by Damon Galgut
Dry, earnest, ignorant Adela. All this time, she’d been in love, longing to be touched, and her longing had transmuted into violence. Imaginary or real or ghostly: let it remain mysterious. He wouldn’t explain what had happened, because he didn’t know what had happened. As a writer, he’d felt he had to provide answers, but India had reminded him that no answer would suffice. There had been so much he’d seen and heard in that country which had baffled him and which rational thinking couldn’t penetrate. Mystery was at the heart of things there and it would be at the heart of his novel too. It was right that there should be an obscurity at the core of events, echoing the physical shape of the cave, around which the characters and events would dance. One could move outwards from that absence, suggesting infinite expansion.
He especially liked this idea, because it seemed to work like certain pieces of music did (Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, for example) which left him with the sensation that something was heard once the orchestra had stopped, something that hadn’t actually been played. Now, in an extended clarity, he saw the way forward. He had wanted the story to open out, and suddenly it had, in the most Indian of ways, into wider questions about the universe. And when he took up his pen again to write, for the first time in years his hand trailed behind his head, trying to keep up.
Wearing Adela’s skin now, which fitted him better than he liked, he burst out of the tunnel, into the blinding light. At the end of his recent visit he had gone travelling with Masood and one afternoon he’d tried, against all sensible advice, to climb up to a hilltop fort and had got himself into bad trouble with cactuses. It was horrible to fall headlong through them again now, lacerated and torn on their spines, his own frenzy entrapping him. He flailed and cried—but did break free in the end, into the open plain, the horizon remote. There was nothing to hold him back now and he ran, he ran.
Nor did his velocity slow in the coming days. Even when he had left the Barabar Hills behind and was back again behind the Civil Lines in Chandrapore, the words continued to braid and flow. He was writing quickly and decisively, sure of his footing, and more sure of where he was going.
“I have come unstuck with my novel,” he told Leonard, when they next saw each other, then immediately corrected himself. “That is, no, rather the opposite. I mean to say, I have found my path again. And I have you to thank, for urging me to persist.”
“It is moving again?”
“Yes, it is moving quickly.”
“I’m very glad.” Leonard eyed him shrewdly, sucking on his pipe. “Now perhaps you will let us publish it for you.”
Instantly, Morgan folded into himself. His writing, along with his grief, was in a private area of his life; he hardly spoke about it to anyone. He needed to keep the work secret, exactly like a certain kind of relationship. Talk of publication belonged to a future, theoretical world.
“I wish you well with the Hogarth Press,” he said.
“We pay generously, let me remind you. Ten pounds for every thousand words.”
But money bored Morgan.
“In any case, I am bound to Edward Arnold. I have been promising him my Indian novel for a decade now.”
“Well, not your Indian novel then,” Leonard said irritably. “Don’t you have something else? What about this history of Alexandria you have been talking about for years?”
It still hadn’t appeared. Morgan had signed an agreement with Whitehead Morris in Alexandria, and entered upon the most hopeless publishing process he’d yet experienced. The representative of the company in Egypt, the nervous, colourless Mr. Mann, seemed to have no idea what was involved in putting a book like this together. There had been endless back-and-forth discussion about maps and illustrations and, though he had finished the bulk of the text not long after his return, it had taken another three years before the proofs were ready. He had read from them aloud to Mohammed in Helouan, and they had sent his friend to sleep—perhaps their only purpose in the world so far.
“It will appear at the end of the year,” he said uncertainly. “That, anyway, is what they tell me.”
“Nothing else lying around?”
“Well, there is one possibility.”
“What might that be?”
“I have been wondering about collecting together all my Egyptian writings. You know, all the bits and pieces that I have done for the papers . . . ”
Leonard liked the idea. Among the occasional pieces that Morgan had cooked up for the Egyptian Mail—entertaining impressionistic vignettes about English life in Alexandria—there were twelve that immediately suggested themselves, which would need only to be slightly rearranged. The Hogarth Press would bring it out the following year; they would call it Pharos and Pharillon.
Very quickly, Morgan decided that he would dedicate the book to Mohammed. The gesture felt important to him. But he didn’t have the courage to address him by name, which would have drawn questions and curiosity. So he chose a cryptic camouflage instead. The dedication was in Greek, to the god Hermes Psychopompos—the conductor of souls. Others might not understand, but he did. He liked the allusion to conducting, it was amusing, but there was a more serious meaning too. One soul could help another: Mohammed had done that for him, probably without meaning to, although the afterglow continued to radiate.
His long leave-taking of Mohammed had gone on inside him, out of sight. He didn’t forget his ever friend. It had started to matter, though it hadn’t in the beginning, that he get hold of the ring that had been promised him. Almost five months of letters and requests and money passed back and forth before he finally held it in his hand. Then he didn’t know what to do with it. A plain, brass circle, glinting dully in his palm. There were so many associations with a ring like this, but all of them belonged to a Western world, a world of men and women, which neither he nor Mohammed were part of. What did the ring signify?
Nothing, perhaps. It was merely an object. He owned only two other items that had belonged to Mohammed, both given as gifts when he’d first left Egypt—his conductor’s whistle and a pencil. He sometimes wore the whistle around his neck, where it hung uselessly. Nor could he do much with the pencil. But he took comfort in these little keepsakes, if only because they had once touched the living skin of his friend.
He took to wearing the ring himself now, putting it on at least once a day, hoping to summon the past. But walking on the Chertsey Mead one morning with the ring on his finger, he understood that it would, in fact, be better to forget. His efforts of memory didn’t bring back what was gone. Everybody he loved would vanish into these incoherent misperceptions when they died, and then he himself would die too. There was only the present moment, and Mohammed could never be in it again.
* * *
Among the decisions Morgan faced was what to include in Pharos and Pharillon. As he reflected on it, he thought that he would add another four pieces to the book, and one of them would be his essay on Cavafy. It had caused a ripple when it had first appeared in the Athenaeum, but perhaps it would have more effect between covers.
He had stayed in contact with the poet, though their friendship had never grown strong. Despite his own fulsome tone, to say nothing of his efforts on the other man’s behalf, the replies he received were always polite and distant. On his recent visit to Alexandria he had dropped in on Cavafy at the usual hour when he was at home to callers, the Palamas whisky set on a table in readiness. Morgan had hoped to create a stir, but he’d only been greeted with dry surprise, overlaid with irony, as though he hadn’t ever left.
Nevertheless, his faithfulness didn’t waver. He was loyal to the poems, if not entirely to their creator. He had managed to get some of them published, but though he continued to lobby for fresh translations, these were hardly ever forthcoming. Into his Alexandrian book he had inserted “The God Abandons Antony” between the two parts, the history and the guide, and now he put the same poem, the first one he’d hea
rd, into Pharos and Pharillon. In addition, he ended the book with his piece on Cavafy, in the hope that it would linger in the memory.
To his surprise, Mr. Mann didn’t let him down. Whitehead Morris brought out Alexandria at the end of the year, and it received appreciative and thoughtful reviews. And more of the same was to follow when Pharos and Pharillon appeared just a few months later, and sold unexpectedly well. There was, it seemed, an eager anticipation of something new from his pen, and these books would fill the gap until a novel arrived.
He had apparently become a writer again, despite his best efforts to slip away. He wasn’t exactly sure how this had happened, but it wasn’t only other people who saw him like this: even in his own eyes, the vocation had somehow assumed him. He was spending long hours alone now, with his book. It had been years since anything had claimed him quite as fully. But despite the flow that he achieved, there were still times when he was hauling his own props around an empty stage. He could become so depressed by it that he wanted to spit or scream, but mostly stared blankly instead.
He had lived for so long with an unfinished book that the idea of finishing seemed unreal. But there were questions, contingent on completion, which had to be attended to, and he turned his mind to them now. One of these was the matter of the dedication. From early on, it had felt that the book belonged to Masood. At different moments, as their closeness had waxed and waned, he had nurtured the idea and let go of it again, but now, as things narrowed to a close, it seemed obvious that the writing had been, all along, connected to his friend. Even the initial idea, however lightly thrown out, had been his. But more than that, the very presence of India in Morgan’s life had only happened through Masood. Everything in it, and everything behind it, had flowed from him, and led back to him again.
Nevertheless, there were the formalities. He wrote to Masood, asking for permission. Suppose it is finished, will you accept it? He knew the answer in advance, but immediately had qualms. It seemed like a very flawed gift. But insufficient as it was, his writing was really all he had to offer.
Other worries took over. How to express it? At first he thought it should be by initials only—to S. R. M. But over time he relented and inclined towards spelling the name out. To Syed Ross Masood. No more was really necessary, but it didn’t seem enough. He didn’t want to put their intimacy on display, of course, but people might not understand how solid their friendship was, and he wanted it conveyed. Perhaps he could add something? In Memory and in Expectation? No, that was too formal. In remembrance of the past sixteen years and in certainty of the years to come? No, no, no. Too cumbersome and overwrought. More even than in the narrative which followed, the right words counted, though perhaps only to Morgan.
Of course and as usual, Masood didn’t seem to care too much. He was volubly grateful, but the wording of the dedication didn’t concern him. And there were other irritations between them. Morgan was deep into the second half of the book by now and the courtroom scenes presented their own special problems. He wasn’t even sure of the most basic details, such as whether a case as serious as the one he was describing would take place in a small, provincial court. The law, as it was practised in India, was an abstruse subject; he needed Masood’s help. It was important to him that he represent the reality correctly, at least in its technical aspects. But when he sent the relevant material over to India, to be inspected and pronounced upon, he got only a few perfunctory corrections and the injunction that he shouldn’t change a word of it.
All this might have been cause for conflict, but by now he and Masood understood each other too well. After the last Indian visit, their letters had been full of a comfortable closeness. You can have no idea my dearest how very much your love for me helps me to bear all my troubles. I love you so much that whenever anything new happens to me I cannot help thinking of you at once. I long to make you share it but become desperate when I realise that you are far away.
In the past, lines like these might have excited Morgan with their promise, but he knew better by now. They were true, but also untrue. They meant something, and they didn’t mean anything. Somehow, between them, it had always been this way.
* * *
Another problem was the title. Nothing obvious had thrown itself up, and he couldn’t put off a decision much longer.
In the end, the solution came from an unexpected quarter. He was paying a visit to Edward Carpenter, who had moved to a Guildford villa not far from West Hackhurst. The old man had lost much of his allure in recent years; he was pleasant company, but repeated himself a great deal. He exerted no new fascination and, after a couple of hours, Morgan was almost relieved to be leaving.
As he headed for the gate, Carpenter asked him, “When do you go next to India?”
He kept trotting down the path in the twilight. “I have only just returned. Or no, it’s been a couple of years already, but it feels like only last week. I don’t know that I’ll ever see it again.”
“In your dreams, you will.” And, smiling, he began to intone, in a special, sonorous voice: “Passage to India! Lo, soul! Seest thou not God’s purpose from the first? The earth to be spanned, connected by . . . connected by . . . what was it again?”
Morgan stopped at the gate. There seemed to be a quick, strange smell on the air, which almost instantly disappeared.
“Where is that from?”
“It is Leaves of Grass. Have I told you that Walt Whitman was my very dear friend long ago?”
“Yes, you have told me.” It was one of the stories that Carpenter too frequently repeated, but Morgan had first heard it from Goldie. The rumour was that Whitman and Carpenter had once been lovers. If it was ever true, the gloss had gone from it, and he didn’t want to listen to old memories again. He waved a hand and said goodbye.
But the words kept on unrolling in his head, with their pleasing rhythm and shape. A passage to India. Yes, that was it—simple and unadorned. The phrase said nothing in itself, but it seemed to point the way ahead. And, not disagreeably, it reminded him of sitting aboard ship, talking to Searight, all those years ago.
* * *
The momentum of coming unstuck hadn’t lasted. Despite his ignorance, the courtroom scenes had been easy to write, but what followed was much harder. The third part of the book exerted him once again to the utmost. Dewas and Chhatarpur provided the physical details, but the religious content came mostly from the Gokul Ashtami festival, which protruded like a knob on a smooth surface, drawing undue attention to itself. He was trying to explain what couldn’t be said in words, or not in words that he knew.
More than anything, he felt, writing showed his own failings to him. The struggle that was involved was a demeaning and dutiful one, a matter of grinding craft rather than lofty art. Not that he was a fake; his interest had always been real. But he saw in others a hunger, a voracious need to comprehend or capture life by transforming it into language, which he didn’t share. There had always been something a little self-conscious and studied about his writing life; it involved an effort of will, which wasn’t true of the genuine practitioners. If he never picked up his pen again, he wouldn’t feel greatly diminished.
On a weekend visit to Monks House, the country retreat in Rodmell that Leonard had recently acquired, he found himself announcing his futility. While playing bowls on the lawn, his attention went to the big round ball in his hand. It occurred to him that writing, in his case, had never taken on this smooth, spherical quality; the perfect circle eluded him.
“You know,” he said suddenly, “I don’t think I am a novelist.”
He had offered this observation without any secret motive; in that moment, it seemed like the truth. He felt Leonard and Virginia stirring. His remark had caught them both.
Unexpectedly, Virginia said, “No, I don’t think you are.” She spoke sincerely, without malice; she was recognising something. They were discussing a fact, like his hair or hi
s eyes.
“Ah,” he said eagerly, turning to her. Virginia was a witch, or at least a High Priestess; she might absolve him. He wanted very much to hear what she would say next.
But Leonard had become most uncomfortable. His hands, which habitually shook, took on extra agitation.
“Oh, what rot,” he snapped huffily. “You write novels, therefore you are a novelist—what else to call you? You have always tried to be someone apart, but your struggles are like everybody else’s. I wish you could accept that. Now please, Morgan, do bowl.”
Morgan wanted to protest: he was someone apart, he always had been—even if he had to play bowls like the others, because no guest at Monks House was spared. The ball trundled dispiritedly, stopping well short of its target, and Leonard clicked disapprovingly with his tongue.
“You know,” Morgan told them, as they went in for lunch soon afterwards, “I’m not at all downcast about my literary career.”
Nor was he. If his novel failed, well then, it failed. It was merely a matter of literature, not real life, which was far more important. He had other things he could fall back on.
He knew it now: this would be his last novel. He had threatened it before, but this time, he thought, it was true. Beyond the imaginings in India, no feature broke the horizon. He could feel that something had been used up. If he’d stuck to what was familiar and safe, a comfortable tapestry of tea parties and English scenery, he might have kept a quiet industry going, writing numerous books of a similar nature. But the world that interested him was disappearing, or already gone, buried under motor cars and machinery and the smoke of war. Writers should see ahead, not constantly be looking behind them, and his powers couldn’t keep pace with history. There would be no more books like this one.
Still, if it came off, it might be a fitting conclusion to his novelistic career. At least it was different from most English books, and different too from other books about India. In his best moments, he suspected that he had created something new. But his best moments came seldom, and their power didn’t last for long. Mostly, as things narrowed down on the end, he just thought it very bad. Getting it finished was often a slog, and he put in the hours with his teeth lightly clenched, a distant turbulence troubling his bowels.