Читать книгу Island - Aldous Leonard Huxley - Страница 7

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The sun was just rising as Dr Robert entered his wife’s room at the hospital. An orange glow and, against it the jagged silhouette of the mountains. Then suddenly a dazzling sickle of incandescence between two peaks. The sickle became a half circle and the first long shadows, the first shafts of golden light crossed the garden outside the window. And when one looked up again at the mountains there was the whole unbearable glory of the risen sun.

Dr Robert sat down by the bed, took his wife’s hand and kissed it. She smiled at him, then turned again towards the window.

“How quickly the earth turns!” she whispered, and then after a silence, “One of these mornings,” she added, “it’ll be my last sunrise.”

Through the confused chorus of bird cries and insect noises, a mynah was chanting, “Karuna. Karuna ...”

“Karuna,” Lakshmi repeated. “Compassion ...”

“Karuna. Karuna,” the oboe-voice of Buddha insisted from the garden.

“I shan’t be needing it much longer,” she went on. “But what about you? Poor Robert, what about you?”

“Somehow or other one finds the necessary strength,” he said.

“But will it be the right kind of strength? Or will it be the strength of armour, the strength of shut-offness, the strength of being absorbed in your work and your ideas and not caring a damn for anything else? Remember how I used to come and pull your hair and make you pay attention? Who’s going to do that when I’m gone?”

A nurse came in with a glass of sugared water. Dr Robert slid a hand under his wife’s shoulders and lifted her to a sitting position. The nurse held the glass to her lips. Lakshmi drank a little water, swallowed with difficulty, then drank again and yet once more. Turning from the proffered glass, she looked up at Dr Robert. The wasted face was illumined by a strangely incongruous twinkle of pure mischief.

“ ‘I the Trinity illustrate,’ ” the faint voice hoarsely quoted, “ ‘Sipping watered orange pulp; in three sips the Arian frustrate’ ...” She broke off. “What a ridiculous thing to be remembering. But then I always was pretty ridiculous, wasn’t I?”

Dr Robert did his best to smile back at her. “Pretty ridiculous,” he agreed.

“You used to say I was like a flea. Here one moment and then, hop! somewhere else, miles away. No wonder you could never educate me!”

“But you educated me all right,” he assured her. “If it hadn’t been for you coming in and pulling my hair and making me look at the world and helping me to understand it, what would I be today? A pedant in blinkers—in spite of all my training. But luckily I had the sense to ask you to marry me, and luckily you had the folly to say yes and then the wisdom and intelligence to make a good job of me. After thirty-seven years of adult education I’m almost human.”

“But I’m still a flea.” She shook her head. “And yet I did try. I tried very hard. I don’t know if you ever realized it, Robert: I was always on tiptoes, always straining up towards the place where you were doing your work and your thinking and your reading. On tiptoes, trying to reach it, trying to get up there beside you. Goodness, how tiring it was! What an endless series of efforts! And all of them quite useless. Because I was just a dumb flea hopping about down here among the people and the flowers and the cats and dogs. Your kind of highbrow world was a place I could never climb up to, much less find my way in. When this thing happened,” (she raised her hand to her absent breast) “I didn’t have to try any more. No more school, no more homework. I had a permanent excuse.”

There was a long silence.

“What about taking another sip?” said the nurse at last.

“Yes, you ought to drink some more,” Dr Robert agreed.

“And ruin the Trinity?” Lakshmi gave him another of her smiles. Through the mask of age and mortal sickness Dr Robert suddenly saw the laughing girl with whom, half a life-time ago, and yet only yesterday, he had fallen in love.

An hour later Dr Robert was back in his bungalow.

“You’re going to be all alone this morning,” he announced, after changing the dressing on Will Farnaby’s knee. “I have to drive down to Shivapuram for a meeting of the Privy Council. One of our student nurses will come in around twelve to give you your injection and get you something to eat. And in the afternoon, as soon as she’s finished her work at the school, Susila will be dropping in again. And now I must be going.” Dr Robert rose and laid his hand for a moment on Will’s arm. “Till this evening.” Half way to the door he halted and turned back. “I almost forgot to give you this.” From one of the side pockets of his sagging jacket he pulled out a small green booklet. “It’s the Old Raja’s ‘Notes on What’s What, and on What it Might be Reasonable to Do About What’s What.’ ”

“What an admirable title!” said Will as he took the proffered book.

“And you’ll like the contents, too,” Dr Robert assured him. “Just a few pages, that’s all. But if you want to know what Pala is all about, there’s no better introduction.”

“Incidentally,” Will asked, “who is the Old Raja?”

“Who was he, I’m afraid. The Old Raja died in thirty-eight—after a reign three years longer than Queen Victoria’s. His eldest son died before he did, and he was succeeded by his grandson, who was an ass—but made up for it by being short-lived. The present Raja is his great-grandson.”

“And, if I may ask a personal question, how does anybody called MacPhail come into the picture?”

“The first MacPhail of Pala came into it under the Old Raja’s grandfather—the Raja of the Reform, we call him. Between them, he and my great-grandfather invented modern Pala. The Old Raja consolidated their work and carried it further. And today we’re doing our best to follow in his footsteps.”

Will held up the ‘Notes on What’s What’.

“Does this give the history of the reforms?”

Dr Robert shook his head. “It merely states the underlying principles. Read about those first. When I get back from Shivapuram this evening, I’ll give you a taste of the history. You’ll have a better understanding of what was actually done, if you start by knowing what had to be done—what always and everywhere has to be done by anyone who has a clear idea about what’s what. So read it, read it. And don’t forget to drink your fruit juice at eleven.”

Will watched him go, then opened the little green book and started to read.

Nobody needs to go anywhere else. We are all, if we only knew it, already there.

If I only knew who in fact I am, I should cease to behave as what I think I am; and if I stopped behaving as what I think I am, I should know who I am.

What in fact I am, if only the Manichee I think I am would allow me to know it, is the reconciliation of yes and no lived out in total acceptance and the blessed experience of Not-Two.

In religion all words are dirty words. Anybody who gets eloquent about Buddha, or God, or Christ, ought to have his mouth washed out with carbolic soap.

Because his aspiration to perpetuate only the ‘yes’ in every pair of opposites can never, in the nature of things, be realized, the insulated Manichee I think I am condemns himself to endlessly repeated frustration, endlessly repeated conflicts with other aspiring and frustrated Manichees.

Conflicts and frustrations—the theme of all history and almost all biography. “I show you sorrow,” said the Buddha realistically. But he also showed the ending of sorrow—self-knowledge, total acceptance, the blessed experience of Not-Two.