Island (25 page)

“Do you come here often?” Will asked after a silence.

“Whenever I feel like meditating in a group rather than alone.”

“How often is that?”

“Once every week or so. But of course some people like to do it oftener—and some much more rarely, or even never. It depends on one’s temperament. Take our friend Susila, for example—she needs big doses of solitude; so she hardly ever comes to the meditation room. Whereas Shanta (that’s my wife) likes to look in here almost every day.”

“So do I,” said Mrs. Rao. “But that’s only to be expected,” she added with a laugh. “Fat people enjoy company—even when they’re meditating.”

“And do you meditate on this picture?” Will asked.

“Not
on
it.
From
it, if you see what I mean. Or rather parallel with it. I look at it, and the other people look at it, and it reminds us all of who we are and what we aren’t, and how what we aren’t might turn into who we are.”

“Is there any connection,” Will asked, “between what you’ve been talking about and what I saw up there in the Shiva temple?”

“Of course there is,” she answered. “The
moksha
-medicine takes you to the same place as you get to in meditation.”

“So why bother to meditate?”

“You might as well ask, Why bother to eat your dinner?”

“But, according to you, the
moksha
-medicine
is
dinner.”

“It’s a banquet,” she said emphatically. “And that’s precisely why there has to be meditation. You can’t have banquets every day. They’re too rich and they last too long. Besides, banquets are provided by a caterer;
you
don’t have any part in the preparation of them. For your everyday diet you have to do your own cooking. The
moksha
-medicine comes as an occasional treat.”

“In theological terms,” said Vijaya, “the
moksha
-medicine prepares one for the reception of gratuitous graces—premystical visions or the full-blown mystical experiences. Meditation is one of the ways in which one co-operates with those gratuitous graces.”

“How?”

“By cultivating the state of mind that makes it possible for the dazzling ecstatic insights to become permanent and habitual illuminations. By getting to know oneself to the point where one won’t be compelled by one’s unconscious to do all the ugly, absurd, self-stultifying things that one so often finds oneself doing.”

“You mean, it helps one to be more intelligent?”

“Not more intelligent in relation to science or logical argument—more intelligent on the deeper level of concrete experiences and personal relationships.”

“More intelligent on
that
level,” said Mrs. Rao, “even though one may be very stupid upstairs.” She patted the top of her head. “I’m too dumb to be any good at the things that Dr. Robert and Vijaya are good at—genetics and biochemistry and philosophy and all the rest. And I’m no good at painting or poetry or acting. No talents and no cleverness. So I ought to feel horribly inferior and depressed. But in fact I don’t—thanks entirely to the
moksha
-medicine and meditation. No talents or cleverness. But when it comes to living, when it comes to understanding people and helping them, I feel myself growing more
and more sensitive and skillful. And when it comes to what Vijaya calls gratuitous graces…” She broke off. “You could be the greatest genius in the world, but you wouldn’t have anything more than what I’ve been given. Isn’t that true, Vijaya?”

“Perfectly true.”

She turned back to Will. “So you see, Mr. Farnaby, Pala’s the place for stupid people. The greatest happiness of the greatest number—and we stupid ones
are
the greatest number. People like Dr. Robert and Vijaya and my darling Ranga—we recognize their superiority, we know very well that their kind of intelligence is enormously important. But we also know that our kind of intelligence is just as important. And we don’t envy them, because we’re given just as much as they are. Sometimes even more.”

“Sometimes,” Vijaya agreed, “even more. For the simple reason that a talent for manipulating symbols tempts its possessors into habitual symbol manipulation, and habitual symbol manipulation is an obstacle in the way of concrete experiencing and the reception of gratuitous graces.”

“So you see,” said Mrs. Rao, “you don’t have to feel too sorry for us.” She looked at her watch. “Goodness, I shall be late for Dillip’s dinner if I don’t hurry.”

She started briskly towards the door.

“Time, time, time,” Will mocked. “Time even in this place of timeless meditation. Time for dinner breaking incorrigibly into eternity.” He laughed. Never take yes for an answer. The nature of things is always no.

Mrs. Rao halted for a moment and looked back at him.

“But sometimes,” she said with a smile, “it’s eternity that miraculously breaks into time—even into dinnertime. Good-bye.” She waved her hand and was gone.

“Which is better,” Will wondered aloud as he followed Vijaya through the dark temple, out into the noonday glare, “which is better—to be born stupid into an intelligent society or intelligent into an insane one?”

“H
ERE WE ARE,” SAID
V
IJAYA, WHEN THEY HAD REACHED THE END
of the short street that led downhill from the marketplace. He opened a wicket gate and ushered his guest into a tiny garden, at the further end of which, on its low stilts, stood a small thatched house.

From behind the bungalow a yellow mongrel dog rushed out and greeted them with a frenzy of ecstatic yelps and jumps and tail-waggings. A moment later a large green parrot, with white cheeks and a bill of polished jet, came swooping down from nowhere and landed with a squawk and a noisy fluttering of wings on Vijaya’s shoulder.

“Parrots for you,” said Will, “mynahs for little Mary Sarojini. You people seem to be on remarkably good terms with the local fauna.”

Vijaya nodded. “Pala is probably the only country in which an animal theologian would have no reason for believing in devils. For animals everywhere else, Satan, quite obviously, is
Homo sapiens
.”

They climbed the steps to the veranda and walked through the open front door into the bungalow’s main living room.
Seated on a low chair near the window, a young woman in blue was nursing her baby son. She lifted a heart-shaped face that narrowed down from a broad forehead to a delicately pointed chin, and gave them a welcoming smile.

“I’ve brought Will Farnaby,” said Vijaya as he bent down to kiss her.

Shanta held out her free hand to the stranger.

“I hope Mr. Farnaby doesn’t object to nature in the raw,” she said. As though to give point to her words, the baby withdrew his mouth from the brown nipple, and belched. A white bubble of milk appeared between his lips, swelled up and burst. He belched again, then resumed his sucking. “Even at eight months,” she added, “Rama’s table manners are still rather primitive.”

“A fine specimen,” said Will politely. He was not much interested in babies and had always been thankful for those repeated miscarriages which had frustrated all Molly’s hopes and longings for a child. “Who’s he going to look like—you or Vijaya?”

Shanta laughed and Vijaya joined in, enormously, an octave lower.

“He certainly won’t look like Vijaya,” she answered.

“Why not?”

“For the sufficient reason,” said Vijaya, “that I’m not genetically responsible.”

“In other words, the baby isn’t Vijaya’s son.”

Will looked from one laughing face to the other, then shrugged his shoulders. “I give up.”

“Four years ago,” Shanta explained, “we produced a pair of twins who are the living image of Vijaya. This time we thought it would be fun to have a complete change. We decided to enrich the family with an entirely new physique and temperament. Did you ever hear of Gobind Singh?”

“Vijaya has just been showing me his painting in your meditation room.”

“Well, that’s the man we chose for Rama’s father.”

“But I understood he was dead.”

Shanta nodded. “But his soul goes marching along.”

“What do you mean?”

“DF and AI.”

“DF and AI?”

“Deep Freeze and Artificial Insemination.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Actually,” said Vijaya, “we developed the techniques of AI about twenty years before you did. But of course we couldn’t do much with it until we had electric power and reliable refrigerators. We got those in the late twenties. Since then we’ve been using AI in a big way.”

“So you see,” Shanta chimed in, “my baby might grow up to be a painter—that is, if that kind of talent is inherited. And even if it isn’t he’ll be a lot more endomorphic and viscerotonic than his brothers or either of his parents. Which is going to be very interesting and educative for everybody concerned.”

“Do many people go in for this kind of thing?” Will asked.

“More and more. In fact I’d say that practically all the couples who decide to have a third child now go in for AI. So do quite a lot of those who mean to stop at number two. Take my family, for example. There’s been some diabetes among my father’s people; so they thought it best—he and my mother—to have both their children by AI. My brother’s descended from three generations of dancers and, genetically, I’m the daughter of Dr. Robert’s first cousin, Malcolm Chakravarti-MacPhail, who was the Old Raja’s private secretary.”

“And the author,” Vijaya added, “of the best history of Pala. Chakravarti-MacPhail was one of the ablest men of his generation.”

Will looked at Shanta, then back again at Vijaya.

“And has the ability been inherited?” he asked.

“So much so,” Vijaya answered, “that I have the greatest dif
ficulty in maintaining my position of masculine superiority. Shanta has more brains than I have; but fortunately she can’t compete with my brawn.”

“Brawn,” Shanta repeated sarcastically, “
brawn…
I seem to remember a story about a young lady called Delilah.”

“Incidentally,” Vijaya went on, “Shanta has thirty-two half brothers and twenty-nine half sisters. And more than a third of them are exceptionally bright.”

“So you’re improving the race.”

“Very definitely. Give us another century, and our average IQ will be up to a hundred and fifteen.”

“Whereas
ours
, at the present rate of progress, will be down to about eighty-five. Better medicine—more congenital deficiencies preserved and passed on. It’ll make things a lot easier for future dictators.” At the thought of this cosmic joke he laughed aloud. Then, after a silence, “What about the ethical and religious aspects of AI?” he asked.

“In the early days,” said Vijaya, “there were a good many conscientious objectors. But now the advantages of AI have been so clearly demonstrated, most married couples feel that it’s more moral to take a shot at having a child of superior quality than to run the risk of slavishly reproducing whatever quirks and defects may happen to run in the husband’s family. Meanwhile the theologians have got busy. AI has been justified in terms of reincarnation and the theory of karma. Pious fathers now feel happy at the thought that they’re giving their wife’s children a chance of creating a better destiny for themselves and their posterity.”

“A better destiny?”

“Because they carry the germ plasm of a better stock. And the stock is better because it’s the manifestation of a better karma. We have a central bank of superior stocks. Superior stocks of every variety of physique and temperament. In
your
kind of environment, most people’s heredity never gets a fair chance. In ours, it does. And incidentally we have excellent genealogical
and anthropometric records going back as far as the eighteen-seventies. So you see we’re not working entirely in the dark. For example, we know that Gobind Singh’s maternal grandmother was a gifted medium and lived to ninety-six.”

“So you see,” said Shanta, “we may even have a centenarian clairvoyant in the family.” The baby belched again. She laughed. “The oracle has spoken—as usual, very enigmatically.” Turning to Vijaya, “If you want lunch to be ready on time,” she added, “you’d better go and do something about it. Rama’s going to keep me busy for at least another ten minutes.”

Vijaya rose, laid one hand on his wife’s shoulder and with the other gently rubbed the baby’s brown back.

Shanta bent down and passed her cheek across the top of the child’s downy head. “It’s father,” she whispered. “Good father, good, good….”

Vijaya administered a final pat, then straightened himself up. “You were wondering,” he said to Will, “how it is that we get on so well with the local fauna. I’ll show you.” He raised his hand. “Polly. Polly.” Cautiously, the big bird stepped from his shoulder to the extended forefinger. “Polly’s a good bird,” he chanted. “Polly’s a very good bird.” He lowered his hand to the point where a contact was made between the bird’s body and the child’s, then moved it slowly, feathers against brown skin, back and forth, back and forth. “Polly’s a good bird,” he repeated, “a good bird.”

The parrot uttered a succession of low chuckles, then leaned forward from its perch on Vijaya’s finger and very gently nibbled at the child’s tiny ear.

“Such a good bird,” Shanta whispered, taking up the refrain. “Such a
good
bird.”

“Dr. Andrew picked up the idea,” said Vijaya, “while he was serving as a naturalist on the
Melampus
. From a tribe in northern New Guinea. Neolithic people; but like you Christians and us Buddhists, they believed in love. And unlike us and you, they’d
invented some very practical ways of making their belief come true. This technique was one of their happiest discoveries. Stroke the baby while you’re feeding him; it doubles his pleasure. Then, while he’s sucking and being caressed, introduce him to the animal or person you want him to love. Rub his body against theirs; let there be a warm physical contact between child and love object. At the same time repeat some word like ‘good.’ At first he’ll understand only your tone of voice. Later on, when he learns to speak, he’ll get the full meaning. Food plus caress plus contact plus ‘good’ equals love. And love equals pleasure, love equals satisfaction.”

“Pure Pavlov.”

“But Pavlov purely for a good purpose. Pavlov for friendliness and trust and compassion. Whereas you prefer to use Pavlov for brainwashing, Pavlov for selling cigarettes and vodka and patriotism. Pavlov for the benefit of dictators, generals and tycoons.”

Refusing any longer to be left out in the cold, the yellow mongrel had joined the group and was impartially licking every piece of sentient matter within its reach—Shanta’s arm, Vijaya’s hand, the parrot’s feet, the baby’s backside. Shanta drew the dog closer and rubbed the child against its furry flank.

“And this is a good good dog,” she said. “Dog Toby, good good dog Toby.”

Will laughed. “Oughtn’t I to get into the act?”

“I was going to suggest it,” Shanta answered, “only I was afraid you’d think it was beneath your dignity.”

“You can take my place,” said Vijaya. “I must go and see about our lunch.”

Still carrying the parrot, he walked out through the door that led into the kitchen. Will pulled up his chair and, leaning forward, began to stroke the child’s tiny body.

“This is another man,” Shanta whispered. “A good man, baby. A
good
man.”

“How I wish it were true!” he said with a rueful little laugh.

“Here and now it
is
true.” And bending down again over the child, “He’s a good man,” she repeated. “A good good man.”

He looked at her blissful, secretly smiling face, he felt the smoothness and warmth of the child’s tiny body against his fingertips. Good, good, good…He too might have known this goodness—but only if his life had been completely different from what in fact, in senseless and disgusting fact, it was. So never take yes for an answer, even when, as now, yes is self-evident. He looked again with eyes deliberately attuned to another wavelength of value, and saw the caricature of a Memling altarpiece. “Madonna with Child, Dog, Pavlov and Casual Acquaintance.” And suddenly he could almost understand, from the inside, why Mr. Bahu so hated these people. Why he was so bent—in the name, as usual and needless to say, of God—on their destruction.

“Good,” Shanta was still murmuring to her baby, “good, good, good.”

Too
good—that was their crime. It simply wasn’t permissible. And yet how precious it was! And how passionately he wished that he might have had a part in it! “Pure sentimentality!” he said to himself; and then aloud, “Good, good, good,” he echoed ironically. “But what happens when the child grows a little bigger and discovers that a lot of things and people are thoroughly bad, bad, bad?”

“Friendliness evokes friendliness,” she answered.

“From the friendly—yes. But not from the greedy, not from the power lovers, not from the frustrated and embittered. For them, friendliness is just weakness, just an invitation to exploit, to bully, to take vengeance with impunity.”

“But one has to run the risk, one has to make a beginning. And luckily no one’s immortal. The people who’ve been conditioned to swindling and bullying and bitterness will all be dead in a few years. Dead, and replaced by men and women brought up in the new way. It happened with us; it can happen with you.”

“It
can
happen,” he agreed. “But in the context of H-bombs and nationalism and fifty million more people every single year, it almost certainly won’t.”

“You can’t tell till you try.”

“And we shan’t try as long as the world is in its present state. And, of course, it will remain in its present state until we do try. Try and, what’s more, succeed at least as well as you’ve succeeded. Which brings me back to my original question. What happens when good, good, good discovers that, even in Pala, there’s a lot of bad, bad, bad? Don’t the children get some pretty unpleasant shocks?”

“We try to inoculate them against those shocks.”

“How? By making things unpleasant for them while they’re still young?”

“Not unpleasant. Let’s say
real
. We teach them love and confidence, but we expose them to reality, reality in
all
its aspects. And then give them responsibilities. They’re made to understand that Pala isn’t Eden or the Land of Cockaigne. It’s a nice place all right. But it will remain nice only if everybody works and behaves decently. And meanwhile the facts of life are the facts of life. Even here.”

“What about the facts of life in those bloodcurdling snakes I met halfway up the precipice? You can say ‘good, good, good’ as much as you like; but snakes will still bite.”

“You mean, they still
can
bite. But will they in fact make use of their ability?”

“Why shouldn’t they?”

“Look over there,” said Shanta. He turned his head and saw that what she was pointing at was a niche in the wall behind him. Within the niche was a stone Buddha, about half life-size, seated upon a curiously grooved cylindrical pedestal and surmounted by a kind of lead-shaped canopy that tapered down behind him into a broad pillar. “It’s a small replica,” she went on, “of the
Buddha in the Station Compound—you know, the huge figure by the lotus pool.”

“Which is a magnificent piece of sculpture,” he said. “And the smile really gives one an inkling of what the Beatific Vision must be like. But what has it got to do with snakes?”