Cedilla (55 page)

One night I was woken by something pulling at my finger. It was a macacque, grey-furred and frenetic, of the sort I had seen everywhere in those parts, even in the ashram. While it yanked at my knuckles it looked at me with a pleading intelligence, as if it wanted to enlist me in some public-spirited rescue like the clever dogs in old films.

If so, it had chosen the wrong chap – Lassie, move on.

No help to be had at this address.

Try the next verandah along.

It was chattering at me, not angrily in the style of its species but urgently, with a pulse of meaning, and then it scampered away. It was only after the event (if it even was an event and not a dream) that it occurred to me as strange that its fur had been quite dry despite the downpour. Even so, this could be explained if it nested somehow under the roof of Mrs Osborne’s verandah, sharing with me the hospitality of the mountain.

I asked Mrs O if there were any stories about the local monkeys and their behaviour. Unhesitatingly she said there were. ‘Monkeys are famously fond of tamarind, and humans prize the fruit also, although it must be cooked for their consumption. In fact it is the crucial element in a true curry. Nevertheless the tree is considered unlucky. Consequently they have been nationalised and are government property. Individuals cannot own them, and are thereby spared the attendant bad luck. Instead they pay rent on the trees to the state government. This
is ingenious, I feel, and shows Indian bureaucracy in a rare positive light.’ I too was impressed by authorities which accepted the irrationality of their citizens, rather than plastering every wall with posters trying to dispel the superstition. Perhaps we in the U.K. should nationalise black cats and the bits of pavement under ladders.

I had even heard of tamarind, which was an important ingredient of Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce, Marmite’s acrid sister in the store cupboard. During my bed years, when every other bit of print in the house had been used up, I would get Mum to read me the labels of bottles from the bathroom and pantry. That’s how I know that Dettol disinfectant is one-and-a-half times stronger than pure carbolic acid (Rideal-Walker Test).

‘It happened,’ Mrs O went on, ‘that a Muslim who had rights over one such tree used a catapult to keep the monkeys away. Monkeys value the fruit of the tamarind even more than humans. Meaning only to frighten, he killed one – the monkey king. Did you not know that the monkeys have a king? Each group has its leader. The monkeys took the body to Ramana Maharshi, and asked him to bring their king back to life. Bhagavan always made sure, when feeding his followers, that the monkeys had their share. He spoke their language, as he spoke the language of every animal, but would not undertake resurrection. Instead he comforted them and assuaged their grief.

‘A little later the Muslim became fevered, and rumours of a curse put on him by Bhagavan began to circulate. In fact he treated and cured the fever with an application of
vibhuti
– the ashes of Shiva. Unfortunately the rumours of a curse did not altogether die away, but nothing could have been further from Bhagavan’s practice.

‘As for the modern behaviour of monkeys, I am afraid that it is less elevated. Rooms at the ashram have to be locked and the windows closed, since otherwise monkeys sneak in and pilfer. It is even possible, since visitors’ rooms are particularly liable to be ransacked, that some of the monkeys are currently human in form. They are perhaps laying the foundations for a future life, in which they will be fully…’ – she looked around for the exact adjective, and for once the Polish sibilants I had learned to filter out couldn’t be ignored – ‘
shimian
.’ For a moment I thought she had used a Tamil word.

I wasn’t sure what I made of these stories. If I had wanted a guru
who talked to the animals I would probably have stuck with Dr Do-little. Still, public figures can’t control how they are perceived, and it made sense that the locals would assimilate Ramana Maharshi into their folk beliefs rather than absorb the full force of his teaching.

Mrs Osborne came in one morning and said that in the night she had seen a light burning on Arthur’s grave. She seemed reassured rather than upset by this manifestation.

I was sceptical about the whole thing, so I asked her to wake me if it happened again. The following night I felt her tugging at me, more roughly than was necessary, and saying ‘
Get up!!
’ Of course from a bed that low I needed help to rise. She wrestled me into an upright position and pointed me in the right direction, towards Arthur’s grave. Rain was tipping down, but sure enough a steady light was visible even through the monsoon. I felt that I should be frightened, but my nervous system wouldn’t play along. It stayed stubbornly serene.

One afternoon in the third week of my stay, while Kuppu was giving me a wash, tenderly pouring jugs of sun-warmed water over myself in the wheelchair, a strange couple of figures appeared at Mrs Osborne’s house. There was a tall European man leaning on the shoulder of a little middle-aged Indian, being helped to walk. I had never seen the Indian before, but the European was oddly familiar.

With a shock I recognised my brother Peter. He was very thin and weak, and when he spoke his voice was little more than a croak. ‘I told you I’d see you in India, Jay,’ he said. Kuppu ran off.

It was true that those had been Peter’s last words to me before I set off on my travels – ‘See you in India, Jay’ – but I hadn’t taken him seriously for a moment. He was an experienced traveller and a dab hand at finding cheap tickets. He was surprisingly disciplined about saving the money he earned as a waiter to fund the journeys he enjoyed. On the other hand, he’d never expressed an actual interest in India.

The look on my face gave him a transfusion of energy for just a few moments. He basked in the triumph of having delivered a major surprise, by the brilliantly simple strategy of keeping a promise I had taken for a joke, and then his body gave way and he needed to
sit down. The closest thing to a seat was Arthur Osborne’s commode, mercifully closed just then.

It would be going too far to compare Peter with the ancient Athenian who ran all the way from Marathon to break the news of victory. Peter’s pace was crawling, his news was only himself, and his collapse was no more than a return of weakness, a convalescent setback.

It was strange that Mum should insist on having her hair turned white by worrying over me, when Peter was the one who liked to take risks. He was always flying off somewhere, and adding another country to his itinerary probably didn’t strike him as unduly capricious.

He introduced his companion as Dalton, and said that Dalton had saved his life. It was only a slight exaggeration. What had happened was that Peter was at a railway station, feeling very ill, and simply fainted. He had been lucky not to fall onto the tracks, but the wallet containing all his money and also his passport did just that. He would have been in serious difficulties if Dalton had not had the kindness to pick up this stranger and look after him, as well as the presence of mind to climb down onto the track to retrieve the wallet before he took Peter to hospital.

By now Kuppu had re-appeared on the verandah, bringing with her Mrs Osborne and also Rajah Manikkam. Everyone fussed over these two odd visitors. Peter told the whole story of his experiences in an Indian hospital, while Dalton kept saying, in tones of joy, ‘Please don’t mention it. I only did what anyone would have done. It has been a supreme privilege to be of help to a traveller in difficulties.’ Between sentences he frowned and pushed his lips forward, turning the impulse to preen into a solemn grimace.

Up to that moment I hadn’t known that Mrs Osborne spoke German, though in talking about my university future (the one I didn’t believe in) I had obviously told her of my familiarity with the language. Suddenly she was saying in my ear, in German, ‘What’s the quickest way of keeping your brother and getting rid of the other?’ Mrs O could withhold a welcome in any number of languages. I was slightly shocked at the sharply defined limits to this enlightened being’s sociability, but relieved that at least Peter was on the right side of them. It wasn’t as if he had any real claim. I myself was perched on
a narrow ledge of hospitality, and wasn’t sure if I could get away with letting him bed down in the lee of the wheelchair.

Peter went on with the story, while Dalton listened with an expression of utter fascination, not because it was unfamiliar but because the part he played in it was so dazzling that he would never get used to it.

When Peter woke up in hospital he was violently sick, and then fell deeply asleep again. The next time he woke the light had changed and it was many hours later. His vomit was being cleared away, in the most meticulous manner. There could be no doubt about that. He closed his eyes and counted to a hundred. When he opened them, the clearing-up was still going on but no visible progress had been made.

The process was so slow because it was being carried out by ants. They worked tirelessly to carry away crusted particles from the vistas of regurgitated picnic spread out before them, while Peter watched between dozes. Watching those ants was his only entertainment, and no other creature did any cleaning. No one brought any food to replace what his body had rejected, even many hours after the event.

Every now and then a doctor would come in and administer an injection with great efficiency or at least great force. None of them addressed a word to him. Nurses he never saw, neither by day nor by night. He saw women who might have been nurses, but all they did was stride into the ward, as if to count the number of patients, and promptly walk out again. Indian nursing seemed to be restricted to this striding and counting, without any actual aspect of care.

Poor Peter was learning the hard way about the hospital etiquette of India. The maintenance of patients, their cleaning, feeding and being assisted to perform the bodily functions, was assumed to fall on family rather than professional staff. And Peter had no family. In Indian terms, the absence of any visible family made his whole existence seem tenuous. It was a moot point whether it was even worth the trouble to aid the recovery of so uncorroborated a being.

Peter having no family, Dalton stepped in to fill the vacancy. He
acted as an interpreter between Peter and the doctors, he brought home-cooked food, he took upon himself humble tasks that would otherwise have been neglected. The doctors’ attitude towards Peter changed, not because of anything that was said to them but because he was no longer dangling. He became worthy of humane treatment now that he had a context, however improvised and ramshackle. Sometimes Dalton’s wife sat with Peter. Her English was broken at best but there was nothing broken about her smile.

And now Dalton was escorting my brother, recovered from the worst of his illness if not completely better, to join me at Mrs Osborne’s, at Aruna Giri. I had learned by now that the name meant
Aruna Hill
– I was bivouacking on the foothills of enlightenment. But where would Peter be bivouacking? I started shooting glances of mute appeal at Mrs Osborne. I could almost feel them bouncing off the toughened hide of her psyche, and yet some subatomic particle of pleading may have found a flaw in her shielding.

By now Dalton had so consistently courted and refused our gratitude that I had begun to get just a whiff of an ulterior motive. Nothing material, just a faint spiritual fluffing-up of feathers. By saying so insistently that he had only done what anyone would have done, he gave us to understand nevertheless that his actions had a special status. He was setting an example by following one. His meekness was imitation of Christ.

I don’t think it was an accident that Mrs O thanked him in studiously non-Christian terms, saying that he must have been inspired by the precepts of Bhagavan Sri Ramana. A shadow passed across Dalton’s face, and he swallowed audibly. On features less transfigured by a righteous deed it would have been a scowl. No religion and no sect has any sort of monopoly on virtue, but they all love a squabble. Mrs O pressed home her advantage by offering to take him to the ashram for lunch. No rudeness could have got rid of the Good Samaritan more efficiently than this offer of food served under an alien blessing. Soon he took his leave of us, with a few last flourishes of humility.

Finally Mrs Osborne turned her attention to Peter and his needs. ‘One brother is on my verandah, and the newcomer must also be accommodated. Young man, brother of John, name not yet vouchsafed to me, you are not I hope expecting a commode of your own? I cannot
provide the luxury of personal sanitation for all comers.’ Make a commode available in exceptional circumstances, and everyone will feel entitled to one.

Peter looked baffled, and sent me a glance that wondered about Mrs O’s mental capacity. I did my best to reassure him with a shake of my head, and he politely answered No. He wasn’t expecting to be greeted with a commode, though he would appreciate the chance to lie down. And he was called Peter.

‘In that case I will offer you the hoshpitality of my roof,’ said Mrs O. Her roof was reached by a flight of stairs built on the outside of the house, and Peter, who had stood for too long and was trembling with fatigue even sitting down, set himself to climb them. He waved away Rajah Manikkam’s offers of help, but he had overestimated his strength. He had to sit down part-way up to recover himself. For his weakness I felt an acute pity which was entirely new and only half welcome. How far we had both had to travel for me to see my younger brother helpless in the body!

Just as Mrs O had boasted about the excellence of her verandah, so now she sang the praises of her roof as a place of habitation. She said there was a ‘Goh-taa’ up there, which she explained as a kind of hut made of bamboos and palm-fronds. It sounded like a habitable parasol. Peter’s eyes were drooping even before she had finished waxing lyrical about the shelter on top of her house. Peter may not have slept for the whole of that day, but he didn’t come down again to my level. Kuppu carried up dainties to him. Mrs Osborne delivered some sweet-lime juice in person, a great gesture of concern, well masked by gruffness, from someone to whom stairs did not come easily.