The Names

"I've been preparing for this all my life," he said. "Not that I knew it. I didn't know it until I walked into this room, out of the color and light, the red scarves worn as turbans, the food stalls out there, the ground chili and turmeric, the pans of indigo, the coloring for paint, those trays of brilliant powders and dyes. The mustard, bay leaf, pepper and cardamom. You see what I've done, don't you, by coming into this room? Brought only the names. Pine nuts, walnuts, almonds, cashews. All I can tell you is that I'm not surprised to find myself here. The moment I stepped inside it seemed right, it seemed inevitable, the place I've been preparing for. The correct number of objects, the correct proportions. For sixty years I've been approaching this room.”"Anand speaks of you.”"He wrote. He told me you'd been there. I knew you'd come.”"Did you?”"But when you stood in the door I didn't recognize you at all. I was surprised, James. I wondered who you were. You looked familiar-but in the damnedest way. I didn't understand. I thought something was happening. Am I dying, I wondered. Is this who they send?”"You took it calmly, if you thought I was a messenger from the other side.”"Oh I'm ready," he said laughing. "Ready as I'll ever be. Counting the cracks in the wall.”There was a pale gray booklet in the copper tray. Kharoshthi Primer. I picked it up and turned the pages. Lesson number one, the alphabet. Lesson number two, medial vowels. There were seven lessons, a picture on the back cover of a stone Buddha with a halo inscription in Kharoshthi."The ragged mob squats in the dust around the public storyteller," he said. "Someone beats a drum, a boy wraps a snake around his neck. The storyteller begins to recite. Heads nod, heads wag, a child squats down to pee. The man tells his story at a rapid clip, spinning event after event, this one traditional, that one improvised. His small son passes through the audience with a wooden bowl for donations. When the storyteller interrupts his narrative to consider things, to weigh events and characters, to summarize for the latecomers, to examine methodically, the mob grows impatient, then angry, crying out together, 'Show us their faces, tell us what they said!'‘