The Bell-Boy

by James Hamilton-Paterson

  Laki grasped her fingers and impulsively drew them to his lips. By now he firmly believed his mother’s life had been saved and real tears stood in his eyes. ‘Oh missus, missus, you too too kind for me. I always be your friend. I always be your bell-boy.’

  ‘Why, Lucky.’ Tessa sat next to him with her hand imprisoned at his mouth, somewhat embarrassed by the effusiveness, the absurdity of the situation, the disparity between them. But even as she blushed she was conscious of their proximity and above all the elusive scent his clothing gave off, some kind of exotic flower maybe. At that instant he looked up at her from beneath long, tear-fringed lashes and met her gaze with something besides dumb gratitude. ‘How silly,’ she heard herself say. ‘Of course we shall always be friends. But you won’t always be my bell-boy. Or any kind of boy,’ she added. One of her hands detached itself of its own accord from his mouth and, with the halting delicacy of a butterfly, alighted for the briefest moment before fluttering away to rest in her own lap. ‘Goodness,’ she breathed. ‘Come along then.’ She stood up purposefully but carefully in case her back were suddenly painful. ‘Off you go. The sooner your mother gets the medicine the sooner she’ll get well. But come back sometime and I’ll show you how to heal a person at a distance. If I knew you better and we’d had a chance to get on the same spiritual wavelength, I could have helped to heal your mother through you, right here in this very room. But first I’d need to get a special oil and do some reflexology on you.’

  Laki, having pulled his jacket down as far as it would go, got awkwardly to his feet and made for the door. ‘Thank you, missus,’ he said huskily. ‘One day I to showing you my room. Very beautiful the vine there. You will come see?’

  ‘I promise,’ said Tessa. ‘Good night.’

  ‘Good night, my missus. Oh.’

  He went softly away up the corridor. Once through the door on to the brick landing he gave a little skip and raced lightly upstairs to his den. From the depths of the vine he dug out one of the hotel’s smudgily-printed envelopes, addressed it to home, scrawled a brief message and enclosed a fifty-note. The other three notes he thrust into the bowels of the plant before trotting downstairs and out into the street in search of the dried-fish merchant. All within an hour his fortunes had changed and things were looking up. Now anything was possible. As he passed the Lingasumin, its glowing ruby rekindled the embers of a considerable ardour he had felt at the end of his visit to the missus. He was right; these people really did want something to happen.

  When the pain in her back became intractable enough to make her plan this trip, Tessa had spoken to Swami Bopi Gul on the telephone. This instrument was screwed to a wall in the bar below Valcognano, and allowing for the transatlantic time difference she usually found herself making such calls in the evening against the din of card games and television. The Teacher was not an easy man to speak to; generally she got through to Ed, who would then vanish off the line in search of him. A fifteen-minute wait was not uncommon, during which the little counter behind the bar clocked up the scatti at an alarming rate. It had never occurred to Tessa to mention this. One did not trouble swamis with such trivia, still less did one ask an incarnate god to accept reverse-charge calls.

  On this occasion he had been quite prompt and within seven minutes was saying, ‘Of course, my dear Tessa, you absolutely must go to Malomba. There are wonderful things in that place. It will be arranged for you to see hadlam Tapranne, a great and good healer who is close to us. While you are there—’

  A deafening burst of cheering from behind her blotted out the Teacher’s gentle tones. Someone had scored a goal on television.

  ‘— many new essences for Pure Light Products, maybe. You understand, my dear, this has never been done before. Is it not exciting? To this person it is the greatest bliss to know that at last a serious effort is being made to coordinate the world’s most potent healing substances in order to attack the modern evils. The work of our movement is to become a united healing agency, able to supply any essence from anywhere, able to use any of the sacred techniques the ancients practised and which have been temporarily – temporarily, mind – smothered by the three modern evils.’

  ‘Technology. Speed. Mass media.’

  ‘Technology. Speed. Mass media,’ echoed the Swami from seven-odd thousand miles away. ‘Exactly. But then you are one of our oldest and dearest disciples, even though I know you have been a little troubled.’

  ‘Master, I am in bliss.’

  ‘Of course. But we know, my dear. We know you did not at first understand our plan when Ed came and explained it to you. Come now, you were troubled.’ The Swami’s delicious laugh sounded down the wire.

  ‘Perhaps just for an instant, Master. It was stupid of me.’

  ‘But now you perceive?’

  ‘With all my heart, Teacher.’ For she really did. To combat the degeneration of human spiritual life on this planet, one needed to borrow certain leaves from the book of so-called Progress. Turn their weapons on themselves, but with love.

  ‘Good. So turn their weapons on themselves, but with love. Organise. Be efficient … And how is your delightful family? Ed tells me your daughter is becoming truly beautiful. He describes her as a creature of the most delicate light. I am now wondering whether she ought not to come to California. She—’

  Another goal was scored. Someone knocked a metal chair to the marble floor. When the noise had diminished Tessa discovered Swami Bopi Gul had gone, and all she could hear was an expensive electrical hum as she clamped the receiver to her head.

  This conversation explained why some weeks later in Malomba she took Laki’s advice and engaged Mr Tominy Bundash, official guide, to help her track down a good local source of natural medicine. Zoe decided to accompany her. Before they left the hotel that morning Tessa had a brief, confidential word with Mr Muffy.

  ‘I want you to do something for me,’ she said. ‘A simple act of kindness. My son Jason wants to go swimming and your bell-boy Lucky has very sweetly offered to take him somewhere he knows where boys go. I’d like you to lend us Lucky for a bit – on a sort of half-day, you know? He’s been most considerate to us.’

  Mr Muffy, who had initially faced her with an expression of benign accommodation, began to exhibit signs of incredulity.

  ‘Considerate, madam? Laki? Half-day?’

  ‘Come on, why not? I presume you’re obliged by law to give all your employees time off? Especially child employees,’ she added with what she imagined was a hint of the official reprisals which could always be called down. But the proprietor was still shaking his head.

  ‘Here in Malomba, madam, it is not customarily to giving bell-boys half-days off. They are at the onset of their careers when they must acquire the correct attitude to work which will see them through the rest of their lives. One cannot begin by giving them holidays. Laki has duties.’

  Tessa glanced pointedly at the board behind his head. A key hung from nearly every hook.

  ‘I’m sure he has duties. But I’m asking this as a favour and not just for my own convenience, either. The fact is’ – she leaned forward and lowered her voice – ‘the poor boy’s most upset about his mother.’

  ‘His mother?’

  ‘Yes. I’m sure he won’t have told you, but she’s actually very ill with scarlet fever. She’s going to be all right, though.’

  ‘Scarlet fever?’

  At this moment Jason and Laki appeared. Mr Muffy gave his bell-boy a look and thought he had never seen anyone less upset. In the circumstances, however, a group of foreign guests leaning on his desk constituted force majeure, so he contented himself with a resigned nod.

  ‘You’re a truly kind man,’ Tessa told him. Zoe shot him a brilliant smile which produced a watery sensation in his stomach and practically reconciled him on the spot to this unheard-of arrangement. She really was, Mr Muffy thought, at the most perfect moment of ripeness. She was like a farewell-fruit as it acquired its rich colours of dusk but before it attained its
squashy midnight purple … Without visualising anything definite he experienced the psychic sensation of biting, of a soft and sweet firmness around his mouth parts which were not located on his face, particularly, but over his whole body. The farewell-fruit, delicious and dangerous … To think of that ragamuffin creeping his way into such company! He directed a stony glare at Laki’s back as the boys went out. Scarlet fever? What nonsense had the little rogue been selling them? There were things here which needed investigation.

  Mr Bundash, special guide, was at his best this morning. Tessa explained what she and Zoe were interested in finding, and when he had listened gravely he announced an itinerary.

  ‘It is evident that a certain quarter of the Wednesday Market shall be our destination. Our way will take us past the celebrated Temple of Ashes. You have visited this yet, madams?’

  ‘I’ve lost count,’ said Zoe.

  ‘I think we haven’t,’ Tessa told her. ‘I believe it’s the only major one we’ve not yet seen.’

  The Temple of Ashes was certainly eye-catching from the outside, being shaped more or less like a huge marble wigwam. It was regularly rubbed with cinnabar and it burned at the junction of two streets, a silent stone bonfire. The inside was as unrelievedly grey as the outside was vermilion. Light – and, during the monsoon, rain – came from a circular opening at its apex and fell on the Burning Floor immediately beneath. The sound of their feet was muffled by grey powder which puffed greasily about their ankles as they entered.

  ‘This,’ said Mr Bundash in a reverently hushed voice, ‘is the world’s foremost centre of Spodist worship. It may be that you are not fully conversant with the history of Spodism, so I will recount it briefly. It is believed to have had its origin in Asia Minor some two thousand years before the birth of the Holy Prophet Mohammed, probably as a reaction against the relentless symbolisation of spring, rebirth and fertility as commonly celebrated by cults such as Adonis-Tammuz and the Canaanite Ras Shamra ritualism. The name, of course, is of Greek origin, from the word spodos, ashes. I’m not going too fast for you, madams? No, excellent.

  ‘Veiled in obscurity as it is for us – although the Spodist priesthood has its own somewhat tendentious account – this religion must certainly predate Zoroastrianism in what is now Iran. One uses the expression “religion” loosely, perhaps. It is more of a philosophy since there is no real deity. Scholars nowadays consider it was this very lack which made inevitable Zarathustra’s reforms as well as his widespread acceptance as Servant of the Supreme Wise Lord, Ahura Mazda. We might also agree,’ said Mr Bundash, glancing cautiously around, ‘that the Spodists’ belief was too fatalistic, too bleak for mass appeal.

  ‘Now follow me closely here, madams. For them the supreme principle of the universe is what modern science refers to as entropy, which is the innate tendency of things to become disordered, to incline towards their own destruction as discrete systems. Thus the only abiding thing is fire. The ancient Spodists looked into the skies of Asia Minor and saw fire: the relentless sun by day, the unchanging stars by night.’ He lowered his voice once more. ‘Naturally, they did not have the benefit of telescopes so they could not know that many of the stars they saw were not on fire at all but dead and freezing and merely reflecting light, like our moon. Nor could they have known that even our sun is steadily being consumed.’

  ‘O naïve, naïve Bundash.’ A soft but penetrating voice came from a dim grey boulder rolled against one wall and now slowly getting to its feet.

  Mr Tominy Bundash clutched at his chest. ‘Your forgiveness, reverend sir,’ he said. ‘I had not realised you … I mean …’

  ‘O Bundash, how many times have I heard you in this our temple giving your account of our beliefs? You think you are not heard, but I tell you the least whisper carries. I believe,’ he added in a mischievous imitation of the guide’s voice, ‘I believe it is what modern science refers to as acoustics.’

  ‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ said Mr Bundash unhappily. This was terrible; if there were a complaint by any of Malomba’s religious he could well lose his official status and with it his ID card in its leather wallet. ‘Oh, dear me.’

  ‘It’s the fault of the system, madams.’ The High Priest was addressing Tessa and Zoe as he advanced genially with little puffs of dust. ‘It’s one of the inherent ironies of mass tourism which has Moslems explaining Spodism to Christians, to say nothing of philistines lecturing the indifferent about masterpieces of art and architecture. But I would not dignify this irony with the name of entropy. No; I would simply call it Bundashism and leave it at that.’

  ‘I say, I say,’ protested Tominy Bundash. Tessa smiled at him and took his hand sympathetically.

  ‘Actually, we aren’t Christians,’ she said.

  ‘I have an appointment, madam,’ said the High Priest, pulling back his ragged grey vestments to glance at his watch. ‘Otherwise I should be delighted to set the record straight at some length. But I cannot go without correcting your guide’s naïve misapprehension. It is not of the least consequence whether we know or do not know that the sun is being consumed. Neither telescopes nor any other instrument can weaken or enhance the Spodist position. We are not talking about literal fire, you understand, but metaphorical fire. It is the Incandescence in whose midst we are nothing, and with us the world, the solar system and the universe. It is the same all-consuming Incandescence which can be found blazing at the heart of a sun and in the entrails of a corpse. We do not worship it but the thought of It. That is all. The good man is he who contemplates not the fire but its ashes. And so each year we make a model of the world and burn it here on the Burning Floor. It is a symbolic act. Otherwise the Burning Floor is used only for Spodists themselves, many of whom are sent thousands of miles from their native lands for incineration in this our holiest shrine.’

  ‘When … when they’re dead?’ asked Zoe nervously.

  ‘Of course when they’re dead, young madam,’ said the High Priest with an air of magnificent patience. ‘Do you take us for barbarians? For them it is the final honour to lie here. Who dares walk on dust and not know himself dust?’ His voice had taken on the plummy richness of somebody quoting scripture. ‘For all seeing is this: that the flame which will consume us was lit at the moment of our birth. Now I must be going.’ And with a slight bow he made off, trailing clouds.

  ‘You don’t think …?’ said Zoe presently, scuffing the toe of a sandal.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Mr Bundash, following her gaze. ‘I was coming to that. We are of course walking on his congregation.’

  They left and headed for the Wednesday Market. On the way Mr Bundash regained some of his self-confidence; it was evident he was grateful for Tessa’s reassurances that his was indeed a difficult job involving feats of memory and discretion. How could anyone reasonable expect a guide to get the most finicking points of doctrine correct in all thirty-nine of Malomba’s temples?

  ‘Yes, yes, madam, you perfectly understand. Exactly. I am a good Moslem and yet I tell you in strictest confidence’ – glancing round for a disguised imam – ‘sometimes I almost begin to forget the tenets of my own faith. It was worse still when there were more tourists here. I would go to bed at night with my head full of texts and think how beautiful these scriptures often were, how like poetry in their truthfulness. Then with a horror I would sit up on my bed because I realised they were not always from the Holy Qu’ran at all but from a dozen infidel books. Oh yes indeed, they were from the Sayings of Rimmon or the Book of Mormon or the Vedas or the Testament of Wisdom. They were from the Talmud or the Torah or the Kabbalah. They were from the Bible or the Book of Splendour, the Revelations of Mithras, the Sublime Recipe, the Analects of Confucius, the Bhagavad-Gita and on and on until my head was whirling with noble truths instead of allowing me to go to sleep and rest my tired feet.

  ‘I was no longer certain even of who I was, madams. My dear wives would say, “Tominy-da, Tominy-da, what are you becoming? This is not the good Moslem gentleman we married.”
It was my head, you see. Can you believe it was bursting with commandments, edicts, laws, injunctions and precepts? Oh yes. Do this. Don’t do that. Never do the other except on the last Thursday in the month when there is no menstruating woman in the house. I wish I had a fifty-note for every Last Judgement which I’ve been obliged to attend in my nightmares, madams. Oh, it is grisly. Over and over again the universe destroyed in various ways: floods, plague, holocaust, nuclear war. And over and over again this poor Bundash condemned to burn for ever, to drown for ever, to lie in a tent eating dates for ever. Oh, he is beaten and winnowed and flayed and broken on wheels. And once, madams,’ their guide gave a mildly crazed laugh, ‘I awoke screaming because an archangel was to give me enemas of chillies for the rest of eternity. But I see we’ve arrived now.’

  For they had reached the Wednesday Market and began to wind in and out of alleys crowded with people and merchandise of every variety. All at once Zoe spied a heap of fruit like spiked grenades inside a padlocked wire cage. In response to her query they stopped.

  ‘Those are the famous farewell-fruit,’ Mr Bundash said. ‘I’m most happy you should have seen them. It’s a lucky chance, since their supply is irregular.’

  ‘But why are they locked up?’

  ‘To prevent theft, young madam. Heavens, they are costly. Each one is worth’ – he did a sum on his fingers – ‘approximately seventeen American dollars. That’s more than the poorest of Malomba’s poor can expect in one month.’

  ‘They’re a little like midget durians.’ Tessa bent to sniff the cage. ‘Only they don’t smell as bad.’

  The owner of the stall was looking on with the indifference of one who has seen many tourists stop and very few buy. Mechanically he took two flimsy yellow leaflets from a flyblown stack and handed one each to Tessa and Zoe. They read them while Tominy Bundash gave his own explanation, and from these two sources learned something of why this fruit was so highly prized.