The Names

"He was wrong," I said, surprised at my own abruptness. "You weren't there to confess anything.”"Unless it was to acknowledge my likeness to them.”"Everybody is like everybody else.”"You can't mean that.”"Not exactly. Not stated exactly so.”"We overlap. Is that what you mean?”"I'm not sure what I mean.”His voice grew soft. He was careful not to accuse, not to hurt."What do you see when you look at me?" he said. "You see yourself in twenty years' time. A damn sobering sight. It's true, isn't it? Our likeness is a kind of leap, a condition you can't help but foresee. You used to oppose almost everything I said. Less so of late. As though you've begun to hedge your bets. You see yourself, James, don't you?”Alone, weak-willed, defenseless, taking the stairs two at a time. Was this true, was he right? I would never completely understand Owen, know his reasons, know the inner shapes and themes. This only made the likeness more plausible.

Feet flat on the ground, weight on the calves, arms draped over the knees. They hunkered in one of the bins. Singh rubbed two long stones against each other, rough-shaping them as he talked. He was a talking machine. He moved from Hindi to English to Sanskrit in the space of a single long remark. Owen was afraid of him. He was too clearly on the maniacal edge. He looked mad, spoke in a jumble of tongues, fell into cruel and sweeping laughter, eyes shut, mouth wide open, full of rotting teeth. Owen listened to him talk for much of a long afternoon and through the pale desert vespers and into the night. He was mercurial and deft, sometimes intimidating, sometimes appearing to seek favor. Not a true games-player, not an observer of the rules, Owen thought, astonished at the stupidity of this reflection. Singh was electric, messianic, crazy, the coarsely grained face set in a mass of dusty ringlets. He stopped rubbing the stones only long enough to raise his fingers in the air, indicating quotation marks around a word he used ironically or with a double meaning."Thar. This is a contraction of marust 'hali. Abode of death. Let me tell you what I like about the desert. The desert is a solution. Simple, inevitable. It's like a mathematical solution applied to the affairs of the planet. Oceans are the subconscious of the world. Deserts are the waking awareness, the simple and clear solution. My mind works better in the desert. My mind is a razed tablet out here. Everything counts in the desert. The simplest word has enormous power. This is fitting because it's part of the Indian tradition. The word in India has enormous power. Not what people mean but what they say. Intended meaning is beside the point. The word itself is all that matters. The Hindu woman tries to avoid speaking her husband's name. Every utterance of his name brings him closer to death. You know this. I'm not telling you something you don't know, or am I? Indian literature has been eaten by white ants. The bark and leaf manuscripts, nibbled, gnawed, consumed. You know this. India doesn't need a literature anyway. Superfluous. India is the right brain of the world. Dancing Shiva, you know? Pure motion baby. What I'd like to do when we leave this place is go to northern Iraq and study Yezidi cryptic. You have to see this alphabet to believe it. A little Hebrew-looking, a little Persian, a little Arabic, a little Martian. This thing is cryptic because the Yezidis live among Muslims and can't stand the mothers. Total mutual loathing, right? If a Yezidi hears a Muslim in prayer he either kills the poor bugger or kills himself. That's according to the book anyway. There are other alphabets to study in that area. I could go to the marshes. I'd take the woman except she's serious about starving herself. I'd like to fuck her everywhichway to Sunday or whatever the phrase. She's the kind you fuck with a vengeance, am I right? Each sound has one sign only. This is the genius of the alphabet. Simple, inevitable. No wonder it happened in the desert.”