4

Tom,

it’s late, but I must write this to you before I go to sleep tonight, in fact I know I won’t be able to sleep until I’ve got it off my chest—I have to tell you how dreadfully I miss you.

I expected to, of course, in the way that I miss the few other people I really care about, but this feeling is entirely different. I feel sick, literally. It keeps coming over me in waves of nausea—I’m here and you aren’t. Ever since I arrived it’s been getting worse, and tonight it’s almost unbearable.

You’ll probably read this with bewilderment, deciding I must be drunk or crazy. Well, I am certainly not drunk. I doubt if there’s a single bottle of whisky within ten miles of where I’m sitting! As for my being crazy, yes, I suppose many people would call it that, people who never felt as I do now and never will because they’d always stop themselves in time before it got out of control. Such people live in perpetual terror of what’s inside themselves, they imagine it would destroy them instantly if they were ever to let it out. You and I are different. We can afford to laugh at wretched timid creatures like that and even feel sorry for them, can’t we?

To be perfectly frank, despite the acute misery of it, I have to confess that I’m glad I’m able to feel like this—because it does prove there’s something in me that’s still young and alive and kicking! However, my being glad is my own affair. It doesn’t mean I’m going to let you off your share of responsibility for this state I’m in.

Yes, yours, you little devil! Oh, I can just see you making big eyes of innocence, I can just hear you protesting, ‘But you wanted it and I wanted it, what’s wrong with that, what did you expect anyway, how can I help being me?’ Of course you can’t help it, Tommy, and I’ve thanked God you were you from the first day I met you. But that’s not the responsibility I’m talking about, and you know damn well it isn’t. It’s that bloody novel you gave me to read. Well, now I have read it right through, twice, not to mention I don’t know how many dippings into some of the sexier scenes. I know you weren’t recommending it to me for its literary value and so your feelings won’t be hurt when I say that it’s probably the greatest trash I ever read in my life—and I’m speaking as a professional reader of trash, remember!—but that doesn’t make it any the less exciting. Admittedly I haven’t had much experience of this sort of literature. I realize that it’s being mass-produced nowadays, especially in your own enlightened country. Funny to think that, when I was your age, even, this book still couldn’t have been published openly and sold on the counter!

You certainly must have intended me to get the stunning surprise I did get when I reached that chapter where they go to Tunnel Cove—otherwise you’d have prepared me for it in advance. Of course, I know that hundreds of tourists must have walked through that tunnel and out on to the reef, so it really isn’t strange that some writer should have hit on the idea of setting a scene there in a book. But that particular kind of scene and those particular characters! Tom, I’ve got to know this, did you deliberately make us re-enact it? It would be just like you, yes, I can believe it of you, it’s exactly the sort of wonderful sweet idiotic crazy thing you would do—and of course you did it, there’s no other possible explanation! You had read the book and it was you who planned the trip and took me there. I love the romantic silliness of your doing it, but at the same time I can’t help feeling, to put it mildly, embarrassed! I mean to say, there I was, taking part for all I was worth in a wild scene of passion—it was one of the most insane things I’ve ever done, if anybody had come through that tunnel we could never possibly have heard him coming until it was too late, with all that noise the waves were making. I was imagining in my innocence that you were as completely carried away as I was. You certainly behaved as if you were. And now I find everything you said and did printed almost word for word and move for move in this damned novel!

Tommy, please don’t think I’m angry or hurt about this or that I feel like the victim of a practical joke. Even if you did stage-manage the whole thing, I know that doesn’t mean you were just pretending—I’m certain you weren’t. You gave me quite satisfactory proofs that you meant what you were doing, on numerous other occasions! And if you got some kind of private erotic kick out of your stage-managing, then all I can say is, I hope you thoroughly enjoyed it.

While I was reading the novel I suddenly remembered something—actually it was on the same night we got back from that trip, we were having dinner, and you told me that there was a character in a book you’d read that you used to think about a lot and hope one day you’d meet someone like him. The way you told me made it clear you meant that now you had met the someone, and it was me—which flattered me, of course, and made me very happy. But when I asked you about the book itself you smiled and got all mysterious. Now I realize that obviously the character was Lance in this novel. With all due respect to him, I must say I hope you consider me an improvement—because the way he talks is a bit overripe for my taste, and I don’t greatly care to inherit the author’s description of him as ‘faunlike’!

Tommy, you are a devil, though! Your not giving me this book until we were separating from each other, what else was that but a really fiendish plan to torment me by continually reminding me of you? It’s like those new American capsules to cure colds which keep hitting you every hour on the hour, only this is the opposite of a cure, it makes the fever worse and worse. It brings you here into this room with me, right inside the mosquito-net on this bed where I’m lying naked, it’s such a warm night. God, I want you so badly! I want you in my arms. If I close my eyes I can almost imagine—yes, I can.… Damn, damn, what’s the use of playing tricks on myself. If I do that I shall only feel wretcheder and emptier afterwards.

Let’s change the subject!

I think this must be the least sexy place in the world. Everything I set eyes on here seems anti-sexual. Take the boys, for instance. A lot of them go around half-naked but they couldn’t be less exciting. Not that many of them aren’t reasonably cute-looking and they often have good broad shoulders, but the shoulders are so sadly, depressingly thin. And their legs! Wretched sticks, more like birds’ legs than humans’. You can’t walk on legs like that and move with any physical pride in yourself. And those dhotis they wear—the most repulsive droopy drawers, even you couldn’t carry them off! From the front they look bad enough, but from behind they’re positively indecent, especially if you squat down in them. People squat to pee openly into the ditches beside the roads—even very dignified-looking elderly men do this—and then the folds of the dhoti part and you get hideous glimpses of skinny naked shanks. The only well-grown legs I’ve seen so far were on police-officers, and they were nearly all too fat and enclosed in grotesquely baggy old-fashioned shorts. Oh, this is truly a land where you could learn to hate the flesh! Much as I dislike having to admit it, I’m afraid it’s all for the best that you can’t be with me here. If you were, you’d stand out amongst all these pitiful underdeveloped creatures like—I was going to say a sore thumb—no, a gorgeously healthy sexy great big golden Californian thumb! And I’d be dragging you back to this room half a dozen times a day to make love to you, which would be conduct highly unbefitting a guest at a monastery and lacking in respect for my reverend Brother.

Tommy, I know there is going to be a future for us together, there has got to be, but I don’t want to think about it too much, yet. This job for you in our film could be the first step—I really do think that’s going to work out—and no doubt it will lead on to the next step, in one way or another. We must just play everything by ear, as it comes. The really decisive question is, do we deserve each other? If we do, we shall get each other for keeps. That’s my firm belief—I can’t explain it or justify it, but there it is! Well, it goes without saying that you deserve me, if you want me, because there’s no one you don’t deserve. You deserve the best, and what the best is, from your point of view, only you can say! Do I deserve you? I would never dare to claim that. But if you say I do, then I’ll be the last to contradict you!

I long to see those photographs we took of ourselves with the automatic shutter-release, that morning in the patio when the sun was so hot—you remember, the ones your friend promised to develop. Be sure to let me know how they turned out. Better not send them to Singapore, though, you never know if some officious secretary might not open the envelope! And be a little careful what you write, won’t you, for the same reason? Tom, I don’t want you to misunderstand this, for heaven’s sake, don’t think I’m being overcautious and old-maidish. I know how you hate any sort of pretence and concealment, and I admire you for that. But we must never forget, when we go against the majority, that we’re forced to be like guerrillas, our chief weapon is cunning. We can’t ever attack openly. That’s just exactly what the enemy wants us to do, so he can destroy us. If we’re bold and rash, we’re simply putting a weapon into his hands. Defiance is a luxury we can’t afford.

Of course I honour people who deliberately invite martyrdom and provoke test-cases so that some injustice can be brought out into the open, to make the public begin to ask itself: Is this fair? But a martyr must be prepared to sacrifice the immediate future altogether, and I’m afraid I’m not prepared to do that, because it might mean losing you. I only hope you feel the same way? If you do, then I’m sure when you think this over you’ll agree that I’m right, we have to be cunning. There’s nothing dishonourable in that, it can even be a lot of fun. We’ll play a game against them, Tom, and we’ll outfox them and laugh at them while we’re doing it. Do you know, I have a feeling that playing this game is going to be what binds us together more than anything else? It’ll be you and me against the world! And although we’re its enemies, we’ll make this idiot of a world accept us and admire us, perhaps reward us, even—that’ll be our triumph and private joke!

Oh, Tommy, I feel so much better, suddenly! Writing all this seems to have brought you nearer to me. Now I know I shall be able to sleep—and I’m going to dream about you till morning.

Goodnight,

Patrick

 

Dearest Mother,

although I’ve only been here five days, I’m already getting quite habituated. I can almost go so far as to say that I feel at home—as much at home as someone like me could ever be in a Hindu monastery, or indeed a monastery of any kind!

In my last letter I think I mentioned the still-lingering influence, here, of the British Raj? You feel its ghost rather wistfully haunting the present, powerless now to exert any direct authority and regarding the scene with the reproachful air of an unwanted adviser. The architecture of the older buildings is full of funny charming evocations of Victorian England. For instance, there’s a gateway which leads into the grounds of the Monastery, it’s just down the lane from our guest-house. Now the moment I set eyes on this gateway I felt a sort of confused recognition, and after looking it over carefully a couple of times I suddenly realized what it reminded me of—one of the back gates of our college at Cambridge, over which I sometimes had to climb when I returned from trips to London, after hours! This gateway was probably built about the same time and you can detect, beneath the veneer of Indian gods and goddesses, a substructure of good homely nineteenth-century Gothic. What a pity the process wasn’t reversed—Cambridge would have been greatly embellished by a few Hindu domes!

At certain hours, the Monastery grounds are open to the public and are treated as a kind of park. This surprised me rather, at first. Of course, some of the people who come there certainly do go into the Temple to worship, but the great majority of them seem just to wander about and sit on the grass under the trees. The grounds are inhabited by numerous white cows. Yesterday I saw one of them approach a group of visitors and get shooed away quite rudely. I haven’t been able to discover exactly how sacred cows are, nowadays, and I hesitate to ask Olly, lest this should be a delicate subject!

Beside the main gate there’s a small house called the Lodge, which is another Victorian structure in oriental disguise, a kind of cousin to the Gatekeeper’s Lodge on a country estate in England. The Lodge seems to be always crowded, even when the grounds are officially closed. Olly tells me that families wait there when they’ve come to see a relative who’s a monk. Also, mail is delivered there—and frequently lost, I should think. And it contains the only telephone in the entire Monastery! The telephone is in the front room, that’s to say in the most public part of the building, and you can hear someone shouting into it whenever you walk by outside. No doubt one has to shout, because of the noise made by all the people who sit chattering around you!

Everything is delightfully picturesque and all the more so because of certain incongruities. For instance, outside the main gate they sell what look at first like those fat kewpie dolls people buy on piers to decorate the mantelpiece of some villa in Greater London. But, when you examine these more closely, you find they’re figures of godlets or holy men! There are also framed photographs which a newcomer from our debased culture would naturally expect to be of American movie stars—only, here, they’re of Gandhi and Rabindranath Tagore!

The great charm of the Monastery grounds is that they lie along the edge of the Ganges. The monks in their yellow robes and the women in bright saris make marvellously vivid spots of colour, against the moving background of water. The river at this point is wide and shallow and the tide seems very strong, also there is usually quite a strong breeze. There is an astounding variety of boats. Small steamers with thunderous hooters (one of these wakes me every morning, unless I’ve already been woken by some tropical bird with an equally powerful whistle!), high-prowed barges which remind you of gondolas, boats with huge square sails like Chinese junks, boats rowed by standing oarsmen which might be galleys straight out of Cleopatra’s Egypt. This afternoon I saw two immense haystacks come drifting quickly by in mid-stream, apparently afloat. It was only while they were actually passing that you could see they were on rafts.

Across on the opposite shore there are pink and yellow houses like gaily painted toys, standing among palm trees. Even the occasional factory chimneys aren’t offensive, they are so absurdly out of place that they seem merely quaint. And, oh, Mother, you should see that incredible light during the few minutes of tropical evening, just as the sun is going down! It shines through the thin mist that rises off the surface of the river and everything turns golden, a rich old eighteenth-century greenish-gold, exactly like a Guardi.

It’s then that you hear the music of the evening service coming from the Temple—very loud, it must be audible all over the neighbourhood—a sort of up-and-down wailing, accompanied by drums and cymbals and stringed instruments, plangent and disturbing, but impressive, certainly. I longed to go into the Temple itself to listen, but Olly didn’t suggest it, so I didn’t venture to. However, now one of the swamis says he’ll take me. He himself admires Bach and he assures me he will quickly convert me to Hindu music!

Three or four of the senior swamis now join me regularly for lunch and supper at the guest-house. Sometimes Oliver comes too, sometimes he doesn’t, but I’m certain this doesn’t mean he is missing meals and neglecting his health, he obviously has duties which force him to eat earlier or later—into these, of course, I don’t pry. The swamis are a very jolly lot, and needless to say I’m able to regard them from a viewpoint greatly different from Oliver’s. Oliver very properly approaches them with deep reverence. I’m not expected to and don’t, and this makes our relations considerably easier—in fact I might almost claim that I feel I already know them in certain respects better than Olly does! They are very intelligent and very human, and, while they are not in the least hypocritical, they’re well able to enjoy the humourous aspect of the solemn role their position in the Order demands that they play.

I told you in my last letter that Olly was going to introduce me to the Mahanta, the head of this Monastery. It was a memorable experience. The Mahanta lives in a little separate house on the river-embankment, built probably by Europeans, for it has a very French-looking fountain in the middle of its garden. The fountain is supported by three stone swans and by two cupids. The swans are all right from a Hindu point of view, because they stand for spiritual discrimination between the Real and the Unreal, but the cupids do seem a bit carnal for these monastic surroundings—however, one of them has lost his head, so is perhaps rendered hors de combat! Unfortunately, the fountain has been allowed to fall into disrepair, it doesn’t work and its bowl is full of green scum, and the garden is carelessly looked after, if at all. There are rose-bushes, and I suddenly pictured you so clearly, in your shawl and gardening gloves, snipping and pruning! You could restore and transform the whole place within a few months, and, even in its present run-down state, I know how it would appeal to you. You’d love to sit on the stone water-stairs—at the bottom of which discarded leaf-plates and broken earthenware cups are joggled up and down by the river-waves. And of course you would sketch the passing boats.

Which reminds me, near this fountain among the rose-bushes there’s a marble seat with scrolled ends, the sort of prop one associates with the less inspired productions of Shakespeare plays—only here in this setting it seems pleasingly unusual. When I remarked on it to Oliver, he told me that it used to be the favourite seat of his particular swami, the one who was his teacher in Munich and then died. I thought it was really touching that Oliver should have taken the trouble to find out a little detail of this kind, especially one that relates to the Swami’s early life in this Monastery, many years before Oliver met him. It proves that our Olly is capable of indulging in sentiment, after all. We used to think of him as the least sentimental of creatures, didn’t we? With deep feelings and strong loyalties, yes, but determined not to show them at any price. I was the one who always wore my heart on my sleeve!

But to get back to our visit to the Mahanta. His room opens directly on to a verandah which runs right around the house. There were at least a dozen youths and men standing at the doorway, all of them monks. Of course, this living in public is characteristically Asian, and I suppose you get used to it very quickly. When we entered the room itself, there were more monks. They formed a group around an old-fashioned brass bedstead on which the Mahanta was sitting. He is a massive old man, really very big, not particularly fat. His skin is silver-grey in colour and mottled with liver-spots, I don’t think he is well at all. He wore a blanket over his shoulders, covering the gerua robe. His feet and crossed legs were partly visible, clothed in long underwear and brown silk socks. I found the underwear somehow disconcerting, yet I hardly know why. Is it that monks are still to us what Victorian ladies used to be—are their undergarments ‘unmentionables’ which mustn’t even be thought about?!

Before our visit, Oliver had very considerately briefed me on the protocol. He told me that I should address the Mahanta as ‘Maharaj’, which means approximately ‘Master’ and is a conventional title of respect used in speaking to religious dignitaries in this country. He explained that he himself would have to prostrate before the Mahanta—it’s called making a pranam, or taking the dust of a person’s feet. (This consists of bowing down and touching the feet of your superior, one after the other, and then touching your own forehead, and it signifies asking for his blessing as well as making a salutation of extreme reverence. Of course, the dust is usually only symbolic dust, since the feet presumably are clean!) I should not be expected to do this, not being a devotee. In fact my attempting to do it—as I easily might have if I hadn’t been warned, because in a situation like this you’re apt to copy any action, however bizarre, taking it for granted as part of the drill—would have been instantly checked by the Mahanta himself and perhaps even regarded as an offensive bit of crudity. I asked Oliver if I should shake hands with the Mahanta, and he said that that would be perfectly all right, but that it would be even better if I made him a namaskar, a bow with the palms of the hands pressed together as if in prayer. So, having gone through a hasty rehearsal beforehand, that was what I did, and I sensed immediately—I’m usually able to judge such things—that it made a really good impression. Which was good for me and good for Oliver too. He didn’t have to feel apologetic for his unbeliever-brother!

Then the Mahanta said to me, ‘So you have made this arduous and lengthy journey solely in order to visit your brother? This is indeed a most touching proof of fraternal affection!’ That’s the way he talks, and it seems perfectly natural, coming from him, because he pronounces his words beautifully and precisely and with genuine relish, as though the entire English language were a classic text from which he loves to quote. The swamis who have meals with me all talk English fluently and more or less like this, but the Mahanta has more style than any of them.

Meanwhile, one of the younger monks stepped forward, took one of the Mahanta’s hands in his, and began to massage it. The Mahanta allowed this to happen without the least suggestion of personal involvement, he didn’t even glance at the boy, much less express his thanks. In England, this kind of behaviour might have seemed cold and arrogant, here it didn’t, because the boy didn’t seem involved either. He didn’t appear to be doing this for the Mahanta, there was no gleam of devotion in his eyes, in fact he seemed unaware that he was handling part of a living organism! Meanwhile, a massive Hindu silence fell upon us all. That too I had been warned about by Oliver, so I prepared myself to sit it out. It’s actually very nice and restful to be able to drop all efforts at making conversation and not feel that anybody is being offended.

A few minutes later, some very slight noise made me turn round. Then for the first time I saw what was apparently a whole family, half a dozen adults and as many children of various ages, lined up with their backs to the wall behind me, squatting on the floor. I had missed noticing them as we came into the room, because my eyes had been fixed on the Mahanta. Now I felt embarrassed, because Oliver and I were blocking their view of him. They were evidently there for what’s called darshan (again I must ask for your admiration of the way I’m picking up these technical terms!), it means exposing yourself to the spiritual radiations of a holy man, rather like taking a bath under a sun-lamp.

What Oliver had neglected to prepare me for—and he really can’t be expected to allow for every emergency—was that he, after he had made his prostration, would normally have sat down cross-legged on the floor as this family was doing. But, before he could do this, a commotion was caused on my behalf, two monks sprang forward simultaneously with chairs for me. As an alien guest I suppose I had to sit high, but I couldn’t help feeling that the honour was ambiguous, it might also mean that I was unworthy of the floor! Anyhow, the Mahanta, who is obviously a master of tact as well as spiritual wisdom, promptly motioned to Oliver to take the other chair—thus treating him as my brother rather than as one of his monks. Oliver submitted to this classification with a good grace, though perhaps not with entire satisfaction.… I find these nuances of monastic etiquette absolutely fascinating!

Having turned round, I tried to indicate to the family by my expression that I was sorry I was sitting in their light. They didn’t react. Probably they hadn’t a ghost of a notion what I meant. As for Oliver, he showed no sign of concern. However, the Mahanta did seem to understand, because he caught the attention of one of the senior members of the family and gave him a slight nod, as much as to say, ‘That’s enough, you’re cooked right through,’ at which the whole family rose and prostrated before him, one after the other, before leaving the room.

I was watching the Mahanta’s face closely as they did this, and I witnessed something very odd, almost uncanny. As each member of the family prostrated, the Mahanta’s personality quite visibly switched itself off—that’s to say, his face became masklike and his eyes blank, he suddenly wasn’t there!

And then a memory came to me—it seemed absurdly irrelevant at first—from my time in the Army, an old sergeant patiently arguing with a prim anarchistically-minded young recruit who didn’t see why one man should be made to kowtow to another, as he put it, and the sergeant told him. ‘Don’t be so daft, lad, it’s not the man you’re saluting, it’s the uniform.’ And then I saw, in a flash, that perhaps the same principle was in operation here—perhaps the Mahanta was simply refusing to take these salutations personally and standing aside, as it were, while they were offered to what he represented.

I felt quite proud of this bit of insight and I hoped Olly would be pleased with me for having had it. So, after our visit was over—it ended with some polite small-talk—and we were alone together again, I told him what I thought I’d observed and asked if I was right. He seemed to agree that I was—that’s to say, he nodded and grunted. Our dear Oliver, I must tell you, is a little unwilling to discuss the mysteries of his faith with me, or so it appears. Of course, for all I know, any kind of discussion may be officially frowned on here; perhaps you’re supposed to believe and not talk about it. In any case, please don’t take this as an implied criticism of Olly himself. We must remember that converts are always apt to be more royalist than the King!

I still see quite a lot of him, though not as much as at the very beginning of my stay. As I mentioned above, he has his duties and I assume that these must include some sort of spiritual preparations—meditation, study and so forth—for the taking of his vows of sannyas. The ceremony is to be at the end of next week. So as not to embarrass him by hanging around and seeming to need to be entertained, I’ve been making excursions into Calcutta. I looked up a man I used to know who’s out here on business, and he has introduced me to a few others.

One can’t pretend that Calcutta isn’t squalid, though the old English quarter, with the palatial government buildings and the open spaces of park and the monuments, has kept a little of its charm. But even this part of the city looks as if all strong colour had been parched out of it by the sun; it’s faded to a dirty yellow. And the streets are filthy—you have to be careful not to slip on garbage which has been scattered and smeared over the pavement. Even in daytime the atmosphere is full of smoke from the charcoal pots they burn at night. And the crowds! You get the impression that the houses simply will not contain all these people; thousands of them must be living out of doors. Many of the streets are so full that there’s a permanent traffic jam. The traffic ranges from lorries and taxis to bullock carts, rickshaws and funny little closed cabs with louvered shutters. The bullock carts cause most of the obstruction. It’s not just that they are naturally slow, they seem perversely determined to be slower. This morning I noticed one little gnome of a driver seated between the huge wheels of his cart and making absolutely no attempt to prod his bullock into action, despite the frantic honking of horns behind him. He merely pointed his stick at its hindquarters, like a magician, a completely incompetent one, pointing his wand!

Mother darling, I’m telling you all this because I know you want to hear everything about Oliver’s life and surroundings. If you found out that I’d withheld some detail from you just because it was unpleasant, you’d never trust me again, would you? Everybody who returns from this country is apt to dwell on the horrors of Calcutta, and I’m afraid you may hear descriptions of it which will make you worry about Oliver. What you must realize is that everything is very different out here at the Monastery, where it’s clean and healthy and one has plenty of space and can breathe the fresh river-air.

I have told Oliver that I’m writing to you and he sends his love. I’m sure his thoughts and prayers are with you constantly. Certainly my prayers are no good to anyone, but my loving thoughts are with you as ever.

Your devoted son,

Paddy

 

Penelope darling,

high time for another communiqué!

I’m afraid you may have found my last letter a trifle hysterical? I admit that it was written in a mood of mild panic, the mood in which you say to yourself, can I possibly stand this? And of course the answer always is, you can if you must. Already I’m in a state of psychological convalescence, sitting up and taking a keen interest in my surroundings. That doesn’t mean that I like them any better!

I do, however, very much like the monks of this monastery—the few I’ve met, that is. Collectively they are part of the trap into which Olly has fallen, but you can’t blame them for that as individuals, and anyhow they are quite adorable. I suppose I’d expected them to be hypocrites or, at best, mock-humble and mealy-mouthed. But now, having got to know them a little, I’m already prepared to believe that they’re completely on the level—chiefly because they’re so civilized about their beliefs. They seldom refer to them unless you ask a direct question, and there’s never the least hint of their wanting to convert you—hypocrites would be much more aggressive and emphatic! They are soft-voiced and playful and gently teasing, but they’re far from being mealy-mouthed, especially when the conversation gets on to Red China’s ambitions or Pakistan’s claims to Kashmir! They never become mystically grave or tiresomely inscrutable. The plump ones chuckle plumply at my jokes, the skinny ones titter. They all seem to enjoy their food and they belch after it. Now and then, one of them exclaims what at first I thought was ‘Shiver! Shiver!’ but later discovered to be a pious ejaculation, ‘Shiva! Shiva!’ Being with them is delightfully cosy.

How do they feel about me, I wonder? When I try to put myself in their position, I realize that they must regard Oliver as a tremendous catch. This isn’t something I’m imagining—I’ve seen them looking at him with beaming proprietary pride! And is that so surprising? I don’t, of course, know what kind of followers Olly’s Swami had found for himself in Munich before Olly came along, but they must have been a pretty stodgy lot of middle-aged transcendentalist krauts. No doubt the Swami’s brothers here had already regretfully written off his mission to the barbarians as a flop. And then, at long last, he captures and posthumously presents them with this unique marvellous creature, this his one and only genuine disciple, who has cooked for him, looked after him, abased himself before him in utter devotion, and is an Englishman into the bargain! What a typically Indian victory, a victory without violence! The child of the conquerors is brought, literally and willingly, to his knees! Not only does he embrace the religion of the conquered, he’s ready to accept a position of authority, publicly, as one of its ministers—this must actually be, from their point of view, the greatest triumph of all. (However, what I don’t think the swamis can possibly understand is that Olly would never, under any circumstances, have become a Christian priest or minister. Most of his fellow-workers on these social projects must have been Christians. Where would have been the thrill for him in going over to them? It would have been such a tame sort of conversion. Besides, the Christians believe in action, and that’s what he was evidently yearning to give up!)

Now, if the people here think Olly’s conversion is such a coup, then they must naturally expect that it’ll be headline news in London, read by the English with dismay. (The cream of the joke is that they might not be absolutely wrong, as far as the headlines are concerned. Today, while I was in Calcutta, I ran into an Irish journalist I know slightly; he has been roaming around eastern Asia looking for suitable stories to peddle to the London press. He had heard some exaggerated rumours about Olly and had the cheek to ask me of all people if I’d help him get an interview with The White Swami, illustrated no doubt with photos of Olly enrobed and perhaps even communing with a cobra! My first impulse was to kick his backside, but prudence intervened and I tried instead to talk him out of the idea by being very blasé and disowning poor Olly as a boring unnewsworthy crank!)

Anyhow, my point is that the swamis of this Monastery may well have been expecting some sort of counter-attack. I don’t mean by the English nation—would Victoria have sent a battleship to bring Olly back?—but perhaps by his family. And what, in fact, does happen? I appear—your official representative, the Elder Brother, that formidable figure whose authority, according to oriental thinking, is equal to that of the Father himself! Are they really at all worried by my visit? I very much doubt it. But who can tell? I have no way of guessing what they think me capable of doing, or how well they understand Olly. Not very well, I suspect. Still, this is a confrontation of a sort. There is some kind of opposition, deep down, between them and me, even if it’s no more serious than a game of chess. All right—I’m quite willing to play chess with them, and puzzle them a bit if I can, and see what happens. It should be fun!

How does Oliver take my being here? That’s a terribly difficult question to answer. I sense a mixture of hostility—yes, there’s that, certainly—and genuine affection. Also I get the impression that he wants desperately to talk to me—I mean, talk really frankly about this whole situation—but that he can’t bring himself to, at least not yet. Also, now and then, I’m aware that he’s avoiding me. He excuses himself, says he has things to do, but it just isn’t convincing. When I ask him about his life here, he takes one of two attitudes—either he’s cagey and changes the subject, or else he answers at considerable length, but in a bored clockwork tone of voice, like a guide showing you round a cathedral.

A couple of days ago, I met Olly unexpectedly as he was coming out of the Temple after the evening service. He seemed disconcerted and asked me, quite sharply, what I was doing there. I explained meekly that I’d been standing outside listening to the singing—which, incidentally, I find curiously exciting—no doubt it has its own brand of religious sentimentality, but as a foreigner one mercifully isn’t aware of this. While I was speaking, I noticed that Olly was holding something in his hand. He saw I saw it, and made a quick furtive move to slip it into the breast pocket of his shirt. I asked, ‘Is that your rosary?’ I honestly didn’t intend to embarrass him—his nervousness made me nervous too, and I felt I had to say something. He looked surly, and said, ‘Yes it is, actually.’ So then what could I do but ask to see it? He hesitated visibly, for several seconds, before he opened his fist—the rosary was twisted around it. But, as I moved slightly closer to look, he jerked his hand and his whole body backwards, shying away from me, exactly like an animal. I suppose he thought I was going to touch it, which of course I wouldn’t have dreamt of doing. Perhaps if I had touched it with my impure worldly hand he’d have had to throw it away! Anyhow, we were both almost equally startled by his reaction, it was so violent and so instinctive. We stared at each other, unable to speak. Then he mumbled that he had to be off somewhere, and he left me abruptly.

This incident didn’t discourage me, however, because at least I’d provoked Olly into doing something spontaneous. So I decided to stop being so tactful and prod him a bit harder. (I’m well aware that I’m making myself sound bitchy, not to say malicious, but seriously, Penny, don’t you agree that if Oliver is ever to realize what this mess is that he’s in, he must be made to drag his new beliefs up out of the murky gooey soup of the subconscious and take a long look at them, consciously and objectively? He must hear how they sound when he has to define them to a nonbeliever. Perhaps it simply isn’t possible to induce him to do this, but that’s no reason not to try and go on trying!)

Yesterday I began cross-examining him about his own Swami and his teachings. Olly obviously didn’t want to discuss this, but he couldn’t very well refuse to, because he’d already told me enough in one of his letters to give me ammunition for my questions. So we went into all this thing about the Red Cross and the Quakers and how the Swami had made him see that the Western concept of social service is fundamentally unsound, because it’s based on judgement by results and a belief that social conditions can be permanently improved—which is idiotic, Olly said. This view I find merely asinine. Of course conditions can be changed permanently, for better or for worse—by blowing up the world, for example! But in all fairness I must admit I realize that that’s not exactly what Olly means, and I do glimpse some sort of truth glimmering behind his deplorably sloppy phraseology. It’s just that this languid supercilious oriental negativism makes me want to puke!

However, I certainly wasn’t going to get myself involved in an argument about semantics, so I just asked Olly mildly what he thought the proper approach to social service was. At this, he began to mumble and stumble, muttering that it was very difficult to explain. Again to do Olly justice, we both know that he’s no tongue-tied moron, he can be as articulate as the best of us—what he actually meant was that it was difficult, i.e., embarrassing, for him to explain this sort of thing to me. However, he finally managed to come out with the statement that the Hindus believe that all one’s work should be done symbolically, as though it was some kind of a religious ritual which has no practical usefulness, only intrinsic spiritual significance as an offering to the Supreme Being or whatnot—in other words, what’s important is one’s attitude to the performance of the action itself, not to its results—success and failure are regarded as equally irrelevant. (Forgive this clumsy exposition of what’s probably kindergarten stuff to you; I only include it because it’s part of the story.) It was naughty of me, I know, but I couldn’t resist such a beautiful opening. I said, in a dreamy faraway murmur, ‘To work alone thou hast the right, but never to the fruits thereof’—which startled Olly considerably. ‘But that’s from the Gita,’ he exclaimed, quite indignantly. ‘Funny,’ I said, all innocence, ‘it just popped into my head—you know my unfortunate talent for storing up useless information, I must have heard it quoted by someone, Penny probably.’ He didn’t like this, I could tell—I suppose because it seemed like poaching on his preserves. ‘But, frankly Olly,’ I went on, ‘I really couldn’t care less what somebody wrote thousands of years ago, all that interests me is what you think, now.’ I was honestly trying to pacify him, but my tone must have been wrong, because this only displeased him more. ‘You keep saying you’re interested,’ he said, looking at me very hard. ‘I dare say you are, up to a point. You’d better not get too interested, though. It might be risky.’ ‘Risky?’ I said. ‘Why on earth should it be risky?’ ‘If you really cared what I thought,’ he said, ‘you’d be forced to ask yourself, sooner or later, if there wasn’t some truth in it. And suppose you decided there was, then the question would arise, what you were going to do about it. And that might mean altering your attitude to a whole lot of things. Wouldn’t that be a bit inconvenient for you?’ He said this with the most aggressive kind of sarcasm, it quite startled me. I felt the situation was getting altogether too serious and tense and that I’d better stop poking him, for the time being. So I laughed and said, ‘But surely, Olly, you should be the last person to worry about that. I mean, let’s suppose that by some miracle I did change my attitude—whatever you think that is—shouldn’t I be, from your point of view, saved?’

This made him grin, in spite of himself, and created a noticeable détente, of which I took advantage by asking to see his room. Of course, this was being personal too, in a different way—I’d asked him once before and he’d put me off with some excuse—but now he raised no objection, in fact he seemed positively eager to show it to me. (Looking back on the incident, I suspect he’d decided that the time was ripe to teach me a little lesson. More about that in a moment.)

So he took me over to a building I’d scarcely noticed before, it’s behind the Monastery kitchen, right at the back of the grounds, a long way from the river. When we got there, he led me up an outside staircase to a doorway at the top. He didn’t invite me to enter, he simply stepped aside to let me look in—and, I must say, I got one of the biggest shocks of my life! (Mother would have rushed straightway to the Mahanta, boiling with indignation, to demand proper accommodation for her boy. She might even have wired our Ambassador in New Delhi! So, in case you talk to her on the phone and she happens to bring this subject up, for Heaven’s sake be discreet! Either say I haven’t mentioned it in my letters, or, if you’re not afraid of having a white lie on your conscience, assure her that Olly has a charming little cell all to himself with a breezy outlook on the river. Which is what I shall have to tell her, anyway, sooner or later.)

What I did actually see was a very large ill-ventilated room which was as bare and stark as a public urinal—the best you could say for it was that it looked adequately clean. It was empty just then, but the entire floor was covered with sleeping-pads and bundles of clothes, and it was crisscrossed by clotheslines hung with mosquito-nets. I imagined myself waking up there at night and wanting to relieve nature and trying desperately to get out of the place in the dark without stepping on someone’s face or catching my neck on one of those lines! I fairly gasped with horror! And that pleased Olly, I could tell—it’s reassuring to know that he hasn’t yet risen above liking to show off a little!

I was so distressed that I found myself cross-examining him exactly as Mother would have. He told me that he has been living in this dungeon ever since he arrived at the Monastery. Yes, they had offered him a room to himself, but he’d refused to take it—‘For obvious reasons’ was his comment, and I’m afraid I in my wicked way couldn’t help being reminded of Colonel Lawrence’s determination to prove to his Arabs that he was just as tough as they were, and a bit extra! However, Olly did admit that this room was ordinarily less crowded—two weeks ago it was filled up by the arrival of a lot of junior monks from other monasteries of the Order in different parts of India, who have come to take this final vow of sannyas. Olly does have a few more possessions than the others, his European clothes for instance, and these he keeps in a suitcase, somewhere else. But just think of it—no privacy whatever, nowhere to sit down properly in a chair or at a table, nowhere to be even relatively alone except out of doors! (I remembered how I’d once come upon him sitting cross-legged under a tree in the grounds, writing something in a copybook open on his lap—at the time I didn’t realize that he had nowhere else to do it!)

Of course, Oliver is used to roughing it, and he has always been unnecessarily strict with himself, but he can’t ever have experienced anything as bad as this, before. The way he lived while he was in Africa was luxury by comparison. There were moments in the Army when one felt pretty sorry for oneself, but one always had the consolation of knowing one wasn’t stuck there for ever, and at least one was among one’s own kind. I must admit, liberal and one-worldly as one tries to be, that I absolutely shudder in my deepest bowels at the thought of spending even a single week shut up all alone with these, well, what else can you call them, aliens. No amount of shared belief, religious or otherwise, could make it any better, surely? As a matter of fact, I’m willing to bet that Olly’s brother monks shrink back from him, in their innermost feelings. That’s instinct, and how can you change it?

Seeing that ghastly room made me really understand for the first time just what poor desperate heroic crazy Olly has been putting himself through. Now I know how awful it must have been for him to come out to this country and find himself in this place, all on his own, without even his Swami to show him the ropes and give him moral support. Imagine the hideous moment when he realized how he’d got himself trapped!

What made him do it? Was it for the thrill of making a complete break? Was it a sense of duty to the Order? Was it loyalty to his Swami’s dying wishes? No, Penny, let’s be frank, we know our Olly better than that. What forced him to come out here was his pride. He had burned his bridges! Where else in the world could he go? To go back to the Red Cross or the Quakers, or anyone else connected with his old life, would have been a retreat, and can you see Olly retreating? He wouldn’t dare! He’d kill himself first. There’s never any way possible for him but forward. In one of his letters he actually alludes to this crisis, in his own inimitable style—says that he went through ‘a few doubts and deliberations’ about what he should do next, after the Swami had died. A few doubts, mind you! Olly is probably our greatest living master of understatement. It would be funny, if it weren’t so horribly sad. He must have gone quite literally through tortures.

Oh, Penny—why couldn’t he have come to us, before he made this disastrous decision, and frankly talked the whole thing over? Was it our fault that he couldn’t? It must have been, to some extent. We ought to have insisted on seeing him, even though he seemed to be avoiding us. I ought to have gone over to Munich and looked him up, even if it had made him furious with me. If we could have once hammered it into his obstinate head that we loved him and really cared what he did with his life, perhaps this would never have happened.

And now here he is, deliberately preparing himself to take this final step, and here am I standing by, watching him. I suppose it’s rather like being with someone who’s sentenced to death, with only one week more before his execution. Yes, I know that sounds melodramatic! It does express what half of me feels, but only half. Half of me is desperately concerned about Olly, the other half is hypnotized, as it were, and almost acquiescent—that’s the peculiar hypnotic power of this place and its way of life, or rather anti-life. All values are turned upside down, here, and inside out, and it’s done with such a matter-of-course air that, sooner or later, one would probably begin accepting them—this monstrously unnatural spectacle of a young Englishman being turned into a Hindu swami would seem perfectly natural and reasonable then! Luckily for me, I’m not staying long enough for the hypnotism to do any permanent damage!

Still, I do have the uncanniest feeling that this situation is drifting out of my hands, that I’m not quite in control of my own actions, even. I feel that the half of me which is concerned about Olly is going to do something, intervene in some way, and very soon. Meanwhile the other half of me watches, and is merely curious to see what’ll happen!

Don’t be alarmed, darling, I’m not developing schizophrenia! I’m sure I’m reacting to this topsy-turvy environment as any normal outsider would. If you were here, you’d understand.

Perhaps it’s a tragedy that you’re not here. Perhaps you could really do something to help poor Olly. But let’s not dwell on perhapses!

My dearest love to you all, as always,

Paddy

I almost forgot—I’ve been on a reckless buying spree in Calcutta. Saris! Not the kind of thing you see in the shops. I got shown these privately, through a business contact. They’re stunningly beautiful, quite worthy of an ancient maharaja’s court—at least, I think so. Hope you’ll agree with me! I don’t know in what form you and the Two Ds will wear them, but rely as always on your creative genius. Be sure to let me know when they arrive, they’re already on their way to you, air freight. Also the things from Tokyo and Hong Kong—but that’s not nearly so important.

 

Am I being unjust to Patrick? That’s what I must keep asking myself. Am I even completely wrong about him?

But what do I mean when I say ‘wrong’? My attitude towards him is so hopelessly subjective that it’s absurd to talk about myself as though I were an impartial observer who could ever be ‘wrong’ or ‘right’. For me, the alternatives aren’t to understand him or misunderstand him, but to love him or hate him.

And of course I love him—I mean, I’m capable of it. Part of me probably loves him all the time. All of me certainly does, sometimes. When I was going through my Freudian phase, I used to wonder if I wasn’t actually in love with him, romantically and even physically. I’m quite sure now that that’s not true, at least not any longer. It isn’t nearly as simple as that—considering what I’ve been through lately, I almost wish it were. Now and then I suspect that Patrick thinks it is—when he sort of flirts with me. But I’m afraid the truth is less interesting. Patrick’s flirting is just a nervous habit he’s got into, he tries it on all ages and both sexes. It doesn’t mean anything and I suppose it’s usually harmless, except that it has probably fooled a few people and made them unhappy later.

What I do love about Patrick, and always have, is his joy, his boldness in demanding enjoyment for himself and the get-away-with-murder impudence with which he accepts the best as his absolute right. A gloomy old guilt-ridden puritan like me is naturally attracted to a Patrick, however much he may resist the attraction, and in our case, being brothers, we’re that much more closely involved. Heredity has made us part of a single circuit, our wires are all connected. At moments I can actually feel and think like him, and that scares me, of course. I get afraid that I’ll start behaving like him and lose my own identity altogether—which is pretty funny when you think that my whole life in this Monastery is aimed toward mortifying the sense of ego! To escape behaving like Patrick, I tell myself that his behaviour is evil, and I withdraw hastily into the gloomy self-righteous part of myself, which has nothing in common with him, it’s all mine, and I freeze up the connections between us with hate.

Patrick can disturb me so terribly because he can make me question the way I live my life. I’m fairly sure he doesn’t do this consciously—he doesn’t have to know what he’s doing, because he does it by just being himself. And I’m quite sure I could never make him question the way he lives his! What I must keep reminding myself is that it’s I who give him this power. His power over me is nothing but my own doubt and weakness. If I really believe in what I say I believe in, then a million Patricks won’t be able to shake me. I won’t feel threatened by him, and so I won’t have to cut myself off from him and hate him.

When I write this down, it looks so simple. And in fact on the rare occasions (this is one of them) when I can think about Patrick sanely, I do see how absurd it is to let him upset me. Of all the people on earth, isn’t he actually the one who’s least equipped to judge me? Our likeness and our unlikeness both make it impossible for him to understand what my life is really about. And yet I invite his judgement!

I realize now that I as good as asked him to come here. If I hadn’t subconsciously wanted him to come, I would never have written him the kind of letter I did. I phrased it in a way that was absolutely guaranteed to excite his curiosity—curt, mysterious, with ‘keep out’ signs all over it. Whenever Patrick sees that sign, he does his level best to nose his way in.

And why didn’t I wait to write until after I’d taken sannyas? That would have been the natural thing to do, having waited so long already. No, I wanted him here before sannyas, because I longed for him to reassure me that Swami’s teaching is true, and that this Monastery is a good place, and that it’s all right for me to become a monk! That sounds fantastic, but it’s the truth—at least partly.

And that’s what makes me hostile and evasive so often, when Patrick cross-questions me. I’m afraid of giving him unconvincing answers! He notices this, of course, and it only provokes him to tease me with more questions. All these references he makes to my ‘duties’—I’m sure he must guess what the situation is. That used to be one of my biggest problems when I first arrived here. I expected to be set tasks and given a daily work schedule, like the other brahmacharis. I can understand now why Mahanta Maharaj treated me differently—duties were the very last thing I needed. Swami must have written him a lot about me, and no doubt even before we met he had a pretty clear picture of my eager-beaver mentality, that desperate conscience-stricken urge to keep busy. I used to grumble to myself that Maharaj had given me nothing to do. Then slowly I realized that he’d given me everything to do—the obligation to pray and tell your beads and remember God is always there. It can’t ever be finished, like scrubbing a floor. Well, I came gradually to accept this other way of life and be deeply contented in it—until now Patrick appears and by his mere presence makes me feel guilty all over again, like a hypocrite who’s hanging around and wasting time!

At the moment, I can see how uproariously funny this is. But how shall I feel when next I’m with him? One thing is becoming clear—in order to think about Patrick sanely, I must concentrate on his funny side!

He is a terriffic hit with Swami V. and Swami K., and in fact with all the swamis who have meals with him at the guest-house. From their point of view he must be the ideal type of outsider, he knows exactly how to carry on the light table-conversation they enjoy and expect from the non-religious. Oh yes, he charms them right out of the trees—so amusing, so well-informed, so British in the nicest way—and always with that respectfully hinted undertone: Of course you understand, Reverend Sirs, that I talk like this because I would never dare presume to speak of anything serious to you.

The first time I ate with them all together, Patrick told them in his most artless style about this film of his and how he’s going on to Singapore to make arrangements for it. And then, with an air of shy confession, he let out that he’d hesitated for a long time before signing the film contract—some mystic instinct warned him to wait, perhaps it was a mistake. ‘But when I got your cable,’ said Patrick, turning to me, ‘I suddenly knew! I said to myself, if I go first to the Monastery and see Oliver, then everything I do after that will have a blessing on it—so I signed, that same day!’ Then Patrick looked round the table, smiling coyly at them all, and he said, ‘I’m terribly superstitious, I’m afraid.’

This seemed to me utterly outrageous—I was so ashamed for Patrick that I actually blushed, I didn’t know where to look. This time, I thought, he really has gone too far! But not a bit of it—the others all found his story delightful. Swami V. chuckled hugely and said, ‘Your motion picture will undoubtedly have a phenomenal success, for you are now under the special protection of Mother Lakshmi, the goddess of good fortune!’ Actually, I strongly suspect that Patrick was lying; he just invented this stuff to entertain them. Most probably he’d made up his mind to sign that contract even before he got my first letter.

Being with them at meals embarrasses me unspeakably, I can’t help it, and I keep making excuses to stay away. That’s bad. These are lies, even when they’re only implied—there’s no such thing as a white lie, anyway. I must have a genuine reason for not eating at the guest-house. I’ve just decided what I’ll do—I’ll start a partial fast from now until sannyas, just take a little rice and some vegetables once a day. Mahanta Maharaj is always so anxious about my health, but I’m sure he’ll give me his permission now, so near the time.

I’ve been working hard to learn those long Sanskrit mantras which we must all be able to repeat when we take part in the ritual. Swami A. has been teaching them to us, and several of my brother brahmacharis have been helping me rehearse them. They are so sweetly gentle and patient with my slowness. Today our gerua robes were brought to us, folded ready for the great moment when we shall put them on, after stripping off our old clothing in the Temple and prostrating naked before Mahanta Maharaj, to be accepted by him as our new selves, on the night of sannyas. The very youthful-looking brahmachari from Bombay happened to be beside me when our robes were brought. He looked at them in delight and wonder, and then he turned to me with such a brilliant smile of joy and hugged me and said, ‘We—together!’ I hugged him too, of course, but it was with a tiny conscious effort, and even as I was doing it I felt sadly alien. How can I, with my wretched raw-skinned self-consciousness, ever really be one with these people and the utter simplicity of their feelings? I can’t. Becoming a swami will make no difference. I shall never quite belong to them. I’d better accept that fact now and for the future.

Anyway, this isn’t nearly as tragic as I’ve made it sound. What separates me from them isn’t important, not ultimately. What unites us is the one and only thing that really matters.