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  "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 com-

  mand," 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.

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  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.

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  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 reasonable 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 no licensed drovers, royal or military, capitalistic or revolutionary, to brand, confine and butcher. There are only voluntary 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 grandmother 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 prevents us from growing.

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  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 culture 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 elsewhere. Being the products of happiness and a sense of fulfillment, they are probably less moving, perhaps less satisfying aesthetically, than the tragic or compensatory symbols created 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 (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."

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  " 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 party had double-crossed his fellow double-crossers—himself, of course, included.

  "Within the last few days," the Rani went on, "representatives of no less than three Major Oil Companies, European and

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  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 tra
nsmit the message in code by way of the Rendang Legation in London) and along with the information 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.

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  "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 triumphs, 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 literature. 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

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  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 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!"

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  "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 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

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  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 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

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  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.