The Elephanta Suite (19 page)

 

"That is my father," Shah was saying, holding a framed photograph.

The old man in the silver frame was bearded, very thin, gripping a walking stick, carrying a cloth bundle.

"All his worldly possessions."

The ascetic and rather starved face contrasted sharply with the elegant frame, the polished side table on which it rested with other silver-framed pictures—more of the old man—the cut-glass lamp, the linen tablecloth, the candlesticks.

And Dwight sat at a table that had been set with delicate porcelain plates thin as eggshells, linen napkins, gold-trimmed salvers, crystal goblets. But there were yellow lentils in the plates, beans in the salvers, water in the goblets.

"Please take some more dhal," Mrs. Shah said. "It's a family recipe. Tarka dhal—very creamy, you see."

She was a lovely woman, younger than her husband, with a smooth serious face and a slightly strained manner, a kind of concern that Dwight understood as the effort of being hospitable to a big American stranger who had a reputation for bluntness. Shah must have warned her, but Shah was much more confident these days.

"And this," she said, serving him with silver pincers what looked like a flattened muffin, "this is my mother's uttapam."

"Delicious," Dwight said. "I'm not eating meat ever again."

"Thank you," Mrs. Shah said. She rang a bell and a young woman entered with a bowl of rice. As the woman stood next to Dwight, serving him, he had one thought in his mind. These days, when he met a woman in India, he thought, Would I? To this one, he nodded and smiled, thinking, Yes, I would.

"My father was a businessman," Shah said, glancing at the framed photograph as he spoke. "He started as an accountant, then created a firm and eventually had a huge business—bought his building, branched out into real estate and investment. He did very well. My brother and I had a privileged upbringing. But as he got older he prepared himself, and at last he embarked on his journey."

"Where did he go?"

"Not where, but how, is the question. He walked, he slept on the ground. He begged for alms, holding bowl. He wished to become a saint. It was his aim."

"Renounced everything?"

"Completely," Shah said. "Not so, my dear?"

Mrs. Shah tipped her head in regret.

"Obeying the
mahavratas,"
Shah said. "The big vows. No injury. No lying. No stealing. Chastity. Lacking all possessions. Meditation and praying only. And walking to the shrines, day and night, begging for food."

Now Dwight looked at the picture of the wealthy investor, who out of piety had reinvented himself as a beggar. Dwight said, "It's quite a trajectory."

"Jain trajectory—Buddhist too," Shah said. "My brother and I looked after my mother. And my turn will come." He suddenly became self-conscious and smiled at his wife. "Then my son will look after my wife. It is our way."

"In this other picture he's wearing a mask," Dwight said.

"So as not to breathe in microbes and fleas."

"So as not to get sick?"

"So as not to kill them.
Ahimsa.
Not killing a life, even flea's life."

"I get you."

"I will share with you some literature about our beliefs," Shah said. "We are not extreme—not like the Digambara, who are sky-clad."

"Sky-clad, meaning...?"

"Nakedness. They go about mortifying themselves in the nakedness state. No one on earth could live more simply. But we are Svetambara. We follow the tenets of our faith. It is ancient, I tell you—older than your Christianity, from long before."

"Maybe you can tell me about it sometime."

"We have sweetened curd for dessert," Mrs. Shah said, ringing the servant bell again.

"I anticipate being a saddhu myself—giving up the world. Just wandering, as my father wandered. He was so contented."

"I guess that's an Indian solution to life."

"No. It was penance. He was not pure previously. I am not pure." He smiled at Dwight, who read in Shah's smile,
And you?

Dwight saw himself with a wooden staff and a loincloth and a turban, striding down a dusty road in the sunlight in sandals, eating an apple—did they eat apples? Birds sang, a fragrant breeze cooled his face, he carried a bowl full of flower petals. He smiled, mocking himself with this image, knowing that he would be visiting Indru later.

Shah's apartment was luxurious, with gilt-framed mirrors and brocade cushions on a white sofa that could have held five people, a thick carpet—he'd left his shoes at the door—windows like walls with panes of glass that went from floor to ceiling, and a balcony that gave onto Mumbai, from this height a magical-looking city of twinkling lights and toy cars.

The food could not have been simpler, yet it had been served on the thinnest porcelain; even the bell that Mrs. Shah rang to summon the serving girl looked precious. The colored portraits on the walls could have been deities, objects of veneration, as well as a valuable collection of paintings.

All this time, Shah was talking about Jainism, atonement, penance, poverty.

"Nirjara
—process of atonement," he said.
"Ahimsa
—respect for all living things, great and small, all
jiva,
all life and soul."

The mention of living things great and small made Dwight think of his partners in Boston. He said, "Have you given any thought to my proposal? I've cleared it with the firm. They're pretty excited."

"I have reflected deeply on it," Shah said. He kept a studied tone of reluctance in his voice that Dwight recognized as an eagerness he didn't want to show. "I will accept. I will do my level best."

To match Shah's tone, Dwight was subdued when he quietly thanked him, but inside he was rejoicing. He wouldn't have to make the long trip back to Boston. Shah would be perfect for the business seminar.

Leaving Shah's apartment, plunging back into the city, he was reminded that it had been the second time he'd been inside the house of a wealthy Indian. Like the big soft apartment of Winky Vellore, it was a refuge. All of India had been shut out, more than from the fastness of the Elephanta Suite. At Shah's, India almost did not exist, except in the paintings and photographs of Shah's father, the wandering holy man, and the talk of atonement. The apartment had shone with polished silver and white porcelain and crisp linen on the gleaming table.

Now Dwight recalled that music had been playing softly, the sounds of string instruments, the soft chanting, the odd and irregular harmonies. And the big glass doors had been shut so that Mumbai was its lights and shadows, and it had sparkled, silent and odorless, far below. What floor had they been on? It seemed that they'd hovered at a great height in the splendor of a glass tower. And he knew he would always remember the experience for its comfort, the softness of Mrs. Shah, the beauty of the serving girl, the glint of the silver in the candlelight. Mumbai had looked like a city of crystal.

Now he was at Indru's, in the stew of stinks and harsh voices from the lane, in the cement stairwell—his secret, his hiding place. Approaching the building, he'd heard a groan and looked aside and saw a cow, visible because of its pale hide, sounding human and helpless in its distress.

He kicked the stairs as he climbed, to scatter the rats, and when he got to Indru's landing he tapped a coin on the iron bars of the outer door.

Padmini scuffed forward, unlocked the door, held the round brass tray with the oil lamp flickering in its dish. On tiptoes the small thin girl stretched to apply the mark with her thumb.

"Never mind that."

She stared, her eyes shining in the firelight. On the days she worked at the salon her hair was lovely, her makeup like a mask, her nails thickly varnished.

"Where's Indru?"

Padmini hesitated, then said, "Brother come."

Dwight shut the door. He lifted the tray from Padmini's hands. In the sounds of the traffic, the yakking voices of television sets, car doors slamming, the loud blatting of motorbikes, he heard the moaning of the cow suffering in the alley.

He waved his hand at the dark insects and white moths strafing the naked bulb above his head. He shot the bolt in the door, and when he turned Padmini was gone.

"Where are you?"

From deep in the far room, "Here, sir."

She was squatting cross-legged in the back room, on the mattress that was spread on the floor, where she slept—not even a string bed, but what did that matter? The only light was the light from the street, filtered through a high dirty window.

Padmini was indistinct. He tried to read her expression, to see her posture. He thought, Reality is many-sided.

"Is bolt in door?"

"Yes."

A quality of air, no more than a ripple, told him she had relaxed, hearing that. But when he held her she stiffened, like someone about to take a leap. She wouldn't let him kiss her, though she allowed him to touch her. She seemed to grow limp as he did so, murmuring in her throat, and still the cow moaned in the alley.

In Shah's absence, Dwight kept himself scarce. He spent less time in the boardroom, and when he was there he avoided looking down the long table for a view of the Gateway of India. Huge though it was, even when he did accidentally glance in that direction, he hardly saw it. The three-portaled archway did not loom for him anymore. Too much had happened to him for the thing to seem important in his life. It was just another monument in a country that was cluttered with monuments.

Unwelcome visitors were another reason for his keeping away. Incredibly, he was regarded as the expert on India now.

"I'd like to pick your brain," people said in phone calls. That meant his dispensing free advice over a hotel lunch to another nervous American on his first visit to India.

And the odd thing was that when Dwight spoke to these newcomers, he said unexpected things, surprising himself in his opinions.

A man named Todd Pinsker visited. He was a Hollywood lawyer—he'd done a contract with Ralph Picard from the Boston office; he was passing through Mumbai on his way to Rajasthan for a luxury vacation. As a favor to Ralph, Dwight saw him for a drink at the Taj.

"And this is my son, Zack," Pinsker said. "He's making a movie."

The boy's smug expression matched his clumsiness. He wore a baseball cap backward, sat with his legs sticking out, and demanded that the waiter remove the ice from his drink.

"Ice can make you sick," he said. "I mean, you can get a bad ice cube."

"He's got this dynamite idea," the boy's father said. "Sort of meld the Bollywood idea with an American movie. I mean, get some major talent from the States and shoot it here."

"I have no contacts at all in the movie industry," Dwight said. "I'm contracting for U.S. companies who want to outsource here."

"That's Zack's project," the man said. "I want to set up a concept restaurant in Manhattan. I've got some backing in L.A. I'm looking for ideas here, for a theme. Maybe headhunt a chef."

"Wish I could help you. I don't even eat in restaurants anymore," Dwight said. He wondered, Is this true? And he surprised himself again by saying, "I mean, I'm a committed vegetarian."

"That's cool," the man said, but his squint gave away his caution.

"Following kind of a Jain thing," Dwight said.

That got Zack's attention. "A Jain thing? Those people that don't kill bugs?"

"Ahimsa,"
Dwight said in almost a whisper, because the boy's voice was so loud. "It's part of the philosophy—non-killing."

"Vegetarian options would play a big part in this restaurant," the man said. "I've just got to meet some people. Have you been to Rajvilas?"

"No. I've hardly been out of Mumbai."

"Clinton stayed there," the boy said, and sucked on his glass of Coke.

Dwight became impatient. This father and son were annoying him with their presumption. They were both trying to get rich, do some business, use the Indians as everyone else did.

"You won't have a problem finding what you want here," he said. "Whatever it is. Everyone gets what they want. But at the same time you're going to find something you didn't bargain for."

"Is that some kind of warning?"

"I suppose it is," Dwight said. He thought: Where is this coming from? Why am I saying this? But without any effort, and hardly knowing what was coming next, he said, "But it's a fact. India's cheap, so it attracts amateurs and second-raters and opportunists. Backpackers. Little Leaguers. Because India's desperate, Indians do most of the work for you."

"Isn't that a good thing?"

"Depends," Dwight said. "Indians never lose. No matter how well you think you're doing, they're doing better. You're glad because you can get a pair of blue jeans for a buck twenty-nine. But eighty cents of that is profit for them."

"I'm trying to put a restaurant together. Zack's doing a movie."

"You'll get it done. And you'll get something else you never expected. The Indian extra. The Indian surprise."

He knew he was being enigmatic; he was not even sure what he was saying. Certainly he was warning them, but he didn't like them enough to explain the warning in detail. What alarmed him was, having given no thought to these opinions before, they seemed to be bubbling up from his unconscious. Maybe I am warning myself?

After an hour, he said he had an appointment. They swapped business cards—even the punk kid Zack had one. And then Dwight took a taxi to Indru's. Probably that was what he meant when he mentioned the Indian surprise.

It was true that Indians did most of the work. And there were plenty of manufacturers eager to service clients—too many of them, perhaps, and they were ruthless with each other. They were persistent with him and tended to call his cell phone at all hours, offering to cut deals. It was no good for him to say, "You can't do an end run on the tendering process," because they didn't understand the metaphor, and anyway, backstabbing was a standard business practice, even part of the culture, with real backs and real knives.

But Dwight had always found someone suitable to make the product—not movies or concept restaurants, time-wasting negotiations that brought together those natural allies, the dreamer and the bullshitter. He preferred deals for making plastic buckets, rubber gaskets, leisure wear, nylon plumbing fixtures, sports shoes, electronic components. The insulated wire that was a crucial part of a spark plug—no one wanted to make them in the States anymore, but Shah had found a man in Hyderabad, a former rope maker, who had retooled his shop to make the wire for a few dollars a spool. That kind of thing. The hard part was the contract, the final wording, the up-front payments, the penalty clauses, and for that he needed Shah's scrupulous shit-detecting Jain eye.