The Scorpion-Fish Page 4

  … And what interests them, even more than their debts, is whether their mothers have found them wives. They are tired of gripping the arm-rests of the seats in the ‘Cosmic’ cinema until their knuckles go white, watching French films so mutilated by the censors that they are incomprehensible. (When two heads draw close, even if only to share a secret, out come the scissors.)

  ‘Old chap,’ they say to me out of the blue, with that discretion peculiar to the whole sub-continent, ‘have you already made it with a woman?’ They haven’t. You understand their impatience. And they describe to me in detail the pleasures they intend to share with this long-awaited companion, they are assiduous readers of the little porn papers printed in the capital, with their pale, fuzzy plates in that homemade style common to all pious pictures, whether Buddhist, Baptist or Catholic — all fakes are the same.

  The truth is that having got a woman, despite what they tell me about kamasutra, they give her a baby straight away, without any frills; as so often here, laziness and nature combine to bring plans to nothing. And behold the women in the doorways of Hospital Street, oiling their long hair and warming their bellies in the sun, waiting for the three ceremonial incantations that will ensure the foetus a propitious development and an uneventful delivery. One pregnancy follows another, the body coarsens and soon beauty is no more than memory; it only has a chance of lasting among the rich. There’s an end to libertine dreams, a return to the deadly daily round. I’m sure they only half believe in the feast of lasciviousness they promise themselves: given a century of Anglo-Saxon prudery grafted on to a Buddhism as gloomily misogynist as it is moribund, not to mention the atrocious uniforms worn by the students of the ‘Lady Griffith Girls’ College’ — with their angelically plain bodies and voices tuned to the harmonium — the result is bound to be frustration and sourness.

  ‘To kiss in a public place is a legal offence’ I read at the entrance to the public gardens, behind the church, where roots of banyan and such can be traced by the cracks they make in the paths. You can peer into all the nooks and crannies of the town without surprising embracing couples, examine walls and urinals without finding any graffiti other than political ones about the two rival parties, the Umbrella and the Elephant. Only once, under the Island’s commercial slogan ‘Every time is tea time’, scrawled by someone idly waiting for his bladder to co-operate, I made out an addition in chalk by another frustrated hand, ‘… and no time ever fucking time’. If I’d had something to write with, I’d have scribbled below it, ‘Mates, how right you are!’ Decency is fine as far as it goes, but when love’s labours lack their point of existence — and for no good reason — then a balance is lost. Without that natural, essential appetite our motivation falters, animals that we are. Consider the donkey: nose to the grindstone and constantly having erections.

  My friends make no progress, they let life get on without them, as she always does in her sly, disconcerting way. Despite their exhausting chatter, despite our common poverty which might have brought us together, I never got much out of them beyond those futile erotic longings. For example, they had great fun with the questions about the island I plied them with at first: they decided, no doubt rightly, that I’d never been hot enough to be taken seriously.

  But the town had its politics, fairly predictable and bombastic, with two or three parties besides the Umbrella and Elephant, and even an extreme left-wing group that held court in the back room of the ‘Oriental Patissery’. It is worth reflecting why, at 5º latitude north, 77.5º longitude east and 105º in the shade, a shop selling nothing but curry fritters lighter than air should still think it necessary to stress that it is ‘oriental’. In Tours, or Bremen, or Brescia, can you imagine an advertisement for ‘Western Shoe Repairs’ or ‘The Occidental Pantry’? Surely not, it would be not only bizarre but rather defeatist — albeit less so if Attila, Tamburlaine or Suleiman had succeeded in their efforts to conquer Europe. As things stand, we are the ones who’ve imposed our manners, our measures, our meridians, our gods; manipulated the markets and annexed geography for our profit alone. God and gunboats, liquor and holy water. For several centuries the Christian West has been the centre, the rest of the planet a suburb of Europe. You don’t label the centre, you define other points on the periphery in relation to it. ‘Oriental Patissery’ indeed! But habit is such a good mother that the group meeting there didn’t question the adjective. They were a handful of academic ultranationalists, who took to wearing sarongs again in protest against ‘western alienation’, injured themselves once in a blue moon with their home-made bombs — of which they were the only victims — and gathered there each evening for their whist games. They were the only people in the town to look indulgently on my wanderings, and question me about what I’d seen. I looked in on them several times, to ask why they still clung to their convictions in this furnace. For no apparent reason: no industrial proletariat, no slums, no coolies; no picturesque misery but an ocean of small, needy people just able to make ends meet, who preserved an unhappy, threadbare respectability that would never jolt them into action. Apostles without disciples, the group maintained a slightly tarnished virtue in lieu of a programme, and an astonishing ability to argue endlessly in the heat — getting themselves in trim for doctrinal quarrels with fraternal groups, for they were neither Stalinists, Maoists, Castroists nor Titoists but Trotskyites of more than twenty years’ standing, no doubt the last ones. The reasons for this choice had been forgotten in the meantime; they held stubbornly to this then disappearing doctrine nevertheless. I felt that in the matter of ideology, as in business, we had once again palmed off old stock on them. If they were strongly attached to these outmoded goods it was because they had learned from experience that we wouldn’t be back to collect them.

  I came across them when they had run out of enthusiasm, exhausted by several years of activism, fervour, and a few vociferous and memorable demonstrations. Here where the climate is often stronger than greed, the slightest whiff of altruism obviously knocks you out. It is just too hot to be good for long. ‘It was the Northerners,’ they used to excuse themselves, ‘who invented the revolution of the proletariat and the class struggle,’ concepts which seem distinctly glacial here. And — I should have apologized — invented by an intelligentsia who blew on their fingers before writing, for example, ‘the dry acacia twigs chime like porcelain, lighter than a frozen herring’. They are right: Engels had a hot-water bottle, the proofs of Capital were corrected in mittens, Trotsky’s ink froze in the inkwell; all these ghosts from the north lose their substance here, melting like snow on a stove. Even before it is primed, nitrocellulose explodes spontaneously in this climate. It seemed to me that equatorial Bolshevism was a poor option, Marxism under the scorching sky in a bad way, and the vocation of my friends more than problematic. Whether they chose passivity or revolt, we had deceived them as to the numbers, faked the rules, dictated the terms, and kept the ace up our sleeve. Of all trades, the trade in ideologies — which has no conception of its client — is the most harmful, and it harms both sides because it is demeaning to force others into imitation.

  In any case, my friends weren’t rebuilding the world any longer, nor even that end of the road, always full of potholes, which links the Fort with the market. They went on happily meeting there, the vanquished, betrayed, verbose, who listened to me without sniggering, who welcomed me with that funereal hilarity which always signifies irrevocable defeat.

  I am grateful to you, Soviet of the ‘Oriental Patissery’, and I see you again now: the oil lamp smokes and chars, a black icon; faces with large pores gleam in the night heat while time dissolves in ghostly speeches; through arak fumes you could cut with a knife the glow of a cheroot illuminates decayed teeth. They put down their cards, patiently poking at the past, as I did myself today. If you forbade the ageing to use that little phrase ‘do you remember’, there would be no more conversation: we all have it in us to suddenly, quietly, cut our throats.

  VIII

&n
bsp; Indigo Street

  Indigo Street, which runs from the lighthouse to Aeolus Tower, is the oldest street in the Fort. It is my street, because it ends at the sea just beside the boarding-house: my familiar, well-trodden street. In a way, although I have never been happy there, it is the most beautiful, crazy street in my ineffectual life.

  I have returned so often in my dreams that I can still see the shops precisely — the Tamil’s tea-stall, the fishmonger with the gold ring in his left ear, the barber’s chairs with their pompoms, the Muslim grocery — spaced along the way like indelible notes of music meant specially for me, for whose tune I’m still searching. There’s a long row of narrow façades on which the weather-board, cinnamon, ultramarine or salmon, corroded by sea spray, disintegrates in gem-like halftones, in a crystalline flowering of sumptuous melancholy. It is that colonial baroque — patched, lethargic, frivolous — of the little people who lightly adapt to the western conquerors’ style, which flourished haphazardly in trading-posts and little ports from Madagascar to Flores. But here, a superabundant nature decorates at the same time as it wears away: festoons of salt wink under the windows, mother-of-pearl and coral grow in the volutes of leprous stucco, light flatters the rinds of rotten fruit, and shellfish creep into the smallest whorls of architecture.

  Decrepitude and weather give a patina to Indigo Street, make it glow like an icon. The sea wind plays it like a flute, and makes fine curtains of sand dance along the street, pattering on the palm-roofed barrows, swiftly rippling across the ground. Sometimes a pilgrim crab, his claws extended, is swept up in a gust of wind, spinning the length of the street like a dead leaf. However high the sun, here the light retains an underwater quality, resolutely crepuscular, as though Indigo Street had long since foundered with all its crew.

  Every day, walking up the street, I glimpse those I still don’t dare to call my neighbours: stiff, white forms, faintly luminous in their immaculate straight sarongs in the blue shadows of identical rooms. They are the survivors of a commercial caste which traded in citronella and indigo before the port silted up, and brought them into financial straits and inactivity. The little plots they still keep outside the Fort yield just enough to eat, to preserve their pride and wooden countenances. Once or twice a week their tenant-farmers come along with small handcarts and, with a certain resentment, tip out a jumble of coconuts at each doorway. The empty shells, lewdly bulging and split, are later left to ferment on the street — with an abominable smell like mouldy flax — for making into heaven knows what potion.

  My neighbours don’t go out before sundown, they bide their time in their dark kitchens. At any hour of the day a glance will confirm that they are really there: a few old women, and mainly the hieratic old men, chignons crowned with tall, tortoiseshell combs, unmoving. They are like chrysalids pinned to their Dutch-colonial chairs, which are polished as bones and hewed from teak so hard that the termites — usually undeterred here — have long since given up the struggle. The seats, a blue primus, an oil lamp in elaborate brass, sometimes an old wireless set with a rounded top, are the only ornaments of these dwellings, the last tokens of a lost luxury. Apart from sitting in these chairs and presenting their profiles to passers-by, my neighbours — I’ve finally decided — toil at absolutely nothing. Well, nothing visible. The presence of a spinning wheel would be inconceivable. Sometimes you see one of them tremblingly take a sip from a copper beaker filled with arak, sometimes drop into his coffee one of those tiny balls of cannabis that makes their eyes so vacant and brilliant, sometimes snip away at a banana-tree leaf, making one of those pretty, over-decorated pennons covered in mantras and five-pointed stars used here for black or white magic. Sometimes too a dry, sharp cough rises out of one of these lairs, answered by other coughs, little harsh explosions which come from all directions as the street gradually rouses itself, and time stands still … is something about to happen at last? Then order is restored and my old wizards take up their slumped positions once again, as though they had all overheard the same dreadful news. Back to that deceptive torpor — I suspect some mystery underlies it — which recalls the stillness of great insects on the look-out.

  Do they sometimes visit one another? I don’t think so, unless a sharper eye than mine could detect it; these dark lairs and their occupants are so alike. In the evening, when the sea snuffs out like a candle, when the darkness begins and the dim oil lamps make this similarity even more dizzying, anyone strolling along Indigo Street would swear he was walking on the spot, that smoked mirrors were giving him the illusion of movement … that this lark-snare had been devised especially for him.

  Despite their necromancy, my neighbours have never been on good terms with the sun. They loathe it, and neither invoke it nor try to ward it off. Everybody here does their best to ignore it. At around six o’clock it soars above the horizon like a cannonball and explodes in the hazy sky. You see this cyclops everywhere, dimly reflected in the vapours and secretions he draws out of the town. During the interminable day he weighs down on plants, people, ideas, ripening and rotting them apace, poisons us like bad absinthe before plunging steamily into the sea in a riot of winy colours, soon extinguished. Each evening the same bonfire, the same orgy of molten beauty, the same baroque splendour spread out above our ant-heap as though mocking it. Sometimes at midday you scarcely have a shadow, but woe betide the man who is taken in by this and decides to act while the sun is high in the sky. A sort of inexplicable intoxication overtakes him, but the sun triumphs every time. So you are forced to do your shopping at the end of the day, or in the hours just after dawn, when you can preserve some idea of what you want. Even then it’s a matter of moving fast. I’ve often seen my neighbours on their doorsteps — early in the morning but just a moment too late — snuffbox tucked into their belts, gripping their umbrellas, all set to go. Thanks to a fresh, humid night they have planned something, their faces almost animated by definite intentions. They leave the shade of the porch and, in the time it takes to open a brolly, the sun has already struck their heads and vaporized their projects. They fade further and further away into the light, their steps shaky, and the capricious wind tosses them like twigs.

  IX

  Four Grains of Hellebore

  A stone’s throw out on either hand

  From that well-ordered road we tread,

  And all the world is wild and strange …

  — Rudyard Kipling

  You could say that this island has been given over to magic since the day it rose out of the sea. If we believe the ancient chronicles, at this point the air was humming with wicked presences, so that Buddha himself made several trips to convert the shades to Holy Law and make the country inhabitable. At least for a while, but it is the nature of demons to be demonic, as of scorpions to sting or spouses to be faithful; the world plan requires everything to wear out and fall back into its karma. The Prime Minister of Mandadipa, who had long since been changed into a parrot, exercised his official functions from his high perch right up to his death; and the gates of the first capital were guarded for years only by ghouls or converted goblins — so recently repentant and so confused they were still devouring laggard travellers.

  There are still lots of wizards but you will find none — at least in my province — more redoubtable than those of the village of M—. No one will tell you why. Their ancestral superiority in wickedness is recognized, regretfully, and their proximity is a constant anxiety for my little town. We are already spoilt for magic here: everything is a pretext for spells, the possessed spin around, frothing at the mouth and humming like tops. Every night is laced with the sound of drums, everyone sets aside a little energy or money to guard against their neighbours’ real or suspected tricks. I must admit though that as they have to simmer in the cauldron of my town, even the demons have softened a bit. They share the boastfulness, carelessness and general lethargy, and the inn-keeper — who is a knowledgeable man — assures me that they are also tireless gossips. For their part, our exorcists
are not super-virtuous. They are scroungers assured of their bowls of rice, and do not observe any of the abstinence that would make them really efficacious. The cutting edge is dulled on both sides. We manipulate our ghosts and quibble over our spirits and things mostly work out all right. When something does go wrong, someone hasn’t played the game or — who knows — has suddenly woken up to it. In a few generations our magic will be worth no more than our politics.

  In M— things are quite different: the old poison has kept all its virulence. There in an undertone they pass on the rites and formulae which are the root of all occult phenomena, great or small. From those which curdle milk or shower excrement on a wedding feast — both to be regarded as harassments or warnings — up to really major spells, like the one that stabs the barber with such excruciating pain between the shoulder blades that his razor slips and falls, cutting a soapy throat. Regrettable, of course, but that’s how things are; you have to adapt to them. At least you know where the blows come from. When a couple of magpies raid the jeweller’s stall in the bazaar, and make off with some fine gold bracelets, rings and pendants, the poor fellow picks up his umbrella and trudges off to M— to reclaim his goods at a price that will be negotiated. During the whole journey he is wondering what he did to ‘them’, or what he did at all. The worry is enough to make him remember distinctly all the lousy tricks he’d managed to forget. But if the wizards of M— sometimes serve as a conscience, they more often serve as an alibi, since all the delays here caused by laziness, incompetence and negligence are blamed on them. If the traders in the bazaar are the first to use this excuse, it is because they are the chief victims. The customers from M—, insolent great fellows, strut about and jostle impatiently. When they are tired of haggling, their bargaining takes on a hint of menace: the vendor quickly lowers the price and the customer trots off, his purchase under his arm. You never know who you’re dealing with. It’s better to reduce your profit than to wake up the next day with a tongue so swollen you can scarcely wag it, or not to wake up at all. It’s best to handle these neighbours with care: their services are precisely valued and, in many delicate situations (a small inheritance, for instance), they offer the only way round. M— is like a shadow over my town, the price it pays for its spinelessness, the only disturbance to that sleep which resembles death. The enchanters of M— are as necessary to us as sand to oblivion.