The only inhabitants of Bombay who take no notice of the ‘right of admission’ regulations in force at the Taj Mahal are the crows. They drop slowly onto the terrace of the Inter-Continental, laze on the Mogul windows of the older building, perch amid the branches of the mango trees in the garden, and hop on the perfect carpet of lawn that surrounds the swimming pool. They would go and drink from the pool itself or peck at the orange peel in your martini, were it not for a very efficient servant in livery who chases them off with a cricket bat, as though in some absurd match orchestrated by a whimsical film director. You have to be careful of the crows, they have very dirty beaks. The Bombay town council has had to arrange for the enormous reservoirs that feed the city’s aqueduct to be covered over, because more than once the crows, who themselves arrange for the re-introduction into the ‘life cycle’ of the corpses the Parsees lay out on the Towers of Silence (there are quite a number of towers in the Malabar Hill area), have dropped the odd mouthful into the water supply. But even with these measures the town council certainly hasn’t resolved the hygiene problem, because then there are the problems of the rats, the insects, the seepage from the sewers. It’s as well not to drink the water in Bombay. But you can drink it at the Taj Mahal which has its own purifiers and is proud of its water. Because the Taj is not a hotel: with its eight hundred rooms it is a city within a city.
When I arrived in this city I was received by a doorman dressed as an Indian prince with red sash and turban, who led me as far as the lobby, all done out in brass, where there were other employees likewise disguised as maharajas. Probably they imagined that I too was disguised, though in reverse – that I was a tycoon dressed up as a nobody – and they busily set about finding me a room in the noble wing of the building, the part that has the antique furniture and the view of the Gateway of India. For a moment I was tempted to tell them that I wasn’t there for aesthetic purposes, but just to sleep in consciousless comfort, and that they could put me anywhere they liked, in a room with shamefully modern furniture, even the skyscraper of the Inter-Continental was okay by me. But then I thought it would be cruel to disappoint them like this. The Peacock Suite, however, I refused. It was too much for one person on his own; but it wasn’t a question of price, I explained, to maintain the kind of style I had opted for.
The room was impressive, my case had come along ahead of me by some mysterious route and stood on a wicker stool, the bath was already full of water and foam. I sank into it and then wrapped myself in a linen towel. The windows opened onto the Arabian Sea. The sun was almost up now, and a pinkish light tinged the beach; beneath the Taj Mahal the life of India had begun to swarm once again. The heavy curtains of green velvet ran sweetly and softly as a theatre curtain; I drew them across the scene and the room was reduced to half-light and silence. The lazy, comforting hum of the big fan lulled me and I just managed to reflect that this too was a superfluous luxury, since the room temperature was perfect, when suddenly I found myself at an old chapel on a Mediterranean hillside. The chapel was white and it was hot. We were hungry and Xavier, laughing, was pulling out some sandwiches and cool wine from a basket. Isabel was laughing too, while Magda stretched out on a blanket on the grass. Far below us was the blue of the sea and a solitary donkey dawdled in the shade of the chapel. But it wasn’t a dream, it was a real memory; I was looking into the dark of the room and seeing that distant scene which seemed like a dream because I’d slept for a long time; my watch told me it was four in the afternoon. I stayed in bed quite a while, thinking of those times, going back over landscapes, faces, lives. I remembered the trips in the car along the pinewoods by the sea, the nicknames we gave each other, Xavier’s guitar and Magda’s shrill voice announcing in mock-serious tones, like a fairground showman: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, your attention please, we have among us The Italian Nightingale!’ And I would play along with her and launch into old Neapolitan songs, mimicking the out-dated warbling of singers in the old days, while everybody laughed and applauded. Amongst ourselves, and I was resigned to it, I was ‘Roux’, short for Rouxinol, Portuguese for nightingale. But the way they said it it seemed an attractive, even exotic name, so there was no reason to take offence. And then I went back over the following summers. Magda crying – I thought, why? Was it right perhaps? And Isabel, and her illusions. And when those memories took on an unbearable clarity, sharp as if beamed on the wall by a projector, I got up and left the room.
Six o’clock is a bit too late for lunch and a bit too early for dinner. But at the Taj Mahal, said my guidebook, thanks to its four restaurants, you can eat at any time. The Rendez-Vous was on the top floor of the Apollo Bunder, but it was really too intimate. And too expensive. I dropped into the Apollo Bar and chose a table by the big terrace window looking out on the first lights of the evening; the seafront was a garland. I drank two gin-and-tonics which put me in a good mood and wrote a letter to Isabel. I wrote for a long time, in a constant stream, with passion, and told her everything. I wrote about those distant days, about my trip, and about how feelings flower again with time. I also told her things I would never have thought of telling her, and when I re-read the letter, with the reckless amusement of someone who has drunk on an empty stomach, I realised that really that letter was for Magda, it was to her I’d written it, of course it was, even though I’d begun, ‘Dear Isabel’; and so I screwed it up and left it in the ashtray, went down to the ground floor, into the Tanjore Restaurant and ordered a slap-up meal, exactly as a prince dressed up as a nobody would have. And then when I’d finished eating it was night-time; the Taj was coming to life and sparkled with lights; on the lawn near the pool the liveried servants stood ready to chase off the crows; I sat myself down on a couch in the middle of that hall, big as a football field, and set about watching luxury. I don’t know who it was said that in the pure activity of watching there is always a little sadism. I tried to think who it was, but couldn’t, yet I felt that there was some truth in the statement: and so I watched with greater pleasure, with the perfect sensation of being just two eyes watching while I myself was elsewhere, without knowing where. I watched the women and the jewels, the turbans, the fezes, the veils, the trains, the evening dresses, the Moslems and the millionaire Americans, the oil magnates and the spotless, silent servants: I listened to laughter, to phrases comprehensible and incomprehensible, whispers, rustlings. And this went on and on the entire night, till dawn almost. Then, when the voices thinned out and the lights were dimmed, I leant my head on the cushions of the couch and fell asleep. Not for long though, because the first boat for Elephanta casts off from right in front of the Taj at seven o’clock; and along with an older Japanese couple, cameras round their necks, I was on that boat.