Island

  "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 Shivapuram tomorrow evening, and there won't be another outgoing 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 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 get very far. History and the other rats will always see to it that 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 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 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 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 conspiratorially 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 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 veteran 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 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?"

  "Of course."

  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 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."

  "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 fin
d 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 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 I 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?"