It was Sancho—Sancho, who had not stopped shaking for several hours, and remained on the edge of tears—who made Quichotte face that question. “What do you think?” he said. “Is there a place for us in this America?”
“We have entered the third valley,” Quichotte replied. “This is the Valley of Knowledge, in which all worldly knowledge ceases to be of use and must be discarded.”
“Is there some other sort of knowledge that helps?”
“Only knowledge of the Beloved can save us now,” he replied.
When Quichotte talked this way it showed Sancho that the old fellow was truly cuckoo, and that the route by which he, Sancho, might find his way toward his own goal of full humanity did not lie through his strange progenitor. Quichotte was too lost in the deranged logic of his private universe of antiquated words, mystical thoughts, and TV addictions to be able to function properly, or even grasp what was really going on in the actually existing world around him. Even his improbable beloved, Miss Salma R, was by this point also a creation of words, thoughts, and TV images, no longer real to Quichotte in the way that real things are real: a fantasy, passionately believed in but essentially unattainable, no matter how obsessively pursued. Once you have cast aside belief/unbelief, reason, and knowledge, you’re pretty handicapped in the real world, Sancho reckoned. Who knew what insanity the next “four valleys” might bring? He tried to think, not for the first time, about how he might break away and strike out on his own. He could just walk off, of course—stick out a thumb, hitch a ride, and take whatever came his way, whatever work, and, if he was lucky, whatever girls. The plan always foundered, however, on practicalities. Being an imaginary creature who had crossed the boundary into the real, he had no legal existence. Without (a) a driving license it was hard to get very far on your own. Without (b) a bank account or a debit card, ditto. And there was no way to get (b) without (a), and (a) was quite an obstacle, not least because he had never been behind the wheel of a car. There were two possibilities, as far as he could see: (a) a life of crime, and (b) a miracle. Of the two, (b) seemed the most likely to work. He was, after all, quite a miracle himself. Maybe he still had access to the sphere of the miraculous.
He left Quichotte in the room watching Project Runway and headed for the darkest corner of the Motel 6 parking lot. Here, standing between a pickup truck (a blue Honda Ridgeline Sport AWD, if you must know) and an aging red Hyundai Elantra, he spread his arms and closed his eyes and called upon the realm of the magical. “Grillo Parlante,” he said.
“So, finally he comprehends that he need a friend,” said a voice from the hood of the Elantra. “Cosa vuoi, paisan? What do you wish from me?”
“I get wishes? How many? Three?”
“That is not the way it works,” the cricket said. “The way it works, you ask what you wish, e poi, vedremo. Let’s see if it can be done. There are limits.”
“So,” Sancho said, taking a deep breath, “a driving license, a bank account, a card for the ATM, and money in the bank.”
“Banking is only susceptible to magic at the level of the grande frode, the major fraud,” the cricket said. “Billionaires, politicians, mafiosi. You don’t play in that league. At your level, it’s strictly a cash economy.”
“That’s disappointing,” Sancho said. “Is there maybe a more powerful person I could talk to instead of you? A blue fairy, for example?”
“The blue fairy è una favola,” said the cricket. “It’s a fairy tale. At least at your level. Don’t even think about her. Also, don’t be insulting.”
“Then I’m fucked,” Sancho said.
“How fucked?” the cricket asked. “Why fucked? You’re ungrateful, si. You’re rude, also. You’re poor, of course. But fucked, no. Look in your billfold.”
“I don’t have a billfold.”
“Look in the pocket of your pants. Is there a billfold there or am I full of shit?”
There was something in his pocket. Sancho removed it, in wonderment. It was a cheap brown leather billfold and in it were ten new twenty-dollar bills.
“Two hundred dollars is the maximum possible,” the cricket said. “According to your limits.”
Two hundred dollars, at that moment, felt like a fortune to Sancho. But he was suspicious. “Is this like a conjuring trick?” he asked. “Will it disappear when the trick ends?”
The cricket ignored this contemptible slander. “Is there something else in the billfold?” it asked. Sancho looked again. There was an absolutely real-looking state ID card with his photograph on it, and his signature, or what might be his signature if he ever signed his name, which so far he had never done. “New York State,” the cricket said with a note of pride. “Non è facile, New York State.”
“Thank you,” Sancho said, overwhelmed.
“Driving license, not possible, not even magic can make you a good driver,” the cricket said. “But this is all the ID you require. Now you are truly free,” the cricket said. “And to be human you must have at least la possibilità di libertà. You are trapped in the cash economy, as I told you; this is true, but you have ten Jacksons and an ID card. Great starting point! So a bank account can be procured by non-magical means.”
Sancho shook his head in disbelief.
“The question is,” the cricket asked, “now that you are free, what do you want to do? Where do you want to go?”
“In the long term, I don’t know yet,” Sancho replied. “But in the short term—right now—there’s someone I want to see.”
* * *
—
SANCHO IS AT THE DOOR of a modest home in Beautiful, a cream-colored two-story building, with the word WELCOME, in English, sprayed in white paint on a red ground in the small forecourt, below a small OM sign. There is no doorbell. He takes hold of the brass knocker and knocks, twice. After a pause the door is opened by a young woman in her early twenties. Sancho instantly recognizes that something impossible has happened: that this stranger is the perfect woman for him, the girl of his dreams, and fate karma kismet has brought him here to meet his only true love; and he arrives in that same instant at the tragic realization that a dream is just a dream, karma does not come with any guarantees, and this girl whose name he does not know will not be his. Never in a thousand lifetimes. He blushes deeply and cannot speak.
“Yes?” says the beloved.
He clears his throat and speaks in the voice of despairing adoration. “May I see Mrs. K, the lady of the house.”
“Who are you. Why are you here. Don’t you know better than to intrude at such a time. The whole community is in grief. Are you a journalist.”
“No. Not a journalist. But she asked a question on TV and I need to know her answer. Is there a place for us, she asked. I need to know what she thinks.”
“I know what you want. You want to steal something from her. You want to steal his death and her sadness and make it yours. Go away and get your own sadness and your own death. These things don’t belong to you.”
“I was there. I was in the bar.”
“Many people were in the bar. Nobody prevented it. You also did not prevent it. We are not here to console you for this death. If you have evidence go to police.”
“Are you the lady’s sister? Excuse me but you are very beautiful. Beautiful from Beautiful.” (He can’t help himself.)
“You are an obscene person. I will shut the door now.” (Her scorn destroys him.)
“Please. Forgive me. I only recently arrived in this country. I need to know what it means. How we should live.”
“You are not from here.”
“No. I’m passing through. My name is Sancho.”
“That’s a peculiar name. Okay, let me tell you this, Mr. Sancho. We are all affected. People said to my father, don’t let your daughter work in America anymore, send her home. Maybe I will take that advice now. Nobody can tell t
he difference, Iranian, Arab, Muslim. Therefore we are not safe. Now Indian Indian families do not want arranged marriages with Indian Americans anymore. Maybe our people will go to Canada. Canada says it will receive us. There is also the question of language. We are Telangana people, our language is Telugu. But we tell each other, do not speak Telugu where others can hear. Telugu, Arabic, Persian, nobody can tell the difference. Therefore we are not safe. That bar was supposed to be a safe place and they were not speaking Telugu to each other but still it was not safe, so nowhere is safe. Have you heard enough? We have lost our tongues. We must be cowardly and tear our own tongues from our mouths.”
“That sucks. But I get it. May I see the lady to express my condolences?”
“This is not that lady’s house. She is not here. You have come to the wrong address.”
“Then what—”
“We are all that lady now. We are all her family. If you are from home, from the country, only recently arrived, then you will surely understand. But this is not your place. This is not your blood.”
“What is your name?”
“Why do you want to know my name?”
“You know my name.”
“What did you call me before?”
“Beautiful from Beautiful.”
“Then that’s my name.”
“I have to go,” Sancho says. “I have to accompany my father on his last journey. When I’m done with that…”
“I don’t know you,” she says. “And the future? Nobody can see it. Go away.”
The door shuts.
He leaves, simultaneously brokenhearted and elated, but with a new look to him; a sudden determination, which is not the same thing as requited love, but is, at least, something he can take away from the encounter.
* * *
—
QUICHOTTE WAS WAITING IN the car, looking displeased. “You are a headstrong child,” he said. “I made it clear that this was an absurd idea, more than absurd, an indecorous deed. If I have brought you here it is because you threatened me with your departure, and I did not bring you into the world to lose you so soon. It is worse than indecorous, what you have done. It is an irrelevance to the great matter which we have in hand, the great enterprise we have undertaken. It is a sidetrack, a blind alley, and none of our business.”
Sancho in the passenger seat was weeping: the first tears of his young life.
“Now you understand unhappiness,” Quichotte said, not kindly. “Is this what you came here to learn? Learn it, then. Human life is mostly unhappiness. The only antidote to human misery is love, and it is to love that we must now rededicate ourselves. Let us go.”
“I want you to teach me your language,” Sancho said. “The language you spoke back there. I want us to speak to each other in that language, especially in public, to defy the bastards who hate us for possessing another tongue. I want you to start teaching me now.”
Quichotte found himself unexpectedly moved. “Very well,” he said. “I will teach you, my son. Your mother tongue, my child without a mother. It is a language of celebrated beauty. And I will also teach you Bambaiyya, the local variant which we spoke in my childhood streets, which is less beautiful but which you should know, because only when you know it will you truly be a citizen of that city which you have never seen.”
“When I have finished learning,” Sancho says, “I am going to come back and knock on that door again. I’m going to tell her, we don’t have to be afraid.”
Only knowledge of the Beloved can save us now. When Quichotte said that, Sancho had thought of it as proof of his detachment from real life. Now he saw that he had underestimated the old man. Now he had a beloved too.
“When she said ‘go away,’ ” he tells Quichotte, “I know that she meant ‘come back.’ ”
* * *
—
BEAUTIFUL FROM BEAUTIFUL WAS Khoobsoorat sé Khoobsoorat, which could also mean “more beautiful than beautiful,” which was a good meaning too. That was in the proper language, but in Bambaiyya she was also rawas, “fantastic,” and raapchick, “hot.” These words could also be used to describe the beauty of America, but there were also many other words of praise available for that. The Mississippi River at St. Louis was baap, which literally meant “father,” but in Bambaiyya it meant “great,” “best of the best,” or something like, but way cooler than, the now uncool “rad”: “That’s one baap river, ‘Dad.’ ” Chicago, and the great lake by which it stood, were both majboot: literally “strong,” but used to mean “fabulous,” “amazing,” “terrific.” “Chicago: totally majboot city, yaar! And Lake Michigan—bilkul majboot pani!” (Completely amazing water.)
A sexy girl was maal, literally “the goods.” A girlfriend was fanti. A young, hot, but unfortunately married woman was a chicken tikka. In Ann Arbor they paused to take a look at the university campus and Sancho noted that there was a lot of maal walking around.
“I thought you found yourself a fanti who is waiting for you back in Beautiful,” Quichotte teased him gravely. “Also that girl you’re looking at has a ring on her finger. She’s definitely chicken tikka, I’m sorry to inform you.”
Sancho learned fast. “And that girl over there,” he said, “is a carrom board.” Flat chested.
Bambaiyya was not a polite vernacular. It possessed the harshness of life on the city streets. A man you didn’t like might be chimaat, “weird looking,” or a khajvua, a guy who scratches his balls.
America became Sancho’s language lesson. When there were shootings on the TV, he learned that a gun was a ghoda, which meant “horse,” and a bullet was a tablet, or sometimes a capsule. So English, in such mutations, found its way into Bambaiyya too.
Both of them were happy. Quichotte the teacher, as the words from far away evoked old memories, felt joined to his youth again, and he and Sancho were brought closer by the lessons, which leavened the tedium of the road with long bouts of laughter. The country rolled by, rivers and mills, wooded hills and suburbs, freeways and turnpikes, and all of it was comedy. Once, between Toledo (pop. 278,508) and Cleveland (pop. 385,809), Quichotte took a wrong turn and cried out, “Vaat lag gayi!”
“What did you say?” Sancho asked.
“I said,” Quichotte replied, abandoning his habitual dignity, “that we are totally screwed.”
To redescribe the country in their private language was also to take ownership of it. “I understand now why the racists want everyone to speak only English,” Sancho told Quichotte. “They don’t want these other words to have rights over the land.” That launched Quichotte into a new elaboration of his “Indian country” trope. “Once there were other words with rights,” he said. “Words belonging to those other Indians. Now sometimes those words are just sounds with lost meanings. Shenandoah, unknown Native origin. At other times the meaning remains but nobody knows it, which denies the word its influence. Ticonderoga is the junction of two waterways. Nobody knows that. Chicago is an onion field. Who knew? Punxsutawney, town of sandflies, or maybe mosquitoes. Nobody knows it, not even on Groundhog Day. Mississippi, great river. Maybe somebody could guess that. These are the words of lost power. New words were poured over them to take away their magic. On the West Coast, holy names of saints in Spanish, Francisco, Diego, Bernardino, José, also Santa Maria de los Angeles. On the East Coast, names from England burying the past beneath them, Hampshire, Exeter, Southampton, Manchester, Warwick, Worcester, Taunton, Peterborough, Northampton, Chesterfield, Putney, Dover, Lancaster, Bangor, Boston. And of course New York.”
“Can you stop?” Sancho pleaded. “Please. Just stop.”
“You’re right,” Quichotte admitted, stopping. “We are in the third valley, in which all knowledge has become useless. My useless knowledge, this rough magic, I here abjure.”
* * *
—
THEIR LINGUISTIC ACT OF possession mad
e the country begin to make sense again. The random spatial and temporal dislocations stopped. The world settled down and gave Sancho the illusion, at least, of comprehensibility. They made their journey according to Quichotte’s plan. After Cleveland, Bunyan, Pennsylvania (pop. 108,260), then Pittsburgh (pop. 303,625), and after that, Philadelphia (pop. 1,568,000). Across state lines toward Chaucer, New Jersey (pop. 17,000), and Huckleberry, New York (pop. 109,571). Soon the Emerald City itself would come into view. The weather went on being disjointed, however; blazing hot one day, freezing cold the next, heat waves and hailstones, droughts and floods. Maybe that was just what the weather was going to be like now. At least geographical continuity seemed to have been restored. Why? In the world beyond knowledge, there was no why. There was just this odd couple, a father and his parthenogenetic offspring, heading toward their doom.
* * *
—
GOD, SANCHO DECIDED, was the Clint Eastwood “Man With No Name” type. Didn’t talk a whole lot, kept his thoughts to himself, and every so often he was the high plains drifter riding into town chewing on a cigar and sending everybody straight to Hell. In a lot of ways the opposite of Daddy Q, who never shut up. When Sancho got sick of listening to “Dad” it was actually kinda great to imagine that God was in the car too. God was the Silence. Sometimes that’s what was required.
They were riding into town. No cigars and maybe they were the ones who would get sent to Hell. He, “Dad,” saw nothing except his quest, heard nothing except what he wanted to hear. Sancho saw everything, heard it all. Across America he collected the sour expressions on the faces of motel clerks, baristas, and girls at cash registers in 7-Elevens.
And now he, too, had a Beloved to attain.
* * *
—
“MY DEAR SANCHO,” SAID QUICHOTTE at the wheel of the Cruze, “I must warn you as we approach the great city that we will face a series of majboot obstacles there. The great city is an object of great desire. One might say that it is desired by a great many people in the same way that I desire Miss Salma R. Consequently it is defended by mighty guardians just as in days of old, and in many parts of the world to this very day, a woman is guarded against dishonor; just as Miss Salma R is guarded against unwelcome advances, among which I do not, for obvious reasons, number my own.”
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