He showed me the gesture, right hand turned upward with his four fingertips curled toward the palm. Then he raised the hand to his forehead to complete the picture.

I felt I was going to suffocate, but he continued.

“I saw her there for weeks. Sometimes I would give her spare change. Once I even gave her ten rupees. She smiled at me. After that she recognized my car and ran to me each time I passed. And finally …” He paused and weighed his words. There was an internal debate of some kind going on in his mind. “And finally, I bought her freedom from the lady who sat with her. She wasn’t her mother. They were part of some crime syndicate. They buy children to beg. The younger and prettier, the better. The kiddies get nothing except a meal or two a day. All the money they beg goes to the criminals.”

“Why … why are you telling me this?” I asked, wishing he would stop, but, at the same time, wanting to know everything. Despite my horror, despite what it might do to my feelings for Sushmita, I had to know.

“I’m telling you this because you think you love her. But you don’t even know her. You don’t know that I paid off her masters and took her away. Cleaned her up and hired a tutor to teach her English and to read and write. Then I enrolled her in school in Poona. At St. Mary’s. She was a clever girl. The smartest girl in her class.”

“And you made her your lover?” I asked, dreading his answer. “An eight-year-old child?”

He dismissed my question with a curt shake of the head. “Of course not.”

I drew a sigh.

“Not until she was twelve,” he said, crushing me.

He said it as if sleeping with eight- or nine- or eleven-year-olds was obscene, but there was nothing more natural than raping a twelve-year-old girl who’s totally dependent on you for her life. I wanted to strangle him right then and there. I might have chanced it, too, if I hadn’t been sure Chhotu and Bikas would burst through the door and shoot me dead before I could kill Willy. And that would deprive me of the pleasure of seeing him arrested and hanged for his crimes.

“I suppose she never studied at Cambridge?” I asked instead.

“But of course she did. She was a brilliant student. Learned grace and a very posh accent there. I was so proud of her.”

I didn’t know what else to say. My chin dropped to my chest, and I closed my eyes to compose myself.