[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]I forced myself to join the other passengers during the refueling stop in
Tehran. The pilot had announced the temperature outside as being 33
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Dan Simmons Song of Kali [ e - r e ads ]
degrees, and only when the terrible heat and humidity struck me did I realize
that it had been given in degrees Celsius.
It was late, sometime before midnight, but the hot air stank of waiting
violence. Pictures of the Shah were everywhere in the echoing, brightly lit
barn of a terminal, and security men and soldiers roamed around with
their sidearms drawn for no apparent reason. Muslim women cloaked in
black chadors glided like wraiths through the green fluorescent emptiness.
Old men slept on the floor or knelt on their dark prayer rugs amid ciga-
rette butts and cellophane wrappers while nearby an American boy of
about six blond hair and red-striped shirt incongruous among dark
hues, crouched behind a chair and raked the customs counter with auto-
matic fire from his toy M-16.
The PA system announced that our flight would be reboarding in fifteen
minutes. I stumbled past an old man in a red scarf and found myself in the
public restrooms. It was very dark in there, the only light reflected from a sin-
gle bulb outside the entrance. Dark shapes moved through the gloom. For a
second I wondered if I had inadvertently entered the women s side and was
seeing chadors in the darkness, but then I heard deep voices speaking in gut-
tural syllables. There was also the sound of water dripping. At that second the
dizziness struck me worse than before, and I crouched over one of the Asian
toilets and vomited, continuing to spasm long after I had rid myself of the last
of the airline meals.
I collapsed sideways and lay full-length on the cool tile floor. The empti-
ness inside me was almost complete now. I trembled as sweat poured from me
and mixed with the salt of my tears. The incessant insect noise had risen to a
crescendo so that I could hear distinct voices. The Song of Kali was very loud.
I realized that already I had crossed the borders into her new domain.
In a few minutes I rose in the darkness, cleaned myself as well as I could at
the only sink, and walked quickly into the green light to joint the others lin-
ing up for the flight to Calcutta.
We came out of the clouds, circled once, and landed at Calcutta s Dum-
Dum Airport at 3:10 A.M. I joined the line descending the staircase to the wet
tarmac. The city seemed to be on fire. The orange light turned back by the
low monsoon clouds, the red beacons reflected in countless puddles, and the
blaze of spotlights from beyond the terminal added to the illusion. I could
hear no sound but the chanting chorus of shrill voices as I stumbled along
with the others toward the customs shed.
A year before, Amrita, Victoria, and I had spent more than an hour going
through customs in Bombay. This time I was through in less than five minutes.
I had not the slightest anxiety that they would open my luggage. The little
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Dan Simmons Song of Kali [ e - r e ads ]
man in soiled khaki chalked an X on my suitcase directly over the outside
compartment where I had hidden the Luger and ammunition, and then I was
in the main terminal, walking toward the outside doors.
Someone will be here to meet me. Probably Krishna-Sanjay. He will tell
me where to find the Kamakhya bitch before he dies.
It was almost three-thirty in the morning but the crowd was no less
intense than the other times I had been in the airport. People shouted and
shoved in the sick light from sputtering fluorescent strips, but I could barely
hear the noise as I stepped over Kipling s sheeted dead while making little
effort to avoid treading on the sleeping forms. I let the crowd move me. My
arms and legs felt anesthetized, jerking along as if I had become a poorly han-
dled marionette. I closed my eyes to listen to the Song and to feel the energy
from the weapon only inches from my right hand.
Chatterjee and Gupta also will have to die. However small their complic-
ity, they will have to die.
I stumbled along with the crowd like a man caught in a terrible windstorm.
The noise and smell and pressure from the jostling mob joined perfectly with
the growing emptiness within me to form a dark flower unfolding in my mind.
The laughter was very loud now. Behind my closed eyelids I could see Her
visage rising above the gray towers of the dying city, hear Her voice leading
the rising chant, see Her arms moving to the beat of the terrible dance.
When you open your eyes you will see someone you know. You do not
have to wait. Let it begin here.
I forced my eyes to stay shut, but gripping the suitcase with both hands I
raised it to my chest. I could feel the crowd moving me forward with them
toward the open doors. Screams of porters and the sewer-sweet smells of
Calcutta came in clearly now. I felt my right hand begin unzipping the outside
compartment of the suitcase where I had packed the loaded gun.
Let it begin here.
With my eyes still closed I saw the next few minutes opening before me
like the waiting doors, like the maw of the great beast that was the city, and I
could sense the dark flower opening wide inside me and then the lifting of the
oiled perfection of the Luger and then the sacrament will commence, and
then the power will flow up my arm and into me and through me and out of
me in coughs of flame in the night, and the running forms will fall and I will
reload with the satisfying snick of the new magazine sliding into place and
the pain and the power will flow from me and the running forms will fall and
flesh will fly from flesh from the impact and the flames of chimneys will light
the sky and by their red hue I will find my way through the streets and lanes
and alleys and I will find Victoria, in time this time, find Victoria in time, and
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Dan Simmons Song of Kali [ e - r e ads ]
I will kill those who took her from me and kill those who get in my way and
kill everyone who
Let it begin now.
No! I screamed and opened my eyes. My scream quelled the Song for
only a second or two but in that time I pulled my hand out of the open suit-
case compartment and shoved violently to my left. The doors were only ten
paces in front of me and the crowd surged relentlessly toward them, the cur-
rent of their progress faster now, more concentrated. Through the doors I
caught a glimpse of a man in a white shirt standing by a small blue-and-white
bus. The man s hair rose like spikes of dark electricity.
No! I used the suitcase as a battering ram to fight my way to the wall. A
tall man in the crowd shoved me and I struck him in the chest until he let me
pass. I was only three steps from the open doors now, and the movement of
the crowd pulled me along as surely as an explosion of air into a vacuum.
Let it begin now.
No! I do not know if I shouted aloud. I threw myself forward, shoved
against the crowd like a man wading chest-deep in a river, and with my left
hand grasped the bar of an unmarked side door leading into the off-limits sec-
tion of the terminal. Somehow I managed to hold onto the suitcase while
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