A Dead Hand

by Paul Theroux

  "Tell him your vow, Ma," Charlie said.

  Ma straightened and said, "I refuse to read about the royals. If there's a story about Queenie's dogs or her children's foolish marriages—have you ever seen so many divorces in a holy family?—anything related to the royals, I turn the page. The headline 'Prince Charles in Skiing Accident' has me thrusting the paper aside. I change channels when they're on the telly."

  What was strange about this was that Ma had the vaguely provincial English accent that well-educated Americans sometimes have, and as I mentioned, a put-on English turn of phrase. The words "thrusting" and "telly" and "artistic," which she'd pronounced autistic.

  "They are a decaying family," she said. "You can see it in their faces. Inbred, lifeless, people without a point or purpose. I understand why royals are never jailed, why, when the time comes, they are lined up and shot."

  "Mother upsets her London friends," Charlie said, his face gleaming in admiration.

  "Because I speak the truth. I daresay, most of the British royal family are Germans."

  While I smiled at "I daresay," Rajat laughed. He shrieked, "Germans!" Then he said, "Indians are just as false. Sonia Gandhi is Italian."

  I pushed my breakfast aside and continued to write this down, delighted to have something for my notebook, glad to have something to do today. And when I was done I took the envelope that I had tucked into the pages. I opened the letter again and glanced through it. I come to India to oversee my charity. What did that mean? And what of the rest, the intrigue at the hotel? I tried to recall whether she had mentioned it over dinner. I remembered more of her rant about the royal family (a detail related to their TV watching), but very little about the letter, which was the reason I'd gone there in the first place. I wrote all that I remembered: Shall we drop it? She tended to the theatrical, but I loved her confidence, a certainty that enhanced her beauty.

  I was glad to be relieved of the obligation to solve the crime. And the simple breakfast gave me a feeling of well-being. I lingered on the verandah reading the Statesman with my feet on a hassock. The tang of spices from the shop next door to the Hastings, the rattle and beep of cars jostling with pedicabs on the back lanes, the babble of human voices, mostly hawkers; the sense of life being lived outdoors, the city exposed. Ma had said she'd come to Calcutta for Durga Puja, but that had been months before, and this midwinter weather was perfect, warm days, chilly nights, an aroma of woodsmoke and burning charcoal in the city.

  I resisted writing what I could barely put into words, that I'd met someone I liked, who seemed to know my mind, whom I hoped to go on knowing. A rare feeling in life, that one has made a friend. I am not thinking of a love affair, although that is the extreme example of such a feeling. I mean the desire to see a person again, the curiosity, the sense most of all that the person is a generous and vitalizing force—that I will be happier and stronger because of this friendship.

  She had made me no promises. She'd said only, "Go to this spa"—had she said "spa"?—"you'll be glad you did." And I concluded that if I did it, obeying her, she would be pleased and want to see me again. She'd want to know how I liked it. She'd want to say See? I was right. You're glad you went.

  She wanted to be right. I wanted to report to her that she'd been right. I wanted to obey her. And as on previous occasions in my life, I thought, not in words but in rising wavelets of feeling, like promises of health: If I don't see her again I'll be very disappointed. This eagerness, like a schoolboy crush, made me feel young and happy and a little silly. Out of the chaos and noise of Calcutta, the rejection, the indifference of the Indian mob, I'd found a purpose and someone to like.

  I had made up my mind that she was exceptional—generous, motherly, flirtatious, kind, out of the ordinary. She seemed to know me. She seemed to care for me. And she was attractive. Ever since leaving her at the little restaurant—we left separately in taxis—I had begun to miss her.

  All this was out of character for me. I am by nature suspicious and solitary, an eavesdropper not a buttonholer. The rich don't interest me, and for the rich, usually, people without money are of little account. I hate the way the rich cut corners. I can't stand their timidity. I hate their whining about the high cost of living or how little money they have, for the indirection of the rich is their incessant howl that they're poor.

  But the new emotion in me, a nostalgia for attachment, made me feel better. I had the sense of unfamiliar sentiments being uncovered in me, like discovering a taste for a certain wine or a forgiveness for an old slight. I was thrilled to feel something new. It was knowledge, a surprise, and I was grateful because it came with a distinct optimism. Something new might be something to write about, another reason not to feel old.

  "Your car is here, sir."

  I looked up and saw the desk clerk, Ramesh Datta. What car? I hadn't ordered a car. I was reminded of the suddenness of the letter he'd brought me. I looked beyond the verandah and there it was, a black Ambassador with yellow curtains, an Indian in a white uniform standing next to it, awaiting orders. I hurried downstairs.

  "You're looking for me?"

  The man in uniform made a wing-flap of his arm and gave me a little salute. "Transport to Lodge, sir."

  Another surprise, more pleasure, life becoming easier, the sort of thing one hopes for in India, usually in vain.

  "My appointment's not until ten."

  "I will wait, sir, and proceed at your pleasure."

  "I appreciate that."

  "Therefore I will bide my time," he said. "Cool heels."

  That was another thing about India: the huge number of people whose job it was to stand and wait for those few who kept them waiting. Most were drivers, idle beside the car until the owner flashed into view and made an impatient gesture. But they were also door openers, secretaries, personal assistants, cooks, receptionists, every conceivable job description reduced to the level of flunky.

  In my month of giving lectures in and around Calcutta I'd had to wait for people to show up—the sponsor, the audience, the person introducing me. And now I was someone for whom a flunky waited. This role did not suit me; it made me feel conspicuous and anxious, but I told myself that I had not asked for the car and driver.

  "Who sent you?"

  "Ma."

  In all Indian legends, in every ancient narrative, the god or goddess has a vehicle. For Durga it is a lion, for Vishnu the eagle Garuda, for Shiva the bull. In this odd-looking pantheon Ganesh, the elephant god, rides on a mouse, Kali on a demon corpse. Ma had an Ambassador Nova with stringy curtains.

  Chauffeur-driven cars rarely arrived at the Hotel Hastings, and when they did, they never lingered. For the first time since checking in I became an object of interest, not whispers but earnest glances. The staff seemed relieved. If I happened to be someone of substance, I might be a tipper. The ability to provide baksheesh was the principal determiner of a person's worth in India.

  That chimed with the feeling within me that had surfaced this morning—that I was someone else today, not perhaps a whole new person but an aspect that had been slumbering inside me had been awakened, someone new to me. This smiling creature was sitting up and wagging his tail, open-mouthed and eager.

  Still with a twitch of obligation, a sense that I wanted to please Ma, I put down my newspaper and went out to the car that was parked in the lane next to the hotel.

  "You know where we're going?"

  "Lodge, sir."

  "What's your name?"

  "Balraj, sir. Thank you, sir."

  He swung open the door for me, then took his place at the wheel, jamming his peaked cap more firmly on his head. We were soon lost in traffic. I had not recognized the name of the spa—or lodge? I'd planned to show it to a taxi driver. I had a general idea of the main streets, but Balraj took side streets, back lanes, and alleys, jostling with bicycles, auto-rickshaws, and now and then hand-pulled rickshaws—as though wheeled off the pages of a Victorian print of old Calcutta, every detail intact. Barrows
too, the ancient kind: I saw hairy legs and thick wooden spokes in wooden wheels. When the car slowed down people peered in the window at me, their faces pressed against the glass.

  "Not far, sir."

  I had not said a word. Balraj had the driver's instinct for a passenger's anxiety, but I also presumed that his reassurance was his way of bucking for a tip.

  The lanes were becoming narrower, the car slowing to fit through them, but at the point where I expected Balraj to speed up and pull away from a high wall of cracked stucco, he swung the car sharply, and as he did, an iron gate with rusty spikes suddenly opened and Balraj drove between a pair of flaking whitewashed pillars. A man rushed forward to open my door.

  "Where are we?"

  "Lodge, sir."

  An old three-story plaster and brick villa, modified mock Georgian, Indian style, with porches, fluted columns, a high portico, slatted blinds, and a date at the base of a plinth, 1892. It could have been a school or a rotting hospital, but probably—this being Calcutta—it had once been the residence of a tycoon, a jute merchant or tea magnate. A fountain in the courtyard, its centerpiece a nymph in the act of emptying a water jar, was dry and the nymph was missing one arm. Two rusted urns held geraniums. A fresher eye than mine, someone new to Calcutta, would have seen the villa as derelict, but I knew that it was a usable antique: it was clean and orderly, the courtyard swept, the flowers watered, all of them deep red lilies. To one side was a gateway with a garden of shade trees visible beyond it. This was one of those Indian time warps that I had stepped into many times but without surrendering to it, because I was the traveling writer who always had to leave early the next morning for a new place. I kicked off my shoes and mounted the steps.

  A man in a white smock and leggings stood barefoot at the doorway, a woman beside him in a white sari. She held the usual tray with a flame, passed it under my chin, and applied a red thumbprint to my forehead.

  "Welcome to the Lodge, sir."

  "Lovely place."

  "Your home, sir," the man said.

  I followed them inside and through a high-ceilinged lobby, across a marble floor. The ruinous outside was not repeated here: the interior was whole and cool, with painted murals of classical European landscapes on the walls of the lobby—Palladian villas set amid tall poplars, deer and birds in a pastoral scene, a great sweep of bay, perhaps Naples, all of these faded paintings blurred with an overlay of dust.

  I had seen a few spas in India; this was not like any of them. The ruin on the outside did not suggest anything hygienic, and the lobby here was more suited to stuffed shirts and evening gowns. In this newer incarnation I would have said it was a school—for the odors alone, with the whiff of chalk dust in the air, the tang of varnished desks and mildewed books, the battered woodwork, the baseboards looking kicked and bumped. I imagined children jostling here. And I could hear voices: the singsong of children's laughter, the sounds of their playing, reciting, the shrieky rat-a-tat of childish taunts. And more, the tapping of feet—the peculiar dry scuff and thump of bare soles; the fleeting shapes—faces at door cracks, faces at the spindles in the upper galleries, the contending screeches of small boys, the imploring voices of little girls. Because I could not see any of them clearly, they seemed to be especially numerous, a whole mansion of murmuring children, Interrupted from time to time by the odd dull nag of an older woman.

  The unseen but vibrant presence of life, an intimation of children, made me uncomfortable. I felt I'd entered by the wrong door, somewhere I didn't belong.

  I looked at the man who was leading me through the cool, odorous—smell of damp mop on old tile—corridors, and I hoped to be reassured. I wanted him to say Never mind them, or to explain what the voices were.

  He didn't say anything, not even his name. He didn't smile, or if he did, I could not see it beneath his mustache. He had the face-forward and rather resigned and glazed expression of an Indian menial doing his duty. That is, both submissive and slightly haughty.

  We turned into another corridor—fleeting shapes of children—and then went through a latched door to an annex of the old building. A woman waiting at the door handed me a parcel, like a delivery of hotel laundry, and the man said, "You can change in there. Wear robe only and cloth slippers. Valuables will be deposited in this container"—he indicated a basket on a shelf—"for containing only. No one will disturb."

  When I stepped into the changing room, he left and so did the woman. I shut the door and changed quickly, took off my watch and put it with my wallet into the basket. Just then, a knock at the door: he seemed to know that I was done.

  "This way, sir."

  "Where to?"

  "To vault."

  What he said was wait, and the word thrilled me. He led me deeper into the Lodge, past adjoining rooms and narrowing corridors to a heavy door. Behind this door was a room with a long wooden table in the center, a shower in one corner, a stool in another corner. The tiny smoke trail rising from a taper in a dish must have accounted for the fragrant and dizzying aroma.

  Two young men in the room bowed to me, their hands clasped in a gesture of namaste. The taller of the two motioned me to the stool where the other had already begun to crouch.

  This second man washed my feet with lukewarm water, massaging my toes, rubbing them gently, cupping my heels. It was more than mere pouring water and soaping; it was not an empty ritual but rather an act of purification, a slow and thorough cleansing of the flesh of my feet, making them live—reminding me that I had two feet.

  "Table, sir."

  These laconic directions were all I got. I could not tell whether they knew a whole English sentence. But it didn't matter. They had removed my robe and my wrap, and I lay face-down on the table, feeling exposed. My first thought, the fearful one, was that I was to be killed: I was in the helpless posture of an animal on a slab. I lay like a human sacrifice, blind to my captors, my ass in the air.

  One of them hosed me with a fine spray while the other scrubbed me with a mild abrasive—salt, I realized. Each of them wore cloth mitts, and they worked the salt over my body the way you scour a pot. This went on for a while, their rocking me with scrubbing motions.

  I was possessed by a strange sensation, as though I was not human at all but an enormous vegetable or a dumb animal being cleaned. I gave myself up to it and was amazed at their conscientious scrubbing, the chafing of their mitts. Then they sprayed all the salt off me, and I heard the gulp of the excess water in the drains.

  When all the salt had been removed from my body and the table, one of them gave me a towel and helped me to a sitting position.

  "Take time, sir."

  He knew I was dizzy from their pummeling. Was this what Ma had meant when she'd said, You'll be a new man? I dried myself and stood up on the wooden slats of the floor. One of the men draped a robe over my shoulders, the other tied the cords in front.

  "This way, sir."

  Down the hall to a new room, a dry table as sacrificial-seeming as the last but with a more pungent odor, like sesame oil, and a burning smell too. An oil lamp, a sacred statue in a shrine garlanded with marigolds.

  I lay on the table, again face-down, but I saw one of them take a brass pot from a squat, stove-like heater, and he poured hot oil on my back and buttocks and calves, and he worked it into my muscles. He dripped it into my hair, massaged my scalp, and proceeded from there to my feet. I felt like a piece of meat being marinated for the pot.

  Some minutes of this, then, "Thank you, sir," and they left me alone in the warm room that was thick with the scent of oil.

  4

  NAKED IN THIS STRANGE interior room in an old ripe-smelling mansion in a district of Calcutta, I began to mock myself, thinking: This is what happens when you surrender. I didn't really know where I was. Somehow curiosity and vanity had led me here, and a sentiment I thought I had outgrown, the greed for experience, agreeing to the suggestions of a beautiful stranger. That willingness had served me before when I needed something t
o write about.

  I did not know what would happen next. Mine was an act of faith, or stupidity—I was a credulous fool. The car had been sent, like a vehicle in a ghost story or an Indian myth, and I had gotten in and allowed myself to be transported here. Now I lay, literally with my dick in my hand, in the posture of submission, alone and bare-assed, like a big buttered man on an altar.

  Yet I was not alarmed. The hot oil had calmed me. Coated in it, I was warmed and relaxed, the lamp flickering in the aroma of sesame and ghee. The only light came from the flame wagging on the wick in the oil lamp. The last identifiable sound I'd heard was the door's decisive click as the masseurs had departed. I wasn't sorry: I didn't like being touched by a man. But I wasn't surprised. In puritanical caste-crazed India it was unusual for a woman in a spa to attend to male clients.

  I must have dozed. The whole business had been soporific. With my head covered by a folded towel, I was dimly aware—perhaps in shallow dreams, or in adjacent rooms—of the murmur of life nearby, like a children's chorus, vaguely taunting and competing as children's voices seem to do. My body was penetrated by the vibrations of busy lives, the shuffle of small feet, the contentious cries of kids, the whole huge house pulsing around this small room, the vault.

  And I thought, or dreamed: This is not like any spa I've ever seen, in India or anywhere else. The muted life, the deliberate pauses, the silences of a spa were unavailable here. This was like being in a household—a large one—or a schoolhouse or (the thought occurred to me as a grotesquerie) a big throbbing body. I had the absurd thought that I'd been swallowed whole by a monstrous creature and that I was in the belly of this monster. But it was an Indian beast, accommodating and warm, its blood pounding in my ears, and still the shrieks and calls of children echoing in the walls.