Dan Simmons - Song of Kali

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SONG OF KALI

by Dan Simmons

A MASTERPIECE OF SHEER TERROR

When _Song of Kali_ was published in 1985, Dan Simmons was virtually

unknown, having published only a few short stories. But this sharp, vivid

novel struck a raw nerve. A startled and amazed readership could only gasp in

wonder and horror at the apparent ease with which the author made readers feel

that they were living the nightmarish reality he so potently conveyed in the

pages of this blood-curdling novel.

Here is Calcutta, perhaps the foulest and most crime-ridden city in the

world: filthy, stench-ridden, crawling with vermin both human and otherwise,

possessed of evils so vile that they beggar description.

In this steaming, fetid cradle of chaos, the ordeal of an American man

and his family plays out, moment by moment, page by page, in a novel so truly

frightening that otherwise jaded readers will quail in fear at its

gut-wrenching finale.

One of the great masterpieces of horror of this century, _Song of Kali_

will leave an indelible imprint on your soul. Once you read it, you'll never

forget it. . . . Never.

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in

this novel are either fictitious or are used fictitiously.

SONG OF KALI

portions thereof, in any form.

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Published by arrangement with Bluejay Books

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

Tor Books on the World Wide Web:

http://www.tor.com

Tor is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Simmons, Dan.

Song of Kali / by Dan Simmons.

p. cm.

"A Tom Doherty Associates book."

ISBN 0-312-86583-X

1. Kali (Hindu deity) -- Fiction. I. Title.

PS3569.I47292S6 1998

813'.54 -- dc21 97-30993

CIP

Printed in the United States of America

0987654

For HARLAN ELLISON,

who has heard the song,

And for KAREN and JANE,

who are my other voices.

". . . there is a darkness. It

is for everyone . . . Only some Greeks

and admirers of theirs, in their

liquid noon, where the friendship

of beauty to human things was perfect,

thought they were clearly divided

from this darkness. And these

Greeks too were in it. But still

they are the admiration of the

rest of the mud-sprung, famine-

knifed, street-pounding, war-

rattled, difficult, painstaking,

kicked in the belly, grief and

cartilage mankind, the multitude,

some under a coal-sucking Vesuvius

of chaos smoke, some inside a

heaving Calcutta midnight, who

very well know where they are."

-- Saul Bellow

"Why, this is Hell; nor am I

out of it."

-- Christopher Marlowe

Some places are too evil to be allowed to exist. Some _cities_ are too

wicked to be suffered. Calcutta is such a place. Before Calcutta I would have

laughed at such an idea. Before Calcutta I did not believe in evil --

certainly not as a force separate from the actions of men. Before Calcutta I

was a fool.

After the Romans had conquered the city of Carthage, they killed the

men, sold the women and children into slavery, pulled down the great

buildings, broke up the stones, burned the rubble, and salted the earth so

that nothing would ever grow there again. That is not enough for Calcutta.

Calcutta should be _expunged_.

Before Calcutta I took part in marches against nuclear weapons. Now I

dream of nuclear mushroom clouds rising above a city. I see buildings melting

into lakes of glass. I see paved streets flowing like rivers of lava and real

rivers boiling away in great gouts of steam. I see human figures dancing like

burning insects, like obscene praying mantises sputtering and bursting against

a fiery red background of total destruction.

The city is Calcutta. The dreams are not unpleasant.

Some places are too evil to be allowed to exist.

Chapter One

"_Today everything happens in Calcutta . . .

Who should I blame?_"

-- Sankha Ghosh

"Don't go, Bobby," said my friend. "It's not worth it."

It was June of 1977, and I had come down to New York from New Hampshire

in order to finalize the details of the Calcutta trip with my editor at

_Harper's_. Afterward I decided to drop in to see my friend Abe Bronstein. The

modest uptown office building that housed our little literary magazine, _Other

Voices_, looked less than impressive after several hours of looking down on

Madison Avenue from the rarefied heights of the suites at _Harper's_.

Abe was in his cluttered office, alone, working on the autumn issue of

_Voices_. The windows were open, but the air in the room was as stale and

moist as the dead cigar that Abe was chewing on. "Don't go to Calcutta,

Bobby," Abe said again. "Let someone else do it."

"Abe, it's all set," I said. "We're leaving next week." I hesitated a

moment. "They're paying very well and covering all expenses," I added.

"Hnnn," said Abe. He shifted the cigar to the other side of his mouth

and frowned at a stack of manuscripts in front of him. From looking at this

sweaty, disheveled little man -- more the picture of an overworked bookie than

anything else -- one would never have guessed that he edited one of the more

respected "little magazines" in the country. In 1977, _Other Voices_ hadn't

eclipsed the old _Kenyan Review_ or caused _The Hudson Review_ undue worry

about competition, but we were getting our quarterly issues out to

subscribers; five stories that had first appeared in _Voices_ had been chosen

for the O'Henry Award anthologies; and Joyce Carol Gates had donated a story

to our tenth-anniversary issue. At various times I had been _Other Voices_

assistant editor, poetry editor, and unpaid proofreader. Now, after a year off

to think and write in the New Hampshire hills and with a newly issued book of

verse to my credit, I was merely a valued contributor. But I still thought of

_Voices_ as _our_ magazine. And I still thought of Abe Bronstein as a close

friend.

"Why the hell are they sending _you_, Bobby?" asked Abe. "Why doesn't

_Harper's_ send one of its big guns if this is so important that they're going

to cover expenses?"

Abe had a point. Not many people had heard of Robert C. Luczak in 1977,

despite the fact that _Winter Spirits_ had received half a column of review in

the _Times_. Still, I hoped that what people -- especially the few hundred

people who counted -- _had_ heard was promising. "_Harper's_ thought of me

because of that piece I did in _Voices_ last year," I said. "You know, the one

on Bengali poetry. You said I spent too much time on Rabindranath Tagore."

"Yeah, I remember," said Abe. "I'm surprised that those clowns at

_Harper's_ knew who Tagore was."

"Chet Morrow called me," I said. "He said that he had been impressed

with the piece." I neglected to tell Abe that Morrow had forgotten Tagore's

name, "Chet Morrow?" grunted Abe. "Isn't he busy doing novelizations of TV

series?"

"He's filling in as temporary assistant editor at _Harper's_," I said.

"He wants the Calcutta article in by the October issue."

Abe shook his head. "What about Amrita and little Elizabeth Regina . .

." "Victoria," I said. Abe knew the baby's name. When I had first told him

the name we'd chosen for our daughter, Abe had suggested that it was a pretty

damn Waspy title for the offspring of an Indian princess and a Chicago

pollock. The man was the epitome of sensitivity. Abe, although well over

fifty, still lived with his mother in Bronxville. He was totally absorbed in

putting out _Voices_ and seemed indifferent to anything or anyone that didn't

directly apply to that end. One winter the heat had gone out in the office,

and he had spent the better part of January here working in his wool coat

before getting around to having it fixed. Most of Abe's interactions with

people these days tended to be over the phone or through letters, but that

didn't make the tone of his comments any less acerbic. I began to see why no

one had taken my place as either assistant editor or poetry editor. "Her

name's Victoria," I said again.

"Whatever. How does Amrita feel about you going off and deserting her

and the kid? How old's the baby, anyway? Couple months?"

"Seven months old," I said.

"Lousy time to go off to India and leave them," said Abe.

"Amrita's going too," I said. "And Victoria. I convinced Morrow that

Amrita could translate the Bengali for me." This was not quite the truth. It

had been Morrow who suggested that Amrita go with me. In fact, it was probably

Amrita's name that had gotten me the assignment. _Harper's_ had contacted

three authorities on Bengali literature, two of them Indian writers living in

the States, before calling me. All three had turned down the assignment, but

the last man they contacted had mentioned Amrita -- despite her field being

mathematics, not writing -- and Morrow had followed up on it. "She _does_

speak Bengali, doesn't she?" Morrow had asked over the phone. "Sure," I'd

said. Actually, Amita spoke Hindi, Marathi, Tamil, and a little Punjabi as

well as German, Russian, and English, but not Bengali. _Close enough_, I'd

thought.

"Amrita wants to go?" asked Abe.

"She's looking forward to it," I said. "She hasn't been back to India

since her father moved the family to England when she was seven. She's also

looking forward to our spending some time in London on the way to India so her

parents can meet Victoria." This last part was true. Amrita had not wanted to

go to Calcutta with the baby until I convinced her that it was important to my

career. The stopover in London had been the deciding factor for her.

"Okay," grunted Abe. "Go to Calcutta." His tone of voice let me know

precisely what he thought of the idea.

"Tell me why you don't want me to," I said.

"Later," said Abe. "Right now tell me about this Das thing Morrow's

talking about. And I'd like to know why you want me to save half of next

spring's issue of _Voices_ for more Das stuff. I hate reprints, and there

can't be ten lines of his verse that hasn't been printed and reprinted _ad

nauseum_."

"Das, yes," I said. "But not reprints. New things."

"Tell me," said Abe.

I told him.

"I'm going to Calcutta to find the poet M. Das," I said. "Find him, talk

to him, and bring back some samples of his new work for publication."

Abe stared at me. "Uh-uh," he said. "No way. M. Das is dead. He died six

or seven years ago. In 1970, I think."

"July of 1969," I said. I could not keep a trace of smugness out of my

voice. "He disappeared in July of 1969 while on his way back from his father's

funeral, cremation actually, in a village in East Pakistan -- Bangladesh now

-- and everyone assumed he was murdered."

"Yeah, I remember," said Abe. "I stayed with you and Amrita for a couple

of days in your Boston apartment when the New England Poets' Alliance held

that commemorative reading for him. You read some of Tagore's stuff, and

excerpts from Das's epic poems about what'shername, the nun -- Mother Teresa."

"And two of my Chicago Cycle pieces were dedicated to him," I said. "But

I guess we were all a bit premature. Das seems to have resurfaced in Calcutta,

or at least some of his new poetry and correspondence has. _Harper's_ got some

samples through an agency they work with there, and people who knew Das say

that he definitely wrote these new things. But nobody's seen the man himself.

_Harper's_ wants me to try to get some of his new work, but the slant of the

article is going to be 'The Search for M. Das,' that kind of crap. Now here's

the good news. _Harper's_ gets first refusal on any of the poetry I get rights

to, but we can print the rest in _Other Voices_."

"Sloppy seconds," grumbled Abe and chewed on his cigar. This was the

kind of enthusiastic gratitude I'd grown used to during my years with

Bronstein. I said nothing, and eventually he spoke again. "So where the hell's

Das been for eight years, Bobby?"

I shrugged and tossed him a photocopied page that Morrow had given me.

Abe inspected it, held it at arm's length, turned it sideways like a

centerfold, and tossed it back. "I give up," he said. "What the shit is it?"

"That's the fragment of a new poem that Das is supposed to have written

within the past couple of years."

"What's it in, Hindi?"

"No, Sanskrit and Bengali, mostly. Here's the English translation." I

handed over the other photocopy.

Abe's sweaty brow furrowed as he read. "Sweet Christ, Bobby, is this

what I'm holding the spring issue for? This is about some dame scewing

doggie-style while drinking the blood of a headless man. Or did I miss

something?"

"Nope. That's about it. Of course there are only a few stanzas in that

fragment," I said. "And it's a rough translation."

"I thought Das's work was lyrical and sentimental. Sort of the way you

described Tagore's stuff in your article."

"He was. He is. Not sentimental but _optimistic_." It was the same

phrase I'd used many times to defend Tagore. Hell, it was the same phrase I'd

used to defend my own work.

"Uh-huh," said Abe. "Optimistic. I like this optimistic part here --

'_Kama Rati kamé / viparita karé rati_.' According to the translator's copy it

means -- 'Maddened by lust, Kama and Rati fuck like dogs.' Sweet. It has a

distinctive lilt to it, Bobby. Sort of early Robert Frost-ish."

"It's part of a traditional Bengali song," I said. "Notice how Das had

embedded the rhythm of it in the general passage. He shifts from classical

Vedic form to folk-Bengali and then back to Vedic. It's a complicated

stylistic treatment, even allowing for translation." I shut up. I was just

repeating what Morrow had told me, and he had been repeating what one of his

"experts" had said. It was very hot in the little room. Through the open

windows came the lulling sound of traffic and the somehow reassuring cry of a

distant siren. "You're right," I said. "It doesn't sound like Das at all. It's

almost impossible to believe that this is from the same man who wrote the

Mother Teresa epic. My guess is that Das isn't alive and that this is some

sort of scam. I don't know, Abe."

Abe pushed back in his swivel chair, and I thought for a second that he

actually was going to remove the cigar stub from his mouth. Instead he

scowled, rotated the cigar left and then right, leaned back in his chair, and

clasped his stubby fingers behind his neck. "Bobby, did I ever tell you about

the time I was in Calcutta?"

"No." I blinked in surprise. Abe had traveled widely as a wire-service

reporter before he wrote his first novel, but he rarely talked about those

days. After he had accepted my Tagore piece, he idly mentioned that he once

had spent nine months with Lord Mountbatten in Burma. His stories about his

wire-service days were rare but invariably enjoyable. "Was it during the war?"

I asked.

"No. Right after. During the Hindu-Muslim partition riots in '47.

Britain was pulling out, carving India into two countries and leaving the two

religious groups to slaughter eath other. That was all before your time,

wasn't it Roberto?"

"I've read about it, Abe. So you went to Calcutta to report the riots?"

"Nope. People didn't want to read about any more fighting right then. I

went to Calcutta because Gandhi . . . Mohandas, not Indira . . . Gandhi was

going there and we were covering _him_. Man of Peace, Saint in a Loincloth,

the whole _schtick_. Anyway, I was in Calcutta for about three months." Abe

paused and ran a hand through his thinning hair. He seemed at a loss for

words. I'd never seen Abe hesitate a second in using language -- written,

spoken, or shouted. "Bobby," he said at last, "do you know what the word

_miasma_ means?"

"A poisonous atmosphere," I said. It nettled me to be quizzed. "As from

a swamp. Or any noxious influence. Probably comes from the Greek _miainein_,

meaning 'to pollute.'"

"Yeah," said Abe and rotated his cigar again. He took no notice of my

little performance. Abe Bronstein _expected_ his former poetry editor to know

his Greek. "Well, the only word that could describe Calcutta to me then . . .

or now . . . was miasma. I can't even hear one word without thinking of the

other."

"It was built on a swamp," I said, still irritated. I wasn't used to

hearing this kind of garbage from Abe. It was like having your reliable old

plumber suddenly break into a discourse on astrology. "And we'll be going

there during the monsoon season, which isn't the most pleasant time of the

year, I guess. But _I_ don't think --"

"I wasn't talking about the weather," said Abe. "Although it's the

hottest, most humid, most miserable goddamn hellhole I've ever been in. Worse

than Burma in '43. Worse than Singapore in typhoon weather. Jesus, it's worse

than Washington in August. No, Bobby, I'm talking about _the place_,

goddammit. There was something . . . something miasmal about that city. I've

never been in a place that seemed as mean or shitty, and I've spent time in

some of the great sewer cities of the world. Calcutta _scared_ me, Bobby."

I nodded. The heat had caused a headache to start throbbing behind my

eyes. "Abe, you've just spent time in the wrong cities," I said lightly. "Try

spending a summer in North Philadelphia or on the Southside of Chicago where I

grew up. That'll make Calcutta look like Fun City."

"Yeah," said Abe. He wasn't looking at me anymore. "Well, it wasn't just

the city. I wanted out of Calcutta so my bureau chief -- a poor _schmuck_ who

died of cirrhosis of the liver a couple of years later . . . this jerk gives

me an assignment to cover a bridge dedication way out in the boonies of Bengal

somewhere. I mean, there wasn't even a railroad line there yet, just this damn

bridge connecting one patch of jungle to another across a river about two

hundred yards wide and three inches deep. But the bridge had been built with

some of the first postwar aid money sent from the States, so I had to go cover

the dedication." Abe paused and looked out the window. From somewhere down the

street came angry shouts in Spanish. Abe did not seem to hear them. "So

anyway, it was pretty dull. The engineers and construction crew had already

left, and the dedication was the usual mixture of politics and religion that

you always get in India. It was too late to start back by jeep that evening --

I was in no hurry to get back to Calcutta, anyway -- so I stayed in a little

guest house on the edge of the village. It was probably left over from British

inspection tours during the Raj. But it was so damn hot that night -- one of

those times when the sweat won't even drip, it just beads on your skin and

hangs in the air -- and the mosquitoes were driving me crazy; so sometime

after midnight I got up and walked down to the bridge. I smoked a cigarette

and headed back. If it hadn't been for the moon I wouldn't have seen it."

Abe took the cigar out of his mouth. He grimaced as if it tasted as foul

as it looked. "The kid couldn't have been much more than ten, maybe younger,"

he said. "He'd been impaled on some iron reinforcement rods sticking up out of

the cement abutment on the west side of the bridge. You could tell that he

hadn't died right away; that he'd struggled for some time after the rods went

through him --"

"He'd been climbing on the new bridge?" I said.

"Yeah, that's what I thought," said Abe. "And that's what the local

authorities said at the inquest. But for the life of me I couldn't figure out

how he'd managed to hit those rods. . . . He would've had to have jumped way

out from the high girders. Then, a couple of weeks later, right before Gandhi

broke his fast and the rioting stopped back in Calcutta, I went over to the

British consulate there to dig out a copy of Kipling's story 'The Bridge

Builders.' You've read it, haven't you?"

"No," I said. I couldn't stand Kipling's prose or poetry.

"You should," said Abe. "Kipling's short fiction is quite good."

"So what's the story?" I asked.

"Well, the story hinges around the fact that at the end of every

bridge-building, Bengalis used to have an elaborate religious ceremony."

"That's not unusual, is it?" I said, half guessing the punch line of all

of this.

"Not at all," said Abe. "Every event in India calls for some sort of

religious ceremony. It's just the way the Bengalis went about it that caused

Kipling to write the story." Abe put the cigar back in his mouth and spoke

through gritted teeth. "At the end of each bridge construction, they offered

up a human sacrifice."

"Right," I said. "Great." I gathered up my photocopies, stuffed them in

my briefcase, and rose to leave. "If you remember any more Kipling tales, Abe,

be sure to give us a call. Amrita'll get a big kick out of them."

Abe stood up and leaned on his desk. His blunt fingers pressed down on

stacks of manuscripts. "Hell, Bobby, I'd just prefer that you weren't going

into that --"

"Miasma," I said.

Abe nodded.

"I'll stay away from new bridges," I said while walking toward the door.

"At least think again about taking Amrita and the baby."

"We're going," I said. "The reservations have been made. We've had our

shots. The only question now is whether you want to see Das's stuff if it _is_

Das and if I can secure publication rights. What do you say, Abe?"

Abe nodded again. He threw his cigar into a cluttered ashtray.

"I'll send you a postcard from poolside at the Calcutta Oberoi Grand

Hotel," I said, opening the door.

My last sight of Abe was of him standing there with his arm and hand

extended, either in a half-wave or some mute gesture of tired resignation.

Chapter Two

"_Would you like to know Calcutta?_

_Then be prepared to forget her_."

-- Sushil Roy

On the night before we were to leave, I sat on the front porch with

Amrita as she nursed Victoria. Fireflies winked their cryptic messages against

the dark line of trees. Crickets, tree frogs, and a few night birds wove a

tapestry of nocturnal background noise. Our house was only a few miles from

Exeter, New Hampshire, but at times it was so quiet there that we could have

been on another world. I had appreciated that solitude during my winter of

writing, but I realized now that I was restless; that it was partly those very

months of isolation that were making me itch to travel, to see strange places,

faces. "You're sure you want to go?" I asked. My voice sounded too loud in the

night.Amrita looked up as the baby finished nursing. The dim light from the

window illuminated Amrita's strong cheekbones and soft brown skin. Her dark

eyes seemed luminous. Sometimes she was so beautiful that I physically ached

at the thought we might not have met, married, had our child together. She

lifted Victoria slightly, and I caught a glimpse of a soft curve of breast and

raised nipple before her blouse was back in place. "I don't mind going," said

Amrita. "It will be nice to see Mother and Father again."

"But India," I said. "Calcutta. Do you want to go there?"

"I don't mind, if I can be of help," she said. She put a folded, clean

diaper on my shoulder and handed Victoria to me. I rubbed the baby's back,

feeling her warmth, smelling the milk and baby smell of her.

"You're sure it won't be a problem with your work?" I asked. Victoria

wiggled in my grasp, reaching a chubby hand toward my nose. I blew on her palm

and she giggled and then burped.

"It won't be a problem," said Amrita, although I knew it would be. She

was to start teaching a new graduate-level math course at Boston University

after Labor Day, and I knew how much preparation lay ahead of her.

"Are you looking forward to seeing India again?" I asked. Victoria had

moved her head closer to my cheek and was happily drooling on my collar.

"I'm curious to see how it compares with what I remember," said Amrita.

Her voice was soft, modulated by her three years at Cambridge, but never

clipped in the flat British manner. Listening to Amrita was like being stroked

by a firm but well-oiled palm.

Amrita had been seven years old when her father moved his engineering

firm from New Delhi to London. The memories of India that she had shared with

me supported the stereotype of a culture rampant with noise, confusion, and

caste discrimination. Nothing could have been more alien to Amrita's own

character; she was the physical essence of quiet dignity, she despised noise

and clutter of any sort, she was appalled by injustice, and her mind had been

disciplined by the well-ordered rhythms of linguistics and mathematics.

Amrita had once described her home in Delhi and the apartment in Bombay

where she and her sisters had spent summers with her uncle: bare walls

encrusted with grime and ancient handprints, open windows, rough sheets,

lizards scrabbling across the walls at night, the cluttered cheapness of

everything. Our home near Exeter was as clean and open as a Scandinavian

designer's dreams, all gleaming bare wood, comfortable modular seating,

immaculately white walls, and works of art illuminated by recessed lighting.

It had been Amrita's money that made both the house and our little art

collection possible: her "dowry," she jokingly used to call it. I had

protested at first. In 1969, the first year of our marriage, I declared an

annual income of $5,732. I had quit my teaching job at Wellesley College and

was writing and editing full-time. We lived in Boston, in an apartment where

even the rats had to walk stoop-shouldered. I didn't care. I was willing to

suffer indefinitely for my art. Amrita was not. She never argued; she agreed

with the principle behind my protests over the use of her trust fund; but in

1972 she made the down payment on the house and four acres and bought the

first of our nine paintings, a small oil sketch by Jamie Wyeth.

"She's asleep," said Amrita. "You can quit rocking."

I looked down and saw that she was right. Victoria was fast asleep,

mouth open, fists half-clenched. Her breath came soft and quick against my

neck. I continued rocking.

"Shall we take her in?" asked Amrita. "It's getting cool."

"In a minute," I said. My handspan was broader than the baby's back.

I was thirty-five when Victoria was born; Amrita was thirty-one. For

years I had told anyone who wanted to listen -- and a few who didn't -- all

about my feelings concerning the foolishness of bringing children into the

world. I spoke of overpopulation, of the unfairness of subjecting youngsters

to the horrors of the Twentieth Century, and the folly of people having

unwanted children. Again, Amrita never argued with me -- although with her

training in formal logic I suspect that she could have laid waste to all of my

arguments in two minutes -- but sometime in early 1976, about the time of our

state's primary, Amrita unilaterally went off the pill. It was on January 22,

1977, two days after Jimmy Carter walked back to the White House from his

Inauguration, that our daughter Victoria was born.

I never would have chosen the name "Victoria" but was secretly delighted

by it. Amrita first suggested it one hot day in July, and we treated it as a

joke. It seemed that one of her earliest memories was of arriving by train at

Victoria Station in Bombay. That huge edifice -- one of the remnants of the

British Raj, which evidently still defines India -- had always filled Amrita

with a sense of awe. Since that time, the name Victoria had evoked an echo of

beauty, elegance, and mystery in her. So at first we joked about naming the

baby Victoria, but by Christmas of 1976 we knew that no other name would fit

our child if it was a girl.

Before Victoria was born, I used to grumble about couples we knew who

had been lobotomized by the birth of their children. Perfectly intelligent

people with whom we'd enjoyed countless debates over politics, prose, the

death of the theater, or the decline of poetry now burbled at us about their

little boy's first tooth or spent hours sharing the engrossing details of

little Heather's first day at preschool. I swore that I would never fall prey

to that.

But it was _different_ with our child. Victoria's development was worthy

of serious study by anyone. I found myself totally fascinated by earliest

noises and most awkward movements. Even the repellant act of changing diapers

could be delightful when my child -- _my child_ -- would wave her pudgy arms

and look up at me in what I took to be loving appreciation at the thought of

her father, _a published poet_, carrying out such mundane tasks for her. When,

at seven weeks, she blessed us with her first real smile one morning, I

immediately called Abe Bronstein to share the good news. Abe, who was as well

known for never rising before ten-thirty in the morning as he was for his

sense of good prose, congratulated me and gently pointed out that I had called

at 5:45 A.M.

Now that Victoria was seven months old, it was even more obvious that

she was a gifted child. She had learned to play "So big!" almost a month

earlier and had mastered "Peekaboo!" weeks before that. She was creeping at

six and a half months -- a sure sign of high intelligence, despite Amrita's

comments to the contrary -- and it didn't bother me at all that Victoria's

attempts at locomotion invariably moved her backwards. Each day now her

language abilities became stronger, and although I hadn't been able to pick

_dada_ or _mama_ out of the babble of syllables (even when I played back my

tapes at half-speed), Amrita assured me, with only a slight smile, that she

had heard several complete Russian or German words and once an entire sentence

in Hindi. Meanwhile, I read to Victoria every evening, alternating Mother

Goose with Wordsworth, Keats, and carefully chosen excerpts from Pound's

"Cantos." She showed a preference for Pound.

"Shall we go to bed?" asked Amrita. "We need to get an early start

tomorrow."

Something in Amrita's voice caught my attention. There were times when

she asked, "Shall we go to bed?" and there were times when she said _Shall we

go to bed?_ This had been one of the latter.

I carried Victoria up to her crib and tucked her in. I stood and watched

a minute as she lay there on her stomach under the light quilt, surrounded by

her stuffed animals, her head against the bumper pad. The moonlight lay across

her like a benediction.

In a while I went downstairs, locked the house, turned off the lights,

and came back upstairs to where Amrita was waiting in bed.

Later, in the last seconds of our lovemaking, I turned to look at her

face as if seeking the answer to unasked questions there, but a cloud had

crossed the moon and everything was lost in the sudden darkness.

Chapter Three

"_At midnight, this city is Disneyland_."

-- Subrata Chakravarty

We flew into Calcutta at midnight, coming in from the south, over the

Bay of Bengal.

"My God," I whispered. Amrita leaned across me to peer out the window.

On the advice of her parents, we had flown BOAC into Bombay to go

through customs there. That had worked fine, but the connecting Air India

flight to Calcutta had been delayed for three hours due to mechanical

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SONGOFKALIbyDanSimmonsAMASTERPIECEOFSHEERTERRORWhen_SongofKali_waspublishedin1985,DanSimmonswasvirtuallyunknown,havingpublishedonlyafewshortstories.Butthissharp,vividnovelstruckarawnerve.Astartledandamazedreadershipcouldonlygaspinwonderandhorrorattheapparenteasewithwhichtheauthormadereadersfeelthatt...

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Dan Simmons - Song of Kali

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