The lobby had given her an idea of what to expect. A narrow iron bed, sagging in the middle, stood in a corner, its thin pad of a mattress covered with a threadbare blanket. A dressing table listed on spindly legs under a cloudy mirror. The room was lit by a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling. Wires protruded from the socket intended for a twin bulb. The porter put down her suitcase and turned on the light in the bathroom. She glanced in for a ritual inspection. A rust-stained sink, a toilet, an open shower with no curtain or stall, and a red plastic pail and dipper for those who preferred to bathe Indian style. A cigarette butt floated in the toilet bowl. “Fine,” she said. She tipped him and he left, murmuring, “Memsa’ab.”
She undressed, stood under the tepid trickle of the shower, dragged her nightgown from her suitcase and put it on. The bed gave a raspy twang as she crawled in. The radio was still playing what seemed to be the same song when she fell asleep.
19
The next morning the radio was silent. Sunlight slanted through the lobby, catching motes of spinning dust. Although Marina could smell something frying, and occasional clatters and raised voices indicated that the hotel was not completely deserted, the lobby was empty. She studied the Elephanta poster for a few moments, then wandered to the desk. The registration book lay on the counter where it had been the night before. She reached out and let her fingers rest on its cracked black cover. Still nobody. Why not? She slid the book around so it faced her, glanced over her shoulder, and opened it.
It didn’t surprise her to discover that the Hotel Rama’s bookkeeping system seemed haphazard. It was difficult to tell, though, because many of the guests had signed the register in Indian languages, or what she guessed were Indian languages. Only occasionally was something written in English. The Miss Cloud call had been made on January fifteenth. Here was January. Even if I can find January fifteenth, that’ll only tell me who checked in on that day. The person who made the call could have been here a week beforehand. Could even live here.
Suppose it was Catherine. She might walk in now; this minute I could see her. She might have been badly burned, be terribly scarred, wear a veil over her face to hide it. It could be she doesn’t want to show herself to me because of that, and that’s why she’s been so mysterious.
She found January fifteenth and stared at the scribbled, wavering lines, at least half of them written in characters she couldn’t begin to decipher. Somebody could decipher them, though. If I had a copy and a little time. She raised her head and looked around again, her hand at the same time going into her canvas bag and closing around the hard plastic case of her little camera.
It took her only seconds to move the book into better light and shoot the pages she wanted. As she closed the book and readjusted it in its former position she heard a sound. Peering at her from a doorway on the other side of the desk was a bent old woman with sunken cheeks and gray hair.
Marina couldn’t control a start of surprise, but she got hold of herself and said, “Can you help me? I’m looking for someone who can help me.”
The old woman disappeared. As Marina wondered whether to wait or not, a heavily pregnant woman in a red sari, her blue-black hair braided down her back, entered through the same doorway. “Madam?” she said.
Surely the old woman hadn’t had time to say she’d seen Marina photographing the registration book— if she had seen. Act businesslike. “I’m looking for someone who telephoned me in the United States. The call came from this hotel. The message wasn’t clear, unfortunately, and it was important. Can you help me?”
The woman said, “Telephone?”
Her English, Marina realized, was limited. “Telephone.”
“No telephone now.”
“No, I don’t want to make a call. I want to know—”
“You see Raki. Telephone.”
“Raki? Where is Raki?”
“Not here. Later.”
“How much later? When?”
“Later. See Raki. Telephone.” The woman inclined her head with an air of finality and left the room.
There seemed to be no choice but to see Raki later. She was hungry. Despite the pervasive cooking smell the Rama seemed to lack any sort of restaurant or dining room for guests. She walked outside to get her bearings.
The sunlight was hot and brilliant in the shabby street. Near the sweetmeat stand two boys crouched on the sidewalk tinkering with an ancient motorcycle. The beedi vendor squatted near a huge film billboard depicting a buxom, sari-clad woman with a huge tear on one cheek, and, behind her, a handsome man staring at her with a yearning expression. A wooden cart pulled by two bullocks, bells clinking around their necks, made its laborious way through the cars, bicycles, and minicabs that crowded the street. Two men passed by, carrying stacks of wicker cages in which green birds fluttered. Under the billboard was a small establishment whose sign proclaimed it to be the Kumkum Cafe. Maybe she could get breakfast there.
She could. She bought the Times of India and read it while she ate chapatis and vegetable curry that made her mouth tingle. A government scandal was brewing; a woman had been doused with kerosene and set on fire by her husband’s family because her dowry wasn’t large enough; a dacoit, or bandit, who claimed to be India’s modern Robin Hood, was terrorizing villages south of Bombay; a follower of Gandhi had died. Putting the paper aside, she sat over a last cup of tea and planned her next move. She should visit the consulate, in case they knew something that could help. They wouldn’t welcome her, but they never had. She paid her bill and went to look for a taxi.
20
She got out of the taxi and shaded her eyes against the glare reflected off the consulate’s white walls. I can’t do it. I can’t go in there again. The taxi moved away. A line of Indians waiting for something, probably a turn at the visa office, straggled down the block.
The building had been a maharajah’s palace. She remembered how overwhelmed she had been at age twenty-two, climbing the steps practically on tiptoe, creeping along the corridors, an unwanted, bothersome supplicant. I can’t. It’s too much.
Her legs felt like overstretched elastic. They would never carry her up those steps into a past she would do anything to avoid. Maybe if I lean forward almost far enough to fall, I’ll move. She moved. She started to climb.
The office to which she was eventually shown had half-closed blinds and a ceiling fan, but the man behind the desk was not the man she remembered, Mr. Hayes. Marina wondered where Mr. Hayes had been posted. Maybe he had retired. She remembered sitting in a hotel room with an anguished little group of Americans, survivors of the other two disciples who had died, while he explained the details of the U.S. government’s protest about the Palika Road incident. He read the text of the message and said, “We’re vigorously pursuing the investigation, but in a case of mob violence it’s almost impossible to isolate the guilty parties. Few Indians will talk at all, and those who will say either the crowd was after Nagarajan and didn’t realize he was in jail, or they thought the ashram was empty after his arrest and were burning it in symbolic protest.”
He stubbed out a cigarette. A woman was weeping against the shoulder of her tight-lipped husband. “Those are all rationalizations after the fact, pseudo-explanations for what was basically an irrational act,” Mr. Hayes said.
“My son is dead, and you talk to me about irrational acts. It was murder,” the man said. He and his wife had later brought suit, charging that the investigation had been mishandled. Marina had gotten a letter asking if she wanted to join them. She hadn’t answered.
Marina’s last memory of Mr. Hayes was of his seeing her off. She hadn’t expected it, and was surprised to see him at the airport, a nondescript little figure in his usual white short-sleeved shirt and tightly knotted tie. They had waited for her boarding call. When it came, he shook her hand and said, “I’m sorry, Miss Robinson. We were too late.”
“None of it was your fault.”
As she walked toward the plane she turned once and looked back. W
hen he saw her looking, he waved. She had waved back and turned to leave India, as she thought, forever.
***
This man, James Curtis, did not look like Mr. Hayes. He was plump and fortyish, with reddish-blond hair and beard and a floral tie loosened at the neck of his pink candy-striped shirt. What he had in common with Mr. Hayes was an air of being harassed. “I don’t know about letting you in the files,” he was saying. “I’d have to check with some people.”
The close air in the office was made closer by the smoke from his pipe, which he puffed steadily while looking at the letters from Cloud Sister.
“I thought the files might tell me something helpful.”
“Yes, so you said.” Mr. Curtis placed his still-smoking pipe in an ashtray. “You didn’t say helpful with what, exactly.”
“I’m not sure. I don’t know what I’d be looking for. I do know that either my sister is alive or somebody wants me to think she is. You understand that I’d like to find out more.”
“Yes. I understand. And yet— let me try to explain our point of view.” He picked the pipe up again, toying with the bowl. “I was fairly new in the service when the Palika Road incident occurred. I can tell you that it is still considered the textbook case of the worst possible peacetime civilian occurrence. People cringe when it’s mentioned. You see what I’m driving at?”
“Not exactly.”
“What I’m driving at is, nobody wants it stirred up again. We don’t, the Indians don’t. You come over here with absolutely no warning, go through the files, ask questions. Pretty soon, all the old wounds start to bleed again. Would you like to see that happen?”
“You’re forgetting that I was perfectly willing to leave it alone. It wouldn’t leave me alone.”
“You said it yourself. Some crank saw your name in the paper.”
“A crank who knows details of my personal history.”
Mr. Curtis sighed. “Let’s have some coffee.”
When the steaming cups had been served, he scratched his beard and said, “I don’t suppose you’d want to take my advice.”
“Not if it’s to go home.”
“It is.”
“Then no.”
“We can’t have you running around the countryside asking about Palika Road. We just can’t have it.”
Time to take the gloves off. “Forgive me for putting it this way, but is there anything you can do to stop me? I mean, without causing some of the trouble you’re so eager to avoid?”
He looked at her keenly over the top of his cup. Finally he said, “If I let you look in the file, will you promise not to make me sorry?”
“I promise not to make you sorry deliberately.”
“OK. Follow me.”
***
It was hot in the file room, despite a rattling air conditioner. Perspiration trickled through Marina’s hair as she sat at the wooden table with stacks of documents in front of her. Here was the police report of Nagarajan’s suicide. The guard testified, “When I made my round at eight o’clock in the evening, he was sitting on his bed mat with his head on his knees. When I returned at nine o’clock, he was hanging from the bars of his cell. Around his neck was a noose he had made from strips of his clothing.” An attached page noted that Nagarajan had been cremated the same night.
Dizzy with jet lag and bad memories, she picked up another sheaf of papers. This was the dossier about the riot and fire on Palika Road. The few witnesses whose testimony was recorded had avoided specifics. The story of a tenant farmer was typical:
We were drinking tea at the shop of Govinda when two men came in. I do not know their names. They were talking about the evil that was done to Agit More. They said this evil had polluted Halapur. We heard voices outside and went to see, and there were people with rocks and sticks, talking of the evil at the ashram. Someone said, “Why should we not go there?” and everyone said, “Yes, yes, we must go there.”
As we went along, others joined us. I wanted to go away, but I was afraid. When it started to burn, I ran away. I didn’t see.
The accounts were confused and fragmentary. Nobody knew the whole story, and because all the principals were dead there had been no trial. The people who had gone through the burned-out ashram had thought they found the remains of three bodies, but couldn’t they have been mistaken? Such mistakes had been made before. Her head was throbbing.
Before she left, she stopped to thank Mr. Curtis. He nodded. “What do you plan to do now?”
“I don’t know. I have a couple of leads to follow up. Then, I don’t know.”
“Let me ask you again, formally, not to pursue this.”
“All right, you’ve asked.”
“Let me warn you, formally, that you can get into a lot of trouble and cause yourself and us embarrassment.”
“OK. I understand.”
“Let me formally dissociate myself and the consulate from whatever you undertake in the matter of Palika Road.”
“Fine.”
“One final request. Would you leave your home and Bombay addresses with the secretary for our files?” He stood to see her out.
Marina returned to the Rama. The lobby was as deserted as before, and she couldn’t summon the strength to inquire about Raki. She felt almost sick from the effort of going to the consulate, reading the files, dragging herself through it all again. She fell on her creaking bed and slept.
She was awakened at dusk by a tap on the door. After splashing water on her face she answered. Standing there was a young Indian man. He wore a beautifully tailored blue suit, a starched white shirt, a striped tie. His short hair was brushed neatly back, and he wore black-rimmed glasses and carried a briefcase. “My name is Vijay Pandit,” he said. “Mr. Curtis sent me to help you.”
21
Marina bit into her samosa, chewed, and felt her mouth begin to burn. She took a large swallow of beer. “So Mr. Curtis sent you to be my keeper,” she said.
Vijay Pandit was chewing an idli. Except for a table of men drinking tea in a corner, the two of them were the sole patrons of the Kumkum Cafe. “A helper only,” he said.
Marina had checked his identification, which said he worked for the United States Information Agency. Not satisfied with the card that looked perfectly in order, she called James Curtis’s office to make sure they had heard of this very proper-looking young man. A secretary confirmed that Vijay Pandit, who worked for USIA, was on temporary assignment to Mr. Curtis. Through all this, Vijay Pandit stood patiently in the hall, obviously unwilling to cross the threshhold of her room. When she handed his card back he said, “Shall we discuss over tiffin?”
Her mouth was anesthetized by now, and she was able to continue eating. “I don’t understand. Mr. Curtis made a point of dissociating himself formally from anything I plan to do.”
“Yes. Formally, I am not here.”
Marina thought Mr. Curtis had a hell of a nerve. She should have realized at the consulate that he was letting her go too easily. Now he had saddled her with a prim, toe-the-line civil servant who would be a direct pipeline on her every move. She studied Vijay Pandit, who was the picture of a company man, with his exquisite manners, his neat grooming, his sincerity. Having him around would be like having a ball and chain on her leg.
He looked up, noticed her examining him, and smiled, tentatively. She looked away. She could get rid of him. If she simply told him to go away, what could he do? He couldn’t force himself on her.
“You would like something else? More beer?” he said.
“No thanks.” She pushed her plate away and turned to him. “What’s your assignment, exactly?”
“Simply to aid you in your inquiries.” He smiled again, more broadly. “And, as you have probably guessed, to be in touch with the consulate immediately if you get into trouble.”
At least he was honest about it. A thought occurred to her. “What languages do you speak?”
“English, as you already know. Also Marathi, the language of Maharashtra
, the state we are in. Also Hindi, our other national language besides English. I studied a bit of French at university, but I don’t really speak.”
“You read those too?”
“Yes.”
He would probably have no trouble reading the pages she had photographed from the hotel register. Having admitted one advantage to having him around, she thought of others. He knew the territory. He would probably have access to a car and driver. If he got to be a problem, she could always ditch him. “Maybe I should tell you what I’m doing, Mr. Pandit,” she said.
“Please. You will call me Vijay,” he said, and leaned forward.
She started with Catherine and ended with photographing the register and being surprised by the old woman. By the time she finished talking, the cafe was full, and bright lights illuminated the smoky interior.
Vijay listened closely, interrupting only a few times with questions. He sat back. “So you must speak with this Raki,” he said.
“Yes, but he doesn’t seem to be around very much.”
“Shall we go now? Perhaps he has returned.”
***
The lobby of the Rama was more alive than Marina had ever seen it. Two men in loud print shirts conversed rapidly by the door. A massively fat man sat on the couch, pudgy hands resting on his knees. The old woman she had seen earlier stood half-hidden in a doorway. At the switchboard sat a small, dark, misshapen man whom she guessed must be Raki.
He climbed laboriously from the stool he was sitting on and walked to the registration desk with a limping, scraping gait. His chin barely cleared the top of the desk. His face was mobile and alive with intelligence, and despite his twisted body, his arms and chest were full and muscular. When she asked about the January fifteenth call he tilted his head to one side. “A call to the States? That would have been very expensive call, madam.”
The Grand Tour: Four International Mysteries Page 72