A Dead Hand

by Paul Theroux

  She had said, I want you to know me. At the time her words seemed like procrastination. But now I'd seen enough to know that she was someone of real substance. She was an idealist, and she was kind; she was motherly, yet she had the efficiency and command of a businesswoman—all the qualities of a nurturer.

  We had arrived at a downstairs lobby that fronted onto the garden. The moss-covered statuary, the damp bricks on the paved paths, the pool with its fountain—a marble cow's head spewing water from the pipe at its rounded mouth, a gurgling that seemed to cool the garden.

  "Tea?" Mrs. Unger said.

  "Perfect." But I would have said that to anything she suggested.

  "It's herbal. One of our own blends. Mint and neem paste."

  "I'd love some. Maybe with ice."

  "We never use ice."

  "Oh?"

  "Think what ice would do to your system," she said, and before I could reply, she went on, "Traumatize it." A man in white pajamas was hovering. "Two pots of tea."

  "Yes, madam."

  "You run the whole place alone?"

  "Charlie and Rajat are an enormous help."

  "I'm amazed that you have no outside funding."

  "I could use more funding, but I don't want the strings. It would mean interference. This place runs smoothly because I'm alone."

  She talked about the running of the house, the staffing of the clinic, the spa, the school; but as always I was distracted by her beauty, her fresh face, her full lips, the way her eyeteeth bulged against them, her thick dark hair drawn back and held in a braid, the dangly gold hoops attached to the lobes of her tightly rolled ears, her long neck, her breasts that were defined even in the mass of twisted silk of her sari and shawl. Her hands—the arousing hands that had brought me to a pitch of delirium. Her words had never meant as much to me as her hands; her words were so abstract or esoteric as to be meaningless. But her hands had been all over me, every bit of my body, inside me. She had remade me with her hands, made me her own.

  I was listening to her describe the work she did as a philanthropist, and I marveled, but I could not erase from my mind the pleasure she had given me as I'd lain naked under her hands. Yet she had not alluded to the episode. She'd given me no relief, only filled me with a kind of desire I'd thought was unattainable.

  "I've never met anyone like you," I said.

  "That could mean anything."

  "I'm trying to compliment you."

  "Thank you. It may seem an odd thing for me to say, but I don't think anyone is really able to know another person completely. We try, but—maybe it's best that way."

  "You said you wanted me to know you. You wanted to know me."

  "Know me better. Know you better. Not know completely. That's hopeless."

  "What's the point?"

  "Isn't it fun trying?"

  "Frustrating," I said.

  The tea had come; the servant had been noiseless. Mrs. Unger didn't say anything more. She allowed the man to pour us each a cup of the fragrant tea.

  Forming in my head was the line I was looking forward to your healing hands—your magic fingers. It sounded pathetic and corny as I silently rehearsed it. But it was what I felt. I wanted more. Sitting there in dumb yearning for her, I felt like a monkey, with a monkey's hunger.

  But I said, "You sent me a letter, remember? It was about a dead body in a hotel—very dramatic. I thought you wanted me to help you."

  I couldn't tell her that I'd talked to Rajat, that I had paid two visits to the Ananda Hotel: I had no results. Next to this accomplished woman I felt inept, and I had no news.

  "I was wondering if you remembered the letter."

  "How could I forget it? I still have it—an actual letter, not an e-mail. Purple ink on handmade paper. Are you sorry you sent it to me?"

  "Not at all." She spoke with utter certainty.

  "Then what do you want me to do?"

  "Ask no questions."

  "Then what?"

  She stared at me, looking triumphant, as though she'd trapped me. And of course she had.

  "No more questions," I said.

  "I was wondering if you were planning to stay in Calcutta."

  No questions. I said, "I'll do whatever you want me to do."

  "Nothing more today," she said, and with a gesture she signaled for Balraj to drive me back to the Hastings.

  You might think—I certainly thought—her cool smile and distant manner would put me off and perhaps rebuff me to the point where I'd develop another social circle in Calcutta, or (as I had briefly planned) leave the city altogether. The opposite was the case. At the outset, she'd said that she knew I was close to the consulate. Though she didn't know Howard, she probably believed I was another consulate partygoer. She imagined that I mattered to those people.

  Yet I'd seen them less and less because of her, and her days of remoteness had made me more dependent on her. Her not mentioning the letter made me memorize it; her distance had kept me in suspense. I had longed for her to call me. I had not been able to call her, nor could I lurk near her Lodge, because I had no idea where it was in this city of lanes and back alleys. I had desired her, she had been inaccessible, and I had been helpless—a pathetic way for a grown man to behave, and something new to me.

  I had told myself that I didn't want her love, that I saw no future for us, that I thought her son and his friend were a little odd and off-putting. What did I want, then?

  I was lying in bed that night, tuning my shortwave radio, trying to get the news from the wider world. I surprised myself by speaking out loud.

  "More," I said.

  Alone, I became inward and analytical, taking altogether too much notice of my dreams, as solitary people do, hoping for good omens, hoping for hope. Lately I dreamed of narrow escapes, of making my way across the ramparts of very high walls and having to descend the narrowest and steepest staircases, with no handrail, a great emptiness on either side, tiptoeing, dizzy and fearful. Yet I never fell, in all the variations of this vertigo. The clack of the ceiling fan, the rattle of the blinds, the voices in the street, and the bright morning sun only added to the tormenting effects in the dream.

  I never suspected Mrs. Unger of being a tormentor. She was busy. I was not busy at all. There was not a day I spent in Calcutta in my moping that I did not think how virtuous she was, working every day to improve the lives of those children, and how selfishly I spent my time, helping no one. I thought often of the bat-eared boy Jyoti: how much she had done for him, how she had saved him—the sort of street child I saw every day in Calcutta and simply hurried past, not wanting to think of his fate. I did not regard myself as worthy enough for her to care. I deserved to wait. Ask no questions was a conundrum, but it was an order I deserved. My patient waiting was the proof of my loyalty. I was not in love, but something deeper took hold of me, a peculiar form of devotion, a need for her to protect me. And I knew that others must have felt the same—the lost children, for example.

  Maybe I was one of them.

  One of the sunnier remarks of a gloomy German philosopher is that the only way of knowing a person is to love without hope.

  The other effect of my solitude was that the diary I had started had become the repository of all these thoughts, even a kind of narrative. Keeping a diary is often an unmistakable sign of desperation. It was a log of my feelings, a chronology of incidents (including the ones I have described here), and an account of time passing. It served its purpose: I had nothing else to write; it kept me busy at night and reminded me of my pain.

  I go for walks, I wrote. I look for the man I once was. I believe that by wandering I might find him wandering here. I need to soothe myself in this uncertainty. I want something to write about. Walking in the big decaying yet eternal-seeming ruin of the city helps me meditate on the past and gives me the hope that I might find the man I had once been — confident in a strange country, so anonymous as to be invisible, living the muffled and spectral existence of a traveler, ghosting from
street to street in the endless decrepitude, unseen. I expect to come face to face with myself.

  What a shock, then, in this mournful scribbling, in my mood of anonymity, one afternoon to be touched physically in the street. It was not the sleeve-tug of the beggar or the tout but a hard pinch, skin to skin, by the pincers of a skinny person's fingers. I pulled my hand away.

  "Take, sir."

  "No."

  "Please, sir."

  A thin-faced girl in a shawl was urging me to accept a piece of folded paper from her. I imagined she was selling something or that she was trying to distract me so that my pocket could be picked. This was why, when she touched me, I shoved my hands into my pockets and clutched my wallet and keys, pressing my arms to my sides. Or I'd take the paper and she would say, "No mother, no father. Please, you give me, sir."

  But she said, "Mobile number, sir."

  "I don't want it."

  "Mina, sir."

  That stopped me. And now I recognized this nervous girl in the shawl as the new clerk from the Ananda, the head of gleaming hair that had bobbed beneath the counter.

  I accepted the paper. Without a pause, she drew her shawl tighter and darted away, dodging oncoming pedestrians, slipping past a man with a barrow piled with coconuts and children's sandals.

  It always amazed me to see an Indian run—sprint in this traffic, through the crowds, into the heat. Yet they often ran, and the poorer and more ragged they were, the faster they went, knees pumping, feet slapping. Foreigners never ran in India.

  I unfolded the paper. I walked a bit, then stepped into a doorway, dialed the number, and cupped my hand over the phone. I heard ringing, then gabble. I could not understand a word. I said into the din, "Mina?"

  "Yes, here."

  "Someone just gave me your number."

  "My friend. I am knowing."

  "What do you want?"

  "Pass information."

  "Okay. Let's meet."

  "Tomorrow, teatime."

  "My hotel. The Hastings."

  "Cannot hotel, sir."

  "What about the Roxy, or the Oly Pub?"

  "Cannot Roxy. Go to Eden Teashop. Middleton Row at Park Street. Teatime."

  I had to ask her to repeat this several times.

  Finally she said, "Taxi will know."

  "Will I recognize you?"

  "I will find you, sir."

  Of course, the big pink ferringhi would be obvious.

  As Mina had predicted, the taxi driver knew the precise place, a small bakery and café with some trays of Indian sweets in the window and more in a glass case under a counter inside. I had last seen Mina wearing a pink dress, so I was confused when I went in at the appointed time—I took it to be four—and didn't see a woman who resembled her. No dresses, only saris.

  Seating myself in the corner, with a good view of the door, I ordered tea from a waiter and cautiously looked around. Three tables were occupied. My tea was served. I sipped it. I read a section of the Statesman that was lying on a nearby chair, and when after thirty minutes or more I did not see Mina, I paid the bill and left. I wondered what had gone wrong. I turned into Park Street and kept walking.

  The heat, the stink, the diesel fumes, the noise, all combined to thicken the steamy air and burden me. How could people run in this air? I had stepped briskly onto the sidewalk but slowed my pace, with the heat on my shoulders, my head ringing from the smells. It was exhausting to be in the middle of so much human activity—so much futility, so it seemed—the people pressed against me and stepping on my feet. It wearied me to be touched and jostled at every step.

  I was bumped. I turned to object and saw a woman wrapped in a sari hovering at my side.

  "Mina?"

  "Indeed, sir."

  "I waited for you at the teashop."

  "I could not enter in. I saw a relation of Mr. Bibhuti Biswas inside. I waited nearby, at the godown."

  "So where shall we go?"

  "Continue footpath this side to cemetery."

  The Park Street Cemetery—I'd been there before on one of my reflective strolls. We walked, Mina and I, without speaking, she keeping slightly ahead of me. When we got to the cemetery gates she moved quickly onto one of the gravel paths at the side and vanished among the tombstones. I did not hurry. I had lost her, but I counted on her to find me. I plodded like a tourist. Deeper into the cemetery, where the tombs were like obelisks and pyramids, the vaults like little villas and classical bungalows, I saw her sitting on a mourner's bench near a big broken tomb—Doric columns, a marble wreath, a winged angel, and bold croaking ravens in the trees and hopping on the ground.

  "Mina."

  "Yes, sir. Here, sir. Thank you."

  "Thank you for getting in touch."

  "Sorry for the hue and cry, sir. I could not reveal myself."

  "You're wearing a sari. I was expecting you in a dress."

  I took a seat beside her and now, as she adjusted her shawl to speak, I could see her face. One whole side was swollen and bruised. Her left eye was rimmed with dark skin, the eye itself reddened, the white of the eye blood-drenched.

  "What happened to you?"

  "Mr. Bibhuti Biswas administered a beating, sir."

  She slipped her shawl off her forearm and I saw bruises there, welts, red and crusted, black broken patches on her dark skin.

  "I breaking the rules, sir. He beat me with a lathi, sir. He calling me kangali. Bhikhiri. Other bad names. Then he say, 'Tumi kono kajer na — tumi ekdom bekar!'"

  This outpouring of Bengali left me glassy-eyed, and I was stunned into staring at her.

  "'You totally useless. Totally worthless.' Then he sack me."

  "That's awful."

  "Very bad. What I can do? But I knowing why you come to Ananda Hotel. I knowing about your friend."

  "That there was a dead body in his room?"

  "Dead boy, sir. Rolled in carpet, sir. Like tumbaco in beedee."

  "You saw it?"

  "When they taking it away, we all knowing. Mr. Bibhuti Biswas say Chup karo. Not say anything! But it is human child, sir. One of God's children."

  "What could have happened to him?"

  "I cannot know how he dead."

  "No. I mean, how did they dispose of him?"

  "Disposing in pieces, sir. So horrible. I was witness. They used very sharp dah."

  "I mean, in the carpet?"

  "Not carpet afterward. Crate, sir. Steamer trunk, so to say. Maybe in the river. Or in municipal dustcart."

  "We'll never find him."

  "So many people die in Calcutta, sir."

  "Some of them are right here."

  In the stillness of the cemetery, behind the thick perimeter walls, among the high monuments and the ornate inscriptions, the fluted columns and the statuary.

  "But I am liking to come here."

  "For the tombstones?"

  "For the angels, sir. See them."

  Angels kneeling at prayer, angels on plinths in repose. Angels with their wings spread—some of the wings clipped, other angels beheaded—angels sounding trumpets. They were cracked and battered, some of them carved in stone, others in marble, and in this city of peeling paint most of them were mottled or mossgrown, but they were angels nonetheless. The angels put me in mind of the dead boy in the room.

  "But how did he get there?" I asked. Mina was staring at me, her good eye registering concern. "The boy. In the hotel. In the room."

  "I duty manager."

  "At the desk?"

  "Yes. It was a parcel delivery."

  I smiled at the explanation, as I had smiled at duty manager. "They delivered a dead body?"

  "A carpet, sir. I sign for it, sir. The carpet was dispatched to room of your friend."

  "What room?"

  "Fifteen. Garden view."

  "Where was the body?"

  "Carpet was parceled. Body was inside."

  Now I saw it: the skinny child rolled in the carpet and brought upstairs, perhaps in the darkness, lugged
into the room and unrolled. Rajat had woken and seen it, the corpse on the floor, and had fled.

  "So my friend wasn't imagining it?"

  "You not tell Mr. Bibhuti Biswas, sir, that you speak to me. He be so angry."

  "He's not your boss anymore."

  "He be terrible to me again, beating me. He knowing my residence in bustee in Tollygunge. I have new job."

  "What doing?"

  "Sweeper, sir."

  This tore at my heart—the bruised face, the skinny fingers tugging at her shawl. Helpless and ashamed, I gave her two five-hundred-rupee notes.

  "God bless you, sir."

  She reached into the folds of her shawl and took out a small cloth shoulder bag and set it on her lap. She plucked open the knots on the flap and slid out a plastic pouch that was taped shut.

  "Not be fearful, sir, please."

  "Why should I be fearful?" I had started to smile, but her bruised face sobered me.

  "It be so strange to you. You must not cry out. It is very important. It is all that is left. The only thing." She spoke slowly, annoyingly so. She was nodding as she put the plastic pouch into my hand. "You will be knowing what to do."

  "Shall I open it now?"

  "After I gone, sir. I can't bear look it again. It is terrible thing indeed."

  She flung her shawl around her face, pinched it at her chin so that only her eyes showed, then she bowed, said "Bless you, sir" again, and slipped between the gravestones and the many angels and was gone.

  I held the soft pouch. I was skeptical: Indians loved drama; their natural element was hyperbole. They lived in words—words were kinder and more habitable than the bustees. Mrs. Unger was like that too. So I picked at the lightly taped parcel with the feeling that I was being trifled with in the Indian way: It be so strange to you. You must not cry out.

  I did not cry out at once. I thought: A piece of meat, how odd in vegetarian India.

  But then I saw the small fingers, the tiny fingernails, almost reptilian, the lined palm, the severed wrist bone, the ragged flesh bound by a piece of string. A human hand—a dead hand, stiff and gray. And I let out a cry, as though someone had stabbed me, and twisted the knife.

  With this thing in my possession I knew I could not leave Calcutta.