So I was rattled, I’m afraid, and all the more so because I knew you’d already spoken to my Brother. I don’t know exactly what you said to him, he didn’t tell me and I didn’t ask him, but it was obvious that you’d been pretty hysterical, I saw that from his manner. I’m sure you didn’t leave him in any doubt as to what the relations between you and me were. My Brother isn’t by any means a prude, you mustn’t imagine him as ‘religious’ in the American sense of the word, in fact he’s wonderfully understanding, but still it wasn’t very pleasant for me to have to confess to him everything that has gone on between us. I say ‘confess,’ because having to tell him outright like that, without any preparation, made it sound like a confession. But I owed it to him not to spare any details, because of course he may well have to face questions from his superiors, if they get to hear about our conversation from those who were present. I know that Oliver in his loyalty will do his best to cover up the whole affair and make light of it, even though, as a monk, he will be committing a grave sin by not telling the unvarnished truth. This will cause him great distress, I know, and most probably he’ll punish himself for it later with severe self-inflicted penances. That’s one of the aspects of this wretched business which makes me feel most ashamed—I’ve made my Brother’s position here just that much more difficult. And it can’t ever have been easy. As an Englishman who is trying desperately to be accepted as a fellow-monk and a Hindu, one of themselves, he must be under constant observation by the people in this Monastery. I don’t doubt that there are a few malicious or chauvinistic ones who actually hope he’ll fail to measure up to their standards. Imagine what they’ll make out of this scandal, if they get the chance!
I don’t give a damn about myself, of course. I shall be leaving this place anyhow in three days at the most, and I’ll certainly never be coming back here, I couldn’t possibly, after what’s happened. I am only thinking of my Brother. No, that’s not quite true—I’m thinking also of the elder monks, the ones I’ve met and got to know. They’ve been so extraordinarily kind to me, and I should hate it if they should be told about this. It’s all very well to be defiant and say that my private life is my own affair. Yes, that’s true, but only as long as I keep it private. By letting it become public I force my standards of behaviour on them, as it were—and what right have I to do that? They never preached to me, never tried to make me conform, never forced their monkhood on me in any way. I feel I’ve abused their hospitality. And that I hate. That’s really humiliating.
All the same, I shouldn’t have been angry with you. How could you have understood any of this? You are an impulsive creature, Tommy dear, as you well know, and that’s a great part of your charm. You’re spontaneous and reckless and you absolutely refuse to look ahead. I’m just beginning to realize how awfully young you are, young even for your age. Since last night I see that we do actually belong to two different generations. I suppose that’s a fact of life which I ought to have faced from the start and which my vanity stopped me from facing! While we were together you helped me avoid facing it, because most of the things you wanted us to do together were physical and we could still be equals physically—I haven’t yet begun to fall apart at the seams!
But seriously, though, the realization of how young you are emotionally was the greatest shock I got from last night. It has made me think very hard. I begin to see our relationship in an altogether different light, and for the first time I feel guilty about it, because I now see that I involved you in something which was far out of your depth.
I wrote in my last letter about our facing the world together. I see now how utterly monstrously selfish my attitude was. I told you that you were my one chance of becoming alive and really living, and that was certainly true—my God, you’ll never dream how true it was! I know you’d have given me everything I asked for, all of yourself that you had to give. But that doesn’t mean I’d have had the right to accept it. I don’t have that right—that’s what I’ve understood, just in time, before it’s too late.
The fact that you must try to accept, Tommy dear, is that you and I could never have been happy together, no matter how much courage and determination and good luck we might have had. It’s not that my feelings for you aren’t as strong as yours for me—perhaps mine are even stronger—but the point is, they’re of two very different kinds. You see, my feelings are based on a clear objective critical knowledge of you. Yes, I do think I can claim to know you pretty thoroughly, even after this short friendship. But, Tom, do you know me even a little? I very much fear that the person you think you know is quite largely a creation of your own desires and fantasies. He’s not even altogether disentangled from that absurd character Lance in the novel you gave me! He seems glamorous to you because he has travelled in foreign countries you think of as exotic, and known certain famous people you think you’d love to know, and had experiences you imagine you’d give anything to have. What you can’t possibly understand is his attitude to all of this. I’m not saying that it’s entirely cynical and world-weary—a few, a very few, of the people and experiences were worth the effort—but it is quite different from yours. And if you don’t understand my attitude to my past life, how can you claim to know me?
Oh, it was all my fault, of course. In my eagerness to seem young to you, I instinctively concealed my oldness of spirit, my tiredness. That wasn’t too difficult, because these things don’t show on the outside yet. But they are there inside me. You see, I have been hurt, I don’t want to remember how many times, there’s no sense in brooding over it. You don’t know what it’s like, thank goodness, that kind of disappointment in someone which takes the edge off your faith in life—blunts it, so to speak, only a little perhaps, but it can never be quite the same again.
You gave me back some of my faith, as much as could be given back, and I’ll be everlastingly grateful to you for that. The only way I can repay you is to make sure that you won’t ever be disillusioned by me. Somebody will hurt you sooner or later, I’m afraid, because you’re so reckless and innocent and loving—but it won’t be me, that I can prevent, at any rate.
For God’s sake, don’t get the suspicion that this is leading up to some dishonest attempt to say goodbye without actually saying it, just to spare your feelings and save me embarrassment! I give you my word, I’ll be your friend always—one of your truest friends, I hope. And of course we shall meet again. Only I do think we need a period of separation first, probably quite a long one. We ought not to see each other again until we can take each other more lightly. I think we got off on the wrong foot. Our relationship was so dramatic and desperate—sometimes rather ridiculously so. Don’t you agree?
Dearest Tommy, I’m well aware that what I’ve written may upset you, to begin with, but I’m confident that you’ll come to agree that I was right—and then perhaps you’ll even be grateful to me. If you feel deserted and deprived, please remind yourself that it’s really I who am giving up and losing far more than you are. I’m losing you! I’m saying goodbye—I mean, as a lover—to probably the last and certainly the sweetest and sexiest boy I shall ever have had in my life. As long as my poor old nerves can even twitch, I’ll remember the feel of you in my arms. They can never take that away from me. And, no matter who takes my place with you, at least I’ll always be able to say I was there before him!
Yes, I do wish you another lover, someone altogether more suitable, closer to your own age, with more faith and courage and innocence than I had left to give you. I hope you’ll find that having been with me has done something to help you be happy with him. I’ll imagine the two of you together sometimes—yes, even on that rock at Tunnel Cove! I give you both my blessing in advance—and I’m already as jealous as hell!
As for me, well, there’ll always be my work. I must plunge back into that. And then there’s my family—I have my duty to them, and one of the chief things I can count on to keep me going is that they have so many needs which it’s up to me to satisfy, in a practical way. Dut
y often seems to me to be the only thing one can really count on, in the long run. Happiness may be thrown in as an occasional bonus, but one never knows how long it will last.
I won’t write again until I’ve heard from you that you’ve received this letter. I have to know, first, how you’ll react to it. Please, don’t sit down the moment you’ve read it and scribble off something impulsive and violent! Don’t reply for twenty-four hours at least. First read it carefully several times and think it over even more carefully.
About those letters which are already waiting for me in Singapore—Tom, I am not going to read them. That would be just rubbing salt into the wound, and it doesn’t seem fair to you. So I’ll either burn them unopened or send them back to you—let me know which you prefer. In any case, I beg you, burn all my letters, for your own sake! If you keep them around and reread them, they’ll only make you unhappy. Rather than that, I’d much prefer you to get furious with me, if it helps!
And now I can say something I could never say before—I love you, and I always shall. And that includes being in love with you. I know in my bones that I’ll still be a little bit in love with you on my hundredth birthday, which I fully intend to celebrate! I’m not asking you to go on being in love with me—I wouldn’t even want that—but please don’t ever forget your
Patrick.
Wait—I haven’t finished yet!
All the time I’ve been writing this letter, something has kept nagging at me which I feel I ought to say to you. I hesitate to say it because I’m so afraid you may misunderstand, and yet I know I absolutely must. If I really wish you well, and I do with all my heart, then I have no right to keep my mouth shut.
Tom, when I refer above to your future lover, I seem to take it for granted that the lover will be a he. That’s an impression I want to correct. Look—are you absolutely sure you can’t have a relationship with a girl? I know you told me you’d tried it two or three times, but that was back in high-school, wasn’t it, and they may merely have been the wrong ones for you. I think you do at least know me well enough to know that I’d never dream of suggesting you should go against your nature. But when someone is—as you must admit you are—such a militant standard-bearer in the ranks of the man-lovers, isn’t it just possible that his sexual inclinations may be partly prejudice? Steady now, don’t start denying this right away! First ask yourself frankly, am I against heterosexual love simply because it’s respectable and legal and approved of by the churches and the newspapers and all those other vested interests I hate?
Sometimes I’ve worried about you, Tommy, fearing that you’ll waste much of your wonderful vitality in defying organized Society—such a hopeless fruitless occupation! Society itself couldn’t care less, and that kind of defiance only hardens and embitters the defier in the long run and makes him old before his time. We can’t have that happening to you, can we? If you honestly don’t like girls, you don’t—all I’m urging is that you should give them a few more tries. They do have their advantages, you know, the chief of which is that they can provide you with children. You of all people, with so much love to give, ought not to miss the marvellous experience of being a father. I can promise you that becoming a husband is a very small price to pay for it!
Being married does make a lot of things easier, because the world accepts marriage at its face value, without asking what goes on behind the scenes—whereas it’s always a bit suspicious of bachelors! The unmarried are apt to regard marriage as a prison—actually it gives you much greater freedom. And you’d be amazed how many of the married men I know personally swing both ways. Some of them will even admit that they feel more at ease making love with other married men, rather than with out-and-out homosexuals, whom they’re inclined to look on as somewhat wilful freaks.
May I also call to your attention that one of your best-seller American psychologists—I forget his name, but I once came across a paperback of his at your place, it must have enraged you if you ever read it—maintains that man is bisexual by nature and that the homosexual who rigidly rejects women under all circumstances is being just as unnatural and square as the heterosexual who rejects men!
Enough said! Now, Tommy dear, do try to keep an open mind toward whatever the future may bring you and don’t dismiss it out of hand if it happens to be wearing a skirt!
It’s less than eight hours since I last wrote in this diary, and yet the whole world seems changed. This time I have no scruples about breaking my resolve—in fact I’m not breaking it. The reasons for making the resolve are no longer valid. And I must record exactly what has happened while it’s still fresh in my mind.
I know it would be perfectly proper for me to tell Mahanta Maharaj about this, but I’m not going to, at least not yet. This is something so extremely personal to me that I want to keep it to myself for a while. Maharaj would understand it perfectly, of course, but in his different, Hindu way. He wouldn’t quite see what it means to me, and there are aspects of it which I couldn’t very well explain to him. Anyhow, Swami often used to tell me that it’s dangerous, especially for a beginner, to describe such things to other people, because one may so easily lapse into indirect bragging.
About an hour ago, in the middle of this afternoon, I was standing outside our sleeping-quarters in the courtyard, leaning against a small tree. I was dazed with tiredness but still unable to sleep and still in the violently disturbed state I was in this morning, not knowing what on earth to do next. I leaned with my back against the tree trunk and closed my eyes, feeling as if I had absolutely no strength left to make a movement in any direction. I suppose, half consciously, I was still praying to Swami for help.
Sleep must have hit me very suddenly. I don’t even remember lying down. Perhaps I was already asleep when my legs sagged and I slid to the ground, where I found myself when I woke. This sleep was wonderfully deep and refreshing, but brief—it can’t have lasted more than half an hour. Presumably it was a few moments before waking that I saw Swami.
Yes, I can say I did literally see him, although this wasn’t a vision in the waking state. But seeing him was only a part of the experience of his presence, which was intensely vivid, far more so than an ordinary dream. Also, unlike a dream, it didn’t altogether end when I woke up. It is losing strength now, but it’s still going on inside me at this moment.
I can’t say where it took place—where is a meaningless word in this connection, anyway—it could have been in Swami’s flat in Munich or it could have been here, it wasn’t specifically either. In one sense it was here rather than in Munich, because it had such a feeling of being absolutely now.
I was with Swami from the beginning, I mean he didn’t appear to me at a certain moment, I simply became aware that we were together—and it didn’t seem as if we had only just met. We were domestically together as we used to be in the old days. Swami was sitting cross-legged on a bed or couch—the room was nondescript and not recognizable—and I was making tea for him, boiling water in a kettle on a gas-ring. I felt happy and at peace, as I always used to be while doing him any small service. In that sense, we did seem to be back in Munich.
At the same time, I was quite clearly aware that Swami was already ‘dead’—that’s to say no longer in his earthly body. And I understood, in a way I’d never understood before, that making this tea for him was both physically unnecessary and spiritually of tremendous importance. It was a symbolic act, but it was every bit as important as making tea that would actually be drunk, or indeed doing any other kind of physical service, for an embodied being. The spiritual significance was all that ultimately mattered, and it was the same in either case. In other words, I really and deeply understood, at long last, what Swami used to keep trying to teach me and what I used to repeat after him so glibly without any true understanding, about the symbolic nature of all action.
I knew that Swami was ‘dead’, and I knew that nevertheless he was now with me—and that he is with me always, wherever I am. While he was in the body, he wasn�
�t always with me, that’s obvious. If I was away at work, we could only be together in our thoughts, at best. But now we are never separated. I woke up actually knowing that. I can’t say that I still know it, in that absolute sense, as I write these words, but at least I can still vividly remember how I felt at the time. My eyes keep filling with tears of joy, remembering it.
And now I come to the thing which is hardest to describe, because it’s so strange. All the time that Swami and I were together, we were communicating with each other—I hesitate to say ‘talking’ because I have no memory of a single word we said. Perhaps the communication was nonverbal and telepathic. In any case, what we were communicating about was Patrick.
While Swami and I were living together he very seldom asked me about my past life or the members of my family. Of course I had told him at the beginning about Patrick and Penelope and the Children and Mother, but not very much. They seemed far away from our life, and there was almost never a reason for me to mention any of them. Swami can only have had the vaguest picture of what they were like.
But now it seemed to me that Patrick was very close to us—in the next room, as it were. And I was aware that he was an established part of our life, the three of us belonged together intimately and I accepted this as a matter of course. There was no question of my feeling any jealousy or hostility towards him—in that situation such feelings were unimaginable.
Swami seemed quietly but gravely concerned about Patrick. He was like a doctor discussing the condition of a very sick patient—only what he was discussing was Patrick’s spiritual, not physical condition. And yet, despite his gravity and concern, he seemed amused and even on the verge of smiling—shaking his head over Patrick, so to speak, with an air of indulgent amusement, as if to say, ‘Oh my goodness, what will he be up to next?’ The general impression I had was that Patrick had got himself into a spiritual state which was very serious, so serious as to be almost ridiculous, but that nevertheless he would be all right.
A Meeting by the River Page 13