The Charmed Life | Page 6

asked, with something of a challenge in his
accents which were getting more and more unsteady, " that's the
Colootallah Section--cha--charming little bunch of real estate--worst in
the world, not even excepting Aden, Naples and all the wickedness and
crimes of Port Said. Only two men are safe there, and they aren't quite
safe," he laughed, and to my quickly interjected question, he replied,
"Why, a fakir--holy man, you know--and a member of the filthy castes
who thrive there--you know even criminal have their own castes in
India, and they all seem to congregate there--thugs and thieves and
murderers and what-not.
"Wait "--he stopped my questions with a gesture--" perhaps, mind you,
I say 'perhaps,' an exceptional detective of the Metropolitan Police in
Lal Bazaar may be safe there for three minutes, but--" He was silent
and leered at me.
"But what?" I asked impatiently.
"I'd tackle it just the same if I were you, young and strong. No white
man has done it before. By Jupiter, I'd tackle it if I had a char-- char

charmed life--" and quite suddenly he fell into snoring, alcoholic
slumber.
I stepped out on the balcony. India was at my feet, cruel, beckoning,
mysterious, scented, minatory, fascinating, inexplicable. Right then it
got below my skin.
I gave a low laugh. No, I don't know why I laughed.
Stephen Denton was silent for a moment. He was thinking deeply.
Then he shook his head.
Honestly, 1 don't know why I laughed. I don't know why I did any of
the things I did that night, until I came to the wall at the other end of
Ibrahim Khan's Gully. No, no. I had imbibed quite a little--couldn't
help it--with Roos- Keppel, but I was not drunk. Not a bit of it.
Well, imagine me there on the balcony of the Semiramis, laughing at
India, if you wish; perhaps at the Back Bay, perhaps at myself. I left the
balcony, patted the drunken man on the shoulder, and stepped out of
the hotel and into the smoky, purple night. The storm which had
threatened earlier by the evening was melting into a quiet night of
glowing violet, with a pale, sneering, negligent sort of a moon. A low,
cool wind was blowing up from the River Hooghli.
I gave a mocking farewell bow in the direction of Park Street, the white
man's Calcutta, Government House, green tea and respectability,. and
turned east, sharp east, toward the patch of darkness, toward the
Colootallah. I walked very steadily, as if I had a definite aim and object,
turned on the corner of Park Street, and there a policeman, an English
policeman, stopped me.
"Beg pardon, sir," he said with that careful. Anglo-Saxon politeness,
"you're goin' the wrong way, I fancy, sir. The hotel is over yonder, sir,"
pointing in the opposite direction; and I laughed. I pressed a rupee into
his ready hand. "Hotel, nothing:." I said. "I am going toward the Street
of Charmed Life!"

"Right-o." commented the policeman. "Some of these 'ere native streets
do 'ave funny names, don't they? But--beggin' your pardon, sir--better
'ave a care. Those streets ain't safe for a white man, least--ways at
night."
"Quite safe--for me!" I assured him. and I walked on, on and on, not
caring where I went-- away from the thoroughfares, through grimy little
gardens in the back of opium dens where the brick paths were hollow
and slimy with the tread of many naked, unsteady feet; then through a
greasy, packed wilderness of three-storied houses, perfectly respectable
Babu houses, from which a faint, acrid smell seemed to emanate; on,
twisting and turning, through the Burra Bazaar and the Jora Bagan--you
know the sections, don't you, and their New York counterpart, the
Bowery and Hell's Kitchen--and then up into the crooked mazes of the
Machua Bazaar--evil, filthy, packed.
On and on, farther and farther away, and at every corner, in every
doorway, there were new faces, new types, new voices, new odors,
until I came to the Colootallah.
How did I know I was there? Oh, I asked a native, decent sort he was,
though he was a bit unsteady with opium, and, just like the English
policeman, he advised me to go back to Park Street.
Perhaps he was right. For a moment I was quite sure that he was right,
but I walked on, through streets that grew steadily more narrow. You
know how narrow they can be, with a glimpse of smoky sky above the
roofs revealing scarcely three yards of breadth, and all sorts of squirmy,
squishy things underneath your feet, and shawls, and bit of underwear,
and turban clothes hanging from the windows and balconies and
flopping unexpectedly into your face, and beggars, and roughs, and
lepers slinking and pushing against you, jabbering,