CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

PAUL TOOK THE elevator to the third floor, leafed through a Hindi magazine in the waiting room and saw the previous patient leave on the stroke of ten. The young man didn’t look ill at all.

Paul waited to be called in. The magazine was glossy and appeared to be about astrology; it was one of the few subjects on which Paul and his religious parents had always agreed; which is to say that they had thought every form of divination was of the devil, while Paul just found the notion that his destiny was in the stars idiotic.

He went to the window. A dry wind was blowing, piling up litter, shaking the leaves off dusty trees. Were there circumstances, he wondered, or a state of mind perhaps, that prompted a person to consult a system of science, or pseudoscience, in which he had no faith whatsoever? If so, what was that state of mind?

‘Mr Roberts?’

Dr Bhagat was a trim fellow in his late thirties, wearing a smart suit and tie. He emanated a brisk confidence. ‘Mr Roberts, this is my wife, Bala.’ A small woman offered her hand with a smile at once kind and shrewd. ‘We work together,’ he explained.

Paul took a seat opposite the doctor who sat behind an impressive desk. His suit was light grey and his tie yellow. The wife arranged herself to one side, pen in hand and notepad in her lap. Everything was clean and very neat.

‘As I said on the phone,’ Paul began, ‘I haven’t come for myself, but to talk about a patient of yours who died some months ago. Albert James.’

‘And as my wife no doubt explained, our consultations with patients are strictly confidential.’

‘I understand that,’ Paul told him, ‘and of course I’m very grateful you agreed to see me at all at such short notice.’

He paused. With its lowered blinds and quiet air conditioning the room conveyed a mood of sensible modernity. Paul had expected something more fancifully charlatan: drapes, lamps, iconic knick-knacks.

‘I am writing a biography of Professor James,’ he said. ‘His wife thought you might be able to tell me something.’

‘You are a writer?’ the doctor enquired. He had the bland deference of one professional man showing interest in another.

‘That’s right.’ Paul hesitated. ‘I’m curious about your branch of medicine and about why Professor James chose to come to you.’

The doctor appeared to think about this. ‘Bala,’ he asked, ‘get Mr James’s file, will you?’

There were separate shelves for blue, green and red files. Albert’s was green. Paul was aware that he might ask about these colours; instead he enquired: ‘Were you surprised by Albert’s death?’

The doctor opened the file and began leafing through notes and receipts. He had two small moles above the left corner of his mouth. ‘We didn’t actually know Mr James was deceased until your phone call. The last time he visited us was’ – he glanced at the uppermost sheet of paper – ‘15 November. Many months ago.’ Dr Bhagat looked up. ‘But no, I am not surprised. Saddened, but not surprised.’

‘He was very ill, then?’

‘Ill?’ The doctor raised an eyebrow.

‘He had prostate cancer.’

The Indian’s small wife leaned forward: ‘We wouldn’t actually be thinking or talking about a patient in quite those limiting terms, Mr Roberts. A man is not just a cancer.’

‘I have spoken to his urologist at the Sir Ganga Ram hospital,’ Paul told them.

‘He had a urologist at Ganga Ram?’ Dr Bhagat asked. ‘Now you do surprise me.’

‘He had consulted one, yes.’

‘Ah. Consulted.’ The doctor pursed his lips. ‘What was written on the death certificate?’ he enquired.

Paul was taken aback. ‘I’ve no idea,’ he said.

‘Ha!’ the doctor came back. ‘I would be very interested to know.’

Paul reflected. ‘Perhaps you could talk about him more generally. I mean, your impression, things he said, without betraying a doctor’s trust, naturally. Though, of course, Professor James is dead now and I am a great admirer of his work. I can assure you that this will be a very positive biography.’

‘I have treated quite a number of Westerners over the years.’ Dr Bhagat sat back, fingertips on the edge of the desk, legs stretched beneath. ‘Of course they grew up in a culture that relies almost exclusively on scientific instruments, on measurements of determined chemical substances, on photographic images of a foreign body or an area of alteration in the muscles or organs.’ The doctor made a show of reflecting on this. ‘A culture at once technically sophisticated, sometimes marvellously efficient, for certain conditions, but spiritually primitive.’ He scratched at the corner of his mouth. ‘Many come to India to flee that; they go to the opposite extreme, the mystics, gurus, meditation centres, to the exact opposite of what they are used to. This is rather naïve. From the frying pan to the fire as it were.’

Paul waited.

‘Those who come to an Ayurvedic doctor …’

When he hesitated, his wife chipped in: ‘It is because they are aware of the need for a more integrated approach. Allopathic and homeopathic.’

Dr Bhagat sat up. ‘Mr James was not ill, Mr Roberts. Not just ill. Not in my professional opinion. He was full of vata. He was bursting with it. Blocked vata.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘It is ether,’ said the wife. The high collar of her blouse gave her a rather prim look.

‘Vata, Mr Roberts, is an energy that runs in our body and needs to be kept in constant circulation. One of the five key elements. It needs to be balanced and to balance other elements. In Mr James the vata did not flow. That is not so unusual. It gathered and poisoned. What was unusual was the intensity of this condition in Mr James’s case. He came to see me and began speaking of the symptoms of what you call prostate cancer. Certainly, he did have these symptoms. I am sure that is no secret and his wife will no doubt have confirmed this for you: the very frequent and difficult urination; certain pains, some quite strong, yes, in the belly, the abdomen, and a general and sometimes very intense discomfort, in the bladder area. In fact, his problem was vata. It couldn’t flow because of the tussle in his mind. A very fierce tussle. I told him that within five minutes of his walking into this room. Or even sooner. Even before he was telling me his problems I told him.’

‘I remember,’ his wife said.

‘Because of the tussle in his mind,’ Paul repeated.

‘You would have needed to be blind not to see it. And then if you have my experience …’

‘And what was this tussle about?’ Paul enquired.

‘Ha!’ Dr Bhagat cried.

‘A tussle like this is not really about anything,’ his wife explained. ‘It is part of his prakruti.’

‘The personality, Mr Roberts. Or if we want to put it in a finer fashion, we might say: the collision between the inherited personality and its acquired traits. Yes. A grave tussle can manifest itself in this or that dilemma, but the tussle does not go when the dilemma is resolved. No. The tussle is simply looking for the dilemma so it can appear in the world. When one dilemma goes it finds another.’

Paul was sceptical. ‘So, how do you treat a condition like this?’

‘There are many ways of treating an accumulation of vata.’ The doctor’s tone became more practical. He turned a pen back and forth between his fingers. ‘There are massages using oil mixed with certain herbs. When the vata has gathered in the bladder and groin areas as in this case one can also prescribe an enema of oil: one hundred centilitres of sesame oil with appropriate herbs to be held in the colon as long as the patient finds possible. Certainly not less than forty minutes.’

‘Enemas? And Professor James did that?’

‘I certainly prescribed it. Whether he did it or not is another matter. Your Mr James was like a man looking in from outside. Perhaps he was just curious.’

‘Westerners put a high value on curiosity,’ the wife said.

‘In any event,’ the doctor concluded, ‘I warned him that these treatments would only be palliatives. He must address the tussle in his mind.’

‘You have no cure for that?’

Dr Bhagat reflected. ‘It is not easy to cure the prakruti. In a way you are asking a doctor to undo someone’s life. Do you see? There are approaches rather than cures. Astrology is very useful in these cases.’

‘Astrology?’

‘You are surprised, but I have a great deal of experience, Mr Roberts, in using astrology both for diagnoses and cures.’

‘For tussles in the mind?’

‘This is part of Ayurvedic medicine, Mr Roberts. The body’s balance of elements is very much determined by the position of the planets. We must understand who we are dealing with before trying to help. However, Mr James did not allow me to make a birth chart and pursue this line.’

‘He didn’t believe in astrology?’

The wife smiled: ‘Your professor said he was afraid he would start believing in it if my husband did it successfully.’

‘This is the typical contradictory response coming from a man with a tussle in his mind,’ laughed Dr Bhagat. ‘I have helped many such patients with astrology,’ he repeated, ‘though I never came across such a severe case. I am sorry he died. He was an interesting man.’

Paul watched the doctor. ‘Sorry, but not surprised?’

‘No.’

Paul tried to make his perplexity apparent. ‘Can I ask why not, if you didn’t even think he was ill? I don’t understand. I mean, do you die of this … vata?’

Leafing through his notes, the doctor again appeared to reflect. ‘Mr James told me nothing about his private life. He was very reserved. To be honest I did not know he was a professor. He gave his name only as Mr Albert James. He seemed a modest man.’

The doctor frowned, scratched lightly beside his moles. ‘Of course I cannot disclose all the symptoms he presented; no, some of them were rather unusual for the illness he believed he had. I feel it would be wrong for me to reveal those things; they were presented to me in confidence and of a rather intimate nature. Let’s say’ – he hesitated – ‘yes, let’s say I had the impression that Mr James’s situation was not sustainable, without really understanding what that situation was. He appeared to be – how can I put it? – running out of time.’

The man relaxed and his voice altered. ‘But now Albert James’s problems have been resolved, have they not, one way or the other, or at least taken to another life?’

The doctor’s wife said: ‘Often there are deep feelings that prevent us from wanting to be healthy.’

Her husband added: ‘Maybe the easiest thing we can say is that some way of living this patient had developed was becoming impossible for him. That can happen. A man can stand on one leg for so long.’ He smiled. ‘Although, in my experience, it is remarkable how very long some people can stand on one leg, and even run sometimes.’

Paul’s exasperation peaked. He stood up and reached for his wallet.

Dr Bhagat didn’t move. ‘You are in a hurry, Mr Roberts?’

They had agreed on a fee of 400 rupees. Paul counted it out.

‘Perhaps you could tell us why you are writing a biography of Mr James. What is it that attracts you to this man?’

‘You yourself also seem a little fretful,’ the wife said.

Paul stayed on his feet but lifted his eyes from his wallet. Okay, he thought, and sat down. He would stay for his money’s worth.

‘It had seemed to me,’ Paul said, ‘reading Professor James’s considerable body of anthropological and scientific writings, that he had gone further than anyone else in understanding how people behave in relation to each other. Also, he had a fascinating life and marriage.’

There was a long silence, as if the doctor and his wife were waiting for more. Paul thought he had said quite enough. Eventually, almost as though speaking to himself, Dr Bhagat murmured: ‘Yet there is a problem, I sense.’

‘A problem?’

The doctor looked up, and spoke more confidently. ‘There is a problem with what you are saying. You do not sound so convinced. You say, it had seemed to me, not, I am sure.’

‘Well,’ Paul acknowledged, ‘the truth is that Albert James died before I could meet him and now that I have come to Delhi he seems to have led me into a sort of maze. I can’t find him.’

‘Seems again.’

‘I mean, it feels like that.’

‘You feel your dead man is hiding from you?’

Paul shrugged. The Indian was amused. He began to run his tie through his fingers.

‘I believe the dead are dead, Doctor.’

‘But you said he was leading you into a maze.’

‘Metaphorically speaking.’

‘Ah,’ the doctor said.

‘Metaphors,’ the wife smiled.

For a few moments none of them spoke. Dr Bhagat and his wife were a clever double act, Paul thought. They had imposed a strong mood. As always when he met a real couple, he tried to imagine the two of them making love. It was a habit he had never shaken off since his adolescent wonderment on discovering that his puritan parents actually got down to it between the sheets. For the first time, it occurred to Paul that, rather than meeting Albert James, the important thing would have been to have met Albert and Helen together, to have seen how they were together, to have seen them make love, he thought. The idea distracted him. Something twitched in his neck.

‘We feel there is something else, Mr Roberts,’ the doctor said.

‘In what sense?’

‘There is something that is troubling you.’

Paul hesitated, then thought, why not? ‘In the last few days,’ he said, ‘I have begun a relationship with Professor James’s widow.’

‘Ha!’ The doctor shook his head and rubbed the moles at the corner of his mouth. He seemed almost gleeful. ‘That is most interesting!’ He went on shaking his glossy head. ‘So you know what to expect,’ he chuckled rather merrily to his wife, ‘when a writer arrives to write a biography of me, Bala! Or no? Beware! Beware!’

The lady remained expressionless.

‘Perhaps, Mr Roberts,’ the doctor resumed his more professional manner, but he was still smiling, ‘perhaps you would like me to draw up a birth chart for you? We could examine some of the decisions you have to make. Steer you out of this maze.’

Paul looked at him. Nothing could have been further from the ethos he had been brought up in. Nothing would be more convenient than to know how to deal with the future.

‘I’ll think it over,’ he said dryly.

‘Looking through my notes here,’ the doctor said now, ‘I find I have written down one thing that Mr James said which perhaps I could share with you. I do not think it would be a breach of trust.’

‘Yes?’

‘Here. Let me see … when I asked him – this was at our first encounter – why he had come to me, he said he thought Ayurvedic medicine was, and I quote, “absolutely charming”.’ The doctor frowned, stroking his yellow tie again. ‘A strange expression, don’t you think, to describe a learned practice that goes back many centuries: absolutely charming.’

Closing the door behind him a few minutes later, Paul decided to take the stairs. There were only three floors. But between the second and the first, as he hurried down the steps, he heard a voice call his name. ‘Paul?’

Paul stopped and walked back to the landing. It was a man’s voice, he thought. There was no one there.

Paul looked up the stairs towards Dr Bhagat’s office. But now he realised that the doctor didn’t know his first name. No one knows my name here, he thought.

He stood on the landing, his breath a little short, wishing he could wind time back a moment. Paul. Paul. He turned and went back down the stairs. Outside, he found the street was a cloud of swirling dust.