by Noel Scanlon
Chris and Enika were on the floor fighting one another like two wildcats. Their clothes were torn, their faces scratched. Chris was the heavier and healthier of the two. But Enika’s wan weak body seemed to be endowed with some sort of maniacal strength. There was no sign of the mild gentle girl she had once been. Her glaring eyes were filled with naked hostility.
Enika was trying to kill Chris. There was no doubt in my mind that that was what she intended to do. She was lying on top of her and her hands were locked about Chris’s throat. Both had their upper garments ripped. Lying there they looked as if they were committing some far-out sexual act. But it was only a horrible parody.
Last time something like this had happened, I was barely able to hold her. But now I was weaker and had little or no chance of subduing her.
Raising the stake I used the minimum force needed to stop Enika killing Chris. She slumped to the ground.
I helped Chris to her feet but at first she was not able to stand. It was some time before she was able to tell me what happened.
“She was coming on fine,” Chris said panting and wild-eyed. “She just lay there quietly in her room and never complained. I fed her on grain and stuff just like you told me. Nothing off the island. I was sure she had recovered. That’s why I thought it was safe to go out. When I got back she was waiting for me. She came at me without any warning. I just couldn’t believe how strong she was.”
We didn’t bother clearing up the cottage. There didn’t seem to be any point.
As we were about to leave there was a loud mewing and the striped tom-cat came out of hiding and dashed out in front of us.
Helping Enika between us, we went out, leaving the door open behind us. It didn’t make any difference. That vegetation was going to beat its way inside anyway. I had noticed some of the tendrils of the bindweed creeping through the window sashes. In a few hours the brambles too would be breaking in.
We trudged along the path I had cleared. Once or twice we had to pause while I knocked a giant nettle out of the way.
We helped Enika into the church and I left her there with Chris. Hari and Arjun were hunched in a corner looking frightened and worried.
CHAPTER 21
Early next morning there was a scratching sound at the front door. At first I ignored it. Ordinarily Manju or Maya would have opened the door but this time they didn’t. I was sure I could win them back but for the moment they were treating me with circumspection.
They were polite but careful of me. They kept watching me surreptiously as if trying to size me up.
There was something unnerving in this metamorphosis of two friendly amenable girls into two suspicious young women. Did I look different? Did I look dangerous?
I was so affected by the change here in my own home that I had had difficulty in sleeping during the night.
I lay awake thinking. The middle of the night seemed to be the only time I could any longer think clearly.
In the calm stillness of the night, I was able to remind myself that, as the guru had taught me, the power of the mind, if focused, is immense.
Time was removed to a different dimension, enabling me to undergo a spiritual experience of great intensity. In the same way as black holes, those black mysteries of the universe, suck in whole stars, packing atoms together to a point of infinite density into which the whole universe will one day collapse, there are also black holes in the mind which produce spiritual experiences through which people escape to different and ascending states of consciousness.
While I was having these insights, and was about to access a new level of awareness, the noise of moving stones on the Hill intruded, pulling me out of my meditative state, so difficult to attain but so easy to shatter.
I tossed and turned feverishly trying to regain control of my, by now agitated mind.
Perhaps at my present state of development I would be better able to handle such a situation. By prolonged meditation and non-involvement I have become stronger. But at that time I was dominated by the ego. I had very little real idea of non-attachment and the powers that flow from it.
I became aware that someone or something was by my bedside.
There was a rustling noise as two forms glided away.
Was it Manju and Maya or someone or something else?
I got up, dressed and went out into the kitchen. Manju and Maya were sitting at the fire as usual. They had their backs to me as if everything was normal.
The scratching noise started up again. I opened the door.
Dominic’s dog stood outside wagging its tail and looking up at me expectantly. It made it clear that it wanted me to follow it.
Reluctantly I went outside and followed the sheepdog. Its presence meant that either Augustus John or Dominic was on the island. Their continued intrusion annoyed me. I had enough to deal with without them.
The dog kept running ahead of me for twenty yards or so then darting back, all the time keeping warily out of reach, circling and herding me towards its master as if I was a stray sheep. I do not know what it would have done if l had refused to come.
I looked critically at the landscape to see if it had changed any more. It had. The vegetation had extended its boundaries further. A number of bog irises of a giant size and with a bloom of the most intense yellow were right across my path. And the other dimension, that eerie additive I had noticed the previous day, had intensified.
The sheepdog ran backwards and forwards with a maddening vitality that I thought exceeded normal animal behaviour.
Dominic was not to be seen. But Augustus John was in the graveyard sitting on a tombstone smoking and waiting. At my approach he got slowly to his feet. Drawing the heel of his boot across a grave he said with a twisted grin, “Isn’t that a fine grave now.” He scraped his heel through the soil to the cement below. “But can you tell me now, reverend, how in the name of jaysus could anyone rise up through that slab of concrete on the Last Day?” He grinned broadly. “I mean,” he said, “it’s terrible hard.”
I looked at him closely. There was something I didn’t like about the way Augustus John had begun to appear in the graveyard. I had begun to wonder if it was an act of desecration. In any event I ignored his inane remark. I had long since ceased to find any of his remarks in any way humorous.
“What are you doing here?” I demanded coldly.
Augustus John planted his gum-booted legs well apart so that he loomed against the Celtic crosses and the turbulence of the ocean beyond. He leaned back against a faded tombstone and stubbed his cigarette out on an eternal wreath.
“What are you doing here?” I repeated. “I thought I made it clear you couldn’t come to this island except with my permission.” My voice rang a little too high and querulous.
“Well now, reverend,” Augustus John said evenly. “It isn’t that we wanted the trip out here. But the postmistress told us to bring you this telegram.”
“A telegram!” I said, startled. “ Give it to me.”
I tore it open.
Come to Carmodys now with Augustus John and bring the girl with you. If you don’t the gardai will come and arrest you.
I didn’t want to know the contents of the other mail which would no doubt also be hostile. But, overcome by some weakness of will, I opened and read the first letter.
Sir,
You should be shot.
Until I read the article in the Western Herald I would never have believed that such gross immorality and licentiousness could invade our shores and disgust and repel all right-thinking and god-fearing citizens.
It fairly took my breath away to read about them orgies. Have you and the likes of you no shame or sense of decency at all? What about the parents of the girls? If you are so hardened not to be afraid of anything in this world are you not afraid of receiving your punishment in the next?
The postmistress had heavily underlined this last sentence in red. The other letters were in a similar vein.
Sir, you should be hung drawn an
d quartered.
Are you aware, sir, that this country brought Christianity to Europe and we will not now stand idly by while the likes of you and your wanton hussies commit immoralities and sacrileges that offend against man and God and the impurity of which is bound to seep across the sea and pollute the moral atmosphere on the mainland where every soul is a sound Catholic leaving no stone unturned in order to get in through the pearly gates.
We will not in the latter end be thrown down into the fires of Hell on account of you and your black pagan witch doctor standing on his head and floating in air. We have our own miracles without all those fancy foreign ones. You and your paganism, sir, should be run off the island and cast into the sea
There was only one letter which was not in this vein.
The committee for the Pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady’s Apparition at Kulchmore thank you for your generous contribution for which Masses are being said.
This year is the 50th year since our Blessed Lady’s Visitation which has resulted in many fully attested miracles in commemoration of which we plan to complete our new church together with a complex to accommodate pilgrims.
Due to inflation, the price of a brick has this year risen from €10 to €25. Please send your contribution to Father O’Hara at the above address
I could only presume that this last letter had been sent to me in error.
At one time I would have laughed at all this nonsense but the whole affair had gone beyond the possibility of laughter.
“There was another thing,” Augustus John said, “I brought you a present.”
He whistled. A rumbling sound came from the direction of the hill, the familiar sound of the crashing and scraping together of stones.
Augustus John whistled again. From behind a tombstone stepped a huge male goat, a magnificent animal with curved horns several feet long. From the moment I set eyes on the goat, I knew that there was something very odd about it, that this was no ordinary goat.
I said to Augustus John in a conciliatory manner which I despised, “That was very good of you, Augustus John, but we don’t want a goat. “
Augustus John pretended not to have heard me. “I brought himself first but I’ll bring the female goats tomorrow. They say there’s nothing like goats‘ milk. On account of all the herbs they eat. And there’s a powerful lot of eating on this island now, wouldn’t you say, with everything growing so well. And it is growing powerful well, isn’t it?” he said slyly.
I didn’t respond. I was watching the goat. There was something knowing and calculating and imperious about him as he stared out of cynical, predatory eyes that were bright with an ancient evil. I felt that I was again in the presence of one of the island entities. Had I not seen those eyes before? Were they not the same eyes as I had seen in that Druidic stone?
Suddenly the goat was advancing on me. I seized a rock and flung it. But, to my astonishment, the rock appeared to pass right through its body!
Augustus John put his hand on my arm and squeezed viciously. “You shouldn’t have done that, reverend,” he said threateningly. “You should never have done that.”
He began to pull pieces of binding twine from his pocket.
“There’s one thing about goats, sur,” he said. “They’re divils to catch. So what you have to do is spancel them. Come on now and I’ll give you a demonstration.” His powerful grip propelled me towards the goat. I tried to resist but couldn’t. “Just hould him a minute, sur, while I spancel him.”
Augustus John dragged me forward and forced my hand on to the goat’s horns.
Immediately my body was shaken by a series of convulsions. I was falling into a dark deep abyss, a black hole in the mind. The goat grew and grew in size until it was towering over me. It began to envelop me. It was drawing me inside it, into a dark hideous presence. Distantly I could hear Augustus John muttering, ‘’Just hould on, sur, just hould on.”
I wrenched one hand away, staggered back and fell to the ground. By the time I got to my feet the goat had disappeared.
Augustus John was grinning a knowing, conniving grin. “Where’s the divil got to? They’re awful frisky, goats. But I’ve never seen one take off as fast as that.”
I stood there shaken and dazed. This was my closest personal encounter with an island entity one so far.
I was startled by the howling of a dog coming from the direction of my cottage.
Getting my shaking body under control I ran towards it. Dominic’s dog was outside my door trying to get in. I dashed inside.
Maya was standing by the window naked except for the gold bangles which she always wore and which I had so often watched twinkling in the turf light as we sat in that cottage, comfortable and contented by the fireside, protected from the leaping snarling elements outside. She was looking at the bed. And what was happening there made me gasp for air.
Two bodies were entwined - Manju’s slim golden one and Dominic’s white hunch-backed one.
My initial reaction was to assume that it was rape and I was about to act accordingly.
But what was happening before my eyes made it obvious that it was not rape. It was Dominic who looked confused and perplexed. Everything pointed to co-operation on the part of the girls. Their clothes had not been torn from them but were neatly folded on a stool by the fire. How had Dominic got into the cottage anyway? Meantime Manju had pulled Dominic on top of her and she was writhing and pumping beneath him on the bed.
There was a pounding noise outside and Augustus John burst in. Prudishly averting his gaze from the two naked girls, he pulled his brother off the bed. “What are you doing in here? You know you’re not allowed in these parts. Now get that thing inside your trousers where it belongs and get outa here.”
Grinning inanely and glancing slyly at the girls Dominic pulled his clothes on. Augustus John shoved him outside. “Get down to the boat and wait for us.”
To me he said, “I’m terrible sorry about that, sur.” He backed out the door with downcast averted eyes. “I dunno what got into him at all at all.”
I went outside with him.
“I think we’d better be going now, sur. They’re expecting us. And there’ll be ructions if you don’t turn up. I don’t think you’ve any choice, sur, but to come. If you don’t the gardai’ll be out to get you.”
He made off towards the jetty.
I went back into the cottage, collected the two Indian girls and followed him.
CHAPTER 22
I was about to set this chapter down when I fell ill and was ill for several weeks. I had been fasting for some time (it was a vow I had taken). The guru ordered me to eat again and, when I was recovered, sent me on a walking tour among the villages. The guru, with his usual common sense, told me there were different paths for different people and at the moment this was what I needed.
He was right of course. Try as I may, I do not have the same facility for meditation and silence, for long hours of sitting in the same position, which seems to come so readily to his Indian followers. It has, I suppose, something to do with my European upbringing so different from that of the east.
Out on the road I immediately felt stronger. There is nothing better for the mind, body, and spirit than walking for day after day in the tremendous stillness of the Indian countryside which gradually moves in on you and forms a pool of stillness inside you.
I do not know anywhere else which has quite the same atmosphere of expansiveness as the Grand Trunk Road in central India. The vast flat Gangetic plain flows away on either side into fields where the maize stalks are higher than a man, into the sound of insects and the smell of the Indian countryside. Under the intense white light, the whole plain shimmers and dances; the quality of the light gives everything a two-dimensional, insubstantial air.
Out there, I began to feel that I had at last begun to make real progress in my spiritual life. Some of the things the guru taught became easier to understand. Out there, I came to see that inspiration is in every man’s
nature; there is no trick or magic about it. Everybody in the world has the ability to reach the superconscious.
The Indians are well accustomed to so-called holy men travelling through their villages and treat one with respect. At night-time there is always a bowl of food and a hut to sleep in and the people looking for cures and blessings are always considerate.
On my way back I followed the same route as I had followed when I had first come to the ashram. What had guided me on that occasion? I had passed tracks that led to hundreds of Indian villages. Why had I taken that particular one? I did not even know where it led.
Coming back along it I was strongly aware of how little it had changed since I had first seen it. Very little changes in India. It might have been the same bullock cart creaking along, the hoofs of the bullocks kicking dust into my face. It might have been the same village women reaping barley with sickles and carrying it off in sheafs on their heads.
I sat for an hour in the village under the same banyan tree in the same spot where I had originally sat. Here too the scene was unchanged. Old men squatted down smoking beadies. Black-haired pigs grunted with satisfaction as they poked in the refuse nearby and scrawny hens scratched in the earth. Under the banyan tree there is a shrine built of stone. While I sat there a young man came to ring the bell suspended from a fork in the tree and its noise caused flocks of parakeets to rise from the maize fields in a twittering green mass.
I relived that earlier pilgrimage and speculated on what power had guided me there.
When I got back to the ashram, I resumed this narrative with renewed energy. I have never told the guru about it in the certainty that he would not approve. He has many ways of finding things out but he has never alluded in any way to my writing this narrative and my fellow devotees think that I am doing a translation of the Gita.
As we pulled away from the island, the currach began to pitch in the long Atlantic swells. It was cold and the wind had begun to snarl like a caged animal. Sitting here in this heat in a country with predictable climatic changes, a predictable hot season and a predictable monsoon season, it is the changeability of the Irish climate which remains most vividly with me. Here we watch the monsoon clouds slowly gather for weeks. Off Inishwrack, a bright blue sky could become clouded and grey in a moment. I remember a constant flux between leaping clawing winds under low clouds and periods of calm when all the forces of nature were held perfectly in balance.