To the Ends of the Earth

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.