Indian money was peculiarly filthy, the frayed little ten rupee notes, the tattered hundreds; a stack of bills looked like a pile of dirty rags. The money smelled of all the people who had fingered it and used it. The thought of this killed his desire, and he began to see Indru and Padmini as two lazy girls, older and cleverer than they looked. He saw himself as even lazier, or worse—credulous and weak. As he saw their cynicism, he liked himself less. He feared that one day he would come to despise them.
Meanwhile Shah—so he said in an e-mail—had gone to Disney World in Orlando. He had visited New York City, where he had a cousin. He’d found clients all over New England. He’d been invited to Harvard Business School, to speak informally at a seminar. Kohut had given a dinner party for him in Sudbury. “Autumn leaves,” Shah reported, “magnificent colors.” And “I trust all is well, Mumbai-side.”
Was it? These walks along Chowpatty Beach, because they were interludes, because they required conversation, were revealing and proved to Dwight that he was kidding himself. He was a man who had discovered sex in India and thought it was magic. But it was an illusion, the consequence of his having power and money in a land of desperation. Sex was a good thing, because sex had an end, and when his desire died he saw he’d been a fool. But now, with more power and less conviction, his passion diminished to casual playing, and he took more risks.
Seeing a boy with a CD player and headphones, Indru said, “Buy me one of those.”
“What will you do with it?”
“Listen music.”
“Maybe,” he said, to tease her, and saw she was agitated with greed. He said to Padmini, “Do you want one too?”
Her whisper was so soft he could scarcely hear it, yet he knew her vibrant lips were saying yes.
“But what will you give me?”
He was ashamed. He had no right to feel powerful when he said this, making the request like a greedy king addressing his subjects, asking, How do you intend to please me?
They were at the beach, another of their Sunday strolls, watched by groups of chattering boys who were attracted by the pretty girls, curious about the tall white man in the Indian shirt and kadi vest of homespun, which Dwight had begun to wear since Shah’s departure for the States.
Padmini glanced at Indru, who was smirking and looking coy, as though challenging Padmini to give the right answer.
“Sir, we will be good to you,” Padmini said.
Indru laughed and skipped ahead. Her laugh got the attention of an old woman who was walking in the opposite direction. Dwight looked up at Indru and saw the woman. He wouldn’t have noticed her at all except that she hesitated and stared at him.
She had not changed. She was fat and slow, wearing a billowing sari banded with gold embroidery, gold bangles on her wrists, brown-gray hair, with a shawl thrown over it.
For a moment Dwight wondered how she’d singled him out—but of course, he was the only white man on the beach. He was glad that Indru and Padmini had gone ahead. The old woman’s unfriendly smile was like mockery.
“Hello,” he said.
Instead of replying, the woman called out sharply. Amid the crowd of beach strollers, three figures hurried over—the little girl, the young boy, and the tall skinny dancer in her Gypsy dress. He recognized them only because the old woman was there. The boy was taller but thinner, with a resentful face; the little girl wore a new dress but seemed sickly, hollow-eyed, with lipstick and eye shadow, a parody of a whore. Sumitra, the dancer, looked at him with hatred. She was bony and her hair was full and frizzed, with dry patches on her strangely hairy arms and lines in her face, as though she’d become old. In the way they stared, they seemed brutalized and rude.
The old woman gabbled in Hindi. Dwight knew she must have been saying, It is the man. You remember him from the Gateway of India?
Were they speculating on whether they could con him again, somehow entice him?
“Nice to see you,” Dwight said.
But as he made a move to go, they crowded him and blocked his way.
With a yelp, a passing boy called out to his friends, and Dwight thought how suddenly stupid the boy became in his eagerness. The other boys hurried over, attracted by the odd public scene: the yakking old woman, the scruffy Gypsy-looking children, the white man—the towering, isolated white man. In just seconds there were more spectators, all boys, laughing, perhaps suspecting trouble—that slack-jawed look of anticipation was also moronic. Dwight had seen this before in India, how subtle and crafty Indians could be individually, how ignorant and obvious in a large crowd.
At that moment, in what seemed to him a standoff, Dwight heard a screech.
“Yaaagh!” Another animal noise—Indru’s shriek, and followed by Padmini, Indru broke through the cluster of people.
She snatched at Dwight’s hand, and a jeering cry went up from the boys. But Indru screamed at them, something that had to be worse than “go away,” because they howled back at her.
Glancing around to make his escape, Dwight saw the old woman smile. It was a sour smile of contempt. Even she recognized what he was now, and she began to mutter defiantly. What was she saying? Something wicked about him to these foolish boys.
Dwight stepped back while Indru continued to yell at the boys. She wasn’t like a girl anymore, she was a howling woman with big reddish teeth in her wide-open mouth.
Now the old woman, who seemed fearless and slightly superior, was saying something sly to Indru—vile words, they had to be, because Indru spat at her, a gob of reddish saliva that darkened in a streak on the old woman’s sari. The boys laughed and punched the air in delight.
“Come on,” Dwight said, and pulled Indru away as the old woman craned her neck and screamed.
Indru said, “That auntie say she know you. You give her money. You bad man.”
When they had crossed the expanse of Chowpatty sand and were back on the sidewalk, Dwight said, “I am a bad man!”
He was disgusted with himself. He deserved this humiliating scene at the public beach on a busy Sunday, with the horrible boys watching, the cowshit, the yellow froth at the sea’s edge, the poisonous water, the spectacle of a predatory American confronted by the victims he had paid off.
I am a bad man had shocked Indru into silence. She merely followed him to the apartment block, and when they got there, Dwight shook his head. He saw that Padmini was just catching up with them, still looking flustered from the business at the beach.
“No,” he said.
“Yes,” Padmini said. She took his big hand in her small one.
That gave him some strength. He climbed the stairs slowly, feeling weak.
In the room, while Indru watched, Padmini said, “We be good to you.”
The words made him sad, but she had turned away and dropped her sari, and now her little brown made-up face made him sad, her skinny neck, the fuzz of hair on her lower back, the tight globes of her buttocks.
Indru had taken most of her clothes off. She lay on the charpoy wearing a sarong, her heavy breasts hanging, one to the left, one to the right. There was something lewd in the asymmetry, and the way she lolled, half propped up, watching Padmini bend to pick up her sari and fold it.
Dwight tried to laugh, but he was numb all over. The thought that saved him was: I created this. I brought these people here. I gave them my wedding ring to rent the place—it’s all mine. And so I can do whatever I want.