Antonio Tabucchi: Indian Nocturne

Six o’clock is a bit too late for lunch and a bit too early for dinner. But at the Taj Mahal, said my guidebook, thanks to its four restaurants, you can eat at any time. The Rendez-Vous was on the top floor of the Apollo Bunder, but it was really too intimate. And too expensive. I dropped into the Apollo Bar and chose a table by the big terrace window looking out on the first lights of the evening; the seafront was a garland. I drank two gin-and-tonics which put me in a good mood and wrote a letter to Isabel. I wrote for a long time, in a constant stream, with passion, and told her everything. I wrote about those distant days, about my trip, and about how feelings flower again with time. I also told her things I would never have thought of telling her, and when I re-read the letter, with the reckless amusement of someone who has drunk on an empty stomach, I realised that really that letter was for Magda, it was to her I’d written it, of course it was, even though I’d begun, ‘Dear Isabel’; and so I screwed it up and left it in the ashtray, went down to the ground floor, into the Tanjore Restaurant and ordered a slap-up meal, exactly as a prince dressed up as a nobody would have. And then when I’d finished eating it was night-time; the Taj was coming to life and sparkled with lights; on the lawn near the pool the liveried servants stood ready to chase off the crows; I sat myself down on a couch in the middle of that hall, big as a football field, and set about watching luxury. I don’t know who it was said that in the pure activity of watching there is always a little sadism. I tried to think who it was, but couldn’t, yet I felt that there was some truth in the statement: and so I watched with greater pleasure, with the perfect sensation of being just two eyes watching while I myself was elsewhere, without knowing where. I watched the women and the jewels, the turbans, the fezes, the veils, the trains, the evening dresses, the Moslems and the millionaire Americans, the oil magnates and the spotless, silent servants: I listened to laughter, to phrases comprehensible and incomprehensible, whispers, rustlings. And this went on and on the entire night, till dawn almost. Then, when the voices thinned out and the lights were dimmed, I leant my head on the cushions of the couch and fell asleep. Not for long though, because the first boat for Elephanta casts off from right in front of the Taj at seven o’clock; and along with an older Japanese couple, cameras round their necks, I was on that boat.

‘What are we doing inside these bodies,’ said the man who was preparing to stretch out in the bed next to mine.

His voice didn’t have an interrogative tone, perhaps it was not a question, just a statement, made in his way; in any case it would have been a question I couldn’t have answered. The light that came from the station platforms was yellow and traced its thin shadow on the peeling walls, moving lightly across the room, prudently and discreetly I thought, the same way the Indians themselves move. From far away came a slow monotonous voice, a prayer perhaps, or a solitary, hopeless lament, the kind of cry that expresses nothing but itself, asks nothing of anyone. I found it impossible to make out any words. India was this too: a universe of flat sounds, undifferentiated, indistinguishable.

‘Perhaps we’re travelling in them,’ I said.

Some time must have passed since his first comment, I had lost myself in distant thoughts: a few minutes’ sleep maybe. I was very tired.

He said: ‘What did you say?’

‘I was referring to our bodies,’ I said. ‘Perhaps they’re like suitcases; we carry ourselves around.’

Above the door was a blue nightlight, like the ones they have in night trains. Blending with the yellow light that came from the window it gave a pale-green, aquarium-like glow. I looked at him and in the greenish, almost funereal light, I saw the profile of a sharp face with a slightly aquiline nose. He had his hands on his chest.

‘Do you know Mantegna?’ I asked. My question was absurd too, but certainly no less so than his.

‘No,’ he said, ‘is he Indian?’

‘Italian,’ I said.

‘I only know the English,’ he said, ‘the only Europeans I know are English.’

The distant cry picked up again and with greater intensity; it was really shrill now. For a moment I thought it might be a jackal.

‘An animal?’ I said. ‘What do you think?’

‘I thought he might be a friend of yours,’ he replied softly.

‘No, no,’ I said, ‘I meant the voice coming from outside — Mantegna is a painter, but I never knew him, he’s been dead a few hundred years.’

The man breathed deeply. He was dressed in white, but he wasn’t a Moslem, that much I had understood. ‘I’ve been to England,’ he said, ‘but I used to speak French too, if you prefer we can speak French.’ His voice was completely neutral, as if he were making a statement across the counter in a government office; and this, I don’t know why, disturbed me. ‘It’s a Jain,’ he said after a few seconds, ‘he’s lamenting the evil of the world.’

I said: ‘Oh, right,’ because now I’d realised he was talking about the wailing in the distance.

‘There aren’t many Jains in Bombay,’ he said then, with the tone of someone explaining something to a tourist. ‘In the south, yes, there are still a lot. As a religion it’s very beautiful and very stupid.’ He said this without any sign of contempt, still speaking in the neutral tone of someone giving evidence.

‘What are you?’ I asked. ‘If you’ll forgive my indiscretion.’

‘I’m a Jain,’ he said.

The station clock struck midnight. The distant wail suddenly stopped, as if the wailer had been waiting for the hour to strike. ‘Another day has begun,’ said the man, ‘from this moment it’s another day.’

I said nothing, his assertions didn’t exactly encourage conversation. A few minutes went by; I had the impression that the platform lights had grown dimmer. My companion’s breathing had slowed, with pauses between each breath, as if he were sleeping. When he spoke again I started. ‘I’m going to Varanasi,’ he said, ‘what about yourself?’

‘To Madras,’ I said.

‘Madras,’ he repeated, ‘oh yes.’

‘I want to see the place where it’s said the Apostle Thomas was martyred; the Portuguese built a church there in the sixteenth century, I don’t know what’s left of it. And then I have to go to Goa, I’m going to do some work in an old library — that’s why I came to India.’

‘Is it a pilgrimage?’ he asked.

I said no. Or rather, yes, but not in the religious sense of the word. If anything, it was a private journey, how could I put it, I was only looking for clues.

‘You’re a Catholic, I suppose,’ said my companion.

‘All Europeans are Catholics, in a way,’ I said. ‘Or Christians anyway, which is practically the same thing.’

The man repeated the adverb I’d used as if he were savouring it. His English was very elegant, with little pauses and the conjunctions slightly drawled and hesitant, the way people speak in certain universities I realised. ‘Practically. . Actually,’ he said, ‘what strange words. I heard them so many times in England, you Europeans often use these words.’ He paused a moment longer than usual, but I was aware that he hadn’t finished what he was saying. ‘I never managed to establish whether out of pessimism or optimism,’ he went on. ‘What do you think?’

I asked him if he could explain himself better.

‘Oh,’ he said, ‘it’s difficult to explain more clearly. Yes, sometimes I ask myself if it’s a word which indicates arrogance, or whether on the contrary it merely signifies cynicism. And a great deal of fear as well, perhaps. You follow me?’