Island, Page 4

  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

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  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 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

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  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 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 . . .

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  "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?"

  "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."

  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.

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  "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 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."

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  "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 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

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  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 further. And today we're doing our best to follow in his footsteps."

  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 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.

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  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 himself to endlessly repeated frustration, endlessly repeated conflicts 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 society 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 Pala are fools for trying to call it into existence.

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  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

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  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, 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 co
unterbalanced 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

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  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 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!"