Danny raised his hand at eye level and moved his thumb and forefinger back and forth, open and shut like a vise. In what life did he first use this pincer? How many generations of life-existence did it take to make a hand of this claw? To make this thumb function in the opposite direction? To make this tendoned creative instrument? He would have to discuss that with the priest. Evolution was always good material for a friendly argument with the priest.
The red and gold sun sank rapidly now and he lowered his eyes to the green sea of the jungle far in the valley below, and in his mind he saw the splendor of the life that abounded in it; the huge magnificence of its overarching pillared trees imprisoning the heat of day humidly like a giant green house; the life of its shadowed floor competing madly, proliferating with an unbelievable luxuriance.
It was an enchanting land, Danny thought; severed only by occasional plains and plateaus or a slow forever undulating river where great vines and massive blocks of vegetation rose out of the water shadowing the earth with dim and murky pockets. Here multicolored orchids lay hidden and a thousand kinds of trees groped upward, tall and flowering and bearing many and unknown fruits. It was a fairy land for reptilian life, teeming with turtles and tortoises, toads and lizards and snakes, and birds filling the jungle aisles with their shimmering cries, and partridges and peacocks good to eat. And in the quiet crystal clear pools of the river were speckled trout and catfish over five feet long.
It was all in the way you looked at it, Danny knew. It was beautiful, or you could see the jungle as that Danforth fellow of Con’s pictured it; stagnant pools and rank undergrowth, with the ever abounding life always as a threat to your own, seeing the jungle’s dark and hidden places as men would look upon death, afraid and unknowing.
Rapidly now it grew darker and Danny glanced toward the horizon seeing the final red and gold sun as it began to disappear beyond the hills.
He took the .32 from his holster, released the safety and checked the action. Rapidly he pulled the trigger three times and the bullets whammed into the tree above the priest’s head. The steady sounds of the camp and his three hundred men quieted to a whisper. The Father jumped up groping, his twinkly blue eyes darting in astonishment.
“Where did that come from, old boy?” Danny asked pokerfaced, his jaw set. He had concealed the pistol by his side.
“St. Patrick, we’re being attacked,” the priest said, half sitting up but crouched low. “They must have gotten through the outpost, lad.”
“Stay low,” Danny whispered. “Don’t move. Maybe they’re close.”
The priest rolled forward onto his belly. He scanned the forest and Danny remained erect in his Lotus Seat, pistol in hand now.
A young Scout came rushing into the headquarters saluting stiffly, breathlessly.
“Down lad. Down with ye,” the priest said motioning. “We’re being attacked.”
The young Scout hit the ground next to Danny: “The Subadar Major wishes to know.…”
“Never mind,” Danny interrupted. “Tell the Subadar Major the Du Father has been shooting peacocks again.”
The young Kachin grinned a widemouthed glistening white grin. He stood up saluting Danny with a tenseness that made him shake all over, and walked merrily out of the clearing.
The priest sat up returning his .45 to his holster looking at Danny tiredly, poutingly: “Danny,” he sighed, “Danny lad, ye shouldn’t do that to an old man like me,” the Priest said placing his hand to his breast.
There was a shouting up on the hill and the whispering camp came suddenly alive louder than before, artificially louder and more harmonious. Danny looked at the Father impassively: “It wasn’t especially for you though I had to get you up some way.… it was for the troops really. A few shots keeps them on their toes, you know.”
The priest uncorked the bottle and swigged heavily, the whiskey spilling into his thick beard. He coughed and laughed all at once shaking his head from side to side. “I should know better than to associate with the heathen likes of you.” He wiped the beard with the back of his hand and held out the bottle to Danny.
“Later,” Danny said, silently admiring the silken white of the old missionary’s head.
“’Tis almost dark,” the priest said suddenly, surprised.
“You slept most of the day. You missed a jolly good show. Con had the whole jungle on fire down there by the road.”
The priest looked down into the valley: “Damned if it still doesn’t burn, lad. Let me have yer glasses.”
Danny handed him the binoculars and the Priest studied the darkening valley. “Jesus Mary and Joseph,” the Father crossed himself. “They must have gotten some trucks or a petrol dump to make that slimey stuff burn.”
“They got something good,” Danny said, still immobile.
“I’ll say a prayer for the lads tonight,” the priest said thoughtfully, handing Danny the glasses, but still scrutinizing the valley.
There was a shouting of orders in the distance and the sound of men scampering through the brush.
“Not another rifle inspection?” the Father asked quizzically, his blue eyes twinkling.
“If they’re having their third inspection today you can bet a silver rupee they bloody well warrant it. The Subadar Major knows his business,” Danny said confidently. “If any of this battalion is going to die they can do so rightly, without the help of some silly stoppage.”
“Right you are there, lad,” the priest said with an authoritative and military seriousness, taking a plug of tobacco from his breast pocket, biting it off wincingly between teeth loose and decayed from the malaria, the dysentery, the pyorrhea of his many years in these hills.
Danny sat unmoving, staring expressionlessly at the horizon? at a painting? at God? Even seeing him it was hard for the Priest to believe that this man who remained so flat faced in his serenity was yet so alive and vital in his immobility. It was very unreal and like everything about Danny, the Kukri knife on his belt, the three canteens, the pistol, the bandoliers crisscrossed over his chest and the grenades hanging from every available loose end of his person.
“Oh Danny,” the priest said, “ye can be so sensible at times yet ye have to worship that blooming idol … if I could only show you the path, the true Christian way, it would give this old heart a great peace,” he said almost plaintively.
“You’ve explained it over and over and I can’t see a thing really. Yet you hesitate to listen to what I have to say. The fact that you are unwilling to listen weakens your own argument. To listen to me, to think about what I would say to you, would be heresy in the eyes of your church,” Danny said turning his eyes to the priest, his head and body stationary. “You have therefore placed a limitation on God. Come now, do you think that’s right?”
The priest rolled the tobacco up between his cheek and gums, the skin on the right side of his face swelling out; he swigged the bottle again, sliding down the plug and biting into it for the wash.
Danny continued: “My guru told me much of your church and I have read of it. All the men of India who have seen the light know of your Christ, whom you believe to be a Jew but was not a Jew but an Aryan like the majority of the people of India,” Danny spoke calmly, assuredly.
“Ay. I’ve heard that theory before. But there’s little weight to it. You don’t really believe that He was a Hindu that walked through the passage and over the Great Desert to Palestine. You don’t really believe that, lad?”
“Absolutely. He was a living son of God. There is irrefutable proof that Christ was not a historical character. He was a great Rishi come down to earth and for three years after the Baptism in Jordan He was vested with heavenly powers and liberated from the material physical world. Just as a man who is drowning sees his life pass before him in a giant panorama, just so did the physical body of the man Jesus.…” Danny paused as if changing his mind, “and at that moment there descended into the body of the Nazarene this Mighty Being and took possession of it. From that moment
Christ walked the earth as a human, a living breathing entity.”
“Jesus Mary and Joseph,” the Father crossed himself.
“This is the meaning of the older Gospels before so many translators had changed and modified the meaning. But going back to the ancient Greek translation …” again Danny paused. “‘The Son of Heaven, the Christ is now begotten. This is my Beloved Son; this day have I begotten Him.’ Those were the words spoken out of the Heaven when Christ was Baptized, when He went under the waters of the River Jordon.”
The Father looked at Danny quizzically, then he crossed himself again: “Danny, I must pray for yer soul.”
“I will not condemn your prayers, Father. Nor will I accept them,” Danny said evenly, hearing in the distance the lashing tongue of his Subadar Major as he whipped out against someone’s dirty bore. It didn’t matter where he had been or where he had soldiered: India, Burma, China, Ethiopia, Palestine, Constantinople, a soldier was just a soldier when it came to rifle inspection.
The priest scratched his beard and spit expertly of the tobacco juice, then Danny went on: “Do you know the story of your Lazarus, Father?”
“Ay.”
“Do you see any clue in it there to what I believe when I say Christ was a Hindu, and that Lazarus was a Chela of Christ. Do you remember what Christ’s answer was when He was told that Lazarus was dead?”
“Christ said, ‘He is not dead …’ then if you remember it was spoken in certain translations of the Bible … ‘He called to Lazarus in a high piercing voice …’” Danny said surely, still immobile.
“That I do,” the Father said meditating.
“It is my belief,” Danny went on, “as it is the belief of many of those who have seen the light, that Lazarus was in the state of the Kali Mudra … Hindustani for the Death Gesture, which is not a state of true death, but a condition so akin to it that the most prominent of English and German physicians have been unable to distinguish it. Often when a man is in the state of Kali Mudra he can not come out of it of his own volition. It takes a piercing or shrieking sound to shock him out of it. I have seen men brought out of it with my own eyes and it is not considered a miracle among the Hindus to be in this state for as high as twenty days, buried not in a tomb, nor a coffin, but under ten feet of pure earth … In your church you would consider this a miracle. In India it is merely an attainment that one may reach.”
The priest pondered for a long moment. “Ay, another logical sounding argument,” he said in a melancholy, sinking voice. “But tis not true, lad.” He reached for the bottle.
That was the way it was with his mother, Danny thought. It was at dark that she really began to drink heavily. Only when the fog lay thick and close to the London streets or when it rained did she drink in the day. It was strange that this old missionary of a Priest should remind him of his mother. Yet, really, it wasn’t. They were both of mankind and both harbored the same anxieties.
“The truth is what you believe, old boy,” Danny said reaching into his pocket, pulling out a small tin, glancing quickly at the red and white label: “Major Grey’s Moustache Wax. Color. Red-Brown.” He opened the tin, rubbing off some of the paste and massaged it in, twisting the ends of his long moustaches tightly.
It was the first time he had moved since putting his pistol away, the Father noted. Not once had he changed the straight line of his back nor, by the Grace of God, moved any of his person once, nor, by Jesus, changed that flat knowing expression on his face.
The priest spit some of the tobacco juice, dripping it onto his beard and bit down hard on the plug. Danny saw him wince as the pain shot upward from the decayed teeth and for one fleeting second Danny’s own gums ached and his stomach went all hollow and empty.
And then Danny felt the Father’s fear. It wasn’t that the priest was afraid of the enemy or anything that concerned his life; it was deeper than a thing of the flesh. The Priest had touched on something that was beyond the fruitless repenting, confessing, absolving pattern of his church.
Danny knew the Father would not look into the dark of it nor would he separate himself from it, and in the murky black the silent strength of his unknown fear blossomed like a subterranean flower.
“Would you care to walk over to headquarters radio with me?” Danny asked. “We’ll pick up the evening message.”
“Go on lad. I’ll join ye at the mess. I think I’ll sit here awhile.”
“No fires on this side of the hill,” Danny warned, unfolding his legs. “We’re really too visible from the road here.” Danny stood up setting his bush hat rakishly on the side of his shaven head, then he adjusted the bandoliers and grenades and knives.
“See you at the mess then,” the priest said.
“Righto.” Danny started up the hill in the rapidly enclosing darkness, hearing in the distance the rifle inspection that was just now ending with a final harangue from the Subadar Major.
The priest forced the tobacco to its drinking position in his mouth; drank, drank again, then stretched out fully arms folded under his head feeling very old and drained tired. Then the whiskey settled in his stomach and drove quickly to the bright center of his brain charging it with a sudden illumination.
What was this unique and bottomless barrel that England possessed? From it had poured fourth Chinese Gordon, Clive of India, Lawrence of Arabia, Wingate of Ethiopia and now this ’ere lad. Strange. Strange. Like chameleons were these men who absorbed knowledge and languages and customs as a sponge soaked up water. Men who could come simply and unknown to a strange land and unite all mixtures and races of men who had been for centuries chaotic.
Could he compare Danny to any one of them? Or for that matter any one of them to another? It would have vexed even the lesser of them all to be compared; for like as they all seemed, each was somehow indelibly marked in his own greatness by a very singular individuality.
All the Father’s life because of his heritage, because he was of the soil of Ireland, he had hated England. But all his years out here had taught him to love Englishmen. It was ironic that he had never really understood them.
And now this Danny de Mortimer who it was rumored was entitled to his own robes at a coronation even though he worshipped the idols of a heathen religion. This strange man who by the power of his convictions had so quickly won the loyalty of his subject peoples.
He was a sight to watch; using his determination and great mystic quality to dramatize himself. He took the attitude that he was a Kachin, a Burman, and always that he was great and dignified in whatever he did. That was Danny’s approach to the people. It was his success with them. As though he had brought the best of himself and united it with the best they had salvaged.
Now Danny stood on the barren summit of the hill. He had started for the radio headquarters on the trail around the side of the hill and veered suddenly upward. He had to have a few moments to himself, apart from other men. Every man needed that once in awhile. He looked up at the first night star beautiful and strong and bright in its solitude. He looked down the hill; his eyes searching out to where the priest lay in the rapidly enclosing darkness under the shimmering shadows of the tall pines.
No, he couldn’t help the Father. Certainly not now. Maybe he shouldn’t have tried. The priest was doing his own job and doing it well.
Spiritual progress was given to a man only when he was ready for it. When he deserved it. When he opened his heart to it. And the test of that readiness lay always in himself. In the amount of self-sacrifice that was in his nature and the desire of knowledge that drove him on.
The priest envisioned only darkness in the future. With all his religion, he held little prospect or hope for anyone beyond a Heaven in the skies. In reality, Danny thought, the Father was tightening his grip with the past because of his fear of the future.
Danny wished that he might help the priest to escape his fear. That he might tell him some of the things his own guru had taught him. There were times it might help a man if he were born k
nowing of his other lives.
Because the priest thought this life’s experiences was everything and because he had not advanced to an awareness of the dark racial past within him, that great bottomless subconsciousness of unplumbed desires, he did not know why he lived as he did, acted as he did and hungered with a passionate longing as he did. Always athirst for what was preconceived in him, yet not capable of comprehending why the God in him stood aside to allow the Luciferic influences to flame and eventually burn out. Only when the desires for the past were sublimated could he turn himself to the new.
This thirst, this insatiate hunger was ever the cause of Man’s separation from the goal. Man wanted more than he had. He wanted more than other men or more than the world voluntarily offered. It was strange, Danny thought, how similar were the teachings of Buddha and Freud when you stopped to compare them.
Below a sudden cracking in the brush brought him to one knee. Danny lowered himself with a rhythmical smoothness, drawing the pistol from his holster and taking a grenade from his belt all in one synchronized movement. Then he froze, for the undetectable noise was growing louder and whatever it was was coming directly up the hill toward him. It wasn’t any of his men, he was sure. They had been carefully instructed to follow only the trails on this side of the hill.
Then the sound became a blend and he knew there was more than one. He waited. The noise stopped and then began to move forward again. He strained to see in the shadows. Then he heard a grunting and saw the dim outline of several wild pigs as they sniffed the ground coming toward him.
“Yahupp,” Danny hollered rising. He stamped his foot and the pigs broke running. He smiled returning the grenade and pistol. Man’s own mind was the betrayer, he thought. It was not death or pain itself that men feared, but the fear of death or pain, Danny knew.
All men radiated what was inside, his guru had said. If a man was ice he would be like the arctic tundra forever dark and wintry, without the warmth of compassion that made him one with all, with nothing to fear. A man twists the strands of his own rope, his.…
Never So Few Page 4