Free The Elephanta Suite by Paul Theroux Page A

flicker of TV sets, and the woof-woofing of dogs somewhere. At one doorway she smelled meat grilling, the sputter and hiss, the pucker and bust of hot snapping fat.
    Satish must have smelled it too. He said, "Muslim people. Many here. This we are calling"—he was pointing at Monkey Hill, but the sweep of his arm seemed to take in the whole province—"Muslim belt."
    She said, "I can't go any further."
    "We have arrived," he said, and led her up a path of broken paving stones that rolled under her feet, past a small astonished girl in a bright pink dress dawdling by a lighted doorway, past a padlocked shed, to a door latch which Satish manipulated, pushing the door open. Beth stepped inside quickly, fearing to be seen, and was at once suffocated by the smell of cooked food, steaming on a low table.
    "Bhaji," Satish said, lifting the lid of a tin pot. Then more lids up and down. "Mung dhal. Uttapam. Bindi. Naan bread. Rice."
    "Very nice," Beth said, overcome by the heat, the stifling aromas, and a distinct odor of turpentine.
    "Gurd," Satish said, offering her a dish of crudded yogurt.
    "I really must go back," she said.
    "Madam," he said, "take some food."
    "I'm not hungry," she said, and remembered from a book on India that it was considered offensive to refuse food in an Indian household, but that a small symbolic mouthful was all that was necessary. She said, "But some of that curd would be delicious. Just a touch."
    He spooned some into a bowl and handed it to her, saying, "Sit, please, madam. A drink. Hot tea. Juices. Cool water."
    She was rechecking the position of the door, preparing her exit, when she saw an assortment of foot-high paintings propped on a shelf under a bare light bulb.
    "No, thank you. Are those your pictures?"
    She was still standing, eyeing the door. He went to the paintings and selected a highly colored one of a fat naked baby attended by a smiling chubby-cheeked woman in a yellow sari.
    "Bal Krishna," he said. "Krishna baby. Mother Yashoda."
    Moving closer to the shelf, she saw other pictures she had taken to be animals, yet some of them had human features in spite of their snouts and multiple arms.
    "Ganesh. Hanuman. Durga. I do with brush. Classical."
    "Superb. Thank you. Now I must go."
    "Madam."
    But as soon as she turned and found the latch and got the door ajar he was next to her, embracing her, pressing himself against her, whinnying, "Madam. Madam."
    "I don't feel at all well," she said.
    "I have aspirin, madam." His hands and fingers flexed on her waist as though testing its pliability.
    But now she had gotten the door fully open, and the night air had a chilly smell of dirt and woodsmoke in it that clung like grime to the bare skin of her face and arms.
    Just a few feet down the path the small girl in the pink dress gaped at her, the light from the open door falling across her face, brightening her wide staring eyes. Satish had pursued Beth, but when he saw the little girl he hesitated, seemingly overcome, and he dropped his arms to his sides, gathering his hands into his pajama top as though in a reflex of shame.
    Without a word, moving efficiently in fear, Beth stepped along the walkway, those same uneven paving stones, and fled into the road, keeping her head down when car headlights passed her. She looked back several times to make sure she was not being followed.
    She slipped into the suite with all the stealth of a burglar, called out "Audie?" But there was no reply. The suite was empty.
    In the darkness outside the Agni enclosure, the smell was more apparent. Audie had stood just at nightfall watching the sun drop, dissolving into the depths of dust and haze that lay in thick bars above the horizon, obliterating the mountains—and the mountains were the Himalayas. Rising around him in the gathering dusk was the sharpness of dry trees, the stray grit in the air, the dander of grubby monkey fur—and the smell of boiled beans, burned meat, woodsmoke, and foul