Читать книгу Old Ugly-Face - Talbot Mundy - Страница 16

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Nancy Strong returned into the room, took the large photograph of Lobsang Pun in its silver frame from the small square table and set it on one of the armchairs in full firelight, facing Elsa. It was an ageless face, almost incredibly wrinkled, apparently not dark-skinned, but weathered. Beneath a lama's peaked hood, roguish Chinese-looking wise eyes gazed straight forward, seeming to see everything but to tell nothing. The nose suggested an eagle's beak. The eyes combined a bird's bright far-sightedness and a cat's experienced incredulity; they were unconquerable eyes, interested, amused, unafraid. The portrait stirred memories that poured as daydreams into Elsa's thought. Nancy Strong interrupted:

"You recognize him?"

Elsa came out of reverie: "Of course. Who could forget him? But why Lobsang Pun so suddenly? Don't you want me to know that Dr. Lewis phoned you about me?"

"Tell me what you think about Lobsang Pun."

"You don't want to talk about Dr. Lewis? Oh, very well. But, Nancy, what difference can it make what I think about—"

"Tell me what you think about Lobsang Pun. Look straight at his portrait and tell me. I want to know."

Elsa stared at the portrait. "I don't understand him. I never did. He's an enigma. Tom likes him better than I do. He struck me as a tremendously powerful personality, but scornful and—"

"Scornful of what?"

"I don't know. Scornful and decidedly cruel."

"Was he cruel to you?"

"Yes. He was kind on several occasions, and almost courteous in his own high-handed way, but he could be as brusque as a gust of wind. He said astonishing things in broken English. He made me feel I was being laughed at. But I couldn't help liking him, most of the time. Yes. I like him."

"Did he laugh at, or with you?"

"I don't know. He laughed. He seemed to me cruel, and as ruthless as he is ugly to look at. He seemed to have no feeling of obligation or gratitude. After Tom had helped him to seize the Thunder Dragon Gate—and mind you, Tom took tremendous chances—he turned Tom and me out to shift for ourselves. Gave us no help whatever, beyond replenishing our supplies and exchanging some fresh ponies for our exhausted ones. I should say Lobsang Pun is a hugely intelligent and very dangerous man, who doesn't care twopence whose toes get trodden on when he—"

Nancy Strong interrupted: "Elsa, my dear, for nine years I was that man's chela."*

[* chela (Hindi)—a disciple, a servant. Encyclopedic Theosophical Glossary. ]

"You? You, Nancy, a chela? You mean Lobsang Pun is a—then you are—"

"He is my teacher. I lived with him for nine years on terms of the closest possible spiritual intimacy. I have wandered with him all over Tibet, and into China. I was with him in Peking, Tokyo and Seoul. This school was his doing. He ordered it."

"You mean it's Lobsang Pun's school?"

"No, no. Nothing like that. It's my school. As you remarked, he is ruthless. But I don't think you know what ruthless means. Scornful, but you don't know what of. He despises the conceit of fools who think their brains are the boundaries of wisdom, and that what their brains can't define can't possibly be true. I told him one day in Lhasa that I believed I could teach children what he had been teaching me. He said: go the Darjeeling and do it. [sic] It seemed impossible. I hadn't a rupee. But he told me to get out and go to Darjeeling and use my vision, instead of being afraid of myself, like a devil looking at its own reflection in a dirty mirror. He was ruthless. He wouldn't listen to my pleading for advice and help. He drove me away. It would take too long to tell you how I reached Darjeeling. But when I got here there was money in the bank, waiting for me."

"Whose money?"

"The money belonging to me and the children who were to come to my school and be waked up. Coin of the realm—good legal currency. Fools refuse to realize that one of the dimensions of every real idea is affluence. I was a fool, and afraid. But he wasn't. The money came quite naturally through business channels. All I had to do was sign a legal document. But it wouldn't have come; that money would have gone to someone else; it would never have entered my consciousness if I had disobeyed because of what I used to believe before I met Lobsang Pun."

"It sounds like a miracle, the way you tell it," said Elsa. "I used to believe in miracles. I've read Mrs. Eddy's books and some of Madame Blavatsky's. I believed in the loaves and fishes, and Elijah and the ravens —and even Lazarus, and the Resurrection. Honestly I did. I thought it was a miracle when Tom met me in the British Museum and offered me the chance to come to India. It seemed to be an answer to prayer. But now I don't believe, and I don't pray any more. I wish I did. Credulous people are better off."

"So you prefer conceit to credulity? God won't come into your trap, so you don't believe in God. Is that it?"

"Nancy, please explain what you mean. I don't feel conceited. Not meek either. I feel resentful, and bitter, and wish I didn't."

"You're in danger of becoming a convinced and self-convicted fool, imprisoned in fear."

"Nancy, I don't feel afraid. Really I don't. I'm willing to face anything except—"

"Except the key of the prison. And the open door. And life—faith —hope—courage!"

"Nancy, I have got courage. I'm just disillusioned, that's all. Life looks hideous."

"Would you call Lobsang Pun beautiful?"

Elsa laughed: "He's almost comically ugly. He must be almost the ugliest man in the world. Even his Tibetan servants used to refer to him as Old Ugly- face."

"Lobsang Pun's face is as ugly as the surface of life," Nancy Strong answered. "But look beneath the surface. I learned from that man all the faith that's in me and all that I know about beauty, truth, kindness, affluence and nowness, as dimensions of ideas."

"Dimensions? Of ideas?"

"Yes. Every genuine idea that ever was, or is, or will be, has all those dimensions, along with lots of others."

"But, Nancy, how can you talk such nonsense? How can an idea have dimensions? You can't conceive of a long or a short idea."

"Of course not. True dimensions are not boundaries or limitations. Space and time are like a frame that we look through. An idea hasn't time and space. It has completeness. That includes beauty, kindness, nowness. There's no distance in connection with it. Where did you get your ignorance? Whose particular wool is pulled over your eyes? Who taught you?"

"Oh, numbers of people have tried to. I've read tons of books—some of them are here on these shelves—Plato, Nietzsche, Kant, Schopenhauer—Spengler—Karl Marx—"

"But not the Twenty-third Psalm."

"Indeed, I know it by heart."

"What is the first line?"

"'The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.'"

"Good. Stop there. That's the whole secret. It's the one important thing to know and remember. All other knowledge is merely relative to that."

"But it isn't true, Nancy. I know it isn't. I've proved it's a lie. I used to believe it. I tried to prove it. I took everything I had—hope, faith, enthusiasm, trust in God, whoever or whatever He is, and offered them up—oh, how ungrudgingly. I hadn't a single mental reservation. I was simply enthusiastic and eager to live. Life felt suddenly like flowers in a garden in spring. I threw pride overboard, and money, and a career, and the good opinion of the few friends I had. I said: the Lord will provide. And now look at me. I haven't even my baby. And I haven't Tom Grayne's confidence. I'm married to him. I seduced him. He isn't really my husband."

"But you're going back to him?"

"Yes. Thanks to Andrew. Gunning's generosity. I like Tom. I admire him. I love him. But he doesn't love me. He never will. I'm a liability and he's too manly to admit it. So I'm returning to Tibet to set Tom free. After that I don't care what happens."

"No? But as I understand it you agreed, before you married, that either might divorce the other if—"

"Yes. It wasn't supposed to be a real marriage. It was an alliance."

"Do you remember what Talleyrand said about that?"

"No. Wasn't he Napoleon's Judas? I've been Tom Grayne's Judas."

"He was Napoleon's confidential minister. He said: 'Every alliance is a horse and rider.'"

"That sounds like one of those generalizations. But perhaps it's true. At any rate, I'm like an old man of the sea on Tom's shoulders, and he knows it, and I know it, and—"

"Isn't it a long way to go, just to tell Tom Grayne what he knows already?"

"A long way. Yes. But it's better than running away."

"And yet you're running from something nearer."

"What do you mean? I'm not running. I'm facing the fact."

"Something nearer than breathing, closer than hands and feet."

"You mean Tennyson's God? I don't believe in God. I did. But I don't now."

"I mean your vision."

"I haven't any. You mean clairvoyance? That's a disease!"

"Elsa, it is the substance of things hoped for. It is the evidence of things not seen by—"

"Nancy, it's naked hell! You ought to know, if you have the same affliction. I can't imagine how you endure it and keep your faith in— "

"Will you let me tell you?"

"Yes, if you won't be cruel about it. Don't tell me to count my blessings. I have a curse that outweighs all of them, and—"

"Listen, child. I am going to cell you in the fewest possible words, what Lobsang Pun took nine years to teach me."

"Before he kicked you out of Lhasa without a penny to find your way across Tibet! I call that evidence of cruelty."

"Before he kindly and unsentimentally forced me to do what he knew I could do, and what I wouldn't have done otherwise. No calf ever wants to be weaned."

"Are you going to kick me out? Very well, I'll go the minute you say so."

"I can prevent you from going to Tibet, Elsa. And unless you wake up, I will prevent you. Tibet is no land for a meek mouse. You must be willing to be what you are."

"What do you mean? What do you think I am?"

"Tell me what you yourself think you are."

"I don't know. I have given up trying to know. I feel like a discouraged female in a bad temper. But what's a female? Nothing! Protoplasm and sensation, stuck together with magnetism, and nobody knows what that is, except that it's said to be a form of motion—but motion what of?"

"You are an evidence of evolution."

"Evolution of what?"

"Evolution of consciousness. My dear, you're a proof of St. Paul's statement: 'for now we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face.' You're one degree of evolution ahead of most people. Your glass isn't quite so dark."

"If this is evolution, I'm headed the wrong way!"

"Listen, my dear. You can't prevent it, any more than the crops can prevent the weather. But you can make hell for yourself if you resist; because evolution breaks the molds of consciousness as the roots of growing trees break rocks. Evolution is a spiritual, irresistible growth— upward and outward from the illusion of solid four-dimensional limited matter."

"Four dimensional?"

"Yes. Time is a dimension of matter. Length, breadth, depth and time. Or, more simply, space-time."

"Evolution upward toward what? Disillusionment? I'm there now."

"Growth toward reality, where the illusion of matter fades, true dimensions enter consciousness, and the secret place of the Most High yields its secret. Child, even now you can see through stone walls and across a thousand miles of mountains to where Tom Grayne is."

"Yes, but I can't make him see me, so it's only torture. I even know what he's thinking about. But I can't warn him. I can see danger, but I can't make him see it. I can't even tell him our baby is dead. Don't, Nancy! Don't! You're seeing, and you're making me see! Please don't!"

"There are rules to be learned. No one can use even a hammer and a saw without knowing the rules. We can't even walk without first learning how to do it, or play the piano without learning the notes."

"Some people can. They do it naturally, without thinking. I can, and I never took a music lesson."

"You obey the rules intuitively. That doesn't make them not-rules. Rule Number One of Evolution, which is the Law of Life, is 'The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.'"

"Is that what you teach children! But Nancy, it isn't true! I know it isn't! It's a lie! I want my baby, for instance, and my husband's confidence, and faith that life's worth living, and—"

"Listen to the second rule. It's in the Ninety-first Psalm: 'He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High ...' You know the rest of it, don't you?"

"Of course. I know it by heart."

"What does your heart tell you?"

"Nothing. A heart is just a physical organ. What I used to believe has turned out so totally false that—Nancy, can you look around at the world, and then believe such piffle? War, cruelty, poverty, sickness, lying propaganda, pain, death—dead babies—not mine only— babies bombed to death in—"

"Listen to the third rule: 'And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not the milk of human kindness, I am nothing.'"

"Oh yes. Thirteenth Corinthians. I had to say it at school and then put sixpence in the poor box. Kindness? I don't even know what it means. I don't know much knowledge; and I've no faith left, although I did have some once; but I don't believe I ever did know what human kindness really means. I thought I was being kind to Tom. The fact is, I was cruel."

"My dear, if you will be kinder to yourself you will learn what skittles facts are."

"Oh, you mean mind over matter? Don't you believe in facts? Isn't it a fact that you and I are here, talking to each other? Isn't your school a fact? Wasn't my baby a fact? Mind can't change that, can it?"

"Try giving mind a chance."

"What do you mean?"

"Accept the fact of spiritual evolution. Recognize it. Trust your clairvoyant vision, and then look at the other facts."

"I can't trust it. I daren't. It's like dreams."

"Master it. Govern it."

"I can't. It runs away with me. It leads me into all kinds of—"

"Stop!"

Nancy Strong glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece. It was a quarter to twelve. She stood up and took a step toward Elsa. The firelight shone on their faces. They were half-reliefs, unreal, bright-eyed, against wavering shadow from which the cat's eyes watched them.

"We've had enough of that hysteria, young woman. Ally yourself one way or the other. Every alliance is a horse and a rider. Ride or be ridden. Tell me what you think your soul is."

"I haven't one:"

"Quite right. Now we're getting somewhere."

"I used to believe the old superstition that I have a soul to be saved from hell. It's a lie."

"Yes, it's a lie. You are your soul. How could you have what you are?"

"What do you mean?"

"You're not a body that has a soul. You are your soul. Soul! You have a body and brain that are no more you than that dress which your body is wearing. Wake up."

"I'm wide awake. At any rate, my brain tells me I am."

"Listen, Elsa. Your brain is no more you than this portrait is Lobsang Pun. Even the most bigoted and stupid second-rate scientists know nowadays that brains can't think. Brains are like radio sets, to be controlled and used and tuned in. They're too often tuned in to the sort of nonsense you've been talking tonight. Your mind is no more in your brain than Lobsang Pun is in his photograph."

"If my brain doesn't think, what does?"

"You do. And you will either believe what your senses tell you, in a glass darkly, or what you see face to face, with your clairvoyant vision. Your brain sees illusion, because it's part of the illusion, and you tune it in to the illusion. It can see reality if you'll let it. Clairvoyance is soul —vision—it's you—the real you—waking— one degree of evolution closer to reality, seeing things more nearly as they really are."

"But, Nancy, it's unendurable. It isn't—"

"Learn to control it. Others will do that for you, if you don't."

"How can others control it, if I can't?"

"They will control you without your knowing they're doing it, unless you remember the rules. And if they can't control you they will treat you the way they treated Jesus and Joan of Arc and countless others."

"Didn't Jesus know the rules?"

"Yes. Joan of Arc had soul-vision, but without understanding the rules. She won battles and saved France. But she had wielded the sword. She had accepted the reality of hatred, cruelty and death. You know what happened to her."

"You're not trying to encourage me with her fate, are you?"

"Jesus, on the other hand, had vision and knew all the rules. He rejected the sword, repudiated the brain-mind illusion of matter-substance, and—"

"Yes, and got crucified."

"But arose from the dead."

"You believe that? You don't believe that, do you?"

"I know it. That's different from believing. Whoever believes can disbelieve. I know."

"I wish I even believed."

"Jesus broke once and for all the solid hypnotic illusion of matter- consciousness, and said: 'I go my way.' It's a long way, Elsa. But it's the way of evolution. And they'll Joan of Arc you on the way, unless you remember the rules."

"That sounds cheerful!"

"'Who is not with me, is against me.' Trust the one or the other. The reality or the illusion. But don't try both, or you'll find yourself giving to Caesar the things that are God's and trying to buy God with Caesar's counterfeit credit."

"Nancy, there's no fanatic in me. Really there isn't. You sound as if you're inviting me to be a martyr."

"Yes. But not a fanatic. Martyr means living witness, not dead witness. A witness sees, knows, and gives evidence of the truth and nothing but the truth. A fanatic believes, but doesn't know; so he's afraid. Fear destroys the fanatic's sense of humor and makes him hysterical. A fanatic desires proof of what he believes but can't prove. He tries to create the proofs usually by doing violence to others. But a witness is proof of what he knows. He is it. He is the knowledge itself. He is the secret truth and its evidence."

"Why secret?"

"Because the self-styled realists can't see it. Their conceit won't let them see it. If they even believed it blindly they would take your truth and try to use it to strengthen materiality. The power-cravers, the money-hungry, the self-important—the opportunists—will use you, and then lose you, the way the French lost Joan of Arc. They'll canonize you when it's too late."

"Then you want me to see, and say nothing?"

"I am not inviting you to cast pearls before swine. Which side will you be witness for? You or your senses? Spirit or matter? Dark logic or bright intuition?"

Elsa quoted, laughing: "'Almost thou persuadest me to—'"

"My appeal is to you. Not the pig, but the poet. The real you. But if it helps you to use logic, use it," said Nancy. "Do you realize that e you can't drop a grain of sand into the sea without eventually moving every drop of water in all the oceans in the world?"

"Yes, I read that years ago in the Atlantic Monthly. It seems almost incredible. But I suppose it's true."

"It is mathematically and physically true and demonstrable. But even the sea, as our senses perceive it, is only phenomenal—a part of the illusion of thought. You—you yourself with a grain of sand can move every drop of all those billions of tons of water. How much more then will one thought, violently flung, disturb the whole mass of illusion in which we think we live and move and have our being!"

"Good heavens—then shouldn't we think?"

"Yes. But think. Don't parrot other people's fears at secondhand. See —know—trust your vision—and remember Rule One."

"But not talk about it? Not tell anyone?"

"Not unless you want to be Joan-of-Arc'd by the thought manipulators, propagandists and the devils who use others' vision for their own ends."

"But you're telling it"

"I am talking to you, not to your material illusion. This is a communion, not a battle of brains. 'Where two or three are gathered together in my name ...'"

"I always wondered what that meant."

"Arguing with the crowd increases and enrages the illusion that already blinds them. It makes it easier for hypnotists to control them. That is the sole reason for secrecy. The truth enrages the liars. But one by one, two by two, sometimes three by three, we can find our way out from the illusion of desire, into reality. That makes it easier for all the others to follow."

"Mustn't we desire anything?"

"No. Desire presupposes that we have not. Desire is the exact opposite of real consciousness. Desire for the illusion of material means to the spiritual end made me hesitate to come here and start this school. But I gave up desiring. I obeyed, and came, and found what was needed. It was waiting for me. Desire, hatred, malice are the essence of illusion. They're its substance—what it's made of. They produce war, cruelty, poverty —and in the end disillusion—and then new beginnings. But why exhaust the horrors of illusion before—"

"Mayn't we own anything?"

"You'll find you can't help owning things. But don't let things own you. Never regard things as more than shadows of ideas."

The clock struck twelve. "Midnight," said Nancy Strong. "Middle of nothing. But we can't ignore time as long as we're imprisoned in it. Time waits for no man, and space confines us. But time and space are illusions. You and I can prove it."

The front door bell rang—sudden and loud. The servant's footsteps hurried along the hallway. Nancy Strong sat down.

"Remember," she said, "we can prove nothing, and be nothing, without the milk of human kindness. Even faith is worth nothing without it, and hope is a fool."

"How can you tell it from charity?"

"By its humor. That's the milk of it. Charity has absolutely no humor. True kindness is humor, plus vision and courage."

"Nancy, you don't seem particularly humorous this evening."

"Child, if I had laughed, you might have feared I was laughing at you instead of with you. Who is our visitor? Look."

"You mean go out and—"

"Look. It might be one of three people. Who is it?"

"Bulah Singh" said Elsa. "I can see him on the doorstep. What shall I do? I'm supposed to be ill at the monastery! Can't I escape to my room before he comes in here?"

"Run away if you wish," said Nancy Strong. "But why not face him? He is only a fact. And he has no sense of humor."