LITMIR.BIZ

      Holy Man

      Everywhere was coming down with Christmas, the streets

      and window displays ethereal after rain, but what was it –

      October? Maybe I’d been thinking about why I hated

      Tibetan prayer flags and whether that was similar to how

      I felt about Christmas: things become meaningless severed

      from the body of ritual, of belief. Then I thought about

      those who see kindness in my face, or see it as unusually

      calm, which must have to do with that image of the Buddha

      smiling. I turned off Regent Street and onto Piccadilly,

      then down a side road by Costa to Jermyn Street, where

      a man caught my eye as I was about to cross the road

      and asked to shake my hand. You have a kind face, he said.

      Really. He was wearing a diamond-checked golfer’s jumper

      and said he was a holy man. As soon as he let go, he started

      scribbling in a notepad, then tore out a sheet which

      he scrunched into a little ball and pressed to his forehead

      and the back of his neck before blowing on it – once, sharply –

      and giving it to me. I see kindness in you, but also bad habits.

       Am I right? Not drinking or drugs or sex, not like that, but bad

       habits. 2020 will be a good year for you. Don’t cut your hair

      on a Tuesday or Thursday. Have courage. He took out his wallet

      and showed me a photograph of a temple, in front of which

      stood a family. His, I think. A crowd of businessmen

      flowed around us. Name a colour of the rainbow. Any colour,

      except red or orange. He was looking to my right, at what

      I thought could be a rainbow – despite the sun, a light wind

      blew the rain about like scattered sand – but when

      I followed his gaze it seemed to be fixed on either a fish

      restaurant or a suit display, or maybe backwards in time to

      the memory of a rainbow. Why did he stop me? I’d been

      dawdling, staring at people on business lunches. Restaurants

      like high-end clinics, etherized on white wine. I must

      have been the only one to catch his eye, to hold it. What

      colour could I see? I tried to picture the full spectrum

      arrayed in stained glass, shining sadly, and then refracted

      through a single shade that appeared to me in the form of

      a freshly mown lawn, a stack of banknotes, a cartoon

      frog, a row of pines, an unripe mango, a septic wound. I saw

      the glen beside the tall elm tree where the sweetbriar

      smells so sweet, then the lane in Devon where my dad

      grew up, and the river in Riau where my mum played.

      It was blue and yellow mixed, like Howard Hodgkin’s version

      of a Bombay sunset, or pistachio ice cream; a jade statue

      of the Buddha. I remembered being asked – forced – to give

      my favourite colour by a teacher (why did it matter?),

      which was the colour of my favourite Power Ranger,

      of the Knight beheaded by Gawain, of the girdle given

      to him by Lady Bertilak, and chose the same again.

       The paper in your hand, if it is your colour, will bring you luck,

      and if not … He trailed off. First hold it to your forehead,

      then the back of your neck. Then blow. I unscrunched the ball.

      Now put it here, he said, opening his wallet, and money please.

      I had no cash. Nothing? He looked me in the eyes and said

      (again) that he was a holy man. I felt honour-bound

      to give him something. Up and down the street, men rode

      to their important offices. I told him it was my favourite

      colour, or had been, and as I did I saw us from a distance,

      as we might seem years from now – scraps of coloured fabric

      draped across a hall which, taken out of context, signified

      nothing – and I flinched, waiting for the blade to fall.