When Patrick came back, he looked quickly at the letters and then up at me, and he smiled a little smile which could have meant anything or nothing. Then he picked up the letter to Penny and put it into an envelope and he asked me if the post office was far from here. I told him No, it was quite near the main gate of the Monastery, and that we could easily go by there and send off his letters, so that then he’d know where it was. I was tempted to add, I expect you’ll be using it a lot.
We started out shortly before four o’clock, just as the side gate at the end of the lane was about to be opened to let the public in, after the midday closing. So the lane was quite crowded and I had some private fun observing Patrick’s reactions. If only he knew how funny he is! It isn’t that he’s without humour, he has plenty of it about other people, and I’m sure it’s his pride and ultimate support, his religion, in fact. It’s what saves him, he thinks, from losing his sense of proportion and falling for weird oriental cults—like a certain humourless brother of his who couldn’t look on the funny side of things and thus came to a gruesome end, denying All That Makes Life Truly Worthwhile!
Patrick has already created for himself a special way of behaving in India. He created one specially for the Congo too, but that was crude by comparison. Here, he is super-benevolent and super-diplomatic. Watching him yesterday afternoon, I wanted to burst out laughing. Whenever he meets a ‘native’, he steps aside and pauses just for an instant, it’s barely perceptible, as if to indicate that he knows his place, he’s a stranger and British into the bargain and he wouldn’t dream of intruding, so please ignore him, he should be seen and not heard. When a couple of girls pass and glance at him and giggle together he smiles at them so nicely as if he’s agreeing with them, yes, you’re absolutely right, I am ridiculous, aren’t I? Once he met a cow and he stepped aside for her too, and you could almost hear him murmuring deferentially, my salaams, Ma’am, believe me I’m fully aware of your sanctity, you are Mother India Herself.
Then we got into the Monastery compound and I began showing him around and he asked a lot of questions which were quite intelligent in themselves, only it was like an Englishman who isn’t interested in cricket, even, asking an American about the rules of baseball—not about the game itself or the people who play it, but just the rules. He was exceedingly polite and tactful, but all the time his eyes had a teasing sparkle in them which meant, be frank, Brother dear, you’ve had to pretend to swallow this mumbo-jumbo, I quite understand that, but surely you can admit to me that you don’t believe it any more than I do. I resented this, of course, but not very much; it was no more than I’d expected from him. What I chiefly felt was sheer utter weariness at the thought of even trying to explain to him just what I do believe and what I mean by ‘believe’, and what’s really important to me in Hinduism and what isn’t, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.
He also pinpricked me a couple of times about my ‘duties’. ‘I’m not keeping you from anything, you’re quite sure?’ ‘I don’t want to get you into any trouble with your superiors, you know!’
Showing the Monastery to Patrick brought back to me so many things I’d almost succeeded in putting out of my mind—I’ve certainly tried to, hard enough—all the negative reactions I had to this place when I first came here. Those crippled children begging outside the Main Gate, those visitors and hangers-on who sit day and night in the Lodge, lounging and gossiping their lives away, the general messiness and casualness of everything, Patrick made me see them again as I saw them then. He never hinted at any criticism, he never even showed distaste at the deformities and the dirt and the bad smells, but I knew what he was feeling and I felt it through him. When we were crossing the small courtyard behind the Temple, one of the brahmacharis was preparing the dye for the gerua robes. The very willingness and cheerful energy with which he was doing the job only demonstrated more plainly what a slow awkward process this is—so much rubbing of the rock against the wet piece of marble produces so little, and the mixture is so greasy and full of lumps. Patrick made no comment, but I felt sure he was thinking exactly what I used to think and finding the same obvious solution to the problem. Soon after I got here, when my brain was still buzzing with schemes to make this Monastery as efficient as a European factory, I had the nerve to go to Swami V. and later to Mahanta Maharaj himself, and tell them, respectfully but firmly, that they really ought to mend their ancient unpractical ways. I pointed out to them that a lot of the gerua dye gets washed out each time you wash the cloth, so that very soon it has to be dyed again. Why, I demanded, couldn’t we arrange with a chemical firm to mix us up a large supply of proper fast commercial dye, which would be far easier and quicker to use and would ensure a uniform shade of gerua and would last very much longer? Mahanta Maharaj seemed slightly amused, but he didn’t snub me. He asked me gently what would be the point of making this change. I was almost indignant with him for a moment, I felt he couldn’t have been listening to what I was telling him. ‘Why, Maharaj,’ I said, ‘obviously—it would save time.’ And he looked grave and thoughtful, as if I’d made some deeply philosophical remark, and murmured, ‘Ah yes, time—’ and then he was silent, and there was nothing more I could say, and nothing was ever done about it.
I’d been wishing all day that I didn’t have to take Patrick to meet Mahanta Maharaj. But actually the visit went off quite smoothly, without any particular embarrassment. I dare say I might just as well have been introducing Patrick to some Christian bishop, for all the impression it made on him.
All the time we were in there, I was watching Patrick watching him, studying him for mannerisms, probably, so that when Patrick gets home he’ll be able to do one of his imitations. Well, let’s suppose that he actually was, what else could you expect him to be doing? What does anyone do, when he doesn’t understand something? He fastens on to its surface appearance.
Patrick is the most uncanny mimic I know. Sometimes, when he’s talking about someone, he’ll start mimicking that person without, I truly believe, being aware that he’s doing it. That’s the monkeylike side of him. The monkey imitates without understanding. You can’t call it sneering—only human beings are capable of sneering. What Patrick does is pathetic, really, because this need of his to mimic shows such an utter lack of contact with life itself. I suppose Patrick has gradually let himself lose this, until now all he can do is imitate its sounds and movements. Poor Patrick—this is one instance in which the word poor has a literal meaning, it’s what real essential poverty is.
As we were coming down the steps after leaving Mahanta Maharaj’s room, Patrick said, in his polite sightseer’s tones, ‘How charming that fountain is, and that little marble seat among those rose-bushes!’ And then I heard myself answering, ‘That’s where Swami used to sit, in the days when he was living here, before he went to Europe.’
The moment I’d said it I was quite horrified, as if I’d betrayed a most sacred secret. Why do I so often tell Patrick more than I mean to? But that was all I told him, and I know my tone of voice can’t have given him the least hint that I was telling him anything of importance to me. Perhaps he wasn’t even listening. He made no comment, and when I glanced at him next he was looking out across the river.
The first discovery I made about Swami, and I made it only by very slow degrees, was his incredible capacity for concern. Before I could think of myself as truly his disciple, I had to understand and believe that I mattered to him, far more than I’d ever mattered to anyone else I’d known, even to Mother. What makes this kind of concern so tremendously powerful is that it has no ulterior motive, it isn’t in the least possessive, and it isn’t adulterated with pathos and sentimentality, like most so-called love.
Mahanta Maharaj, Swami V. and Swami A. are capable of this concern too—I’m sure there must be several others, but these are the only ones I can say it about from my personal experience. However, it took me some time to realize that. As I look back on them now, it seems to me that my first few weeks here were eve
n worse than those last weeks in Munich after Swami had left us. I was with the Group then and we could share each other’s feelings, also there were lots of practical arrangements which had to be made, and that kept me occupied. When I arrived out here I had the leisure, much too much of it, to indulge in grovelling self-pity and loneliness. Of course I was seldom physically alone, never unless I wanted to be, and the brahmacharis were untiringly loving in their efforts to make me feel one of them, but I couldn’t or wouldn’t accept their love. I made myself be friendly to them, naturally, but my beastly self-pity kept coming between us, although they may not have been aware of it. Even while I was being friendly, I was on the verge of shedding tears over my sorrow, which I told myself was greater than anything they could ever know!
And oh those days of shuddering dainty-minded distaste I used to feel for everything Indian—their religion most of all! Swami’s little Hindu shrine in the Munich flat seemed charming to me even when I first saw it, and probably the very fact that it was an alien object made it better as a focus for one’s meditation; there was nothing like it anywhere around. It was a shock to come to this country and see them everywhere, little and big, indoors and outdoors, in homes and temples and beside the roads. What had seemed my private property, almost, was a public possession. I’d grown to enjoy the privacy of having a peculiar form of worship, now it was suddenly invaded by millions of people who’d taken it for granted since their birth!
For a while I couldn’t stop being sorry for myself long enough to become aware that Maharaj and the others were watching me. They didn’t attempt any consolation. They didn’t make light conversation and jokes as they do with outsiders. They even treated me with what I took to be coldness, and how I moped over that! I see now that they were standing aside, so to speak, and letting the spirit of this place take its effect and gradually get through to me at a deeper level.
Then one day Maharaj did a wonderful thing. He took me out of doors as though for a little stroll, and then quite casually he pointed out the seat to me, telling me how Swami used to sit on it every day and how they’d teased him about it, saying that a monk shouldn’t form such attachments. While he was talking, Maharaj himself sat down on the seat and he signed to me to sit down too—I suppose he wanted to show me that it was all right for me to. I didn’t know at that time that Maharaj hardly ever leaves his room, because of the bone-disease in his hip. It must have hurt him to walk even that short distance, and he probably needed to rest before he could walk back again.
Of course, I didn’t immediately realize what it was that Maharaj had done for me. Obviously he knew that only Swami himself could help me through that bad time and that I needed a focus so that I could feel his presence. Before Maharaj showed me the seat, I had tried sitting beside the river and telling myself that Swami must be present there, because it had received his ashes. But the river keeps flowing and it seems to carry everything away with it, including your concentration. And then, very soon, the seat began to draw me to it. I began going at night or in the early morning to sit there with my beads. A few times I’ve felt Swami with me there, so strongly that I’ve shed tears of relief— I’m starting to tremble with excitement as I write this, which is bad, probably. So that’s enough for now.
I’m glad I have written all this down, though, because it reassures me. It makes me realize how silly I am to worry about telling Patrick too much. What does it matter what I tell him? How could he possibly understand any of this? He wouldn’t even be able to make a funny story out of it. It would embarrass him, I suppose. And then he’d try to forget it as quickly as he could.
4
Tom,
it’s late, but I must write this to you before I go to sleep tonight, in fact I know I won’t be able to sleep until I’ve got it off my chest—I have to tell you how dreadfully I miss you.
I expected to, of course, in the way that I miss the few other people I really care about, but this feeling is entirely different. I feel sick, literally. It keeps coming over me in waves of nausea—I’m here and you aren’t. Ever since I arrived it’s been getting worse, and tonight it’s almost unbearable.
You’ll probably read this with bewilderment, deciding I must be drunk or crazy. Well, I am certainly not drunk. I doubt if there’s a single bottle of whisky within ten miles of where I’m sitting! As for my being crazy, yes, I suppose many people would call it that, people who never felt as I do now and never will because they’d always stop themselves in time before it got out of control. Such people live in perpetual terror of what’s inside themselves, they imagine it would destroy them instantly if they were ever to let it out. You and I are different. We can afford to laugh at wretched timid creatures like that and even feel sorry for them, can’t we?
To be perfectly frank, despite the acute misery of it, I have to confess that I’m glad I’m able to feel like this—because it does prove there’s something in me that’s still young and alive and kicking! However, my being glad is my own affair. It doesn’t mean I’m going to let you off your share of responsibility for this state I’m in.
Yes, yours, you little devil! Oh, I can just see you making big eyes of innocence, I can just hear you protesting, ‘But you wanted it and I wanted it, what’s wrong with that, what did you expect anyway, how can I help being me?’ Of course you can’t help it, Tommy, and I’ve thanked God you were you from the first day I met you. But that’s not the responsibility I’m talking about, and you know damn well it isn’t. It’s that bloody novel you gave me to read. Well, now I have read it right through, twice, not to mention I don’t know how many dippings into some of the sexier scenes. I know you weren’t recommending it to me for its literary value and so your feelings won’t be hurt when I say that it’s probably the greatest trash I ever read in my life—and I’m speaking as a professional reader of trash, remember!—but that doesn’t make it any the less exciting. Admittedly I haven’t had much experience of this sort of literature. I realize that it’s being mass-produced nowadays, especially in your own enlightened country. Funny to think that, when I was your age, even, this book still couldn’t have been published openly and sold on the counter!
You certainly must have intended me to get the stunning surprise I did get when I reached that chapter where they go to Tunnel Cove—otherwise you’d have prepared me for it in advance. Of course, I know that hundreds of tourists must have walked through that tunnel and out on to the reef, so it really isn’t strange that some writer should have hit on the idea of setting a scene there in a book. But that particular kind of scene and those particular characters! Tom, I’ve got to know this, did you deliberately make us re-enact it? It would be just like you, yes, I can believe it of you, it’s exactly the sort of wonderful sweet idiotic crazy thing you would do—and of course you did it, there’s no other possible explanation! You had read the book and it was you who planned the trip and took me there. I love the romantic silliness of your doing it, but at the same time I can’t help feeling, to put it mildly, embarrassed! I mean to say, there I was, taking part for all I was worth in a wild scene of passion—it was one of the most insane things I’ve ever done, if anybody had come through that tunnel we could never possibly have heard him coming until it was too late, with all that noise the waves were making. I was imagining in my innocence that you were as completely carried away as I was. You certainly behaved as if you were. And now I find everything you said and did printed almost word for word and move for move in this damned novel!
Tommy, please don’t think I’m angry or hurt about this or that I feel like the victim of a practical joke. Even if you did stage-manage the whole thing, I know that doesn’t mean you were just pretending—I’m certain you weren’t. You gave me quite satisfactory proofs that you meant what you were doing, on numerous other occasions! And if you got some kind of private erotic kick out of your stage-managing, then all I can say is, I hope you thoroughly enjoyed it.
While I was reading the novel I suddenly remembered some
thing—actually it was on the same night we got back from that trip, we were having dinner, and you told me that there was a character in a book you’d read that you used to think about a lot and hope one day you’d meet someone like him. The way you told me made it clear you meant that now you had met the someone, and it was me—which flattered me, of course, and made me very happy. But when I asked you about the book itself you smiled and got all mysterious. Now I realize that obviously the character was Lance in this novel. With all due respect to him, I must say I hope you consider me an improvement—because the way he talks is a bit overripe for my taste, and I don’t greatly care to inherit the author’s description of him as ‘faunlike’!
Tommy, you are a devil, though! Your not giving me this book until we were separating from each other, what else was that but a really fiendish plan to torment me by continually reminding me of you? It’s like those new American capsules to cure colds which keep hitting you every hour on the hour, only this is the opposite of a cure, it makes the fever worse and worse. It brings you here into this room with me, right inside the mosquito-net on this bed where I’m lying naked, it’s such a warm night. God, I want you so badly! I want you in my arms. If I close my eyes I can almost imagine—yes, I can.… Damn, damn, what’s the use of playing tricks on myself. If I do that I shall only feel wretcheder and emptier afterwards.
Let’s change the subject!
I think this must be the least sexy place in the world. Everything I set eyes on here seems anti-sexual. Take the boys, for instance. A lot of them go around half-naked but they couldn’t be less exciting. Not that many of them aren’t reasonably cute-looking and they often have good broad shoulders, but the shoulders are so sadly, depressingly thin. And their legs! Wretched sticks, more like birds’ legs than humans’. You can’t walk on legs like that and move with any physical pride in yourself. And those dhotis they wear—the most repulsive droopy drawers, even you couldn’t carry them off! From the front they look bad enough, but from behind they’re positively indecent, especially if you squat down in them. People squat to pee openly into the ditches beside the roads—even very dignified-looking elderly men do this—and then the folds of the dhoti part and you get hideous glimpses of skinny naked shanks. The only well-grown legs I’ve seen so far were on police-officers, and they were nearly all too fat and enclosed in grotesquely baggy old-fashioned shorts. Oh, this is truly a land where you could learn to hate the flesh! Much as I dislike having to admit it, I’m afraid it’s all for the best that you can’t be with me here. If you were, you’d stand out amongst all these pitiful underdeveloped creatures like—I was going to say a sore thumb—no, a gorgeously healthy sexy great big golden Californian thumb! And I’d be dragging you back to this room half a dozen times a day to make love to you, which would be conduct highly unbefitting a guest at a monastery and lacking in respect for my reverend Brother.
A Meeting by the River Page 6