Nancy had never been to the East; she was introduced to it at the Bombay airport, at about 2:00 in the morning. She'd not seen men so diminished, so damaged and so transformed by turmoil, by din and by wasteful energy; their ceaseless motion and their aggressive curiosity reminded her of scurrying rats. And so many of them were barefoot. She tried to concentrate on the customs inspector, who was attended by two policemen; they weren't barefoot. But the policemen--a couple of constables in blue shirts and wide blue shorts--were wearing the most absurd leg warmers she'd ever seen, especially in such hot weather. And she'd never seen Nehru caps on cops before.
In Frankfurt, Dieter had arranged for Nancy to be examined--in regard to the proper size for a diaphragm--but when the doctor had discovered she'd had a baby, he'd outfitted her with an intrauterine device instead. She hadn't wanted one. When the customs inspector was examining her toiletries and one of the overseeing policemen opened a jar of her moisturizer and scooped out a gob of the cream with his finger, which the other policeman then sniffed, Nancy was grateful that there was no diaphragm or spermicidal ointment for them to play with. The constables couldn't see or touch or smell her IUD.
But of course there was the dildo, which lay untouched in the long athletic sock while the policemen and the customs inspector pawed through the clothes in her rucksack and emptied her carry-on bag, which was really just an oversized imitation-leather purse. One of the policemen picked up the battered paperback copy of Lawrence Durrell's Clea, the fourth novel of the Alexandria Quartet, of which Dieter had read only the first, Justine. Nancy hadn't read any of them; but the novel was dog-eared where the last reader had presumably stopped reading, and it was at this marked page that the constable opened the book, his eyes quickly finding that passage which Dieter had underlined in pencil for just such an occasion. In truth, this copy of Clea had made the trip to India and the return trip to Germany with two of Dieter's other women, neither of whom had read the novel or even the passage Dieter had marked. He'd chosen the particular passage because it would doubtless identify the reader to any international customs authority as a harmless fool.
The policeman was so stymied by the passage that he handed the book to his fellow constable, who looked stricken, as if he'd been asked to crack an indecipherable code; he, too, passed the book on. It was the customs inspector who finally read the passage. Nancy watched the clumsy, involuntary movement of the man's lips, as if he were isolating olive pits. Gradually the words, or something like the words, emerged aloud; they frankly seemed incomprehensible to Nancy. She couldn't imagine what the customs inspector and the constables made of them.
" 'The whole quarter lay drowsing in the umbrageous violet of approaching nightfall,' " the customs inspector read. " 'A sky of palpitating velours which was cut into by the stark flare of a thousand electric light bulbs. It lay over Tatwig Street, that night, like a velvet rind.' " The customs inspector stopped reading, looking like a man who'd just eaten something odd. One of the policemen stared angrily at the book, as if he felt compelled to confiscate it or destroy it on the spot, but the other constable was as distracted as a bored child; he picked up the dildo in the athletic sock and unsheathed the giant penis as one would unsheathe a sword. The sock drooped limply in the policeman's left hand while his right hand grasped the great cock at its root, at the rock-hard pair of makeshift balls.
Suddenly seeing what he held, the policeman quickly extended the dildo to his fellow constable, who took hold of the instrument by the rolled foreskin before he recognized the exaggerated male member, which he instantly handed to the customs inspector. Still holding Clea in his left hand, the customs inspector seized the dildo at the scrotum; then he dropped the novel and snatched the sock from the first, gaping policeman. But the impressive penis was more difficult to sheathe than to unsheathe, and in his haste the customs inspector inserted the instrument the wrong way. Thus were the balls jammed into the heel of the sock, where they made an awkward lump--they didn't fit--and the bluish tip of the thing (the circumcised head) protruded loosely from the open end of the sock. The hole at the end of the enormous cock appeared to stare out at the constables and the customs inspector like the proverbial evil eye.
"Where you stay?" one of the policemen asked Nancy. He was furiously wiping his hand on his leg warmers--a trace of the lubricating jelly, perhaps.
"Always carry your own bag," the other constable advised her.
"Agree to a price with the taxi-walla before you get in the car," the first policeman said.
The customs inspector wouldn't look at her. She'd expected something worse; surely the dildo would provoke leering--at least rude or suggestive laughter, she'd thought. But she was in the land of the lingam--or so she imagined. Wasn't the phallic symbol worshiped here? Nancy thought she'd read that the penis was a symbol of Lord Shiva. Maybe what Nancy carried in her purse was as realistic (albeit exaggerated) a lingam as these men had ever seen. Maybe she'd made an unholy use of such a symbol--was that why these men wanted nothing to do with her? But the constables and the customs inspector weren't thinking of lingams or Lord Shiva; they were simply appalled at the portable penis.
Poor Nancy was left to find her own way out of the airport and into the shrill cries of the taxi-wallas. An unending lineup of taxis extended into the infernal blackness of this outlying district of Bombay; except for the oasis, which was the airport, there were no lights in Santa Cruz--there was no Sahar in 1969. It was then about 3:00 in the morning.
Nancy had to haggle with her taxi-walla over the fare into Bombay. After she arranged the prepaid trip, she still encountered some difficulty with her driver; he was a Tamil, apparently new to Bombay. He claimed to not understand Hindi or Marami; it was in uncertain English that Nancy heard him asking the other taxi-wallas for directions to the Taj.
"Lady, you don't want to go with him," one of the taxi-wallas told her, but she'd already paid and was sitting in the back seat of the taxi.
As they drove toward the city, the Tamil continued a lengthy debate with another Tamil driver who drove his taxi perilously close to theirs; for several miles, they drove like this--past the unlit slums in the predawn, immeasurable darkness, wherein the slum dwellers were distinguishable only by the smell of their excrement and their dead or dying fires. (What were they burning? Rubbish?) When the sidewalks on the outskirts of Bombay first appeared, still without electric light, the two Tamils raced side by side--even through the traffic circles, those wild roundabouts--their discourse progressing from an argument to a shouting match to threats, which sounded (even in Tamil) quite dire to Nancy.
The seemingly unconcerned passengers in the other Tamil's taxi were a well-dressed British couple in their forties. Nancy guessed they were also headed to the Taj, and that this coincidence lay at the heart of the dispute between the two Tamils. (Dieter had warned her of this common practice: two drivers with two separate fares, headed for the same place. Naturally, one of the drivers was attempting to persuade the other to carry both fares.)
At a traffic light, the two stopped taxis were suddenly surrounded by barking dogs--starving curs, all snapping at one another--and Nancy imagined that, if one jumped through the open window at her, she could club it with the dildo. This passing idea perhaps prepared her for what happened at the next intersection, where again the light was against them; while they waited this time, they were slowly approached by beggars instead of dogs. The shouting Tamils had attracted some of the sidewalk sleepers, whose mounded bodies under their light-colored clothing could be dimly seen to contrast with the darkened streets and buildings. First a man in a ragged, filthy dhoti stuck his arm in Nancy's window. Nancy noticed that the prim British couple--not in fear but out of sheer obstinacy--had closed their windows, despite the moist heat. Nancy thought she would suffocate if she closed hers.
Instead, she spoke sharply to her driver--to go! After all, the light had changed. But her Tamil and the other Tamil were too engrossed in their confrontation to obey the traff
ic signal. Her Tamil ignored her, and, to Nancy's further irritation, the other Tamil now coerced his British passengers into the street; he was beckoning to them that they must join Nancy in her cab, exactly as Dieter had foretold.
Nancy shouted at her driver, who turned to her and shrugged; she shouted out the window to the other Tamil, who shouted back at her. Nancy shouted to the British couple that they shouldn't allow themselves to be so taken advantage of; they should demand of their driver that he bring them to their prearranged, prepaid destination.
"Don't let the bastards screw you!" Nancy shouted. Then she realized that she was waving the dildo at them; to be sure, it was still in the sock and they didn't know it was a dildo; they could only suppose she was an hysterical young woman threatening them with a sock.
Nancy slid over in her seat. "Please get in," she said to the British couple, but when they opened the door, Nancy's driver protested. He even jerked the car a little forward. Nancy tapped him on his shoulder with the dildo--still in the sock. Her driver looked indifferent; his counterpart was already stuffing the British couple's luggage into the trunk as the twosome squeezed into the seat beside her.
Nancy was pressed against the window when a beggar woman pushed a baby in the window and held it in front of her face; the child was foul-smelling, unmoving, expressionless--it looked half dead. Nancy raised the dildo, but what could she do? Whom should she hit? Instead, she screamed at the woman, who indignantly withdrew the baby from the taxi. Maybe it wasn't even her baby, Nancy considered; possibly it was just a baby that people used for begging. Perhaps it wasn't even a real baby.
Ahead of them, two young men were supporting a drunken or a drugged companion. They paused in crossing the road, as if they weren't sure that the taxi had stopped. But the taxi was stopped, and Nancy was incensed that her driver and the other Tamil were still arguing. She leaned forward and brought the dildo down across the back of her driver's neck. That was when the sock flew off. The driver turned to face her. She struck him squarely on his nose with the huge cock in her hand.
"Drive on!" she shouted at the Tamil. Suitably impressed with the giant penis, he lurched the taxi forward--through the traffic light, which had turned red again. Fortunately, no other traffic was on the street. Unfortunately, the two young men and their slumped companion were directly in the taxi's path. At first, it seemed to Nancy that all three of them were hit. Later, she distinctly remembered that two of them had run away, although she couldn't say that she'd actually seen the impact; she must have closed her eyes.
While the Englishman helped the driver put the body in the front seat of the taxi, Nancy realized that the young man who'd been hit was the one who'd appeared to be drunk or drugged. It never occurred to her that the young man might already have been dead when the car hit him. But this was the subject of the Englishman's conversation with the Tamil driver: had the boy or young man been pushed into the path of the taxi deliberately, and was he even conscious before the taxi struck him?
"He looked dead," the Englishman kept saying.
"Yes, he is dying before!" the Tamil shouted. "I am not killing him!"
"Is he dead now?" Nancy asked quietly.
"Oh, definitely," the Englishman replied. Like the customs inspector, he wouldn't look at her, but the Englishman's wife was staring at Nancy, who still clutched the fierce dildo in her fist. Still not looking at her, the Englishman handed her the sock. She covered the weapon and returned it to her big purse.
"Is this your first visit to India?" the Englishwoman asked her, while the crazed Tamil drove them faster and faster through the streets now more and more blessed with electric light; the colorful mounds of the sidewalk sleepers were visible all around them. "In Bombay, half the population sleeps on the streets--but it's really quite safe here," the Englishwoman said. Nancy's pinched expression implied to the British couple that she was a newcomer to the city and its smells. Actually, it was the lingering smell of the baby that pinched Nancy's face--how something so small could reek with such force.
The body in the front seat made its deadness known. The young man's head lolled lifelessly, his shoulders impossibly slack. Whenever the Tamil braked or cornered, the body responded as heavily as a bag of sand. Nancy was grateful that she couldn't see the young man's face, which was making a dull sound against the windshield--his face rested flush against the glass--until the Tamil cornered again and then accelerated.
Still not looking at Nancy, the Englishman said, "Don't mind the body, dear." It seemed unclear whether he'd spoken to Nancy or to his wife.
"It doesn't bother me," his wife answered.
Over Marine Drive, a thick smog hung suspended, as warm as a woolen shroud; the Arabian Sea was veiled, but the Englishwoman pointed to where the sea should have been. "Out there is the ocean," she told Nancy, who began to gag. Overhead, on the lampposts, not even the advertisements were visible in the smog. The lights strung along Marine Drive weren't smog lights, then; they were white, not yellow.
In the careening taxi, the Englishman pointed out the window into the veil of smog. "This is the Queen's Necklace," he told Nancy. As the taxi raced on, he added--more to assure himself and his wife than to comfort Nancy--"Well, we're almost there."
"I'm going to throw up," Nancy said.
"If you don't think about being sick, dear, you won't be sick," the Englishwoman said.
The taxi departed Marine Drive for the narrower, winding streets; the three living passengers leaned in to the corners, and the dead boy in the front seat appeared to come alive. His head walloped the side window; he slid forward and his face glanced off the windshield, skidding him into the Tamil driver, who elbowed the body away. The young man's hands flew up to his face, as if he'd just remembered something important. Then, once again, the boy's body appeared to forget everything.
There were whistles, piercing sharp and loud: these were the sounds of the tall Sikh doormen who directed the traffic at the Taj, but Nancy was searching for some evidence of the police. Nearby, at the looming Gateway of India, Nancy thought she'd seen some sort of police activity; there were lights, the sound of hysterics, a sort of disturbance. At first, some beggar urchins were reputed to be the cause; the story was, they'd failed to beg a single rupee from a young Swedish couple who'd been photographing the Gateway of India with an ostentatious and professional use of bright-white lights and reflectors. Hence the urchins had urinated on the Gateway of India in an effort to spoil the picture, and when they'd failed to gain suitable attention from the foreigners--the Swedes allegedly found this demonstration symbolically interesting--the urchins then attempted to urinate on the photographic equipment, and that was the cause of the ruckus. But further investigation would reveal that the Swedes had paid the beggars to pee on the Gateway of India, which had little effect--the Gateway of India was already soiled. The urchins had never attempted to pee on the Swedes' photographic equipment; that would have been far too bold for them--they'd merely complained that they weren't paid enough for pissing on the Gateway of India. That was the true cause of the ruckus.
Meanwhile, the dead boy in the taxi had to wait. In the driveway of the Taj, the Tamil driver became hysterical; a dead man had been thrown into the path of his car--apparently, there was a dent. The British couple confided to a policeman that the Tamil had run a red light (upon being struck by a dildo). The policeman was the bewildered constable who'd finally freed himself from the crime of urination at the Gateway of India. It wasn't clear to Nancy if the British couple was blaming her for the accident, if it even had been an accident. After all, the Tamil and the Englishman agreed that the boy had looked dead before the taxi hit him. What was clear to Nancy was that the policeman didn't know what a "dildo" was.
"A penis--a rather large one," the Englishman explained to the constable.
"She?" the policeman asked, pointing to Nancy. "She is hitting the taxi-walla with a what?"
"You'll have to show him, dear," the Englishwoman told Nancy.
"I'm not showing him anything," Nancy said.
Our Friend, the Real Policeman
It took an hour before Nancy was free to register in the hotel. A half hour later--she'd just finished soaking in a hot bath--a second policeman came to her room. This one wasn't a constable--no blue shorts a yard wide, no silly leg warmers. This one wasn't another nerd in a Nehru cap; he wore an officer's cap with the Maharashtrian police insignia and a khaki shirt, long khaki pants, black shoes, a revolver. It was the duty officer from the Colaba Police Station, which has jurisdiction over the Taj. Without his jowls, but even then sporting that pencil-thin mustache--and 20 years before he would have occasion to question Dr. Daruwalla and Inspector Dhar at the Duckworth Club--the young Inspector Patel gave a good first impression of himself. A future deputy commissioner could be discerned in the young policeman's composure.
Inspector Patel was aggressive but courteous, and even in his twenties he was an intimidating detective in the way that he invited a certain misunderstanding of his questions. His manner persuaded you to believe that he already knew the answers to many of the questions he asked, although he usually didn't; thus he encouraged you to tell the truth by implying that he already knew it. And his method of questioning carried the added implication that, within your answers, Inspector Patel could discern your moral character.
In her current state, Nancy was vulnerable to such an uncommonly proper and pleasant-looking young man. To sympathize with Nancy's situation: Inspector Patel did not present himself as a person whom even a brazen or a supremely self-confident young woman would choose to show a dildo to. Also, it was about 5:00 in the morning. There may have been some eager early risers who were heralding the sunrise that--when viewed across the water, and perfectly framed in the arch of the Gateway of India--could still summon the vainglorious days of the British Raj, but poor Nancy wasn't among them. Besides, her only windows and the small balcony didn't afford her a view of the sea. Dieter had arranged for one of the cheaper rooms.