Antonio Tabucchi - Indian Nocturne

‘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.

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.