‘Do you want a drink?’ he asked.
‘I’ve already ordered,’ I replied. ‘They’ll bring it in a moment. Tell me, do you say that to all the girls, about the romantic dream of your childhood?’
‘No, only to you. I’ve never said anything like that to any girl before.’
‘I see. Then I’ll say something to you that I’ve never said to any other man before. You look like Captain Nemo.’
‘From 20,000 Leagues under the Sea?’
Oho, I thought, what a well-read portfolio investor!
‘No, from the American film The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. There was one extraordinary gentleman who looked just like you. An underwater karate specialist with a beard and a blue turban.’
‘Why, was the film based on Jules Verne?’
They brought my cocktail. It turned out to be small - only sixty grams.
‘No, they gathered together all the supermen of the nineteenth century - Captain Nemo, the Invisible Man, Dorian Gray and so on.’
‘Really? That’s original.’
‘Nothing original about it. An economy based on brokerage gives rise to a culture that prefers to resell images and concepts created by others instead of creating new ones.’
That was a phrase I’d heard from a certain left-wing film critic who stung me for 350 euros. Not that I entirely agreed with it, it was just that every time I repeated those words in conversation with a client I felt the film critic was paying me back a few bucks. But it was too much for the Sikh.
‘I beg your pardon?’ he asked with a frown.
‘The point is, the Nemo character looked remarkably like you. A moustache and beard . . . he even prayed to the goddess Kali in his submarine.’
‘Then it’s not likely that we have much in common,’ he said with a smile. ‘I don’t worship the goddess Kali. I’m a Sikh.’
‘I have a lot of respect for Sikhism,’ I said. ‘I think it’s one of the most advanced religions in the world.’
‘Do you know what it is?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘You’ve probably heard that Sikhs are men with beards who wear turbans?’ he laughed.
‘It’s not the external attributes of Sikhism that I find attractive. I really admire its spiritual side, especially the fearless transition from reliance on living teachers to reliance on a book.’
‘But that’s the case in many other religions,’ he said. ‘It’s just that instead of the Koran or the Bible, we have Guru Granth Sahib.’