The contest was still not won, however. Less than seven hours before the ceremony, a new crisis erupted. But this time the person responsible was the rickshaw puller himself. Recollecting suddenly that the standing of a wedding was assessed as much on the munificence of the nuptial procession as on the opulence of the festivities, he inquired of the groom's father as to the manner in which he intended to have his son arrive at the domicile of his future wife. Even in this slum of mud and pestilence, such a journey was usually undertaken on a horse caparisoned with gold and velvet.
"In a rickshaw," replied the father. Kovalski thought Hasari was going to suffocate.
"In a rickshaw?" he hiccuped. "You did say 'in a rickshaw'?" The groom's father nodded his head.
Hasari gave him a withering look. "My daughter will never marry a man who comes to her wedding in a rickshaw, as if she were a common poor man's daughter," he thundered. "I demand a taxi. A taxi and a procession. Otherwise I shall take my daughter back."
Providence was once more to call upon Son of Miracle. Informed of the latest point of difference between the two families, the taxi driver was quick to offer his car to transport the cortege. His generosity moved the former peasant in a very special way. After all, it had been in that same car that he had once experienced the greatest revela-
tion of his life. It was as he sat in that vehicle that he had watched the rupees on the meter "fall like the monsoon rain." 'That taxi will bring luck to my daughter and her household," he said to himself, his cheerfulness and confidence restored.
A few hours later, Hasari would at last witness the marvelous sight toward which all his arduous efforts had been directed. "Look, Big Brother Stephan. How beautiful my daughter is," he murmured ecstatically. Swathed in a scarlet sari sprinkled with golden stars, her head bowed, her face concealed behind a muslin veil, her naked feet painted red, her toes, her ankles, and wrists sparkling with the jewels that were her dowry, Amrita, led by her mother and the women of the compound, was going to take her place on the rice straw mat placed in the center of the courtyard, just in front of the little brazier in which the sacred and eternal flame burned. In sheer happiness, his lips parted in a smile that rose from the very depths of his soul, Hasari rejoiced in the most beautiful spectacle of his life, a magical scene that wiped out so many nightmare images at a single stroke: Amrita crying of cold and hunger on the winter nights spent on their piece of pavement, foraging with her little hands through the refuse from the Grand Hotel, begging under the Chowringhee arcades .. . This was a moment of triumph, of apotheosis, of final revenge on a rotten karma.
A brass band burst into sound, accompanied by singing and shouting. Preceded by a troupe of transvestite dancers, outrageously made up with rouge and kohl, the procession made its grandiose entry into the courtyard filled with the smoke of the chulas. "It was as if a prince out of A Thousand and One Nights had just dropped out of the sky," Kovalski was to say. "With his cardboard diadem encrusted with bits of colored glass, the groom looked like one of the maharajahs you see in engravings, surrounded by his courtiers."
Like Anouar, before taking up his position the boy had to submit to the ritual of parda, the imposition of a veil, so that the eyes of his betrothed would not be able to see his face before the moment prescribed by the liturgy. Then the pujari motioned to him to go and sit beside Amrita. So
began the interminable and picturesque ritual of a Hindu wedding ceremony, punctuated with mantras in Sanskrit, the language of sages and men of letters, which of course no one in this slum could understand, not even the Brahmin who recited them.
The congregation had not failed to notice that the best man's place to the right of the bride had remained vacant. Hasari had offered this place, the first in the hierarchy of precedence, to his brother in poverty, the Big Brother from the hovel next door, the man of God who, together with Son of Miracle, had been his providence, his friend, his confidant. Kovalski, however, had not been able to occupy the place. At the very moment the groom and his procession made their entrance, a series of convulsions had brutally shaken Hasari's chest. The priest had rushed to carry the poor man into his room. The eyes and mouth that only a moment previously had been exultant with joy had closed again in an expression of intense pain. When the convulsions stopped, his body remained stiff and motionless. Then, as if under the influence of an electrical impulse, his chest and all his muscles contracted anew. His lips parted. They were completely blue, a clear indication of respiratory difficulties.
Kovalski straddled the body and, putting all his weight on the thorax, started to massage it vigorously from bottom to top. The rickshaw puller had been reduced to skin and bone to such an extent that it was like getting hold of a skeleton. The sternum and ribs creaked under the pressure of his fingers. Soaking his beautiful white best man's punjabi with perspiration, the Pole worked away with all his might and, miracle of all miracles, a very feeble, almost imperceptible breath soon quivered through the fleshless form. Kovalski realized that he had succeeded in restarting the motor. To consolidate this victory, he gave his brother the most beautiful demonstration of affection he could. Bending right over him, he put his lips to Hasari's mouth and began to blow rhythmic puffs of air into lungs consumed with the red fever.
Kovalski was to write of the events that followed in a letter to the superior of his fraternity. "Hasari opened his eyes. They were swimming with tears and I realized he
must be in pain. I tried to give him a drink but the water trickled over his lips without his being able to swallow it. He was breathing very faintly. At one point he seemed to be straining to listen. He appeared to be able to hear the noises coming from the courtyard, the voices and the music of the festivities. He smiled weakly at the joyous commotion. Hearing the wedding going on had such a curative effect that he wanted to speak. I put my ear closer to his mouth and heard, 'Big Brother, Big Brother,' then some words that I could not make out.
"A few moments later he took hold of my hand and squeezed it. I was amazed at the strength with which he clasped my fingers. The hand that had grasped the shafts of his rickshaw for so many years was still like a vise. He looked at me then with eyes that were full of supplication. 'Big Brother, Big Brother,' he repeated, then murmured some words in Bengali. That time I understood that he was referring to his wife and sons, that he was asking me to take care of them. I tried to reassure him. Moiew that the end was near and he must have been thinking the same thing because with several movements of his hand he conveyed to me that he wanted to leave the compound without anybody noticing. No doubt he was afraid that his death would disrupt the celebrations. I had foreseen such an eventuality and asked Son of Miracle to have Hasari transferred to his compound as soon as possible.
"Toward three o'clock in the morning, with the help of Kalima and Hasari's son Shambu, the little ragpicker, we were able discreetly to move the rickshaw puller. The revelers noticed nothing. The godfather had sent along an extra supply of bangla and many of the guests were already drunk. Hasari must have been conscious that he was leaving his home because he joined his hands across his chest in a gesture of Namaskar as if to bid everyone farewell.
"After that, it all happened very quickly. At about five in the morning, Hasari was shaken by a violent attack. Then his lips parted and a jet of foaming blood spurted out. Shortly afterward his chest caved in with a rattle. It was all over. I closed his eyes and recited the prayer for the dead."
Less than an hour later a series of heavy blows shook the door to the room where Son of Miracle and Kovalski were watching over the mortal remains of their friend, now enveloped in a white khadi shroud and adorned with a garland of marigolds. The taxi driver went to open it. In the shadows he could just make out two very dark-skinned faces.
"We're the Doms" announced the elder of the two. "The deceased was under contract. We've come to collect his body."
"Brothers, sisters, listen!" Stephan Kovalski raised a finger in the direction of the ringing bells and closed hi
s eyes to absorb fully the crystalline notes that came cascading across the fume-hung sky. "Christ, our Savior is born" announced the peal from the illuminated church of Our Lady of the Loving Heart. It was midnight on Christmas Eve.
At that instant, from one end of the immense metropolis to the other, other chimes sounded out the same news. Despite the fact that Christians represented a small minority in Calcutta, the birth of Jesus was celebrated with as much devotion and display as that of Krishna, Muhammad, Buddha, the guru Nanak of the Sikhs, or Mahavira, saint of the Jains. Christmas was one of approximately twenty official religious festivals marked with a general holiday in a city where such a miscellany of faiths and such devotion to God prevailed.
Filled with decorations, in the darkness the church looked more like a maharajah's palace on a coronation night. In the courtyard, only a few feet away from the pavements where thousands of homeless people slept hud-486
died in the bitter cold, a monumental crib with life-size models reconstructed the birth of the Messiah in the straw of a Bethlehem stable. A colorful crowd, the women in magnificent saris, their heads covered with embroidered veils, the men and children dressed like princes, filled the vast nave adorned with banners and garlands. The splendid bouquets of tuberoses, roses, and marigolds that decorated the altar and choir had been brought by a Christian woman from the City of Joy in gratitude for the miraculous healing of her husband, who had recovered from cholera. All around the pillars, before the innumerable plaques recording the names of the British men and women who had been buried in this church since its construction two centuries earlier, wreaths of foliage and flowers formed a triumphal arch.
Suddenly a burst of firecrackers shook the night. To the accompaniment of the organ, the congregation joined in singing a hymn celebrating the advent of the holy infant. The rector, Alberto Cordeiro, looking more opulent than ever in his immaculate alb and his red silk vestments, made his entrance. Escorted by his deacons and a double row of choirboys, he processed through the nave and ceremoniously approached the altar. "So much pomp among so much poverty," marveled Max Loeb who attended midnight mass for the first time in his life. The Jewish doctor did not know that the good priest had once tried to dissuade Kovalski from going to live among the poor of the City of Joy, for fear that he might "become a slave to them and lose their respect."
Similar services were beginning in churches elsewhere in Calcutta. All around St. Thomas, the smart parish in the Park Street area, dozens of private cars, taxis, and rickshaws were unloading worshippers. Park Street and the neighboring streets glittered with garlands and luminous stars. The night was resonant with Christmas carols. On the pavements children sold little Santa Clauses they had made and decorated in their slum workshops. Others offered cardboard fir trees glistening with snow, or cribs. All the shops were open, their windows full of presents, bottles of wine, alcohol, and beer, baskets bursting with fruits, con-fectionaries, and special preserves. Wealthy Indian la-
dies escorted by their servants did last-minute shopping for the midnight supper. Whole families besieged Flury's, the celebrated ice-cream and pastry shop. Others swept into Peter Kat, Tandoor, or into the restaurants at the Moulin Rouge, the Park Hotel, or the Grand Hotel. This last was declared to be fully booked. Its dinner, with entertainment and souvenirs, cost three hundred rupees for two, almost the price for which Hasari Pal had sold his bones.
Deep in the alleyways of the City of Joy, Christmas was no less lively. Garlands of lights and streamers had been strung up wherever there were Christian homes. Loudspeakers spread the sound of carols and hymns. Each family had decorated its home. Taking advantage of Kovalski's absence, Margareta had put a new coat of paint on the walls of his room, drawn a rangoli pattern on the floor, placed a small crib under the picture of the Sacred Shroud, opened up the Gospels at the page of the nativity, and lit candles and sticks of incense. From the framework she had hung garlands of marigolds and roses that formed a kind of canopy above the little oratory.
For all the Christians of the City of Joy, however, it was the enormous luminous star poised on the end of a bamboo cane above Kovalski's hovel that was the most beautiful symbol of that magical night. The Hindu Ajit and the Muslim Saladdin had had the idea of hoisting the emblem into the sky over the City of Joy, as if to say to the despairing people of the slum: "Be not afraid. You are not alone. On this night when the God of the Christians was born, there is already a Savior among us."
That night the "savior" in question had remained, with the agreement of the parish priest, among his brothers. With his head and shoulders wrapped in a shawl because of the biting cold, Kovalski was celebrating the mystery of the Eucharist for some fifty worshippers who had assembled in Margareta's compound. How many years had gone by since his first Mass, celebrated on that same piece of plank supported on two crates? Five, six, seven? How could anyone measure the passing of time in this world without past or future? In this world where the life of so
many hinged upon surviving the present minute? Listening to the carols that filled the night, he thought, "This concentration camp is a monastery." The thought had often come to him and on this Christmas night, one conviction impressed itself upon him more forcefully than ever: nowhere was the message of a God who has made man to save humanity more alive than in this slum. The City of Joy and Bethlehem were one and the same place. Before uplifting to the heavens the fragment of unleavened bread that took the place of the host, the priest felt the need to speak a few words.
"It is easy for any man to recognize and glorify the riches of the world," he said, seeking out faces in the shadows. "But only a poor man can know the riches of poverty. Only a poor man can know the riches of suffering..."
Hardly had he spoken these words than a strange phenomenon occurred. First there was a sudden gust of wind, then a mass of hot air swept into the compound, tearing down the garlands and streamers, extinguishing the luminous stars and bringing the tiles ofiF the rooftops. Almost immediately after that, a formidable thunderclap rent the night. Kovalski could not help wondering if the monsoon was on its way back. After a few seconds, however, all was calm once more.
"And it is because the poor are the only ones to be able to know such riches that they are able to stand up against the wretchedness of the world, against injustice, against the suffering of the innocent," he said. "If Christ chose to be born among the poor, it is because he wanted the poor to teach the world the good news of his message, the good news of his love for mankind.
"Brothers and sisters of the City of Joy, it is you who today are the bearers of that flame of hope. Your Big Brother can promise you that the day will come when the tiger shall lie down with the young child, and the cobra will sleep with the dove, and all the peoples of all the nations will be as brothers and sisters."
Kovalski was to relate how as he spoke these words he saw again a photograph of Martin Luther King, Jr., meditating in front of a Christmas crib. In the caption to this
photograph, King told how before that crib he* had had a vision of an enormous banquet on the hillsides of Virginia, where slaves and the sons of slaves sat down with their masters to share in a meal of peace and love. That evening Kovalski felt himself impelled by the same dream. One day, he was quite certain, the rich and the poor, slaves and their masters, executioners and their victims, would all be able to sit down at the same table.
The priest picked up the morsel of griddle cake and raised it to the heavens. What he then saw above the rooftops seemed so extraordinary to him that he could not take his eyes off it. Sheaves of lightning were streaking the sky, lighting up an enormous mass of black cloud scudding past at great speed. A fresh cannonade of thunder immediately rolled across the night, followed this time by a burst of wind so forceful that, in the depths of their compound, Kovalski and his congregation felt as if they were being literally sucked up into it. A few moments later the clouds shed a deluge of lukewarm water. It was then that Kovalski heard the voice of Aristotle John shoutin
g above the uproar, t4 A cyclone, it's a cyclone!"
On the other side of the city, in an old colonial mansion with balusters in the residential district of Alipore, a man was listening to the rising howl of the tornado. His interest was of a professional nature: T. S. Ranjit Singh, a thirty-eight-year-old Sikh originally from Amritsar in the Punjab, was on duty that Christmas night at the meteorological center for the region of Calcutta. Situated among hundred-year-old banyan trees beneath which Rabindranath Tagore had composed some of his poems, the center's antennae received and collated weather bulletins from all the stations planted along the shores of the Bay of Bengal, in the Andaman islands, and even as far away as Rangoon in Burma. Similarly, twice a day the station laboratory picked up photographs of the Indian subcontinent and the seas that bordered on it, taken from the upper stratosphere by the American satellite NOAA7 and by its Soviet counterpart Meteor. The Arabian Sea to the west and the Bay of
Bengal to the east had always been areas with a predilection for giving birth to the savage hurricanes known to meteorologists as cyclones. Caused by harsh variations in temperature and atmospheric pressure between sea level and higher altitudes, the whirlwinds unleashed forces comparable to those of hydrogen bombs of several megatons. From time to time they ravaged the shores of India, causing thousands, sometimes tens of thousands, of deaths, destroying and submerging in one fell swoop regions as vast as New England or Louisiana. India's whole memory had been traumatized by the nightmare of its cyclones.
On the night in question, however, Ranjit Singh had no particular reason to be alarmed. Not all tropical depressions became cyclonic whirlwinds, particularly when they occurred as late in the season as this. The photograph transmitted by the American satellite at seven in the evening was even somewhat reassuring. The Sikh examined it attentively. The diffused zone of stratocuixiulus it showed had little chance of becoming dangerous. Situated more than eight hundred miles south of Calcutta, it was tracking northeast, in other words, in the direction of Burma. The last readings from the weather stations, transmitted by teleprinter, had come in barely an hour ago. It was true that they indicated areas of low pressure all over the region but the wind speed everywhere was less than thirty miles an hour. Reassured, the Sikh decided to spend his Christmas Eve as pleasantly as possible. Opening his attache case, he took out the two tin boxes his wife had prepared. They contained a real midnight feast: fish curry with cubes of white cheese in a sauce, little balls of vegetables, and baked nan. He also took out a small bottle of rum he had brought back from an inspection in Sikkim and filled a glass. Oblivious to the squalls that were banging at the shutters, he swallowed a first mouthful with relish. Then he began his meal. When he had finished eating, he poured himself a fresh glass of rum, got up, and appeased his conscience by casting an eye over the teleprinter roll in the adjoining room. With some satisfaction he confirmed the absence of any message and went back to his seat. "There we go," he remarked
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