Song of Kali Read online

  "Marvelous!" said Amrita. It was the first time I'd seen her so relaxed since London. She turned to me. "Kamakhya knows of a good sari dealer not far from here, near the Elite Cinema. I really would like to buy some material while we're here. That is, if you won't need me tomorrow, Bobby."

  "Mmm, I'm not sure," I said. "Well, plan on your trip. I don't know when they'll arrange their appointment for me."

  "I will call you in the morning then," said the girl. She smiled at Amrita, and I found myself jealous, wishing that I had been the recipient of that benediction. She rose and shook Amrita's hand while simultaneously adjusting her sari with the graceful move of her hand so universal with Indian women.

  "Very good," said Amrita.

  Kamakhya Bharati bowed slightly to me as she moved to the door. I returned the nod and then she was gone. A slight, tantalizing scent remained.

  "Sweet Christ," I said.

  "Relax, Robert," said Amrita. The proper British tones held a hint of amusement. "She's only twenty-two, but she's been engaged for eleven years. She's to be married this October."

  "Damned waste," I said and dropped onto the bed next to the baby. Victoria turned her head and waved her arms, ready to play. I swung her up in the air. She made noises of delight and kicked her feet. "Is she really Das's niece?"

  "She used to help him with his manuscripts. Sharpen pencils. Go to the library for him. Or so she says."

  "Yeah? She must have been ten years old." Victoria squealed as I swung her in an arc, spun her around, swung her back.

  "Thirteen when he disappeared. Evidently her father had a falling out with Das right before their father died."

  "Their father? Oh, Das's — "

  "Yes. At any rate, his name hasn't been mentioned in the household for years. I got the impression that she was too shy to approach Chatterjee or the Writers' Union."

  "She approached us."

  "That's different," said Amrita. "We're foreigners. We don't count. Are we still going to dinner?"

  I lowered Victoria to my stomach. Her face was red with pleasure and she was pondering whether to cry. She dug her knees into my lap and began creeping up my chest. One pudgy hand tightened on the collar of my shirt in a death grip.

  "Where shall we eat?" I asked. I explained about the nine-thirty meeting with Krishna's Mysterious Stranger. "It's a little late to go out on the town. Shall we call Room Service or go down to the Prince's Room? I hear they have Fatima the Exotic Dancer for a floor show."

  "Victoria would undoubtedly create a fuss," said Amrita. "But I would imagine she would prefer Fatima to Room Service."

  "Right-o," I said.

  "I'll be ready in a moment."

  * * *

  Fatima the Exotic Dancer was an overweight, middle-aged Indian woman whose dance could have been performed before a den of Exeter Cub Scouts without fear of scandal. Nonetheless, the crowd of overweight, middle-aged, predominantly male couples in the Prince's Room seemed appropriately titillated by her performance. Victoria was not. She began to cry, and the three of us left halfway through Fatima's second round of gyrations.

  Rather than return to the room, Amrita and I walked around the darkened hotel courtyard. It had been raining much of the evening, but now we could make out a few stars between the low, sulfurous clouds. Heavy curtains were drawn across most of the windows facing the courtyard, and only a few bands of light were visible. We took turns carrying the still-crying baby until the sobbing slowed and then stopped altogether. We paused by the pool and sat on a low bench near the dark café. Ripples of light from underwater spotlights danced across the heavy foliage and lowered bamboo curtains. I noticed a dark shape floating in the shallow end of the pool and realized that it was a drowned rat.

  "Victoria's asleep," said Amrita. I glanced over to see the baby's hands clenched and her eyes closed in that intense, somehow satisfied-looking form of sleep that often followed intense crying spells.

  I stretched my legs out and put my head back. I realized that I was very tired, probably still suffering from jet lag. I sat up and looked at Amrita. She was gently rocking the baby, her own gaze absent and meditative as it often was when she was working on a prolonged mathematical problem.

  "How does it feel to be back?" I asked.

  Amrita looked at me and blinked. "What, Bobby?"

  "In India," I said. "How does it feel to be back?"

  She patted the baby's ruff of hair and handed her to me. I settled Victoria in the hollow of my shoulder and watched as Amrita walked to the edge of the pool and smoothed down her tan skirt. The light from the pool illuminated her sharp cheekbones from below. My wife is beautiful, I thought for the thousandth time since our wedding.

  "It feels a bit like déjà vu," she said very softly. "No, that's not quite the right word. It's actually more like reentering a recurring dream. The heat, the noise, the languages, the smell — everything is familiar and alien at the same time."

  "I'm sorry if it upsets you," I said.

  Amrita shook her head. "It doesn't upset me, Bobby. It frightens me, but it doesn't upset me. I find it very seductive."

  "Seductive?" I stared at her. "What on earth have we seen that has been seductive?" It was not like Amrita to use a word loosely. Her precision with language often exceeded mine.

  She smiled. "Do you mean besides Kamakhya Bharati?" She slipped off her sandal and stirred the blue water with her foot. I could not see the drowned rat at the far end of the pool. "Seriously, Bobby, I find it all seductive in a strange way. It's as if I have been using only one part of my mind for all these years and now another part of me is being called to."

  "Would you like to stay longer?" I asked. "After the assignment's over, I mean." I was confused.

  "No," said Amrita, and there was no mistaking the finality in her voice.

  I shook my head. "I'm sorry I left you alone all afternoon and agreed to this thing tonight," I said. "I guess it was a mistake for the three of us to come. I underestimated how difficult it would be for you with Victoria along." Somewhere from above came a sharp series of commands in what sounded like Arabic followed by a rush of nasal Bengali. A door slammed.

  Amrita walked over to sit next to me again. She took Victoria and laid her across her legs. "It's all right, Bobby," she said. "I knew what it would be like. I guessed that you probably wouldn't need me as a translator until after you got the manuscript."

  "I'm sorry," I said again.

  Amrita looked back at the pool. "When I was seven years old," she said, "the summer before we moved to London, I saw a ghost."

  I stared at her. I could not have been more surprised or incredulous if Amrita had told me that she had fallen in love with the old bellhop and was leaving me. Amrita was — or had been to that instant — the most unrelentingly rational person I had even known. Her interest and belief in the supernatural had until now seemed nonexistent. I had never even been able to interest her in the trashy Stephen King novels I would bring to the beach each summer.

  "A ghost?" I said at last.

  "We were on our way by train from our home in New Delhi to our uncle's in Bombay," she said. "It was always exciting when my sisters and I traveled with our mother to Bombay each June. But this year my sister Santha became ill. We got off the train west of Bhopal and stayed in a railway guest house for two days while a local doctor treated her."

  "Was she all right?" I asked.

  "Yes, it was just the measles," said Amrita. "But now I was the only one of the children who had not had them, so I slept outside our hotel room on a small balcony overlooking the forest. The only way to the balcony was through the room where my mother and sisters slept. The rains had not yet come that summer, and it was very hot."

  "And you saw a ghost?"

  Amrita smiled slightly. "I awoke in the middle of the night to the sound of crying. At first I thought it was my sister or mother, and then I realized that an old woman in a sari was sitting on the edge of my bed and sobbing. I remember feeling no
fear, only wonder that my mother had allowed this person to go through their room to join me on the balcony.

  "Her crying was very soft but somehow very terrible. I reached out my hand to console her, but before I touched her she stopped weeping and looked at me. I realized then that she was not really old, but that she had been aged by some terrible grief."

  "And then what?" I prompted. "How did you know she was a ghost? Did she fade away or walk off on air or melt down to a pile of rags and grease, or what?"

  Amrita shook her head. "The moon passed behind the clouds for a few seconds, and when there was light again the old woman was gone. I called out, and when my mother and sisters came out onto the balcony they assured me that no one had come through their room."

  "Hmmm," I said. "Sounds sort of dull to me. You were seven years old and probably dreaming. Even if you were awake, how do you know it wasn't some chambermaid who'd come up a fire escape or something?"

  Amrita lifted Victoria to her shoulder. "I agree it's not a very frightening ghost story," she said. "But it frightened me for years. You see, in that second before the moon was obscured, I looked right into the woman's face and I knew very well who she was." Amrita patted the baby's back and looked at me. "It was me."

  "You?" I said.

  "I decided then that I wanted to live in a country where I would see no ghosts."

  "I hate to break it to you, kiddo," I said, "but Great Britain and New England are famous for having their share of ghosts."

  "Perhaps," said Amrita and rose with Victoria secure in her arms. "But I can't see them."

  At nine-thirty P.M. I was sitting in the lobby, nursing a growing headache from heat and fatigue, feeling queasy from too much bad wine at dinner, and going through various excuses to give to Krishna when he appeared. By ninefifty I had decided to tell him that Amrita or the baby was sick. At ten P.M.I realized that I didn't have to tell him anything, and I had risen to go upstairs when suddenly he appeared, disheveled and distraught. His eyes looked red and puffy as though he had been crying. He came forward and shook my hand solemnly, as if the lobby were a funeral home and I the bereaved next of kin.

  "What is it?" I asked.

  "Very, very sad," he said, and the high voice broke. "Very terrible news."

  "Your friend?" I asked. I felt a sense of relief in the sudden hunch that his mysterious source had broken his leg or been run over by a trolley or collapsed of a coronary.

  "No, no, no. You must have heard. Mr. Nabokov has passed away. A great tragedy."

  "Who?" Through the dialect I had heard only another rattling Bengali name.

  "Nabokov! Nabokov! Vladimir Nabokov! Pale Fire. Ada. The greatest prose stylist in your native language. A very great loss for all of us. All men of letters."

  "Oh," I said. I had never even got around to reading Lolita. By the time I remembered my resolve not to go with Krishna, we were outside in the humid dark and he was leading me to a rickshaw where a gaunt, wizened little rick shaw-coolie dozed in a red seat. I pulled back. Something in me rebelled at the thought of being pulled through filthy streets by this human scarecrow. "Let's take a cab," I said.

  "No, no. This is reserved for us. It is a short ride. Our friend is waiting."

  The seat was wet from the evening rains but not uncomfortable. The little man jumped down with a slap of his bare feet, grabbed the twin yokes, jumped into the air with a practiced agility, and came down straight-armed, balancing our weight expertly.

  The rickshaw had no running lights, only a kerosene lantern that swung on a metal hook. It did not reassure me that the trucks and cars that swerved around us, horns blaring, also ran without lights. The trolleys were still running, and the sick, yellow pall of their interior bulbs showed sweaty faces crowded behind wire-mesh windows. Despite the late hour all of the public transit was loaded, buses swaying from the weight of people hanging from barred windows and outside grips, passing trains showing innumerable heads and torsos protruding from the black carriages.

  There were few streetlights, but alleys and half-glimpsed courtyards glowed with that pale, decaying phosphorescence I had seen from the air. The darkness had not brought any relief from the heat. If anything, it was warmer now than it had been during the day. Heavy clouds could be seen just above the overhanging buildings, and their moist weight seemed to reflect the heat of the city streets back to us.

  Anxiety rose in me again. It is hard even now for me to describe the nature of this tension. It had little to do with a sense of physical danger, although I felt absurdly exposed as we rattled over loose paving stones, heaps of garbage, and trolley tracks. I realized that I still had two hundred dollars' worth of travelers' checks in my billfold. But that was not the real source of the nervousness that rose in my throat like bile.

  Something about the Calcutta night worked directly upon the darkest regions of my mind. Brief clutches of an almost childlike fear tugged at my consciousness and were forced down again by the adult mind. The sounds of the night held no threat in and of themselves — distant shouts, sibilant scrapings, an occasional muffled snatch of conversation as we passed the sheeted figures — but they had the same gut-wrenching, attention-getting effect that the sound of someone breathing under your bed at night would generate.

  "Kaliksetra," said Krishna. His voice was soft, barely audible over the panting of the rickshaw-coolie and the slap of bare feet on pavement.

  "Excuse me?"

  "Kaliksetra. It means 'the place of Kali.' Certainly you knew that this is where the name of our city has originated?"

  "Ahh, no. That is, I may have. I must have forgotten."

  Krishna turned toward me. I could not see his face clearly in the darkness, but I could feel the weight of his stare. "You must know this," he said flatly. "Kaliksetra became the village of Kalikata. Kalikata was the site of the great Kalighat, the most holy temple to Kali. It still stands. Less than two miles from your hotel. Certainly you must know this."

  "Hmmm," I said. A trolley had turned the corner at high speed. Our rickshaw-coolie suddenly swerved across the tracks, avoiding the tram by less than a yard. Angry shouts followed us out onto a wider, emptier street. "Kali was a goddess, wasn't she?" I said. "One of Siva's consorts?" Despite my interest in Tagore, it had been many years since I had read any of the Vedas.

  Krishna made an incredible sound. At first I thought it was an explosive burst of derision, but then I turned to look. He was stopping one nostril with his finger and loudly blowing mucus into his left hand. "Yes, yes," he said. "Kali is the sacred sakti of Siva." He inspected the contents of his hand, nodded as if satisfied, and flicked his fingers over the side of the rickshaw.

  "Certainly you know her aspect?" he asked. From one of the shadowy, dilapidated buildings we had passed came the sound of several women screaming at each other.

  "Her aspect? No, I don't believe so. She . . . the statues . . . they have four arms, don't they?" I looked around, and wondered if we were almost at our destination. There were fewer shops here. I found it hard to imagine a coffee shop among these ruins.

  "Of course! Of course! She is a goddess; obviously she has four arms! You must see the great idol in the Kalighat. It is the jagrata, the "very awake" Kali. Very terrible. Beautifully terrible, Mr. Luczak. Her hands show the abhaya and vara mudras — the fear-removing and boon-granting mudras. But very terrible. Very tall. Very gaunt. Her mouth is open. Her tongue is long. She has the two . . . what is the word . . . the teeth of the vampire?"

  "Fangs?" I gripped the wet seat cover and wondered what Krishna was going on about. We turned down a darker, narrower street.

  "Ah, yes, yes. She alone of the gods has conquered time. She devours all beings, of course. Purusam, as´vam, g¯am, avim, ajam. She is unclad. Her beautiful feet tread on a corpse. In her hands she holds a pasé . . . a noose, khatvanga . . . what is the word? . . . A stick, no, a staff with a skull, khadga . . . a sword, and a severed head."

  "A severed head?"

  "Certainly. Yo
u must know this."

  "Listen, goddammit, Krishna, what is all this — "

  "Ah, we are here, Mr. Luczak. Step down. Quickly, please. We are late. The coffee shop closes at eleven."

  The street was little more than an alley filled with sewage and rainwater. There was no sign of any storefronts or shops, much less a café. The walls were unlit except for the dim reflection of lanterns glowing from one of the upper windows. The rickshaw-coolie had dropped the traces and was lighting a small pipe. I remained seated.

  "Quickly please," said Krishna, and snapped his fingers at me in the way I had seen him deal with porters. He stopped over a sleeping man on the sidewalk and opened a door that I hadn't noticed. A single bulb illuminated a steep, narrow staircase. Faint undertones of conversation drifted down to us.