A woman in a mask who had a blue blanket over her head put the soft limp jute of him onto the conveyor belt. Then he got Jmr Swashed and rolled. The rollers gleamed and worked him back and forth, softening him. He could not scream. To her he was not even a shadow. (A poster of the president changed rose-light on its shrine.) What worked the rollers? The factory had its own generator, its own grand shouting alternators, built to last, 237 kilowatts. . The jute of his soul got matted and soft. He did not see the hammer-and-sickle flag anymore. His soul got squeezed by a rickety rattling. Now he was squished almost as thin as a hair. People dragged him away slowly, pulling long bunches of him with both hands. He was in a vast cement-floored enclosure whose roof was stained brown. They stretched him out. Slowly he went up a long steep conveyor. He emerged in a pale white roll of hope, twirling down, narrowing into a strip. The barefooted workers gathered him into piles on the concrete floor, then stuffed him into barrels, which were then mounted on huge reels. Murderers like him had destroyed this place once already. There had been twelve hundred workers. Now that it had been rebuilt, eight hundred and sixty worked there, eight hours a day, six days a week, not knowing that jute was souls. They cleaned and pressed him into accordioned ribbons of fiber that built up in the turning barrels. A masked girl stood ready to pack him down with her hands and roll a new barrel into place. He recognized her. She pressed him to her unscarred breast. Then someone took the barrels to go into a second pressing machine. A metal arm whipped back and forth, but only for a minute; the barefoot girls had to fiddle with it again. His substance was cleaned and dried. A masked woman lifted up levers, twisted him by hand into the clamps, pulled down levers, and he spilled out again. He recognized her also. She smiled at him. Now everyone could see him being woven into string, dense, rough and thick; this string in turn was woven into sacking. They were going to fill his empty heart with rice. This is not such a bad destiny for anyone, since rice is life. The barefoot girls teased out the rolls of soul-cloth, gathering them from the big roll in different sizes (63 X 29 inches and 20 X 98 inches); boys dragged them across the floor at intervals, stretching, looking around, slowly smoothing them amidst the sounds of the mechanical presses. So they stacked him among the other sacks. Girls sat on sacks on the floor, sewing more sacks; they were fixing the mistakes of the sack-sewing machine. Then they pressed the sacks into bales. But he'd turned out perfectly; he did not need any girls to stitch up holes in his heart. He was ready now in the bale of sacks. If someone guarded him well he might last two years. Then he'd turn to dirt. A man's hands seized his bale and carried him toward the place where he would be used. Then the man's work-shift was over. The man went to serve his hours on the factory militia, readying himself for duty in the room of black guns on jute sacks. The man knew that in the jungle other murderers were still nearby.
I SEE THAT YOU LIKE ORIENTAL WOMEN
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.
TOO MANY GODS
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.