A Fortune-Teller Told Me (16 page)

Chang Choub, with the life he led, brought all this before me again, and made me think that it might have something to do with me. When he left Turtle House, with his half-empty purple sack over his shoulder, it was as if he left behind a trail of little white stones—or bread crumbs?—to show me the way toward new explorations.

We promised to meet again in India. I have felt for years that India is in my future. In origin the reason was simple. I had grown up politically in the 1950s, when anyone interested in the Third World came up against two great myths, Gandhi and Mao—two different solutions to the same problem, opposing bets on the destinies of the two most populous nations on earth, two hypotheses of social philosophy from which it seemed that we in the West also had something to learn. Having spent years among the Chinese, trying to understand what a disaster the myth of Mao had been for them, it seemed logical to go one day to India to see what had happened to the myth of Gandhi. Living in Peking or Hong Kong, whenever we felt fed up with the prosaic pragmatism of the Chinese, or noticed ourselves reacting in a Chinese way, Angela and I would say to each other: “India. India.” For us India had become the antidote to the
mal jaune
, that poison concocted of love and disappointment, of endless small irritations and great faith, which afflicts all those who put down roots for a while in the Middle Kingdom and then find that they cannot tear themselves away.

I would have liked to move to India in 1984, when the Chinese took a decision for me that I would never have been able to take on my own, and thus did me an enormous favor: they arrested me and expelled me from their country. But at the time I did not manage it, and more years went by. To my original reason for wanting to go to India a new and more important one has been added: I want to see if India, with its spirituality and its madness, can resist the disheartening wave of materialism which is sweeping the world. I want to see if India can solve the
dilemma and preserve its uniqueness. I want to see if in India the seed of a humanity with aspirations beyond the greedy race for Western modernity is still alive.

Living in Asia, I have told myself again and again that there is no culture with the capacity to resist, to express itself with renewed creativity. Chinese culture has been moribund for at least a century, and Mao, in the effort to found a new China, murdered the little that remained of the old. With nothing left to believe in, the Chinese now dream only of becoming Americans. Students marched in Tiananmen Square behind a copy of the Statue of Liberty, and the old Marxist-Leninist rulers erase the memory of their crimes and their lust for power by letting the people run after illusions of Western wealth.

Which Asian culture has preserved its own springs of creativity? Which is still able to regenerate itself, to develop its own models, its own alternatives? The Khmer culture, which died with Angkor eight centuries ago and was once again killed by Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in their absurd attempt to revive it? The Vietnamese culture, which can define itself solely in terms of political independence? Or the Balinese, now packaged for tourist consumption?

India, India! I said to myself, nursing the hope—or perhaps the illusion—of a last enclave of spirituality. India, where there is still plenty of madness. India, which gives hospitality to the Dalai Lama. India, where the dollar is not yet the sole measure of greatness. That is why I made plans to go to India, and meet there my fellow Florentine escapee, Chang Choub.

A rich woman from Hong Kong came to see me. She was in Bangkok to meet her guru, a Tibetan monk and follower of the Dalai Lama, “a very advanced teacher.” He belongs to the international jet set, at home in New York, Paris and London, and he has a following of such women, usually rich and beautiful, in constant attendance. He plays the guru and the women pay the bills, buy his air tickets, organize his life. “He’s the reincarnation of a great teacher. He can’t be bothered with such things,” said the understanding lady, a consenting victim—perhaps like Chang Choub?—of Tibet’s great, subtle, historic vengeance.

Quite extraordinary, Tibet! For centuries it remained closed and
inaccessible, removed from the world; for centuries, in isolation, cutting itself off from any other field of study, it practiced the “inner science.” Then came the first explorers. At the beginning of the twentieth century the British entered Lhasa; fifty years later the Chinese occupied the country and made it a sort of colony. A hundred thousand Tibetans fled, but that diaspora lit the fuse for the time bomb of revenge.

Tibetan Buddhism, first practiced exclusively in the Himalayas and Mongolia, has been spreading throughout the world. Tibetan gurus have settled everywhere, from Switzerland to California, displacing the yogis who had formerly conquered the soul of Europe in its quest for the exotic. Their dogmas, once secret, have become best-sellers. Young gurus claiming to be reincarnations of old Tibetan teachers have become the mouthpieces of this ancient wisdom. With thousands of followers all over the world, they are looked after by little circles of rich lay nuns. Bernardo Bertolucci’s adviser on his film
Little Buddha
was one of these young gurus, born and raised outside Tibet, but a reincarnation of a great teacher. The capital of the Dalai Lama in exile, in Dharamsala, north of Delhi, has become a place of pilgrimage for thousands of young Westerners, and he has acquired the stature of a sort of second Pope, not only a spiritual leader, but also the head of the Tibetan government in exile.

By occupying Tibet, the Chinese have indirectly sown the seeds of Tibetan Buddhism throughout the world, thus practically planting a bomb in their own house. Sympathy for the Tibetan cause is growing, and interest in the spiritual aspect has become political. The Dalai Lama is welcomed as a guest in the centers of world power. He has become the symbol of the struggle against Peking’s totalitarian regime.

The other side of the coin is that the gurus, with their mythical roots amid the Himalayan peaks and their role as representatives of an oppressed people and bearers of spirituality, provide a perfect alibi for people who pursue redemption while remaining completely enmeshed in materialism. Because of the widespread disorientation from which our culture suffers, people have lost their natural skepticism. Today any charlatan can sell his spiritual potions if he gives them an exotic name.

Am I too a victim of this phenomenon? Is that why I spend days listening to Chang Choub, why I obey the prophetic warning not to fly, and say “yes” when invited to see a new fortune-teller?

The woman who had served as my interpreter with the blind fortune-teller made an appointment for me with her own astrologer-monk. So, one afternoon, again pretending that I was passing through Bangkok, I arranged to meet her and her friend in the lobby of the Oriental Hotel.

Her friend drove a Volvo. She was of Chinese origin, an importer of medical equipment for Thai hospitals. She was in her late forties, a once-beautiful woman who had allowed herself to put on weight. For want of love? So I concluded while scrutinizing her. I reflected with amusement that, starting with that observation, I too could set up as a fortune-teller and talk to her of her past and her future.

We crossed the Chao Paya by one of Bangkok’s many bridges. In the Bang Khun Non quarter we turned off the squalid, depressing cement road, lined with rubbish heaps and shapeless little houses, into a narrow lane. After about two hundred yards we arrived at the hushed, tranquil compound of a Buddhist temple. It was simple and austere, constructed entirely of wood, with long dormitories, beautiful inlaid panels under the eaves, and large windows where the monks’ orange robes were hung out to dry. The heat was stifling, but two large trees gave the complex of buildings an air of freshness.

The monk we had come to see was sitting on the teak floor of a wide, shady terrace, surrounded by coffee jars, teapots, small cups and trays, rolls of toilet paper, packets of cigarettes and two fans. He was served by a young couple, his relatives, who handed him things from time to time with gestures of devout submission. Now and then they fanned their baby, a few months old, who slept peacefully with his bottle between two fat astrology books and a geomancer’s quadrant.

The monk was about fifty, with a handsome head, and tattoos on his chest and arms. He drank tea nonstop and chain-smoked. Thai Buddhism is extremely tolerant and permissive. Monks are forbidden the use of intoxicants, and most Buddhists include tobacco in that category. But not the Thais, who find cigarettes and tea the best means of combating hunger during the long daily fast. Reading the future is also supposed to be against the rules; in fact Buddha himself forbade it. But in this the Thais follow the tradition of one of his disciples, Mogellana, who began telling fortunes immediately after Buddha’s death, using
powers acquired thanks to the master’s teachings and through meditation.

The monk welcomed us with a big smile and a fine burp. It was noon; he had just finished his big meal of the day, and would eat no more solid food until breakfast at dawn the next morning. My interpreter’s friend dropped to her knees and shuffled toward him. She had been there once before, but without giving her name. Her husband was one of the monk’s faithful disciples and frequent visitors, and she wanted, without letting him know, to have her future read by the same person who did it for him.

The sitting lasted about an hour, but the surprising part came at once. “Your husband has many other women, and you should sue for divorce,” said the monk. The woman laughed. My interpreter explained to me that it was absolutely true about these lovers, and her friend had already secretly made arrangements for a divorce. She was only afraid that her husband would refuse to sign the documents, or that he would demand a mint of money for doing so.

“You must leave the house you share with your husband, and go and live elsewhere. If you move during the month of October all will be well with you,” the monk said. My interpreter whispered to me that her friend had bought an apartment of her own already.

“Once you are in the new house,” continued the monk, “you must make a choice: a new husband or a great deal of money. Take care: if you have even one boyfriend, you’ll never become rich.”

“Venerable one,” said the woman, “help me to make a hundred million baht and I’ll buy you a Mercedes!” As if to show that she was in earnest, she took a fine electric thermos out of her bag and proffered it to him very ceremoniously with both hands, bowing her forehead to the floor.

The rest of the session was banal and of little interest; in the end I fell asleep on the beautiful wooden boards. I was woken once my interpreter had had her session and had been advised. It was my turn.

On a piece of paper I wrote the day and hour of my birth. Not the time in Florence, eight in the evening, but the equivalent in Bangkok, two in the afternoon. To tell the truth I have never known exactly at what time I was born. I remember only that my mother said it was “before supper.”

The monk made some complicated calculations, consulted the quadrant and a thick book, and with a Biro on a piece of white paper he drew some circles inside a square—my horoscope, apparently—then some signs. He asked me some more questions, saying he had to check whether the time of birth I had given him was the correct one. He needed certain information about my past if he was to read the right future. It was as if there were different pages for different types of destiny, and before proceeding he had to make sure he was reading the correct one.