Antonio Tabucchi - Indian Nocturne

‘The Germans were very much attracted by our culture. They have often formulated interesting opinions about India, don’t you think?’

‘Perhaps,’ I said, ‘I’m not in a position to say with any confidence.’

‘What do you think of Hesse, for example?’

‘Hesse was Swiss,’ I said.

‘No, no,’ my host corrected, ‘he was German; he only took Swiss citizenship in 1921.’

‘But he died Swiss,’ I insisted.

‘You haven’t told me what you think of him yet,’ chided my host in a soft voice.

For the first time I sensed a strong feeling of irritation growing inside me. That heavy, dark, close room with its bronze busts along the walls and glass-covered bookcases; that pedantic, presumptuous Indian, manipulating the conversation as he chose; his manner, somewhere between the condescending and the crafty: all this was making me uneasy and that uneasiness was rapidly turning into anger, I could feel it. I had come here for quite other reasons and he had coolly ignored them, indifferent to the urgency which he must have appreciated from my phone calls and my note. And he was subjecting me to idiotic questions about Hermann Hesse. I felt I was being taken for a ride.

‘Are you familiar with rosolio ?’ I asked him. ‘Have you ever tried it?’

‘I don’t think so,’ he said, ‘what is it?’

‘It’s an Italian liqueur, it’s rare now. They drank it in the bourgeois salons of the nineteenth century — a sweet, sticky liqueur. Hermann Hesse makes me think of rosolio. When I get back to Italy I’ll send you a bottle, if it’s still to be found, that is.’

He looked at me, uncertain as to whether this was ingenuousness or insolence. Naturally it was insolence: that was not what I thought of Hesse.

‘I don’t think I’d like it,’ he said drily. ‘I don’t drink, and what’s more I detest sweet things.’ He folded his napkin and said: ‘Shall we make ourselves comfortable for tea?’

We moved to the armchairs near the bookcase and the servant came in with a tray as if he’d been waiting behind the curtain. ‘Sugar?’ my host asked, pouring tea into my cup.

‘No, thanks,’ I answered, ‘I don’t like sweet things either.’

There followed a long and embarrassing silence. My host sat with his eyes closed, quite still; for a moment I thought he might have dozed off. I tried to work out his age, without success. He had an old but very smooth face. I noticed that he wore lace-up sandals on bare feet.

‘Are you a gnostic?’ he asked suddenly, still keeping his eyes closed.

‘I don’t think so,’ I said. And then added: ‘No, I’m not, just a little curious.’

He opened his eyes and gave me a sly or ironic look: ‘And how far has your curiosity taken you?’

‘Swedenborg,’ I said, ‘Schelling, Annie Besant: something of everybody.’ He seemed interested and I explained: ‘I came to some of them in roundabout ways, Annie Besant, for example. She was translated by Fernando Pessoa, a great Portuguese poet. He died in obscurity in 1935.’

‘Pessoa,’ he said, ‘of course.’

‘You know him?’ I asked.

‘A little,’ he said. ‘The way you know the others.’

‘Pessoa said he was a gnostic,’ I said. ‘He was a Rosicrucian. He wrote a series of esoteric poems called Passos da Cruz .’

‘I’ve never read them,’ said my host, ‘but I know something of his life.’

‘Do you know what his last words were?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘What were they?’

‘Give me my glasses,’ I said. ‘He was very shortsighted and he wanted to enter the other world with his glasses on.’

My host smiled and said nothing.

‘A few minutes before that he wrote a note in English: he often used English in his personal notes — it was his second language — he had grown up in South Africa. I managed to photocopy that note; the writing was very uncertain of course. Pessoa was in agony, but it is legible. You want me to tell you what it said?’

My host moved his head back and forth, as Indians do when they nod.

‘I know not what tomorrow will bring.’

‘What strange English,’ he said.

‘Right,’ I said, ‘what strange English.’

My host got up slowly, he gestured to me to stay where I was and crossed the room. ‘Please excuse me a minute,’ he said, going out of the door at the other end of the room. ‘Do make yourself comfortable.’

I sat in my armchair and looked at the ceiling. It must have been very late already, but my watch had stopped. The silence was total. I thought I heard the ticking of a clock in another room, but perhaps it was something wooden creaking, or my imagination. The servant came in without saying a word and took away the tray. I began to feel rather uneasy again, and this together with my tiredness generated a sense of discomfort, a kind of suffering almost. Finally my host came back and, before sitting down, handed me a small yellow envelope. I immediately recognised Xavier’s handwriting. I opened the envelope and read the following note: Dear Master and Friend, the circumstances of my life are not such as to permit me to come back and walk along the banks of the Adyar. I have become a night bird and I prefer to think that my destiny wanted it this way. Remember me as you knew me. Your X. The note was dated: Calangute, Goa, September 23rd.

I looked at my host in amazement. He had sat down and was watching me with what seemed like curiosity. ‘So he isn’t in Bombay any more,’ I said. ‘He’s in Goa, at the end of September he was in Goa.’

He nodded and said nothing. ‘But why did he go to Goa?’ I asked. ‘If you know something, tell me.’

He clasped his hands together over his knees and spoke calmly. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what your friend’s life is really like, I can’t help you, I’m sorry. Perhaps the circumstances of that life of his haven’t been propitious, or perhaps he himself wanted it that way; one must never know too much about the mere appearances of other people’s lives.’ He smiled coyly and gave me to understand that he had no more to say to me on the matter. ‘Are you staying on in Madras?’

‘No,’ I said, ‘I’ve been here three days, I’m going tonight, I already have a ticket for the long-distance bus.’

I thought I saw an expression of disapproval cross his face.

‘It’s the reason for my trip,’ I felt I ought to explain. ‘I’m going to consult some archives in Goa, I have to do some research. I would have gone anyway, even if the person I’m looking for had not been there.’

‘What have you seen here in our parts?’ he asked.

‘I’ve been to Mahabalipuram and Kanchipuram,’ I said. ‘I’ve visited all the temples.’

‘Did you stay the night there?’

‘Yes, in a little government-run hotel, very cheap: it was what I found.’

‘I know it,’ he said. And then he asked: ‘What did you like most?’

‘Lots of things, but perhaps the Temple of Kailasantha. There’s something distressing and magical about it.’

He shook his head. ‘That’s a strange description,’ he said. Then he quietly got up and murmured: ‘I think it’s late, I still have a great deal of writing to do tonight. Allow me to show you out.’

I got up and he led me down the long corridor to the front door. I stopped a moment in the porch and we shook hands. Going out I thanked him briefly. He smiled and said nothing in reply. Then, before closing the door, he said, ‘Blind science tills vain clods, mad Faith lives the dream of its cult, a new God is only a word. Don’t believe or search: all is hidden.’ I went down the few steps and walked a little way along the gravel drive. Then all of a sudden I understood, and I turned quickly: they were lines from a poem by Pessoa, only he had said them in English, that was why I hadn’t immediately recognised them. The poem was called Christmas. But the door was already closed and the servant, at the end of the driveway, was waiting to close the gate after me.