Indian Nocturne Read Online Free Page B

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