Shalimar The Clown_ A Novel Part 4

Boonyi left Pachigam without her husband, because the Americans had only asked Abdullah Noman for a dance act. She had been commanded to give her Anarkali again, to dazzle the capital's grandees on a specially constructed stage in the residence's central atrium, below a pyramidal lantern. Himal and Gonwati were with her, to dance behind and beside her, content with their supporting roles, happy to shine a little in her reflected light. Habib Joo the old dance teacher was going, too, and a trio of musicians. "Pachigam sending a troupe to New Delhi, to the American emba.s.sy," Abdullah Noman said happily at the bus stop, embracing each of them. "What honor you bring on us all."

Shalimar the clown had come to see her off. When the bus arrived, making its usual devil-squawk of a racket and daubed with warnings to motorists and pedestrians alike, Noman climbed onto the roof with her bedroll and made sure everything was safely tied down. When Boonyi said good-bye to him she knew it was an ending. He understood nothing, did not foresee the breaking of his heart. He loved her too much to suspect her of having a traitorous soul. But he was just a clown, and his love led nowhere, would change nothing, would not take her where it was her destiny to go. As she went up through the door of the bus she looked back and saw Shalimar the clown standing with her damaged friend Zoon Misri, a vague drifting presence, half-human, half-phantom, whose place at his side was like a portent of the damage that she, Boonyi, would shortly be inflicting on him. She gave him her best, brightest smile and he lit up in return, as always. This was how she would remember him, his beauty illumined by love. Then the bus set off with a jerk and a rush, and turned a corner, and he was gone, and she began to prepare for what was about to happen. What do you want, What do you want, the amba.s.sador had asked her. She knew what he wanted. He wanted what men want. But to have an answer to his question was important. To know exactly what she wanted and what she was prepared to offer in return. the amba.s.sador had asked her. She knew what he wanted. He wanted what men want. But to have an answer to his question was important. To know exactly what she wanted and what she was prepared to offer in return.

When he came to her she was ready. Edgar Wood, that peculiar young man, had arranged everything perfectly. The dancing girls were allocated comfortable rooms in the Roosevelt House guest wing, and Wood was careful to seek Mrs. Ophuls's approval of the arrangements. Mrs. Ophuls's private suite was at the far end of the building-she and the amba.s.sador preferred not to share a bedroom-and Beaver Wood had handpicked the Marines guarding the route between the distinguished couple's quarters, and also the Marines stationed in the corridor outside the dancing girls' rooms. (After his arrival in New Delhi the Beaver had made it his first business to establish which members of the emba.s.sy security detail he could rely on, the ones who understood that their absolute loyalty lay to the amba.s.sador and not to their Midwestern parents' conservative moral values or even to G.o.d.) It was emba.s.sy policy, Wood informed the young women, that in order to ensure their safety the residence's corridors would be off-limits until breakfast time, even for themselves. Himal and Gonwati made no objection, particularly as their rooms were filled with bolts of fabric, bottles of perfume and necklaces and wrist-cuffs made of antique silver, and with wicker baskets overflowing with good things to eat and drink. With cries of delight they rushed toward their gifts. Meanwhile Habib Joo and his trio of male musicians were taken to a suite of rooms at the Ashoka, where they made the acquaintance of minibars for the first time in their lives and decided contentedly that their religion made a special blind-eye exception for expenses-paid nights away from home in deluxe five-star hotels.

In her room at Roosevelt House, Boonyi examined no sari, smelled no perfume, ate no bonbon. Still wearing the clothes of Anarkali, the tight high scarlet bodice that revealed the slenderness of her midriff and the muscled flatness of her belly, the wide, much-pleated dancer's skirt in emerald green silk edged in gold braid, the white tights below to preserve her modesty when the skirt fanned and flared outwards as she whirled, and the costume jewelry, the "ruby" pendant around her neck, the "golden" nose-ring, the braids of fake pearls in her hair, she sat perfectly still on the edge of her bed, staying "in character," acting the part of the great courtesan waiting for the heir to the Mughal throne. With her hands folded in her lap she waited, without complaint. It was three o'clock in the morning before she heard a single, quiet knock on her door.

He had prepared a declaration in newly learned Kashmiri but she put a finger across his lips. How handsome he was, how much his eyes had seen, how much his body knew. "I can speak some little English," she said-not for nothing was she the daughter of Pyarelal Kaul!-and laughed as his whole body relaxed in surprised relief. She had prepared a speech, too, laboring over it in her racing mind as she lay sleepless during the small hours beside her unknowing husband. This was her stage and it was time for her soliloquy. "Please, I want to be a great dancer," she told him. "So I want a great teacher. Also, I want please to be educated to high standard. And I want a good place to live-please-so that I am not ashamed to receive you there. Finally," and now her voice trembled, "because I will give up much for this, please, sir, I want to hear from your own lips that you will keep me safe."

He was both moved and amused. "I will be guided by you in this," he replied, gravely. "Meh haav tae sae wath. Please show me the way." Whereupon for an hour they hammered out the treaty of their affiliation as if it were a back-channel negotiation or an international arms deal, each recognizing a need in the other that complemented their own. Max Ophuls was actually aroused by the young woman's naked pragmatism. Perhaps her notable openness concerning her ambition foreshadowed an equal openness in lovemaking. He looked forward to discovering if this were so. The negotiation was also pleasing in itself. The details of the "Understanding," as they both elected to call it-though Max privately preferred the term BKN/MO/JSA(C), which more fully summarized the joint statement of accord (cla.s.sified) between Boonyi Kaul Noman and himself-were quickly agreed. Just as mutual self-interest was the only real guarantee of a durable accord between nations, so Boonyi's perception that this liaison was her best chance of furthering her own purposes const.i.tuted a reliable guarantee of her future seriousness and discretion. That the most delicate clause in the unwritten contract proved not to be an obstacle provided Max with a further necessary guarantee. "And for your part, if I do as you require?" he asked her: the question she had known he would ask, and to which, in her thoughts, her answer had been given, refined and given again a thousand and one times. She looked him in the eyes. "In that case I will do anything you want, whenever you want it," she replied in immaculate English. "My body will be yours to command and it will be my joy to obey." Please show me the way." Whereupon for an hour they hammered out the treaty of their affiliation as if it were a back-channel negotiation or an international arms deal, each recognizing a need in the other that complemented their own. Max Ophuls was actually aroused by the young woman's naked pragmatism. Perhaps her notable openness concerning her ambition foreshadowed an equal openness in lovemaking. He looked forward to discovering if this were so. The negotiation was also pleasing in itself. The details of the "Understanding," as they both elected to call it-though Max privately preferred the term BKN/MO/JSA(C), which more fully summarized the joint statement of accord (cla.s.sified) between Boonyi Kaul Noman and himself-were quickly agreed. Just as mutual self-interest was the only real guarantee of a durable accord between nations, so Boonyi's perception that this liaison was her best chance of furthering her own purposes const.i.tuted a reliable guarantee of her future seriousness and discretion. That the most delicate clause in the unwritten contract proved not to be an obstacle provided Max with a further necessary guarantee. "And for your part, if I do as you require?" he asked her: the question she had known he would ask, and to which, in her thoughts, her answer had been given, refined and given again a thousand and one times. She looked him in the eyes. "In that case I will do anything you want, whenever you want it," she replied in immaculate English. "My body will be yours to command and it will be my joy to obey."

Thus all Max's significant requirements were in place: not only discretion and seriousness but also complete docility, absolute compliance, maximum attentiveness, exceptional eagerness to please and unlimited access, all fueled by the girl's determination to better herself, to make the leap from the village to the world, to give herself the future she believed she deserved. The clown of a husband was a problem, but she insisted that Max need not concern himself with this aspect of things as it was something she could easily take care of. Everything was acceptable. Edgar Wood, whose forte was antic.i.p.ation, had already found the apartment, at Type-1 Number-22 Southeast Hira Bagh, two pink rooms with harsh blue-white neon strip-lights and no balcony located in a sage-green concrete bunker of an apartment block in a low-rent residential "colony" to the south of the city center. The rooms were on the floor above the purple-faced Odissi dance guru Jayababu-Pandit Jayanta Mudgal-who would be paid well to teach the girl everything he knew and to be deaf and blind to everything he should not know. Max and Boonyi actually shook hands on the deal. At the age of fifty-five Amba.s.sador Ophuls was being offered a garden of earthly delights. There was, however, a strangeness. In spite of the cynicism of the Understanding, he felt something that had been asleep for a long time and should not have been awakened begin to stir within himself. Desire was to be expected, for he had rarely been in the presence of so beautiful a woman. But the worm stirring in him lay deeper than desire.

"Don't do this," he warned himself. "To fall in love would break the treaty-nothing can come of it but trouble." But the secret creature within him stretched and yawned, climbed out of its almost-forgotten cellar and rose toward the light. He began to smile a foolish smile whenever he thought of her, to visit her more often than was wise, and to lavish gifts on her. She wanted treasures from the U.S. diplomats' store: American cheese in a tin, the new ridged American potato chips that looked like miniature plowed fields, 45 rpm recordings celebrating the joys of surfing and driving fast motorcars, and above all candy bars. Chocolates and sweets, which would be her downfall, entered her life in quant.i.ty for the first time. She also craved the women's fashions of 1966, not the boring Jackie Kennedy pillbox-hat-and-pearls styles but the looks in the magazines she devoured, the Pocahontas headbands, the swirling orange-print shift dresses, the fringed leather jackets, the Mondrian squares of Saint Laurent, the hoop dresses, the s.p.a.ce-age catsuits, the miniskirts, the vinyl, the gloves. She only wore these things in the privacy of the love nest, dressing up eagerly for her lover, giggling at her own daring, and allowing him to undress her as he pleased, to take his time, or to rip the clothes roughly off her body and leave them in shreds on the floor. Edgar Wood, given the task of acquiring and later dispensing these gifts in such a way as to avoid suspicion falling on the amba.s.sador, fulfilled his duties with a growing hostility which Boonyi regally ignored. He got his revenge by insisting on being present to watch her take the daily contraceptive pills that had been Understood to be essential to the deal.

As a result of Max's unexpected romantic infatuation-and also because Boonyi was every bit as attentive as promised-he failed to sense what she had silently been telling him from the beginning, what she a.s.sumed he knew to be a part of their hard-nosed agreement: Don't ask for my heart, because I am tearing it out and breaking it into little bits and throwing it away so I will be heartless but you will not know it because I will be the perfect counterfeit of a loving woman and you will receive from me a perfect forgery of love. Don't ask for my heart, because I am tearing it out and breaking it into little bits and throwing it away so I will be heartless but you will not know it because I will be the perfect counterfeit of a loving woman and you will receive from me a perfect forgery of love.

So there were two unspoken clauses in the Understanding, one regarding the giving of love and the other concerning the withholding of it, codicils that were sharply at odds with each other and impossible to reconcile. The result was, as Max had foreseen, trouble; the biggest Indo-American diplomatic rumpus in history. But for a time the master forger was deceived by the forgery he had bought, both deceived and satisfied, as content to possess it as an art collector who discovers a masterpiece concealed in a mound of garbage, as happy to keep it hidden from view as a collector who can't resist buying what he knows to be stolen property. And that was how it came about that a faithless wife from the village of the bhand pather began to influence, to complicate and even to shape, American diplomatic activity regarding the vexed matter of Kashmir.

Pachigam was a trap, she told herself every night, but the Muskadoon still scurried through her dreams, its cold swift mountain music singing in her ears. She was a girl from the mountains and the climate of the plains affected her badly. When it was summer in Delhi the air conditioners were invariably incapacitated by "load-shedding" power cuts at the hottest times of day. The heat was like a hammer, like a stone. Crushed beneath it, she collapsed onto her illicit bed of shame and thought of Chandanwari, of Manasbal and Shishnag, of flower-carpeted Gulmarg and the eternal snows above, of cool glaciers and bubbling springs and the high ice-temples of the G.o.ds. She heard the soft splash of a heart-shaped oar in the water of a mirror lake, the rustle of chinar leaves, the boatmen's songs and the soft beating of wings, thrushes' wings, mynah wings, the wings of bluet.i.ts and hoopoes, and the top-knotted bulbuls that looked like young girls who had put up their hair. When she closed her eyes she invariably saw her father, her husband, her companions, her appointed place on earth. Not her new lover but her old, lost life. My old life like a prison, My old life like a prison, she told herself savagely, but her heart called her a fool. She had it all upside down and backward, her heart scolded her. What she thought of as her former imprisonment had been freedom, while this so-called liberation was no more than a gilded cage. she told herself savagely, but her heart called her a fool. She had it all upside down and backward, her heart scolded her. What she thought of as her former imprisonment had been freedom, while this so-called liberation was no more than a gilded cage.

She thought of Shalimar the clown and was horrified again by the ease with which she had abandoned him. When she left Pachigam none of her closest people guessed what she was doing, the dolts. None of them tried to save her from herself, and how could she forgive them for that? What idiots they all were! Her husband was super-idiot number one and her father was super-idiot number two and everyone else was pretty close behind. Even after Himal and Gonwati returned to Pachigam without her and the bad talk began, even then Shalimar the clown sent her trusting letters, letters haunted by the phantom of their murdered love. I reach out to you and touch you without touching you as on the riverbank in the old days. I know you are following your dream but that dream will always bring you back to me. If the Amrikan is of a.s.sistance well and good. People always talk lies but I know your heart is true. I sit with folded hands and await your loving return. I reach out to you and touch you without touching you as on the riverbank in the old days. I know you are following your dream but that dream will always bring you back to me. If the Amrikan is of a.s.sistance well and good. People always talk lies but I know your heart is true. I sit with folded hands and await your loving return. She lay perspiring on her bed, held captive by the chains of her enslaving solitude, and tore the letters into smaller and smaller pieces. They were letters that humiliated both their author and their recipient, letters that had no business existing, that should never have been sent. Such thoughts should never have come into being, and would not have, were it not for the enfeebled mind of that man without honor whom it was her shame to have espoused. She lay perspiring on her bed, held captive by the chains of her enslaving solitude, and tore the letters into smaller and smaller pieces. They were letters that humiliated both their author and their recipient, letters that had no business existing, that should never have been sent. Such thoughts should never have come into being, and would not have, were it not for the enfeebled mind of that man without honor whom it was her shame to have espoused.

The paper sc.r.a.ps fell from her enervated summer hand and floated like snowflakes to the bedroom floor, and indeed the messages they bore were as irrelevant to her new life as snow. What kind of husband was he anyway, this clown? Was he storming the capital in his wrath like a Muslim conqueror of old, a Tughlaq or Khilji at least if not a Mughal, or, like Lord Ram, was he at least sending the monkey-G.o.d Hanuman to find her before he launched his lethal attack on her abductor, the American Ravan? No, he was mooning over her picture and weeping into the waters of the stupid Muskadoon like an impotent goof, accepting his fate like a true Kashmiri coward, content to be trampled over by anyone who felt like doing a bit of trampling, a wrong-headed duffer who quarreled with his brother Anees who at least had the guts to take matters into his own hands and blow up a few useless things. He was behaving like the performing dog he was, a creature who imitated life to make people laugh but who had not the slightest understanding of how a man should live.

On the night she first lay with him, she remembered, he had menaced her lovingly, swearing to pursue her and take her life, hers and her children's, if she ever did what she had just so callously done. What empty words men spoke when they had had their way with a woman. He was a weakling, a strutting turkey-c.o.c.k, a fool. In his place she would have hunted herself down and murdered herself in a gutter, like a dog, so that the shame of it would outlive her.

The letters stopped. But still every night in her dreams he came to her, walking the high wire, jumping rope in the sky, bouncing on air as if it were a trampoline, playing leapfrog with his brothers along the high thin line, pretending to slip on an invisible banana skin, windmilling his arms, saving himself, regaining his balance, then slipping on a second imaginary banana skin and falling in a skillfully chaotic tumble all the way to the ground, a finale that always brought the house down. In her dreams she smiled at his genius but when she woke the smile withered and died.

In short, she could not get her cuckolded husband out of her mind, and because it was impossible to talk to her American lover about anything important she spoke heatedly of "Kashmir" instead. Whenever she said "Kashmir" she secretly meant her husband, and this ruse allowed her to declare her love for the man she had betrayed to the man with whom she had committed the act of treason. More and more often she spoke of her love for this encoded "Kashmir," arousing no suspicion, even when her p.r.o.nouns occasionally slipped, so that she referred to his mountains, his valleys, his gardens, his flowing streams, his flowers, his stags, his fish. Her American lover was obviously too stupid to crack the code, and attributed the p.r.o.noun slippage to her incomplete command of the language. However he, the amba.s.sador, took careful note of her pa.s.sion, and was plainly moved when she was at her angriest, when she castigated "Kashmir" for his cowardice, for his pa.s.sivity in the face of the horrible crimes committed against him. "These crimes," he asked, reclining on her pillows, caressing her naked back, kissing her exposed hip, pinching her nipple, "these would be actions of the Indian armed forces you're talking about?" At that moment she decided that the term "Indian armed forces" would secretly refer to the amba.s.sador himself, she would use the Indian presence in the valley as a surrogate for the American occupation of her body, so, "Yes, that's it," she cried, "the 'Indian armed forces,' raping and pillaging. How can you not know it? How can you not comprehend the humiliation of it, the shame of having your boots march all over my private fields?" Again, those telltale slips of the tongue. Your boots, my fields. Again, distracted by her inflamed beauty, he paid no attention to the errors. "Yes, dearest," he said in a m.u.f.fled voice from between her thighs, "I believe I do begin to understand, but would it be possible to table the subject for the moment?"

Time pa.s.sed. Max Ophuls knew that Boonyi Noman did not love him but at first he shut the knowledge away, blinding himself to its consequences, because she had taken up temporary residence in a tender corner of his heart. He knew she hid a great deal of herself from him, exposing only her body, like a true courtesan, like any common wh.o.r.e, but he agreed with himself to forget this, deceiving himself into believing that she reciprocated what he was pleased to call his love. And he allowed her diatribes on the "occupation" of "Kashmir" to affect his thinking, never suspecting that she was secretly railing against himself and against the ineffectual husband who had failed to come to her rescue. He began to object, in private session and in public speeches, to the militarization of the Kashmir valley, and when the word oppressors oppressors pa.s.sed his lips for the first time the bubble of his popularity finally burst. pa.s.sed his lips for the first time the bubble of his popularity finally burst.

Newspaper editorials lambasted him. Here, they said, here beneath all the phony Indiaphile posturing, was just another cheap "cigarette" (this was a slang term meaning a Pak-American, an American with Pakistani sympathies, a play on the name of the Pak-American Tobacco Company), just another uncomprehending gringo. America was trampling over southeast Asia, Vietnamese children's bodies were burning with unquenchable napalm fire, and yet the American amba.s.sador had the gall to speak of oppression. "America should put its own house in order," thundered India's editorial writers, "and stop telling us how to take care of our own land." It was at this point that Edgar Wood, correctly identifying the source of the amba.s.sador's problems, decided that Boonyi Noman had to go.

Observe him, this unctuous rodent, this Eager Beaver Wood, this invisible, scurrying oiler of wheels, this subterranean enabler of the visible, this lizard person, this snake at the mountain's root! A pimp of this ilk, a pander of this water would seem to be ill equipped for the burdensome work of moral disapproval. It is not easy to look down on others when one's own position lacks elevation. Yet the feat was achieved by the ever-resourceful and duplicitous Wood, who proceeded entirely by inversions. The child of a Bostonian prelate (and therefore a Brahmin of sorts himself), he had turned away from religion at an early age. Having rejected religious observance, he nevertheless continued to harbor a secret love of sanctimony and pomp. Being covertly pompous and sanctimonious, he affected humility and open-minded tolerance. Being humble, he concealed within himself an overweening pride. Being prideful, he offered himself to Max Ophuls as a selfless devotee, an effacer of his own needs, a do-everything, see-nothing man without qualities, a servitor, a low footstool for his high master's shoe. Thus, though low-natured, he was still able to consider himself high-minded. See him now, coursing through the streets of the Indian capital in a little phut-phut scooter-rickshaw, his white kurta flapping in the wind. Behold the simple chappals chappals on his feet. See him arrive at his residential quarters, and note, if you please, the Indian artworks and memorabilia therein, the Madhubani painting, the Warli tribal art, the miniatures of the Kashmiri and Company schools. Is this not the very picture of a Westerner gone native? Yet this same Wood was privately convinced of the innate superiority of the West, and filled with a shadowy contempt for the nation whose style he sought so a.s.siduously to ape. He was tormented, we may grant him that. Such tergiversations of the soul, such twists in the psyche, such tortuous contradictions between the apparent and the actual, would certainly be painful, we may concede, to endure. on his feet. See him arrive at his residential quarters, and note, if you please, the Indian artworks and memorabilia therein, the Madhubani painting, the Warli tribal art, the miniatures of the Kashmiri and Company schools. Is this not the very picture of a Westerner gone native? Yet this same Wood was privately convinced of the innate superiority of the West, and filled with a shadowy contempt for the nation whose style he sought so a.s.siduously to ape. He was tormented, we may grant him that. Such tergiversations of the soul, such twists in the psyche, such tortuous contradictions between the apparent and the actual, would certainly be painful, we may concede, to endure.

Such a coiled and doubled man-serpent would have been too formidable an adversary for a heavily compromised and largely defenseless young woman in any case, but the truth was that she made his task much easier than he expected; and so, finally, did Max. Things in Delhi had not gone as Boonyi Kaul Noman would have wished. Pink, in her two small lonely rooms, rapidly became the color of her isolation and self-loathing. The blue-white of the neon strip-lighting became the color of judgment, a harsh contemptuous glare that erased shadows and left her no place to hide. And as for the sage-green color of her dance guru's apartment walls, well, that became the color of her failure. The Odissi master Pandit Mudgal had been scornful of her from the first. He was the guru of Sonal Karnaa and k.u.mk.u.m Segal! He had taught Alarmel Mansingh! He was the master of Kiran Qunango! No man had done more than he to popularize the Odissi dance form! Where would they all be without him-Aloka Panigrahi, Sanjukta Sarukkai, Protima Mahapatra, Madhavi Mohanty? And now in his mottled old age came this raw, lazy village girl, this kept woman, this nothing. She was a rich American's toy, and he despised her for that; somewhat he despised himself for taking the Yankee dollars and becoming party to the arrangement, and this, too, he held against her. The lessons had gone badly from the start; nor had there been much subsequent improvement. At length Pandit Mudgal, a thickset man with the physiognomy-and all the sensuality-of an outsized eggplant, told her, "Yes, madam, s.e.x appeal you have, that we can all see. You move and men watch you. That is only one thing. Great mastery requires a great soul and your soul, madam, is d.a.m.ned." She fled weeping from his sight and the next day the amba.s.sador sent Edgar Wood to tell Mudgal that his salary would be increased-doubled!-if he persevered. Like Charles Foster Kane trying to make a singer out of his discordant wife, Max Ophuls tried to buy what could not be bought, and failed. Jayababu, once long, lean and beautiful and now a dark brinjal of a man, an ill-tempered eggplant, refused the cash.

"I am a man for a challenge," he told Edgar Wood. "But this girl is not for me. Hers is not the high calling, but the low."

Max's attention began to wander after that, though for a long time he refused to acknowledge the change in himself. He stayed away from Boonyi for longer periods. Once or twice he dined privately with his wife. Peggy Ophuls was annoyed with herself for feeling so pleased. She was legendary for her toughness but with him she was always weak. How easily she came back to him, how pathetically she opened her arms and let him slink shamefacedly home! He murmured something about the old days, about the Pat Line or the Lyons Corner House, and at once floods of repressed emotion surged through her body. He did his imitation of the vocal style of Mrs. Shanti d.i.c.kens of Porchester Terrace as she relished the day's crime reports-"Wery wery hawful, sir, hisn't it? Maybe 'e is heatin' 'er for 'is tea!"-and tears of laughter stood in the Grey Rat's eyes. This time had been the hardest of all for her. She had lost him for so long that she had feared she would never get him back. But here he was, coming round to face her again. This was what they had, she told herself, this inevitability. They were built to last. She raised a gla.s.s to him and a smile trembled at the corners of her mouth. I am the most deluded woman in the world, she thought. But look at him, here he is. My man.

None of Max Ophuls's amours ever lasted very long before he came to India. Boonyi had been different. This was "love," and the nature of love was-was it not?-to endure. Or was that just one of the mistakes people made about love, Max got to wondering. Was he clothing an essentially savage, irrational thing in the garb of civilization, dolling it up in the dress shirt of endurance, the silk trousers of constancy, the frock coat of solicitude and the top hat of selflessness? Like Tarzan the ape man when he came to London or New York: the natural rendered unnatural. But under all the fancy apparel the untamable, unkind reality still remained, a feral thing more gorilla-like than human. Something having less to do with sweetness and tenderness and caring and more to do with spoor and territory and grooming and domination and s.e.x. Something provisional, no matter what sort of treaties you acceded to, signed marriage contracts or private statements of accord.

When he began to speak in this way the matador Edgar Wood understood that the bull was tiring, and sent in the picadors, or, to be precise, the picadoras. The beauties he aimed at Max were carefully selected from the upper echelons of Delhi and Bombay society to make Boonyi look bad. They were wealthy, cultured, accomplished, extraordinary women. They circled him from a distance, then moved closer in. The lances of their flirtatious regard, their graceful motion, their touch, speared him time and time again. He fell to his knees. He was almost ready for the sword.

So perhaps it was her failure to be exceptional as well as beautiful that d.a.m.ned Boonyi, or perhaps it was just the pa.s.sage of time. Shut away in her pink shame, sometimes for days on end (for the amba.s.sador was an increasingly busy man), with only the opprobrium of her dance master for company, she slid downwards toward ruin, slowly at first and then with gathering speed. The excess of Delhi deranged her, its surfeit of muchness, its fecal odors, its h.e.l.lish noise, its anonymity, its uncaring crowd of the desperate fighting to survive. She became addicted to chewing tobacco, keeping a little cud of it nestled between her lower molars and her cheek. To pa.s.s the empty time she frequently fell ill in a languid, faux-consumptive way, and (more truthfully) suffered often from stress, depression, hypertension, stomach trouble and all the other hysteric ailments, and so as the slow months pa.s.sed she began to learn about medication, about the capacity of tablets and capsules and potions to make the world seem other than it was, faster, slower, more exciting, calmer, happier, more peaceful, kinder, wilder, better. Pandit Mudgal's thirteen-year-old hamal, hamal, the household boy whom the dance teacher periodically bedded in an offhand, seigneurial manner, led Boonyi deeper into the psychotropical jungle, teaching her about the household boy whom the dance teacher periodically bedded in an offhand, seigneurial manner, led Boonyi deeper into the psychotropical jungle, teaching her about afim: afim: opium. After that she curled herself into the metamorphic smoke whenever she could, and dreamed thickly of lost joy while time, cruelly, continued to pa.s.s. opium. After that she curled herself into the metamorphic smoke whenever she could, and dreamed thickly of lost joy while time, cruelly, continued to pa.s.s.

But her narcotic of choice turned out to be food. At a certain point early in the second year of her liberated captivity, she began, with great seriousness and a capacity for excess learned from the devil-city itself, to eat. If her world would not expand, her body could. She took to gluttony with the same bottomless enthusiasm she had once had for s.e.x, diverting the immense force of her erotic requirements from her bed to her table. She ate seven times a day, guzzling down a proper breakfast, then a midmorning plate, then a full luncheon, then a midafternoon array of sweet delicacies, then a hearty dinner, then a second dinner at bedtime, and finally a fridge-raiding gobble in the small hours before dawn. Yes, she was a wh.o.r.e, she admitted to herself with a twist of the heart, but she would at least be an extremely well-fed one.

Of all this her keeper Edgar Wood was fully aware, and in all of it he was wholly complicit. If she was setting out down the road to self-destruction (he reasoned), who was he to prevent her? It saved him the difficulty of steering her down exactly such a path. Without a word to his master he brought her the chewing tobacco that was ruining her smile, filled her little bathroom cabinet with pills to pop, clouded her mind with opium, and above all arranged for food to be cooked and delivered, food by the basketful, the trolleyful, delivered by unmarked car or by a dependable tiffin-runner pushing a laden two-wheeled wooden cart. All this he did with a sober grace that entirely deceived her. She had never trusted him until now, but his immaculate courtesy and her growing list of addictions forged a kind of trust, or at least pushed her to set the issue of his trustworthiness to one side. Pragmatism ruled; he was the only one who could satisfy her now. In a sense, he had become her lover, supplanting the amba.s.sador. He was the one who gave her what she needed.

Edgar Wood himself was far too proper to make any such suggestion. He was simply there to be of a.s.sistance, he a.s.sured Boonyi. Nothing was too good for the woman the amba.s.sador had chosen to love. She had only to ask. And ask she did. It was as if the nostalgic memory of the Kashmiri "super-wazwaan," the Banquet of Sixty Courses Maximum, had possessed her and driven her insane. Once she understood that Edgar was prepared to satisfy her every whim she grew increasingly promiscuous and peremptory in her gourmandizing. She sent for Kashmiri food, of course, but also for the tandoori and Mughlai cuisines of north India, the boti kabab boti kababs, the murgh makhani, murgh makhani, and for the fish dishes of the Malabar coast, for the and for the fish dishes of the Malabar coast, for the masala dosa masala dosas of Madras and the fabled early pumpkins of the coast of Coromandel, for the hot pickle curries of Hyderabad, for kulfi kulfi and and barfi barfi and and pista-ki-lauz, pista-ki-lauz, and for sweet Bengali and for sweet Bengali sandesh. sandesh. Her appet.i.te had grown to subcontinental size. It crossed all frontiers of language and custom. She was vegetarian and nonvegetarian, fish- and meat-eating, Hindu, Christian and Muslim, a democratic, secularist omnivore. Her appet.i.te had grown to subcontinental size. It crossed all frontiers of language and custom. She was vegetarian and nonvegetarian, fish- and meat-eating, Hindu, Christian and Muslim, a democratic, secularist omnivore.

Elsewhere in the world it was the summer of love.

Inevitably her beauty dimmed. Her hair lost its l.u.s.ter, her skin coa.r.s.ened, her teeth rotted, her body odor soured, and her bulk-ah! her bulk-increased steadily, week by week, day by day, almost hour by hour. Her head rattled with pills, her lungs were full of poppies. Soon the pretense of lessons was dropped. The general education she had requested as part of her deal with the amba.s.sador had ceased long ago; she had always been too lazy to be a good student, even in Pachigam. Now the dancing also fell away. Pandit Mudgal stayed downstairs with his young hamal, and Boonyi lived above him in a perpetual daze, with her head in a chemical spin and her belly full of food. Edgar Wood, her candyman, allowed himself to wonder idly if her astonishingly self-destructive behavior might be a deliberate suicide attempt, but quite frankly he wasn't interested enough in her interior life to pursue the thought. What interested him more was the durability of the amba.s.sador's feeling for her. Max went on visiting her for a considerable time after she had pa.s.sed what Edgar Wood privately called the point of revoltingness. It must be like sleeping not only on but with a stinking foam mattress, he thought with a fastidious shudder: yeuchh. yeuchh. According to Mudgal's boy, a voyeuristic youth whom Wood was paying for information, the amba.s.sador liked the Kashmiri woman's use during lovemaking of her teeth and clawlike nails. Like many others, Edgar Wood had read Max Ophuls's unusually frank account of his wartime exploits. How strange, he thought, that the famous anti-n.a.z.i should still be aroused by his memory of the s.e.xual preferences of the fascist Ursula Brandt, the Panther, whom he had f.u.c.ked for the Cause. How very strange that a bloated Kashmiri woman should close that s.e.xual circle, so that he went on needing her services long after she had ceased to be attractive. In the end, however, the break was made; the amba.s.sador stopped visiting Boonyi. "It's impossible," he told Edgar Wood. "See that she is taken care of, the poor wretch. What a wreck she has made of herself." According to Mudgal's boy, a voyeuristic youth whom Wood was paying for information, the amba.s.sador liked the Kashmiri woman's use during lovemaking of her teeth and clawlike nails. Like many others, Edgar Wood had read Max Ophuls's unusually frank account of his wartime exploits. How strange, he thought, that the famous anti-n.a.z.i should still be aroused by his memory of the s.e.xual preferences of the fascist Ursula Brandt, the Panther, whom he had f.u.c.ked for the Cause. How very strange that a bloated Kashmiri woman should close that s.e.xual circle, so that he went on needing her services long after she had ceased to be attractive. In the end, however, the break was made; the amba.s.sador stopped visiting Boonyi. "It's impossible," he told Edgar Wood. "See that she is taken care of, the poor wretch. What a wreck she has made of herself."

When the man of power withdraws his protection from a concubine, she becomes like a child abandoned in wolf-infested hills. Mowgli's adoption by the Seeonee pack is untypical; this is not the way such stories usually develop. Boonyi Noman, prostrate on her groaning bed, gasping beneath the weight of her own body, saw Edgar Wood enter her quarters like a predator, without the civility of a knock or a word of greeting and with murder in his eyes, and understood that the crisis was upon her. It was time to tell him her secret.

Edgar Wood heard the news of her pregnancy and accepted that he had been outwitted by a master. He had come to terminate the Understanding, to give Boonyi a final cash payment, a ticket to oblivion and a warning of the dangers of future indiscretion, and he came to her in an ugly way because it was an ugly duty he had to perform, because the man whose ugly deed this was didn't have the decency to come here himself. But before he could deliver his message of ugliness she played her trump. He had brought her a contraceptive pill every day without fail and had watched her place it in her mouth, take a gulp of water and swallow, but plainly she had fooled him, she had tongued the pills to one side, concealing them beneath those ever-present wads of chewing tobacco, and now she was carrying the amba.s.sador's child, and she was many months pregnant. She had grown so obese that the pregnancy had been invisible, it lay hidden somewhere inside her fat, and it was too late to think about an abortion, she was too far advanced and the risks were too great. "Congratulations," said Edgar Wood. "We underestimated you." "I want to see him," Boonyi answered. "Tell him to come at once."

In one version of the story of the dancing girl Anarkali, the Emperor Akbar himself spoke to the young beauty and persuaded her that Prince Salim's love affair with her must end, that she must trick him into believing she no longer loved him so that he could go away from her and return to the path of destiny that would lead him eventually to the throne; and, just as in La Traviata, La Traviata, just like Violetta giving up Alfredo after the visit from his father Germont, she agreed. But Boonyi was no longer Anarkali, she had lost her beauty and could no longer dance, and the amba.s.sador was n.o.body's son but the man of power himself. And Anarkali didn't get pregnant. Stories were stories and real life was real life, naked, ugly, and finally impossible to cosmeticize in the greasepaint of a tale. Max Ophuls came to Boonyi's pink bedroom that night. He stood before her bed in the dark, leaning forward slightly and clutching at his straw hat's brim with both his trembling hands. The sight of her ballooning, cetacean body still had the power to shock him. What lay within it, what was growing daily in her womb, was even more of a shock. His child was taking shape in there. It would be his firstborn child. "What do you want," he asked in a low voice, while dark thoughts and wild emotions rioted in his inner squares and streets. just like Violetta giving up Alfredo after the visit from his father Germont, she agreed. But Boonyi was no longer Anarkali, she had lost her beauty and could no longer dance, and the amba.s.sador was n.o.body's son but the man of power himself. And Anarkali didn't get pregnant. Stories were stories and real life was real life, naked, ugly, and finally impossible to cosmeticize in the greasepaint of a tale. Max Ophuls came to Boonyi's pink bedroom that night. He stood before her bed in the dark, leaning forward slightly and clutching at his straw hat's brim with both his trembling hands. The sight of her ballooning, cetacean body still had the power to shock him. What lay within it, what was growing daily in her womb, was even more of a shock. His child was taking shape in there. It would be his firstborn child. "What do you want," he asked in a low voice, while dark thoughts and wild emotions rioted in his inner squares and streets.

"I want to tell you what I think of you," she said.

Her English had improved and he had learned her language too. At their closest they had sometimes forgotten which language they were speaking; the two tongues blurred into one. As they drifted apart so did their speech. Now she spoke her own language and he spoke his. Each understood the other well enough. He had known there would be abuse and there was abuse. There were empty threats and accusations of betrayal. All this he comprehended. Look at me, she was saying. I am your handiwork made flesh. You took beauty and created hideousness, and out of this monstrosity your child will be born. Look at me. I am the meaning of your deeds. I am the meaning of your so-called love, your destructive, selfish, wanton love. Look at me. Your love looks just like hatred. I never spoke of love, she was saying. I was honest and you have turned me into your lie. This is not me. This is not me. This is you.

And then came another, older line of attack. I should have known, she was saying. I should have known better than to lie with a Jew. The Jews are our enemy and I should have known.

The past reared up. Briefly he saw again the army of the Jewish fallen. He set the memory aside. The wheel had turned. In this moment of his story he was not the victim. In this moment she, not he, had the right to claim kinship with the lost. At least I never spoke of love, she was saying. I kept my love for my husband though my body served you, Jew. Look what you have made of the body I gave you. But my heart is still my own.

"You never loved me, then," he said, hanging his head, when she had finished. He sounded ridiculously false and hypocritical even to himself. She was laughing at him, viciously. Does a rat love the snake that gobbles it up, she was asking. He winced at the sharpness of her tongue, at the violence welling up in her. "You will be well looked after. Everything you need," he said, and turned to go. In the doorway he paused. "I once loved a Rat," he said. "Maybe you were the snake that ate her."

The scandal broke a week later. A baby changed things. A pregnancy could not be winked at. Max Ophuls never found out who leaked the information to the papers-Boonyi herself, or the eggplant dancing master downstairs, or his young catamite, or one of the group of drivers and security guards handpicked for their alleged discretion by Edgar Wood, or even Wood himself, Wood washing his hands after many years of his master's grubby work-but within days of Max's last meeting with Boonyi, every journalist in the city had the story.

It was not the biggest story of the period, but it fed naturally into those stories. The working committee of the national conference of Jammu and Kashmir had unanimously pa.s.sed a resolution calling for a permanent merger of the state with India. Indira Gandhi had asked for and been given powers to outlaw groups that questioned Indian sovereignty over the valley. A Kashmiri girl ruined and destroyed by a powerful American gave the Indian government an opportunity to look like it would stand up and defend Kashmiris against marauders of all types-to defend the honor of Kashmir as stoutly as it would defend that of any other integral part of India. Nothing less than Max's head on a plate would do. His friend Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan had retired from the presidency; the new president, Zakir Hussain, was making angry statements in private about the G.o.dless American's exploitation of an innocent Hindu girl. n.o.body had said the words s.e.xual a.s.sault s.e.xual a.s.sault yet but Max knew they could not be far from people's lips. He was no longer the well-beloved lover of India, but her heartless ravisher. And Indira Gandhi was out for blood. yet but Max knew they could not be far from people's lips. He was no longer the well-beloved lover of India, but her heartless ravisher. And Indira Gandhi was out for blood.

The Vietnam War was at its height and so was American unpopularity in Asia. Draft cards were burned in Central Park and Martin Luther King led a protest march to the United Nations and in India the G.o.dd.a.m.n American amba.s.sador was apparently f.u.c.king the local peasantry. So war-torn America turned on Max as well, his alleged oppression of Boonyi becoming a sort of allegory of Vietnam. Norman Mailer wrote about Boonyi and Max as if she were the countryside near Saigon and he was Operation Cedar Falls. Joan Baez made up a song about them. These interventions were not sympathetic to Max Ophuls. It was as if his previous selves were erased overnight-the Resistance hero, the bestselling author, the economic genius, the famous lover of his equally heroic wife, and the Flying Jew-and standing in their place was this Bluebeard-like ogre, this s.e.xual predator who was fit for nothing but gelding. Tarring and feathering were too good for the likes of him. Che Guevara was killed around then, and that was just about the only thing that happened that wasn't laid at Max's door.

Back then there were no "media sieges" in the modern sense. All-India Radio sent a radio reporter to stand uncertainly outside the sage-green apartment building at Type-1 Number-22 Southeast Hira Bagh, holding out his microphone as if it were a begging bowl. Doordarshan, in those days the only television channel, sent a cameraman and sound recordist. The text of what they were permitted to say in commentary would no doubt be handed down later from the prime minister's office, so there was no need to send a journalist. There was a man from the PTI news agency and two or three other men from the print media. They saw Odissi dancing divas come and go, and Jayababu's boy running errands. The anonymous occupants of other apartments in the same building had seen nothing, knew nothing, shied away from the cameras and microphones as if from danger, and fled. Just once the great Jayababu himself sallied forth to scold the press for making too much noise and disturbing his dance cla.s.s, whereupon the abashed reporters at once commenced to speak in whispers. Of the princ.i.p.al actors in the drama there was no sign. At mealtimes the watchers dispersed to seek refreshment, and they soon lost interest in staying at their posts. Delhi in winter was cold as a ghost and in the mornings and evenings the fog came down and pushed its clammy hands through your skin and froze your bones. There was no need for anyone to stay. The news was being constructed elsewhere. The American amba.s.sador was being withdrawn in disgrace. The U.S. emba.s.sy was the place to be. Hira Bagh was just a gossipy footnote. In the winter mist it looked like a phantom world.

One fog-white night, at about three o'clock in the morning, long after the gentlemen of the press had departed, a hooded figure arrived at Boonyi's pink apartment. When the pregnant woman beached on her bed like a stranded sea-monster heard the key turning in her front door she a.s.sumed it was Edgar Wood making his nocturnal food run. These days he only visited her in the middle of the night, arriving out of breath, burdened by huge amounts of edibles. She had no sympathy for him. He was a necessary side effect of a sick life, like vomit. "I'm hungry," she called out. "You're late." He came into the bedroom wincing as if he were a schoolboy in a bully's armlock, a child whose ear was being twisted by a disciplinarian aunt. The hooded figure followed him into the room, unveiled herself, and looked Boonyi over with a brisk, nannyish sympathy. "Oh, dear me," she said. "Dear me, what a dreadful . . . ha! Can you believe it, my dear, I almost envied-haha!-oh, leave it.-But there's this. I almost forgave him. Can you believe that that?-Extraordinary.-But I almost did, in spite of everything. In spite, my dear, of you.-But look at you. No discipline. We can't have this.-Hmm.-Edgar, you vile sticky creature, have you made the arrangements?-Well, of course you have, it's what you do.-It's what he does, dear. Yes, you loathe him too, of course you do, everyone does.-Harrumph.-We're going to get you away from here, my dear.-You'll be needing care. We'll see you through.-Oh, I see. You misunderstand me.-No, my husband did not send me here. He has left the country. He has left the diplomatic service. However, let me be plain, he has not left me. It is I who have left him.-You follow?-Hmm?-Left him after everything and in spite of everything and at the end of it all.-Oh, let it go.-The point is to get you somewhere else. No more prying eyes and a spot of good medical care.-Hmm?-How far gone are you? Seven months?-More? Eight? Aha. Eight. Good. Won't be long, then. Oh, get on with it, Edgar, for Christ's sake.-Edgar's been sacked too, dear, I thought you'd like to know. I'll make sure this little s.h.i.t never works for his country again, I promise you that.-Tonight's your last hurrah, isn't it, Edgar? Outlived your blasted usefulness, I'd say.-Poor Edgar. What will you do?-Ha!-No, on reflection, I don't think we're going to worry about you, are we, dear?-No.-Well then, Edgar: where's the bally van?"

"Around the corner." Thus Edgar Wood through gritted teeth. "But I warned you she might be too big to fit through the door." Margaret Rhodes Ophuls whirled to face him, shriveling him in the dragon-fire of her gaze. "Quite right, Edgar," she said, sweetly. "So you did. Run along then, and fetch the b.l.o.o.d.y sledgehammer."

Boonyi gave birth to a baby daughter in a clean, simple bedroom in Father Joseph Ambrose's Holy Love of India Evangalactic Girls' Orphanage for Disabled & Dest.i.tute Street Girls, located at 77-A, Ward-5, Mehrauli, an inst.i.tution that had benefited greatly from the ex-amba.s.sador's wife's fund-raising skills and personal largesse. In spite of everyone at the Evangalactic Orphanage's affection and admiration for Peggy-Mata, the new resident she had foisted on them was not initially popular. Every detail of Boonyi's story somehow became common knowledge at the orphanage almost at once. There were girls at the Evangalactic who had been rescued from the wh.o.r.ehouses of Old Delhi at the age of nine, and these children gathered outside Boonyi's door and conversed in loud, impolite voices about the fallen rich man's tart who had actually chosen the demeaning life from which they had managed to escape. There were girls who looked like giant spiders because of spinal problems that obliged them to walk on all fours, and they joined the former child prost.i.tutes to jeer at this new type of cripple, who had rendered herself almost immobile through sheer gluttony. There were country girls who had fled to the big city from the dirty old men to whom they had been betrothed-or, rather, sold into betrothal-and these girls, too, added to the crowd at Boonyi's door to express their disbelief that a woman should leave a good man who had truly loved her.

Things were on the brink of getting out of hand, until Father Ambrose, nudged by Peggy Ophuls, addressed the girls and shamed them into something like compa.s.sion. "The holy love of India brought all of you to the harbor of this safe place," Father Ambrose, a young but charismatic Catholic priest who had grown up in a Keralan fishing village and was accordingly fond of maritime metaphors, rebuked his charges. "G.o.d's love cast out its nets for you upon the filthy seas in which you swam. G.o.d caught up your souls from the black water and revealed your shining light. Show me, then, that you, too, can be fishers of the spirit. Cast out the nets of your compa.s.sion and bring back to a safe place this new soul crying out for your love."

After Father Ambrose's little speech Peggy Ophuls was able to find a few willing helpers, not only a doctor and a midwife but also girls to cook for Boonyi, and to wash her and oil her and comb her tangled hair. Mrs. Ophuls made no attempt to limit the damaged woman's food intake. "Let's have the child out safely," she told Father Ambrose and the orphans (who muttered sullenly, but made no objection). "Then we can think about the mother."

In due course the baby was born. Boonyi, cradling her daughter, named her Kashmira. "Do you hear me?" she whispered into the little girl's ear. "Your name is Kashmira Noman, and I'm going to take you home."

This was when Peggy Ophuls's face hardened and she revealed her darker purpose, unveiling the secret she had kept hidden until this moment beneath the cloak of her apparently boundless altruism. "Young lady," she said, "it's time to face facts. You want to go home, you say?" Yes, replied Boonyi, it is the only thing I now want in the world. "Hmm," said Peggy Ophuls. "Home to that husband of yours in Pachigam. The one who never came for you. The one who stopped writing. The clown." Boonyi's eyes filled with tears. "Yes, my dear, I make it my business to know-Ha! I see!-That's the chap you're going back to with another man's baby in your arms?-Mmm?-And you imagine that's the chap who will give this little girl his name-Kashmira Noman-and take her for his own, and then it's off into the sunset for a spot of happily ever after?" The tears were streaming down Boonyi's face. "That's a nonstarter, my dear," said Peggy Ophuls unsentimentally, moving in for the kill. "Noman, indeed!-That's not her name. And what did you say? indeed!-That's not her name. And what did you say? Kashmira? Kashmira? No, no, darling. That can't be her future." Something new in the tone of her voice made Boonyi dry her tears. No, no, darling. That can't be her future." Something new in the tone of her voice made Boonyi dry her tears.

"Tell you what, though," added Peggy Ophuls, as if the idea had just occurred to her. "Here's a bit of a plan.-Are you listening? You'd do well to listen." Boonyi was paying attention now. "It's winter," said Peggy Ophuls. "The road over the Pir Panjal is closed. No way into the valley by land.-No matter.-I can give you what you want. I can get an aircraft to fly you in. You're probably more than one seat wide. That can be taken into account.-You don't have to worry about nursing the child. I have a wet nurse standing by.-You can probably travel in, what, a week? Let's say a week. I can have a comfortable vehicle waiting for you at the other end to drive you back to Pachigam in style. How does that sound?-Hmm?-Sounds good, I expect. Ha! Of course it does."

Boonyi's tears had dried. "Please, I do not understand," she said at last. "What is the need for a wet nurse?" As the words left her lips she saw the answer to the question in her benefactress's eyes.

"Do you know the tale of Rumplestiltskin?" asked Peggy Ophuls, dreamily. "No, of course you don't.-Well, in brief.-Once upon a time there was a miller's daughter who was told by one of those whimsical fairy-tale kings, If you have not spun this straw into gold by tomorrow morning, you must die.- If you have not spun this straw into gold by tomorrow morning, you must die.-You know the type of fellow I mean, dear.-They'll screw you or chop off your head, those killer princes, love and death being the same sort of thing to them. They'll screw you and and chop off your head. They'll screw you chop off your head. They'll screw you while your head is being chopped off. . . . - while your head is being chopped off. . . . -Sorry. As I was saying.-In the middle of the night, while she sat helpless and weeping, locked away in a castle tower, there was a knock at the door, and in came a little manikin, who asked, What will you give me if I do it for you? What will you give me if I do it for you? And he did it, you know, three nights running he spun the straw into gold, and the miller's daughter lived, and of course she married the whimsical king, and had a child. Silly woman! To marry the man who would have killed her as easily as blinking.-Well!-Scheherazade married her murderous Shahryar, too.-Can't beat women for stupidity, what?-Take me, for example. I married my whimsical prince as well, the murderer of my love.-But you know all about him, of course, I'm so sorry.-So, where was I.-Yes. In conclusion.-One night the little manikin came back. And he did it, you know, three nights running he spun the straw into gold, and the miller's daughter lived, and of course she married the whimsical king, and had a child. Silly woman! To marry the man who would have killed her as easily as blinking.-Well!-Scheherazade married her murderous Shahryar, too.-Can't beat women for stupidity, what?-Take me, for example. I married my whimsical prince as well, the murderer of my love.-But you know all about him, of course, I'm so sorry.-So, where was I.-Yes. In conclusion.-One night the little manikin came back. You know what I came for, You know what I came for, he said. Rumplestiltskin was his name." he said. Rumplestiltskin was his name."

They were alone in the room; alone with their desperate needs. The silence was terrible: a dark, hopeless hush of inevitability. But the look on Margaret Rhodes Ophuls's face was worse, at once savage and happy. "Ophuls," said Peggy-Mata. "That's her father's name. And India India's a nice name, a name containing, as it does, the truth. The question of origins is one of the two great questions. India Ophuls India Ophuls is an answer. To the second great question, the question of ethics, she'll have to find answers of her own." is an answer. To the second great question, the question of ethics, she'll have to find answers of her own."

"No," said Boonyi, shouting. "I won't do it." Peggy Ophuls put a hand on the young mother's head. "You get what you want," she said. "You live, and go home. But there are two of us here, my dear.-Don't you see?-Two of us to satisfy. Yes. You know, the night before I came to India I dreamed I would not leave without a child to call my own. I dreamed I was holding a little baby girl and singing her a song I'd made up specially.-And then all this time with all these children I've wondered when my child would come.-You understand, I'm sure.-One wants the world to be what it is not.-One clings to hope. Then finally one faces up.-Let's look at the world as it is, shall we?-I can't have a baby. That's clear. More than one reason now. Biology and divorce.-And you?-You can't keep this little girl. She will drag you down and she will be the death of you and that will be the death of her.-You follow?-Whereas with me she can live like a queen."

"No," said Boonyi, dully, hugging her daughter. "No, no, no."

"I'm so glad," said Peggy Ophuls. "Hmm?-Yes. Really!-Couldn't be more delighted. I knew you'd be sensible once it was all properly explained." As she left the room she was humming the dream-song to herself. Ratetta, sweet Ratetta, Ratetta, sweet Ratetta, she sang, she sang, who could be better than you? who could be better than you?

Here is ex-amba.s.sador Maximilian Ophuls, falling, for the time being, out of history. Here he is in disgrace, plunging down through the turbulent waters of 1968, past the Prague Spring and the Magical Mystery Tour and the Tet Offensive and the Paris evenements evenements and the My Lai ma.s.sacre and the dead bodies of Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy, past Grosvenor Square and Baader-Meinhof and Mrs. Robinson and O. J. Simpson and Nixon. The swollen ocean of events, mighty and heartless, closes over Max as it always does over losers. Here is drowned Max, the invisible man. Underground Max, trapped in a subterranean Edgar Wood world, a world of the disregarded, of lizard people and snake people, of busted hustlers and discarded lovers and lost leaders and dashed hopes. Here is Max wandering among the high heaps of the bodies of the rejected, the mountain ranges of defeat. But even in this, his newfound invisibility, he is ahead of his time, because in this occult soil the seeds of the future are being planted, and the time of the invisible world will come, the time of the altered dialectic, the time of the dialectic gone underground, when anonymous spectral armies will fight in secret over the fate of the earth. A good man is never discarded for long. A use is always found for such a man. Invisible Max will find a new use. He will be one of the makers of this new age, too, until old age at last rings down the curtain, and Death comes to his door in the form of a handsome man, a Mercader, an Udham Singh, Death asking him, in the name of the woman they once both loved, for work. and the My Lai ma.s.sacre and the dead bodies of Dr. King and Bobby Kennedy, past Grosvenor Square and Baader-Meinhof and Mrs. Robinson and O. J. Simpson and Nixon. The swollen ocean of events, mighty and heartless, closes over Max as it always does over losers. Here is drowned Max, the invisible man. Underground Max, trapped in a subterranean Edgar Wood world, a world of the disregarded, of lizard people and snake people, of busted hustlers and discarded lovers and lost leaders and dashed hopes. Here is Max wandering among the high heaps of the bodies of the rejected, the mountain ranges of defeat. But even in this, his newfound invisibility, he is ahead of his time, because in this occult soil the seeds of the future are being planted, and the time of the invisible world will come, the time of the altered dialectic, the time of the dialectic gone underground, when anonymous spectral armies will fight in secret over the fate of the earth. A good man is never discarded for long. A use is always found for such a man. Invisible Max will find a new use. He will be one of the makers of t