A Dead Hand by Paul Theroux

Author:Paul Theroux [Theroux, Paul]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-55199-319-5
Publisher: McClelland & Stewart
Published: 2009-09-21T16:00:00+00:00

Another contained the image

...the muted lisp

Of morning's tongue pushes against the sky.

"What do you think?"

"What do I think? Coruscating."

She laughed. She said she wanted to loan me a book by a Bengal novelist. "Pop by my flat. You must read Sarat Chandra Chatterji."

Though Howard had told me she lived with her parents, I took this to mean that the flat was hers. It might have been. On a side street near a mosque in Shobhabazar in north Calcutta, it was four flights up on a landing that faced the minarets and a building draped with drying laundry. The dark staircase smelled of disinfectant and cooking. I was breathless from the climb when I knocked. An old woman opened the door, her harassed face puffy with the heat, a servant judging from the way she was dressed, wrapped in a plain cotton sari and barefoot.

"Won't be a minute!" Parvati called from an adjacent room that was blocked by a folding screen.

"Chai? Pani?" the old woman asked as she plucked at her gauzy sari.

"I'm fine," I said, and clarified it by gesturing with my hands. An offering of water in Calcutta had sinister implications for me. The very word "water" was like poison.

An inner door clicked open. I expected Parvati, but from the reaction of the servant, compact, cringing, I took the woman approaching to be her mother. She straightened to appraise me. She was not old, but I saw no resemblance to Parvati. She was darker, heavier, flatfooted in gold sandals, wearing rings on her toes, and she twisted her wrist bangles as she frowned at me. She was clearly disappointed, as though I was hardly human, a peculiar animal, a pest.

"You are alone?"

What did that mean? I was still standing. I said, "Yes."

"Your employment is American consulate?"

"Not exactly." What had Parvati told her, and why wasn't she here to help me? "I do a little writing. I was giving lectures at various places around Calcutta, sponsored by the consulate. Maybe that's what you were thinking of."

She waggled her head. "Please sit. You won't have tea?"

Helpless, not knowing how to deal with the silence in the shadowy room, I said, "Thanks. I think I will."

"Ragini, chai," she said to the servant, who stood to the side, still cringing. And seating herself across from me, she said, "And how are you knowing Parvati?"

"Through her poetry, of course."

"Tcha." This was less a word than a way of sucking her teeth.

"And her classical dancing."

"Tcha."

Behind me, I saw as a flash in a mirror, the outer door opened—a sight of laundry and minarets—and a man came in, obviously fresh from work and heat; a crease of disturbance on his face made him seem like an escapee. He glanced at me with undisguised alarm and disapproval, as if he'd encountered an intruder. His leather briefcase was bulgy and bruised, and although the day was hot he wore a dark wool jacket and a shirt and tie. He unbuttoned his jacket but did not remove it. His

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