The crowd grew magically. One second there were ten or fifteen people shouting and holding their hands out, and a few seconds later the mob had grown to thirty, then fifty. I felt as if it were Halloween and I was dispensing candy to a crowd of trick-or-treaters, but this harmless illusion disappeared when a dark hand rotted from leprosy came out of the crowd and scabrous fingers batted at my face.

"Hey!" I shouted, but it was a weak sound against the noise of the mob. There must have been a hundred people pushing toward the packed center of a circle which held me as its locus. The pressure was frightening. A groping hand accidentally ripped my shirt open and left parallel tracks across my chest. An elbow struck me in the side of the head and I would have gone down then if the press of bodies had not kept me upright.

"Baba! Baba! Baba!" The entire mob was moving toward the edge of the platform. It was a six-or seven-foot drop to the metal rails. The woman with the cripple on her back screamed as the man was torn loose and fell into the surging pack. A man near me began screaming and repeatedly striking another in the face with the side of his hand.

"The shit with this," I said and threw the bag of coins into the air. The canvas pouch turned over once in a lazy arc and spewed coins across the mob and a shouting rice vendor. The screaming rose in pitch and the frenzied mass lunged away from the edge of the platform, but not before I heard something or someone heavy fall to the rails. A woman screamed inches from my face and saliva spattered over me. Then a heavy blow caught me in the back and I pitched forward, grabbed at a sari, then went down on my knees.

The mob pressed around me, and for a second I panicked, covering my heads with my hands. Stained trouser legs and sharp knees in rags struck at my face. Someone tripped over me, and for a second the full weight of the mob was on my back, forcing my face to the floor, crushing me. I distantly heard Amrita's shouts above the animal roar of the crowd. I opened my mouth to scream, but at that instant a filthy bare foot struck me in the face. Someone stepped on the back of my leg and a searing pain shot up my calf muscle.

One second I was lost in the darkness of tumbling forms and in the next I could see the glow from broken skylights high above and Amrita was bending over me, holding Victoria in her left arm while she used her right arm to shove aside the last of the jostling beggars. Then the mob was past and Amrita was helping me to a sitting position on the filthy platform. It was as if a tidal wave had appeared from nowhere, spent its violence, and was now flowing back into the random sea of people and pools of huddled families. Nearby an old man crouched over a large pot of boiling water that had remained miraculously unspilled in the confusion.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," I kept repeating to Amrita when I could get my breath. Now that the danger was past, Amrita began sobbing and laughing as she hugged me and helped me to my feet. We checked Victoria for bruises or scratches, and the baby chose that instant to begin wailing so loudly that both of us had to reassure her with hugs and kisses. "I'm sorry," I said again. "That was so stupid."

"Look," said Amrita. There, next to my feet, lay a plain brown briefcase. I picked it up, and we pushed our way outside past packs of rickshaw coolies clamoring for our business. We found a relatively open space near the street and leaned against a brick pillar while the flow of people broke around us. I checked Victoria again. She was fine, blinking in the stronger light and obviously debating whether to resume her wailing.

Amrita grasped my forearm. "Let's see what's in the briefcase and get out of here," she said.

"I'll open it later."

"Open it now, Bobby," she said. "We'll feel pretty foolish if you went through all that to come away with some businessman's lunch."

I nodded and snapped open the latches. It was not someone's lunch. The manuscript lay in a heap of several hundred pages. Some were typewritten, some were scrawled in longhand, and at least half a dozen different sizes and colors of paper had been used. I glanced at enough pages to confirm that it was poetry and that the manuscript was in English. "Okay," I said, "Let's get out of here."

I closed the briefcase and we had turned to choose a taxi when the Premiere screeched to a halt and Mr. Chatterjee and Mr. Gupta jumped out, shouting excitedly.

"Greetings," I said wearily. "What kept you?"

Chapter Eleven

The apparition in the mirror was a mess. His hair was in disarray, his shirt was torn, his white cotton slacks were filthy, and there were fingernail tracks across his chest. I grimaced at myself and tossed the ruined shirt on the floor. I grimaced again as Amrita applied a cotton swab soaked with peroxide to my cuts.

"You didn't make Mr. Chatterjee or Mr. Gupta very happy," she said.

"It's not my fault that there wasn't a Bengali version of the manuscript."

"They would have liked to have had more time to study the English version, Bobby."

"Yeah. Well, they can catch excerpts in Harper's or wait for the spring edition of Other Voices. That is, if Morrow's experts decide it is a Das manuscript. I have my doubts."

"And you're not going to read it today?"

"Nope. I'll look at it tomorrow during the flight and study it when we get home."

Amrita nodded and finished swabbing the cuts on my chest. "Let's have Dr. Heinz look at these when we get home."

"All right." We went into the other room and sat on the bed. The electricity was out, the air conditioning had failed, and the room was a steam bath. Opening the windows only served to let in the noise and stench from the street below. Victoria sat on her quilt on the floor. She wore nothing but diapers and rubber pants and was wrestling with a big ball with bells in it. The ball was on top and appeared to be winning the match.

I had surprised even myself by not reading the manuscript immediately. I had never been known for either stifling my curiosity or deferring gratification of any sort. But I was tired and depressed and had a strong and completely illogical aversion to even looking at the manuscript until the three of us were safely out of the country.

Where had the police been? I had not seen the gray sedan again and now had my doubts as to whether it had ever actually followed us. Well, nothing else had appeared to work efficiently in Calcutta. Why should the police force be an exception?

"So, what do we do today?" asked Amrita.

I flopped back on the bed and picked up a tourist guide. "Well, we can see impressive Fort William, or view the imposing Nakhoda Mosque — which, by the way, was modeled on Akbar's tomb, whoever Akbar was — or go back across the river to see the botanical gardens."

"It's so hot," said Amrita. She had changed into shorts and a T-shirt that read A WOMAN'S PLACE IS IN THE HOUSE — AND THE SENATE. I wondered what Chatterjee would think if he saw her dressed that way.

"We could go to the Victoria Memorial."

"I bet they don't even have fans there," she said. "Where would it be cool?"

"A bar?"

"It's Sunday."

"Yeah. I've been meaning to ask. Why is it that every place closes down in a Hindu country on —"

"The park!" said Amrita. "We could go for a walk on the Maidan near the racecourse we saw from the taxi. There should be a breeze."

I sighed. "Let's try it. It's bound to be cooler than this place."

It was no cooler there. Small groups of beggars, a painful reminder of the morning's folly, flocked to us everywhere. Even the frequent and violent bouts of rainfall did not discourage them. I had long since emptied my pockets of change, but their insistent clamoring only grew louder. We paid two rupees to duck into a zoological garden in the park. There were only a few animals caged there, miserably swatting their tails back and forth to keep away clouds of insects, tongues hanging out from the heat. The zoo smell mixed with the heavy sewer sweetness of the river tributary that flowed past the park. We pointed out a tired tiger and some sullen monkeys to Victoria, but the baby wanted only to nestle against my damp shirt and sleep. When the rains struck again we found shelter in a small pavilion which we shared with a six- or seven-year-old boy who was watching over an infant lying on the cracked stone. Occasionally the boy would wave a hand to shoo the flies which hovered above the baby's face. Amrita tried talking to the youngster, but he continued to squat silently and stare at her with his large brown eyes. She pressed several rupees and a ballpoint pen into his hand and we left.