“I can’t wait any longer,” she managed to groan. “Oh god, Stanley…Fuck me.”
I pushed myself forward one last time, down into the abyss.
16
NOT LONG AFTER SUNRISE the next morning, our chamber door was assaulted by a series of brash knocks. My eyes cracked open reluctantly, rebelling against the early morning sunlight coming through the shutters.
“Chai, Sahab!” It was Jagjit.
I pushed myself up and out from under the net, snagged my pants off the floor, and yanked them on. When I pulled the door open there they were, man and beast, both faces baring their teeth in a good-morning smile. Jagjit was holding a tray with two cups, a pot of tea, a small bowl of sugar, and a silver pitcher of boiled milk. The monkey was perched in his usual spot, his fuzzy, dwarfish head and pointed ears bobbing right alongside his master’s own barbered pate. This morning the servant was sporting a trendy synthetic kurta over a pink lungi. Very stylish. The embroidered collar was open, and for the first time I noticed the pendant that dangled from a silver chain strung around his neck. It was a miniature figure of Chota Hanuman’s divine namesake, the monkey god Hanuman, loyal servant of Lord Ram. It was Hanuman who had rescued the goddess Sita from her captor, the demon Ravana.
The monkey swung down and stood waiting at his master’s side while I took the tray and deposited it on our vanity. When I returned to the door, Jagjit tilted his head slightly forward in the customary Indian fashion, affecting an abbreviated bow, palms joined in front.
“The colonel invites you to meet him for breakfast on the terrace as soon as you are ready.” His Hindi was marked with the same lilting accent I had first heard in Ramnagar when we stopped for lunch.
I acknowledged the invitation with my own small bow. Just then, from somewhere behind me, I heard a metallic tinkling and knew right away that Chota Hanuman had once again surrendered to his obsession with Penny’s jewelry. He was rummaging through her bag. Jagjit bounded across the room and scooped the little bandit up in his arms, extracted a glass bangle and two silver rings from the grip of those furry fingers, and deposited him back on his perch, after which the recidivistic anthropoid gave a shriek of protest and promptly began to twist his master’s ear with unrestrained zeal. Jagjit batted the offending paw away and flashed me a sheepish grin as he exited the room.
Singh speaks the truth, I thought. The show starts at dawn.
I roused Penny and poured us both a cup of tea, serving it to her where she lingered, supine under the royal canopy. The brew was hot and strong and worked its magic. I was sitting beside her, poised for a last sip, when a shrill trumpeting pierced the early morning silence. I sat down my cup, went over, and opened the shutters.
Beyond the veranda an elephant swayed heavily in the brilliant Himalayan sunlight, an enormous gray battleship rocking on waves of parched yellow grass. Her trunk curled back over her forehead as she cut loose with another blast that echoed into the emptiness of the mountain sky. The mahout straddled her neck and rocked up and down, one bare calloused foot nestling behind each of the elephant’s magisterial ears. He was a small, wiry man, naked except for a short dhoti rolled up between his legs like a bulky diaper. His head was wrapped in a ribbon of indigo cotton; the last meter of cloth hung free in back, rippling in the breeze like the tail on one of those kites I had watched in the sky over Banaras. He nudged a heel sharply up behind the elephant’s left ear, and she pirouetted on the grass and sauntered obediently out of sight around the corner of the house. I remembered the colonel’s promise of an outing. Was this to be our mount? Downing the last few swallows of tea, we hurried through our morning ablutions.
When we arrived on the terrace, we found the colonel sitting over his cup perusing some official-looking papers stacked in his lap. His ever-present stick reclined across a corner of the table. We exchanged greetings, prompting him to shift the stack of papers to the floor, rise from his chair, and favor each of us with his characteristic, stiff-waisted military bow. I watched closely this time as his eyes swept over Penny’s body, from the tips of her long lashes down to her bare, sandaled feet. Her outfit—a light blue salwar kameez with subtle gold stitching along the hem—seemed to meet with his approval.
“Well,” he declared, his eyes coming to rest at last on Penny’s face and neck, then on mine, “it looks as though your mosquito net may have a few holes.” Our skin was, in fact, dotted with tiny red bumps. Only then did I realize that he might have heard us in the other room; we had not been discreet. Penny took firm control of the situation before I could begin to assemble a viable response to the colonel’s remark. She didn’t miss a beat.
“It was my fault. I’m so clumsy. I got up to go to the loo and tripped over the chair. Poor Stanley . . .” She glanced shyly over at me where I stood dumbfounded, waiting to see what this brazen little liar would say next. “He leapt up to help me and the net got tangled. I do hope we didn’t wake you with all the commotion.” She lowered her eyes demurely and rounded off the whole charming show with a sweet, impeccably innocent smile.
Penny’s acting skill, this ability to project a poised and convincing facade, was more than a bit disconcerting. I had problems with anyone who could just whip up fictitious tales like this on the spur of the moment. I held myself tightly to a pristine ideal of truth. That’s why I told Judith about my infidelity the very day it occurred. I actually thought she would prefer to know. Once, when I took Penny to task for cooking up these bullshit stories on the spot, her response was equally swift: “It’s not lying, Stanley. It’s simply an embroidered version of the truth.” Of course my own brutal integrity was every bit as self-serving as any lie, but at the time I did not see it that way, and during the few months we shared, I often experienced a twinge of panic when I thought about what it would mean to fall in love with such a woman. Penny seemed capable of saying absolutely anything that would work toward her own, present purposes, and saying it with utter conviction. I couldn’t trust a word that came out of her mouth. I could not even trust her beauty. There was nothing about her that I could hold on to, nothing that could not conceivably be turned against me. In any case, Singh was obviously satisfied with her response.
Over breakfast, he told us we would be going on an adventure. He had given orders to prepare his elephant, Sita, a spry, middle-aged female that had served the previous director as well. It was she we had seen cavorting on the lawn. We finished our vegetable cutlets and toast, and when the final pot of tea had been drained, we left the table and followed a stone path through a grove of aromatic mango trees to a clearing outside the stables. Sita was in full harness now and awaiting our arrival. Several layers of stiff, colorful dharis had been draped over her back, an intricately carved teak howdah set in place and cinched from below with leather belts that circled down and around her belly. She was standing alongside an ingenious scaffold that permitted us to mount her by ascending a small platform abutting the expanse of her ribbed flank. A single brown eye followed our progress up the staircase. One by one we stepped into the howdah and found our seats. I slipped my legs under the banister and let them swing free; the heels of my black converse sneakers brushed against the pachyderm’s coarse hide. Smooth and warm to the touch, the wooden rail pressed against my palms.
Evidently a man of many talents, Jagjit had for the present occasion assumed the guise of lookout and guard. He sat immediately to the rear of the mahout, an ancient and colossal gun cradled in his arms. The leather ammunition belt was strapped diagonally across his chest, the shells down along its length like a row of dormitory beds stuffed with fat cylinders, each one wearing the same copper nightcap, each one quietly dreaming of violent, explosive surrender. Chota Hanuman was not in attendance. He had been left behind, perhaps out of concern that he might decide to reach over and trigger the weapon.
Once everyone was comfortable, Singh barked out an order, and we lurched off, lumbering across the yard and directly into the high grass. Within a hundred meters of the hous
e the undergrowth became so tall it grazed our feet. Penny reached out and let the stalks brush against her fingers as we plunged forward, blazing a path through country that would have been inaccessible to the Land Rover.
After some time we paused at the edge of a steep bank and surveyed the clear waters of the Ramganga. The river stretched out in front of us, its gravel bed strewn with smooth, chalky white rocks. The mahout pushed both heels forward, and before we could catch our breath, Sita plunged over the edge and straight down the side, leaving us clinging insanely at the balustrade. I understood then why the wood under my hands had been worn to a high gloss over the years. Once at the bottom, the elephant waded knee deep into the river and repeatedly submerged the tip of her trunk, each time sucking up one or two gallons of water that was summarily hosed into her waiting mouth. Thirst slaked, she moved farther out into the swift current, and within seconds the water was churning up around her stomach.
“Colonel, what would happen,” I asked, “if she chanced to step over a steep drop-off?”
“She knows what she is doing,” he assured me, with obvious confidence.
Exactly like Penny at her best, I thought, as I listened to him speak. I was about to ask if elephants can swim when Singh continued, preempting any further reference to the subject.
“Mr. Harrington, this is her world, not ours.”
Sure enough, we made it safely across, only to face another harrowing trip directly up the opposite bank and then back into the relative security of the high grass.
“Amazing creatures, elephants!” our host exclaimed. “Sure footed and silent.”
Singh went on to tell us that the previous director had come across Sita wandering alone, an infant in the jungle, not far from where we had stopped to watch the herd of elephants on our first day in the park. He had found her half starved and desperate for attention. It was not clear what had become of her mother, nor was it evident why she had not been adopted by the other matriarchs of the herd. Rather than leave her to an almost certain death, the director had led the small elephant home and personally nursed her back to health. His original intention had been to set her free as soon as she was strong enough to fend for herself, but when the time arrived it seemed she had no interest in leaving.
Twice she was set loose at considerable distance from the house, and twice she returned. The second time it took her almost a week to find her way back, but in the end she appeared one morning outside the kitchen, lazily grazing on the high grass at the edge of the yard. The director made up his mind to keep her and raise her himself, and in the months that followed, she was subjected to a rigorous education. Among other things, she had been trained to spot tigers by relying on her prodigious olfactory powers. Singh explained that an elephant’s sense of smell is legendary and encouraged us to pay close attention and we would see for ourselves. In this we were not disappointed. From our perch on her back, we watched her halt from time to time, uncoil her great trunk and let it rise, bobbing and swaying like a cobra, mesmerizing us with the gentle rhythm of its dance as she sampled a stray breeze for traces of the elusive feline perfume. At such times I too would inhale deeply, drawing in the musky odor of the jungle, redolent with the secrets of life and death. I asked myself what it was she sought—something so familiar she would recognize it instantly and without question. Something I could not discern. What is the scent of a tiger in the wild, untamed and free?
This is her world, not ours.
More than once Sita picked up the aroma of a cat lurking somewhere nearby. On four occasions she raised her right front foot, offering us the prescribed sign, softly pawing the ground. Each time we scrutinized the surrounding brush, suspicious of every leaf that swayed, every blade of grass that stirred in the light breeze. The third time this happened, we were poised, holding our breath, looking and listening, when without the slightest warning, a large male boar shot out of the underbrush not more than thirty feet off to the right. Something had apparently spooked him, and he bolted straight toward us. One look at Sita, though, and he veered away and ran shrieking along a different course. In the excitement, Jagjit swung the shotgun around and almost blasted the hell out of one bristly, frightened pig. Even Singh was caught off guard. Penny latched onto my wrist so hard that her nails left visible marks. We still had not seen a tiger, but early in the afternoon, just before turning back, our luck changed.
“Look!” Penny pointed up into the foliage. Just above us a sloth was suspended upside down from the branch of a venerable sal tree, hanging there like a furry Christmas ornament. Its head was thrown all the way back, slowly rotating so as to keep an eye on us as we passed below. This was the first of these comical little creatures either of us had seen, and we were talking and laughing about it when suddenly Sita froze at the edge of a broad, flat marsh.
“Quiet!” Singh whispered, holding his hand up between us.
The elephant raised her trunk and sniffed. I became suddenly conscious of the smell of stagnant water and rotting vegetation. And then I heard the faint sound of Sita’s ponderous foot scraping the dirt. I felt a tug at my sleeve, and I turned, straining my eyes in the direction Singh indicated, straight out over the open marsh.
A large Bengal tiger was crouching in the grass, so near I could see its flesh ripple, its ribs swell and contract with each breath. The animal turned and glared at Sita. The muscles of the neck and shoulder bunched up, the eyes narrowed.
Here was a lethal, compelling beauty, unlike any I had known and infinitely more seductive. A beauty that fed on life, erotic and irresistible.
17
WE RETURNED IN TIME to rinse off at the tap before late afternoon tea, followed by dinner and the colonel’s ritual nightcap. It was hard to believe that this was only our second evening together; I had already become attached to the house and its comforts, and to the alien, savage intensity of the jungle outside. But we were to leave the following morning. Singh had made arrangements to send us back with his driver to Ramnagar, where we would catch the train for Delhi.
While Penny was getting ready for bed, I went out to stretch my legs. The fresh night air was sobering after having spent the last few hours settled back by the fire with the colonel’s whiskey. I walked unsteadily around the drive for a while, my head tipped back, gazing up into the immensity of the cosmos. The sky looked like one of those cheap velvet paintings, the plush carpet of the universe plastered over the inside of a gigantic dome, a blackness so dense it absorbed time and space and then let them rip through again in a billion points of cold white fire. On an impulse, I headed toward the stables to check in on Sita. I wanted to see if elephants slept on their feet like horses and cows.
I crept up to the huge door and peaked in. Sure enough, there she was, standing motionless, her big head dipped forward between those magnificent ears, eyes closed like some hoary sage immersed in deep samadhi. The expert nose drooped limply down into the straw. Was she dreaming of tigers? I studied the mountainous silhouette of her body as it loomed over me in the darkness. All at once I realized that I was utterly exhausted. I found my way back to the room, climbed in bed next to Penny, and immediately fell into a fitful sleep.
That night I dreamed that I was being pursued through the jungle by Kalidas. He was accompanied by a trained tiger able to track me down by following my peculiar scent—the smell of Regenstein Library at the University of Chicago. I was running for my life. Stumbling through the brush I jettisoned my bag, which was stuffed with heavy dictionaries and grammars. I kept hoping to come upon a river, so I could use that trick you always see in the movies when convicts escape the bloodhounds by swimming downstream. In my panic to shed the library stench, I began frantically to strip off one piece of clothing after another, until at last I was crashing naked through a dense tangle of vegetation. But it was to no avail. My skin itself exuded a telltale aroma of bound periodicals, xerox fluid, and those foul little ammonia wafers they put in urinals. I entered a clearing and sprinted for the other side, the
n tripped and fell. Within seconds, Kalidas and the tiger burst out of the jungle. The old man barked a command, and the animal lunged toward me where I lay in a crumpled fetal position, knees drawn tight against my chest, arms thrown up around my head.
I must have cried out in my sleep and woken Penny, for the next thing I remember is the warmth of her arms wrapped around me. Half lost in dream, I drifted into her embrace, giving myself over to her touch. We lay together in silence, legs entwined, while she stroked my hair, gently kissing my face and neck. And then we made love, our bodies moving together and merging as the early morning light filtered through the shutters.
At breakfast the colonel seemed uncharacteristically jumpy. Twice he asked how we had slept, then called for a fresh pot of tea. While we waited, he fidgeted with his napkin, rearranged his chair, and commented repeatedly on the weather. At last the tea arrived and Jagjit circled the table, filling our cups. Only then, after the servant had once again disappeared, Singh let it be known that he intended to name the tiger cub in the back room after “Miss Ainsworth.” He made quite a production of the announcement, stressing that he had, until now, been unable to reach a decision on this important matter. He obviously intended for Penny to take it as a considerable honor. He ended by formally requesting permission to use her first name.
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