The Elephanta Suite

  "First-class AC?" he asked, still writing, but faster than before, scribbling as he asked questions distractedly, breathing hard, his head tilted toward the privacy curtain at the side of the room, as though he were listening not to Alice but to something else. Or perhaps calculating, as they all seemed to do.

  "So you have enjoyed the acquaintance of the named person for some three-over months?"

  Alice decided to say nothing. Everything she said seemed to incriminate her, as if she were guilty of allowing it all to happen.

  But fury overcame her, and she said, "Look. I was traveling on my own. He followed me. He had somehow found out my plans. You people seem to have ways of getting all sorts of private information."

  The man cocked his head and then shoved at the desk and stood up.

  Alice said, "When do I get a chance to tell my side of the story?"

  "Excuse me," the man said, seeming to go meek. He crumpled the statement into his canvas briefcase and looked at once very stern and very frightened, as though emboldening himself—yet indifferent to Alice's watching him. He screwed up his face and squinted, like a stiffened animal in the dark.

  "Listen to me!" she said, her voice breaking.

  But he had become an utter stranger in just seconds. He turned his back on her and pushed the curtain aside and was gone. She did not even hear the sound of his footsteps, a noiseless departure, another vanishing. From being a big persuasive presence he had become small and finally left without a sound, swallowed up.

  That was what was most foreign to her now, the way people came and went, as they did in dreams. Indian vanishings, of which the elephant blocking the road had been an example. If the elephant hadn't been there, she'd have gotten away. Always it seemed insulting and disorienting, with dream-like irrationality—people showing up when she least expected them, people dropping from view.

  Alice felt cheated again. It was worse than an interruption. It was first an intrusion, and to make it worse, the man had turned his back on her and seemed to flee—another abandonment.

  She slumped and put her head in her hands, heavy, bereft, sorrowful in the empty room. She had never felt farther from home, and the India she had known slipped away and became not just unfamiliar—ruins and shadows—but hostile.

  When she heard a sound, the rings on the curtain rod scraping again, she lifted her head and was startled to see a woman, a nurse, the one she'd spoken to earlier, and behind this woman a man in a khaki uniform. They stood just outside the privacy curtain, holding it open, peering in, the man holding a briefcase.

  "Are you all right?" the woman asked.

  "No," Alice said.

  "The inspector wishes to speak with you."

  "It won't take long," the man said.

  Alice saw on the man's face a look of pain. He seemed awkward, even sheepish, unwilling to step beyond the curtain.

  "All you've got are questions," Alice said. "How about some answers?"

  "I will be as quick as I can," the man said. He entered the room and took a seat at the table while the nurse stood to one side. He opened his briefcase and slipped out a pad and pen. He said, "We have requested a fast-track hearing. It can be held in Bangalore, in the first instance, if you approve." He clicked the pen and stuck out his elbow, as left-handers often did. "How well did you know the accused?"

  "I've just told you," Alice said.

  "I'm sorry, I don't follow."

  "I told your man."

  "What man do you mean?"

  "The other policeman. The young one. That just left here."

  The inspector turned accusingly to the nurse and said something fierce—it might even have been English, it certainly was a reprimand, but it remained incoherent to Alice. Yet she could tell that something had gone wrong, that there was tension between the policeman and the nurse in which her own misfortune, her pain, did not figure.

  "I don't get it," Alice said.

  "We have no other man. I am assigned to your case."

  "So who was I talking to just a little while ago?"

  The policeman had been facing away from her all this time, staring at the serious face of the nurse. He was still looking at the nurse, and now she looked appalled.

  He said, "Let's pray it wasn't one of these journalists."

  The story appeared the next day in the Hindustan Times. The policeman who accompanied her to the station handed the paper to her, folded, but why would he give it to her if there was nothing in it? Alice saw the story on the third page and began to read it. When she came across "I met him in February on the train in my compartment," she averted her eyes and turned the paper over on the seat so that she would not have to look at the headline: "Alleged American Rape Victim Knew Her Assailant."

  She sat in the Ladies Only coach with three other women and two children. One of the children was a chubby boisterous boy who tugged at his mother's sari and then climbed onto a seat and jumped noisily to the floor, clamoring for attention. Alice disliked the fat boy and disliked the woman for her placidity. The big pale mothers indulged the spoiled child, taking no notice of the small girl, who sat wincing at the boy's disruption.

  Only a few days before, Alice would have struck up a conversation with the women; she had believed such women to be strong, holding India together. She now saw them as complacent and hypocritical, bullies and nags to everyone except their sons, allowing them to rule. My mother calls me Bapu. It means Dad.

  These women had betrayed her. That selfish pushy boy would grow up to be a tormentor.

  "Katapadi," one woman said, seeing a station platform appear at the window.

  Skinny sharp-voiced food sellers hovered at the open windows, calling to the women, holding teapots and trays of nuts and cups of ice cream.

  The fat boy wailed for an ice cream and got one. He had a devilish face, and though he could not have been older than six or seven he seemed to Alice like a wolf child, with a shadow of hair on his cheeks, a low-growing hairline on his forehead, and a slight mustache. His fingernails were painted pink—Alice could see that they were chipped. His legs were hairy too. He sat down with a thump next to her and poked her with his elbow.

  Alice felt violent toward him and wanted to poke him back, slap his hairy cheek. She said, "You're dripping ice cream on my bag!"

  She knew she'd made an ugly face and shouted for effect, to insult the mother. The boy scowled at her and lapped at his ice cream.

  "Rupesh," his mother said, calling him wearily.

  He went to his mother, who nuzzled him and hugged him. The other women cooed, as if to soothe the boy.

  The women were opposite Alice in the six-seat compartment, occupying the three seats on one side, the children dawdling at their legs. And they stayed there, facing Alice in the corner seat on her side, two empty seats beside her. An invisible frontier ran down the compartment, not a racial barrier, Alice told herself, but a cultural divide.

  She crouched, feeling wounded, hating the journey, sorrowing, feeling like an amputee. A cleaner entered the compartment with a whiskbroom and a sack for rubbish. The Indian women tossed in the ice cream wrappers and used tissues and orange peels. Alice twisted the Hindustan Times and tucked it into the sack of garbage.

  Later, Alice was grateful for the women ignoring her. She slept soundly for short periods and was awakened only when the train screeched and halted at stations. Then she dozed again as the train continued into the afternoon.

  She said nothing when the women and children pulled out their bags, turned their backs on her, and got off at a station where more boys were shouting. Aching with fatigue, she found she could not wake up properly, so she locked the door by working the bolt. She pulled down the tin shutter and slept deeply for a period of time, an hour perhaps, and was jolted awake—alarmed, gasping—when the door slid open.

  "Bangalore City," the conductor said.

  She went tentatively to the ashram, where she was welcomed in a subdued way, gently, almost obliquely, as though she were f
ragile and had been injured. Alice thought, It shows on my face, it shows in the way I walk, in my whispers.

  All topics unrelated to the assault seemed frivolous, and only Priyanka and Prithi dared ask about her experience. They seemed excited by her story. While seeming to commiserate, they wanted details.

  "I have to see Swami," Alice said, as a way of deflecting their curiosity.

  In the past he had rebuffed her, but now it seemed that he too knew what had happened to her. Perhaps everyone knew. The devotee at Swami's gate did not ask her name. He nodded, made a namaste with his hands, and said, "You may pass."

  Touching Swami's feet, Alice knelt before him. He placed his fingers on her head covering and murmured prayers. He was smiling when she sat back and clasped her hands.

  "Something terrible happened to me," she said.

  Swami was still smiling, his head slightly inclined, one of his familiar expressions, as though to indicate that he knew something she didn't.

  "My dear child. You have seen devotees walking on hot coals?"

  She nodded. Early on, they'd arranged it. She had been invited. The fire walkers had made an elaborate business of it, praying before they set forth on the glowing coals, chanting as they hurried across, giving thanks when they were done.

  "Their hearts were not burned. Feet only."

  But it was some sort of trick. Fire walking was a con. There was a scientific explanation for not scorching your foot soles, nothing to do with heat. Anyone who was sufficiently confident could do it without getting burned. And Swami was using this as a parallel for that fat bastard trapping her and dragging her into the field?

  "Swami, I'm sorry, I don't see the point."

  "You must separate body from mind. Mind must meditate and find peace. Body must be occupied with work. That way you will overcome tribulation."

  "I was injured," Alice said.

  "Injury is in mind. Rid mind of injury. Prayer will do it. Work also."

  "Have you ever seen a big suffering elephant chained to a post? That's how I feel."

  "That is a good thought. But take it further. What if elephant keeps very still?" He held his hand before her to represent the standing elephant. "If elephant is still, elephant is free, not chained to post. Elephant is Lambodar."

  "Lambodar?" she asked.

  "One with Protruding Belly. Ganesh."

  Swami twinkled at his own neat piece of wisdom, as though Alice had handed him a limp ribbon and he'd tied it into a bow. He was so pleased with himself he began praying over her, using his hands, murmuring sticky-sounding words.

  "That is Ganesh mahamantra," he said. "It comes from Ganapati Upanishad. It is used for beginning anything new in your life. If hindrances are there, hindrances are removed, and you can be crowned with success."

  Alice bowed and thanked him, she touched the hem of his orange tunic, and, still bowing, she backed away.

  Crap, she thought.

  "Swami is the answer," Priyanka said. "Always, Swami sees to the heart of things."

  Alice agreed because she did not want to be cast out, but what Swami had said seemed like a libel on her only friend, the creature at the stable, who was not Ganesh at all, not a god, but hathi, just a nameless elephant trapped by a chain.

  She visited the elephant. At a vegetable stall on the way, she bought a bag of carrots. The elephant wrapped the tender end of his trunk around each carrot and fed himself, crunching them, working his lower jaw, extending his trunk for more.

  The mahout allowed her to spray him with the hose and, cooled by the water, the elephant danced back and forth, tugging his chain. If elephant is still, elephant is free, not chained, Swami had said. But the truth was that such an elephant, big and restless, was never still. It was always conscious of the grip on its leg, the clank of the chain, so what Swami had said was meaningless. The elephant could only be free without the shackle.

  Alice stood, beholding the elephant's eye, which was like the eye of a separate being, the eye of someone inhabiting the elephant's body, someone like Alice herself. The words trailed in her head: I will never be the woman I was before—horrible, that fat man has changed me forever. She sorrowed for the innocent woman, trapped and frightened on that narrow Indian road.

  "No, no," the mahout cried out, rushing toward her, appealing to her, looking tormented and helpless, because for the first time since the awful thing had happened, Alice had begun to cry.

  7

  She had not gone back to Electronics City, had not even called Miss Ghosh. She knew she'd be unwelcome. She was stained, scandalous, an embarrassment, the subject of an investigation. But what did "fast track" mean? There was no sign of a hearing, only more paperwork—visa questions, a reprimand, and a warning because she'd put down that she was a teacher at InfoTech and she had no work permit. More official forms were sent, with detailed questions about places she'd visited, people she knew, Indian citizens she'd met—names, addresses, specific locations. Attach additional sheets if necessary. She was under suspicion. She had come to India to be free, and now she was under scrutiny and hated it. Everyone knew, of course they did. Only the elephant and his mahout still smiled at her as before.

  She wondered, Should I leave? But she did nothing. The weather had grown hot, no rains yet, dust hanging in the air, particles of it on her lips. She languished in the soupy lukewarm air of the ashram, where time was so clouded it was measured in months.

  Miss Ghosh's secretary called her on the ashram's emergency number, the only one she had, and passed on Miss Ghosh's complaint that intrusive strangers were trying to get in touch with Alice. People who claimed they wanted to help were wasting InfoTech's time. You couldn't be more despised in India than being told by someone's secretary you were a problem. Letters and printed e-mail messages were forwarded in bundles to the ashram. Using a phone card and the phone across the road at the ramshackle shop, Alice responded to the offers of help.

  "We must meet you face to face," a woman said.

  Alice agreed, but regretted it as soon as they showed up, three of them. One was the speaker, the others were silent, supporting her on either side. Alice met them just inside the ashram gate, the public entrance near the shoe rack, where there were chairs.

  The two silent women stood; the woman who spoke sat on a white molded-plastic chair. Like the others she carried a basket. She had a mean face and sunken, mask-like eyes, and even trying to talk in a benign way she sounded like a scold, saying, "You are new to India. We are taught to be kind to strangers. We need you to bear with us."

  People offering favors in India always were in need of greater favors. No charity ever, only salesmanship.

  The woman said, "The smallest misstep can destroy a whole future. An elephant sees a mouse and it rears up and kills its keeper and tramples passersby."

  Alice said, "What happened wasn't a misstep. It was the worst thing that has ever happened to me."

  "I am not thinking of your future. The boy will be ruined."

  "I'm ruined," Alice said. She thought, Oh, God, don't cry again, and could not speak.

  "You think that because you are young. Worse things will happen to you. Death will visit you and your family. This episode will seem like nothing."

  "It was like death. What do you know?"

  "You are strong and quite young. You can go on living your life. You can go home."

  "I'm staying. I'm fighting this."

  Her face crumpling, the speaking woman began quietly to weep. The other women consoled her. The one on the right, nearest to Alice, said, "This is Auntie. Her mother is sick. She has taken to her bed."

  "A young man is being destroyed," the woman on the left said, while still the aunt wept.

  Alice looked nervously behind her, and seeing that no one from the ashram was watching, she said, "Don't you see? He tried to destroy me."

  "But he failed."

  Alice lowered her head and whispered harshly, "He raped me."

  "You are able to walk away," th
e woman on the right said. Now her stern tone was apparent. "He will be disgraced."

  "I'm disgraced. You're women—why don't you see it?"

  The aunt recovered and dabbed her eyes. "We are begging you."

  Then Alice found herself weeping with the woman, unable to speak.

  The next day a man visited. He was kindly, with a black mustache that hid his mouth. He twisted its ends as he spoke, giving the big thing tips like tails. He wore a shirt and tie and a pale silk suit, and in that terrible heat did not look hot.

  "I represent the family of the accused," he said. He handed Alice his card. He looked absurd on the white plastic chair, but it was the only place on the grounds where Alice could meet someone without being overheard. It was bad enough being seen like this. No one dressed that way ever visited the ashram.

  Alice glanced at the card, the man's long name, the word "Solicitors." The man took some papers out of his briefcase.

  "This is a release form. Your signature is required."

  "I don't get it."

  "It is the wisest course. This way, no one gets dragged through the mud." He tugged and twisted his mustache tips.

  "I don't care. I want him on trial, facing the charges."

  "Miss. Listen to me. You will also be on trial. Everything will be known about you. A thorough investigation will be undertaken and all the facts of the case made public."

  Another wordy Indian trying to sell her his opinion. She said, "So what?"

  "In some instances, unpleasant facts."

  "I'm not signing."

  With one hand twisting a mustache tip, and seeming confident, the man said, "For example, in Mumbai, it has been established that you entertained a young American chap in your hotel room."

  "That's a lie."

  "We are in receipt of the desk clerk's signature on a sworn affidavit."

  It had to be Stella, entertaining Zack, but Alice said nothing.

  "We are well aware that you have limited funds at your disposal. The family is prepared to compensate you. This can be negotiated."

  Alice said, "Please leave."