A Fortune-Teller Told Me (32 page)

I would really have liked to ask her what a Taoist sage thought of modern Singapore; what a man who had spent years as a hermit felt on seeing his followers all obsessed with making money. But a little crowd of the Master’s faithful had gathered around me, and I thought they might be offended. In the end I settled for: “A fortune-teller told me …”

The woman wanted to know who the fortune-teller was and when he had made that prediction. Then she did some calculations in the Chinese manner, starting with her hand open, bending the fingers in turn, beginning with the thumb, to count to five and then extending them again, beginning with the little finger, to reach ten. She said:

Her manner of speaking was extraordinary. Every sentence was like a verse of a classical poem, four characters recited in the rhythm of alternating rhymes.

“But are there no dangers ahead of me?” I asked.

“When?” I asked, inwardly ashamed at such a banal question. The woman gave one of her nervous laughs, caressed her long, imaginary beard and said:

She swept her right hand outward as if to suggest a very long road.

She was sweating, and one of her assistants constantly wiped her brow. The other put a cup of dark tea to her lips, making her sip it slowly as one does with a sick person. The medium never looked at me. Her eyes were fixed on the statue of the Master, who looked down on all of us from above.

One of the assistants gave her the pipe to smoke again, and the other leaned on the base of the altar to lay three strips of green paper in front of her. The shaman shook herself, made some long hissing sounds, and waved her hands as if to drive something away. Then they put a brush in her right hand, and with firm, precise movements, constantly shaking her head backward and forward, she began drawing signs on the
paper. They looked like characters, but I could not make out which. The three strips were taken away by the secretary, who set them on one side in front of a small altar. One of them, said the shaman, must be burned on that altar, one I had to swallow, and one I had always to keep with me.

Then came the taboo.

said the woman, continuing to speak in an old man’s voice, between a mouthful of smoke and a sip of tea.

“Is that all right?”
she asked, as if one could somehow bargain over these prohibitions.

“All right about the dog meat and the heroin, but I would have a problem not eating beef.”

She shook herself violently. Again from deep inside her came that strange, sardonic laugh, and then the ancient voice:
“Think of the ox. A strong, handsome animal. He helps man in the fields and on the road. To eat him you must kill him. That meat enters into you and turns you, too, into a murderer. No. You must never again eat beef. Every time you feel tempted, think how the ox is killed. You will lose the desire. You must respect nature, respect animals. One must live in a natural way. If you eat beef Kuan Lao Xiang Xian will no longer protect you.”

The secretary signaled to me that my time was up. With my hands still joined I thanked the woman, using the Chinese expression
xie xie ni
, “thanks to you.” She corrected me:
“Not to me. Thanks to Kuan Lao Xiang Xian.”

The worst was to come. The secretary made me kneel on the Yin and Yang symbol at the center of a large Taoist octagon in black and white marble. Before my eyes he burned one of the three paper strips, put the ashes into a glass of water and ordered me to drink it. Thus the protection would enter me. I knew it would be of little use, because I fully intended to eat a steak from time to time, but how could I tell him that? I swallowed it. The second strip, while burning, was passed over my body and head, only an inch or so away from me so that it might create a cloud of protection. He put the third into a little green envelope and handed it to me as if it were extremely precious.

A few days later I called T. K. Soon to tell him how much I liked his temple, and he came up with another story about the shaman. Shortly after the temple was completed and the spirit of Kuan Lao Xiang Xian had got into the habit of coming there on Thursdays, the Taoist Association organized a trip to China, under the guidance of the shaman-woman, to see the places where the Master had lived and to look for the original temple erected in his honor. In Chengdu, nobody could help them. No one had ever heard of a Chee Tong temple. The woman ordered everyone onto their buses and told the drivers to go in a certain direction. They traveled for more than two hours, and found themselves in a peasant village. Nobody knew of the temple there either. In a trance the woman began walking across the fields until she came to a plain. She pointed to the ground, and there lay the remains of some old foundations—the site of the temple. Not far away they found the grotto where the Master used to meditate.

I could not bring myself to ask him what I did not want others to ask me: “Do you believe it, then?” If he had said yes, I would have taken him for a fool. If he had said no, I would have been sorry, because it is, all said and done, more pleasing to live with the thought that such a story might be true.

The wait had been worthwhile. I would not have wanted to miss seeing the Chinese Communists and Nationalists signing their first agreement and clinking champagne glasses in a Singapore skyscraper. This was the beginning of the process of the reunification of China. For me it was further proof that I was not mistaken in thinking that China had
renounced its diversity, had stopped looking for Chinese solutions to its problems and was becoming a country like all the others, dominated by the scramble for Western-style modernization, with no ideology except for money and race.

This was obvious after a glance at the Communist and Nationalist Chinese: there was no difference between them anymore. Even a few years ago a Peking official would have spoken, dressed, moved and behaved in a very different way from a Taiwanese. No more. Now they were identical: all dressed like Western businessmen, all ready to talk of common economic interests. One Communist official had gone even further: he actually added that the meeting was important “to safeguard the interests of the whole Chinese race.”

Thus the Chinese of the diaspora in the various continents of the world were again the children of the Yellow Emperor, reunited under a single roof. The sleeping dragon that had worried Napoleon was perhaps about to awaken.

At last I obtained my appointment with Rajamanikam, too. I would have been sorry to leave Singapore without seeing him. Everyone told me he was a genuine astrologer, serious and reliable. He was related to a leading politician of the regime, and was sometimes consulted by members of the government.

On the telephone Rajamanikam’s secretary asked if I knew exactly at what time I was born. “More or less,” I answered. “No,” she insisted. “You must know it exactly, to the minute, otherwise there is no point in coming.” I had to call Angela, who happened to be in Florence. In an office at the Palazzo Vecchio, at the Registry of Births and Deaths, a clerk found the time in the original 1938 register: 7:15 p.m. Incredible: the monk in Bangkok who had arrived at it by quizzing me on my past was right! I was not born at eight o’clock, but exactly three-quarters of an hour before: an enormous difference for an astrologer.

Rajamanikam lived in an Indian neighborhood on the road to the airport. His house was modest, with pictures of Hindu divinities on the walls. He received me in a small, clean and pleasantly scented study, sitting at a desk with a shelf of old books behind him. Lean and dark-skinned like all Tamils of southern India, he had an elegant air. He was
dressed in a starched
gurta
, whiter than white, with two small gold buttons on the front, and a sarong, also white. He wore ultra-thick-lensed glasses, and had a beautiful smile. He held some sheets of paper and a pen, with which he continually made calculations. His presence was formidable and reassuring. Nothing about him seemed false or designed to curry favor with whoever was confronting him. He spoke with the rolling cadence of the southern dialect, repeatedly nodding his head as punctuation. On the wall was an old German pendulum clock which struck the hours and chimed the quarters.

“You were born in the fourth phase of the star Parani,”
began Rajamanikam,
“and so you’re under the influence of Jupiter, the king of the planets. Your sign in Western terms is Virgo with the moon in Pisces. A good combination that makes you intelligent, able and independent-minded, a person who likes debating. You could have studied law.”
(Well done! That is exactly what I did.)

He stopped, and examined his notes at length. He knew nothing about me. I had given his secretary the details of birth, and on that basis he had prepared a folder with a beautifully decorated cover of traditional design, containing my horoscope and some notes in red and blue pencil. He looked up. He had begun to suspect something.

“Are you by any chance an astrologer?”
he asked.

“No.”

“But you could become one. Otherwise you might be a writer, a journalist or a researcher. People can trust you and believe what you say. One day you’ll suddenly acquire a fortune, and as an old man you’ll be rich. Your mind never stops, it’s always on the go, and you’re a good worker. You are straight, you’re sincere, and you couldn’t succeed in hoodwinking anyone. You’re destined to make a name for yourself, perhaps to become very well known. You’ll live to the age of ninety-four, but there are two critical periods in your life: one between the ages of fifty-nine and sixty-one, the other at the age of seventy-seven. In those years keep away from water. Have nothing to do with water. Don’t go sailing, don’t swim. A period when you must be especially careful about water is between August 8, 1997 and August 11, 2000.”
(Just when I want to be in Hong Kong to see how the Chinese retake the colony. I hope I won’t have to escape by swimming!)

“In your life there are still many changes to come, but all for the better, because the best period of your life is still to come.”
(That’s the second
time I’ve heard this.)
“The year of the great change will be when you’re fifty-seven. There’s a very strong light coming toward you. On December 2, 1995 the best part of your life will begin. You’ll turn out to be very influential in what you do. You’ll be lucky in a matter involving property, and for the first time in your life you’ll be rich. Up to now money has come and gone, but this will change after you reach the age of fifty-seven. At the moment you’re in a period of transition, of uncertainty.”

Rajamanikam spoke, my cassette recorder turned, I automatically took notes, and my mind played with his words. I felt that basically he was right. Not that I expected a better life than the one I had had, but the idea that the best part was still to come seemed to have a certain logic. Up to the age that I had reached, you did your duty, you had children, you worked. You played the part you had chosen or been assigned. You behaved as you should, you created your own personality. And then at last you were free. I don’t mean free to retire. For me getting older means becoming more outspoken, more unconstrained. It means being able to say what I think, and to spend my time on what I consider important, even if it does not appear so to others. When you are older you can be free in a way that is unacceptable when you are young. You can live outside the usual patterns, outside the rules that preserve society. Have I not already begun, maybe? Here I am consulting a fortune-teller. At thirty I would never have done it! The man inspired me.