"You did well, Sister Holly," said the phansigar, removing the yellow cloth. There was a red welt around the neck, but no blood. He untied the sacred strangling cloth, which was called the "rumal." They went through the student's pockets and found forty dollars.
It barely covered the air fare, even the just Folks consumer fare. The phansigar shook his head. He did not know what the Holy One would say.
"But isn't the important thing the death offering to Kali?" Holly asked. "Kill for Kali? Offer her up a demon? Doesn't Kali love pain? Even our pain? Even our deaths?"
The phansigar, formerly a stationery-store clerk in Kansas City, had to agree. "It was a good death," he said. "A very good death."
"Thank you," said Holly. "It was my first. I thought I wasn't even going to be able to say hello to anyone, I was so frightened."
"That's just how I felt my first time," said the brother phansigar, he of the strangling cord, he who offered up the sacrifice suitable to Kali, the goddess of death. "It gets easier as you go along."
On their way to the Holy Temple, where Kali received the kiss to Her followers, Her loyal servants ate the traditional raw sugar and said the prayers again. They wrapped the forty dollars in the holy rumal, and with songs of praise and the raw sugar still on their lips, went before the Holy One, who had been brought to America by Kali. They intoned prayers for Kali and recitations of the victim's pain, which was wine for Her lips."
Ban Sar Din heard the prayers, heard the recitations of devotion from the followers, and waited until the holy rumal was placed at his feet. Then he nodded sagely at the bowing devotees.
"Kali has tasted the sweetness of death again because of you, beloved followers," he said, and then added something in the language of Bangalore, his native Indian city. Americans liked that. Especially the kids. The kids were the best. They were complete jerks.
Ban Sar Din gave the holy strangler phansigar a fresh rumal and took the closed death cloth with a grunt of gratitude. A quick glance inside told him only forty dollars.
Impossible, he thought. Even on a just Folks consumer-fare flight, they would be losing money on a forty-dollar take. And that was just one fare. What about the other fares? What about those times when there was no one for them to set up? The overhead was enormous. The lights alone for the temple cost $120 a month. What was the matter with these kids? Forty dollars. Impossible.
When Ban Sar Din retreated for private devotions into his solitary office, the cold brutal fact hit him when he saw three tens, a five, and five singles. It was forty dollars. This group of yo-yos had wasted a consumer-bonus fare for forty dollars. He wanted to run back into the temple and kick them out.
How the hell did they think he was going to meet his budget?
The yellow handkerchiefs were going up. He used to be able to get a gross for $87.50, and that included the printed likeness of Kali. Now a gross of something barely strong enough to strangle a neck bigger than a chicken's cost $110, and if you wanted printed pictures, forget the whole thing. And the other pictures of Kali. They went well, but prices were rising there too. And candles. Everybody in America was burning candles, and prices had gone up like smoke.
So with strangling cloths going up, candles out of sight, printing prohibitive, and it only a matter of time before just Folks raised its fares to meet the competitors', Ban Sar Din realized he was going broke at forty dollars a pop.
But how was he going to tell these American hooples to at least look to see if the victim was wearing an expensive watch? Was that too much to ask? Look for an expensive watch before you send the demon on his way to Kali.
That didn't seem like a lot to ask. But he didn't know. He never knew about Americans or America. He had come to the country seven years before, with only a six-month visa and his quick wits. Back in Bangalore, the ruling magistrate had let him know that he wasn't wanted on the streets of the city and if he were caught picking another Indian pocket, the police were going to take him into an alley and beat his dark brown skin purple.
Then a friend told him about the wonders of America. In the United States, if you were caught picking a pocket, you were given a room to yourself and three good meals a day. It was supposed to be punishment. Americans called it jail.
You could even get free legal help, and because Americans thought that any kind of punishment was too harsh, they were even experimenting with making the opposite sex available so that prisoners wouldn't be lonely. They had taken away the bars too, and given prisoners free education so they could make money outside jail by working if they chose to, although not too many did. And who could blame them, when jail was so good?
"I do not believe such a place like this exists," Ban Sar Din had told his friend.
"True. It is like that in America."
"You lie. No one is that stupid. No country."
"Not only do they do all these things, but if a person who is rewarded for killing and robbing kills and robs again, guess who they blame?"
"I don't know."
"Themselves," his friend had said.
"You lie," Ban Sar Din spat.
"They gave India fifteen billion dollars in grain, and look at how we treat them. Fifteen billion when a billion was a lot of money even for Americans."
"They can't be that rich and that stupid. How do they survive?" Ban Sar Din asked.
"They have a very big ocean on both sides of them." Ban Sar Din crossed one of those oceans with his very last penny and immediately went about picking pockets, expecting to get caught and go to this wonderful place called jail. Then one day some white man on a park bench near Lake Pontchartrain spoke to him. "Where did I go wrong?" the white man said.
Ban Sar Din would have left, but his hand was solidly inside the man's trouser pocket.
The man furrowed his brows. "We are a vacant, empty society," he said.
Ban Sar Din tried to get his hand out but couldn't, so he nodded.
"I am vacant, too," the man said.
Ban Sar Din nodded again. He was only five feet tall and weighed less than one hundred pounds. He did not have the leverage to just yank free.
He had black hair and eyes and dark brown skin and he had expected people in America to single him out because of that. Everyone in Bangalore had the same coloring, but in America people were different colors, but none of them ever died in the streets no matter what their color. In Bangalore, there were often demonstrations on behalf of the racially oppressed in America, and everyone marched, except of course the untouchables, who, when they tried to demonstrate along with the other castes, were beaten to death or flogged from the streets.
"What can I do to make amends?" the white man asked.
"Lean forward a bit to I can get my hand out of your pocket," Ban Sar Din suggested.
"Forward. Yes, of course. I've been looking at the past, turning in on myself and the tragedies of the past. I have to look forward."
"And twist a bit," Ban Sar Din said.
"Of course. Twist. Change. Are you telling me all change is possible?" asked the man on the bench. Ban Sar Din smiled.
"You smile. Do you think my struggles ludicrous?" asked the man. "Or do they have a deeper, more transcendental meaning?"
The hand was almost loose from the pocket now. "Up," said Ban Sar Din.
"Higher than transcendental?"
"Stand, please."
"You are beyond me in your wisdom," said the man, slowly getting to his feet. "I know money is meaningless to you, but here, let me give you something."
He took the wallet out of his rear pocket along with the limp brown hand that was clutching it. Ban Sar Din knew now he had succeeded. The man would surely call the police. Then, glorious jail.