"We can go to America, father."
He inspected the wrist from which most of the hand had been blown. With some of the rags, he bandaged it, stopping the worst of the bleeding.
And then the sobs began to come up from his stomach.
He did not know why he was crying, but he could not control himself. The sobs made him helpless. His body was shaken by them and the noise he made was not very loud but it was the worst noise any of the listeners had heard that night. Even Mr. Armfelt, absorbed in his hysterical calculations, was dimly aware of the noise and he became, if anything, even more depressed.
— What do you think it can be? Something you ate? Do you want some aspirin?
— Aspirin won't do anything for me. I don't know what causes a migraine. A combination of things, maybe.
— Or merely a useful evasion, Karl. Like some forms of gout or consumption. One of those subtle diseases whose symptoms can only be transmitted by word of mouth.
— Thanks for your sympathy. Can I sleep now.
— What a time to get a headache. And you were just beginning to enjoy yourself, too.
You live in a city.
A disaster has resulted in the collapse of society as you know it.
Public amenities, such as gas, electricity, telephones and postal services no longer exist. There is no piped water. Rats and other vermin proliferate in the piles of garbage which, uncollected, contaminate the city. Disease is rife. You have heard that things are equally bad in the country. There, strangers are attacked and killed if they try to settle. In some ways it is more dangerous in the country than it is in the city where gangs of predatory men and women roam the streets.
You are used to city life. You have a house, a car and you have obtained several guns from a gun shop you broke into. You raid shops and garages for fuel and food. You have a water purifier and a camp stove. You have a wife and three young children.
Do you think it would be better to go out into the country and take your chances in the wild, or would you try to work out a way of living and protecting yourself and your family in a city with which you are familiar?
7
Calcutta Flies: 1911:
Doing Business
Ten years ago, an observer going to India with a fresh mind for its problems saw two great engines at work. One was the British Government, ruling the country according to its own canons of what would be best for the people. Its system of education in Western science and thought was shaking the old beliefs and social traditions. By securing justice and enforcing peace, it had set men's minds free to speculate and criticize. For India's future it had no definite plan; its ambitions, to all outward seeming, were confined to a steady growth of administrative efficiency. The other engine was the awakening of a national consciousness. It was feeding on the Western ideas provided by the British Government and the noble army of Christian missionaries, adapting them to its own purposes, and building on them a rising demand that the people should be given a larger share in their own destiny. Our observer could not help being impressed by how far the two engines were from working in parallel. There was friction and a general feeling of unsettlement. In 1908 a cautious measure of political advance had been offered when Lord Minto was Viceroy and Lord Morley was his "opposite number" in Whitehall. It was tainted, however, with an air of unreality which disquieted the officials and irritated the Indian politician. The cry grew loud for more rapid progress, "colonial self-government" was the slogan, and the professional classes (chiefly the lawyers) with an English education were busy in a wide-spread movement for a change in the methods of government. As in all nationalist movements, there was an extreme wing, which leaned to direct action, rather than the slower constitutional modes of agitation. In Eastern hyperbole they wrote and harangued about British tyranny and the duty of patriots to rise and become martyrs for freedom. What they thus conceived in poetic frenzy was translated into sinister prose by others. Anarchists are never lacking in any crowded population, especially when hunger is the bedfellow of so many. In India the section of violence had got into touch with revolutionary camps in Europe and the United States, and sporadic outbursts from 1907 onwards, including attempts on the life of two Viceroys and a Lieutenant-Governor, indicated the existence of subterranean conspiracy. Public opinion condemned it, but did little to check vehemence of language which continued to inflame weak minds. The whole position was one of anxiety. Would it ever be possible to reconcile the two forces which were rapidly moving towards conflict?
— There! That's more like it, Kadi Ah! Better! Better! Now you're moving!
Karl bucks and bounces, gasps and groans. His muscles ache, but he forces his body to make dramatic responses to every tiny stimulus. The black man cheers him on, yelling with delight.
— Ah! sings Karl. Oh! Ah! Oh!
Up and down and from side to side, whinnying like a proud stallion, he carries the black man round the hotel room on his back. His back is wet, but not from sperm or sweat, for, in spite of all his shouts of pleasure, the black man has not had an orgasm as far as Karl can tell. His back is wet with just a drop or two of blood.
— Now you're moving! Now you're moving! shouts the black man again.—Hurrah!
Karl is twelve. An orphan. Half-German, half-Indian. In Calcutta. In 1911.
— Faster! Faster! The black man has produced a riding crop and with it he flicks Karl's bouncing buttocks.—Faster!
When Karl was fifteen, he left home to become a great painter. He returned home three months later. He had been turned down by the Art School. His mother had been very sympathetic. She could afford to be.
-Faster! That's it! You're learning, Karl! Karl is twelve. The red sun rises over red ships. Calcutta... The riding crop cracks harder and Karl gallops on.
KARL WAS TWELVE. His mother was dead. His father was dead. His two sisters were sixteen and seventeen and he did not often see them. He embarrassed them. Karl was in business for himself and, all things considered, he was doing pretty well.
He worked the docks along the Hooghly. He described himself as an Agent. If something was wanted by the sailors or the passengers off the ships, he would either get it for them or take them somewhere where they might obtain it. He did better than the other boys in the same trade, for he was quite light-skinned and he wore a European suit. He spoke English and German perfectly and was fairly fluent in most other languages, including a fair number of Indian dialects. Because he knew when to be honest and who to bribe, he was popular both with customers and suppliers and people coming from the big red steamers would ask after him when they landed, having been recommended to him by friends. Because he was well-mannered and discreet, he was tolerated by most of the Indian and British policemen on the docks (and he had done several of them good turns in his time, for he knew the importance of keeping in with the authorities). Karl was rumored to be a millionaire (in rupees), but, because of his overheads, he was, in fact, worth only about a thousand rupees, which he banked with his friend in Barrackpore, some fifteen miles away, because it was safer. He was content with his relatively small profit and had worked out that by the time he was twenty he would be quite rich enough to set himself up in a respectable business of some kind in Central Calcutta.