by Angus Wilson
“No, I think I can safely say that rats don’t worry me.”
First things first for the Thera. “May I suggest, Sir, that you correct your posture. Posture and breathing are the first steps, you know. So, you are not frightened by rats.” He seemed cross. “Many Europeans are. I can tell you a story of it. There was a lady. One of your compatriots. An actress but a very fine person. She was seeking. Rather like a child I am afraid. I want to learn the True Path, Pandit, she asked me. She confused Ceylon and India, you know. So I answered as to a child. ‘Madam, you tell me you are afraid of rats.’ For she had told me that, you see. ‘But you have many pet cats.’ I knew this because she had spoken of them. ‘I advise you to procure also some pet rats. And all can live in harmony.’ She screamed. Then when I told her, ‘Rats too are living creatures,’ she cried, ‘But the cats will eat the rats.’ ‘We shall see,’ I told her.” He paused to allow a thin, pale but very elegantly dressed elderly man who had joined the group to say, “May I?”, and then dramatically announced, “A letter came two years later. From Dawlish. Dawlish in Devonshire where this lady lived. ‘I write,’ she said, ‘on a beautiful spring day in my garden where with my darling marmalade cat and Bianco my white rat I am sharing a bowl of milk.’ By the way, I was glad that she too was drinking the milk. There had been some problem of alcohol for the poor lady.”
Hamo saw with relief that Mrs. Jayasekere was making her rounds, urging people to take their seats for the film show; but Mr. Wickramanayake, too, was moving nearer. It would be a neck to neck. He felt quite angry with his host; he had specifically said “no scientists”.
“Oh yes, I know the old story. Here we are all together—you, the spiritual saviour of our country, and I the dangerous revolutionary, and Kirsti Jayasekere, the wicked capitalist. And we are all drinking together with an Englishman. The reign of love has broken out. The sun shines on Sri Lanka to please even the late Bishop Heber.”
To Hamo the drawling voice of this elegant self-announced revolutionary gentleman reminded him vaguely of visits to the theatre, a performance of some comedy of Wilde’s that was done at his house at Winchester—for a moment he remembered a boy, dressed in a blue satin gown with a train, on whom he had had a crush. It seemed a curious association for revolution but he was too concerned with watching Wickramanayake to give the ambiguity much attention.
“Or shall we prefer to say that the dialectic moves in a mysterious way its wonders to perform? In the struggle against neo-colonialism, there are many apparently strange alliances. Even with travelling English gentlemen with consciences about Imperial history. They can be most useful, such consciences.”
The Marxist dandy slightly inclined his slim-waisted figure and grey coiffure towards Sudbury, the nobody from the U.K.
Even through his alarmed distraction, the heavy ironic politeness, the undertone of sheer hostility that now marked the artificial drawl, suggested to Hamo something more appropriate to revolutionaries. All the same, stage revolutionaries, he thought; but then he had hardly known revolutionaries at all, except from the occasional cinema or theatre performance. In any case all these plays within plays were only further complications by which his play, the play he had put on here this evening, was getting out of his directional hands. He must treat the whole thing as a controlled experiment, allow no extraneous irrelevancies. He did not answer.
“Perhaps you have no conscience about the late British rule, Mr. Sudbury. My congratulations. I can assure you it is most refreshing for us not to be asked to excuse or forgive the process of history. We find it hard sometimes to view the long exploitation of Sri Lanka as an aberration in the consciences of our liberal British visitors. The absolution so many nice gentlemen and ladies from England ask for it is not in our power to give.” He laughed softly and pressed Mr. Sudbury to accept a nut.
Even W. R. Chandraranthera’s fatty chuckle of benevolence had an edge to it now.
“Oh dear! Conscience! How the poor British tried so hard to teach us this conscience. There was a nice chap, the Anglican minister at Kandy—‘search your conscience,’ he said to his servant one day. That fellow was looking for many hours, but he didn’t know where to search. Was it under the master’s bed? Oh, yes, for nearly two hundred years we were learning about conscience from the British. And what a mess we made of it! The Singhalese conscience was always a most distressing hybrid. And now Professor Pereira wants us to learn about dialectical materialism. I am afraid we shall be at the bottom of the class again. But what is your impression of our country, Sir? May I say, ‘poor tourist that you are’?”
The Professor, too, seemed ready now to be less acid. “I hope you haven’t been left to the tender mercies of our tourist industry, Mr. Sudbury. We made some beginnings during the last Government. Some experts came from Intourist. But now with free enterprise back again we can offer you only Jayasekere’s Dugong Guide. Most of it advertisement. Well, that’s all right, milk the rich Americans, why not? They expect it from those God-damned gooks. Trouble is the pictures are so poor. They don’t know, these poor Daughters of the Revolution, which I believe those blue-haired, thin-legged ladies are called, whether they’ve ordered rubies from Ratnapura or bought the Buddha’s tooth.”
W. R. Chandraranthera’s smile was against rather than for this joke.
Kirsti Jayasekere said at once, and rather haughtily, “That’s all being looked after now. Mr. Keaton, the celebrated photographer, whose movie, Pereira, you will see tonight, will be undertaking the supervision of all the art work for the Press.”
Hearing his own pronouncement, he was clearly disturbed by its audacity. He stopped short and glowered at his father-in-law who was approaching the group, beaming with benevolence.
“Here I am snooping,” he said. “By the way, I looked up that word in the dictionary. I am afraid that it has rather an unfriendly meaning. I was most distressed that I should have used it to so distinguished a gentleman the other evening. May I say,” and he made a little old-fashioned bow in part whimsical, in part deferential, “that our house is open to your snoopings at every hour.”
His son-in-law turned his irritation on the silent visitor, “Well, Mr. Sudbury, we are waiting for your answer. What is it that interests you in Ceylon? Education, isn’t it?”
But Sudbury was deaf to Malcolm overtures, for Hamo, in following Wickramanayake’s approach, had caught a sudden sight of Muthu’s slim figure slipping nimbly into the kitchen.
“The vanishing wild life, really,” he said.
W. R. Chandraranthera’s sweet smile of universal acceptance of life was swallowed up in Professor Pereira’s angry sarcasm.
“The contradictions within capitalism, I have no doubt, will in the end bring that historical phase to a close; but long before that I am afraid they will have destroyed the Third World. At this moment, although I have not met the gentleman, I understand that the distinguished British scientist who has enriched our economy with the hybrid rice Magic is visiting us to see the results of his work in our plentiful rice harvest. I hope that he will see how his benevolent discovery has been exploited to the detriment of the poor peasants under a government which is so sensitive to the demands of Western investment. But no doubt, poor chap, he has to play the double role of the scientific white wizard and the needy rentier. Oh dear, his poor conscience! And then to make matters worse along come you, Mr. Sudbury, and other gentlemen from England who are asking us to preserve most carefully the elephant and the buffalo who will trample down that same harvest.”
W. R. Chandraranthera giggled like a schoolgirl. “Your examples are not well chosen to touch the Western conscience, Pereira. Remember that in Western countries all is forgiven if it is useful. I recall when I was in my primary school, the teacher told us ‘the horse is a useful animal’. I only knew horses from passing the race-course, so I told him, ‘Excuse me, Sir, the buffalo and the elephants are the useful animals.’ ”
But Mr. Jayasekere had seen his chance to bring Doctor
Malcolm to his senses.
“Mr. Sudbury wishes to save the rare species, I think, for example the dugong.” He smiled with self-teasing charm.
At that moment, Wickramanayake, talking earnestly with an elderly man, registered Hamo’s presence with surprise and a formal bow—but, thank heaven for his earnestness, continued his conversation. And now Charlie Keaton’s voice came to them.
“Right you are then, boys and girls. Take your seats in the shillings. Old-age pensioners first. What the butler saw through the aeroplane window.”
Mrs. Jayasekere, trying to follow so cheery a lead, clapped her hands and cried, “Everybody to their seats, please.”
“I don’t know anything about dugongs,” Hamo said, for he felt at last free to shed all personation, “We must take our seats.”
But he spoke too soon, for Leela announced loudly, “Mrs. Goonasekere,” and immediately, in the lightest of jade green silks and the most glittering of emeralds, shrieking like a jay, a tiny little woman flew down upon her frightened hostess.
“Oh, Jayantha! I am so late. But those who are not invited often come late, isn’t it? Somebody told me Jayantha Jayasekere is giving an impromptu. Only last-minute telephone invitations. And I have been out so much this week that I knew I had missed your call. But here I am come impromptu. So many people I have not seen for years. So many people we do not usually see. Professor Pereira, Dr. Chandraranthera, Mr. Premaratne,” her bright little eyes took in each and every guest. “Edith Dhammaratna will be so interested for her column. She has gone to the first night of Paddy the Next Best Thing. These old plays the British left us from our grandmothers’ time But I told her, who wants to see those old Players, when we have Mr. Premaratne’s Singhalese ballet, isn’t it? Now I must see the famous photographer. Where is he, Jayantha? Introduce me, please. Oh, I shall report all to Edith.”
The whole room, including Hamo, was riveted to her announcement.
“Oh, my God!” cried Mr. Jayasekere, “the chattering mynah!”
But once again Mr. Dissawardene came, however unwittingly, to save Hamo’s embarrassment. He brought a Dugong Encyclopædia volume.
“The entry for dugong is here. ‘A curious creature of the order sirenæ. Often called the sea-cow. It inhabits the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. It is found in diminishing numbers off our own island coast near Mannar. This aquatic animal is vegetarian. The animals are said to be the origin of the legend of mermaids.’ ”
Professor da Silva laughed. “Mermaids or not, I am afraid there will be few left for Mr. Sudbury’s liberal conscience to preserve. The Puttalam Muslim fishermen, you know, kill them. Oh yes. The flesh is like pork. No doubt the Wheel of Being included such creatures to provide Muslims with a seemly means of eluding the Prophet’s commands.” He smiled pointedly at Chandraranthera. “And like all vegetarians, they are easy to knock on the head. But why do you want to preserve such creatures, Mr. Sudbury? I see you are not a liberal at all but a lover of lost causes. An Oxford man of the dreaming spires. Oh dear! You should talk to Premaratne over there. He is performing the magic drama and folk mime in all our villages. But my word he’d better watch out when the Indian movies arrive to those places. There’s a piece of private enterprise you haven’t considered, Jayasekere. How about Dugong Movies Ltd.? The Mermaids of Mannar. But all very tame I am afraid, Mr. Sudbury. Modesty is still a virtue with us. That’s why I feel more at home in Moscow than in swinging London. But magic drama and dugongs! Oh my God! All this putting the clock back, when it doesn’t even tell the time properly. Why you might as well try to encourage the peasants to grow their rice on the Mihintale rocks or in the flood waters by Kataragama. It’s all very charming if you’re a Count Tolstoy, but we have no room for Counts in Sri Lanka. By the way,” his voice took on a new drawl, “did you ever stay at Yasnaya Polyana? No? Well, I suppose they don’t accommodate tourists. I was guest of honour in Moscow for a big conference and they put me up there at the week-end.”
No one had much to remark to this, so Mr. Dissawardene continued his reading: “ ‘The dugongs are allied to the manatees of the Gulf of Mexico and the lagoons of Florida.’ What does that tell us, I wonder?”, he asked.
The pretty, plump, spiteful old face and blond coiffure of Lorelei of Little Rock came back to Hamo; he saw that skinny, spiteful hand tightening on the full flesh of a smooth amber buttock.
He said, “It tells us that Professor Pereira is wrong. The dugong like the manatee could do much to clear exactly those swampy areas he referred to, of choking weeds like the water hyacinth, and so make possible rice growing in places where it has up to now seemed hopeless.”
“Oh good heavens!” Professor Pereira cried, “don’t voice such views here. Do you see that gentleman with the spectacles there? He is Professor of Ayurvedic Medicine. He is teaching us all how to combat the cancer virus by eating iguana fat. Surely that’s enough of such stuff for one little island.” And he laughed in a reversion to his most silky rudeness.
But a more direct anger now met him. From behind Hamo a familiar, earnest voice spoke.
“I think, Professor Pereira, that you are stepping dangerously. When one of the most distinguished authorities on rice in the world proposes a suggestion . . .”
But once again Mr. Dissawardene’s simplicity came protectively, angelically to hide Hamo in its wings. Before his elderly authority, young Mr. Wickramanayake, even in earnest professional anger, gave way. The old man raised his puzzled face from the encyclopædic volume.
“Ah, I understand it now. These creatures were mistaken for mermaids because, to speak frankly, and without the presence of ladies, the sailors of the old days saw them giving suck to their young. So they are called sirenæ. Because of the siren song of the mermaids. What sort of song was that, do you think, Sir?”
Hamo, in despair, had fixed his eyes upon the Most Beautiful Youth—in what was probably to be a Famous Last Glance. The boy was chattering volubly in reply to some order of Mrs. Dissawardene.
“It was like the chattering of a little monkey. And infinitely seductive,” he said.
“Oh ho! So the mermaid was a monkey. That is very dry.” The old man in his delight forgot all caution. “I think Kirsti that we must ask Doctor Malcolm to revise the encyclopædia.”
The whole theatre was falling about his ears. The play trap he had devised threatened now to spring its teeth upon no one but himself. In his panic, he forsook alike Sudbury’s nullity, Malcolm’s self-importance, even Langmuir’s wary reserve.
“Put out the lights!” he shouted. “Put out the lights! It’s time to start the show.”
*
In comfortable crepuscular disguise, in a specially selected seat at the end of the back row and nearest to the kitchen door, Hamo reflected with shocked surprise that panic (so forbidden to him by his father, his housemaster, his most admired professors, and Leslie) appeared to have its proper time and place, so docilely had the company followed his lead into the darkness—a lead which Erroll, aching to woo an audience for the first time by art rather than charm, had been quick to support; a darkness which the Jayasekeres, beset by Maisies and Wickramanayakes, were eager to embrace. So attentive and silent was the audience that the faintest giggling from far down the servants’ quarters seemed an explosion. Mrs. Jayasekere sharply ordered the elderly servant, absent on Hamo’s first visit and now in attendance on this company, to convey her anger to the banished juveniles. The scolding that followed produced even more noise, but it gave Charlie Keaton his impromptu clue—as important to a likely lad’s soft-sell as to Maisie Goonasekere’s fashion-setting.
“There you are, boys and girls. The laughs have started already. Now all we want are a few tears. And by the sound of things they shouldn’t be long in coming. It’s all my own work, Ladies and Gentlemen. Done with my very own B. & H. All I aim to do is to make them laugh and cry. And if I can’t do both at the same time, I’ll return my medals to the President, as the Yankee General said when he launched the fi
rst napalm attack on a Vietnam village.”
Led by Professor Pereira there were a few isolated bursts of clapping at this sally.
“Thank you all very much. Thank you very much. And we’re all ready. The first sequences by the way, Ladies and Gentlemen, are of your own island paradise. After all, Charity begins at home. And if anyone knows the bloke at the head of the Tourist Department, I’m open to offers. But strictly for large lolly.”
Singhalese life flowed and raced and streamed and flashed before the bewildered company. For the most part they sat in dazed silence before it, although after ten minutes or so, coughing and a restrained, restless rustling provided subdued comment on the Life that they were being offered as one man’s view of their own daily background.
Hamo, alert for noise under cover of which to make his get-away, without wishing Erroll failure, could have welcomed louder coughing. He saw, with impatience, sweating and dusty camera-packed tourists, passing with self-conscious disregard the wheedling-bullying whispers and nudges of the illegal money touts outside curio shops, change to a stout rich Singhalese gentleman with old-fashioned topee and umbrella allowing himself with grandeur to be conducted by bowing clerks up the splendid staircase that, beneath the vast cool, colonial magnificence of the Chartered Bank’s roof, led to the holy sanctum of the manager’s office. Why Erroll couldn’t give them . . . well . . . something noisy, for tediously now the camera had fixed upon the carved detail of a post on the Bank’s mahogany staircase rail; it circled again and again among the frets and over the smooth surface of the ball-head. Mr. Dissawardene spoke to his wife in what no doubt deafness led him to think was a whisper.
“I remember those old ball posts. When I was a boy, my father used to take me to the Bank. Sometimes I would sit for an hour on the stairs while my father talked with the manager. There were big transactions in those days. I came to know those posts just as we are seeing them now. But I was always rewarded with . . . Oh my!”