Olly, I must say this in conclusion—you can’t know how happy and honoured I feel that you chose to confide in me as you have. Even if our relationship as brothers no longer means anything to you, I feel you have brought us close together again as human beings, perhaps closer than we’ve ever been before. I won’t harp on this theme because I know how you hate sentiment. I’m afraid I am a shameless sentimentalist, and getting more of one as I get older. (Thirty-eight next birthday, in case you’ve lost count!) So please make allowances for me. And remember me in your prayers. I need them. I really mean this.
With my deep affection, brother or no brother,
Paddy
Patrick’s first letter fooled me completely to begin with, because it worked on my guilty conscience. I was ashamed of my silly childish secretiveness. I wanted him to tell me he understood perfectly what made me behave like that, and then assume the responsibility for putting everything right again, like a true Elder Brother. So I accepted what he wrote at its face value and believed what I wanted to believe.
But this second letter shows the first one up. It’s obvious to me now that he was just playing with me, as he always used to. He hasn’t changed a bit. And why should he have changed, why should I have expected it? You don’t change unless you want to, and it’s clear that nothing has happened to make him the least dissatisfied with himself as he is. All the same, quite unreasonably, I can’t help feeling furious with him. Furious because I’m humiliated, humiliated because I told him far too much about Swami. I could have explained everything that needed to be explained without going into those things which were strictly between Swami and me. But is that Patrick’s fault? Did he ask me to tell him? He didn’t even know then that Swami existed.
He’s still playing all his old tricks, including that blackmailing sobstuff about Mother. Not that that in itself makes me angry any more, he’s so obviously just trying to get a rise out of me. For him, teasing is its own reward. Actually, Mother can’t possibly care much about me now. She must be forgetting me already, which is as it should be and as I want it to be. She only needs to keep being reassured that I’m all right, so she can comfortably dismiss me from her mind for longer and longer periods. That’s what old ladies are like, and why be sentimental and lie about it? If Mother really cares for anything now I’m sure it’s her cats and her grandchildren, in that order.
Even if I could see you for half an hour a day, Patrick says! If he was so desperate to see me, why didn’t he ever come over to see me in Munich? No, Brother Patrick is inquisitive, that’s all. The idea of this Monastery intrigues him. He’d enjoy coming here and spying around a bit, that’s his only motive.
(At this point, I suddenly stopped. I felt, with a strange kind of panic, that I mustn’t write another word. At first this feeling seemed justified and right and proper. I took it for the voice of conscience. I said to myself, keeping this diary has helped me so much, through the months I’ve been out here. It has got me over all kinds of negative moods and aversions. But never before today have I used it as an outlet for personal resentment. Isn’t this terribly wrong and dangerous? But then it gradually dawned on me why it really was that I was afraid to go on writing. When I wrote that I was humiliated because I’d told Patrick too much about Swami, that wasn’t getting down to the truth. The truth is that I’m unspeakably humiliated and shocked to discover that I, who am supposed to be spiritually advanced to the level at which I can take sannyas, still feel these primitive spasms of sheer hatred toward my own brother! That stabs my ego in the very heart of its vanity. It was already beginning to pose in its swami’s robes and admire itself as a budding saint. Now it gets a glimpse of its unchanged unregenerate vicious monkey-face, and it’s shocked. It goes into a panic. It tries desperately not to look.
When shall I get it through my head, once and for all, that the ego, the Oliver in me, never will and never can be anything but a vain little monkey? I ought to have learned by this time, after all Swami’s teaching and training, to live with this monkey and refuse resolutely to be impressed or shocked by its postures and greeds and rages. Its whole effort is directed toward making me identify myself with it, when I know perfectly well that I ought to be continually dissociating myself from it, calmly and firmly and with complete good humour—if you get angry with it, you identify automatically. That’s what self-discipline means. The monkey must be made to face its ugliness again and again. That’s why I should keep on with this diary and even write it in more detail than usual throughout these next weeks, being as frank as I can. It’s absolutely necessary to bring everything out into the open at last, in the little time I have left before sannyas.)
I haven’t let myself realize until now—and at least I’m thankful that I have realized it, even so late—what a terrific problem Patrick still is for me. This is something I have got to cope with, not ignore and avoid any longer. He must come here. There’s no getting out of that. I even want him to come.
There was a lie, or at least an evasion, in what I wrote to Patrick. It wasn’t because of him that I didn’t visit them in England, it was because of Penny. I was afraid to see her then. I didn’t trust myself.
And what about nowadays? Suppose Patrick had wanted to bring her here? How would I have felt? I can’t possibly tell—because I haven’t the smallest idea what Penny is like now. She may have changed so much that it wouldn’t mean anything at all if we did meet. That marvellous understanding we used to have together might simply not be there.
Which makes me wonder, how much of our understanding was just in my imagination? What sort of person was she really? Right up to the last moment I refused to believe she would actually go through with it and marry Patrick. Doesn’t that in itself prove I didn’t really know her? And anyhow, she surely must have changed, after living all these years with him.
All right, perhaps I am still a bit in love with her. Perhaps I’m rationalizing my jealousy of Patrick by saying he’s unworthy of her. Perhaps it’s even true that I fell for Penny in the first place partly because she was engaged to Patrick. None of that really matters. It’s just psychology, and psychology is merely a sophisticated parlour-game unless you indulge yourself by playing it and giving it the power of truth. I have vowed not to play the game—that’s the whole meaning of my life here. In Patrick’s world, everybody plays it, and so the precious ego is flattered and cultivated and fattened by being told about its remarkable sicknesses. In our world, the ego is methodically starved to death.
Patrick must come here, and I must face him and our relationship. I must accept him with all his arts and tricks, all the good, all the bad, everything. What’s the use of me, if I can’t pass this test? What kind of a swami am I going to be?
Enough of this for now. Now write to Patrick. Tell him he can come.
No, better send him a cable. Let’s get the machinery started, irrevocably, as soon as possible.
2
Dearest Mother,
as you may imagine, I’ve been eagerly looking forward to hearing what you’d have to say to the news about Oliver. Your letter didn’t reach me until yesterday, when I was in the midst of getting ready to leave, so there was no time to write then. Anyhow, there’s really nothing of importance to be added before I can send you my impressions of him at first hand.
I don’t wonder you say you find the idea of Oliver in his Monastery ‘a little bewildering’! It does sound pretty exotic—a far cry from St Martin’s and your beloved Vicar! Olly is indeed a genius at surprises. If we’d been told that he was about to surprise us once again and that we must guess how he’d do it, I don’t think we would ever have hit on this, would we? He is among the very few who really have the right to say, ‘My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways.’ (Sorry, I don’t mean to blaspheme!) But that unpredictability is one of the things we love him for, isn’t it?
And isn’t it refreshing, in these days of conformity, to know of one human being at least who always seems to do
exactly what he wants to do, not what he has to do? I do find that most inspiring—though what would happen to the world if we all followed Oliver’s example, I tremble to think! Nearly all of us are the slaves of our obligations, however willingly we may fulfil them. (If you read this letter aloud to Penny over the phone, perhaps you’d better skip that last sentence, or she’s sure to take it personally. Aren’t I awful?!) Of course, joining a monastery is very definitely an obligation, too, and it’s possible that our reckless Olly has got himself caught at last. But I wouldn’t be too sure of it. He’s capable of breaking out of situations just as drastically as he plunges into them!
Well, now I’m actually on my way to him. We took off from Los Angeles after breakfast, at nine this morning. Or perhaps it was yesterday by now, I don’t know if we’ve crossed the international date line yet. The plane stopped at Honolulu but only briefly, I’m glad to say. There was a violent hot wind blowing, like the draught coming out of a huge hair-drier; such unpleasant clammy heat and harsh glittering sunshine. The airport is very like most other big ones nowadays, with all those ghastly shiny gift-shops. But to prove to you that you really are on the Hawaiian Islands the stewardesses grab you on arrival and throw a great halter of flowers around your neck, as though you were a horse. The flowers must be terribly hot and heavy to carry about, and their smell is sweet enough to make you feel sick, even at a distance. Luckily for me I wasn’t an honoured visitor but only a bird of passage, so I was able to avoid getting haltered.
My final memories of California are very agreeable, though. After weeks of having to attend tiresome lunches with executives in film studios and dinner parties at the homes of exceedingly dim stars, it was arranged for me to escape for a few days’ holiday. I was motored far up the coast to a district which is still quite wild and unspoilt; cliffs towering sheer out of the sea, seals swimming in the coves below, and magnificent tall dark solemn woods in deep canyons. At the bottom of one canyon, a low tunnel has been cut right through the rock. You come out through it on to a reef which forms a small natural harbour, just enough room for a single boat. The old heavy iron mooring-rings are still there. Perhaps it was used by smugglers, one can easily imagine that it might have been. I kept wishing you could have been with me, with your watercolours. It’s just the kind of outrageously romantic spot which really appeals to you!
We shall be in Tokyo by suppertime. India, via Hong Kong, tomorrow evening. I am very well and enormously enjoying this trip. I will write again as soon as I’ve seen Oliver, of course.
And now remember, Mother darling, you are not to worry about him. I can absolutely promise you, even in advance, that everything is going to be all right. I have a feeling about this, and you know my feelings, they’re never wrong!
Ever lovingly,
Paddy
My darling Penelope,
I’m afraid I have been bad, not writing to you in all this long while. I know how you hate phone calls, and our last few have been more than usually unsatisfactory, haven’t they? I kept feeling that I wasn’t really getting through to you. No, worse than that, I got an uneasy impression from one or two things you said that you imagined I was behaving strangely—being cold or distant, I don’t exactly know what. I avoided asking you about this at the time, for fear I’d only make matters worse, but now tell me, was that how you felt? If it was, you had no reason to, believe me! You must admit, darling, you do sometimes fancy things. Not that I’m criticizing you for that, it’s just one of the penalties you pay for having such an acutely sensitive sweet nature. I love you for minding about my moods, real or imaginary, because that proves you love me. But I can’t bear to think of your being even the least tiny bit unhappy, however mistakenly.
I even suspect, and do forgive me if I’m wrong, that you feel my staying on in Los Angeles these last ten days was unnecessary. (I know you were terribly disappointed, as I was, about our missing a Christmas together for the first time, but that was absolutely unavoidable, as I’m sure you realize.) Well, yes, it’s true that I could actually have left Los Angeles a little earlier than I did, and made the trip to India the other way around, via England, and spent a few days with you and the Children. That sounds heavenly, as an idea, but just consider, darling, what it would have been like in fact, our being together with the prospect of parting again so soon hanging over us all the time. You know yourself, the few times that’s happened, what a strain it was and how wretched, and how it makes a sort of tragedy out of something that isn’t in the least tragic—as though you and I were desperate lovers in wartime, counting the last minutes of my leave!
I think that what matters above everything else, when two people have come as close to each other as you and I have, is that we shall always be sensible and realistic. There’s always the danger of our getting over-intense and seeing minor annoyances as major problems. Also, when one of us makes a decision, the other must accept it without questioning. Perhaps you’ll laugh when you read this and say to yourself, what Paddy means is that I must accept his decisions! But you know, don’t you, Penny, that that isn’t so? You know how absolutely I rely on your strength. How I demand from you the faith that holds us two together. You know me, only too well. You know how weak I am. And, don’t you see, it’s just because I’m the weaker one, because I need you more than you need me, that it’s up to me to make this kind of decision—to be sensible and stay on in Los Angeles instead of giving way to my impulse and dashing frantically back to you?
But why am I writing all this? You don’t really need reassuring, do you?
This letter seems to be all about Los Angeles, but Los Angeles is far behind me now. And my thoughts are far ahead of this slow old plane, hopping to Olly in India, then to Singapore, then on home to you, as quickly as I can manage. I can scarcely believe I’m actually going to see Olly tomorrow night! What will he be like, now? What will be his attitude toward us all? It won’t be straightforward and uncomplicated, that much I’m sure of. The first time he wrote to me, I knew at once that he was hinting I should come out there to him, though his pride kept him from asking me outright. But does he really want me to come? Never shall I forget that disastrous occasion when he was working with his Quakers in that Congo village and I went down there to see him, very much against my better judgement and at considerable expense, not to mention the hideous discomfort. I hadn’t been there twenty-four hours before I began to feel him resenting my presence and willing me to leave at once!
If I seriously thought this new venture would bring him any real peace of mind, I suppose I’d have to be in favour of it. But, alas, all the signs point the other way. In both his letters, as I’m sure you’ll agree when you read them, there’s such a pitiful admission of insecurity behind his bold determined front. He keeps declaring, directly and indirectly, that nothing, nothing, nothing will change his decision to become a monk, until it becomes obvious that he’s secretly longing for something or someone to make him change it!
Poor dear old Olly, what in the world is going to become of him when he runs out of causes to embrace and prophets to sit at the feet of—feet that invariably prove to be of clay? You never knew Maddox, Oliver’s analyst. Olly seemed to regard him as Freud the Father, till one day he broke with him and never uttered his name again. And then there was that terribly aggressive passive resister who led Olly into all that trouble with the police. And at least half a dozen since. Not one of them lasted long. Olly softened them up with his desperate will-to-believe and then mercilessly poked them to pieces with his doubts. Really, you couldn’t help feeling sorry for them, he’s a demon-disciple! This Swami has certainly lasted by far the longest—his great advantage is that he’s dead—but, you mark my words, in the end he’ll find himself posthumously seen through and rejected, like the rest.
But of course it’s only Oliver himself that one really cares about. In the long run, he’s bound to suffer the most from his rejections. Every time he makes one of these breaks, the shock and disillusionment must b
e greater. So, if there has to be a break this time too, then obviously one must do one’s best to prepare him for it, try at least to cushion it somewhat. But how, exactly? Well—more of this after I’ve seen him and found out what kind of a state he’s in.
Tell Daphne and Deirdre that I’ll send them some little surprises from Tokyo before we leave there tomorrow morning. I’ll also try to find something for them in Hong Kong, if our stopover in Kowloon is long enough to give me time to get over there. (Better not tell them that, though, in case I can’t manage it.)
Bless you, my darling. Bless you for existing. Bless you for loving me. Kiss the Two Ds from me. Tell them to kiss you from me.
Devotedly,
Paddy
Tom,
how very strange—this is the first time I’ve ever written your name, and it sort of conjures you up! My heart has started beating faster already and I feel a bit breathless. Tom. Tom. Tom.
Aren’t I an idiot?
I wonder where you are, right at this very moment. That takes some calculating. Let’s see, there’s approximately four hours’ difference between Los Angeles and where I am now, over the mid-Pacific. You’re four hours later, so you’re about getting ready to have supper. However, the stewardess says we’ve already crossed the date line, so we’re in Saturday January the ninth. You’re still in Friday the eighth, which means it’s still the same day for you as when we said Goodbye at the airport. For me, that’s supposed to have been yesterday but it certainly doesn’t feel like it! I can remember every single detail, everything we said and did and everything I was feeling, exactly as though it were this morning. Perhaps you weren’t aware of the eyebrows raised by some of the other passengers when you kissed me smack on the mouth? That’s why I made a point of kissing you right back with equal enthusiasm! But I imagine most of the people who saw us doing it assumed you were my younger brother and we were foreigners of some kind, bidding each other a big Latin-style farewell.
A Meeting by the River Page 3