Phases of Gravity Read Online Free PDF Page B

moonlight and let the darkness in.
    Basti, chawl, whatever the Calcuttans called it, it was the ultimate slum. Stretching for miles along the railroad tracks, the maze of tin-roofed shacks and gunnysack tents was penetrated only by a few winding paths that served as both streets and sewers. The density of people was almost beyond belief. Children were everywhere, defecating in doorways, chasing each other between huts, and following Baedecker with the light-footed hop of the shy and the barefoot. Women looked away as Baedecker passed, or pulled up the cloth of their saris to cover their faces. Men stared with open curiosity verging on hostility. Some ignored him. Mothers squatted behind their children, intent on pulling lice from matted hair. Little girls crouched next to old women and kneaded cow dung with their hands, shaping it into properly sized patties for fuel. An old man hawked phlegm into his hand as he squatted to shit in an empty lot.
    "Baba! Baba!" Children ran alongside Baedecker. Palms were stretched out and hands tugged at him. He had long since emptied his pockets of coins.
    "Baba! Baba!"
    He had agreed to meet Maggie at two o'clock at Calcutta University but had become lost after getting off the overcrowded bus too soon. It must have been getting close to five o'clock. The paths and dirt streets wound back on themselves, trapping him between the railroad tracks and the Hooghly River. He had captured repeated glimpses of the Howrah Bridge, but he could never seem to get closer to it. The stench from the river was rivaled only by the stink of the slums and mud through which he walked.
    "Baba!" The crowd around him was getting larger and not all of the beggars were children. Several large men pushed right behind him, speaking rapidly and thrusting out their hands in jabs that fell just short of landing.
    My own goddamn fault, thought Baedecker. The Ugly American strikes again.
    The huts had no doorways. Chickens ran in and out of the cramped, dark spaces. In a low-lying pond of sewage, a group of boys and men washed the black sides of a sleepy bullock. Somewhere in the tightly packed maze of shacks there was a battery-powered radio playing loudly. The music had been rising to a crescendo of plucked strings that augmented Baedecker's growing anxiety. Thirty or forty people were following him now, and lean, angry men had all but pushed the children away.
    One man with a red bandanna around his head screamed loudly in what Baedecker took to be Hindi or Bengali. When Baedecker shook his head that he did not understand, the man blocked his way, waved his thin arms in the air, and shouted more loudly. Some of the phrases were repeated by other men in the crowd.
    Much earlier, Baedecker had picked up a small but heavy rock. Now he casually put his hand in the pocket of his safari shirt and palmed the stone. Time seemed to slow and a calm descended on him.
    Suddenly there was a screaming from one side, children were running, and the crowd abandoned Baedecker to jog down a side street. Even the man with the red bandanna shouted a parting syllable and moved quickly away. Baedecker waited a minute and then strolled after them, descending a muddy path to the river's edge.
    A crowd had gathered around something that had washed up in the mud. At first, Baedecker thought it was a bleached tree stump, but then he saw the awful symmetry of it and recognized it as a human body. It was white—white beyond albino white, beyond fish-belly white—and gases had bloated it to twice normal-size. Black holes seemed to stare out from the puffy mass that had once been a face. Several of the children who had been following Baedecker now squatted close to the thing and ran their hands across it with shrill giggles. The texture reminded Baedecker of white fungus, of huge mushrooms rotting in the sun. Pieces of flesh collapsed inward or broke off as the boys prodded and giggled.
    Finally some of the men went closer and prodded the body