A beggar’s skinny hand appeared at my compartment door, a bruised forearm, a ragged sleeve. Then the doomed cry, “Sahib!”
At Sirpur, just over the border of Andhra Pradesh, the train ground to a halt. Twenty minutes later we were still there. Sirpur is insignificant: the platform is uncovered, the station has two rooms, and there are cows on the veranda. Grass tufts grow out of the ledge of the booking-office window. It smelled of rain and wood smoke and cow dung; it was little more than a hut, dignified with the usual railway signs, of which the most hopeful was TRAINS RUNNING LATE ARE LIKELY TO MAKE UP TIME. Passengers on the Grand Trunk Express began to get out. They promenaded, belching in little groups, grateful for the exercise.
“The engine has packed up,” one man told me. “They are sending for a new one. Delay of two hours.”
Another man said, “If there was a cabinet minister on this train they would have an engine in ten minutes’ time.”
The Tamils were raving on the platform. A native of Sirpur wandered out of the darkness with a sack of roasted chickpeas. He was set upon by the Tamils, who bought all the chickpeas and demanded more. A mob of Tamils gathered at the stationmaster’s window to howl at a man tapping out Morse code with a little key.
I decided to look for a beer, but just outside the station I was in darkness so complete I had second thoughts. The smell of rain on the vegetation gave a humid richness to the air that was almost sweet. There were cows lying on the road: they were white; I could see them clearly. Using the cows as road markers I walked along until I saw a small orange light about fifty yards away. I headed toward it and came to a little hut, a low poky shack with mud walls and a canvas roof. There was a kerosene lantern hanging over the doorway and another inside lighting the surprised faces of half a dozen tea drinkers, two of whom recognized me from the train.
“What do you want?” one said. “I will ask for it.”
“Can I buy a bottle of beer here?”
This was translated. There was laughter. I knew the answer.
“About two kilometers down the road”—the man pointed into the blackness—“there is a bar. You can get beer there.”
“How will I find it?”
“A car,” he said. He spoke again to the man serving tea. “But there is no car here. Have some tea.”
We stood in the hut drinking milky tea out of cracked glasses. A joss stick was lit. No one said a word. The train passengers looked at the villagers; the villagers averted their eyes. The canvas ceiling drooped; the tables were worn shiny; the joss stick filled the room with stinking perfume. The train passengers grew uncomfortable and, in their discomfort, took an exaggerated interest in the calendar, the faded color prints of Shiva and Ganpati. The lanterns flickered in the dead silence as our shadows leaped on the walls.
The Indian who had translated my question said under his breath, “This is the real India!”
“I Find You English Girl”—Madras
THIS WAS WHAT I IMAGINED: SOMEWHERE PAST THE BRICK-and-plaster mansions of Madras, arrayed along Mount Road like so many yellowing wedding cakes, was the Bay of Bengal, on which I would find a breezy seafront restaurant, palm trees, flapping tablecloths. I would sit facing the water, have a fish dinner and five beers, and watch the dancing lights of the little Tamil fishing smacks. Then I would go to bed and be up early for the train to Rameswaram, that village on the tip of India’s nose.
“Take me to the beach,” I said to the taxi driver. He was an unshaven, wild-haired Tamil with his shirt torn open. He had the look of the feral child in the psychology textbook: feral children — mangled, demented Mowglis — abound in South India. It is said they are suckled by wolves.
“Beach Road?”
“That sounds like the place.” I explained that I wanted to eat a fish.
“Twenty rupees.”
“I’ll give you five.”
“Okay, fifteen. Get in.”
We drove about two hundred yards and I realized that I was very hungry: turning vegetarian had confused my stomach with what seemed an imperfect substitute for real food. Vegetables subdued my appetite, but a craving — a carnivorous emotion — remained.
“You like English girls?” The taxi driver was turning the steering wheel with his wrists, as a wolf might, given the opportunity to drive a taxi.
“Very much,” I said.
“I find you English girl.”
“Really?” It seemed an unlikely place to find an English whore — Madras, a city without any apparent prosperity. In Bombay I might have believed it: the sleek Indian businessmen, running in and out of the Taj Mahal Hotel, oozing wealth, and driving at top speed past the sleepers on the sidewalk — they were certainly whore fodder. And in Delhi, city of conferees and delegates, I was told there were lots of European hookers cruising through the lobbies of the plush hotels, promising pleasure with a cheery swing of their hips. But in Madras?
The driver spun in his seat and crossed his heart, two slashes with his long nails. “English girl.”
“Keep your eyes on the road!”
“Twenty-five rupees.”
Three dollars and twenty-five cents.
“Pretty girl?”
“English girl,” he said. “You want?”
I thought this over. It wasn’t the girl but the situation that attracted me. An English girl in Madras, whoring for peanuts. I wondered where she lived, and how, and for how long; what had brought her to the godforsaken place? I saw her as a castaway, a fugitive, like Lena in Conrad’s Victory fleeing a tuneless traveling orchestra in Surabaya. I had once met an English whore in Singapore. She said she was making a fortune. But it wasn’t just the money: she preferred Chinese and Indian men to the English, who were not so quick and, worse, usually wanted to spank her.
The driver noticed my silence and slowed down. In the heavy traffic he turned around once again. His cracked teeth, stained with betel juice, were red and gleaming in the lights from the car behind us. He said, “Beach or girl?”
“Beach,” I said.
He drove for a few minutes more. Surely she was Anglo-Indian—“English” was a euphemism.
“Girl,” I said.
“Beach or girl?”
“Girl, girl, for Heaven’s sake.” It was as if he were trying to make me confess to an especially vicious impulse.
He swung the car around dangerously and sped in the opposite direction, babbling, “Good — nice girls — you like — little house — about two miles — five girls—”
“English girls?”
“English girls.”
The luminous certitude had gone out of his voice but still he nodded, perhaps trying to calm me.
We drove for twenty minutes. We went through streets where kerosene lamps burned at stalls, and past brightly lit textile shops in which clerks in striped pajamas shook out bolts of yellow cloth and sequined saris. I sat back and watched Madras go by, teeth and eyes in dark alleys, nighttime shoppers with full baskets, and endless doorways distinguished by memorable signboards, SANGADA LUNCH HOME, VISHNU SHOE CLINIC, and the dark, funereal THOUSAND LIGHTS RESTAURANT.