Author: Aldous Huxley
Category: Literature
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God there in heaven.
The door creaked, and an instant later Will heard light footsteps and the rustle of skirts. Then a hand was laid on his shoulder and a woman’s voice, low-pitched and musical, asked him how he was feeling.
“I’m feeling miserable,” he answered without opening his eyes.
There was no self-pity in his tone, no appeal for sympathy — only the angry matter-of-factness of a Stoic who has finally grown sick of the long farce of impassibility and is resentfully blurting out the truth.
“I’m feeling miserable.”
The hand touched him again. “I’m Susila MacPhail,” said the voice, “Mary Sarojini’s mother.”
Reluctantly Will turned his head and opened his eyes. An adult, darker version of Mary Sarojini was sitting there beside the bed, smiling at him with friendly solicitude. To smile back at her would have cost him too great an effort; he contented himself with saying “How do you do,” then pulled the sheet a little higher and closed his eyes again.
Susila looked down at him in silence — at the bony shoulders, at the cage of ribs under a skin whose Nordic pallor made him seem, to her Palanese eyes, so strangely frail and vulnerable, at the sunburnt face, emphatically featured like a carving intended to be seen at a distance — emphatic and yet sensitive, the quivering, more than naked face, she found herself thinking, of a man who has been flayed and left to suffer.
“I hear you’re from England,” she said at last.
“I don’t care where I’m from,” Will muttered irritably. “Nor where I’m going. From hell to hell.”
“I was in England just after the War,” she went on. “As a student.”
He tried not to listen; but ears have no lids; there was no escape from that intruding voice.
“There was a girl in my psychology class,” it was saying; “her people lived at Wells. She asked me to stay with them for the first month of the summer vacation. Do you know Wells?”
Of course he knew Wells. Why did she pester him with her silly reminiscences?
“I used to love walking there by the water,” Susila went on, “looking across the moat at the cathedral,” — and thinking, while she looked at the cathedral, of Dugald under the palm trees on the beach, of Dugald giving her her first lesson in rock climbing. “You’re on the rope. You’re perfectly safe. You can’t possibly fall …” Can’t possibly fall, she repeated bitterly — and then remembered here and now, remembered that she had a job to do, remembered, as she looked again at the flayed emphatic face, that here was a human being in pain. “How lovely it was,” she went on, “and how marvellously peaceful!”
The voice, it seemed to Will Farnaby, had become more musical and in some strange way more remote. Perhaps that was why he no longer resented its intrusion.
“Such an extraordinary sense of peace. Shanti, shanti, shanti. The peace that passes understanding.”
The voice was almost chanting now — chanting, it seemed, out of some other world.
“I can shut my eyes,” it chanted on, “can shut my eyes and see it all so clearly. Can see the church — and it’s enormous, much taller than the huge trees round the bishop’s palace. Can see the green grass and the water and the golden sunlight on the stones and the slanting shadows between the buttresses. And listen! I can hear the bells. The bells and the jackdaws. The jackdaws in the tower — can you hear the jackdaws?”
Yes, he could hear the jackdaws, could hear them almost as clearly as he now heard those parrots in the trees outside his window. He was here and at the same time he was there — here in this dark, sweltering room near the equator, but also there, outdoors in that cool hollow at the edge of the Mendips, with the jackdaws calling from the cathedral tower and the sound of the bells dying away into the green silence.
“And there are white clouds,” the voice was saying, “and the blue sky between them is so pale, so delicate, so exquisitely tender.”
Tender, he repeated, the tender blue sky of that April week-end he had spent there, before the disaster of their marriage, with Molly. There were daisies in the grass and dandelions, and across the water towered up the huge church, challenging the wildness of those soft April clouds with its austere geometry. Challenging the wildness, and at the same time complementing it, coming to terms with it in perfect reconciliation. That was how it should have been with himself and Molly — how it had been then.
“And the swans,” he now heard the voice dreamily chanting, “the swans …”
Yes, the swans. White swans moving across a mirror of jade and jet — a breathing mirror that heaved and trembled, so that their silvery images were forever breaking and coming together again, disintegrating and being made whole.
“Like the inventions of heraldry. Romantic, impossibly beautiful. And yet there they are — real birds in a real place. So near to me now that I can almost touch them — and yet so far away, thousands of miles away. Far away on that smooth water, moving as if by magic, softly, majestically …”
Majestically, moving majestically, with the dark water lifting and parting as the curved white breasts advanced — lifting, parting, sliding back in ripples that widened in a gleaming arrowhead behind them. He could see them moving across their dark mirror, could hear the jackdaws in the tower, could catch, through this nearer mingling of disinfectants and gardenias, the cold, flat, weedy smell of that Gothic moat in the far-away green valley.
“Effortlessly floating,” Will said to himself. “Effortlessly floating.” The words gave him a deep satisfaction.
“I’d sit there,” she was saying, “I’d sit there looking and looking, and in a little while I’d be floating too. I’d be floating with the swans on that smooth surface between the darkness below and the pale tender sky above. Floating at the same time on that other surface between here and far away, between then and now.” And between remembered happiness, she was thinking, and this insistent, excruciating presence of an absence. “Floating,” she said aloud, “on the surface between the real and the imagined, between what comes to us from the outside and what comes to us from within, from deep, deep down in here.”
She laid her hand on his forehead, and suddenly the words transformed themselves into the things and events for which they stood; the images turned into facts. He actually was floating.
“Floating,” the voice softly insisted. “Floating like a white bird on the water. Floating on a great river of life — a great smooth silent river that flows so still, so still, you might almost think it was asleep. A sleeping river. But it flows irresistibly.
“Life flowing silently and irresistibly into ever fuller life, into a living peace all the more profound, all the richer and stronger and more complete because it knows all your pain and unhappiness, knows them and takes them into itself and makes them one with its own substance. And it’s into that peace that you’re floating now, floating on this smooth silent river that sleeps and is yet irresistible, and is irresistible precisely because it’s sleeping. And I’m floating with it.” She was speaking for the stranger. She was speaking on another level for herself. “Effortlessly floating. Not having to do anything at all. Just letting go, just allowing myself to be carried along, just asking this irresistible sleeping river of life to take me where it’s going — and knowing all the time that where it’s going is where I want to go, where I have to go: into more life, into living peace. Along the sleeping river, irresistibly, into the wholeness of reconciliation.”
Involuntarily, unconsciously, Will Farnaby gave a deep sigh. How silent the world had become! Silent with a deep crystalline silence, even though the parrots were still busy out there beyond the shutters, even though the voice still chanted here beside him. Silence and emptiness and through the silence and the emptiness flowed the river, sleeping and irresistible.
Susila looked down at the face on the pillow. It seemed suddenly very young, child-like in its perfect serenity. The frowning lines across the forehead had disappeared. The lips that had been so tightly clo
sed in pain were parted now, and the breath came slowly, softly, almost imperceptibly. She remembered suddenly the words that had come into her mind as she looked down, one moonlit night, at the transfigured innocence of Dugald’s face: “She giveth her beloved sleep.”
“Sleep,” she said aloud. “Sleep.”
The silence seemed to become more absolute, the emptiness more enormous.
“Asleep on the sleeping river,” the voice was saying. “And above the river, in the pale sky, there are huge white clouds. And as you look at them, you begin to float up towards them. Yes, you begin to float up towards them, and the river now is a river in the air, an invisible river that carries you on, carries you up, higher and higher.”
Upwards, upwards through the silent emptiness. The image was the thing, the words became the experience.
“Out of the hot plain,” the voice went on, “effortlessly, into the freshness of the mountains.”
Yes, there was the Jungfrau, dazzlingly white against the blue. There was Monte Rosa …
“How fresh the air feels as you breathe it. Fresh, pure, charged with life!”
He breathed deeply and the new life flowed into him. And now a little wind came blowing across the snow-fields, cool against his skin, deliciously cool. And, as though echoing his thoughts, as though describing his experience, the voice said, “Coolness. Coolness and sleep. Through coolness into more life. Through sleep into reconciliation, into wholeness, into living peace.”
Half an hour later Susila re-entered the sitting room.
“Well?” her father-in-law questioned. “Any success?”
She nodded.
“I talked to him about a place in England,” she said. “He went off more quickly than I’d expected. After that I gave him some suggestions about his temperature …”
“And the knee, I hope.”
“Of course.”
“Direct suggestion?”
“No, indirect. They’re always better. I got him to be conscious of his body image. Then I made him imagine it much bigger than in everyday reality — and the knee much smaller. A miserable little thing in revolt against a huge and splendid thing. There can’t be any doubt as to who’s going to win.” She looked at the clock on the wall. “Goodness, I must hurry. Otherwise I’ll be late for my class at school.”
CHAPTER FIVE
THE SUN WAS just rising as Dr Robert entered his wife’s room at the hospital. An orange glow and, against it the jagged silhouette of the mountains. Then suddenly a dazzling sickle of incandescence between two peaks. The sickle became a half circle and the first long shadows, the first shafts of golden light crossed the garden outside the window. And when one looked up again at the mountains there was the whole unbearable glory of the risen sun.
Dr Robert sat down by the bed, took his wife’s hand and kissed it. She smiled at him, then turned again towards the window.
“How quickly the earth turns!” she whispered, and then after a silence, “One of these mornings,” she added, “it’ll be my last sunrise.”
Through the confused chorus of bird cries and insect noises, a mynah was chanting, “Karuna. Karuna …”
“Karuna,” Lakshmi repeated. “Compassion …”
“Karuna. Karuna,” the oboe-voice of Buddha insisted from the garden.
“I shan’t be needing it much longer,” she went on. “But what about you? Poor Robert, what about you?”
“Somehow or other one finds the necessary strength,” he said.
“But will it be the right kind of strength? Or will it be the strength of armour, the strength of shut-offness, the strength of being absorbed in your work and your ideas and not caring a damn for anything else? Remember how I used to come and pull your hair and make you pay attention? Who’s going to do that when I’m gone?”
A nurse came in with a glass of sugared water. Dr Robert slid a hand under his wife’s shoulders and lifted her to a sitting position. The nurse held the glass to her lips. Lakshmi drank a little water, swallowed with difficulty, then drank again and yet once more. Turning from the proffered glass, she looked up at Dr Robert. The wasted face was illumined by a strangely incongruous twinkle of pure mischief.
“‘I the Trinity illustrate,’” the faint voice hoarsely quoted, “‘Sipping watered orange pulp; in three sips the Arian frustrate’ …” She broke off. “What a ridiculous thing to be remembering. But then I always was pretty ridiculous, wasn’t I?”
Dr Robert did his best to smile back at her. “Pretty ridiculous,” he agreed.
“You used to say I was like a flea. Here one moment and then, hop! somewhere else, miles away. No wonder you could never educate me!”
“But you educated me all right,” he assured her. “If it hadn’t been for you coming in and pulling my hair and making me look at the world and helping me to understand it, what would I be today? A pedant in blinkers — in spite of all my training. But luckily I had the sense to ask you to marry me, and luckily you had the folly to say yes and then the wisdom and intelligence to make a good job of me. After thirty-seven years of adult education I’m almost human.”
“But I’m still a flea.” She shook her head. “And yet I did try. I tried very hard. I don’t know if you ever realized it, Robert: I was always on tiptoes, always straining up towards the place where you were doing your work and your thinking and your reading. On tiptoes, trying to reach it, trying to get up there beside you. Goodness, how tiring it was! What an endless series of efforts! And all of them quite useless. Because I was just a dumb flea hopping about down here among the people and the flowers and the cats and dogs. Your kind of highbrow world was a place I could never climb up to, much less find my way in. When this thing happened,” (she raised her hand to her absent breast) “I didn’t have to try any more. No more school, no more homework. I had a permanent excuse.”
There was a long silence.
“What about taking another sip?” said the nurse at last.
“Yes, you ought to drink some more,” Dr Robert agreed.
“And ruin the Trinity?” Lakshmi gave him another of her smiles. Through the mask of age and mortal sickness Dr Robert suddenly saw the laughing girl with whom, half a life-time ago, and yet only yesterday, he had fallen in love.
An hour later Dr Robert was back in his bungalow.
“You’re going to be all alone this morning,” he announced, after changing the dressing on Will Farnaby’s knee. “I have to drive down to Shivapuram for a meeting of the Privy Council. One of our student nurses will come in around twelve to give you your injection and get you something to eat. And in the afternoon, as soon as she’s finished her work at the school, Susila will be dropping in again. And now I must be going.” Dr Robert rose and laid his hand for a moment on Will’s arm. “Till this evening.” Half way to the door he halted and turned back. “I almost forgot to give you this.” From one of the side pockets of his sagging jacket he pulled out a small green booklet. “It’s the Old Raja’s ‘Notes on What’s What, and on What it Might be Reasonable to Do About What’s What.’”
“What an admirable title!” said Will as he took the proffered book.
“And you’ll like the contents, too,” Dr Robert assured him. “Just a few pages, that’s all. But if you want to know what Pala is all about, there’s no better introduction.”
“Incidentally,” Will asked, “who is the Old Raja?”
“Who was he, I’m afraid. The Old Raja died in thirty-eight — after a reign three years longer than Queen Victoria’s. His eldest son died before he did, and he was succeeded by his grandson, who was an ass — but made up for it by being short-lived. The present Raja is his great-grandson.”
“And, if I may ask a personal question, how does anybody called MacPhail come into the picture?”
“The first MacPhail of Pala came into it under the Old Raja’s grandfather — the Raja of the Reform, we call him. Between them, he and my great-grandfather invented modern Pala. The Old Raja consolidated their work and
carried it further. And today we’re doing our best to follow in his footsteps.”
Will held up the ‘Notes on What’s What’.
“Does this give the history of the reforms?”
Dr Robert shook his head. “It merely states the underlying principles. Read about those first. When I get back from Shivapuram this evening, I’ll give you a taste of the history. You’ll have a better understanding of what was actually done, if you start by knowing what had to be done — what always and everywhere has to be done by anyone who has a clear idea about what’s what. So read it, read it. And don’t forget to drink your fruit juice at eleven.”
Will watched him go, then opened the little green book and started to read.
Nobody needs to go anywhere else. We are all, if we only knew it, already there.
If I only knew who in fact I am, I should cease to behave as what I think I am; and if I stopped behaving as what I think I am, I should know who I am.
What in fact I am, if only the Manichee I think I am would allow me to know it, is the reconciliation of yes and no lived out in total acceptance and the blessed experience of Not-Two.
In religion all words are dirty words. Anybody who gets eloquent about Buddha, or God, or Christ, ought to have his mouth washed out with carbolic soap.
Because his aspiration to perpetuate only the ‘yes’ in every pair of opposites can never, in the nature of things, be realized, the insulated Manichee I think I am condemns himself to endlessly repeated frustration, endlessly repeated conflicts with other aspiring and frustrated Manichees.
Conflicts and frustrations — the theme of all history and almost all biography. “I show you sorrow,” said the Buddha realistically. But he also showed the ending of sorrow — self-knowledge, total acceptance, the blessed experience of Not-Two.
II
Knowing who in fact we are results in Good Being, and Good Being results in the most appropriate kind of good doing. But good doing does not of itself result in Good Being. We can be virtuous without knowing who in fact we are. The beings who are merely good are not Good Beings; they are just pillars of society.