Smooth Criminal Astrologers

There are men who arrive in Canada with two suitcases, a university transcript, three winter coats insufficient for the winter, and such an honest terror of government forms that they preserve every receipt for seven years; and there are other men who arrive with one suitcase, no winter coat at all, and nevertheless seem from the first morning to understand that humanity itself is a receipt which, if folded correctly, may be presented for reimbursement.

To this second category belonged Sri Venkata Narasimha Rao, though on business cards he preferred the more sonorous designation:

PANDIT DR. N. V. RAO

VEDIC ASTROLOGER • PSYCHIC •

SPIRITUAL HEALER

BLACK MAGIC REMOVAL • LOVE

PROBLEMS • BUSINESS SUCCESS •

FAMILY PROTECTION

Below this, in significantly smaller letters, appeared the phrase:

Results may vary.

This last sentence, printed almost reluctantly along the bottom edge, had been suggested by a Canadian acquaintance who knew something about advertising law and nothing whatever about Saturn or Venus.

Rao had been born in Andhra Pradesh and had come legally to Canada, a fact of which he was immensely proud whenever anybody questioned his respectability and curiously forgetful whenever anybody questioned his business practices. He had lived first in Mississauga, then Surrey, then for a short and financially unsuccessful period in Calgary, where the cold offended him personally, before establishing himself in a small commercial unit between a tax preparer and a shop that repaired mobile phones.

The office was called Divine Jyotish Spiritual Centre, although there was no centre to speak of, divine or otherwise. There were two rooms, a washroom whose tap screamed when turned, and a reception area furnished with three red plastic chairs.

Yet the walls were magnificent.

Indeed, had the landlord understood art, he might have doubled the rent.

Across one entire wall stretched a mural of Hindu gods emerging through clouds of vermilion, gold, turquoise, and midnight blue. Hanuman leapt above a painted mountain, mace in hand, his expression combining ferocity with a curious bureaucratic patience, as though prepared to carry the Himalayas but only after the proper form had been stamped. Lakshmi sat upon her lotus in a waterfall of coins. Shiva appeared bluish and serene beneath a crescent moon. Kali, black-skinned and terrible, stood with garland and tongue beneath a storm of red paint.

In one corner, unfortunately, the painter had given Ganesha five fingers on one hand and six on the other.

Rao had noticed this immediately.

"Very auspicious," he told everyone.

When the artist apologized, Rao deducted eighty dollars.

A low table stood beneath the mural. Upon it rested brass lamps, incense, bowls of colored powders, coconuts, flowers, limes, bells, little packets of camphor, a Kali statuette, a Hanuman image, and two ceremonial knives whose chief spiritual property, so far as anyone could determine, was that they frightened clients splendidly.

It must be stated at once that Rao did know astrology.

This is important.

He was not one of those crude fellows who discover Jupiter on Thursday and open a spiritual centre on Friday.

He could calculate a birth chart, discuss nakshatras, identify Saturn's position, explain the difference between a mahadasha and an antardasha, and pronounce Sanskrit verses with considerably more competence than many of the clients who later accused him of fraud could pronounce his surname.

His trouble was not ignorance.

His trouble was imagination.

For Rao possessed that most dangerous of human gifts: the ability to take a small truth and furnish it with three bedrooms, a balcony, underground parking, and a mortgage.

A worried customer might arrive asking whether a difficult period in life corresponded with Saturn.

"Yes," Rao would say thoughtfully.

There would be a pause.

"You have enemies."

Almost everyone has enemies, particularly those who have family.

The customer would lean forward.

"Someone is jealous."

Almost everyone knows someone jealous, and those who do not can usually remember a cousin.

Rao would close his eyes.

"Female energy."

At this, approximately half of humanity became suspect.

Sometimes he said male energy.

He was not inflexible.

Then came the grave part.

"This is not ordinary astrology."

Here the client's stomach generally tightened.

"Somebody has done something."

"What?"

Rao did not answer immediately. He would look toward Kali.

The client looked toward Kali.

Kali, who had been carved in Hyderabad and shipped to British Columbia in foam peanuts, said nothing.

"Black work," Rao whispered.

The beauty of the phrase lay in its incompleteness.

A foolish man explains too much. A true professional allows fear to perform unpaid labor.

Rao would then recommend prayers, protective rites, temple offerings, purification, sometimes repeated ceremonies, sometimes a special series of ceremonies. The cost began modestly and, like certain Canadian construction projects, acquired additional zeros once work commenced.

A few hundred dollars became fifteen hundred.

Fifteen hundred became four thousand.

Four thousand, under unfavorable planetary conditions, became nine.

There were people who paid.

There were people who refused.

There were people who paid, refused, returned, paid again, and afterward declared that they had never believed any of it.

Human dignity, like a cat caught stealing meat, is capable of astonishing revisions.

Rao's clientele was diverse. He had Indian clients, Chinese clients, Iranian clients, Caribbean clients, African clients, white Canadians, Eastern Europeans, Filipinos, Latin Americans, and one elderly Scottish gentleman who came because his second wife had dreamed three times about a black horse.

Rao enjoyed this diversity immensely.

"Canada," he sometimes told his associates, "is spiritually very multicultural."

By this he meant that anxiety (and existential angst) possessed no ethnicity.

Among his white clients was a contractor named Gordon V. Pritchard, a broad man with pink ears, a divorce, two pickup trucks, and the permanent suspicion that someone somewhere was charging him too much.

Gordon had come because his construction business had declined, his girlfriend had begun sleeping with her phone beneath her pillow, and three fluorescent lights in his basement had burned out within one week.

Rao examined his chart and spoke darkly of obstruction.

On Gordon's third visit, he arrived early and found Rao reading at his desk.

The book was The Brothers Karamazov.

It was an enormous paperback with small print, bent corners, and enough underlining to suggest either scholarship or a prolonged nervous collapse.

Gordon stared at it.

"What're you reading that for?"

"Dostoyevsky."

"I know who it is."

Rao looked pleased.

Gordon picked up the book, examined its thickness as though estimating drywall, and dropped it back onto the desk.

"Dostoyevsky is boring as shit."

There are insults to religion, insults to family, insults to nation, and insults to those obscure private enthusiasms which a man himself mocks freely but cannot bear to hear mocked by another.

Rao forgave Gordon for doubting the evil eye.

He never forgave him for this.

"Perhaps," Rao said coldly, "your spiritual blockage is stronger than I thought."

Gordon eventually paid another twelve hundred dollars.

Whether this was vengeance, astrology, or merely commerce is not ours to determine.

For Rao loved Russian literature sincerely.

He read Tolstoy, though he thought Tolstoy morally exhausting. He read Gogol with delight and occasionally laughed so loudly at Dead Souls that the tax preparer next door complained. He worshiped Dostoyevsky, particularly those scenes in which five people entered a room intending to discuss money and emerged three hours later having confessed murder, atheism, love, epilepsy, and the fate of Europe.

Russia acquired for him the splendor that distant countries often possess for men who have never had to renew a lease there.

He began learning Russian.

His pronunciation was heroic and terrible.

"Я читаю Достоевского [I am reading Dostoyevsky]," he announced proudly to anyone who would listen.

Once he told a Russian-speaking customer that he was studying Russian literature.

The customer asked which writers.

"Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Gogol."

"No Bulgakov?"

Rao went home wounded and bought The Master and Margarita.

Thus civilization advances.

But astrology alone did not produce Rao's prosperity.

There existed around him a loose circle of men who called one another cousins regardless of whether they shared grandparents, villages, castes, or merely mobile-phone plans.

There was Ravi in Brampton, who specialized in relationship problems.

Srinivas in Edmonton dealt heavily in business luck.

Mahesh, who had briefly operated in Winnipeg, advertised "same-day spiritual solution," an ambitious promise even for the gods.

Prakash claimed particular expertise in curses associated with property disputes.

They were mostly Telugu-speaking Hindus, though the network occasionally included men from elsewhere in India who had learned enough Telugu profanity to be considered honorary members.

Rao jokingly called them the Smooth Criminal Astrologers.

He had encountered the phrase in an old Michael Jackson song and thought it magnificent.

The others disagreed.

"Do not call us criminals," said Ravi.

"It is a joke."

"Still."

"Then smooth astrologers."

"That sounds worse."

Their network was not an organization in the grand sense. There was no president, no treasurer, no annual general meeting, and certainly no minutes. Rather, they exchanged customers, gossip, warnings, advertising ideas, landlord complaints, and occasionally spiritual supplies. One knew a printer. Another knew a muralist. Another imported ritual objects. Another knew which radio stations accepted late-night advertisements

They did not all cheat equally.

This must also be said.

Some believed sincerely in what they did.

Some believed on Mondays and doubted on Wednesdays.

Some believed that astrology was true but exaggerated their powers.

Some believed the rituals worked if performed correctly.

Some believed the rituals worked particularly well when paid for in advance.

And Rao--well, Rao had constructed within himself such a complicated palace of belief, expedience, fear, piety, greed, cultural inheritance, self-justification, and theater that even he could no longer tell which rooms were load-bearing.

He prayed sincerely before cheating people.

This gave him comfort.

His troubles began not with a dramatic police raid but with paperwork.

Great empires are imagined to collapse beneath artillery, yet it is remarkable how often one finds, somewhere underneath the ruins, a person holding a folder.

A woman complained.

Then another.

A bank noticed unusual transfers.

A local reporter made inquiries.

Someone posted recordings online.

An elderly client claimed she had been frightened into paying money to remove a curse supposedly threatening her grandchildren.

Rao insisted that he had never threatened anyone.

"I only explained spiritual danger."

The distinction sounded finer each time he repeated it.

Then a former associate, furious over money, began speaking to investigators.

At first Rao was offended.

Then amused.

Then contemptuous.

Then unable to sleep.

Finally, one rainy evening, sitting beneath the painted Hanuman while incense smoke curled toward the ceiling, Rao admitted what frightened men usually admit last:

The problem might be real.

He telephoned Ravi.

"They are asking questions."

"Who?"

"You know who."

"CRA?"

"No."

"Immigration?"

"No."

"Police?"

Rao said nothing.

Ravi breathed differently.

"What did you tell them?"

"Nothing."

"Good."

"What are you doing?"

"Nothing."

"Excellent."

There followed a silence in which both men understood that "nothing" was no longer a strategy but had not yet discovered anything better.

Rao looked around the office.

Kali stared over his shoulder.

Hanuman continued carrying the mountain.

On the desk lay Dead Souls [including the unfinished draft(s) of Part Two], a Russian grammar workbook, three unpaid invoices, and a lime which had begun to rot.

For the first time, Rao felt that the mural was not protecting him.

It was watching him.

Over the next weeks, he became strangely literary.

He began interpreting his own life as though it had been written by one of his Russians.

The investigators were Gogolian officials.

His former associate was Smerdyakov.

His clients were souls wandering beneath Saturn.

He himself varied according to mood between Raskolnikov, Chichikov, and Napoleon.

This last comparison was especially inaccurate.

Then came the idea of Russia.

We need not trouble ourselves with the practical details, and indeed Rao himself did not understand half of them. His conception of escape consisted chiefly of Moscow snow, onion domes, samovars, Dostoyevsky, and policemen who for some reason never asked questions.

Ravi thought he had gone mad.

"Russia?"

"Yes."

"Why Russia?"

"They respect literature."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"Everything."

"Do you know anybody there?"

"No."

"Then why?"

Rao hesitated.

"There are countries where a man can begin again."

"Like where?"

"Russia."

"Why?"

"Because it is large."

This reasoning impressed Rao considerably more than Ravi.

"But what about us?" Ravi asked.

At this Rao became serious.

That was the one thing he had decided.

He would not give names.

He would not save himself by supplying the authorities with everyone else.

Perhaps this was loyalty.

Perhaps fear.

Perhaps vanity.

A man likes to believe that even his vices contain principles.

"They will ask about the others," Rao said.

"Yes."

"I won't tell them."

Ravi was silent.

Then, unexpectedly:

"Okay."

Nothing further was said.

Yet afterward Rao felt almost noble.

Such are the dangers of doing one decent thing after many indecent ones.

Before leaving, he dismantled the Divine Jyotish Spiritual Centre.

The plastic chairs disappeared first.

Then the brass bowls.

Then the lamps.

The goddess Kali was wrapped carefully in newspaper.

The ceremonial knives went into a box with other ritual objects and were entrusted to an acquaintance; Rao, for all his recklessness, was not fool enough to make a dramatic international journey carrying mysterious blades.

Hanuman was more difficult.

One cannot pack a mural.

For a long time Rao stood before the wall.

The painted monkey-god leapt eternally across the plaster, mountain lifted in one hand.

Rao suddenly remembered his grandmother telling him stories of Hanuman when he was a child. Before astrology had become invoices, before spirituality had become advertisements, before frightened strangers began handing him envelopes, there had been stories.

He felt something unpleasant in his chest.

Remorse, perhaps.

Or indigestion.

He had eaten very late.

"You know," Rao said to Hanuman, "I wasn't always bad."

The god offered no legal opinion.

Rao switched off the lights.

...

Russia, when at last he saw it, was disappointingly real.

There were no violins.

No one quoted Dostoyevsky at passport control.

Nobody mistook him for an intellectual exile.

Moscow possessed traffic, advertisements, delivery couriers, expensive coffee, exhausted clerks, enormous apartment blocks, stylish young people, old women carrying bags, policemen looking at telephones, and a cold which entered through clothing with the administrative efficiency of a tax authority.

Rao loved it immediately.

Then hated it.

Then loved it again.

His Russian improved because necessity is the finest language teacher and humiliation the second finest.

He learned quickly that ordering soup in Russian was different from reading Dostoyevsky with a dictionary. He could explain the immortality of the soul more easily than ask whether a washing machine was included in the rent.

His landlord, a widow named Galina Petrovna, regarded him with the permanent suspicion Russians sometimes reserve for men who say they are businessmen but cannot describe the business.

"What do you do?"

"Astrologer."

She stared.

"Horoscopes?"

"Vedic astrology."

"Ah."

She looked unimpressed.

"My sister goes to one woman."

"Astrologer?"

"No. Psychologist."

The conversation ended.

For several months Rao lived quietly.

He read.

He walked.

He visited churches without quite knowing why.

He discovered Gogol's grave.

He ate Georgian food and began claiming that khachapuri was proof that God had forgiven humanity. 

But a man cannot easily abandon the profession through which he has learned to understand himself.

Soon, acquaintances asked questions.

First harmlessly.

Birth dates.

Compatibility.

Marriage.

Money.

Then a woman asked whether somebody had cursed her.

Rao froze.

The old words appeared in his mind automatically.

Someone is jealous.

He could have said them.

He knew exactly how her face would change.

He knew what fear would do next.

He knew how easily fear could be converted into authority, and authority into payment.

For several seconds, the entire old machinery stood ready.

Then he looked at the woman.

"No," he said.

She blinked.

"No?"

"No black magic."

"How do you know?"

"I don't."

This answer astonished both of them.

Rao leaned back.

"Maybe you are frightened. Maybe life is bad right now. Maybe astrology can give you something to think about. But don't give thousands of rubles to somebody who tells you demons are chasing your family."

The woman narrowed her eyes.

"You are not a very good psychic."

"No," said Rao.

And, to his surprise, he laughed.

That evening, while snow accumulated on the sill of his rented apartment, Rao opened The Brothers Karamazov again.

He remembered Gordon Pritchard.

"Boring as shit," he muttered in English.

Then he imagined Gordon receiving another bill from some contractor and felt immediately better.

His telephone vibrated.

A message had arrived from Canada.

For a moment Rao's old terror returned with such force that he could hear his heartbeat.

He looked at the screen.

It was Ravi.

Brother. Be careful. They are still asking.

Rao sat very still.

Outside, Moscow moved beneath the snow: buses, headlights, pedestrians, windows illuminated one above another into the distance.

He thought of Canada.

He thought of the mural.

He thought of his clients.

He thought of the old woman who had paid because she feared for her grandchildren.

He thought of his associates.

He thought of justice.

And, being Rao, he thought of Saturn.

Then he did something he had rarely done in his professional life.

He admitted that he did not know what would happen next.

Perhaps the authorities would reach him eventually.

Perhaps Russia would prove no sanctuary at all.

Perhaps his own past would follow him more faithfully than any planetary period.

Perhaps a man did not escape simply by crossing an ocean, changing alphabets, and learning to ask for bread in another language.

He looked again at Dostoyevsky's enormous novel.

Then at the little Kali statuette he had placed on his windowsill.

"You see?" Rao said to her.

"No charge."

The goddess remained silent.

Somewhere far below, a car alarm began shrieking.

Galina Petrovna struck the radiator with what sounded like a saucepan.

Snow descended upon Moscow with perfect impartiality, covering the roofs of saints and swindlers alike.

And thus Sri Venkata Narasimha Rao--astrologer, psychic, reader of Russian novels, legal immigrant, unreliable businessman, occasional theologian, and founding member of an organization which did not officially exist--sat down beneath a foreign sky and began, with considerable difficulty, to read in Russian.

Whether he became an honest man afterward is another story.

It would be irresponsible to promise too much.

After all, results may vary.