35053668-Empire-of-the-Soul-Paul-William-Roberts

EMPIRE OF THE SOUL
doing themselves similar forms of inner damage. Such a mass
psychosis, Otis added, was found in Nazi Germany.
By this time we had reached my ‘hotel’. Dr. Otis agreed to meet
me the next day, offering a dry, cold hand. He looked like an
embalmer or a mortician as he turned again into the throng of
relentless hustlers. They took one look at that Grim Reaper face,
however, and decided not to press their wares on him. Crowds
literally parted to let him through.
Washed and abed, I soon noticed that the cacophony of screaming
voices and blaring speakers blasting out Hindi film songs so loudly
you could hear the tin vibrating was not going to make sleep easy. I
fashioned earplugs from candle wax – these candles a telltale sign
that power cuts were guaranteed – and pressed them inside my ears.
I don’t recommend this. Without material to bind it, as with
commercial plugs, the wax gradually gets softer and softer, soon
flowing right up against the eardrum itself. This hurts savagely when
you inevitably lie on an ear, and then the stuff proves hopelessly
difficult to extract. An hour later, I was banging one side of my head
to shake the wax loose, without any success, when, although halfdeaf,
I heard three distinct raps on my door.
‘Hi,’ Ma Tantra said. ‘Hope you ain’t busy?’
She pushed by me, looking around at my room in exaggerated
horror. ‘The pits,’ she decided. ‘Fuckin’ rats wouldn’t stay here.’
‘Cockroaches don’t mind it.’
‘They don’t mind a million rems of strontium ninety either.’
This scientific know-how impressed me. I mentioned the problem
I’d created in my ears.
‘Lemme take a look.’ She made me lie on the bed while she
peered into an ear, her breath warm on my neck, her hair cascading
in a dark, fibrous tent over my face – a tent filled with the aroma of
alien flesh and something that smelled like a mixture of linseed oil
and sandalwood. It was not unpleasant. The bare legs beneath her
loose orange smock were now astride my left hip.
She looked not unlike Cher does now. When not suffering
excruciating pain from her hair clip, which was probing and scraping
at my tympanum, I wondered what this nocturnal visit was all about.
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