A Dead Hand

  The chowkidar knocked on the office door, and hearing a grunt, he showed us in.

  "Dr. Mukherjee. Namashkar," Howard said. "Apni keman achen?"

  "Top hole, thank you, Mr. Howard."

  They talked for a while about a recent case, an American who'd died in Darjeeling. "Heart-related," Dr. Mukherjee said. "Altitude was factor. He left immense debts. It turned out that he was a blighter and a mountebank."

  Then Howard said, "And I think you know my friend?"

  "Ah, yes," he said, with less enthusiasm, and I knew what he was thinking: he associated me with the dead hand, the sad little thing with no fingerprints.

  "I'd like you to test this." I opened the plastic bag and showed him the stained piece of carpet I'd found in the closet at the Ananda Hotel.

  "Test for what? For fibers? For DNA?" He stroked his mustache, speaking slowly. "Traces of drugs? Bodily fluids? Gunpowder? Chemicals? Food particles? Hair strands?"

  Howard had begun to laugh softly at the litany of questions.

  "We are thorough!" Dr. Mooly Mukherjee said, tweaking one tip of his mustache.

  "Please test it for everything. There's a suspicious stain on it. Who knows, maybe a bloodstain."

  "I will be judge of that," Dr. Mukherjee said, taking up a clipboard that held a printed form. "May I ask origin of carpet sample?"

  I squirmed a bit, then said, "It came into my possession."

  "You have become a repository of many items," he said. "I can only wonder if they are related. Let's say, 'Of unknown origin.'"

  "That's good. How long will it take you to do the tests?"

  "For simple tests, a few days. We might have to send it to the lab. Here's my card. I'll write my mobile number." He did so on the back of the card. "Phone me Thursday afternoon. We might have some results then."

  "He's a good man," Howard said when we left the building. He was curious, I could tell, resisting the obvious question, being pointedly discreet. And he had not referred to my earlier request, when I had foolishly revealed that I had a dead hand that wanted to be identified.

  In the silence, I said, "I can't tell you why I need to know this."

  "It's much better that I don't know," Howard said. "I don't want to have to write a report. Knowing things is a big burden in the consular business. Even though I'm a PAO, it puts me under an obligation. I'm glad to help. And I like the evidence."

  "That's not evidence. I'm just helping a friend."

  But he could see I was being defensive. "The piece of carpet," he said. "It's pure Henry James. The big clue hidden somewhere in the weave. Puzzle it out and you have the answer. You know the story? 'The Figure in the Carpet.'"

  "Yes, I do."

  "One of the many things I love about Calcutta is its Victorian texture. It's Jamesian. Not just the grandiose architecture, but the people too. Women need chaperones. They don't marry for love. Dr. Mooly Mukherjee is a Victorian figure. His mustache is dated. Even the words he uses. 'Repository.' 'Blighter.' 'Mountebank.'"

  Talking this way gave a bigger meaning to our visit to police headquarters, and by linking it to literature, he dignified it. He was right about 'The Figure in the Carpet.' And so although I was looking for bloodstains, or anything criminal, we were able to talk about it in euphemisms, and that helped us to be a little more dignified too.

  And it calmed me. We agreed to meet again soon. I could not tell him what I was doing. There was only one person I could tell.

  15

  I HAD MISSED MRS. UNGER. I had come to depend on seeing her once or twice a week for the sessions of tantric massage, and I had yearned for her while she'd been away—her week in Mirzapur. I was like an old-fashioned woman waiting for a man to call, passive, dependent, helpless. She said that tantra was all-encompassing ancient wisdom that included sex, as it did every aspect of life. Yet for me the massage was not a sexual act but a way of prolonging desire: at its best it had no end, at least not an explosive finality, but rather a tapering glow of intense well-being.

  "Better than sex," I'd said to her.

  She liked my saying that, yet still I was possessed.

  My week in Calcutta without her had allowed me to plan the stay at the Ananda that resulted in my securing the stained piece of carpet from the closet. I guessed that the entire carpet had been cut and distributed throughout the hotel. And now I had the police working on identifying anything that had adhered to it. I had studied the scene of the crime. I'd used my time well, I thought. I'd have news for Mrs. Unger. And now I was able to see her again.

  Knowing that I was going to see her later in the day filled me with pleasure. The foreknowledge of desire, the certainty of a meeting, something every lover knows, is a vitalizing power, a source of happiness and optimism. She had that effect on me. She had that effect on everyone she knew, inspiring an eagerness, a willingness to make a sacrifice.

  I longed to please her. The greatest gift of love was—without thinking—losing one's ego in a passion for someone else, becoming unselfish, wishing to serve and satisfy that other person, wanting her to smile.

  That was easy to do for Mrs. Unger because she gave so much of herself to others. Her goodness, the bigheartedness that made people thrive, motivated me to want to please her in the same way; she sacrificed so much herself that my making a sacrifice for her was a pleasure. The more inconvenienced I was by serving her, the happier I became, because she deserved it.

  I found what many lovers find, that it is hard to give anything to someone who is truly generous. Her strength, and perhaps the key to Mrs. Unger's personality, was that she didn't need anything from me, or anyone. Her criticism of Mother Teresa was that she needed to bask, to meet celebrities, to collect money, to be acknowledged. Mrs. Unger scorned all of that. She seemed to exist in an atmosphere of pure kindness and serenity, offering blessings. What could I give her? A clue to the body in the room would be welcome, but not much else. Even that was unselfish on her part, for all she cared about was clearing Rajat's name. "He must not be hurt," she said. "He has a lovely soul. He has fairy energy."

  I could see how the children thrived in the Lodge. That was how I felt at my hotel, writing those pages about her, having recaptured the ability to write that I had believed—dreaded—deserted me. She was both the inspiration for those pages and the subject of them. Knowing her, being vitalized by her, touched by her, I was returned to being a writer, and finding that creativity, I had found a self I thought I'd burned out. But no, I'd rediscovered it, and in so doing I'd rediscovered a younger self. She had rejuvenated me. All she said was "Kundalini."

  I didn't want to wait to be summoned. I wanted to get a taxi outside the Hastings and ride to Alipore, full of expectation, unbidden, to show my loyalty and love. But I resisted, because the last time I'd done it, she'd been away in Mirzapur, wherever that was.

  The night at the Ananda Hotel had interrupted my writing schedule, yet I was able to resume working on the pages of "A Dead Hand," advancing my description of Mrs. Unger and the stories of her philanthropy. She could easily have remained in New York or Palm Beach—she had the money. She could have spent all her time in pure idleness, among the wealthy, going to charity events, looking glamorous. She could have done what Mother Teresa did—hobnobbed with the stars, pretending to be a saint, dining out on her horror stories. But instead, Mrs. Unger, who shunned publicity, was in Calcutta anonymously, enduring the heat and the noise, the unending mob, the crowded sidewalks, the traffic, the squalor. She chose to devote all her energy to neglected children.

  This was my subject. While debating whether to visit her unannounced, I kept writing "A Dead Hand."

  "Gentleman to see you, sir." I looked up and saw Ramesh Datta, awaiting further instructions.

  I didn't want anyone to see me writing. I considered it my secret and my strength, especially these pages.

  "I'll be right down."

  I assumed it was Howard with news of Dr. Mukherjee's forensic report. But it was Rajat. He'd been sittin
g in a wicker chair. The chair screeched as he leaped to his feet, recklessly, like a schoolboy when a teacher enters a room.

  "I happened to be passing. I thought I'd say hello."

  This could not have been true. He'd never dropped in on me before. What was on his mind?

  "Nice to see you. Would you like a drink?"

  "A cup of tea only."

  Ramesh Datta had been standing by listening. He signaled to Ramachandra, who hurried forward.

  "Two teas, sir?"

  I said to Rajat, "You want a samosa?"

  "I am not taking."

  "Tea cake?"

  "I am not taking."

  "Biscuit?" I was asking just to torment him and say the odd words and hear his refusals. "Milk Bikki? Fancy biscuits? Gulabjam? Sweetmeats?"

  "I will take unsalted nuts."

  "Mineral water for me." I sat down, and Rajat returned to his wicker chair, sitting at the edge of the cushion, his elbows on his knees.

  "How are you getting on here?" he asked. "You seem to find the city congenial."

  "I like seeing Mrs. Unger. I think you can understand that."

  "A gracious and distinctly formidable woman," he said.

  Victorian, Howard had said of the Bengalis. I was by now able to take their florid and slightly pretentious phrasing in stride.

  "Oh, yes," I said. But I was thinking, She's much more than that.

  "I know she charged you with vindicating me," he said. "Have you made any headway?"

  He seemed terribly nervous, so nervous he could not manage to be subtle; he was without any guile. He'd come straight to the point.

  "I don't see my job as vindicating you."

  "What then?"

  "I think something like searching for the truth."

  I knew this was pompous, but pomposity was a normal mode of discourse in Calcutta. Don't be audacious, Parvati sometimes said to me. Rajat began to speak, but seeing Ramachandra bringing the tea tray, he held off, smiled at the waiter, and did not speak until we were alone again.

  "It was the worst experience of my life. Can you imagine waking up in a strange hotel room with a human corpse?"

  Instead of answering, I said, "I'm wondering if you made the right decision in running away."

  "The alternative was much worse—being implicated in a murder."

  "Why do you say murder?"

  "That's how it would have been viewed by the law here." His knees were pressed together. He held his teacup with precisely poised fingers. "And I fear scandalmongery. People would spread malicious tales and calumnies about me."

  "Why didn't you mention the carpet to Mrs. Unger? Or to me?"

  "Was there a carpet? I didn't get a proper look. I told you I was using my cell phone as a torch."

  "But the carpet was right there on the floor of your room."

  He put the cup down. He said, "When you see a dead person, you don't see anything else. I was transfixed."

  That at least made sense.

  "Was there any blood?"

  "Had I seen blood, it would have obtained a lodgment in my memory," he said. When he was nervous he spoke this way. "But I didn't touch the body. I simply bolted."

  "Your big mistake. It makes you look responsible for the death."

  "What would you have done?" He picked up his cup, though seemed merely to use it as a prop; he didn't drink.

  I thought hard before I answered, because I had been in the Ananda, and I now knew what a spooky place it was, the hot stifling rooms, the menacing corridors, the angry Mr. Biswas with his crow-like face.

  "I don't know. But I would have put my trust in Mrs. Unger to get to the bottom of it."

  "That's what I have done," he said, his voice breaking. "I don't think she wholly believed me, or else why did she charge you with looking into the case?"

  He had not counted on Mrs. Unger's getting in touch with me. And though I had hoped for a lucky break, I had not counted on Mina Jagtap's giving me all this timely help—the dead hand, the fragment of carpet—had not counted on Chitra's recognizing the carpet. All this because of my earlier visit and Mr. Biswas's slapping Mina's face and firing her.

  "I'm sure everything will be fine," I said. Only when I spoke did I hear the doubt in my voice. I didn't believe this at all.

  "I have to go. I'm supposed to meet Charlie at the Lodge. Thank you for the tea."

  He had put sugar in the tea the waiter had poured. He had stirred it. He had even lifted the cup to his lips. But he hadn't drunk any of it. He had not touched the bowl of unsalted cashews. This both annoyed me and made me suspicious. I am uneasy at meals where guests pick at their food or don't eat. I think: Why are they here?

  Rajat had not simply dropped in; he had planned this meeting. He was trying to find out what I knew.

  "Why don't you come along?" His eyes glistened as his gaze became a kind of pleading.

  He was smallish, mousy, with a softness to him; weak and compliant, almost feminine, with large dark eyes—soft and fearful, deep-set with girlish lashes. Yet he was stubbornly like a girl too, unforthcoming. Now and then I asked him a question and he wouldn't reply, just stared, and I thought of old girlfriends. He had slender hands and tiny breakable wrists. In his fragility he reminded me of Mrs. Unger's lost children, the bat-eared boy Jyoti who had been so animated and whom I had looked for my last time at the Lodge. "He has moved on," Mrs. Unger said. "We're so proud of him."

  "Is Mrs. Unger there?"

  "Oh, yes. She'd love to see you. I'd try her on my mobile, but the battery's flat."

  "Ma is not fond of surprises," I said.

  "This is a pleasant surprise." He clawed his cuff from his wrist and looked at his watch. "We really should go."

  Just the thought of her in her vault sensitized me, made me tremulous. And the Calcutta heat helped too. The day was stifling, the humidity like a cloak, but in the way it slowed me and made me breathless, it was like a foretaste of desire, the same heaviness, the same pulse of blood in my head, a flush of eagerness that I could taste—as though right before a great risky leap—and a dampness on my skin and eyes.

  As Rajat talked, more urgently than I'd seen him before, we ambled to the street, where I hailed a taxi. When one pulled up, we got in and Rajat gave directions. After that he fell silent. He began gnawing a finger in misery, his knuckle under his nose.

  "Won't she mind this? Our arriving together?"

  His eyes, set close, gave him the look of a rodent contemplating cheese on a tray—eager yet hyperalert, the same nibble and the twitching nostrils. Yet his tight smile made him the fidgety embodiment of contradiction.

  "Not at all. She of course likes you immensely."

  "And she likes you too, Rajat."

  "I fear she finds me loquacious," he said. "Even if we arrive together she won't suspect us of plotting."

  This unexpected remark surprised me, because it seemed exactly what she might think: I had never arrived at the Lodge with him before. But that was at the periphery of my mind. I was concentrated on one thing, Mrs. Unger's vault: the perfumes, the lamps, her hands, her body slipping against the silk of her sari.

  Rajat spoke sharply to the taxi driver.

  The man threw up his hands. "Traffic. Too many traffic."

  "Are you telling him to hurry?" I asked.

  "Don't you want to see Ma?" he said.

  I said nothing because I didn't want to be quoted; he seemed to be provoking me. He seemed odder, fussier in the taxi than he had seemed in the Hastings, not drinking his tea.

  "Ah." He sighed with relief as the traffic began to move. I knew the feeling. I was relieved too as the taxi coursed through Alipore. I watched for the wall, the gateway, the fountain. Mrs. Unger, at the front door, turned abruptly at the sound of the taxi on the gravel driveway.

  "Dear, dear boy," she said to Rajat, and to me, "I've been meaning to call you. You absolutely read my mind."

  She embraced him, and at first he stiffened at her touch. Then she patted him and
stroked his arms, and as she did so, he relaxed and sighed and surrendered.

  "What have you boys been doing?" she asked, and when Rajat didn't answer, she said teasingly to him, "Madam has gone all silent."

  Rajat seemed uneasy yet watchful, as he had in the taxi, glancing around, smiling in apprehension. We were standing at the top of the outer staircase, on the carved porch, with its plump balusters, the cracked and ornate entry, chunks of plaster missing from the stair treads, revealing old red brick beneath, like a deep gash, the same raw red, the whiteness surrounding it, like flesh, the Lodge like a noble wounded body.

  "I didn't realize you had guests." This was spoken by a woman exiting the Lodge, who took me by surprise. She left the front entrance, taking a gingerly step that made her seem old, the chowkidar holding the door open, Balraj saluting. Now she approached Mrs. Unger.

  "These are friends," Mrs. Unger said. "They're family."

  The woman—thin, middle-aged, auntyish—was obviously American. She looked like a big insect, bug-eyed in large sunglasses, in an expensive, fitted summer dress. She frowned in the heat from beneath a wide-brimmed straw hat, dabbing her face with a hanky. Over her shoulder was slung a woven bag, not Indian but designer-stylish. She had thin, pale, bony arms and was brisk, in a hurry, in contrast to the child plodding next to her.

  She held the hand of this dazed-looking girl in a starched dress and white ankle socks and black shoes—a classier version of the school uniform of the children at the Lodge. I smiled at her, and looking closer I thought I recognized the child. But all Mrs. Unger's children seemed memorable. They were unlike Indian children with parents; they were street children in a house, always seeming somewhat pent-up, trapped, and a little reckless, with searching eyes, tidy in simple uniforms.

  This child was almost certainly the little girl who had ridden back to the house with us the day we'd visited the Kali temple and what Rajat had called "the monthly intake."