The streets were flooded. Water stood two and three feet deep in places. Under tattered canvas, robed figures sat and slept and squatted and stared at us with eyes that showed only white in orbs of shadow. Each alley gave a glimpse of open rooms, starkly lit courtyards, shadows moving within shadows. A frail man pulling a heavy cart had to leap aside as our bus roared past, throwing a curtain of water across him and his load. He shook his fist, and his mouth shaped unheard obscenities.

The buildings seemed ancient beyond age, decayed remnants of some forgotten millennium — some pre-human age — for the shadows, angles, apertures, and emptinesses did not fit the architecture of man. Yet, on every second or third floor there were open-windowed glimpses of humanity inhabiting these druidic shambles: bare bulbs swinging, bobbing heads, peeled walls with plaster rotting off the white rib-bones of the building, garish illustrations of multi-armed deities clipped from magazines and taped crookedly to walls or window-panes, the cries of children playing, running, fleeing through the knife-blackened alleys, the wail of infants half heard — and everywhere the random movement caught in the corner of one's vision, the sibilant rush of the bus's tires on wet clay and tarmac, and the sight of sheeted figures lying like corpses in the sidewalk shadows. A terrible feeling of déjà vu came over me.

"I quit in disgust when a fool of a professor would not accept my paper on Walt Whitman's debt to Zen Buddhism. An arrogant, parochial fool."

"Yes," I said. "Do you think we could turn off these inside lights?"

We were approaching the center of the city. Rotting residential slums gave way to larger, even more decayed-looking buildings. There were few street lights. Vague flickers of heat lightning were reflected in the deep pools of black water that filled the intersections. Every darkened storefront seemed to hold the silent, sheeted forms lying like unclaimed bundles of laundry or propped up to watch us pass. The yellow lights inside the bus made the three of us look like waxen corpses. I knew now how prisoners of war must feel while being paraded through the streets of the enemy's capital.

Ahead, a boy stood atop a crate in a black circle of water and swung what I took to be a dead cat by its tail. He threw it as the bus approached, and it was not until the furry corpse bounced hollowly off the windshield that I realized it had been a rat. The driver cursed and swerved toward the child. The boy leaped away with a flash of brown legs, and the crate he had been standing on splintered under our right wheel.

"You understand, of course, because you are a poet," said Krishna, and bared small, sharp teeth.

"What about the lights?" I asked. I could feel the rage rising in me. Amrita touched my arm with her left hand.

Krishna snapped something in Bengali. The driver shrugged and grunted an answer.

"The switch is broken," said Krishna.

We swung into an open square. What may have been a park cut a solid line of blackness through the maze of sagging buildings. Two streetcars sat abandoned in the center of a cluttered plaza while a dozen families huddled nearby under sagging canvas. It began to rain again. The sudden downpour beat at the metal of the bus like fists from the dark sky. Only the driver's side of the windshield had a wiper, and it moved sluggishly against the curtain of water that soon put a veil between the city and us.

"We must talk about Mr. M. Das," said Krishna.

I blinked. "I would like the lights out," I said slowly and distinctly. The irrational fury had been building in me since the airport. In a second I knew I would be choking this smug, insensitive cretin; choking him until his froglike eyes popped out of his stupid head. I felt the anger flow down into me like the heat from a strong drink. Amrita must have sensed my second of insanity, for her restraining hand closed on my arm like a vise.

"It is very important that I talk to you about Mr. M. Das," said Krishna. The heat in the bus was almost overpowering. Sweat stood on our faces like burn blisters. Our breath seemed to hang in the air like vapor while the world remained obliterated by the crashing downpour outside.

"I'll turn out the fucking lights," I said, and started to rise. Amrita would have held me back with both hands had it not been for Victoria.

Krishna's heavy brows went up in surprise as I towered over him. I freed my right arm just as Amrita said, "It doesn't matter, Bobby. We're here. Look, there's the hotel."

I paused and then stooped to look out the window. The downpour had stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and only a light drizzle continued to fall. My anger diminished with the ebbing sound of rain on the roof.

"We will perhaps speak later, Mr. Luczak," said Krishna. "It is most important. Tomorrow, perhaps."

" Yeah." I lifted Victoria in my arms and led the way off the bus.

The front of the Oberoi Grand Hotel was as dark as a granite cliff, but a little light escaped from the double doorway. A tattered awning ran to the curb. On either side, standing silently under rain-slicked umbrellas, were a dozen or so shadowy figures. Some were holding soggy placards. I could make out a hammer and sickle, and the English word UNFAIR on one. "Strikers," said Krishna as he snapped his fingers at a sleepy, red-vested porter. I shrugged. A picket line outside a pitch-black hotel at one-thirty A.M. in monsoon-drenched Calcutta did not surprise me. Sometime in the previous half-hour, my sense of reality had slipped its tether. A roaring filled my ears like the rasp of countless insect legs. Jet lag, I thought.

"Thank you for picking us up," said Amrita as Krishna hopped back aboard the bus.

He flashed his baby shark's grimace. "Yes, yes. I talk to you tomorrow. Good night. Good night."

The entrance to the hotel seemed to include several dark hallways that separated the lobby from the street like a protective labyrinth. The lobby itself was bright enough. The clerk was wide awake, smartly dressed, and pleased to see us. Yes, the reservations were right here for Mr. and Mrs. Luczak. Yes, they had received our Telex about the delay. The baggage porter was an old man, but he cooed at Victoria as we took the elevator to the sixth floor and I gave him ten rupees as he left us.

Our room was as cavernous and shadowy as everything else in the city, but it seemed relatively clean and there was a heavy bolt on the door.

"Oh, no!" It was Amrita's voice from the bathroom. I was there in three strides with my heart pounding.

"There are no towels," said Amrita. "Only washcloths." We both began to laugh then. One of us would stop, only to have the other start it up again.

It took us ten minutes to make a nest for Victoria on the empty bed, to strip off our sweat-sodden clothes, rinse up as well as possible, and crawl under the thin spread together. The air conditioner clunked and wheezed hollowly. Somewhere closeby, a toilet flushed explosively. The throbbing sound in my ears was the echo of jet engines.

"Sweet dreams, Victoria," said Amrita. The baby cooed softly in her sleep.

We were asleep in two minutes.