Free The Elephanta Suite by Paul Theroux

let his hands work on her, to give nothing a name.
    In spite of this, another whole unthought-out line came to her. "I'd like to see them."
    "Yes, please."
    "Maybe sometime."
    "Madam, tonight."
    Against her will she found herself agreeing, and just afterward, avoiding Audie at the pool, she felt excited, thrilled and yet jittery, like a girl.
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    Satish had said he'd meet her below the laundry building, which lay on the path that wound down Monkey Hill to the main road into Hanuman Nagar. She told Audie she was going up to the spa—"a treatment." He smiled and said, "Have a good one." But instead of climbing up the road, she ducked through the bamboo grove and walked quickly through the thick flowering trees, into the smoky air that rose from the town.
    She felt on her face the sourness of descending the path into a thickening smell, plunging toward shadows, ducking beneath the silken daylight of dusk in this upper world into the fugitive and divided lamplight of the town below.
    A person thrusting a broomstick at her rose up on the road and caused her to gasp.
    "Moddom."
    "Who are you?"
    "Chowkidar,
moddom."
    "What do you want?"
    Fright made her severe, and her severity made the man deferential.
    He said, "Protection only, moddom."
    His mildness calmed her. She found some rupees in her pocket—in the darkness she could not tell how much—and handed the notes to the watchman. He touched them to his forehead, then bowed to let her pass.
    The downward path was so narrow her shoulders brushed the bushes on either side of it, and she imagined that at that time of day there might be monkeys, crouching to observe the setting sun, like the ones she'd seen with Audie a week or so before, when they'd heard the name Hanuman Nagar from the spectral old man.
    The sense that she was leaving one world for another was palpable: in the rising dust and the sound of impatient voices, the men shouting at the monkey temple, the smell of smoke, the sharp Indian yell, meant to be heard at a distance and to make the hearer submit to it. The grating of traffic, too—heavy trucks, the laboring bus, all shuddering metal and hisses. And, farther from the clear air and the tidy gardens of Agni, the stink of the town—dirt, dung, smoke, mingled with cooking odors and scorched oil. Disorder was also a stew of smells.
    Where she thought she saw a monkey squatting on its heels, a man stood up. Too startled to scream, her hands flew up to protect her throat and her face. She saw it was Satish.
    "Not to worry," he said.
    She hoped he wouldn't touch her. Rattled from her uneasy descent from Agni on the filthy path, she said, "I can't stay long."
    "It is near," he said, placing a finger on her elbow to steer her, and when she reacted, he said, "Sorry!"
    His touch made her stumble, the path here littered with loose trodden stones. He was still apologizing as they passed behind a shop, a wall that reeked of urine and was scribbled on, and came out onto the road. In the distance, at a curve in the road, she saw the shop fronts of Hanuman Nagar, merchandise hanging in doorways, and the fires at the monkey temple—men waving torches, some people chanting, the line of policemen holding sticks.
    "Cart road," Satish said, blocking her way as a truck went slowly past in gusts of diesel fumes.
    "That temple," Beth said.
    "Hanuman shrine. Long ago, Mughal time, Muslim ruler put mosque in its place. Now it is restored to Hindu. Now everyone so happy."
    "Why are those people shouting?"
    "Muslim people," Satish said, hurrying ahead, away from the center of town.
    She followed him, her head down, walking just above the gutter and the storm drain, by the roadside, thinking, This is insane.
    "I have to go back." She felt even more like a girl, but a foolish one.
    "It is just here," he said, fluttering his fingers into the middle distance.
    All she saw were small yellow windows, like lanterns hanging in darkness, faces at some of the windows, the blue