A Dead Hand by Paul Theroux Page A

at every step.
    I was bumped. I turned to object and saw a woman wrapped in a sari hovering at my side.
    "Mina?"
    "Indeed, sir."
    "I waited for you at the teashop."
    "I could not enter in. I saw a relation of Mr. Bibhuti Biswas inside. I waited nearby, at the godown."
    "So where shall we go?"
    "Continue footpath this side to cemetery."
    The Park Street Cemetery—I'd been there before on one of my reflective strolls. We walked, Mina and I, without speaking, she keeping slightly ahead of me. When we got to the cemetery gates she moved quickly onto one of the gravel paths at the side and vanished among the tombstones. I did not hurry. I had lost her, but I counted on her to find me. I plodded like a tourist. Deeper into the cemetery, where the tombs were like obelisks and pyramids, the vaults like little villas and classical bungalows, I saw her sitting on a mourner's bench near a big broken tomb—Doric columns, a marble wreath, a winged angel, and bold croaking ravens in the trees and hopping on the ground.
    "Mina."
    "Yes, sir. Here, sir. Thank you."
    "Thank you for getting in touch."
    "Sorry for the hue and cry, sir. I could not reveal myself."
    "You're wearing a sari. I was expecting you in a dress."
    I took a seat beside her and now, as she adjusted her shawl to speak, I could see her face. One whole side was swollen and bruised. Her left eye was rimmed with dark skin, the eye itself reddened, the white of the eye blood-drenched.
    "What happened to you?"
    "Mr. Bibhuti Biswas administered a beating, sir."
    She slipped her shawl off her forearm and I saw bruises there, welts, red and crusted, black broken patches on her dark skin.
    "I breaking the rules, sir. He beat me with a lathi, sir. He calling me
kangali. Bhikhiri.
Other bad names. Then he say, '
Tumi kono kajer na
—
tumi ekdom bekar!
'"
    This outpouring of Bengali left me glassy-eyed, and I was stunned into staring at her.
    "'You totally useless. Totally worthless.' Then he sack me."
    "That's awful."
    "Very bad. What I can do? But I knowing why you come to Ananda Hotel. I knowing about your friend."
    "That there was a dead body in his room?"
    "Dead boy, sir. Rolled in carpet, sir. Like tumbaco in beedee."
    "You saw it?"
    "When they taking it away, we all knowing. Mr. Bibhuti Biswas say
Chup karo.
Not say anything! But it is human child, sir. One of God's children."
    "What could have happened to him?"
    "I cannot know how he dead."
    "No. I mean, how did they dispose of him?"
    "Disposing in pieces, sir. So horrible. I was witness. They used very sharp
dah.
"
    "I mean, in the carpet?"
    "Not carpet afterward. Crate, sir. Steamer trunk, so to say. Maybe in the river. Or in municipal dustcart."
    "We'll never find him."
    "So many people die in Calcutta, sir."
    "Some of them are right here."
    In the stillness of the cemetery, behind the thick perimeter walls, among the high monuments and the ornate inscriptions, the fluted columns and the statuary.
    "But I am liking to come here."
    "For the tombstones?"
    "For the angels, sir. See them."
    Angels kneeling at prayer, angels on plinths in repose. Angels with their wings spread—some of the wings clipped, other angels beheaded—angels sounding trumpets. They were cracked and battered, some of them carved in stone, others in marble, and in this city of peeling paint most of them were mottled or mossgrown, but they were angels nonetheless. The angels put me in mind of the dead boy in the room.
    "But how did he get there?" I asked. Mina was staring at me, her good eye registering concern. "The boy. In the hotel. In the room."
    "I duty manager."
    "At the desk?"
    "Yes. It was a parcel delivery."
    I smiled at the explanation, as I had smiled at
duty manager.
"They delivered a dead body?"
    "A carpet, sir. I sign for it, sir. The carpet was dispatched to room of your friend."
    "What room?"
    "Fifteen. Garden view."
    "Where was the body?"
    "Carpet was parceled. Body was inside."
    Now I saw it: the skinny child rolled in the