Whit

by Iain Banks

  It might be argued that the subsequent deceits of my grandmother and great-aunt had been the balancing wrong that had redeemed my Grandfather's original sins, that sometimes two wrongs do make a right, and that of all the things Aasni and Zhobelia might have done - reporting the find of money and Grandfather's army pay-book to the appropriate authorities being the most obvious and strictly correct - their actual course of action, intrinsically dishonest though it was and including Zhobelia's exploitation of her own Gift and my Grandfather's need for guidance, had produced entirely the best and most fruitful outcome, and a harvest of enlightenment and happiness very few avowedly good and well-intentioned acts ever yielded.

  But ancestry matters in the minds of men and women, and symbols are important. To discover that Salvador had been no more than a common thief on the run after an act of violence, and realise that had he been able to find his washed-up loot he would probably have disappeared from Aasni and Zhobelia's lives, could not fail to alter the whole way people thought of my Grandfather, and by implication the Faith he had engendered. We would all feel deceived, and our beliefs cheapened.

  It could be argued that the worse Grandfather had been before his conversion, the more blessed he became in comparison afterwards; God may take little credit for turning a man already good into a slightly better one, but to perform the miracle of forging a virtuous man from a bad one signified serious divine accomplishment and deserved real appreciation. But would such considerations make up for the inevitable feeling of betrayal people were bound to experience?

  How many followers would we lose if this truth came out, as I had vowed to myself it must? How many more converts could we hope to gain once my Grandfather's history became common knowledge? Ought I now to renounce my earlier oath and, like my grandmother and great-aunt, conceal the ugly truth to favour the general good? What, then, would my word be worth? What self-respect could I claim for myself if a commitment, so freshly made, so vehemently sworn, could be so quickly abandoned when its consequences proved even more wide-ranging and more grave than I had anticipated?

  Well, my self-respect was far from being the most important point at issue, I supposed; what mattered was the good of the Order and the Community and the spiritual well-being of the great majority of blameless people therein. I was confident that should I go back on my vow and keep my Grandfather's dreadful secret to myself, I could rest easy with such contained knowledge, and its cosseting would not contaminate or poison me.

  But would it be right to incorporate what would in effect be another lie into what was already a whole tangled web of them, when the truth might sweep them all away and let us start again, righteous, uncontaminated, and without the baleful, jeopardising threat of that deceit hanging over us? And was I right - and had I the right - to assume that our Faith was so fragile it required shielding from such unpleasant facts? In the long term, might it not be better to embrace the truth regardless, and suffer whatever falling away in belief and support such a course entailed, secure in the knowledge that what - and who - remained would be true and strong and fundamentally trustworthy, and proofed - tempered -against further harm?

  And should I announce, I have the Gift, only me; I am the one and the line that comes from my great-aunt, not my Grandfather? Ought I to take it upon myself to alter the whole emphasis of our Faith and point out another false belief we had previously held so dear, another area of shifting sand we had before thought immovable bedrock?

  And by God, even my Gift was not unquestioned, in my own mind; here I was suffused with self-righteous anger at my Grandfather for having lied to us when there was still a question hanging over the validity of my own renown, if people only knew. The problem of action at a distance, with which I had been struggling for over a decade, took on a new, shiftier significance in the present climate of poisonous suspicion, and suddenly the hope I had clung to that I might have a gift greater than people knew of, rather than lesser, looked distinctly dubious.

  'Cheer up, Isis; might never happen,' Topee's friend Mark said, winking at me across the glass-crowded table.

  I gave him a tolerant smile. 'I'm afraid it already has,' I told him, and drank my beer.

  I fell out of the system of buying rounds, unable and unwilling to keep up.

  I went to the dance with the lads, and continued slowly drinking beer out of plastic pint containers, but my heart was not really in the proceedings. I found the music boring and the men who came up to our group to ask me to dance no more attractive than the sounds. I could not bring myself to join in the dancing even when Topee asked. Instead I found myself watching everybody else dance, reflecting what a strange and comical activity it could appear. How odd that we should get such pleasure just from moving rhythmically.

  I supposed you could link the urge to dance to the sexual drive, and certainly there was both a correspondence between the regularity of the movements the two activities tended to involve and an obvious element of something between courtship and foreplay in the coming together of two people on the dance floor, but I had watched young children and very old people take part in dances at the Community and had myself danced there when I had been convinced there was no aspect of sexuality involved, and had seen the obvious delight experienced by young and old alike and felt a kind of transcendent joy in myself that I was even more sure shared nothing with carnality except the feeling that what one was experiencing was good and pleasant.

  The elation I had felt while dancing, in fact, seemed to have more in common with religious ecstasy, as I understood it, than with sexual bliss; one could feel almost mystically taken out of oneself, transported to another plane of existence where things became clearer and simpler and more connected at once and one's whole being seemed suffused with peace and understanding.

  Certainly this effect was difficult - and took a long time - to achieve while dancing (I thought of whirling dervishes, and African tribespeople, spinning through the night), and could only ever be a weak reflection of the intense rapture experienced by the believer… but one had to say that it would be better than nothing, if nothing was the only other choice. Perhaps there lay the explanation for the attraction so many young people obviously felt for dancing, in our increasingly Godless and materialist society.

  A strange species, humanity, I found myself thinking, quite as though I was some visiting alien.

  I do not belong here, I thought. My place is with my people, and their future rests in my hands now. I suddenly wanted to be away from the noise and the heat and the smoke of this place, and so borrowed a key from Topee, donated the remains of my pint to him and stood and made my apologies and left, stepping out into the clear black night and breathing in its cool air as though released from a fetid prison after many years' incarceration.

  The stars were mostly hidden by the city's glare, but the moon, less than a day away from being full, shone down almost undiminished, and as coolly serene as ever.

  I did not go straight back to the flat, but wandered the streets for a while, still troubled by my conflicting thoughts, my conscience and will buffeted this way and that by the opposing arguments that racked my soul.

  Eventually, I stood on the bridge that carries Great Western Road over the river Kelvin, leaning on the stone balustrade and looking down into the dark waters far beneath while the traffic grumbled and roared at my back and groups of people went chattering past.

  A feeling of calmness gradually stole over me as I stood there, thinking and thinking and trying not to think. It was as though the warring forces in my soul were both so evenly matched and so precisely targeted upon their opposite that they eventually cancelled each other out, fighting each other to a standstill, to exhaustion and a stop, if not a conclusion.

  Let what would be, be, I thought. The shape of tomorrow was already half decided, and how exactly it would all end I would simply have to wait and see, playing events as they fell rather than trying to decide precisely what I would do now. At the least, I could sleep on my d
ecision.

  Sleep seemed a very good idea, I thought.

  I returned to the flat, extended my hammock between the wardrobe and the bed's headboard in Topee's room - both articles of furniture were massive enough to support the weight, and both were also of such an anciently elaborate design that there was an almost embarrassing choice of stoutly carved curlicues and knobbly extrusions on which to loop the hammock cords. I took off my jacket, shirt and trousers, climbed into my hammock and fell asleep almost instantly.

  I was only dimly aware of a party going on much later. Topee crept in and whispered to me he'd got lucky and swapped rooms with Stephen so that he could be alone with his new conquest, but Stephen, true to Topee's guarantee, did not disturb me during the night and I awoke - to Stephen's unconscious snuffles and snorts - bright and early the next morning. I arose, washed and dressed before anybody else awoke.

  The living room was carpeted with sleeping bodies. I stood at the hall table to write a note to Topee and a letter to Grandmother Yolanda, then left to find a post box.

  Sophi - who had been the next person I'd telephoned after talking to Mr Womersledge last night - arrived in her little Morris half an hour later, to discover me sitting on the flat's doorstep, eating a filled roll from a wee shop down the road.

  Sophi looked blithe and summery in jeans and a striped T-shirt; her hair was gathered up in a pony-tail. She kissed me when I got into the car.

  'You look tired,' she told me.

  'Thank you. That's how I feel,' I told her. I held out the white paper bag I'd got from the wee shop. 'Would you like a filled roll?'

  'I had breakfast,' she told me. 'So.' She clapped her hands. 'Where first?'

  'Mauchtie, Lanarkshire,' I told her.

  'Righty-ho,' she said, and put the car into gear.

  The day, and the last, decisive part of my campaign, had begun.

  * * *

  It had crossed my mind that if I did decide that discretion concerning Grandfather's misdemeanours was the prudent course, then bringing Zhobelia back into the bosom of our family and Community might prove unwise, even catastrophic. What were the chances that she would be able to hold her tongue regarding the pay-book and the money now that she had broken the dam of that secrecy? Having her staying with us might well mean that the truth would be bound to leak out eventually, and perhaps in the most damaging way: over time, through rumour and gossip.

  But I could not leave her in that place; it had been clean enough at the Gloamings Nursing Home, Zhobelia had a generously sized room, she obviously shared and enjoyed some sort of social contact with the other residents, and she had not complained of much there, but it had all seemed so loveless, so cold after the warmth of the Community. I had to take her away. If doing so forced my hand concerning the telling of the truth, then so be it; I would not sacrifice my great-aunt's happiness to such expediency. Telling the truth was what I had sworn to myself I would do, after all, even if now my instinct was to conceal rather than to reveal.

  Well, we would see.

  We drove through the lightly trafficked city. I gave Sophi an edited version of my short but eventful travels with Uncle Mo, my meeting with Morag, my audience with Great-aunt Zhobelia and time spent with Brother Topee. I did not, for the time being, mention the things Zhobelia had told me, or the pay-book and the ten-pound note.

  'So what were you looking for at the library?' Sophi asked.

  I shook my head, and could not look at her. 'Oh, old stuff,' I said. 'Things I half wish I hadn't found out.' I glanced at her. Things I'm not sure about telling anybody else yet.'

  Sophi looked briefly at me, and smiled. 'Well, that's okay.'

  And seemed happy with that, bless her.

  * * *

  'She is my great-aunt and she's corning with us!'

  'Look, hen, she's here in my charge, and I'm not supposed to just let any of these old dears start wandering off.'

  'She is not "wandering off", she is coming of her own free will, back into the bosom of her family.'

  'Aye, well, that's what you say. Ah don't even know you are her…'

  'Great niece,' I supplied. 'Well, look, why don't we just ask her? I think you'll find she'll confirm everything I say.'

  'Och, come on; she's not exactly the full shilling, is she?'

  'I beg your pardon? My great-aunt may appear a little confused on occasion but I suspect that much of what seems to be encroaching senility is simply the effect of having to subsist within the insufficiently stimulating environment which is all that you are able to provide, despite what I am sure are your best efforts. After some time spent with the many, many people who love her and who are able to provide her with a more intense set of emotional and spiritual surroundings I should be most surprised indeed if she did not a show a marked improvement in that regard.'

  'Yeah!' Sophi breathed at my side. 'Well said, Is.'

  'Thank you,' I said to her, then turned back to the plump middle-aged lady who had let us into the hall of the Gloamings Nursing Home. The lady had introduced herself as Mrs Johnson. She wore a tight blue uniform like the one the young lass had worn the last time I'd been here, two nights ago, and unconvincing blonde hair. 'Now,' I said, 'I would like to see my great-aunt.'

  'Well, you can see her, Ah canny stop ye seein; her, but Ah havny had any notification she's supposed to be movin' out,' Mrs Johnson said, turning to walk towards the rear of the house. She shook her head as we followed her. 'Ah don't know, ye get told nuthin' here. Nuthin'.'

  Great-aunt Zhobelia was in a room full of old ladies, all perched on high-seated chairs watching the television. A large tray with tea things sat on a sideboard, and many of the old dears - Zhobelia actually looked the youngest - were sitting sipping cups of tea, their bony, fragile hands shakily clutching robust green china cups which rattled in their saucers. Zhobelia wore a voluminous bright red sari and a matching red hat in the style of a turban. She looked bright and alert.

  'Ah, it's you!' she said, the instant she saw me. She turned to one of the other old ladies and shouted, 'See, you silly old woman? Told you she was real! A dream, indeed!' Then she looked back to me and put up one finger, as though raising some point of order. 'Thought about it. Made up my mind. Decided to come for a holiday. Bags are packed,' she said, and smiled widely. Mrs Johnson sighed deeply.

  * * *

  'A lion-tamer? Goodness gracious me!' said Great-aunt Zhobelia from the back of Sophi's car as we headed cross-country towards Stirling.

  'I'm not really a lion-tamer, Mrs Whit,' Sophi said, slapping me on the thigh with her left hand, then laughing. 'Isis just tells people that because she thinks it sounds good. I'm an assistant animal handler; an estate worker and zoo-keeper, really.'

  'What, no lions, then?' Great-aunt Zhobelia asked. She was sitting sideways across the car's back seat, her arm on the back of my seat. Her bags took up the rear footwells as well as the car's boot.

  'Oh yes,' Sophi said. 'There are lions. But we don't tame them or anything.'

  'You don't tame them!' Zhobelia said. 'My. That sounds worse! You must be very brave.'

  'Nonsense,' Sophi snorted.

  'Yes, she is, Great-aunt,' I told her. 'And dashing, too.'

  'Oh, stop it,' Sophi said, grinning.

  'Do you have tigers at this safari park?'

  'Yes,' Sophi said. 'Indian tigers: a breeding pair and two cubs.'

  'There used to be tigers in Khalmakistan,' Zhobelia told us. 'Not that I was there ever, but we were told. Yes.'

  'Aren't there any there any more?' I asked.

  'Oh no!' Zhobelia said. 'I think we caught and killed them all long ago and sold their bits to the Chinese. They believe tiger bones and such are magic. Silly people.'

  'That's a shame,' I said.

  'A shame? I don't think so. It's their own fault. They don't have to be silly. Good merchants, though. Canny. Yes. Give them that. Things are worth what people will pay for them, no more, no less; say what you like. Found that out all right
.'

  'I meant for the tigers.'

  Zhobelia hmphed. 'Generous with your sympathy. They used to eat us, you know. Yes. Eat people.' She reached over and tapped Sophi on the shoulder. 'Hoy. Miss Sophi; these tigers, in this safari park next door to the farm, they aren't going to escape, are they?'

  'We've never had an escape,' Sophi said in her most reassuring voice. 'We're not next door to the farm, anyway; a couple of miles away. But no, they aren't going to escape.'

  'Ah well,' Zhobelia said, settling back in her seat. 'I suppose I should not worry. I'm as tough as old boots, I am. A tiger is not going to eat a shrivelled-up old lady like me, is it? Not when there's young ones about, tender young things like you and Isis, eh?' she said, thumping me on the shoulder and laughing loudly in my ear. 'Nice and juicy young things like you, eh? Nice and tasty, eh? Eh?'

  I turned and looked round at her. She winked and said, 'Eh?' again, and took out a handkerchief from somewhere in her sari, to dab at her eyes.

  Sophi looked across at me, grinning and raising her eyebrows. I smiled, content.

  * * *

  We met Morag and Ricky in the foyer of the same Stirling hotel Grandmother Yolanda had stayed at. I had called Morag at her hotel in Perth the night before, after I'd rung Sophi. Morag and Ricky had checked in here for the night.

  'Hey, Is,' Morag said, glancing at Ricky, who looked away, embarrassed. 'We've decided if you can get this all sorted out, we would like to get married at the Festival; we'll come back after we've done all the Scottish flumes. Sound cool?'

  I laughed and took her hands in mine. 'It sounds wonderful,' I said. 'Congratulations.' I kissed her cheek and Ricky's. He turned red and mumbled. Sophi and Zhobelia offered their congratulations as well; a bottle of champagne was ordered and a toast drunk.