It was not without some regret that the least important and most trivial details seemed to come first in recollecting the sequence of events that comprise this story. Few if any of the facts should be construed to be true although although the diligent scholar is sure to find correspondence in early texts that might present scatological impressions of actual events . Certainly Borges’ contributions are pervasive if not entirely invisible. To speak about what will be spoken of is difficult to avoid given the subtle digressions which compose the precession of events. As such it would strain credulity to suggest that the reader will likely end at the place the author begins, however be that as it may (or may not), this story was related to me in passing.
It was at sunset in early summer, when, as the No. 3 train leaves the city coming across the Manhattan Bridge it becomes the scene of an apocalyptic sunset, a moment set outside of life, a place between places, temporarily alleviating the anti-humanity of subterranean travel before again burrowing underground. At such moments the quiet affords the diligent opportunist to capture the private words and looks shared between friends whose guard has come down and from lovers whose hatred uncoils; those who consider those strangers around them as though ephemera. A jaunty brown-skinned chap, a coolie twice removed, tries hard to appear local through his mastery of the nuances of vernacular and fashion succeeds only in confirming to the the astute observer his status as a not recently arrived immigrant from the Asian Sub-continent. Physical frailty, white, strong teeth, and and the chalky gesturing caused by lanky bones lend him an academic intensity that caricatures a stage puppet which serves only to exaggerate the movement of his thin lips which move across his face, held carefully composed in an ineffectual affectation of depth, contemplation and importance; from such a bitter shell cracked comes the first movement:
It was in the state of Orissa, in Behrampur, on the Bay of Bengal that my father, en route to his final trimester of medical school had occasion to hear this story on the street from a tea-seller near the old British railway station. The tea seller, to judge his appearance, had nothing of worth, and distractedly sold his warm chai, as though the coins he received were inconsequential, yet he found my father in the teeming and sweat-shiny crowd, who, in his way and with equal ambivalence watched the trifling exchanges. The bent man as though urgency propelled him and lent confidence and command to his carriage that was misaligned with his caste and profession, stopped my father with a voice and meter that would not tolerate dissent, and then he began:
Young Babu Ji, you are a wise and you will want what I share with you, although you will not be able to repay me in this world nor the next. This karma will not bind us though, as it settles an old debt that will be payed in full many years after our time has passed, by others not us. You are not who you have been, and even now you are not the messenger, only the case the carries it. I will give you two things, one which you will bear for another, and the second which will make you who are to be. Then he gave my father the kitab, that object, from which he made his for. He received nothing else.
[story 3 - mystery girl a la murakami - unspoken dream sequence]
[story 4 - dust]
