"Over here is the pen that Tagore used to write his famous plays," Chatterjee said loudly, trying to draw us away from Krishna.

"He wrote a poem about it." continued Krishna. "About dying during Laurel and Hardy. In those last days he dated his poems, knowing that each one could be his last. Then, in the brief periods between coma, he wrote down the hour as well. Gone was his sentimental optimism. Gone was the gentle bonhomie that marked so much of his popular work. For you see, between poems, he now was facing the dark face of Death. He was a frightened old man. But the poems . . . ahh, Mr. Luczak . . . those final poems are beautiful. And painful. Like his dying. Tagore looked at the cinema images on the wall and wondered — 'Are we all illusions? Brief shadows thrown on a white wall for the shallow amusement of bored gods? Is this all?' And then he died. Right there. In the corner."

"Come this way," snapped Gupta. "There is much more to see."

There was indeed. Photographs of Tagore's friends and contemporaries included autographed images of Einstein, G. B. Shaw, and a very young Will Durant.

"The Master was a strong influence on Mr. W. B. Yeats," said Chatterjee. "Did you know that the 'rough beast' in 'The Second Coming' — the lion body with the head of a man — was drawn from Tagore's description to Yeats of the fifth incarnation of Vishnu?"

"No," I said. "I don't think I knew that."

"Yes," said Krishna. He ran his hand over the top of a dusty display case and smiled at Chatterjee. "And when Tagore sent Yeats a bound edition of his Bengali poetry, do you know what happened?" Krishna ignored the frowns from Gupta and Chatterjee. He dropped into a crouch and wielded an invisible weapon with both hands. "Why, Yeats charged across his London sitting room, grabbed a large samurai sword which had been a gift, and smote Tagore's book thus . . . Ayehh!!"

"Really?" asked Amrita.

"Yes, really, Mrs. Luczak. And Yeats then cried out, 'Tagore be damned! He sings of peace and love when blood is the answer!'"

The tape recordings of Tagore's music stopped abruptly. We all turned as a poorly dressed boy of about eight stepped into the room. The boy carried a small canvas bag, but it was too small and too irregular to hold a manuscript. He looked from face to face until he came to me.

"You are Mr. Luczak?" The words sounded memorized, as if the boy did not speak English.

"Yes."

"Follow me. I take you to M. Das."

A rickshaw waited in the courtyard. There was room beside the boy for Amrita, Victoria, and me. Gupta and Chatterjee hurried to their car to follow. Krishna seemed to lose interest, and stood by the door.

"You're not coming?" I shouted.

"Not now," said Krishna. "I will see you later."

"We're leaving in the morning," called Amrita.

Krishna shrugged. The boy said something to the rickshaw wallah, and we moved out onto the street. Chatterjee's Premiere pulled out behind us. Half a block back, a small gray sedan also pulled away from the curb. Behind it, a bullock cart lumbered along with half a dozen ragged people in it. I amused myself by imagining that the bullock cart driver was the Metropolitan Policeman assigned to following us. The boy yelled a sentence in Bengali and the rickshaw-coolie shouted back and broke into a faster trot.

"What'd he say?" I asked Amrita. "Where are we going?"

"The boy said, 'Hurry up,'" said Amrita with a smile. "The rickshaw man said that the Americans are heavy pigs."

"Hmmm."

We crossed Howrah Bridge in a mass of brawling traffic that made all previous traffic jams I'd seen pale in comparison. There was as much pedestrain movement as wheeled traffic and it jammed the two levels of the bridge to capacity. The intricate puzzle of gray girders and steel mesh stretched more than a quarter of a mile across the muddy expanse of the Hooghly River. It was a child's Erector Set version of a bridge, and I took Amrita's Minolta to snap a picture of it.

"Why did you do that?"

"I promised your father."

The boy waved both hands at me and repeated something that sounded urgent and angry.

"What's he saying?"

Amrita frowned. "I'm not sure through the dialect, but it's something about photos of the bridge being against the law."

"Tell him it's okay."

She spoke in Hindi, and the boy scowled and responded in Bengali.

"He says it's not okay," said Amrita. "He says that we Americans should let our satellites do our spying."

"Jesus."

The rickshaw pulled up in front of an interminable brick building that was the Howrah Railway Station. There was no sign of Chatterjee's Premiere or of the gray sedan in the snarl of traffic coming off the bridge. "Now what?" I said.

The boy turned to me and handed over the canvas bag. I was surprised by its weight. I tugged the drawstring loose and looked inside.

"Good heavens," said Amrita. "They're coins."

"Not just coins," I said, holding one up. "Kennedy half-dollars. There must be fifty or sixty of them here."

The boy pointed to the entrance of the building and spoke quickly. "He says you are to go inside and give these away," said Amrita.

"Give them away? To whom?"

"He says someone will ask you for them."

The boy nodded as if satisfied, reached into the bag, grabbed four of the coins, and was out of the rickshaw, into the crowd.

Victoria reached for the coins. I tugged the drawstring tight and stared at Amrita. "Well," I said, "I guess it's up to us."

"After you, sir."

When I was a child, the Merchandise Mart in Chicago was the biggest building I could possibly imagine. Then in the late 60's I had the opportunity to see the interior of the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center. The friend who was showing me around told me that clouds formed indoors on some days.

Howrah Railway Station was more impressive.

It was a structure built to a giant's scale. There were a dozen tracks immediately visible; five locomotives at rest, several pouring steam; several score of vendors selling unnamed things from carts that sent up eye-scalding plumes of smoke, thousands of sweating, jostling people; more thousands squatting, sleeping, cooking — living there; and a cacophony of sound so deafening that one couldn't hear himself shout, much less think. That was Howrah Railway Station.

"Mother of Mercy," I said. A few feet from my head, an aircraft propeller protruded from a girder and slowly stirred the heavy air. Dozens of similar fans added their racket to the ocean of noise.

"What?" shouted Amrita. Victoria cringed against her mother's breast.

"Nothing!" We began walking aimlessly, shoving through a crowd moving nowhere. Amrita tugged at my sleeve, and I leaned over so she could speak in my ear. "Shouldn't we wait for Mr. Chatterjee and Mr. Gupta?"

I shook my head. "Let them get their own Kennedy half-dollars."

"What?"

"Never mind."

A short woman came up to us. On her back was a thing that might have been her husband. The man's spine was twisted cruelly, one shoulder grew out of the middle of his humped back, and his legs were boneless tentacles that disappeared inside the folds of the woman's sari. A black arm more bone than flesh unfolded our way and his palm opened. "Baba, Baba."

I hesitated a second and then reached into the bag and handed him a coin. His wife's eyes opened wide, and both her hands thrust at us. "Baba!"

"Should I give him the whole thing?" I shouted at Amrita, but before she could reply there were a dozen hands being thrust into my face.

"Baba! Baba!"

I tried to back away, but more imploring palms struck at my back. Quickly I began dispensing coins. The hands would grasp the silver, disappear into the fray, and then thrust back for more. I caught a glimpse of Amrita and Victoria ten feet away and was glad there was some distance between us.