Suddenly a louder noise behind me caused me to jump. The shadow of the rat blended into the shadows of the hallway and there was a scrabbling as of many claws on woodwork. Mr. Chatterjee and Mr. Gupta emerged from the black council room. Flames reflected on Mr. Chatterjee's glasses. Mr. Gupta took a step forward into my pulsing circle of light. His smile was eager and his teeth were long and yellow.

"It is settled," he said. "You will receive the manuscript tomorrow. You will be contacted about arrangements."

Chapter Five

It was too easy. That was the thought that entered my mind as I was driven back to the hotel. I had held an image of being the trench-coated investigative journalist — Jesus, in that heat — carefully following up clues to piece together the mysterious disappearance and reappearance of the phantom Bengali poet. Now, on my first afternoon in the city, the puzzle had been assembled for me. Tomorrow, Saturday, I would have the manuscript and be free to take Amrita and the baby and fly home. What kind of article would that make? It was too easy.

My body insisted that it was early morning, but my wristwatch said it was five P.M. Workers were emerging from the age-stained office buildings near the hotel like white ants from gray stone carcasses. Families were brewing hot water for tea on the broken sidewalks while men with briefcases stepped over sleeping infants, A man in rags squatted to urinate in the gutter while another bathed in a puddle not six feet away. I brushed through the Communist pickets and entered the air-conditioned sanctuary of the hotel.

Krishna was waiting in the lobby. The hotel's assistant manager was watching him as though Krishna were a known terrorist. Little wonder. He looked even wilder than before. His black hair leaped out in electric exclamation marks, and the toad-like eyes were wider and whiter than ever under dark brows. He grinned widely when he saw me and came forward with hand extended. I was shaking it before I realized that the cordial greeting was Krishna's way of validating his presence to the assistant manager.

"Ah, Mr. Luczak! Very good to see you again! I have come to help you in your search for the poet, M. Das." He continued to pump my hand. He was wearing the same soiled shirt as the night before and smelled of musky cologne and sweat. I felt the sweat drying on my own body as the fierce air-conditioning raised goose bumps along my arms.

"Thank you, Mr. Krishna, but there is no need." I extricated my hand. "I've made all the necessary arrangements. I'll be completing my business here tomorrow."

Krishna froze in place. The smile faded, and the brows came even closer together over the great curve of nose. " Ahh, I see. You have been to the Writers' Union. Yes?"

"Yes."

"Ah, yes, yes. They would have had a very satisfactory story to tell you about our illustrious M. Das. You were satisfied by their story, Mr. Luczak?" Krishna almost whispered the last sentence, and his look was so blatantly conspiratorial that the assistant manager frowned across the entire length of lobby. God knows what he thought I was being offered.

I hesitated. I didn't know what the hell Krishna had to do with the whole thing, and I didn't really want to take time to find out. I mentally cursed Abe Bronstein for poking around in my arrangements and inadvertently putting me in touch with this creep. At the same time I was acutely aware of Amrita and Victoria waiting for me and of my own irritation at the direction this assignment was taking.

Interpreting my hesitation as uncertainty, Krishna leaned forward and grasped my forearm. "I have someone for you to meet, Mr. Luczak. Someone who can tell you the truth about M. Das."

"What do you mean, the truth? Who is this person?"

"He would rather I not say," whispered Krishna. His hands were moist. There were tiny veins of yellow in the whites of his eyes. "You will understand when you hear his story."

"When?" I snapped. Only the sense of incompleteness I had felt in the car kept me from telling Krishna to go to hell.

"Immediately!" said Krishna with a triumphant grin. "We can meet him at once!"

"Impossible." I abruptly pulled my arm out of Krishna's grasp. "I'm going upstairs. Take a shower. I promised my wife we would go out to dinner."

"Ah, yes, yes." Krishna nodded and sucked on his lower teeth. "Of course. I will make the arrangements for nine-thirty o'clock, then. That will be sufficiently good?"

I hesitated. "Does your friend wish to be paid for his information?"

"Oh, no, no!" Krishna raised both palms. "He would not allow such a thing. It is only with the greatest difficulty that I have convinced him to speak to anyone about this."

"Nine-thirty?" I asked. The thought of going out into the Calcutta night filled me with a vague sickness.

"Yes. The coffee shop closes at eleven. We will meet him there."

Coffee shop. The words had an innocuous familiarity to them. If there were some angle I could use in the article. . . .

"All right," I said.

"I shall be waiting for you here, Mr. Luczak."

The woman holding my child was not Amrita. I stopped with my hand still on the doorknob. I might have stayed like that or even retreated into the hall in confusion if Amrita had not emerged from the bathroom at that moment.

"Oh, Bobby, this is Kamakhya Bharati. Kamakhya, this is my husband, Robert Luczak."

"It is a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Luczak." Her voice was wind through spring blossoms.

"Nice to meet you, Miss — ah — Bharati." I blinked stupidly and looked at Amrita. I had always thought that Amrita's features approached true beauty with her guileless eyes and the honest planes of her face, but next to this young woman I could see only the lines of approaching middle age in Amrita's flesh, the slight double chin, and the bump on the bridge of her nose. The afterimage of the young woman stayed in my retinas like a flashbulb's optical echo.

Her hair was jet-black and hung to her shoulders. Her face was a sharpened oval, perfect, punctuated with soft, slightly tremulous lips that seemed designed for laughter and great sensuality. Her eyes were startling — huge beyond all probability, accentuated by eye shadow and heavy lashes, pupils so dark and so penetrating that her gaze stabbed like dark beacons. There was something subtly oriental about those eyes while at the same time they projected a Western, almost subliminal sense of innocence and wordliness warring within.

Kamakhya Bharati was young — in her mid-twenties at most — and wore a sari of a silk so light that it seemed to float an inch above her flesh, buoyed up by some fragant pulse of feminity that seemed to emanate from her like a redolent breeze.

I had always associated the word voluptuous with a Rubens' weightiness, masses of alluring flesh, but this young woman's thin body, half-perceived through shifting layers of silk, struck me with a sense of voluptuousness so intense that it dried the saliva in my mouth and emptied my mind.

"Kamakhya is the niece of M. Das, Bobby. She came to inquire about your article, and we've spent the last hour talking."

"Oh?" I glanced at Amrita and looked back at the girl. I could think of nothing else to say.

"Yes, Mr. Luczak. I have heard rumors that my uncle has communicated to some of his old colleagues. I wished to know if you had seen my uncle . . . if he is all right. . . ."Her gaze dropped and her voice trailed off.

I sat on the edge of an armchair. "No," I said. "I mean, I haven't seen him but he's all right. I'd like to, though. See him. I'm doing an article —"