The Elephanta Suite Read Free Page A

yourself," the doctor said. "Next ten years, excellent health. Never trust any person blindly, especially those who praise you. Follow intuition. Invest in real estate. Avoid crowds, smoke, dust." The doctor strained, as if translating from a difficult language he was reading on Beth's palm. "Avoid perfume. No litigation."
    As the doctor tensed, showing his teeth, Beth said, "That's enough," and lifted her hand and clasped it. Audie glanced at her and guessed that she was also wondering if Dr. Nagaraj was a quack. But that thought was not in her mind.
    Dr. Nagaraj perhaps sensed this querying, though he seemed calm again. He sipped his lassi, he nodded, he tapped his clipboard.
    "I took my friend Sanjeev to Rajaji National Park to see the wild elephants. They are my passion. Did you not see my collection of Ganeshes in my office?"
    "I remember," Beth said. "The elephant figurines on the shelves."
    "Quite so." The doctor drank again. "We encountered a great herd of elephants in Rajaji. They are not the same as the working domesticated elephants but a separate species. They saw us. We were near the banks of the river. Do you know the expression 'Never get between an elephant and water'?"
    "No," said Beth.
    "I guess I do now," said Audie.
    "The elephants became enraged. I saw the bull elephant trumpeting and I ran and hid in the trees. Sanjeev was behind me, rooted to the spot, too frightened to move."
    As he spoke the waitress came back, paused at their table, then asked whether there was anything more she could get them.
    "We're fine," Audie said.
    When she had gone, Dr. Nagaraj said, "I watched with horror as the huge elephant bore down on Sanjeev, followed by the herd of smaller elephants, raising so much dust. Seeing them, Sanjeev bowed his head and knelt, knowing he was about to die. He couldn't run, he couldn't swim. But he did yoga—
bidalasana,
cat position, instinctive somehow."
    Flexing his fingers, making a business of it, Dr. Nagaraj straightened the mat in front of him, tidied the coaster under his glass, then dipped his head and sucked at the lassi.
    "And what happened?" Audie asked.
    Dr. Nagaraj went vague, his face slackening, then, "Oh, yes," as he pretended to remember. "The great bull elephant lowered his head as though to charge. But instead of impaling Sanjeev on his tusks as I had expected, the elephant knelt, trapping Sanjeev between the two great tusks. Not to kill him, oh no. I could see it was to protect him from the other elephants trampling him."
    He seemed on the point of saying more when Beth said that she was exhausted, that she would be a basket case if she didn't get some sleep.
    "I call that another miracle," Beth Blunden said as they strolled under the starry sky to their suite.

2
    They woke to a brilliant sunrise and felt there were no days like this anywhere but on this hilltop in India. The rest of India and the stormy world were elsewhere.
    Was it two weeks they'd been there? With a clarity of mind and a lightness in their bodies that was new to them, they had lost their sense of passing time. Being at Agni had strengthened them, and they were surprised, for it was like a cure for an obscure but tenacious ailment of which they'd been unaware. Rested, well looked-after, like children on an extended holiday pampered by adults, they were invigorated, enjoying the power and poise of contentment. Audie had even stopped teasing the waiters about the food, calling the uttapam "shit on a shingle."
    Everyone was pleasant to them, the staff always pausing to say hello or
namaskar.
Always smiling, deferential without groveling, they waited on the Blundens, devoted servants, prescient too, anticipating their desires. "Carrot juice again, sir?" "Green tea sorbet again, madam?" And when the Blundens skipped meals the waiters would say, "We missed you last night, sir," as though their absence mattered and was a diminishment.
    The Blundens were, to their surprise, grateful and patient. What Audie said