A Meeting by the River

by Christopher Isherwood

  That’s all I have to record. It’s quite beside the point to try to guess how long the experience lasted. It didn’t need time, or hardly any, because it didn’t progress or change, it was simply a situation. There were just these three aspects of the situation and they remained constant throughout it—Swami’s presence, my tea-making, Swami’s concern about Patrick.

  This much I’m sure of, Swami wouldn’t have revealed his concern for Patrick to me without a purpose. It can’t be that he wants me to help Patrick in any way, for what other help does Patrick need if Swami is with him? So this must be an admonition to me, for my own sake—that I’m to try to remember always, from this moment on, that Patrick is in Swami’s care and in Swami’s presence—even though he himself may be utterly unaware of it now and for some time to come.

  Sooner or later, certainly, Patrick will become aware of it, either gradually or suddenly. Suppose Swami appears to him, as he has to me—how would Patrick react to the experience? Wouldn’t he have to persuade himself that it was ‘just a dream’? But I mustn’t make such assumptions. Who am I to dare to say what the power that works through Swami can do? I only know that it would be terribly wrong for me to tell Patrick that I know this about him—not that it would make any particular difference if I did tell him, because he’d never believe me. But it would be wrong for me to meddle.

  But now another thought occurs to me. I have allowed myself to get frantically upset by Patrick’s being here, and have even felt that he was challenging my whole way of life by his mere presence. That wasn’t all my imagination, either—last night he as good as urged me to walk out of this Monastery and give up being a monk. What I haven’t asked myself until this moment is, Why did he do that? And now I believe I have the answer.

  I’ve always taken it for granted that Patrick has never felt any dissatisfaction with his way of life, and I’m sure that used to be true. But I suspect that now he has begun to feel dissatisfied—it probably began quite recently—and that that’s the reason why he wants me to stop being a monk. If I left the Order he’d take it as a reassurance that his way of life was the right one, and that all possibility of another kind of life, with quite different aims and values, could be dismissed as self-deception and nonsense.

  Now, why has Patrick started to feel like this? What, actually, is his dissatisfaction? Couldn’t it be the first faint beginning of an awareness that some new and unknown power is working inside him? Couldn’t he be starting to be aware of Swami’s presence? That would surely be a most disconcerting sensation for him at first. It would make him increasingly dissatisfied with everything he used to think was desirable and important, and he wouldn’t even know why!

  No wonder Swami seemed amused! If you look at this objectively, it’s a pretty comic situation. Poor old Paddy—he’s in a state of grace! And he’s going to discover it the hard way. He doesn’t dream what he’s in for, but he’ll find out before long.

  8

  Oh, Penny—

  I don’t think I have ever felt a greater need to write to you than I do now—there’s so much I want to say.

  Actually, I’m not going to post this letter until I get to Singapore. It should reach you quicker from there than it would from here, and I’ll be there tomorrow evening—no, this evening, it’s long past midnight already. But I want to write now, while I’m still here, rather than tomorrow while I’m on the plane. Whatever may be said against this place—and I have said a good deal, haven’t I?—it does seem to create an atmosphere in which you can think your thoughts more objectively and indeed almost look at them while you’re thinking them. I have a strange, rather exhilarating feeling that I’ve never understood certain things about myself and my life as clearly as I do at this moment. I’m afraid life will begin to appear in its usual complex muddle as soon as I return to a more normal environment.

  Another reason for writing this letter now, a very secondary one, is that I have got to do something to keep me awake! This is Olly’s great night—the night of sannyas, during which he actually becomes a swami. The ceremony must have begun by this time, and it’s scheduled to last until dawn, and for some funny reason I feel I ought not to go to bed, I want to hold my own little private vigil to keep him company! Do you think that’s idiotic of me? Whether it is or not, nobody but you will ever know about it. Even if I do manage not to drop off to sleep, I can’t possibly tell Olly what I’ve done—he might so easily misunderstand and think I was somehow making mock of this sacred occasion.

  One of the swamis explained a bit about the significance of the rituals to me—he did this when I asked him what had become of Olly, whom I haven’t seen for the past three days. It seems that, before you take sannyas, you have to go through a preliminary ceremony called the shraddha, a sort of funeral service. You perform rites in advance for the peace of your parents’ souls because, as a monk, you won’t be able to do this when your parents actually do die—monks aren’t supposed to take part in any rites connected with birth, marriage or death, they’re trained to regard all three as mere aspects of illusion! After you’ve done this you perform similar rites for yourself, signifying that you are now ‘dying to the world’. This shraddha service was held in the morning of the day before yesterday, and Olly has remained incommunicado since then because—having died as himself and not yet been reborn as a swami—he’s been technically a spook!

  (I can’t help laughing when I think how hideously gruesome and morbid Mother would find all this—particularly the idea that Olly has, so to speak, buried her before her time!)

  I keep picturing him over there now in the Temple, not five minutes’ walk from this room and yet so far removed from me and from all of us—so far from home! Nevertheless, he is still our own Olly, ridiculously British, hopelessly out of his element, muffled in those alien robes and mumbling the words of that dead language, amongst all those dark faces. I find this act of his, the sheer courage of it, terribly moving. He’s so utterly, almost unimaginably alone in what he’s doing—far more so than any lone hero on a battlefield. Mind you, it still fills me with a certain horror and one does feel it’s a ghastly waste, even if the waste is heroic, a sort of spiritual Charge of the Light Brigade—c’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la vie!

  Still, I’m not really concerned about Olly’s future. I feel sure now that nothing is going to defeat him, in the long run. People with his kind of strength work out their own destinies almost in spite of themselves, no matter what perverse disciplines and rules they insist on observing. However much Olly may try to persuade himself that he believes in humility, obedience and anonymity, he’s actually quite incapable of remaining a holy nobody. I believe he’s going to make something extraordinary out of being a swami, something peculiarly his own.

  The other night I at length found an opportunity to speak to him about himself, and very frankly. I don’t know how much of an impression I made, there were moments when I thought I was getting through to him, but then I seemed to lose contact again. I suppose in any case it was much too late in the game to expect any immediate results.

  But what I’m beginning to wonder is if I didn’t make an utter fool of myself, talking to him like that. There I was, pleading with him not to desert us, not to hide himself in a crowd of Hindus but come back and help us in the West, where he belonged. I even suggested he should take a job with some agency of the United Nations! But now I wonder, in making plans like that for him, wasn’t I aiming far too low?

  The wild idea has suddenly struck me that Olly may fulfil his real destiny by staying in this country, by staying on in this Monastery even—at least for the present. Perhaps his destiny is to be a foreigner. They say that this part of Asia is intensely nationalistic and skin-conscious, nowadays—but a situation like that always means that there’s a throne vacant for the extraordinary outsider, the paleface prophet. Perhaps Olly, by virtue of his foreignness, plus of course his Hinduism and monastic status, will gradually evolve into one of those terrifyingly unc
orrupt politico-religious leaders who appear from time to time to be adored by millions, dominate international conferences and finally checkmate the opposition by getting themselves assassinated! Perhaps that ass Rafferty, with the genius of his unspeakable vulgarity, has actually had a true glimpse of what Olly will become! If he turns out to have been right, won’t that be a laugh on the rest of us—and on Olly most of all?

  Dear old awe-inspiring preposterous Olly—however far His Holiness may choose to withdraw himself from me, I don’t care, I feel so close to him tonight! And through him, I seem closer than ever to you, my darling—I mean, I feel such closeness in the thought of us three together. Each one of us will belong to the other two always, even if we never set eyes on Olly again. Do you know, while I’ve been with him here, I’ve often found myself wondering what would have happened if he had married you! We have never discussed you, only referred to you and the Children occasionally, and yet, oddly enough, I now know for certain that he’s still in love with you. And you once told me that you were still in love with him. Isn’t it strange that I can talk about this and not feel jealous? Oh, Penny, how extraordinary men and women are in their dealings with each other! Why do two people choose to live together, ‘forsaking all others’? Is it love or need? Is the need to be needed stronger than love? Or does love, in its pure absolute (as in alcohol) form, need no relationships? Do we love Olly because he doesn’t need us? I know I need you. I hope to God you need me.

  What is a ‘marriage’ anyway? I’m at my most natural with you, and we live as man and wife in every accepted meaning of the phrase, and yet as soon as I think of myself as a ‘married man’ I see that this isn’t my natural role and that the word ‘marriage’ doesn’t at all describe the most essential part of our life together. It seems to me that we only play at ‘marriage’ for the benefit of other people, to reassure them that we’re like they are and not freaks. But why do we have to reassure them? Do we really care what they think of us? No, of course we don’t. (I sometimes get the odd feeling that one gives out this reassurance as a sort of public service—lest some individual should be seized by the fear that he’s the only non-freak in a world of freaks, and thus start a chain-reaction of panic leading to mass stampede and slaughter!) Even being parents is a game to us, isn’t it? And yet I’m willing to bet that the Two Ds, when they grow up, will agree that they would much rather have had us than the genuine articles!

  All the same, game-playing can be dangerous, because one may get to take it seriously. There is a danger that even you and I might start believing that I really am your husband! And there have been times, I know, when you have suddenly felt insecure, in spite of all your marvellous power of understanding, and begun to wonder if perhaps the game was reality after all. You’ve accepted the world’s values and allowed yourself to think in terms of ‘husband’, ‘wife’, ‘married couple’, etc., and therefore told yourself that you were being humiliated, betrayed and so forth, because that’s what married couples are supposed to do to each other. As if I could ever ‘betray’ you! I know I have hurt you sometimes, darling, though I’ve never meant to. When I did so unintentionally, it was because I simply couldn’t believe I had the power to hurt you—I couldn’t take myself seriously in that way, I mean, as a ‘betrayer’!

  Penny dearest, for the sake of our whole future together, I appeal to you—accept me as I am. Will you try to do that? Will you let me be silly sometimes, and show me you know it’s only silliness and doesn’t matter to you? Let me run off now and then, looking for my teen-age self and flexing my muscles! I can promise you one thing, I shall always return from these idiotic adventures with increased love for you and gratitude—in fact, I can only enjoy the adventures if you’ll sanction them! Oh Penny, can’t we forget about ‘marriage’ altogether and live in our own special way, the way that’s natural to us? Can’t I quite shamelessly be the child who keeps running home to you, and who is always thinking of you even in the midst of his play? When I see us in that relationship it’s obvious to me that you can be more central to my life than any mere wife could be to any mere husband. Oh, it’s all so beautifully simple, really—if only you can accept me fully, then you’ll see how happy we shall be! Everything will be out in the open, happy and innocent, without lies or suspicions. And you’ll be everything to me, without any rivals, even imaginary ones.

  It’s just conceivably possible that a young American named Tom, whom I met while I was in Los Angeles, may try to get in touch with you. Please don’t let this upset you. He’s terribly disturbed, poor boy, and terribly young, and because (I don’t want to conceal anything from you, even when it’s totally unimportant) we’d had a little interlude of pleasure together, he jumped to conclusions and imagined, I don’t exactly know what, that I had somehow committed myself to him. As I say, he’s disturbed and hysterical and given, as many hysterics are, to the very anti-social vice of long-distance telephoning! So he might try to make some kind of a scene with you and perhaps pretend that I’ve promised him all sorts of things which I never did or could have. If this happens, I’m sure you’ll know how to cope with him. I shall never forget how understanding but firm you were with that poor tiresome child from Stockholm. (You see, I’ve even forgotten his name!)

  As a matter of fact, this Tom did create quite a disturbance by phoning me here, and I’ve been forced to write him a very firm letter breaking the whole thing off, or rather, explaining that there really never was a ‘thing’ to break.

  I am all yours, Penny. Yours and the Children’s. Never doubt this. To me you are safety and freedom, both together, and those are the two things I need more than anything else in the world. Only you can give them to me.

  Oh my darling, how I long for the Two Ps and the Two Ds to be reunited! I’ll cut this business in Singapore as short as I can, and hurry home. I feel a new life is starting for us.

  Yours sleepily but completely,

  Paddy

  9

  Dearest Mother,

  forgive this long silence—it must be all of ten days since I last wrote. Well, anyhow, I now have something really exciting to write about, a piece of stop-press headline news—at approximately six a.m. this morning, Oliver became a swami!

  Actually, of course, this process of becoming a swami consists of several ceremonies which take place over a period of days. For instance, the candidate for sannyas has first to be invested with the sacred thread, to signify that he has become a member of the caste of the Brahmins, which is the highest of all the castes. You might say that it’s rather like being knighted or raised to the peerage, and the idea behind it is that if you’re going to renounce earthly rank and fame you ought first to have something really worthwhile to renounce! There is also a beautiful ritual in which the candidate lays his former self to rest—thereby becoming a pure disembodied spirit—as a prelude to assuming his new monastic identity. I have carefully written down the name Oliver will have as a swami, but it’s in a notebook in my bag, and I find I have forgotten it—the name, I mean! These Sanskrit names all sound rather alike to English ears, as they all end with the suffix -ananda, which means ‘bliss’—in a spiritual sense, of course.

  Later in the morning, Oliver and his newly-made fellow-swamis had to go out into the surrounding district and beg alms, just as Hindu monks have done for thousands of years. But in modern times—in this Order at any rate—the swamis only have to beg during their first three days. It’s more of a symbolic thing really. I was in the Mahanta’s room, saying goodbye to him, when Oliver returned with the food he had been given. He offered some of it to the Mahanta, and then he offered me some, which I thought was very touching. I felt that Oliver did this to make it clear that he wasn’t disowning me or excluding me from his new life—and of course that applied equally to you and Penny.

  He wasn’t able to come with me to the airport, but we had a short walk in the grounds before I left. As we walked, people kept running forward and bending to touch his feet, which were bar
e, in token of their reverence! It was really beautiful, the way Olly took this. He smiled shyly and raised his hands palm to palm, touching them to his forehead with a bashful deprecatory gesture. He looked even taller than usual, among all the little Bengalis, wonderfully handsome and every inch a holy man, with the long flame-coloured robe falling to his feet. You would have been proud of him I know, and happy to see how well he seems suited to his new role in life. I was so proud to walk beside him and know that everybody knew he was my brother.

  Incidentally, the Mahanta told me that a monk, when he takes his final vows, gains liberation for his entire family—so you and Penny and the Children, and even I, need never worry about the health of our souls again, thanks to Olly! I shall try not to take unfair advantage of this immunity—though I must admit, it creates a temptation!

  Am writing this on the plane to Singapore. We shall be there in another hour.

  Ever lovingly,

  Paddy

  Did Oliver die? No and Yes. I see now I was silly to expect some melodramatic transformation. Now I understand that the dying and being reborn are a gradual process. Nevertheless, since this morning, the process has truly begun and that’s all that matters. I feel absolutely confident—sooner or later, through Swami’s grace, Oliver will die.