The other crew members, however, were enjoying a brief rest in the tunnel. Their heads were drooping. They had no feeling for conundrums or cryptographs. They were mostly plain souls, with a touch of cynicism here, and a flash of scepticism there. They were mostly people who took life as they found it, and were unwilling to probe too deeply into what they couldn’t fathom. They were people of appearances, people of the senses, of the skin, of the surface.
They were people of appearances, except for the couple who sat staring into the darkness, the drunken presenter and his painter companion. They cultivated wakefulness. Irony was his favoured beverage. Wisdom was the great secret food of his spirit. Caustic vision was the deceptive mode in which he functioned in the world, preferring to be seen as a wild and bitter man than as a lovable clown or a forgivable fool, the other two disguises open to a man of spirit and intelligence in an age without a centre, an age without beliefs, an age of emptiness. He hid his wisdom, his genius for living, and his mighty love beneath what appeared to be a coruscating madness. This effort cost him dear, for the mask often became the face, became the visage by which the world recognised him. He became like an actor who played his part on stage longer than he lived his truth in life. His role sometimes overwhelmed his reality.
His father had named him Lao. It was a name he had hated as a child, because it was so alien, but which he had come to like as an adult, because it was intangible.
Lao sat there, staring past his companion, into the darkness. Having overheard the latest drama with the envelope, and watched the baffled reaction of the crew, he noted how silent Jute had become, and how solemn Jim now was, as he contemplated the envelope and its instructions. Jim had not come to Lao, discouraged by his forbidding and apparent cynicism, his verbal cruelty, and his permanent air of non-involvement. This air was one of his best cloaks, a garment of invisibility. It enabled him to see everything, without being seen, to hear everything, without being heard. It gave him the space for vast inner and outer freedoms.