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By Root 1439 0

She’s a bar girl. But when we met she’d only been working for like a week. We didn’t even do anything at first. Just talked. She said she wanted to learn English, for her job, so we sat at the bar and I taught her some words. She’s like seventeen. O.K., so then a few days later, I went back to the bar and she was there again and I took her back to my hotel. And then we went to Phuket together for a week. She was like my girlfriend. Anyway, we get back to Bangkok, and she tells me she wants to marry me. Can you believe it? She said she wanted to come back to the States with me. I actually thought about it for a minute, I’m not kidding you. You tell me I could get a girl like that back in the States? Who would cook and clean for me? And who’s a piece of ass? No way, man. Those days are over. American women are all looking after themselves now. They’re basically all men. So, yeah, I thought about it. But then I’m taking a piss one day and I get this burning in my johnson. I thought she’d given me something! So I went to the bar and ragged her out. Turned out it was nothing. Just some spermicide or whatever getting up my shaft. I went back to apologize but Meha wouldn’t talk to me. Had some other guy sitting with her. Some fat Dutch guy.”

Mitchell handed the photograph back.

“What do you think?” Mike said. “She’s pretty, right?”

“Probably a good idea that you didn’t marry her.”

“I know. I’m an idiot. But I’m telling you, she was sexy, man. Jesus.” He shook his head, putting the snapshot back into his wallet.

Having nowhere to go on a Saturday, Mitchell lingered at breakfast for another half hour. After the waiters stopped serving and took his plate away, he wandered into the little lending library on the second floor, browsing the shelves of inspirational or religious titles. The only other person there was Rüdiger. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor, barefoot as usual. He had a large head, wide-set gray eyes, and a slight Habsburg jaw, and he was dressed in clothes he made himself, tight-fitting maroon pants that ended at his calves and a sleeveless tunic the color of fresh ground turmeric. The snugness of his clothes, along with his lithe frame and bare feet, gave him a resemblance to a circus acrobat. Rüdiger was a mercurial presence. He had been traveling for seventeen straight years, visiting, by his own claim, every country in the world except North Korea and South Yemen. He’d arrived in Calcutta by bicycle, riding the two thousand kilometers from Bombay on an Italian ten-speed and sleeping out in the open beside the road. As soon as he’d got to the city, he’d sold the bike, making enough money to live for the next three months.

Right now he was sitting still, and reading. He didn’t look up when Mitchell entered.

Mitchell took a book from the shelves, Francis Schaeffer’s The God Who Is There. Before he could open it, however, Rüdiger suddenly spoke up.

“I also cut my hair,” he said. He ran his hand over his bristly scalp. “I used to have so beautiful curls. But the vanity, it was so heavy.”

“I’m not sure it was vanity in my case,” Mitchell said.

“Then what was it?”

“Sort of a cleansing process.”

“But that is the same thing! I know the person you are,” Rüdiger said, examining Mitchell closely and nodding. “You think you are not a vain person. You are maybe not so much into your body. But you are probably more vain about how intelligent you are. Or how good you are. So maybe, in your case, cutting off your hair only made your vanity heavier!”

“It’s possible,” Mitchell said, waiting for more.

But Rüdiger quickly changed subjects. “I am reading a book what is fantastic,” he said. “I am reading this book since yesterday and I am thinking every minute, Wow.”

“What is it?”

Rüdiger held up a frayed green hardback. “The Answers of Jesus to Job. In the Old Testament, Job is always asking God questions. ‘Why do you do so terrible things to me? I am your faithful servant.’ He goes on asking and asking. But does God answer? No. God doesn’t say nothing. But Jesus is a different story. The man who is writing this