3

Dearest Mother,

I sent you a cable from the airport when I arrived here last night. I hope you’ll have got it by now.

We didn’t get in until shortly before midnight, three hours late, because we were delayed at Kowloon waiting for a plane from Jakarta which then proceeded to load us full of Indonesians, all very small and silent and slightly sinister. There seemed to be dozens and dozens of them, and I had an uneasy feeling that they were being stowed away in the baggage compartment and made to sit on the floor between the seats, and that we should never be able to take off. We were, however, so I suppose they can’t have weighed very much! When we finally reached Calcutta, I found to my surprise and delight that Olly was still out at the airport, patiently waiting for me.

Mother, I told you not to worry about him. Now that I can say this with absolute authority, I’ll repeat it—Oliver is well, and I mean well in every way, mentally and physically. I know you would agree with me, if you could see him. He has lost a little weight, yes, but not because of malnutrition or anemia. He has toughened—not that he wasn’t a lot tougher than most of us, always—and now he looks lean but very fit. He assures me, and particularly asks me to assure you, that he’s getting enough to eat. In accordance with his beliefs he follows a vegetarian diet, but vegetables are plentiful here and, besides, he is supplementing them with vitamins! I know you will be surprised as well as relieved to hear this, it doesn’t sound like our Oliver, does it? You remember how, when we were boys, he seemed hardly to know if he had eaten or not. However, the senior monks of this Monastery seem to be looking after him quite anxiously. (Olly was obviously embarrassed when he told me this!) They have an exaggerated idea of the frailty of an English constitution in the Indian climate and are continually warning him not to overdo things and to be most careful what he eats and drinks. Apparently the fact that he has lived in Africa and survived the hardships of the equatorial zone doesn’t impress them a bit. They claim superior toxic powers for their own land—a funny kind of patriotism!

Is Oliver happy? Yes, Mother, I sincerely believe that he is. Of course, it’s a kind of happiness which could never be entirely understood by you or me. I know—although I’m sure you haven’t let him guess it by so much as the faintest hint—that you’ve grieved because Olly has never found himself a partner in life and never given you grandchildren. (Penny and I have done our best to fill that gap, haven’t we?) If one has once known everything that a happy marriage and a home can be, then it’s hard, I admit, not to feel that happiness is marriage and that those who haven’t experienced it are simply unlucky. But we mustn’t let ourselves be too smug about this, must we? All through history one can find plenty of examples of the other way of life—I don’t mean only in the sphere of religion, take Lawrence of Arabia or van Gogh for example—these people who apparently need and prefer to go it alone. I suppose Olly is like that, and perhaps it’s what is meant by saying that someone is in God’s hands. That phrase always sounds terribly chilly and bleak to me, but it’s certainly something one can respect.

It’s a descent from the sublime to the prosaic to talk about my own health and welfare, but I know that you in your dear love worry about me too, so I must tell you that I’m far more comfortable here than I ever expected to be, in an extremely clean guesthouse which is run by the Monastery and stands just outside its walls. I shall have all my meals prepared for me by a special cook who is a Christian and has been trained to produce authentic British food! In fact, I’m probably better off than I should be in some run-to-seed luxury hotel.

The influence of the Empire is still apparent in this country. The immigration and customs officials at the airport all have distinctly English accents, rather pedantic and Oxonian, despite their sing-song way of talking English. They seemed absolutely without hostility and couldn’t have been pleasanter. Still, when one of them stamped my passport and handed it back to me saying ‘Welcome to India!’ I thought I detected just the smallest hint of proprietorship. It must be a satisfaction, after all that has happened here, to be able to welcome the British as mere guests in one’s own house!

Of course the friendliness may have been largely due to Oliver’s presence. One of them seemed to be on particularly friendly terms with him, and made some remark, evidently a joke, in the native language—to which Oliver answered with apparent fluency. Later I asked him, ‘Was that Bengali you were talking?’ Olly nodded and grinned—that grin of his hasn’t changed since we were boys, and it’s all the more charming for being somewhat rare. ‘I was practising on him while I was waiting for the plane,’ he said, ‘I wanted to impress you.’ So then I asked him what he’d said to the official and he told me it was ‘Yes, I quite agree, that is very true.’ So I asked what it was that the official had said to him first, and he roared with laughter and answered, ‘I don’t know, I didn’t understand a word!’

He was wearing a shirt, pullover, flannel trousers and sandals—the sandals were the only Indian part of his costume, in fact. I commented on this, saying that I’d expected him to be ‘dressed differently’. As soon as I’d made that remark I was afraid I’d dropped an awful brick, because it sounded as if I’d expected to find him ‘gone native’. What I’d actually meant, of course, was that I’d expected he’d be wearing some sort of monastic habit. But he wasn’t a bit offended. ‘Well I did think of coming out here without changing,’ he told me, ‘but then I pictured you arriving and this weird-looking oriental running to greet you, and it’s your long-lost brother. I was afraid that might be a bit much for you to swallow, right at the start, but I see now I was wrong, you’d have taken it all in your your stride, wouldn’t you?’ I could have hugged him for saying that! I did take hold of his arm and give it a squeeze, but then I dropped it again like a hot potato because I had a sudden qualm that this might be considered as lacking in respect for his cloth or a breach of some taboo. I even muttered ‘Sorry!’ which was idiotic of me, I realize. But Olly just laughed and said, ‘That’s all right, I haven’t become an Untouchable, you know!’ Wasn’t that marvellous of him? It relieved me more than I can tell you, because it proved that he hasn’t really changed, inside. He hasn’t lost his sense of humour. And as long as he keeps that, India can never come between him and us.

Oliver looked in on me this morning, first thing, to make sure that I had everything I needed, and he sat and talked to me while I had my breakfast. Here in the Monastery he naturally wears the light cotton Hindu clothing, like all the other monks. (I’ve already got some photos of him in this, and I plan to illustrate this whole visit lavishly with my camera, so that you’ll be able to have a good idea of how the place looks.) Monks who have taken only their first vows wear white, swamis wear an ochre yellow which is called gerua. (You see, I’m beginning to learn the ropes!) Oliver assures me that Hindu clothes are much more comfortable, more hygienic and better suited to the climate than our European dress. I can easily believe this. Not that I feel any discomfort dressed as I am, because the weather at this time of year is only pleasantly warm.

This afternoon, Olly will come back and conduct me around the Monastery buildings and grounds. It is so dear of him to go to all this trouble, I know he is sparing me as much of his precious time as he possibly can. Also, later today, I am to be presented to some of the senior swamis, including the abbot or head of the Monastery, whose proper title is The Mahanta. (Doesn’t that sound awe-inspiring?) As you may imagine, I have a bad case of stage-fright at the prospect of these encounters. For poor dear Oliver’s sake, I do hope I shan’t commit any faux pas!

Will write you more news very soon.

Ever lovingly,

Paddy

 

Penelope my darling,

I know that the first question you’ll want answered will be, has Oliver changed? Yes, he has, but not in the way I should have expected. I mean, he doesn’t seem to have got noticeably older—but then after all, one must remember that he’s only thirty-four, even now. As a young man, there was an assurance about him, or shall we say a determination, or even a ruthlessness—no, I’ve gone too far, I can hear you protesting!—well, anyway, he carried himself very erect and was apt to stick his jaw out, and his movements were purposeful. Now he gives the impression of being far less sure of himself. He stoops towards you when he talks and hunches his shoulders in a funny awkward way, as if he’s apologizing for being taller and bigger than you are.

Does he look healthy? No, I’m afraid he doesn’t. He is lean and bony-faced and tough, tough enough obviously to take an enormous lot of strain without breaking down. But he’s under great strain, of that I’m sure, and I doubt if he’s getting nearly enough sleep. You can see the fatigue in his eyes. They are bluer than ever and shockingly brilliant and searching, quite desperate. One avoids them, or rather one consciously makes oneself look into them, so as to pretend one hasn’t noticed anything wrong.

All these characteristics became much more evident this morning, when I saw him in his monastic outfit, this crumpled shoddy cotton sheeting he has to wear. He is too big and physical for it. It makes him seem rather pathetic, like a hospital patient in a nightgown, deprived of his trousers.

As yet I can’t detect any hostility towards me, although Goodness knows I came prepared for it. That may appear later. When he met me at the airport his behavior was nervous to the point of hysteria. But of course he had been waiting for me a long time, my plane was late, he was probably very tired and had no doubt been rehearsing our meeting and winding himself up for it, as I certainly had, so he wasn’t his normal self. As he ran towards me he was laughing quite wildly, as I never remember him laughing before, and then he stopped in front of me and stood just looking at me, without even shaking hands. I didn’t know how to react to this, so I started walking and he fell into step beside me. Meanwhile he was still laughing or rather simmering with laughter, and his face kept flushing deep red, and he made jokes which all alluded in one way or another to his status as a monk. It was as though he was trying to forestall any possible criticism. Also he was unnaturally polite. He speaks more softly and diffidently than he used to, several times I had to ask him to repeat what he’d said.

There’s something almost indecently vulnerable about him. You feel he’s utterly exposed. Even the thinnest mask, the one nearly all of us wear for decency, has been stripped off. Do I mean by this that I think he has turned into a saint already? No—but then I don’t know what a saint is, so how can I tell? Isn’t it just a word we use for anyone who makes us feel acutely uncomfortable?

What I’m wondering is, what on earth do the people in this Monastery think of him? That’s one of the many things I’m hoping to find out while I’m here.

You know, Penny, this really is a most formidable country! If you regard it in the aspect of an adversary, it has a kind of passive cunning, something like a judo wrestler who throws you by means of your own weight and strength. Am I making any sense? Probably not, as these are just first incoherent impressions.

I began to get them last night, while Oliver and I were driving back from the airport. We drove through miles and miles and miles of tumble-down suburbs—no, suburbs is too materialistic a word—this was a no-place, dark, featureless, an endless straggling bumpy lane with low unlighted buildings on one side of it and trees on the other, trailing their leaves in a ditch of muddy water. The weirdest thing about this midnight limbo was that it wasn’t at all deserted. Dim figures were flitting silently about in wispy smoke-coloured garments; it was as if they’d formed themselves out of the smoke from the glowing charcoal braziers we kept passing. The air was full of acrid charcoal smoke and richly perfumed dust; it’s the very breath of this place, so soft and yet so powerful. I felt a kind of nauseating enchantment. How easy it would be to breathe it in and become part of it like its inhabitants, these emanations of dust and smoke! Surely that must happen to anyone who stays here long. That’s why I fear for Olly. I suppose that’s what I was trying to express when I mentioned judo—Olly’s very strength, his terrific energy and manic determination, may actually hasten his defeat. And isn’t this exactly what he wants?

It was before you and I met, but I know I must have told you how Uncle Fred got a banker friend of his to give Oliver a job in his bank, it was somewhere in the City. Olly actually worked there a whole year, or nearly, and he was so efficient that everyone marvelled. They predicted that he had a brilliant future ahead of him, he was the stuff of which first-rate executives are made, he’d be on the board before he was thirty, and so forth. So what does our Olly do—walks out one day and joins the Quakers! Of course, at the time we all told each other it was merely a phase, he was still very young, only just down from the Varsity. I listened indulgently to his not very tactful declarations that all business is immoral and that banking is the worst, because it’s usury, and that those who practise it are the scum of the earth. Bless him, he didn’t mean anything personal! Uncle Fred’s friend was the calmest and most optimistic of us all—he treated Olly’s defection as a sort of mild nervous breakdown, had known lots of similar cases, he said, it was usually the best boys who went through it, in fact it was a mark of real character, and in due course they returned to sanity with an improved sense of proportion, all the better for their little escapade. Indeed, he announced that he was holding Olly’s job open for him, being so certain he’d recover. Well, he was mistaken. We all were. Olly had meant what he said, and furthermore, ever since that day, he has proceeded to follow his principles to their logical conclusion. First, business is rejected as evil, then all activity including social service is found to be meaningless, and so you end up with the integrity of doing nothing but contemplate your navel and the fascinatingly frustrating game of trying to know the Unknowable! Believe me, darling, I’m not merely sneering—if I sound bitter it’s because this concerns me passionately. I hadn’t fully realized, until I actually arrived here and saw Olly again, just what a sorry tragedy this is and how near he is to the final curtain of it. Am I going to stand by and watch it fall, without even a protest? No, of course not. I have got to speak out, even if it means losing his trust and affection forever. I must wait for the right opportunity, though.

The Monastery guest-house is bare in the usual cheerless tropical way, but perfectly clean. Oliver warned me not to hang my clothes on some wall-pegs near the window, because thieves have been known to angle with long canes from the alley outside and lift things off the pegs and the nearby table. He told me this with the almost unavoidable pride which the old hand feels in warning a newcomer. Living in a place like this makes you possessive of the discomforts, they’re all you’ve got. I remember how, in Africa, Olly had an air of practically owning the mosquitoes!

(Which reminds me, I had rather dreaded them here, but there don’t seem to be many. I have a net over the bed, of course. One slightly spooky thing did happen this morning, though. When I opened my suitcase three or four of them flew out—they’d been inside it all night!)

My food is prepared by a special cook, and it is British to the extreme of caricature. It must have taken generations of memsahibs to train the Bengalis to produce this brassy black tea, this wooden toast, these chalk-white scrambled eggs as dry as leather. I am to eat my meals in a vast bare dining-room at a table which would seat twenty at least. Oliver says that some of the senior swamis will be joining me for lunch and supper soon, but this morning at breakfast I was alone with him. He watched me eat but would take only a cup of tea. I sat in state at the head of the table under a huge propeller fan, like an incarnation of Western capitalism, with Oliver across from me in his Hindu wrapper, representing poverty, chastity and non-attachment. What a pair! How much cruder can symbolism get? I had to fight against laughing, not because I felt happily amused but because I was afraid of hysteria. I know this sounds affected, but it’s the truth. The situation seemed funny to me but also ugly, because it was so false, and that’s a combination which provokes hysterics. It isn’t this new-found religion of Oliver’s that I can’t take seriously, I know it means something to you and I can at least respect it intellectually. What I can’t and will not take seriously is Oliver himself as a synthetic Hindu, dressed up in these robes. I’m sorry. Perhaps you’ll think I’m being hatefully provincial. Perhaps I am. But I won’t apologize for that. It wouldn’t be sincere.

During breakfast, I asked Olly a few beginner’s questions about the manners and customs here, just so as not to offend him by a lack of curiosity. I longed to probe deeper, into his personal life, but I couldn’t trust the tone of my voice, he might have guessed from it what my attitude is. If he realizes this prematurely, I shall have lost whatever tiny chance I may have of bringing him to his senses.

After breakfast, when he said he had to leave me, I went out to explore. There’s a lane outside this guesthouse, one end of it leads to a gateway which opens into the grounds of the Monastery; in the opposite direction it winds along behind the houses which line the bank of the Ganges. I am to see the Monastery this afternoon with Oliver, and anyhow I wouldn’t have dared face it without a chaperone, so I walked the other way. This river-suburb must have been fashionably grand, once—ancient crumbling dark-crimson mansions, the homes of the English and other Europeans no doubt, with nineteenth-century French statues in their gardens, nymphs and classical goddesses, and creepers with great blossoms climbing over everything. Pools full of waterflowers, cows cropping at weeds amidst garbage, walled alleys that wander in and out and stop abruptly, choked with rubble where the walls have collapsed. Mother will absolutely adore the romantic colour-photographs I’m going to take of all this; luckily she won’t be able to smell the stink from the open drains and assorted droppings! (Incidentally, I’ve just finished writing to her—I foresee I’m going to have to use up my normal quota of white lies for years to come, reassuring her about the health and happiness of her precious ewe-lamb!)

This morning I was in the wrong mood, I suppose. Under other circumstances I could have discounted the stinks and appreciated the romance, but I can’t look at this place except in relation to Oliver, so it fills me with depression and a certain horror, even. Down at the ghats by the river I was watching the men and boys bathing—it’s they and their families who are now crammed into the tumble-down mansions, turning them into slum-tenements. They were ducking their heads in the cloudy brown mud-water, then swilling it round in their mouths and spitting it out again. I wanted to yell ‘Stop!’ It’s as shocking as seeing someone take poison. But of course it doesn’t poison them, and that in its own way is even more shocking, that such filth should be their daily drink. And they seem so unsubstantial, so humble, so dreadfully patient. It’s no good, Penny—no doubt we are rooted in the flesh, no doubt we’re the most arrogant of spiritual morons, no doubt their traditions did have much to teach us, once—but not any longer; tradition is dead when it no longer produces a way of life in the present, and their way of life has failed. When unfortunate innocents like Olly expose themselves to it, it can only corrupt and destroy them.

But I’m getting altogether too worked up! Had better stop here, lie down on my exceedingly hard bed and try to lower my blood-pressure before lunch by reading a good trashy novel. (Luckily I have one here with me.)

My warmest occidental hugs and kisses for you and the Two Ds. Wish me well on my crusade against the Hindus!

Faithfully,

Paddy

P.S. On rereading this letter, it suddenly strikes me that there’s one other thing about my meeting with Oliver you’ll undoubtedly like to hear. The very first question he asked me when we met was about you (not Mother!); he wanted to know how you were and what you were doing, and he listened eagerly to everything I told him and then questioned me some more. I also took the liberty of inventing a cable you’d sent me just before I left the States, in which you particularly asked me to give him your love. I could see that this pleased him immensely—more than he wanted me to know!

 

He hasn’t really changed. I was right about that. I knew it before we’d even left the airport. But he is more everything. He has more assurance. He’s slyer. He’s more on his guard. Also, he’s much more tired. At moments, he looks really dead tired. Perhaps it’s slowly wearing him out, this need he feels to be eternally on the alert. But that doesn’t mean that he’ll ever relax. I doubt if he could, now. It must have become part of his nature.

I’d forgotten how powerfully charming he is. Even when you know all his tricks, he can still charm you. And anyone would have to admit that he looks marvellously young for his age. That black floppy hair with hardly any grey in it, those bright clear eyes with only the tiniest wrinkles showing white against his tan, those firm brown cheeks only slightly too heavy, and those beautiful teeth—they must certainly have had something done to them since I saw them last, they’re unnaturally regular. Perhaps one of the dentists in Los Angeles put crowns on them. That’s what they do to movie stars, and Patrick is a kind of star, he’s fighting middle-age just as they do.

When we met, he seemed almost scared. I think he really is afraid of offending me. That ought to melt my heart, I know, but it doesn’t. It only irritates me, I’m sorry to say, because Patrick’s way of being scared is in itself a kind of maliciousness. Oh, he treads so softly lest he should step on one of my prejudices, and he jolly well takes care that I shall feel him doing it!

Yesterday morning, I came round early to the guesthouse and talked to the cook about Patrick’s breakfast, and then I went to Patrick’s door to ask him if he was ready to eat. I heard him moving about inside the room, so I knew he was awake. I knocked and called ‘Patrick?’ and he called back, ‘Come in,’ so he must have been quite prepared for my entrance, and yet when I walked into the room I found him stark naked. Well, that in itself wasn’t surprising. Patrick has never been shy about nakedness; he used to make fun of me because I was. But then he said, ‘This won’t take a moment, I just want to finish—’ and he proceeded to do a lot of pushups, forty at least, and then about a dozen jumps, raising his arms and landing with his feet apart, then jumping to bring them together again. He did these jumps very deliberately, facing me and grinning at me, with his teeth looking whiter than ever in his flushed brown face. And I couldn’t help being aware of his rather big penis slapping against his bare thigh as he jumped. Patrick always had a beautiful body and it is still in perfect shape, he must exercise all the time. You can tell that he’s been lying in the sun completely nude. He’s dark brown all over, with only the faintest trace to show the part the swimming-trunks have covered.

I was embarrassed and wanted to look away. But Patrick was grinning at me as if he was challenging me to admit that I felt awkward about looking at him, so I had to go on doing it. And I knew that he was sort of testing me—to see if I’d risen above the flesh, I suppose, and was so pure I wouldn’t even notice if he was naked or not! It would have been ridiculous if it hadn’t been rather obscene. God, he is just like a woman, sometimes! It was like some corny scene in an old Russian novel, where the woman tempts the young monk. I wanted to laugh out loud but I couldn’t, because I did notice and I was embarrassed, and that made me angry with him. So I walked away and stood looking out of the window, and needless to say as soon as I did that he stopped exercising at once and put a towel round his waist and went into the bathroom. I told him I’d wait for him in the dining-room. As I shut the door I thought I heard him laugh, but that was probably just my imagination.

In the afternoon, when I went to fetch him to show him around the Monastery, I found him sitting at the table in the dining-room, reading through a letter he’d just written. I offered to arrange for him to have a table in his room to write on, but he said, ‘I’d rather work at a big table like this one, where you can spread your papers out—it makes me feel I’ve got everything under control.’ Then he excused himself and went into his bedroom.

Before I’d even had time to resolve not to do it, I’d glanced down at the table. There was one letter already sealed in an envelope, addressed to Mother, and there was the letter Patrick had been reading. All I could see was the bottom of the last page, just a postscript. The rest of it was covered by a sheet of blank paper, which he’d casually slipped over it as I walked in.

Patrick had written a lie to Penelope, saying that, as soon as he and I met, I’d asked for news of her and listened to it ‘eagerly.’ Also he admitted lying to me, about a cable she was supposed to have sent and actually hadn’t, giving me her love. Patrick claimed that this lie had pleased me ‘immensely’—‘more than I wanted him to know.’

This was so flatly untrue, I could hardly believe my own eyes. Actually, while I was still waiting for Patrick’s plane, I’d already made up my mind not on any account to be the first to mention Penny, and not to show any undue enthusiasm when he mentioned her. Patrick could claim he noticed some unnatural reserve in my manner, perhaps, when he talked about her. That’s all he could possibly have noticed.

Why did Patrick lie? Was it for Penny? That would mean he believed Penny seriously cared if I’d asked about her or not, which I’m afraid I doubt. Or was it for me? Patrick is anything but a careless person, his very indiscretions are calculated, he doesn’t leave things lying about that he wants hidden. I’m nearly sure he meant me to read that postscript—just to tease me, disturb me, keep me puzzled and guessing. So now I must try to forget all about it.

When Patrick came back, he looked quickly at the letters and then up at me, and he smiled a little smile which could have meant anything or nothing. Then he picked up the letter to Penny and put it into an envelope and he asked me if the post office was far from here. I told him No, it was quite near the main gate of the Monastery, and that we could easily go by there and send off his letters, so that then he’d know where it was. I was tempted to add, I expect you’ll be using it a lot.

We started out shortly before four o’clock, just as the side gate at the end of the lane was about to be opened to let the public in, after the midday closing. So the lane was quite crowded and I had some private fun observing Patrick’s reactions. If only he knew how funny he is! It isn’t that he’s without humour, he has plenty of it about other people, and I’m sure it’s his pride and ultimate support, his religion, in fact. It’s what saves him, he thinks, from losing his sense of proportion and falling for weird oriental cults—like a certain humourless brother of his who couldn’t look on the funny side of things and thus came to a gruesome end, denying All That Makes Life Truly Worthwhile!

Patrick has already created for himself a special way of behaving in India. He created one specially for the Congo too, but that was crude by comparison. Here, he is super-benevolent and super-diplomatic. Watching him yesterday afternoon, I wanted to burst out laughing. Whenever he meets a ‘native’, he steps aside and pauses just for an instant, it’s barely perceptible, as if to indicate that he knows his place, he’s a stranger and British into the bargain and he wouldn’t dream of intruding, so please ignore him, he should be seen and not heard. When a couple of girls pass and glance at him and giggle together he smiles at them so nicely as if he’s agreeing with them, yes, you’re absolutely right, I am ridiculous, aren’t I? Once he met a cow and he stepped aside for her too, and you could almost hear him murmuring deferentially, my salaams, Ma’am, believe me I’m fully aware of your sanctity, you are Mother India Herself.

Then we got into the Monastery compound and I began showing him around and he asked a lot of questions which were quite intelligent in themselves, only it was like an Englishman who isn’t interested in cricket, even, asking an American about the rules of baseball—not about the game itself or the people who play it, but just the rules. He was exceedingly polite and tactful, but all the time his eyes had a teasing sparkle in them which meant, be frank, Brother dear, you’ve had to pretend to swallow this mumbo-jumbo, I quite understand that, but surely you can admit to me that you don’t believe it any more than I do. I resented this, of course, but not very much; it was no more than I’d expected from him. What I chiefly felt was sheer utter weariness at the thought of even trying to explain to him just what I do believe and what I mean by ‘believe’, and what’s really important to me in Hinduism and what isn’t, etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc. etc.

He also pinpricked me a couple of times about my ‘duties’. ‘I’m not keeping you from anything, you’re quite sure?’ ‘I don’t want to get you into any trouble with your superiors, you know!’

Showing the Monastery to Patrick brought back to me so many things I’d almost succeeded in putting out of my mind—I’ve certainly tried to, hard enough—all the negative reactions I had to this place when I first came here. Those crippled children begging outside the Main Gate, those visitors and hangers-on who sit day and night in the Lodge, lounging and gossiping their lives away, the general messiness and casualness of everything, Patrick made me see them again as I saw them then. He never hinted at any criticism, he never even showed distaste at the deformities and the dirt and the bad smells, but I knew what he was feeling and I felt it through him. When we were crossing the small courtyard behind the Temple, one of the brahmacharis was preparing the dye for the gerua robes. The very willingness and cheerful energy with which he was doing the job only demonstrated more plainly what a slow awkward process this is—so much rubbing of the rock against the wet piece of marble produces so little, and the mixture is so greasy and full of lumps. Patrick made no comment, but I felt sure he was thinking exactly what I used to think and finding the same obvious solution to the problem. Soon after I got here, when my brain was still buzzing with schemes to make this Monastery as efficient as a European factory, I had the nerve to go to Swami V. and later to Mahanta Maharaj himself, and tell them, respectfully but firmly, that they really ought to mend their ancient unpractical ways. I pointed out to them that a lot of the gerua dye gets washed out each time you wash the cloth, so that very soon it has to be dyed again. Why, I demanded, couldn’t we arrange with a chemical firm to mix us up a large supply of proper fast commercial dye, which would be far easier and quicker to use and would ensure a uniform shade of gerua and would last very much longer? Mahanta Maharaj seemed slightly amused, but he didn’t snub me. He asked me gently what would be the point of making this change. I was almost indignant with him for a moment, I felt he couldn’t have been listening to what I was telling him. ‘Why, Maharaj,’ I said, ‘obviously—it would save time.’ And he looked grave and thoughtful, as if I’d made some deeply philosophical remark, and murmured, ‘Ah yes, time—’ and then he was silent, and there was nothing more I could say, and nothing was ever done about it.

I’d been wishing all day that I didn’t have to take Patrick to meet Mahanta Maharaj. But actually the visit went off quite smoothly, without any particular embarrassment. I dare say I might just as well have been introducing Patrick to some Christian bishop, for all the impression it made on him.

All the time we were in there, I was watching Patrick watching him, studying him for mannerisms, probably, so that when Patrick gets home he’ll be able to do one of his imitations. Well, let’s suppose that he actually was, what else could you expect him to be doing? What does anyone do, when he doesn’t understand something? He fastens on to its surface appearance.

Patrick is the most uncanny mimic I know. Sometimes, when he’s talking about someone, he’ll start mimicking that person without, I truly believe, being aware that he’s doing it. That’s the monkeylike side of him. The monkey imitates without understanding. You can’t call it sneering—only human beings are capable of sneering. What Patrick does is pathetic, really, because this need of his to mimic shows such an utter lack of contact with life itself. I suppose Patrick has gradually let himself lose this, until now all he can do is imitate its sounds and movements. Poor Patrick—this is one instance in which the word poor has a literal meaning, it’s what real essential poverty is.

As we were coming down the steps after leaving Mahanta Maharaj’s room, Patrick said, in his polite sightseer’s tones, ‘How charming that fountain is, and that little marble seat among those rose-bushes!’ And then I heard myself answering, ‘That’s where Swami used to sit, in the days when he was living here, before he went to Europe.’

The moment I’d said it I was quite horrified, as if I’d betrayed a most sacred secret. Why do I so often tell Patrick more than I mean to? But that was all I told him, and I know my tone of voice can’t have given him the least hint that I was telling him anything of importance to me. Perhaps he wasn’t even listening. He made no comment, and when I glanced at him next he was looking out across the river.

The first discovery I made about Swami, and I made it only by very slow degrees, was his incredible capacity for concern. Before I could think of myself as truly his disciple, I had to understand and believe that I mattered to him, far more than I’d ever mattered to anyone else I’d known, even to Mother. What makes this kind of concern so tremendously powerful is that it has no ulterior motive, it isn’t in the least possessive, and it isn’t adulterated with pathos and sentimentality, like most so-called love.

Mahanta Maharaj, Swami V. and Swami A. are capable of this concern too—I’m sure there must be several others, but these are the only ones I can say it about from my personal experience. However, it took me some time to realize that. As I look back on them now, it seems to me that my first few weeks here were even worse than those last weeks in Munich after Swami had left us. I was with the Group then and we could share each other’s feelings, also there were lots of practical arrangements which had to be made, and that kept me occupied. When I arrived out here I had the leisure, much too much of it, to indulge in grovelling self-pity and loneliness. Of course I was seldom physically alone, never unless I wanted to be, and the brahmacharis were untiringly loving in their efforts to make me feel one of them, but I couldn’t or wouldn’t accept their love. I made myself be friendly to them, naturally, but my beastly self-pity kept coming between us, although they may not have been aware of it. Even while I was being friendly, I was on the verge of shedding tears over my sorrow, which I told myself was greater than anything they could ever know!

And oh those days of shuddering dainty-minded distaste I used to feel for everything Indian—their religion most of all! Swami’s little Hindu shrine in the Munich flat seemed charming to me even when I first saw it, and probably the very fact that it was an alien object made it better as a focus for one’s meditation; there was nothing like it anywhere around. It was a shock to come to this country and see them everywhere, little and big, indoors and outdoors, in homes and temples and beside the roads. What had seemed my private property, almost, was a public possession. I’d grown to enjoy the privacy of having a peculiar form of worship, now it was suddenly invaded by millions of people who’d taken it for granted since their birth!

For a while I couldn’t stop being sorry for myself long enough to become aware that Maharaj and the others were watching me. They didn’t attempt any consolation. They didn’t make light conversation and jokes as they do with outsiders. They even treated me with what I took to be coldness, and how I moped over that! I see now that they were standing aside, so to speak, and letting the spirit of this place take its effect and gradually get through to me at a deeper level.

Then one day Maharaj did a wonderful thing. He took me out of doors as though for a little stroll, and then quite casually he pointed out the seat to me, telling me how Swami used to sit on it every day and how they’d teased him about it, saying that a monk shouldn’t form such attachments. While he was talking, Maharaj himself sat down on the seat and he signed to me to sit down too—I suppose he wanted to show me that it was all right for me to. I didn’t know at that time that Maharaj hardly ever leaves his room, because of the bone-disease in his hip. It must have hurt him to walk even that short distance, and he probably needed to rest before he could walk back again.

Of course, I didn’t immediately realize what it was that Maharaj had done for me. Obviously he knew that only Swami himself could help me through that bad time and that I needed a focus so that I could feel his presence. Before Maharaj showed me the seat, I had tried sitting beside the river and telling myself that Swami must be present there, because it had received his ashes. But the river keeps flowing and it seems to carry everything away with it, including your concentration. And then, very soon, the seat began to draw me to it. I began going at night or in the early morning to sit there with my beads. A few times I’ve felt Swami with me there, so strongly that I’ve shed tears of relief— I’m starting to tremble with excitement as I write this, which is bad, probably. So that’s enough for now.

I’m glad I have written all this down, though, because it reassures me. It makes me realize how silly I am to worry about telling Patrick too much. What does it matter what I tell him? How could he possibly understand any of this? He wouldn’t even be able to make a funny story out of it. It would embarrass him, I suppose. And then he’d try to forget it as quickly as he could.