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

EMPIRE OF THE SOUL
bathroom! Something brown and furry shot behind the barrel. Just
above eye level was a hole with broken and rusted iron bars through
which I kept seeing various swathed legs pass by: I was looking out,
I realised, onto one of the town streets . . .
Feeling a sinister twinge in my guts, I washed, ladling water from
the barrel with the plastic jug, much as I did back in my bungalow in
Bangalore. Except my bungalow was in better shape than this palace.
Somewhat refreshed, I was led, not by a eunuch but by two twelveyear-old
girls, identical twins, in soiled and threadbare saris down
some very dark and narrow corridors into the purdah area. Here all
the windows were screened with carved wood dotted with tiny
peepholes – to enable the royal ladies to look out while remaining
unseen. One of these corridors must have been the kitchen: It was
black with soot and scattered charcoal fragments, strewn with dented
aluminium pots and pans, the flagstones suggesting that cooking was
performed on wood fires right there.
My room, the princely chamber itself, boasted a narrow springy
bed, a bookcase crammed with torn old Rex Stout, Mickey Spillane
and Agatha Christie paperbacks, one bare light bulb dangling
dangerously close to the fly-splattered blades of a pre-war ceiling
fan, and a minute bedside table that nearly collapsed when I placed
my toilet bag on it. There simply was no room in the room for
anything else. Apart from laser beams of sunlight piercing the purdah
screens for a few hours in the afternoon, the place was oppressive.
That and the stupendous heat made me feel I was in a medieval
prison cell – the Black Hole of Venkatagiri.
I lay on the dry lumps of my bed for what seemed hours, reading
about a murder I knew damn well the vicar had committed. (He
hadn’t, as things turned out.) It grew extremely dark, and my bulb
pulsed spasmodically – as did something in my intestines. I was
beginning to think they were connected when, without warning, the
little twins arrived bearing a bowed tray between them. They set it
down on a fissured Formica table out in a kind of antechamber, swiftly
retreating into the shadows. The food was a greasy black mass of
something I could not identify, partly because of the ferocious,
blistering spices it contained. I pondered the folly of this trip, eating
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