces of cardboard, others were making me sniflf little balls of cotton impregnated with a strange smell that was nauseatingly pungent. Others brought me cups of potions, and yet others were advising goodness knows what."
The incident provided an opportunity for the entire neighborhood to get together and talk, to comment and demonstrate its friendship. What surprised the young American most, however, was that no one seemed to take the matter very seriously. Here a scorpion sting was something quite banal. Someone explained to Max that he had been stung seven times. Another man exposed his thigh, repeating "Cobra! Cobra!" in a way that suggested that a scorpion sting was nothing. Yet those small creatures killed
between ten and twenty slum people every year, particularly children.
4 'How did you get to know about it?" Max asked Bandona.
"Big Brother Max, when your neighbors didn't see you go out to attend to 'the call of nature,' they wondered whether you were sick. When they didn't see you at the fountain, they thought you must be dead, so they came to get me. You can't hide anything here—not even the color of your soul."
To say that Stephan Kovalski received the news with transports of joy would be an exaggeration, but he was convinced that it was a sign from God, confirming the meaning of his mission at a time of distress. It came at an instant in his life when this man who had shared everything and accepted everything had begun to feel his strength deserting him. To add to the excessive heat, the strike of municipal workers who cleaned the latrines had transformed the City of Joy into a cesspool more difficult than ever to tolerate. At night, desperate for sleep in the oppressive humidity, Kovalski dreamed of the vast wheat plains of his native Poland or of the deserted beaches of Brittany. He dreamed of space, of rural fragrances, forests, flower beds, and animals in the wild. When he first arrived in the slum he had plugged up his ears in order not to hear the cries of suffering. Now he found himself yearning to veil his face in order that he might no longer see or feel anything. In short, he was in the depths of a depression, and even the presence of Max Loeb did not alleviate it. It was at this point that Ashish and Shanta came to tell him the news. 356
&nb
sp; "Stephan, Big Brother, we've found you a room in our compound," announced Shanta in a trembling voice. "No one wants to live in it because the previous owner hanged himself from the framework. People call it the 'hanged man's room.' But it's right next door to ours,"
Kovalski was being offered a room in one of those little courtyards where something like a hundred people lived together, were born and died together, ate and starved together, coughed, spat, urinated, defecated, and wept together, where they loved each other, insulted each other, helped and hated each other, where they suffered together and hoped together. For a long time now Kovalski had been wanting to leave the relative anonymity of his alleyway to go and live in a compound, to devote himself even more completely to others. Now, Ashish and Shanta had arranged everything. As ritual required, they presented their proteg6 to the senior man in the compound, a former sailor and a Hindu who had been stranded in Calcutta by a drinking bout during shore leave. Krishna Jado had lived in Anand Nager for twenty-seven years. His extreme thinness, his wheezing breath and husky voice betrayed the fact that he had tuberculosis. The head man in his turn introduced the Pole to the other tenants, who welcomed him warmly. As Shanta commented, "A Father Sahib landing in a compound, it was like Santa Claus coming to you."
The City of Joy Page 34