Antonio Tabucchi - Indian Nocturne

‘Like them,’ I said.

‘You see,’ he said. He rolled himself another cigarette, split it in two and gave me half. ‘What are you doing round here?’ he asked.

‘I’m looking for someone called Xavier, he may have passed through here from time to time.’

Tommy shook his head. ‘But is he happy for you to be looking for him?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘So don’t look for him then.’

I tried to give him a detailed description of Xavier. ‘When he smiles he looks sad,’ I finished.

A girl left the group and called to us. Tommy called back to her and she came towards us. ‘My girlfriend,’ Tommy explained. She was a pale blonde girl with vacant eyes and two childish pigtails gathered up on her head. She swayed as she walked, a little hesitant. Tommy asked her if she knew a guy who looked like this and this, repeating my description. She smiled incongruously and didn’t answer. Then she sweetly stretched out her hands to us and whispered: ‘Hotel Mandovi.’

‘The party’s beginning,’ said Tommy. ‘Come along.’

We were sitting on the edge of a very primitive boat with a crude float like a catamaran’s. ‘Maybe I’ll come over later,’ I said. ‘I’m going to lie down a while in the boat and take a nap.’ As they were going away I couldn’t resist it and shouted after him that he had forgotten to tell me if I was a gentleman like the rest. Tommy stopped, raised his arms and said: ‘Try and guess.’

‘I give up,’ I shouted, ‘it’s too difficult.’ I got out my guidebook and lit matches. I found it almost at once. They described it as a ‘popular, top range hotel’, with a respectable restaurant. In Panaji, once Nova Goa, inland. I stretched out on the bottom of the boat and looked at the sky. The night was truly magnificent. I followed the constellations and thought about the stars and the time when we used to study them and the afternoons spent at the planetarium. All at once I remembered how I had learnt them, classifying them by the intensity of their light: Sirius, Canopus, Centaurus, Vega, Capella, Arcturus, Orion. . And then I thought of the variable stars and the book of a person dear to me. And then of the dead stars, whose light still reaches us, and of the neutron stars in the last stage of evolution, and the feeble ray they emit. In a low voice I said: pulsar. And almost as if reawakened by my whisper, or as if I had started a tape recorder, I heard the nasal phlegmatic voice of Professor Stini saying: When the mass of a dying star is greater than double the solar mass, the matter is no longer in a state such as to arrest the process of concentration which then proceeds ad infinitum; no radiation will ever leave that star again and it is thus transformed into a black hole.

How odd life is. The Hotel Mandovi takes its name from the river it stands beside. The Mandovi is a wide, calm river with a long estuary lined with beaches, almost like sea beaches. On the left there is the port of Panaji, a river port for small steamers pulling barges laden with merchandise. There are two dilapidated gangways and a rusty jetty. And when I arrived, right by the edge of the jetty, as if it were coming out of the river, the moon rose. It had a yellow halo and was full and blood-coloured. I thought, red moon, and instinctively I started whistling an old song. The idea came like a short circuit. I thought of a name, Roux, and then immediately of those words of Xavier’s: ‘I have become a night bird’; and then everything seemed so obvious, stupid even, and I thought: Why didn’t I think of it before?

I went into the hotel and took a look around. The Mandovi was built in the late fifties and already has an air of being old. Perhaps it was built when the Portuguese were still in Goa. I don’t know what it was, but the place seemed to have preserved something of the fascist taste of the period. Perhaps it was the big lobby that looked like a station waiting room, or perhaps it was the impersonal, depressing post-office or civil-service-style furniture. Behind the desk were two employees; one had a striped tunic, and the other a slightly shabby black jacket and an air of importance about him. I went to the latter and showed him my passport.

‘I’d like a room.’

He consulted the register and nodded.

‘With terrace and river view,’ I specified.

‘Yes, sir,’ he said.

‘Are you the manager?’ I asked as he was filling out my form.

‘No, sir,’ he answered. ‘The manager is away, but I am at your service for anything you may need.’

‘I’m looking for Mr Nightingale,’ I said.

‘Mr Nightingale isn’t here any more,’ he said perfectly naturally. ‘He left some time ago.’

‘Do you know where he went?’ I asked, trying to keep sounding natural myself.

‘Normally he goes to Bangkok,’ he said. ‘Mr Nightingale travels a lot, he’s a businessman.’

‘Oh, I know,’ I said, ‘but I thought he might have come back.’

The man raised his eyes from the form and looked at me with a puzzled expression. ‘I couldn’t say, sir,’ he said politely.

‘I thought there might be someone in the hotel in a position to give me some more precise information. I’m looking for him for an important piece of business. I’ve come from Europe specially.’ I saw he was confused and took advantage of it. I took out a twenty-dollar bill and slipped it under the passport. ‘Business deals cost money,’ I said. ‘It’s annoying to come a long way for nothing, if you see what I mean.’

He took the note and gave me back my passport. ‘Mr Nightingale comes here very rarely these days,’ he said. He assumed an apologetic expression. ‘You’ll appreciate,’ he added, ‘ours is a good hotel, but it can’t compete with the luxury hotels.’ Perhaps it was only at that moment that he realised he was saying too much. And he also realised that I appreciated his saying too much. It happened in a glance, an instant.

‘I have to clinch an urgent deal with Mr Nightingale,’ I said, though with the clear impression that this tap had now been turned off. And it had. ‘I am not concerned with Mr Nightingale’s business affairs,’ he said politely but firmly. Then he went on in a professional tone: ‘How many days will you be staying, sir?’

‘Just tonight,’ I said.

As he was giving me the key I asked him what time the restaurant opened. He replied promptly that it opened at eight-thirty and that I could order from the menu or go to the buffet which would be laid on in the middle of the room. ‘The buffet is Indian food only,’ he explained. I thanked him and took the key. When I was already at the lift I turned back and asked innocuously, ‘I imagine Mr Nightingale ate in the hotel when he was staying here.’ He looked at me without really understanding. ‘Of course,’ he replied proudly. ‘Our restaurant is one of the finest in the city.’

Wine costs a lot in India, it is almost all imported from Europe. To drink wine, even in a good restaurant, confers a certain prestige. My guidebook said the same thing: to order wine means to bring in the head waiter. I gambled on the wine.

The head waiter was a plump man with dark rings round his eyes and Brylcreemed hair. His pronunciation of French wines was disastrous, but he did all he could to explain the qualities of each brand. I had the impression he was improvising a little, but I let it go. I made him wait a good while, studying the list. I knew I was breaking the bank, but this would be the last money I spent to this end: I took a twenty-dollar bill, laid it inside the list, closed it and handed it to him. ‘It’s a difficult choice,’ I said. ‘Bring me the wine Mr Nightingale would choose.’

He showed no surprise. He strutted off and came back with a bottle of Rosé de Provence. He uncorked it carefully and poured a little for me to try. I tasted it but didn’t give an opinion. He didn’t say anything either, impassive. I decided that the moment had come to play my card. I drank another sip and said: ‘Mr Nightingale buys only the best, I’ve heard, what do you think?’