The City of Joy

by Dominique Lapierre

  Knowing that a body takes four hours to be consumed, Max slipped discreetly away to go and bring a little comfort to Bandona. Just before he got back to her hovel, however, he suddenly felt the ground give way beneath his feet. A blackish stream rushed into his mouth; then his nostrils, ears, and eyes were submerged beneath the gurgling filth. He struggled against it but the more he floundered, the more he was sucked down toward the bottom of the cesspool. Two or three times in the course of his existence, his life had been saved by virtue of his prowess as a swimmer. This time, in this unholy slime, he was paralyzed: the density and consistency of the liquid made his attempts to surface ineffective. He realized then that he was going to drown.

  It is said that at such an instant you see your life pass before you in a flash. In this eddy of putrefaction, he had only time to glimpse a strange vision: "that of my mother carrying an enormous birthday cake out onto the terrace of our house in Florida." It was at that moment that he lost consciousness.

  What followed was told to Max Loeb by others. The body of a sahib swirling about in the sewers of the City of Joy could not pass unnoticed for long. Some people had seen him disappear. They had rushed over and, without hesitation, had plunged in after him, had retrieved his inanimate form and taken him to Bandona's house.

  For the second time that day, the young Assamese woman took charge of the operation. She got everyone moving. Kovalski, Margareta, and the others came running. She even succeeded in inducing a doctor to come

  from Howrah. Artificial respiration, cardiac massage, injections, the washing out of his stomach—everything possible was done to try and bring Max back to life. After three hours of relentless efforts, Max finally opened his eyes to be greeted by "a whole collection of marvelous faces, who seemed to be pleased at my awakening! In particular there were two almond eyes gazing at me fondly, eyes that were still red from having cried much that day."

  ''You could do with a good clean up," Kovalski announced the next day to the survivor of the sewers of Anand Nagar. "What would you say to a little chlorophyll bath? I know a magnificent place."

  Max looked hesitant. "To be honest with you, I'd prefer a bubble bath in a five-star luxury hotel."

  Kovalski raised his arms to the heavens.

  "That's really banal! Whereas the place I want to take you to..."

  An hour later a bus dropped the two sahibs outside the entrance to an oasis that seemed improbable so close to the most prodigious urban concentration on earth. It was a tropical garden, several dozen acres in size, with thousands of trees of every variety in Asia. The universe of lush vegetation they entered more than warranted their surprise. There were huge banyan trees ensnared by interwoven creepers; many hundred-year-old cedars with trunks as thick as towers; clusters of mahogany and teak trees; pyramid-shaped ashok trees; gigantic magnolias with beautiful leaves like the glazed tiles of Chinese pagodas. "The garden of Eden had just sprung up before my eyes still

  stinging as they were from the filth and fumes of the City of Joy," Max Loeb was to say. Even more extraordinary were the number and variety of birds that populated the park. There were bright yellow orioles; splendid woodpeckers as large as pigeons, with golden backs and conical beaks; majestic black kites with forked tails, circling in the sky before swooping down on their prey. There were proud sandpipers with long incurved beaks perched on the tall stilts of migrating birds. Flying from one clump of bamboo to the next were magpies, russet wagtails, and large parakeets with yellow plumage. Suddenly a kingfisher with bright violet-red feathers and a large red beak came and landed in front of the two visitors. They stopped to avoid frightening him, but he was so tame that he moved to another piece of bamboo to be even nearer to them.

  "What a release it is to watch a bird in the wild!" enthused Kovalski. "A creature in his natural state, his free state. He takes no notice of you. He just hops from one branch to another, catches an insect, calls out. He shows off his plumage."

  "He does what birds are supposed to do," Max said.

  "That's exactly what's so great about it; he isn't even looking at us."

  "If he were looking at us, everything might become contrived."

  "Absolutely. He's truly a free spirit. And in the kind of environment where we live we never meet truly free spirits. People are always in the grip of some problem or other. And as you're there to help, you're obliged to ask yourself questions about them, to try and understand their predicaments, study their antecedents, and so on."

  Max thought of the arduous day he had just been through. "It's true. The least encounter in a slum is an occasion for tension."

  Kovalski pointed to the bird.

  "Except when it comes to the children," he said. "Only a child is a creature devoid of tension. When I look into the eyes of a child of the City of Joy, I see God. A child doesn't assume an attitude, doesn't seek to play a role, doesn't change to suit events, he is open. Like that bird; a bird that lives out his bird's life to perfection."

  Max and Kovalski had sat down on the grass. To both of them it was as if they were millions of miles away from Anand Nagar.

  "I think it is here that I drew the strength to hold out over these last years," admitted the Pole in a confidential mood. "Here and in praying. Every time I felt too depressed, I jumped on a bus and came here. A dragonfly fluttering on a bush, the cooing of a brown woodpecker, a flower closing as evening approaches—those are the things that have been my life-buoys in this experience."

  There was a long silence. Then suddenly the Pole asked, "You're a Jew, aren't you?"

  Seeing Max's surprise, Kovalski apologized. "It's a typically Indian reflex to ask that question. Here a man is determined by his religion. Religion conditions everything else."

  "Yes," Max said, "I am a Jew."

  Kovalski's face lit up.

  "You're privileged. Judaism is one of the world's most sumptuous religions."

  "That hasn't always been the view of all Christians," Max observed calmly.

  . "Alas no, but what millenary heroism that has inspired in you! What unshakable faith! What dignity in suffering! What tenacity in listening to the one God! Haven't you inscribed the Shema Israel on the doors of your homes? What a lesson that is to the rest of humanity! For us Christians in particular."

  Kovalski laid a hand on the American's shoulder. "Spiritually, you know, we Christians are Jews," he went on. "Abraham is the father of us all. Moses is our guide. The Red Sea is part of my culture—no, of my life. Like the tablets of the Law, the desert, the Arch of Alliance. The prophets are our consciences. David is our psalmist. Judaism brought us Yahweh, the God who is all-powerful, transcendent, universal. Judaism teaches us to love our neighbor as we love God! What a wonderful commandment that is. Eight centuries before Christ, you realize, Judaism introduced to the world the extraordinary notion of a one, universal God, a notion that could only be the fruit of revelation. Even Hinduism, despite all its intuitive,

  mystical power, has never been able to envisage a personal God. It was the exclusive privilege of Israel to have revealed that vision to the world and never to have strayed from it. That's really fantastic. Just think, Max, the same luminous moment of humanity that saw the birth of Buddha, Lao-tzu, Confucius, Mahavira, also witnessed a Jewish prophet call Isaiah proclaiming the primacy of Love over Law."

  Love! It was in India that both the Jew and the Christian had discovered the real meaning of the word. Two of their brothers from the City of Joy were to remind them of it that very evening on their return. "A blind man of about thirty was squatting at the end of the main street in front of a small boy struck with polio," Max would recount. "He was speaking to the boy as he gently massaged first the youngster's needle-thin calves, then his deformed knees and thighs. The boy held on to the man's neck with a look submerged with gratitude. His blind companion was laughing. He was still so young, yet he exuded a serenity and goodness that was almost supernatural. After a few minutes he stood up and took the boy delicately by the shou
lders to get him on his feet. The latter made an eflFort to support himself on his legs. The blind man spoke a few words and the lad put one foot in front of him into the murky water that swamped the street. Again the blind man pushed him gently forward and the child moved his other leg. He had taken a step. Reassured, he took a second. After a few minutes they both were making their way down the middle of the alley, the little boy acting as guide for his brother in darkness and the latter propelling the young polio victim forward. So remarkable was the sight of those two castaways that even the children playing marbles on the curbstones stood up to watch as they passed."

  With her gaudy bracelets and necklaces, brightly colored saris, dark eyes circled with eyeliner, eyebrows penciled in, and her pretty mouth reddened with betel juice, twenty-year-old Kalima was the pinup of the compound. Even Kovalski was disturbed by a presence that spread sensuality and gaiety into the dark hole in which he now found himself. Above all, he admired the wide blue ribbon and the jasmine flower with which this creature ornamented her thick waist-length black hair. Such refinement in the midst of so much ugliness delighted the Pole. The only problem was that Kalima was not a woman, but a eunuch.

  Kovalski had seen the proof of this while he was washing on his second morning. The "young woman" had let her veil fall for a fraction of a second and the priest had caught sight of his penis, or at least what was left of it. Kalima was not a man dressed in woman's attire. He was indeed an authentic representative of the secret and mysterious case of the hijras, which had communities scattered throughout India. He had been castrated.

  A few days later an impromptu celebration was to give

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  Kovalski the opportunity to discover what functions this picturesque person and his companions served in the slum. Night had just fallen when the cries of a newborn baby suddenly filled the compound. Homai, the wife of the one-eyed Hindu who lived on the other side of the courtyard, had just brought a son into the world. At once his grandmother in a white widow's veil ru$hed across with the other women of the family to the eunuch's room to invite him urgently to come and bless the child. Kalima and his friends hastily put on their makeup, changed into their festival saris, and adorned themselves with their baubles. Kalima also fastened on several strings of bells around his ankles while his companions smeared their dholaks, the small drums from which they never separated, with red powder. Thus arrayed, the five eunuchs emerged jangling their instruments and singing in their gruff voices, "A newborn baby has appeared on the earth. We have come to bless it. Hirola! Hirola!"

  The eldest of the little troupe, a eunuch with fuzzy hair and prominent cheekbones, was called Boulboul—the Nightingale. Dressed in a bright red skirt and bodice, with a gold ring through his nose and gilded earrings in his ears, he led the ceremony, swaying his hips as he did so. He was the guru of the group, its master, its "mother." His disciples, with Kalima at their head, followed, skipping and singing. "Sister, bring me your child," called out Boulboul, "for we wish to share in your joy. Hirola! Hirola!" The grandmother in the white widow's veil hastened to go and fetch the baby, then offered it to Kalima. The eunuch took the little body gently in his arms and began to dance, hopping from one foot to another, to the sound of bells, turning and swaying to the jerky rhythm of the drum. With his gruff voice he intoned:

  Long live the newborn child!

  We bless you,

  That you may live for a long time,

  That you may always have good health,

  That you may earn lots of money.

  The singing had attracted the inhabitants of the neighboring compounds. The courtyard had filled. Clusters of

  children had even scaled the roofs. No one appeared to be daunted by the crushing temperature. This was an occasion for celebration. While Kalima and his companions went on dancing, the guru Boulboul went ofiF to collect the fee for his troupe. Eunuchs charged a good deal for their services and no one dared to haggle for fear of incurring their maledictions.

  "Our newborn baby is as strong as Shiva," the dancers next proclaimed, "and we beg the all-powerful god to transfer the sins of all his past lives to us." In a way this appeal was the eunuchs' credo, the justification of their role in society. Mystical India had sanctified the most underprivileged of its pariahs by granting them the role of scapegoat.

  The guru returned with a bowl of rice sprinkled with pieces of ginger. With the tip of his index finger he dabbed up the red powder from one of the drums and marked the baby's forehead with it. This symbolic gesture transferred onto his person, onto his companions and onto all the H'ijra caste the past sins of the newborn child. For eunuchs, the red powder, which is the emblem of marriage among Hindu wives, represents their ritual union with their drums. Next the guru scattered a few grains of rice onto the instrument, then threw one whole handful at the door of the infant's home to bless the mother, and then another over the child. After that, raising the bowl above his head, he began to spin around on the spot.

  Accompanied by the others striking their drums and clapping their hands in time, he sang, "We shall bathe in the sacred rivers to wash away all the sins of the newborn child." Then, before the admiring eyes of the onlookers, Kalima began to dance, cradling the infant in his arms. His fine features and the femininity of his movements perfected the illusion. Pathetic in the realism of his performance, the eunuch smiled maternally at the little bundle of flesh which was making his entry into the world of the City of Joy. The ceremony concluded with a display of mime. Kalima restored the baby to his grandmother and fixed a cushion under his sari. Personifying a woman in the final stages of pregnancy, he began to dance around in a circle. Then he

  aped the first pains of childbirth. Uttering cries that grew ever more heartrending, he fell to the ground while the other eunuchs patted him on the shoulders and back as if to help him give birth. When finally he was completely exhausted, his guru fetched the newborn baby and deposited him in his arms, whereupon Kovalski saw Kalima's face light up with happiness. He saw his lips addressing the child with words of love. Then his bust and his arms began to move in a rocking motion. The eunuch was tenderly cradling the new addition to the compound.

  "GoodGod," thought Max Loeb suddenly, "there is such a thing as paradise!"

  A servant in a white turban and tunic, with the hotel coat of arms blazoned on his breast, had just come into his room. He was bearing on a silver tray a double whiskey, a bottle of soda, and a bowlful of cashew nuts. The American had been unable to resist the temptation to recharge his batteries. The chlorophyll bath in the tropical garden had not been enough. He had taken refuge in an air-conditioned suite in Calcutta's luxury hotel, the Grand. A foaming Niagara of perfumed froth was already tumbling into the bathtub of his marble bathroom. The nightmare of the City of Joy had receded to another planet. He slipped a ten-rupee note into the servant's hand. Just as he was leaving, however, the servant swung around in a half circle. He was a very wrinkled little man with a gray beard.

  "Would you like a girl, Sahib? A very pretty young girl?"

  Startled, Max put down his glass of whiskey.

  "Very pretty and sweet-natured," elaborated the servant with a wink. The American swallowed another mouthful

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  of alcohol. "Unless you'd prefer two girls together," urged the Indian, "young girls but very, very skillful. The entire range of the Kama Sutra, Sahib/''

  Max thought of the erotic sculptures in the temples of Khajurao which he had admired in a photograph album. He remembered too, his fiancee's words during their last dinner together. "They're lovers without equal, those Indian girls," Sylvia had said. The Indian plucked up his courage. He knew his clientele all too well. As soon as they arrived in Asia, Europeans and Americans turned into devils. No temptation seemed spicy enough for them. "Perhaps you'd prefer a boy, Sahib? A fine looking young boy, sweet and ..." The servant made an obscene gesture and matched it with another wink. Max nibbled at a cashew nut. The servant remained undaunted by the American
's silence. With the same air of complicity, this time he suggested "two young boys," then after a few moments, he volunteered "two young boys and two girls together," then a eunuch, and finally a transvestite. "Very clean, Sahib, very safe."

  Max could just imagine the face Kovalski would make when he descibed this scene to him. He got up to turn off the faucet in the bathroom. When he returned the servant was still there. His catalog of pleasures was not yet exhausted.

  "If sex doesn't tempt you, perhaps you'd like to smoke a little grass?" he suggested. "I could get you the best in the country. It comes straight from Bhutan." Next he added, "Unless of course you prefer a really good pipe"—a gleam came into his watery eyes—"our opium comes from China, Sahib." Quite undeterred by the lack of enthusiasm inspired by his merchandise, the servant then ventured to suggest "a nice syringe full of coke," along with various other locally manufactured drugs, like bhang, the local hashish. Quite obviously, however, the honorable foreigner wasn't buying.

  Not wanting to leave the room as a complete failure, the man in the turban finally suggested that most banal of all transactions that resounds like a litany in the ears of every tourist in this world. "Would you like to change some

  dollars, Sahib? For you I can manage a special rate: eleven rupees to the dollar."

  Max emptied his glass. 4 Td rather you brought me another double whiskey," he ordered as he stood up.

  The servant surveyed him with a look of sadness and pity.

  "You don't appreciate the good things of this life, Sahib?'

  Of course Max Loeb appreciated the "good things" in life. Especially after weeks of doing penance in the cesspool of the City of Joy. After downing his second double whiskey, he asked the beturbaned servant to send him one of those Kama Sutra princesses he had been offered. This first experience with one of the descendants of the sacred prostitutes who had once inspired the temple sculptors did not, however, develop at all in the way he had expected. Brought to his door by the owner of the cabaret into which she had been sold, the girl, a tiny thing outrageously made-up, looked so terrified that Max did not dare even to caress her long dark oily hair. Instead he decided to put on a feast for her. He called room service and had them bring up a lavish assortment of ice cream, pastries, and cakes. The young prostitute's eyelashes began to flutter like the wings of a moth around a lamp. Never before had she seen such marvels. To her it was quite obvious: this client was none other than the Lord Shiva in person.