‘There are the festivals,’ he said. ‘The Jain come from all over Kerala, there are a lot of pilgrims around now.’
‘And you are pilgrims too?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘we do the rounds of the temples, my brother is an Arhant.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘but I don’t know what that means.’
‘An Arhant is a Jain prophet,’ the boy explained patiently. ‘He reads the karma of the pilgrims, we make a lot of money.’
‘So he’s a fortune-teller.’
‘Yes,’ said the boy innocently, ‘he sees the past and the future.’ Then making a professional association of ideas, he asked me: ‘Would you like to know your karma? It only costs five rupees.’
‘Okay,’ I said, ‘ask your brother about my karma.’
The boy spoke softly to his brother and the brother replied in a whisper, looking at me with his darting eyes.
‘My brother asks if he can touch your forehead,’ the boy told me. The monster nodded agreement, waiting.
‘Sure he can, if it’s necessary.’
The fortune-teller stretched out his twisted little hand and placed his forefinger on my forehead. He stayed that way a few moments staring at me intently. Then he withdrew his hand and whispered some words in his brother’s ear. A short, excited argument followed. The fortune-teller spoke quickly, he seemed annoyed and irritated. When they had finished arguing the boy turned to me with a wounded look.
‘So,’ I asked, ‘can I hear it?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘my brother says it isn’t possible, you are someone else.’
‘Oh, really,’ I said, ‘who am I?’
The boy spoke to his brother again and the brother answered briefly. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ translated the boy, ‘that’s only maya.’
‘And what is maya?’
‘It’s the outward appearance of the world,’ the boy replied, ‘but it’s only illusion, what counts is the atma.’ Then he consulted his brother and confirmed with conviction: ‘What counts is the atma.’
‘And what is the atma?’
The boy smiled at my ignorance. ‘The soul,’ he said, ‘the individual soul.’
A woman came in and sat on the bench opposite us. She was carrying a basket with a child asleep inside. I looked at her and she made a rapid gesture of bowing her head in her hands as a sign of respect.
‘I thought we only had our karma inside us,’ I said, ‘the sum of our actions, of what we have been and what we shall be.’
The boy smiled again and spoke to his brother. The monster looked at me with his small sharp eyes and held up two of his fingers. ‘Oh, no,’ explained the boy, ‘there’s your atma as well, it’s there together with the karma, but it’s a separate thing.’
‘Well then, if I’m another person, I’d like to know where my atma is, where it is now.’
The boy translated for the brother and a rapid exchange followed. ‘It’s difficult to say,’ he came back to me, ‘he can’t do it.’
‘Try asking him if ten rupees would help,’ I said.
The boy told him and the monster stared into my face with his small eyes. Then he spoke a few words directly to me, very quickly. ‘He says it’s not a question of rupees,’ the boy translated, ‘you’re not there, he can’t tell you where you are.’ He gave me a nice smile and went on: ‘but if you want to give us the ten rupees, we’ll take them anyway.’
‘Sure I’ll give you them,’ I said, ‘but at least ask him who I am now.’
The boy turned on his indulgent smile again and then said: ‘but that’s only your maya, what use is it knowing that?’
‘Of course,’ I said, ‘you’re right, no use at all.’ Then I had an idea and said: ‘Ask him to try and guess.’
The boy looked at me in astonishment. ‘To guess what?’
‘To guess where my atma is,’ I said. ‘Didn’t you say he had prophetic powers?’
The boy translated my question and the brother gave him a brief answer. ‘He says he can try,’ he said, ‘but he can’t guarantee anything.’
‘It doesn’t matter, let him try just the same.’
The monster stared at me very intensely, for a long time. Then he made a gesture with his hand and I waited for him to speak, but he didn’t. His fingers moved lightly in the air, tracing waves, then he cupped his hands as if to lift some imaginary water. He whispered a few words. ‘He says you are on a boat,’ the boy also spoke in a whisper. The monster made a gesture with his palms turned outward and stopped still.
‘On a boat,’ I said. ‘Ask him where, quickly, what boat?’
The boy put his ear to his brother’s whispering mouth. ‘He sees a lot of lights. He can’t see any more than that, it’s no good asking him.’
The fortune-teller had again assumed his initial position, his face hidden in his brother’s hair. I took out ten rupees and handed them over. I went out into the night and lit a cigarette. I stopped to look at the sky and the dark bank of vegetation along the edge of the road. The bus for Mudabiri shouldn’t be far away now.
VIII
The custodian was a wrinkly, friendly-faced little old man with a circle of white hair that stood out against his olive skin. He spoke perfect Portuguese and when I told him my name he smiled broadly nodding his head back and forth, apparently very pleased to see me. He explained that the prior was taking vespers and had asked me to please wait for him in the library. He handed me a note which read: Welcome to Goa. I’ll meet you in the library at 18.30. If you need something, you can ask Theotónio. Father Pimentel.
Theotónio led me up the stairs chattering away. He was a great talker and had no inhibitions; he had lived a long time in Portugal, in Vila do Conde, he said, where he had some relatives; he liked Portuguese cakes, especially pão de ló.
The staircase was made of dark wood and led up to a large, dimly lit gallery with a long table and a globe. On the wall were life-size paintings of serious-looking bearded figures, darkened by time. Theotónio left me at the door to the library and hurried back downstairs as if he had a lot to do. The room was large and cool with a strong stale smell. The bookshelves had baroque twirls and ivory inlays, but were in bad condition, I thought. There were two long central tables with big twisted candlestick legs and some smaller low tables near the walls with church-style pews and old wicker armchairs. I took a look at the first shelf on the right. There were some books on patristics and some seventeenth-century Jesuit chronicles. I took out two books at random and sat down on the armchair near the entrance. On the next table a book lay open, but I didn’t look at it; I leafed through one of the books I had taken, the Relaçao do novo caminho que fez por Terra e por Mar, vindo da India para Portugal, o Padre Manoel Godinho da Companhia de Iesu. The colophon said: Em Lisboa, na Officina de Henrique Valente de Oliveira, Impressor del Rey N.S., Anno 1665. Manoel Godinho had a pragmatic vision of life, which didn’t clash in the slightest with his profession as guardian of the Catholic faith in that enclave of counter-reform besieged by the Hindu pantheon. His narrative was exact and circumstantial, free of pomposity or rhetoric. He had no love of metaphors or similes, this priest; he had a strategic eye, dividing the earth into promising and unpromising areas, and he thought of the Christian West as the centre of the world. I had got to the end of a long preface dedicated to the King, when, without knowing in response to what signal, I had the sensation I was not alone. Perhaps I heard a slight squeak or sigh; or, more likely, I simply had the sensation you get when you’re being watched. I raised my eyes and scanned the room. In an armchair between the two windows at the other end of the room, the dark mass, which when I came in I had thought was a cloak carelessly thrown over the back of the chair, turned slowly round, exactly as if he had been waiting for the moment I would look at him, and stared at me. He was an old man with a long hollow face, his head covered by some kind of hat whose shape I couldn’t make out.
‘Welcome to Goa,’ he grunted. ‘You have committed the imprudence of co
ming from Madras; the road is full of bandits.’
He had a very hoarse voice, and made occasional gurgling noises. I looked at him in amazement. It seemed odd to me that he should use the word ‘bandits’, and odder still that he knew where I had come from.
‘And the overnight stop in that horrible place certainly won’t have been very reassuring for you,’ he went on. ‘You are young and enterprising, but you are often afraid; you wouldn’t make a good soldier, perhaps cowardice would get the better of you.’ He looked at me indulgently. I don’t know why, but I felt a deep embarrassment which prevented me from replying. But how did he know about my trip, I thought, who had told him?
‘Don’t worry,’ said the old man, as if guessing what I was thinking. ‘I’ve got plenty of informers, I have.’
He pronounced this last remark in an almost menacing tone, and this made a strange impression on me. We were speaking in Portuguese, I remember, and his words were cold and dull, as if a great distance lay between them and his voice. Why did he speak like that, I wondered, who on earth could he be? The long room was in semi-darkness and he was at the other end, quite a distance from me, his body partly hidden by a table. All this, together with the surprise, had prevented me from seeing his face. But now I saw that he wore a triangular hat of soft cloth and had a long grey beard that brushed against his chest which was covered by a corset embroidered with silver thread. His shoulders were wrapped in a roomy black cloak cut in an antique style, with puffed-out sleeves. He read the uneasiness on my face, shifted his seat and sprang up toward the middle of the room with an agility I would never have suspected. He was wearing high boots turned down at the thigh and had a sword at his hip. He made a somewhat ridiculous theatrical gesture, tracing a generous spiral with his right arm which he then placed over his heart, exclaiming in a booming voice: ‘I am Afonso de Albuquerque, Viceroy of the Indies!’
Only then did I realise that he was mad. I realised it and at the same time, in an odd way, I thought that he really was Afonso de Albuquerque, and none of this surprised me: it just made me feel tired and indifferent, as if everything was predestined and unavoidable.
The old man looked me over warily, suspiciously, his small eyes gleaming. He was tall, majestic, arrogant. I realised that he was expecting me to speak; and I spoke. But the words came out of their own accord, involuntarily. ‘You look like Ivan the Terrible,’ I said, ‘or rather the actor who played him.’
He said nothing and put his hand to his ear.
‘I mean in an old film,’ I explained, ‘you made me think of an old film.’ And while I was saying this, a glow spread across his face, as if a fire were blazing in a hearth nearby. But there was no hearth, the room was getting darker and darker, perhaps it had been the last ray of the setting sun.
‘What have you come here for?’ he shouted suddenly. ‘What do you want from us?’
‘Nothing,’ I said, ‘I don’t want anything. I came here to do some archive research, it’s my job. This library is almost unknown in the West. I’m looking for old chronicles.’
The old man tossed his large cloak over one shoulder, just as theatre actors do when they’re about to fight a duel. ‘It’s a lie!’ he cried vehemently. ‘You had a different reason for coming here.’
His violence didn’t frighten me, I wasn’t afraid he would attack me: yet I did feel a strange sense of subjugation, as if he had uncovered some guilt that I had been concealing from him. I lowered my eyes in shame and saw that the book open on the table was Saint Augustine. I read these words: Quo modo praesciantur futura. Was it just a coincidence, or did someone want me to read those words? And who, if not the old man? He had told me he had his informers, that was his word, and this I found menacing and inescapable.
‘I’ve come here to search for Xavier,’ I confessed. ‘It’s true, I’m searching for Xavier.’
He looked at me triumphantly. There was irony in his expression now, and scorn perhaps. ‘And who is Xavier?’
I saw this question as a betrayal, because I felt he was going back on a tacit agreement, that he ‘knew’ who Xavier was and shouldn’t have had to ask me. And I didn’t want to tell him, I felt that too.
‘Xavier is my brother,’ I lied.
He laughed cruelly and pointed his forefinger at me. ‘Xavier doesn’t exist,’ he said. ‘He’s nothing but a ghost.’ He made a gesture that took in the whole room. ‘We are all dead, haven’t you realised that yet? I am dead, and this city is dead, and the battles, the sweat, the blood, the glory and my power, all dead, all utterly in vain.’
‘No,’ I said, ‘there is always something survives.’
‘What?’ he demanded. ‘His memory? Your memory? These books?’
He took a step toward me and I was swept by a great sense of horror, because I already knew what he was about to do, I don’t know how, but I already knew. With his boot he kicked a little bundle that lay at his feet, and I saw it was a dead mouse. He shifted the creature across the floor and grunted with derision: ‘Or this mouse?’ He laughed again and his laughter froze my blood. ‘I am the Pied Piper of Hamelin!’ he cried. Then his voice became friendly, called me professor and said: ‘I’m sorry if I woke you.’
‘I’m sorry if I woke you,’ said Father Pimentel.
He was a man of about fifty with a solid build and a frank manner. He held out his hand and I got up, confused.
‘Oh, thank you,’ I said, ‘I was having a bad dream.’
He sat on the small armchair near mine and made a reassuring gesture. ‘I got your letter,’ he said. ‘The archives are at your disposal, you can stay as long as you like. I imagine you’ll be sleeping here this evening, I’ve prepared a room for you.’ Theotónio came in with a tray of tea and a cake that looked like pão de ló.
‘Thank you,’ I said, ‘your hospitality is most kind. But I won’t be stopping this evening, I’m going on to Calangute, I’ve hired a car. I want to try and find out something about somebody. I’ll be back in a few days’ time.’
IX
Another thing that can happen to one in the course of a lifetime is to spend a night in the Hotel Zuari. At the time it may not seem a particularly happy adventure; but in the memory, as always with memories, refined of immediate physical sensations, of smells, colour, and the sight of a certain little beasty beneath the washbasin, the experience takes on a vagueness which improves the overall image. Past reality never seems quite as bad as it really was: the memory is a formidable falsifier. Distortions creep in, even when you don’t want them to. Hotels like this already populate our fantasy: we have already come across them in the books of Conrad or Somerset Maugham, in the occasional American film based on the novels of Kipling or Bromfield: they seem almost familiar.
I arrived at the Hotel Zuari late in the evening and I had no choice but to stay there, as is often the way in India. Vasco da Gama is a small town in the State of Goa, an exceptionally ugly, dark town with cows wandering about the streets and poor people wearing Western clothes, an inheritance of the Portuguese period; it thus has all the misery without the mystery. Beggars abound, but there are no temples or sacred places here, and the beggars don’t beg in the name of Vishnù, nor lavish benedictions and religious formulas on you: they are taciturn and dazed, as if dead.
In the lobby of the Hotel Zuari there is a semi-circular reception desk behind which stands a fat male receptionist who is forever talking on the telephone. He books you in, talking on the telephone; still talking on the telephone he gives you the keys; and at dawn, when the first light tells you you can finally dispense with the hospitality of your room, you will find him talking on the telephone in a monotonous, low, indecipherable voice. Who is the receptionist of the Hotel Zuari talking to?
There is also a vast dining room on the first floor of the Hotel Zuari, so as not to contradict the sign on the door; but that evening it was dark and there were no tables and I ate on the patio, a little courtyard with bougainvillaea and heavily scented flowers and low little
tables with small wooden benches, all dimly lit. I ate scampi as big as lobsters and a mango dessert, I drank tea and a kind of wine that tasted of cinnamon; all for a price equivalent to three thousand lira, which cheered me up. Along one side of the patio ran the veranda onto which the rooms looked out; a white rabbit was hopping over the stones of the courtyard. An Indian family was eating at a table at the far end. At the table next to mine was a blonde woman of indefinable age and faded beauty. She ate with three fingers, the way the Indians do, making perfect little balls of rice and dipping them in the sauce. She looked English to me, and so, as it turned out, she was. She had a mad glint in her eyes, but only every now and then. Later she told me a story that I don’t really think I should put down here. It may well have been an anxiety dream. But then the Hotel Zuari is not a place for happy dreams.
X
‘I worked as a mailman in Philadelphia, at eighteen already walking the streets with my bag over my shoulder, without fail, every morning, in summer when the tar turns to molasses and in winter when you slip on the icy snow. For ten years, carrying letters. You don’t know how many letters I’ve carried, thousands and thousands. They were all upper class, rich, the people on the envelopes. Letters from all over the world: Miami, Paris, London, Caracas. Good morning, sir. Good morning, madam. I’m your mailman.’
He raised an arm and pointed to the group of young people on the beach. The sun was going down and the water sparkled. Near us some fishermen were preparing a boat. They were half naked, wearing loincloths. ‘Here we’re all equal,’ he said, ‘there’s no upper class, no ladies and gentlemen.’ He looked at me and a sly expression crossed his face. ‘Are you a gentleman?’
‘What do you think?’
He looked at me doubtfully. ‘I’ll answer that later.’ Then he pointed to the huts made of palm leaves on our left that leant against the dunes. ‘We live there, it’s our village, it’s called Sun Village.’ He pulled out a little wooden box with papers and a mixture and rolled himself a cigarette. ‘Smoke?’
Indian Nocturne Page 5