This was extremely disappointing news. I could only hope Shmelke would be kicked out of this squat as he had been from all of the others, and it would revert to a hospice so that I could continue with the dying process undisturbed. Charlotte arrived next with her entire girls band, Lakshmi and the Survivors, including her great reed player, Monica Lewinsky, blowing away. She was bursting with the fantastic news that her legal team was now closing a deal with the city thugs in Dalhousie Square and the Kali temple goondas up the road to buy this abandoned shelter for Rebbie-ji. It was looking very good, knock on wood, Charlotte said, tapping the air in the direction of the head of my narrow bed, over which a wooden cross was hanging covered by a bath-sized towel. We’re almost home free, keep your fingers crossed, she declared. After scuttling like a bug from one miserable country to another without rest to escape extradition back to Israel on such false and absurd charges that would be beneath us to even enumerate, Rebbie-ji will soon have permanent headquarters right here in tolerant live-and-let-live India, a nation that instinctively comprehends the duality of the spirit, the holy and the profane, the dark and the light. In this place he would at last have full protection and sanctuary from primitive Abrahamic vengeance and punishment.

From all of this I concluded that how I had gotten from Bombay to Calcutta had something to do with the interventions of Manika, Shmelke, and above all Charlotte, who now, having successfully redirected my past, was charging straight ahead to arrange my future. She invited me to join her in her private kabbalah tutorial with Rebbie-ji. They were working with clay to fashion a golem to defend all the persecuted and pursued of the world. “Do you know how therapeutic it is to stick your hands into clay and just squeeze?” she asked. “Excuse my French, Rebbie-ji, but it’s a privilege, like playing with your personal caca—pure regressive pleasure.” Such talk is permissible if you’re paying, I reflected, even to such a holy figure as my brother. She also insisted that I attend a performance of her band that night in the great room—for women only, she added, since Rebbie-ji has taught that the voice of a woman is nakedness and therefore cannot be listened to by men who are always so prone to sexual arousal. Rebbie-ji of course will be there, however, Charlotte assured me, the only man allowed to watch the show since he is completely hopeless below the waist, totally harmless and nonthreatening no matter what his enemies say, all you need to do is take one look at him in his wheelchair for God’s sake.

I am in mourning, I responded. For me, music is forbidden.