The Beautiful Possible Read Online Free

wearing a hat, and wound up here. In Bombay. He has a friend named Kavita and a job in a spice market. Isn’t that enough?
    “I don’t think so,” says Walter.
    “You are such a lost man.”
    “I have a job.”
    “You haul sacks and get high on spices. I’d call that a dalliance, a goddamn waste.”
    Walter shakes his head. Go play cricket. Go off to your American students and teach them Tagore’s line about the butterfly that counts moments and tell them how my Sonia was shot. Just go—
    “Please leave me,” says Walter.
    “Is that what you really want?”
    “Yes, it is. I never should have followed you. There were other strangers on that ship. Beautiful women. I should have trailed someone else. Or stayed until Shanghai, where no one would have found me.”
    “I will leave you then. I’m sorry.”
    Paul leaves and wanders off, first slowly and then more quickly, winding his way through a maze of alleys.
    That night, Walter asks Kavita if she knows Tagore’s work.
    “Of course,” she says. “Even a Bengali whore knows her national poet.” She closes her eyes and Walter listens to her sing in a scratchy high-pitched voice. When she finishes, she opens her eyes and takes his hand.
    “Gitanjali,” she says.
    “What is the song about?”
    Kavita pulls a sheet of paper from Walter’s sketchbook and draws a footpath crossing a river. Then she sketches a primitive boat with a stick figure standing at the helm, playing a flute. Walter lies beside Kavita and closes his eyes. He has no boat, no river, no flute. Sonia and his father are dead. Kavita, Rohan, and Paul are the only people in the world he knows. One. Two. Three. No more.
    The following morning Paul spies Walter in the market, inhaling peppercorns.
    “Getting off on the ambrosia again?” asks Paul.
    “I asked you to leave me alone.”
    Paul reaches out and grabs Walter’s shoulders. “Staying here is a mistake.”
    Walter pushes away his hands.
    “Suit yourself then. Disappear as if you had never been saved. One day your fingers will turn yellow from turmeric and your skin will harden into citrus peel.”
    Walter pulls a shawl over his head and begins to sway.
    “You look like a crazy Jew, shuckling in prayer.”
    “I don’t pray.”
    “You’re not like the Jews I know,” says Paul. “Not at all.”
    “How would you know what kind of Jew I am? I wrote a damn paper on the Song of Songs. And I’m not dead. So what am I?”
    “Smart and lucky.”
    “Neither,” whispers Walter.
    “If you come to America with me I’ll set you up for a brilliant career. Students will admire your erudition; you will enlighten the world about the burning heart of theology.”
    Walter adjusts his shawl and closes his eyes. You will become a professor of world religions. It is your destiny, Sonia had said. But, Sonia, my love, what is destiny when the future has been rendered into ash? What now for us? What now?
    “First stop New York,” says Paul. “The Jewish Theological Seminary of America.”
    “That’s ridiculous. I’m not religious. And I’m not looking for the Bible.”
    “Beyond the Bible, Walter! You will study with rabbis. Wissenschaft: the science of plumbing ancient texts. Your fingers will touch the words you need to learn. You will weave yourself into the story, morph yourself into my Jewish protégé.”
    “Don’t label me.”
    “Agreed. No labels for the young man with boundless potential.”
    Walter scans the market stalls and alleys that are beginning to feel like home. He doesn’t have to give in. He has Kavita andRohan. He has spices. He has charcoal and a sketchbook. He has lost everything and now he has quite enough. Dream on, Professor.
    “Look,” says Paul. “I give up. If you change your mind, prepare yourself for a long train ride and find your way to Shantiniketan—Tagore’s ashram. It’s the only place where history won’t intrude on you, a sanctuary of respite where you can heal, wipe yourself