He was sitting there in a white Punjab kaftan and a white turban, a curious hybrid of a felt doll and the spermatozoon from that Woody Allen film, which had grown into a big albino otter with black whiskers. There was probably some business we should have been attending to. Dealings in Delhi (I personally found this pun quite amusing). We had only a vague recollection of what these dealings were, but we knew for certain that it was precisely their existence (the dealings, I mean) that was dragging our bodies down into this cesspit. What if they had… well, who knows how many shadowy vistas would have opened out before us? All right, enough of that… So we found ourselves inevitably drawn towards this otter, all the while trying to avoid making eye contact with all and sundry, so as not to bring about this all and sundry's premature death by getting up their hopes for a gigantic hypothetical sale.
There he was, sitting on the corner deep in thought, on a folding stool covered with stripy cloth… and we'll never know what he was thinking, the bastard. And what infuriates me most of all, is that we'll never know what the whole lot of them were thinking about. We're only wasting time discussing such rubbish. We weren't even…
…intending to stop. I wasn't at any rate. He rushed out and intercepted us, brandishing a little leather folder. He wasn't particularly convincing with that little folder of his there on the corner of Jampath Lane and the Tibetan Market. And now he'd metamorphosed from an otter into a university trade union organizer on the day when everyone's travel cards were being handed out. We found ourselves in a sealed-off bullet-proof glass gutter, a gusting north-westerly wind, veering to northerly, salty ocean water with a moderate concentration of iodine, slow current but it swept us under the hill and we were unable to stop. He floated alongside, gurgling and spluttering with the novelty of it all, and waving his folder about upwards and sideways like the saintly worker leading the May Day march on the famous poster. I wondered why he wasn't melting. What had they mixed into him? Taku said nothing. I suspected that he didn't really burden himself with thought processes. Which was exactly what I needed. The man of my life. Sometimes he said: «oh-la-la,» and he had a funny Japanese accent when he said that «oh-la-la.» It made me smile. The trade-union organizer flung open his little folder and waved some photographs of a sadhu wearing orange robes and coloured wreaths. Taku lit a cigarette.
The ground we were now standing on was rough, porous and ochre-grey. It was cracked, like an almond cookie, little clumps of scorched grass stuck out and different insects, beetles and spiders were crawling about. There was a smell of warm manure. For some reason I could only breathe through one nostril. Probably the right one. I'm always getting my left and right confused. Taku didn't distinguish between them at all. He was absolutely supple. When he grew tired he'd lean his elbow out onto the air or sit down on it and take a breather. I hadn't noticed how the trade-union organizer had pulled out a low stone urn with small yellow flowers and seated Taku on its edge. «Have you ever had your fortune told before? Tell me? Where? Here in India? I'll do it for you now…» Taku yawned. He yawned just like Mowgli. Yawned like a man who had grown up in the wild among beasts that didn't yawn, didn't smile, and who was now trying these new mimes out on his face. «Now you listen to what I'm telling you, I can read your thoughts, I can tell your fortune, I'm a brilliant yogi.» He quickly drew three horizontal lines and three vertical ones on a scrap of paper to make a grid of nine squares. «Give me a number between two and seven.» Taku looked him in the eye lazily… the fakir drew a clumsy figure of three in one of the squares. Taku stubbed out his cigarette on the sole of his Grinders and sluggishly threw away the butt… All around us the hawkers buzzed and careened, diving in front of people, clattering and jangling with their hypnotic eyes… «Where're you from? Japan? Give me a name of a flower and an animal»… this was all turning into a cheap farce… «daisy, elephant»… and I stood there on the corner of Jampath Lane and the Tibetan Market, on the almond cookie cracking in the intense heat, and like some idiot I thought about immortality… that it was such a strange thing… you can't become immortal, either you're born immortal or not… we can never know for certain, you only know that you're probably not mortal, and you constantly flounder in the gap, as in parachute riggings, plastered in the air, and you've always got to confirm your immortality, but no matter what you do, even if you think it only has a focused, localized meaning, it is at once both in your future and your past, because you were born immortal, and you're just in a fleeting moment. And then you suddenly become a curious exception to the world at large and submit to the laws of quantum physics. I often think such rubbish…
The fakir drew a «d» and an «e» in two of the empty squares, twirled his moustache and a dry wind twirled Taku's golden, sunburnt hair, and the fakir asked «when were you born?»… he asked «can you speak?»… Taku glanced at me calmly and smirked… he was unencumbered, he looked at himself all the time in the mirror, straightened out his hair, spruced himself up, and I looked at him, and it brought us closer… the otter lost his patience and jabbered quickly… «look over here, I'm writing down three letters, LMC, love, marriage, change, you'll get married in September, you'll return to India in two year time, you'll…» Taku got up and walked towards a vortex of delicate spinning iron rods with large spikes, and among the rods lots of eyes would appear and disappear, appear and disappear, appear and dis-… And music was playing, a silvery-blue siren song, and sparks danced to it and the music was also whirling round in the vortex, and the iron rods now turned into lianas, brown, beige, ashen, leopard-skinned, they slithered and flowed and revolved and pulsed and changed their hue… and they asked me «what do you want?» and I said «to write» «and what would you give to do that?» «anything» «anything?» «yes» «would you go without children?»… I looked at my stomach, gelatinous and transparent and bulging, and inside it in some sort of a spacesuit someone was living, and he was preparing to leave… and I cried out «no»… I thought I cried out, maybe that was just the way it seemed, you can never say anything for certain… «No» I said «to write and love» I twisted myself up into the vertical funnel… the otter grabbed back my arm… «You have a big heart»… and I imagined my own heart taking up all the free space inside me, and the other organs, all the little livers and spleens and stomachs, pressing themselves up against my skin trying to fight their way through to my arms and legs, trying to get an audience with my brain to explain the whole situation… «Oh I can tell from your palm, you had a great love once, but you split up, and he broke your heart»… now the little livers and spleens and stomachs hunched over my heart in sorrow and tried to glue it back together with Superglue… and Lou Reed sang about a perfect day when he could be somebody else, somebody new… and I made a wry face… the folder slipped off his lap and the pictures scattered in the yellow dust… «but in July there'll come a change of fortunes, in July you'll meet an American, and you'll fall in love, and you'll marry him in 1999, and… gimme some money» «I don't have any» «You do» «I don't» «I see in your eyes that you do».
«And I see in yours that you can't see»… he said «This will lie heavily on your conscience»… now he looked like a soft-boiled semolina dumpling… I replied «But I don't have a conscience» and he…
…I stood up and followed Taku. We gathered our things. We were heading for Nepal. I forgot all about the yogi. I took Taku by the hand and we walked along dusty grey-green streets, our unsteady feet shuffling through piles of rubbish, past shops and shanties, zoos and banks, along the ocean shore and beneath the benumbed Indian sky, and by our side the slopes of the Himalayas soared up, and grey monkeys swung on the railings of bridges, and street urchins tugged at our clothes and grinning Indians yelled after us «Halloo, sweet lady and chocolate man!» and the stars burned brightly overhead, as they had a thousand years before and would a thousand years hence… and they cried out «How are Juan Matus and his wife Dona Juanita, and their darling student Don Carlos?» and I replied «They're well thank you, but Carlos Castaneda lives on the roof, and Carlson Castaneda lives on all of our „roofs“… and I sensed that I was trembling all over…»