Maya (11 page)

“Fine, Mr. Singh.”

He shook my hand, a bit limply, then withdrew his fingers and dangled them over the bottles. The rings glowed softly, reflecting the tiered flames of a brass butter-lamp that burned at the end of the table. “What will you have to drink?”

I studied the labels on the beer. The choice was between Rosy Pelican, He-Man 9000, and Tipsy. “Any of these will be fine.”

“Balaram!” He turned to the bartender and spoke to him quickly in Hindi.

I accepted the glass, thanked Balaram, and nodded to Mr. Singh, who was already setting off to take care of some other business in the kitchen.

“Now what?” I wondered. I suddenly imagined myself, as if from across the room, dressed in white pantaloons and a loose white satin blouse with large buttons, my face painted with a frown.

I moved away from the table and surveyed the crowd. Three people were standing off to my right near a bookshelf displaying publications of past Fulbright scholars. I heard a familiar nasal voice and recognized Margaret just as she looked my direction and smiled, motioning me to come over.

“Stanley, how nice to see you here.” She gave me a knowing look. Before I could respond she turned to face an elderly gentleman wearing a baggy tweed coat and a pair of scuffed hush puppies. He had a drink in one hand, a pipe in the other. “Stanley, this is John McIntyre, from Harvard. He's been gathering material for a study of early Buddhist logic. John, Stanley Harrington. Chicago. Quite an authority on Vedanta.” Once again she caught my eye with a portentous glance.

“Glad to meet you, Stanley.” He glanced at his hands, both of which were occupied, then shrugged and smiled.

“Good evening,” I said.

“And of course you and Frank are old friends,” Margaret continued, directing my attention to the man on her left. I hadn't noticed until that moment who it was standing right across from me.

“Good to see you here, Stanley.” He gripped my hand and pumped it up and down a few times. “How's the research going? We haven't heard a thing from you.”

“Professor Davis,” I said, as enthusiastically as I could manage. “Hello. Welcome to Delhi.” He was a tall man with fleshy lips and heavy, sagging
jowls. His hairline had retreated over the years, surrendering a pale, liver-spotted forehead to a pair of glasses with square plastic frames. His nose hung from the bridge like a rubber carrot.

“Stanley, Abe tells me you haven't written to him. Not once since you left. That's no way to treat your advisor!” He chuckled and glanced over at Margaret, who responded with a tight smile. “He told me to look you up, see if you hadn't perhaps run off to the Himalayas to meditate in a cave or something.” Once again he turned to Margaret and laughed, as if meditating in a cave were the most preposterous thing in the world.

It was true, I hadn't written a word to my advisor. “I guess I've been so busy I, uh, let it slide.”
Frank, you and I both know that the bastard wouldn't care if he never heard from me again. He's far too busy with more important matters.

“Well then, tell us what you're up to with your work on Shankara.”

“Actually,” I said, before realizing my mistake, “I've recently changed the area of my research. That is, I'm sort of shifting the focus of my concern, you might say.”

The carrot twitched. He reached up and adjusted his glasses with the tip of one finger, pushing them back in place. “How so?”

“I've gotten much more interested in Buddhism.”

“Isn't that a bit like switching horses in midstream?” He frowned. “I believe you were awarded the Fulbright on the basis of the proposal approved by the members of your dissertation committee.”

Professor McIntyre had perked up at the reference to Buddhism and was about to say something when Margaret chimed in and cut him off. She had obviously been following this exchange with growing concern. “This
is
news, Stanley.” Somehow she managed to pack a staggering amount of disapproval into the single syllable is. “How intriguing. This must have happened sometime after we talked?”

“It had been coming for a while before then. But yes, I made the decision not long after our conversation.” Poor Margaret. This odd maternal affection I inspired in her was obviously hurt by my apparent disregard for the advice she had given me.

McIntyre drained off a bit of something that looked like a Manhattan and pulled on his pipe, letting the smoke roll out one corner of his mouth. “What exactly are you reading?”

“Nothing in particular yet.” Out of the corner of my eye I could see Margaret's look of disbelief. I fully expected her to reach over any second
and prod me. “I've been going over a lot of Pali sources, reviewing the grammar, trying to rebuild some fluency. I spent a couple of semesters with the language a year ago.”

“The Pali canon?” McIntyre looked surprised. “That material has been pretty much raked over, hasn't it? What do you hope to find?”

“It seemed like a good place to start, that's all. I want to go back and take another look at all the basic texts,” I said, aware that I was beginning to sound defensive.

Once again McIntyre was about to respond when he was interrupted, this time by Frank Davis. “Your advisor will most certainly be interested in all this,” he said with a vaguely sardonic air of authority. “Perhaps you ought to drop him a card when you make up your mind.”

Margaret looked distinctly uneasy. She was unquestionably perturbed with me for letting things get out of hand like this. I could tell that she was busy cooking up some scheme to bail me out. “John doesn't live very far from you, Stanley.” She turned and addressed Professor McIntyre, rather presumptuously, it seemed to me. “Aren't you over in Lajpat Nagar, John?”

It was impossible to tell if he even noticed Margaret's tone. He was simply pleased that the conversation had finally turned his way. “Not far from the market,” he announced proudly. “‘A' Block. One thirty-seven.”

“You wouldn't mind giving Stanley a little guidance on this, would you?

“Not at all. He could drop by anytime.” Having said this much, he pulled his shoulders back just a touch and puffed contentedly at his pipe, then swiveled about to face me. “By all means, Stanley. Do come and visit. I would love to bat around some ideas I've had on Dignaga's
Pramanasamucchaya
. I've come to believe lately that Hattori might be a little off base here and there.”

“You should get together with John and talk.” Margaret impaled me with her gaze, then took a drag on her cigarette and withdrew it from her lips slowly. I noticed that it was an Indian brand. The Dunhills must have run out sooner than she had expected. Meanwhile, McIntyre, who interpreted her remark as an invitation to proceed, launched into a monologue on the intricacies of Dignaga's critique of Sankhya theories of perception.

Medieval Indian Buddhist epistemology is an amazingly boring subject to all but a small club of intellectuals who have for some unknown reason staked it out as their territory, but the monotonous drone of McIntyre's
voice took the heat off me, and I was more than happy to stand there and swill my beer while he held the floor. In fact I was deriving some real pleasure from watching Margaret and Frank Davis suffer, when just about this time Mahmud approached with a tray of hors d'oeuvres.

While the others gathered around the food, I chanced to look over his shoulder and spot an attractive young woman standing alone near the bar. It was Penelope Ainsworth—the art historian from Agra. I was surprised to see her here. I had no idea she was in town. She was wearing a sapphire-blue sari that cascaded to the floor in a stream of elegant folds. A thin gold chain hung from her neck and trailed down over her angular collarbones. I watched as she examined the bottles and made her choice, directing Balaram to pour her an immense scotch on the rocks. Twice she politely instructed him to add more to what he had already poured, not backing off until the glass was full. She picked up her drink and casually scanned the room.

“Penny!” I called out and waved. Margaret had succeeded in bringing the discussion around to her research on Girnir, but at the sound of my voice all three of them stopped talking and looked in the direction of the bar. The men were obviously interested, Margaret much less so as she watched Penelope cross over to where we stood.

“Stanley,” she said, “How wonderful to see you again!” She took my hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “I hoped you might be here tonight.”

I introduced her to the others. “This is Penelope Ainsworth. Penny, this is Professor Davis, the guest of honor.”

“Evening,” he said, taking her hand.

“And Professor McIntyre.”

He bowed slightly, making it clear with a shrug and the same little grin he had shown me earlier that he was incapacitated by his pipe and drink.

“And this is my friend, Dr. Margaret Billings. From Columbia. She's on the verge of overturning everything we thought we knew about Gupta administrative policy.” Margaret gave her a polite smile and a perfunctory handshake. “Penny and I met in Agra,” I said, “a few months back, when I was there studying Hindi.”

“I don't think I've seen you here before,” Margaret said. “Are you a fellow?”

“No, I'm not. My research is funded through a private endowment at Oxford.”

“That's where you're coming from, then?” Despite her effort to appear
blasé, Margaret could not help being impressed by the mere sound of certain charmed names.

Penny nodded and took a swallow of scotch, then set the glass down on a nearby table and pulled a package of Dunhills out of her purse. She extracted a cigarette from the pack and lit it up.

Margaret's eyes flared in the glow of the burning tobacco. “Would you mind a whole lot giving up one of those?” She gestured toward Penelope's cigarette. For an instant I thought she was going to reach over and pluck it out of her fingers. “I just finished my last pack two days ago and I'm already thinking about leaving India if I can't find an alternative to these things.” Margaret displayed the Indian cigarette she had been smoking and brandished it disdainfully under our noses; then with a ruthless flourish she crushed it out in a nearby ashtray and stood waiting for relief. Penny produced another Dunhill and lit it for her. One or two drags and Margaret was ready to pick up the interrogation where she had left off. It was evident, though, that Penelope had more or less won her over.

“Are you faculty, or . . .” Margaret hesitated tactfully.

“A graduate student,” Penny completed the question. “I'm writing on early Buddhist relief sculpture. I've been doing some work near Agra. That's where Stanley and I met.” She smiled and touched my hand again. “But I've shifted now to Bhopal. Photographing Buddhist monuments in the area.”

“And what brings you to Delhi?” Once again the mention of Buddhism seemed to have provided Professor McIntyre with an opportunity to join the conversation.

“Partly a social visit, partly research. I'm collecting some information at the archives of the National Museum.”

“What's the social part?” Margaret asked, as though she were only trying to make conversation and didn't really care.

“I'm staying with some friends of my parents . . .” She broke off and reconsidered. “They're old family friends, really, with the embassy. I knew them years ago when we lived here. I was just a girl.”

“Your parents are involved with the embassy?” Davis asked.

“My father was in the Foreign Office. He retired last spring from his last post in Rome. He and my mother have settled in London.”

Margaret pried into Penny's father's foreign-service background a while, then lost interest and steered the conversation back to Girnir. At that point I politely excused myself from the group, inviting Penny to join me for another drink, which I at least wanted badly. She had already
polished off the scotch and was ready for a refill. Margaret never stopped talking, but she watched us out of the corner of her eye as we walked over to the bar.

In view of this unexpected reunion I decided to switch to something more festive, and following the art historian's example, I leaned on Balaram to pour me a half liter or so of bourbon over ice. Thus fortified we retired to the couch and immediately fell into conversation. We talked of her work at the archives, then of my own faltering research. I avoided the details of my escalating conversion to Buddhism, though I did touch on some of the intellectual high points. She listened attentively to everything I said. I could tell from her response that Mick had told her something about Judith, but I was not in the mood to find out what. Talk of academia eventually moved into discussion of the food she was being treated to at the British embassy: real cheese, fresh salads, and warm, whole-wheat bread from the commissary kitchen.

She told me an amusing story about her host, a cultural liaison at the embassy. He helped put together concerts, plays, and lectures, working to facilitate an exchange of artists and scholars between England and India. Over the years he had entertained quite a number of celebrities in his home. It was part of his job to see that they were comfortable during their visit and, occasionally, to do whatever else might be necessary to insure that all went smoothly. A pianist from the London Conservatory had insisted on going out to dinner the night before his concert—alone—to Moti Mahal in Daryaganj. He may actually have gone there, but this was probably not the real motive for the trip. He had apparently sought out a postprandial rendezvous with a prostitute somewhere in the back alleys around Turkman Gate. While he was humping away, somebody stole his pants along with everything in the pockets—passport, money, and a Patek Philippe watch. He insisted that this was the work of the woman's pimp, a cab driver who took him there, but he could only describe the man as “an obese chap with a long gray beard. Rather like Father Christmas with a turban.” Under pressure from the authorities to come up with a more specific description, he finally managed to produce one other tidbit: the cab had two foam dice and a plastic playboy rabbit hanging from the mirror up front. If the police were to put out an all-points bulletin for a man fitting this description, they would end up interrogating half the taxi drivers in Delhi.