After Dieter and Nancy smoked the joint, Dieter was able to encourage Nancy to masturbate; it seemed to her that it took a long time, and she couldn't remember him leaving the bed to get the dildo. Later, when he was asleep, she lay awake and thought for a while about the thousands of Deutsche marks that were inside the thing that had been inside her. She decided not to tell Dieter about the murdered boy or Inspector Patel. She got out of bed and made sure the card the inspector had given her was well concealed among her clothes. She didn't go back to bed; she was standing on the balcony at dawn when the first of the beggars arrived. After a while, the same child performers were perfectly in place, like figures painted by the daylight itself--even the crippled boy with his padded crutch. He waved to her. It was so early, he was careful not to call too loudly, but Nancy could hear him distinctly.
"Hey, lady!"
He made her cry. She went back inside the room and watched Dieter while he was sleeping. She thought again about the thousands of Deutsche marks; she wanted to throw them out the window to the child performers, but it frightened her to imagine what a terrible scene she might cause. She went into the bathroom and tried to unscrew the dildo to count how many marks were inside, but Dieter had screwed the thing too tightly together. This was probably deliberate, she realized; at last, she was learning.
She went through his clothes, looking for the money belt--she thought she could count how many marks were there--but she couldn't find it. She lifted the bedsheet and saw that Dieter was naked except for the money belt. It worried her that she couldn't remember falling asleep, nor could she remember Dieter getting out of bed to put the money belt on. She would have to be more careful, she thought. Nancy was beginning to appreciate the extent to which Dieter might be willing to use her; she worried that she'd developed a morbid curiosity about how far he would go.
Nancy found it calming to speculate about Inspector Patel. She indulged herself with the comforting notion that she could turn to the inspector if she needed him, if she was really in trouble. Although the morning was intensely bright, Nancy didn't close the curtains; in the light of day, it was easier for her to imagine that leaving Dieter was merely a matter of picking the right time. And if things get too bad, Nancy thought to herself, I can just pick up the phone and ask for Vijay Patel--Police Inspector, Colaba Station.
But Nancy had never been to the East. She didn't know where she was. She had no idea.
12
THE RATS
Four Baths
In Bombay, in his bedroom, where Dr. Daruwalla sat shivering in Julia's embrace, the unresolved nature of the majority of the doctor's phone messages depressed him: Ranjit's peevish complaints about the dwarf's wife; Deepa's expectations regarding the potential bonelessness of a child prostitute; Vinod's fear of the first-floor dogs; Father Cecil's consternation that none of the Jesuits at St. Ignatius knew exactly when Dhar's twin was arriving; and director Balraj Gupta's greedy desire to release the new Inspector Dhar movie in the midst of the murders inspired by the last Inspector Dhar movie. To be sure, there was the familiar voice of the woman who tried to sound like a man and who repeatedly relished the details of old Lowji's car bombing; this message wasn't lacking in resolution, but it was muted by excessive repetition. And Detective Patel's cool delivery of the news that he had a private matter to discuss didn't sound "unresolved" to the doctor; although Dr. Daruwalla may not have known what the message meant, the deputy commissioner seemed to have made up his mind about the matter. But all these things were only mildly depressing in comparison to Farrokh's memory of the big blonde with her bad foot.
"Liebchen," Julia whispered to her husband. "We shouldn't leave John D. alone. Think about the hippie another time."
Both to break him from his trance and as a physical reminder of her affection for him, Julia squeezed Farrokh. She simply hugged him, more or less in the area of his lower chest, or just above his little beer belly. It surprised her how her husband winced in pain. The sharp tweak in his side--it must have been a rib--instantly reminded Dr. Daruwalla of his collision with the second Mrs. Dogar in the foyer of the Duckworth Club. Farrokh then told Julia the story: how the vulgar woman's body was as hard as a stone wall.
"But you said you fell down," Julia told him. "I would guess it was your contact with the stone floor that caused your injury."
"No! It was that damn woman herself--her body is a rock!" Dr. Daruwalla said. "Mr. Dogar was knocked down, too! Only that crude woman was left standing."
"Well, she's supposed to be a fitness freak," Julia replied.
"She's a weight lifter!" Farrokh said. Then he remembered that the second Mrs. Dogar had reminded him of someone--definitely a long-ago movie star, he decided. He imagined that one night he would discover who it was on the videocassette recorder; both in Bombay and in Toronto, he had so many tapes of old movies that it was hard for him to remember how he'd lived before the VCR.
Farrokh sighed and his sore rib responded with a little twinge of pain.
"Let me rub some liniment on you, Liebchen," Julia said.
"Liniment is for muscles--it was my rib she hurt," the doctor complained.
Although Julia still favored the theory that the stone floor was the source of her husband's pain, she humored him. "Was it Mrs. Dogar's shoulder or her elbow that hit you?" she asked.
"You're going to think it's funny," Farrokh admitted to Julia, "but I swear I ran right into her bosom."
"Then it's no wonder she hurt you, Liebchen," Julia replied. It was Julia's opinion that the second Mrs. Dogar had no bosom to speak of.
Dr. Daruwalla could sense his wife's impatience on John D.'s behalf, but less for the fact that Inspector Dhar had been left alone than that the dear boy hadn't been forewarned of the pending arrival of his twin. Yet even this dilemma struck the doctor as trivial--as insubstantial as the second Mrs. Dogar's bosom--in comparison to the big blonde in the bathtub at the Hotel Bardez. Twenty years couldn't lessen the impact of what had happened to Dr. Daruwalla there, for it had changed him more than anything in his whole life had changed him, and the long-ago memory of it endured unfaded, although he'd never returned to Goa. All other beach resorts had been ruined for him by the unpleasant association.
Julia recognized her husband's expression. She could see how far away he was; she knew exactly where he was. Although she wanted to reassure John D. that the doctor would join them soon, it would have been heartless of her to leave her husband; dutifully, she remained seated beside him. Sometimes she thought she ought to tell him that it was his own curiosity that had got him into trouble. But this wasn't entirely a fair accusation; dutifully, she remained silent. Her own memory, although it didn't torture her with the same details that made the doctor miserable, was surprisingly vivid. She could still see Farrokh on the balcony of the Hotel Bardez, where he'd been as restless and bored as a little boy.
"What a long bath the hippie is taking!" the doctor had said to his wife.
"She looked like she needed a long bath, Liebchen," Julia had told him. That was when Farrokh pulled the hippie's rucksack closer to him and peered into the top of it; the top wouldn't quite close.
"Don't look at her things!" Julia told him.
"It's just a book," Farrokh said; he pulled the copy of Clea from the top of the rucksack. "I was just curious to know what she was reading."
"Put it back," Julia said.
"I will!" the doctor said, but he was reading the marked passage, the same bit about the "umbrageous violet" and the "velvet rind" that one customs official and two policemen had already found so spellbinding. "She has a poetic sensibility," Dr. Daruwalla said.
"I find that hard to believe," Julia told him. "Put it back!"
But putting the book back presented the doctor with a new difficulty: something was in the way.
"Stop groping through her things!" Julia said.
"The damn book doesn't fit," Farrokh said. "I'm not groping through her things." An overpowering mustiness embraced him
from the depths of the rucksack, a stale exhalation. The hippie's clothing felt damp. As a married man with daughters, Dr. Daruwalla was particularly sensitive to an abundance of dirty underpants in any woman's laundry. A mangled bra clung to his wrist as he tried to extract his hand, and still the copy of Clea wouldn't lie flat at the top of the rucksack; something poked against the book. What the hell is this thing? the doctor wondered. Then Julia heard him gasp; she saw him spring away from the rucksack as if an animal had bitten his hand.
"What is it?" she cried.
"I don't know!" the doctor moaned. He staggered to the rail of the balcony, where he gripped the tangled branches of the clinging vine. Several bright-yellow finches with seeds falling from their beaks exploded from among the flowers, and a gecko sprang from the branch nearest the doctor's right hand; it wriggled into the open end of a drainpipe just as Dr. Daruwalla leaned over the balcony and vomited onto the patio below. Fortunately, no one was having afternoon tea there. There was only one of the hotel's sweepers, who'd fallen asleep in a curled position in the shade of a large potted plant. The doctor's falling vomit left the sweeper undisturbed.
"Liebchen!" Julia cried.
"I'm all right," Farrokh said. "It's nothing, really--it's just ... lunch." Julia was staring at the hippie's rucksack as if she expected something to crawl out from under the copy of Clea.
"What was it--what did you see?" she asked Farrokh.
"I'm not sure," he said, but Julia was thoroughly exasperated with him.
"You don't know, you're not sure, it's nothing, really--it just made you throw up!" she said. She reached for the rucksack. "Well, if you don't tell me, I'll just see for myself."
"No, don't!" the doctor cried.
"Then tell me," Julia said.
"I saw a penis," Farrokh said.
Not even Julia could think of anything to say.
"I mean, it can't be a real penis," he continued. "I don't mean that it's someone's severed penis, or anything ghastly like that."
"What do you mean?" Julia asked him.
"I mean, it's a very lifelike, very graphic, very large male member--it's an enormous cock, with balls!" Dr. Daruwalla said.
"Do you mean a dildo?" Julia asked him. Farrokh was shocked that she knew the word; he barely knew it himself. A colleague in Toronto, a fellow surgeon, kept a collection of pornographic magazines in his hospital locker, and it was only in one of these that Dr. Daruwalla had ever seen a dildo; the advertisement hadn't been nearly as realistic as the terrifying thing in the hippie's rucksack.
"I think it is a dildo, yes," Farrokh said.
"Let me see," Julia said; she attempted to dodge past her husband to the rucksack.
"No, Julia! Please!" Farrokh cried.
"Well, you saw it--I want to see it," Julia said.
"I don't think you do," the doctor said.
"For God's sake, Farrokh," Julia said. He sheepishly stood aside; then he glanced nervously at the bathroom door, behind which the huge hippie was still bathing.
"Hurry up, Julia, and don't mess up her things," Dr. Daruwalla said.
"It's not as if everything has been neatly folded--oh my goodness!" Julia said.
"Well, there it is--you've seen it. Now get away!" said Dr. Daruwalla, who was a little surprised that his wife had not recoiled in horror.
"Does it use batteries?" Julia asked; she was still looking at it.
"Batteries!" Farrokh cried. "For God's sake, Julia--please get away!" The concept of such a thing being battery-powered would haunt the doctor's dreams for 20 years. The idea certainly worsened the agony of waiting for the hippie to finish her bath.
Fearing that the freakish girl had drowned, Dr. Daruwalla timidly approached the bathroom door, through which he heard neither singing nor splashing; there wasn't a sign of bathtub life. But before he could knock on the door, the doctor was surprised by the uncanny powers of the bathing hippie; she seemed to sense that someone was near.
"Hello out there," the girl said laconically. "Would you bring me my rucksack? I forgot it."
Dr. Daruwalla fetched the rucksack; for its size, it was uncommonly heavy. Full of batteries, Farrokh supposed. He opened the bathroom door cautiously, and only partially--just enough to reach his hand with the rucksack inside the door. Steam, with a thousand, conflicting scents, engulfed him. The girl said, "Thanks. Just drop it." The doctor withdrew his hand and closed the door, wondering at the sound of metal as the rucksack struck the floor. Either a machete or a machine gun, Farrokh imagined; he didn't want to know.
Julia had arranged a sturdy table on the balcony and covered it with a clean white sheet. Even late in the day, there was better light for surgery outside than in the rooms. Dr. Daruwalla assembled his instruments and prepared the anesthetic.
In the bathroom, Nancy managed to reach her rucksack without getting out of the bathtub; she began a search for anything marginally cleaner than what she'd been wearing. It was a matter of exchanging one kind of dirt for another, but she wanted to wear a long-sleeved cotton blouse and a bra and long pants; she also wanted to wash the dildo, and--if she was strong enough--she wanted to unscrew the thing and count how much money was left. It was repellent to her to touch the cock, but she managed to withdraw it from the rucksack by pinching one of the balls between the thumb and index finger of her right hand; then she dropped the dildo into the bath, where (of course) it floated, the balls slightly submerged, the circumcised head raised--almost in the manner of a perplexed, solitary swimmer. Its single, evil eye was on her.
As for Dr. Daruwalla and his wife, their growing anxiety was in no way lessened by the unmistakable sounds of the bathtub being emptied and refilled. It was the hippie's fourth bath.
One can sympathize with Farrokh and Julia for their misunderstanding of the grunts and groans that Nancy made while she was struggling to unscrew the preposterous penis and determine the amount of Deutsche marks that it contained. After all, despite their rekindling of the sexual flame, the pleasure of which was partially owed to Mr. James Salter, the Daruwallas were sexually tame souls. Given the size of the intimidating instrument that they'd seen in the hippie's rucksack, and the sounds of physical exertion that passed from behind the bathroom door, it's forgivable that Farrokh and Julia allowed their imaginations to run away with them. How could the Daruwallas have known that Nancy's cries and curses of frustration were simply the result of her being unable to unscrew the dildo? And despite how far the Daruwallas allowed their imaginations to run, they never could have imagined what truly had happened to Nancy.
Four baths wouldn't wash away what had happened to her.
With Dieter
From the moment Dieter had moved them out of the Taj, everything for Nancy had gone from bad to worse. Their new lodgings were in a small place on Marine Drive, the Sea Green Guest House, which Nancy noticed was an off-white color--or maybe, in the smog, a kind of blue-gray. Dieter said he favored the place because it was popular with an Arab clientele, and Arabs were safe. Nancy didn't notice many Arabs, but she might not have spotted all of them, she supposed. She also didn't know what Dieter meant by "safe"--he meant only that the Arabs were indifferent to drug trafficking on such a small scale as his.
At the Sea Green Guest House, Nancy was introduced to one of the featured activities involved in buying high-quality narcotics--namely, waiting. Dieter made some phone calls; then they waited. According to Dieter, the best deals came to you indirectly. No matter how hard you tried to make a direct deal, and to make it in Bombay, you always ended up in Goa, doing your business with the friend of a friend. And you always had to wait.
This time the friend of a friend was known to frequent the brothel area of Bombay, although the word on the street was that the guy had already gone to Goa; Dieter would have to find him there. The way you found him was, you rented a cottage on a certain beach; then you waited. You could ask for him, but even so you'd never find him; he always found you. This time his name was Rahul. It was always a common n
ame and you never knew the last name--just Rahul. In the red-light district, they called him "Pretty."
"That's a funny thing to call a guy," Nancy observed.
"He's probably one of those chicks with dicks," Dieter said. This expression was new to Nancy; she doubted that Dieter had picked it up from watching American movies.
Dieter attempted to explain the transvestite scene to Nancy, but he'd never understood that the hijras were eunuchs--that they'd truly been emasculated. He'd confused the hijras with the zenanas--the unaltered transvestites. A hijra had once exposed himself to Dieter, but Dieter had mistaken the scar for a vagina--he'd thought the hijra was a real woman. As for the zenanas, the so-called chicks with dicks, Dieter also called them "little boys with breasts." Dieter said that they were all fags who took estrogens to make their tits bigger, but the estrogens also made their pricks get smaller and smaller until they looked like little boys.
Dieter tended to dwell on sexual things, and he used the halfhearted hope of finding Rahul in Bombay as an excuse to take Nancy to the red-light district. She didn't want to go; but Dieter seemed destined to act out the old dictum that there is at least a kind of certainty in degradation. Debasement is specific. There is something exact about sexual corruption that Dieter probably found comforting in comparison to the vagueness of looking for Rahul.
For Nancy, the wet heat and ripe smell of Bombay were only enhanced by close proximity to the cage girls on Falkland Road. "Aren't they amazing?" Dieter asked her. But why they were "amazing" eluded Nancy. On the ground floor of the old wooden buildings, there were cagelike rooms with beckoning girls inside them; above these cages, the buildings rose not more than four or five stories, with more girls on the window-sills--or else a curtain was drawn across a window to indicate that a prostitute was with a customer.
Nancy and Dieter drank tea at the Olympia on Falkland Road; it was an old, mirror-lined cafe frequented by the street prostitutes and their pimps, several of whom Dieter seemed to know. But these contacts either couldn't or wouldn't shed any light on the whereabouts of Rahul; they wouldn't even speak of Rahul--except to say that he belonged to the transvestite scene, which they wanted no part of.