“Of course, that’s ignoring the fact that you’re a gentile and going to suffer eternal damnation either way,” said Josh.

“Yeah, leaving that out altogether.”

“But we’ll get your daughter back,” Joshua said.

Joshua wanted to rush into Kalighat and demand the return of Rumi’s daughter and the release of all the other victims in the name of what was good and right. Joshua’s solution to everything was to lead with righteous indignation, and there is a time and a place unto that, but there is also a time for cunning and guile (Ecclesiastes 9 or something). I was able to talk him into an alternate plan by using flawless logic:

“Josh, did the Vegemites smite the Marmites by charging in and demanding justice at the end of a sword? I think not. These Brahmans cut off and eat the fingers of children. I know there’s no finger-cutting commandment, Josh, but still, I’m guessing that these people think differently than we do. They call the Buddha a heretic, and he was one of their princes. How do you think they’ll receive a scrawny brown kid claiming to be the son of a god who doesn’t even live in their area?”

“Good point. But we still have to save the child.”

“Of course.”

“How?”

“Extreme sneakiness.”

“You’ll have to be in charge then.”

“First we need to see this city and this temple where the sacrifices will be held.”

Joshua scratched his head. His hair had mostly grown back, but was still short. “The Vegemites smote the Marmites?”

“Yeah, Excretions three-six.”

“I don’t remember that. I guess I need to brush up on my Torah.”

The statue of Kali over her altar was carved from black stone and stood as tall as ten men. She wore a necklace of human skulls around her neck and a girdle made of severed human hands at her hips. Her open maw was lined with a saw blade of teeth over which a stream of fresh blood had been poured. Even her toenails curved into vicious blades which dug into the pile of twisted, graven corpses on which she stood. She had four arms, one holding a cruel, serpentine sword, another a severed head by the hair; the third hand she held crooked, as if beckoning her victims to the place of dark destruction to which all are destined, and the fourth was posed downward, in a manner presenting the goddess’s hand-girded hips, as if asking the eternal question, “Does this outfit make me look fat?”

The raised altar lay in the middle of an open garden that was surrounded by trees. The altar was wide enough that five hundred people could have stood in the shadow of the black goddess. Deep grooves had been cut in the stone to channel the blood of sacrifices into vessels, so it could be poured through the goddess’s jaws. Leading to the altar was a wide stone-paved boulevard, which was lined on either side by great elephants carved from wood and set on turntables so they could be rotated. The trunks and front feet of the elephants were stained rusty brown, and here and there the trunks exhibited deep gouges from blades that had hewn through a child into the mahogany.

“Vitra isn’t being kept here,” Joshua said.

We were hiding behind a tree near the temple garden, dressed as natives, fake caste marks and all. Having lost when we drew lots, I was the one dressed as a woman.

“I think this is a bodhi tree,” I said, “just like Buddha sat under! It’s so exciting. I’m feeling sort of enlightened just standing here. Really, I can feel ripe bodhies squishing between my toes.”

Joshua looked at my feet. “I don’t think those are bodhies. There was a cow here before us.”

I lifted my foot out of the mess. “Cows are overrated in this country. Under the Buddha’s tree too. Is nothing sacred?”

“There’s no temple to this temple,” Joshua said. “We have to ask Rumi where the sacrifices are kept until the festival.”

“He won’t know. He’s Untouchable. These guys are Brahmans—priests—they wouldn’t tell him anything. That would be like a Sadducee telling a Samaritan what the Holy of Holies looked like.”

“Then we have to find them ourselves,” Joshua said.

“We know where they’re going to be at midnight, we’ll get them then.”

“I say we find these Brahmans and force them to stop the whole festival.”

“We’ll just storm up to their temple and tell them to stop it?”

“Yes.”

“And they will.”

“Yes.”

“That’s cute, Josh. Let’s go find Rumi. I have a plan.”

“You make a very attractive woman,” Rumi said from the comfort of his pit. “Did I tell you that my wife has passed on to her next incarnation and that I am alone?”

“Yeah, you mentioned that.” He seemed to have given up on us getting his daughter back. “What happened to the rest of your family, anyway?”

“They drowned.”

“I’m sorry. In the Ganges?”

“No, at home. It was the monsoon season. Little Vitra and I had gone to the market to buy some swill, and there was a sudden downpour. When we returned…” He shrugged.

“I don’t mean to sound insensitive, Rumi, but there is a chance that your loss could have been caused by—oh, I don’t know—perhaps the fact that you LIVE IN A FUCKING PIT!”

“That’s not helping, Biff,” Joshua said. “You said you had a plan?”

“Right. Rumi, am I correct in assuming that these pits, when someone is not living in them, are used for tanning hides?”

“Yes, it is work that only Untouchables may do.”

“That would account for the lovely smell. I assume you use urine in the tanning process, right?”

“Yes, urine, mashed brains, and tea are the main ingredients.”

“Show me the pit where the urine is condensed.”

“The Rajneesh family is living there.”

“That’s okay, we’ll bring them a present. Josh, do you have any lint in the bottom of your satchel?”

“What are you up to?”

“Alchemy,” I said. “The subtle manipulation of the elements. Watch and learn.”

When it was not being used, the urine pit was the home of the Rajneesh family, and they were more than happy to give us loads of the white crystals that covered the floor of their home. There were six in the family, father, mother, an almost grown daughter, and three little ones. Another little son had been taken for sacrifice at the festival of Kali. Like Rumi, and all the other Untouchables, the Rajneesh family looked more like skeletons mummified in brown leather than people. The Untouchable men went about the pits naked or wearing only a loincloth, and even the women were dressed in tatters that barely covered them—nothing as nice as the stylish sari that I had purchased in the marketplace. Mr. Rajneesh commented that I was a very attractive woman and encouraged me to drop by after the next monsoon.

Joshua pounded chunks of the crystallized mineral into a fine white powder while Rumi and I collected charcoal from under the heated dying pit (a firebox had been gouged out of the stone under the pit) which the Untouchables used to render the flowers from the indigo shrub into fabric dye.

“I need brimstone, Rumi. Do you know what that is? A yellow stone that burns with a blue flame and gives off a smoke that smells like rotten eggs?”

“Oh yes, they sell it in the market as some sort of medicine.”

I handed the Untouchable a silver coin. Go buy as much of it as you can carry.”

“Oh my, this will be more than enough money. May I buy some salt with what is left?”

“Buy what you need with what’s left over, just go.”

Rumi skulked away and I went to help Joshua process the saltpeter.

The concept of abundance was an abstract one to the Untouchables, except as it pertained to two categories, suffering and animal parts. If you wanted decent food, shelter, or clean water, you would be sorely disappointed among the Untouchables, but if you were in the market for beaks, bones, teeth, hides, sinew, hooves, hair, gallstones, fins, feathers, ears, antlers, eyeballs, bladders, lips, nostrils, poop chutes, or any other inedible part of virtually any creature that walked on, swam under, or flew over the subcontinent of India, then the Untouchables were likely to have what you wanted lying around, conveniently stored beneath a thick blanket of black flies. In order to fashion the equipment I needed for my plan, I had to think in terms of animal parts. Fine unless you need, say, a dozen short swords, bows and arrows, and chain mail for thirty soldiers and all you have to work with is a stack of nostrils and three mismatched poop chutes. It was a challenge, but I made do. As Joshua moved among the Untouchables, surreptitiously healing their maladies, I barked out my orders.