Island

Aldous Huxley

In framing an ideal we may assume what we wish, but

should avoid impossibilities.

ARISTOTLE

1

1

"Attention," a voice began to call, and it was as though

an oboe had suddenly become articulate. "Attention," it

repeated in the same high, nasal monotone. "Attention."

Lying there like a corpse in the dead leaves, his hair

matted, his face grotesquely smudged and bruised, his

clothes in rags and muddy, Will Farnaby awoke with a start.

Molly had called him. Time to get up. Time to get dressed.

Mustn't be late at the office.

"Thank you, darling," he said and sat up. A sharp pain

stabbed at his right knee and there were other kinds of pain

in his back, his arms, his forehead.

"Attention," the voice insisted without the slightest

change of tone. Leaning on one elbow, Will looked about

him and saw with bewilderment, not the gray wallpaper and

yellow curtains of his London bedroom, but a glade among

trees and the long shadows and slanting lights of early

morning in a forest. "Attention"?

Why did she say, "Attention"?

"Attention. Attention," the voice insisted-how strangely,

how senselessly!

"Molly?" he questioned. "Molly?"

The name seemed to open a window inside his head.

Suddenly, with that horribly familiar sense of guilt at the pit

of the stomach, he smelt formaldehyde, he saw the small

brisk nurse hurrying ahead of him along the green corridor,

heard the dry creaking of her starched clothes. "Number

fifty-five," she was saying, and then halted, opened a white

door. He entered and there, on a high white bed, was Molly.

Molly with bandages covering half her face and the mouth

hanging cavernously open. "Molly," he had called, "Molly

..." His voice had broken, and he was crying, was imploring

now, "My darling!" There was no answer. Through the

gaping mouth the quick shallow breaths came noisily, again,

again. "My darling, my darling . . ." And then suddenly the

2

hand he was holding came to life for a moment. Then was

still again.

"It's me," he said, "it's Will."

Once more the fingers stirred. Slowly, with what was

evidently an enormous effort, they closed themselves over

his own, pressed them for a moment and then relaxed again

into lifelessness.

"Attention," called the inhuman voice. "Attention."

It had been an accident, he hastened to assure himself.

The road was wet, the car had skidded across the white line.

It was one of those things that happen all the time. The

papers are full of them; he had reported them by the dozen.

"Mother and three children killed in head-on crash ..." But

that was beside the point. The point was that, when she asked

him if it was really the end, he had said yes; the point was

that less than an hour after she had walked out from that last

shameful interview into the rain, Molly was in the

ambulance, dying.

He hadn't looked at her as she turned to go, hadn't dared

to look at her. Another glimpse of that pale suffering face

might have been too much for him. She had risen from her

chair and was moving slowly across the room, moving

slowly out of his life. Shouldn't he call her back, ask her

forgiveness, tell her that he still loved her? Had he ever loved

her?

For the hundredth time the articulate oboe called him to

attention.

Yes, had he ever really loved her?

"Good-bye, Will," came her remembered whisper as she

turned back on the threshold. And then it was she who had

said it-in a whisper, from the depths of her heart. "I still love

you, Will-in spite of everything."

A moment later the door of the flat closed behind her

almost without a sound. The little dry click of the latch, and

she was gone.

He had jumped up, had run to the front door and opened

it, had listened to the retreating footsteps on the stairs. Like a

ghost at cockcrow, a faint familiar perfume lingered

vanishingly on the air. He closed the door again, walked into

his gray-and-yellow bedroom and looked out the widow. A

few seconds passed, then he saw her crossing the pavement

and getting into the car. He heard the shrill grinding of the

3

starter, once, twice, and after that the drumming of the

motor. Should he open the window? "Wait, Molly, wait," he

heard himself shouting in imagination. The window

remained unopened; the car began to move, turned the corner

and the street was empty. It was too late. Too late, thank

God! said a gross derisive voice. Yes, thank God! And yet

the guilt was there at the pit of his stomach. The guilt, the

gnawing of his remorse-but through the remorse he could

feel a horrible rejoicing. Somebody low and lewd and brutal,

somebody alien and odious who was yet himself was

gleefully thinking that now there was nothing to prevent him

from having what he wanted. And what he wanted was a

different perfume, was the warmth and resilience of a

younger body. "Attention," said the oboe. Yes, attention.

Attention to Babs's musky bedroom, with its strawberry-pink

alcove and the two windows that looked onto the Charing

Cross Road and were looked into, all night long, by the

winking glare of the big sky sign for Porter's Gin on the

opposite side of the street. Gin in royal crimson-and for ten

seconds the alcove was the Sacred Heart, for ten miraculous

seconds the flushed face so close to his own glowed like a

seraph's, transfigured as though by an inner fire of love.

Then came the yet profounder transfiguration of darkness.

One, two, three, four . . . Ah God, make it go on forever! But

punctually at the count of ten the electric clock would turn

on another revelation-but of death, of the Essential Horror;

for the lights, this time, were green, and for ten hideous

seconds Babs's rosy alcove became a womb of mud and, on

the bed, Babs herself was corpse-colored, a cadaver

galvanized into posthumous epilepsy. When Porter's Gin

proclaimed itself in green, it was hard to forget what had

happened and who one was. The only thing to do was to shut

one's eyes and plunge, if one could, more deeply into the

Other World of sensuality, plunge violently, plunge

deliberately into those alienating frenzies to which poor

Molly- Molly ("Attention") in her bandages, Molly in her

wet grave at Highgate, and Highgate, of course, was why one

had to shut one's eyes each time when the green light made a

corpse of Babs's nakedness-had always and so utterly been a

stranger. And not only Molly. Behind his closed eyelids,

Will saw his mother, pale like a cameo, her face spiritualized

by accepted suffering, her hands made monstrous and

4

subhuman by arthritis. His mother and, standing behind her

wheelchair, already running to fat and quivering like

calf's-foot jelly with all the feelings that had never found

their proper expression in consummated love, was his sister

Maud.

"How can you, Will?"

"Yes, how can you?" Maud echoed tearfully in her

vibrating contralto.

There was no answer. No answer, that was to say, in

any words that could be uttered in their presence, that,

uttered, those two martyrs-the mother to her unhappy

marriage, the daughter to filial piety-could possibly

understand. No answer except in words of the most

obscenely scientific objectivity, the most inadmissible

frankness. How could he do it? He could do it, for all

practical purposes was compelled to do it, because . . . well,

because Babs had certain physical peculiarities which Molly

did not possess and behaved at certain moments in ways

which Molly would have found unthinkable.

There had been a long silence; but now, abruptly, the

strange voice took up its old refrain.

"Attention. Attention."

Attention to Molly, attention to Maud and his mother,

attention to Babs. And suddenly another memory emerged

from the fog of vagueness and confusion. Babs's

strawberry-pink alcove sheltered another guest, and its

owner's body was shuddering ecstatically under somebody

else's caresses. To the guilt in the stomach was added an

anguish about the heart, a constriction of the throat.

"Attention."

The voice had come nearer, was calling from

somewhere over there to the right. He turned his head, he

tried to raise himself for a better view; but the arm that

supported his weight began to tremble, then gave way, and

he fell back into the leaves. Too tired to go on remembering,

he lay there for a long time staring up through half-closed

lids at the incomprehensible world around him. Where was

he and how on earth had he got here? Not that this was of

any importance. At the moment nothing was of any

importance except this pain, this annihilating weakness. All

the same, just as a matter of scientific interest. . .

This tree, for example, under which (for no known

5

reason) he found himself lying, this column of gray bark

with the groining, high up, of sun-speckled branches, this

ought by rights to be a beech tree. But in that case-and Will

admired himself for being so lucidly logical-in that case the

leaves had no right to be so obviously evergreen. And why

would a beech tree send its roots elbowing up like this above

the surface of the ground? And those preposterous wooden

buttresses, on which the pseudo-beech supported itself-where

did those fit into the picture? Will remembered suddenly his

favorite worst line of poetry. "Who prop, thou ask'st, in these

bad days my mind?" Answer: congealed ectoplasm, Early

Dali. Which definitely ruled out the Chilterns. So did the

butterflies swooping out there in the thick buttery sunshine.

Why were they so large, so improbably cerulean or velvet

black, so extravagantly eyed and freckled? Purple staring out

of chestnut, silver powdered over emerald, over topaz, over

sapphire.

"Attention."

"Who's there?" Will Farnaby called in what he intended

to be a loud and formidable tone; but all that came out of his

mouth was a thin, quavering croak.

There was a long and, it seemed, profoundly menacing

silence. From the hollow between two of the tree's wooden

buttresses an enormous black centipede emerged for a

moment into view, then hurried away on its regiment of

crimson legs and vanished into another cleft in the

lichen-covered ectoplasm.

"Who's there?" he croaked again.

There was a rustling in the bushes on his left and

suddenly, like a cuckoo from a nursery clock, out popped a

large black bird, the size of a jackdaw-only, needless to say,

it wasn't a jackdaw. It clapped a pair of white-tipped wings

and, darting across the intervening space, settled on the

lowest branch of a small dead tree, not twenty feet from

where Will was lying. Its beak, he noticed, was orange, and

it had a bald yellow patch under each eye, with

canary-colored wattles that covered the sides and back of its

head with a thick wig of naked flesh. The bird cocked its

head and looked at him first with the right eye, then with the

left. After which it opened its orange bill, whistled ten or

twelve notes of a little air in the pentatonic scale, made a

noise like somebody having hiccups, and then, in a chanting

6

phrase, do do sol do, said, "Here and now, boys; here and

now, boys."

The words pressed a trigger, and all of a sudden he

remembered everything. Here was Pala, the forbidden island,

the place no journalist had ever visited. And now must be the

morning after the afternoon when he'd been fool enough to

go sailing, alone, outside the harbor of Rendang-Lobo. He

remembered it all-the white sail curved by the wind into the

likeness of a huge magnolia petal, the water sizzling at the

prow, the sparkle of diamonds on every wave crest, the

troughs of wrinkled jade. And eastwards, across the Strait,

what clouds, what prodigies of sculptured whiteness above

the volcanoes of Pala! Sitting there at the tiller, he had

caught himself singing-caught himself, incredibly, in the act

of feeling unequivocally happy.

" 'Three, three for the rivals,' " he had declaimed into

the wind.

" 'Two, two for the lily-white boys, clothed all in

green-oh; One is one and all alone . . . ' "

Yes, all alone. All alone on the enormous jewel of the

sea. " 'And ever more shall be so.' "

After which, needless to say, the thing that all the

cautious and experienced yachtsmen had warned him against

happened. The black squall out of nowhere, the sudden,

senseless frenzy of wind and rain and waves . . .

"Here and now, boys," chanted the bird. "Here and now,

boys."

The really extraordinary thing was that he should be

here, he reflected, under the trees and not out there, at the

bottom of the Pala Strait or, worse, smashed to pieces at the

foot of the cliffs. For even after he had managed, by sheer

miracle, to take his sinking boat through the breakers and run

her aground on the only sandy beach in all those miles of

Pala's rockbound coast- even then it wasn't over. The cliffs

towered above him; but at the head of the cove there was a

kind of headlong ravine where a little stream came down in a

succession of filmy waterfalls, and there were trees and

bushes growing between the walls of gray limestone. Six or

seven hundred feet of rock climbing-in tennis shoes, and all

the footholes slippery with water. And then, dear God! those

snakes. The black one looped over the branch by which he

was pulling himself up. And five minutes later, the huge

7

green one coiled there on the ledge, just where he was

preparing to step. Terror had been succeeded by a terror infi-

nitely worse. The sight of the snake had made him start,

made him violently withdraw his foot, and that sudden

unconsidered movement had made him lose his balance. For

a long sickening second, in the dreadful knowledge that this

was the end, he had swayed on the brink, then fallen. Death,

death, death. And then, with the noise of splintering wood in

his ears he had found himself clinging to the branches of a

small tree, his face scratched, his right knee bruised and

bleeding, but alive. Painfully he had resumed his climbing.

His knee hurt him excruciatingly; but he climbed on. There

was no alternative. And then the light had begun to fail. In

the end he was climbing almost in darkness, climbing by

faith, climbing by sheer despair.

"Here and now, boys," shouted the bird.

But Will Farnaby was neither here nor now. He was

there on the rock face, he was then at the dreadful moment of

falling. The dry leaves rustled beneath him; he was

trembling. Violently, uncontrollably, he was trembling from

head to foot.

8

2

Suddenly the bird ceased to be articulate and started to

scream. A small shrill human voice said, "Mynah!" and then

added something in a language that Will did not understand.

There was a sound of footsteps on dry leaves. Then a little

cry of alarm. Then silence. Will opened his eyes and saw two

exquisite children looking down at him, their eyes wide with

astonishment and a fascinated horror. The smaller of them

was a tiny boy of five, perhaps, or six, dressed only in a

green loincloth. Beside him, carrying a basket of fruit on her

head, stood a little girl some four or five years older. She

wore a full crimson skirt that reached almost to her ankles;

but above the waist she was naked. In the sunlight her skin

glowed like pale copper flushed with rose. Will looked from

one child to the other. How beautiful they were, and how

faultless, how extraordinarily elegant! Like two little

thoroughbreds. A round and sturdy thoroughbred, with a face

like a cherub's-that was the boy. And the girl was another

kind of thoroughbred, fine-drawn, with a rather long, grave

little face framed between braids of dark hair.

There was another burst of screaming. On its perch in

the dead tree the bird was turning nervously this way and

that; then, with a final screech, it dived into the air. Without

taking her eyes from Will's face, the girl held out her hand

invitingly. The bird fluttered, settled, flapped wildly, found

its balance, then folded its wings and immediately started to

hiccup. Will looked on without surprise. Anything was

possible now-anything. Even talking birds that would perch

on a child's finger. Will tried to smile at them; but his lips

were still trembling, and what was meant to be a sign of

friendliness must have seemed like a frightening grimace.

The little boy took cover behind his sister.

The bird stopped hiccuping and began to repeat a word

that Will did not understand. "Runa"-was that it? No,

"karuna," Definitely "karuna."

He raised a trembling hand and pointed at the fruit in

9

the round basket. Mangoes, bananas . . . His dry mouth was

watering.

"Hungry," he said. Then, feeling that in these exotic

circumstances the child might understand him better if he put

on an imitation of a musical-comedy Chinaman, "Me velly

hungry," he elaborated.

"Do you want to eat?" the child asked in perfect

English.

"Yes-eat," he repeated, "eat."

"Fly away, mynah!" She shook her hand. The bird

uttered a protesting squawk and returned to its perch on the

dead tree. Lifting her thin little arms in a gesture that was

like a dancer's, the child raised the basket from her head,

then lowered it to the ground. She selected a banana, peeled

it and, torn between fear and compassion, advanced towards

the stranger. In his incomprehensible language the little boy

uttered a cry of warning and clutched at her skirt. With a

reassuring word, the girl halted, well out of danger, and held

up the fruit.

"Do you want it?" she asked.

Still trembling, Will Farnaby stretched out his hand.

Very cautiously, she edged forward, then halted again and,

crouching down, peered at him intently.

"Quick," he said in an agony of impatience.

But the little girl was taking no chances. Eyeing his

hand for the least sign of a suspicious movement, she leaned

forward, she cautiously extended her arm.

"For God's sake," he implored.

"God?" the child repeated with sudden interest. "Which

god?" she asked. "There are such a lot of them."

"Any damned god you like," he answered impatiently.

"I don't really like any of them," she answered. "I like

the Compassionate One."

"Then be compassionate to me," he begged. "Give me

that banana."

Her expression changed. "I'm sorry," she said

apologetically. Rising to her full height, she took a quick

step forward and dropped the fruit into his shaking hand.

"There," she said and, like a little animal avoiding a

trap, she jumped back, out of reach.

The small boy clapped his hands and laughed aloud.

She turned and said something to him. He nodded his round

10

head, and saying "Okay, boss," trotted away, through a

barrage of blue and sulphur butterflies, into the forest

shadows on the further side of the glade.

"I told Tom Krishna to go and fetch someone," she ex-

plained.

Will finished his banana and asked for another, and then

for a third. As the urgency of his hunger diminished, he felt a

need to satisfy his curiosity.

"How is it that you speak such good English?" he asked.

"Because everybody speaks English," the child

answered.

"Everybody?"

"I mean, when they're not speaking Palanese." Finding

the subject uninteresting, she turned, waved a small brown

hand and whistled.

"Here and now, boys," the bird repeated yet once more,

then fluttered down from its perch on the dead tree and

settled on her shoulder. The child peeled another banana,

gave two-thirds of it to Will and offered what remained to

the mynah.

"Is that your bird?" Will asked.

She shook her head.

"Mynahs are like the electric light," she said. "They

don't belong to anybody."

"Why does he say those things?"

"Because somebody taught him," she answered

patiently. What an ass! her tone seemed to imply.

"But why did they teach him those things? Why

'Attention'? Why 'Here and now'?"

"Well ..." She searched for the right words in which to

explain the self-evident to this strange imbecile. "That's what

you always forget, isn't it? I mean, you forget to pay

attention to what's happening. And that's the same as not

being here and now."

"And the mynahs fly about reminding you-is that it?"

She nodded. That, of course, was it. There was a

silence.

"What's your name?" she inquired.

Will introduced himself.

"My name's Mary Sarojini MacPhail."

"MacPhail?" It was too implausible.

"MacPhail," she assured him.

11

"And your little brother is called Tom Krishna?" She

nodded. "Well, I'm damned!"

"Did you come to Pala by the airplane?"

"I came out of the sea."

"Out of the sea? Do you have a boat?"

"I did have one." With his mind's eye Will saw the

waves breaking over the stranded hulk, heard with his inner

ear the crash of their impact. Under her questioning he told

her what had happened. The storm, the beaching of the boat,

the long nightmare of the climb, the snakes, the horror of

falling . . . He began to tremble again, more violently than

ever.

Mary Sarojini listened attentively and without

comment. Then, as his voice faltered and finally broke, she

stepped forward and, the bird still perched on her shoulder,

kneeled down beside him.

"Listen, Will," she said, laying a hand on his forehead.

"We've got to get rid of this." Her tone was professional and

calmly authoritative.

"I wish I knew how," he said between chattering teeth.

"How?" she repeated. "But in the usual way, of course.

Tell me again about those snakes and how you fell down."

He shook his head. "I don't want to."

"Of course you don't want to," she said. "But you've got

to. Listen to what the mynah's saying."

"Here and now, boys," the bird was still exhorting.

"Here and now, boys."

"You can't be here and now," she went on, "until you've

got rid of those snakes. Tell me."

"I don't want to, I don't want to." He was almost in

tears.

"Then you'll never get rid of them. They'll be crawling

about inside your head forever. And serve you right," Mary

Sarojini added severely.

He tried to control the trembling; but his body had

ceased to belong to him. Someone else was in charge,

someone malevolently determined to humiliate him, to make

him suffer.

"Remember what happened when you were a little

boy," Mary Sarojini was saying. "What did your mother do

when you hurt yourself?"

She had taken him in her arms, had said, "My poor

12

baby, my poor little baby."

"She did that?" The child spoke in a tone of shocked

amazement. "But that's awful! That's the way to rub it in.

'My poor baby,' " she repeated derisively, "it must have gone

on hurting for hours. And you'd never forget it."

Will Farnaby made no comment, but lay there in

silence, shaken by irrepressible shudderings.

"Well, if you won't do it yourself, I'll have to do it for

you. Listen, Will: there was a snake, a big green snake, and

you almost stepped on him. You almost stepped on him, and

it gave you such a fright that you lost your balance, you fell.

Now say it yourself-say it!"

"I almost stepped on him," he whispered obediently.

"And then I ..." He couldn't say it. "Then I fell," he brought

out at last, almost inaudibly.

All the horror of it came back to him-the nausea of fear,

the panic start that had made him lose his balance, and then

worse fear and the ghastly certainty that it was the end.

"Say it again."

"I almost stepped on him. And then ..."

He heard himself whimpering.

"That's right, Will. Cry-cry!"

The whimpering became a moaning. Ashamed, he

clenched his teeth, and the moaning stopped.

"No, don't do that," she cried. "Let it come out if it

wants to. Remember that snake, Will. Remember how you

fell."

The moaning broke out again and he began to shudder

more violently than ever.

"Now tell me what happened."

"I could see its eyes, I could see its tongue going in and

out."

"Yes, you could see his tongue. And what happened

then?"

"I lost my balance, I fell."

"Say it again, Will." He was sobbing now. "Say it

again," she insisted.

"I fell."

"Again."

It was tearing him to pieces, but he said it. "I fell."

"Again, Will." She was implacable. "Again."

"I fell, I fell. I fell . . ."

13

Gradually the sobbing died down. The words came

more easily and the memories they aroused were less painful.

"I fell," he repeated for the hundredth time.

"But you didn't fall very far," Mary Sarojini now said.

"No, I didn't fall very far," he agreed.

"So what's all the fuss about?" the child inquired.

There was no malice or irony in her tone, not the

slightest implication of blame. She was just asking a simple,

straightforward question that called for a simple,

straightforward answer. Yes, what was all the fuss about?

The snake hadn't bitten him; he hadn't broken his neck. And

anyhow it had all happened yesterday. Today there were

these butterflies, this bird that called one to attention, this

strange child who talked to one like a Dutch uncle, looked

like an angel out of some unfamiliar mythology and within

five degrees of the equator was called, believe it or not,

MacPhail. Will Farnaby laughed aloud.

The little girl clapped her hands and laughed too. A

moment later the bird on her shoulder joined in with peal

upon peal of loud demonic laughter that filled the glade and

echoed among the trees, so that the whole universe seemed

to be fairly splitting its sides over the enormous joke of

existence.

14

3

"Well, I'm glad it's all so amusing," a deep voice

suddenly commented.

Will Farnaby turned and saw, smiling down at him, a

small spare man dressed in European clothes and carrying a

black bag. A man, he judged, in his late fifties. Under the

wide straw hat the hair was thick and white, and what a

strange beaky nose! And the eyes-how incongruously blue in

the dark face!

"Grandfather!" he heard Mary Sarojini exclaiming.

The stranger turned from Will to the child.

"What was so funny?" he asked.

"Well," Mary Sarojini began, and paused for a moment

to marshal her thoughts. "Well, you see, he was in a boat and

there

was

that

storm

yesterday

and

he

got

wrecked-somewhere down there. So he had to climb up the

cliff. And there were some snakes, and he fell down. But

luckily there was a tree, so he only had a fright. Which was

why he was shivering so hard, so I gave him some bananas

and I made him go through it a million times. And then all of

a sudden he saw that it wasn't anything to worry about. I

mean, it's all over and done with. And that made him laugh.

And when he laughed, I laughed. And then the mynah bird

laughed."

"Very good," said her grandfather approvingly. "And

now," he added, turning back to Will Farnaby, "after the

psychological first aid, let's see what can be done for poor

old Brother Ass. I'm Dr. Robert MacPhail, by the way. Who

are you?"

"His name's Will," said Mary Sarojini before the young

man could answer. "And his other name is Far-something."

"Farnaby, to be precise. William Asquith Farnaby. My

father, as you might guess, was an ardent Liberal. Even when

he was drunk. Especially when he was drunk." He gave vent

to a harsh derisive laugh strangely unlike the full-throated

merriment which had greeted his discovery that there was

15

really nothing to make a fuss about.

"Didn't you like your father?" Mary Sarojini asked with

concern.

"Not as much as I might have," Will answered.

"What he means," Dr. MacPhail explained to the child,

"is that he hated his father. A lot of them do," he added

parenthetically.

Squatting down on his haunches, he began to undo the

straps of his black bag.

"One of our ex-imperialists, I assume," he said over his

shoulder to the young man.

"Born in Bloomsbury," Will confirmed.

"Upper class," the doctor diagnosed, "but not a member

of the military or county subspecies."

"Correct. My father was a barrister and political

journalist. That is, when he wasn't too busy being an

alcoholic. My mother, incredible as it may seem, was the

daughter of an archdeacon. An archdeacon,'" he repeated,

and laughed again as he had laughed over his father's taste

for brandy.

Dr. MacPhail looked at him for a moment, then turned

his attention once more to the straps.

"When you laugh like that," he remarked in a tone of

scientific detachment, "your face becomes curiously ugly."

Taken aback, Will tried to cover his embarrassment

with a piece of facetiousness. "It's always ugly," he said.

"On the contrary, in a Baudelairean sort of way it's

rather beautiful. Except when you choose to make noises like

a hyena. Why do you make those noises?"

"I'm a journalist," Will explained. "Our Special

Correspondent, paid to travel about the world and report on

the current horrors. What other kind of noise do you expect

me to make? Coo-coo? Blah-blah? Marx-Marx?" He laughed

again, then brought out one of his well-tried witticisms. "I'm

the man who won't take yes for an answer."

"Pretty," said Dr. MacPhail. "Very pretty. But now let's

get down to business." Taking a pair of scissors out of his

bag, he started to cut away the torn and bloodstained trouser

leg that covered Will's injured knee.

Will Farnaby looked up at him and wondered, as he

looked, how much of this improbable Highlander was still

Scottish and how much Palanese. About the blue eyes and

16

the jutting nose there could be no doubt. But the brown skin,

the delicate hands, the grace of movement-these surely came

from somewhere considerably south of the Tweed.

"Were you born here?" he asked.

The doctor nodded affirmatively. "At Shivapuram, on

the day of Queen Victoria's funeral."

There was a final click of the scissors, and the trouser

leg fell away, exposing the knee. "Messy," was Dr.

MacPhail's verdict after a first intent scrutiny. "But I don't

think there's anything too serious." He turned to his

granddaughter. "I'd like you to run back to the station and

ask Vijaya to come here with one of the other men. Tell them

to pick up a stretcher at the infirmary."

Mary Sarojini nodded and, without a word, rose to her

feet and hurried away across the glade.

Will looked after the small figure as it receded-the red

skirt swinging from side to side, the smooth skin of the torso

glowing rosily golden in the sunlight.

"You have a very remarkable granddaughter," he said to

Dr. MacPhail.

"Mary Sarojini's father," said the doctor after a little

silence, "was my eldest son. He died four months ago-a

mountain-climbing accident."

Will mumbled his sympathy, and there was another

silence.

Dr. MacPhail uncorked a bottle of alcohol and swabbed

his hands.

"This is going to hurt a bit," he warned. "I'd suggest that

you listen to that bird." He waved a hand in the direction of

the dead tree, to which, after Mary Sarojini's departure, the

mynah had returned.

"Listen to him closely, listen discriminatingly. It'll keep

your mind off the discomfort."

Will Farnaby listened. The mynah had gone back to its

first theme.

"Attention," the articulate oboe was calling. "Attention."

"Attention to what?" he asked, in the hope of eliciting a

more enlightening answer than the one he had received from

Mary Sarojini.

"To attention," said Dr. MacPhail.

"Attention to attention?"

"Of course."

17

"Attention,"

the

mynah

chanted

in

ironical

confirmation.

"Do you have many of these talking birds?"

"There must be at least a thousand of them flying about

the island. It was the Old Raja's idea. He thought it would do

people good. Maybe it does, though it seems rather unfair to

the poor mynahs. Fortunately, however, birds don't

understand pep talks. Not even St. Francis'. Just imagine," he

went on, "preaching sermons to perfectly good thrushes and

goldfinches and chiff-chaffs! What presumption! Why

couldn't he have kept his mouth shut and let the birds preach

to him? And now," he added in another tone, "you'd better

start listening to our friend in the tree. I'm going to clean this

thing up."

"Attention."

"Here goes."

The young man winced and bit his lip.

"Attention. Attention. Attention."

Yes, it was quite true. If you listened intently enough,

the pain wasn't so bad.

"Attention. Attention ..."

"How you ever contrived to get up that cliff," said Dr.

MacPhail, as he reached for the bandage, "I cannot

conceive."

Will managed to laugh. "Remember the beginning of

Erewhon" he said. " 'As luck would have it, Providence was

on my side.' "

From the further side of the glade came the sound of

voices. Will turned his head and saw Mary Sarojini emerging

from between the trees, her red skirt swinging as she skipped

along. Behind her, naked to the waist and carrying over his

shoulder the bamboo poles and rolled-up canvas of a light

stretcher, walked a huge bronze statue of a man, and behind

the giant came a slender, dark-skinned adolescent in white

shorts.

"This is Vijaya Bhattacharya," said Dr. MacPhail as the

bronze statue approached. "Vijaya is my assistant."

"In the hospital?"

Dr. MacPhail shook his head. "Except in emergencies,"

he said, "I don't practice any more. Vijaya and I work

together at the Agricultural Experimental Station. And

Murugan Mailen-dra" (he waved his hand in the direction of

18

the dark-skinned boy) "is with us temporarily, studying soil

science and plant breeding."

Vijaya stepped aside and, laying a large hand on his

companion's shoulder, pushed him forward. Looking up into

that beautiful, sulky young face, Will suddenly recognized,

with a start of surprise, the elegantly tailored youth he had

met, five days before, at Rendang-Lobo, had driven with in

Colonel Dipa's white Mercedes all over the island. He

smiled, he opened his mouth to speak, then checked himself.

Almost imperceptibly but quite unmistakenly, the boy had

shaken his head. In his eyes Will saw an expression of

anguished pleading. His lips moved soundlessly. "Please," he

seemed to be saying, "please ..." Will readjusted his face.

"How do you do, Mr. Mailendra," he said in a tone of

casual formality.

Murugan looked enormously relieved. "How do you

do," he said, and made a little bow.

Will looked round to see if the others had noticed what

had happened. Mary Sarojini and Vijaya, he saw, were busy

with tli£ stretcher and the doctor was repacking his black

bag. The little comedy had been played without an audience.

Young Murugan evidently had his reasons for not wanting it

to be known that he had been in Rendang. Boys will be boys.

Boys will even be girls. Colonel Dipa had been more than

fatherly towards his young protege, and towards the Colonel,

Murugan had been a good deal more than filial-he had been

positively adoring. Was it merely hero worship, merely a

schoolboy's admiration for the strong man who had carried

out a successful revolution, liquidated the opposition, and

installed himself as dictator? Or were other feelings

involved? Was Murugan playing Antinous to this

black-mustached Hadrian? Well, if that was how he felt

about middle-aged military gangsters, that was his privilege.

And if the gangster liked pretty boys, that was his. And

perhaps, Will went on to reflect, that was why Colonel Dipa

had refrained from making a formal introduction. "This is

Muru" was all he had said when the boy was ushered into the

presidential office. "My young friend Muru," and he had

risen, had put his arm around the boy's shoulders, had led

him to the sofa and sat down beside him. "May I drive the

Mercedes?" Murugan had asked. The dictator had smiled

indulgently and nodded his sleek black head. And that was

19

another reason for thinking that more than mere friendliness

was involved in that curious relationship. At the wheel of the

Colonel's sports car Murugan was a maniac. Only an

infatuated lover would have entrusted himself, not to

mention his guest, to such a chauffeur. On the flat between

Rendang-Lobo and the oil fields the speedometer had twice

touched a hundred and ten; and worse, much worse, was to

follow on the mountain road from the oil fields to the copper

mines. Chasms yawned, tires screeched round corners, water

buffaloes emerged from bamboo thickets a few feet ahead of

the car, ten-ton lorries came roaring down on the wrong side

of the road. "Aren't you a little nervous?" Will had ventured

to ask. But the gangster was pious as well as infatuated. "If

one knows that one is doing the will of Allah-and I do know

it, Mr. Farnaby-there is no excuse for nervousness. In those

circumstances, nervousness would be blasphemy." And as

Murugan swerved to avoid yet another buffalo, he opened his

gold cigarette case and offered Will a Balkan Sobranje.

"Ready," Vijaya called.

Will turned his head and saw the stretcher lying on the

ground beside him.

"Good!" said Dr. MacPhail. "Let's lift him onto it.

Carefully. Carefully ..."

A minute later the little procession was winding its way

up the narrow path between the trees. Mary Sarojini was in

the van, her grandfather brought up the rear and, between

them, came Murugan and Vijaya at either end of the

stretcher.

From his moving bed Will Farnaby looked up through

the green darkness as though from the floor of a living sea.

Far overhead, near the surface, there was a rustling among

the leaves, a noise of monkeys. And now it was a dozen

hornbills hopping, like the figments of a disordered

imagination, through a cloud of orchids.

"Are you comfortable?" Vijaya asked, bending

solicitously to look into his face.

Will smiled back at him.

"Luxuriously comfortable," he said.

"It isn't far," the other went on reassuringly. "We'll be

there in a few minutes."

"Where's 'there'?"

"The Experimental Station. It's like Rothamsted. Did

20

you ever go to Rothamsted when you were in England?"

Will had heard of it, of course, but never seen the place.

"It's been going for more than a hundred years," Vijaya

went on.

"A hundred and eighteen, to be precise," said Dr.

MacPhail. "Lawes and Gilbert started their work on

fertilizers in 1843. One of their pupils came out here in the

early fifties to help my grandfather get our station going.

Rothamsted in the tropics- that was the idea. In the tropics

and for the tropics."

There was a lightening of the green gloom and a

moment later the litter emerged from the forest into the full

glare of tropical sunshine. Will raised his head and looked

about him. They were not far from the floor of an immense

amphitheater. Five hundred feet below stretched a wide

plain, checkered with fields, dotted with clumps of trees and

clustered houses. In the other direction the slopes climbed up

and up, thousands of feet towards a semicircle of mountains.

Terrace above green or golden terrace, from the plain to the

crenelated wall of peaks, the rice paddies followed the

contour lines, emphasizing every swell and recession of the

slope with what seemed a deliberate and artful intention.

Nature here was no longer merely natural; the landscape had

been composed, had been reduced to its geometrical

essences, and rendered, by what in a painter would have been

a miracle of virtuosity, in terms of these sinuous lines, these

streaks of pure bright color.

"What were you doing in Rendang?" Dr. Robert asked,

breaking a long silence.

"Collecting materials for a piece on the new regime." "I

wouldn't have thought the Colonel was newsworthy."

"You're mistaken. He's a military dictator. That means there's

death in the offing. And death is always news. Even the

remote smell of death is news." He laughed. "That's why I

was told to drop in on my way back from China."

And there had been other reasons which he preferred

not to mention. Newspapers were only one of Lord

Aldehyde's interests. In another manifestation he was the

Southeast Asia Petroleum Company, he was Imperial and

Foreign Copper Limited. Officially, Will had come to

Rendang to sniff the death in its militarized air; but he had

also been commissioned to find out what the dictator felt

21

about foreign capital, what tax rebates he was prepared to

offer, what guarantees against nationalization. And how

much of the profits would be exportable? How many native

technicians and administrators would have to be employed?

A whole battery of questions. But Colonel Dipa had been

most affable and co-operative. Hence that hair-raising drive,

with Murugan at the wheel, to the copper mines. "Primitive,

my dear Farnaby, primitive. Urgently in need, as you can see

for yourself, of modern equipment." Another meeting had

been arranged- arranged, Will now remembered, for this very

morning. He visualized the Colonel at his desk. A report

from the chief of police. "Mr. Farnaby was last seen sailing a

small boat singlehanded into the Pala Strait. Two hours later

a storm of great violence . . . Presumed dead ..." Instead of

which, here he was, alive and kicking, on the forbidden

island.

"They'll never give you a visa," Joe Aldehyde had said

at their last interview. "But perhaps you could sneak ashore

in disguise. Wear a burnous or something, like Lawrence of

Arabia."

With a straight face, "I'll try," Will had promised.

"Anyhow, if you ever do manage to land in Pala, make

a bee-line for the palace. The Rani-that's their Queen

Mother-is an old friend of mine. Met her for the first time six

years ago at Lugano. She was staying there with old Voegeli,

the investment banker. His girl friend is interested in

spiritualism and they staged a seance for me. A trumpet

medium, genuine Direct Voice-only unfortunately it was all

in German. Well, after the lights were turned on, I had a long

talk with her."

"With the trumpet?"

"No, no. With the Rani. She's a remarkable woman.

You know, the Crusade of the Spirit."

"Was that her invention?"

"Absolutely. And personally I prefer it to Moral

Rearmament. It goes down better in Asia. We had a long talk

about it that evening. And after that we talked about oil.

Pala's full of oil. Southeast Asia Petroleum has been trying to

get in on it for years. So have all the other companies.

Nothing doing. No oil concessions to anyone. It's their fixed

policy. But the Rani doesn't agree with it. She wants to see

the oil doing some good in the world. Financing the Crusade

22

of the Spirit, for example. So, as I say, if ever you get to

Pala, make a beeline for the palace. Talk to her. Get the

inside story about the men who make the decisions. Find out

if there's a pro-oil minority and ask how we could help them

to carry on the good work." And he had ended by promising

Will a handsome bonus if his efforts should be crowned with

success. Enough to give him a full year of freedom. "No

more reporting. Nothing but High Art, Art, A-ART." And he

had uttered a scatalogical laugh as though the word had an s

at the end of it and not a t. Unspeakable creature! But all the

same he wrote for the unspeakable creature's vile papers and

was ready, for a bribe, to do the vile creature's dirty work.

And now, incredibly, here he was on Palanese soil. As luck

would have it, Providence had been on his side-for the

express purpose, evidently, of perpetrating one of those

sinister practical jokes which are Providence's specialty.

He was called back to present reality by the sound of

Mary Sarojini's shrill voice. "Here we are!"

Will raised his head again. The little procession had

turned off the highway and was passing through an opening

in a white stuccoed wall. To the left, on a rising succession

of terraces, stood lines of low buildings shaped by peepul

trees. Straight ahead an avenue of tall palms sloped down to

a lotus pool, on the further side of which sat a huge stone

Buddha. Turning to the left, they climbed between flowering

trees and through blending perfumes to the first terrace.

Behind a fence, motionless except for his ruminating jaws,

stood a snow-white humped bull, godlike in his serene and

mindless beauty. Europa's lover receded into the past, and

here were a brace of Juno's birds trailing their feathers over

the grass. Mary Sarojini unlatched the gate of a small garden.

"My bungalow," said Dr. MacPhail, and turning to

Muru-gan, "Let me help you to negotiate the steps."

23

4

Tom Krishna and Mary Sarojini had gone to take their

siesta with the gardener's children next door. In her darkened

living room Susila MacPhail sat alone with her memories of

past happiness and the present pain of her bereavement. The

clock in the kitchen struck the half hour. It was time for her

to go. With a sigh she rose, put on her sandals and walked

out into the tremendous glare of the tropical afternoon. She

looked up at the sky. Over the volcanoes enormous clouds

were climbing towards the zenith. In an hour it would be

raining. Moving from one pool of shadow to the next, she

made her way along the tree-lined path. With a sudden rattle

of quills a flock of pigeons broke out of one of the towering

peepul trees. Green-winged and coral-billed, their breasts

changing color in the light like mother-of-pearl, they flew off

towards the forest. How beautiful they were, how unutterably

lovely! Susila was on the point of turning to catch the

expression of delight on Dugald's upturned face; then,

checking herself, she looked down at the ground. There was

no Dugald any more; there was only this pain, like the pain

of the phantom limb that goes on haunting the imagination,

haunting even the perceptions of those who have undergone

an amputation. "Amputation," she whispered to herself,

"amputation ..." Feeling her eyes fill with tears, she broke

off. Amputation was no excuse for self-pity and, for all that

Dugald was dead, the birds were as beautiful as ever and her

children, all the other children-, had as much need to be

loved and helped and taught. If his absence was so constantly

present, that was to remind her that henceforward she must

love for two, live for two, take thought for two, must

perceive and understand not merely with her own eyes and

mind but with the mind and eyes that had been his and,

before the catastrophe, hers too in a communion of delight

and intelligence.

But here was the doctor's bungalow. She mounted the

24

steps, crossed the veranda and walked into the living room.

Her father-in-law was seated near the window, sipping cold

tea from an earthenware mug and reading the Revue tie

Mycologie. He looked up as she approached, and gave her a

welcoming

smile.

"Susila, my dear! I'm so glad you were able to come."

She bent down and kissed his stubbly cheek.

"What's all this I hear from Mary Sarojini?" she asked.

"Is it true she found a castaway?"

"From England-but via China, Rendang, and a

shipwreck. A journalist."

"What's he like?"

"The physique of a Messiah. But too clever to believe in

God or be convinced of his own mission. And too sensitive,

even if he were convinced, to carry it out. His muscles would

like to act and his feelings would like to believe; but his

nerve endings and his cleverness won't allow it."

"So I suppose he's very unhappy."

"So unhappy that he has to laugh like a hyena."

"Does he know he laughs like a hyena?"

"Knows and is rather proud of it. Even makes epigrams

about it. 'I'm the man who won't take yes for an answer.' "

"Is he badly hurt?" she asked.

"Not badly. But he's running a temperature. I've started

him on antibiotics. Now it's up to you to raise his resistance

and give the vis medicatrix naturae a chance."

"I'll do my best." Then, after a silence, "I went to see

Lak-shmi," she said, "on my way back from school."

"How did you find her?"

"About the same. No, perhaps a little weaker than

yesterday/'

"That's what I felt when I saw her this morning."

"Luckily the pain doesn't seem to get any worse. We

can still handle it psychologically. And today we worked on

the nausea. She was able to drink something. I don't think

there'll be any more need for intravenous fluids."

"Thank goodness!" he said. "Those IV's were a torture.

Such enormous courage in the face of every real danger; but

whenever it was a question of a hypodermic or a needle in a

vein, the most abject and irrational terror."

He thought of the time, in the early days of their

25

marriage, when he had lost his temper and called her a

coward for making such a fuss. Lakshmi had cried and,

having submitted to her martyrdom, had heaped coals of fire

upon his head by begging to be forgiven. "Lakshmi, Lakshmi

. . ." And now in a few days she would be dead. After

thirty-seven years. "What did you talk about?" he asked

aloud.

"Nothing in particular," Susila answered. But the truth

was that they had talked about Dugald and that she couldn't

bring herself to repeat what had passed between them. "My

first baby," the dying woman had whispered. "I didn't know

that babies could be so beautiful." In their skull-deep,

skull-dark sockets the eyes had brightened, the bloodless lips

had smiled. "Such tiny, tiny hands," the faint hoarse voice

went on, "such a greedy little mouth!" And an almost

fleshless hand tremblingly touched the place where, before

last year's operation, her breast had been. "I never knew," she

repeated. And, before the event, how could she have known?

It had been a revelation, an apocalypse of touch and love.

"Do you know what I mean?" And Susila had nodded. Of

course she knew-had known it in relation to her own two

children, known it, in those other apocalypses of touch and

love, with the man that little Dugald of the tiny hands and

greedy mouth had grown into. "I used to be afraid for him,"

the dying woman had whispered. "He was so strong, such a

tyrant, he could have hurt and bullied and destroyed. If he'd

married another woman . . . I'm so thankful it was you!"

From the place where the breast had been the fleshless hand

moved out and came to rest on Susila's arm. She had bent her

head and kissed it. They were both crying.

Dr. MacPhail sighed, looked up and, like a man who

has climbed out of the water, gave himself a little shake.

"The castaway's name is Farnaby," he said. "Will Farnaby."

"Will Farnaby," Susila repeated. "Well, I'd better go and

see what I can do for him." She turned and walked away.

Dr. MacPhail looked after her, then leaned back in his

chair and closed his eyes. He thought of his son, he thought

of his wife-of Lakshmi slowly wasting to extinction, of

Dugald like a bright fiery flame suddenly snuffed out.

Thought of the incomprehensible sequence of changes and

chances that make up a life, all the beauties and horrors and

absurdities whose conjunctions create the uninterpretable and

26

yet divinely significant pattern of human destiny. "Poor girl,"

he said to himself, remembering the look on Susila's face

when he had told her of what had happened to Dugald, "poor

girl!" Meanwhile there was this article on Hallucinogenic

mushrooms in the Revue de Mycologie. That was another of

the irrelevancies that somehow took its place in the pattern.

The words of one of the old Raja's queer little poems came to

his mind.

All things, to all things

perfectly indifferent, perfectly

work together in discord for a

Good beyond good, for a

Being more timeless in

transience, more eternal in its dwindling

than God there in

heaven.

The door creaked, and an instant later Will heard light

footsteps and the rustle of skirts. Then a hand was laid on his

shoulder and a woman's voice, low-pitched and musical,

asked him how he was feeling.

"I'm feeling miserable," he answered without opening

his eyes.

There was no self-pity in his tone, no appeal for

sympathy- only the angry matter-of-factness of a Stoic who

has finally grown sick of the long farce of impassibility and

is resentfully blurting out the truth.

"I'm feeling miserable."

The hand touched him again. "I'm Susila MacPhail,"

said the voice "Mary Sarojini's mother."

Reluctantly Will turned his head and opened his eyes.

An adult, darker version of Mary Sarojini was sitting there

beside the bed, smiling at him with friendly solicitude. To

smile back at her would have cost him too great an effort; he

contented himself with saying "How do you do," then pulled

the sheet a little higher and closed his eyes again.

Susila looked down at him in silence-at the bony

shoulders, at the cage of ribs under a skin whose Nordic

pallor made him seem, to her Palanese eyes, so strangely

frail and vulnerable, at the sunburnt face, emphatically

featured like a carving intended to be seen at a

27

distance-emphatic and yet sensitive, the quivering, more than

naked face, she found herself thinking, of a man who has

been flayed and left to suffer.

"I hear you're from England," she said at last.

"I don't care where I'm from," Will muttered irritably.

"Nor where I'm going. From hell to hell."

"I was in England just after the war," she went on. "As a

student."

He tried not to listen; but ears have no lids; there was no

escape from that intruding voice.

"There was a girl in my psychology class," it was

saying: "her people lived at Wells. She asked me to stay with

them for the first month of the summer vacation. Do you

know Wells?"

Of course he knew Wells. Why did she pester him with

her silly reminiscences?

"I used to love walking there by the water," Susila went

on, "looking across the moat at the cathedral"-and thinking,

while she looked at the cathedral, of Dugald under the palm

trees on the beach, of Dugald giving her her first lesson in

rock climbing. "You're on the rope. You're perfectly safe.

You can't possibly fall ..." Can't possibly fall, she repeated

bitterly-and then remembered here and now, remembered

that she had a job to do, remembered, as she looked again at

the flayed emphatic face, that here was a human being in

pain. "How lovely it was," she went on, "and how

marvelously peaceful!"

The voice, it seemed to Will Farnaby, had become more

musical and in some strange way more remote. Perhaps that

was why he no longer resented its intrusion.

"Such an extraordinary sense of peace. Shanti, shanti,

shanti. The peace that passes understanding."

The voice was almost chanting now-chanting, it

seemed, out of some other world.

"I can shut my eyes," it chanted on, "can shut my eyes

and see it all so clearly. Can see the church-and it's

enormous, much taller than the huge trees round the bishop's

palace. Can see the green grass and the water and the golden

sunlight on the stones and the slanting shadows between the

buttresses. And listen! I can hear the bells. The bells and the

jackdaws. The jackdaws in the tower-can you hear the

jackdaws?"

28

Yes, he could hear the jackdaws, could hear them

almost as clearly as he now heard those parrots in the trees

outside his window. He was here and at the same time he

was there-here in this dark, sweltering room near the equator,

but also there, outdoors in that cool hollow at the edge of the

Mendips, with the jackdaws calling from the cathedral tower

and the sound of the bells dying away into the green silence.

"And there are white clouds," the voice was saying,

"and the blue sky between them is so pale, so delicate, so

exquisitely tender."

Tender, he repeated, the tender blue sky of that April

weekend he had spent there, before the disaster of their

marriage, with Molly. There were daisies in the grass and

dandelions, and across the water towered up the huge church,

challenging the wildness of those soft April clouds with its

austere geometry. Challenging the wildness, and at the same

time complementing it, coming to terms with it in perfect

reconciliation. That was how it should have been with

himself and Molly-how it had been then.

"And the swans," he now heard the voice dreamily

chanting, "the swans ..."

Yes, the swans. White swans moving across a mirror of

jade and jet-a breathing mirror that heaved and trembled, so

that their silvery images were forever breaking and coming

together again, disintegrating and being made whole.

"Like the inventions of heraldry. Romantic, impossibly

beautiful. And yet there they are-real birds in a real place. So

near to me now that I can almost touch them-and yet so far

away, thousands of miles away. Far away on that smooth

water, moving as if by magic, softly, majestically ..."

Majestically, moving majestically, with the dark water

lifting

and

parting

as

the

curved

white

breasts

advanced-lifting, parting, sliding back in ripples that

widened in a gleaming arrowhead behind them. He could see

them moving across their dark mirror, could hear the

jackdaws in the tower, could catch, through this nearer

mingling of disinfectants and gardenias, the cold, flat, weedy

smell of that Gothic moat in the faraway green valley.

"Effortlessly floating."

"Effortlessly floating." The words gave him a deep

satisfaction.

"I'd sit there," she was saying, "I'd sit there looking and

29

looking, and in a little while I'd be floating too. I'd be

floating with the swans on that smooth surface between the

darkness below and the pale tender sky above. Floating at the

same time on that other surface between here and far away,

between then and now." And between remembered

happiness, she was thinking, and this insistent, excruciating

presence of an absence. "Floating," she said aloud, "on the

surface between the real and the imagined, between what

comes to us from the outside and what comes to us from

within, from deep, deep down in

here."

She laid her hand on his forehead, and suddenly the

words transformed themselves into the things and events for

which they stood; the images turned into facts. He actually

was floating.

"Floating," the voice softly insisted. "Floating like a

white bird on the water. Floating on a great river of life-a

great smooth silent river that flows so still, so still, you might

almost think it was asleep. A sleeping river. But it flows

irresistibly.

"Life flowing silently and irresistibly into ever fuller

life, into a living peace all the more profound, all the richer

and stronger and more complete because it knows all your

pain and unhappi-ness, knows them and takes them into

itself and makes them one with its own substance. And it's

into that peace that you're floating now, floating on this

smooth silent river that sleeps and is yet irresistible, and is

irresistible precisely because it's sleeping. And I'm floating

with it." She was speaking for the stranger. She was speaking

on another level for herself. "Effortlessly floating. Not

having to do anything at all. Just letting go, just allowing

myself to be carried along, just asking this irresistible

sleeping river of life to take me where it's going-and

knowing all the time that where it's going is where I want to

go, where I have to go: into more life, into living peace.

Along the sleeping river, irresistibly, into the wholeness of

reconciliation."

Involuntarily, unconsciously, Will Farnaby gave a deep

sigh. How silent the world had become! Silent with a deep

crystalline silence, even though the parrots were still busy

out there beyond the shutters, even though the voice still

chanted here beside him! Silence and emptiness and through

30

the silence and the emptiness flowed the river, sleeping and

irresistible.

Susila looked down at the face on the pillow. It seemed

suddenly very young, childlike in its perfect serenity. The

frowning lines across the forehead had disappeared. The lips

that had been so tightly closed in pain were parted now, and

the breath came slowly, softly, almost imperceptibly. She

remembered suddenly the words that had come into her mind

as she looked down, one moonlit night, at the transfigured

innocence of Dugald's face: "She giveth her beloved sleep."

"Sleep," she said aloud. "Sleep."

The silence seemed to become more absolute, the

emptiness more enormous.

"Asleep on the sleeping river," the voice was saying.

"And above the river, in the pale sky, there are huge white

clouds. And as you look at them, you begin to float up

towards them. Yes, you begin to float up towards them, and

the river now is a river in the air, an invisible river that

carries you on, carries you up, higher and higher."

Upwards, upwards through the silent emptiness. The

image was the thing, the words became the experience.

"Out of the hot plain," the voice went on, "effortlessly,

into the freshness of the mountains."

Yes, there was the Jungfrau, dazzlingly white against

the blue. There was Monte Rosa . . . "How fresh the air feels

as you breathe it. Fresh, pure, charged with life!"

He breathed deeply and the new life flowed into him.

And now a little wind came blowing across the snowfields,

cool against his skin, deliciously cool. And, as though

echoing his thoughts, as though describing his experience,

the voice said, "Coolness. Coolness and sleep. Through

coolness into more life. Through sleep into reconciliation,

into wholeness, into living peace."

Half an hour later Susila re-entered the sitting room.

"Well?" her father-in-law questioned. "Any success?"

She nodded.

"I talked to him about a place in England," she said. "He

went off more quickly than I'd expected. After that I gave

him some suggestions about his temperature ..."

"And the knee, I hope."

"Of course."

"Direct suggestions?"

31

"No, indirect. They're always better. I got him to be

conscious of his body image. Then I made him imagine it

much bigger than in everyday reality-and the knee much

smaller. A miserable little thing in revolt against a huge and

splendid thing. There can't be any doubt as to who's going to

win." She looked at the clock on the wall. "Goodness, I must

hurry. Otherwise I'll be late for my class at school."

32

5

The sun was just rising as Dr. Robert entered his wife's

room at the hospital. An orange glow, and against it the

jagged silhouette of the mountains. Then suddenly a dazzling

sickle of incandescence between two peaks. The sickle

became a half circle and the first long shadows, the first

shafts of golden light crossed the garden outside the window.

And when one looked up again at the mountains there was

the whole unbearable glory of the risen sun.

Dr. Robert sat down by the bed, took his wife's hand

and kissed it. She smiled at him, then turned again towards

the window.

"How quickly the earth turns!" she whispered, and then

after a silence, "One of these mornings," she added, "it'll be

my last sunrise."

Through the confused chorus of bird cries and insect

noises, a mynah was chanting, "Karuna. Karuna . . ."

"Karuna," Lakshmi repeated. "Compassion . . ."

"Karuna. Karuna," the oboe voice of Buddha insisted

from the garden.

"I shan't be needing it much longer," she went on. "But

what about you? Poor Robert, what about you?"

"Somehow or other one finds the necessary strength,"

he said.

"But will it be the right kind of strength? Or will it be

the strength of armor, the strength of shut-offness, the

strength of being absorbed in your work and your ideas and

not caring a damn for anything else? Remember how I used

to come and pull your hair and make you pay attention?

Who's going to do that when I'm gone?"

A nurse came in with a glass of sugared water. Dr.

Robert slid a hand under his wife's shoulders and lifted her to

a sitting position. The nurse held the glass to her lips.

Lakshmi drank a little water, swallowed with difficulty, then

drank again and yet once more. Turning from the proffered

33

glass, she looked up at Dr. Robert. The wasted face was

illumined by a strangely incongruous twinkle of pure

mischief.

" 'I the Trinity illustrate,' " the faint voice hoarsely

quoted, " 'sipping watered orange pulp; in three sips the

Arian frustrate' . . ." She broke off. "What a ridiculous thing

to be remembering. But then I always was pretty ridiculous,

wasn't I?"

Dr. Robert did his best to smile back at her. "Pretty

ridiculous," he agreed.

"You used to say I was like a flea. Here one moment

and then, hop! somewhere else, miles away. No wonder you

could never educate me!"

"But you educated me all right," he assured her. "If it

hadn't been for you coming in and pulling my hair and

making me look at the world and helping me to understand

it, what would I be today? A pedant in blinkers-in spite of all

my training. But luckily I had the sense to ask you to marry

me, and luckily you had the folly to say yes and then the

wisdom and intelligence to make a good job of me. After

thirty-seven years of adult education I'm almost human."

"But I'm still a flea." She shook her head. "And yet I did

try. I tried very hard. I don't know if you ever realized it,

Robert: I was always on tiptoes, always straining up towards

the place where you were doing your work and your thinking

and your reading. On tiptoes, trying to reach it, trying to get

up there beside you. Goodness, how tiring it was! What an

endless series of efforts! And all of them quite useless.

Because I was just a dumb flea hopping about down here

among the people and the flowers and the cats and dogs.

Your kind of highbrow world was a place I could never

climb up to, much less find my way in. When this thing

happened" (she raised her hand again to her absent breast) "I

didn't have to try any more. No more school, no more

homework. I had a permanent excuse."

There was a long silence.

"What about taking another sip?" said the nurse at last.

"Yes, you ought to drink some more," Dr. Robert

agreed.

"And ruin the Trinity?" Lakshmi gave him another of

her smiles. Through the mask of age and mortal sickness Dr.

Robert suddenly saw the laughing girl with whom, half a

34

lifetime ago, and yet only yesterday, he had fallen in love.

An hour later Dr. Robert was back in his bungalow.

"You're going to be all alone this morning," he

announced, after changing the dressing on Will Farnaby's

knee. "I have to drive down to Shivapuram for a meeting of

the Privy Council. One of our student nurses will come in

around twelve to give you your injection and get you

something to eat. And in the afternoon, as soon as she's

finished her work at the school, Susila will be dropping in

again. And now I must be going." Dr. Robert rose and laid

his hand for a moment on Will's arm. "Till this evening."

Halfway to the door he halted and turned back. "I almost

forgot to give you this." From one of the side pockets of his

sagging jacket he pulled out a small green booklet. "It's the

Old Raja's Notes on What's What, and on What It Might be

Reasonable to Do about What's What."

"What an admirable title!" said Will as he took the

proffered book.

"And you'll like the contents, too," Dr. Robert assured

him. "Just a few pages, that's all. But if you want to know

what Pala is all about, there's no better introduction."

"Incidentally," Will asked, "who is the Old Raja?"

"Who was he, I'm afraid. The Old Raja died in

'thirty-eight-after a reign three years longer than Queen

Victoria's. His eldest son died before he did, and he was

succeeded by his grandson, who was an ass-but made up for

it by being shortlived. The present Raja is his

great-grandson." '

"And, if I may ask a personal question, how does

anybody called MacPhail come into the picture?"

"The first MacPhail of Pala came into it under the Old

Raja's grandfather-the Raja of the Reform, we call him.

Between them, he and my great-grandfather invented modern

Pala. The Old Raja consolidated their work and carried it fur-

ther. And today we're doing our best to follow in his foot-

steps."

Will held up the Notes on What's What.

"Does this give the history of the reforms?"

Dr. Robert shook his head. "It merely states the

underlying principles. Read about those first. When I get

back from Shiva-puram this evening, I'll give you a taste of

the history. You'll have a better understanding of what was

35

actually done if you start by knowing what had to be

done-what always and everywhere has to be done by anyone

who has a clear idea about what's what. So read it, read it.

And don't forget to drink your fruit juice at eleven."

Will watched him go, then opened the little green book

and started to read.

Nobody needs to go anywhere else. We are all, if we

only knew it, already there.

If I only knew who in fact I am, I should cease to

behave as what I think I am; and if I stopped behaving as

what I think 1 am, I should know who I am.

What in fact I am, if only the Manichee I think I am

would allow me to know it, is the reconciliation of yes and

no lived out in total acceptance and the blessed experience of

Not-Two.

In religion all words are dirty words. Anybody who gets

eloquent about Buddha, or God, or Christ, ought to have his

mouth washed out with carbolic soap.

Because his aspiration to perpetuate only the "yes" in

every pair of opposites can never, in the nature of things, be

realized, the insulated Manichee I think I am condemns him-

self to endlessly repeated frustration, endlessly repeated con-

flicts with other aspiring and frustrated Manichees.

Conflicts and frustrations-the theme of all history and

almost all biography. "I show you sorrow," said the Buddha

realistically. But he also showed the ending of

sorrow-self-knowledge, total acceptance, the blessed

experience of Not-Two.

II

Knowing who in fact we are results in Good Being, and

Good Being results in the most appropriate kind of good

doing. But good doing does not of itself result in Good

Being. We can be virtuous without knowing who in fact we

are. The beings who are merely good are not Good Beings;

they are just pillars of society.

Most pillars are their own Samsons. They hold up, but

sooner or later they pull down. There has never been a soci-

ety in which most good doing was the product of Good

Being and therefore constantly appropriate. This does not

mean that there will never be such a society or that we in

36

Pala are fools for trying to call it into existence.

III

The Yogin and the Stoic-two righteous egos who

achieve their very considerable results by pretending,

systematically, to be somebody else. But it is not by

pretending to be somebody else, even somebody supremely

good and wise, that we can pass from insulated

Manichee-hood to Good Being.

Good Being is knowing who in fact we are; and in order

to know who in fact we are, we must first know, moment by

moment, who we think we are and what this bad habit of

thought compels us to feel and do. A moment of clear and

complete knowledge of what we think we are, but in fact are

not, puts a stop, for the moment, to the Manichean charade.

If we renew, until they become a continuity, these moments

of the knowledge of what we are not, we may find ourselves,

all of a sudden, knowing who in fact we are.

Concentration,

abstract

thinking,

spiritual

exercises-systematic exclusions in the realm of thought.

Asceticism and hedonism-systematic exclusions in the

realms of sensation, feeling and action. But Good Being is in

the knowledge of who in fact one is in relation to all

experiences. So be aware-aware in every context, at all times

and whatever, creditable or discreditable, pleasant or

unpleasant, you may be doing or suffering. This is the only

genuine yoga, the only spiritual exercise worth practicing.

The more a man knows about individual objects, the

more he knows about God. Translating Spinoza's language

into ours, we can say: The more a man knows about himself

in relation to every kind of experience, the greater his chance

of suddenly, one fine morning, realizing who in fact he is-or

rather Who (capital W) in Fact (capital F) "he" (between

quotation marks) Is (capital I).

St. John was right. In a blessedly speechless universe,

the Word was not only with God; it was God. As a

something to be believed in. God is a projected symbol, a

reified name. God = "God."

Faith is something very different from belief. Belief is

the systematic taking of unanalyzed words much too

seriously. Paul's words, Mohammed's words, Marx's words,

37

Hitler's words-people take them too seriously, and what

happens? What happens is the senseless ambivalence of

history-sadism versus duty, or (incomparably worse) sadism

as duty; devotion counterbalanced by organized paranoia;

sisters of charity selflessly tending the victims of their own

church's inquisitors and crusaders. Faith, on the contrary, can

never be taken too seriously. For Faith is the empirically

justified confidence in our capacity to know who in fact we

are, to forget the belief-intoxicated Manichee in Good Being.

Give us this day our daily Faith, but deliver us, dear God,

from Belief.

There was a tap at the door. Will looked up from his

book.

"Who's there?"

"It's me," said a voice that brought back unpleasant

memories of Colonel Dipa and that nightmarish drive in the

white Mercedes. Dressed only in white sandals, white shorts,

and a platinum wrist watch, Murugan was advancing towards

the bed.

"How nice of you to come and see me!"

Another visitor would have asked him how he was

feeling; but Murugan was too wholeheartedly concerned

with himself to be able even to simulate the slightest interest

in anyone else. "I came to the door three-quarters of an hour

ago," he said in tones of aggrieved complaint. "But the old

man hadn't left, so I had to go home again. And then I had to

sit with my mother and the man who's staying with us while

they were having their breakfast..."

"Why couldn't you come in while Dr. Robert was here?"

Will asked. "Is it against the rules for you to talk to me?"

The boy shook his head impatiently. "Of course not. I

just didn't want him to know the reason for my coming to see

you."

"The reason?" Will smiled. "Visiting the sick is an act

of charity-highly commendable."

His irony was lost upon Murugan, who went on steadily

thinking about his own affairs. "Thank you for not telling

them you'd seen me before," he said abruptly, almost angrily.

It was as though he resented having to acknowledge his

obligation and were furious with Will for having done him

the good turn which demanded this acknowledgment.

"I could see you didn't want me to say anything about

38

it," said Will. "So of course I didn't."

"I wanted to thank you," Murugan muttered between his

teeth and in a tone that would have been appropriate to "You

dirty swine!"

"Don't mention it," said Will with mock politeness.

What a delicious creature! he was thinking as he

looked, with amused curiosity, at that smooth golden torso,

that averted face, regular as a statue's but no longer

Olympian, no longer classical--a Hellenistic face, mobile and

all too human. A vessel of incomparable beauty-but what did

it contain? It was a pity, he reflected, that he hadn't asked

that question a little more seriously before getting involved

with his unspeakable Babs. But then Babs was a female. By

the sort of heterosexual he was, the sort of rational question

he was now posing was unaskable. As no doubt it would be,

by anyone susceptible to boys, in regard to this bad-blooded

little demigod sitting at the end of his bed.

"Didn't Dr. Robert know you'd gone to Rendang?" he

asked.

"Of course he knew. Everybody knew it. I'd gone there

to fetch my mother. She was staying there with some of her

relations. I went over to bring her back to Pala. It was

absolutely official."

"Then why didn't you want me to say that I'd met you

over there?"

Murugan hesitated for a moment, then looked up at Will

defiantly. "Because I didn't want them to know I'd been

seeing Colonel Dipa."

Oh, so that was it! "Colonel Dipa's a remarkable man,"

he said aloud, fishing with sugared bait for confidences.

Surprisingly unsuspicious, the fish rose at once.

Murugan's sulky face lit up with enthusiasm and there,

suddenly, was Anti-nous in all the fascinating beauty of his

ambiguous adolescence. "I think he's wonderful," he said,

and for the first time since he had entered the room he

seemed to recognize Will's existence and give him the

friendliest of smiles. The Colonel's wonderful-ness had made

him forget his resentment, had made it possible for him,

momentarily, to love everybody-even this man to whom he

owed a rankling debt of gratitude. "Look at what he's doing

for Rendang!"

"He's certainly doing a great deal for Rendang," said

39

Will noncommittally.

A cloud passed across Murugan's radiant face. "They

don't think so here," he said, frowning. "They think he's

awful."

"Who thinks so?"

"Practically everybody!" ;! "So they didn't want you to

see him?"

With the expression of an urchin who has cocked a

snook while the teacher's back is turned, Murugan grinned

triumphantly. "They thought I was with my mother all the

time."

Will picked up the cue at once. "Did your mother know

you were seeing the Colonel?" he asked."Of course." "And

had no objection?" "She was all for it."

And yet, Will felt quite sure, he hadn't been mistaken

when he thought of Hadrian and Antinous. Was the woman

blind? Or didn't she wish to see what was happening?

"But if she doesn't mind," he said aloud, "why should

Dr. Robert and the rest of them object?" Murugan looked at

him suspiciously. Realizing that he had ventured too far into

forbidden territory, Will hastily drew a red herring across the

trail. "Do they think," he asked with a laugh, "that he might

convert you to a belief in military dictatorship?"

The red herring was duly followed, and the boy's face

relaxed into a smile. "Not that, exactly," he answered, "but

something like it. It's all so stupid," he added with a shrug of

the shoulders. "Just idiotic protocol."

"Protocol?" Will was genuinely puzzled.

"Weren't you told anything about me?"

"Only what Dr. Robert said yesterday."

"You mean, about my being a student?" Murugan threw

back his head and laughed.

"What's so funny about being a student?"

"Nothing-nothing at all." The boy looked away again.

There was a silence. Still averted, "The reason," he said at

last, "why I'm not supposed to see Colonel Dipa is that he's

the head of a state and I'm the head of a state. When we

meet, it's international politics."

"What do you mean?"

"I happen to be the Raja of Pala."

"TheRajaofPala?"

"Since 'fifty-four. That was when my father died."

40

"And your mother, I take it, is the Rani?"

"My mother is the Rani."

Make a beelinefor the palace. But here was the palace

making a beeline for him. Providence, evidently, was on the

side of Joe Aldehyde and working overtime.

"Were you the eldest son?" he asked.

"The only son," Murugan replied. And then, stressing

his uniqueness still more emphatically, "The only child,'1'' he

added.

"So there's no possible doubt," said Will. "My

goodness! I ought to be calling you Your Majesty. Or at least

Sir." The words were spoken laughingly; but it was with the

most perfect seriousness and a sudden assumption of regal

dignity that Murugan responded to them.

"You'll have to call me that at the end of next week," he

said. "After my birthday. I shall be eighteen. That's when a

Raja of Pala comes of age. Till then I'm just Murugan

Mailendra. Just a student learning a little bit about

everything-including

plant

breeding,"

he

added

contemptuously-"so that, when the time comes, I shall know

what I'm doing."

"And when the time comes, what will you be doing?"

Between this pretty Antinous and his portentous office there

was a contrast which Will found richly comic. "How do you

propose to act?" he continued on a bantering note. "Off with

their heads? L'etat c'est moi?"

Seriousness and regal dignity hardened into rebuke.

"Don't be stupid."

Amused, Will went through the motions of apology. "I

just wanted to find out how absolute you were going to be."

"Pala is a constitutional monarchy," Murugan answered

gravely.

"In other words, you're just going to be a symbolic

figurehead-to reign, like the Queen of England, but not rule."

Forgetting his regal dignity, "No, no" Murugan almost

screamed. "Not like the Queen of England. The Raja of Pala

doesn't just reign; he rules." Too much agitated to sit still,

Murugan jumped up and began to walk about the room. "He

rules constitutionally; but, by God, he rules, he rules!"

Murugan walked to the window and looked out. Turning

back after a moment of silence, he confronted Will with a

face transfigured by its new expression into an emblem,

41

exquisitely molded and colored, of an all too familiar kind of

psychological ugliness. "I'll show them who's the boss

around here," he said in a phrase and tone which had

obviously been borrowed from the hero of some American

gangster movie. "These people think they can push me

around," he went on, reciting from the dismally common-

place script, "the way they pushed my father around. But

they're making a big mistake." He uttered a sinister snigger

and wagged his beautiful, odious head. "A big mistake," he

repeated.

The words had been spoken between clenched teeth and

with scarcely moving lips; the lower jaw had been thrust out

so as to look like the jaw of a comic strip criminal; the eyes

glared coldly between narrowed lids. At once absurd and

horrible. Antinous had become the caricature of all the tough

guys in all the B-pictures from time immemorial.

"Who's been running the country during your

minority?" he now asked.

"Three sets of old fogeys," Murugan answered

contemptuously. "The Cabinet, the House of Representatives

and then, representing me, the Raja, the Privy Council."

"Poor old fogeys!" said Will. "They'll soon be getting

the shock of their lives." Entering gaily into the spirit of

delinquency, he laughed aloud. "I only hope I'll still be

around to see it happening."

Murugan joined in the laughter-joined in it, not as the

sin-isterly mirthful Tough Guy, but with one of those sudden

changes of mood and expression that would make it, Will

foresaw, so hard for him to play the Tough Guy part, as the

triumphant urchin of a few minutes earlier. "The shock of

their lives," he repeated happily.

"Have you made any specific plans?"

"I most certainly have," said Murugan. On his mobile

face the triumphant urchin made way for the statesman,

grave but condescendingly affable, at a press conference.

"Top priority: get this place modernized. Look at what

Rendang has been able to do because of its oil royalties."

"But doesn't Pala get any oil royalties?" Will questioned

with that innocent air of total ignorance which he had found

by long experience to be the best way of eliciting

information from the simpleminded and the self-important.

"Not a penny," said Murugan. "And yet the southern

42

end of the island is fairly oozing with the stuff. But except

for a few measly little wells for home consumption, the old

fogeys won't do anything about it. And what's more, they

won't allow anyone else to do anything about it." The

statesman was growing angry; there were hints now in his

voice and expression of the Tough Guy. "All sorts of people

have made offers-Southeast Asia Petroleum, Shell, Royal

Dutch, Standard of California. But the bloody old fools won't

listen."

"Can't you persuade them to listen?"

"I'll damn well make them listen," said the Tough Guy.

"That's the spirit!" Then, casually, "Which of the offers

do you think of accepting?" he asked.

"Colonel Dipa's working with Standard of California,

and he thinks it might be best if we did the same."

"I wouldn't do that without at least getting a few

competing bids."

"That's what I think too. So does my mother."

"Very wise."

"My mother's all for Southeast Asia Petroleum. She

knows the Chairman of the Board, Lord Aldehyde."

"She knows Lord Aldehyde? But how extraordinary!"

The tone of delighted astonishment was thoroughly

convincing. "Joe Aldehyde is a friend of mine. I write for his

papers.

I

even

serve

s

his

private

ambassador.

Confidentially," he added, "that's why we took that trip to the

copper mines. Copper is one of Joe's sidelines. But of course

his real love is oil."

Murugan tried to look shrewd. "What would he be

prepared to offer?"

Will picked up the cue and answered, in the best movie

-tycoon style, "Whatever Standard offers plus a little more."

"Fair enough," said Murugan out of the same script, and

nodded sagely. There was a long silence. When he spoke

again, it was as the statesman granting an interview to

representatives of the press.

"The oil royalties," he said, "will be used in the

following manner: twenty-five percent of all moneys

received will go to World Reconstruction."

"May I ask," Will enquired deferentially, "precisely

how you propose to reconstruct the world?"

"Through the Crusade of the Spirit. Do you know about

43

the Crusade of the Spirit?"

"Of course. Who doesn't?"

"It's a great world movement," said the statesman

gravely. "Like Early Christianity. Founded by my mother."

Will registered awe and astonishment.

"Yes, founded by my mother," Murugan repeated, and

he added impressively, "I believe it's man's only hope."

"Quite," said Will Farnaby, "quite."

"Well, that's how the first twenty-five percent of the

royalties will be used," the statesman continued. "The

remainder will go into an intensive program of

industrialization." The tone changed again. "These old idiots

here only want to industrialize in spots and leave all the rest

as it was a thousand years ago."

"Whereas you'd like to go the whole hog.

Industrialization for industrialization's sake."

"No,

industrialization

for

the

country's

sake.

Industrialization to make Pala strong. To make other people

respect us. Look at Rendang. Within five years they'll be

manufacturing all the rifles and mortars and ammunition they

need. It'll be quite a long time before they can make tanks.

But meanwhile they can buy them from Skoda with their oil

money."

"How soon will they graduate to H-bombs?" Will asked

ironically.

"They won't even try," Murugan answered. "But after

all," he added, "H-bombs aren't the only absolute weapons."

He pronounced the phrase with relish. It was evident that he

found the taste of "absolute weapons" positively delicious.

"Chemical and biological weapons-Colonel Dipa calls them

the poor man's H-bombs. One of the first things I'll do is to

build a big insecticide plant." Murugan laughed and winked

an eye. "If you can make insecticides," he said, "you can

make nerve gas."

Will remembered that still unfinished factory in the

suburbs of Rendang-Lobo.

"What's that?" he had asked Colonel Dipa as they

flashed past it in the white Mercedes.

"Insecticides," the Colonel had answered. And showing

his gleaming white teeth in a genial smile, "We shall soon be

exporting the stuff all over Southeast Asia."

At the time, of course, he had thought that the Colonel

44

merely meant what he said. But now . . . Will shrugged his

mental shoulders. Colonels will be colonels and boys, even

boys like Murugan, will be gun-loving boys. There would

always be plenty of jobs for special correspondents on the

trail of death.

"So you'll strengthen Pala's army?" Will said aloud.

"Strengthen it? No-I'll create it. Pala doesn't have an

army."

"None at all?"

"Absolutely nothing. They're all pacifists." The p was

an explosion of disgust, the s's hissed contemptuously. "I

shall have to start from scratch."

"And you'll militarize as you industrialize, is that it?"

"Exactly."

Will laughed. "Back to the Assyrians! You'll go down

in history as a true revolutionary."

"That's what I hope," said Murugan. "Because that's

what my policy is going to be-Continuing Revolution."

"Very good!" Will applauded.

"I'll just be continuing the revolution that was started

more than a hundred years ago by Dr. Robert's

great-grandfather when he came to Pala and helped my

great-great-grandfather to put through the first reforms.

Some of the things they did were really wonderful. Not all of

them, mind you," he qualified; and with the absurd solemnity

of a schoolboy playing Polonius in an end-of-term

performance of Hamlet he shook his curly head in grave,

judicial disapproval. "But at least they did something.

Whereas nowadays we're governed by a set of do-nothing

conservatives. Conservatively primitive-they won't lift a

finger to bring in modern improvements. And conservatively

radical- they refuse to change any of the old bad

revolutionary ideas that ought to be changed. They won't

reform the reforms. And I tell you, some of those so-called

reforms are absolutely disgusting."

"Meaning, I take it, that they have something to do with

sex?"

Murugan nodded and turned away his face. To his

astonishment, Will saw that he was blushing.

"Give me an example," he demanded.

But Murugan could not bring himself to be explicit.

"Ask Dr. Robert," he said, "ask Vijaya. They think that

45

sort of thing is simply wonderful. In fact they all do. That's

one of the reasons why nobody wants to change. They'd like

everything to go on as it is, in the same old disgusting way,

forever and ever."

"Forever and ever," a rich contralto voice teasingly

repeated.

"Mother!" Murugan sprang to his feet.

Will turned and saw in the doorway a large florid

woman swathed (rather incongruously, he thought; for that

kind of face and build usually went with mauve and magenta

and electric blue) in clouds of white muslin. She stood there

smiling with a conscious mysteriousness, one fleshy brown

arm upraised, with its jeweled hand pressed against the

doorjamb, in the pose of the great actress, the acknowledged

diva, pausing at her first entrance to accept the plaudits of

her adorers on the other side of the footlights. In the

background, waiting patiently for his cue, stood a tall man in

a dove-gray Dacron suit whom Murugan, peering past the

massive embodiment of maternity that almost filled the

doorway, now greeted as Mr. Bahu.

Still in the wings, Mr. Bahu bowed without speaking.

Murugan turned again to his mother. "Did you walk

here?" he asked. His tone expressed incredulity and an

admiring solicitude. Walking here-how unthinkable! But if

she had walked, what heroism! "All the way?"

"All the way, my baby," she echoed, tenderly playful.

The uplifted arm came down, slid round the boy's slender

body, pressed it, engulfed in floating draperies, against the

enormous bosom, then released it again. "I had one of my

Impulses." She had a way, Will noticed, of making you

actually hear the capital letters at the beginning of the words

she meant to emphasize. "My Little Voice said, 'Go and see

this Stranger at Dr. Robert's house. Go!' 'Now?' I said.

''Malgre la chaleur? Which makes my Little Voice lose

patience. 'Woman,' it says, 'hold your silly tongue and do as

you're told.' So here I am, Mr. Farnaby." With hand

outstretched and surrounded by a powerful aura of

sandal-wood oil, she advanced towards him.

Will bowed over the thick bejeweled ringers and

mumbled something that ended in "Your Highness."

"Bahu!" she called, using the royal prerogative of the

unadorned surname.

46

Responding to his long-awaited cue, the supporting

actor made his entrance and was introduced as His

Excellency, Abdul Bahu, the Ambassador of Rendang:

"Abdul Pierre Bahu-car sa mere est parisienne. But he

learned his English in New York."

He looked, Will thought as he shook the Ambassador's

hand, like Savonarola-but a Savonarola with a monocle and a

tailor in Savile Row.

"Bahu," said the Rani, "is Colonel Dipa's Brains Trust."

"Your Highness, if I may be permitted to say so, is

much too kind to me and not nearly kind enough to the

Colonel."

His words and manner were courtly to the point of

being ironical, a parody of deference and self-abasement.

"The brains," he went on, "are where brains ought to

be-in the head. As for me, I am merely a part of Rendang's

sympathetic nervous system."

"Et combien sympathique!" said the Rani. "Among

other things, Mr. Farnaby, Bahu is the Last of the

Aristocrats. You should see his country place! Like The

Arabian Nights! One claps one's hands-and instantly there

are six servants ready to do one's bidding. One has a

birthday-and there is a fete nocturne in the gardens. Music,

refreshments, dancing girls; two hundred retainers carrying

torches. The life of Harun al-Rashid, but with modern

plumbing."

"It sounds quite delightful," said Will, remembering the

villages through which he had passed in Colonel Dipa's

white Mercedes-the wattled huts, the garbage, the children

with ophthalmia, the skeleton dogs, the women bent double

under enormous loads.

"And such taste," the Rani went on, "such a well-stored

mind and, through it all" (she lowered her voice) "such a

deep and unfailing Sense of the Divine."

Mr. Bahu bowed his head, and there was a silence.

Murugan, meanwhile, had pushed up a chair. Without

so much as a backward glance-regally confident that

someone must always, in the very nature of things, be at

hand to guard against mishaps and loss of dignity-the Rani

sat down with all the majestic emphasis of her hundred

kilograms.

"I hope you don't feel that my visit is an intrusion," she

47

said to Will. He assured her that he didn't; but she continued

to apologize. "I would have given warning," she said, "I

would have asked your permission. But my Little Voice

says, 'No-you must go now.' Why? I cannot say. But no

doubt we shall find out in due course." She fixed him with

her large, bulging eyes and gave him a mysterious smile.

"And now, first of all, how are you, dear Mr. Farnaby?"

"As you see, ma'am, in very good shape."

"Truly?" The bulging eyes scrutinized his face with an

intent-ness that he found embarrassing. "I can see that you're

the kind of heroically considerate man who will go on

reassuring his friends even on his deathbed."

"You're very flattering," he said. "But as it happens, I

am

in

good

shape.

Amazingly

so,

all

things

considered-miraculously so."

"Miraculous," said the Rani, "was the very word I used

when I heard about your escape. It was a miracle."

" 'As luck would have it,' " Will quoted again from

Erewhon, " 'Providence was on my side.' "

Mr. Bahu started to laugh; but noticing that the Rani

had evidently failed to get the point, changed his mind and

adroitly turned the sound of merriment into a loud cough.

"How true!" the Rani was saying, and her rich contralto

thrillingly vibrated. "Providence is always on our side." And

when Will raised a questioning eyebrow, "I mean," she

elaborated, "in the eyes of those who Truly Understand"

(capital T, capital U). "And this is true even when all things

seem to conspire against us-meme dans le desastre. You

understand French, of course, Mr. Farnaby?" Will nodded.

"It often comes to me more easily than my own native

tongue, or English or Palanese. After so many years in

Switzerland," she explained, "first at school. And again, later

on, when my poor baby's health was so precarious" (she

patted Murugan's bare arm) "and we had to go and live in the

mountains. Which illustrates what I was saying about

Providence always being on our side. When they told me that

my little boy was on the brink of consumption, I forgot

everything I'd ever learnt. I was mad with fear and anguish, I

was indignant against God for having allowed such a thing to

happen. What Utter Blindness! My baby got well, and those

years among the Eternal Snows were the happiest of our

lives- weren't they, darling?"

48

"The happiest of our lives," the boy agreed, with what

almost sounded like complete sincerity.

The Rani smiled triumphantly, pouted her full red lips,

and with a faint smack parted them again in a long-distance

kiss. "So you see, my dear Farnaby," she went on, "you see.

It's really self-evident. Nothing happens by Accident. There's

a Great Plan, and within the Great Plan innumerable little

plans. A little plan for each and every one of us."

"Quite," said Will politely. "Quite."

"There was a time," the Rani continued, "when I knew

it only with my intellect. Now I know it with my heart. I

really ..." she paused for an instant to prepare for the

utterance of the mystic majuscule, "Understand."

"Psychic as hell." Will remembered what Joe Aldehyde

had said of her. And surely that lifelong frequenter of

seances should know.

"I take it, ma'am," he said, "that you're naturally

psychic."

"From birth," she admitted. "But also and above all by

training. Training, needless to say, in Something Else."

"Something else?"

"In the life of the Spirit. As one advances along the

Path, all the sidhis, all the psychic gifts and miraculous

powers, develop spontaneously."

"Is that so?"

"My mother," Murugan proudly assured him, "can do

the most fantastic things."

"N'exagerons pas, cheri."

"But it's the truth," Murugan insisted.

"A truth," the Ambassador put in, "which I can confirm.

And I confirm it," he added, smiling at his own expense,

"with a certain reluctance. As a lifelong skeptic about these

things, I don't like to see the impossible happening. But I

have an unfortunate weakness for honesty. And when the

impossible actually does happen, before my eyes, I'm

compelled malgre moi to bear witness to the fact. Her

Highness does do the most fantastic things."

"Well, if you like to put it that way," said the Rani,

beaming with pleasure. "But never forget, Bahu, never

forget. Miracles are of absolutely no importance. What's

important is the Other Thing-the Thing one comes to at the

end of the Path."

49

"After the Fourth Initiation," Murugan specified. "My

mother ..."

"Darling!" The Rani had raised a finger to her lips.

"These are things one doesn't talk about."

"I'm sorry," said the boy. There was a long and pregnant

silence.

The Rani closed her eyes, and Mr. Bahu, letting fall his

monocle, reverentially followed suit and became the image

of Savonarola in silent prayer. What was going on behind

that austere, that almost fleshless mask of recollectedness?

Will looked and wondered.

"May I ask," he said at last, "how you first came,

ma'am, to find the Path?"

For a second or two the Rani said nothing, merely sat

there with her eyes shut, smiling her Buddha smile of

mysterious bliss. "Providence found it for me," she answered

at last.

"Quite, quite. But there must have been an occasion, a

place, a human instrument."

"I'll tell you." The lids fluttered apart and once again he

found himself under the bright unswerving glare of those

protu-! berant eyes of hers.

The place had been Lausanne; the time, the first year of

her Swiss education; the chosen instrument, darling little

Mme Buloz. Darling little Mme Buloz was the wife of

darling old Professor Buloz, and old Professor Buloz was the

man to whose charge, after careful enquiry and much

anxious thought, she had been committed by her father, the

late Sultan of Rendang. The Professor was sixty-seven,

taught geology and was a Protestant of so austere a sect that,

except for drinking a glass of claret with his dinner, saying

his prayers only twice a day, and being strictly monogamous,

he might almost have been a Muslim. Under such

guardianship a princess of Rendang would be intellectually

stimulated, while remaining morally and doctrinally intact.

But the Sultan had reckoned without the Professor's wife.

Mme Buloz was only forty, plump, sentimental, bubblingly

enthusiastic and, though officially of her husband's

Protestant persuasion, a newly converted and intensely

ardent Theosophist. In a room at the top of the tall house

near the Place de la Riponne she had her Oratory, to which,

whenever she could find time, she would secretly retire to do

50

breathing exercises, practice concentration, and raise

Kundalini. Strenuous disciplines! But the reward was

transcendentally great. In the small hours of a hot summer

night, while the darling old Professor lay rhythmically

snoring two floors down, she had become aware of a

Presence: the Master Koot Hoomi was with her.

The Rani made an impressive pause. "Extraordinary,"

said Mr. Bahu. "Extraordinary," Will dutifully echoed. The

Rani resumed her narrative. Irrepressibly happy, Mme Buloz

had been unable to keep her secret. She had dropped mys-

terious hints, had passed from hints to confidences, from

confidences to an invitation to the Oratory and a course of

instruction. In a very short time Koot Hoomi was bestowing

greater favors upon the novice than upon her teacher.

"And from that day to this," she concluded, "the Master

has helped me to Go Forward."

To go forward, Will asked himself, into what? Koot

Hoomi only knew. But whatever it was that she had gone

forward into, he didn't like it. There was an expression on

that large florid face which he found peculiarly distasteful-an

expression of domineering calm, of serene and unshakable

self-esteem. She reminded him in a curious way of Joe

Aldehyde. Joe was one of those happy tycoons who feel no

qualms, but rejoice without inhibition in their money and in

all that their money will buy in the way of influence and

power. And here-albeit clothed in white muslin, mystic,

wonderful-was another of Joe Aldehyde's breed: a female

tycoon who had cornered the market, not in soya beans or

copper, but in Pure Spirituality and the Ascended Masters,

and was now happily rubbing her hands over the exploit.

"Here's one example of what He's done for me," the

Rani went on. "Eight years ago-to be exact, on the

twenty-third of November, 1952-the Master came to me in

my morning Meditation. Came in Person, came in Glory. 'A

great Crusade is to be launched,' He said, 'a World

Movement to save Humanity from self-destruction. And you,

my child, are the Appointed Instrument.' 'Me? A World

Movement? But that's absurd,' I said. 'I've never made a

speech in my whole life. I've never written a word for

publication. I've never been a leader or an organizer.' 'Nev-

ertheless,' He said (and He gave one of these indescribably

beautiful smiles of His), 'nevertheless it is you who will

51

launch this Crusade-the World-Wide Crusade of the Spirit.

You will be laughed at, you will be called a fool, a crank, a

fanatic. The dogs bark; the Caravan passes. From tiny,

laughable beginnings the Crusade of the Spirit is destined to

become a Mighty Force. A force for Good, a force that will

ultimately Save the World.' And with that He left me. Left

me stunned, bewildered, scared out of my wits. But there

was nothing for it; I had to obey. I did obey. And what

happened? I made speeches, and He gave me eloquence. I

accepted the burden of leadership and, because He was

walking invisibly at my side, people followed me. I asked for

help, and the money came pouring in. So here I am." She

threw out her thick hands in a gesture of self-depreciation,

she smiled a mystic smile. A poor thing, she seemed to be

saying, but not my own-my Master's, Koot Hoomi's. "Here I

am," she repeated. "Here, praise God," said Mr. Bahu

devoutly, "you are." After a decent interval Will asked the

Rani if she had always kept up the practices so providentially

learned in Mme Buloz's Oratory.

"Always," she answered. "I could no more do without

Meditation than I could do without Food."

"Wasn't it rather difficult after you were married? I

mean, before you went back to Switzerland. There must have

been so many tiresome official duties."

"Not to mention all the unofficial ones," said the Rani in

a tone that implied whole volumes of unfavorable comment

upon her late husband's character, Weltanschauung and

sexual habits. She opened her mouth to elaborate on the

theme, then closed it again and looked at Murugan.

"Darling," she called.

Murugan, who was absorbedly polishing the nails of his

left hand upon the open palm of his right, looked up with a

guilty start. "Yes, Mother?"

Ignoring the nails and his evident inattention to what

she had been saying, the Rani gave him a seducing smile.

"Be an angel," she said, "and go and fetch the car. My Little

Voice doesn't say anything about walking back to the

bungalow. It's only a few hundred yards," she explained to

Will. "But in this heat, and at my age . . ."

Her words called for some kind of flattering rebuttal.

But if it was too hot to walk, it was also too hot, Will felt, to

put forth the very considerable amount of energy required for

52

a convincing show of bogus sincerity. Fortunately a

professional diplomat, a practiced courtier was on hand to

make up for the uncouth journalist's deficiencies. Mr. Bahu

uttered a peal of lighthearted laughter, then apologized for

his merriment.

"But it was really too funny! 'At my age,' " he repeated,

and laughed again. "Murugan is not quite eighteen, and I

happen to know how old-how very young-the Princess of

Rendang was when she married the Raja of Pala."

Murugan, meanwhile, had obediently risen and was

kissing his mother's hand.

"Now we can talk more freely," said the Rani when he

had left the room. And freely-her face, her tone, her bulging

eyes, her whole quivering frame registering the most intense

disapproval- she now let fly. De mortuis. . . She wouldn't say

anything about her husband except that he was a typical

Palanese, a true representative of his country. For the sad

truth was that Pala's smooth bright skin concealed the most

horrible rottenness.

"When I think what they tried to do to my Baby, two

years ago, when I was on my world tour for the Crusade of

the Spirit." With a jingling of bracelets she lifted her hands

in horror. "It was an agony for me to be parted from him for

so long; but the Master had sent me on a Mission, and my

Little Voice told me that it wouldn't be right for me to take

my Baby with me. He'd lived abroad for so long. It was high

time for him to get to know the country he was to rule. So I

decided to leave him here. The Privy Council appointed a

committee of guardianship. Two women with growing boys

of their own and two men-one of whom, I regret to say"

(more in sorrow than in anger), "was Dr. Robert MacPhail.

Well, to cut a long story short, no sooner was I safely out of

the country than those precious guardians, to whom I'd

entrusted my Baby, my Only Son, set to work

systematically- systematically, Mr. Farnaby-to undermine

my influence. They tried to destroy the whole edifice of

Moral and Spiritual Values which I had so laboriously built

up over the years."

Somewhat maliciously (for of course he knew what the

woman was talking about), Will expressed his astonishment.

The whole edifice of moral and spiritual values? And yet

nobody could have been kinder than Dr. Robert and the

53

others, no Good Samaritans were ever more simply and

effectively charitable.

"I'm not denying their kindness," said the Rani. "But

after all kindness isn't the only virtue."

"Of course not," Will agreed, and he listed all the

qualities that the Rani seemed most conspicuously to lack.

"There's also sincerity. Not to mention truthfulness, humility,

selflessness . . ."

"You're forgetting Purity," said the Rani severely.

"Purity is fundamental, Purity is the sine qua, non."

"But here in Pala, I gather, they don't think so."

"They most certainly do not," said the Rani. And she

went on to tell him how her poor Baby had been deliberately

exposed to impurity, even actively encouraged to indulge in

it with one of those precocious, promiscuous girls of whom,

in Pala, there were only too many. And when they found that

he wasn't the sort of boy who would seduce a girl (for she

had brought him up to think of Woman as essentially Holy),

they had encouraged the girl to do her best to seduce him.

Had she, Will wondered, succeeded? Or had Antinoiis

already been girlproofed by little friends of his own age or,

still more effectively, by some older, more experienced and

authoritative pederast, some Swiss precursor of Colonel

Dipa?

"But that wasn't the worst." The Rani lowered her voice

to a horrified stage whisper. "One of the mothers on the

committee of guardianship-one of the mothers, mind

you-advised him to take a course of lessons."

"What sort of lessons?"

"In what they euphemistically call Love." She wrinkled

up her nose as though she had smelt raw sewage. "Lessons, if

you please," and disgust turned into indignation, "from some

Older Woman."

"Heavens!" cried the Ambassador.

"Heavens!" Will dutifully echoed. Those older women,

he could see, were competitors much more dangerous, in the

Rani's eyes, than even the most precociously promiscuous of

girls. A mature instructress in love would be a rival mother,

enjoying the monstrously unfair advantage of being free to

go the limits of incest.

"They teach ..." The Rani hesitated. "They teach Special

Techniques."

54

"What sort of techniques?" Will enquired. But she

couldn't bring herself to go into the repulsive particulars.

And anyhow it wasn't necessary, for Murugan (bless his

heart!) had refused to listen to them. Lessons in immorality

from someone old enough to be his mother-the very idea of it

had made him sick. No wonder. He had been brought up to

reverence the Ideal of Purity. "Brahmacharya, if you know

what that means."

"Quite," said Will.

"And this is another reason why his illness was such a

blessing in disguise, such a real godsend. I don't think I could

have brought him up that way in Pala. There are too many

bad influences here. Forces working against Purity, against

the Family, even against Mother Love."

Will pricked up his ears. "Did they even reform

mothers?" She nodded. "You just can't imagine how far

things have gone here. But Koot Hoomi knew what kind of

dangers we would have to run in Pala. So what happens? My

Baby falls ill, and the doctors order us to Switzerland. Out of

harm's way."

"How was it," Will asked, "that Koot Hoomi let you go

off on your Crusade? Didn't he foresee what would happen

to Murugan as soon as your back was turned?"

"He foresaw everything," said the Rani. "The

temptations, the resistance, the massed assault by all the

Powers of Evil and then, at the very last moment, the rescue.

For a long time," she explained, "Murugan didn't tell me

what was happening. But after three months the assaults of

the Powers of Evil were too much for him. He dropped hints;

but I was too completely absorbed in my Master's business to

be able to take them. Finally he wrote me a letter in which it

was all spelled out-in detail. I canceled my last four lectures

in Brazil and flew home as fast as the jets would carry me. A

week later we were back in Switzerland. Just my Baby and

I-alone with the Master."

She closed her eyes, and an expression of gloating

ecstasy appeared upon her face. Will looked away in distaste.

This self-canonized world-savior, this clutching and

devouring mother- had she ever, for a single moment, seen

herself as others saw her? Did she have any idea of what she

had done, what she was still doing, to her poor silly little

son? To the first question the answer was certainly no. About

55

the second one could only speculate. Perhaps she honestly

didn't know what she had made of the boy. But perhaps, on

the other hand, she did know. Knew and preferred what was

happening with the Colonel to what might happen if the

boy's education were taken in hand by a woman. The woman

might supplant her; the Colonel, she knew, would not.

"Murugan told me that he intended to reform these

so-called reforms."

"I can only pray," said the Rani in a tone that reminded

Will of his grandfather, the Archdeacon, "that he'll be given

the Strength and Wisdom to do it."

"And what do you think of his other projects?" Will

asked. "Oil? Industries? An army?"

"Economics and politics aren't exactly my strong point,"

she answered with a little laugh which was meant to remind

him that he was talking to someone who had taken the

Fourth Initiation. "Ask Bahu what he thinks."

"I have no right to offer an opinion," said the

Ambassador. "I'm an outsider, the representative of a foreign

power."

"Not so very foreign," said the Rani.

"Not in your eyes, ma'am. And not, as you know very

well, in mine. But in the eyes of the Palanese

government-yes. Completely foreign."

"But that," said Will, "doesn't prevent you from having

opinions. It only prevents you from having the locally

orthodox opinions. And incidentally," he added, "I'm not

here in my professional capacity. You're not being

interviewed, Mr. Ambassador. All this is strictly off the

record."

"Strictly off the record, then, and strictly as myself and

not as an official personage, I believe that our young friend is

perfectly right."

"Which implies, of course, that you believe the policy

of the Palanese government to be perfectly wrong."

"Perfectly wrong," said Mr. Bahu-and the bony,

emphatic mask of Savonarola positively twinkled with his

Voltairean smile-"perfectly wrong because all too perfectly

right."

"Right?" the Rani protested. "Right?"

"Perfectly right," he explained, "because so perfectly

designed to make every man, woman, and child on this

56

enchanting island as perfectly free and happy as it's possible

to be."

"But with a False Happiness," the Rani cried, "a

freedom that's only for the Lower Self."

"I bow," said the Ambassador, duly bowing, "to Your

High-ness's superior insight. But still, high or low, true or

false, happiness is happiness and freedom is most enjoyable.

And there can be no doubt that the politics inaugurated by

the original Reformers and developed over the years have

been admirably well adapted to achieving these two goals."

"But you feel," said Will, "that these are undesirable

goals?"

"On the contrary, everybody desires them. But unfortu-

nately they're out of context, they've become completely

irrelevant to the present situation of the world in general and

Pala in particular."

"Are they more irrelevant now than they were when the

Reformers first started to work for happiness and freedom?"

The Ambassador nodded. "In those days Pala was still

completely off the map. The idea of turning it into an oasis

of freedom and happiness made sense. So long as it remains

out of touch with the rest of the world, an ideal society can

be a viable society. Pala was completely viable, I'd say, until

about 1905. Then, in less than a single generation, the world

completely changed. Movies, cars, airplanes, radio. Mass

production, mass slaughter, mass communication and, above

all, plain mass- more and more people in bigger and bigger

slums or suburbs. By 1930 any clear-sighted observer could

have seen that, for three quarters of the human race, freedom

and happiness were almost out of the question. Today, thirty

years later, they're completely out of the question. And

meanwhile the outside world has been closing in on this little

island of freedom and happiness. Closing in steadily and

inexorably, coming nearer and nearer. What was once a

viable ideal is now no longer viable."

"So Pala will have to be changed-is that your

conclusion?"

Mr. Bahu nodded. "Radically."

"Root and branch," said the Rani with a prophet's

sadistic

gusto.

"And for two cogent reasons," Mr. Bahu went on.

57

"First, because it simply isn't possible for Pala to go on being

different from the rest of the world. And, second, because it

isn't right that it should be different."

"Not right for people to be free and happy?"

Once again the Rani said something inspirational about

false happiness and the wrong kind of freedom.

Mr. Bahu deferentially acknowledged her interruption,

then

turned

back

to

Will.

.,,

"Not right," he insisted. "Flaunting your blessedness in

the face of so much misery-it's sheer hubris, it's a deliberate

affront to the rest of humanity. It's even a kind of affront to

God."

"God," the Rani murmured voluptuously, "God . . ."

Then, reopening her eyes, "These people in Pala," she added,

"they don't believe in God. They only believe in Hypnotism

and Pantheism and Free Love." She emphasized the words

with indignant disgust.

"So now," said Will, "you're proposing to make them

miserable in the hope that this will restore their faith in God.

Well, that's one way of producing a conversion. Maybe it'll

work. And maybe the end will justify the means." He

shrugged his shoulders. "But I do see," he added, "that, good

or bad, and regardless of what the Palanese may feel about it,

this thing is going to happen. One doesn't have to be much of

a prophet to foretell that Murugan is going to succeed. He's

riding the wave of the future. And the wave of the future is

undoubtedly a wave of crude petroleum. Talking of crudity

and petroleum," he added, turning to the Rani, "I understand

that you're acquainted with my old friend, Joe Aldehyde."

"You know Lord Aldehyde?" "Well."

"So that's why my Little Voice was so insistent!"

Closing her eyes again, she smiled to herself and slowly

nodded her head. "Now I Understand." Then, in another

tone, "How is that dear man?" she asked.

"Still characteristically himself," Will assured her. "And

what a rare self! L'homme au cerf-volant-that's what I call

him."

"The man with the kite?" Will was puzzled. "He does

his work down here," she explained; "but he holds a string in

his hand, and at the other end of the string is a kite, and the

kite is forever trying to go higher, higher, Higher. Even

58

while he's at work, he feels the constant Pull from Above,

feels the Spirit tugging insistently at the flesh. Think of it! A

man of affairs, a great Captain of Industry-and yet, for him,

the only thing that Really Matters is the Immortality of the

Soul."

Light dawned. The woman had been talking about Joe

Alde-hyde's addiction to spiritualism. He thought of those

weekly seances with Mrs. Harbottle, the automatist; with

Mrs. Pym, whose control was a Kiowa Indian called Bawbo;

with Miss Tuke and her floating trumpet out of which a

squeaky whisper uttered oracular words that were taken

down in shorthand by Joe's private secretary: "Buy

Australian cement; don't be alarmed by the fall in Breakfast

Foods; unload forty percent of your rubber shares and invest

the money in IBM and Westinghouse ..."

"Did he ever tell you," Will asked, "about that departed

stockbroker who always knew what the market was going to

do next week?"

"Sidhis," said the Rani indulgently. "Just sidhis. What

else can you expect? After all, he's only a Beginner. And in

this present life business is his karma. He was predestined to

do what he's done, what he's doing, what he's going to do.

And what he's going to do," she added impressively and

paused in a listening pose, her finger lifted, her head cocked,

"what he's going to do-that's what my Little Voice is

saying-includes some great and wonderful things here in

Pala."

What a spiritual way of saying, This is what I want to

happen! Not as I will but as God wills-and by a happy

coincidence God's will and mine are always identical. Will

chuckled inwardly, but kept the straightest of faces.

"Does your Little Voice say anything about Southeast

Asia Petroleum?" he asked.

The Rani listened again, then nodded. "Distinctly."

"But Colonel Dipa, I gather, doesn't say anything but

'Standard of California.' Incidentally," Will went on, "why

does Pala have to worry about the Colonel's taste in oil

companies?"

"My government," said Mr. Bahu sonorously, "is

thinking in terms of a Five-Year Plan for Interisland

Economic Co-ordina tion and Co-operation."

"Does Interisland Co-ordination and Co-operation mean

59

that Standard has to be granted a monopoly?"

"Only if Standard's terms were more advantageous than

those of its competitors."

"In other words," said the Rani, "only if there's nobody

who will pay us more."

"Before you came," Will told her, "I was discussing this

subject with Murugan. Southeast Asia Petroleum, I said, will

give Pala whatever Standard gives Rendang plus a little

more."

"Fifteen percent more?"

"Let's say ten."

"Make it twelve and a half."

Will looked at her admiringly. For someone who had

taken the Fourth Initiation she was doing pretty well.

"Joe Aldehyde will scream with agony," he said. "But in

the end, I feel certain, you'll get your twelve and a half."

"It would certainly be a most attractive proposition,"

said Mr. Bahu.

"The only trouble is that the Palanese government won't

accept it."

"The Palanese government," said the Rani, "will soon

be changing its policy."

"You think so?"

"I KNOW it," the Rani answered in a tone that made it

quite clear that the information had come straight from the

Master's mouth.

"When the change of policy comes, would it help," Will

asked, "if Colonel Dipa were to put in a good word for

Southeast Asia Petroleum?"

"Undoubtedly."

Will turned to Mr. Bahu. "And would you be prepared,

Mr. Ambassador, to put in a good word with Colonel Dipa?"

In polysyllables, as though he were addressing a plenary

session of some international organization, Mr. Bahu hedged

diplomatically. On the one hand, yes; but on the other hand,

no. From one point of view, white; but from a different

angle, distinctly black.

Will listened in polite silence. Behind the mask of

Savonarola, behind the aristocratic monocle, behind the

ambassadorial verbiage he could see and hear the Levantine

broker in quest of his commission, the petty official cadging

for a gratuity. And for her enthusiastic sponsorship of

60

Southeast Asia Petroleum, how much had the royal initiate

been promised? Something, he was prepared to bet, pretty

substantial. Not for herself, of course, no no! For the Crusade

of the Spirit, needless to say, for the greater glory of Koot

Hoomi.

Mr. Bahu had reached the peroration of his speech to

the international organization. "It must therefore be

understood," he was saying, "that any positive action on my

part must remain contingent upon circumstances as, when,

and if these circumstances arise. Do I make myself clear?"

"Perfectly," Will assured him. "And now," he went on

with deliberately indecent frankness, "let me explain my

position in this matter. All I'm interested in is money. Two

thousand pounds without having to do a hand's turn of work.

A year of freedom just for helping Joe Aldehyde to get his

hands on Pala."

"Lord Aldehyde," said the Rani, "is remarkably

generous."

"Remarkably," Will agreed, "considering how little I

can do in this matter. Needless to say, he'd be still more

generous to anyone who could be of greater help."

There was a long silence. In the distance a mynah bird

was calling monotonously for attention. Attention to avarice,

attention to hypocrisy, attention to vulgar cynicism . . . There

was a knock at the door.

"Come in," Will called out and, turning to Mr. Bahu,

"Let's continue this conversation some other time," he said.

Mr. Bahu nodded.

"Come in," Will repeated.

Dressed in a blue skirt and a short buttonless jacket that

left her midriff bare and only sometimes covered a pair of

apple-round breasts, a girl in her late teens walked briskly

into the room. On her smooth brown face a smile of

friendliest greeting was punctuated at either end by dimples.

"I'm Nurse Appu," she began. "Radhu Appu." Then, catching

sight of Will's visitors, she broke off. "Oh, excuse me, I

didn't know ..."

She made a perfunctory knicks to the Rani.

Mr. Bahu, meanwhile, had courteously risen to his feet.

"Nurse Appu," he cried enthusiastically. "My little

ministering angel from the Shivapuram hospital. What a

delightful surprise!"

61

For the girl, it was evident to Will, the surprise was far

from delightful.

"How do you do, Mr. Bahu," she said without a smile

and, quickly turning away, started to busy herself with the

straps of the canvas bag she was carrying.

"Your Highness has probably forgotten," said Mr.

Bahu; "but I had to have an operation last summer. For

hernia," he specified. "Well, this young lady used to come

and wash me every morning. Punctually at eight-forty-five.

And now, after having vanished for all these months, here

she is again!"

"Synchronicity," said the Rani oracularly. "It's all part

of the Plan."

"I'm supposed to give Mr. Farnaby an injection," said

the little nurse, looking up, still unsmiling, from her

professional bag.

"Doctor's orders are doctor's orders," cried the Rani,

overacting the role of royal personage deigning to be

playfully gracious. "To hear is to obey. But where's my

chauffeur?"

"Your chauffeur's here," called a familiar voice.

Beautiful as a vision of Ganymede, Murugan was

standing in the doorway. A look of amusement appeared on

the little nurse's face.

"Hullo, Murugan-I mean, Your Highness." She bobbed

another curtsy, which he was free to take as a mark of

respect or of ironic mockery.

"Oh, hullo, Radha," said the boy in a tone that was

meant to be distantly casual. He walked past her to where his

mother was sitting. "The car," he said, "is at the door. Or

rather the so-called car." With a sarcastic laugh, "It's a Baby

Austin, 1954 vintage," he explained to Will. "The best that

this highly civilized country can provide for its royal family.

Rendang gives its ambassador a Bentley," he added bitterly.

"Which will be calling for me at this address in about

ten minutes," said Mr. Bahu, looking at his watch. "So may I

be permitted to take leave of you here, Your Highness?"

The Rani extended her hand. With all the piety of a

good Catholic kissing a cardinal's ring, he bent over it; then,

straightening himself up, he turned to Will.

"I'm assuming-perhaps unjustifiably-that Mr. Farnaby

can put up with me for a little longer. May I stay?"

62

Will assured the Ambassador that he would be

delighted.

"And I hope," said Mr. Bahu to the little nurse, "that

there will be no objections on medical grounds?"

"Not on medical grounds," said the girl in a tone that

implied the existence of the most cogent nonmedical

objections.

Assisted by Murugan, the Rani hoisted herself out of

her chair. uAu revoir, mon cher Farnaby," she said as she

gave him her jeweled hand. Her smile was charged with a

sweetness that Will found positively menacing.

"Good-bye, ma'am."

She turned, patted the little nurse's cheek, and sailed out

of the room. Like a pinnace in the wake of a full-rigged ship

of the line, Murugan trailed after her.

63

6

"Golly!" the little nurse exploded, when the door was

safely closed behind them.

"I entirely agree with you," said Will.

The Voltairean light twinkled for a moment on Mr.

Bahu's evangelical face. "Golly," he repeated. "It was what I

heard an English schoolboy saying when he first saw the

Great Pyramid. The Rani makes the same kind of

impression. Monumental. She's what the Germans call eine

grosse Seek." The twinkle had faded, the face was

unequivocally Savonarola's, the words, it was obvious, were

for publication.

The little nurse suddenly started to laugh.

"What's so funny?" Will asked.

"I suddenly saw the Great Pyramid all dressed up in

white muslin," she gasped. "Dr. Robert calls it the mystic's

uniform."

"Witty, very witty!" said Mr. Bahu. "And yet," he added

diplomatically, "I don't know why mystics shouldn't wear

uniforms, if they feel like it."

The little nurse drew a deep breath, wiped the tears of

merriment from her eyes, and began to make her

preparations for giving the patient his injection "I know

exactly what you're thinking," she said to Will. "You're

thinking I'm much too young to do a good job."

"I certainly think you're very young."

"You people go to a university at eighteen and stay

there for four years. We start at sixteen and go on with our

education till we're twenty-four-half-time study and

half-time work. I've been doing biology and at the same time

doing this job for two years. So I'm not quite such a fool as I

look. Actually I'm a pretty good nurse."

"A statement," said Mr. Bahu, "which I can

unequivocally confirm. Miss Radha is not merely a good

64

nurse; she's an absolutely first-rate one."

But what he really meant, Will felt sure as he studied

the expression on that face of a much-tempted monk, was

that Miss Radha had a first-rate midriff, first-rate navel, and

first-rate breasts. But the owner of the navel, midriff and

breasts had clearly resented Savonarola's admiration, or at

any rate the way it had been expressed. Hopefully,

overhopefully, the rebuffed Ambassador was returning the

attack.

The spirit lamp was lighted and, while the needle was

being boiled, little Nurse Appu took her patient's

temperature.

"Ninety-nine point two."

"Does that mean I have to be banished?" Mr. Bahu

enquired.

"Not so far as he's concerned," the girl answered.

"So please stay," said Will.

The little nurse gave him his injection of antibiotic,

then, from one of the bottles in her bag, stirred a

tablespoonful of some greenish liquid into half a glass of

water.

"Drink this."

It tasted like one of those herbal concoctions that

health-food enthusiasts substitute for tea.

"What is it?" Will asked, and was told that it was an

extract from a mountain plant related to valerian.

"It helps people to stop worrying," the little nurse

explained, "without making them sleepy. We give it to

convalescents. It's useful, too, in mental cases."

"Which am I? Mental or convalescent?"

"Both," she answered without hesitation.

Will laughed aloud. "That's what comes of fishing for

compliments."

"I didn't mean to be rude," she assured him. "All I

meant was that I've never met anybody from the outside who

wasn't a mental case."

"Including the Ambassador?"

She turned the question back upon the questioner.

"What do you think?"

Will passed it on to Mr. Bahu. "You're the expert in this

field," he said.

"Settle it between yourselves," said the little nurse. "I've

65

got to go and see about my patient's lunch."

Mr. Bahu watched her go; then, raising his left

eyebrow, he let fall his monocle and started methodically to

polish the lens with his handkerchief. "You're aberrated in

one way," he said to Will. "I'm aberrated in another. A

schizoid (isn't that what you are?) and, from the other side of

the world, a paranoid. Both of us victims of the same

twentieth-century plague. Not the Black Death, this time; the

Gray Life. Were you ever interested in power?" he asked

after a moment of silence.

"Never." Will shook his head emphatically. "One can't

have power without committing oneself."

"And for you the horror of being committed outweighs

the pleasure of pushing other people around?"

"By a factor of several thousand times."

"So it was never a temptation?"

"Never." Then after a pause, "Let's get down to

business," Will added in another tone.

"To business," Mr. Bahu repeated. "Tell me something

about Lord Aldehyde."

"Well, as the Rani said, he's remarkably generous."

"I'm not interested in his virtues, only his intelligence.

How bright is he?"

"Bright enough to know that nobody does anything for

nothing."

"Good," said Mr. Bahu. "Then tell him from me that for

effective work by experts in strategic positions he must be

prepared to lay out at least ten times what he's going to pay

you."

"I'll write him a letter to that effect."

"And do it today," Mr. Bahu advised. "The plane leaves

Shiv-apuram tomorrow evening, and there won't be another

outgo- ing mail for a whole week."

"Thank you for telling me," said Will. "And now-Her

Highness and the shockable stripling being gone-let's move

on to the next temptation. What about sex?"

With the gesture of a man who tries to rid himself of a

cloud of importunate insects, Mr. Bahu waved a brown and

bony hand back and forth in front of his face. "Just a

distraction, that's all. Just a nagging, humiliating vexation.

But an intelligent man can always cope with it."

"How difficult it is," said Will, "to understand another

66

man's vices!"

"You're right. Everybody should stick to the insanity

that God has seen fit to curse him with. Pecca fortiter-that

was Luther's advice. But make a point of sinning your own

sins, not someone else's. And above all don't do what the

people of this island do. Don't try to behave as though you

were essentially sane and naturally good. We're all demented

sinners in the same cosmic boat-and the boat is perpetually

sinking."

"In spite of which, no rat is justified in leaving it. Is that

what you're saying?"

"A few of them may sometimes try to leave. But they

never they drown with the rest of us. That's why Pala doesn't

have the ghost of a chance."

Carrying a tray, the little nurse re-entered the room.

"Buddhist food," she said, as she tied a napkin round

Will's neck. "All except the fish. But we've decided that

fishes are vegetables within the meaning of the act."

Will started to eat.

"Apart from the Rani and Murugan and us two here," he

asked after swallowing the first mouthful, "how many people

from the outside have you ever met?"

"Well, there was that group of American doctors," she

answered. "They came to Shivapuram last year, while I was

working at the Central Hospital."

"What were they doing here?"

"They wanted to find out why we have such a low rate

of neurosis and cardiovascular trouble. Those doctors!" She

shook her head. "I tell you, Mr. Farnaby, they really made

my hair stand on end-made everybody's hair stand on end in

the whole hospital."

"So you think our medicine's pretty primitive?"

"That's the wrong word. It isn't primitive. It's fifty

percent terrific and fifty percent nonexistent. Marvelous

antibiotics-but absolutely no methods for increasing

resistance, so that antibiotics won't be necessary. Fantastic

operations-but when it comes to teaching people the way of

going through life without having to be chopped up,

absolutely nothing. And it's the same all along the line.

Alpha Plus for patching you up when you've started to fall

apart; but Delta Minus for keeping you healthy. Apart from

sewerage systems and synthetic vitamins, you don't seem to

67

do anything at all about prevention. And yet you've got a

proverb: prevention is better than cure."

"But cure," said Will, "is so much more dramatic than

prevention. And for the doctors it's also a lot more profitable.

"Maybe for your doctors," said the little nurse. "Not for

ours. Ours get paid for keeping people well."

"How is it to be done?"

"We've been asking that question for a hundred years,

and we've found a lot of answers. Chemical answers,

psychological answers, answers in terms of what you eat,

how you make love, what you see and hear, how you feel

about being who you are in this kind of world."

"And which are the best answers?"

"None of them is best without the others."

"So there's no panacea."

"How can there be?" And she quoted the little rhyme

that every student nurse had to learn by heart on the first day

of her training.

" 'I' am a crowd, obeying as many laws As it has

members. Chemically impure Are all 'my' beings. There's no

single cure For what can never have a single cause."

"So whether it's prevention or whether it's cure, we

attack on all the fronts at once. All the fronts," she insisted,

"from diet to autosuggestion, from negative ions to

meditation."

"Very sensible," was Will's comment.

"Perhaps a little too sensible," said Mr. Bahu. "Did you

ever try to talk sense to a maniac?" Will shook his head. "I

did once." He lifted the graying lock that slanted obliquely

across his forehead. Just below the hairline a jagged scar

stood out, strangely pale against the brown skin. "Luckily for

me, the bottle he hit me with was pretty flimsy." Smoothing

his ruffled hair, he turned to the little nurse. "Don't ever

forget, Miss Radha; to the senseless nothing is more

maddening than sense. Pala is a small island completely

surrounded by twenty-nine hundred million mental cases. So

beware of being too rational. In the country of the insane, the

integrated man doesn't become king." Mr. Bahu's face was

positively twinkling with Voltairean glee. "He gets lynched."

Will laughed perfunctorily, then turned again to the

68

little nurse.

"Don't you have any candidates for the asylum?" he

asked.

"Just as many as you have-I mean in proportion to the

population. At least that's what the textbook says."

"So living in a sensible world doesn't seem to make any

difference."

"Not to the people with the kind of body chemistry

that'll turn them into psychotics. They're born vulnerable.

Little troubles that other people hardly notice can bring them

down. We're just beginning to find out what it is that makes

them so vulnerable. We're beginning to be able to spot them

in advance of a breakdown. And once they've been spotted,

we can do something to raise their resistance. Prevention

again--and, of course, on all the fronts at once."

"So being born into a sensible world will make a

difference even for the predestined psychotic."

"And for the neurotics it has already made a difference.

Your neurosis rate is about one in five or even four. Ours is

about one in twenty. The one that breaks down gets

treatment, on all fronts, and the nineteen who don't break

down have had prevention on all the fronts. Which brings me

back to those American doctors. Three of them were

psychiatrists, and one of the psychiatrists smoked cigars

without stopping and had a German accent. He was the one

that was chosen to give us a lecture. What a lecture!" The

little nurse held her head between her hands. "I never heard

anything like it."

"What was it about?"

"About the way they treat people with neurotic

symptoms. We just couldn't believe our ears. They never

attack on all the fronts; they only attack on about half of one

front. So far as they're concerned, the physical fronts don't

exist. Except for a mouth and an anus, their patient doesn't

have a body. He isn't an organism, he wasn't born with a

constitution or a temperament. All he has is the two ends of a

digestive tube, a family and a psyche. But what sort of

psyche? Obviously not the whole mind, not the mind as it

really is. How could it be that when they take no account of a

person's anatomy, or biochemistry or physiology? Mind

abstracted from body-that's the only front they attack on.

And not even on the whole of that front. The man with the

69

cigar kept talking about the unconscious. But the only

unconscious they ever pay attention to is the negative

unconscious, the garbage that people have tried to get rid of

by burying it in the basement. Not a single word about the

positive unconscious. No attempt to help the patient to open

himself up to the life force or the Buddha Nature. And no

attempt even to teach him to be a little more conscious in his

everyday life. You know: 'Here and now, boys.' 'Attention.' "

She gave an imitation of the mynah birds. "These people just

leave the unfortunate neurotic to wallow in his old bad habits

of never being all there in present time. The whole thing is

just pure idiocy! No, the man with the cigar didn't even have

that excuse; he was as clever as clever can be. So it's not

idiocy. It must be something voluntary, something

self-induced-like getting drunk or talking yourself into

believing some piece of foolishness because it happens to be

in the Scriptures. And then look at their idea of what's

normal. Believe it or not, a normal human being is one who

can have an orgasm and is adjusted to his society." Once

again the little nurse held her head between her hands. "It's

unimaginable! No question about what you do with your

orgasms. No question about the quality of your feelings and

thoughts and perceptions. And then what about the society

you're supposed to be adjusted to? Is it a mad society or a

sane one? And even if it's pretty sane, is it right that anybody

should be completely adjusted to it?"

With another of his twinkling smiles, "Those whom

God would destroy," said the Ambassador, "He first makes

mad. Or alternatively, and perhaps even more effectively, He

first makes them sane." Mr. Bahu rose and walked to the

window. "My car has come for me. I must be getting back to

Shivapuram and my desk." He turned to Will and treated him

to a long and flowery farewell. Then, switching off the

Ambassador, "Don't forget to write that letter," he said. "It's

very important." He smiled con-spiratorially and, passing his

thumb back and forth across the first two fingers of his right

hand, he counted out invisible money.

"Thank goodness," said the little nurse when he had

gone.

"What was his offense?" Will enquired. "The usual

thing?"

"Offering money to someone you want to go to bed

70

with- but she doesn't like you. So you offer more. Is that

usual where he comes from?"

"Profoundly usual," Will assured her.

"Well, I didn't like it."

"So I could see. And here's another question. What

about Murugan?"

"What makes you ask?"

"Curiosity. I noticed that you'd met before. Was that

when he was here two years ago without his mother?"

"How did you know about that?"

"A little bird told me-or rather an extremely massive

bird."

"The Rani! She must have made it sound like Sodom

and Gomorrah."

"But unfortunately I was spared the lurid details. Dark

hints-that was all she gave me. Hints, for example, about vet-

eran Messalinas giving lessons in love to innocent young

boys."

"And did he need those lessons!"

"Hints, too, about a precocious and promiscuous girl of

his own age."

Nurse Appu burst out laughing.

"Did you know her?"

"The precocious and promiscuous girl was me."

"You? Does the Rani know it?"

"Murugan only gave her the facts, not the names. For

which I'm very grateful. You see, I'd behaved pretty badly.

Losing my head about someone I didn't really love and

hurting someone I did. Why is one so stupid?"

"The heart has its reasons," said Will, "and the

endocrines have theirs."

There was a long silence. He finished the last of his

cold boiled fish and vegetables. Nurse Appu handed him a

plate of fruit salad.

"You've never seen Murugan in white satin pajamas,"

she said.

"Have I missed something?"

"You've no idea how beautiful he looks in white satin

pajamas. Nobody has any right to be so beautiful. It's

indecent. It's taking an unfair advantage."

It was the sight of him in those white satin pajamas

from Sulka that had finally made her lose her head. Lose it

71

so completely that for two months she had been someone

else-an idiot who had gone chasing after a person who

couldn't bear her and had turned her back on the person who

had always loved her, the person she herself had always

loved.

"Did you get anywhere with the pajama boy?" Will

asked.

"As far as a bed," she answered. "But when I started to

kiss him, he jumped out from between the sheets and locked

himself in the bathroom. He wouldn't come out until I'd

passed his pajamas through the transom and given him my

word of honor that he wouldn't be molested. I can laugh

about it now; but at the time, I tell you, at the time . . ." She

shook her head. "Pure tragedy. They must have guessed,

from the way I carried on, what had happened. Precocious

and promiscuous girls, it was obvious, were no good. What

he needed was regular lessons."

"And the rest of the story I know," said Will. "Boy

writes to Mother, Mother flies home and whisks him off to

Switzerland."

"And they didn't come back until about six months ago.

And for at least half of that time they were in Rendang,

staying with Murugan's aunt."

Will was on the point of mentioning Colonel Dipa, then

remembered that he had promised Murugan to be discreet

and said nothing.

From the garden came the sound of a whistle.

"Excuse me," said the little nurse and went to the

window. Smiling happily at what she saw, she waved her

hand. "It's Ranga."

"Who's Ranga?"

"That friend of mine I was talking about. He wants to

ask you some questions. May he come in for a minute?"

"Ofcourse."

She turned back to the window and made a beckoning

gesture.

"This means, I take it, that the white satin pajamas are

completely out of the picture."

She nodded. "It was only a one-act tragedy. I found my

head almost as quickly as I'd lost it. And when I'd found it,

there was Ranga, the same as ever, waiting for me." The

door swung open and a lanky young man in gym shoes and

72

khaki shorts came into the room.

"Ranga Karakuran," he announced as he shook Will's

hand.

"If you'd come five minutes earlier," said Radha, "you'd

have had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Bahu."

"Was he here?" Ranga made a grimace of disgust.

"Is he as bad as all that?" Will asked.

Ranga listed the indictments. "A: He hates us. B: He's

Colonel Dipa's tame jackal. C: He's the unofficial

ambassador of all the oil companies. D: The old pig made

passes at Radha. And E: He goes about giving lectures about

the need for a religious revival. He's even published a book

about it. Complete with preface by someone at the Harvard

Divinity School. It's all part of the campaign against

Palanese independence. God is Dipa's alibi. Why can't

criminals be frank about what they're up to? All this

disgusting idealistic hogwash-it makes one vomit."

Radha stretched out her hand and gave his ear three

sharp

tweaks.

"You little ..." he began angrily; then broke off and

laughed. "You're quite right," he said. "All the same, you

didn't have to pull quite so hard."

"Is that what you always do when he gets worked up?"

Will enquired of Radha.

"Whenever he gets worked up at the wrong moment, or

over things he can't do anything about."

Will turned to the boy. "And do you ever have to tweak

her

ear?"

Ranga laughed. "I find it more satisfactory," he said, "to

smack her bottom. Unfortunately, she rarely needs it."

"Does that mean she's better balanced than you are?"

"Better balanced? I tell you, she's abnormally sane."

"Whereas you're merely normal?"

"Maybe a little left of center." He shook his head. "I get

horribly depressed sometimes-feel I'm no good for

anything."

"Whereas in fact," said Radha, "he's so good that

they've given him a scholarship to study biochemistry at the

University

of Manchester."

73

"What do you do with him when he plays these

despairing, miserable-sinner tricks on you? Pull his ears?"

"That," she said, "and . . . well, other things." She

looked at Ranga and Ranga looked at her. Then they both

burst out laughing.

"Quite," said Will. "Quite. And these other things being

what they are," he went on, "is Ranga looking forward to the

prospect of leaving Pala for a couple of years?"

"Not much," Ranga admitted.

"But he has to go," said Radha firmly.

"And when he gets there," Will wondered, "is he going

to be happy?"

"That's what I wanted to ask you," said Ranga. "Well,

you won't like the climate, you won't like the food, you won't

like the noises or the smells or the architecture. But you'll

almost certainly like the work and you'll probably find that

you can like quite a lot of the people." "What about the

girls?" Radha enquired. "How do you want me to answer that

question?"

he

asked.

"Consolingly

or

truthfully?"

"Truthfully."

"Well, my dear, the truth is that Ranga will be a wild

success. Dozens of girls are going to find him irresistible.

And some of those girls will be charming. How will you feel

if he can't resist?" "I'll be glad for his sake."

Will turned to Ranga. "And will you be glad if she

consoles herself, while you're away, with another boy?"

"I'd like to be," he said. "But whether I actually shall be

glad-that's another question."

"Will you make her promise to be faithful?" "I won't

make her promise anything." "Even though she's your girl?"

"She's her own girl."

"And Ranga's his own boy," said the little nurse. "He's

free to do what he likes."

Will thought of Babs's strawberry-pink alcove and

laughed ferociously. "And free above all," he said, "to do

what he doesn't like." He looked from one young face to the

other and saw that he was being eyed with a certain

astonishment. In another tone and with a different kind of

smile, "But I'd forgotten," he added. "One of you is

abnormally sane and the other is only a little left of center.

So how can you be expected to understand what this mental

case from the outside is talking about?" And without leaving

74

them time to answer his question, "Tell me," he asked, "how

long is it-" He broke off. "But perhaps I'm being indiscreet.

If so, just tell me to mind my own business. But 1 would like

to know, just as a matter of anthropological interest, how

long you two have been friends."

"Do you mean 'friends'?" asked the little nurse. "Or do

you mean 'lovers'?"

"Why not both, while we're about it?"

"Well, Ranga and I have been friends since we were

babies. And we've been lovers-except for that miserable

white pajama episode-since I was fifteen and a half and he

was seventeen- just about two and a half years."

"And nobody objected?"

"Why should they?"

"Why, indeed," Will echoed. "But the fact remains that,

in my part of the world, practically everybody would have

objected."

"What about other boys?" Ranga asked.

"In theory they are even more out of bounds than girls.

In practice . . . Well, you can guess what happens when five

or six hundred male adolescents are cooped up together in a

boarding school. Does that sort of thing ever go on here?"

"Of course."

"I'm surprised."

"Surprised? Why?"

"Seeing that girls aren't out of bounds."

"But one kind of love doesn't exclude the other."

"And both are legitimate?"

"Naturally."

"So that nobody would have minded if Murugan had

been interested in another pajama boy?"

"Not if it was a good sort of relationship."

"But unfortunately," said Radha, "the Rani had done

such a thorough job that he couldn't be interested in anyone

but her- and, of course, himself."

"No boys?"

"Maybe now. I don't know. All I know is that in my day

there was nobody in his universe. No boys and, still more

emphatically, no girls. Only Mother and masturbation and

the Ascended Masters. Only jazz records and sports cars and

Hitlerian ideas about being a Great Leader and turning Pala

into what he calls a Modern State."

75

"Three weeks ago," said Ranga, "he and the Rani were

at the palace, in Shivapuram. They invited a group of us

from the university to come and listen to Murugan's ideas-on

oil, on industrialization, on television, on armaments, on the

Crusade of the Spirit."

"Did he make any converts?"

Ranga shook his head. "Why would anyone want to

exchange something rich and good and endlessly interesting

for something bad and thin and boring? We don't feel any

need for your speedboats or your television, your wars and

revolutions, vour revivals, your political slogans, your

metaphysical nonsense from Rome and Moscow. Did you

ever hear of maithuna?" he asked.

"Maithuna? What's that?"

"Let's start with the historical background," Ranga

answered; and with the engaging pedantry of an

undergraduate delivering a lecture about matters which he

himself has only lately heard of, he launched forth.

"Buddhism came to Pala about twelve hundred years ago,

and it came not from Ceylon, which is what one would have

expected, but from Bengal, and through Bengal, later on,

from Tibet. Result: we're Mahayanists, and our Buddhism is

shot through and through with Tantra. Do you know what

Tantra is?"

Will had to admit that he had only the haziest notion.

"And to tell you the truth," said Ranga, with a laugh that

broke irrepressibly through the crust of his pedantry, "I don't

really know much more than you do. Tantra's an enormous

subject and most of it, I guess, is just silliness and

superstition-not worth bothering about. But there's a hard

core of sense. If you're a Tantrik, you don't renounce the

world or deny its value; you don't try to escape into a

Nirvana apart from life, as the monks of the Southern School

do. No, you accept the world, and you make use of it; you

make use of everything you do, of everything that happens to

you, of all the things you see and hear and taste and touch, as

so many means to your liberation from the prison of

yourself."

"Good talk," said Will in a tone of polite skepticism.

"And something more besides," Ranga insisted. "That's

the difference," he added-and youthful pedantry modulated

into the eagerness of youthful proselytism-"that's the

76

difference between your philosophy and ours. Western

philosophers, even the best of them-they're nothing more

than good talkers. Eastern philosophers are often rather bad

talkers, but that doesn't matter. Talk isn't the point. Their

philosophy is pragmatic and operational. Like the philosophy

of modern physics-except that the operations in question are

psychological and the results transcendental. Your

metaphysicians make statements about the nature of man and

the universe; but they don't offer the reader any way of

testing the truth of those statements. When we make

statements, we follow them up with a list of operations that

can be used for testing the validity of what we've been

saying. For example, tat tvam asi, 'thou are That'-the heart of

all our philosophy. Tat tvam asi," he repeated. "It looks like a

proposition in metaphysics; but what it actually refers to is a

psychological experience, and the operations by means of

which the experience can be lived through are described by

our philosophers, so that anyone who's willing to perform the

necessary operations can test the validity of tat tvam asi for

himself. The operations arc-called yoga, or dhyana, or

Zen-or, in certain special circumstances, maithuna."

"Which brings us back to my original question. What is

ntaithuna!"

"Maybe you'd better ask Radha."

Will turned to the little nurse. "What is it?"

u Maithuna," she answered gravely, "is the yoga of

love."

"Sacred or profane?"

"There's no difference."

"That's the whole point," Ranga put in. "When you do

maithuna, profane love is sacred love."

"Buddhatvanyoshidyonisansritan," the girl quoted.

"None of your Sanskirt! What does it mean?"

"How would you translate Buddhatvan, Ranga?"

"Buddhaness, Buddheity, the quality of being

enlightened."

Radha nodded and turned back to Will. "It means that

Buddhaness is in the yoni."

"In the yoni?" Will remembered those little stone

emblems of the Eternal Feminine that he had bought, as

presents for the girls at the office, from a hunchbacked

vendor of bondieuseries at Benares. Eight annas for a black

77

yoni; twelve for the still more sacred image of the

yoni-lingam. "Literally in the yoniV he asked. "Or

metaphorically?"

"What a ridiculous question!" said the little nurse, and

she laughed her clear unaffected laugh of pure amusement.

"Do you think we make love metaphorically? Buddhatvan

yoshidyonisan-sritan" she repeated. "It couldn't be more

completely and absolutely literal."

"Did you ever hear of the Oneida Community?" Ranga

now asked.

Will nodded. He had known an American historian who

specialized in nineteenth-century communities. "But why do

you know about it?" he asked.

"Because it's mentioned in all our textbooks of applied

philosophy. Basically, maithuna is the same as what the

Oneida peopie called Male Continence. And that was the

same as what Roman Catholics mean by coitus reservatus."

"Reservatus," the little nurse repeated. "It always makes

me want to laugh. 'Such a reserved young man'!" The

dimples reappeared and there was a flash of white teeth.

"Don't be silly," said Ranga severely. "This is serious."

She expressed her contrition. "But reservatus was really

too

funny."

"In a word," Will concluded, "it's just birth control

without

contraceptives."

"But that's only the beginning of the story," said Ranga.

"Maithuna is also something else. Something even more

important." The undergraduate pedant had reasserted

himself. "Remember," he went on earnestly, "remember the

point that Freud was always harping on."

"Which point? There were so many."

"The point about the sexuality of children. What we're

born with, what we experience all through infancy and

childhood, is a sexuality that isn't concentrated on the

genitals; it's a sexuality diffused throughout the whole

organism. That's the paradise we inherit. But the paradise

gets lost as the child grows up. Maithuna is the organized

attempt to regain that paradise." He turned to Radha. "You've

got a good memory," he said. "What's that phrase of

Spinoza's that they quote in the applied philosophy book?"

78

" 'Make the body capable of doing many things,' " she

recited. " 'This will help you to perfect the mind and so to

come to the intellectual love of God.' "

"Hence all the yogas," said Ranga. "Including

maithuna."

"And it's a real yoga," the girl insisted. "As good as raja

yoga, or karma yoga, or bhakti yoga. In fact, a great deal

better, so far as most people are concerned. Maithuna really

gets them there."

"What's 'there'?" Will asked.

" 'There' is where you know."

"Know what?"

"Know who in fact you are-and believe it or not," she

added, "tat tvam asi-thou art That, and so am I: That is me."

The dimples came to life, the teeth flashed. "And That's also

him." She pointed at Ranga. "Incredible, isn't it?" She stuck

out her tongue at him. "And yet it's a fact."

Ranga smiled, reached out and with an extended

forefinger touched the tip of her nose. "And not merely a

fact," he said. "A revealed truth." He gave the nose a little

tap. "A revealed truth," he repeated. "So mind your P's and

Q's, young woman."

"What I'm wondering," said Will, "is why we aren't all

enlightened-I mean, if it's just a question of making love with

a rather special kind of technique. What's the answer to

that?"

"I'll tell you," Ranga began.

But the girl cut him short. "Listen," she said, "listen!"

Will listened. Faint and far off, but still distinct, he

heard the strange inhuman voice that had first welcomed him

to Pala. "Attention," it was saying. "Attention, Attention ..."

"That bloody bird again!"

"But that's the secret."

"Attention? But a moment ago you were saying it was

something else. What about that young man who's so

reserved?"

"That's just to make it easier to pay attention."

"And it does make it easier," Ranga confirmed. "And

that's the whole point of maithuna. It's not the special

technique that turns love-making into yoga; it's the kind of

awareness that the technique makes possible. Awareness of

one's sensations and awareness of the not-sensation in every

79

sensation."

"What's a not-sensation?"

"It's the raw material for sensation that my not-self

provides me with."

"And you can pay attention to your not-self?"

"Ofcourse."

Will turned to the little nurse. "You too?"

"To myself," she answered, "and at the same time to my

not-self. And to Ranga's not-self, and to Ranga's self, and to

Ranga's body, and to my body and everything it's feeling.

And to all the love and the friendship. And to the mystery of

the other person- the perfect stranger, who's the other half of

your own self, and the same as your not-self. And all the

while one's paying attention to all the things that, if one were

sentimental, or worse, if one were spiritual like the poor old

Rani, one would find so unromantic and gross and sordid

even. But they aren't sordid, because one's also paying

attention to the fact that, when one's fully aware of them,

those things are just as beautiful as all the rest, just as

wonderful."

"Maithuna is dhyana," Ranga concluded. A new word,

he evidently felt, would explain everything.

"But what is dhyana?" Will asked.

"Dhyana is contemplation."

"Contemplation."

Will thought of that strawberry-pink alcove above the

Charing Cross Road. Contemplation was hardly the word he

would have chosen. And yet even there, on second thoughts,

even there he had found a kind of deliverance. Those

alienations in the changing light of Porter's Gin were

alienations from his odious daytime self. They were also,

unfortunately, alienations from all the rest of his

being-alienations from love, from intelligence, from common

decency, from all consciousness but that of an excruciating

frenzy by corpse-light or in the rosy glow of the cheapest,

vulgarest illusion. He looked again at Radha's shining face.

What happiness! What a manifest conviction, not of the sin

that Mr. Bahu was so determined to make the world safe for,

but of its serene and blissful opposite! It was profoundly

touching. But he refused to be touched. Noli me tangere-it

was a categor ical imperative. Shifting the focus of his mind,

he managed to see the whole thing as reassuringly ludicrous.

80

What shall we do to be saved? The answer is in four letters.

Smiling at his own little joke, "Were you taught

maithuna at school?" he asked ironically.

"At school," Radha answered with a simple

matter-of-fact-ness that took all the Rabelaisian wind out of

his sails.

"Everybody's taught it," Ranga added.

"And when does the teaching begin?"

"About the same time as trigonometry and advanced

biology. That's between fifteen and fifteen and a half."

"And after they've learned maithuna, after they've gone

out into the world and got married-that is, if you ever do get

married?"

"Oh, we do, we do," Radha assured him.

"Do they still practice it?"

"Not all of them, of course. But a good many do."

"All the time?"

"Except when they want to have a baby."

"And those who don't want to have babies, but who

might like to have a little change from maithuna-what do

they do?"

"Contraceptives," said Ranga laconically.

"And are the contraceptives available?"

"Available! They're distributed by the government.

Free, gratis, and for nothing-except of course that they have

to be paid for out of taxes."

"The postman," Radha added, "delivers a thirty-night

supply at the beginning of each month."

"And the babies don't arrive?"

"Only those we want. Nobody has more than three, and

most people stop at two."

"With the result," said Ranga, reverting, with the

statistics, to his pedantic manner, "that our population is

increasing at less than a third of one percent per annum.

Whereas Rendang's increase is as big as Ceylon's-almost

three percent. And China's is two percent, and India's about

one point seven."

"I was in China only a month ago," said Will.

"Terrifying!

And last year I spent four weeks in India. And before

India in Central America, which is outbreeding even

Rendang and Ceylon. Has either of you been in

81

Rendang-Lobo?"

Ranga nodded affirmatively.

"Three days in Rendang," he explained. "If you get into

the Upper Sixth, it's part of the advanced sociology course.

They let you see for yourself what the Outside is like."

"And what did you think of the Outside?" Will

enquired.

Ranga answered with another question. "When you

were in Rendang-Lobo, did they show you the slums?"

"On the contrary, they did their best to prevent me from

seeing the slums. But I gave them the slip."

Gave them the slip, he was vividly remembering, on his

way back to the hotel from that grisly cocktail party at the

Rendang Foreign Office. Everybody who was anybody was

there. All the local dignitaries and their wives-uniforms and

medals,

Dior

and

emeralds.

All

the

important

foreigners-diplomats galore, British and American oilmen,

six members of the Japanese trade mission, a lady

pharmacologist from Leningrad, two Polish engineers, a

German tourist who just happened to be a cousin of Krupp

von Bohlen, an enigmatic Armenian representing a very

important financial consortium in Tangier, and, beaming

with triumph, the fourteen Czech technicians who had come

with last month's shipment of tanks and cannon and machine

guns from Skoda. "And these are the people," he had said to

himself as he walked down the marble steps of the Foreign

Office into Liberty Square, "these are the people who rule

the world. Twenty-nine hundred millions of us at the mercy

of a few scores of politicians, a few thousands of tycoons

and generals and moneylenders. Ye are the cyanide of the

earth-and the cyanide will never, never lose its savor."

After the glare of the cocktail party, after the laughter

and the luscious smells of canapes and Chanel-sprayed

women, those alleys behind the brand-new Palace of Justice

had seemed doubly dark and noisome. Those poor wretches

camping out under the palm trees of Independence Avenue

more totally abandoned by God and man than even the

homeless, hopeless thousands he had seen sleeping like

corpses in the streets of Calcutta. And now he thought of that

little boy, that tiny potbellied skeleton, whom he had picked

up, bruised and shaken by a fall from the back of the little

girl, scarcely larger than himself, who was carrying him-had

82

picked up and, led by the other child, had carried hack,

carried down, to the windowless cellar that, for nine of them

(he had counted the dark ringwormy heads), was home.

"Keeping babies alive," he said, "healing the sick,

preventing the sewage from getting into the water supply-one

starts with doing things that are obviously and intrinsically

good. And how does one end? One ends by increasing the

sum of human misery and jeopardizing civilization. It's the

kind of cosmic practical joke that God seems really to

enjoy."

He gave the young people one of his flayed, ferocious

grins. "God has nothing to do with it," Ranga retorted, "and

the joke isn't cosmic, it's strictly man-made. These things

aren't like gravity or the second law of thermodynamics; they

don't have to happen. They happen only if people are stupid

enough to allow them to happen. Here in Pala we haven't

allowed them to happen, so the joke hasn't been played on

us. We've had good sanitation for the best part of a

century-and still we're not overcrowded, we're not miserable,

we're not under a dictatorship. And the reason is very simple:

we chose to behave in a sensible and realistic way."

"How on earth were you able to choose?" Will asked.

"The right people were intelligent at the right moment," said

Ranga. "But it must be admitted-they were also very lucky.

In fact Pala as a whole has been extraordinarily lucky. It's

had the luck, first of all, never to have been anyone's colony.

Rendang has a magnificent harbor. That brought them an

Arab invasion in the Middle Ages. We have no harbor, so the

Arabs left us alone and we're still Buddhists or Shivaites-that

is, when we're not Tantrik agnostics."

"Is that what you are?" Will enquired. "A Tantrik

agnostic?"

"With Mahayana trimmings," Ranga qualified. "Well, to

return to Rendang. After the Arabs it got the Portuguese. We

didn't. No harbor, no Portuguese. Therefore no Catholic mi-

nority, no blasphemous nonsense about its being God's will

that people should breed themselves into subhuman misery,

no organized resistance to birth control. And that isn't our

only blessing: After a hundred and twenty years of the

Portuguese, Ceylon and Rendang got the Dutch. And after

the Dutch came the English. We escaped both those

infestations. No Dutch, no English, and therefore no planters,

83

no coolie labor, no cash crops for export, no systematic

exhaustion of our soil. Also no whisky, no Calvinism, no

syphilis, no foreign administrators. We were left to go our

own way and take responsibility for our own affairs."

"You certainly were lucky."

"And on top of that amazing good luck," Ranga went

on, "there was the amazing good management of Murugan

the Reformer and Andrew MacPhail. Has Dr. Robert talked

to you about his great-grandfather?"

"Just a few words, that's all."

"Did he tell you about the founding of the Experimental

Station?"

Will shook his head.

"The Experimental Station," said Ranga, "had a lot to

do with our population policy. It all began with a famine.

Before he came to Pala, Dr. Andrew spent a few years in

Madras. The second year he was there, the monsoon failed.

The crops were burnt up, the tanks and even the wells went

dry. Except for the English and the rich, there was no food.

People died like flies. There's a famous passage in Dr.

Andrew's memoirs about the famine. A description and then

a comment. He'd had to listen to a lot of sermons when he

was a boy, and there was one he kept remembering now, as

he worked among the starving Indians. 'Man cannot live by

bread alone'-that was the text, and the preacher had been so

eloquent that several people were converted. 'Man cannot

live by bread alone.' But without bread, he now saw, there is

no mind, no spirit, no inner light, no Father in Heaven. There

is only hunger, there is only despair and then apathy and

finally death."

"Another of the cosmic jokes," said Will. "And this one

was formulated by Jesus himself. 'To those who have shall

be given, and from those who have not shall be taken away

even that which they have'-the bare possibility of being

human. It's the crudest of all God's jokes, and also the

commonest. I've seen it being played on millions of men and

women, millions of small children-all over the world."

"So you can understand why that famine made such an

indelible impression on Dr. Andrew's mind. He was

resolved, and so was his friend the Raja, that in Pala, at least,

there should always be bread. Hence their decision to set up

the Experimental Station. Rothamsted-in-the-Tropics was a

84

great success. In a few years we had new strains of rice and

maize and millet and breadfruit. We had better breeds of

cattle and chickens. Better ways of cultivating and

composting; and in the fifties we built the first

superphosphate factory east of Berlin. Thanks to all these

things people were eating better, living longer, losing fewer

children.

Ten

years

after

the

founding

of

Rothamsted-in-the-Tropics the Raja took a census. The

population had been stable, more or less, for a century. Now

it had started to rise. In fifty or sixty years, Dr. Andrew

foresaw, Pala would be transformed into the kind of festering

slum that Rendang is today. What was to be clone? Dr.

Andrew had read his Malthus. 'Food production increases

arithmetically; population increases geometrically. Man has

only two choices: he can either leave the matter to Nature,

who will solve the population problem in the old familiar

way, by amine, pestilence and war: or else (Malthus being a

clergyman) he can keep down his numbers by moral

restraint.' "

"Mor-ral r-restr-raint," the little nurse repeated, rolling

her r's in the Indonesian parody of a Scottish divine.

"Mor-ral r-restr-raint! Incidentally," she added, "Dr. Andrew

had just married the Raja's sixteen-year-old niece."

"And that," said Ranga, "was yet another reason for

revising Malthus. Famine on this side, restraint on that.

Surely there must be some better, happier, humaner way

between the Malthusian horns. And of course there was such

a way even then, even before the age of rubber and

spermicides. There were sponges, there was soap, there were

condoms made of every known waterproof material from

oiled silk to the blind gut of sheep. The whole armory of

Paleo-Birth Control."

"And how did the Raja and his subjects react to

Paleo-Birth Control? With horror?"

"Not at all. They were good Buddhists, and every good

Bud dhist knows that begetting is merely postponed

assassination. Do your best to get off the Wheel of Birth and

Death, and for heaven's sake don't go about putting

superfluous victims onto the Wheel. For a good Buddhist,

birth control makes metaphys ical sense. And for a village

community of rice growers, it makes social and economic

sense. There must be enough young people to work the fields

85

and support the aged and the little ones. But not too many of

them; for then neither the old nor the workers nor their

children will have enough to eat. In the old days, couples had

to have six children in order to raise two or three. Then came

clean water and the Experimental Station. Out of six chil

dren five now survived. The old patterns of breeding had

ceased to make sense. The only objection to Paleo-Birth

Control was its crudity. But fortunately there was a more

aesthetic alternative. The Raja was a Tantrik initiate and had

learned the yoga of love. Dr. Andrew was told about

maithunn and, being a true man of science, agreed to try it.

He and his young wife were given the necessary instruction."

"With what results?"

"Enthusiastic approval."

"That's the way everybody feels about it," said Radha.

"Now, now, none of your sweeping generalizations!

Some feel that way, others don't. Dr. Andrew was one of the

enthusiasts. The whole matter was lengthily discussed. In the

end they decided that contraceptives should be like

education-free, tax-supported and, though not compulsory, as

nearly as possible universal. For those who felt the need for

something more refined, there would be instruction in the

yoga of love."

"Do you mean to tell me that they got away with it?"

"It wasn't really so difficult. Maithuna was orthodox.

People weren't being asked to do anything against their

religion. On the contrary, they were being given a flattering

opportunity to join the elect by learning something esoteric."

"And don't forget the most important point of all," the

little nurse chimed in. "For women-all women, and I don't

care what you say about sweeping generalizations-the yoga

of love means perfection, means being transformed and

taken out of themselves and completed." There was a brief

silence. "And now," she resumed in another, brisker tone,

"it's high time we left you to your siesta."

"Before you go," said Will, "I'd like to write a letter.

Just a brief note to my boss to say that I'm alive and in no

immediate danger of being eaten by the natives."

Radha went foraging in Dr. Robert's study and came

back with paper, pencil and an envelope.

" Veni, vidi," Will scrawled. "I was wrecked, I met the

Rani and her collaborator from Rendang, who implies that he

86

can deliver the goods in return for baksheesh to the tune (he

was specific) of twenty thousand pounds. Shall I negotiate

on this basis? If you cable Proposed article OK, I shall go

ahead. If No hurry for article I shall let the matter drop. Tell

my mother I am safe and shall soon be writing."

"There," he said as he handed the envelope, sealed and

addressed, to Ranga. "May I ask you to buy me a stamp and

get this off in time to catch tomorrow's plane?"

"Without fail," the boy promised.

Watching them go, Will felt a twinge of conscience.

What charming young people! And here he was, plotting

with Bahu and the forces of history to subvert their world.

He comforted himself with the thought that, if he didn't do it,

somebody else would. And even if Joe Aldehyde did get his

concession, they could still go on making love in the style to

which they were accustomed. Or couldn't they?

From the door the little nurse turned back for a final

word. "No reading now," she wagged her finger at him. "Go

to sleep."

"I never sleep during the day," Will assured her, with a

certain perverse satisfaction.

87

7

He could never go to sleep during the day; but when he

looked next at his watch, the time was twenty-five past four,

and he was feeling wonderfully refreshed. He picked up

Notes on What's What, and resumed his interrupted reading:

Give us this day our daily Faith, but deliver us, dear

God, from Belief.

This was as far as he had got this morning; and now

here was a new section, the fifth:

Me as I think I am and me as I am in fact—sorrow, in

other words, and the ending of sorrow. One third, more or

less, of all the sorrow that the person I think I am must

endure is unavoidable. It is the sorrow inherent in the human

condition, the price we must pay for being sentient and

self-conscious organisms, aspirants to liberation, but subject

to the laws of nature and under orders to keep on marching,

through irreversible time, through a world wholly indifferent

to our well-being, toward decrepitude and the certainty of

death. The remaining two thirds of all sorrow is homemade

and, so far as the universe is concerned, unnecessary.

Will turned the page. A sheet of notepaper fluttered

onto the bed. He picked it up and glanced at it. Twenty lines

of small clear writing and at the bottom of the page the

initials S. M. Not a letter evidently; a poem and therefore

public property. He read:

Somewhere between brute silence and last Sunday's

Thirteen hundred thousand sermons;

Somewhere between

Calvin on Christ (God help us!) and the lizards;

Somewhere between seeing and speaking, somewhere

Between our soiled and greasy currency of words

And the first star, the great moths fluttering

About the ghosts of flowers,

Lies the clear place where I, no longer I,

Nevertheless remember

88

Love's nightlong wisdom of the other shore;

And, listening to the wind, remember too

That other night, that first of widowhood,

Sleepless, with death beside me in the dark.

Mine, mine, all mine, mine inescapably!

But I, no longer I,

In this clear place between my thought and silence

See all I had and lost, anguish and joys,

Glowing like gentians in the Alpine grass,

Blue, unpossessed and open.

"Like gentians," Will repeated to himself, and thought

of that summer holiday in Switzerland when he was twelve;

thought of the meadow, high above Grindelwald, with its

unfamiliar flowers, its wonderful un-English butterflies;

thought of the dark-blue sky and the sunshine and the huge

shining mountains on the other side of the valley. And all his

father had found to say was that it looked like an

advertisement for Nestle's milk chocolate. "Not even real

chocolate," he had insisted with a grimace of disgust. "Milk

chocolate." After which there had been an ironic comment

on the water color his mother was painting— so badly (poor

thing!) but with such loving and conscientious care. "The

milk chocolate advertisement that Nestle rejected." And now

it was his turn. "Instead of just mooning about with your

mouth open, like the village idiot, why not do something

intelligent for a change? Put in some work on your German

grammar, for example." And diving into the rucksack, he had

pulled out, from among the hard-boiled eggs and the sand-

wiches, the abhorred little brown book. What a detestable

mail! And yet, if Susila was right, one ought to be able to see

him now, after all these years, glowing like a gentian—Will

glanced again at the last line of the poem—"blue,

unpossessed and open."

"Well ..." said a familiar voice.

He turned toward the door. "Talk of the devil," he said.

"Or rather read what the devil has written." He held up the

sheet of notepaper for her inspection.

Susila glanced at it. "Oh that,'' she said. "If only good

intentions were enough to make good poetry!" She sighed

and shook her head.

"I was trying to think of my father as a gentian," he

went on. "But all I get is the persistent image of the most

89

enormous turd."

"Even turds," she assured him, "can be seen as

gentians."

"But only, I take it, in the place you were writing

about—the clear place between thought and silence?"

Susila nodded.

"How do you get there?"

"You don't get there. There comes to you. Or rather

there is really here."

"You're just like little Radha," he complained.

"Parroting what the Old Raja says at the beginning of this

book."

"If we repeat it," she said, "it's because it happens to be

true. If we didn't repeat it, we'd be ignoring the facts."

"Whose facts?" he asked. "Certainly not mine."

"Not at the moment," she agreed. "But if you were to do

the kind of things that the Old Raja recommends, they might

be yours."

"Did you have parent trouble?" he asked after a little

silence. "Or could you aways see turds as gentians?"

"Not at that age," she answered. "Children have to be

Manichean dualists. It's the price we must all pay for

learning the rudiments of being human. Seeing turds as

gentians, or rather seeing both gentians and turds as Gentians

with a capital G— that's a postgraduate accomplishment."

"So what did you do about your parents? Just grin and

bear the unbearable? Or did your father and mother happen

to be bearable?"

"Bearable separately," she answered. "Especially my

father. But quite unbearable together—unbearable because

they couldn't bear one another. A bustling, cheerful, outgoing

woman married to a man so fastidiously introverted that she

got on his nerves all the time—even, I suspect, in bed. She

never stopped communicating, and he never started. With the

result that he thought she was shallow and insincere, she

thought he was heartless, contemptuous and without normal

human feelings."

"I'd have expected that you people would know better

than to walk into that kind of trap."

"We do know better," she assured him. "Boys and girls

are specifically taught what to expect of people whose

temperament and physique are very different from their own.

90

Unfortunately, it sometimes happens that the lessons don't

seem to have much effect. Not to mention the fact that in

some cases the psychological distance between the people

involved is really too great to be bridged. Anyhow, the fact

remains that my father and mother never managed to make a

go of it. They'd fallen in love with one another—goodness

knows why. But when they came to close quarters, she found

herself being constantly hurt by his inaccessibility, while her

uninhibited good-fellowship made him fairly cringe with

embarrassment and distaste. My sympathies were always

with my father. Physically and temperamentally I'm very

close to him, not in the least like my mother. I remember,

even as a tiny child, how I used to shrink away from her

exuberance. She was like a permanent invasion of one's

privacy. She still is."

"Do you have to see a lot of her?"

"Very little. She has her own job and her own friends.

In our part of the world 'Mother' is strictly the name of a

function. When the function has been duly fulfilled, the title

lapses; the ex-child and the woman who used to be called

'Mother' establish a new kind of relationship. If they get on

well together, they continue to see a lot of one another. If

they don't, they drift apart. Nobody expects them to cling,

and clinging isn't equated with loving—isn't regarded as

anything particularly creditable."

"So all's well now. But what about then? What

happened when you were a child, growing up between two

people who couldn't bridge the gulf that separated them? I

know what that means—the fairy-story ending in reverse,

'And so they lived unhappily ever after.' "

"And I've no doubt," said Susila, "that if we hadn't been

born in Pala, we would have lived unhappily ever after. As it

was, we got on, all things considered, remarkably well."

"How did you manage to do that?"

"We didn't; it was all managed for us. Have you read

what the Old Raja says about getting rid of the two thirds of

sorrow that's homemade and gratuitous?"

Will nodded. "I was just reading it when you came in."

"Well, in the bad old days," she went on, "Palanese

families could be just as victimizing, tyrant-producing and

liar-creating as yours can be today. In fact they were so

awful that Dr. Andrew and the Raja of the Reform decided

91

that something had to be done about it. Buddhist ethics and

primitive village communism were skillfully made to serve

the purposes of reason, and in a single generation the whole

family system was radically changed." She hesitated for a

moment. "Let me explain," she went on, "in terms of my

own particular case—the case of an only child of two people

who couldn't understand one another and were always at

cross-purposes or actually quarreling. In the old days, a little

girl brought up in those surroundings would have emerged as

either a wreck, a rebel, or a resigned hypocritical conformist.

Under the new dispensation I didn't have to undergo

unnecessary suffer ing, I wasn't wrecked or forced into

rebellion or resignation. Why? Because from the moment I

could toddle, I was free to escape."

"To escape?" he repeated. "To escape?" It seemed too

good to be true.

"Escape," she explained, "is built into the new system.

Whenever the parental Home Sweet Home becomes too

unbearable, the child is allowed, is actively encouraged—and

the whole weight of public opinion is behind the

encouragement— to migrate to one of its other homes."

"How many homes does a Palanese child have?"

"About twenty on the average."

"Twenty? My God!"

"We all belong," Susila explained, "to an MAC—a

Mutual Adoption Club. Every MAC consists of anything

from fifteen to twenty-five assorted couples. Newly elected

brides and bridegrooms, old-timers with growing children,

grandparents and great-grandparents—everybody in the club

adopts everyone else. Besides our own blood relations, we

all have our quota of deputy mothers, deputy fathers, deputy

aunts and uncles, deputy brothers and sisters, deputy babies

and toddlers and teen-agers."

Will shook his head. "Making twenty families grow

where only one grew before."

"But what grew before was your kind of family. The

twenty are all our kind." As though reading instructions from

a cookery book, "Take one sexually inept wage slave," she

went on, "one dissatisfied female, two or (if preferred) three

small television addicts; marinate in a mixture of Freudism

and dilute Christianity; then bottle up tightly in a four-room

flat and stew for fifteen years in their own juice. Our recipe

92

is rather different: Take twenty sexually satisfied couples and

their offspring; add science, intuition and humor in equal

quantities; steep in Tantrik Buddhism and simmer

indefinitely in an open pan in the open air over a brisk flame

of affection."

"And what comes out of your open pan?" he asked. "An

entirely different kind of family. Not exclusive, like your

families, and not predestined, not compulsory. An inclusive,

unpredestined and voluntary family. Twenty pairs of fathers

and mothers, eight or nine ex-fathers and ex-mothers, and

forty or fifty assorted children of all ages."

"Do people stay in the same adoption club all their

lives?" "Of course not. Grown-up children don't adopt their

own parents or their own brothers and sisters. They go out

and adopt another set of elders, a different group of peers and

juniors. And the members of the new club adopt them and, in

due

course,

their

children.

Hybridization

of

microcultures—that's what our sociologists call the process.

It's as beneficial, on its own level, as the hybridization of

different strains of maize or chickens. Healthier relationships

in more responsible groups, wider sympathies and deeper

understandings. And the sympathies and understandings arc

for everyone in the MAC from babies to centenarians."

"Centenarians? What's your expectation of life?" "A year or

two more than yours," she answered. "Ten percent of us are

over sixty-five. The old get pensions, if they can't earn. But

obviously pensions aren't enough. They need some-thing

useful and challenging to do; they need people they can care

for and be loved by in return. The MAC's fulfill those

needs."

"It all sounds," said Will, "suspiciously like the

propaganda for one of the new Chinese communes."

"Nothing," she assured him, "could be less like a

commune than an MAC. An MAC isn't run by the

government, it's run by its members. And we're not

militaristic. We're not interested in turning out good party

members; we're only interested in turn ing out good human

beings. We don't inculcate dogmas. And finally we don't take

the children away from their parents; on the contrary, we

give the children additional parents and the parents

additional children. That means that even in the nursery we

enjoy a certain degree of freedom; and our freedom increases

93

as we grow older and can deal with a wider range of

experience and take on greater responsibilities. Whereas in

China there's no freedom at all. The children are handed over

to official baby tamers, whose business it is to turn them into

obedient servants of the State. Things are a great deal better

in your part of the world—better, but still quite bad enough.

You escape the state appointed baby-tamers; but your society

condemns you to pass your childhood in an exclusive family,

with only a single set of siblings and parents. They're foisted

on you by hereditary pre destination. You can't get rid of

them, can't take a holiday from them, can't go to anyone else

for a change of moral or psycho logical air. It's freedom, if

you like—but freedom in a telephone booth."

"Locked in," Will elaborated, "(and I'm thinking now ol

myself) with a sneering bully, a Christian martyr, and a little

girl who'd been frightened by the bully and blackmailed by

the mar tyr's appeal to her better feelings into a state of

quivering imbe cility. That was the home from which, until I

was fourteen and my aunt Mary came to live next door, I

never escaped."

"And your unfortunate parents never escaped from

you.'"

"That's not quite true. My father used to escape into

brandy and my mother into High Anglicanism. I had to serve

out my sentence without the slightest mitigation. Fourteen

years of family servitude. How I envy you! Free as a bird!"

"Not so lyrical! Free, let's say, as a developing human

being, lice as a future woman—but no freer. Mutual

Adoption guarantees children against injustice and the worst

consequences of parental ineptitude. It doesn't guarantee

them against discipline, or against having to accept

responsibilities. On the contrary, it increases the number of

their responsibilities; it exposes them to a wide variety of

disciplines. In your predestined and exclusive families,

children, as you say, serve a long prison term under a single

set of parental jailers. These parental jailers may, of course,

be good, wise and intelligent. In that case the little prisoners

will emerge more or less unscathed. But in point of fact most

of your parental jailers are not conspicuously good, wise or

intelligent. They're apt to be well-meaning but stupid, or not

well-meaning and frivolous, or else neurotic, or occasionally

downright malevolent, or frankly insane. So God help the

94

young convicts committed by law and custom and religion to

their tender mercies! But now consider what happens in a

large, inclusive, voluntary family. No telephone booths, no

predestined jailers. Here the children grow up in a world

that's a working model of society at large, a small-scale but

accurate version of the environment in which they're going to

have to live when they're grown up. 'Holy,' 'healthy,'

'whole'—they all come from the same root and carry

different overtones of the same meaning. Etymologically,

and in fact, our kind of family, the inclusive and voluntary

kind, is the genuine holy family. Yours is the unholy family."

"Amen," said Will, and thought again of his own

childhood, thought too of poor little Murugan in the clutches

of the Rani. "What happens," he asked after a pause, "when

the children migrate to one of their other homes? How long

do they stay there?"

"It all depends. When my children get fed up with me,

they seldom stay away for more than a day or two. That's

because, fundamentally, they're very happy at home. I

wasn't, and so when I walked out, I'd sometimes stay away

for a whole month."

"And did your deputy parents back you up against your

real mother and father?"

"It's not a question of doing anything against anybody.

All that's being backed up is intelligence and good feeling,

and all that's being opposed is unhappiness and its avoidable

causes. If a child feels unhappy in his first home, we do our

best for him in fifteen or twenty second homes. Meanwhile

the father and mother get some tactful therapy from the other

members of their Mutual Adoption Club. In a few weeks the

parents are fit to be with their children again, and the

children are fit to be with their parents. But you mustn't

think," she added, "that it's only when they're in trouble that

children resort to their deputy parents and grandparents.

They do it all the time, whenever they feel the need for a

change or some kind of new experience. And it isn't just a

social whirl. Wherever they go, as deputy children, they have

their responsibilities as well as their rights—brushing the

dog, for example, cleaning out the birdcages, minding the

baby while the mother's doing something else. Duties as well

as privileges—but not in one of your airless little telephone

booths. Duties and privileges in a big, open, unpredestined,

95

inclusive family, where all the seven ages of man and a

dozen different skills and talents are represented, and in

which children have experience of all the important and

significant

things

that

human

beings

do

and

suffer—working, playing, loving, getting old, being sick,

dying ..." She was silent, thinking of Dugald and Dugald's

mother; then, deliberately changing her tone, "But what

about you)" she went on. "I've been so busy talking about

families that I haven't even asked you how you're feeling.

You certainly look a lot better than when I saw you last."

"Thanks to Dr. MacPhail. And also thanks to someone

who, I suspect, was definitely practicing medicine without a

license. What on earth did you do to me yesterday

afternoon?"

Susila smiled. "You did it to yourself," she assured him.

"I merely pressed the buttons."

"Which buttons?"

"Memory buttons, imagination buttons."

"And that was enough to put me into a hypnotic

trance?"

"If you like to call it that."

"What else can one call it?"

"Why

call

it

anything?

Names

are

such

question-beggars. Why not be content with just knowing that

it happened?"

"But what did happen?"

"Well, to begin with, we made some kind of contact,

didn't we?"

"We certainly did," he agreed. "And yet I don't believe I

even so much as looked at you."

He was looking at her now, though—looking and

wondering, as he looked, who this strange little creature

really was, what lay behind the smooth grave mask of the

face, what the dark eyes were seeing as they returned his

scrutiny, what she was thinking.

"How could you look at me?" she said. "You'd gone off

on your vacation."

"Or was I pushed off?"

"Pushed? No." She shook her head. "Let's say seen off,

helped off." There was a moment of silence. "Did you ever,"

she resumed, "try to do a job of work with a child hanging

around?"

96

Will thought of the small neighbor who had offered to

help him paint the dining-room furniture, and laughed at the

memory of his exasperation.

"Poor little darling!" Susila went on. "He means so well,

he's do anxious to help."

"But the paint's on the carpet, the fingerprints are all

over the walls . . ."

"So that in the end you have to get rid of him. 'Run

along, little boy! Go and play in the garden!' "

There was a silence.

"Well?" he questioned at last.

"Don't you see?"

Will shook his head.

"What happens when you're ill, when you've been hurt?

Who does the repairing? Who heals the wounds and throws

off the infection? Do you?"

"Who else?"

"You?" she insisted. "You? The person that feels the

pain and does the worrying and thinks about sin and money

and the future! Is that you capable of doing what has to be

done?"

"Oh, I see what you're driving at."

"At last!" she mocked.

"Send me to play in the garden so that the grown-ups

can do their work in peace. But who are the grown-ups?"

"Don't ask me," she answered. "That's a question for a

neuro-theologian."

"Meaning what?" he asked.

"Meaning precisely what it says. Somebody who thinks

about people in terms, simultaneously, of the Clear Light of

the Void and the vegetative nervous system. The grown-ups

are a mixture of Mind and physiology."

"And the children?"

"The children are the little fellows who think they know

better than the grown-ups."

"And so must be told to run along and play."

"Exactly."

"Is your sort of treatment standard procedure in Pala?"

he asked.

"Standard procedure," she assured him. "In your part of

the world doctors get rid of the children by poisoning them

with barbiturates. We do it by talking to them about

97

cathedrals and jackdaws." Her voice had modulated into a

chant. "About white clouds floating in the sky, white swans

floating on the dark, smooth, irresistible river of life . . ."

"Now, now," he protested. "None of that!"

A smile lit up the grave dark face, and she began to

laugh. Will looked at her with astonishment. Here, suddenly,

was a different person, another Susila MacPhail, gay,

mischievous, ironical.

"I know your tricks," he added, joining in the laughter.

"Tricks?" Still laughing, she shook her head. "I was just

explaining how I did it."

"I know exactly how you did it. And I also know that it

works. What's more, I give you leave to do it

again—whenever it's necessary."

"If you like," she said more seriously, "I'll show you

how to press your own buttons. We teach it in all our

elementary schools. The three R's plus rudimentary SD."

"What's that?"

"Self-Determination. Alias Destiny Control."

"Destiny Control?" He raised his eyebrows.

"No, no," she assured him, "we're not quite such fools

as you seem to think. We know perfectly well that only a

part of our destiny is controllable."

"And you control it by pressing your own buttons?"

"Pressing our own buttons and then visualizing what

we'd like to happen."

"But does it happen?"

"In many cases it does."

"Simple!" There was a note of irony in his voice.

"Wonderfully simple," she agreed. "And yet, so far as I

know, we're the only people who systematically teach DC to

their children. You just tell them what they're supposed to do

and leave it at that. Behave well, you say. But how? You

never tell them. All you do is give them pep talks and

punishments. Pure idiocy."

"Pure unadulterated idiocy," he agreed, remembering

Mr. Crabbe, his housemaster, on the subject of masturbation,

remembering the canings and the weekly sermons and the

Com mination Service on Ash Wednesday. "Cursed is he

that lieth with his neighbor's wife. Amen."

"If your children take the idiocy seriously, they grow up

to be miserable sinners. And if they don't take it seriously,

98

they grow up to be miserable cynics. And if they react from

miserable cynicism, they're apt to go Papist or Marxist. No

wonder you have to have-all those thousands of jails and

churches and Communist cells."

"Whereas in Pala, I gather, you have very few."

Susila shook her head.

"No Alcatrazes here," she said. "No Billy Grahams or

Mao Tse-tungs or Madonnas of Fatima. No hells on earth

and no Christian pie in the sky, no Communist pie in the

twenty-second century. Just men and women and their

children trying to make the best of the here and now, instead

of living somewhere else, as you people mostly do, in some

other time, some other home made imaginary universe. And

it really isn't your fault. You're almost compelled to live that

way because the present is so frustrating. And it's frustrating

because you've never been taught how to bridge the gap

between theory and practice, between your New Year's

resolutions and your actual behavior."

" 'For the good that I would,' " he quoted, " 'I do not;

and the evil that I would not, that I do.' "

"Who said that?"

"The man who invented Christianity—St. Paul."

"You see," she said, "the highest possible ideals, and no

methods for realizing them."

"Except the supernatural method of having them

realized by Somebody Else."

Throwing back his head, Will Farnaby burst into song.

"There is a fountain fill'd with blood,

Drawn from Emmanuel's veins, And sinners plunged

beneath that flood Are cleansed of all their stains."

Susila had covered her ears. "It's really obscene," she

said.

"My housemaster's favorite hymn," Will explained.

"We used to sing it about once a week, all the time I was at

school."

"Thank goodness," she said, "there was never any blood

in Buddhism! Gautama lived till eighty and died from being

too courteous to refuse bad food. Violent death always seems

to call for more violent death. 'If you won't believe that

you're redeemed by my redeemer's blood, I'll drown you in

99

your own.' Last year I took a course at Shivapuram in the

history of Christianity." Susila shuddered at the memory.

"What a horror! And all because that poor ignorant man

didn't know how to implement his good intentions."

"And most of us," said Will, "are still in the same old

boat. The evil that we would not, that we do. And how!"

Reacting unforgivably to the unforgivable, Will

Farnaby laughed derisively. Laughed because he had seen

the goodness of Molly and then, with open eyes, had chosen

the pink alcove and, with it, Molly's unhappiness, Molly's

death, his own gnawing sense of guilt, and then the pain, out

of all proportion to its low and essentially farcical cause, the

agonizing pain that he had felt when Babs in due course did

what any fool must have known she inevitably would

do—turned him out of her infernal gin-illumined paradise,

and took another lover.

"What's the matter?" Susila asked.

"Nothing. Why do you ask?"

"Because you're not very good at hiding your feelings.

You were thinking of something that made you unhappy."

"You've got sharp eyes," he said, and looked away.

There was a long silence. Should he tell her? Tell her

about Babs, about poor Molly, about himself, tell her all the

dismal and senseless things he had never, even when he was

drunk, told even his oldest friends? Old friends knew too

much about one, too much about the other parties involved,

too much about the grotesque and complicated game which

(as an English gentleman who was also a bohemian, also a

would-be poet, also—in mere despair, because he knew he

could never be a good poet—a hard-boiled journalist, and the

private agent, very well paid, of a rich man whom he

despised) he was always so elaborately playing. No, old

friends would never do. But from this dark little outsider,

this stranger to whom he already owed so much and with

whom, though he knew nothing about her, he was already so

intimate, there would come no foregone conclusions, no ex

parte judgments—would come perhaps, he found himself

hoping (he who had trained himself never to hope!), some

unexpected enlightenment, some positive and practical help.

(And, God knew, he needed help—though God also knew

only too well that he would never say so, never sink so low

as to ask for it.)

100

Like a muezzin in his minaret, one of the talking birds

began to shout from the tall palm beyond the mango trees,

"Here and now, boys. Here and now, boys."

Will decided to take the plunge—but to take it

indirectly, by talking first, not about his problems, but about

hers. Without looking at Susila (for that, he felt, would be

indecent), he began to speak.

"Dr. MacPhail told me something about. . . about what

happened to your husband."

The words turned a sword in her heart; but that was to

be expected, that was right and inevitable. "It'll be four

months next Wednesday," she said. And then, meditatively,

"Two people," she went on after a little silence, "two

separate individuals—but they add up to something like a

new creation. And then suddenly half of this new creature is

amputated; but the other half doesn't die—can't die, mustn't

die."

"Mustn't die?"

"For so many reasons—the children, oneself, the whole

nature of things. But needless to say," she added, with a little

smile that only accentuated the sadness in her eyes, "needless

to say the reasons don't lessen the shock of the amputation or

make the aftermath any more bearable. The only thing that

helps is what we were talking about just now—Destiny

Control. And even that..." She shook her head. "DC can give

you a completely painless childbirth. But a completely

painless bereavement—no. And of course that's as it should

be. It wouldn't be right if you could take away all the pain of

a bereavement; you'd be less than human."

"Less than human," he repeated. "Less than human ..."

Three short words; but how completely they summed him

up! "The really terrible thing," he said aloud, "is when you

know it's your fault that the other person died."

"Were you married?" she asked.

"For twelve years. Until last spring ..."

"And now she's dead?"

"She died in an accident."

"In an accident? Then how was it your fault?"

"The accident happened because . . . well, because the

evil t hat I didn't want to do, I did. And that day it came to a

head. The hurt of it confused and distracted her, and I let her

drive away in the car—let her drive away into a head-on

101

collision."

"Did you love her?"

He hesitated for a moment, then slowly shook his head.

"Was there somebody else—somebody you cared for

more?"

"Somebody I couldn't have cared for less." He made a

grimace of sardonic self-mockery.

"And that was the evil you didn't want to do, but did?"

"Did and went on doing until I'd killed the woman I

ought to have loved, but didn't. Went on doing it even after

I'd killed her, even though I hated myself for doing it—yes,

and really hated the person who made me do it."

"Made you do it, I suppose, by having the right kind of

body?"

Will nodded, and there was a silence.

"Do you know what it's like," he asked at length, "to

feel that nothing is quite real-—including yourself?"

Susila nodded. "It sometimes happens when one's just

on the point of discovering that everything, including

oneself, is much more real than one ever imagined. It's like

shifting gears: you have to go into neutral before you change

into high."

"Or low," said Will. "In my case, the shift wasn't up, it

was down. No, not even down; it was into reverse. The first

time it happened I was waiting for a bus to take me home

from Fleet Street. Thousands upon thousands of people, all

on the move, and each of them unique, each of them the

center of the universe. Then the sun came out from behind a

cloud. Everything was extraordinarily bright and clear; and

suddenly, with an almost audible click, they were all

maggots."

"Maggots?"

"You know, those little pale worms with black heads

that one sees on rotten meat. Nothing had changed, of

course; people's faces were the same, their clothes were the

same. And yet they were all maggots. Not even real

maggots—just the ghosts of maggots, just the illusion of

maggots. And I was the illusion of a spectator of maggots. I

lived in that maggot world for months. Lived in it, worked in

it, went out to lunch and dinner in it—all without the least

interest in what I was doing. Without the least enjoyment or

relish, completely desireless and, as I discovered when I tried

102

to make love to a young woman I'd had occasional fun with

in the past, completely impotent."

"What did you expect?"

"Precisely that."

"Then why on earth . . . ?"

Will gave her one of his flayed smiles and shrugged his

shoulders. "As a matter of scientific interest. I was an

entomologist investigating the sex life of the phantom

maggot."

"After which, I suppose, everything seemed even more

unreal."

"Even more," he agreed, "if that was possible."

"But what brought on the maggots in the first place?"

"Well, to begin with," he answered, "I was my parents'

son. By Bully Boozer out of Christian Martyr. And on top of

being my parents' son," he went on after a little pause, "I was

my aunt Mary's nephew."

"What did your aunt Mary have to do with it?"

"She was the only person I ever loved, and when I was

sixteen she got cancer. Off with the right breast; then, a year

later, off with the left. And after that nine months of X rays

and radiation sickness. Then it got into the liver, and that was

the end. I was rhere from start to finish. For a boy in his

teens it was a liberal education—but liberal."

"In what?" Susila asked.

"In Pure and Applied Pointlessness. And a few weeks

after i he close of my private course in the subject came the

grand opening of the public course. World War II. Followed

by the nonstop refresher course of Cold War I. And all this

time I'd been wanting to be a poet and finding out that I

simply don't have what it takes. And then, after the war, I

had to go into journalism to make money. What I wanted

was to go hungry, if necessary, but try to write something

decent—good prose at least, seeing that it couldn't be good

poetry. But I'd reckoned without those darling parents of

mine. By the time he died, in lanuary of 'forty-six, my father

had got rid of all the little money our family had inherited

and by the time she was blessedly a widow, my mother was

crippled with arthritis and had to be supported. So there I

was in Fleet Street, supporting her with an ease and a success

that were completely humiliating."

"Why humiliating?"

103

"Wouldn't you be humiliated if you found yourself

making money by turning out the cheapest, flashiest kind of

literary forgery? I was a success because I was so

irremediably second-rate."

"And the net result of it all was maggots?"

He nodded. "Not even real maggots: phantom maggots.

And here's where Molly came into the picture. I met her at a

high-class maggot party in Bloomsbury. We were

introduced, we made some politely inane conversation about

nonobjective painting. Not wanting to see any more

maggots, I didn't look at her; but she must have been looking

at me. Molly had very pale gray-blue eyes," he added

parenthetically, "eyes that saw everything—she was

incredibly observant, but observed without malice or

censoriousness, seeing the evil, if it was there, but never

condemning it, just feeling enormously sorry for the person

who was under compulsion to think those thoughts and do

that odious kind of thing. Well, as I say, she must have been

looking at me while we talked; for suddenly she asked me

why I was so sad. I'd had a couple of drinks and there was

nothing impertinent or offensive about the way she asked the

question; so I told her about the maggots. 'And you're one of

them,' I finished up, and for the first time I looked at her. 'A

blue-eyed maggot with a face like one of the holy women in

attendance at a Flemish crucifixion.' "

"Was she flattered?"

"I think so. She'd stopped being a Catholic; but she still

had a certain weakness for crucifixions and holy women.

Anyhow, next morning she called me at breakfast time.

Would I like to drive down into the country with her? It was

Sunday and, by a miracle, fine. I accepted. We spent an hour

in a hazel copse, picking primroses and looking at the little

white windflowers. One doesn't pick the windflowers," he

explained, "because in an hour they're withered. I did a lot of

looking in that hazel copse— looking at flowers with the

naked eye and then looking into them through the

magnifying glass that Molly had brought with her. I don't

know why, but it was extraordinarily therapeutic— just

looking into the hearts of primroses and anemones. For the

rest of the day I saw no maggots. But Fleet Street was still

there, waiting for me, and by lunchtime on Monday the

whole place was crawling with them as thickly as ever.

104

Millions of maggots. But now I knew what to do about them.

That evening I went to Molly's studio."

"Was she a painter?"

"Not a real painter, and she knew it. Knew it and didn't

resent it, just made the best of having no talent. She didn't

paint for art's sake; she painted because she liked looking at

things, liked the process of trying meticulously to reproduce

what she saw. That evening she gave me a canvas and a

palette, and told me to do likewise." "And did it work?"

"It worked so well that when a couple of months later I

cut open a rotten apple, the worm at its center wasn't a

maggot— not subjectively, I mean. Objectively, yes; it was

all that a maggot should be, and that's how I portrayed it,

how we both portrayed it—for we always painted the same

things at the same time."

"What about the other maggots, the phantom maggots

outside the apple?"

"Well, I still had relapses, especially in Fleet Street and

at cocktail parties; but the maggots were definitely fewer,

definitely less haunting. And meanwhile something new was

happening in the studio. I was falling in love—falling in love

because love is catching and Molly was so obviously in love

with me—why, God only knows."

"I can see several possible reasons why. She might have

loved you because . . ." Susila eyed him appraisingly and

smiled. "Well, because you're quite an attractive kind of

queer fish."

He laughed. "Thank you for a handsome compliment."

"On the other hand," Susila went on, "(and this isn't

quite so complimentary), she might have loved you because

you made her feel so damned sorry for you."

"That's the truth, I'm afraid. Molly was a born Sister of

Mercy."

"And a Sister of Mercy, unfortunately, isn't the same as

a Wife of Love."

"Which I duly discovered," he said.

"After your marriage, I suppose."

Will hesitated for a moment. "Actually," he said, "it was

before. Not because, on her side, there had been any urgency

of desire, but only because she was so eager to do anything

to please me. Only because, on principle, she didn't believe

in conventions and was all for freely loving, and more

105

surprisingly" (he remembered the outrageous things she

would so casually and placidly give utterance to even in his

mother's presence) "all for freely talking about that

freedom."

"You knew it beforehand," Susila summed up, "and yet

you still married her."

Will nodded his head without speaking.

"Because you were a gentleman, I take it, and a

gentleman keeps his word."

"Partly for that rather old-fashioned reason, but also

because I was in love with her."

" Were you in love with her?"

"Yes. No, I don't know. But at the time I did know. At

least I thought I knew. I was really convinced that I was

really in love with her. And I knew, I still know, why I was

convinced. I was grateful to her for having exorcised those

maggots. And besides the gratitude there was respect. There

was admiration. She was so much better and honester than I

was. But unfortunately, you're right: a Sister of Mercy isn't

the same as a Wife of Love.

But I was ready to take Molly on her own terms, not on

mine. I was ready to believe that her terms were better than

mine."

"How soon," Susila asked, after a long silence, "did you

start having affairs on the side?"

Will smiled his flayed smile. "Three months to the day

after our wedding. The first time was with one of the

secretaries at the office. Goodness, what a bore! After that

there was a young painter, a curlyheaded little Jewish girl

whom Molly had helped with money while she was studying

at the Slade. I used to go to her studio twice a week, from

five to seven. It was almost three years before Molly found

out about it."

"And, I gather, she was upset?"

"Much more than I'd ever thought she'd be."

"So what did you do about it?"

Will shook his head. "This is where it begins to get

complicated," he said. "I had no intention of giving up my

cocktail hours with Rachel; but I hated myself for making

Molly so unhappy. At the same time I hated her for being

unhappy. I resented her suffering and the love that had made

her suffer; I felt that they were unfair, a kind of blackmail to

106

force me to give up my innocent fun with Rachel. By loving

me so much and being so miserable about what I was

doing—what she really forced me to do—she was putting

pressure on me, she was trying to restrict my freedom. But

meanwhile she was genuinely unhappy; and though I hated

her for blackmailing me with her unhappiness, I was filled

with pity for her. Pity," he repeated, "not compassion.

Compassion is suffering-with, and what I wanted at all costs

was to spare myself the pain her suffering caused me, and

avoid the painful sacrifices by which I could put an end to

her suffering. Pity was my answer, being sorry for her from

the outside, if you see what I mean—sorry for her as a spec-

tator, an aesthete, a connoisseur in excruciations. And this

aesthetic pity of mine was so intense, every time her

unhappiness came to a head, that I could almost mistake it

for love. Almost, but never quite. For when I expressed my

pity in physical tenderness (which I did because that was the

only way of putting a temporary stop to her unhappiness and

to the pain her unhappi-ness was inflicting on me), that

tenderness was always frustrated 'i; before it could come to

its

natural

consummation.

Frustrated

because,

by

temperament, she was only a Sister of Mercy, not a wife.

And yet, on every level but the sensual, she loved me with a

total commitment—a commitment that called for an

answering commitment on my part. But I wouldn't commit

myself, maybe I genuinely couldn't. So instead of being

grateful for her self-giving, I resented it. It made claims on

me, claims that I refused to acknowledge. So there we were,

at the end of every crisis, back at the beginning of the old

drama—the drama of a love incapable of sensuality

self-committed to a sensuality incapable of love and evoking

strangely mixed responses of guilt and exasperation, of pity

and resentment, sometimes of real hatred (but always with an

undertone of remorse), the whole accompanied by, contra-

puntal to, a succession of furtive evenings with my little

curly-headed painter."

"I hope at least they were enjoyable," said Susila.

He shrugged his shoulders. "Only moderately. Rachel

could never forget that she was an intellectual. She had a

way of asking what one thought of Piero di Cosimo at the

most inopportune moments. The real enjoyment and of

course the real agony—I never experienced them until Babs

107

appeared on the scene."

"When was that?"

"Just over a year ago. In Africa."

"Africa?"

"I'd been sent there by Joe Aldehyde."

"That man who owns newspapers?"

""And, all the rest. He was married to Molly's aunt

Eileen. An exemplary family man, I may add. That's why

he's so serenely convinced of his own righteousness, even

when he's engaged in the most nefarious financial

operations."

"And you're working for him?"

Will nodded. "That was his wedding present to

Molly—a job for me on the Aldehyde papers at almost twice

the salary I'd been getting from my previous employers.

Princely! But then he was very fond of Molly."

"How did he react to Babs?"

"He never knew about her—never knew that there was

any reason for Molly's accident."

"So he goes on employing you for your dead wife's

sake?"

Will shrugged his shoulders. "The excuse," he said, "is

that I have my mother to support."

"And of course you wouldn't enjoy being poor."

"I certainly wouldn't."

There was a silence.

"Well," said Susila at last, "let's get back to Africa."

"I'd been sent there to do a series on Negro Nationalism.

Not to mention a little private hanky-panky in the business

line lor Uncle Joe. It was on the plane, flying home from

Nairobi. I found myself sitting next to her."

"Next to the young woman you couldn't have liked

less?"

"Couldn't have liked less," he repeated, "or disapproved

of more. But if you're an addict you've got to have your

dope—the dope that you know in advance is going to destroy

you."

"It's a funny thing," she said reflectively, "but in Pala

we have liardly any addicts."

"Not even sex addicts?"

"The sex addicts are also person addicts. In other words,

they're lovers."

108

"But even lovers sometimes hate the people they love."

"Naturally. Because I always have the same name and

the same nose and eyes, it doesn't follow that I'm always the

same woman. Recognizing that fact and reacting to it

sensibly—that's part of the Art of Loving."

As succinctly as he could, Will told her the rest of the

story. It was the same story, now that Babs had come on the

scene, as it had been before—the same but much more so.

Babs had been Rachel raised, so to speak, to a higher

power—Rachel squared, Rachel to the rath. And the

unhappiness that, because of Babs, he had inflicted upon

Molly was proportionately greater than anything she had had

to suffer on account of Rachel. Proportionately greater, too,

had been his own exasperation, his own resentful sense of

being blackmailed by her love and suffering, his own

remorse and pity, his own determination, in spite of the

remorse and the pity, to go on getting what he wanted, what

he hated himself for wanting, what he resolutely refused to

do without. And meanwhile Babs had become more

demanding, was claiming ever more and more of his

time—time not only in the strawberry-pink alcove, but also

outside, in restaurants, and nightclubs, at her horrible friends'

cocktail parties, on weekends in the country. "Just you and

me, darling," she would say, "all alone together." All alone

together in an isolation that gave him the opportunity to

plumb the almost unfathomable depths of her mindlessness

and vulgarity. But through all his boredom and distaste, all

his moral and intellectual repugnance, the craving persisted.

After one of those dreadful weekends, he was as hopelessly a

Babs addict as he had been before. And on her side, on her

own Sister-of-Mercy level, Molly had remained, in spite of

everything, no less hopelessly a Will Farnaby addict.

Hopelessly so far as he was concerned—for his one wish

was that she should love him less and allow him to go to hell

in peace. But, so far as Molly herself was concerned, the

addiction was always and irre-pressibly hopeful. She never

ceased to expect the transfiguring miracle that would change

him into the kind, unselfish, loving Will Farnaby whom (in

the teeth of all the evidence, all the repeated

disappointments) she stubbornly insisted on regarding as his

true self. It was only in the course of that last fatal interview,

only when (stifling his pity and giving free rein to his resent-

109

ment of her blackmailing unhappiness) he had announced his

intention of leaving her and going to live with Babs—it was

only then that hope had finally given place to hopelessness.

"Do you mean it, Will—do you really mean it?" "I really

mean it." It was in hopelessness, in utter hopelessness, that

she had walked out to the car, had driven away into the

rain—into her death. At the funeral, when the coffin was

lowered into the grave, he had promised himself that he

would never see Babs again. Never, never, never again. That

evening, while he was sitting at his desk trying to write an

article on "What's Wrong with Youth," trying not to

remember the hospital, the open grave, and his own

responsibility for everything that had happened, he was

startled by the shrill buzzing of the doorbell. A belated

message of condolence, no doubt. . . He had opened, and

there, instead of the telegram, was Babs—dramatically

without makeup and all in black.

"My poor, poor Will!" They had sat down on the sofa in

the living room, and she had stroked his hair and both of

them had cried.

"When pain and anguish wring the brow, a ministering

angel thou." An hour later, needless to say, they were naked

and in bed. After which he had moved, earth to earth, into

the pink alcove. Within three months, as any fool could have

foreseen, Babs had begun to tire of him; within four, an

absolutely divine man from Kenya had turned up at a

cocktail party. One thing had led to another and when, three

days later, Babs came home, it was to prepare the alcove for

a new tenant and give notice to the old.

"Do you really mean it, Babs?" She really meant it.

There was a rustling in the bushes outside the window

and an instant later, standingly loud and slightly out of time,

"Here and now, boys," shouted a talking bird.

"Shut up!" Will shouted back.

"Here and now, boys," the mynah repeated. "Here and

now, boys. Here and—"

"Shut up!"

There was silence.

"I had to shut him up," Will explained, "because of

course he's absolutely right. Here, boys; now, boys. Then and

there are absolutely irrelevant. Or aren't they? What about

your husband's death, for example? Is that irrelevant?"

110

Susila looked at him for a moment in silence, then

slowly nodded her head. "In the context of what I have to do

now— yes, completely irrelevant. That's something I had to

learn."

"Does one learn how to forget?"

"It isn't a matter of forgetting. What one has to learn is

how to remember and yet be free of the past. How to be there

with the dead and yet still be here, on the spot, with the

living." She gave him a sad little smile and added, "It isn't

easy."

"It isn't easy," Will repeated. And suddenly all his

defenses were down, all his pride had left him. "Will you

help me?" he asked.

"It's a bargain," she said, and held out her hand.

A sound of footsteps made them turn their heads. Dr.

MacPhail had entered the room.

111

8

"Good evening, my dear. Good evening, Mr. Farnaby."

The tone was cheerful-not, Susila was quick to notice,

with any kind of synthetic cheerfulness, but naturally,

genuinely. And yet, before coming here, he must have

stopped at the hospital, must have seen Lakshmi as Susila

herself had seen her only an hour or two since, more

dreadfully emaciated than ever, more skull-like and

discolored. Half a long lifetime of love and lovalty and

mutual forgiveness-and in another day or two it would be all

over; he would be alone. But sufficient unto the day is the

evil thereof--sufficient unto the place and the person. "One

has no right," her father-in-law had said to her one day as

they were leaving the hospital together, "one has no right to

inflict one's sadness on other people. And no right, of course,

to pretend that one isn't sad. One just has to accept one's grief

and one's absurd attempts to be a stoic. Accept, accept..." His

voice broke. Looking up at him, she saw that his face was

wet with tears. Five minutes later they were sitting on a

bench, at the edge of the lotus pool, in the shadow of the

huge stone Buddha. With a little plop, sharp and yet liquidly

voluptuous, an unseen frog dived from its round leafy

platform into the water. Thrusting up from the mud, the thick

green stems with their turgid buds broke through into the air,

and here and there the blue or rosy symbols of enlightenment

had opened their petals to the sun and the probing visitations

of flies and tiny beetles and the wild bees from the jungle.

Darting, pausing in mid-flight, darting again, a score of

glittering blue and green dragonflies were hawking for

midges.

"Tathata," Dr. Robert had whispered. "Suchness."

For a long time they sat there in silence. Then,

suddenly, he had touched her shoulder.

"Look!"

She lifted her eyes to where he was pointing. Two small

parrots had perched on the Buddha's right hand and were

going through the ritual of courtship.

112

"Did you stop again at the lotus pool?" Susila asked

aloud.

Dr. Robert gave her a little smile and nodded his head.

"How was Shivapuram?" Will enquired.

"Pleasant enough in itself," the doctor answered. "Its

only defect is that it's so close to the outside world. Up here

one can simply ignore the organized insanities and get on

with one's work. Down there, with all those antennae and

listening posts and channels of communication that a

government has to have, the outside world is perpetually

breathing down one's neck. One hears it, feels it, smells

it-yes, smells it."

"Has anything more than usually disastrous happened

since I've been here?"

"Nothing out of the ordinary at your end of the world. I

wish I could say the same about our end."

"What's the trouble?"

"The trouble is our next-door neighbor, Colonel Dipa.

To begin with, he's made another deal with the Czechs."

"More armaments?"

"Sixty million dollars' worth. It was on the radio this

morning.

"But what on earth for?"

"The usual reasons. Glory and power. The pleasures of

vanity and the pleasures of bullying. Terrorism and military

parades at home; conquests and Te Deums abroad. And that

brings me to the second item of unpleasant news. Last night

the Colonel delivered another of his celebrated Greater

Rendang speeches." "Greater Rendang? What's that?"

"You may well ask," said Dr. Robert. "Greater Rendang

is the territory controlled by the Sultans of Rendang-Lobo

between 1447 and 1483. It included Rendang, the Nicobar

Islands, about thirty percent of Sumatra and the whole of

Pala. Today, it's Colonel Dipa's Irredenta.'" "Seriously?"

"With a perfectly straight face. No, I'm wrong. With a

purple, distorted face and at the top of a voice that he has

trained, after long practice, to sound exactly like Hitler's.

Greater Rendang or death!"

"But the great powers would never allow it." "Maybe

they wouldn't like to see him in Sumatra. But Pala- that's

another matter." He shook his head. "Pala, unfortunately, is

in nobody's good books. We don't want the Communists; but

113

neither do we want the capitalists. Least of all do we want

the wholesale industrialization that both parties are so

anxious to impose on us-for different reasons, of course. The

West wants it because our labor costs are low and investors'

dividends will be correspondingly high. And the East wants

it because industrialization will create a proletariat, open

fresh fields for Communist agitation and may lead in the

long run to the setting up of yet another People's Democracy.

We say no to both of you, so we're unpopular everywhere.

Regardless of their ideologies, all the Great Powers may

prefer a Rendang-controlled Pala with oil fields to an

independent Pala without. If Dipa attacks us, they'll say it's

most deplorable; but they won't lift a finger. And when he

takes us over and calls the oilmen in, they'll be delighted."

"What can you do about Colonel Dipa?" Will asked.

"Except for passive resistance, nothing. We have no

army and no powerful friends. The Colonel has both. The

most we can do, if he starts making trouble, is to appeal to

the United Nations. Meanwhile we shall remonstrate with the

Colonel about this latest Greater Rendang effusion.

Remonstrate through our minister in Rendang-Lobo, and

remonstrate with the great man in person when he pays his

state visit to Pala ten days from now."

"A state visit?"

"For the young Raja's coming-of-age celebrations. He

was asked a long time ago, but he never let us know for

certain whether he was coming or not. Today it was finally

settled. We'll have a summit meeting as well as a birthday

party. But let's talk about something more rewarding. How

did you get on today, Mr. Farnaby?"

"Not merely well-gloriously. I had the honor of a visit

from your reigning monarch."

"Murugan?"

"Why didn't you tell me he was your reigning

monarch?"

Dr. Robert laughed. "You might have asked for an

interview."

"Well, I didn't. Nor from the Queen Mother."

"Did the Rani come too?"

"At the command of her Little Voice. And, sure enough,

the Little Voice sent her to the right address. My boss, Joe

Aldehyde, is one of her dearest friends."

114

"Did she tell you that she's trying to bring your boss

here, to exploit our oil?"

"She did indeed."

"We turned down his latest offer less than a month ago.

Did you know that?"

Will was relieved to be able to answer quite truthfully

that he didn't. Neither Joe Aldehyde nor the Rani had told

him of this most recent rebuff. "My job," he went on, a little

less truthfully, "is in the wood-pulp department, not in

petroleum." There was a silence. "What's my status here?" he

asked at last. "Undesirable alien?"

"Well, fortunately you're not an armament salesman."

"Nor a missionary," said Susila.

"Nor an oilman-though on that count you might be

guilty by association."

"Nor even, so far as we know, a uranium prospector."

"Those," Dr. Robert concluded, "are the Alpha Plus

undesirables. As a journalist you rank as a Beta. Not the kind

of person we should ever dream of inviting to Pala. But also

not the kind who, having managed to get here, requires to be

summarily deported."

"I'd like to stay here for as long as it's legally possible,"

said Will.

"May I ask why?"

Will hesitated. As Joe Aldehyde's secret agent and a

reporter with a hopeless passion for literature, he had to stay

long enough to negotiate with Bahu and earn his year of

freedom. But there were other, more avowable reasons. "If

you don't object to personal remarks," he said, "I'll tell you."

"Fire away," said Dr. Robert.

"The fact is that, the more I see of you people the better

I like you. I want to find out more about you. And in the

process," he added, glancing at Susila, "I might find out

some interesting things about myself. How long shall I be

allowed to stay?"

"Normally we'd turn you out as soon as you're fit to

travel. But if you're seriously interested in Pala, above all if

you're seriously interested in yourself-well, we might stretch

a point. Or shouldn't we stretch that point? What do you say,

Susila? After all, he does work for Lord Aldehyde."

Will was on the point of protesting again that his job

was in the wood-pulp department; but the words stuck in his

115

throat and he said nothing. The seconds passed. Dr. Robert

repeated his question.

"Yes," Susila said at last, "we'd be taking a certain risk.

But personally . . . personally I'd be ready to take it. Am I

right?" she turned to Will.

"Well, I think you can trust me. At least I hope you

can." He laughed, trying to make a joke of it; but to his

annoyance and embarrassment, he felt himself blushing.

Blushing for what? he demanded resentfully of his

conscience. If anybody was being double-crossed, it was

Standard of California. And once Dipa had moved in, what

difference would it make who got the concession? Which

would you rather be eaten by-a wolf or a tiger? So far as the

lamb is concerned, it hardly seems to matter. Joe would be

no worse than his competitors. All the same, he wished he

hadn't been in such a hurry to send off that letter. And why,

why couldn't that dreadful woman have left him in peace?

Through the sheet he felt a hand on his undamaged

knee. Dr. Robert was smiling down at him.

"You can have a month here," he said. "I'll take full

responsibility for you. And we'll do our best to show you

everything."

"I'm very grateful to you."

"When in doubt," said Dr. Robert, "always act on the

assumption that people are more honorable than you have

any solid reason for supposing they are. That was the advice

the Old Raja gave me when I was a young man." Turning to

Susila, "Let's see," he said, "how old were you when the Old

Raja died?"

"Just eight."

"So you remember him pretty well."

Susila laughed. "Could anyone ever forget the way he

used to talk about himself. 'Quote "I" (unquote) like sugar in

my tea.' What a darling man."

"And what a great one!"

Dr. MacPhail got up and, crossing to the bookcase that

stood between the door and the wardrobe, pulled out of its

lowest shelf a thick red album, much the worse for tropical

weather and fish insects. "There's a picture of him

somewhere," he said as he turned over the pages. "Here we

are."

Will found himself looking at the faded snapshot of a

116

little old Hindu in spectacles and a loincloth, engaged in

emptying the contents of an extremely ornate silver

sauceboat over a small squat pillar.

"What is he doing?" he asked.

"Anointing a phallic symbol with melted butter," the

doctor answered. "It was a habit my poor father could never

break him of."

"Did your father disapprove of phalluses?"

"No, wo," said Dr. MacPhail. "My father was all for

them. It was the symbol that he disapproved of."

"Why the symbol?"

"Because he thought that people ought to take their

religion warm from the cow, if you see what I mean. Not

skimmed or pasteurized or homogenized. Above all not

canned in any kind of theological or liturgical container."

"And the Raja had a weakness for containers?"

"Not for containers in general. Just this one particular

tin can. He'd always felt a special attachment to the family

lingam. It was made of black basalt, and was at least eight

hundred years old."

"I see," said Will Farnaby.

"Buttering the family lingam-it was an act of piety, it

expressed a beautiful sentiment about a sublime idea. But

even the sublimest of ideas is totally different from the

cosmic mystery it's supposed to stand for. And the beautiful

sentiments connected with the sublime idea-what do they

have in common with the direct experience of the mystery?

Nothing whatsoever. Needless to say, the Old Raja knew all

this perfectly well. Better than my father. He'd drunk the

milk as it came from the cow, he'd actually been the milk.

But the buttering of lingams was a devotional practice he just

couldn't bear to give up. And, I don't have to tell you, he

should never have been asked to give it up.

But where symbols were concerned, my father was a

puritan. He'd amended Goethe-Alles vergdnglkhe ist nicht

ein Gleich-nis. His ideal was pure experimental science at

one end of the spectrum and pure experimental mysticism at

the other. Direct experience on every level and then clear,

rational statements about those experiences. Lingams and

crosses, butter and holy water, sutras, gospels, images,

chanting-he'd have liked to abolish them all."

"Where would the arts have come in?" Will questioned.

117

"They wouldn't have come in at all," Dr. MacPhail

answered. "And that was my father's blindest spot-poetry. He

said he liked it; but in fact he didn't. Poetry for its own sake,

poetry as an autonomous universe, out there, in the space

between direct experience and the symbols of science-that

was something he simply couldn't understand. Let's find his

picture."

Dr. MacPhail turned back the pages of the album and

pointed to a craggy profile with enormous eyebrows.

"What a Scotsman!" Will commented.

"And yet his mother and his grandmother were

Palanese."

"One doesn't see a trace of them."

"Whereas his grandfather, who hailed from Perth, might

almost have passed for a Rajput."

Will peered into the ancient photograph of a young man

with an oval face and black side-whiskers, leaning his elbow

on a marble pedestal on which, bottom upwards, stood his

inordinately tall top hat.

"Your great-grandfather?"

"The first MacPhail of Pala. Dr. Andrew. Born 1822, in

the Royal Burgh, where his father, James MacPhail, owned a

rope mill. Which was properly symbolical; for James was a

devout Calvinist, and being convinced that he himself was

one of the elect, derived a deep and glowing satisfaction

from the thought of all those millions of his fellow men

going through life with the noose of predestination about

their necks, and Old Nobodaddy Aloft counting the minutes

to spring the trap."

Will laughed.

"Yes," Dr. Robert agreed, "it does seem pretty comic.

But it didn't then. Then it was serious-much more serious

than the H-bomb is today. It was known for certain that

ninety-nine point nine percent of the human race were

condemned to everlasting brimstone. Why? Either because

they'd never heard of Jesus; or, if they had, because they

couldn't believe sufficiently strongly that Jesus had delivered

them from the brimstone. And the proof that they didn't

believe sufficiently strongly was the empirical, observable

fact that their souls were not at peace. Perfect faith is defined

as something that produces perfect peace of mind. But

perfect peace of mind is something that practically nobody

118

possesses. Therefore practically nobody possesses perfect

faith. Therefore practically everybody is predestined to

eternal punishment. Quod erat demonstrandum.''''

"One wonders," said Susila, "why they didn't all go

mad."

"Fortunately most of them believed only with the tops

of their heads. Up here." Dr. MacPhail tapped his bald spot.

"With the tops of their heads they were convinced it was the

Truth with the largest possible T. But their glands and their

guts knew better- knew that it was all sheer bosh. For most

of them, Truth was true only on Sundays, and then only in a

strictly Pickwickian sense. James MacPhail knew all this and

was determined that his children should not be mere

Sabbath-day believers. They were to believe every word of

the sacred nonsense even on Mondays, even on half-holiday

afternoons; and they were to believe with their whole being,

not merely up there, in the attic. Perfect faith and the perfect

peace that goes with it were to be forced into them. How? By

giving them hell now and threatening them with hell

hereafter. And if, in their devilish perversity, they refused to

have perfect faith, and be at peace, give them more hell and

threaten hotter fires. And meanwhile tell them that good

works are as filthy rags in the sight of God; but punish them

ferociously for every misdemeanor. Tell them that by nature

they're totally depraved, then beat them for being what they

inescapably are."

Will Farnaby turned back to the album.

"Do you have a picture of this delightful ancestor of

yours?"

"We had an oil painting," said Dr. MacPhail. "But the

dampness was too much for the canvas, and then the fish

insects got into it. He was a splendid specimen. Like a High

Renaissance picture of Jeremiah. You know-majestic, with

an inspired eye and the kind of prophetic beard that covers

such a multitude of physiognomic sins. The only relic of him

that remains is a pencil drawing of his house."

He turned back another page and there it was.

"Solid granite," he went on, "with bars on all the

windows. And, inside that cozy little family Bastille, what

systematic inhumanity! Systematic inhumanity in the name,

needless to say, of Christ and for righteousness' sake. Dr.

Andrew left an unfinished autobiography, so we know all

119

about it."

"Didn't the children get any help from their mother?"

Dr. MacPhail shook his head.

"Janet MacPhail was a Cameron and as good a Calvinist

as James himself. Maybe an even better Calvinist than he

was. Being a woman, she had further to go, she had more

instinctive decencies to overcome. But she did overcome

them-heroically. Far from restraining her husband, she urged

him on, she backed him up. There were homilies before

breakfast and at the midday dinner; there was the catechism

on Sundays and learning the Epistles by heart; and every

evening, when the day's delinquencies had been added up

and assessed, methodical whipping, with a whalebone riding

switch on the bare buttocks, for all six children, girls as well

as boys, in order of seniority."

"It always makes me feel slightly sick," said Susila.

"Pure sadism."

"No, not pure," said Dr. MacPhail. "Applied sadism.

Sadism with an ulterior motive, sadism in the service of an

ideal, as the expression of a religious conviction. And that's a

subject," he added, turning to Will, "that somebody ought to

make a historical study of-the relation between theology and

corporal punishment in childhood. I have a theory that,

wherever little boys and girls are systematically flagellated,

the victims grow up to think of God as 'Wholly Other'-isn't

that the fashionable argot in your part of the world?

Wherever, on the contrary, children are brought up without

being subjected to physical violence, God is immanent. A

people's theology reflects the state of its children's bottoms.

Look at the Hebrews-enthusiastic child-beaters. And so were

all good Christians in the Ages of Faith. Hence Jehovah,

hence Original Sin and the infinitely offended Father of

Roman and Protestant orthodoxy. Whereas among Buddhists

and Hindus education has always been nonviolent. No

laceration of little buttocks-therefore tat tvam asi, thou art

That, mind from Mind is not divided. And look at the

Quakers. They were heretical enough to believe in the Inner

Light, and what happened? They gave up beating their

children and were the first Christian denomination to protest

against the institution of slavery."

"But child-beating," Will objected, "has quite gone out

of fashion nowadays. And yet it's precisely at this moment

120

that it has become modish to hold forth about the Wholly

Other."

Dr. MacPhail waved the objection away. "It's just a case

of reaction following action. By the second half of the

nineteenth century freethinking humanitarianism had become

so strong that even good Christians were influenced by it and

stopped beating their children. There were no weals on the

younger generation's posterior; consequently, it ceased to

think of God as the Wholly Other and proceeded to invent

New Thought, Unity, Christian Science-all the semi-Oriental

heresies in which God is the Wholly Identical. The

movement was well under way in William James's day, and

it's been gathering momentum ever since. But thesis always

invites antithesis and in due course the heresies begat

Neo-Orthodoxy. Down with the Wholly Identical and back

to the Wholly Other! Back to Augustine, back to Martin

Luther-back, in a word, to the two most relentlessly flagel-

lated bottoms in the whole history of Christian thought. Read

the Confessions, read the Table Talk. Augustine was beaten

by his schoolmaster and laughed at by his parents when he

complained, Luther was systematically flogged not only by

his teachers and his father, but even by his loving mother.

The world has been paying for the scars on his buttocks ever

since. Prussianism and the Third Reich-without Luther and

his flagellation theology these monstrosities could never

have come into existence. Or take the flagellation theology

of Augustine, as carried to its logical conclusions by Calvin

and swallowed whole by pious folk like James MacPhail and

Janet Cameron. Major premise: God is Wholly Other. Minor

premise: man is totally depraved. Conclusion: Do to your

children's bottoms what was done to yours, what your

Heavenly Father has been doing to the collective bottom of

humanity ever since the Fall: whip, whip, whip!"

There was a silence. Will Farnaby looked again at the

drawing of the granite person in the rope walk, and thought

of all the grotesque and ugly phantasies promoted to the rank

of supernatural facts, all the obscene cruelties inspired by

those phantasies, all the pain inflicted and the miseries

endured because of them. And when it wasn't Augustine with

his "benignant asperity," it was Robespierre, it was Stalin;

when it wasn't Luther exhorting the princes to kill the

peasants, it was a genial Mao reducing them to slavery.

121

"Don't you sometimes despair?" he asked.

Dr. MacPhail shook his head. "We don't despair," he

said, "because we know that things don't necessarily have to

be as bad as in fact they've always been."

"We know that they can be a great deal better," Susila

added.

"Know it because they already are a great deal better,

here and now, on this absurd little island."

"But whether we shall be able to persuade you people to

follow our example, or whether we shall even be able to

preserve our tiny oasis of humanity in the midst of your

worldwide wilderness of monkeys-that, alas," said Dr.

MacPhail, "is another question. One's justified in feeling

extremely pessimistic about the current situation. But

despair, radical despair-no, I can't see any justification for

that."

"Not even when you read history?"

"Not even when I read history."

"I envy you. How do you manage to do it?"

"By remembering what history is-the record of what

human beings have been impelled to do by their ignorance

and the enormous bumptiousness that makes them canonize

their ignorance as a political or religious dogma."

He turned again to the album. "Let's get back to the

house in the Royal Burgh, back to James and Janet, and the

six children whom Calvin's God, in His inscrutable

malevolence, had condemned to their tender mercies. 'The

rod and reproof bring wisdom; but a child left to himself

bringeth his mother to shame.' Indoctrination reinforced by

psychological stress and physical torture-the perfect

Pavlovian setup. But, unfortunately for organized religion

and political dictatorship, human beings are much less

reliable as laboratory animals than dogs. On Tom, Mary and

Jean the conditioning worked as it was meant to work. Tom

became a minister, and Mary married a minister and duly

died in childbirth. Jean stayed at home, nursed her mother

through a long grim cancer and for the next twenty years was

slowly sacrificed to the aging and finally senile and driveling

patriarch. So far, so good. But with Annie, the fourth child,

the pattern changed. Annie was pretty. At eighteen she was

proposed to by a captain of dragoons. But the captain was an

Anglican and his views on total depravity and God's good

122

pleasure were criminally incorrect. The marriage was

forbidden. It looked as though Annie were predestined to

share the fate of Jean. She stuck it out for ten years; then, at

twenty-eight, she got herself seduced by the second mate of

an East Indiaman. There were seven weeks of almost frantic

happiness-the first she had ever known. Her face was

transfigured by a kind of supernatural beauty, her body

glowed with life. Then the Indiaman sailed for a two-year

voyage for Madras and Macao. Four months later, pregnant,

friendless and despairing, Annie threw herself into the Tay.

Meanwhile Alexander, the next in line, had run away from

school and joined a company of actors. In the house by the

rope walk nobody, thenceforward, was ever allowed to refer

to his existence. And finally there was Andrew, the

youngest, the Benjamin. What a model child! He was

obedient, he loved his lessons, he learned the Epistles by

heart faster and more accurately than any of the other

children had done. Then, just in time to restore her faith in

human wickedness, his mother caught him one evening

playing with his genitals. He was whipped till the blood

came; was caught again a few weeks later and again

whipped, sentenced to solitary confinement on bread and

water, told that he had almost certainly committed the sin

against the Holy Ghost and that it was undoubtedly on

account of that sin that his mother had been afflicted with

cancer. For the rest of his childhood Andrew was haunted by

recurrent nightmares of hell. Haunted, too, by recurrent

temptations and, when he succumbed to them-which of

course he did, but always in the privacy of the latrine at the

bottom of the garden-by yet more terrifying visions of the

punishments in store for him."

"And to think," Will Farnaby commented, "to think that

people complain about modern life having no meaning!

Look at what life was like when it did have a meaning. A tale

told by an idiot or a tale told by a Calvinist? Give me the

idiot every time."

"Agreed," said Dr. MacPhail. "But mightn't there be a

third possibility? Mightn't there be a tale told by somebody

who is neither an imbecile nor a paranoiac?"

"Somebody, for a change, completely sane," said Susila.

"Yes, for a change," Dr. MacPhail repeated. "For a

blessed change. And luckily, even under the old

123

dispensation, there were always plenty of people whom even

the most diabolic upbringing couldn't ruin. By all the rules of

the Freudian and Pavlovian games, my great-grandfather

ought to have grown up to be a mental cripple. In fact, he

grew up to be a mental athlete. Which only shows," Dr.

Robert added parenthetically, "how hopelessly inadequate

your two highly touted systems of psychology really are.

Freudism and behaviorism-poles apart but in complete

agreement when it comes to the facts of the built-in,

congenital differences between individuals. How do your pet

psychologists deal with these facts? Very simply. They

ignore them. They blandly pretend that the facts aren't there.

Hence their complete inability to cope with the human

situation as it really exists, or even to explain it theoretically.

Look at what happened, for, example, in this particular case.

Andrew's brothers and sisters were either tamed by their

conditioning or destroyed. Andrew was neither destroyed nor

tamed. Why? Because the roulette wheel of heredity had

stopped turning at a lucky number. He had a more resilient

constitution than the others, a different anatomy, different

biochemistry and different temperament. His parents did

their worst, as they had done with all the rest of their

unfortunate brood. Andrew came through with flying colors,

almost without a scar."

"In spite of the sin against the Holy Ghost?"

"That, happily, was something he got rid of during his

first year of medical studies at Edinburgh. He was only a

boy-just over seventeen. (They started young in those days.)

In the dissecting room the boy found himself listening to the

extravagant obscenities and blasphemies with which his

fellow students kept up their spirits among the slowly rotting

cadavers. Listening at first with horror, with a sickening fear

that God would surely take vengeance. But nothing

happened. The blasphemers flourished, the loud-mouthed

fornicators escaped with nothing worse than a dose, every

now and then, of the clap. Fear gave place in Andrew's mind

to a wonderful sense of relief and deliverance. Greatly

daring, he began to risk a few ribald jokes of his own. His

first utterance of a four-letter word-what a liberation, what a

genuinely religious experience! And meanwhile, in his spare

time, he read Tom Jones, he read Hume's 'Essay on

Miracles,' he read the infidel Gibbon. Putting the French he

124

had learned at school to good account, he read La Mettrie, he

read Dr. Caba-nis. Man is a machine, the brain secretes

thought as the liver secretes bile. How simple it all was, how

luminously obvious! With all the fervor of a convert at a

revival meeting, he decided for atheism. In the circumstances

it was only to be expected. You can't stomach St. Augustine

any more, you can't go on repeating the Athanasian

rigmarole. So you pull the plug and send them down the

drain. What bliss! But not for very long. Something, you

discover, is missing. The experimental baby was flushed out

with the theological dirt and soapsuds. But nature abhors a

vacuum. Bliss gives place to a chronic discomfort, and now

you're afflicted, generation after generation, by a succession

of Wesleys, Puseys, Moodys and Billys-Sunday and

Graham-all working like beavers to pump the theology back

out of the cesspool. They hope, of course, to recover the

baby. But they never succeed. All that a revivalist can do is

to siphon up a little of the dirty water. Which, in due course,

has to be thrown out again. And so on, indefinitely. It's really

too boring and, as Dr. Andrew came at last to realize, wholly

unnecessary. Meanwhile here he was, in the first flush of his

new-found freedom. Excited, exultant-but quietly excited,

exultant behind that appearance of grave and courteous

detachment which he habitually presented to the world."

"What about his father?" Will asked. "Did they have a

battle?"

"No battle. Andrew didn't like battles. He was the sort

of man who always goes his own way, but doesn't advertise

the fact, doesn't argue with people who prefer another road.

The old man was never given the opportunity of putting on

his Jeremiah act. Andrew kept his mouth shut about Hume

and La Mettrie and went through the traditional motions. But

when his training was finished, he just didn't come home.

Instead, he went to London and signed up, as surgeon and

naturalist, on HMS Melampus, bound for the South Seas

with orders to chart, survey, collect specimens and protect

Protestant missionaries and British interests. The cruise of

the Melampus lasted for a full three years. They called at

Tahiti, they spent two months on Samoa and a month in the

Marquesas group. After Perth, the islands seemed like

Eden-but an Eden innocent unfortunately not only of Calvin-

ism and capitalism and industrial slums, but also of

125

Shakespeare and Mozart, also of scientific knowledge and

logical thinking. It was paradise, but it wouldn't do, it

wouldn't do. They sailed on. They visited Fiji and the

Carolines and the Solomons. They charted the northern coast

of New Guinea and, in Borneo, a party went ashore, trapped

a pregnant orangutan and climbed to the top of Mount

Kinabalu. Then followed a week at Panay, a fortnight in the

Mergui Archipelago. After which they headed west to the

Andamans and from the Andamans to the mainland of India.

While ashore, my great-grandfather was thrown from his

horse and broke his right leg. The captain of the Melampus

found another surgeon and sailed for home. Two months

later, as good as new, Andrew was practicing medicine at

Madras. Doctors were scarce in those days and sickness

fearfully common. The young man began to prosper. But life

among the merchants and officials of the presidency was

oppressively boring. It was an exile, but an exile without any

of the compensations of exile, an exile without adventure or

strangeness, a banishment merely to the provinces, to the

tropical equivalent of Swansea or Hudders-field. But still he

resisted the temptation to book a passage on the next

homebound ship. If he stuck it out for five years, he would

have enough money to buy a good practice in Edinburgh-no,

in London, in the West End. The future beckoned, rosy and

golden. There would be a wife, preferably with auburn hair

and a modest competence. There would be four or five

children- happy, unwhipped and atheistic. And his practice

would grow, his patients would be drawn from circles ever

more exalted. Wealth, reputation, dignity, even a knighthood.

Sir Andrew MacPhail stepping out of his brougham in

Belgrave Square. The great Sir Andrew, physician to the

Queen. Summoned to St. Petersburg to operate on the Grand

Duke, to the Tuileries, to the Vatican, to the Sublime Porte.

Delightful phantasies! But the facts, as it turned out, were to

be far more interesting. One fine morning a brown-skinned

stranger called at the surgery. In halting English he gave an

account of himself. He was from Pala and had been

commanded by His Highness, the Raja, to seek out and bring

back with him a skillful surgeon from the West. The rewards

would be princely. Princely, he insisted. There and then Dr.

Andrew accepted the invitation. Partly, of course, for the

money; but mostly because he was bored, because he needed

126

a change, needed a taste of adventure. A trip to the

Forbidden Island-the lure was irresistible."

"And remember," Susila interjected, "in those days Pala

was much more forbidden than it is now."

"So you can imagine how eagerly young Dr. Andrew

jumped at the opportunity now offered by the Raja's

ambassador. Ten days later his ship dropped anchor off the

north coast of the forbidden island. With his medicine chest,

his bag of instruments, and a small tin trunk containing his

clothes and a few indispensable books, he was rowed in an

outrigger canoe through the pounding surf, carried in a

palanquin through the streets of Shivapuram and set down in

the inner courtyard of the royal palace. His royal patient was

eagerly awaiting him. Without being given time to shave or

change his clothes, Dr. Andrew was ushered into the

presence—the pitiable presence of a small brown man in his

early forties, terribly emaciated under his rich brocades, his

face so swollen and distorted as to be barely human, his

voice reduced to a hoarse whisper. Dr. Andrew examined

him. From the maxillary antrum, where it had its roots, a

tumor had spread in all directions. It had filled the nose, it

had pushed up into the socket of the right eye, it had half

blocked the throat. Breathing had become difficult,

swallowing acutely painful, and sleep an impossibility—for

whenever he dropped off, the patient would choke and wake

up frantically struggling for air. Without radical surgery, it

was obvious, the Raja would be dead within a couple of

months. With radical surgery, much sooner. Those were the

good old days, remember—the good old days of septic

operations without benefit of chloroform. Even in the most

favorable circumstances surgery was fatal to one patient out

of four. Where conditions were less propitious, the odds

declined—fifty-fifty, thirty to seventy, zero to a hundred. In

the present case the prognosis could hardly have been worse.

The patient was already weak and the operation would be

long, difficult and excruciatingly painful. There was a good

chance that he would die on the operating table and a virtual

certainty that, if he survived, it would only be to die a few

days later of blood poisoning. But if he should die, Dr.

Andrew now reflected, what would be the fate of the alien

surgeon who had killed a king? And, during the operation,

who would hold the royal patient down while he writhed

127

under the.knife? Which of his servants or courtiers would

have the strength of mind to disobey, when the master

screamed in agony or positively commanded them to let him

go?

"Perhaps the wisest thing would be to say, here and

now, that the case was hopeless, that he could do nothing,

and ask to be sent back to Madras forthwith. Then he looked

again at the sick man. Through the grotesque mask of his

poor deformed face the Raja was looking at him

intently—looking with the eyes of a condemned criminal

begging the judge for mercy. Touched by the appeal, Dr.

Andrew gave him a smile of encouragement and all at once,

as he patted the thin hand, he had an idea. It was absurd,

crackbrained, thoroughly discreditable; but all the same, all

the same ...

"Five years before, he suddenly remembered, while he

was still at Edinburgh, there had been an article in The

Lancet, an article denouncing the notorious Professor

Elliotson for his advocacy of animal magnetism. Elliotson

had had the effrontery to talk of painless operations

performed on patients in the mesmeric trance.

"The man was either a gullible fool or an unscrupulous

knave. The so-called evidence for such nonsense was

manifestly worthless. It was all sheer humbug, quackery,

downright fraud— and so on for six columns of righteous

indignation. At the time—for he was still full of La Mettrie

and Hume and Cabanis— Dr. Andrew had read the article

with a glow of orthodox approval. After which he had

forgotten about the very existence of animal magnetism.

Now, at the Raja's bedside, it all came back to him—the mad

professor, the magnetic passes, the amputations without pain,

the low death rate and the rapid recoveries. Perhaps, after all,

there might be something in it. He was deep in these

thoughts when, breaking a long silence, the sick man spoke

to him. From a young sailor who had deserted his ship at

Rendang-Lobo and somehow made his way across the Strait,

the Raja had learned to speak English with remarkable

fluency, but , also, in faithful imitation of his teacher, with a

strong Cockney accent. That Cockney accent," Dr. MacPhail

repeated with a little laugh. "It turns up again and again in

my great-grandfather's memoirs. There was something, to

him, inexpressibly improper about a king who spoke like

128

Sam Weller. And in this case the impropriety was more than

merely social. Besides being a king, the Raja was a man of

intellect and the most exquisite refinement; a man, not only

of deep religious convictions (any crude oaf can have deep

religious convictions), but also of deep religious experience

and spiritual insight. That such a man should express himself

in Cockney was something that an Early Victorian Scotsman

who had read The Pickwick Papers could never get over.

Nor, in spite of all my great-grandfather's tactful coaching,

could the Raja ever get over his impure diphthongs and

dropped aitches. But all that was in the future. At their first

tragic meeting, that shocking, lower-class accent seemed

strangely touching. Laying the palms of his hands together in

a gesture of supplication, the sick man whispered, ' 'Elp me,

Dr. MacPhile, 'elp me.'

"The appeal was decisive. Without any further

hesitation, Dr. Andrew took the Raja's thin hands between

his own and began to speak in the most confident tone about

a wonderful new treatment recently discovered in Europe

and employed as yet by only a handful of the most eminent

physicians. Then, turning to the attendants who had been

hovering all this time in the background, he ordered them out

of the room. They did not understand the words; but his tone

and accompanying gestures were unmistakably clear. They

bowed and withdrew. Dr. Andrew took off his coat, rolled up

his shirt sleeves and started to make those famous magnetic

passes, about which he had read with so much skeptical

amusement in The Lancet. From the crown of the head, over

the face and down the trunk to the epigastrium, again and

again until the patient falls into a trance—'or until' (he

remembered the derisive comments of the anonymous writer

of the article) 'until the presiding charlatan shall choose to

say that his dupe is now under the magnetic influence.'

Quackery, humbug and fraud. But all the same, all the same

... He worked away in silence. Twenty passes, fifty passes.

The sick man sighed and closed his eyes. Sixty, eighty, a

hundred, a hundred and twenty. The heat was stifling, Dr.

Andrew's shirt was drenched with sweat, and his arms ached.

Grimly he repeated the same absurd gesture. A hundred and

fifty, a hundred and seventy-five, two hundred. It was all

fraud and humbug; but all the same he was determined to

make this poor devil go to sleep, even if it took him the

129

whole day to do it. 'You are going to sleep,' he said aloud as

he made the two hundred and eleventh pass. 'You are going

to sleep.' The sick man seemed to sink more deeply into his

pillows, and suddenly Dr. Andrew caught the sound of a rat-

tling wheeze. 'This time,' he added quickly, 'you are not

going to choke. There's plenty of room for the air to pass,

and you're not going to choke.' The Raja's breathing grew

quiet. Dr. Andrew made a few more passes, then decided that

it would be safe to take a rest. He mopped his face, then rose,

stretched his arms and took a couple of turns up and down

the room. Sitting down again by the bed, he took one of the

Raja's sticklike wrists and felt for the pulse. An hour before

it had been running at almost a hundred; now the rate had

fallen to seventy. He raised the arm: the hand hung limp like

a dead man's. He let go, and the arm dropped by its own

weight and lay, inert and unmoving, where it had fallen.

'Your Highness,' he said, and again, more loudly, 'Your

Highness.' There was no answer. It was all quack-ery,

humbug and fraud, but all the same it worked, it obviously

worked."

A large, brightly colored mantis fluttered down onto the

rail at the foot of the bed, folded its pink and white wings,

raised its small flat head, and stretched out its incredibly

muscular front legs in the attitude of prayer. Dr. MacPhail

pulled out a magnify- ing glass and bent forward to examine

it.

"Gongylus gongyloides," he pronounced. "It dresses

itself up to look like a flower. When unwary flies and moths

come sailing in to sip the nectar, it sips them. And if it's a

female, she eats her lovers." He put the glass away and

leaned back in his chair. "What one likes most about the

universe," he said to Will Farnaby, "is its wild improbability.

Gongylus

gongyloides,

Homo

sapiens,

my

great

grandfather's introduction to Pala and hypnosis—what could

be more unlikely?"

"Nothing," said Will. "Except perhaps my introduction

to Pala and hypnosis, Pala via a shipwreck and a precipice;

hypnosis by way of a soliloquy about an English cathedral."

Susila laughed. "Fortunately I didn't have to make all

those passes over you. In this climate! I really admire Dr.

Andrew. It sometimes takes three hours to anesthetize a

person with the passes."

130

"But in the end he succeeded?"

"Triumphantly."

"And did he actually perform the operation?"

"Yes, he actually performed the operation," said Dr.

MacPhail. "But not immediately. There had to be a long

preparation. Dr. Andrew began by telling his patient that

henceforward he would be able to swallow without pain.

Then, for the next three weeks, he fed him up. And between

meals he put him into trance and kept him asleep until it was

time for another feeding. It's wonderful what your body will

do for you if you only give it a chance. The Raja gained

twelve pounds and felt like a new man. A new man full of

new hope and confidence. He knew he was going to come

through his ordeal. And so, incidentally, did Dr. Andrew. In

the process of fortifying the Raja's faith he had fortified his

own. It was not a blind faith. The operation, he felt quite

certain, was going to be successful. But this unshakable

confidence did not prevent him from doing everything that

might contribute to its success. Very early in the proceedings

he started to work on the trance. The trance, he kept telling

his patient, was becoming deeper every day, and on the day

of the operation it would be much deeper than it had ever

been before. It would also last longer. 'You'll sleep,' he

assured the Raja, 'for four full hours after the operation's

over; and when you awake, you won't feel the slightest pain.'

Dr. Andrew made these affirmations with a mixture of total

skepticism and complete confidence. Reason and past

experience assured him that all this was impossible. But in

the present context past experience had proved to be

irrelevant. The impossible had already happened, several

times. There was no reason why it shouldn't happen again.

The important thing was to say that it would happen—so he

said it, again and again. All this was good; but better still

was Dr. Andrew's invention of the rehearsal."

"Rehearsal of what?"

"Of the surgery. They ran through the procedure half a

dozen times. The last rehearsal was on the morning of the

operation. At six, Dr. Andrew came to the Raja's room and,

after a little cheerful talk, began to make the passes. In a few

minutes the patient was in deep trance. Stage by stage, Dr.

Andrew described what he was going to do. Touching the

cheekbone near the Raja's right eye, he said, T begin by

131

stretching the skin. And now with this scalpel' (and he drew

the tip of a pencil across the cheek) 'I make an incision. You

feel no pain, of course—not even the slightest discomfort.

And now the underlying tissues are being cut and you still

feel nothing at all. You just lie there, comfortably asleep,

while I dissect the cheek back to the nose. Every now and

then I stop to tie a blood vessel; then I go on again. And

when that part of the work is done, I'm ready to start on the

tumor. It has its roots there in the antrum and it has grown

upwards, under the cheekbone, into the eye socket, and

downwards into the gullet. And as I cut it loose, you lie there

as before, feeling nothing, perfectly comfortable, completely

relaxed. And now I lift your head.' Suiting his action to the

words, he lifted the Raja's head and bent it forward on the

limp neck. 'I lift it and bend it so that you can get rid of the

blood that's run down into your mouth and throat. Some of

the blood has got into your windpipe, and you cough a little

to get rid of it; but it doesn't wake you.' The Raja coughed

once or twice, then, when Dr. Andrew released his hold,

dropped back onto the pillows, still fast asleep. 'And you

don't choke even when I work on the lower end of the tumor

in your gullet.' Dr. Andrew opened the Raja's mouth and

thrust two fingers down his throat. 'It's just a question of

pulling it loose, that's all. Nothing in that to make you choke.

And if you have to cough up the blood, you can do it in your

sleep. Yes, in your sleep, in this deep, deep sleep.'

"That was the end of the rehearsal. Ten minutes later,

after making some more passes and telling his patient to

sleep still more deeply, Dr. Andrew began the operation. He

stretched the skin, he made the incision, he dissected the

cheek, he cut the tumor away from its roots in the antrum.

The Raja lay there perfectly relaxed, his pulse firm and

steady at seventy-five, feeling no more pain than he had felt

during the make-believe of the rehearsal. Dr. Andrew

worked on the throat; there was no choking. The blood

flowed into the windpipe; the Raja coughed but did not

awake. Four hours after the operation was over, he was still

sleeping; then, punctual to the minute, he opened his eyes,

smiled at Dr. Andrew between his bandages and asked, in his

singsong Cockney, when the operation was to start. After a

feeding and a sponging, he was given some more passes and

told to sleep for four more hours and to get well quickly. Dr.

132

Andrew kept it up for a full week. Sixteen hours of trance

each day, eight of waking. The Raja suffered almost no pain

and, in spite of the thoroughly septic conditions under which

the operation had been performed and the dressings renewed,

the wounds healed without suppuration. Remembering the

horrors he had witnessed in the Edinburgh infirmary, the yet

more frightful horrors of the surgical wards at Madras, Dr.

Andrew could hardly believe his eyes. And now he was

given another opportunity to prove to himself what animal

magnetism could do. The Raja's eldest daughter was in the

ninth month of her first pregnancy. Impressed by what he

had done for her husband, the Rani sent for Dr. Andrew. He

found her sitting with a frail frightened girl of sixteen, who

knew just enough broken Cockney to be able to tell him she

was going to die—she and her baby too. Three black birds

had confirmed it by flying on three successive days across

her path. Dr. Andrew did not try to argue with her. Instead,

he asked her to lie down, then started to make the passes.

Twenty minutes later the girl was in a deep trance. In his

country, Dr. Andrew now assured her, black birds were

lucky—a presage of birth and joy. She would bear her child

easily and without pain. Yes, with no more pain than her

father had felt during his operation. No pain at all, he

promised, no pain whatsoever.

"Three days later, and after three or four more hours of

intensive suggestion, it all came true. When the Raja woke

up for his evening meal, he found his wife sitting by his bed.

'We have a grandson,' she said, 'and our daughter is well. Dr.

Andrew has said that tomorrow you may be carried to her

room, to give them both your blessing.' At the end of a

month the Raja dissolved the Council of Regency and

resumed his royal powers. Resumed them, in gratitude to the

man who had saved his life and (the Rani was convinced of

it) his daughter's life as well, with Dr. Andrew as his chief

adviser."

"So he didn't go back to Madras?"

"Not to Madras. Not even to London. He stayed here in

Pala."

"Trying to change the Raja's accent?"

"And trying, rather more successfully, to change the

Raja's kingdom."

"Into what?"

133

"That was a question he couldn't have answered. In

those early days he had no plan-—only a set of likes and

dislikes. There were things about Pala that he liked, and

plenty of others that he didn't like at all. Things about Europe

that he detested, and things he passionately approved of.

Things he had seen on his travels that seemed to make good

sense, and things that filled him with disgust. People, he was

beginning to understand, are at once the beneficiaries and the

victims of their culture. It brings them to flower; but it also

nips them in the bud or plants a canker at the heart of the

blossom. Might it not be possible, on this forbidden island, to

avoid the cankers, minimize the nip-pings, and make the

individual blooms more beautiful? That was the question to

which, implicitly at first, then with a growing awareness of

what they were really up to, Dr. Andrew and the Raja were

trying to find an answer."

"And did they find an answer?"

"Looking back," said Dr. MacPhail, "one's amazed by

what those two men accomplished. The Scottish doctor and

the Palanese king, the Calvinist-turned-atheist and the pious

Mahayana Buddhist—what a strangely assorted pair! But a

pair, very soon, of firm friends; a pair, moreover, of

complementary

temperaments

and

talents,

with

complementary philosophies and complementary stocks of

knowledge, each man supplying the other's deficiencies, each

stimulating and fortifying the other's native capacities. The

Raja's was an acute and subtle mind; but he knew nothing of

the world beyond the confines of his island, nothing of

physical science, nothing of European technology, European

art, European ways of thinking. No less intelligent, Dr.

Andrew knew nothing, of course, about Indian painting and

poetry and philosophy. He also knew nothing, as he

gradually discovered, about the science of the human mind

and the art of living. In the months that followed the

operation each became the other's pupil and the other's

teacher. And of course that was only a beginning. They were

not merely private citizens concerned with their private

improvement. The Raja had a million subjects and Dr.

Andrew was virtually his prime minister. Private

improvement was to be the preliminary to public

improvement. If the king and the doctor were now teaching

one another to make the best of both worlds—the Oriental

134

and the European, the ancient and the modern—it was in

order to help the whole nation to do the same. To make the

best of both worlds—what am I saying? To make the best of

all the worlds— the worlds already realized within the

various cultures and, beyond them, the worlds of still

unrealized potentialities. It was an enormous ambition, an

ambition totally impossible of fulfillment; but at least it had

the merit of spurring them on, of making them rush in where

angels feared to tread—with results that sometimes proved,

to everybody's astonishment, that they had not been quite

such fools as they looked. They never succeeded, of course,

in making the best of all the worlds; but by dint of boldly

trying they made the best of many more worlds than any

merely prudent or sensible person would have dreamed of

being able to reconcile and combine."

" 'If the fool would persist in his folly,' " Will quoted

from The Proverbs of Hell, " 'he would become wise.' "

"Precisely," Dr. Robert agreed. "And the most

extravagant folly of all is the folly described by Blake, the

folly that the Raja and Dr. Andrew were now

contemplating—the enormous folly of trying to make a

marriage between hell and heaven. But if you persist in that

enormous folly, what an enormous reward! Provided, of

course, that you persist intelligently. Stupid fools get

nowhere; it's only the knowledgeable and clever ones whose

folly can make them wise or produce good results.

Fortunately these two fools were clever. Clever enough, for

example, to embark on their folly in a modest and appealing

way. They began with pain relievers. The Palanese were

Buddhists. They knew how misery is related to mind. You

cling, you crave, you assert yourself—and you live in a

homemade hell. You become detached—and you live in

peace. 'I show you sorrow,' the Buddha had said, 'and I show

you the ending of sorrow.' Well, here was Dr. Andrew with a

special kind of mental detachment which would put an end at

least to one kind of sorrow, namely, physical pain. With the

Raja himself or, for the women, the Rani and her daughter

acting as interpreters, Dr. Andrew gave lessons in his

new-found art to groups of midwives and physicians, of

teachers, mothers, invalids.

Painless childbirth—and forthwith all the women of

Pala were enthusiastically on the side of the innovators.

135

Painless

operations

for

stone

and

cataract

and

hemorrhoids—and they had won the approval of all the old

and the ailing. At one stroke more than half the adult

population became their allies, prejudiced in their favor,

friendly in advance, or at least open-minded, toward the next

reform."

"Where did they go from pain?" Will asked.

"To agriculture and language. To bread and

communication. They got a man out from England to

establish Rothamsted-in-the-Tropics, and they set to work to

give the Palanese a second language. Pala was to remain a

forbidden island; for Dr. Andrew wholeheartedly agreed with

the Raja that missionaries, planters and traders were far too

dangerous to be tolerated. But, while the foreign subversives

must not be allowed to come in, the natives must somehow

be helped to get out—if not physically, at least with their

minds. But their language and their archaic version of the

Brahmi alphabet were a prison without windows. There

could be no escape for them, no glimpse of the outside world

until they had learned English and could read the Latin

script. Among the courtiers, the Raja's linguistic accomplish-

ments had already set a fashion. Ladies and gentlemen larded

their conversation with scraps of Cockney, and some of them

had even sent to Ceylon for English-speaking tutors. What

had been a mode was now transformed into a policy. English

schools were set up and a staff of Bengali printers, with their

presses and their fonts of Caslon and Bodoni, were imported

from Calcutta. The first English book to be published at

Shivapuram was a selection from The Arabian Nights, the

second, a translation of The Diamond Sutra, hitherto

available only in Sanskrit and in manuscript. For those who

wished to read about Sindbad and Marouf, and for those who

were interested in the Wisdom of the Other Shore, there were

now two cogent reasons for learning English.

That was the beginning of the long educational process

that turned us at last into a bilingual people. We speak

Palanese when we're cooking, when we're telling funny

stories, when we're talking about love or making it.

(Incidentally, we have the richest erotic and sentimental

vocabulary in Southeast Asia.) But when it comes to

business, or science, or speculative philosophy, we generally

speak English. And most of us prefer to write in English.

136

Every writer needs a literature as his frame of reference; a set

of models to conform to or depart from. Pala had good

painting and sculpture, splendid architecture, wonderful

dancing, subtle and expressive music—but no real literature,

no national poets or dramatists or storytellers. Just bards

reciting Buddhist and Hindu myths; just a lot of monks

preaching sermons and splitting metaphysical hairs.

Adopting English as our stepmother tongue, we gave

ourselves a literature with one of the longest pasts and

certainly the widest of presents. We gave ourselves a

background, a spiritual yardstick, a repertory of styles and

techniques, an inexhaustible source of inspiration. In a word,

we gave ourselves the possibility of being creative in a field

where we had never been creative before. Thanks to the Raja

and my great-grandfather, there's an Anglo-Palanese

literature— of which, I may add, Susila here is a

contemporary light."

"On the dim side," she protested.

Dr. MacPhail shut his eyes, and, smiling to himself,

began to recite:

"Thus-Gone to Thus-Gone, I with a Buddha's hand

Offer the unplucked flower, the frog's soliloquy Among the

lotus leaves, the milk-smeared mouth At my full breast and

love and, like the cloudless Sky that makes possible

mountains and setting moon, This emptiness that is the

womb of love This poetry of silence."

He opened his eyes again. "And not only this poetry of

silence," he said. "This science, this philosophy, this

theology of silence. And now it's high time you went to

sleep." He rose and moved towards the door. "I'll go and get

you a glass of fruit juice."

137

9

" 'Patriotism is not enough.' But neither is anything else.

Science is not enough, religion is not enough, art is not

enough, politics and economics are not enough, nor is love,

nor is duty, nor is action however disinterested, nor, however

sublime, is contemplation. Nothing short of everything will

really do."

"Attention!" shouted a faraway bird.

Will looked at his watch. Five to twelve. He closed his

Notes on What's What and picking up the bamboo

alpenstock which had once belonged to Dugald MacPhail, he

set out to keep his appointment with Vijaya and Dr. Robert.

By the short cut the main building of the Experimental

Station was less than a quarter of a mile from Dr. Robert's

bungalow. But the day was oppressively hot, and there were

two flights of steps to be negotiated. For a convalescent with

his right leg in a splint, it was a considerable journey.

Slowly, painfully, Will made his way along the winding

path and up the steps. At the top of the second flight he

halted to take breath and mop his forehead; then keeping

close to the wall, where there was still a narrow strip of

shade, he moved on towards a signboard marked laboratory.

The door beneath the board was ajar; he pushed it open

and found himself on the threshold of a long, high-ceilinged

room. There were the usual sinks and worktables, the usual

glass-fronted cabinets full of bottles and equipment, the

usual smells of chemicals and caged mice. For the first

moment Will was under the impression that the room was

untenanted, but no—almost hidden from view by a bookcase

that projected at right angles from the wall, young Murugan

was seated at a table, intently reading. As quietly as he

could—for it was always amusing to take people by

surprise—Will advanced into the room. The whirring of an

electric fan covered the sound of his approach, and it was not

until he was within a few feet of the bookcase that Murugan

became aware of his presence. The boy started guiltily,

138

shoved his book with panic haste into a leather briefcase and,

reaching for another, smaller volume that lay open on the

table beside the briefcase, drew it within reading range. Only

then did he turn to face the intruder.

Will gave him a reassuring smile. "It's only me." The

look of angry defiance gave place, on the boy's face, to one

of relief.

"I thought it was ..." He broke off, leaving the sentence

unfinished.

"You thought it was someone who would bawl you out

for not doing what you're supposed to do—is that it?"

Murugan grinned and nodded his curly head.

"Where's everyone else?" Will asked.

"They're out in the fields—pruning or pollinating or

something." His tone was contemptuous.

"And so, the cats being away, the mouse duly played.

What were you studying so passionately?"

With innocent disingenuousness, Murugan held up the

book he was now pretending to read. "It's called Elementary

Ecology" he said.

"So I see," said Will. "But what I asked you was what

were you reading?"

"Oh, that," Murugan shrugged his shoulders. "You

wouldn't be interested."

"I'm interested in everything that anyone tries to hide,"

Will assured him. "Was it pornography?"

Murugan dropped his playacting and looked genuinely

offended. "Who do you take me for?"

Will was on the point of saying that he took him for an

average boy, but checked himself. To Colonel Dipa's pretty

young friend, "average boy" might sound like an insult or an

innuendo. Instead he bowed with mock politeness. "I beg

Your Majesty's pardon," he said. "But I'm still curious," he

added in another tone. "May I?" He laid a hand on the

bulging briefcase.

Murugan hesitated for a moment, then forced a laugh.

"Go ahead."

"What a tome!" Will pulled the ponderous volume out

of the bag and laid it on the table. "Sears, Roebuck and Co.,"

he read aloud, "Spring and Summer Catalog."

"It's last year's," said Murugan apologetically. "But I

don't suppose there's been much change since then."

139

"There," Will assured him, "you're mistaken. If the

styles weren't completely changed every year, there'd be no

reason for buying new things before the old ones are worn

out. You don't understand the first principles of modern

consumerism." He opened at random. " 'Soft Platform

Wedgies in Wide Widths.' " Opened at another place and

found the description and image of a Whisper-Pink Bra in

Dacron and Pima cotton. Turned the page and here, memento

mori, was what the bra-buyer would be wearing twenty years

later—A Strap-Controlled Front, Cupped to Support

Pendulous Abdomen.

"It doesn't get really interesting," said Murugan, "until

near the end of the book. It has thirteen hundred and

fifty-eight pages," he added parenthetically. "Imagine!

Thirteen hundred and fifty-eight!"

Will skipped the next seven hundred and fifty pages.

"Ah, this is more like it," he said. " 'Our Famous .22

Revolvers and Automatics.' " And here, a little further on,

were the Fibre Glass Boats, here were the High Thrust

Inboard Engines, here was a 12-hp Outboard for only

$234.95—and the Fuel Tank was included. "That's

extraordinarily generous!"

But Murugan, it was evident, was no sailor. Taking the

book, he leafed impatiently through a score of additional

pages.

"Look at this Italian Style Motor Scooter!" And while

Will looked, Murugan read aloud. " 'This sleek Speedster

gives up to 110 Miles per Gallon of Fuel.' Just imagine!" His

normally sulky face was glowing with enthusiasm. "And you

can get up to sixty miles per gallon even on this 14.5-hp

Motorcycle. And it's guaranteed to do seventy-five miles an

hour—guaranteed!"

"Remarkable!" said Will. Then, curiously, "Did

somebody in America send you this glorious book?" he

asked.

Murugan shook his head. "Colonel Dipa gave it to me."

"Colonel Dipa?" What an odd kind of present from Hadrian

to Antinoiis! He looked again at the picture of the motorbike,

then back at Murugan's glowing face. Light dawned; the

Colonel's purpose revealed itself. The serpent tempted me,

and I did eat. The tree in the midst of the garden was called

the Tree of Consumer Goods, and to the inhabitants of every

140

underdeveloped Eden the tiniest taste of its fruit, and even

the sight of its thirteen hundred and fifty-eight leaves, had

power to bring the shameful knowledge that, industrially

speaking, they were stark-naked. The future Raja of Pala was

being made to realize that he was no more than the

untrousered ruler of a tribe of savages.

"You ought," Will said aloud, "to import a million of

these catalogues and distribute them—gratis, of course, like

contraceptives—to all your subjects.

"What for?"

"To whet their appetite for possessions. Then they'll

start clamoring for Progress—oil wells, armaments, Joe

Aldehyde, Soviet technicians."

Murugan frowned and shook his head. "It wouldn't

work."

"You mean, they wouldn't be tempted? Not even by

Sleek Speedsters and Whisper-Pink Bras? But that's

incredible!"

"It may be incredible," said Murugan bitterly, "but it's a

fact. They're just not interested."

"Not even the young ones?"

"I'd say especially the young ones."

Will Farnaby pricked up his ears. This lack of interest

was profoundly interesting. "Can you guess why?" he asked.

"I don't guess," the boy answered. "I know." And as

though he had suddenly decided to stage a parody of his

mother, he began to speak in a tone of righteous indignation

that was absurdly out of keeping with his age and

appearance. "To begin with, they're much too busy with ..."

He hesitated, then the abhorred word was hissed out with a

disgustful emphasis. "With sex."

"But everybody's busy with sex. Which doesn't keep

them from whoring after sleek speedsters."

"Sex is different here," Murugan insisted.

"Because of the yoga of love?" Will asked,

remembering the little nurse's rapturous face.

The boy nodded. "They've got something that makes

them think they're perfectly happy, and they don't want

anything else."

"What a blessed state!"

"There's nothing blessed about it," Murugan snapped.

"It's just stupid and disgusting. No progress, only sex, sex,

141

sex. And of course that beastly dope they're all given."

"Dope?" Will repeated in some astonishment. Dope in a

place where Susila had said there were no addicts? "What

kind of dope?"

"It's made out of toadstools. Toadstools!" He spoke in a

comical caricature of the Rani's vibrant tone of outraged

spirituality. "Those lovely red toadstools that gnomes used to

sit on?" "No, these are yellow. People used to go out and

collect them in the mountains. Nowadays the things are

grown in special fungus beds at the High Altitude

Experimental Station. Scientifically cultivated dope. Pretty,

isn't it?"

A door slammed and there was a sound of voices, of

footsteps approaching along a corridor. Abruptly, the

indignant spirit of the Rani took flight, and Murugan was

once again the conscience-stricken schoolboy furtively trying

to cover up his delinquencies. In a trice Elementary Ecology

had taken the place of Sears, Roebuck, and the suspiciously

bulging briefcase was under the table. A moment later,

stripped to the waist and shining like oiled bronze with the

sweat of labor in the noonday sun, Vijaya came striding into

the room. Behind him came Dr. Robert. With the air of a

model student, interrupted in the midst of his reading by

trespassers from the frivolous outside world, Murugan

looked up from his book. Amused, Will threw himself at

once wholeheartedly into the part that had been assigned to

him.

"It was I who got here too early," he said in response to

Vijaya's apologies for their being so late. "With the result

that our young friend here hasn't been able to get on with his

lessons. We've been talking our heads off."

"What about?" Dr. Robert asked.

"Everything.

Cabbages,

kings,

motor

scooters,

pendulous abdomens. And when you came in, we'd just

embarked on toadstools. Murugan was telling me about the

fungi that are used here as a source of dope."

"What's in a name?" said Dr. Robert, with a laugh.

"Answer, practically everything. Having had the misfortune

to be brought up in Europe, Murugan calls it dope and feels

about it all the disapproval that, by conditioned reflex, the

dirty word evokes. We, on the contrary, give the stuff good

names—the moksha-medicine, the reality revealer, the

142

truth-and-beauty pill. And we know, by direct experience,

that the good names are deserved. Whereas our young friend

here has no firsthand knowledge of the stuff and can't be

persuaded even to give it a try. For him, it's dope and dope is

something that, by definition, no decent person ever indulges

in."

"What does His Highness say to that?" Will asked.

Murugan shook his head. "All it gives you is a lot of

illusions," he muttered. "Why should I go out of my way to

be made a fool of?"

"Why indeed?" said Vijaya with good-humored irony.

"Seeing that, in your normal condition, you alone of the

human race are never made a fool of and never have illusions

about anything!"

"I never said that," Murugan protested. "All I mean is

that I don't want any of your false samadhi."

"How do you know it's false?" Dr. Robert enquired.

"Because the real thing only comes to people after years

and years of meditation and tapas and . . . well, you

know—not going with women."

"Murugan," Vijaya explained to Will, "is one of the

Puritans. He's outraged by the fact that, with four hundred

milligrams of moksha-medicine in their bloodstreams, even

beginners—yes, and even boys and girls who make love

together—can catch a glimpse of the world as it looks to

someone who has been liberated from his bondage to the

ego."

"But it isn't real," Murugan insisted.

"Not real!" Dr. Robert repeated. "You might as well say

that the experience of feeling well isn't real."

"You're begging the question," Will objected. "An

experience can be real in relation to something going on

inside your skull but completely irrelevant to anything

outside."

"Of course," Dr. Robert agreed.

"Do you know what goes on inside your skull, when

you've taken a dose of the mushroom?"

"We know a little."

"And we're trying all the time to find out more," Vijaya

added.

"For example," said Dr. Robert, "we've found that the

people whose EEG doesn't show any alpha-wave activity

143

when they're relaxed aren't likely to respond significantly to

the moksha-medicine. That means that, for about fifteen

percent of the population, we have to find other approaches

to liberation."

"Another thing we're just beginning to understand," said

Vijaya, "is the neurological correlate of these experiences.

What's happening in the brain when you're having a vision?

And what's happening when you pass from a premystical to a

genuinely mystical state of mind?"

"Do you know?" Will asked.

" 'Know' is a big word. Let's say we're in a position to

make some plausible guesses. Angels and New Jerusalems

and Madonnas and Future Buddhas—they're all related to

some kind of unusual stimulation of the brain areas of

primary projection— the visual cortex, for example. Just

how the moksha-medicine produces those unusual stimuli we

haven't yet found out. The important fact is that, somehow or

other, it does produce them. And somehow or other, it also

does something unusual to the silent areas of the brain, the

areas not specifically concerned with perceiving, or moving,

or feeling."

"And how do the silent areas respond?" Will enquired.

"Let's start with what they don't respond with. They

don't respond with visions or auditions, they don't respond

with telepathy or clairvoyance or any other kind of

parapsychological performance. None of that amusing

premystical stuff. Their response is the full-blown mystical

experience. You know—One in all and All in one. The basic

experience with its corollaries— boundless compassion,

fathomless mystery and meaning."

"Not to mention joy," said Dr. Robert, "inexpressible

joy."

"And the whole caboodle is inside your skull," said

Will. "Strictly private. No reference to any external fact

except a toadstool."

"Not real," Murugan chimed in. "That's exactly what I

was trying to say."

"You're assuming," said Dr. Robert, "that the brain

produces consciousness. I'm assuming that it transmits

consciousness. And my explanation is no more farfetched

than yours. How on earth can a set of events belonging to

one order be experienced as a set of events belonging to an

144

entirely different and incommensurable order? Nobody has

the faintest idea. All one can do is to accept the facts and

concoct hypotheses. And one hypothesis is just about as

good, philosophically speaking, as another. You say that the

moksha-mcdicmc does something to the silent areas of the

brain which causes them to produce a set of subjective events

to which people have given the name 'mystical experience.' /

say that the moksha-medicine does something to the silent

areas of the brain which opens some kind of neurological

sluice and so allows a larger volume of Mind with a large 'M'

to flow into your mind with a small 'm.' You can't

demonstrate the truth of your hypothesis, and I can't

demonstrate the truth of mine. And even if you could prove

that I'm wrong, would it make any practical difference?"

"I'd have thought it would make all the difference," said

Will.

"Do you like music?" Dr. Robert asked.

"More than most things."

"And what, may I ask, does Mozart's G-Minor Quintet

refer to? Does it refer to Allah? Or Tao? Or the second

person of the Trinity? Or the Atman-Brahman?"

Will laughed. "Let's hope not."

"But that doesn't make the experience of the G-Minor

Quintet any less rewarding. Well, it's the same with the kind

of experience that you get with the moksha-medicine, or

through prayer and fasting and spiritual exercises. Even if it

doesn't refer to anything outside itself, it's still the most

important thing that ever happened to you. Like music, only

incomparably more so. And if you give the experience a

chance, if you're prepared to go along with it, the results are

incomparably more therapeutic and transforming. So maybe

the whole thing does happen inside one's skull. Maybe it is

private and there's no unitive knowledge of anything but

one's own physiology. Who cares? The fact remains that the

experience can open one's eyes and make one blessed and

transform one's whole life." There was a long silence. "Let

me tell you something," he resumed, turning to Murugan.

"Something I hadn't intended to talk about to anybody. But

now I feel that perhaps I have a duty, a duty to the throne, a

duty to Pala and all its people—an obligation to tell you

about this very private experience. Perhaps the telling may

help you to be a little more understanding about your country

145

and its ways." He was silent for a moment; then in a quietly

matter-of-fact tone, "I suppose you know about my wife," he

went on.

His face still averted, Murugan nodded. "I was sorry,"

he mumbled, "to hear she was so ill."

"It's a matter of a few days now," said Dr. Robert. "Four

or five at the most. But she's still perfectly lucid, perfectly

conscious of what's happening to her. Yesterday she asked

me if we could take the moksha-medicinc together. We'd

taken it together," he added parenthetically, "once or twice

each year for the last thirty-seven years—ever since we

decided to get married. And now once more—for the last

time, the last, last time. There was a risk involved, because

of the damage to the liver. But we decided it was a risk worth

taking. And as it turned out, we were right. The

moksha-medicine—the dope, as you prefer to call it— hardly

upset her at all. All that happened to her was the mental

transformation."

He was silent, and Will suddenly became aware of the

squeak and scrabble of caged rats and, through the open

window, the babel of tropical life and the call of a distant

mynah bird. "Here and now, boys. Here and now ..."

"You're like that mynah," said Dr. Robert at last.

"Trained to repeat words you don't understand or know the

reason for, 'It isn't real. It isn't real.' But if you'd experienced

what Lakshmi and I went through yesterday you'd know

better. You'd know it was much more real than what you call

reality. More real than what you're thinking and feeling at

this moment. More real than the world before your eyes. But

not real is what you've been taught to say. Not real, not

real.'" Dr. Robert laid a hand affectionately on the boy's

shoulder. "You've been told that we're just a set of

self-indulgent dope takers, wallowing in illusions and false

samadhis. Listen, Murugan—forget all the bad language

that's been pumped into you. Forget it at least to the point of

making a single experiment. Take four hundred milligrams

of moksha-medicine and find out for yourself what it does,

what it can tell you about your own nature, about this strange

world you've got to live in, learn in, suffer in, and finally die

in. Yes, even you will have to die one day—maybe fifty

years from now, maybe tomorrow. Who knows? But it's

going to happen, and one's a fool if one doesn't prepare for

146

it." He turned to Will. "Would you like to come along while

we take our shower and get into some clothes?"

Without waiting for an answer, he walked out through

the door that led into that central corridor of the long

building. Will picked up his bamboo staff and, accompanied

by Vijaya, followed him out of the room.

"Do you suppose that made any impression on

Murugan?" he asked Vijaya when the door had closed behind

them.

Vijaya shrugged his shoulders. "I doubt it."

"What with his mother," said Will, "and his passion for

internal-combustion engines, he's probably impervious to

anything you people can say. You should have heard him on

the subject of motor scooters!"

"We have heard him," said Dr. Robert, who had halted

in front of a blue door and was waiting for them to come up

with him. "Frequently. When he comes of age, scooters are

going to become a major political issue."

Vijaya laughed. "To scoot or not to scoot, that is the

question."

"And it isn't only in Pala that it's the question," Dr.

Robert added. "It's the question that every underdeveloped

country has to answer one way or the other."

"And the answer," said Will, "is always the same.

Wherever

I've

been—and

I've

been

almost

everywhere—they've opted wholeheartedly for scooting. All

of them."

"Without exception," Vijaya agreed. "Scooting for

scooting's sake, and to hell with all considerations of

fulfillment, self-knowledge, liberation. Not to mention

common or garden health or happiness."

"Whereas we" said Dr. Robert, "have always chosen to

adapt our economy and technology to human beings—not

our human beings to somebody else's economy and

technology. We import what we can't make; but we make an

import only what we can afford. And what we can afford is

limited not merely by our supply of pounds and marks and

dollars, but also primarily—primarily" he insisted—"by our

wish to be happy, our ambition to become fully human.

Scooters, we've decided after carefully looking into the

matter, are among the things—the very numerous

things—we simply can't afford. Which is something poor lit-

147

tle Murugan will have to learn the hard way—seeing that he

hasn't learned, and doesn't want to learn, the easy way."

"Which is the easy way?" Will asked.

"Education and reality-revealers. Murugan has had

neither.

Or rather he's had the opposite of both. He's had

miseducation in Europe—Swiss governesses, English tutors,

American movies, everybody's advertisements—and he's had

reality eclipsed for him by his mother's brand of spirituality.

So it's no wonder he pines for scooters."

"But his subjects, I gather, do not."

"Why should they? They've been taught from infancy to

be fully aware of the world, and to enjoy their awareness.

And, on top of that, they have been shown the world and

themselves and other people as these are illumined and

transfigured by reality-revealers. Which helps them, of

course, to have an intenser awareness and a more

understanding enjoyment, so that the most ordinary things,

the most trivial events, are seen as jewels and miracles.

Jewels and miracles," he repeated emphatically. "So why

should we resort to scooters or whisky or television or Billy

Graham

or

any

other

of

your

distractions

and

compensations?"

" 'Nothing short of everything will really do,' " Will

quoted. "I see now what the Old Raja was talking about. You

can't be a good economist unless you're also a good

psychologist. Or a good engineer without being the right

kind of metaphysician."

"And don't forget all the other sciences," said Dr.

Robert. "Pharmacology, sociology, physiology, not to

mention pure and applied autology, neurotheology,

metachemistry, mycomysti-cism, and the ultimate science,"

he added, looking away so as to be more alone with his

thoughts of Lakshmi in the hospital, "the science that sooner

or later we shall all have to be examined in— thanatology."

He was silent for a moment; then, in another tone, "Well,

let's go and get washed up," he said and, opening the blue

door, led the way into a long changing room with a row of

showers and wash basins at one end and on the opposite

wall, tiers of lockers and a large hanging cupboard.

Will took a seat and while his companions lathered

themselves at the basins, went on with their conversations

148

"Would it be permissible," he asked, "for a miseducated alien

to try a truth-and-beauty pill?"

The answer was another question. "Is your liver in good

order?" Dr. Robert enquired.

"Excellent."

"And you don't seem to be more than mildly

schizophrenic. So I can't see any counterindication."

"Then I can make the experiment?"

"Whenever you like."

He stepped into the nearest shower stall and turned on

the water. Vijaya followed suit.

"Aren't you supposed to be intellectuals?" Will asked

when the two men had emerged again and were drying

themselves.

"We do intellectual work," Vijaya answered.

"Then why all this horrible honest toil?"

"For a very simple reason: this morning I had some

spare time."

"So did I," said Dr. Robert.

"So you went out into the fields and did a Tolstoy act."

Vijaya laughed. "You seem to imagine we do it for

ethical reasons."

"Don't you?"

"Certainly not. I do muscular work, because I have

muscles; and if I don't use my muscles I shall become a

bad-tempered sitting-addict."

"With nothing between the cortex and the buttocks,"

said Dr. Robert. "Or rather with everything—but in a

condition of complete unconsciousness and toxic stagnation.

Western intellectuals are all sitting-addicts. That's why most

of you are so repulsively unwholesome. In the past even a

duke had to do a lot of walking, even a moneylender, even a

metaphysician. And when they weren't using their legs, they

were jogging about on horses. Whereas now, from the

tycoon to his typist, from the logical positivist to the positive

thinker, you spend nine tenths of your time on foam rubber.

Spongy seats for spongy bottoms—at home, in the office, in

cars and bars, in planes and trains and buses. No moving of

legs, no struggles with distance and gravity— just lifts and

planes and cars, just foam rubber and an eternity of sitting.

The life force that used to find an outlet through striped

muscle gets turned back on the viscera and the nervous

149

system, and slowly destroys them."

"So you take to digging and delving as a form of

therapy?" "As prevention—to make therapy unnecessary. In

Pala even a professor, even a government official, generally

puts in two hours of digging and delving each day." "As part

of his duties?" "And as part of his pleasure."

Will made a grimace. "It wouldn't be part of my

pleasure." "That's because you weren't taught to use your

mind-body in the right way," Vijaya explained. "If you'd

been shown how to do things with the minimum of strain and

the maximum of awareness, you'd enjoy even honest toil."

"I take it that your children all get this kind of training."

"From the first moment they start doing for themselves. For

example, what's the proper way of handling yourself while

you're buttoning your clothes?" And suiting action to words,

Vijaya started to button the shirt he had just slipped into.

"We answer the question by actually putting their heads and

bodies into the physiologically best position. And we

encourage them at the same time to notice how it feels to be

in the physiologically best position, to be aware of what the

process of doing up buttons consists of in terms of touches

and pressures and muscular sensations. By the time they're

fourteen they've learned how to get the most and the

best—objectively and subjectively—out of any activity they

may undertake. And that's when we start them working.

Ninety minutes a day at some kind of manual job." "Back to

good old child labor!"

"Or rather," said Dr. Robert, "forward from bad new

child idleness. You don't allow your teen-agers to work; so

they have to blow off steam in delinquency or else throttle

down steam till they're ready to become domesticated

sitting-addicts. And now," he added, "it's time to be going.

I'll lead the way."

In the laboratory, when they entered, Murugan was in

the act of locking his briefcase against all prying eyes. "I'm

ready," he said and, tucking the thirteen hundred and

fifty-eight pages of the Newest Testament under his arm, he

followed them out into the sunshine. A few minutes later,

crammed into an ancient jeep, the four of them were rolling

along the road that led, past the paddock of the white bull,

past the lotus pool and the huge stone Buddha, out through

the gate of the Station Compound to the highway. "I'm sorry

150

we can't provide more comfortable transportation," said

Vijaya as they bumped and rattled along.

Will patted Murugan's knee. "This is the man you

should be apologizing to," he said. "The one whose soul

yearns for Jaguars and Thunder birds."

"It's a yearning, I'm afraid," said Dr. Robert from the

back seat, "that will have to remain unsatisfied."

Murugan made no comment, but smiled the secret

contemptuous smile of one who knows better.

"We can't import toys," Dr. Robert went on. "Only

essentials."

"Such as?"

"You'll see in a moment." They rounded a curve, and

there beneath them were the thatched roofs and tree-shaded

gardens of a considerable village. Vijaya pulled up at the

side of the road and turned off the motor. "You're looking at

New Rothamsted," he said. "Alias Madalia. Rice, vegetables,

poultry, fruit. Not to mention two potteries and a furniture

factory. Hence those wires." He waved his hand in the

direction of the long row of pylons that climbed up the

terraced slope behind the village, dipped out of sight over the

ridge, and reappeared, far away, marching up from the floor

of the next valley towards the green belt of mountain jungle

and the cloudy peaks beyond and above. "That's one of the

indispensable imports—electrical equipment. And when the

waterfalls have been harnessed and you've strung up the

transmission lines, here's something else with a high pri-

ority." He directed a pointing finger at a windowless block of

cement that rose incongruously from among the wooden

houses near the upper entrance to the village.

"What is it?" Will asked. "Some kind of electric oven?"

"No, the kilns are over on the other side of the village.

This is the communal freezer."

"In the old days," Dr. Robert explained, "we used to

lose about half of all the perishables we produced. Now we

lose practically nothing. Whatever we grow is for us, not for

the circumambient bacteria."

"So now you have enough to eat."

"More than enough. We eat better than any other

country in Asia, and there's a surplus for export. Lenin used

to say that electricity plus socialism equals communism. Our

equations are rather different. Electricity minus heavy

151

industry plus birth control equals democracy and plenty.

Electricity plus heavy industry minus birth control equals

misery, totalitarianism and war."

"Incidentally," Will asked, "who owns all this? Are you

capitalists or state socialists?"

"Neither. Most of the time we're co-operators. Palanese

agriculture has always been an affair of terracing and

irrigation. But terracing and irrigation call for pooled efforts

and friendly agreements. Cutthroat competition isn't

compatible with rice-growing in a mountainous country. Our

people found it quite easy to pass from mutual aid in a

village community to streamlined cooperative techniques for

buying and selling and profit sharing and financing."

"Even co-operative financing?"

Dr. Robert nodded. "None of those bloodsucking

usurers that you find all over the Indian countryside. And no

commercial banks in your Western style. Our borrowing and

lending system was modeled on those credit unions that

Wilhelm Raiffeisen set up more than a century ago in

Germany. Dr. Andrew persuaded the Raja to invite one of

Raiffeisen's young men to come here and organize a

cooperative banking system. It's still going strong."

"And what do you use for money?" Will asked.

Dr. Robert dipped into his trouser pocket and pulled out

a handful of silver, gold and copper.

"In a modest way," he explained, "Pala's a

gold-producing country. We mine enough to give our paper a

solid metallic backing. And the gold supplements our

exports. We can pay spot cash for expensive equipment like

those transmission lines and the generators at the other end."

"You seem to have solved your economic problems

pretty successfully."

"Solving them wasn't difficult. To begin with, we never

allowed ourselves to produce more children than we could

feed, clothe, house, and educate into something like full

humanity. Not being overpopulated, we have plenty. But,

although we have plenty, we've managed to resist the

temptation that the West has now succumbed to—the

temptation to overconsume. We don't give ourselves

coronaries by guzzling six times as much saturated fat as we

need. We don't hypnotize ourselves into believing that two

television sets will make us twice as happy as one television

152

set. And finally we don't spend a quarter of the gross national

product preparing for World War III or even World War's

baby brother, Local War MMMCCCXXXIII. Armaments,

universal debt, and planned obsolescence—those are the

three pillars of Western prosperity. If war, waste, and

moneylenders were abolished, you'd collapse. And while you

people are overconsuming the rest of the world sinks more

and more deeply into chronic disaster. Ignorance, militarism

and breeding, these three—and the greatest of these is

breeding. No hope, not the slightest possibility, of solving

the economic problem until that's under control. As

population rushes up, prosperity goes down." He traced the

descending curve with an outstretched finger. "And as pros-

perity goes down, discontent and rebellion" (the forefinger

moved up again), "political ruthlessness and one-party rule,

nationalism and bellicosity begin to rise. Another ten or

fifteen years of uninhibited breeding, and the whole world,

from China to Peru via Africa and the Middle East, will be

fairly crawling with Great Leaders, all dedicated to the

suppression of freedom, all armed to the teeth by Russia or

America or, better still, by both at once, all waving flags, all

screaming for Lebensraum."

"What about Pala?" Will asked. "Will you be blessed

with a Great Leader ten years from now?"

"Not if we can help it," Dr. Robert answered. "We've

always done everything possible to make it very difficult for

a Great Leader to arise."

Out of the corner of his eye Will saw that Murugan was

making a face of indignant and contemptuous disgust. In his

fancy Antinoiis evidently saw himself as a Carlylean Hero.

Will turned back to Dr. Robert.

"Tell me how you do it," he said.

"Well, to begin with we don't fight wars or prepare for

them. Consequently, we have no need for conscription, or

military hierarchies, or a unified command. Then there's our

economic system: it doesn't permit anybody to become more

than four or five times as rich as the average. That means

that we don't have any captains of industry or omnipotent

financiers. Better still, we have no omnipotent politicians or

bureaucrats. Pala's a federation of self-governing units,

geographical units, professional units, economic units—so

there's plenty of scope for small-scale initiative and

153

democratic leaders, but no place for any kind of dictator at

the head of a centralized government. Another point: we

have no established church, and our religion stresses

immediate experience and deplores belief in unverifiable

dogmas and the emotions which that belief inspires. So we're

preserved from the plagues of popery, on the one hand, and

fundamentalist revivalism, on the other. And along with

transcendental experience we systematically cultivate

skepticism. Discouraging children from taking words too

seriously, teaching them to analyze whatever they hear or

read—this is an integral part of the school curriculum.

Result: the eloquent rabble-rouser, like Hitler or our neigh-

bor across the Strait, Colonel Dipa, just doesn't have a

chance here in Pala."

This was too much for Murugan. Unable to contain

himself, "But look at the energy Colonel Dipa generates in

his people," he burst out. "Look at all the devotion and

self-sacrifice. We don't have anything like that here."

"Thank God," said Dr. Robert devoutly.

"Thank God," Vijaya echoed.

"But these things are good," the boy protested. "I

admire them."

"I admire them too," said Dr. Robert. "Admire them in

the same way as I admire a typhoon. Unfortunately that kind

of energy and devotion and self-sacrifice happens to be

incompatible with liberty, not to mention reason and human

decency. But decency, reason and liberty are what Pala has

been working for, ever since the time of your namesake,

Murugan the Reformer."

From under his seat Vijaya pulled out a tin box and,

lifting the lid, distributed a first round of cheese and avocado

sandwiches. "We'll have to eat as we go." He started the

motor and with one hand, the other being busy with his

sandwich, swung the little car onto the road. "Tomorrow," he

said to Will, "I'll show you the sights of the village, and the

still more remarkable sight of my family eating their lunch.

Today we have an appointment in the mountains."

Near the entrance to the village he turned the jeep into a

side road that went winding steeply up between terraced

fields of rice and vegetables, interspersed with-orchards and,

here and there, plantations of young trees destined, Dr.

Robert explained, to supply the pulp mills of Shivapuram

154

with their raw material.

"How many papers does Pala support?" Will enquired

and was surprised to learn that there was only one. "Who

enjoys the monopoly? The government? The party in power?

The local Joe Aldehyde?"

"Nobody enjoys a monopoly," Dr. Robert assured him.

"There's a panel of editors representing half a dozen different

parties and interests. Each of them gets his allotted space for

comment and criticism. The reader's in a position to compare

their arguments and make up his own mind. I remember how

shocked I was the first time I read one of your big-circulation

newspapers. The bias of the headlines, the systematic

one-sided-ness of the reporting and the commentaries, the

catchwords and slogans instead of argument. No serious

appeal to reason. Instead, a systematic effort to install

conditioned reflexes in the minds of the voters—and, for the

rest, crime, divorce, anecdotes, twaddle, anything to keep

them distracted, anything to prevent them from thinking."

The car climbed on and now they were on a ridge

between two headlong descents, with a tree-fringed lake

down at the bottom of a gorge to their left and to the right a

broader valley where, between two tree-shaded villages, like

an incongruous piece of pure geometry, sprawled a huge

factory.

"Cement?" Will questioned.

Dr. Robert nodded. "One of the indispensable

industries. We produce all we need and a surplus for export."

"And those villages supply the manpower?"

"In the intervals of agriculture and work in the forest

and the sawmills."

"Does that kind of part-time system work well?"

"It depends what you mean by 'well.' It doesn't result in

maximum efficiency. But then in Pala maximum efficiency

isn't the categorical imperative that it is with you. You think

first of getting the biggest possible output in the shortest

possible time. We think first of human beings and their

satisfactions. Changing jobs doesn't make for the biggest

output in the fewest days. But most people like it better than

doing one kind of job all their lives. If it's a choice between

mechanical efficiency and human satisfaction, we choose

satisfaction."

"When I was twenty," Vijaya now volunteered, "I put in

155

four months at that cement plant—and after that ten weeks

making superphosphates and then six months in the jungle,

as a lumberjack."

"All this ghastly honest toil!"

"Twenty years earlier," said Dr. Robert, "I did a stint at

the copper smelters. After which I had a taste of the sea on a

fishing boat. Sampling all kinds of work—it's part of

everybody's education. One learns an enormous amount that

way—about things and skills and organizations, about all

kinds of people and their ways of thinking."

Will shook his head. "I'd still rather get it out of a

book."

"But what you can get out of a book is never it. At

bottom," Dr. Robert added, "all of you are still Platonists.

You worship the word and abhor matter!"

"Tell that to the clergymen," said Will. "They're always

reproaching us with being crass materialists."

"Crass," Dr. Robert agreed, "but crass precisely because

you're

such

inadequate

materialists.

Abstract

materialism—that's what you profess. Whereas we make a

point of being materialists concretely—materialistic on the

wordless levels of seeing and touching and smelling, of

tensed muscles and dirty hands. Abstract materialism is as

bad as abstract idealism; it makes immediate spiritual

experience almost impossible. Sampling different kinds of

work in concrete materialism is the first, indispensable step

in our education for concrete spirituality."

"But even the most concrete materialism," Vijaya

qualified, "won't get you very far unless you're fully

conscious of what you're doing and experiencing. You've got

to be completely aware of the bits of matter you're handling,

the skills you're practicing, the people you work with."

"Quite right," said Dr. Robert. "I ought to have made it

clear that concrete materialism is only the raw stuff of a fully

human life. It's through awareness, complete and constant

awareness, that we transform it into concrete spirituality. Be

fully aware of what you're doing, and work becomes the

yoga of work, play becomes the yoga of play, everyday

living becomes the yoga of everyday living."

Will thought of Ranga and the little nurse. "And what

about love?"

Dr. Robert nodded. "That too. Awareness transfigures

156

it, turns love-making into the yoga of love-making."

Murugan gave an imitation of his mother looking

shocked.

"Psychophysical means to a transcendental end," said

Vijaya, raising his voice against the grinding screech of the

low gear into which he had just shifted, "that, primarily, is

what all these yogas are. But they're also something else,

they're also devices for dealing with the problems of power."

He shifted back to a quieter gear and lowered his voice to its

normal tone. "The problems of power," he repeated. "And

they confront you on every level of organization—every

level, from national governments down to nurseries and

honeymooning couples. For it isn't merely a question of

making things hard for the Great Leaders. There are all the

millions of small-scale tyrants and persecutors, all the mute

inglorious Hitlers, the village Napoleons, the Calvins and

Torquemadas of the family. Not to mention all the brigands

and bullies stupid enough to get themselves labeled as

criminals. How does one harness the enormous power these

people generate and set it to work in some useful way—or at

least prevent it from doing harm?"

"That's what I want you to tell me," said Will. "Where

do you start?"

"We start everywhere at once," Vijaya answered. "But

since one can't say more than one thing at a time, let's begin

by talking about the anatomy and physiology of power. Tell

him about your biochemical approach to the subject, Dr.

Robert."

"It started," said Dr. Robert, "nearly forty years ago,

while I was studying in London. Started with prison visiting

on weekends and reading history whenever I had a free

evening. History and prisons," he repeated. "I discovered that

they were closely related. The record of the crimes, follies

and misfortunes of mankind (that's Gibbon, isn't it?) and the

place where unsuccessful crimes and follies are visited with

a special kind of misfortune. Reading my books and talking

to my jailbirds, I found myself asking questions. What kind

of people became dangerous delinquents—the grand

delinquents of the history books, the little ones of

Pentonville and Wormwood Scrubbs? What kinds of people

are moved by the lust for power, the passion to bully and

domineer? And the ruthless ones, the men and women who

157

know what they want and have no qualms about hurting and

killing in order to get it, the monsters who hurt and kill, not

for profit, but gratuitously, because hurting and killing are

such fun—who are they? I used to discuss these questions

with the experts—doctors, psychologists, social scientists,

teachers. Man-tegazza and Galton had gone out of fashion,

and most of my experts assured me that the only valid

answers to these questions were answers in terms of culture,

economics, and the family. It was all a matter of mothers and

toilet training, of early conditioning and traumatic

environments. I was only half convinced. Mothers and toilet

training and the circumambient nonsense— these were

obviously important. But were they a//-important? In the

course of my prison visiting I'd begun to see evidence of

some kind of a built-in pattern—or rather of two kinds of

built-in

patterns;

for

dangerous

delinquents

and

power-loving troublemakers don't belong to a single species.

Most of them, as I was beginning to realize even then,

belong to one or other of two distinct and dissimilar

species—the Muscle People and the Peter Pans. I've

specialized in the treatment of Peter Pans."

"The boys who never grow up?" Will queried.

" 'Never' is the wrong word. In real life Peter Pan

always ends by growing up. He merely grows up too

late—grows up physiologically more slowly than he grows

up in terms of birthdays."

"What about girl Peter Pans?"

"They're very rare. But the boys are as common as

blackberries. You can expect one Peter Pan among every five

or six male children. And among problem children, among

the boys who can't read, won't learn, don't get on with

anyone, and finally turn to the more violent forms of

delinquency, seven out of ten turn out, if you take an X ray

of the bones of the wrist, to be Peter Pans. The rest are

mostly Muscle People of one sort or another."

"I'm trying to think," said Will, "of a good historical

example of a delinquent Peter Pan."

"You don't have to go far afield. The most recent, as

well as the best and biggest, was Adolf Hitler."

"Hitler?" Murugan's tone was one of shocked

astonishment. Hitler was evidently one of his heroes.

"Read the Fiihrer's biography," said Dr. Robert. "A

158

Peter Pan if ever there was one. Hopeless at school.

Incapable either of competing or co-operating. Envying all

the normally successful boys—and, because he envied,

hating them and, to make himself feel better, despising them

as inferior beings. Then came the time for puberty. But Adolf

was sexually backward. Other boys made advances to girls,

and the girls responded. Adolf was too shy, too uncertain of

his manhood. And all the time incapable of steady work, at

home only in the compensatory Other World of his fancy.

There, at the very least, he was Michelangelo. Here,

unfortunately, he couldn't draw. His only gifts were hatred,

low cunning, a set of indefatigable vocal cords and a talent

for nonstop talking at the top of his voice from the depths of

his Peter-Panic paranoia. Thirty or forty million deaths and

heaven knows how many billions of dollars—that was the

price the world had to pay for little Adolf's retarded

maturation. Fortunately most of the boys who grow up too

slowly never get a chance of being more than minor

delinquents. But even minor delinquents, if there are enough

of them, can exact a pretty stiff price. That's why we try to

nip them in the bud—or rather, since we're dealing with

Peter Pans, that's why we try to make their nipped buds open

out and grow."

"And do you succeed?"

Dr. Robert nodded. "It isn't hard. Particularly if you

start early enough. Between four and a half and five all our

children get a thorough examination. Blood tests,

psychological tests, somatotyping; then we X ray their wrists

and give them an EEC All the cute little Peter Pans are

spotted without fail, and appropriate treatment is started

immediately. Within a year practically all of them are

perfectly normal. A crop of potential failures and criminals,

potential tyrants and sadists, potential misanthropes and

revolutionaries for revolution's sake, has been transformed

into a crop of useful citizens who can be governed adandena

asatthena—without punishment and without a sword. In your

part of the world delinquency is still left to clergymen, social

workers and the police. Nonstop sermons and supportive

therapy; prison sentences galore. With what results? The

delinquency rate goes steadily up and up. No wonder. Words

about sibling rivalry and hell and the personality of Jesus are

no substitutes for biochemistry. A year in jail won't cure a

159

Peter Pan of his endocrine disbalance or help the ex-Peter

Pan to get rid of his psychological consequences. For

Peter-Panic delinquency, what you need is early diagnosis

and three pink capsules a day before meals. Given a tolerable

environment, the result will be sweet reasonableness and a

modicum of the cardinal virtues within eighteen months. Not

to mention a fair chance, where before there hadn't been the

faintest possibility, of eventual praj-naparamita and karuna,

eventual wisdom and compassion. And now get Vijaya to

tell you about the Muscle People. As you may perhaps have

observed, he's one of them." Leaning forward, Dr. Robert

thumped the giant's broad back. "Solid beef!" And he added,

"How lucky for us poor shrimps that the animal isn't savage."

Vijaya took one hand off the wheel, beat his chest and

uttered a loud ferocious roar. "Don't tease the gorilla," he

said, and laughed good-humoredly. Then, "Think of the other

great dictator," he said to Will, "think of Joseph

Vissarionovich Stalin. Hitler's the supreme example of the

delinquent Peter Pan. Stalin's the supreme example of the

delinquent Muscle Man. Predestined, by his shape, to be an

extravert. Not one of your soft, round, spill-the-beans

extraverts who pine for indiscriminate togetherness.

No-—the trampling, driving extravert, the one who always

feels impelled to Do Something and is never inhibited by

doubts or qualms, by sympathy or sensibility. In his will,

Lenin advised his successors to get rid of Stalin: the man was

too fond of power and too apt to abuse it. But the advice

came too late. Stalin was already so firmly entrenched that

he couldn't be ousted. Ten years later his power was

absolute. Trotsky had been scotched; all his old friends had

been bumped off. Now, like God among the choiring angels,

he was alone in a cozy little heaven peopled only by

flatterers and yes-men. And all the time he was ruthlessly

busy, liquidating kulaks, organizing collectives, building an

armament industry, shifting reluctant millions from farm to

factory. Working with a tenacity, a lucid efficiency of which

the German Peter Pan, with his apocalyptic phantasies and

his fluctuating moods, was utterly incapable. And in the last

phase of the war, compare Stalin's strategy with Hitler's.

Cool calculation pitted against compensatory daydreams,

clear-eyed realism against the rhetorical nonsense that Hitler

had finally talked himself into believing. Two monsters,

160

equal in delinquency, but profoundly dissimilar in

temperament, in unconscious motivation, and finally in

efficiency. Peter Pans are wonderfully good at starting wars

and revolutions; but it takes Muscle Men to carry them

through to a successful conclusion. Here's the jungle," Vijaya

added in another tone, waving a hand in the direction of a

great cliff of trees that seemed to block their further ascent.

A moment later they had left the glare of the open

hillside and had plunged into a narrow tunnel of green

twilight that zigzagged up between walls of tropical foliage.

Creepers dangled from the overarching branches and

between the trunks of huge trees grew ferns and dark-leaved

rhododendrons with a dense profusion of shrubs and bushes

that for Will, as he looked about him, were namelessly

unfamiliar. The air was stiflingly damp and there was a hot,

acrid smell of luxuriant green growth and of that other kind

of life which is decay. Muffled by the thick foliage, Will

heard the ringing of distant axes, the rhythmic screech of a

saw. The road turned yet once more and suddenly the green

darkness of the tunnel gave place to sunshine. They had

entered a clearing in the forest. Tall and broad-shouldered,

half a dozen almost naked woodcutters were engaged in

lopping the branches from a newly felled tree. In the

sunshine hundreds of blue and amethyst butterflies chased

one another, fluttering and soaring in an endless random

dance. Over a fire at the further side of the clearing an old

man was slowly stirring the contents of an iron caldron.

Nearby a small tame deer, fine-limbed and elegantly dap-

pled, was quietly grazing.

"Old friends," said Vijaya, and shouted something in

Palanese. The woodcutters shouted back and waved their

hands. Then the road swung sharply to the left and they were

climbing again up the green tunnel between the trees.

"Talk of Muscle Men," said Will as they left the

clearing. "Those were really splendid specimens."

"That kind of physique," said Vijaya, "is a standing

temptation. And yet among all these men—and I've worked

with scores of them—I've never met a single bully, a single

potentially dangerous power lover."

"Which is just another way," Murugan broke in

contemptuously, "of saying that nobody here has any

ambition."

161

"What's the explanation?" Will asked.

"Very simple, so far as the Peter Pans are concerned.

They're never given a chance to work up an appetite for

power. We cure them of their delinquency before it's had

time to develop. But the Muscle Men are different. They're

just as muscular here, just as tramplingly extraverted, as they

are with you. So why don't they turn into Stalins or Dipas, or

at the least into domestic tyrants? First of all, our social

arrangements offer them very few opportunities for bullying

their families, and our political arrangements make it

practically impossible for them to domineer on any larger

scale. Second, we train the Muscle Men to be aware and

sensitive, we teach them to enjoy the commonplaces of

everyday existence. This means that they always have an

alternative—innumerable alternatives—to the pleasure of

being the boss. And finally we work directly on the love of

power and domination that goes with this kind of physique in

almost all its variations. We canalize this love of power and

we deflect it—turn it away from people and on to things. We

give them all kinds of difficult tasks to perform—strenuous

and violent tasks that exercise their muscles and satisfy their

craving for domination—but satisfy it at nobody's expense

and in ways that are either harmless or positively useful."

"So these splendid creatures fell trees instead of felling

people—is that it?"

"Precisely. And when they've had enough of the woods,

they can go to sea, or try their hands at mining, or take it

easy, relatively speaking, on the rice paddies."

Will Farnaby suddenly laughed.

"What's the joke?"

"I was thinking of my father. A little woodchopping

might have been the making of him—not to mention the

salvation of his wretched family. Unfortunately he was an

English gentleman. Woodchopping was out of the question."

"Didn't he have any physical outlet for his energies?"

Will shook his head. "Besides being a gentleman," he

explained, "my father thought he was an intellectual. But an

intellectual doesn't hunt or shoot or play golf; he just thinks

and drinks. Apart from brandy, my father's only amusements

were bullying, auction bridge, and the theory of politics. He

fancied himself as a twentietly century version of Lord

Acton— the last, lonely philosopher of Liberalism. You

162

should have heard him on the iniquities of the modern

omnipotent state! 'Power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts

absolutely. Absolutely.'' After which he'd down another

brandy and go back with renewed gusto to his favorite

pastime—trampling on his wife and children."

"And if Acton himself didn't behave in that way," said

Dr. Robert, "it was merely because he happened to be

virtuous and intelligent. There was nothing in his theories to

restrain a delinquent Muscle Man or an untreated Peter Pan

from trampling on anyone he could get his feet on. That was

Acton's fatal weakness. As a political theorist he was

altogether admirable. As a practical psychologist he was

almost nonexistent. He seems to have thought that the power

problem could be solved by good social arrangements,

supplemented, of course, by sound morality and a spot of

revealed religion. But the power problem has its roots in

anatomy and biochemistry and temperament. Power has to

be curbed on the legal and political levels; that's obvious. But

it's also obvious that there must be prevention on the

individual level. On the level of instinct and emotion, on the

level of the glands and the viscera, the muscles and the

blood. If I can ever find the time, I'd like to write a little

book on human physiology in relation to ethics, religion,

politics and law."

"Law," Will echoed. "I was just going to ask you about

law. Are you absolutely swordless and punishmentless? Or

do you still need judges and policemen?"

"We still need them," said Dr. Robert. "But we don't

need nearly so many of them as you do. In the first place,

thanks to preventive medicine and preventive education, we

don't commit many crimes. And in the second place, most of

the few crimes that are committed are dealt with by the

criminal's MAC. Group therapy within a community that has

assumed group responsibility for the delinquent. And in

difficult cases the group therapy is supplemented by medical

treatment and a course of moksha-medicme experiences,

directed by somebody with an exceptional degree of insight."

"So where do the judges come in?"

"The judge listens to the evidence, decides whether the

accused person is innocent or guilty, and if he's guilty,

remands him to his MAC and, where it seems advisable, to

the local panel of medical and mycomystical experts. At

163

stated intervals the experts and the MAC report back to the

judge. When the reports are satisfactory, the case is closed."

"And if they're never satisfactory?"

"In the long run," said Dr. Robert, "they always are."

There was a silence.

"Did you ever do any rock climbing?" Vijaya suddenly

asked.

Will laughed. "How do you think I came by my game

leg?"

"That was forced climbing. Did you ever climb for

fun?"

"Enough," said Will, "to convince me that I wasn't

much good at it."

Vijaya glanced at Murugan. "What about you, while

you were in Switzerland?"

The boy blushed deeply and shook his head. "You can't

do any of those things," he muttered, "if you have a tendency

to TB."

"What a pity!" said Vijaya. "It would have been so good

for you."

Will asked, "Do people do a lot of climbing in these

mountains?"

"Climbing's an integral part of the school curriculum."

"For everybody?"

"A little for everybody. With more advanced rock work

for the full-blown Muscle People—that's about one in twelve

of the boys and one in twenty-seven of the girls. We shall

soon be seeing some youngsters tackling their first

post-elementary climb."

The green tunnel widened, brightened, and suddenly

they were out of the dripping forest on a wide shelf of almost

level ground, walled in on three sides by red rocks that

towered up two thousand feet and more into a succession of

jagged crests and isolated pinnacles. There was a freshness in

the air and, as they passed from sunshine into the shadow of

a floating island of cumulus, it was almost cool. Dr. Robert

leaned forward and pointed, through the windshield, at a

group of white buildings on a little knoll near the center of

the plateau.

"That's the High Altitude Station," he said. "Seven

thousand feet up, with more than five thousand acres of good

flat land, where we can grow practically anything that grows

164

in southern Europe. Wheat and barley; green peas and

cabbages, lettuce and tomatoes (the fruit won't set where

night temperatures are over sixty-eight); gooseberries,

strawberries, walnuts, greengages, peaches, apricots. Plus all

the valuable plants that are native to high mountains at this

latitude—including the mushrooms that our young friend

here so violently disapproves of."

"Is this the place we're bound for?" Will asked.

"No, we're going higher." Dr. Robert pointed to the last

outpost of the range, a ridge of dark-red rock from which the

land sloped down on one side to the jungle and on the other

mounted precipitously towards an unseen summit lost in the

clouds. "Up to the old Shiva temple where the pilgrims used

to come every spring and autumn equinox. It's one of my

favorite places in the whole island. When the children were

small, we used to go up there for picnics, Lakshmi and I,

almost every week. How many years ago!" A note of sadness

had come into his voice. He sighed and, leaning back in his

seat, closed his eyes.

They turned off the road that led to the High Altitude

Station and began to climb again.

"Entering the last, worst lap," said Vijaya. "Seven

hairpin turns and half a mile of unventilated tunnel."

He shifted into first gear and conversation became

impossible. Ten minutes later they had arrived.

165

10

Cautiously maneuvering his immobilized leg, Will

climbed out of the car and looked about him. Between the

red soaring crags to the south and the headlong descents in

every other direction the crest of the ridge had been leveled,

and at the midpoint of this long narrow terrace stood the

temple—a great red tower of the same substance as the

mountains, massive, four-sided, vertically ribbed. A thing of

symmetry in contrast with the rocks, but regular not as

Euclidean abstractions are regular; regular with the

pragmatic geometry of a living thing. Yes, of a living thing;

for all the temple's richly textured surfaces, all its bounding

contours against the sky curved organically inwards,

narrowing as they mounted towards a ring of marble, above

which the red stone swelled out again, like the seed capsule

of a flowering plant, into a flattened, many-ribbed dome that

crowned the whole.

"Built about fifty years before the Norman Conquest,"

said Dr. Robert.

"And looks," Will commented, "as though it hadn't been

built by anybody—as though it had grown out of the rock.

Grown like the bud of an agave, on the point of rocketing

up into a twelve-foot stalk and an explosion of flowers."

Vijaya touched his arm. "Look," he said. "A party of

Ele-mentaries coming down."

Will turned towards the mountain and saw a young man

in nailed boots and climbing clothes working his way down a

chimney in the face of the precipice. At a place where the

chimney offered a convenient resting place he halted and,

throwing back his head, gave utterance to a loud Alpine

yodel. Fifty feet above him a boy came out from behind a

buttress of rock, lowered himself from the ledge on which he

was standing and started down the chimney.

"Does it tempt you?" Vijaya asked, turning to Murugan.

166

Heavily overacting the part of the bored, sophisticated

adult who has something better to do than watch the children

at play, Murugan shrugged his shoulders. "Not in the

slightest." He moved away and, sitting down on the

weatherworn carving of a lion, pulled a gaudily bound

American magazine out of his pocket and started to read.

"What's the literature?" Vijaya asked.

''Science Fiction." There was a ring of defiance in

Murugan's voice.

Dr. Robert laughed. "Anything to escape from Fact."

Pretending not to have heard him, Murugan turned a page

and went on reading.

"He's pretty good," said Vijaya, who had been watching

the young climber's progress. "They have an experienced

man at each end of the rope," he added. "You can't see the

number-one man. He's behind that buttress in a parallel

chimney thirty or forty feet higher up. There's a permanent

iron spike up there, where you can belay the rope. The whole

party could fall, and they'd be perfectly safe."

Spread-eagled between footholds in either wall of the

narrow chimney, the leader kept shouting up instructions and

encouragement. Then, as the boy approached, he yielded his

place, climbed down another twenty feet and, halting,

yodeled again. Booted and trousered, a tall girl with her hair

in pigtails appeared from behind the buttress and lowered

herself into the chimney.

"Excellent!" said Vijaya approvingly as he watched her.

Meanwhile, from a low building at the foot of the

cliff—the tropical version, evidently, of an Alpine hut—a

group of young people had come out to see what was

happening. They belonged, Will was told, to three other

parties of climbers who had taken their Postelementary Test

earlier in the day.

"Does the best team win a prize?" Will asked.

"Nobody wins anything," Vijaya answered. "This isn't a

competition. It's more like an ordeal."

"An ordeal," Dr. Robert explained, "which is the first

stage of their initiation out of childhood into adolescence. An

ordeal that helps them to understand the world they'll have to

live in, helps them to realize the omnipresence of death, the

essential precariousness of all existence. But after the ordeal

comes the revelation. In a few minutes these boys and girls

167

will be given their first experience of the moksha-medicinc.

They'll all take it together, and there'll be a religious

ceremony in the temple."

"Something like the Confirmation Service?"

"Except that this is more than just a piece of theological

rigmarole. Thanks to the moksha-medicinc, it includes an

actual experience of the real thing."

"The real thing?" Will shook his head. "Is there such a

thing? I wish I could believe it."

"You're not being asked to believe it," said Dr. Robert.

"The real thing isn't a proposition; it's a state of being. We

don't teach our children creeds or get them worked up over

emotionally charged symbols. When it's time for them to

learn the deepest truths of religion, we set them to climb a

precipice and then give them four hundred milligrams of

revelation. Two firsthand experiences of reality, from which

any reasonably intelligent boy or girl can derive a very good

idea of what's what."

"And don't forget the dear old power problem," said

Vijaya. "Rock climbing's a branch of applied ethics; it's

another preventive substitute for bullying."

"So my father ought to have been an Alpinist as well as a

woodchopper."

"One may laugh," said Vijaya, duly laughing. "But the

fact remains that it works. It works. First and last I've

climbed my way out of literally scores of the ugliest

temptations to throw my weight around—and my weight

being

considerable,"

he

added,

"incitements

were

correspondingly strong."

"There seems to be only one catch," said Will. "In the

process of climbing your way out of temptation, you might

fall and ..." Suddenly remembering what had happened to

Dugald MacPhail, he broke off.

It was Dr. Robert who finished the sentence. "Might fall,"

he said slowly, "and kill yourself. Dugald was climbing

alone," he went on after a little pause. "Nobody knows what

happened. The body wasn't found till the next day." There

was a long

silence.

"Do you still think this is a good idea?" Will asked,

pointing with his bamboo staff at the tiny figures crawling so

laboriously on the face of that headlong wilderness of naked

168

rock.

"I still think it's a good idea," said Dr. Robert.

"But poor Susila___"

"Yes, poor Susila," Dr. Robert repeated. "And poor

children, poor Lakshmi, poor me. But if Dugald hadn't made

a habit of risking his life, it might have been poor everybody

for other reasons. Better court the danger of killing yourself

than court the danger of killing other people, or at the very

least making them miserable. Hurting them because you're

naturally aggressive and too prudent, or too ignorant, to work

off your aggression on a precipice. And now," he continued

in another tone, "I want to show you the view."

"And I'll go and talk to those boys and girls." Vijaya

walked away towards the group at the foot of the red crags.

Leaving Murugan to his Science Fiction, Will followed

Dr. Robert through a pillared gateway and across the wide

stone platform that surrounded the temple. At one corner of

this platform stood a small domed pavilion. They entered

and, crossing to the wide unglazed window, looked out.

Rising to the line of the horizon, like a solid wall of jade and

lapis, was the sea. Below them, after a sheer fall of a

thousand feet, lay the green of the jungle. Beyond the jungle,

folded vertically into combe and buttress, terraced

horizontally into a huge man-made staircase of innumerable

fields, the lower slopes went steeply down into a wide plain,

at whose furthest verge, between the market gardens and the

palm-fringed beach, stretched a considerable city. Seen from

this high vantage point in its shining completeness, it looked

like the tiny, meticulous painting of a city in a medieval

book of hours.

"There's Shivapuram," said Dr. Robert. "And that

complex of buildings on the hill beyond the river—that's the

great Buddhist temple. A little earlier than Borobudur, and

the sculpture is as fine as anything in Further India." There

was a silence. "This little summerhouse," he resumed, "is

where we used to eat our picnics when it was raining. I shall

never forget the time when Dugald (he must have been about

ten) amused himself by climbing up here on the window

ledge and standing on one leg in the attitude of the dancing

Shiva. Poor Lakshmi, she was scared out of her wits. But

Dugald was a born steeplejack. Which only makes the

accident even more incomprehensible." He shook his head;

169

then, after another silence, "The last time we all came up

here," he said, "was eight or nine months ago. Dugald was

still alive and Lakshmi wasn't yet too weak for a day's outing

with her grandchildren. He did that Shiva stunt again for the

benefit of Tom Krishna and Mary Sarojini. On one leg; and

he kept his arms moving so fast that one could have sworn

there were four of them." Dr. Robert broke off. Picking up a

flake of mortar from the floor, he tossed it out of the win-

dow. "Down, down, down . . . Empty space. Pascal avait son

gouffre. How strange that this should be at once the most

powerful symbol of death and the most powerful symbol of

the fullest, intensest life." Suddenly his face lighted up. "Do

you see that hawk?"

"A hawk?"

Dr. Robert pointed to where, halfway between their eyrie

and the dark roof of the forest, a small brown incarnation of

speed and rapine lazily wheeled on unmoving wings. "It

reminds me of a poem that the Old Raja once wrote about

this place." Dr. Robert was silent for a moment, then started

to recite:

"Up here, you ask me, Up here aloft where Shiva Dances

above the world, What the devil do I think I'm doing?

No answer, friend—except

That hawk below us turning,

Those black and arrowy swifts

Trailing long silver wires across the air—

The shrillness of their crying.

How far, you say, from the hot plains, How far,

reproachfully, from all my people! And yet how close! For

here between the cloudy Sky and the sea below, suddenly

visible, I read their luminous secret and my own."

"And the secret, I take it, is this empty space."

"Or rather what this empty space is the symbol of—the

Buddha Nature in all our perpetual perishing. Which reminds

me . . ." He looked at his watch.

"What's next on the program?" Will asked as they stepped

out into the glare.

"The service in the temple," Dr. Robert answered. "The

young climbers will offer their accomplishment to Shiva—in

other words, to their own Suchness visualized as God. After

170

which they'll go on to the second part of their initiation—the

experience of being liberated from themselves."

"By means of the moksha-medicine?"

Dr. Robert nodded. "Their leaders give it them before

they leave the Climbing Association's hut. Then they come

over to the temple. The stuff starts working during the

service. Incidentally," he added, "the service is in Sanskrit,

so you won't understand a word of it. Vijaya's address will be

in English—he speaks in his capacity as president of the

Climbing Association. So will mine. And of course the

young people will mostly talk in English."

Inside the temple there was a cool, cavernous darkness,

tempered only by the faint daylight filtering in through a pair

of small latticed windows and by the seven lamps that hung,

like a halo of yellow, quivering stars, above the head of the

image on the altar. It was a copper statue, no taller than a

child, of Shiva. Surrounded by a flame-fringed glory, his

four arms gesturing, his braided hair wildly flying, his right

foot treading down a dwarfish figure of the most hideous

malignity, his left foot gracefully lifted, the god stood there,

frozen in mid-ecstasy. No longer in their climbing dress, but

sandaled, bare-breasted and in shorts or brightly colored

skirts, a score of boys and girls, together with the six young

men who had acted as their leaders and instructors, were

sitting cross-legged on the floor. Above them, on the highest

of the altar steps, an old priest, shaven and yellow-robed,

was intoning something sonorous and incomprehensible.

Leaving Will installed on a convenient ledge, Dr. Robert

tiptoed over to where Vijaya and Murugan were sitting and

squatted down beside them.

The splendid rumble of Sanskrit gave place to a high

nasal chant, and the chanting in due course was succeeded by

a litany, priestly utterance alternating with congregational

response.

And now incense was burned in a bass thurible. The old

priest held up his two hands for silence, and through a long

pregnant time of the most perfect stillness the thread of gray

incense smoke rose straight and unwavering before the god,

then as it met the draft from the windows broke and was lost

to view in an invisible cloud that filled the whole dim space

with the mysterious fragrance of another world. Will opened

his eyes and saw that, alone of all the congregation, Murugan

171

was restlessly fidgeting. And not merely fidgeting—making

faces of impatient disapproval. He himself had never

climbed; therefore climbing was merely silly. He himself had

always refused to try the moksha-medicine; therefore those

who used it were beyond the pale. His mother believed in the

Ascended Masters and chatted regularly with Koot Hoomi;

therefore the image of Shiva was a vulgar idol. What an

eloquent pantomime, Will thought as he watched the boy.

But alas for poor little Murugan, nobody was paying the

slightest attention to his antics.

"Shivayanama," said the old priest, breaking the long

silence, and again, "Shivayanama." He made a beckoning

gesture.

Rising from her place, the tall girl whom Will had seen

working her way down the precipice mounted the altar steps.

Standing on tiptoe, her oiled body gleaming like a second

copper statue in the light of the lamps, she hung a garland of

pale-yellow flowers on the uppermost of Shiva's two left

arms. Then, laying palm to palm, she looked up into the

god's serenely smiling face and, in a voice that faltered at

first, but gradually grew steadier, began to speak:

"O you the creator, you the destroyer, you who sustain

and make an end, Who in sunlight dance among the birds

and the children

at their play, Who at midnight dance among corpses in the

burning

grounds,

You Shiva, you dark and terrible Bhairava, You Suchness

and Illusion, the Void and All Things, You are the lord of

life, and therefore I have brought you

flowers; You are the lord of death, and therefore I have

brought

you my heart—

This heart that is now your burning ground. Ignorance

there and self shall be consumed with fire. That you may

dance, Bhairava, among the ashes. That you may dance,

Lord Shiva, in a place of flowers, And I dance with you."

Raising her arms, the girl made a gesture that hinted at the

ecstatic devotion of a hundred generations of dancing wor-

shipers, then turned away and walked back into the twilight.

172

"Shivayanama," somebody cried out. Murugan snorted con-

temptuously as the refrain was taken up by other young

voices. "Shivayanama, Shivayanama..." The old priest

started to intone another passage from the Scripture. Halfway

through his recitation a small gray bird with a crimson head

flew in through one of the latticed windows, fluttered wildly

around the altar lamps, then, chattering in loud indignant

terror, darted out again. The chanting continued, swelled to a

climax, and ended in the whispered prayer for peace: Shanti

shanti shanti. The old priest now turned towards the altar,

picked up a long taper and, borrowing flame from one of the

lamps above Shiva's head, proceeded to light seven other

lamps that hung within a deep niche beneath the slab on

which the dancer stood. Glinting on polished convexities of

metal, their light revealed another statue— this time of Shiva

and Parvati, of the Arch-Yogin seated and, while two of his

four hands held aloft the symbolic drum and fire, caressing

with the second pair the amorous Goddess, with her twining

legs and arms, by whom, in this eternal embrace of bronze,

he was bestridden. The old priest waved his hand. This time

it was a boy, dark-skinned and powerfully muscled, who

stepped into the light. Bending down, he hung the garland he

was carrying about Parvati's neck; then, twisting the long

flower chain, dropped a second loop of white orchids over

Shiva's head.

"Each is both," he said.

"Each is both," the chorus of young voices repeated.

Murugan violently shook his head.

"O you who are gone," said the dark-skinned boy, "who

are gone, who are gone to the other shore, who have landed

on the other shore, O you enlightenment and you other

enlightenment, you liberation made one with liberation, you

compassion in the arms of infinite compassion."

"Shivayanama."

He went back to his place. There was a long silence. Then

Vijaya rose to his feet and began to speak.

"Danger," he said, and again, "danger. Danger

deliberately and yet lightly accepted. Danger shared with a

friend, a group of friends. Shared consciously, shared to the

limits of awareness so that the sharing and the danger

become a yoga. Two friends roped together on a rock face.

Sometimes three friends or four. Each totally aware of his

173

own straining muscles, his own skill, his own fear, and his

own spirit transcending the fear. And each, of course, aware

at the same time of all the others, concerned for them, doing

the right things to make sure that they'll be safe. Life at its

highest pitch of bodily and mental tension, life more

abundant, more inestimably precious, because of the

ever-present threat of death. But after the yoga of danger

there's the yoga of the summit, the yoga of rest and letting

go, the yoga of complete and total receptiveness, the yoga

that consists in consciously accepting what is given as it is

given, without censorship by your busy moralistic mind,

without any additions from your stock of secondhand ideals,

your even larger stock of wishful phantasies. You just sit

there with muscles relaxed and a mind open to the sunlight

and the clouds, open to distance and the horizon, open in the

end to that formless, wordless Not-Thought which the

stillness of the summit permits you to divine, profound and

enduring, within the twittering flux of your everyday

thinking.

"And now it's time for the descent, time for a second bout

of the yoga of danger, time for a renewal of tension and the

awareness of life in its glowing plenitude as you hang

precariously on the brink of destruction. Then at the foot of

the precipice you unrope, you go striding down the rocky

path toward the first trees. And suddenly you're in the forest,

and another kind of yoga is called for—the yoga of the

jungle, the yoga that consists of being totally aware of life at

the near-point, jungle life in all its exuberance and its rotting,

crawling squalor, all its melodramatic ambivalence of

orchids and centipedes, of leeches and sunbirds, of the

drinkers of nectar and the drinkers of blood. Life bringing

order out of chaos and ugliness, life performing its miracles

of birth and growth, but performing them, it seems, for no

other purpose than to destroy itself. Beauty and horror,

beauty," he repeated, "and horror. And then suddenly, as you

come down from one of your expeditions in the mountains,

suddenly you know that there's a reconciliation. And not

merely a reconciliation. A fusion, an identity. Beauty made

one with horror in the yoga of the jungle. Life reconciled

with the perpetual imminence of death in the yoga of danger.

Emptiness identified with selfhood in the Sabbath yoga of

the summit."

174

There was silence. Murugan yawned ostentatiously. The

old priest lighted another stick of incense and, muttering,

waved it before the dancer, waved it again around the cosmic

love-making of Shiva and the Goddess.

"Breathe deeply," said Vijaya, "and as you breathe pay

attention to this smell of incense. Pay your whole attention to

it; know it for what it is—an ineffable fact beyond words,

beyond reason and explanation. Know it in the raw. Know it

as a mystery. Perfume, women and prayer—those were the

three things that Mohammed loved above all others. The

inexplicable data of breathed incense, touched skin, felt love

and beyond them, the mystery of mysteries, the One in

plurality, the Emptiness that is all, the Suchness totally

present in every appearance, at every point and instant. So

breathe," he repeated, "breathe," and in a final whisper, as he

sat down, "breathe."

"Shivayanama," murmured the old priest ecstatically.

Dr. Robert rose and started towards the altar, then halted,

turned back, and beckoned to Will Farnaby.

"Come and sit with me," he whispered, when Will had

caught up with him. "I'd like you to see their faces."

"Shan't I be in the way?"

Dr. Robert shook his head, and together they moved for-

ward, climbed and, three quarters of the way up the altar

stair, sat down side by side in the penumbra between

darkness and the light of the lamps. Very quietly Dr. Robert

began to talk about Shiva-Nataraja, the Lord of the Dance.

"Look at his image," he said. "Look at it with these new

eyes that the moksha-medicine has given you. See how it

breathes and pulses, how it grows out of brightness into

brightness ever more intense. Dancing through time and out

of time, dancing everlastingly and in the eternal now.

Dancing and dancing in all the worlds at once. Look at him."

Scanning those upturned faces, Will noted, now in one,

now in another, the dawning illuminations of delight,

recognition, understanding, the signs of worshiping wonder

that quivered on the brinks of ecstasy or terror.

"Look closely," Dr. Robert insisted. "Look still more

closely." Then, after a long minute of silence, "Dancing in all

the worlds at once," he repeated. "In all the worlds. And first

of all in the world of matter. Look at the great round halo,

fringed with the symbols of fire, within which the god is

175

dancing. It stands for Nature, for the world of mass and

energy. Within it Shiva-Nataraja dances the dance of endless

becoming and passing away. It's his lila, his cosmic play.

Playing for the sake of playing, like a child. But this child is

the Order of Things. His toys are galaxies, his playground is

infinite space and between finger and finger every interval is

a thousand million light-years. Look at him there on the

altar. The image is man-made, a little contraption of copper

only four feet high. But Shiva-Nataraja fills the universe, is

the universe. Shut your eyes and see him towering into the

night, follow the boundless stretch of those arms and the

wild hair infinitely flying.

"Nataraja at play among the stars and in the atoms. But

also," he added, "also at play within every living thing, every

sentient creature, every child and man and woman. Play for

play's sake. But now the playground is conscious, the dance

floor is capable of suffering. To us, this play without purpose

seems a kind of insult. What we would really like is a God

who never destroys what he has created. Or if there must be

pain and death, let them be meted out by a God of

righteousness, who will punish the wicked and reward the

good with everlasting happiness. But in fact the good get

hurt, the innocent suffer. Then let there be a God who

sympathizes and brings comfort. But Nataraja only dances.

His play is a play impartially of death and of life, of all evils

as well as of all goods. In the uppermost of his right hands he

holds the drum that summons being out of not-being.

Rub-a-dub-dub—the creation tattoo, the cosmic reveille. But

now look at the uppermost of his left hands. It brandishes the

fire by which all that has been created is forthwith destroyed.

He dances this way-—what happiness! Dances that

way—and oh, the pain, the hideous fear, the desolation!

Then hop, skip and jump. Hop into perfect health. Skip into

cancer and senility. Jump out of the fullness of life into

nothingness, out of nothingness again into life. For Nataraja

it's all play, and the play is an end in itself, everlastingly

purposeless. He dances because he dances, and the dancing

is his maha-sukha, his infinite and eternal bliss. Eternal

bliss," Dr. Robert repeated and again, but questioningly,

"Eternal bliss?" He shook his head. "For us there's no bliss,

only the oscillation between happiness and terror and a sense

of outrage at the thought that our pains are as integral a part

176

of Nataraja's dance as our pleasures, our dying as our living.

Let's quietly think about that for a little while."

The seconds passed, the silence deepened. Suddenly,

star-tlingly, one of the girls began to sob. Vijaya left his

place and, kneeling down beside her, laid a hand on her

shoulder. The sobbing died down.

"Suffering and sickness," Dr. Robert resumed at last, "old

age, decrepitude, death. I show you sorrow. But that wasn't

the only thing the Buddha showed us. He also showed us the

ending of sorrow."

"Shivayanama," the old priest cried triumphantly.

"Open your eyes again and look at Nataraja up there on

the altar. Look closely. In his upper right hand, as you've

already seen, he holds the drum that calls the world into

existence and in his upper left hand he carries the destroying

fire. Life and death, order and disintegration, impartially. But

now look at Shiva's other pair of hands. The lower right hand

is raised and the palm is turned outwards. What does that

gesture signify? It signifies, 'Don't be afraid; it's All Right.'

But how can anyone in his senses fail to be afraid? How can

anyone pretend that evil and suffering are all right, when it's

so obvious that they're all wrong? Nataraja has the answer.

Look now at his lower left hand. He's using it to point down

at his feet. And what are his feet doing? Look closely and

you'll see that the right foot is planted squarely on a horrible

little subhuman creature—the demon, Muyalaka. A dwarf,

but immensely powerful in his malignity, Muyalaka is the

embodiment of ignorance, the manifestation of greedy,

possessive selfhood. Stamp on him, break his back! And

that's precisely what Nataraja is doing. Trampling the little

monster down under his right foot. But notice that it isn't at

this trampling right foot that he points his finger; it's at the

left foot, the foot that, as he dances, he's in the act of raising

from the ground. And why does he point at it? Why? That

lifted foot, that dancing defiance of the force of gravity—it's

the symbol of release, of moksha, of liberation. Nataraja

dances in all the worlds at once—in the world of physics and

chemistry, in the world of ordinary, all-too-human,

experience, in the world finally of Suchness, of Mind, of the

Clear Light. . . . And now," Dr. Robert went on after a

moment of silence, "I want you to look at the other statue,

the image of Shiva and the Goddess. Look at them there in

177

their little cave of light. And now shut your eyes and see

them again—shining, alive, glorified. How beautiful! And in

their tenderness what depths of meaning! What wisdom

beyond all spoken wisdoms in that sensual experience of

spiritual fusion and atonement! Eternity in love with time.

The One joined in marriage to the many, the relative made

absolute by its union with the One. Nirvana identified with

samsara, the manifestation in time and flesh and feeling of

the Buddha Nature."

"Shivayanctma" The old priest lighted another stick of

incense and softly, in a succession of long-drawn melismata,

began to chant something in Sanskrit. On the young faces

before him Will could read the marks of a listening serenity,

the hardly perceptible, ecstatic smile that welcomes a sudden

insight, a revelation of truth or of beauty. In the background,

meanwhile, Murugan sat wearily slumped against a pillar,

picking his exquisitely Grecian nose "Liberation," Dr. Robert

began again, "the ending of sorrow, ceasing to be what you

ignorantly think you are and becoming what you are in fact.

For a little while, thanks to the moksha-medicine, you will

know what it's like to be what in fact you are, what in fact

you always have been. What a timeless bliss! But, like

everything else, this timelessness is transient. Like

everything else, it will pass. And when it has passed, what

will you do with this experience? What will you do with all

the other similar experiences that the moksha-medicine will

bring you in the years to come? Will you merely enjoy them

as you would enjoy an evening at the puppet show, and then

go back to business as usual, back to behaving like the silly

delinquents you imagine yourselves to be? Or, having

glimpsed, will you devote your lives to the business, not at

all as usual, of being what you are in fact? All that we older

people can do with our teachings, all that Pala can do for you

with its social arrangements, is to provide you with

techniques

and

opportunities.

And

all

that

the

moksha-medicine can do is to give you a succession of

beatific glimpses, an hour or two, every now and then, of

enlightening and liberating grace. It remains for you to

decide whether you'll co-operate with the grace and take

those opportunities. But that's for the future. Here and now,

all you have to do is to follow the mynah bird's advice:

Attention! Pay attention and you'll find yourselves, gradually

178

or suddenly, becoming aware of the great primordial facts

behind these symbols on the altar."

"Shivayanama!" The old priest waved his stick of incense.

At the foot of the altar steps the boys and girls sat motionless

as statues. A door creaked, there was a sound of footsteps.

Will turned his head and saw a short, thickset man picking

his way between the young contemplatives. He mounted the

steps and, bending down, murmured something in Dr.

Robert's ear, then turned and walked back towards the door.

Dr. Robert laid a hand on Will's knee. "It's a royal

command," he whispered, with a smile and a shrug of the

shoulders. "That was the man in charge of the Alpine hut.

The Rani has just telephoned to say that she has to see

Murugan as soon as possible. It's urgent." Laughing

noiselessly, he rose and helped Will to his feet.

179

11

Will Farnaby had made his own breakfast and, when Dr.

Robert returned from his early-morning visit to the hospital,

was drinking his second cup of Palanese tea and eating

toasted breadfruit with pumelo marmalade.

"Not too much pain in the night," was Dr. Robert's

response to his enquiries. "Lakshmi had four or five hours of

good sleep, and this morning she was able to take some

broth."

They could look forward, he continued, to another day of

respite. And so, since it tired the patient to have him there all

the time, and since life, after all, had to go on and be made

the best of, he had decided to drive up to the High Altitude

Station and put in a few hours' work on the research team in

the pharmaceutical laboratory.

"Work on the moksha-medicine?"

Dr. Robert shook his head. "That's just a matter of

repeating a standard operation—something for technicians,

not for the researchers. They're busy with something new."

And he began to talk about the indoles recently isolated

from the ololiuqui seeds that had been brought in from

Mexico last year and were now being grown in the station's

botanic garden.

At least three different indoles, of which one seemed to be

extremely potent. Animal experiments indicated that it

affected the reticular system. . . .

Left to himself, Will sat down under the overhead fan and

went on with his reading of the Notes on What's What.

We cannot reason ourselves out of our basic irrationality.

All we can do is to learn the art of being irrational in a rea-

sonable way.

In Pala, after three generations of Reform, there are no

sheeplike flocks and no ecclesiastical Good Shepherds to

shear and castrate; there are no bovine or swinish herds and

180

no licensed drovers, royal or military, capitalistic or revolu-

tionary, to brand, confine and butcher. There are only volun-

tary associations of men and women on the road to full

humanity.

Tunes or pebbles, processes or substantial things?

"Tunes," answer Buddhism and modern science. "Pebbles,"

say the classical philosophers of the West. Buddhism and

modern science think of the world in terms of music. The

image that comes to mind when one reads the philosophers

of the West is a figure in a Byzantine mosaic, rigid,

symmetrical, made up of millions of little squares of some

stony material and firmly cemented to the walls of a

windowless basilica.

The dancer's grace and, forty years on, her arthritis—both

are functions of the skeleton. It is thanks to an inflexible

framework of bones that the girl is able to do her pirouettes,

thanks to the same bones, grown a little rusty, that the grand-

mother is condemned to a wheelchair. Analogously, the firm

support of a culture is the prime-condition of all individual

originality and creativeness; it is also their principal enemy.

The thing in whose absence we cannot possibly grow into a

complete human being is, all too often, the thing that pre-

vents us from growing.

A century of research on the moksha-medicine has clearly

shown that quite ordinary people are perfectly capable of

having visionary or even fully liberating experiences. In this

respect the men and women who make and enjoy high cul-

ture are no better off than the lowbrows. High experience is

perfectly compatible with low symbolic expression.

The expressive symbols created by Palanese artists are no

better than the expressive symbols created by artists else-

where. Being the products of happiness and a sense of fulfill-

ment, they are probably less moving, perhaps less satisfying

aesthetically, than the tragic or compensatory symbols cre-

ated by victims of frustration and ignorance, of tyranny, war

and guilt-fostering, crime-inciting superstitions. Palanese

superiority does not lie in symbolic expression but in an art

which, though higher and far more valuable than all the rest,

can yet be practiced by everyone—the art of adequately

experiencing, the art of becoming more intimately

acquainted with all the worlds that, as human beings, we find

ourselves inhabiting. Palanese culture is not to be judged as

181

(for lack of any better criterion) we judge other cultures. It is

not to be judged by the accomplishments of a few gifted

manipulators of artistic or philosophical symbols. No, it is to

be judged by what all the members of the community, the

ordinary as well as the extraordinary, can and do experience

in every contingency and at each successive intersection of

time and eternity.

The telephone bell had started to ring. Should he let it ring

or would it be better to answer and let the caller know that

Dr. Robert was out for the day? Deciding on the second

course, Will lifted the receiver.

"Dr. MacPhail's bungalow," he said, in a parody of

secretarial efficiency. "But the doctor is out for the day."

" Tant mieux" said the rich royal voice at the other end of

the wire. "How are you, mon cher Farnaby?"

Taken aback, Will stammered out his thanks for Her

Highness' gracious enquiry.

"So they took you," said the Rani, "to see one of their

so-called initiations yesterday afternoon."

Will had recovered sufficiently from his surprise to

respond with a neutral word and in the most noncommittal of

tones. "It was most remarkable," he said.

"Remarkable," said the Rani, dwelling emphatically on

the spoken equivalents of pejorative and laudatory capital

letters, "but only as the Blasphemous Caricature of true

Initiation. They've never learned to make the elementary

distinction between the Natural Order and the Supernatural."

"Quite," Will murmured. "Quite . . ."

"What did you say?" the voice at the other end of the line

demanded.

"Quite," Will repeated more loudly.

"I'm glad you agree. But I didn't call you," the Rani went

on, "to discuss the difference between the Natural and the

Supernatural—Supremely Important as that difference is.

No, I called you about a more urgent matter."

"Oil?"

"Oil," she confirmed. "I've just received a very disquieting

communication from my Personal Representative in

Rendang. Very Highly Placed," she added parenthetically,

"and invariably Well Informed."

Will found himself wondering which of all those sleek

and much bemedaled guests at the Foreign Office cocktail

182

party

had

double-crossed

his

fellow

double-crossers—himself, of course, included.

"Within the last few days," the Rani went on, "representa-

tives of no less than three Major Oil Companies, European

and American, have flown into Rendang-Lobo. My

informant tells me that they're already working on the four or

five Key Figures in the Administration who might, at some

future date, be influential in deciding who is to get the

concession for Pala."

Will clicked his tongue disapprovingly.

Considerable sums, she hinted, had been, if not directly

offered, at least named and temptingly dangled.

"Nefarious," he commented.

Nefarious, the Rani agreed, was the word. And that was

why Something must be Done About It, and Done

Immediately. From Bahu she had learned that Will had

already written to Lord Aldehyde, and within a few days a

reply would doubtless be forthcoming. But a few days were

too long. Time was of the essence—not only because of what

those rival companies were up to, but also (and the Rani

lowered her voice mysteriously) for Other Reasons. "Now,

now!" her Little Voice kept exhorting. "Now, without

delay!" Lord Aldehyde must be informed by cable of what

was happening (the faithful Bahu, she added parenthetically,

had offered to transmit the message in code by way of the

Rendang Legation in London) and along with the infor-

mation must go an urgent request that he empower his

Special Correspondent to take such steps—at this stage the

appropriate steps would be predominantly of a financial

nature—as might be necessary to secure the triumph of their

Common Cause.

"So with your permission," the voice concluded, "I'll tell

Bahu to send the cable immediately. In our joint names, Mr.

Farnaby, yours and Mine. I hope, mon cher, that this will be

agreeable to you."

It wasn't at all agreeable, but there seemed to be no

excuse, seeing that he had already written that letter to Joe

Aldehyde, for demurring. And so, "Yes, of course," he cried

with a show of enthusiasm belied by his long dubious pause,

before the words were uttered, in search of an alternative

answer. "We ought to get the reply sometime tomorrow," he

added.

183

"We shall get it tonight," the Rani assured him.

"Is that possible?"

"With God" {con espressione) "all things are possible."

"Quite," he said, "quite. But still . . ."

"I go by what my Little Voice tells me. 'Tonight,' it's

saying. And 'he will give Mr. Farnaby carte blanche'—carte

blanche," she repeated with gusto. " 'And Farnaby will be

completely successful.' "

"I wonder?" he said doubtfully.

"You must be successful."

"Must be?"

"Must be," she insisted.

"Why?"

"Because it was God who inspired me to launch the

Crusade of the Spirit."

"I don't quite get the connection."

"Perhaps I oughtn't to tell you," she said. Then, after a

moment of silence, "But after all, why not? If Our Cause tri-

umphs, Lord Aldehyde has promised to back the Crusade

with all his resources. And since God wants the Crusade to

succeed, Our Cause cannot fail to triumph."

"Q.E.D.," he wanted to shout, but restrained himself. It

wouldn't be polite. And anyhow this was no joking matter.

"Well, I must call Bahu," said the Rani. "A bientot, my

dear Farnaby." And she rang off.

Shrugging his shoulders, Will turned back to the Notes on

What's What. What else was there to do?

Dualism . . . Without it there can hardly be good litera-

ture. With it, there most certainly can be no good life.

"I" affirms a separate and abiding me-substance; "am"

denies the fact that all existence is relationship and change.

"I am." Two tiny words, but what an enormity of untruth!

The religiously-minded dualist calls homemade spirits from

the vasty deep; the nondualist calls the vasty deep into his

spirit or, to be more accurate, he finds that the vasty deep is

already there.

There was the noise of an approaching car, then silence as

the motor was turned off, then the slamming of a door and

the sound of footsteps on gravel, on the steps of the veranda.

"Are you ready?" called Vijaya's deep voice.

Will put down the Notes on What's What, picked up his

bamboo staff, and hoisting himself to his feet, walked to the

184

front door.

"Ready and champing at the bit," he said as he stepped

out onto the veranda.

"Then let's go." Vijaya took his arm. "Careful of these

steps," he recommended.

Dressed all in pink and with corals round her neck and in

her ears, a plump, round-faced woman in her middle forties

was standing beside the jeep.

"This is Leela Rao," said Vijaya. "Our librarian, secretary,

treasurer, and general keeper-in-order. Without her we'd be

lost."

She looked, Will thought as he shook hands with her, like

a browner version of one of those gentle but inexhaustibly

energetic English ladies who, when their children are grown,

go in for good works or organized culture. Not too

intelligent, poor dears; but how selfless, how devoted, how

genuinely good—and, alas, how boring!

"I was hearing of you," Mrs. Rao volunteered as they

rattled along past the lotus pond and out onto the highway,

"from my young friends, Radha and Ranga."

"I hope," said Will, "that they approved of me as heartily

as I approved of them."

Mrs. Rao's face brightened with pleasure. "I'm so glad you

like them!"

"Ranga's exceptionally bright," Vijaya put in. And so

delicately balanced, Mrs. Rao elaborated, between

introversion and the outside world. Always tempted—and

how strongly!—to escape into the Arhat's Nirvana or the

scientists' beautifully tidy little paradise of pure abstraction.

Always tempted, but often resisting temptation; for Ranga,

the Arhat-scientist, was also another kind of Ranga, a Ranga

capable of compassion, ready, if one knew how to make the

right kind of appeal, to lay himself open to the concrete

realities of life, to be aware, concerned and actively helpful.

How fortunate for him and for everyone else that he had

found a girl like little Radha, a girl so intelligently simple, so

humorous and tender, so richly endowed for love and

happiness! Radha and Ranga, Mrs. Rao confided, had been

among her favorite pupils.

Pupils, Will patronizingly assumed, in some kind of

Buddhist Sunday school. But in fact, as he was now

flabbergasted to learn, it was in the yoga of love that this

185

devoted settlement worker had been, for the past six years

and in the intervals of librarian-ship, instructing the young.

By the kinds of methods, Will supposed, that Murugan had

shrunk from and the Rani, in her all but incestuous

possessiveness, had found so outrageous. He opened his

mouth to question her. But his reflexes had been conditioned

in higher latitude and by settlement workers of another

species. The questions simply refused to pass his lips. And

now it was too late to ask them. Mrs. Rao had begun to talk

about her other avocation.

"If you knew," she was saying, "what trouble we have

with books in this climate! The paper rots, the glue liquefies,

the bindings disintegrate, the insects devour. Literature and

the tropics are really incompatible."

"And if one's to believe your Old Raja," said Will,

"literature is incompatible with a lot of other local features

besides your climate—incompatible with human integrity,

incompatible with philosophical truth, incompatible with

individual sanity and a decent social system, incompatible

with everything except dualism, criminal lunacy, impossible

aspiration, and unnecessary guilt. But never mind." He

grinned ferociously. "Colonel Dipa will put everything right.

After Pala has been invaded and made safe for war and oil

and heavy industry, you'll undoubtedly have a Golden Age

of literature and theology."

"I'd like to laugh," said Vijaya. "The only trouble is that

you're probably right. I have an uncomfortable feeling that

my children will grow up to see your prophecy come true."

They left their jeep, parked between an oxcart and a

brand-new Japanese lorry, at the entrance to the village, and

proceeded on foot. Between thatched houses, set in gardens

shaded by palms and papayas and breadfruit trees, the

narrow street led to a central marketplace. Will halted and,

leaning on his bamboo staff, looked around him. On one side

of the square stood a charming piece of Oriental rococo with

a pink stucco facade and gazebos at the four

corners—evidently the town hall. Facing it, on the opposite

side of the square, rose a small temple of reddish stone, with

a central tower on which, tier after tier, a host of sculptured

figures recounted the legends of the Buddha's progress from

spoiled child to Tathagata. Between these two monuments,

more than half of the open space was covered by a huge

186

banyan tree. Along its winding and shadowy aisles were

ranged the stalls of a score of merchants and market women.

Slanting down through chinks in the green vaulting

overhead, the long probes of sunlight picked out here a row

of black-and-yellow water jars, there a silver bracelet, a

painted wooden toy, a bolt of cotton print; here a pile of

fruits, and a girl's gaily flowered bodice, there the flash of

laughing teeth and eyes, the ruddy gold of a naked torso.

"Everybody looks so healthy," Will commented, as they

made their way between the stalls under the great tree.

"They look healthy because they are healthy," said Mrs.

Rao. "And happy—for a change." He was thinking of the

faces

he

had

seen

in

Calcutta,

in

Manila,

in

Rendang-Lobo—the faces, for that matter, one saw every

day in Fleet Street and the Strand. "Even the women," he

noted, glancing from face to face, "even the women look

happy."

"They don't have ten children," Mrs. Rao explained.

"They don't have ten children where I come from," said Will.

"In spite of which . . . 'Marks of weakness marks of woe.' "

He halted for a moment to watch a middle-aged market

woman weighing out slices of sun-dried breadfruit for a very

young mother with a baby in a carrying bag on her back.

"There's a kind of radiance," he concluded.

"Thanks to maithuna," said Mrs. Rao triumphantly.

"Thanks to the yoga of love." Her face shone with a mixture

of religious fervor and professional pride.

They walked out from under the shade of the banyan,

across a stretch of fierce sunlight, up a flight of worn steps,

and into the gloom of the temple. A golden Bodhisattva

loomed, gigantic, out of the darkness. There was a smell of

incense and fading flowers, and from somewhere behind the

statue the voice of an unseen worshiper was muttering an

endless litany. Noiselessly, on bare feet, a little girl came

hurrying in from a side door. Paying no attention to the

grown-ups she climbed with the agility of a cat onto the altar

and laid a spray of white orchids on the statue's upturned

palm. Then, looking up into the huge golden face, she

murmured a few words, shut her eyes for a moment,

murmured again, then turned, scrambled down and, softly

singing to herself, went out by the door through which she

had entered.

187

"Charming," said Will, as he watched her go. "Couldn't be

prettier. But precisely what does a child like that think she's

doing? What kind of religion is she supposed to be

practicing?"

"She's practicing," Vijaya explained, "the local brand of

Mahayana Buddhism, with a bit of Shivaism, probably, on

the side."

"And do you highbrows encourage this kind of thing?"

"We neither encourage nor discourage. We accept it.

Accept it as we accept that spider web up there on the

cornice. Given the nature of spiders, webs are inevitable.

And given the nature of human beings, so are religions.

Spiders can't help making flytraps, and men can't help

making symbols. That's what the human brain is there

for—to turn the chaos of given experience into a set of

manageable symbols. Sometimes the symbols correspond

fairly closely to some of the aspects of the external reality

behind our experience; then you have science and common

sense. Sometimes, on the contrary, the symbols have almost

no connection with external reality; then you have paranoia

and delirium. More often there's a mixture, part realistic and

part fantastic; that's religion. Good religion or bad

religion—it depends on the blending of the cocktail. For

example, in the kind of Calvinism that Dr. Andrew was

brought up in, you're given only the tiniest jigger of realism

to a whole jugful of malignant fancy. In other cases the

mixture is more wholesome. Fifty-fifty, or even sixty-forty,

even seventy-thirty in favor of truth and decency. Our local

Old-Fashioned contains a remarkably small admixture of

poison."

Will nodded. "Offerings of white orchids to an image of

compassion and enlightenment—it certainly seems harmless

enough. And after what I saw yesterday, I'd be prepared to

put in a good word for cosmic dancing and divine

copulation."

"And remember," said Vijaya, "this sort of thing isn't

compulsory. Everybody's given a chance to go further. You

asked what that child thinks she's doing. I'll tell you. With

one part of her mind, she thinks she's talking to a person—an

enormous, divine person who can be cajoled with orchids

into giving her what she wants. But she's already old enough

to have been told about the profounder symbols behind

188

Amitabha's statue and about the experiences that give birth to

those profounder symbols. Consequently with another part of

her mind she knows perfectly well that Amitabha isn't a

person. She even knows, because it's been explained to her,

that if prayers are sometimes answered it's because, in this

very odd psychophysical world of ours, ideas have a

tendency, if you concentrate your mind on them, to get

themselves realized. She knows too that this temple isn't

what she still likes to think it is—the house of Buddha. She

knows it's just a diagram of her own unconscious mind—a

dark little cubbyhole with lizards crawling upside down on

the ceiling and cockroaches in all the crevices. But at the

heart of the verminous darkness sits Enlightenment. And

that's another thing the child is doing—she's unconsciously

learning a lesson about herself, she's being told that if she'd

only stop giving herself suggestions to the contrary, she

might discover that her own busy little mind is also Mind

with a large M."

"And how soon will the lesson be learned? When will she

stop giving herself those suggestions?"

"She may never learn. A lot of people don't. On the other

hand, a lot of people do."

He took Will's arm and led him into the deeper darkness

behind the image of Enlightenment. The chanting grew more

distinct, and there, hardly visible in the shadows, sat the

chanter—a very old man, naked to the waist and, except for

his moving lips, as rigidly still as Amitabha's golden statue.

"What's he intoning?" Will asked. "Something in Sanskrit."

Seven incomprehensible syllables, again and again.

"Good old vain repetition!"

"Not necessarily vain," Mrs. Rao objected. "Sometimes it

really gets you somewhere."

"It gets you somewhere," Vijaya elaborated, "not because

of what the words mean or suggest, but simply because

they're being repeated. You could repeat Hey Diddle Diddle

and it would work just as well as Om or Kyrie Eleison or La

ila ilia 'llah. It works because when you're busy with the

repetition of Hey Diddle Diddle or the name of God, you

can't be entirely preoccupied with yourself. The only trouble

is that you can hey-diddle-diddle yourself downwards as

well as upwards—down into the not-thought of idiocy as

well as up into the not-thought of pure awareness."

189

"So, I take it, you wouldn't recommend this kind of

thing," said Will, "to our little friend with the orchids?"

"Not unless she were unusually jittery or anxious. Which

she isn't. I know her very well; she plays with my children."

"Then what would you do in her case?"

"Among other things," said Vijaya, "I'd take her, in

another year or so, to the place we're going to now."

"What place?"

"The meditation room."

Will followed him through an archway and along a short

corridor. Heavy curtains were parted and they stepped into a

large whitewashed room with a long window, to their left,

that opened onto a little garden planted with banana and

breadfruit trees. There was no furniture, only a scattering on

the floor of small square cushions. On the wall opposite the

window hung a large oil painting. Will gave it a glance, then

approached to look into it more closely.

"My word!" he said at last. "Who is it by?"

"Gobind Singh."

"And who's Gobind Singh?"

"The best landscape painter Pala ever produced. He died

in 'forty-eight."

"Why haven't we ever seen anything by him?"

"Because we like his work too well to export any of it."

"Good for you," said Will. "But bad for us." He looked

again at the picture. "Did this man ever go to China?"

"No; but he studied with a Cantonese painter who was

living in Pala. And of course he'd seen plenty of

reproductions of Sung landscapes."

"A Sung master," said Will, "who chose to paint in oils

and was interested in chiaroscuro."

"Only after he went to Paris. That was in 1910. He struck

up a friendship with Vuillard."

Will nodded. "One might have guessed as much from this

extraordinary richness of texture." He went on looking at the

picture in silence. "Why do you hang it in the meditation

room?" he asked at last.

"Why do you suppose?" Vijaya countered.

"Is it because this thing is what you call a diagram of the

mind?"

"The temple was a diagram. This is something much

better. It's an actual manifestation. A manifestation of Mind

190

with a large M in an individual mind in relation to a

landscape, to canvas and to the experience of painting. It's a

picture, incidentally, of the next valley to the west. Painted

from the place where the power lines disappear over the

ridge."

"What clouds!" said Will. "And the light!"

"The light," Vijaya elaborated, "of the last hour before

dusk. It's just stopped raining and the sun has come out

again, brighter than ever. Bright with the preternatural

brightness of slanting light under a ceiling of cloud, the last,

doomed, afternoon brightness that stipples every surface it

touches and deepens every shadow."

"Deepens every shadow," Will repeated to himself, as he

looked into the picture. The shadow of that huge, high conti-

nent of cloud, darkening whole mountain ranges almost to

blackness; and in the middle distance the shadows of island

clouds. And between dark and dark was the blaze of young

rice, or the red heat of plowed earth, the incandescence of

naked limestone, the sumptuous darks and diamond glitter of

evergreen foliage. And here at the center of the valley stood

a group of thatched houses, remote and tiny, but how clearly

seen, how perfect and articulate, how profoundly significant!

Yes, significant. But when you asked yourself, "Of what?"

you found no answer. Will put the question into words.

"What do they mean?" Vijaya repeated. "They mean

precisely what they are. And so do the mountains, so do the

clouds, so do the lights and darks. And that's why this is a

genuinely religious image. Pseudoreligious pictures always

refer to something else, something beyond the things they

represent—some piece of metaphysical nonsense, some

absurd dogma from the local theology. A genuinely religious

image is always intrinsically meaningful. So that's why we

hang this kind of painting in our meditation room."

"Always landscapes?"

"Almost always. Landscapes can really remind people of

who

they are."

"Better than scenes from the life of a saint or savior?"

Vijaya nodded. "It's the difference, to begin with, between

objective and subjective. A picture of Christ or Buddha is

merely the record of something observed by a behaviorist

and interpreted by a theologian. But when you're confronted

191

with a landscape like this, it's psychologically impossible for

you to look at it with the eyes of a J. B. Watson or the mind

of a Thomas Aquinas. You're almost forced to submit to your

immediate experience; you're practically compelled to

perform an act of self-knowing."

"Self-knowing?"

"Self-knowing," Vijaya insisted. "This view of the next

valley is a view, at one remove, of your own mind, of

everybody's mind as it exists above and below the level of

personal history. Mysteries of darkness; but the darkness

teems with life. Apocalypses of light; and the light shines out

as brightly from the flimsy little houses as from the trees, the

grass, the blue spaces between the clouds. We do our best to

disprove the fact, but a fact it remains; man is as divine as

nature, as infinite as the Void. But that's getting perilously

close to theology, and nobody was ever saved by a notion.

Stick to the data, stick to the concrete facts." He pointed a

finger at the picture. "The fact of half a village in sunshine

and half in shadow and in secret. The fact of those indigo

mountains and of the more fantastic mountains of vapor

above them. The fact of blue lakes in the sky, lakes of pale

green and raw sienna on the sunlit earth. The fact of this

grass in the foreground, this clump of bamboos only a few

yards down the slope, and the fact, at the same time, of those

faraway peaks and the absurd little houses two thousand feet

below in the valley. Distance," he added parenthetically,

"their ability to express the fact of distance—that's yet

another reason why landscapes are the most genuinely reli-

gious pictures."

"Because distance lends enchantment to the view?" "No;

because it lends reality. Distance reminds us that there's a lot

more to the universe than just people—that there's even a lot

more to people than just people. It reminds us that there are

mental spaces inside our skulls as enormous as the spaces

out there. The experience of distance, of inner distance and

outer distance, of distance in time and distance in space—it's

the first and fundamental religious experience. 'O Death in

life, the days that are no more'—and O the places, the infinite

number of places that are not this place! Past pleasures, past

unhappinesses and insights—all so intensely alive in our

memories and yet all dead, dead without hope of

resurrection. And the village down there in the valley so

192

clearly seen even in the shadow, so real and indubitable, and

yet so hopelessly out of reach, incommunicado. A picture

like this is the proof of man's capacity to accept all the deaths

in life, all the yawning absences surrounding every presence.

To my mind," Vijaya added, "the worst feature of your

nonrepresentational art is its systematic two-dimensionality,

its refusal to take account of the universal experience of

distance. As a colored object, a piece of abstract

expressionism can be very handsome. It can also serve as a

kind of glorified Rorschach inkblot. Everybody can find in it

a symbolic expression of his own fears, lusts, hatreds, and

daydreams. But can one ever find in it those more than

human (or should one say those other than all too human)

facts that one discovers in oneself when the mind is

confronted by the outer distances of nature, or by the

simultaneously inner and outer distances of a painted

landscape like this one we're looking at? All I know is that in

your abstractions I don't find the realities that reveal

themselves here, and I doubt if anyone else can. Which is

why this fashionable abstract nonob-jective expressionism of

yours is so fundamentally irreligious— and also, I may add,

why even the best of it is so profoundly boring, so

bottomlessly trivial."

"Do you come here often?" Will asked after a silence.

"Whenever I feel like meditating in a group rather than

alone."

"How often is that?"

"Once every week or so. But of course some people like

to do it oftener—and some much more rarely, or even never.

It depends on one's temperament. Take our friend Susila, for

example—she needs big doses of solitude; so she hardly ever

comes to the meditation room. Whereas Shanta (that's my

wife) likes to look in here almost every day."

"So do I," said Mrs. Rao. "But that's only to be expected,"

she added with a laugh. "Fat people enjoy company—even

when they're meditating."

"And do you meditate on this picture?" Will asked. "Not

on it. From it, if you see what I mean. Or rather parallel with

it. I look at it, and the other people look at it, and it reminds

us all of who we are and what we aren't, and how what we

aren't might turn into who we are."

"Is there any connection," Will asked, "between what

193

you've been talking about and what I saw up there in the

Shiva temple?" "Of course there is," she answered. "The

moksha-medicine takes you to the same place as you get to

in meditation." "So why bother to meditate?"

"You might as well ask, Why bother to eat your dinner?"

"But, according to you, the moksha-medicne is dinner." "It's

a banquet," she said emphatically. "And that's precisely why

there has to be meditation. You can't have banquets every

day. They're too rich and they last too long. Besides,

banquets are provided by a caterer; you don't have any part

in the preparation of them. For your everyday diet you have

to do your own cooking. The moksha-medicine comes as an

occasional treat."

"In theological terms," said Vijaya, "the moksha-medicine

prepares

one

for

the

reception

of

gratuitous

graces—premystical visions or the full-blown mystical

experiences. Meditation is one of the ways in which one

co-operates with those gratuitous graces." "How?"

"By cultivating the state of mind that makes it possible for

the dazzling ecstatic insights to become permanent and

habitual illuminations. By getting to know oneself to the

point where one won't be compelled by one's unconscious to

do all the ugly, absurd, self-stultifying things that one so

often finds oneself doing."

"You mean, it helps one to be more intelligent?" "Not

more intelligent in relation to science or logical argu-

ment—more intelligent on the deeper level of concrete

experiences and personal relationships."

"More intelligent on that level," said Mrs. Rao, "even

though one may be very stupid upstairs." She patted the top

of her head. "I'm too dumb to be any good at the things that

Dr. Robert and Vijaya are good at—genetics and

biochemistry and philosophy and all the rest. And I'm no

good at painting or poetry or acting. No talents and no

cleverness. So I ought to feel horribly inferior and depressed.

But in fact I don't—thanks entirely to the moksha-medicine

and meditation. No talents or cleverness. But when it comes

to living, when it comes to understanding people and helping

them, I feel myself growing more and more sensitive and

skillful. And when it comes to what Vijaya calls gratuitous

graces ..." She broke off. "You could be the greatest genius

in the world, but you wouldn't have anything more than what

194

I've been given. Isn't that true, Vijaya?"

"Perfectly true."

She turned back to Will. "So you see, Mr. Farnaby, Pala's

the place for stupid people. The greatest happiness of the

greatest number—and we stupid ones are the greatest

number. People like Dr. Robert and Vijaya and my darling

Ranga—we recognize their superiority, we know very well

that their kind of intelligence is enormously important. But

we also know that our kind of intelli gence is just as

important. And we don't envy them, because we're given just

as much as they are. Sometimes even more."

"Sometimes," Vijaya agreed, "even more. For the simple

rea son that a talent for manipulating symbols tempts its

possessors into habitual symbol manipulation, and habitual

symbol manipulation is an obstacle in the way of concrete

experiencing and the reception of gratuitous graces."

"So you see," said Mrs. Rao, "you don't have to feel too

sorry for us." She looked at her watch. "Goodness, I shall be

late for Dillip's dinner if I don't hurry."

She started briskly towards the door.

"Time, time, time," Will mocked. "Time even in this

place of timeless meditation. Time for dinner breaking

incorrigibly into eternity." He laughed. Never take yes for an

answer. The nature of things is always no.

Mrs. Rao halted for a moment and looked back at him.

"But sometimes," she said with a smile, "it's eternity that

miraculously breaks into time—even into dinnertime. Good-

bye." She waved her hand and was gone.

"Which is better," Will wondered aloud as he followed

Vijaya through the dark temple, out into the noonday glare,

"which is better—to be born stupid into an intelligent society

or intelligent into an insane one?"

195

12

"Here we are," said Vijaya, when they had reached the

end of the short street that led downhill from the

marketplace. He opened a wicket gate and ushered his guest

into a tiny garden, at the further end of which, on its low

stilts, stood a small thatched house.

From behind the bungalow a yellow mongrel dog rushed

out and greeted them with a frenzy of ecstatic yelps and

jumps and tail-waggings. A moment later a large green

parrot, with white cheeks and a bill of polished jet, came

swooping down from nowhere and landed with a squawk and

a noisy fluttering of wings on Vijaya's shoulder.

"Parrots for you," said Will, "mynahs for little Mary

Sarojini. You people seem to be on remarkably good terms

with the local fauna."

Vijaya nodded. "Pala is probably the only country in

which an animal theologian would have no reason for

believing in devils. For animals everywhere else, Satan, quite

obviously, is Homo sapiens.'

They climbed the steps to the veranda and walked through

the open front door into the bungalow's main living room.

Seated on a low chair near the window, a young woman

in blue was nursing her baby son. She lifted a heart-shaped

face that narrowed down from a broad forehead to a

delicately pointed chin, and gave them a welcoming smile.

"I've brought Will Farnaby," said Vijaya as he bent down

to kiss her.

Shanta held out her free hand to the stranger.

"I hope Mr. Farnaby doesn't object to nature in the raw,"

she said. As though to give point to her words, the baby

withdrew his mouth from the brown nipple, and belched. A

white bubble of milk appeared between his lips, swelled up

and burst. He belched again, then resumed his sucking.

"Even at eight months," she added, "Rama's table manners

196

are still rather primitive."

"A fine specimen," said Will politely. He was not much

interested in babies and had always been thankful for those

repeated miscarriages which had frustrated all Molly's hopes

and longings for a child. "Who's he going to look like—you

or Vijaya?"

Shanta laughed and Vijaya joined in, enormously, an

octave lower.

"He certainly won't look like Vijaya," she answered.

"Why not?"

"For the sufficient reason," said Vijaya, "that I'm not

genetically responsible."

"In other words, the baby isn't Vijaya's son."

Will looked from one laughing face to the other, then

shrugged his shoulders. "I give up."

"Four years ago," Shanta explained, "we produced a pair

of twins who are the living image of Vijaya. This time we

thought it would be fun to have a complete change. We

decided to enrich the family with an entirely new physique

and temperament. Did you ever hear of Gobind Singh?"

"Vijaya has just been showing me his painting in your

meditation room.

"Well, that's the man we chose for Rama's father."

"But I understood he was dead."

Shanta nodded. "But his soul goes marching along."

"What do you mean?"

"DF and AI."

"DFandAI?"

"Deep Freeze and Artificial Insemination."

"Oh, I see."

"Actually," said Vijaya, "we developed the techniques of

AI about twenty years before you did. But of course we

couldn't do much with it until we had electric power and

reliable refrigerators. We got those in the late twenties. Since

then we've been using AI in a big way."

"So you see," Shanta chimed in, "my baby might grow up

to be a painter—that is, if that kind of talent is inherited. And

even if it isn't he'll be a lot more endomorphic and

viscerotonic than his brothers or either of his parents. Which

is going to be very interesting and educative for everybody

concerned."

"Do many people go in for this kind of thing?" Will

197

asked.

"More and more. In fact I'd say that practically all the

couples who decide to have a third child now go in for AI.

So do quite a lot of those who mean to stop at number two.

Take my family, for example. There's been some diabetes

among my father's people; so they thought it best—he and

my mother—to have both their children by AI. My brother's

descended from three generations of dancers and,

genetically, I'm the daughter of Dr. Robert's first cousin,

Malcolm Chakravarti-MacPhail, who was the Old Raja's

private secretary."

"And the author," Vijaya added, "of the best history of

Pala. Chakravarti-MacPhail was one of the ablest men of his

generation."

Will looked at Shanta, then back again at Vijaya.

"And has the ability been inherited?" he asked.

"So much so," Vijaya answered, "that I have the greatest

difficulty in maintaining my position of masculine

superiority. Shanta has more brains than I have; but

fortunately she can't compete with my brawn."

"Brawn," Shanta repeated sarcastically, "brawn ... I seem

to remember a story about a young lady called Delilah."

"Incidentally," Vijaya went on, "Shanta has thirty-two

half brothers and twenty-nine half sisters. And more than a

third of them are exceptionally bright."

"So you're improving the race."

"Very definitely. Give us another century, and our

average IQ will be up to a hundred and fifteen."

"Whereas ours, at the present rate of progress, will be

down to about eighty-five. Better medicine—more

congenital deficiencies preserved and passed on. It'll make

things a lot easier for future dictators." At the thought of this

cosmic joke he laughed aloud. Then, after a silence, "What

about the ethical and religious aspects of AI?" he asked.

"In the early days," said Vijaya, "there were a good many

conscientious objectors. But now the advantages of AI have

been so clearly demonstrated, most married couples feel that

it's more moral to take a shot at having a child of superior

quality than to run the risk of slavishly reproducing whatever

quirks and defects may happen to run in the husband's

family. Meanwhile the theologians have got busy. AI has

been justified in terms of reincarnation and the theory of

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karma. Pious fathers now feel happy at the thought that

they're giving their wife's children a chance of creating a

better destiny for themselves and their posterity."

"A better destiny?"

"Because they carry the germ plasm of a better stock. And

the stock is better because it's the manifestation of a better

karma. We have a central bank of superior stocks. Superior

stocks of every variety of physique and temperament. In your

kind of environment, most people's heredity never gets a fair

chance. In ours, it does. And incidentally we have excellent

genealogical and anthropometric records going back as far as

the eighteen-seventies. So you see we're not working entirely

in the dark. For example, we know that Gobind Singh's

maternal grandmother was a gifted medium and lived to

ninety-six."

"So you see," said Shanta, "we may even have a

centenarian clairvoyant in the family." The baby belched

again. She laughed. "The oracle has spoken—as usual, very

enigmatically." Turning to Vijaya, "If you want lunch to be

ready on time," she added, "you'd better go and do something

about it. Rama's going to keep me busy for at least another

ten minutes."

Vijaya rose, laid one hand on his wife's shoulder and with

the other gently rubbed the baby's brown back.

Shanta bent down and passed her cheek across the top of

the child's downy head. "It's father," she whispered. "Good

father, good, good. ..."

Vijaya administered a final pat, then straightened himself

up. "You were wondering," he said to Will, "how it is that

we get on so well with the local fauna. I'll show you." He

raised his hand. "Polly. Polly." Cautiously, the big bird

stepped from his shoulder to the extended forefinger. "Polly's

a good bird," he chanted. "Polly's a very good bird." He

lowered his hand to the point where a contact was made

between the bird's body and the child's, then moved it

slowly, feathers against brown skin, back and forth, back and

forth. "Polly's a good bird," he repeated, "a good bird."

The parrot uttered a succession of low chuckles, then

leaned forward from its perch on Vijaya's finger and very

gently nibbled at the child's tiny ear.

"Such a good bird," Shanta whispered, taking up the

refrain. "Such good bird."

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"Dr. Andrew picked up the idea," said Vijaya, "while he

was serving as a naturalist on the Melampus. From a tribe in

northern New Guinea. Neolithic people; but like you

Christians and us Buddhists, they believed in love. And

unlike us and you, they'd invented some very practical ways

of making their belief come true. This technique was one of

their happiest discoveries. Stroke the baby while you're

feeding him; it doubles his pleasure. Then, while he's

sucking and being caressed, introduce him to the ani mal or

person you want him to love. Rub his body against theirs; let

there be a warm physical contact between child and love

object. At the same time repeat some word like 'good.' At

first he'll understand only your tone of voice. Later on, when

he learns to speak, he'll get the full meaning. Food plus

caress plus contact plus 'good' equals love. And love equals

pleasure, love equals satisfaction."

"Pure Pavlov."

"But Pavlov purely for a good purpose. Pavlov for

friendliness and trust and compassion. Whereas you prefer to

use Pavlov for brainwashing, Pavlov for selling cigarettes

and vodka and patriotism. Pavlov for the benefit of dictators,

generals and tycoons."

Refusing any longer to be left out in the cold, the yellow

mongrel had joined the group and was impartially licking

every piece of sentient matter within its reach—Shanta's arm,

Vijaya's hand, the parrot's feet, the baby's backside. Shanta

drew the dog closer and rubbed the child against its furry

flank.

"And this is a good good dog," she said. "Dog Toby, good

good dog Toby."

Will laughed. "Oughtn't I to get into the act?"

"I was going to suggest it," Shanta answered, "only I was

afraid you'd think it was beneath your dignity."

"You can take my place," said Vijaya. "I must go and see

about our lunch."

Still carrying the parrot, he walked out through the door

that led into the kitchen. Will pulled up his chair and, leaning

for ward, began to stroke the child's tiny body.

"This is another man," Shanta whispered. "A good man,

baby, kgood, man."

"How I wish it were true!" he said with a rueful little

laugh. "Here and now it is true." And bending down again

200

over the child, "He's a good man," she repeated. "A good

good man."

He looked at her blissful, secretly smiling face, he felt the

smoothness and warmth of the child's tiny body against his

fingertips. Good, good, good . . . He too might have known

this goodness—but only if his life had been completely

different from what in fact, in senseless and disgusting fact,

it was. So never take yes for an answer, even when, as now,

yes is self-evident. He looked again with eyes deliberately

attuned to another wavelength of value, and saw the

caricature of a Memling altarpiece. "Madonna with Child,

Dog, Pavlov and Casual Acquaintance." And suddenly he

could almost understand, from the inside, why Mr. Bahu so

hated these people. Why he was so bent—in the name, as

usual and needless to say, of God—on their destruction.

"Good," Shanta was still murmuring to her baby, "good,

good, good."

Too good—that was their crime. It simply wasn't

permissible. And yet how precious it was! And how

passionately he wished that he might have had a part in it!

"Pure sentimentality!" he said to himself; and then aloud,

"Good, good, good," he echoed ironically. "But what

happens when the child grows a little bigger and discovers

that a lot of things and people are thoroughly bad, bad, bad?"

"Friendliness evokes friendliness," she answered. "From

the friendly—yes. But not from the greedy, not from the

power lovers, not from the frustrated and embittered. For

them, friendliness is just weakness, just an invitation to

exploit, to bully, to take vengeance with impunity."

"But one has to run the risk, one has to make a beginning.

And luckily no one's immortal. The people who've been

conditioned to swindling and bullying and bitterness will all

be dead in a few years. Dead, and replaced by men and

women brought up in the new way. It happened with us; it

can happen with you."

"It can happen," he agreed. "But in the context of

H-bombs and nationalism and fifty million more people

every single year, it almost certainly won't."

"You can't tell till you try."

"And we shan't try as long as the world is in its present

state. And, of course, it will remain in its present state until

we do try. Try and, what's more, succeed at least as well as

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you've succeeded. Which brings me back to my original

question. What happens when good, good, good discovers

that, even in Pala, there's a lot of bad, bad, bad? Don't the

children get some pretty unpleasant shocks?"

"We try to inoculate them against those shocks."

"How? By making things unpleasant for them while

they're still young?"

"Not unpleasant. Let's say real. We teach them love and

confidence, but we expose them to reality, reality in all its

aspects. And then give them responsibilities. They're made to

understand that Pala isn't Eden or the Land of Cockaigne. It's

a nice place all right. But it will remain nice only if

everybody works and behaves decently. And meanwhile the

facts of life are the facts of life. Even here."

"What about the facts of life in those bloodcurdling

snakes I met halfway up the precipice? You can say 'good,

good, good' as much as you like; but snakes will still bite."

"You mean, they still can bite. But will they in fact make

use of their ability?"

"Why shouldn't they?"

"Look over there," said Shanta. He turned his head and

saw that what she was pointing at was a niche in the wall

behind him. Within the niche was a stone Buddha, about half

life-size, seated upon a curiously grooved cylindrical

pedestal and surmounted by a kind of lead-shaped canopy

that tapered down behind him into a broad pillar. "It's a small

replica," she went on, "of the Buddha in the Station

Compound—you know, the huge figure by the lotus pool."

"Which is a magnificent piece of sculpture," he said.

"And the smile really gives one an inkling of what the

Beatific Vision must be like. But what has it got to do with

snakes?"

"Look again."

He looked. "I don't see anything specially significant."

"Look harder."

The seconds passed. Then, with a shock of surprise, he

noticed something strange and even disquieting. What he had

taken for an oddly ornamented cylindrical pedestal had

suddenly revealed itself as a huge coiled snake. And that

downward tapering canopy under which the Buddha was

sitting was the expanded hood, with the flattened head at the

center of its leading edge, of a giant cobra.

202

"My God!" he said. "I hadn't noticed. How unobservant

can one be?"

"Is this the first time you've seen the Buddha in this

context?"

"The first time. Is there some legend?"

She nodded. "One of my favorites. You know about the

Bodhi Tree, of course?"

"Yes, I know about the Bodhi Tree."

"Well, that wasn't the only tree that Gautama sat under at

the time of his Enlightenment. After the Bodhi Tree, he sat

for seven days under a banyan, called the Tree of the

Goatherd. And after that he moved on to the Tree of

Muchalinda."

"Who was Muchalinda?"

"Muchalinda was the King of the Snakes and, being a

god, he knew what was happening. So when the Buddha sat

down under his tree, the Snake King crawled out of his hole,

yards and yards of him, to pay Nature's homage to Wisdom.

Then a great storm blew up from the west. The divine cobra

wrapped its coils round the more than divine man's body,

spread its hood over his head and, for the seven days his

contemplation lasted, sheltered the Tathagata from the wind

and rain. So there he sits to this day, with cobra beneath him,

cobra above him, conscious simultaneously of cobra and the

Clear Light and their ultimate identity."

"How very different," said Will, "from our view of

snakes!"

"And your view of snakes is supposed to be God's view—

remember Genesis."

" 'I will put enmity between thee and the woman,' " he

quoted, " 'and between her seed and thy seed.' "

"But Wisdom never puts enmity anywhere. All those

senseless pointless cockfights between Man and Nature,

between Nature and God, between the Flesh and the Spirit!

Wisdom doesn't make those insane separations."

"Nor does Science."

"Wisdom takes Science in its stride and goes a stage

further."

"And what about totemism?" Will went on. "What about

the fertility cults? They didn't make any separations. Were

they Wisdom?"

"Of course they were—primitive Wisdom, Wisdom on the

203

neolithic level. But after a time people begin to get

self-conscious and the old Dark Gods come to seem

disreputable. So the scene changes. Enter the Gods of Light,

enter the Prophets, enter Pythagoras and Zoroaster, enter the

Jains and the early Buddhists. Between them they usher in

the Age of the Cosmic Cockfight—Ormuzd versus Ahriman,

Jehovah versus Satan and the Baalim, Nirvana as opposed to

Samsara, appearance over against Plato's Ideal Reality. And

except in the minds of a few Tankriks and Mahayanists and

Taoists and heretical Christians, the cockfight went on for

the best part of two thousand years."

"After which?" he questioned.

"After which you get the beginnings of modern biology."

Will laughed. " 'God said, Let Darwin be,' and there was

Nietzsche, Imperialism and Adolf Hitler."

"All that," she agreed. "But also the possibility of a new

kind of Wisdom for everybody. Darwin took the old

totemism and raised it to the level of biology. The fertility

cults reappeared as genetics and Havelock Ellis. And now it's

up to us to take another half turn up the spiral. Darwinism

was the old neolithic Wisdom turned into scientific concepts.

The new conscious Wisdom—the kind of Wisdom that was

prophetically glimpsed in Zen and Taoism and Tantra—is

biological theory realized in living practice, is Darwinism

raised to the level of compassion and spiritual insight. So

you see," she concluded, "there isn't any earthly rea-

son—much less any heavenly reason—why the Buddha, or

anyone else for that matter, shouldn't contemplate the Clear

Light as manifested in a snake."

"Even though the snake might kill him?" "Even though it

might kill him."

"And even though it's the oldest and most universal of

phallic symbols?"

Shanta laughed. " 'Meditate under the Tree of

Muchalinda'— that's the advice we give to every pair of

lovers. And in the intervals between those loving meditations

remember what you were taught as children; snakes are your

brothers; snakes have a right to your compassion and your

respect; snakes, in a word, are good, good, good."

"Snakes are also poisonous, poisonous, poisonous." "But

if you remember that they're just as good as they're poi-

sonous, and act accordingly, they won't use their poison."

204

"Who says so?"

"It's an observable fact. People who aren't frightened of

snakes, people who don't approach them with the fixed belief

that the only good snake is a dead snake, hardly ever get

bitten. Next week I'm borrowing our neighbor's pet python.

For a few days I'll be giving Rama his lunch and dinner in

the coils of the Old Serpent."

From outside the house came the sound of high-pitched

laughter, then a confusion of children's voices interrupting

one another in English and Palanese. A moment later,

looking very tall and maternal by comparison with her

charges, Mary Sarojini walked into the room flanked by a

pair of identical four-year-olds and followed by the sturdy

cherub who had been with her when Will first opened his

eyes on Pala.

"We picked up Tara and Arjuna at the kindergarten,"

Mary Sarojini explained as the twins hurled themselves upon

their mother.

With the baby in one arm and the other round the two

little boys, Shanta smiled her thanks. "That was very kind of

you."

It was Tom Krishna who said, "You're welcome." He

stepped forward and, after a moment of hesitation, "I was

wondering ..." he began, then broke off and looked

appealingly at his sister. Mary Sarojini shook her head.

"What were you wondering?" Shanta enquired.

"Well, as a matter of fact, we were both wondering ... I

mean, could we come and have dinner with you?"

"Oh, I see." Shanta looked from Tom Krishna's face to

Mary Sarojini's and back again. "Well, you'd better go and

ask Vijaya if there's enough to eat. He's doing the cooking

today."

"Okay," said Tom Krishna without enthusiasm. With slow

reluctant steps he crossed the room and went out through the

door into the kitchen. Shanta turned to Mary Sarojini. "What

happened?"

"Well, Mother's told him at least fifty times that she

doesn't like his bringing lizards into the house. But this

morning he did it again. So se got very cross with him."

"And you decided you'd better come and have dinner

here?"

"If it isn't convenhient, Shanta, we could try the Raos or

205

the Rajajinnadasas."

"I'm quite sure it will be convenient," Shanta assured her.

"I only thought it would be good for Tom Krishna to have a

little talk with Vijaya."

"You're perfectly right," said Mary Sarojini gravely.

Then, very businesslike, "Tara, Arjuna," she called. "Come

with me to the bathroom and we'll get washed up. They're

pretty grubby," she said to Shanta as she led them away.

Will waited until they were out of earshot, then turned to

Shanta. "I take it that I've just been seeing a Mutual

Adoption Club in action."

"Fortunately," said Shanta, "in very mild action. Tom

Krishna and Mary Sarojini get on remarkably well with their

mother. There's no personal problem there—only the

problem of destiny, the enormous and terrible problem of

Dugald's being dead."

"Will Susila marry again?" he asked.

"I hope so. For everybody's sake. Meanwhile, it's good for

the children to spend a certain amount of time with one or

other of their deputy fathers. Specially good for Tom

Krishna. Tom Krishna's just reaching the age when little

boys discover their maleness. He still cries like a baby; but

the next moment he's bragging and showing off and bringing

lizards into the house— just to prove he's two hundred

percent a he-man. That's why I sent him to Vijaya. Vijaya's

everything Tom Krishna likes to imagine he is. Three yards

high, two yards wide, terrifically strong, immensely

competent. When he tells Tom Krishna how he ought to

behave, Tom Krishna listens—listens as he would never

listen to me or his mother saying the same things. And

Vijaya does say the same things as we would say. Because,

on top of being two hundred percent male, he's almost fifty

percent sensitive-feminine. So, you see, Tom Krishna is

really getting the works. And now," she concluded, looking

down at the sleeping child in her arms, "I must put this

young man to bed and get ready for lunch."

206

13

Washed and brushed, the twins were already in their high

chairs. Mary Sarojini hung over them like a proud but

anxious mother. At the stove Vijaya was ladling rice and

vegetables out of an earthenware pot. Cautiously and with an

expression on his face of focused concentration, Tom

Krishna carried each bowl, as it was filled, to the table.

"There!" said Vijaya when the last brimming bowl had

been sent on its way. He wiped his hands, walked over to the

table and took his seat. "Better tell our guest about grace," he

said to Shanta.

Turning to Will, "In Pala," she explained, "we don't say

grace before meals. We say it with meals. Or rather we don't

say grace; we chew it."

"Chew it?"

"Grace is the first mouthful of each course—chewed and

chewed until there's nothing left of it. And all the time you're

chewing you pay attention to the flavor of the food, to its

consistency and temperature, to the pressures on your teeth

and the feel of the muscles in your jaws."

"And meanwhile, I suppose, you give thanks to the

Enlightened One, or Shiva, or whoever it may be?"

Shanta shook her head emphatically. "That would distract

your attention, and attention is the whole point. Attention to

the experience of something given, something you haven't

invented, not the memory of a form of words addressed to

somebody in your imagination." She looked round the table.

"Shall we begin?"

"Hurrah!" the twins shouted in unison, and picked up their

spoons.

For a long minute there was a silence, broken only by the

twins who had not yet learned to eat without smacking their

lips.

207

"May we swallow now?" asked one of the little boys at

last.

Shanta nodded. Everyone swallowed. There was a

clinking of spoons and a burst of talk from full mouths.

"Well," Shanta enquired, "what did your grace taste like?"

"It tasted," said Will, "like a long succession of different

things. Or rather a succession of variations on the

fundamental theme of rice and turmeric and red peppers and

zucchini and something leafy that I don't recognize. It's

interesting how it doesn't remain the same. I'd never really

noticed that before."

"And while you were paying attention to these things, you

were momentarily delivered from daydreams, from

memories, from anticipations, from silly notions—from all

the symptoms of you.'"

"Isn't tasting me?"

Shanta looked down the length of the table to her

husband. "What would you say, Vijaya?"

"I'd say it was halfway between me and not-me. Tasting is

not-me doing something for the whole organism. And at the

same time tasting is me being conscious of what's happening.

And that's the point of our chewing-grace—to make the me

more conscious of what the not-me is up to."

"Very nice," was Will's comment. "But what's the point of

the point?"

It was Shanta who answered. "The point of the point," she

said, "is that when you've learned to pay closer attention to

more of the not-you in the environment (that's the food) and

more of the not-you in your own organism (that's your taste

sensations), you may suddenly find yourself paying attention

to the not-you on the further side of consciousness, or

perhaps it would be better," Shanta went on, "to put it the

other way round. The not-you on the further side of

consciousness will find it easier to make itself known to a

you that has learned to be more aware of its not-you on the

side of physiology." She was interrupted by a crash, followed

by a howl from one of the twins. "After which," she

continued as she wiped up the mess on the floor, "one has to

consider the problem of me and not-me in relation to people

less than forty-two inches high. A prize of sixty-four

thousand crores of rupees will be given to anyone who

comes up with a foolproof solution." She wiped the child's

208

eyes, had him blow his nose, then gave him a kiss and went

to the stove for another bowl of rice.

"What are your chores for this afternoon?" Vijaya asked

when lunch was over.

"We're on scarecrow duty," Tom Krishna answered impor

tantly.

"In the field just below the schoolhouse," Mary Sarojini

added.

"Then I'll take you there in the car," said Vijaya. Turning

to Will Farnaby, "Would you like to come along?" he asked.

Will nodded. "And if it's permissible," he said, "I'd like to

see the school, while I'm about it—sit in, maybe, at some of

the classes."

Shanta waved good-bye to them from the veranda and a

few minutes later they came in sight of the parked jeep.

"The school's on the other side of the village," explained

Vijaya as he started the motor. "We have to take the bypass.

It goes down and then up again."

Down through terraced fields of rice and maize and sweet

potatoes, then on the level, along a contour line, with a

muddy little fishpond on the left and an orchard of breadfruit

trees on the right, and finally up again through more fields,

some green, some golden—and there was the schoolhouse,

white and spacious under its towering shade trees.

"And down there," said Mary Sarojini, "are our

scarecrows."

Will looked in the direction she was pointing. In the

nearest of the terraced fields below them the yellow rice was

almost ready to harvest. Two small boys in pink loincloths

and a little girl in a blue skirt were taking turns at pulling the

strings that set in motion two life-sized marionettes attached

to poles at either end of the narrow field. The puppets were

of wood, beautifully carved and clothed, not in rags, but in

the most splendid draperies. Will looked at them in

astonishment.

"Solomon in all his glory," he exclaimed, "was not

arrayed like one of these."

But then Solomon, he went on to reflect, was only a king;

these gorgeous scarecrows were beings of a higher order.

One was a Future Buddha, the other a delightfully gay, East

Indian version of God the Father as one sees him in the

Sistine Chapel, swooping down over the newly created

209

Adam. With each tug of the string the Future Buddha

wagged his head, uncrossed his legs from the lotus posture,

danced a brief fandango in the air, then crossed them again

and sat motionless for a moment until another jerk of the

string once more disturbed his meditations. God the Father,

meanwhile, waved his outstretched arm, wagged his

forefinger in portentous warning, opened and shut his

horsehair-fringed mouth and rolled a pair of eyes which,

being made of glass, flashed comminatory fire at any bird

that dared to approach the rice. And all the time a brisk wind

was fluttering his draperies, which were bright yellow, with a

bold design—in brown, white and black—of tigers and

monkeys, while the Future Buddha's magnificent robes of

red and orange rayon bellied and flapped around him with an

Aeolian jingling of dozens of little silver bells.

"Are all your scarecrows like this?" Will asked.

"It was the Old Raja's idea," Vijaya answered. "He

wanted to make the children understand that all gods are

homemade, and that it's we who pull their strings and so give

them the power to pull ours."

"Make them dance," said Tom Krishna, "make them wig-

gle." He laughed delightedly.

Vijaya stretched out an enormous hand and patted the

child's dark curly head. "That's the spirit!" And turning back

to Will, "Quote 'gods' unquote" he said in what was evidently

an imita tion of the Old Raja's manner, " —their one great

merit apart from scaring birds and quote 'sinners' unquote,

and occasionally, perhaps, consoling the miserable, consists

in this: being raised aloft on poles, they have to be looked up

at; and when anyone-looks up, even at a god, he can hardly

fail to see the sky beyond. And what's the sky? Air and

scattered light; but also a symbol of that boundless and

(excuse the metaphor) pregnant emptiness out of which

everything, the living and the inanimate, the puppet makers

and their divine marionettes, emerge into the universe we

know—or rather that we think we know."

Mary Sarojini, who had been listening intently, nodded

her head. "Father used to say," she volunteered, "that looking

up at birds in the sky was even better. Birds aren't words, he

used to say. Birds are real. Just as real as the sky." Vijaya

brought the car to a standstill. "Have a good time," he said as

the children jumped out. "Make them dance and wiggle."

210

Shouting, Tom Krishna and Mary Sarojini ran down to

join the little group in the field below the road.

"And now for the more solemn aspects of education."

Vijaya turned the jeep into the driveway that led up to the

schoolhouse.

"I'll leave the car here and walk back to the station. When

you've had enough, get someone to drive you home." He

turned off the ignition and handed Will the key.

In the school office Mrs. Narayan, the Principal, was

talking across her desk to a white-haired man with a long,

rather doleful face like the face of a lined and wrinkled

bloodhound.

"Mr. Chandra Menon," Vijaya explained when the

introductions had been made, "is our Under-Secretary of

Education."

"Who is paying us," said the Principal, "one of his

periodical visits of inspection."

"And who thoroughly approves of what he sees," the

Under-Secretary added with a courteous bow in Mrs.

Narayan's direction.

Vijaya excused himself. "I have to get back to my work,"

he said and moved towards the door.

"Are you specially interested in education?" Mr. Menon

enquired.

"Specially ignorant would be more like it," Will

answered. "I was merely brought up, never educated. That's

why I'd like to have a look at the genuine article."

"Well,

you've

come

to

the

right

place,"

the

Under-Secretary assured him. "New Rothamsted is one of

our best schools."

"What's your criterion of a good school?" Will asked.

"Success."

"In what? Winning scholarships? Getting ready for jobs?

Obeying the local categorical imperatives?"

"All that, of course," said Mr. Menon. "But the

fundamental question remains. What are boys and girls for?"

Will shrugged his shoulders. "The answer depends on

where you happen to be domiciled. For example, what are

boys and girls for in America? Answer: for mass

consumption. And the corollaries of mass consumption are

mass communications, mass advertising, mass opiates in the

form of television, meprobamate, positive thinking and

211

cigarettes. And now that Europe has made the breakthrough

into mass production, what will its boys and girls be for? For

mass consumption and all the rest—just like the boys and

girls in America. Whereas in Russia there's a different

answer. Boys and girls are for strengthening the national

state. Hence all those engineers and science teachers, not to

mention fifty divisions ready for instant combat and

equipped with everything from tanks to H-bombs and

long-range rockets. And in China it's the same, but a good

deal more so. What are boys and girls for there? For cannon

fodder, industry fodder, agriculture fodder, road-building

fodder. So East is East and West is West— for the moment.

But the twain may meet in one or other of two ways. West

may get so frightened of East they it will give up thinking

that boys and girls are for mass consumption and decide

instead that they're for cannon fodder and strengthening the

state. Alternatively East may find itself under such pressure

from the appliance-hungry masses who long to go Western,

that it will have to change its mind and say that boys and

girls are really for mass consumption. But that's for the

future. As of now, the current answers to your question are

mutually exclusive."

"And both of the answers," said Mr. Menon, "are different

from ours. What are Palanese boys and girls for? Neither for

mass consumption, nor for strengthening the state. The state

has to exist, of course. And there has to be enough for

everybody. That goes without saying. It's only on those

conditions that boys and girls can discover what in fact they

are for-—only on those conditions that we can do anything

about it."

"And what in fact are they for?"

"For actualization, for being turned into full-blown human

beings."

Will nodded. "Notes on What's What," he commented.

"Become what you really are."

"The Old Raja," said Mr. Menon, "was mainly concerned

with what people really are on the level that's beyond

individual ity. And of course we're just as much interested in

that as he was

But our first business is elementary education, and

elementary education has to deal with individuals in all their

diversity of shape, size, temperament, gifts and deficiencies.

212

Individuals in their transcendent unity are the affair of higher

education. That begins in adolescence and is given

concurrently with advanced elementary education."

"Begins, I take it," said Will, "with the first experience of

the moksha-medicine."

"So you've heard about the moksha-medicine?"

"I've even seen it in action."

"Dr. Robert," the Principal explained, "took him yesterday

to see an initiation."

"By which," added Will, "I was profoundly impressed.

When I think of my religious training ..." He left the sentence

eloquently unfinished.

"Well, as I was saying," Mr. Menon continued,

"adolescents get both kinds of education concurrently.

They're helped to experience their transcendental unity with

all other sentient beings and at the same time they're

learning, in their psychology and physiology classes, that

each one of us has his own constitutional uniqueness,

everybody's different from everybody else."

"When I was at school," said Will, "the pedagogues did

their best to iron out those differences, or at least to plaster

them over with the same Late Victorian ideal—the ideal of

the scholarly but Anglican football-playing gentleman. But

now tell me what you do about the fact that everybody's

different from everybody else."

"We begin," said Mr. Menon, "by assessing the

differences.

Precisely

who

or

what,

anatomically,

biochemically and psychologically, is this child? In the

organic hierarchy, which takes precedence—his gut, his

muscles, or his nervous system? How near does he stand to

the three polar extremes? How harmonious or how

disharmonious is the mixture of his component elements,

physical and mental? How great is his inborn wish to

dominate, or to be sociable, or to retreat into his inner world?

And how does he do his thinking and perceiving and

remembering? Is he a visualizer or a nonvisualizer? Does his

mind work with images or with words, with both at once, or

with neither? How close to the surface is his storytelling

faculty? Does he see the world as Wordsworth and Traherne

saw it when they were children? And, if so, what can be done

to prevent the glory and the freshness from fading into the

light of common day? Or, in more general terms, how can

213

we educate children on the conceptual level without killing

their capacity for intense nonverbal experience? How can we

reconcile analysis with vision? And there are dozens of other

questions that must be asked and answered. For example,

does this child absorb all the vitamins in his food or is he

subject to some chronic deficiency that, if it isn't recognized

and treated, will lower his vitality, darken his mood, make

him see ugliness, feel boredom and think foolishness or

malice? And what about his blood sugar? What about his

breathing? What about his posture and the way he uses his

organism when he's working, playing, studying? And there

are all the questions that have to do with special gifts. Does

he show signs of having a talent for music, for mathematics,

for handling words, for observing accurately and for thinking

logically and imaginatively about what he has observed?

And finally how suggestible is he going to be when he grows

up? All children are good hypnotic subjects—so good that

four out of five of them can be talked into somnambulism. In

adults the proportion is reversed. Four out of five of them

can never be talked into somnambulism. Out of any hundred

children, which are the twenty who will grow up to be

suggestible to the pitch of somnambulism?"

"Can you spot them in advance?" Will asked. "And if so,

what's the point of spotting them?"

"We can spot them," Mr. Menon answered. "And it's very

important that they should be spotted. Particularly important

in your part of the world. Politically speaking, the twenty

percent that can be hypnotized easily and to the limit is the

most dangerous element in your societies." "Dangerous?"

"Because these people are the propagandist's predestined

vic-tims. In an old-fashioned, prescientific democracy, any

spellbinder with a good organization behind him can turn

that twenty percent of potential somnambulists into an army

of regimented fanatics dedicated to the greater glory and

power of their hypnotist. And under a dictatorship these

same potential somnambulists can be talked into implicit

faith and mobilized as the hard core of the omnipotent party.

So you see it's very important for any society that values

liberty to be able to spot the future somnambulists when

they're young. Once they've been spotted, they can be

hypnotized and systematically trained not to be hypnotizable

by the enemies of liberty. And at the same time, of course,

214

you'd be well advised to reorganize your social arrangements

so as to make it difficult or impossible for the enemies of

liberty to arise or have any influence." "Which is the state of

things, I gather, in Pala?" "Precisely," said Mr. Menon. "And

that's why our potential somnambulists don't constitute a

danger."

"Then why do you go to the trouble of spotting them in

advance?"

"Because, if it's properly used, their gift is so valuable."

"For Destiny Control?" Will questioned, remembering those

therapeutic swans and all the things that Susila had said

about pressing one's own buttons.

The Under-Secretary shook his head. "Destiny Control

doesn't call for anything more than a light trance. Practically

everybody's capable of that. The potential somnambulists are

the twenty percent who can go into very deep trance. And it's

in very deep trance—and only in very deep trance—that a

person can be taught how to distort time."

"Can you distort time?" Will enquired.

Mr. Menon shook his head. "Unfortunately I could never

go deep enough. Everything I know had to be learned the

long, slow way. Mrs. Narayan was more fortunate. Being

one of the privileged twenty percent, she could take all kinds

of educational short cuts that were completely closed to the

rest of us."

"What sort of short cuts?" Will asked, turning to the

Principal.

"Short cuts to memorizing," she answered, "short cuts to

calculating and thinking and problem solving. One starts by

learning how to experience twenty seconds as ten minutes, a

minute as half an hour. In deep trance it's really very easy.

You listen to the teacher's suggestions and you sit there

quietly for a long, long time. Two full hours—you'd be ready

to take your oath on it. When you've been brought back, you

look at your watch. Your experience of two hours was

telescoped into exactly four minutes of clock time."

"How?"

"Nobody knows how," said Mr. Menon. "But all those

anecdotes about drowning men seeing the whole of their life

unfolding before them in a few seconds are substantially

true. The mind and the nervous system—or rather some

minds and some nervous systems—happen to be capable of

215

this curious feat; that's all that anybody knows. We

discovered the fact about sixty years ago, and since then

we've been exploiting it. Exploiting it, among other things,

for educational purposes."

"For example," Mrs. Narayan resumed, "here's a

mathematical problem. In your normal state it might take

you the best part of half an hour to solve. But now you

distort time to the point where one minute is subjectively the

equivalent of thirty minutes. Then you set to work on your

problem. Thirty subjec tive minutes later it's solved. But

thirty subjective minutes are one clock minute. Without the

least sense of rush or strain you've been working as fast as

one of those extraordinary calculating boys, who turn up

from time to time. Future geniuses like Ampere and Gauss,

or future idiots like Dase—but all of them, by some built-in

trick of time distortion, capable of getting through an hour's

hard work in a couple of minutes—some-rimes in a matter of

seconds. I'm only an average student; but I could go into

deep trance, which meant that I could be taught how to

telescope my time into a thirtieth of its normal span. Result: I

was able to cover far more intellectual ground than I could

possibly have covered if I'd had to do all my learning in the

ordinary way. You can imagine what happens when some-

body with a genius IQ is also capable of time distortion. The

results are fantastic!"

"Unfortunately," said Mr. Menon, "they're not very com-

mon. In the last two generations we've had precisely two

time distorters of real genius, and only five or six runners-up.

But what Pala owes to those few is incalculable. So it's no

wonder that we keep a sharp lookout for potential

somnambulists!"

"Well, you certainly ask plenty of searching questions

about your little pupils," Will concluded after a brief silence.

"What do you do when you've found the answers?"

"We start educating accordingly," said Mr. Menon. "For

example, we ask questions about every child's physique and

temperament. When we have the answers, we sort out all the

shyest, tensest, most overresponsive and introverted children,

and assemble them in a single group. Then, little by little, the

group is enlarged. First a few children with tendencies

towards indiscriminate sociability are introduced. Then one

or two little muscle men and muscle women—children with

216

tendencies towards aggressiveness and love of power. It's the

best method, we've found, for getting little boys and girls at

the three polar extremes to understand and tolerate one

another. After a few months of carefully controlled mixing,

they're ready to admit that people with a different kind of

hereditary makeup have just as good a right to exist as they

have."

"And the principle," said Mrs. Narayan, "is explicitly

taught as well as progressively applied. In the lower forms

we do the teaching in terms of analogies with familiar

animals. Cats like to be by themselves. Sheep like being

together. Martens are fierce and can't be tamed. Guinea pigs

are gentle and friendly. Are you a cat person or a sheep

person, a guinea-pig person or a marten person? Talk about it

in animal parables, and even very small children can

understand the fact of human diversity and the need for

mutual forbearance, mutual forgiveness."

"And later on," said Mr. Menon, "when they come to read

the Gita, we tell them about the link between constitution

and religion. Sheep people and guinea-pig people love ritual

and public ceremonies and revivalistic emotion; their

temperamental preferences can be directed into the Way of

Devotion. Cat people like to be alone, and their private

broodings can become the Way of Self-Knowledge. Marten

people want to do things, and the problem is how to

transform their driving aggressiveness into the Way of

Disinterested Action."

"And the way to the Way of Disinterested Action is what

I was looking at yesterday," said Will. "The way that leads

through woodchopping and rock climbing—is that it?"

"Woodchopping and rock climbing," said Mr. Menon,

"are special cases. Let's generalize and say that the way to all

the Ways leads through the redirection of power."

"What's that?"

"The principle is very simple. You take the power

generated by fear or envy or too much noradrenalin, or else

by some built-in urge that happens, at the moment, to be out

of place—you take it and, instead of using it to do something

unpleasant to someone else, instead of repressing it and so

doing something unpleasant to yourself, you consciously

direct it along a channel where it can do something useful,

or, if not useful, at least harmless."

217

"Here's a simple case," said the Principal. "An angry or

frustrated child has worked up enough power for a burst of

crying, or bad language, or a fight. If the power generated is

sufficient for any of those things, it's sufficient for running,

or dancing, more than sufficient for five deep breaths. I'll

show you some dancing later on. For the moment, let's

confine ourselves to breathing. Any irritated person who

takes five deep breaths releases a lot of tension and so makes

it easier for himself to behave rationally. So we teach our

children all kinds of breathing games, to be played whenever

they're angry or upset. Some of the games are competitive.

Which of two antagonists can inhale most deeply and say

'om' on the outgoing breath for the longest time? It's a duel

that ends, almost without fail, in reconciliation. But of course

there are many occasions when competitive breathing is out

of place. So here's a little game that an exasperated child can

play on his own, a game that's based on the local folklore.

Every Palanese child has been brought up on Buddhist

legends, and in most of these pious fairy stories somebody

has a vision of a celestial being. A Bodhisattva, say, in an

explosion of lights, jewels and rainbows. And along with the

glorious vision there's always an equally glorious olfaction;

the fireworks are accompanied by an unutterably delicious

perfume. Well, we take these traditional phantasies—which

are all based, needless to say, on actual visionary experiences

of the kind induced by fasting, sensory deprivation or

mushrooms—and we set them to work. Violent feelings, we

tell the children, are like earthquakes. They shake us so hard

that cracks appear in the wall that separates our private

selves from the shared, universal Buddha Nature. You get

cross, something inside of you cracks and, through the crack,

out comes a whiff of the heavenly smell of enlightenment.

Like champak, like ylang-ylang, like gardenias— only

infinitely more wonderful. So don't miss this heavenliness

that you've accidentally released. It's there every time you

get cross. Inhale it, breathe it in, fill your lungs with it. Again

and again."

"And they actually do it?"

"After a few weeks of teaching, most of them do it as a

matter of course. And, what's more, a lot of them really smell

that perfume. The old repressive 'Thou shalt not' has been

translated into a new expressive and rewarding 'Thou shalt.'

218

Potentially harmful power has been redirected into channels

where it's not merely harmless, but may actually do some

good. And meanwhile, of course, we've been giving the

children systematic and carefully graduated training in

perception and the proper use of language. They're taught to

pay attention to what they see and hear, and at the same time

they're asked to notice how their feel ings and desires affect

what they experience of the outer world, and how their

language habits affect not only their feelings and desires but

even their sensations. What my ears and my eyes record is

one thing; what the words I use and the mood I'm in and the

purposes I'm pursuing allow me to perceive, make sense of

and act upon is something quite different. So you see it's all

brought together into a single educational process. What we

give the children is simultaneously a training in perceiving

and imagining, a training in applied physiology and

psychology, a training in practical ethics and practical

religion, a training in the proper use of language, and a

training in self-knowledge. In a word, a training of the whole

mind-body in all its aspects."

"What's the relevance," Will asked, "of all this elaborate

training of the mind-body to formal education? Does it help

a child to do sums, or write grammatically, or understand

elementary physics?"

"It helps a lot," said Mr. Menon. "A trained mind-body

learns more quickly and more thoroughly than an untrained

one. It's also more capable of relating facts to ideas, and both

of them to its own ongoing life." Suddenly and

surprisingly—for that long melancholy face gave one the

impression of being incompatible with any expression of

mirth more emphatic than a rather weary smile—he broke

into a loud long peal of laughter.

"What's the joke?"

"I was thinking of two people I met last time I was in

England. At Cambridge. One of them was an atomic

physicist, the other was a philosopher. Both extremely

eminent. But one had a inental age, outside the laboratory, of

about eleven and the other was a compulsive eater with a

weight problem that he refused to lace. Two extreme

examples of what happens when you take a clever boy, give

him fifteen years of the most intensive formal education and

totally neglect to do anything for the mind-body which has to

219

do the learning and the living."

"And your system, I take it, doesn't produce that kind of

academic monster?"

The Under-Secretary shook his head. "Until I went to

Europe, I'd never seen anything of the kind. They're

grotesquely funny," he added. "But, goodness, how pathetic!

And, poor things, how curiously repulsive!"

"Being pathetically and curiously repulsive—that's the

price we pay for specialization."

"For specialization," Mr. Menon agreed, "but not in the

sense you people ordinarily use the word. Specialization in

that sense is necessary and inevitable. No specialization, no

civilization. And if one educates the whole mind-body along

with the symbol-using intellect, that kind of necessary

specialization won't do much harm. But you people don't

educate the mind-body. Your cure for too much scientific

specialization is a few more courses in the humanities.

Excellent! Every education ought to include courses in the

humanities. But don't let's be fooled by the name. By

themselves, the humanities don't humanize. They're simply

another form of specialization on the symbolic level.

Reading Plato or listening to a lecture on T. S. Eliot doesn't

educate the whole human being; like courses in physics or

chemistry, it merely educates the symbol manipulator and

leaves the rest of the living mind-body in its pristine state of

ignorance and ineptitude. Hence all those pathetic and

repulsive creatures that so astonished me on my first trip

abroad."

"What about formal education?" Will now asked. "What

about indispensable information and the necessary

intellectual skills? Do you teach the way we do?"

"We teach the way you're probably going to teach in

another ten or fifteen years. Take mathematics, for example.

Historically mathematics began with the elaboration of

useful tricks, soared up into metaphysics and finally

explained itself in terms of struc ture and logical

transformations. In our schools we reverse the historical

process. We begin with structure and logic; then, skip ping

the metaphysics, we go on from general principles to par-

ticular applications."

"And the children understand?"

"Far better than they understand when one starts with

220

utilitarian tricks. From about five onwards practically any

intelligent child can learn practically anything, provided

always that you present it to him in the right way. Logic and

structure in the form of games and puzzles. The children play

and, incredibly quickly, they catch the point. After which

you can go on to prac tical applications. Taught in this way,

most children can learn at least three times as much, four

times as thoroughly, in half the time. Or consider another

field where one can use games to implant an understanding

of basic principles. All scientific think ing is in terms of

probability. The old eternal verities are merely a high degree

of likeliness; the immutable laws of nature are just statistical

averages. How does one get these profoundly unobvi-ous

notions into children's heads? By playing roulette with them,

by spinning coins and drawing lots. By teaching them all

kinds of games with cards and boards and dice."

"Evolutionary Snakes and Ladders—that's the most

popular game with the little ones," said Mrs. Narayan.

"Another great favorite is Mendelian Happy Families."

"And a little later," Mr. Menon added, "we introduce them

to a rather complicated game played by four people with a

pack of sixty specially designed cards divided into three

suits. Psycho- logical bridge, we call it. Chance deals you

your hand, but the way you play it is a matter of skill, bluff

and co-operation with your partner."

"Psychology, Mendelism, Evolution—your education

seems to be heavily biological," said Will.

"It is," Mr. Menon agreed. "Our primary emphasis isn't on

physics and chemistry; it's on the sciences of life." "Is that a

matter of principle?"

"Not entirely. It's also a matter of convenience and

economic necessity. We don't have the money for large-scale

research in physics and chemistry, and we don't really have

any practical need for that kind of research—no heavy

industries to be made more competitive, no armaments to be

made more diabolical, not the faintest desire to land on the

backside of the moon. Only the modest ambition to live as

fully human beings in harmony with the rest of life on this

island at this latitude on this planet. We can take the results

of your researches in physics and chemistry and apply them,

if we want to or can afford it, to our own purposes.

Meanwhile we'll concentrate on the research which promises

221

to do us the greatest good—in the sciences of life and mind.

If the politicians in the newly independent countries had any

sense," he added, "they'd do the same. But they want to

throw their weight around; they want to have armies, they

want to catch up with the motorized television addicts of

America and Europe. You people have no choice," he went

on. "You're irretrievably committed to applied physics and

chemistry, with all their dismal consequences, military,

political and social. But the underdeveloped countries aren't

committed. They don't have to follow your example. They're

still free to take the road we've taken—the road of applied

biology, the road of fertility control and the limited

production and selective industrialization which fertility

control makes possible, the road that leads towards happiness

from the inside out, through health, through awareness,

through a change in one's attitude towards the world; not

towards the mirage of happiness from the outside in, through

toys and pills and nonstop distractions. They could still

choose our way; but they don't want to, they want to be

exactly like you, God help them. And as they can't possibly

do what you've done—at any rate within the time they've set

themselves— they're foredoomed to frustration and

disappointment, predestined to the misery of social

breakdown and anarchy, and then to the misery of

enslavement by tyrants. It's a completely foreseeable tragedy,

and they're walking into it with their eyes open."

"And we can't do anything about it," the Principal added.

"Can't do anything," said Mr. Menon, "except go on doing

what we're doing now and hoping against hope that the

example of a nation that has found a way of being happily

human may be imitated. There's very little chance of it; but it

just might happen."

"Unless Greater Rendang happens first."

"Unless Greater Rendang happens first," Mr. Menon

gravely agreed. "Meanwhile we have to get on with our job,

which is education. Is there anything more that you'd like to

hear about, Mr. Farnaby?"

"Lots more," said Will. "For example, how early do you

start your science teaching?"

"We start it at the same time we start multiplication and

division. First lessons in ecology."

"Ecology? Isn't that a bit complicated?"

222

"That's precisely the reason why we begin with it. Never

give children a chance of imagining that anything exists in

isolation. Make it plain from the very first that all living is

relationship. Show them relationships in the woods, in the

fields, in the ponds and streams, in the village and the

country around it. Rub it in."

"And let me add," said the Principal, "that we always

teach the science of relationship in conjunction with the

ethics of relationship. Balance, give and take, no

excesses—it's the rule in nature and, translated out of fact

into morality, it ought to be the rule among people. As I said

before, children find it very easy to understand an idea when

it's presented to them in a parable about animals. We give

them an up-to-date version of Aesop's Fables. Not the old

anthropomorphic fictions, but true ecological fables with

built-in, cosmic morals. And another wonderful parable for

children is the story of erosion. We don't have any good

examples of erosion here; so we show them photographs of

what has happened in Rendang, in India and China, in

Greece and the Levant, in Africa and America—all the

places where greedy, stupid people have tried to take without

giving, to exploit without love or understanding. Treat

Nature well, and Nature will treat you well. Hurt or destroy

Nature, and Nature will soon destroy you. In a Dust Bowl,

'Do as you would be done by' is self-evident—much easier

for a child to recognize and understand than in an eroded

family or village. Psychological wounds don't show—and

anyhow children know so little about their elders. And,

having no standards of comparison, they tend to take even

the worst situation for granted, as though it were part of the

nature of things. Whereas the difference between ten acres of

meadow and ten acres of gullies and blowing sand is

obvious. Sand and gullies are parables. Confronted by them,

it's easy for the child to see the need for conservation and

then to go on from conservation to morality—easy for him to

go on from the Golden Rule in relation to plants and animals

and the earth that supports them to the Golden Rule in

relation to human beings. And here's another important

point. The morality to which a child goes on from the facts

of ecology and the parables of erosion is a universal ethic.

There are no Chosen People in nature, no Holy Lands, no

Unique Historical Revelations. Conservation morality gives

223

nobody an excuse for feeling superior, or claiming special

privileges. 'Do as you would be done by' applies to our

dealings with all kinds of life in every part of the world. We

shall be permitted to live on this planet only for as long as

we treat all nature with compassion and intelligence. Ele-

mentary ecology leads straight to elementary Buddhism."

"A few weeks ago," said Will after a moment of silence,

"I was looking at Thorwald's book about what happened in

eastern Germany between January and May of 1945. Have

either of you read it?"

They shook their heads.

"Then don't," Will advised. "I was in Dresden five months

after the February bombing. Fifty or sixty thousand

civilians— mostly refugees running away from the

Russians—burned alive in a single night. And all because

little Adolf had never learned ecology," he smiled his flayed

ferocious smile, "never been taught the first principles of

conservation." One made a joke of it because it was too

horrible to be talked about seriously.

Mr. Menon rose and picked up his briefcase.

"I must be going." He shook hands with Will. It had been

a pleasure, and he hoped that Mr. Farnaby would enjoy his

stay in Pala. Meanwhile, if he wanted to know more about

Palanese education, he had only to ask Mrs. Narayan.

Nobody was better qualified to act as a guide and instructor.

"Would you like to visit some of the classrooms?" Mrs.

Narayan asked, when the Under-Secretary had left.

Will rose and followed her out of the room and along a

corridor.

"Mathematics," said the Principal as she opened a door.

"And this is the Upper Fifth. Under Mrs. Anand."

Will bowed as he was introduced. The white-haired

teacher gave a welcoming smile and whispered, "We're deep,

as you see, in a problem."

He looked about him. At their desks a score of boys and

girls were frowning, in a concentrated, pencil-biting silence,

over their notebooks. The bent heads were sleek and dark.

Above the white or khaki shorts, above the long gaily

colored skirts, the golden bodies glistened in the heat. Boys'

bodies that showed the cage of the ribs beneath the skin,

girls' bodies, fuller, smoother, with the swell of small breasts,

firm, high-set, elegant as the inventions of a rococo sculptor

224

of nymphs. And everyone took them completely for granted.

What a comfort, Will reflected, to be in a place where the

Fall was an exploded doctrine!

Meanwhile Mrs. Anand was explaining—sotto voce so as

not to distract the problem solvers from their task—that she

always divided her classes into two groups. The group of the

visualizers, who thought in geometrical terms, like the

ancient Greeks, and the group of the nonvisualizers who

preferred algebra and imageless abstractions. Somewhat

reluctantly Will withdrew his attention from the beautiful

unfallen world of young bodies and resigned himself to

taking an intelligent interest in human diversity and the

teaching of mathematics.

They took their leave at last. Next door, in a pale-blue

classroom decorated with paintings of tropical animals,

Bodhisattvas and their bosomy Shaktis, the Lower Fifth were

having their biweekly lesson in Elementary Applied

Philosophy. Breasts here were smaller, arms thinner and less

muscular. These philosophers were only a year away from

childhood.

"Symbols are public," the young man at the blackboard

was saying as Will and Mrs. Narayan entered the room. He

drew a row of little circles, numbered them 1, 2, 3, 4, and n.

"These are people," he explained. Then from each of the

little circles he drew a line that connected it with a square at

the left of the board. S he wrote in the center of the square.

"S is the system of symbols that the people use when they

want to talk to one another. They all speak the same

language—English, Palanese, Eskimo, it depends where they

happen to live. Words are public; they belong to all the

speakers of a given language; they're listed in dictionaries.

And now let's look at the things that happen out there." He

pointed through the open window. Gaudy against a white

cloud, half a dozen parrots came sailing into view, passed

behind a tree and were gone. The teacher drew a second

square at the opposite side of the board, labeled it E for

"events" and connected it by lines to the circles. "What

happens out there is public—or at least fairly public," he

qualified. "And what happens when somebody speaks or

writes words—that's also public. But the things that go on

inside these little circles are private. Private." He laid a hand

on his chest. "Private." He rubbed his forehead. "Private." He

225

touched his eyelids and the tip of his nose with a brown

forefinger. "Now let's make a simple experiment. Say the

word 'pinch.' "

"Pinch," said the class in ragged unison. "Pinch . . ."

"P-I-N-C-H—pinch. That's public, that's something you

can look up in the dictionary. But now pinch yourselves.

Hard! Harder!"

To an accompaniment of giggles, of aies and ows, the

children did as they were told.

"Can anybody feel what the person sitting next to him is

feeling?"

There was a chorus of noes.

"So it looks," said the young man, "as though there

were-— let's see, how many are we?" He ran his eyes over

the desks before him. "It looks as though there were

twenty-three distinct and separate pains. Twenty-three in this

one room. Nearly three thousand million of them in the

whole world. Plus the pains of all the animals. And each of

these pains is strictly private. There's no way of passing the

experience from one center of pain to another center of pain.

No communication except indirectly through S." He pointed

to the square at the left of the board, then to the circles at the

center. "Private pains here in 1, 2, 3, 4, and n. News about

private pains out here at S, where you can say 'pinch,' which

is a public word listed in a dictionary. And notice this: there's

only one public word, 'pain,' for three thousand million

private experiences, each of which is probably about as

different from all the others as my nose is different from

your noses and your noses are different from one another. A

word only stands for the ways in which things or happenings

of the same general kind are like one another. That's why the

word is public. And, being public, it can't possibly stand for

the ways in which happenings of the same general kind are

unlike one another."

There was a silence. Then the teacher looked up and

asked a question.

"Does anyone here know about Mahakasyapa?"

Several hands were raised. He pointed his finger at a little

girl in a blue skirt and a necklace of shells sitting in the front

row.

"You tell us, Amiya."

Breathlessly and with a lisp, Amiya began.

226

"Mahakathyapa," she said, "wath the only one of the

di-thipleth that underthtood what the Buddha wath talking

about."

"And what was he talking about?"

"He wathn't talking. That'th why they didn't underthtand."

"But Mahakasyapa understood what he was talking about

even though he wasn't talking—is that it?"

The little girl nodded. That was it exactly. "They thought

he wath going to preatth a thermon," she said, "but he didn't.

He jutht picked a flower and held it up for everybody to look

at."

"And that was the sermon," shouted a small boy in a

yellow loincloth, who had been wriggling in his seat, hardly

able to contain his desire to impart what he knew. "But

nobody could underthand that kind of a thermon. Nobody

but Mahakathyapa."

"So what did Mahakasyapa say when the Buddha held up

that flower?"

"Nothing!" the yellow loincloth shouted triumphantly.

"He jutht thmiled," Amiya elaborated. "And that thowed

the Buddha that he underthtood what it wath all about. So he

thmiled back, and they jutht that there, thmiling and

thmiling."

"Very good," said the teacher. "And now," he turned to

the yellow loincloth, "let's hear what you think it was that

Mahakasyapa understood.

There was a silence. Then, crestfallen, the child shook his

head. "I don't know," he mumbled. "Does anyone else

know?"

There were several conjectures. Perhaps he'd understood

that people get bored with sermons—even the Buddha's

sermons. Perhaps he liked flowers as much as the

Compassionate One did. Perhaps it was a white flower, and

that made him think of the Clear Light. Or perhaps it was

blue, and that was Shiva's color.

"Good answers," said the teacher. "Especially the first

one. Sermons are pretty boring—especially for the preacher.

But here's a question. If any of your answers had been what

Maha-kasyapa understood when Buddha held up the flower,

why didn't he come out with it in so many words?" "Perhapth

he wathn't a good thpeaker." "He was an excellent speaker."

"Maybe he had a sore throat."

227

"If he'd had a sore throat, he wouldn't have smiled so

hap-pily."

"You tell us," called a shrill voice from the back of the

room. "Yes, you tell us," a dozen other voices chimed in.

The teacher shook his head. "If Mahakasyapa and the Com-

passionate One couldn't put it into words, how can I? Mean-

while let's take another look at these diagrams on the

blackboard. Public words, more or less public events, and

then people, completely private centers of pain and pleasure.

"'Completely private?" he questioned. "But perhaps that isn't

quite true. Perhaps, after all, there is some kind of

communication between the circles—not in the way I'm

communicating with you now, through words, but directly.

And maybe that was what the Buddha was talking about

when his wordless flower-sermon was over. 'I have the

treasure of the unmistakable teachings,' he said to his

disciples, 'the wonderful Mind of Nirvana, the true form

without form, beyond all words, the teaching to be given and

received outside of all doctrines. This I have now handed to

Mahakasyapa.' " Picking up the chalk again, he traced a

rough ellipse that enclosed within its boundaries all the other

diagrams on the board—the little circles representing human

beings, the square that stood for events, and the other square

that stood for words and symbols. "All separate," he said,

"and yet all one. People, events, words—they're all

manifestations of Mind, of Suchness, of the Void. What

Buddha was implying and what Mahakasyapa understood

was that one can't speak these teachings, one can only be

them. Which is something you'll all discover when the

moment comes for your initiation."

"Time to move on," the Principal whispered. And when

the door had closed behind them and they were standing

again in the corridor, "We use this same kind of approach,"

she said to Will, "in our science teaching, beginning with

botany." "Why with botany?"

"Because it can be related so easily to what was being

talked about just now—the Mahakasyapa story." "Is that

your starting point?"

"No, we start prosaically with the textbook. The children

are given all the obvious, elementary facts, tidily arranged in

the standard pigeonholes. Undiluted botany—that's the first

stage. Six or seven weeks of it. After which they get a whole

228

morning of what we call bridge building. Two and a half

hours during which we try to make them relate everything

they've learned in the previous lessons to art, language,

religion, self-knowledge."

"Botany and self-knowledge—how do you build that

bridge?"

"It's really quite simple," Mrs. Narayan assured him.

"Each of the children is given a common flower—a hibiscus,

for example, or better still (because the hibiscus has no

scent) a gardenia. Scientifically speaking, what is a gardenia?

What does it consist of? Petals, stamens, pistil, ovary, and all

the rest of it. The children are asked to write a full analytical

description of the flower, illustrated by an accurate drawing.

When that's done there's a short rest period, at the close of

which the Mahakasyapa story is read to them and they're

asked to think about it. Was Buddha giving a lesson in

botany? Or was he teaching his disciples something else?

And, if so, what?" "What indeed?"

"And of course, as the story makes clear, there's no

answer that can be put into words. So we tell the boys and

girls to stop | thinking and just look. 'But don't look

analytically,' we tell them, 'don't look as scientists, even as

gardeners. Liberate yourselves from everything you know

and look with complete innocence at this infinitely

improbable thing before you. Look at it as though you'd

never seen anything of the kind before, as though it had no

name and belonged to no recognizable class. Look at it

alertly but passively, receptively, without labeling or judging

or comparing. And as you look at it, inhale its mystery,

breathe in the spirit of sense, the smell of the wisdom of the

Other Shore.' "

"All this," Will commented, "sounds very like what Dr.

Robert was saying at the initiation ceremony."

"Of course it does," said Mrs. Narayan. "Learning to take

the Mahakasyapa's-eye view of things is the best preparation

for the moksha-medicine experience. Every child who comes

to initiation comes to it after a long education in the art of

being receptive. First the gardenia as a botanical specimen.

Then the same gardenia in its uniqueness, the gardenia as the

artist sees it, the even more miraculous gardenia seen by the

Buddha and Mahakasyapa. And it goes without saying," she

added, "that we don't confine ourselves to flowers. Every

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course the children take is punctuated by periodical

bridge-building sessions. Everything from dissected frogs to

the spiral nebulae, it all gets looked at receptively as well as

conceptually, as a fact of aesthetic or spiritual experience as

well as in terms of science or history or economics. Training

in receptivity is the complement and antidote to training in

analysis and symbol manipulation. Both kinds of training are

absolutely indispensable. If you neglect either of them you'll

never grow into a fully human being."

There was a silence. "How should one look at other

people?" Will asked at last. "Should one take the Freud's-eye

view or the Cezanne's-eye view? The Proust's-eye view or

the Buddha's-eye view?"

Mrs. Narayan laughed. "Which view are you taking of

me?" she asked.

"Primarily, I suppose, the sociologist's-eye view," he

answered. "I'm looking at you as the representative of an

unfamiliar culture. But I'm also being aware of you

receptively. Thinking, if you don't mind my saying so, that

you seem to have aged remarkably well. Well aesthetically,

well intellectually and psychologically, and well spiritually,

whatever that word means— and if I make myself receptive

it means something important. Whereas, if I choose to

project instead of taking in, I can conceptualize it into pure

nonsense." He uttered a mildly hyenalike laugh.

"If one chooses to," said Mrs. Narayan, "one can always

substitute a bad ready-made notion for the best insights of

receptivity. The question is, why should one want to make

that kind of choice? Why shouldn't one choose to listen to

both parties and harmonize their views? The analyzing

tradition-bound concept maker and the alertly passive insight

receiver—neither is infallible; but both together can do a

reasonably good job."

"Just how effective is your training in the art of being

receptive?" Will now enquired.

"There are degrees of receptivity," she answered. "Very

little of it in a science lesson, for example. Science starts

with observation; but the observation is always selective.

You have to look at the world through a lattice of projected

concepts. Then you take the moksha-medicine, and suddenly

there are hardly any concepts. You don't select and

immediately classify what you experience; you just take it in.

230

It's like that poem of Wordsworth's, 'Bring with you a heart

that watches and receives.' In these bridge-building sessions

I've been describing there's still quite a lot of busy selecting

and projecting, but not nearly so much as in the preceding

science lessons. The children don't suddenly turn into little

Tathagatas; they don't achieve the pure receptivity that

comes with the moksha-medicine. Far from it. All one can

say is that they learn to go easy on names and notions. For a

little while they're taking in a lot more than they give out."

"What do you make them do with what they've taken in?"

"We merely ask them," Mrs. Narayan answered, with a

smile, "to attempt the impossible. The children are told to

translate their experience into words. As a piece of pure,

unconceptual-ized giveness, what is this flower, this

dissected frog, this planet at the other end of the telescope?

What does it mean? What does it make you think, feel,

imagine, remember? Try to put it down on paper. You won't

succeed, of course; but try all the same. It'll help you to

understand the difference between words and events,

between knowing about things and being acquainted with

them. 'And when you've finished writing,' we tell them, 'look

at the flower again and, after you've looked, shut your eyes

for a minute or two. Then draw what came to you when your

eyes

were closed.

Draw whatever it may have

been—something vague or vivid, something like the flower

itself or something entirely different. Draw what you saw or

even what you didn't see, draw it and color it with your

paints or crayons. Then take another rest and, after that,

compare your first drawing with the second; compare the

scientific description of the flower with what you wrote

about it when you weren't analyzing what you saw, when

you behaved as though you didn't know anything about the

flower and just permitted the mystery of its existence to

come to you, like that, out of the blue. Then compare your

drawings and writings with the drawings and writings of the

other boys and girls in the class. You'll notice that the

analytical descriptions and illustrations are very similar,

whereas the drawings and writings of the other kind are very

different one from another. How is all this connected with

what you have learned in school, at home, in the jungle, in

the temple?' Dozens of questions, and all of them insistent.

The bridges have to be built in all directions. One starts with

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botany—or any other subject in the school curriculum—and

one finds oneself, at the end of a bridge-building session,

thinking about the nature of language, about different kinds

of experience, about metaphysics and the conduct of life,

about analytical knowledge and the wisdom of the Other

Shore."

"How on earth," Will asked, "did you ever manage to

teach the teachers who now teach the children to build these

bridges?"

"We began teaching teachers a hundred and seven years

ago," said Mrs. Narayan. "Classes of young men and women

who had been educated in the traditional Palanese way. You

know—good manners, good agriculture, good arts and crafts,

tempered by folk medicine, old-wives' physics and biology

and a belief in the power of magic and the truth of fairy tales.

No sci-ence, no history, no knowledge of anything going on

in the outside world. But these future teachers were pious

Buddhists; most of them practiced meditation and all of them

had read or listened to quite a lot of Mahayana philosophy.

That meant that in the fields of applied metaphysics and

psychology they'd been educated far more thoroughly and far

more realistically than any group of future teachers in your

part of the world. Dr. Andrew was a scientifically trained,

antidogmatic humanist, who had discovered the value of

pure and applied Mahayana. His friend, the Raja, was a

Tantrik Buddhist, who had discovered the value of pure and

applied science. Both, consequently, saw very clearly that, to

be capable of teaching children to become fully human in a

society fit for fully human beings to live in, a teacher would

first have to be taught how to make the best of both worlds."

"And how did those early teachers feel about it? Didn't

they resist the process?"

Mrs. Narayan shook her head. "They didn't resist, for the

good reason that nothing precious had been attacked. Their

Buddhism was respected. All they were asked to give up was

the old-wives' science and the fairy tales. And in exchange

for those they got all kinds of much more interesting facts

and much more useful theories. And these exciting things

from your Western world of knowledge and power and

progress were now to be combined with, and in a sense

subordinated to, the theories of Buddhism and the psy-

chological facts of applied metaphysics. There was really

232

nothing in that best-of-both-worlds program to offend the

susceptibilities of even the touchiest and most ardent of

religious patriots."

"I'm wondering about our future teachers," said Will after

a silence. "At this late stage, would they be teachable? Could

they possibly learn to make the best of both worlds?"

"Why not? They wouldn't have to give up any of the

things that are really important to them. The non-Christian

could go on thinking about man and the Christian could go

on worshiping God. No change, except that God would have

to be thought of as immanent and man would have to be

thought of as potentially self-transcendent."

"And you think they'd make those changes without any

fuss?" Will laughed. "You're an optimist."

"An optimist," said Mrs. Narayan, "for the simple reason

that, if one tackles a problem intelligently and realistically,

the results are apt to be fairly good. This island justifies a

certain optimism. And now let's go and have a look at the

dancing class."

They crossed a tree-shaded courtyard and, pushing

through a swing door, passed out of silence into the rhythmic

beat of a drum and the screech of fifes repeating over and

over again a short pen-tatonic tune that to Will's ears

sounded vaguely Scotch.

"Live music or canned?" he asked.

"Japanese tape," Mrs. Narayan answered laconically. She

opened a second door that gave access to a large gymnasium

where two bearded young men and an amazingly agile little

old lady in black satin slacks were teaching some twenty or

thirty little boys and girls the steps of a lively dance.

"What's this?" Will asked. "Fun or education?"

"Both," said the Principal. "And it's also applied ethics.

Like those breathing exercises we were talking about just

now—only more effective because so much more violent."

"So stamp it out," the children were chanting in unison.

And they stamped their small sandaled feet with all their

might. "So stamp it out!" A final furious stamp and they

were off again, jigging and turning, into another movement

of the dance.

"This is called the Rakshasi Hornpipe," said Mrs.

Narayan.

"Rakshasi?" Will questioned. "What's that?"

233

"A Rakshasi is a species of demon. Very large, and

exceedingly unpleasant. All the ugliest passions personified.

The Rakshasi Hornpipe is a device for letting off those

dangerous heads of steam raised by anger and frustration."

"So stamp it out!" The music had come round again to the

choral refrain. "So stamp it out!"

"Stamp again," cried the little old lady setting a furious

example. "Harder! Harder!"

"Which did more," Will speculated, "for morality and

rational behavior—the Bacchic orgies or the Republic) the

Nico-machean Ethics or corybantic dancing?"

"The Greeks," said Mrs. Narayan, "were much too

sensible to think in terms of either-or. For them, it was

always not-only-but-also. Not only Plato and Aristotle, but

also the maenads. Without those tension-reducing hornpipes,

the moral philosophy would have been impotent, and without

the moral philosophy the hornpipers wouldn't have known

where to go next. All we've done is to take a leaf out of the

old Greek book."

"Very good!" said Will approvingly. Then remembering

(as sooner or later, however keen his pleasure and however

genuine his enthusiasm, he always did remember) that he

was the man who wouldn't take yes for an answer, he

suddenly broke into laughter. "Not that it makes any

difference in the long run," he said. "Corybantism couldn't

stop the Greeks from cutting one another's throats. And when

Colonel Dipa decides to move, what will your Rakshasi

Hornpipes do for you? Help you to reconcile yourselves to

your fate, perhaps—that's all."

"Yes, that's all," said Mrs. Narayan. "But being reconciled

to one's fate—that's already a great achievement."

"You seem to take it all very calmly."

"What would be the point of taking it hysterically? It

wouldn't make our political situation any better; it would

merely make our personal situation a good deal worse."

"So stamp it out," the children shouted again in unison,

and the boards trembled under their pounding feet. "So

stamp it out."

"Don't imagine," Mrs. Narayan resumed, "that this is the

only kind of dancing we teach. Redirecting the power

generated by bad feelings is important. But equally important

is directing good feelings and right knowledge into

234

expression. Expressive movements, in this case, expressive

gesture. If you had come yesterday, when our visiting master

was here, I could have shown you how we teach that kind of

dancing. Not today unfortu nately. He won't be here again

before Tuesday."

"What sort of dancing does he teach?"

Mrs. Narayan tried to describe it. No leaps, no high kicks,

no running. The feet always firmly on the ground. Just

bendings and sideways motions of the knees and hips. All

expression confined to the arms, wrists and hands, to the

neck and head, the face and, above all, the eyes. Movement

from the shoulders upwards and outwards—movement

intrinsically beautiful and at the same time charged with

symbolic meaning. Thought taking shape in ritual and

stylized gesture. The whole body transformed into a

hieroglyph, a succession of hieroglyphs, or attitudes mod-

ulating from significance to significance like a poem or a

piece of music. Movements of the muscles representing

movements of Consciousness, the passage of Suchness into

the many, of the many into the immanent and ever-present

One.

"It's meditation in action," she concluded. "It's the meta-

physics of the Mahayana expressed, not in words, but

through symbolic movements and gestures."

They left the gymnasium by a different door from that

through which they had entered and turned left along a short

corridor.

"What's the next item?" Will asked.

"The Lower Fourth," Mrs. Narayan answered, "and

they're working on Elementary Practical Psychology."

She opened a green door.

"Well, now you know," Will heard a familiar voice

saying. "Nobody has to feel pain. You told yourselves that

the pin wouldn't hurt—and it didn't hurt."

They stepped into the room and there, very tall in the

midst of a score of plump or skinny little brown bodies, was

Susila MacPhail. She smiled at them, pointed to a couple of

chairs in a corner of the room, and turned back to the

children. "Nobody has to feel pain," she repeated. "But never

forget: pain always means that something is wrong. You've

learned to shut pain off, but don't do it thoughtlessly, don't

do it without asking yourselves the question: What's the

235

reason for this pain? And if it's bad, or if there's no obvious

reason for it, tell your mother about it, or your teacher, or

any grown-up in your Mutual Adoption Club. Then shut off

the pain. Shut it off knowing that, if anything needs to be

done, it will be done. Do you understand? . . . And now," she

went on, after all the questions had been asked and answered.

"Now let's play some pretending games. Shut your eyes and

pretend you're looking at that poor old mynah bird with one

leg that comes to school every day to be fed. Can you see

him?"

Of course they could see him. The one-legged mynah was

evidently an old friend.

"See him just as clearly as you saw him today at

lunchtime. And don't stare at him, don't make any effort. Just

see what comes to you, and let your eyes shift—from his

beak to his tail, from his bright little round eye to his one

orange leg."

"I can hear him too," a little girl volunteered. "He's saying

'Karuna, karuna!'"

"That's not true," another child said indignantly. "He's

saying 'Attention!' "

"He's saying both those things," Susila assured them.

"And probably a lot of other words besides. But now we're

going to do some real pretending. Pretend that there are two

one-legged mynah birds. Three one-legged mynah birds.

Four one-legged mynah birds. Can you see all four of them?"

They could.

"Four one-legged mynah birds at the four corners of a

square, and a fifth one in the middle. And now let's make

them change their color. They're white now. Five white

mynah birds with yellow heads and one orange leg. And now

the heads are blue. Bright blue—and the rest of the bird is

pink. Five pink birds with blue heads. And they keep

changing. They're purple now. Five purple birds with white

heads and each of them has one pale-green leg. Goodness,

what's happening! There aren't five of them; there are ten.

No, twenty, fifty, a hundred. Hundreds and hundreds. Can

you see them?" Some of them could— without the slightest

difficulty; and for those who couldn't go the whole hog,

Susila proposed more modest goals.

"Just make twelve of them," she said. "Or if twelve is too

many, make ten, make eight. That's still an awful lot of

236

mynahs. And now," she went on, when all the children had

conjured up all the purple birds that each was capable of

creating, "now they're gone." She clapped her hands. "Gone!

Every single one of them. There's nothing there. And now

you're not going to see mynahs, you're going to see me. One

me in yellow. Two mes in green. Three mes in blue with

pink spots. Four mes in the brightest red you ever saw." She

clapped her hands again. "All gone. And this time it's Mrs.

Narayan and that funny-looking man with a stiff leg who

came in with her. Four of each of them. Standing in a big

circle in the gymnasium. And now they're dancing the

Rakshasi Hornpipe. 'So stamp it out, so stamp it out.' "

There was a general giggle. The dancing Wills and

Principals must have looked richly comical.

Susila snapped her fingers.

"Away with them! Vanish! And now each of you sees

three of your mothers and three of your fathers running

round the playground. Faster, faster, faster! And suddenly

they're not there any more. And then they are there. But next

moment they aren't. They are there, they aren't. They are,

they aren't..."

The giggles swelled into squeals of laughter and at the

height of the laughter a bell rang. The lesson in Elementary

Practical Psychology was over.

"What's the point of it all?" Will asked when the children

had run off to play and Mrs. Narayan had returned to her

office.

"The point," Susila answered, "is to get people to

understand that we're not completely at the mercy of our

memory and our phantasies. If we're disturbed by what's

going on inside our heads, we can do something about it. It's

all a question of being shown what to do and then

practicing—the way one learns to write or play the flute.

What those children you saw here were being taught is a

very simple technique—a technique that we'll develop later

on into a method of liberation. Not complete liberation, of

course. But half a loaf is a great deal better than no bread.

This technique won't lead you to the discovery of your

Buddha Nature: but it may help you to prepare for that

discovery—help you by liberating you from the hauntings of

your own painful memories, your remorses, your causeless

anxieties about the future."

237

" 'Hauntings,' " Will agreed, "is the word."

"But one doesn't have to be haunted. Some of the ghosts

can be laid quite easily. Whenever one of them appears, just

give it the imagination treatment. Deal with it as we dealt

with those mynahs, as we dealt with you and Mrs. Narayan.

Change its clothes, give it another nose, multiply it, tell it to

go away, call it back again and make it do something

ridiculous. Then abolish it. Just think what you could have

done about your father, if someone had taught you a few of

these simple little tricks when you were a child! You thought

of him as a terrifying ogre. But that wasn't necessary. In your

fancy you could have turned the ogre into a grotesque. Into a

whole chorus of grotesques. Twenty of them doing a tap

dance and singing, 'I dreamt I dwelt in marble halls.' A short

course in Elementary Practical Psychology, and your whole

life might have been different."

How would he have dealt with Molly's death, Will

wondered as they walked out towards the parked jeep. What

rites of imaginative exorcism could he have practiced on that

white, musk-scented succubus who was the incarnation of

his frantic and abhorred desires?

But here was the jeep. Will handed Susila the keys and

laboriously hoisted himself into his seat. Very noisily, as

though it were under some neurotic compulsion to

overcompensate for its diminutive stature, a small and aged

car approached from the direction of the village, turned into

the driveway and, still clattering and shuddering, came to a

halt beside the jeep.

They turned. There, leaning out of the window of the

royal Baby Austin, was Murugan, and beyond him, vast in

white muslin and billowy like a cumulus cloud, sat the Rani.

Will bowed in her direction and evoked the most gracious of

smiles, which was switched off as soon as she turned to

Susila, whose greeting was acknowledged only with the most

distant of nods.

"Going for a drive?" Will asked politely.

"Only as far as Shivapuram," said the Rani.

"If this wretched little crate will hold together that long,"

Murugan added bitterly. He turned the ignition key. The

motor gave a last obscene hiccup and died.

"There are some people we have to see," the Rani went

on. "Or rather One Person," she added in a tone charged with

238

conspiratorial significance. She smiled at Will and very

nearly winked.

Pretending not to understand that she was talking about

Bahu,

Will

uttered

a

noncommittal

"Quite,"

and

commiserated with her on all the work and worry that the

preparations for next week's coming-of-age party must

entail.

Murugan interrupted him. "What are you doing out here?"

he asked.

"I've spent the afternoon taking an intelligent interest in

Palanese education."

"Palanese education," the Rani echoed. And again,

sorrowfully, "Palanese" (pause) "Education." She shook her

head.

"Personally," said Will, "I liked everything I saw and

heard of it—from Mr. Menon and the Principal to

Elementary Practical Psychology, as taught," he added,

trying to bring Susila into the conversation, "by Mrs.

MacPhail here."

Still studiedly ignoring Susila, the Rani pointed a thick

accusing finger at the scarecrows in the field below.

"Have you seen those, Mr. Farnaby?"

He had indeed. "And where but in Pala," he asked, "can

one find scarecrows which are simultaneously beautiful,

efficient, and metaphysically significant?"

"And which," said the Rani in a voice that was vibrant

with a kind of sepulchral indignation, "not only scare the

birds away from the rice; they also scare little children away

from the very idea of God and His Avatars." She raised her

hand. "Listen!"

Tom Krishna and Mary Sarojini had been joined by five

or six small companions and were making a game of tugging

at the strings that worked the supernatural marionettes. From

the group came a sound of shrill voices piping in unison. At

their second repetition, Will made out the words of the

chantey.

Pully, hauly, tug with a will;

The gods wiggle-waggle, but the sky stands still.

"Bravo!" he said, and laughed.

"I'm afraid I can't be amused," said the Rani severely. "It

239

isn't funny. It's Tragic, Tragic."

Will stuck to his guns. "I understand," he said, "that these

charming scarecrows were an invention of Murugan's

grandfather."

"Murugan's grandfather," said the Rani, "was a very

remarkable man. Remarkably intelligent, but no less

remarkably

perverse.

Great

gifts—but,

alas,

how

maleficently used! And what made it all so much worse, he

was full of False Spirituality."

"False Spirituality?" Will eyed the enormous specimen of

True Spirituality and, through the reek of hot petroleum

products, inhaled the incenselike, otherworldly smell of

sandalwood. "False Spirituality?" And suddenly he found

himself wondering—wondering and then, with a shudder,

imagining—what the Rani would look like if suddenly

divested of her mystic's uniform and exposed, exuberantly

and steatopygously naked, to the light. And now multiply her

into a trinity of undressed obesities, into two trinities, ten

trinities. Applied Practical Psychology—with a vengeance!

"Yes, False Spirituality," the Rani was repeating. "Talking

about Liberation; but always, because of his obstinate refusal

to follow the True Path, always working for greater

Bondage. Acting the part of humility. But in his heart, he

was so full of pride, Mr. Farnaby, that he refused to

recognize any Spiritual Authority Higher than his own. The

Masters, the Avatars, the Great Tradition—they meant

nothing to him. Nothing at all. Hence those dreadful

scarecrows. Hence that blasphemous rhyme that the children

have been taught to sing. When I think of those Poor

Innocent Little Ones being deliberately perverted, I find it

hard to contain myself, Mr. Farnaby, I find it..."

"Listen, Mother," said Murugan, who had been glancing

impatiently and ever more openly at his wrist watch, "if we

want to be back by dinnertime we'd better get going." His

tone was rudely authoritative. Being at the wheel of a

car—even of this senile Baby Austin—made him feel, it was

evident, considerably larger than life. Without waiting for the

Rani's answer he started the motor, shifted into low and, with

a wave of the hand, drove off.

"Good riddance," said Susila. "Don't you love your dear

Queen?" "She makes my blood boil." "So stamp it out," Will

chanted teasingly. "You're quite right," she agreed, with a

240

laugh. "But unfortunately this was an occasion when it just

wasn't feasible to do a Rakshasi Hornpipe." Her face

brightened with a sudden flash of mischief, and without

warning she punched him, surprisingly hard, in the ribs.

"There!" she said. "Now I feel much better."

241

14

She started the motor and they drove off—down to the

bypass, up again to the high road beyond the other end of the

village, and on into the compound of the Experimental

Station. Susila pulled up at a small thatched bungalow like

all the others. They climbed the six steps that led up to the

veranda and entered a whitewashed living room.

To the left was a wide window with a hammock slung

between the two wooden pillars at either side of the

projecting bay. "For you," she said, pointing to the

hammock. "You can put your leg up." And when Will had

lowered himself into the net, "What shall we talk about?" she

asked as she pulled up a wicker chair and sat down beside

him.

"What about the good, the true and the beautiful? Or

maybe," he grinned, "the ugly, the bad and the even truer."

"I'd thought," she said, ignoring his attempt at a witticism,

"that we might go on where we left off last time—go on

talking about you."

"That was precisely what I was suggesting—the ugly, the

bad and the truer than all official truth."

"Is this just an exhibition of your conversational style?"

she asked. "Or do you really want to talk about yourself?"

"Really," he assured her, "desperately. Just as desperately

as I don't want to talk about myself. Hence, as you may have

noticed, my unflagging interest in art, science, philosophy,

politics, literature—any damned thing rather than the only

thing that ultimately has any importance."

There was a long silence. Then in a tone of casual

reminiscence, Susila began to talk about Wells Cathedral,

about the calling of the jackdaws, about the white swans

floating between the reflections of the floating clouds. In a

few minutes he too was floating.

242

"I was very happy all the time I was at Wells," she said.

"Wonderfully happy. And so were you, weren't you?"

Will made no answer. He was remembering those days in

the green valley, years ago, before he and Molly were

married, before they were lovers. What peace! What a solid,

living, maggotless world of springing grass and flowers! And

between them had flowed the kind of natural, undistorted

feeling that he hadn't experienced since those far-off days

when Aunt Mary was alive. The only person he had ever

really loved—and here, in Molly, was her successor. What

blessedness! Love transposed into another key—but the

melody, the rich and subtle harmonies were the same. And

then, on the fourth night of their stay, Molly had knocked on

the wall that separated their rooms, and he had found her

door ajar, had groped his way in darkness to the bed where,

conscientiously naked, the Sister of Mercy was doing her

best to play the part of the Wife of Love. Doing her best and

(how disastrously!) failing.

Suddenly, as happened almost every afternoon, there was

a loud rushing of wind and, muffled by distance, a hollow

roaring of rain on thick foliage—a roaring that grew louder

and louder as the shower approached. A few seconds passed,

and then the raindrops were hammering insistently on the

windowpanes. Hammering as they had hammered on the

windows of his study that day of their last interview. "Do

you really mean it, Will?"

The pain and shame of it made him want to cry aloud. He

bit his lip.

"What are you thinking of?" Susila asked. It wasn't a

matter of thinking. He was actually seeing her, actually

hearing her voice. "Do you really mean it, Will?" And

through the sound of the rain he heard himself answering, "I

really mean it."

On the windowpane—was it here? or was it there, was it

then?—the roar had diminished, as the gust spent itself, to a

pattering whisper.

"What are you thinking of?" Susila insisted.

"I'm thinking of what I did to Molly."

"What was it that you did to Molly?"

He didn't want to answer; but Susila was inexorable.

"Tell me what it was that you did."

Another violent gust made the windows rattle. It was

243

raining harder now—raining, it seemed to Will Farnaby, on

purpose, raining in such a way that he would have to go on

remembering what he didn't want to remember, would be

compelled to say out loud the shameful things he must at all

costs keep to himself.

"Tell me."

Reluctantly and in spite of himself, he told her.

" 'Do you really mean it, Will?' " And because of

Babs—Babs, God help him! Babs, believe it or not!—he

really did mean it, and she had walked out into the rain.

"The next time I saw her was in the hospital."

"Was it still raining?" Susila asked.

"Still raining."

"As hard as it's raining now?"

"Very nearly." And what Will heard was no longer this

afternoon shower in the tropics but the steady drumming on

the window of the little room where Molly lay dying.

"It's me," he was saying through the sound of the rain,

"it's Will." Nothing happened; and then suddenly he felt the

almost imperceptible movement of Molly's hand within his

own. The voluntary pressure and then, after a few seconds,

the involuntary release, the total limpness. "Tell me again,

Will."

He shook his head. It was too painful, too humiliating.

"Tell me again," she insisted. "It's the only way." Making an

enormous effort, he started to tell the odious story yet once

more. Did he really mean it? Yes, he really meant it—meant

to hurt, meant perhaps (did one ever know what one really

intended?) to kill. All for Babs, or the World Well Lost. Not

his world, of course—Molly's world and, at the center of that

world, the life that had created it. Snuffed out for the sake of

that delicious smell in the darkness, of those muscular

reflexes, that enormity of enjoyment, those consummate and

intoxicat-ingly shameless skills.

"Good-bye, Will." And the door had closed behind her

with a faint, dry click.

He wanted to call her back. But Babs's lover remembered

the skills, the reflexes, and within its aura of musk, a body

agonizing in the extremity of pleasure. Remembered these

things and, standing at the window, watched the car move

away through the rain, watched and was filled, as it turned

the corner, with a shameful exultation. Free at last! Even

244

freer, as he discovered three hours later in the hospital, than

he had supposed. For now he was feeling the last faint

pressure of her fingers; feeling the final message of her love.

And then the message was interrupted. The hand went limp

and now, suddenly, appallingly, there was no sound of

breathing. "Dead," he whispered, and felt himself choking.

"Dead."

"Suppose it hadn't been your fault," said Susila, breaking

a long silence. "Suppose that she'd suddenly died without

your having had anything to do with it. Wouldn't that have

been almost as bad?"

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"I mean, it's more than just feeling guilty about Molly's

death. It's death itself, death as such, that you find so

terrible." She was thinking of Dugald now. "So senselessly

evil."

"Senselessly evil," he repeated. "Yes, perhaps that's why I

had to be a professional execution watcher. Just because it

was all so senseless, so utterly bestial. Following the smell of

death from one end of the earth to the other. Like a vulture.

Nice comfort able people just don't have any idea what the

world is like. Not exceptionally, as it was during the war, but

all the time. All the time." And as he spoke he was seeing, in

a vision as brief and comprehensive and intensely

circumstantial as a drowning man's, all the hateful scenes he

had witnessed in the course of those well-paid pilgrimages to

every hellhole and abattoir revolting enough to qualify as

News. Negroes in South Africa, the man in the San Quentin

gas chamber, mangled bodies in an Algerian farmhouse, and

everywhere mobs, everywhere policemen and paratroopers,

everywhere those dark-skinned children, stick-legged,

potbellied, with flies on their raw eyelids, everywhere the

nauseating smells of hunger and disease, the awful stench of

death. And then suddenly, through the stench of death,

mingled and impregnated with the stench of death, he was

breathing the musky essence of Babs. Breathing the essence

of Babs and remembering his little joke about the chemistry

of purgatory and paradise. Purgatory is tetraethylene diamine

and sulfureted hydrogen; paradise, very definitely, is

symtrinitropsibutyl toluene, with an assortment of organic

impurities—ha—ha—ha! (Oh, the delights of social life!)

And then, quite suddenly, the odors of love and death gave

245

place to a rank animal smell—a smell of dog.

The wind swelled up again into violence and the driving

raindrops hammered and splashed against the panes. "Are

you still thinking of Molly?" Susila asked. "I was thinking of

something I'd completely forgotten," he answered. "I can't

have been more than four years old when it happened, and

now it's all come back to me. Poor Tiger." "Who was poor

Tiger?" she questioned. Tiger, his beautiful red setter. Tiger,

the only source of light in that dismal house where he had

spent his childhood. Tiger, dear dear Tiger. In the midst of

all that fear and misery, between the two poles of his father's

sneering hate of everything and everybody and his mother's

self-conscious self-sacrifice, what effortless good will, what

spontaneous friendliness, what a bounding, barking

irrepressible joy! His mother used to take him on her knee

and tell him about God and Jesus. But there was more God in

Tiger than in all her Bible stories. Tiger, so far as he was

concerned, was the Incarnation. And then one day the

Incarnation came down with distemper. "What happened

then?" Susila asked.

"His basket's in the kitchen, and I'm there, kneeling beside

it. And I'm stroking him—but his fur feels quite different

from what it felt like before he was sick. Kind of sticky. And

there's a bad smell. If I didn't love him so much, I'd run

away, I couldn't bear to be near him. But I do love him, I

love him more than anything or anybody. And while I stroke

him, I keep telling him that he'll soon be well again. Very

soon—tomorrow morning. And then all of a sudden he starts

to shudder, and I try to stop the shuddering by holding his

head between my hands. But it doesn't do any good. The

trembling turns into a horrible convulsion. It makes me feel

sick to look at it, and I'm frightened. I'm dreadfully

frightened. Then the shuddering and the twitching die down

and in a little while he's absolutely still. And when I lift his

head and then let go, the head falls back—thump, like a

piece of meat with a bone inside."

Will's voice broke, the tears were streaming down his

cheeks, he was shaken by the sobs of a four-year-old

grieving for his dog and confronted by the awful,

inexplicable fact of death. With the mental equivalent of a

click and a little jerk, his consciousness seemed to change

gear. He was an adult again, and he had

246

ceased to float.

"I'm sorry." He wiped his eyes and blew his nose. "Well,

that was my first introduction to the Essential Horror. Tiger

was my friend, Tiger was my only consolation. That was

something, obviously, that the Essential Horror couldn't

tolerate. And it was the same with my Aunt Mary. The only

person I ever really loved and admired and completely

trusted; and, Christ, what the Essential Horror did to her!"

"Tell me," said Susila.

Will hesitated, then, shrugging his shoulders, "Why not?"

he said. "Mary Frances Farnaby, my father's younger sister.

Married at eighteen, just a year before the outbreak of the

First World War, to a professional soldier. Frank and Mary,

Mary and Frank—what harmony, what happiness!" He

laughed. "Even outside of Pala there one can find occasional

islands of decency. Tiny little atolls, or even, every now and

then, a full-blown Tahiti—but always totally surrounded by

the Essential Horror. Two young people on their private

Pala. Then, one fine morning, it was August 4, 1914, Frank

went overseas with the Expeditionary Force, and on

Christmas Eve Mary gave birth to a deformed child that

survived long enough for her to see for herself what the E.H.

can do when it really tries. Only God can make a

microcephalous idiot. Three months later, needless to say,

Frank was hit by a piece of shrapnel and died in due course

of gangrene. . . . All that," Will went on after a little silence,

"was before my time. When I first knew her, in the twenties,

Aunt Mary was devoting herself to the aged. Old people in

insti tutions, old people cooped up in their own homes, old

people living on and on as a burden to their children and

grandchildren.

Struldbrugs, Tithonuses. And the more hopeless the

decrepitude, the more crotchety and querulous the character,

the better. As a child, how I hated Aunt Mary's old people!

They smelt bad, they were frighteningly ugly, they were

always boring and generally cross. But Aunt Mary really

loved them—loved them through thick and thin, loved them

in spite of everything. My mother used to talk a lot about

Christian charity; but somehow one never believed what she

said, just as one never felt any love in all the self-sacrificing

things she was always forcing herself to do—-no love, only

duty. Whereas with Aunt Mary one was never in the slightest

247

doubt. Her love was like a kind of physical radiation,

something one could almost sense as heat or light. When she

took me to stay with her in the country and later, when she

came to town and I used to go and see her almost every day,

it was like escaping from a refrigerator into the sunshine. I

could feel myself coming alive in that light of hers, that

radiating warmth. Then the Essential Horror got busy again.

At the beginning she made a joke of it. 'Now I'm an

Amazon,' she said after the first operation."

"Why an Amazon?" Susila asked.

"The Amazons had their right breast amputated. They

were warriors and the breast got in the way when they were

shooting with the long bow. 'Now I'm an Amazon,' " he

repeated, and with his mind's eye could see the smile on that

strong aquiline face, could hear, with his mind's ear, the tone

of amusement in that clear, ringing voice. "But a few months

later the other breast had to be cut off. After that there were

the X rays, the radiation sickness and then, little by little, the

degradation." Will's face took on its look of flayed ferocity.

"If it weren't so unspeakably hideous, it would be really

funny. What a masterpiece of irony! Here was a soul that

radiated goodness and love and heroic charity. Then, for no

known reason, something went wrong. Instead of flouting it,

a little piece of her body started to obey the second law of

thermodynamics. And as the body broke down, the soul

began to lose its virtue, its very identity. The heroism went

out of her, the love and the goodness evaporated. For the last

months of her life she was no more the Aunt Mary I had

loved and admired; she was somebody else, somebody (and

this was the ironist's final and most exquisite touch) almost

indistinguishable from the worst and weakest of the old

people she had once befriended and been a tower of strength

to. She had to be humiliated and degraded; and when the

degradation was complete, she was slowly, and with a great

deal of pain, put to death in solitude. In solitude," he insisted.

"For of course nobody can help, nobody can ever be present.

People may stand by while you're suffering and dying; but

they're standing by in another world. In your world you're

absolutely alone. Alone in your suffering and your dying,

just as you're alone in love, alone even in the most

completely shared pleasure."

The essences of Babs and of Tiger, and when the cancer

248

had gnawed a hole in the liver and her wasted body was

impregnated with that strange, aromatic smell of

contaminated blood, the essence of Aunt Mary dying. And in

the midst of those essences, sickeningly or intoxicatedly

aware of them, was an isolated consciousness, a child's, a

boy's, a man's, forever isolated, irremediably alone. "And on

top of everything else," he went on, "this woman was only

forty-two. She didn't want to die. She refused to accept what

was being done to her. The Essential Horror had to drag her

down by main force. I was there; I saw it happening."

"And that's why you're the man who won't take yes for an

answer?"

"How can anyone take yes for an answer?" he countered.

"Yes is just pretending, just positive thinking. The facts, the

basic and ultimate facts, are always no. Spirit? No! Love?

No! Sense, meaning, achievement? No!"

Tiger exuberantly alive and joyful and full of God. And

then Tiger transformed by the Essential Horror into a packet

of garbage, which the vet had to come and be paid for

removing.

And after Tiger, Aunt Mary. Maimed and tortured,

dragged in the mud, degraded and finally, like Tiger,

transformed into a packet of garbage—only this time it was

the undertaker who had removed it, and a clergyman was

hired to make believe that it was all, in some sublime and

Pickwickian sense, perfectly O.K. Twenty years later another

clergyman had been hired to repeat the same strange

rigmarole over Molly's coffin. "If after the manner of men I

have fought with beasts at Ephesus, what advan-tageth it me,

if the dead rise not? let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we

die."

Will uttered another of his hyena laughs. "What

impeccable logic, what sensibility, what ethical refinement!"

"But you're the man who won't take yes for an answer. So

why raise any objections?"

"I oughtn't to," he agreed. "But one remains an aesthete,

one likes to have the no said with style. 'Let us eat and drink,

for tomorrow we die.' " He screwed up his face in an

expression of disgust.

"And yet," said Susila, "in a certain sense the advice is

excellent.

Eating,

drinking,

dying—three

primary

manifestations of the universal and impersonal life. Animals

249

live that impersonal and universal life without knowing its

nature. Ordinary people know its nature but don't live it and,

if ever they think seriously about it, refuse to accept it. An

enlightened person knows it, lives it, and accepts it

completely. He eats, he drinks, and in due course he

dies—but he eats with a difference, drinks with a difference,

dies with a difference."

"And rises again from the dead?" he asked sarcastically.

"That's one of the questions the Buddha always refused to

discuss. Believing in eternal life never helped anybody to

live in eternity. Nor, of course, did disbelieving. So stop all

your pro-ing and con-ing (that's the Buddha's advice) and get

on with the job."

"Which job?"

"Everybody's job—enlightenment. Which means, here

and now, the preliminary job of practicing all the yogas of

increased awareness."

"But I don't want to be more aware," said Will. "I want to

be less aware. Less aware of horrors like Aunt Mary's death

and the slums of Rendang-Lobo. Less aware of hideous

sights and loathsome smells—even of some delicious

smells," he added as he caught, through the remembered

essences of dog and cancer of the liver, a civetlike whiff of

the pink alcove. "Less aware of my fat income and other

people's subhuman poverty. Less aware of my own excellent

health in an ocean of malaria and hookworm, of my own

safely sterilized sex fun in the ocean of starving babies,

'Forgive them, for they know not what they do.' What a

blessed state of affairs! But unfortunately I do know what

I'm doing. Only too well. And here you go, asking me to be

even more aware than I am already."

"I'm not asking anything," she said. "I'm merely passing

on the advice of a succession of shrewd old birds, beginning

with Gautama and ending with the Old Raja. Start by being

fully aware of what you think you are. It'll help you to

become aware of what you are in fact."

He shrugged his shoulders. "One thinks one's something

unique and wonderful at the center of the universe. But in

fact one's merely a slight delay in the ongoing march of

entropy."

"And that precisely is the first half of the Buddha's

message. Transience, no permanent soul, inevitable sorrow.

250

But he didn't stop there, the message had a second half. This

temporary slowdown of entropy is also pure undiluted

Suchness. This absence of a permanent soul is also the

Buddha Nature."

"Absence of a soul—that's easy to cope with. But what

about the presence of cancer, the presence of slow

degradation? What about hunger and overbreeding and

Colonel Dipa? Are they pure Suchness?"

"Of course. But, needless to say, it's desperately difficult

for the people who are deeply involved in any of those evils

to discover their Buddha Nature. Public health and social

reform are the indispensable preconditions of any kind of

general enlightenment."

"But in spite of public health and social reform, people

still die. Even in Pala," he added ironically.

"Which is why the corollary of welfare has to be

dhyana—all the yogas of living and dying, so that you can be

aware, even in the final agony, of who in fact, and in spite of

everything, you really are."

There was a sound of footsteps on the planking of the

veranda, and a childish voice called, "Mother!" "Here I am,

darling," Susila called back. The front door was flung open

and Mary Sarojini came hur-rying into the room.

"Mother," she said breathlessly, "they want you to come

at once. It's Granny Lakshmi. She's . . ." Catching sight for

the first time of the figure in the hammock, she started and

broke off. "Oh! I didn't know you were here."

Will waved his hand to her without speaking. She gave

him a perfunctory smile, then turned back to her mother.

"Granny Lakshmi suddenly got much worse," she said, "and

Grandpa Robert is still up at the High Altitude Station, and

they can't get through to him on the telephone." "Did you run

all the way?" "Except where it's really too steep."

Susila put her arm round the child and kissed her, then

very brisk and businesslike, rose to her feet. "It's Dugald's

mother," she said.

"Is she . . . ?" He glanced at Mary Sarojini, then back at

Susila. Was death taboo? Could one mention it before

children? "You mean, is she dying?" He nodded. "We've

been expecting it, of course," Susila went on. "But not today.

Today she seemed a little better." She shook her head. "Well,

I have to go and stand by—even if it is another world. And

251

actually," she added, "it isn't quite so completely other as you

think. I'm sorry we had to leave our business unfinished; but

there'll be other opportunities. Meanwhile what do you want

to do? You can stay here. Or I'll drop you at Dr. Robert's. Or

you can come with me and Mary Sarojini."

"As a professional execution watcher?"

"Not as a professional execution watcher," she answered

emphatically. "As a human being, as someone who needs to

know how to live and then how to die. Needs it as urgently

as we all do."

"Needs it," he said, "a lot more urgently than most. But

shan't I be in the way?"

"If you can get out of your own way, you won't be in

anyone else's."

She took his hand and helped him out of the hammock.

Two minutes later they were driving past the lotus pool and

the huge Buddha meditating under the cobra's hood, past the

white bull, out through the main gate of the compound. The

rain was over, in a green sky enormous clouds glowed like

archangels. Low in the west the sun was shining with a

brightness that seemed almost supernatural.

Soles occidere et redire possunt; nobis cum semel occidit

brevis lux, nox est perpetua una dormienda. Da mi basin

mille.

Sunsets and death; death and therefore kisses; kisses and

consequently birth and then death for yet another generation

of sunset watchers.

"What do you say to people who are dying?" he asked.

"Do you tell them not to bother their heads about immortality

and get on with the job?"

"If you like to put it that way—yes, that's precisely what

we do. Going on being aware—it's the whole art of dying."

"And you teach the art?"

"I'd put it another way. We help them to go on practicing

the art of living even while they're dying. Knowing who in

fact one is, being conscious of the universal and impersonal

life that lives itself through each of us—that's the art of

living, and that's what one can help the dying to go on

practicing. To the very end. Maybe beyond the end."

"Beyond?" he questioned. "But you said that was

252

something that the dying aren't supposed to think about."

"They're not being asked to think about it. They're being

helped, if there is such a thing, to experience it. If there is

such a thing," she repeated, "if the universal life goes on,

when the separate me-life is over."

"Do you personally think it does go on?"

Susila smiled. "What I personally think is beside the

point. All that matters is what I may impersonally experience

while I'm living, when I'm dying, maybe when I'm dead."

She swung the car into a parking space and turned off the

engine. On foot they entered the village. Work was over for

the day and the main street was so densely thronged that it

was hard for them to pass.

"I'm going ahead by myself," Susila announced. Then to

Mary Sarojini, "Be at the hospital in about an hour," she said.

"Not before." She turned and, threading her way between the

slowly promenading groups, was soon lost to view.

"You're in charge now," said Will, smiling down at the

child by his side.

Mary Sarojini nodded gravely and took his hand. "Let's

go and see what's happening in the square," she said.

"How old is your Granny Lakshmi?" Will asked as they

started to make their way along the crowded street.

"I don't really know," Mary Sarojini answered. "She

looksterribly old. But maybe that's because she's got cancer."

"Do you know what cancer is?" he asked.

Mary Sarojini knew perfectly well. "It's what happens

when part of you forgets all about the rest of you and carries

on the way people do when they're crazy—just goes on

blowing itself up and blowing itself up as if there was

nobody else in the whole world. Sometimes you can do

something about it. But generally it just goes on blowing

itself up until the person dies."

"And that's what has happened, I gather, to your Granny

Lakshmi."

"And now she needs someone to help her die."

"Does your mother often help people die?"

The child nodded. "She's awfully good at it."

"Have you ever seen anyone die?"

"Of course," Mary Sarojini answered, evidently surprised

that such a question should be asked. "Let me see." She

made a mental calculation. "I've seen five people die. Six, if

253

you count babies."

"I hadn't seen anyone die when I was your age."

"You hadn't?"

"Only a dog."

"Dogs die easier than people. They don't talk about it

beforehand."

"How do you feel about. . . about people dying?"

"Well, it isn't nearly so bad as having babies. That's awful.

Or at least it looks awful. But then you remind yourself that

it doesn't hurt at all. They've turned off the pain."

"Believe it or not," said Will, "I've never seen a baby

being born."

"Never?" Mary Sarojini was astonished. "Not even when

you were at school?"

Will had a vision of his headmaster in full canonicals

conducting three hundred black-coated boys on a tour of the

Lying-in Hospital. "Not even at school," he said aloud.

"You never saw anybody dying, and you never saw

anybody having a baby. How did you get to know things?"

"In the school I went to," he said, "we never got to know

things, we only got to know words."

The child looked up at him, shook her head and, lifting a

small brown hand, significantly tapped her forehead.

"Crazy," she said. "Or were your teachers just stupid?"

Will laughed. "They were high-minded educators

dedicated to mens sana in corpore sano and the maintenance

of our sublime Western Tradition. But meanwhile tell me

something. Weren't you ever frightened?"

"By people having babies?"

"No, by people dying. Didn't that scare you?"

"Well, yes—it did," she said after a moment of silence.

"So what did you do about it?"

"I did what they teach you to do—tried to find out which

of me was frightened and why she was frightened."

"And which of you was it?"

"This one." Mary Sarojini pointed a forefinger into her

open mouth. "The one that does all the talking. Little Miss

Gibber— that's what Vijaya calls her. She's always talking

about all the nasty things I remember, all the huge,

wonderful, impossible things I imagine I can do. She's the

one that gets frightened."

"Why is she so frightened?"

254

"I suppose it's because she gets talking about all the awful

things that might happen to her. Talking out loud or talking

to herself. But there's another one who doesn't get

frightened."

"Which one is that?"

"The one that doesn't talk—just looks and listens and feels

what's going on inside. And sometimes," Mary Sarojini

added, "sometimes she suddenly sees how beautiful

everything is. No, that's wrong. She sees it all the time, but /

don't—not unless she-makes me notice it. That's when it

suddenly happens. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful! Even dog's

messes." She pointed at a formidable specimen almost at

their feet.

From the narrow street they had emerged into the market-

place. The last of the sunlight still touched the sculptured

spire of the temple, the little pink gazebos on the roof of the

town hall; but here in the square there was premonition of

twilight and under the great banyan tree it was already night.

On the stalls between its pillars and hanging ropes the

market women had turned on their lights. In the leafy

darkness there were islands of form and color, and from

hardly visible nonentity brown-skinned figures stepped for a

moment into brilliant exis tence, then back again into

nothingness. The spaces between the tall buildings echoed

with a confusion of English and Palanese, of talk and

laughter, of street cries and whistled tunes, of dogs barking,

parrots screaming. Perched on one of the pink gazebos, a pair

of mynah birds called indefatigably for attention and com-

passion. From an open-air kitchen at the center of the square

rose the appetizing smell of food on the fire. Onions,

peppers, turmeric, fish frying, cakes baking, rice on the

boil—and through these good gross odors, like a reminder

from the Other Shore, drifted the perfume, thin and sweet

and ethereally pure, of the many-colored garlands on sale

beside the fountain.

Twilight deepened and suddenly, from high overhead, the

arc lamps were turned on. Bright and burnished against the

rosy copper of oiled skin, the women's necklaces and rings

and bracelets came alive with glittering reflections. Seen in

the downward striking light, every contour became more

dramatic, every form seemed to be more substantial, more

solidly there. In eye sockets, under nose and chin the

255

shadows deepened. Modeled by light and darkness young

breasts grew fuller and the faces of the old were more

emphatically lined and hollowed.

Hand in hand they made their way through the crowd.

A middle-aged woman greeted Mary Sarojini, then turned

to Will. "Are you that man from the Outside?" she asked.

"Almost infinitely from the outside," he assured her.

She looked at him for a moment in silence, then smiled

encouragingly and patted his cheek.

"We're all very sorry for you," she said.

They moved on, and now they were standing on the

fringes of a group assembled at the foot of the temple steps

to listen to a young man who was playing a long-necked,

lute-like instrument and singing in Palanese. Rapid

declamation alternated with long-drawn, almost birdlike

melismata on a single vowel sound, and then a cheerful and

strongly accented tune that ended in a shout. A roar of

laugher went up from the crowd. A few more bars, another

line or two of recitative, and the singer struck his final chord.

There was applause and more laughter and a chorus of

incomprehensible commentary.

"What's it all about?" Will asked.

"It's about girls and boys sleeping together," Mary

Sarojini answered.

"Oh—I see." He felt a pang of guilty embarrassment; but,

looking down into the child's untroubled face, he could see

that his concern was uncalled for. It was evident that boys

and girls sleeping together were as completely to be taken for

granted as going to school or eating three meals a day—or

dying.

"And the part that made them laugh," Mary Sarojini went

on, "was where he said the Future Buddha won't have to

leave home and sit under the Bodhi Tree. He'll have his

Enlightenment while he's in bed with the princess."

"Do you think that's a good idea?" Will asked.

She nodded emphatically. "It would mean that the

princess would be enlightened too."

"You're perfectly right," said Will. "Being a man, I hadn't

thought of the princess."

The lute player plucked a queer unfamiliar progression of

chords, followed them with a ripple of arpeggios and began

to sing, this time in English.

256

"Everyone talks of sex; take none of them seriously— Not

whore nor hermit, neither Paul nor Freud.

Love—and your lips, her breasts will change mysteriously

Into Themselves, the Suchness and the Void."

The door of the temple swung open. A smell of incense

min gled with the ambient onions and fried fish. An old

woman emerged and very cautiously lowered her unsteady

weight from stair to stair.

"Who were Paul and Freud?" Mary Sarojini asked as they

moved away.

Will began with a brief account of Original Sin and the

Scheme of Redemption. The child heard him out with

concentrated attention.

"No wonder the song says, Don't take them seriously,"

she-concluded.

"After which," said Will, "we come to Dr. Freud and the

Oedipus Complex."

"Oedipus?" Mary Sarojini repeated. "But that's the name

of a marionette show. I saw it last week, and they're giving it

again tonight. Would you like to see it? It's nice."

"Nice?" he repeated. "Nice? Even when the old lady turns

out to be his mother and hangs herself? Even when Oedipus

puts out his eyes?"

"But he doesn't put out his eyes," said Mary Sarojini.

"He does where /hail from."

"Not here. He only says he's going to put out his eyes, and

she only tries to hang herself. They're talked out of it."

"Who by?"

"The boy and girl from Pala."

"How do they get into the act?" Will asked.

"I don't know. They're just there. 'Oedipus in Pala'—that's

what the play is called. So why shouldn't they be there?"

"And you say they talk Jocasta out of suicide and Oedipus

out of blinding himself?"

"Just in the nick of time. She's slipped the rope round her

neck and he's got hold of two huge pins. But the boy and girl

from Pala tell them not to be silly. After all, it was an

accident. He didn't know that the old man was his father.

And anyhow the old man began it, hit him over the head, and

that made Oedipus lose his temper—and nobody had ever

taught him to dance the Rakshasi Hornpipe. And when they

made him a king, he had to marry the old queen. She was

257

really his mother; but neither of them knew it. And of course

all they had to do when they did find out was just to stop

being married. That stuff about marrying his mother being

the reason why everybody had to die of a virus—all that was

just nonsense, just made up by a lot of poor stupid people

who didn't know any better."

"Dr. Freud thought that all little boys really want to marry

their mothers and kill their fathers. And the other way round

for little girls—they want to marry their fathers."

"Which fathers and mothers?" Mary Sarojini asked. "We

have such a lot of them."

"You mean, in your Mutual Adoption Club?"

"There's twenty-two of them in our MAC."

"Safety in numbers!"

"But of course poor old Oedipus never had an MAC. And

besides they'd taught him all that horrible stuff about God

getting furious with people every time they made a mistake."

They had pushed their way through the crowd and now

found themselves at the entrance to a small roped-off

enclosure, in which a hundred or more spectators had already

taken their seats. At the further end of the enclosure the gaily

painted proscenium of a puppet theater glowed red and gold

in the light of powerful flood lamps. Pulling out a handful of

the small change with which Dr. Robert had provided him,

Will paid for two tickets. They entered and sat down on a

bench.

A gong sounded, the curtain of the little proscenium

noiselessly rose and there, white pillars on a pea-green

ground, was the facade of the royal palace of Thebes with a

much-whiskered divinity sitting in a cloud above the

pediment. A priest exactly like the god, except that he was

somewhat smaller and less exuberantly draped, entered from

the right, bowed to the audience, then turned towards the

palace and shouted "Oedipus" in piping tones that seemed

comically incongruous with his prophetic beard. To a

flourish of trumpets the door swung open and, crowned and

heroically buskined, the king appeared. The priest made

obeisance, the royal puppet gave him leave to speak.

"Give ear to our afflictions," the old man piped. The king

cocked his head and listened.

"I hear the groans of dying men," he said. "I hear the

shriek of widows, the sobbing of the motherless, the

258

mutterings of prayer and supplication."

"Supplication!" said the deity in the clouds. "That's the

spirit." He patted himself on the chest.

"They had some kind of a virus," Mary Sarojini explained

in a whisper. "Like Asian flu, only a lot worse."

"We repeat the appropriate litanies," the old priest queru-

lously piped, "we offer the most expensive sacrifices, we

have the whole population living in chastity and flagellating

itself every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. But the flood

of death spreads ever more widely, rises higher and ever

higher. So help us, King Oedipus, help us."

"Only a god can help."

"Hear, hear!" shouted the presiding deity.

"But by what means?"

"Only a god can say."

"Correct," said the god in his basso profundo, "absolutely

correct."

"Creon, my wife's brother, has gone to consult the oracle.

When he returns—as very soon he must—we shall know

what heaven advises."

"What heaven bloody well commands!" the basso

profundo emended.

"Were people really so silly?" Mary Sarojini asked, as the

audience laughed.

"Really and truly," Will assured her.

A phonograph started to play the Dead March in Saul.

From left to right a black-robed procession of mourners

carrying sheeted biers passed slowly across the front of the

stage. Puppet after puppet—and as soon as the group had

disappeared on the right it would be brought in again from

the left. The procession seemed endless, the corpses

innumerable.

"Dead," said Oedipus as he watched them pass. "And

another dead. And yet another, another."

"That'll teach them!" the basso profundo broke in. "I'll

learn you to be a toad!"

Oedipus continued:

"The soldier's bier, the whore's; the babe stone-cold

Pressed to the ache of unsucked breasts; the youth in horror

Turning away from the black swollen face That from his

moonlit pillow once looked up, Eager for kisses. Dead, all

dead, Mourned by the soon to die and by the doomed Borne

259

with reluctant footing to the abhorred Garden of cypresses

where one huge pit Yawns to receive them, stinking to the

moon."

While he was speaking, two new puppets, a boy and a girl

in the gayest of Palanese finery, entered from the right and,

moving in the opposite direction to the black-robed

mourners, took their stand, arm in arm, downstage and a

little left of center.

"But we, meanwhile," said the boy when Oedipus had fin

ished:

"Are bound for rosier gardens and the absurd Apocalyptic

rite that in the mind Calls forth from the touched skin and

melting flesh The immanent Infinite."

"What about Me?" the basso profundo rumbled from the

welkin. "You seem to forget that I'm Wholly Other."

Endlessly the black procession to the cemetery still

shuffled on. But now the Dead March was interrupted in

mid-phrase. Music gave place to a single deep note—tuba

and double bass— prolonged interminably. The boy in the

foreground held up his hand.

"Listen! The drone, the everlasting burden."

In unison with the unseen instruments the mourners began

to chant. "Death, death, death, death ..."

"But life knows more than one note," said the boy.

"Life," the girl chimed in, "can sing both high and low."

"And your unceasing drone of death serves only to make a

richer music."

"A richer music," the girl repeated.

And with that, tenor and treble, they started to vocalize a

wandering arabesque of sound wreathed, as it were, about

the long rigid shaft of the ground bass.

The drone and the singing diminished gradually into

silence; the last of the mourners disappeared and the boy and

girl in the foreground retired to a corner where they could go

on with their kissing undisturbed.

There was another flourish of trumpets and, obese in a

purple tunic, in came Creon, fresh from Delphi and primed

with oracles. For the next few minutes the dialogue was all

in Palanese, and Mary Sarojini had to act as interpreter.

"Oedipus asks him what God said; and the other one says

that what God said was that it was all because of some man

having killed the old king, the one before Oedipus. Nobody

260

had ever caught him, and the man was still living in Thebes,

and this virus that was killing everybody had been sent by

God—that's what ( scon says he was told—as a punishment.

I don't know why all these people who hadn't done anything

to anybody had to be punished; but that's what he says God

said. And the virus won't stop till they catch the man that

killed the old king and send him away from Thebes. And of

course Oedipus says he's going to do everything he can to

find the man and get rid of him."

From his downstage corner the boy began to declaim, this

rime in English:

"God, most Himself when most sublimely vague,

Talks, when His talk is plain, the ungodliest bosh. Repent,

He roars, for Sin has caused the plague. But we say 'Dirt—so

wash.' "

While the audience was still laughing, another group of

mourners emerged from the wings and slowly crossed the

stage.

"Karuna," said the girl in the foreground, "compassion.

The suffering of the stupid is as real as any other suffering."

Feeling a touch on his arm, Will turned and found himself

looking into the beautiful sulky face of young Murugan.

"I've been hunting for you everywhere," he said angrily,

as though Will had concealed himself on purpose just to

annoy him. He spoke so loudly that many heads were turned

and there were calls for quiet.

"You weren't at Dr. Robert's, you weren't at Susila's," the

boy nagged on, regardless of the protests.

"Quiet, quiet ..."

"Quiet!" came a tremendous shout from Basso Profundo

in the clouds. "Things have come to a pretty pass," the voice

added grumblingly, "when God simply can't hear Himself

speak."

"Hear, hear," said Will, joining in the general laughter.

He-rose and, followed by Murugan and Mary Sarojini,

hobbled towards the exit.

"Didn't you want to see the end?" Mary Sarojini asked,

and turning to Murugan, "You really might have waited," she

said in a tone of reproof.

"Mind your own business!" Murugan snapped.

261

Will laid a hand on the child's shoulder. "Luckily," he

said, "your account of the end was so vivid that I don't have

to see ii with my own eyes. And of course," he added

ironically, "His Highness must always come first."

Murugan pulled an envelope out of the pocket of those

white-silk pajamas which had so bedazzled the little nurse

and handed it to Will. "From my mother." And he added,

"It's urgent."

"How good it smells!" Mary Sarojini commented, sniffing

at the rich arua of sandalwood that surrounded the Rani's

missive.

Will unfolded three sheets of heaven-blue notepaper em

bossed with five golden lotuses under a princely crown. How

many underlinings, what a profusion of capital letters! He

started to read.

Ma Petite Voix, cher Farnaby, avait raison—AS usual! I

had been told again and again what Our Mutual Friend was

predestined to do for poor little Pala and (through the finan-

cial support which Pala will permit him to contribute to the

Crusade of the Spirit) for the whole world. So when I read

his cable (which arrived a few minutes ago, by way of the

faithful Bahu and his diplomatic colleague in London), it

came as no surprise to learn that Lord A. has given you Full

Powers (and, it goes without saying, the wherewithal) to

negotiate on his behalf—on our behalf; for his advantage is

also yours, mine and (since in our different ways we are all

Crusaders) the spirit's!!

But the arrival of Lord A.'s cable is not the only piece of

news I have to report. Events (as we learned this afternoon

from Bahu) are rushing towards the Great Turning Point of

Palanese History—rushing far more rapidly than I had previ-

ously thought to be possible. For reasons which are partly

political (the need to offset a recent decline in Colonel D.'s

popularity), partly Economic (the burdens of Defense are too

onerous to be borne by Rendang alone) and partly Astrolog-

ical (these days, say the Experts, are uniquely favorable for a

joint venture by Rams—myself and Murugan—and that typi-

cal Scorpion, Colonel D.) it has been decided to precipitate

an Action originally planned for the night of the lunar eclipse

next November. This being so, it is essential that the three of

us here should meet without delay to decide what must be

262

Done, in these new and swiftly changing Circumstances, to

promote our special interests, material and Spiritual. The

so-called "Accident" which brought you to our shores at this

most critical Moment of Time was, as you must recognize,

Manifestly Providential. It remains for us to collaborate, as

dedicated Crusaders, with that divine power which has so

unequivocally espoused our Cause. So come at once! Muru-

gan has the motorcar and will bring you to our modest Bun-

galow, where, I assure you, my dear Farnaby, you will

receive a very warm welcome from bien sincerement votre,

Fatima R.

Will folded up the three odorous sheets of scrawled blue

paper and replaced them in their envelope. His face was

expressionless; but behind this mask of indifference he was

violently angry. Angry with this ill-mannered boy before

him, so ravishing in his white silk pajamas, so odious in his

spoiled silliness. Angry, as he caught another whiff of the

letter, with that grotesque monster of a woman, who had

begun by ruining her son, in the name of mother love and

chastity, and was now egging him on, in the name of God

and an assortment of Ascended Masters, to become a

bomb-dropping spiritual crusader under the oily ban ner of

Joe Aldehyde. Angry, above all, with himself for having so

wantonly become involved with this ludicrously sinister

couple, in heaven only knew what kind of a vile plot against

all the human decencies that his refusal to take yes for an

answer had never prevented him from secretly believing in

and (how passionately! ) longing for.

"Well, shall we go?" said Murugan in a tone of airy confi-

dence. He was evidently assuming as axiomatic that, when

Fatima R. issued a command, obedience must necessarily be

complete and unhesitating.

Feeling the need to give himself a little more time to cool

off, Will made no immediate answer. Instead, he turned

away to look at the now distant puppets. Jocasta, Oedipus

and Creon were sitting on the palace steps, waiting,

presumably, for the arrival of Tiresias. Overhead, Basso

Profundo was momentarily napping. A party of black-robed

mourners was crossing the stage. Near the footlights the boy

from Pala had begun to declaim in blank verse :

"Light and Compassion," he was saying, "Light and

263

Compassion—how unutterably Simple our Substance! But

the Simple waited, Age after age, for intricacies sufficient To

know their One in multitude, their Everything Here, now,

their Fact in fiction; waited and still Waits on the absurd, on

incommensurables Seamlessly interwoven—oestrin with

Charity, truth with kidney function, beauty With chyle, bile,

sperm, and God with dinner, God With dinner's absence or

the sound of bells Suddenly—one, two, three—in sleepless

ears."

There was a ripple of plucked strings, then the long-drawn

notes of a flute.

"Shall we go?" Murugan repeated.

But Will held up his hand for silence. The girl puppet had

moved to the center of the stage and was singing:

"Thought is the brain's three milliards Of cells from the

inside out. Billions of games of billiards Marked up as Faith

and Doubt.

"My Faith, but their collisions; My logic, their enzymes;

Their pink epinephrin, my visions; Their white epinephrin,

my crimes.

"Since I am the felt arrangement Often to the ninth times

three, Each atom in its estrangement Must yet be prophetic

of me."

Losing all patience, Murugan caught hold of Will's arm

and gave him a savage pinch. "Are you coming?" he shouted.

Will turned on him angrily. "What the devil do you think

you're doing, you little fool?" He jerked his arm out of the

boy's grasp.

Intimidated, Murugan changed his tone. "I just wanted to

know if you were ready to come to my mother's."

"I'm not ready," Will answered, "because I'm not going."

"Not going?" Murugan cried in a tone of incredulous

amazement. "But she expects you, she . . ."

"Tell your mother I'm very sorry, but I have a prior

engagement. With someone who's dying," Will added.

"But this is frightfully important."

"So is dying."

Murugan lowered his voice. "Something's happening," he

whispered.

264

"I can't hear you," Will shouted through the confused

noises of the crowd.

Murugan glanced about him apprehensively, then risked a

somewhat

louder

whisper.

"Something's

happening,

something tremendous."

"Something even more tremendous is happening at the

hos pital."

"We just heard . . ." Murugan began. He looked around

again, then shook his head. "No, I can't tell you—not here.

That's why you must come to the bungalow. Now. There's no

time to lose."

Will glanced at his watch. "No time to lose," he echoed

and, turning to Mary Sarojini, "We must get going," he said.

"Which way?"

"I'll show you," she said, and they set offhand in hand.

"Wait," Murugan implored, "wait!" Then, as Will and

Mary Sarojini held on their course, he came dodging through

the crowd in pursuit. "What shall I tell her?" he wailed at

their heels.

The boy's terror was comically abject. In Will's mind

anger gave place to amusement. He laughed aloud. Then,

halting, "What would you tell her, Mary Sarojini?" he asked.

"I'd tell her exactly what happened," said the child. "I

mean, if it was my mother. But then," she added on second

thought, "my mother isn't the Rani." She looked up at

Murugan. "Do you belong to an MAC?" she enquired.

Of course he didn't. For the Rani the very idea of a

Mutual Adoption Club was a blasphemy. Only God could

make a Mother. The Spiritual Crusader wanted to be alone

with her God-given victim.

"No MAC." Mary Sarojini shook her head. "That's awful!

You might have gone and stayed for a few days with one

of your other mothers."

Still terrified by the prospect of having to tell his only

mother about the failure of his mission, Murugan began to

harp almost hysterically on a new variant of the old theme. "I

don't know what she'll say," he kept repeating. "I don't know

what she'll say."

"There's only one way to find out what she'll say," Will

told him. "Go home and listen."

"Come with me," Murugan begged. "Please." He clutched

at Will's arm.

265

"I told you not to touch me." The clutching hand was

hastily withdrawn. Will smiled again. "That's better!" He

raised his staff in a farewell gesture. "Bonne nuit, Altesse."

Then to Mary Sarojini, "Lead on, MacPhail," he said in high

good humor.

"Were you putting it on?" Mary Sarojini asked. "Or were

you really angry?"

"Really and truly," he assured her. Then he remembered

what he had seen in the school gymnasium. He hummed the

opening notes of the Rakshasi Hornpipe and banged the

pavement with his ironshod staff.

"Ought I to have stamped it out?"

"Maybe it would have been better."

"You think so?"

"He's going to hate you as soon as he's stopped being

frightened."

Will shrugged his shoulders. He couldn't care less. But as

the past receded and the future approached, as they left the

arc lamps of the marketplace and climbed the steep dark

street that wound uphill to the hospital, his mood began to

change. Lead on, MacPhail—but towards what, and away

from what? Towards yet another manifestation of the

Essential Horror and away from all hope of that blessed year

of freedom which Joe Aldehyde had promised and that it

would be so easy and (since Pala was doomed in any event)

not so immoral or treacherous to earn, And not only away

from the hope of freedom; away quite possi bly, if the Rani

complained to Joe and if Joe became sufficiently indignant,

from any further prospects of well-paid slavery as a

professional execution watcher. Should he turn back, should

he try to find Murugan, offer apologies, do whatever that

dreadful woman ordered him to do? A hundred yards up the

road, the lights of the hospital could be seen shining between

the trees.

"Let's rest for a moment," he said.

"Are you tired?" Mary Sarojini enquired solicitously.

"A little."

He turned and, leaning on his staff, looked down at the

market place. In the light of the arc lamps the town hall

glowed pink, like a monumental serving of raspberry

sherbet. On the temple spire he could see, frieze above

frieze, the exuberant chaos of Indie sculpture—elephants and

266

Bodhisattvas, demons, supernat ural girls with breasts and

enormous bottoms, capering Shivas, rows of past and future

Buddhas in quiet ecstasy. Below, in the space between

sherbet and mythology, seethed the crowd, and somewhere

in that crowd was a sulky face and a pair of white satin

pajamas. Should he go back? It would be the sensible, the

safe, the prudent thing to do. But an inner voice—not little,

like the Rani's, but stentorian—shouted, "Squalid! Squalid!"

Con science? No. Morality? Heaven forbid! But

supererogatory squalor, ugliness and vulgarity beyond the

call of duty—these were things which, as a man of taste, one

simply couldn't be a party to.

"Well, shall we go on?" he said to Mary Sarojini.

They entered the lobby of the hospital. The nurse at the

desk had a message for them from Susila. Mary Sarojini was

to go directly to Mrs. Rao's, where she and Tom Krishna

would spend the night. Mr. Farnaby was to be asked to come

at once to Room 34.

"This way," said the nurse, and held open a swing door.

Will stepped forward. The conditioned reflex of

politeness clicked automatically into action. "Thank you," he

said, and smiled. But it was with a dull, sick feeling in the pit

of the stomach that he went hobbling towards the

apprehended future.

"The last door on the left," said the nurse. But now she

had to get back to her desk in the lobby. "So I'll leave you to

go on alone," she added as the door closed behind her.

Alone, he repeated to himself, alone—and the

apprehended future was identical with the haunting past, the

Essential Horror was timeless and ubiquitous. This long

corridor with its green-painted walls was the very same

corridor along which, a year ago, he had walked to the little

room where Molly lay dying. The nightmare was recurrent.

Foredoomed and conscious, he moved on towards its

horrible consummation. Death, yet another vision of death.

Thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four . . . He knocked and

waited, listening to the beating of his heart. The door opened

and he found himself face to face with little Radha.

"Susila was expecting you," she whispered.

Will followed her into the room. Rounding a screen, he

caught a glimpse of Susila's profile silhouetted against a

lamp, of a high bed, of a dark emaciated face on the pillow,

267

of arms that were no more than parchment-covered bones, of

clawlike hands. Once again the Essential Horror. With a

shudder he turned away. Radha motioned him to a chair near

the open window. He sat down and closed his eyes—closed

them physically against the present, but, by that very act,

opened them inwardly upon that hateful past of which the

present had reminded him. He was there in that other room,

with Aunt Mary. Or rather with the person who had once

been Aunt Mary, but was now this hardly recognizable

somebody else—somebody who had never so much as heard

of the charity and courage which had been the very essence

of Aunt Mary's being; somebody who was filled with an

indiscriminate hatred for all who came near her, loathing

them, whoever they might be, simply because they didn't

have cancer, because they weren't in pain, had not been

sentenced to die before their time. And along with this

malignant envy of other people's health and happiness had

gone a bitterly queru lous self-pity, an abject despair.

"Why to me? Why should this thing have happened to

me?"

He could hear the shrill complaining voice, could see that

tearstained and distorted face. The only person he had ever

really loved or wholeheartedly admired. And yet, in her

degrada

tion,

he

had

caught

himself

despising

her—despising,

positively

hating.

To escape from the past, he reopened his eyes. Radha, he

saw, was sitting on the floor, cross-legged and upright, in the

posture of meditation. In her chair beside the bed Susila

seemed to beholding the same kind of focused stillness. He

looked at the face on the pillow. That too was still, still with

a serenity that might almost have been the frozen calm of

death. Outside, in the leafy darkness, a peacock suddenly

screamed. Deepened by contrast, the ensuing silence seemed

to grow pregnant with mysterious and appalling meanings.

"Lakshmi." Susila laid a hand on the old woman's wasted

arm. "Lakshmi," she said again more loudly. The death-calm

face remained impassive. "You mustn't go to sleep."

Not go to sleep? But for Aunt Mary, sleep—the artificial

sleep that followed the injections—had been the only respite

from the self-lacerations of self-pity and brooding fear.

"Lakshmi!"

The face came to life.

268

"I wasn't really asleep," the old woman whispered. "It's

just my being so weak. I seem to float away."

"But you've got to be here," said Susila. "You've got to

know you're here. All the time." She slipped an additional

pillow under the sick woman's shoulders and reached for a

bottle of smelling salts that stood on the bed table.

Lakshmi sniffed, opened her eyes, and looked up into

Susila's face. "I'd forgotten how beautiful you were," she

said. "But then Dugald always did have good taste." The

ghost of a mischievous smile appeared for a moment on the

fleshless face. "What do you think, Susila?" she added after a

moment and in another tone. "Shall we see him again? I

mean, over there?"

In silence Susila stroked the old woman's hand. Then,

suddenly smiling, "How would the Old Raja have asked that

question?" she said. "Do you think 'we' (quote, unquote)

shall see 'him' (quote, unquote) 'over there' (quote, unquote)

?"

"But what do you think?"

"I think we've all come out of the same light, and we're all

going back into the same light."

Words, Will was thinking, words, words, words. With an

effort, Lakshmi lifted a hand and pointed accusingly at the

lamp on the bed table.

"It glares in my eyes," she whispered.

Susila untied the red silk handkerchief knotted around her

throat and draped it over the lamp's parchment shade. From

white and mercilessly revealing, the light became as dimly,

warmly rosy as the flush, Will found himself thinking, on

Babs's rumpled bed, whenever Porter's Gin proclaimed itself

in crimson.

"That's much better," said Lakshmi. She shut her eyes.

Then, after a long silence, "The light," she broke out, "the

light. It's here again." Then after another pause, "Oh, how

wonderful," she whispered at last, "how wonderful!"

Suddenly she winced and bit her lip.

Susila took the old woman's hand in both of hers. "Is the

pain bad?" she asked.

"It would be bad," Lakshmi explained, "if it were really

my pain. But somehow it isn't. The pain's here; but I'm

somewhere else. It's like what you discover with the

moksha-medicine. Nothing really belongs to you. Not even

269

your pain."

"Is the light still there?"

Lakshmi shook her head. "And looking back, I can tell

you exactly when it went away. It went away when I started

talking about the pain not being really mine."

"And yet what you were saying was good."

"I know—but I was saying it." The ghost of an old habit

of irreverent mischief flitted once again across Lakshmi's

face.

"What are you thinking of?" Susila asked.

"Socrates."

"Socrates?"

"Gibber, gibber, gibber—even when he'd actually

swallowed the stuff. Don't let me talk, Susila. Help me to get

out of my own light."

"Do you remember that time last year," Susila began after

a silence, "when we all went up to the old Shiva temple

above the High Altitude Station? You and Robert and

Dugald and me and the two children—do you remember?"

Lakshmi smiled with pleasure at the recollection.

"I'm thinking specially of that view from the west side of

the temple—the view out over the sea. Blue, green,

purple—and the shadows of the clouds were like ink. And

the clouds themselves—snow, lead, charcoal, satin. And

while we were looking, you asked a question. Do you

remember, Lakshmi?"

"You mean, about the Clear Light?"

"About the Clear Light," Susila confirmed. "Why do

people speak of Mind in terms of Light? Is it because they've

seen the sunshine and found it so beautiful that it seems only

natural to identify the Buddha Nature with the clearest of all

possible Clear Lights? Or do they find the sunshine beautiful

because, consciously or unconsciously, they've been having

revelations of Mind in the form of Light ever since they were

born? I was the first to answer," said Susila, smiling to

herself. "And as I'd just been reading something by some

American behaviorist, I didn't stop to think—I just gave you

the (quote, unquote) 'scientific point of view.' People equate

Mind (whatever that may be) with hallucinations of light,

because they've looked at a lot of sunsets and found them

very impressive. But Robert and Dugald would have none of

it. The Clear Light, they insisted, comes first. You go mad

270

about sunsets because sunsets remind you of what's always

been going on, whether you knew it or not, inside your skull

and outside space and time. You agreed with them, Lak-

shmi—do you remember? You said, 'I'd like to be on your

side, Susila, if only because it isn't good for these men of

ours to be right all the time. But in this case—surely it's

pretty obvious—in this case they are right.' Of course they

were right, and of course I was hopelessly wrong. And,

needless to say, you had known the right answer before you

asked the question."

"I never knew anything," Lakshmi whispered. "I could

only see.'"

"I remember your telling me about seeing the Clear

Light," said Susila. "Would you like me to remind you of it?"

The sick woman nodded her head.

"When you were eight years old," said Susila. "That was

the first time. An orange butterfly on a leaf, opening and

shutting its wings in the sunshine—and suddenly there was

the Clear Light of pure Suchness blazing through it, like

another sun."

"Much brighter than the sun," Lakshmi whispered.

"But much gentler. You can look into the Clear Light and

not be blinded. And now remember it. A butterfly on a green

leaf, opening and shutting its wings—and it's the Buddha

Nature totally present, it's the Clear Light outshining the sun.

And you were only eight years old."

"What had I done to deserve it?"

Will found himself remembering that evening, a week or

so before her death, when Aunt Mary had talked about the

wonderful times they had had together in her little Regency

house near Arundel where he had spent the better part of all

his holidays. Smoking out the wasps' nests with fire and

brimstone, having picnics on the downs or under the

beeches. And then the sausage rolls at Bognor, the gypsy

fortuneteller who had proph esied that he would end up as

Chancellor of the Exchequer, the black-robed, red-nosed

verger who had chased them out of Chichester Cathedral

because they had laughed too much. "Laughed too much,"

Aunt Mary had repeated bitterly. "Laughed too much ..."

"And now," Susila was saying, "think of that view from

the Shiva temple. Think of those lights and shadows on the

sea, those blue spaces between the clouds. Think of them,

271

and then let go of your thinking. Let go of it, so that the

not-Thought can come through. Things into Emptiness.

Emptiness into Suchness. Suchness into things again, into

your own mind. Remember what it says in the Sutra. 'Your

own consciousness shining, void, inseparable from the great

Body of Radiance, is subject neither to birth nor death, but is

the same as the immutable Light, Bud dha Amitabha.' "

"The same as the light," Lakshmi repeated. "And yet it's

all dark again."

"It's dark because you're trying too hard," said Susila.

"Dark because you want it to be light. Remember what you

used to tell me when I was a little girl. 'Lightly, child, lightly.

You've got to learn to do everything lightly. Think lightly,

act lightly, feel lightly. Yes, feel lightly, even though you're

feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope

with them.' I was so preposterously serious in those days,

such a humorless little prig. Lightly, lightly—it was the best

advice ever given me. Well, now I'm going to say the same

thing to you, Lakshmi . . . Lightly, my darling, lightly. Even

when it comes to dying. Nothing ponderous, or portentous,

or emphatic. No rhetoric, no tremolos, no self-conscious

persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or

Goethe or Little Nell. And, of course, no theology, no

metaphysics. Just the fact of dying and the fact of the Clear

Light. So throw away all your baggage and go forward.

There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet,

trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair.

That's why you must walk so lightly. Lightly, my darling. On

tiptoes; and no luggage, not even a sponge bag. Completely

unencumbered."

Completely unencumbered . . . Will thought of poor Aunt

Mary sinking deeper and deeper with every step into the

quicksands. Deeper and deeper until, struggling and

protesting to the last, she had gone down, completely and

forever, into the Essential Horror. He looked again at the

fleshless face on the pillow and saw that it was smiling.

"The Light," came the hoarse whisper, "the Clear Light.

It's here—along with the pain, in spite of the pain."

"And where are youV Susila asked.

"Over there, in the corner." Lakshmi tried to point, but the

raised hand faltered and fell back, inert, on the coverlet. "I

can see myself there. And she can see my body on the bed."

272

"Can she see the Light?"

"No. The Light's here, where my body is."

The door of the sickroom was quietly opened. Will turned

his head and was in time to see Dr. Robert's small spare

figure emerging from behind the screen into the rosy

twilight.

Susila rose and motioned him to her place beside the bed.

Dr. Robert sat down and, leaning forward, took his wife's

hand in one of his and laid the other on her forehead.

"It's me," he whispered.

"At last. . ."

A tree, he explained, had fallen across the telephone line.

No communication with the High Altitude Station except by

road. They had sent a messenger in a car, and the car had

broken down. More than two hours had been lost. "But thank

goodness," Dr. Robert concluded, "here I finally am."

The dying woman sighed profoundly, opened her eyes for

a moment and looked up at him with a smile, then closed

them again. "I knew you'd come."

"Lakshmi," he said very softly. "Lakshmi." He drew the

tips of his fingers across the wrinkled forehead, again and

again. "My little love." There were tears on his cheeks; but

his voice was firm and he spoke with the tenderness not of

weakness, but of power.

"I'm not over there any more," Lakshmi whispered.

"She was over there in the corner," Susila explained to her

father-in-law. "Looking at her body here on the bed."

"But now I've come back. Me and the pain, me and the

Light, me and you—all together."

The peacock screamed again and, through the insect

noises that in this tropical night were the equivalent of

silence, far off but clear came the sound of gay music, flutes

and plucked strings and the steady throbbing of drums.

"Listen," said Dr. Robert. "Can you hear it? They're danc-

ing."

"Dancing," Lakshmi repeated. "Dancing."

"Dancing so lightly," Susila whispered. "As though they

had wings."

The music swelled up again into audibility.

"It's the Courting Dance," Susila went on.

"The Courting Dance. Robert, do you remember?"

"Could I ever forget?"

273

Yes, Will said to himself, could one ever forget? Could

one ever forget that other distant music and, nearby,

unnaturally quick and shallow, the sound of dying breath in a

boy's ears? In the house across the street somebody was

practicing one of those Brahms Waltzes that Aunt Mary had

loved to play. One-two and three and One-two and three and

O-o-o-ne two three, One- and One and Two-Three and One

and . . . The odious stranger who had once been Aunt Mary

stirred out of her artificial stupor and opened her eyes. An

expression of the most intense malignity had appeared on the

yellow, wasted face. "Go and tell them to stop," the harsh,

unrecognizable voice had almost screamed. And then the

lines of malignity had changed into the lines of despair, and

the stranger, the pitiable odious stranger started to sob

uncontrollably. Those Brahms Waltzes—they were the

pieces, out of all her repertory, that Frank had loved best.

Another gust of cool air brought with it a louder strain of

the

gay, bright music.

"All those young people dancing together," said Dr.

Robert. "All that laughter and desire, all that uncomplicated

happiness! It's all here, like an atmosphere, like a field of

force. Their joy and our love—Susila's love, my love—all

working together, all reinforcing one another. Love and joy

enveloping you, my darling; love and joy carrying you up

into the peace of the Clear Light. Listen to the music. Can

you still hear it, Lakshmi?"

"She's drifted away again," said Susila. "Try to bring her

back."

Dr. Robert slipped an arm under the emaciated body and

lifted it into a sitting posture. The head drooped sideways

onto

his shoulder.

"My little love," he kept whispering. "My little love . . ."

Her eyelids fluttered open for a moment. "Brighter," came

the barely audible whisper, "brighter." And a smile of

happiness intense almost to the point of elation transfigured

her face.

Through his tears Dr. Robert smiled back at her. "So now

you can let go, my darling." He stroked her gray hair. "Now

you can let go. Let go," he insisted. "Let go of this poor old

body. You don't need it any more. Let it fall away from you.

274

Leave it lying here like a pile of worn-out clothes."

In the fleshless face the mouth had fallen carvernously

open, and suddenly the breathing became stertorous.

"My love, my little love . . ." Dr. Robert held her more

closely. "Let go now, let go. Leave it here, your old worn-out

body, and go on. Go on, my darling, go on into the Light,

into the peace, into the living peace of the Clear Light ..."

Susila picked up one of the limp hands and kissed it, then

turned to little Radha.

"Time to go," she whispered, touching the girl's shoulder.

Interrupted in her meditation, Radha opened her eyes, not)

ded and, scrambling to her feet, tiptoed silently towards the

door. Susila beckoned to Will and, together, they followed

her. In silence the three of them walked along the corridor.

At the swing door Radha took her leave.

"Thank you for letting me be with you," she whispered.

Susila kissed her. "Thank you for helping to make it

easier for Lakshmi."

Will followed Susila across the lobby and out into the

warm odorous darkness. In silence they started to walk

downhill towards the marketplace.

"And now," he said at last, speaking under a strange

compul sion to deny his emotion in a display of the cheapest

kind of cynicism, "I suppose she's trotting off to do a little

maithunn with her boy friend."

"As a matter of fact," said Susila calmly, "she's on night

duty. But if she weren't, what would be the objection to her

going on from the yoga of death to the yoga of love?"

Will did not answer immediately. He was thinking of

what had happened between himself and Babs on the

evening of Molly's funeral. The yoga of antilove, the yoga of

resented addiction, of lust and the self-loathing that

reinforces the self and makes it yet more loathsome.

"I'm sorry I tried to be unpleasant," he said at last.

"It's your father's ghost. We'll have to see if we can exor-

cise it."

They had crossed the marketplace and now, at the end of

the short street that led out of the village, they had come to

the open space where the jeep was parked. As Susila turned

the car onto the highway, the beam of their headlamps swept

across a small green car that was turning downhill into the

bypass.

275

"Don't I recognize the royal Baby Austin?"

"You do," said Susila, and wondered where the Rani and

Murugan could be going at this time of night.

"They're up to no good," Will guessed. And on a sudden

impulse he told Susila of his roving commission from Joe

Aldehyde, his dealings with the Queen Mother and Mr.

Bahu.

"You'd be justified in deporting me tomorrow," he con-

cluded.

"Not now that you've changed your mind," she assured

him. "And anyhow nothing you did could have affected the

real issue. Our enemy is oil in general. Whether we're

exploited by Southeast Asia Petroleum or Standard of

California makes no difference."

"Did you know that Murugan and the Rani were

conspiring

against you?"

"They make no secret of it."

"Then why don't you get rid of them?"

"Because they would be brought back immediately by

Colonel Dipa. The Rani is a princess of Rendang. If we

expelled her, it would be a casus belli."

"So what can you do?"

"Try to keep them in order, try to change their minds,

hope for a happy outcome, and be prepared for the worst."

"And what will you do if the worst happens?"

"Try to make the best of it, I suppose. Even in the worst

society an individual retains a little freedom. One perceives

in private, one remembers and imagines in private, one loves

in private, and one dies in private—even under Colonel

Dipa." Then after a silence, "Did Dr. Robert say you could

have the moksha-medicine?" she asked. And when Will

nodded, "Would you like to try it?"

"Now?"

"Now. That is, if you don't mind being up all night with

it."

"I'd like nothing better."

"You may find that you never liked anything worse,"

Susila warned him. "The moksha-medicine can take you to

heaven; but it can also take you to hell. Or else to both,

together or alternately. Or else (if you're lucky, or if you've

made yourself ready) beyond either of them. And then

276

beyond the beyond, back to where you started from—back to

here, back to New Rotham sted, back to business as usual.

Only now, of course, business as usual is completely

different."

277

15

One, two, three, four ... the clock in the kitchen struck

twelve. How irrelevantly, seeing that time had ceased to

exist! The absurd, importunate bell had sounded at the heart

of a timelessly present Event, of a Now that changed

incessantly in a dimension, not of seconds and minutes, but

of beauty, of significance, of intensity, of deepening mystery.

"Luminous bliss." From the shallows of his mind the

words rose like bubbles, came to the surface, and vanished

into the infinite spaces of living light that now pulsed and

breathed behind his closed eyelids. "Luminous bliss." That

was as near as one could come to it. But it—this timeless and

yet ever-changing Event—was something that words could

only caricature and diminish, never convey. It was not only

bliss, it was also understanding. Understanding of

everything, but without knowledge of anything. Knowledge

involved a knower and all the infinite diversity of known and

knowable things. But here, behind his closed lids, there was

neither spectacle nor spectator. There was only this

experienced fact of being blissfully one with Oneness.

In a succession of revelations, the light grew brighter, the

understanding deepened, the bliss became more impossibly,

more unbearably intense. "Dear God!" he said to himself.

"Oh, my dear God." Then, out of another world, he heard the

sound of Susila's voice.

"Do you feel like telling me what's happening?"

It was a long time before Will answered her. Speaking

was difficult. Not because there was any physical

impediment. It was just that speech seemed so fatuous, so

totally pointless. "Light," he whispered at last.

"And you're there, looking at the light?"

"Not looking at it," he answered, after a long reflective

pause. "Being it. Being it," he repeated emphatically.

278

Its presence was his absence. William Asquith

Farnaby—ultimately and essentially there was no such

person. Ultimately and essentially there was only a luminous

bliss, only a knowledgeless understanding, only union with

unity in a limitless, undifferenti-ated awareness. This,

self-evidently, was the mind's natural state. But no less

certainly there had also been that professional execution

watcher, that self-loathing Babs addict; there were also three

thousand millions of insulated consciousnesses, each at the

center of a nightmare world, in which it was impossible for

anyone with eyes in his head or a grain of honesty to take yes

for an answer. By what sinister miracle had the mind's

natural state been transformed into all these Devil's Islands

of wretchedness and delinquency?

In the firmament of bliss and understanding, like bats

against the sunset, there was a wild crisscrossing of

remembered notions and the hangovers of past feelings.

Bat-thoughts of Plotinus and the Gnostics, of the One and its

emanations, down, down into thickening horror. And then

bat-feelings of anger and disgust as the thickening horrors

became specific memories of what the essentially

nonexistent William Asquith Farnaby had seen and done,

inflicted and suffered.

But behind and around and somehow even within those

flickering memories was the firmament of bliss and peace

and understanding. There might be a few bats in the sunset

sky; but the fact remained that the dreadful miracle of

creation had been reversed. From a preternaturally wretched

and delinquent self he had been unmade into pure mind,

mind in its natural state, limitless, undifferentiated,

luminously blissful, knowledgelessly understanding.

Light here, light now. And because it was infinitely here

and timelessly now, there was nobody outside the light to

look at the light. The fact was the awareness, the awareness

the fact.

From that other world, somewhere out there to the right,

came the sound once more of Susila's voice.

"Are you feeling happy?" she asked.

A surge of brighter radiance swept away all those

flickering thoughts and memories. There was nothing now

except a crystalline transparency of bliss.

Without speaking, without opening his eyes, he smiled

279

and

nodded.

"Eckhart called it God," she went on. " 'Felicity so

ravishing, so inconceivably intense that no one can describe

it. And in the midst of it God glows and flames without

ceasing.' "

God glows and flames ... It was so startlingly, so

comically right that Will found himself laughing aloud. "God

like

a

house

on

fire,"

he

gasped.

"God-the-Fourteenth-of-July." And he exploded once more

into cosmic laughter.

Behind his closed eyelids an ocean of luminous bliss

poured upwards like an inverted cataract. Poured upwards

from union into completer union, from impersonality into a

yet more absolute transcendence of selfhood.

"God-the-Fourteenth-of-July," he repeated and, from the

heart of the cataract, gave vent to a final chuckle of

recognition and understanding.

"What about the fifteenth of July?" Susila questioned.

"What about the morning after?"

"There isn't any morning after."

She shook her head. "It sounds suspiciously like

Nirvana."

"What's wrong with that?"

"Pure Spirit, one hundred percent proof—that's a drink

that only the most hardened contemplation guzzlers indulge

in. Bo dhisattvas dilute their Nirvana with equal parts of love

and work."

"This is better," Will insisted.

"You mean, it's more delicious. That's why it's such an

enor mous temptation. The only temptation that God could

succumb to. The fruit of the ignorance of good and evil.

What heavenly lusciousness, what a supermango! God had

been stuffing Him self with it for billions of years. Then all

of a sudden, up comes Homo sapiens, out pops the

knowledge of good and evil. God had to switch to a much

less palatable brand of fruit. You've just eaten a slice of the

original supermango, so you can sympathize with Him."

A chair creaked, there was a rustle of skirts, then a series

of small busy sounds that he was unable to interpret. What

was she doing? He could have answered that question by

simply opening his eyes. But who cared, after all, what she

280

might be doing? Nothing was of any importance except this

blazing uprush of bliss and understanding.

"Supermango to fruit of knowledge—I'm going to wean

you," she said, "by easy stages."

There was a whirring sound. From the shallows, a bubble

of recognition reached the surface of consciousness. Susila

had been putting a record on the turntable of a phonograph

and now the machine was in motion.

"Johann Sebastian Bach," he heard her saying. "The

music that's closest to silence, closest, in spite of its being so

highly organized, to pure, hundred percent proof Spirit."

The whirring gave place to musical sounds. Another

bubble of recognition came shooting up; he was listening to

the Fourth Brandenburg Concerto.

It was the same, of course, as the Fourth Brandenburg he

had listened to so often in the past—the same and yet

completely different. This Allegro—he knew it by heart.

Which meant that he was in the best possible position to

realize that he had never really heard it before. To begin

with, it was no longer he, William Asquith Farnaby, who

was hearing it. The Allegro was revealing itself as an

element in the great present Event, a manifestation at one

remove of the luminous bliss. Or perhaps that was putting it

too mildly. In another modality this Allegro was the

luminous bliss; it was the knowledgeless understanding of

everything apprehended through a particular piece of knowl-

edge; it was undifferentiated awareness broken up into notes

and phrases and yet still all-comprehendingly itself. And of

course all this belonged to nobody. It was at once in here, out

there, and nowhere. The music which, as William Asquith

Farnaby, he had heard a hundred times before, he had been

reborn as an unowned awareness. Which was why he was

now hearing it for the first time. Unowned, the Fourth

Brandenburg had an intensity of beauty, a depth of intrinsic

meaning, incomparably greater than anything he had ever

found in the same music when it was his private property.

"Poor idiot" came up in a bubble of ironic comment. The

poor idiot hadn't wanted to take yes for an answer in any

field but the aesthetic. And all the time he had been denying,

by the mere fact of being himself, all the beauty and meaning

he so passionately longed to say yes to. William Asquith

Farnaby was nothing but a muddy filter, on the hither side of

281

which human beings, nature, and even his beloved art had

emerged bedimmed and bemired, less, other and uglier than

themselves. Tonight, for the first time, his awareness of a

piece of music was completely unobstructed. Between mind

and sound, mind and pattern, mind and significance, there

was no longer any babel of biographical irrelevances to

drown the music or make a senseless discord. Tonight's

Fourth Brandenburg was a pure datum—no, a blessed

donum—uncorrupted

by

the

personal

history,

the

secondhand notions, the ingrained stupidities with which,

like every self, the poor idiot, who wouldn't (and in art

plainly couldn't) take yes for an answer, had overlaid the

gifts of immediate experience.

And tonight's Fourth Brandenburg was not merely an

unowned Thing in Itself; it was also, in some impossible

way, a Present Event with an infinite duration. Or rather (and

still more impossibly, seeing that it had three movements and

was being played at its usual speed) it was without duration.

The metronome presided over each of its phrases; but the

sum of its phrases was not a span of seconds and minutes.

There was a tempo, but no time. So what was there?

"Eternity," Will was forced to answer. It was one of those

metaphysical dirty words which no decent-minded man

would dream of pronouncing even to himself, much less in

public. "Eternity, my brethren," he said aloud. "Eternity,

blah-blah." The sarcasm, as he might have known it would,

fell completely flat. Tonight those four syllables were no less

concretely significant than the four letters of the other class

of tabooed words. He began to laugh.

"What's so funny?" she asked.

"Eternity," he answered. "Believe it or not, it's as real as

shit."

"Excellent!" she said approvingly.

He sat there motionlessly attentive, following with ear

and inward eye the interwoven streams of sound, the

interwoven streams of congruous and equivalent lights, that

flowed on time-lessly from one sequence to another. And

every phrase of this well-worn familiar music was an

unprecedented revelation of beauty that went pouring

upwards, like a multitudinous fountain, into another

revelation as novel and amazing as itself. Stream within

stream—the stream of the solo violin, the streams of the two

282

recorders, the manifold streams of the harpsichord and the

little orchestra of assorted strings. Separate, distinct,

individual—and yet each of the streams was a function of all

the rest, each was itself in virtue of its relationship to the

whole of which it was a component.

''Dear God!" he heard himself whispering.

In the timeless sequence of change the recorders were

holding a single long-drawn note. A note without upper

partials, clear, pellucid, divinely empty. A note (the word

came bubbling up) of pure contemplation. And here was

another inspirational obscenity that had now acquired a

concrete meaning and might be uttered without a sense of

shame.

Pure

contemplation,

unconcerned,

beyond

contingency, outside the context of moral judgments.

Through the uprushing lights he caught a glimpse, in

memory, of Radha's shining face as she talked of love as

contemplation, of Radha once again, sitting cross-legged, in

a focused intensity of stillness, at the foot of the bed where

Lakshmi lay dying. This long pure note was the meaning of

her words, the audible expression of her silence. But, always,

flowing through and along with the heavenly emptiness of

that contemplative fluting was the rich sound, vibration

within passionate vibration, of the violin. And surrounding

them both—the notes of contemplative detachment and the

notes of passionate involvement— was this network of sharp

dry tones plucked from the wires of the harpsichord. Spirit

and instinct, action and vision—and around them the web of

intellect. They were comprehended by discursive thought,

but comprehended, it was obvious, only from the outside, in

terms of an order of experience radically different from that

which discursive thinking professes to explain.

"It's like a Logical Positivist," he said. "What is?"

"That harpsichord."

Like a Logical Positivist, he was thinking in the shallows

of his mind, while in the depths the great Event of light and

sound tunelessly unfolded. Like a Logical Positivist talking

about Ploti-nus and Julie de Lespinasse.

The music changed again, and now it was the violin that

sus tained (how passionately!) the long-drawn note of

contempla tion, while the two recorders took up the theme of

active involvement and repeated it—the identical form

imposed upon another substance—in the mode of

283

detachment. And here, dancing in and out between them, was

the Logical Positivist, absurd but indispensable, trying to

explain, in a language incommensurable with the facts, what

is was all about.

In the Eternity that was as real as shit, he went on

listening to these interwoven streams of sound, went on

looking at these interwoven streams of light, went on

actually being (out there, in here, and nowhere) all that he

saw and heard. And now, abruptly, the character of the light

underwent a change. These interwoven streams, which were

the first fluid differentiations of an understanding on the

further side of all particular knowledge, had ceased to be a

continuum. Instead, there was, all of a sudden, this endless

succession of separate forms—forms still manifestly charged

with the luminous bliss of undifferentiated being, but limited

now, isolated, individualized. Silver and rose, yellow and

pale green and gentian blue, an endless succession of lumi-

nous spheres came swimming up from some hidden source

of forms and, in time with the music, purposefully

constellated themselves into arrays of unbelievable

complexity and beauty. An inexhaustible fountain that

sprayed out into conscious pattern-ings, into lattices of living

stars. And as he looked at them, as he lived their life and the

life of this music that was their equivalent, they went on

growing into other lattices that filled the three dimensions of

an inner space and changed incessantly in another, timeless

dimension of quality and significance.

"What are you hearing?" Susila asked.

"Hearing what I see," he answered. "And seeing what I

hear."

"And how would you describe it?"

"What it looks like," Will answered, after a long silence,

"what it sounds like, is the creation. Only it's not a one-shot

affair. It's nonstop, perpetual creation."

"Perpetual creation out of no-what nowhere into

something somewhere—is that it?"

"That's it."

"You're making progress."

If words had come more easily and, when spoken, had

been a little less pointless, Will would have explained to her

that knowl-edgeless understanding and luminous bliss were a

damn sight better than even Johann Sebastian Bach.

284

"Making progress," Susila repeated. "But you've still got a

long way to go. What about opening your eyes?"

Will shook his head emphatically.

"It's time you gave yourself a chance of discovering

what's what."

"What's what is this" he muttered.

"It isn't," she assured him. "All you've been seeing and

hearing and being is only the first what. Now you must look

at the second one. Look, and then bring the two together into

a single inclusive what's-what. So open your eyes, Will.

Open them wide."

"All right," he said at last and reluctantly, with an

apprehensive sense of impending misfortune, he opened his

eyes. The inner illumination was swallowed up in another

kind of light. The fountain of forms, the colored orbs in their

conscious arrays and purposefully changing lattices gave

place to a static composition of uprights and diagonals, of

flat planes and curving cylinders, all carved out of some

material that looked like living agate, and all emerging from

a matrix of living and pulsating mother-of-pearl. Like a blind

man newly healed and confronted for the first time by the

mystery of light and color, he stared in uncomprehending

astonishment. And then, at the end of another twenty

timeless bars of the Fourth Brandenburg, a bubble of

explanation rose into consciousness. He was looking, Will

suddenly perceived, at a small square table, and beyond the

table at a rocking chair, and beyond the rocking chair at a

blank wall of whitewashed plaster. The explanation was

reassuring for in the eternity that he had experienced

between the opening of his eyes and the emergent knowledge

of what he was looking at, the mystery confronting him had

deepened from inexplicable beauty to a consummation of

shining alienness that filled him, as he looked, with a kind of

metaphysical terror. Well, this terrifying mystery consisted

of nothing but two pieces of furniture and an expanse of

wall. The fear was allayed, but the wonder only increased.

How was it possible that things so familiar and com-

monplace could be this? Obviously it wasn't possible; and

yet there it was, there it was.

His attention shifted from the geometrical constructions in

brown agate to their pearly background. Its name, he knew,

was "wall"; but in experienced fact it was a living process, a

285

continuing series of transubstantiations from plaster and

whitewash into the stuff of a supernatural body—into a

god-flesh that kept modulating, as he looked at it, from glory

to glory. Out of what the word bubbles had tried to explain

away as mere calcimine some shaping spirit was evoking an

endless succession of the most delicately discriminated hues,

at once faint and intense, that emerged out of latency and

went flushing across the god-body's divinely radiant skin.

Wonderful, wonderful! And there must be other miracles,

new worlds to conquer and be conquered by. He turned his

head to the left and there (appropriate words had bubbled up

almost immediately) was the large marble-topped table at

which they had eaten their supper. And now, thick and fast,

more bubbles began to rise. This breathing apocalypse called

"table" might be thought of as a picture by some mystical

Cubist, some inspired Juan Gris with the soul of Traherne

and a gift for painting miracles with conscious gems and the

changing moods of water-lily petals.

Turning his head a little further to the left he was startled

by .1 blaze of jewelry. And what strange jewelry! Narrow

slabs of emerald and topaz, of ruby and sapphire and lapis

lazuli, blazing away, row above row, like so many bricks in a

wall of the New Jerusalem. Then—at the end, not in the

beginning—came the word, in the beginning were the jewels,

the stained-glass windows, the walls of paradise. It was only

now, at long last, that the word "bookcase" presented itself

for consideration.

Will raised his eyes from the book-jewels and found

himself at the heart of a tropical landscape. Why? Where?

Then he remembered that, when (in another life) he first

entered the room, he had noticed, over the bookcase, a large,

bad water color. Between sand dunes and clumps of palms a

widening estuary receding towards the open sea, and above

the horizon enormous mountains of cloud towered into a pale

sky. "Feeble," came bubbling up from the shallows. The

work, only too obviously, of a not very gifted amateur. But

that was now beside the point, for the landscape had ceased

to be a painting and was now the subject of the painting—a

real river, real sea, real sand glaring in the sunshine, real

trees against a real sky. Real to the nth, real to the point of

absoluteness. And this real river mingling with a real sea was

his own being engulfed in God. " 'God' between quotation

286

marks?" enquired an ironical bubble. "Or God (!) in a mod-

ernist, Pickwickian sense?" Will shook his head. The answer

was just plain God—the God one couldn't possibly believe

in, but who was self-evidently the fact confronting him. And

yet this river was still a river, this sea the Indian Ocean. Not

something else in fancy dress. Unequivocally themselves.

But at the same time unequivocally God.

"Where are you now?" Susila asked.

Without turning his head in her direction, Will answered,

"In heaven, I suppose," and pointed at the landscape.

"In heaven—still? When are you going to make a landing

down here?"

Another bubble of memory came up from the silted

shallows. " 'Something far more deeply interfused, Whose

dwelling is the light'—of something or other."

"But Wordsworth also talked about the still sad music of

humanity."

"Luckily," said Will, "there are no humans in this

landscape."

"Not even any animals," she added, with a little laugh.

"Only clouds and the most deceptively innocent-looking

vegetables. That's why you'd better look at what's on the

floor."

Will dropped his eyes. The grain on the floorboards was a

brown river, and the brown river was an eddying, ongoing

diagram of the world's divine life. At the center of that

diagram was his own right foot, bare under the straps of its

sandal, and star-tlingly three-dimensional, like the marble

foot, revealed by a searchlight, of some heroic statue.

"Boards," "grain," "foot"— through the glib explanatory

words the mystery stared back at him, impenetrable and yet,

paradoxically,

understood.

Understood

with

that

knowledgeless understanding to which, in spite of sensed

objects and remembered names, he was still open.

Suddenly, out of the tail of his eye, he caught a glimpse of

quick, darting movement. Openness

to

bliss

and

understanding was also, he realized, an openness to terror, to

total incomprehension. Like some alien creature lodged

within his chest and struggling in anguish, his heart started to

beat with a violence that made him tremble. In the hideous

certainty that he was about to meet the Essential Horror, Will

turned his head and looked.

287

"It's one of Tom Krishna's pet lizards," she said

reassuringly.

The light was as bright as ever; but the brightness had

changed its sign. A glow of sheer evil radiated from every

gray-green scale of the creature's back, from its obsidian

eyes and the pulsing of its crimson throat, from the armored

edges of its nostrils and its slitlike mouth. He turned away. In

vain. The Essential Horror glared out of everything he

looked at. Those compositions by the mystical Cubist—they

had turned into intricate machines for doing nothing

malevolently. That tropical landscape, in which he had

experienced the union of his own being with the being of

God—it was now simultaneously the most nauseating of

Victorian oleographs and the actuality of hell. On their

shelves, the rows of book-jewels beamed with a thousand

watts of darkness visible. And how cheap these gems of the

abyss had become, how indescribably vulgar! Where there

had been gold and pearl and precious stones there were only

Christmas-tree decorations, only the shallow glare of plastic

and varnished tin. Everything still pulsed with life, but with

the life of an infinitely sinister bargain basement. And that,

the music now affirmed, that was what Omnipotence was

perpetually creating— a cosmic Woolworth stocked with

mass-produced horrors. Horrors of vulgarity and horrors of

pain, of cruelty and tastelessness, of imbecility and deliberate

malice.

"Not a gecko," he heard Susila saying, "not one of our

nice little house lizards. A hulking stranger from outdoors,

one of the bloodsuckers. Not that they suck blood, of course.

They merely have red throats and go purple in the face when

they get excited. Hence that stupid name. Look! There he

goes!"

Will looked down again. Preternaturally real, the scaly

horror with its black blank eyes, its murderer's mouth, its

blood-red throat pumping away while the rest of the body lay

stretched along the floor as still as death, was now within six

inches of his foot.

"He's seen his dinner," said Susila. "Look over there to

your left, on the edge of the matting."

He turned his head.

"Gongylus gongyloides" she went on. "Do you

remember?"

288

Yes, he remembered. The praying mantis that had settled

on his bed. But that was in another existence. What he had

seen then was merely a rather odd-looking insect. What he

saw now was a pair of inch-long monsters, exquisitely grisly,

in the act of coupling. Their bluish pallor was barred and

veined with pink, and the wings that fluttered continuously,

like petals in a breeze, were shaded at the edges with

deepening violet. A mimicry of flowers. But the insect forms

were undisguisable. And now even the flowery colors had

undergone a change. Those quivering wings were the

appendages of two brightly enameled gadgets in the bargain

basement, two little working models of a nightmare, two

miniaturized machines for copulation. And now one of the

nightmare machines, the female, had turned the small flat

head, all mouth and bulging eyes, at the end of its long

neck—had turned it and (dear God!) had begun to devour the

head of the male machine. First a purple eye was chewed

out, then half the bluish face. What was left of the head fell

to the ground. Unrestrained by the weight of the eyes and

jaws, the severed neck waved wildly. The female machine

snapped at the oozing stump, caught it and, while the

headless male uninterruptedly kept up his parody of Ares in

the arms of Aphrodite, methodically chewed.

Out of the corner of his eye Will glimpsed another spurt

of movement, turned his head sharply, and was in time to see

the lizard crawling towards his foot. Nearer, nearer. He

averted his eyes in terror. Something touched his toes and

went tickling across his instep. The tickling ceased; but he

could sense a little weight on his foot, a dry scaly contact. He

wanted to scream; but his voice was gone and, when he tried

to move, his muscles refused to obey him.

Tunelessly the music had turned into the final Presto.

Horror briskly on the march, horror in rococo fancy dress

leading the dance.

Utterly still, except for the pulse in its red throat, the scaly

horror on his instep lay staring with expressionless eyes at its

predestined prey. Interlocked, the two little working models

of a nightmare quivered like windblown petals and were

shaken spasmodically by the simultaneous agonies of death

and copulation. A timeless century passed; bar after bar, the

gay little dance of death went on and on. Suddenly there was

a scrabbling against his skin of tiny claws. The bloodsucker

289

had crawled down from his instep to the floor. For a long

life-span it lay there absolutely still. Then, with incredible

speed, it darted across the boards and onto the matting. The

slitlike mouth opened and closed again. Protruding from

between the champing jaws, the edge of a violet-tinted wing

still fluttered, like an orchid petal in the breeze; a pair of legs

waved wildly for a moment, then disappeared from view.

Will shuddered and closed his eyes; but across the frontier

between things sensed and things remembered, things

imagined, the horror pursued him. In the fluorescent glare of

the inner light an endless column of tin-bright insects and

gleaming reptiles marched up diagonally, from left to right,

out of some hidden source of nightmare towards an unknown

and monstrous consummation. Gongylus gongyloides by

millions and, in the midst of them, innumerable

bloodsuckers. Eating and being eaten—forever.

And all the while—fiddle, flute and harpsichord—the

final Presto of the Fourth Brandenburg kept trotting

timelessly forward. What a jolly little rococo death march!

Left, right; left, right. . . But what was the word of command

for hexapods? And suddenly they weren't hexapods any

longer; they were bipeds. The endless column of insects had

turned abruptly into an endless column of soldiers. Marching

as he had seen the Brown Shirts marching through Berlin, a

year before the war. Thousands upon thousands of them,

their banners fluttering, their uniforms glowing in the

infernal brightness like floodlit excrement. Numberless as

insects, and each of them moving with the precision of a

machine, the perfect docility of a performing dog. And the

faces, the faces! He had seen the close-ups on the German

newsreel, and here they were again, preternatu-rally real and

three-dimensional and alive. The monstrous face of Hitler

with his mouth open, yelling. And then the faces of assorted

listeners. Huge idiot faces, blankly receptive. Faces of

wide-eyed sleepwalkers. Faces of young Nordic angels rapt

in the Beatific Vision. Faces of baroque saints going into

ecstasy. Faces of lovers on the brink of orgasm. One Folk,

One Realm, One Leader. Union with the unity of an insect

swarm. Knowledgeless understanding of nonsense and

diabolism. And then the news reel camera had cut back to the

serried ranks, the swastikas, the brass bands, the yelling

hypnotist on the rostrum. And here once again, in the glare

290

of his inner light, was the brown insectlike column, marching

endlessly to the tunes of this rococo horror music. Onward

Nazi soldiers. Onward Marxists. Onward Chris tian soldiers,

and Muslims. Onward every chosen people, every Crusader

and Holy War maker. Onward into misery, into all

wickedness, into death. And suddenly Will found himself

looking at what the marching column would become when it

had reached its destination—thousands of corpses in the

Korean mud, innumerable packets of garbage littering the

African desert. And here (for the scene kept changing with

bewildering rapidity and suddenness), here were the five

flyblown bodies he-had seen only a few months ago, faces

upwards and their throats gashed, in the courtyard of an

Algerian farm. Here, out of a past almost twenty years

earlier, was that old woman, dead and stark naked in the

rubble of a stucco house in St. John's Wood. And here,

without transition, was his own gray and yellow bedroom,

with the reflection in the mirror on the wardrobe door of two

pale bodies, his and Babs's, frantically coupling to the

accompaniment of his memories of Molly's funeral and the

strains, from Radio Stuttgart, of the Good Friday music out

of Parsifal.

The scene changed again and, festooned with tin stars and

fairy lamps, Aunt Mary's face smiled at him gaily and then

was transformed before his eyes into the face of the whining,

malignant stranger who had taken her place during those last

dreadful weeks before the final transformation into garbage.

A radiance of love and goodness, and then a blind had been

drawn, a shutter closed, a key turned in the lock, and there

they were—she in her cemetery and he in his private prison

sentenced to solitary confinement and, one unspecified fine

morning, to death. The Agony in the Bargain Basement. The

Crucifixion among the Christmas-tree decorations. Outside

or in, with the eyes open or with the eyes closed, there was

no escape.

"No escape," he whispered, and the words confirmed the

fact, transformed it into a hideous certitude that kept opening

out, opening down, into depth below depth of malignant vul-

garity, hell beyond hell of utterly pointless suffering.

And this suffering (it came to him with the force of a

revelation)—this suffering was not merely pointless; it was

also cumulative, it was also self-perpetuating. Surely

291

enough, frightfully enough, as it had come to Molly and

Aunt Mary and all the others, death would come also to him.

Would come to him, but never to this fear, this sickening

disgust, these lacerations of remorse and self-loathing.

Immortal in its pointlessness, suffering would go on forever.

In all other respects one was grotesquely, despicably finite.

Not in respect to suffering. This dark little inspissated clot

that one called "I" was capable of suffering to infinity and, in

spite of death, the suffering would go on forever. The pains

of living and the pains of dying, the routine of successive

agonies in the bargain basement and the final crucifixion in a

blaze

of

tin

and

plastic

vulgarity—reverberating,

continuously amplified, they would always be there. And the

pains were incommunicable, the isolation complete. The

awareness that one existed was an awareness that one was

always alone. Just as much alone in Babs's musky alcove as

one had been alone with one's earache or one's broken arm,

as one would be alone with one's final cancer, alone, when

one thought it was all over, with the immortality of suffering.

He was aware, all of a sudden, that something was

happening to the music. The tempo had changed.

Ralkntando. It was the end. The end of everything for

everyone. The jaunty little death dance had piped the

marchers on and on to the edge of the cliff. And now here it

was, and they were tottering on the brink. Ral-lentando,

rallentando. The dying fall, the fall into dying. And

punctually, inevitably, here were the two anticipated chords,

the consummation, the expectant dominant and then, finis,

the loud unequivocal tonic. There was a scratching, a sharp

click, and then silence. Through the open window he could

hear the distant frogs and the shrill monotonous rasp of

insect noises. And yet in some mysterious way the silence

remained unbroken. Like flies in a block of amber, the

sounds were embedded in a transparent soundlessness which

they were powerless to destroy or even modify, and to which

they remained completely irrelevant. Tunelessly, from

intensity to intensity, the silence deepened. Silence in

ambush, a watching, conspiratorial silence incomparably

more sinister than the grisly little rococo death march which

had preceded it. This was the abyss to whose brink the music

had piped him. To the brink, and now over the brink into this

everlasting silence.

292

"Infinite suffering," he whispered. "And you can't speak,

you can't even cry out."

A chair creaked, silk rustled, he felt the wind of

movement against his face, the nearness of a human

presence. Behind his closed lids he was somehow aware that

Susila was kneeling there in front of him. An instant later he

felt her hands touching his face—the palms against his

cheeks, the fingers on his temples.

The clock in the kitchen made a little whirring noise, then

started to strike the hour. One, two, three, four. Outside in

the garden a gusty breeze whispered intermittently among

the leaves. A cock crowed and a moment later, from a long

way off, came an answering call, and almost simultaneously

another and another. Then an answer to the answers, and

more answers in return. A counterpoint of challenges

challenged, of defiances defied. And now a different kind of

voice joined in the chorus.

Articulate but inhuman. "Attention," it called through the

crowing and the insect noises. "Attention. Attention.

Attention."

"Attention," Susila repeated; and as she spoke, he felt her

fingers starting to move over his forehead. Lightly, lightly,

from the brows up to the hair, from either temple to the

midpoint between the eyes. Up and down, back and forth,

soothing away the mind's contractions, smoothing out the

furrows of bewilderment and pain. "Attention to this." And

she increased the pressure of her palms against his

cheekbones, of her fingertips above his ears. "To this" she

repeated. "To now. Your face between my two hands." The

pressure was relaxed, the fingers started to move again

across his forehead.

"Attention." Through a ragged counterpoint of crowing,

the injunction was insistently repeated. "Attention. Attention.

Atten . . ." The inhuman voice broke off in midword.

Attention to her hands on his face? Or attention to this

dreadful glare of the inner light, to this uprush of tin and

plastic stars and, through the barrage of vulgarity, to this

packet of garbage that had once been Molly, to the

whorehouse looking glass, to all those countless corpses in

the mud, the dust, the rubble. And here were the lizards again

and Gongylusgongyloides by the million, here were the

marching columns, the rapt, devoutly listening faces of

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Nordic angels.

"Attention," the mynah bird began to call again from the

other side of the house. "Attention."

Will shook his head. "Attention to what?"

"To this." And she dug her nails into the skin of his

forehead. "'This. Here and now. And it isn't anything so

romantic as suffering and pain. It's just the feel of

fingernails. And even if it were much worse, it couldn't

possibly be forever or to infinity. Nothing is forever, nothing

is to infinity. Except, maybe, the Buddha Nature."

She moved her hands, and the contact now was no longer

with nails but with skin. The fingertips slid down over his

brows and, very lightly, came to rest on his closed

eyelids.For the first wincing moment he was mortally afraid.

Was she preparing to put out his eyes? He sat there, ready at

her first move to throw back his head and jump to his feet.

But nothing happened. Little by little his fears died away; the

awareness of this intimate, unexpected, potentially dangerous

contact remained. Ai awareness so acute and, because the

eyes were supremely vulnerable, so absorbing that he had

nothing to spare for the innei light or the horrors and

vulgarities revealed by it.

"Pay attention," she whispered.

But it was impossible not to pay attention. However,

gently and delicately, her fingers had probed to the very

quick of his consciousness. And how intensely alive, he now

noticed, those fingers were! What a strange tingling warmth

flowedout of them!

"It's like an electric current," he marveled.

"But luckily," she said, "the wire carries no messages.

One touches and, in the act of touching, one's touched.

Complete communication, but nothing communicated. Just

an exchange of life, that's all." Then, after a pause, "Do you

realize, Will," she went on, "that in all these hours we've

been sitting here—all these centuries in your case, all these

eternities—you haven't looked at me once? Not once. Are

you afraid of what you might see?"

He thought over the question and finally nodded his head.

"Maybe that's what it was," he said. "Afraid of seeing

something I'd have to be involved with, something I might

have to do something about."

"So you stuck to Bach and landscapes and the Clear Light

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of the Void."

"Which you wouldn't let me go on looking at," he com-

plained.

"Because the Void won't do you much good unless you

can see its light in Gongylus jjongyloides. And in people,"

she added. "Which is sometimes considerably more

difficult."

"Difficult?" He thought of the marching columns, of the

bodies in the mirror, of all those other bodies face

downwards in the mud, and shook his head. "It's

impossible."

"No, not impossible," she insisted. "Sunyata implies

karuna. The Void is light; but it's also compassion. Greedy

contempla-tives want to possess themselves of the light

without bothering about compassion. Merely good people try

to be compassionate and refuse to bother about the light. As

usual, it's a question of making the best of both worlds. And

now," she added, "it's time for you to open your eyes and see

what a human being really

looks like."

The fingertips moved up from his eyelids to his forehead,

moved out to the temples, moved down to the cheeks, to the

corners of the jaw. An instant later he felt their touch on his

own fingers, and she was holding his two hands in hers.

Will opened his eyes and, for the first time since he had

taken the moksha-medicine, found himself looking her

squarely

in the face.

"Dear God," he whispered at last.

Susila laughed. "Is it as bad as the bloodsucker?" she

asked.

But this was not a joking matter. Will shook his head

impatiently and went on looking. The eye sockets were

mysterious with shadow and, except for a little crescent of

illumination on the cheekbone, so was all the right side of

her face. The left side glowed with a living, golden

radiance—preternaturally bright, but with a brightness that

was neither the vulgar and sinister glare of darkness visible

nor yet that blissful incandescence revealed, in the far-off

dawn of his eternity, behind his closed lids and, when he had

opened his eyes, in the book-jewels, the compositions of the

mystical Cubists, the transfigured landscape. What he was

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seeing now was the paradox of opposites indissol-ubly

wedded, of light shining out of darkness, of darkness at the

very heart of light.

"It isn't the sun," he said at last, "and it isn't Chartres. Nor

the infernal bargain basement, thank God. It's all of them

together, and you're recognizably you, and I'm recognizably

me—though, needless to say, we're both completely

different. You and me by Rembrandt, but Rembrandt about

five thousand times more so." He was silent for a moment;

then, nodding his head in confirmation of what he had just

said, "Yes, that's it," he went on. "Sun into Chartres, and then

stained-glass windows into bargain basement. And the

bargain basement is also the torture chamber, the

concentration camp, the charnel house with Christmas-tree

decorations. And now the bargain basement goes into

reverse, picks up Chartres and a slice of the sun, and backs

out into this—into you and me by Rembrandt. Does that

make any sense to you?"

"All the sense in the world," she assured him. But Will

was too busy looking at her to be able to pay much attention

to what she was saying. "You're so incredibly beautiful," he

said at last. "But it wouldn't matter if you were incredibly

ugly;

you'd

still

be

a

Rembrandt-but-five-thousand-times-more

-so.

Beautiful,

beautiful," he repeated. "And yet I don't want to sleep with

you. No, that isn't true. I would like to sleep with you. Very

much indeed. But it won't make any difference if I never do.

I shall go on loving you—loving you in the way one's

supposed to love people if one's a Christian. Love," he

repeated, "love. It's another of those dirty words. 'In love,'

'make love'— those are all right. But plain 'love'—that's an

obscenity I couldn't pronounce. But now, now . . ." He

smiled and shook his head. "Believe it or not, now I can

understand what it means when they say, 'God is love.' What

manifest nonsense. And yet it happens to be true. Meanwhile

there's this extraordinary face of yours." He leaned forward

to look into it more closely. "As though one were looking

into a crystal ball," he added incredulously. "Something new

all the time. You can't imagine . . ."

But she could imagine. "Don't forget," she said, "I've been

there myself."

"Did you look at people's faces?"

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She nodded. "At my own in the glass. And of course at

Dugald's. Goodness, that last time we took the

moksha-medicine together! He started by looking like a hero

out of some impossible mythology—of Indians in Iceland, of

Vikings in Tibet. And then, without warning, he was

Maitreya Buddha. Obviously, self-evidently Maitreya

Buddha. Such a radiance! I can still see . . ."

She broke off, and suddenly Will found himself looking at

Incarnate Bereavement with seven swords in her heart.

Reading the signs of pain in the dark eyes, about the corners

of the full-lipped mouth, he knew that the wound had been

very nearly mortal and, with a pang in his own heart, that it

was still open, still bleeding. He pressed her hands. There

was nothing, of course, that one could say, no words, no

consolations of philosophy—only this shared mystery of

touch, only this communication from skin to skin of a

flowing infinity.

"One slips back so easily," she said at last. "Much too

easily. And much too often." She drew a deep breath and

squared her shoulders.

Before his eyes the face, the whole body, underwent

another change. There was strength enough, he could see, in

that small frame to make head against any suffering; a will

that would be more than a match for all the swords that fate

might stab her with. Almost menacing in her determined

serenity, a dark Circean goddess had taken the place of the

Mater Dolorosa. Memories of that quiet voice talking so

irresistibly about the swans and the cathedral, about the

clouds and the smooth water, came rushing up. And as he

remembered, the face before him seemed to glow with the

consciousness of triumph. Power, intrinsic power—he saw

the expression of it, he sensed its formidable presence and

shrank away from it. "Who aw you?" he whispered.

She looked at him for a moment without speaking; then,

gaily smiling, "Don't be so scared," she said. "I'm not the

female mantis."

He smiled back at her-smiled back at a laughing girl with

a weakness for kisses and the frankness to invite them.

"Thank the Lord!" he said, and the love which had shrunk

away in fear came flowing back in a tide of happiness.

"Thank Him for what?"

"For having given you the grace of sensuality."

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She smiled again. "So that cat's out of the bag."

"All that power," he said, "all that admirable, terrible will!

You might have been Lucifer. But fortunately, providentially

..." He disengaged his right hand and with the tip of its

stretched forefinger touched her lips. "The blessed gift of

sensuality—it's been your salvation. Half'your salvation," he

qualified, remembering the gruesomely loveless frenzies in

the pink alcove, "one of your salvations. Because, of course,

there's this other thing, this knowing who in fact you are."

He was silent for a moment. "Mary with swords in her

heart," he went on, "and Circe, and Ninon de Lenclos and

now—who? Somebody like Juliana of Norwich or Catherine

of Genoa. Are you really all these people?"

"Plus an idiot," she assured him. "Plus a rather worried

and not very efficient mother. Plus a bit of the little prig and

day-dreamer I was as a child. Plus, potentially, the old dying

woman who looked out at me from the mirror the last time

we took the moksha-medicme together. And then Dugald

looked and saw what he would be like in another forty years.

Less than a month later," she added, "he was dead."

One slips back too easily, one slips back too often . . .

Half in mysterious darkness, half mysteriously glowing with

golden light, her face had turned once again into a mask of

suffering. Within their shadowy orbits the eyes, he could see,

were closed. She had retreated into another time and was

alone, somewhere else, with the swords and her open wound.

Outside, the cocks were crowing again, and a second mynah

bird had begun to call, half a tone higher than the first, for

compassion.

"Karuna."

"Attention. Attention."

"Karuna."

Will raised his hand once more and touched her lips.

"Do you hear what they're saying?"

It was a long time before she answered. Then, raising her

hand, she took hold of his extended finger and pressed it

hard against her lower lip. "Thank you," she said, and

opened her eyes again.

"Why thank me? You taught me what to do."

"And now it's you who have to teach your teacher."

Like a pair of rival gurus each touting his own brand of

spirituality, "Karuna, attention," shouted the mynah birds;

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then, as they drowned out one another's wisdom in

overlapping

competition,

"Runattenshkarattunshon."

Proclaiming that he was the never-impotent owner of all

females, the invincible challenger of every spurious

pretender to maleness, a cockerel in the next garden shrilly

announced his divinity.

A smile broke through the mask of suffering; from her

private world of swords and memory, Susila had returned to

the present. "Cock-a-doodle-doo," she said. "How I love

him! Just like Tom Krishna when he goes around asking

people to feel his muscles. And those preposterous mynah

birds, so faithfully repeating the good advice they can't

understand. They're just as adorable as my little bantam."

"And what about the other kind of biped?" he asked. "The

less adorable variety."

For all answer she leaned forward, caught him by the

forelock and, pulling his head down, kissed him on the tip of

his nose. "And now it's time you moved your legs," she said.

Climbing to her feet, she held out her hand to him. He took it

and she pulled him up from his chair.

"Negative crowing and parroted antiwisdom," she said.

"That's what some of the other kind of bipeds go in for."

"What's to guarantee that I shan't return to my vomit?" he

asked.

"You probably will," she cheerfully assured him. "But

you'll also probably come back again to this."

There was a spurt of movement at their feet.

Will laughed. "There goes my poor litde scrabbling

incarnation of evil."

She took his arm, and together they walked over to the

open window. Announcing the near approach of dawn, a

little wind fitfully rattled the palm fronds. Below them,

rooted invisibly in the moist, acrid-smelling earth, was a

hibiscus bush—a wild profusion of bright glossy leaves and

vermilion trumpets, evoked from the double darkness of

night and overarching trees by a shaft of lamplight from

within the room.

"It isn't possible," he said incredulously. He was back

again with God-the-Fourteenth-of-July.

"It isn't possible," she agreed. "But like everything else in

the universe, it happens to be a fact. And now that you've

finally recognized my existence, I'll give you leave to look to

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your heart's content."

He stood there motionless, gazing, gazing through a

timeless

succession

of

mounting

intensities

and

ever-profounder significances. Tears filled his eyes and

overflowed at last onto his cheeks. He pulled out his

handkerchief and wiped them away.

"I can't help it," he apologized.

He couldn't help it because there was no other way in

which he could express his thankfulness. Thankfulness for

the privilege of being alive and a witness to this miracle, of

being, indeed, more than a witness—a partner in it, an aspect

of it. Thankfulness for these gifts of luminous bliss and

knowledgeless understanding. Thankfulness for being at

once this union with the divine unity and yet this finite

creature among other finite creatures.

"Why should one cry when one's grateful?" he said as he

put his handkerchief away. "Goodness knows. But one

does." A memory bubble popped up from the sludge of past

reading. " 'Gratitude is heaven itself,' " he quoted. "Pure

gibberish! But now I see that Blake was just recording a

simple fact. It is heaven

itself."

"And all the more heavenly," she said, "for being heaven

on earth and not heaven in heaven."

Startlingly, through the crowing and the croaking, through

the insect noises and the duet of the rival gurus, came the

sound of distant musketry.

"What on earth is that?" she wondered.

"Just the boys playing with fireworks," he answered gaily.

Susila shook her head. "We don't encourage those kinds

of fireworks. We don't even possess them."

From the highway beyond the walls of the compound a

roar of heavy vehicles climbing in low gear swelled up

louder and louder. Over the noise, a voice at once stentorian

and squeaky bellowed incomprehensibly through a

loudspeaker.

In their setting of velvet shadow the leaves were like thin

shavings of jade and emerald, and from the heart of their

gem-bright chaos fantastically sculptured rubies flared out

into five-pointed stars. Gratitude, gratitude. His eyes filled

again with

tears.

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Snatches of the shrill bellowing resolved themselves into

recognizable words. Against his will, he found himself

listening.

"People of Pala," he heard; then the voice blasted into

amplified inarticulateness. Squeak, roar, squeak, and then,

"Your Raja speaking . . . remain calm . . . welcome your

friends from across the Strait ..."

Recognition dawned. "It's Murugan."

"And he's with Dipa's soldiers."

"Progress," the uncertain excited voice was saying.

"Modern life ..." And then, moving on from Sears, Roebuck

to the Rani and Koot Hoomi, "Truth," it squeaked, "values . .

. genuine spirituality ... oil."

"Look," said Susila, "look! They're turning into the com

pound."

Visible in a gap between two clumps of bamboos, the

beams of a procession of headlamps shone for a moment on

the left cheek of the great stone Buddha by the lotus pool and

passed by, hinted again at the blessed possibility of liberation

and again passed by.

"The throne of my father," bawled the gigantically

amplified squeak, "joined to the throne of my mother's

ancestors . . . Two sister nations marching forward, hand in

hand, into the future . . . To be known henceforth as the

United Kingdom of Rendang and Pala . . . The United

Kingdom's first prime minister, that great political and

spiritual leader, Colonel Dipa ..."

The procession of headlamps disappeared behind a long

range of buildings and the shrill bellowing died down into

incoherence. Then the lights re-emerged and once again the

voice became articulate.

"Reactionaries," it was furiously yelling. "Traitors to the

principles of the permanent revolution ..."

In a tone of horror, "They're stopping at Dr. Robert's bun-

galow," Susila whispered.

The voice had said its last word, the headlamps and the

roaring motors had been turned off. In the dark expectant

silence the frogs and the insects kept up their mindless

soliloquies, the mynah birds reiterated their good advice.

"Attention, Karuna." Will looked down at his burning bush

and saw the Suchness of the world and his own being blazing

away with the clear light that was also (how obviously now!)

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compassion—the clear light that, like everyone else, he had

always chosen to be blind to, the compassion to which he

had always preferred his tortures, endured or inflicted, in a

bargain basement, his squalid solitudes, with the living Babs

or the dying Molly in the foreground, with Joe Aldehyde in

the middle distance and, in the remoter background, the great

world of impersonal forces and proliferating numbers, of

collective paranoias, and organized diabolism. And always,

everywhere, there would be the yelling or quietly author-

itative hypnotists; and in the train of the ruling suggestion

givers, always and everywhere, the tribes of buffoons and

hucksters, the professional liars, the purveyors of

entertaining irrelevances. Conditioned from the cradle,

unceasingly distracted, mesmerized systematically, their

uniformed victims would go on obediently marching and

countermarching, go on, always and everywhere, killing and

dying with the perfect docility of trained poodles. And yet in

spite of the entirely justified refusal to take yes for an

answer, the fact remained and would remain always, remain

everywhere—the fact that there was this capacity even in a

paranoiac for intelligence, even in a devil worshiper for love;

the fact that the ground of all being could be totally manifest

in a flowering shrub, a human face; the fact that there was a

light and that this light was also compassion.

There was the sound of a single shot; then a burst of shots

from an automatic rifle.

Susila covered her face with her hands. She was trembling

uncontrollably.

He put an arm round her shoulders and held her close.

The work of a hundred years destroyed in a single night.

And yet the fact remained—the fact of the ending of sorrow

as well as the fact of sorrow.

The starters screeched; engine after engine roared into

action. The headlamps were turned on and, after a minute of

noisy maneuvering, the cars started to move slowly back

along the road by which they had come.

The loudspeaker brayed out the opening bars of a martial

and at the same time lascivious hymn tune, which Will

recognized as the national anthem of Rendang. Then the

Wurlitzer was switched off, and here once again was

Murugan.

"This is your Raja speaking," the excited voice

302

proclaimed. After which, da capo, there was a repetition of

the speech about Progress, Values, Oil, True Spirituality.

Abruptly, as before, the procession disappeared from sight

and hearing. A minute later it was in view again, with its

wobbly countertenor bellowing the praises of the newly

united kingdom's first prime minister.

The procession crawled on and now, from the right this

time, the headlamps of the first armored car lit up the

serenely smiling face of enlightenment. For an instant only,

and then the beam moved on. And here was the Tathagata for

the second time, the third, the fourth, the fifth. The last of the

cars passed by. Disregarded in the darkness, the fact of

enlightenment remained. The roaring of the engines

diminished, the squeaking rhetoric lapsed into an inarticulate

murmur, and as the intruding noises died away, out came the

frogs again, out came the uninterruptable insects, out came

the mynah birds.

"Karuna. Karuna." And a semitone lower, "Attention."

END

Aldous Huxley was born in Surrey, England, in 1894, and

is the author of many critically acclaimed works of fiction

and nonfiction, including Brave New World and Eyeless in

Gaza. He died in 1963.

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