``Forty three degrees,'' someone said. The crowd was so thick. So close to him. People didn't use deodorant like they did at home. Even the Europeans smelled. Were Americans the only people who couldn't abide the smell of sweat? The guide was going on earnestly, endlessly about some obscure god or godess or maybe it was history - he didn't care anymore. He just wanted to get away from the smell of incense and sweat and butter lamps. He didn't want to faint. For one thing he was a foot taller than any of them and Mrs Diamond was eighty if she was a day and she seemed perfectly comfortable.
Then he felt something solid under his foot. A bracelet. He stooped to pick it up. A brass bracelet. He held it up so people could see it in the dim and smoky light. No one seemed to care. As they moved on to the next red encrusted god he slipped the bracelet into his pocket.
It was when they emerged into the brilliant day light that he looked at the bracelet again and it occurred to him that it was made of gold. A plain flat band of gold. Had it been intended for a tribute? Had it slipped from the arm of some wealthy woman? Was it the only treaure of a beggar, her arm grown too thin to hold it? He should show it to his wife who was listening engrossed to the words of the guide - the guide who addressed her personally when he spoke. Was it because she was the only one in the group who appeared to have any real interest in what he said? Or was there some other reason?
The peddlers surrounded them. Pulling gently at him to gain his attention. ``No thanks,'' he'd say and they would persist and follow him and their voices were low and polite and they were relentless and he hated them and he knew that they hated him and still they followed him with their carvings and necklaces and erotic paintings. A girl of eight had once followed their bicycle rickshaw, running two miles, perhaps three through the crowded streets. He could still hear the sound of her small bare feet slapping the hot road surface, her hand outstretched running beside them. He had been dumb enough to give a dollar to another child and a pack of them had followed but only she persisted and he did not give her a dollar and eventually she disappeared. One day he would die with the sound of the child's feet in his ears.
His wife was looking at him from the protection of a wide brimmed hat and sun glasses.
``Help!'' she mouthed.
``We'll catch up with you at the hotel,'' he told the guide, ``we need a cool drink.''
In the slightly cool cafe with a Kingfisher beer between them he showed his wife the bracelet.
``Why its lovely,'' she said. ``Where did you get it? How much did you pay?''
``Nothing,'' he said. He told her how he'd found the bracelet.
``You picked it off the floor? You want to give it to me? You want me to have something you picked off the filthy ground in that gross place?''
``I guess not,'' he said.
In the night he slipped out of the hotel and walked until he found an old woman asleep in a doorway. With a gentle touch to her shoulder she awoke and he slipped the bracelet into her hand.