As if by Magic

by Angus Wilson

  For the camera was now dwelling in detail upon the smooth roundness of the ice-cream that crowned the cones seized eagerly by the hands of noisy children jostling one another at the corner ice-cream cart. But Charlie Keaton gave the old man a word of recognition.

  “Aren’t they wonderful old posts?”

  The children’s squealing delight changed to the honking of pelicans suddenly sailing out with greedy power from the banks of the great Topawera tank at Polonnaruwa towards the fish shoals. Hamo had just time to notice with satisfaction that the ice-cream vendors bore no likeness to uncles, before, under cover of the din of assembling water-birds, he tiptoed out to the kitchen. But pictorial Life swept on regardless of his lust. For a moment, as a snake-head cormorant’s sinewy neck slithered voraciously down into the fish-thick water, there was a glimpse of the lakeside rest-house veranda.

  “That is where Queen Elizabeth stayed on her visit in 1954,” Maisie Goonasekere told everyone, but her information was brought to an abrupt “Oh!” for the camera was now making another snake-ladder descent which proved to be down no bird’s neck but through the S of Cargill’s store sign as the scene moved from the feeding birds, via the outside of the famous emporium, to a stall where a number of elegantly clad Singhalese ladies were deftly picking over silken materials. Professor Pereira, anxious no doubt for any moral he could draw from this unenlightening show, said: “Cormorants of another kind. The luxury goods that keep the wheels of capitalism oiled.”

  But the evident sincerity of Jayantha Jayasekere’s fashionable little cry, “Oh, Professor Pereira, I don’t think you can have been there for a long time. What can we buy, we poor ladies, when nothing is imported,” rather underlined the banality of the screen’s social comment. It was Jayantha’s mother who held to the sequence, when already it was replaced by the half-naked temple attendants at the Dalada Maligawa beating vigorously upon their drums.

  “Oh, that is so interesting. When I was a little girl, I always said to my mother, ‘I am frightened of the big gold S on the Cargill shop. It is like a snake.’ My mother always laughed at me. And now I see that it is not a snake, it is a bird.”

  “Well, it could be a snake,” Keaton told her, “Beautiful bit of lettering anyway. Can’t find that sort of thing in England any more.”

  And now, as the sacred drumming changed to the concentrated industry of an old man in the Kandy market pounding his little heap of turmeric, there was a sudden whirl and the reel broke.

  Maisie Goonasekere had years of practice in making celebrities feel that all was well with their fame.

  “So that is our little Ceylon,” she said, going up to Mr. Keaton, while the servant filled the impromptu interval by distributing coffee and candied guava under the supervision of the hostess and her mother.

  “And how do you decide what pictures to take?” Maisie continued.

  “Oh, well, you know, you’ve got an idea like before you start, haven’t you? I mean even abroad you know what you want. And then you look for it. But you’d be surprised at the little details that come up.” Erroll was pensive and proud.

  A little detail was worrying Mr. Jayasekere. “Where is that fellow Malcolm?” he whispered to his wife as she bent over the coffee cups.

  “Oh, I don’t know, Kirsti. I am angry with him. This movie is not so interesting for everyone, isn’t it? Senator Peiris has been yawning.”

  “What do I care for his yawns? What do you expect? Entertaining all these Reds. But that’s what Malcolm said he wanted. To sound them out. But he has not said a word about the examinations. What does it mean?”

  In answer came the lively lad’s call. “Back you come, Ladies and Gents, to another whiff of the isle of spice.”

  Across their vision walked with deliberate long-legged gait the extraordinary figure of the painted stork, majestic above the common flocks of egrets and ibis and herons that thronged the shallow waters of the Yala lagoon. As a tufted duck dived beneath the water, the stork’s stately leg was poised above in martial step; and then Muthu’s delicate little body came into view bowing to receive parcels and behind him, in superb matronly regality, Mrs. Dissawardene moved processionally towards the waiting car.

  “Oh my!” the good lady reeled from this vision of herself.

  “You look most elegant, Violet. I am pleased with your appearance on this screen.” Her husband’s firm praise appeared to be addressed to the whole audience as much as to his wife.

  “But the boy is on the screen. How funny that is! He will like to see himself. Go and fetch Muthu,” Jayantha told the old servant.

  “Ah, Mr. Sudbury, you are in the picture,” cried Mr. Chandraranthera jovially to encourage that undistinguished, uncommunicative tourist.

  “What is Doctor Malcolm doing there?” cried Mrs. Dissawardene. “I never saw him.”

  “Oh my Gawd!” cried Erroll.

  But Mr. Wickramanayake could not allow all this to pass. “It is Mr. Langmuir,” he said. “He wished to give money to the boy. And all the time you were photographing, Mr. Watton. I never realized.”

  “There we are. The Great Buddha himself,” Erroll cried desperately as the vast rock-cut Gal Vehera statue came into view.

  “It is not the Buddha. It is Ananda. In any case no such photographs are allowed,” W. R. Chandraranthera announced.

  “If you please, mate. I got the special permit. And a proper Charlie I felt too with all the questions the bloke asked. Religion!”

  Kirsti Jayasekere almost knocked Leela down, who, obeying her training, had moved fast to answer the loud telephone ring. He saw in the service a desperate means of escape for himself. Some minutes later, the older servant whispered in Jayantha’s ear.

  “Oh my Lord!” she cried, “What fool has showed Doctor Malcolm to the servants’ toilet?”

  Her husband turned in rebuke of her indiscretion, perhaps of her impropriety, but also in rebuke of all the humiliation that life entails.

  “Doctor Malcolm is not coming to Ceylon,” he told her; and in some reassertion of his status, he gave special announcement of the news to the whole company. “The London examinations are not to be restored in Ceylon. The Minister has rung to inform me. He said that he did not wish my hopes to be disappointed,” he told his wife bitterly. And then, for he could not bring himself to make one of this audience of God knew what trick any longer, he left the room to seek, whatever the impoliteness of the place, some retributive explanation.

  In the servants’ bedroom, Hamo found himself greeted by such soft, pliant and yet teasing tenderness that he was quite disconcerted—though very pleasantly. Dalliance, as Leslie mockingly had called it, had never played a great part in his love-making; yet now, when the situation demanded an expeditious coupling, he found himself, with Muthu no more than half-undressed, giving way to all manner of lingering kisses and fondling. Gently he sucked the ear lobe, let the tip of his tongue slide round the hard shell outlines of cartilage, buried it deep into the heart of the ear. Then, taking the rough but soft palmed hand, he began to suck in turn each finger. He had just reached the thumb, when Mr. Jayasekere flung open the door.

  “You are not Malcolm,” he shouted, “Why do you want to be called Sudbury? And who is Langmuir? The Minister says Malcolm refuses the examinations. Oh my God! What are you doing here?”

  Muthu, in terror at the shouting he did not understand, sought to jerk free of Hamo’s grasp. Hamo, in alarm and resistance, bit the thumb.

  With a presence of mind that amazed himself, he spat on to the floor before he answered.

  “I think this boy may well have poisoned his thumb,” and, despite Muthu’s reluctance, he resumed his sucking. Before Mr. Jayasekere had protested further, his wife’s plaintive voice came from behind him.

  “That young man from the University that Senator Peiris brought with him says Doctor Malcolm is a famous man.”

  “This is not Doctor Malcolm. I told you he is an impostor.”

  “No, Kirsti, no. It seems he is fa
mous. It is to do with rice and magic. Oh! Why is he sucking the boy’s thumb? And why is he in the servants’ room? Muthu was going to bed, I think. He is undressing.”

  “Mrs. Jayasekere, this boy has been badly bitten.”

  “Bitten! What has bitten him?”

  “I wish I knew,” said Hamo solemnly. But then, more foolishly, he pointed to a lizard peeping out from behind the framed picture of a voluptuous highly coloured Indian lady film star.

  Mrs. Jayasekere’s expression was contemptuous.

  “Those are geckoes. They do not bite.” She spoke sharply to Muthu in Singhalese and he answered haltingly. “The boy says he caught his thumb in the door. What does it all mean?”

  Mr. Jayasekere jerked back into authority.

  “Thumbs! Boys! Shut up with all this nonsense, Jayantha. Don’t you see that we have been fooled. I call this man an impostor.”

  “But this is an important gentleman, Kirsti. The University young man says so. He is the big rice man. The Magic man.”

  “Stuff and nonsense about magic. All these names and pretendings. What do you think our friends are saying? And they are not even our friends. Thanks to this chap, our home is full of Reds and anti-government people. What a scandal!”

  The word electrified Mrs. Jayasekere. She knelt before Hamo.

  “Doctor Malcolm . . . Mister . . . I don’t know the name . . . Please do not bring scandal to our house. Doctor Malcolm, we here are a small community.”

  “Now, now, now. What’s all this about? God Almighty! What have you been up to with this lad?” Erroll’s imitation of a police constable only feebly hid his real anxiety.

  “Doctor Malcolm has been sucking the boy’s thumb.”

  “Oh! Is that all? Well, chacun a son goo. That’s all right then. Now don’t you worry about scandal, Mrs. J. I’ve settled it all in there. All the boys and girls have gone home, and some very nice chicks among them. I told them my mate Sudbury here had had a coronary. Shocking thing But we’d been expectin’ it. I thought I’d have a bit of trouble with young Maniac Wick. He would keep telling them all how he knew the Chief. Boastful little bastard! But I pitched the tale. ’Fraid I put you in the shit, Mr. J. But it was all in a good cause. I told him the Chief was worried that some monkeying was going on in Ceylon with the Abstracts of their work from the Plant Genetical Journal. Wanted to watch the publisher without being noticed. Bit of nonsense. But he wore it. Sorry, Mr. J.”

  Mr. Jayasekere pushed the door into the passage wide open.

  “Both you fellows will leave at once, please. I don’t know what fellows you are, but you have come here to make us look stupid. I thought it was business, but I see it is some bad affair.”

  “Look, you don’t know what the Chief is . . .”

  “I don’t know anything. I am an ignorant fool. That is clear. But I know that you have insulted my wife and you must go.”

  Mrs. Jayasekere began to cry.

  “Doctor . . . Mister, what is it? All my life I wanted to go to London. You tell me that you can arrange it. You lied. You have no feelings.”

  “Oh, now, look here, if that’s it. I can tell you the Chief never hurt a flea. I don’t know what it’s all about, but you don’t have to worry, my darling. He’s rolling in it. He’ll fly you to London, put you up at the Ritz, pay for the lot. As to business, Mr. J., this is Hamo Langmuir, the biggest plant geneticist in Europe. He’ll get you scientific publishing on a scale . . .”

  Before Hamo could dam the torrent, Mr. Jayasekere interrupted. He appeared no longer angry. He was even faintly smiling. But he was firm.

  “I think you are a good fellow. I don’t know. But after what this chap has done, whether he’s a big man or not, he must go. The scandal will blow out no doubt, but no thanks to him. The sooner he gets out I am better pleased.”

  Hamo prevented Erroll from speaking further.

  “Mr. Jayasekere is perfectly right. There is no point even in apologizing. But I must ask you, Mr. Jayasekere, please, please do not dismiss this wretched young man. He is in no way to blame.”

  “Muthu? Why should I dismiss him? He is a very good servant. I don’t know what you have said to him. Anyway he can’t understand English. All the same I shall scold him about it all. But it is you who should not be here. This is a poor boy. He works hard. He comes from a poor village. All our servants come from that village. How could I send him away?” Mrs. Jayasekere dried the last of her tears. She settled the folds of the delicate pink veiling on her head. “I am the mistress of the house,” she said.

  “Please go,” her husband insisted. But as Hamo and Erroll turned to walk to the back courtyard, he said in shock, “No, no, through the front door, please. You are guests.”

  They walked the bastinado of Mrs. Dissawardene’s puzzled aloofness and of Mr. Dissawardene’s reserved bow. Only when they reached the patio, did Mr. Jayasekere come striding after them. He handed Erroll a visiting card.

  “You—the other fellow! Your movies were damned boring, but a lot of your photographs are superb stuff. If you want publication with Dugong, you see this chap—Lionel Nicholas, the Art Editor. Tell him I told you to see him.”

  It was this, perhaps, that made Erroll for once say, as they returned to their hotel, “Look. I don’t want to know any of the reasons for all that. You’re the boss in this outfit. But another time, mate, give us a chance. And the sooner we get down to the business we came here for, the better.”

  But meanwhile, Hamo, walking ahead into the leafy, flamboyant-flanked, opulent street, superstitiously dreading the mocking echo of the uncles’ bell, even their laughter, found only Leela final witness to his expulsion from Eden. To her, he said, “Please, if they treat Muthu badly, tell him to come to me. I’ll look after him.” Towering above her, unaccustomedly waving his arms, he sought to pierce her solidity by astonishment. “I’d take him back to England, you know, if need be.” She broke her dumpling surface but the giggling that poured out was not sweet. It seemed to Hamo more like jeering.

  *

  Paddy might be the next best thing in Colombo, but in the south-west wetlands of Ceylon it was, thanks to Langmuir’s Magic, a triumphant success. Hamo returned from there with spirits revived, hopes refortified, mind cleared of large, irrelevant social doubts, ready for discussion with workers in his field at Peradeniya University of the small but relevant problems that were his true concern. Magic in those wetlands had worked. His years of labour had induced the mutation that exactly relieved all the deficiencies under which these heavily monsooned lands had for so many centuries suffered: three harvests where one alone had been reaped before, and this in country where no crop rotation could make up for a too-light yield; a quickly drying seed that allowed for early threshing; no matter that the deep waters inhibited tillering—so much the better, for Magic stood firm and strong but low without unwanted tillered progeny; with successive harvests, the ratoon will of stubble for survival had been killed and with it the great pest ecology that had grown up with it. Where H.4 had only partially succeeded, Langmuir’s brain-child had conquered. The house that Hamo built stood firm. Everything, as Mrs. Jayasekere would say, was Magic.

  As Hamo watched the long rows of men, women, adolescents moving forward in the ballet dance of transplanting the two-week-old green shoots; as he looked at the neat groups of bissas, great jungle roots so neatly compacted with plastered clay and lime, and within them the hundreds of bushels of threshed harvest; as he saw those separate bushels of Red Magic, the rice so acceptable to sub-continental palates, previously so foolishly excluded by those with Japanese or Anglo-American circumscribed tastes, he felt that he had been right for so many years to leave the final fruition of his work as a hazy dream of pastoral Utopia, for so it seemed, or near enough, it was. He was conscious of a lordship, of his tall figure (the Lodger, let them call him) who had brought to these small people the sturdy dwarf rice that they needed. Spurred on by a sense of mastery, he broke through his usual despairing acceptance
of Ministry intermediacy, helped by the faithful Erroll who held the voluble, self-important government guide in check by a double dose of his double talk. Thus released, Hamo found a charming (but not too charming) elegant (but not too elegant) young (but not too young) bilingual local farmer, and felt himself for the first time really touching the roots of his creation. So the small-holdings were only 25 per cent; but so the small-holders had reaped such crops that they had dropped suspicion enough to combine for storage and marketing; but so the shared small-holdings, long impoverished by rotating owner, gave forth goodness enough that all, even to the youngest, were satisfied thereby; but so even those great men—merchants in the cities, the big families of the island, yea, even the bikkhus in their monasteries and the great abbots, who absently owned three-quarters of that fair land—reaped such great crops and were so satisfied thereat that they rewarded their labourers justly and did not turn away such as were old or temporarily sick or slow, neither did they seek to remove the landmarks of the small peasant holdings, and for new seed and even for new animals (Magic required few machines) they gave of them gladly to their labourers. Hamo saw it all and it was very good.

  So, then, how delightful to return at last to his proper sphere of concern in general exchange of ideas in Colombo with the chap come down from Peradeniya University, a man whose tendency to generalization Hamo felt he could overlook, even interestingly contest, in view of the very fine record he had shown in the laboratory. The high, dark but spacious sparsely furnished Colombo colonial hotel suite had, despite the periodic clatter of the antiquated air-conditioning machine, a sense of stoic yet patrician bachelor orderliness left over from the old British days to make Hamo feel as though he were at home in his flat. Host-like, he urged more stale-edged chicken sandwiches and orange juice upon Professor Abbegurewadena and his shy young technical assistant, while replenishing his own glass and Erroll’s with good Scotch whisky. The Professor crammed an enormous sandwich and, with the cress still poking out of the corners of his mouth, said ardently—with his protruding eyes and protruding vegetation more than ever like a delightful frog: “No, no, forgive me please, Mr. Langmuir. Such puritanism if I may call it that,” and he giggled, “would make impossible a great deal of scientific advance. Now take totipotency. Supposing I had gone to a chap in 1945 and said to him, ‘Don’t discard that dead datura plant. You will be able to breed from any single surviving cell.’ He will laugh in my face. Laboratory experiments showed it was impossible. Yet already forty years before in Germany Haberlandt had pointed the way. And now today . . .”