The Charmed Life | Page 6

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, quarreling, begging; and the roadway ankle-deep in thick slime, and a fetid stink hanging over it all like a cloud; and the darkness, the bitter darkness-- black blotched, compact, except for a haggard moon-ray shooting down occasionally from above and glancing off into the ca?on of the street from bulbous roof and crazy, tortured balcony.
By ginger, I was sick for a moment. I said to myself that there was a steamer sailing the next day--home and America via Liverpool--and I was about to turn when--
Wait a second.
Get first