Indian Nocturne by Antonio Tabucchi Read Free Book Online Page A

of herbs. I took a turn round the bus, smoked a cigarette
leaning on the steps at the back, and then headed for the ‘waiting room’. It was a long low shed with an oil lamp hanging at the door. On the door jamb someone had stuck a picture of a
divinity unknown to me, done in coloured chalk. Inside were a dozen or so people, sitting on the benches along the walls. Two women standing by the door were talking busily to each other. The few
passengers who had got off the bus were scattered round the circular bench in the middle around a support post to which were attached leaflets of various colours and a yellowing notice that might
have been a timetable or a government directive. Sitting on the bench at the far end was a boy of about ten with short trousers and sandals. He had a monkey with him, hanging onto his shoulders,
its head hidden in his hair and its little hands clasped together round the neck of its master in an attitude of affection and fear. Apart from the oil lamp on the door, there were two candles on a
packing case: the light was very dim and the corners of the shed were in darkness. I stood a few moments looking at these people who appeared to take no notice of me at all. I thought it strange,
this boy alone in this place with his monkey, even if it is common to see children alone with animals in India; and immediately I thought of a child who was dear to me, and of his way of cuddling a
teddy-bear before going to sleep. Perhaps it was that association that led me toward the boy, and I sat down next to him. He looked at me with two beautiful eyes and smiled, and I smiled back at
him; and only then did I realise with a sense of horror that the tiny creature he was carrying on his shoulders was not a monkey but a human being. It was a monster. Some atrocity of nature or
terrible disease had shrivelled up his body, distorting shape and size. The limbs were twisted and deformed with no proportion or sense other than that of an appalling grotesque. The face too,
which I now glimpsed amid the hair of his carrier, had not escaped the devastation of the disease. The rough skin and wound-like wrinkles gave him that monkeyish look which together with his
features had prompted my mistake. The only thing that was still human about that face were the eyes: two very small, sharp, intelligent eyes, which darted uneasily in every direction as if
terrified by a great and imminent danger, wild with fear.
    The boy said hello in a friendly way. I said good evening to him and found myself unable to get up and go away.
    ‘Where are you going?’ I asked him.
    ‘We’re going to Mudabiri,’ he said smiling, ‘to the temple of Chandranath.’
    He spoke fairly good English, without hestitations. ‘Your English is good,’ I said, ‘who taught you?’
    ‘I learnt at school,’ said the boy proudly. ‘I went for three years.’ Then he made a gesture, turning his head slightly, his face taking on an expression of apology.
‘He doesn’t understand English, he wasn’t able to go to school.’
    ‘Of course,’ I said, ‘I understand.’
    The boy stroked the hands clinging together over his chest. ‘He’s my brother,’ he said affectionately, ‘he’s twenty.’ Then assuming an expression of pride
again, he said: ‘But he knows the Scriptures, he knows them off by heart, he’s very intelligent.’
    I tried to look casual, as if a little distracted and immersed in my own thoughts, so as to disguise the fact that I lacked the courage to look at the person he was talking about. ‘What
are you going to Mudabiri for?’ I asked.
    ‘There are the festivals,’ he said. ‘The Jain come from all over Kerala, there are a lot of pilgrims around now.’
    ‘And you are pilgrims too?’
    ‘No,’ he said, ‘we do the rounds of the temples, my brother is an Arhant.’
    ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘but I don’t know what that means.’
    ‘An Arhant is a Jain prophet,’ the boy explained patiently. ‘He reads