Island (14 page)

“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 for 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 hardly any addicts.”

“Not even sex addicts?”

“The sex addicts are also person addicts. In other words, they’re lovers.”

“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
n
th. 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 irrepressibly 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 resentment 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, startlingly 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?”

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.

“G
OOD EVENING, MY DEAR
. G
OOD EVENING
, M
R
. F
ARNABY
.”

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.

“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 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.”

“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 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 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,
no
,” 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 vergängliche ist
NICHT
ein Gleichnis
. 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.

“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.