A Dead Hand by Paul Theroux Read Free Book Online Page B

and relaxed, the lamp flickering in the aroma of sesame and ghee. The only light came from the flame wagging on the wick in the oil lamp. The last identifiable sound I'd heard was the door's decisive click as the masseurs had departed. I wasn't sorry: I didn't like being touched by a man. But I wasn't surprised. In puritanical caste-crazed India it was unusual for a woman in a spa to attend to male clients.
    I must have dozed. The whole business had been soporific. With my head covered by a folded towel, I was dimly aware—perhaps in shallow dreams, or in adjacent rooms—of the murmur of life nearby, like a children's chorus, vaguely taunting and competing as children's voices seem to do. My body was penetrated by the vibrations of busy lives, the shuffle of small feet, the contentious cries of kids, the whole huge house pulsing around this small room, the vault.
    And I thought, or dreamed: This is not like any spa I've ever seen, in India or anywhere else. The muted life, the deliberate pauses, the silences of a spa were unavailable here. This was like being in a household—a large one—or a schoolhouse or (the thought occurred to me as a grotesquerie) a big throbbing body. I had the absurd thought that I'd been swallowed whole by a monstrous creature and that I was in the belly of this monster. But it was an Indian beast, accommodating and warm, its blood pounding in my ears, and still the shrieks and calls of children echoing in the walls.
    When I woke, Mrs. Unger was beside me.
    She seemed to inhabit a vapor, a fragrant cloud filled with the aroma of flowers and also of Indian spices, mingled oils, and perfumes. She was warmth and softness and a kind of light too. This sounds hyperbolic. I supposed I was overreacting to her because I was so relieved to see her. She brushed my shoulder, the caress of warm skin or silk against my side. I lifted my head a little and saw she was wearing a purple sari. She was moving her hands, palms downward, paddling the air over my body as though warming them like fingers over a fire, and in another motion lifting them in a gesture of levitation, and then making a flourish with them as though she was earnestly searching, my body the object of her dowsing motions.
    "Just breathe normally," she said, and that was all she said for a while.
    Still I lay naked, slick with oil, imagining that I could feel her fluttering hands. I was glad she was there, not just relieved that she was not an Indian masseur but delighted to see her again. Since the previous day I'd been thinking about her—involuntarily, she shimmered in my memory—and I'd even had a vivid dream of her in which she smiled at me, then turned around and was someone else, a demon version of her bewitching side. The everyday horrors on an Indian street or in an average temple make this sort of nightmare a common occurrence. Without speaking, but (in the manner of dreams) knowing what I wanted, I tried to get her to turn again so I could behold that sensual side of her.
    "Trying to see where you need work," she was saying with banal practicality over my feverish memories. Her hands were still active in the air, hovering as if receiving signals with her fingers and palms.
    "Where did you come from?"
    She didn't answer. With a frown in her voice, she said, "Yes, you do need work. Upper trapezius muscles. Very tight."
    Hearing that pleased me. I wanted her to stay. I wanted her attention.
    "Now I'm going to ask you to turn over."
    I skidded slightly as I rolled onto my back. Then I felt the warmth and weight of a towel over my pelvic area; she tucked the ends under my buttocks, so I was decent. A moment later she placed a damp cloth over my eyes. In the darkness I became more aware of the music in the room—a sitar, a warbling flute, and in bursts the
pok-pok
of tabla drums.
    Now I felt her confident fingers on me. She was holding my toes, one by one, explaining softly, "This is your shoulder"—the small