Most pillars are their own Samsons. They hold up, but sooner or later they also pull down. There has never been a society in which most good doing was the product of Good Being and therefore constantly appropriate. This does not mean that there will never be such a society or that we in Pala are fools for trying to call it into existence.
III
The Yogin and the Stoic — two righteous egos who achieve their very considerable results by pretending, systematically, to be somebody else. But it is not by pretending to be somebody else, even somebody supremely good and wise, that we can pass from insulated Manicheehood to Good Being.
Good Being is knowing who in fact we are; and in order to know who in fact we are, we must first know, moment by moment, who we think we are and what this bad habit of thought compels us to feel and do. A moment of clear and complete knowledge of what we think we are, but in fact are not, puts a stop, for the moment, to the Manichean charade. If we renew, until they become a continuity, these moments of the knowledge of what we are not, we may find ourselves all of a sudden, knowing who in fact we are. Concentration abstract thinking, spiritual exercises — systematic exclusions in the realm of thought. Asceticism and hedonism — systematic exclusions in the realms of sensation, feeling and action. But Good Being is in the knowledge of who in fact one is in relation to all experiences; so be aware — aware in every context, at all times and whatever, creditable or discreditable, pleasant or unpleasant, you may be doing or suffering. This is the only genuine yoga, the only spiritual exercise worth practising. The more a man knows about individual objects, the more he knows about God. Translating Spinoza’s language into ours, we can say: The more a man knows about himself in relation to every kind of experience, the greater his chance of suddenly, one fine morning, realizing who in fact he is — or rather Who (capital W) in Fact (capital F) “he” (between quotation marks) Is (capital I).
St John was right. In a blessedly speechless universe, the Word was not only with God; it was God. As a something to be believed in. God is a projected symbol, a deified name. God = “God”.
Faith is something very different from belief. Belief is the systematic taking of unanalysed words much too seriously. Paul’s words, Mohammed’s words, Marx’s words, Hitler’s words — people take them too seriously, and what happens? What happens is the senseless ambivalence of history — sadism versus duty, or (incomparably worse) sadism as duty; devotion counterbalanced by organized paranoia; sisters of charity selflessly tending the victims of their own church’s inquisitors and crusaders. Faith, on the contrary, can never be taken too seriously. For Faith is the empirically justified confidence in our capacity to know who in fact we are, to forget the belief-intoxicated Manichee in Good Being. Give us this day our daily Faith, but deliver us, dear God, from Belief.
There was a tap at the door. Will looked up from his book.
“Who’s there?”
“It’s me,” said a voice that brought back unpleasant memories of Colonel Dipa and that nightmarish drive in the white Mercedes. Dressed only in white sandals, white shorts and a platinum wrist watch, Murugan was advancing towards the bed.
“How nice of you to come and see me!”
Another visitor would have asked him how he was feeling; but Murugan was too whole-heartedly concerned with himself to be able even to simulate the slightest interest in anyone else. “I came to the door three-quarters of an hour ago,” he said in tones of aggrieved complaint. “But the old man hadn’t left, so I had to go home again. And then I had to sit with my mother and the man who’s staying with us while they were having their breakfast …”
“Why couldn’t you come in while Dr Robert was here?” Will asked. “Is it against the rules for you to talk to me?”
The boy shook his head impatiently. “Of course not. I just didn’t want him to know the reason for my coming to see you.”
“The reason?” Will smiled. “Visiting the sick is an act of charity — highly commendable.”
His irony was lost upon Murugan, who went on steadily thinking about his own affairs. “Thank you for not telling them you’d seen me before,” he said abruptly, almost angrily. It was as though he resented having to acknowledge his obligation, and were furious with Will for having done him the good turn which demanded this acknowledgement.
“I could see you didn’t want me to say anything about it,” said Will. “So of course I didn’t.”
“I wanted to thank you,” Murugan muttered between his teeth and in a tone that would have been appropriate to, “You dirty swine!”
“Don’t mention it,” said Will with mock politeness.
What a delicious creature! he was thinking as he looked, with amused curiosity, at that smooth golden torso, that averted face, regular as a statue’s but no longer Olympian, no longer classical — a Hellenistic face, mobile and all too human. A vessel of incomparable beauty — but what did it contain? It was a pity, he reflected, that he hadn’t asked that question a little more seriously before getting involved with his unspeakable Babs. But then Babs was a female. By the sort of heterosexual he was, the sort of rational question he was now posing was unaskable. As no doubt it would be, by anyone susceptible to boys, in regard to this bad-blooded little demi-god sitting at the end of his bed. “Didn’t Dr Robert know you’d gone to Rendang?” he asked.
“Of course he knew. Everybody knew it. I’d gone there to fetch my mother. She was staying there with some of her relations. I went over to bring her back to Pala. It was absolutely official.”
“Then why didn’t you want me to say that I’d met you over there?”
Murugan hesitated for a moment, then looked up at Will defiantly. “Because I didn’t want them to know I’d been seeing Colonel Dipa.”
Oh, so that was it! “Colonel Dipa’s a remarkable man,” he said aloud, fishing with sugared bait for confidences.
Surprisingly unsuspicious, the fish rose at once. Murugan’s sulky face lit up with enthusiasm and there, suddenly, was Antinous in all the fascinating beauty of his ambiguous adolescence. “I think he’s wonderful,” he said, and for the first time since he had entered the room, he seemed to recognize Will’s existence and gave him the friendliest of smiles. The Colonel’s wonderfulness had made him forget his resentment, had made it possible for him, momentarily, to love everybody — even this man to whom he owed a rankling debt of gratitude. “Look at what he’s doing for Rendang!”
“He’s certainly doing a great deal for Rendang,” said Will non-committally.
A cloud passed across Murugan’s radiant face. “They don’t think so here,” he said, frowning. “They think he’s awful.”
“Who thinks so?”
“Practically everybody!”
“So they didn’t want you to see him?”
With the expression of an urchin who has cocked a snook while the teacher’s back is turned, Murugan grinned triumphantly. “They thought I was with my mother all the time.”
Will picked up the cue at once. “Did your mother know you were seeing the Colonel?” he asked.
“Of course.”
“And had no objection?”
“She was all for it.”
And yet Will felt quite sure, he hadn’t been mistaken when he thought of Hadrian and Antinous. Was the woman blind? Or didn’t she wish to see what was happening?
“But if she doesn’t mind,” he said aloud, “why should Dr Robert and the rest of them object?” Murugan looked at him suspiciously. Realizing that he had ventured too far into forbidden territory, Will hastily drew a red herring across the trail. “Do they think,” he asked with a laugh, “that he might convert you to a belief in military dictatorship?”
The red herring was duly followed, and the boy’s face relaxed into a smile. “Not that, exactly,” he answered, “but something like it. It’s all so stupid,” he added with a shrug of the shoulders. “Just idiotic protocol.”
“Protocol?” Will was genuinely puzzled.
“Weren’t you
told anything about me?”
“Only what Dr Robert said yesterday.”
“You mean, about my being a student?” Murugan threw back his head and laughed.
“What’s so funny about being a student?”
“Nothing — nothing at all.” The boy looked away again. There was a silence. Still averted, “The reason,” he said at last, “why I’m not supposed to see Colonel Dipa is that he’s the head of a state and I’m the head of a state. When we meet, it’s international politics.”
“What do you mean?”
“I happen to be the Raja of Pala.”
“The Raja of Pala?”
“Since fifty-four. That was when my father died.”
“And your mother, I take it, is the Rani?”
“My mother is the Rani.”
Make a bee-line for the palace. But here was the palace making a bee-line for him. Providence, evidently, was on the side of Joe Aldehyde and working overtime.
“Were you the eldest son?” he asked.
“The only son,” Murugan replied. And then, stressing his uniqueness still more emphatically, “The only child,” he added.
“So there’s no possible doubt,” said Will. “My goodness! I ought to be calling you Your Majesty. Or at least Sir.” The words were spoken laughingly; but it was with the most perfect seriousness and a sudden assumption of regal dignity that Murugan responded to them.
“You’ll have to call me that at the end of next week,” he said. “After my birthday. I shall be eighteen. That’s when a Raja of Pala comes of age. Till then I’m just Murugan Mailendra. Just a student learning a little bit about everything — including plant breeding,” he added contemptuously— “so that, when the time comes, I shall know what I’m doing.”
“And when the time comes, what will you be doing?” Between this pretty Antinous and his portentous office there was a contrast which Will found richly comic. “How do you propose to act?” he continued on a bantering note. “Off with their heads? L’Etat c’est Moi?”
Seriousness and regal dignity hardened into rebuke. “Don’t be stupid.”
Amused, Will went through the motions of apology. “I just wanted to find out how absolute you were going to be.”
“Pala is a constitutional monarchy,” Murugan answered gravely.
“In other words, you’re just going to be a symbolic figurehead — to reign, like the Queen of England, but not rule.”
Forgetting his regal dignity, “No, no,” Murugan almost screamed. “Not like the Queen of England. The Raja of Pala doesn’t just reign; he rules.” Too much agitated to sit still, Murugan jumped up and began to walk about the room. “He rules constitutionally; but, by God, he rules, he rules!” Murugan walked to the window and looked out. Turning back after a moment of silence, he confronted Will with a face transfigured by its new expression into an emblem, exquisitely moulded and coloured, of an all too familiar kind of psychological ugliness. “I’ll show them who’s the boss around here,” he said in a phrase and tone, which had obviously been borrowed from the hero of some American gangster movie. “These people think they can push me around,” he went on reciting from the dismally commonplace script, “the way they pushed my father around. But they’re making a big mistake,” he uttered a sinister snigger and wagged his beautiful, odious head. “A big mistake,” he repeated.
The words had been spoken between clenched teeth and with scarcely moving lips; the lower jaw had been thrust out so as to look like the jaw of a comic strip criminal; the eyes glared coldly between narrowed lids. At once absurd and horrible. Antinous had become the caricature of all the tough guys in all the B-pictures from time immemorial.
“Who’s been running the country during your minority?” Will now asked.
“Three sets of old fogeys,” Murugan answered contemptuously. “The Cabinet, the House of Representatives and then, representing me, the Raja, the Privy Council.”
“Poor old fogeys!” said Will. “They’ll soon be getting the shock of their lives.” Entering gaily into the spirit of delinquency, he laughed aloud. “I only hope I’ll still be around to see it happening.”
Murugan joined in the laughter — joined in it, not as the sinisterly mirthful Tough Guy but, with one of those sudden changes of mood and expression that would make it, Will foresaw, so hard for him to play the Tough Guy part, as the triumphant urchin of a few minutes earlier. “The shock of their lives,” he repeated happily.
“Have you made any specific plans?”
“I most certainly have,” said Murugan. On his mobile face the triumphant urchin made way for the statesman, grave but condescendingly affable, at a press conference. “Top priority: get this place modernized. Look at what Rendang has been able to do because of its oil royalties.”
“But doesn’t Pala get any oil royalties?” Will questioned with that innocent air of total ignorance, which he had found by long experience to be the best way of eliciting information from the simple-minded and the self-important.
“Not a penny,” said Murugan. “And yet the southern end of the island is fairly oozing with the stuff. But except for a few measly little wells for home consumption, the old fogeys won’t do anything about it. And what’s more, they won’t allow anyone else to do anything about it.” The statesman was growing angry; there were hints now in his voice and expression of the Tough Guy. “All sorts of people have made offers — South-East Asia Petroleum, Shell, Royal Dutch, Standard of California. But the bloody old fools won’t listen.”
“Can’t you persuade them to listen?”
“I’ll damn well make them listen,” said the Tough Guy.
“That’s the spirit!” Then, casually, “Which of the offers do you think of accepting?” he asked.
“Colonel Dipa’s working with Standard of California, and he thinks it might be best if we did the same.”
“I wouldn’t do that without at least getting a few competing bids.”
“That’s what I think too. So does my mother.”
“Very wise.”
“My mother’s all for South-East Asia Petroleum. She knows the Chairman of the Board, Lord Aldehyde.”
“She knows Lord Aldehyde? But how extraordinary!” The tone of delighted astonishment was thoroughly convincing. “Joe Aldehyde is a friend of mine. I write for his papers. I even serve as his private ambassador. Confidentially,” he added, “that’s why we took that trip to the copper mines. Copper is one of Joe’s side-lines. But of course his real love is oil.”
Murugan tried to look shrewd. “What would he be prepared to offer?”
Will picked up the cue and answered, in the best movie-tycoon style, “Whatever Standard offers plus a little more.”
“Fair enough,” said Murugan out of the same script, and nodded sagely. There was a long silence. When he spoke again, it was as the statesman granting an interview to representatives of the press.
“The oil royalties,” he said, “will be used in the following manner. Twenty-five per cent of all monies received will go to World Reconstruction.”
“May I ask,” Will enquired deferentially, “precisely how you propose to reconstruct the world?”
“Through the Crusade of the Spirit. Do you know about the Crusade of the Spirit?”
“Of course. Who doesn’t?”
“It’s a great world movement,” said the statesman gravely. “Like Early Christianity. Founded by my mother.”
Will registered awe and astonishment.
“Yes, founded by my mother,” Murugan repeated, and he added impressively, “I believe it’s man’s only hope.”
“Quite,” said Will Farnaby, “quite.”
“Well, that’s how the first twenty-five per cent of the royalties will be used,” the statesman continued. “The remainder will go into an intensive programme of industrialization.” The tone changed again. “These old idiots here only want to industrialize in spots and leave all the rest as it was a thousand years ago.”
“Wher
eas you’d like to go the whole hog. Industrialization for industrialization’s sake.”
“No, industrialization for the country’s sake. Industrialization to make Pala strong. To make other people respect us. Look at Rendang. Within five years they’ll be manufacturing all the rifles and mortars and ammunition they need. It’ll be quite a long time before they can make tanks. But meanwhile they can buy them from Skoda with their oil money.”
“How soon will they graduate to H-bombs?” Will asked ironically.
“They won’t even try,” Murugan answered. “But after all,” he added, “H-bombs aren’t the only absolute weapons,” He pronounced the phrase with relish. It was evident that he found the taste of ‘absolute weapons’ positively delicious. “Chemical and biological weapons — Colonel Dipa calls them the poor man’s H-bombs. One of the first things I’ll do is to build a big insecticide plant.” Murugan laughed and winked an eye. “If you can make insecticides,” he said, “you can make nerve gas.”
Will remembered that still unfinished factory in the suburbs of Rendang-Lobo.
“What’s that?” he had asked Colonel Dipa as they flashed past it in the white Mercedes.
“Insecticides,” the Colonel had answered. And showing his gleaming white teeth in a genial smile, “We shall soon be exporting the stuff all over South-East Asia.”
At the time, of course, he had thought that the Colonel merely meant what he said. But now … Will shrugged his mental shoulders. Colonels will be Colonels and boys, even boys like Murugan, will be gun-loving boys. There would always be plenty of jobs for special correspondents on the trail of death.
“So you’ll strengthen Pala’s army?” Will said aloud.
“Strengthen it? No — I’ll create it. Pala doesn’t have an army.”
“None at all?”
“Absolutely nothing. They’re all pacifists.” The p was an explosion of disgust, the s’s hissed contemptuously. “I shall have to start from scratch.”
“And you’ll militarize as you industrialize, is that it?”
Complete Works of Aldous Huxley Page 291