Island

  "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.

  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 it 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 embossed 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 financial 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 previously 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 Astrological (these days, say the Experts, are uniquely favorable for a joint venture by Rams--myself and Murugan--and that typical 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 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! Murugan has the motorcar and will bring you to our modest Bungalow, 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 banner 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 confidence. 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 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

  Of ten 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.

  "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 hospital."

  "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 off hand 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.

  "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 possibly, 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 marketplace. 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 Indic sculpture--elephants and Bodhisattvas, demons, supernatural 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!" Conscience? 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, 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 querulous 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 degradation, 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 be holding 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.

  "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 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 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, Lakshmi--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."