A Walk in the Dark Read Online Free PDF

chatter with various weird people. Every now and again I saw Margherita, still chatting to the bearded guy. I was starting to get a bit pissed off, and I looked around to see if I could cadge a cigarette off someone.
Then I remembered I’d quit, and besides, no one was smoking. Smoking isn’t very New Age.
    I was sitting on a sofa, drinking my third or maybe fourth glass of organically grown red wine. It tasted a bit like old Folonari, but I wasn’t much in the mood for being fussy.
    A girl sat down next to me, dressed in Cultural Revolution style. Sky-blue canvas trousers and a jacket/ shirt of the same material, with a Korean-type collar.
    She was very pretty, a bit plump, nose pierced with a small diamond, long black hair, blue eyes. There was something vaguely dreamy about her, I thought – or vaguely stupid. She started talking without any preamble.
    “I don’t think much of this Vietnamese music.”
    So you’re not as stupid as you look, I thought. I’m glad. I don’t think much of it either, to me it sounds like a serenade for nail and blackboard. I was about to say something like that, when she went on:
    “I like Tibetan music a lot. I think it’s more suitable for real meditation.”
    Oh, right. Tibetan music. Perfect.
    “Have you ever listened to Tibetan music?”
    She wasn’t looking at me. She was sitting calmly, almost on the edge of the sofa, looking in front of her. Straight in front of her at some vague spot, like a crazy woman. As I was about to reply, I realized I was assuming the same position.
    “Tibetan music? I’m not really sure. Maybe . . .”
    “You should. It’s the best thing for unblocking the chakras and letting the energy flow. I have the sense, sitting next to you, that you have an intense aura, a great deal of potential energy, but you’re not able to let it flow.”
    I drank a little more of the organic Folonari and
decided to let my potential energy flow. It seemed to me, then and there, that she’d asked for it.
    “It’s strange. They told me something similar, though not in quite the same words, when I started getting interested in Druid astrology.”
    She turned to me, and from her eyes it was clear I’d really grabbed her attention. “Druid astrology?”
    “Yes, it’s a system of astrology based on esoteric principles, developed by the high priests of Stonehenge.”
    “Oh, yes, Stonehenge. That’s that ancient city in Scotland, with those strange stone buildings.”
    Dummy. Stonehenge wasn’t in Scotland, but in England, and as everyone knows, it isn’t a city.
    I didn’t say that. I complimented her on the fact that she’d heard of Stonehenge, we introduced ourselves – her name was Silvia – and then I explained the principles of druid astrology. A discipline invented by me, in her honour, that night. I told her about the astrological rituals performed on the nights of the summer solstice, the astral intersections, the sidereal affinities. Whatever all that might mean.
    Silvia was really interested now. It was rare, she said, to find a man so passionate, so knowledgeable, so sensitive.
    As she said the word sensitive , she gave me a deep, meaningful look. I went to get a fresh supply of organic wine.
    “You drink wine?” she said, with a slight touch of disapproval. New Age girls drink carrot juice and nettle tea. By now I was feeling decidedly merry.
    “Oh, yes. Red wine is a Druid drink. It’s a ritual medium, useful for inducing Dionysian states.” I wasn’t lying. I was simply saying that wine is useful for getting drunk. Which is what I was doing now. Then it occurred to me to tell her about a remarkable method
of divination. Again, of my own invention. It was the reading of the elbow, as practised by the ancient, mystical Chaldean people. As it happened, it was something I knew as much about as I did about the Stonehenge horoscope.
    So I explained how, according to ancient Chaldean wisdom, it was possible to read the trajectories of a