It was as easy as that. Suddenly, the world was opening up again. Mitch and Mark ordered more beer. The waiters brought it. Not cold, but not definitively warm either. They exchanged anecdotes, travel wounds, epiphanies. But it was Kurt they looked to and directed their observations towards, and who held them together. He began speaking about the apathy back in the States, the way people seemed only half-alive. Mitch and Mark nodded like they understood. They were big, hairy, good-natured kids, openly confused to be in India, and Vincent liked them too. In any case, he had loved sitting there with them all, talking English, cracking jokes, and understanding everything that was being said. He liked being part of a group again — the swagger of it, the ease. He hadn’t wanted to admit how incredibly lonely he had been the last few weeks, tromping around by himself, looking at everything but never feeling like he was touching anything.

Vincent had been travelling for five weeks by this time. An embarrassingly short period he remained vague about whenever people asked. And they always asked. ‘Not long,’ he would say, as if ‘not long’ might mean a couple of years. ‘A few months,’ he would say if he was drawn. He was looking forward to the time when that, at least, wouldn’t be a lie. One month and eight days was the truth.

Still, he’d seen some things in that time. Terrible things that he felt changed by. And he was starting to look the part. He’d grown his moustache like Frank Zappa, and his hair, too, was almost as long as he wanted it to be. He was tanned and dirty, and he’d turned wiry, walking everywhere, and not eating much, and shitting water during one particularly long fever in an expensive hotel with a round bed and a mirrored roof. He looked like he knew what he was doing. Truth was though, he didn’t. He felt like an impostor. Sometimes, in the middle of the day, wandering aimlessly through another dusty street, he would catch himself almost wanting to cry.

Vincent was heading to Goa next; that was the plan. The Canadians were thinking about Kathmandu. Kurt was on his way down south to see some guru in an ashram. Kurt’s girlfriend was already there, apparently, an Australian girl called Mary. Kurt opened a battered book — Ram Dass’s Be Here Now — and took out a photograph of a good-looking girl with her arms in the air. The Canadians laughed approvingly. Kurt passed round a picture of the guru. Some stinky old bloke with a beard. The whole thing sounded insane, although the Canadians seemed into it.