"It will be more comfortable outside," said Chatterjee, and held the door open for Amrita.

The flagstones were still wet from the last rainshower, but the cushioned chairs were dry and a table was set for tea. Chatterjee's grown daughter, a heavy young woman with lovely eyes, joined us long enough to chat with Amrita in Hindi for a few minutes and then to depart with her son. Chatterjee seemed bemused by Amrita's linguistic abilities and asked her something in French. Amrita answered fluently, and both of them laughed. He switched to what I later learned was Tamil, and Amrita responded. They began exchanging pleasantries in simple Russian. I sipped my tea and smiled at Mrs. Chatterjee. She smiled back and offered me a cucumber sandwich. We continued smiling at each other through a few more minutes of trilingual banter, and then Victoria began fussing. Amrita took the baby from my arms, and Chatterjee turned to me.

"Would you like more tea, Mr. Luczak?"

"No, thank you, this is fine."

"Perhaps something stronger?"

"Well . . ."

Chatterjee snapped his fingers and a servant quickly appeared. A few seconds later he reappeared with a tray laden with several decanters and glasses.

"Do you drink Scotch, Mr. Luczak?"

Is the Pope Catholic? I thought. "Yes." Amrita had warned me that most Indian Scotch was atrocious stuff, but one swallow told me that Chatterjee's decanter held only premium whiskey, almost certainly twelve years old, almost certainly imported. '' Excellent.''

"It's The Glenlivet," he said. "Unblended. I find it rather more authentic than the blended premiums."

For a few minutes we discussed poetry and poets. I tried to steer the conversation around to M. Das, but Chatterjee was reluctant to discuss the missing poet beyond mentioning that Gupta had arranged the details for tomorrow's transfer of the manuscript. We settled on discussing how hard it was for a serious writer in either of our countries to make a decent living. I got the impression that Chatterjee's money had come down through the family and that he had other interests, investments, and incomes.

Invariably, the talk steered to politics. Chatterjee was most eloquent about the relief the country was feeling after the ouster of Mrs. Gandhi in the previous election. The resurgence of democracy in India was of great interest to me and something I'd hoped to work into my Das article.

"She was a tyrant, Mr. Luczak. The so-called Emergency was merely a ruse to hide the ugly face of her tyranny."

"So you don't think she will ever reenter national politics?"

"Never! Never, Mr. Luczak."

"But I thought that she still has a strong political base and that the Congress Party is still a potential majority if the current coalition was to falter."

"No, no," said Chatterjee and waved his hand in dismissal. "You do not understand. Mrs. Gandhi and her son are finished. They will be in prison within a year. Mark my words. Her son is already under investigation for various scandals and atrocities; and when the truth comes out, he will be lucky to escape execution."

I nodded. "I've read that he alienated many people with his drastic population-control programs."

"He was a swine," Chatterjee said without emotion. "An arrogant, ignorant, dictatorial swine. His programs were little more than efforts at genocide. He preyed on the poor and the uneducated, although he was an essential illiterate himself. Even his mother was frightened of the monster. If he were to enter a crowd today, they would tear him apart with their bare hands. I would be pleased to take part. More tea, Mrs. Luczak?"

A car moved down the quiet side street beyond the iron fence. A rew raindrops pattered on the broad leaves of the banyan tree above us.

"Your impressions of Calcutta, Mr. Luczak?"

Chatterjee's sudden question caught me off guard. I took a drink of Scotch and let the warmth spread for a second before answering. "Calcutta is fascinating, Mr. Chatterjee. It's far too complex a city even to react to in two days. It's a shame we won't have more time to explore it."

"You are diplomatic, Mr. Luczak. What you mean to say is that you find Calcutta appalling. It has already offended your sensibilities, yes?"

"Appalling is not the correct word," I said. "It's true that the poverty affects me."

"Ah, yes, poverty," said Chatterjee and smiled as if the word had deeply ironic connotations. "Indeed, there is much poverty here. Much squalor by Western standards. That must offend the American mind, since America has repeatedly dedicated its great will to eliminating poverty. How did your ex-President Johnson put it . . . to declare war on poverty? One would think that his war in Vietnam would have satisfied him."

"The war on poverty was another war we lost," I said. "America continues to have its share of poverty." I set my empty glass down, and a servant appeared at my elbow to pour more Scotch.

"Yes, yes, but it is Calcutta we are discussing. One of our better poets has referred to Calcutta as that 'half-crushed cockroach of a city.' Another of our writers has compared our city to an aged and dying courtesan surrounded by oxygen tanks and rotting orange peels. Would you agree with that, Mr. Luczak?"

"I would agree that those are very strong metaphors, Mr. Chatterjee."

"Is your husband always so circumspect, Mrs. Luczak?" asked Chatterjee and smiled at us over his glass. "No, no, you should not be concerned that I will take offense. I am used to Americans and their reaction to our city. They will react in either one of two ways: they will find Calcutta 'exotic' and concentrate only on their tourist pleasures; or they will be immediately horrified, recoil, and seek to forget what they have seen and not understood. Yes, yes, the American psyche is as predictable as the sterile and vulnerable American digestive system when it encounters India."

I looked at Mrs. Chatterjee, but she was bouncing Victoria on her lap and seemed not to hear her husband's pronouncements. At the same instant Amrita glanced at me, and I took it as a warning. I smiled to show that I was not going to get argumentative. "You may well be right," I said. "Although I wouldn't presume to say that I understood the 'American psyche' or the 'Indian psyche' — if there are such things. First impressions are necessarily shallow. I appreciate that. I've admired Indian culture for a long time, even before I met Amrita, and she's certainly shared some of the beauty of it with me. But I admit that Calcutta is a bit intimidating. There seems to be something unique . . . unique and disturbing about Calcutta's urban problems. Perhaps its only the scale. Friends have told me that Mexico City, for all of its beauty, shares the same problems."

Chatterjee nodded, smiled, and set down his glass. He steepled his fingers and looked at me the way a teacher looks at a student who may or may not be worth investing more time in. "You have not traveled extensively, Mr. Luczak?"

"Not really. I backpacked through Europe some years ago. Spent some time in Tangiers."

"But not in Asia?"

"No."

Chatterjee dropped his hands as if his point had been amply demonstrated. But the lesson was not quite over. He snapped his ringers, fired a command, and a moment later the servant brought out a slim blue book. I could not make out the title. "Please tell me if you find this a fair and reasonable description of Calcutta, Mr. Luczak," said Chatterjee and began to read aloud: