Ted couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment when darkness took over. Maybe it had always been waiting, and he hadn’t noticed its presence. Up where the ghat became an alley into the Old City, streetlights flickered on, and the area took on the color of an apricot. The women who had set out the bowls now lit them. Dots of flame.
The priests stood with their implements of prayer: a conch shell, a round censer, a silver six-tiered tray, a lamp with a fanned cobra head, a silver handbell that they rang in time to the chant coming over the loudspeaker. The speaker was broken, all hiss and feedback. The sound hurt Ted’s ears. Arun sang along.
“What’s the ceremony for?”
“It’s an offering to the Ganges,” Dev said.
“And the fire?”
“An offering to the fire god, I suppose.”
“You don’t know?”
Dev shrugged. “What is there to know?”
Another boat pulled up beside theirs. The mother grappled their boat with a hook, and the daughter held up a flower bowl. Their boat was filled with these bowls, along with other sundries: garlands, potato chips, and foil packets of fennel seeds. Before Dev could shoo them off, Ted said, “I’ll take one.”
“Good karma,” the girl said. “You pray and set on water.” She lit the candle in the bowl. “You pray for wife, yes?”
Dev probably thought this fatuous, a waste of money. Ted thought about John, who was probably already back in New York with Dr. Mark. A prayer for John, then.
The girl handed him another bowl. “Parents.”
OK, his parents. The bowls didn’t float far. The boats around them had formed a blockade of calm water.
She handed him a third bowl. “Parents.”
“You already gave me one for my parents.”
“One parent. For the other.”
“That will do—” Dev said.
Ted interrupted him: “Last one.”
“One hundred,” the girl said. Ted fished out a hundred-rupee bill, and the girl said, “Each.”
“Outrageous,” Dev said. “Let me teach you a magic word. Nahi.” Long a, short i. “It means no,” he said.
Arun had stopped singing. He hollered to other boat rowers, none of them, it seemed, older than sixteen.
The candle in the bowl was a tea light with an improvised twine wick. The candle tin was battered. Maybe after the ceremony, the mother and daughter collected the spent tins to reuse. Dev gave the girl a bill — Ted couldn’t see the denomination — and they rowed to the next boat. Other tourists, other opportunities.
The priests held their tiered lamps aloft, each tier, a ring of fire. People clapped to the drumming droning from the speakers. The priests drew circles in the air with the lamps, in all four directions. A summoning, an invocation to the divine: Let your presence be known. There were other lights too: camera flashes from other boats and from along the ghat. Brief moments of brightness, like silver coins flipping.
Ted set this third bowl in the water, and it caught the current. For himself and Dev. The black river in ceaseless movement, and atop, this tiny light, a small prayer in a wide, engulfing world.
The ceremony had ended, though the lamps still smoked. And all of a sudden, rush hour on the Ganges. An outboard motor roared into life; Ted was surprised to see that boat filled not with Western tourists, but Indian ones. Another sales boat came by. A boy held out videotapes and CDs of the Ganga Aarti. “Souvenirs,” he called.
Ted said, “Nahi.”
Back at the guesthouse, Dev asked, “Did you enjoy your ride?”
Ted unbuttoned Dev’s shirt and hung it. “I did.”
“I hoped you might.” Dev removed his shoes and tucked his socks into them. He fell onto the bed. “I am exhausted.”
“You’ve had quite the day.” This emulation of home life, of stability, it had an expiration date. Ted laid his face on Dev’s shoulder, the warmth of it. Coconut. He thought about the Ganga Aarti. Ephemeral fires, perpetual water. He had liked it, he could appreciate it, but he could not understand it. The priests had made fire dance. Within Ted was another heat, a different spinning fire. Dev could like it, could appreciate it, but could he understand it?
“It’s a custom,” Dev said, “for pilgrims to Benares to leave something behind. A symbol of freeing yourself of earthly matters.”
“Are you leaving something?”
“Yes,” Dev said.
“What?”
Dev rooted on the floor. Everything could be left behind, everything forgotten. “I’m leaving behind,” Dev said, “a sock,” and threw it at Ted’s face.
Ted mock winced and tucked the still-warm sock under his pillow.
“It’s mine now.”
“What do you intend to give up?” Dev asked.
“I don’t know. I’m not sure I have anything.”
“Liar.” Dev hovered over Ted and slowly lowered himself. “You have everything.” Ted remembered the Ganga Aarti again: as the priests waved their tiered lamps aloft, the individual flames coalesced into a cone of fire. Dev’s body touched his. What fantastic heat! Dev chanted in Ted’s ear—lovely, beautiful—a rhythmic blessing, and the bed frame rang as it struck the wall. Praise be to the fire and to the river. To the night and the sky.
The next day, Dev said that he’d be back in the early afternoon, that they’d do something interesting that evening, and that Ted should stay out of trouble. Saying that, of course, made Ted want to get into trouble, but what sort? Certainly not trouble with a capital T, like hashish, or stolen antiquities, or prostitutes. But a more manageable trouble that didn’t require bravery or planning. Like wandering down an unknown alleyway, or refusing to pay attention, or simply being in the way. In any case, Ted was unlikely to get into any trouble whatsoever.
In fact, he found the streets of the Old City to be a warren, the roads twisting upon themselves, branching out, stopping altogether. He consulted the map, but few of the streets had markers, and he oftentimes had to walk until he saw a shop awning with the street name. Signs with Roman lettering lured him back to the ghats, to another guesthouse, to a restaurant or bakery. Merchants beckoned from their doorways, holding spools of silk in their arms.
This place could not cooperate with the modern world. Power cables and telephone lines were strewn overhead, tangled around one another like strangling ivy. The buildings were weighted with age, their fronts wrinkled and sagging. Litter lined the road, bridging the broken paving stones. Even the dust seemed dingier.
If only that were the worst of it.
Cows sauntered in the road, giving way for nothing and occasionally letting loose a fire hose of piss. He could at least avoid the huge cow patties, visible at twenty paces. More insidious were dog droppings, lumps that made him rear back. And then there were droppings of more indeterminate origin, most likely human. But occasionally among the dirt and shit and commerce, a temple, a painted facade, an altar to a many-armed god. Leaping tigers in plaster. A family of rhesus monkeys groomed each other and observed Ted warily.
The crowds in the commercial area of Dashashwamedh weren’t more extreme than anything he’d seen in Times Square, but he felt more vulnerable. No one had qualms about jostling him or yanking his elbow or staring at him with no other purpose than to stare. He wasn’t being singled out; other tourists were eyed and cajoled with the same intensity. A phalanx of auto rickshaws idled near the road. They snapped to attention when Ted approached. They offered destinations—Train station? Golden Temple? Burning ghat? — but Ted already knew where he was going: back home to wait for Dev.