by Angus Wilson
Hamo said, “I am only sorry that my partially quoted words should have caused confusion to so many people. As I explained to you, a Mr,” and he looked at a card, “Parthasanathy has already preceded you with the erroneous idea that I was urging a return to primitive husbandry.”
At this, the Thing burst into a falsetto cackle. “Jana Sangh! Our estimable friends of the Right-wing Congress? Please let me beg you, my friend, my dear friend, not to allow those idiots to bore you. I myself am able to pursue my esoteric studies and teaching here by the simple faith of the people in that lovable, dancing fellow Vishnu. You know, I suppose, that in his sixth avatára he gave this land here to the Brahmins. Oh, please, remember it, Mr. Langmuir, the local people are very proud of the little gift—especially the Brahmins. They call me Swami and I am happy to accept the title. But I have too much respect for Hinduism, for the Mahabharata which contains much of the old wisdoms, and for the Ramayana which does great honour to man’s sly powers of invention, to be patient with the travesties that these Jana Sangh people and their kind make of the mysterious and the traditional. Don’t bother with them.”
“I am afraid I have far too much to do . . .”
“Good. So. We say good-bye. But allow me first please to give you some advice. And. By the way. Also. Thank you for the excellent brandy. If only the Portuguese had left more brandy behind here and less mumbo-jumbo about the relics of the great magus Francis Xavier. However. Remember what I told you. The ancient Lemurian intuitive sciences survive here very strongly for those who have the powers to inhale them. Or rather, I should say, to arouse and inhale them . . . More powerfully perhaps than in the Pacific itself where the artefacts of those ancient giants survive. More powerfully because it was here that they distilled their wisdoms, here at the meeting-place of old and new, of Lemuria and Atlantis. Such rudiments of their wisdom indeed as they taught to the Atlanteans are all that in our present cosmic consciousness we can comprehend.
“This despite all the claims of your compatriot Major Harvey-Whetmore. Ah, that well meaning, credulous British officer! But for especially sensitive people—and I think that you may well be such a man—Goa stimulates forgotten powers, unrecognized fluids. If this should happen, remember the story of the Abbé Faria, whose statue you may see in our town. A great magus, yet destroyed when he went to France. There he sought to use his Lemurian science, or animal magnetism as the foolish savants of that day liked to call it, in Atlantean realms. And what does Chateaubriand tell us? ‘L’abbé Faria se vanta de tuer un serin en le magnétisant! le serin fut le plus fort, et l’abbé, hors de lui, fut obligé de quitter la partie, de peur d’être tué par le serin.’ ”
Here his cackling laughter startled even the few other occupants of the balcony who, awoken from their snoozing, slowly raised their moribund reptile dry old faces and peered beneath their ancient straw hats to see no doubt if the clamour announced the happy return of the old Portuguese colonial days. A very thin woman who to Erroll looked like the ghost of his favourites, Myrna Loy or Katharine Hepburn, looked up gloomily from a table covered with cigarette ash and stubs.
“Oh God! Not gurus as well as ginger ale!”
Erroll, remembering his beloved stars, gave her a wink.
“Beware then of canaries! The Abbé Faria paid his price by being immortalized not as the considerable magus he was, but in the foolish pages of Dumas’ novel. And then in a mere travesty.”
The Swami made for the curtained door, bowing to Erroll. Then he turned. “In your pursuit of rice, the symbol of marriage and fertility, Mr. Langmuir, it is possible that you may go to Portugal where I believe rice is also grown. If so I shall be grateful if you will visit a place called Monte Claros near to Sintra. This escarpment—do you say? diese Klippe—formerly joined Atlantis to the present mainland of Europe. I should be glad of some reports on the declivities of the shadows there and their mathematical conjunctions. Especially at the Winter Solstice. I would go myself but so many young people are coming now as my disciples and—also—I have my studies. Now too I await certain astrological conjunctions in the coming week. We attend a climax here. By the way, if you are in Austria, my native land, give my greetings to those rogues the gods of the Valhalla, as from one fraud to another.”
Giggling archly, the Swami left, with his bare shoulder peeping roguishly into view for a moment, after the rest of his mountainous bulk had disappeared.
When Hamo sat down again, Erroll thought he looked for the first time aged, like a moulting old stork. Seeking to lighten the atmosphere, Erroll used the first parody at hand.
“Er . . . What was that?” he asked, and added, quickly, “said Dougal. ‘I think it was a swami,’ Florence told him. ‘Whatever that may mean,’ said Dougal.”
Then, his failed joke gabbled away, he said rather lamely, “It’s the Magic Roundabout” and he went on to another tack. “Well, whatever you said into camera for Kit, it went over big.”
“I am sorry if I appeared impolite in preferring to give that television interview without your presence. You see I’m new to all those lights and so on.”
Hamo still seemed to be dazed from their impact.
Erroll said, “That’s all right. Anyway Kit’s terrifically chuffed. He’s marked it as the star interview of the whole Asian series. We’ll have ‘that was the Langmuir, that was’ before we’re done.”
He had spoken without thought, but Hamo seemed not to notice.
“Oh! I don’t know. I tried to be as non-technical as possible as Coates had asked me. So it probably came out rather dogmatically. However, I may not let it be used.”
“What?”
“Much depends on what I finally decide to put into this report. I’ll have to make up my mind in the coming week down at this hotel you’ve found for me.”
“Old Kit knows your intentions? About the interview, I mean?”
“Oh yes. I made it perfectly clear to Coates. He’s a sensible man like most technicians. His vulgarity, I think, is mainly the protective clowning of the world he lives in.”
“Ah.”
There was a pause of some minutes. The tall thin woman left her little table and, swaying slightly as she moved, came to the curtained exit where Erroll stood. Close to, her thirties hat, her thirties fur-trimmed coat were Myrna Loy or Katharine Hepburn, but her face was grey and older than time. She was bare-footed and carrying her shoes. Erroll realized that he must have stared, for she said, “A woman’s loveliest feature is her legs, right? Then I don’t want those God-damned pinching shoes to give me crippled bird’s-claws. Gurus, purple ink, ginger ale, bird’s-claws. Uugh!” She groaned in his face and went by him.
“Gawd!” said Erroll.
But Hamo was gazing intently at the near bank of the wide Mandovi river that was the prospect before them.
“The man of the second family seems to have some regular business in the town,” he said suddenly, “but both the boys are without work, I think. She’s so modest about suckling that baby. But she gossips a lot with the old woman and with the woman of the big family. Look, they’re off to wash their pots now. They always go to the same place. It’s the place where that thin-looking boy is always bathing himself after defecating. I think he must have dysentery.”
Erroll said, “Gawd! How did you work all that lot out?”
“Oh, I can see them from my bedroom window. I haven’t slept much these two nights here. And they seem to be restless sleepers, too. They make little fires, you know, and cook over them at all sorts of hours. And the babies are restless. I think they have worms. They keep the women up. They’re road labourers, a lot of them. And others sell the shrimps they net there. It’s quite a community.”
“Poor bloody untouchables, I shouldn’t wonder. But as you say they make a community. There’s probably a lot more friendliness and help in time of trouble and all that lark than you’d get in the commuter belt round London.”
“That’s what I’ve tried to tell myself, but there have bee
n some terrible fights. I thought that second man would kill that boy from the first family last night. And the rest just stood watching.” He stared out again.
Erroll said, “Well, they’re better clothed than the Colva hippy community. Kit was filming that lot on that super beach down the coast. There’s nothing they don’t show. Not that I want the girls to forsake their little hippie ways. There are some luscious blonde dollies down there. I thought I saw your——” he broke off and added, “but there’s a whole Piccadilly Circus of them.”
The silence brought Hamo back. “Oh! The hippies. I saw something about them in this paper.” He turned over a page. “Yes. An irate letter. I must say, it sounds deserved.”
He read, “Sir, recently at Baga I was amazed to observe the number of stark naked hippies on the beach. These foreigners continue to mock us because of our inability to make them follow the minimum laws of decency in any country. They are creating a morality problem among our youth of incalculable proportions. I was appalled to see young boys, ostensibly strolling the beaches or pretending to go for a swim, but really ogling at the stark naked women who evidently enjoyed the attention. Are we Loans so helpless before these people that we tolerate this mockery of our people whom we love, this insult to our traditions of modesty, decency and goodness? Are we still suffering so much, we Goan men and women, from a hangover of white supremacy that we have not the courage to stop this insult?
“How many of the boys who have seen or heard from their friends about scenes of stark naked men and women lying side by side on the beach can resist the attraction of bunking class to have a look at the blatant nudity? How many of our respectable girls will feel safe to walk alone in the streets knowing that there are bread-men and ice-fruit vendors, etc., who have stared at nude women during the day, prowling around?
“I suggest that the Goan fathers and mothers organize their own squad to gherao or surround these naked hippies so that they cannot move. If they dare to strike out or resort to violence there will be a law and order situation on hand. Yours etcetera.”
“Gawd! Sounds a bit explosive. I hope that . . .” He stopped. “I’ve had your cases put in the hall. Your car’s due here at 4.30. An hour to Dabolim airport, ferry and all. And half an hour’s wait, I’m afraid. I hope you’re going to be all right.”
“Don’t be absurd. It will do you good to discover how little I need your services. When does Coates’s party go?”
“We push off in about ten minutes. Look, Chief. I can still cancel it all. I mean, are you going to be all right? You’ve got that great long motor journey from Bangalore. And then supposing this hotel isn’t all that Kit cracks it up to be?”
“To be without your perpetual chatter will put it in the de luxe category.”
“All right. All right. Anyway, Kit says the food there’s international, so you can write your reports without the squits.”
“No barrack-room language, please.” For a moment Hamo’s features resumed some of their old satisfactions at so familiar an interchange. “I shall give myself some luncheon and watch the life from this balcony. With the constant arrival of ferries there is always coming and going. And the fact that its purpose remains mysterious has its soothing side. I’ve been initiated enough into the ordering of things . . . I’m afraid I shan’t altogether be able to escape even here. The local authorities continue to be distressed by my cancellation of the visit to the rice-fields. They insist on interpreting it as some sort of criticism of their policy, although I’ve explained again and again that it’s just the reverse. I’ve been led a great deal too far into critical generalities in what I’ve said already and until I know what my interim report is going to be, I don’t want to be involved further. In any case, I’ve told them that all this examination of the practical results of Magic is purely informative, not to say historical. Our proper work begins from here onward when we start assessing the problems of sorghum culture that we shall be asked to solve. You agree with that, don’t you?” He looked up to Erroll with the pathos of a Landseer spaniel.
“I couldn’t agree more. Roll on our meeting at Karachi. Roll on East Africa. Roll on the sorghum crops.”
“Yes . . . but all the same, make the most of this experience with Coates. You can’t go on with laboratory work all your life, you know. The modern world hardly allows for stopping still.” He appeared to have surprised himself by his observation, for he added with weary distaste, “Meanwhile, since I’ve refused the Ministry’s conducted tour, I’ll have to receive this Mr. Aires da Braga they’re sending along to tell me what they’re doing in the rice-fields. After all, because it’s all over for me doesn’t mean it isn’t central to their lives. And, in any case, it’s intended as a great compliment to my contribution. But I don’t intend the gentleman to talk to me for more than half an hour. I seem to get tired so quickly these days, Erroll.”
“I don’t intend that he should talk to you at all. And I’m not going to let it happen. Kit looks on you as a gold mine! His personal gold mine . . .”
“But da Braga’s bringing the local journalists with him. He might lose face. You know . . .”
“Journalists! Look, if you see a pack of journalists now, you might just as well put your head in a gas oven. You’re not going to do it. I’m not stirring from here if you don’t agree . . . It’s for yourself, Chief. Not just for us. Look. I tell you what: you take those binoculars your niece or whoever she was gave you. We’ve carted them half across the world, so it’s time they came in useful. There’s a sand-bank up the river here. Through the town, past the statue of that Dracula abbé and his hypnotized victim, and down the esplanade. There’s everything there according to Percy of the camera crew. Storks! Pelicans! The lot. A spot of bird-watching. That’s it. You can’t get into trouble that way. Except with the Indian mynahs. No. Take that back. It wasn’t funny. And don’t get back here until your car’s due. Will you promise me? And I’ll write a note for da Braga that’ll do you proud.”
Hamo was so surprised that he made no protest at this ordering of his life, except to point out severely that Alexandra was not his niece but his god-daughter.
And so, half an hour later, filled with fish soup and kid curry, this stork-like figure set off in search of alleged storks. For the most part, determined to see neither poverty nor youths, he saw nothing. There are intervals—and he carefully recalled them—between knowledge and meaning, between intention and pursuit, when the senses pass on to the intelligence, impressions, aural, visual, tactile, so blurred and confused that, not interfering with the process of reason, they still hold it quiescent, below consciousness. He sought deliberately to maintain such a state; and his height and alien appearance helped him to do so, for as he walked down the shady streets flanked by high, regular, peeling stuccoed houses (slums, but gracious havens of cool regularity in the roasting, rank human jungle of India) children at play, scavenging animals, half-starved clerks, barber’s-shop idlers, even a few busy money-makers scattered before him (spectre of some British visitor from the vanished Raj, haunting his vanished sister—a ilha illustrissima). As a result he was aware only of a blur of colour that, thank God, called up no memories.
Then suddenly he was stopped in his tracks by a crowd of men—clerks and shopkeepers passing their siesta, he supposed them, from their sober, Western-style dress—gathered to watch some spectacle. Stork as he was, he needed to crane but little to see, within a small, regular concrete square, various lines of youths, drawn up in two irregular and apparently opposed formations. From moment to moment, and here and there, a youth would break out of his line and seek by swift devious movements to make his way through the opposing ranks. In turn, opposing youths in sudden rapid sweeps would intercept the invaders, touch them and thereby apparently condemn them to return to their ranks, or even to withdraw from the game. But what game? Hamo could find in it only some sort of Grandmother’s Steps played with immense skill and agility not by children but by older adolescents, who were nearly
young men. It seemed, as he watched, perhaps the more so as among all the many players there was none who approached the Fairest Youth nor yet any who repelled, an intricate rite of delicate sexual overtone, but one, he was relieved, totally without erotic display, totally without exciting violence. A rite, in short, from which he was totally excluded. One of the crowd about him, an ingratiating, soberly-dressed office employee of some kind, sought to please him with explanation.
“You do not know our follió Sir. It is a very old game. It is hard, you see, to reach the other side without being touched. You must be very quick, I think.”
The man’s speech had the merit—historical accident no doubt—of being without the absurd dated slang of the former Raj, but it seemed only to exclude British Hamo the more from the youthful ritual. If the man lacked British slang he did not want for Western moralizing, an European heritage, as much Catholic as Protestant it appeared.
“It is like life, Sir. Many of these boys will rise to good positions, but first they must fight their way through the ranks of their rivals. It is the rule of life, I think. Oh well done! That boy is through. They are from our finest schools, Sir. Scholars many of them as well as athletes.”
(Oh what a missed opportunity for the uncles!) But as Hamo was not competing he moved away from this eager, onlooking crowd of the middle-aged, of former players, but not before he had seen one youthful spectator as excluded as himself who looked with hungry eagerness into the magic square, and not before he had recognized in him the plain, famished, stone-breaking untouchable youth whom he had seen from his hotel window so often defecating on the river-bank and washing his bottom in the river. To his shame, the youth gave him a look of despairing recognition, as though he too, looking up from his public wretchedness on the open riverside, had seen into the luxurious privacy of Hamo’s hotel bedroom, watched him, perhaps, when, impatient of the walk to the corridor lavatory, he had peed into the wash-basin. Determined to refuse this demand for a shared exclusion, Hamo set off briskly away from the crowd along a broad street that led, according to Erroll’s directions, towards the mud-bank sanctuary of birds.