Island (7 page)

“But it was really
too
funny! ‘At my age,’” he repeated, and laughed again. “Murugan is not quite eighteen, and I happen to know how old—how
very
young—the Princess of Rendang was when she married the Raja of Pala.”

Murugan, meanwhile, had obediently risen and was kissing his mother’s hand.

“Now we can talk more freely,” said the Rani when he had left the room. And freely—her face, her tone, her bulging eyes, her whole quivering frame registering the most intense disapproval—she now let fly.
De mortuis
…She wouldn’t say anything about her husband except that he was a typical Palanese, a true representative of his country. For the sad truth was that Pala’s smooth bright skin concealed the most horrible rottenness.

“When I think what they tried to do to my Baby, two years ago, when I was on my world tour for the Crusade of the Spirit.” With a jingling of bracelets she lifted her hands in horror. “It was an agony for me to be parted from him for so long; but the Master had sent me on a Mission, and my Little Voice told me that it wouldn’t be right for me to take my Baby with me. He’d lived abroad for so long. It was high time for him to get to know the country he was to rule. So I decided to leave him here. The Privy Council appointed a committee of guardianship. Two women with growing boys of their own and two men—one of whom, I regret to say” (more in sorrow than in anger), “was Dr. Robert MacPhail. Well, to cut a long story short, no sooner was I safely out of the country than those precious guardians, to whom I’d entrusted my Baby, my Only Son, set to work systematically—
systematically
, Mr. Farnaby—to undermine my influence. They tried to destroy the whole edifice of Moral and Spiritual Values which I had so laboriously built up over the years.”

Somewhat maliciously (for of course he knew what the woman was talking about), Will expressed his astonishment. The
whole
edifice of moral and spiritual values? And yet nobody could have been kinder than Dr. Robert and the others, no Good Samaritans were ever more simply and effectively charitable.

“I’m not denying their kindness,” said the Rani. “But after all kindness isn’t the only virtue.”

“Of course not,” Will agreed, and he listed all the qualities that the Rani seemed most conspicuously to lack. “There’s also sincerity. Not to mention truthfulness, humility, selflessness…”

“You’re forgetting Purity,” said the Rani severely. “Purity is fundamental, Purity is the
sine qua non
.”

“But here in Pala, I gather, they don’t think so.”

“They most certainly do not,” said the Rani. And she went on to tell him how her poor Baby had been deliberately exposed to impurity, even actively encouraged to indulge in it with one of those precocious, promiscuous girls of whom, in Pala, there were only too many. And when they found that he wasn’t the sort of boy who would seduce a girl (for she had brought him up to think of Woman as essentially Holy), they had encouraged the girl to do her best to seduce
him
.

Had she, Will wondered, succeeded? Or had Antinoüs already been girlproofed by little friends of his own age or, still more effectively, by some older, more experienced and authoritative pederast, some Swiss precursor of Colonel Dipa?

“But that wasn’t the worst.” The Rani lowered her voice to a horrified stage whisper. “One of the mothers on the committee of guardianship—one of the
mothers
, mind you—advised him to take a course of lessons.”

“What sort of lessons?”

“In what they euphemistically call Love.” She wrinkled up her nose as though she had smelt raw sewage. “Lessons, if you please,” and disgust turned into indignation, “from some Older Woman.”

“Heavens!” cried the Ambassador.

“Heavens!” Will dutifully echoed. Those older women, he could see, were competitors much more dangerous, in the Rani’s eyes, than even the most precociously promiscuous of girls. A mature instructress in love would be a rival mother, enjoying the monstrously unfair advantage of being free to go the limits of incest.

“They teach…” The Rani hesitated. “They teach Special Techniques.”

“What sort of techniques?” Will enquired.

But she couldn’t bring herself to go into the repulsive particulars. And anyhow it wasn’t necessary, for Murugan (bless his heart!) had refused to listen to them. Lessons in immorality from someone old enough to be his mother—the very idea of it had made him sick. No wonder. He had been brought up to reverence the Ideal of Purity. “
Brahmacharya
, if you know what that means.”

“Quite,” said Will.

“And this is another reason why his illness was such a blessing in disguise, such a real godsend. I don’t think I
could
have brought him up that way in Pala. There are too many bad influences here. Forces working against Purity, against the Family, even against Mother Love.”

Will pricked up his ears. “Did they even reform mothers?”

She nodded. “You just can’t imagine how far things have gone here. But Koot Hoomi knew what kind of dangers we would have to run in Pala. So what happens? My Baby falls ill, and the doctors order us to Switzerland. Out of harm’s way.”

“How was it,” Will asked, “that Koot Hoomi let you go off on your Crusade? Didn’t he foresee what would happen to Murugan as soon as your back was turned?”

“He foresaw everything,” said the Rani. “The temptations, the resistance, the massed assault by all the Powers of Evil and then, at the very last moment, the rescue. For a long time,” she
explained, “Murugan didn’t tell me what was happening. But after three months the assaults of the Powers of Evil were too much for him. He dropped hints; but I was too completely absorbed in my Master’s business to be able to take them. Finally he wrote me a letter in which it was all spelled out—in detail. I canceled my last four lectures in Brazil and flew home as fast as the jets would carry me. A week later we were back in Switzerland. Just my Baby and I—alone with the Master.”

She closed her eyes, and an expression of gloating ecstasy appeared upon her face. Will looked away in distaste. This self-canonized world-savior, this clutching and devouring mother—had she ever, for a single moment, seen herself as others saw her? Did she have any idea of what she had done, what she was still doing, to her poor silly little son? To the first question the answer was certainly no. About the second one could only speculate. Perhaps she honestly didn’t know what she had made of the boy. But perhaps, on the other hand, she
did
know. Knew and preferred what was happening with the Colonel to what might happen if the boy’s education were taken in hand by a woman. The woman might supplant her; the Colonel, she knew, would not.

“Murugan told me that he intended to reform these so-called reforms.”

“I can only pray,” said the Rani in a tone that reminded Will of his grandfather, the Archdeacon, “that he’ll be given the Strength and Wisdom to do it.”

“And what do you think of his other projects?” Will asked. “Oil? Industries? An army?”

“Economics and politics aren’t exactly my strong point,” she answered with a little laugh which was meant to remind him that he was talking to someone who had taken the Fourth Initiation. “Ask Bahu what he thinks.”

“I have no right to offer an opinion,” said the Ambassador. “I’m an outsider, the representative of a foreign power.”

“Not so very foreign,” said the Rani.

“Not in your eyes, ma’am. And not, as you know very well, in mine. But in the eyes of the Palanese government—yes. Completely foreign.”

“But that,” said Will, “doesn’t prevent you from having opinions. It only prevents you from having the locally orthodox opinions. And incidentally,” he added, “I’m not here in my professional capacity. You’re not being interviewed, Mr. Ambassador. All this is strictly off the record.”

“Strictly off the record, then, and strictly as myself and not as an official personage, I believe that our young friend is perfectly right.”

“Which implies, of course, that you believe the policy of the Palanese government to be perfectly wrong.”

“Perfectly wrong,” said Mr. Bahu—and the bony, emphatic mask of Savonarola positively twinkled with his Voltairean smile—“perfectly wrong because all too perfectly right.”

“Right?” the Rani protested. “Right?”

“Perfectly right,” he explained, “because so perfectly designed to make every man, woman, and child on this enchanting island as perfectly free and happy as it’s possible to be.”

“But with a False Happiness,” the Rani cried, “a freedom that’s only for the Lower Self.”

“I bow,” said the Ambassador, duly bowing, “to Your Highness’s superior insight. But still, high or low, true or false, happiness is happiness and freedom is most enjoyable. And there can be no doubt that the politics inaugurated by the original Reformers and developed over the years have been admirably well adapted to achieving these two goals.”

“But you feel,” said Will, “that these are undesirable goals?”

“On the contrary, everybody desires them. But unfortunately they’re out of context, they’ve become completely irrelevant to the present situation of the world in general and Pala in particular.”

“Are they more irrelevant now than they were when the Reformers first started to work for happiness and freedom?”

The Ambassador nodded. “In those days Pala was still completely off the map. The idea of turning it into an oasis of freedom and happiness made sense. So long as it remains out of touch with the rest of the world, an ideal society can be a viable society. Pala was completely viable, I’d say, until about 1905. Then, in less than a single generation, the world completely changed. Movies, cars, airplanes, radio. Mass production, mass slaughter, mass communication and, above all, plain mass—more and more people in bigger and bigger slums or suburbs. By 1930 any clear-sighted observer could have seen that, for three quarters of the human race, freedom and happiness were almost out of the question. Today, thirty years later, they’re completely out of the question. And meanwhile the outside world has been closing in on this little island of freedom and happiness. Closing in steadily and inexorably, coming nearer and nearer. What was once a viable ideal is now no longer viable.”

“So Pala will have to be changed—is that your conclusion?”

Mr. Bahu nodded. “Radically.”

“Root and branch,” said the Rani with a prophet’s sadistic gusto.

“And for two cogent reasons,” Mr. Bahu went on. “First, because it simply isn’t possible for Pala to go on being different from the rest of the world. And, second, because it isn’t right that it should be different.”

“Not right for people to be free and happy?”

Once again the Rani said something inspirational about false happiness and the wrong kind of freedom.

Mr. Bahu deferentially acknowledged her interruption, then turned back to Will.

“Not right,” he insisted. “Flaunting your blessedness in the face of so much misery—it’s sheer hubris, it’s a deliberate affront to the rest of humanity. It’s even a kind of affront to God.”

“God,” the Rani murmured voluptuously, “God…”

Then, reopening her eyes, “These people in Pala,” she added, “they don’t believe in God. They only believe in Hypnotism and Pantheism and Free Love.” She emphasized the words with indignant disgust.

“So now,” said Will, “you’re proposing to make them miserable in the hope that this will restore their faith in God. Well, that’s one way of producing a conversion. Maybe it’ll work. And maybe the end will justify the means.” He shrugged his shoulders. “But I do see,” he added, “that, good or bad, and regardless of what the Palanese may feel about it, this thing is going to happen. One doesn’t have to be much of a prophet to foretell that Murugan is going to succeed. He’s riding the wave of the future. And the wave of the future is undoubtedly a wave of crude petroleum. Talking of crudity and petroleum,” he added, turning to the Rani, “I understand that you’re acquainted with my old friend, Joe Aldehyde.”

“You know Lord Aldehyde?”

“Well.”

“So
that’s
why my Little Voice was so insistent!” Closing her eyes again, she smiled to herself and slowly nodded her head. “Now I Understand.” Then, in another tone, “How is that dear man?” she asked.

“Still characteristically himself,” Will assured her.

“And what a rare self!
L’homme au cerf-volant
—that’s what I call him.”

“The man with the kite?” Will was puzzled.

“He does his work down here,” she explained; “but he holds a string in his hand, and at the other end of the string is a kite, and the kite is forever trying to go higher, higher, Higher. Even while he’s at work, he feels the constant Pull from Above, feels the Spirit tugging insistently at the flesh. Think of it! A man of affairs, a great Captain of Industry—and yet, for him, the only thing that Really Matters is the Immortality of the Soul.”

Light dawned. The woman had been talking about Joe Aldehyde’s addiction to spiritualism. He thought of those weekly séances with Mrs. Harbottle, the automatist; with Mrs. Pym, whose control was a Kiowa Indian called Bawbo; with Miss Tuke and her floating trumpet out of which a squeaky whisper uttered oracular words that were taken down in shorthand by Joe’s private secretary: “
Buy Australian cement; don’t be alarmed by the fall in Breakfast Foods; unload forty percent of your rubber shares and invest the money in IBM and Westinghouse
…”

“Did he ever tell you,” Will asked, “about that departed stockbroker who always knew what the market was going to do next week?”

“
Sidhis
,” said the Rani indulgently. “Just
sidhis
. What else can you expect? After all, he’s only a Beginner. And in this present life business is his karma. He was predestined to do what he’s done, what he’s doing, what he’s going to do. And what he’s going to do,” she added impressively and paused in a listening pose, her finger lifted, her head cocked, “what he’s going to do—that’s what my Little Voice is saying—includes some great and wonderful things here in Pala.”