The Skeptical Romancer (30 page)

I think that the most astonishing thing in these crowds is the diversity of appearance; these people have not the uniformity of look which you find commonly in the crowds of other countries; it is as though the passions of the soul were written more plainly on their faces, and the faces were not a mask but an index, and walking along the Nevsky you saw the whole gallery of the characters of the great Russian novels so that you could put a name to one after the other. You see the thick-lipped, broad-faced merchant with his exuberant beard, sensual, loud-voiced and coarse; the pale-faced dreamer, with his pinched cheeks and sallow skin; you see the stolid woman of the people with a face so expressionless that it is like an instrument of music for wilful hands to play on, and you divine the cruelty of her sex’s tenderness. Lust walks abroad like the personified abstraction of an old morality, and virtue and anger and meekness and gluttony. The Russians say constantly that the world can as little understand them as they understand themselves. There is a little vanity in the mysteriousness upon which they dwell. I have no idea of explaining what so many have claimed to be inexplicable, but I ask myself whether the mystery does not lie in simplicity rather than in complexity. They are strangely primitive in the completeness with which they surrender themselves to emotion. With English people, for instance, there is a solid background of
character which emotion modifies, but which in turn reacts on emotion; with the Russians it looks as though each emotion took complete possession of the individual and swayed him wholly. They are like Aeolian harps upon which a hundred winds play a hundred melodies, and so it seems as though the instrument were of unimaginable complexity.

I often see brooding over the crowd on the Nevsky an extraordinary, a horrifying figure. It seems hardly human. It is a little misshapen dwarf, perched strangely on a tiny seat at the top of a stout pole high enough to bring him above the heads of the passers-by; and the pole is upheld by a sturdy peasant who collects the alms of the charitable. The dwarf sits on his perch like a monstrous bird and the effect is increased by something birdlike in his head, but the strange thing is that the head is fine shaped, the head of a young man, with a great hooked nose and a bold mouth. The eyes are large, rather close together, and they stare with an unwinking fixity. The temples are hollow, the cheeks wan and sunk. The strange beauty of the features is more than commonly striking because in Russia as a rule features are indistinct and flat. It is the head of a Roman of the Empire in a sculpture gallery. There is something sinister in the immobility of the creature, watching the crowd with the intentness of a bird of prey and yet seeing nothing, and that fierce bold mouth is curved into the shadow of a sardonic smile. There is something terrifying in the aloofness of the creature, contemptuous and yet indifferent, malicious and yet tolerant. It is like the spirit of irony watching the human race. The people pass to and fro and they put into the peasant’s box kopecks and stamps and notes.

The Lavra of Alexander Nevsky. As you reach the end of the Nevsky Prospekt it grows shabbier and more dingy. The houses have the bedraggled look of those on the outskirts of a town, they suggest a sordid mystery, until the street ends abruptly in an oddly unfinished way and you come to the gateway of the monastery. You enter. There is a cemetery on each side of you and then you cross a narrow canal and come to the most unexpected scene in the world. It is a great quadrangle. Grass grows fresh and green as though you were in the country. On
one side is a chapel and the cathedral and then, all around, the low white buildings of the monastery. There is something exquisitely strange in their architecture; the decoration is very simple and yet gives a sensation of being ornate; they remind you of a Dutch lady of the seventeenth century, soberly but affluently dressed in black. There is something prim about them, but not at all demure. In the birch trees rooks were cawing, and my recollection was carried back to the precincts of Canterbury; for there the rooks cawed too; it is a sound that never fails to excite my melancholy. I think of my boyhood, unhappy through the shyness which made me lonely among a crowd of boys, and yet rich with vague dreams of the future. The same grey clouds hung overhead. I felt homesick. I stood on the steps of the Greek church, looking at the long line of the monastery buildings, the leafless birches, but I saw the long nave of Canterbury cathedral with its flying buttresses and the central tower more imposing and lovely to my moved eyes than any tower in Europe.

SINGAPORE: OPIUM DREAM
. I saw a road lined on each side with tall poplars, the sort of road that you see often in France, and it stretched in front of me, white and straight, immensely far; I saw farther than I had ever thought it possible to see, and still the white road continued with green poplars on either side. And then I seemed to go along it, rapidly, and the poplars fled past me more quickly, infinitely more quickly than the telegraph poles fly past when you are in an express train; and still they went and still they were ahead of me, the long rows of poplars. Then, on a sudden, there were no more poplars, but shady trees with large leaves, chestnuts and planes; and they were spaced out, and I went at no breakneck speed, but leisurely, and presently I came upon an open space and then, as I looked down, far below me, was the grey calm sea. Here and there a fishing-boat was sailing into harbour. Yonder, on the other side of the bay, stood a trim and tidy granite house with a flagstaff in the garden. It must have been the coastguard’s.

THE SULTAN
. It was arranged that we should be received by the Sultan in his audience chamber at ten, and as we walked along we saw him and his suite coming out of the place where he lives, which is above and at the side of the audience chamber, and we waited for a moment to allow him to enter. He was accompanied by two middle-aged men and a suite, all higgledy-piggledy, with a man holding an umbrella over his head. The audience chamber was a long low room with a gaudily-painted throne at one end. In front of this was a table with half a dozen dining-room chairs round it, and from this, on each side of the table, two rows of chairs ran down the hall. We were introduced to the Sultan and then to the two regents. The Sultan is a little boy of thirteen with a long face like a horse, a pale ivory skin, a large mouth which shows his long teeth and gums when he smiles, and very quick beady eyes. He was dressed in yellow silk, a coat, trousers and sarong, and on his head he wore a black fez decorated with an appliqué pattern of gold cloth enriched with imitation diamonds. Round his neck were a number of gold strings and chains and a large gold medal. The regents, who are his close relations, wore blueish-grey patterned silk handkerchiefs made into a kind of turban on their heads and dark trousers, bajus and sarongs. One of them had a very pronounced squint and wore spectacles of blue glass. The younger brother of the Sultan, a little pale-faced boy of eight, was carried in by an attendant on whose lap he sat throughout the audience. The Sultan looked every now and then at the cross-eyed regent to see what he was to do, but seemed to have self-assurance and to be not at all shy. He sat in an armchair at the head of the table, with the regents on one side of him and the British Resident and ourselves on the other. Behind him stood a group of officials in very shabby clothes. One of them bore a state sword of execution and there was another who bore a spear, a third with a cushion and a fourth with the apparatus for chewing betel-nut. Large native cigarettes were handed round, about the size of an ordinary candle, coarse Borneo tobacco wrapped in nipah palm leaves; but they smoked easily and coolly. The rest of the councillors sat on chairs on each side of the hall and appeared to be listening intently to the conversation that went on at the round table. At the side of the
throne behind the Sultan stood two enormous burning candles in large brass candlesticks, and these were supposed to indicate the purity of the Sultan’s sentiments towards us. The little boy, the Sultan’s brother, stared with all his eyes. The regent on behalf of the Sultan paid us elaborate compliments, and then the Resident on my behalf made a long speech telling them all about me and who I was. After this there was a little desultory conversation, each side trying to think of something to say. Then after a final compliment from the regent and a graceful return from the Resident we took our leave.

AS I WALKED
along I thought of a broad road which I see sometimes in a dream, a road winding over the hills just as this one did that I was on; it leads to a city which, I know not why, I am eager to reach. Men and women are hurrying along the road, and often I have awakened to find myself up and half across my room in my desire to be of their number. The city is plain to see, standing on the top of a hill, surrounded by battlemented walls, and the road, broad and white, can be seen winding up to its great gates. The air is fresh and sweet and the sky is blue. They press on, men, women and children, not talking with each other, for they are intent on their purpose, and their faces shine with expectancy. They look neither to the right nor to the left. They hurry and their eyes are eager and bright. I do not know what they await. I only know that they are impelled by some urgent hope. The city reminds one a little of those cities of El Greco which stand on the brow of a rocky hill, cities of the soul, seen tremulously in a flash of lightning that tears across the darkness of the night. But those are cities of narrow, tortuous streets, and the dark clouds encompass them round about. In the city which I see in my sleep the sun shines and the streets are broad and straight. I know vaguely what the men are in those cities of mystics, the manner of them and the peace they offer to the tortured heart; but what kind of men they are in this city of mine and why it is that all those others on the road so passionately seek it, I do not know. I only know that it imports me urgently to go there, and that when at last I slip through its gates, happiness awaits me.

INDIA. MAJOR C
. He was a tall, broad-built man, with close-cropped brown hair. It was hard to guess his age. He might not have been more than thirty-five and he might have been fifty. He had a clean-shaven face, rather large, but with small features and a short blunt nose. He had an expression of peaceful happiness. He spoke slowly, but fluently, in rather a loud voice. He smiled a great deal and laughed frequently. His manner was cheerful. He was very polite and anxious to do what he could to be pleasant. It was hard to tell if he was intelligent or a little stupid. He was certainly not widely read. There was something of the boy scout about him which was disconcerting; he was childishly pleased when the Yogi came into his room and sat on his chair, and he told me several times that he enjoyed privileges that no other inmate of the Ashrama was accorded. His attitude was a little like that of the schoolboy inclined to boast because he is in the headmaster’s favour.

He has been living at the Ashrama for two years and by special favour has been allowed to build his own little shack with a kitchen behind it. He has his own cook. He does not eat meat or fish or eggs, but has a store of tinned goods from Madras to help out with the curry and curds that his cook prepares for him. He drinks nothing but tea.

In his one room is a pallet bed, a table, an armchair and another chair, a small bookcase in which are perhaps fifty books. They are translations of works on the Vedanta, the Upanishads and so forth, books by the Yogi and books about him. On the walls are a few small pictures, one of Leonardo’s Christ, a few, hideous, of Vishnu, cheap coloured prints and a photograph of the Yogi. The walls are painted green. On the floor a rattan mat.

He wears a sort of Chinese coat and Chinese trousers of white cotton and goes barefoot.

He has an intense adoration for the Yogi and says that he looks upon him as the greatest spiritual figure that the world has known since Christ.

He is somewhat reticent about his past. He said he had no one close to him in England and had travelled a great deal in years gone by, but now, having arrived there, he had reached his goal and would travel no more. He said that he had found peace and
(over and over again) that the presence and the sight of the Yogi gave him a spiritual serenity which was beyond all price. I asked him how he spent his day. In reading, he said, taking his exercise (he has a pushbike and cycles regularly eight miles a day), and in meditation. He spent many hours a day sitting in the hall with the Yogi, though often he did not speak more than a few words to him in a week. But he was a strong man in the prime of life, and I asked him whether his natural energy had sufficient outlet. He said that he was fortunate in that he was one of the few persons who had a real desire and liking for meditation; and that he had always practised it. He added that meditation was a strenuous exercise and after spending some hours in it one was physically exhausted and had to lie down and rest. But I could not get from him exactly what he meant by meditation. I could not understand if he was actively thinking of a certain subject. When I put before him the Jesuit contemplation of a particular theme, such as the Passion, he said it was not that at all. He said his effort was to realize the self in him in communion with the universal self, to separate the I that thinks from the self, for that, he said, is the infinite. When he had done that, and really seen, or felt, that the divine in himself was part of the infinite divine he would have reached enlightenment. He was of a mind to stay there till this happened or till the Yogi died.

It was hard to make up one’s mind what sort of a man he was. He was certainly very happy. I had thought to discover something of the truth about him from what he looked like and from what he said, but I came away completely puzzled.

Hyderabad. Passing along the road by car to Hyderabad from Bida I saw a large crowd, the usual Indian crowd, women in bright saris, men in dhoties, ox wagons, cows – I thought it was a small market, but my bearer told me it was the place where a healer lived and all these people were gathered from the surrounding villages to have their ills cured and women, if they were sterile, to be made fertile. I asked if I could go and see him. The driver told me he was a well-to-do contractor in Hyderabad who had felt the call to live the life of a Sadhu and had given over his fortune to his family and settled in that spot. He lived under a peepul tree and tended a small wayside shrine to Siva. We made our way through the crowd. There must have been
three or four hundred people. Sick men were lying on the ground. There were women with sick children in their arms. When we got near the shrine the healer came forward and greeted us by humbly doing obeisance to us. He was dressed in a grubby white turban, a shirt without a collar, the ends hanging over his grubby dhoty. He had silver earrings in his ears. He was clean-shaven, but for a short stubble of grey moustache. Small, perky, quick in his movements, gay, bustling and cheerful. He looked not at all like a saint but like any wideawake, active shopkeeper in the bazaar. You would have thought him an obvious fake, but for the fact that he had given up his house and belongings and accepted nothing for his ministrations. He lives on the rice and fruit that people bring him and gives away everything he does not need. He insisted on giving us some coconuts. He heals by saying a prayer to the god in his shrine and by the laying on of hands. I was much embarrassed when as I was leaving he asked me to give him a blessing. I told him I was not the proper person to do that, but he was insistent, and so, feeling hypocritical and very foolish, with all those people looking on, I did what he wanted.