But as we stopped twenty feet from them, Amrita and I had eyes only for the heavily wrapped bundle the woman was rapidly rocking. The child's face was not visible. We could see only a pale hint of cheek.
We walked closer. A great ache began in my diaphragm and rose to my chest. I ignored it. Inspector Singh motioned to the uniformed security guard who had snapped to attention. The guard brusquely said something to the young man, who immediately rose from the bench and walked nervously to the counter. As he stood, the girl shifted to let him pass and we caught a glimpse of the baby's face in the thick folds of the shawl.
It was Victoria. Sleeping, pale almost to the point her skin glowed, but beyond any doubt it was Victoria.
Amrita let out a cry then, and everyone moved at once. The young man must have tried to bolt, because the security guard and another man from behind the counter rapidly pinned his arms back. The girl slid across the bench into the corner and clutched the baby to her breast while she began rocking quickly and babbling something that sounded like a nursery rhyme. Amrita, the Inspector, and I advanced quickly together as if to cut off any escape route the girl might consider, but she only turned her face to the green wall and began wailing more loudly.
Singh tried to restrain Amrita then, but she took three quick steps forward, pulled the woman's head back sharply by her hair, and removed Victoria from her grasp with a sweep of her left arm.
Everyone was shouting. For some reason I took several steps back as Amrita lifted our daughter high and began unwrapping her from the filthy purple shawl.
Amrita's first cry cut through the rest of the noise and reduced the room to silence. I continued backing up until I struck a counter. As Amrita's screams started, I turned away in slow motion and lowered my face and clenched fists to the cool countertop.
"Awww," I said. It was a soft noise and it came up out of my earliest childhood. "Awww," I said. "Aww, no, please." I pressed my cheek tight against the countertop and struck my fists against my ears, but I could plainly hear when Amrita's cries turned to sobs.
I still have the report somewhere — the copy of the one Singh sent to Delhi. Like everything else in India, the paper is cheap and inferior. The type is so faint as to be almost transparent, a dull child's idea of a secret message. It doesn't matter. I do not need to see the report to recall its exact wording.
22.7.77 C.M.P.D./D.D.A.S.S. 2671067
SECURITY GUARD JAGMOAN (YASHPAL, D.D.A. SEC. SERV. 1113) PROCESSED THE COUPLE IDENTIFIED BY PAPERS AS CHOWDURY, SUGATA AND DEVI, TRAVELING WITH INFANT TO LONDON, U.K., FOR PLEASURE, AT 04:28/21.7.77. SECURITY GUARD JAGMOAN DETAINED THE COUPLE AT CUSTOMS SECTION B-11 BECAUSE OF POSSIBLE RECOGNITION OF SAID INFANT AS MISSING AMERICAN LUCZAK INFANT, REPORTED KIDNAPPED ON 18.7.77 [RE: C.M.P.D. CASE NO. 117, dt, 18.7.77(S.R. 50/) SINGH.] INSPECTOR YASHWAN SINGH (C.M.P.D. 26774) AND LUCZAKS (ROBERT C. AND AMRITA D.) ARRIVED TO CONFIRM INFANT'S IDENTITY AT 05:41/21.7.77. INFANT WAS POSITIVELY IDENTIFIED AS VICTORIA CAROLYN LUCZAK b. 22.1.77. UPON FURTHER INSPECTION BY CHILD'S MOTHER, IT WAS DISCOVERED THAT INFANT VICTORIA C. LUCZAK HAD BEEN DECEASED FOR SEVERAL HOURS. COUPLE IDENTIFIED AS SUGATA AND DEVI CHOWDURY SUBSEQUENTLY WERE PLACED UNDER ARREST AND TRANSPORTED TO C.M.P.D.H.Q. CHOWRINGHEE: SUSPICION OF CONSPIRACY TO KIDNAP, CONSPIRACY TO MURDER, AND ATTEMPTING TO TRANSPORT STOLEN GOODS ACROSS INTERNATIONAL BOUNDARIES. AUTOPSY REPORT [RE: LUCZAK — C.M.P.D./M.E. 2671067/21.7.77] CONFIRMED THAT THE LUCZAK INFANT HAD BEEN DECEASED FOR A PERIOD OF NO MORE THAN FIVE (5) HOURS AND NO LESS THAN TWO (2) HOURS AND THAT SAID INFANT'S BODY HAD BEEN USED AS A DEPOSITORY TO TRANSPORT STOLEN MERCHANDISE: LIST AND VALUE ESTIMATES APPENDED:
RUBIES (6) RS. 1,115,000
SAPPHIRES (4) RS. 762,000
OPALS (4) RS. 136,000
AMETHYSTS (2) RS. 742,000
TOURMALINES (5) RS. 380,000
FURTHER DETAILS CONTACT SINGH (YASHWAN C.M.P.D. 26774). END REPORT.
15
"Calcutta Has Murdered Me."
— Kabita Sinha
Calcutta would not let us go. For two more days the city held us in its fetid grasp.
Amrita and I would not leave Victoria alone with them. Even during the police autopsy and the undertaker's preparations, we waited in nearby rooms.
Singh told us that we would have to remain in Calcutta for several weeks, at least until the hearings were completed. I told him we would not. Each of us gave a deposition to a bored-looking stenographic clerk.
The man from the American Embassy in New Delhi arrived. He was an officious little rabbit of a man named Don Warden. His idea of dealing with the unhelpful Indian bureaucrats was to apologize to them and explain to us how complicated we had made things by insisting on taking our child's body home so quickly.
On Saturday we rode to the airport for the final time. Warden, Amrita, and I were crowded into the backseat of a rented old Chevrolet. It was raining very hard, and the inside of the closed vehicle was hot and very humid. I did not notice. I had eyes only for the small white hospital van we were following. It did not use its emergency lights in the heavy traffic. There was no rush.
At the airport there was a final delay. An airport official came out with Warden. Both were shaking their heads.
"What's the matter?" I said.
The Indian official brushed at his soiled white shirt and snapped out several Hindustani phrases in an irritated tone.
"What?" I said.
Amrita translated. She was so exhausted that she did not raise her head and her voice was almost inaudible. "He says that the coffin we paid for cannot be loaded on the aircraft," she said wearily. "The metal airline coffin is here, but the necessary papers for the transfer of . . . of the body . . . were not signed by the proper authorities. He says that we can go to the city hall on Monday to get the necessary papers."
I stood up. "Warden?" I said.
The embassy man shrugged. "We have to respect their laws and cultural values," he said. "I've thought all along that it would be much easier if you would agree to having the body cremated here in India."
Kali is the goddess of all cremation grounds.
"Come here," I said. I led the two men back through the doors into the office next to the room where Victoria's body lay. The Indian official looked bored and impatient. I took Warden by the arm and led him to one corner of the room.
"Mr. Warden," I said quietly, "I am going to go into the next room and transfer my daughter's body to the required coffin. If you come into the room or interfere with me in any way, I will kill you. Do you understand?"
Warden blinked several times and nodded. I walked over to the official and explained things to him. I did so quietly, my fingers gently touching his chest as I talked, but he looked into my eyes and something he saw there kept him silent and immobile when I finished speaking and walked through the swinging doors into the dimly lit room where Victoria waited.
The room was long and almost empty except for some stacks of boxes and unclaimed luggage. At one end of the room, already opened on a counter next to a conveyor belt of metal rollers, was the steel airline coffin. At the far end of the room, on a bench next to the loading platform, was the gray casket we had purchased in Calcutta. I walked over to it and, without hesitating, unsealed the casket.
On the night Victoria was born, there was one part of the prepared ritual that I had been nervous about for weeks. I had known that the Exeter Hospital encouraged the new fathers to carry the newborn infants from the delivery room to the nursery next door for the obligatory weighing and measuring prior to returning the baby to the mother in the recovery room. I had worried about this for some time. I was afraid I might drop her. It was a silly reaction, but even after the excitement and exhilaration of the birth, I found my heart pounding with nervousness when the doctor lifted Victoria off Amrita's stomach and asked if I would like to carry my little girl down the hall. I remember nodding, smiling, and feeling terrified. I remember cupping her tiny head, lifting the still-damp-from-birth little form against my chest and shoulder and m
aking the thirty-step trip from the delivery room to the nursery with a growing confidence and joy. It was as if Victoria was helping me. I remember grinning stupidly at the sudden and total realization that I was carrying my child. It remains the happiest memory of my life.
This time I felt no nervousness. I gently raised my daughter, cupped her head, held her against my chest and shoulder as I had so many times before, and made the thirty-step walk to the steel airline coffin with its small bed of white silk.
The plane was delayed several times before takeoff. Amrita and I sat holding hands during the ninety-minute wait, and when the big 747 did finally begin its take-off roll, we did not look toward the windows. Our thoughts were on the small transport coffin we had watched being loaded earlier. We did not talk as the plane climbed toward cruising altitude. We did not look out as clouds obscured the last view of Calcutta. We took our baby and we went home.
16
"Surely some revelation is at hand."
— William Butler Yeats
Victoria's funeral was on Tuesday, July 26, 1977. She was buried in the small Catholic cemetery on the hill overlooking Exeter.
The tiny white casket seemed radiant in the bright sunlight. I did not look at it. During the brief graveside service, I stared at a patch of blue sky just above Father Darcy's head. Through a break in the trees I could see a brick tower on one of the Academy's old buildings. Once a group of pigeons circled and wheeled through the shield of summer sky. Just before the end of the service there came a chorus of children's shouts and laughter, suddenly muted as they saw our group, and Amrita and I turned together to watch a pack of youngsters pedaling furiously as they approached the long, effortless grade down to the town.
Amrita planned to return to teaching at the university in the fall. I did nothing. Three days after we returned, she cleaned out Victoria's room and eventually turned it into a sewing room. She never worked in there and I never went in at all.
When I finally threw out some of the clothes that I'd brought back from Calcutta, I thought to go through the pockets of the torn and stained safari shirt I'd worn the night I'd brought the book to Das. The book of matches was not in any of the pockets. I nodded then, satisfied, but a second later I found my small notebook in another pocket. Perhaps I had both notebooks with me that night.
Abe Bronstein came up for a day in late October. He had been at the funeral, but we had not spoken beyond the necessary rituals of condolence. I had spoken to him one other time — a late, incoherent phone call after I'd been drinking. Abe had listened for the better part of an hour and then said softly, "Go to bed, Bobby. Go to sleep."
On this Sunday in October we sat in the living room over white wine and discussed the problems of keeping Other Voices going and the chances of Carter's new energy program solving the gas shortages. Amrita nodded politely, smiled occasionally, and was a thousand miles away the entire time.
Abe suggested that we go for a walk in the woods behind the house. I blinked. Abe hated exercise of any kind. On this beautiful autumn day he was wearing the same gray, rumpled suit, thin tie, and black wing-tipped shoes that he always wore.
"Sure," I said without any enthusiasm, and he and I set off down the trail toward the pond.
The forest was in full glory. The trail was cushioned with chrome-yellow elm leaves, and every turn confronted us with the flaming reds of maple and sumac. A row of hawthorn offered us both thorns and tiny, autumn apples. A paper birch lunged white against a perfect blue sky. Abe took a half-smoked stogie out of his coat pocket and slogged along, head down, chewing absentmindedly.
We had made two-thirds of the mile-and-a-half circuit and were approaching the crest of the small hill that overlooked the road when Abe sat down on a fallen birch and began methodically emptying his shoes of dirt and twigs. I sat nearby and looked back toward the pond we had circled near the inlet.
"You still have the Das manuscript?" he asked suddenly.
"Yes." If he asked next to use it in Other Voices — agreement or no agreement — our friendship would be at an end.
"Hmmm." Abe cleared his throat and spat. "Harper's give you any shit about not doing the article?"
"No." I heard a woodpecker pounding somewhere beyond the road. "I returned the advance. They insisted on still picking up the travel expenses. Morrow's not with them anymore, you know."
"Yeah." Abe lit the cigar. The smell fit perfectly with the autumn crispness. "Decide yet what you're gonna do with the fucking poem?"
"No."
"Don't publish it, Bobby. Anywhere. Anytime." He threw the still smoking match into a pile of leaves. I retrieved it and squeezed it between my fingers.
"No," I said. We were silent for a while. A cool breeze came up and moved brittle leaves against each other. Far off to the north a squirrel was loudly scolding a trespasser.
"Did you know I lost most of my family in the Holocaust, Bobby?" Abe asked suddenly, not looking at me.
"No. I didn't know that."
"Yeah. Momma got out because she and Jan were in London on their way to visit me. Jan went back to try to get Moshe, Mutti, and the rest out. Never saw them again."
I said nothing. Abe exhaled cigar smoke against the blue sky. "I mention this, Bobby, because afterwards everything seems so inevitable, you know what I mean? You keep thinking you could have changed it but you didn't — like you forgot to do something, then everything happened like clockwork. You know what I mean?"
"Yes."
"Well, it isn't inevitable, Bobby. It's just plain fucking bad luck, is all. It's no one's fault. No one's except the mean bastards that feed off that shit."
I sat without speaking for a long time. Leaves spiraled down around us, adding their sad beauty to the carpet already there. "I don't know, Abe," I said at last. My throat hurt almost too much to go on. "I did everything wrong. Taking them there. Not leaving when I saw how crazy things were. Not making sure their plane got off okay. And I don't understand any of it. Who was responsible? Who were they? Krishna? What did the Kamakhya woman have to gain . . . How does she fit in? Most of all, why did I make the goddamned stupid mistake of taking Das that gun when — "
"Two shots," said Abe.
"What?"
"You told me that night you called that you heard two shots."
"Yeah, well, it was an automatic."
"So what? You think maybe when you blow your brains out you shoot again just to make sure? Eh?"
"What are you driving at, Abe?"
"You didn't kill Das, Bobby. Das didn't kill Das. One of the friendly Kapalika fellows maybe had a reason to set things up that way, eh? Your buddy Krishna . . . Sanjay . . . whatever the fuck his name was — maybe he wanted to be Poet Laureate for a little while."
"Why — " I stopped and watched a seagull pivot on a thermal several hundred feet above us. "But what did Victoria have to do with any of it? Oh, God, Abe . . . how could hurting her help anyone? I don't understand any of it."
Abe rose and spat again. Chips of bark clung to his suit. "Let's go, huh, Bobby? I got to get the bus back to Boston to get the damn train."
I started to lead the way down the hill, but Abe grabbed my arm. He was looking hard at me. "Bobby, you've got to know one thing. You don't have to understand. You won't understand. You won't forget, either. Don't think you will . . . you won't. But you got to keep going. You hear me? Day by day, maybe, but you got to keep going. Otherwise the fuckers win. We can't let them do that, Bobby. You understand me?"
I nodded and turned quickly to follow the faint trail.
On November 2, I received a short letter from Inspector Singh. It informed me that the male suspect, Sugata Chowdury, would not be standing trial. During his detention in Hooghly Prison Chowdury had "met with foul play." Specifically, someone had stuffed a towel down his throat while he slept. The woman identified as Devi Chowdury was expected to come to trial within the month. Singh promised to keep me informed. I never heard from him again.
In mid-Novem
ber, shortly after the first heavy snowfall of that bitter winter, I reread Das's manuscript, including the final hundred pages that I had not finished in Calcutta. Das had been correct in his succinct summary: it was a birth announcement. To get the gist of it, I would recommend Yeats's "Second Coming." Yeats was a better poet.
It occurred to me then that my problem with deciding what to do with Das's manuscript was oddly similar to the problem the Parsees have in disposing of their dead. The Parsees, a dwindling minority in India, hold earth, air, fire, and water all as sacred and do not wish to pollute them with the bodies of their dead. Their solution is ingenious. Years ago Amrita had described to me the Tower of Silence in a Bombay park, above which circle the vultures in patient spirals.