I see that you like Oriental women, said the taxi driver.
Greek women are very nice too, I said. (I tried to be polite and I could tell by his accent.)
Let's be honest, the taxi driver said. All women are beautiful. Especially a young virgin from anywhere, full of hormones.
My wife stared out the window, disgusted and offended. But the driver did not see. He saw only me, because I was one of his kind, a man who liked Oriental women.
I was married to a Chinese girl, he said. I met her in Beijing. She was absolutely, uniquely beautiful. One in a million. A dress model. I had to marry her twice, once in Beijing and again the afternoon we arrived in Sydney. Here in Australia they don't recognize those other marriages. If you don't marry them again it's considered sexual slavery.
So what happened?
Oh, it was about children. She wanted them and I didn't. She accepted it initially, but after the sixth or seventh abortion she began to kick. She tried to come back to me six months after the divorce, but I didn't want to be reconciled.
Why's that?
Oh, by then I had a hot young black girl. Every night I stood her on her head and filled her full of my jizz.
We'll get out here, my wife said.
I wondered if he was going to stare, turn to me, and cry: Oh, it talks! — But he only said: Right we are. Enjoy your stay in Sydney, ma'am.
My wife stood waiting on the sidewalk with her arms folded. As I was paying him he whispered with a wink: You've put some miles on her. Better trade her in for a new one soon's you can. You want me to tell you where to go in Sydney?
Looking into his eyes, I saw such raw wet pain in them, throbbing and obscene, that for a moment I could not breathe. In him there was more need and less hope than in any beggar I had ever met. I started to tip him a tenner, but he shook his head and said hoarsely: Listen to me, pal. Please listen. You've got to be more careful. I know things! You'll need it for the alimony payments.
They gave him parrotfish in brown rivers and he gave them white lotus flowers, purple lotus flowers; he transmuted fish into flowers. Girls and old ladies stood at the side of the road, holding out garlands for sale. They sold his flowers to him in the temples; he paid in good luck and deeds. Then he planted the flowers in the slit windows behind funnels in the stone. They grew into white towers with arches and statues. He planted the money plant in its pedestal in the courtyard. They gave him flowers, garlands and coconuts for offerings. But they were his flowers anyway. On the hillside his worshippers raised a stone phallus to him. He penetrated the faithful who lived slowly moving across their glistening fields, walking barefoot behind their water buffalo. Then the fields were fertile. At a distance suited to humility, rows of pickers and transplanters bent as if in prayer, but they were only taking from him again. Still he gave them cashew apples: red, yellow, green; gave them palm tree suns with green rays, gave them tiny black birds skittering over the swamp, houses tucked under palm trees. The hills of Goa were wrought with trees — mango, cashew, jackfruit, pineapple, and mango. Cashew liquor goes very good with Limca, they said, pleased. But they complained a little, because every year they had to change the roofs of their palm-leaf houses. — They wanted eternal leaves. If he'd given them those, then they would have wanted to be eternal, too. They wanted everything he had. They gnawed at his knowledge, paving nothing. But he couldn't help feeling pity for them. That was why he'd taught them how to fix things. To repair a bridge, they heated metal on wood fires which they'd started with dry coconut fronds. It was easy; he made it easy. His heart was bright green like a rice field.
Mango and bamboo went brown. Across the brown square fields, a woman came striding slowly in a red sari. She said to him that everyone was going to raise blue concrete crosses in front of their houses, because a porous arch had been exhaling the steam of Saint Francis Xavier's breath. Saint Francis Xavier was dead now, so he could not be contradicted. Everyone had decided to paint Jesus on the spare-tire covers of motorcycles.
He said no word. He stared at the woman in the red sari until she felt as tiny as a cashew fruit. She fled among the silvergreen palm-tree mango-tree hills.
He entered the town, and saw the Portuguese governors, plump, sweaty, with long black sickle moustaches, sitting wearily in their black and gold armor, which made their hips as big as women's. He shrank them down, but they were so far lost they didn't even notice it.
Saint Francis Xavier, dead under a roof of palm thatch; opened his eyes and saw him. There was already a halo around his head. Dappled, holding crucifix and rosary, Saint Francis Xavier said to him: They'll expose my body four times a year, on a bier of teak, resting on an angel's head!
