Earthly Powers (47 page)

       "Into the Church of England."

       "A genuine if misguided Christian communion," Carlo conceded. "How is your Latin? Were you ever an altar boy? Can you recite these responses?"

       "Try." And he made crosses everywhere in the air, rumbling from the Rituale Romanum, while John Lim and I looked on, half-expecting that at least that rictus would loosen. The waves of Latin beat at the body, but the poor eroding flesh was a rock to it.

       "Omnipotens Domine, Verborum Dei Patris, Christe Jesu, Deus et Dominus universae creaturae..." I knew it was hopeless; what the hell did these Eastern spirits know or care about Christe Jesu? Carlo pronounced his own Amen then nudged me roughly, and I recited my lines over his bulky shoulder, smelling his sweat and my own. He made the sign of the cross on Philip's uncaring head, saying firmly: "Ecce crucem Domini, fugite partes adversae."

       "J"icit leo de tribu Juda," I said, "radix David."

       "Domine, exaudi orationem meam."

       "Et clamour," I said, thinking: They don't understand Latin, it's gibberish to them, "ad te veniat."

       "Dominus vobiscum."

       "Et cum spiritu tuo."

       Then Carlo said, "Leave me now. Rest. I will be some time." So I closed the door gently as he thundered: "Exorcizo te, immundissime spiritus, omnis flcursio adversarii, omne phantasma, omnis legio—..." I had heard such words before, in the restaurant of the Hotel de Paris, Monte Carlo. A heavy win in the Casino, then a heavy dinner, then exorcising words: how could I take them seriously?

       John Lim and I looked at each other outside the door. He shrugged and said, "It can do no harm." There was weak sunlight at day's end. It had not rained since noon. The watered green and orange and magenta sunset shed mock Parsifal benediction. "I must go home," John Lim said. "I have not been home for three days. Telephone me if."

       Carlo came into the office two hours and more later. I had been dozing on 2 the examination couch, the desk lamp on. Carlo said, with his usual vigour unabated, "We have to see this man."

       "How is Philip?"

       "The same, no apparent change. But in him you see only the effects of demonic action. The face still grins, he is very weak. Tonight we confront the demon. What is the English term—warlock? Warlock." Scott's Restaurant that night, everything being prepared. "Witchcraft." He smacked this word with relish. "Very Anglo-Saxon. You perform an act of violence to the mouth when you utter it. Stregoneria. We have to visit the stre gone."

       "It's a—" I nearly said game, toy, piece of Gothic fiction. "He'll feign ignorance. He'll threaten us with the police. He'll throw us out. He'll be malevolent because he lost his son. You won't board that malevolence. I'll have to offer myself—" But the words were wrong. I was not a Malay about to beg a village pawang to deflect his aim. I belonged to the world of reason. This magic nonsense could be explained away in terms of suggestibility. Carlo did not belong to the world of reason. I had no faith in him after all.

       He said, "I've not eaten for many hours. Is there something to eat?"

       "Outside." Outside the little stalls had returned to the open, selling mee and sateh hot. They had not given up during the worst days of the monsoon; they had sold cold pau and bananas in the hospital colonnade and the ambulance garage. Now they had their fires going under clouds and a watered moon; their wares tasted of smoke and lamp oil. Carlo ate ten or twelve skewerloads of goatmeat kebab dipped in chilli sauce and, proficient with chopsticks, a couple of bowls of mee, swilling it down with warm bottled orange crush. "Moliao lvii yao ho chia.fei," he said to the vendor, but the old man understood only Hokkien. His son, who was learning KuoyŸ at school, translated, and Carlo and I were given thick Camp coffee and condensed milk. "How did you learn all that?"

       "It has to be learned," he said. "You must always be able to speak to people. There are people who say it was God's curse to confound the speech of men, but I do not see that. That there are many different kinds of flower is no curse, so why for many different languages? Finish that and we will go."

       I felt very sick as we approached the waterworks. Nightlife was active, and heavy flying bodies hurled themselves at the windscreen, leaving smears of lime and brown blood. A burong hantu poised a long instant on the radiator cap with a squirming bat in its beak. Carlo steered boldly through deep or shallow lakes in the road. "You are dubious," he said. "You have been corrupted by the rule of reason. Reason, you must remember, is a human invention, and we are not now dealing with human matters. To me everything is very simple, but that does not mean I think there will be easy victory. For your part, you must go in there with diffidence and humility. You will find that you will know what things to say. I will wait outside. You will say among other things that you have an 2 Italian friend who wishes to understand the meaning of a piece of Tamil he has been given. He will let me in. Or if he will not let me in he will let you out, and then I will come in."

       "If he lets me in in the first place."

       But the great gate to the waterworks was open and the indoor lights of the house were on. Carlo stopped the car some way beyond the gate in a puddle on the side of the road. We both got out, Carlo armed with his Rituale Romanurn, myself weak with sickness and dubiety. I shook to the door and knocked. I heard feet coming at once, hurrying as though I were expected. I turned an instant to see Carlo's dirty white slide behind the bulk of a raintree. The door opened and the eldest, now elder, son was there, bowing and grinning. "Your father," I said. "I wish to see your—" Then Mahalingam appeared, black gross bareness to the waist, a Malay sarong knotted at it.

       He said, "Mr Toomey." He said it flat, he merely stated who I was. And then: "I suppose you would wish to come in."

       "I've been away," I babbled, going into that remembered smell of spicy malevolence. "I was horrified to hear of the death of your... I have no doubt everything was done that could be done. I think you would feel that to be so. That nobody is to blame, that one must weep and then cease to weep and start to forget, that life must go on."

       He did not ask me to sit. "Who sent you?" he said.

       "Nobody sent me. I come to you having seen the dreadful effect of Dr. Shawcross's own despair at his failure. He is very ill. Perhaps you did not know that." Mahalingam said nothing. "Perhaps you have wondered why Dr. Shawcross has not been to see you. In the friendship for which you seemed once to be very eager."

       I was aware of the idiot boy behind me, breathing through his mouth with a slight rasp. "Let us have no words about friendship," Mahalingam said. "There was no friendship in Dr. Shawcross's speech to me after the death of my child. He blamed me for neglect. He said it was all my fault. He did not confess that it was the fault of himself and his own peoples and was stupidity or negligence or worse. The child of that ignorant Chinese was better and is now at home. My own child died through stupidity or negligence or worse. The child of a black Indian, nothing. The wicked telephone call that gave me hope, and this whole house was happy, and then the wicked killing of a father's happiness and relief not talk to rue of friendship, Mr Toomey. If you are unhappy now I am sorry for you, since you did no wrong so far as I know. But if your friend is a sick man it is his own fault. That he fell sick is a sign of justice and he knew of the justice, and there is no more to say."

       "He will die," I said, "and I must be reconciled to it. Life must go on. I will have sad duties to perform, the duties of friendship you understand. His possessions must be sent to his mother in Australia. There is a photograph of him 2 playing cricket that she will want." Carlo was right when he said that I would know what things to say. "You took that photograph as a token of friendship. If that friendship no longer exists, then the token is no longer required by you. I would be glad if you would give it to me so that I may send it with his other effects to his mother."

       "I do not have the photograph," Mahalingam said. "In my anger I destroyed it."

       "How did you destroy it?" I asked, very bold now, perhaps too bold. "Or should I say, how are you destroying it?" The idiot boy's breath behind me seemed closer.

       "I do not understand your meaning. If you have said all you wanted to say, then it is time for you to go. You understand that I do not feel obliged to make you the honours of hospitality as before."

       "I understand," I said. "But there is one small request that you will be able to fulfil. It has nothing to do with myself or my poor friend. I have an Italian visitor who wishes you to help him with a small matter of your Tamil language. He brought me here in his car this evening. He is waiting outside. I know that, in your grief, you may not feel disposed to grant the small service he askswhich is the translation into English of some words in Tamil he has received in a letter—but he is a kind man who likes the Tamil people and he would appreciate it. Life must go on," I added.

       "An Italian man? What is an Italian man doing in the Malay State of Perak?"

       "He is in the rubber business."

       Mahalingam seemed faintly amused. "Let us then see this Italian man in the rubber business. Tell him he may come into my house."

       So, the idiot boy behind me, I went to the door and called, and Carlo's dirty white ploughed briskly through the dark and into the squares of thrown light. "Carlo," I said as he came in smiling, "this is Mr Mahalingam. Mr Mahalingam, this is my friend Monsignor Campanati."

       "Not," Mahalingam grinned, "in the rubber business."

       "Ah, no," Carlo countergrinned. He took You will see my problem here. If this were fiction, I should have no trouble in imposing on you a suspension of disbelief, but it is not fiction and I require your belief. And yet there is a sense in which all reminiscence is fiction, though the creativity of memory is not in the service of the art which is itself in the service of a deeper than factual truth. Memory lies, yet how far we can never be sure. I can do no more than transcribe memory.

       He took from within the breast of his half-buttoned soutane a finely made evidently heavy metal cross. "This business," he said. Mahalingam barked something to the idiot boy. Carlo seemed ready for the boy's response, which was a catlike snarl and a catlike hurling himself at Carlo's off-white bulk. Carlo upped with his cross and banged the boy's head with its flat and then, with a 2 quick wrist-twist, struck him laterally with the edge of the crosspiece just under the ear. I had never thought to see that barbarous instrument of punition so used. It was very quick and Mahalingam was very surprised. Carlo then used his cross with an ice pick thrust of some force on the boy's skull. The boy went down foaming and out. "Ah," Carlo went as the boy lay there. And now Mahalingam made for Carlo, gurgling deep and dirty Tamil. "If," Carlo said, "I place my cross flat on your forehead it will burn your forehead and the fire will then pierce your brain. This you know." His Rituale Romanum in one hand and his cross in the other, he said to me: "In my pocket there on the left you will find a rubber container. The rubber business, it is not altogether a lie. It contains holy water. Take it out and squeeze some holy water onto this gentleman's face. Holy water can do him no harm." I fumbled as directed and found a rubber bulb, pear-shaped, nozzled, and I spurted at Mahalingam's eyes, difficult since Mahalingam, roaring, wove with fat arms at Carlo, Carlo getting in odd cracks with his cross, so that I had to dance about seeking a way in. When the fluid sprang at Mahalingam's left eye and reached it there was a very unholy gust of ammonia. Mahalingam yelled and cupped, yelling. I got the other. He yelled louder and doublecupped. There was, I was sure, a whole seraglio beyond the kitchen door, but the door did not open. Male business, the noise perhaps nothing new. This did not seem to me to be exorcism as I had read about it, but Carlo's technique appeared reasonable: after all, you had to get some degree of attention out of your subject. Carlo womanishly raised his soutane and delivered to Mahalingam a great kick in the belly. Mahalingam rolled on the floor.

       "Good," said Carlo. "It is the boy I must deal with." And he opened his book at page 366. Crossing and crossing with his right hand, book in left, he growled out the liturgy. "...—Audi ergo, et time, satana, inimice fidei, hostis gene ris humani, mortis adductor, vitae raptor, justitiae decimator, malo rum radix, tomes vitio rum, seductor hominum, proditor gentium, incitator invidiae, origo avaritiae, causa discordiae, excitator dolorum..." It was not so foreign, after all. Tamil had a large Sanskrit lexis; Sanskrit was an elder sister of Latin. "Quid stas, et resistis, cum scias, Christum Dominum vias tuas perdere?" From the boy's body came a succession of frightful odours—rotting meat, overripe durian, stopped-up drains. His mouth opened to emit a high screech like car brakes. He farted in a slow brief rhythm, there was then a noise like the opening of bowels. "Not pleasant," Carlo commented. The boy's limbs thrust and thrust like pistons. A long coil of some substance like porridge worked in rhythm out of his mouth. "Recede ergo in nomine Patris—et Filii et Spiritus f sancti...

       The porridge lay on the boy's shirt and dhoti and spread, thinning. "That," Carlo said, "will have to be burned." The boy lay very still, as if exhausted. "Now you, sir," Carlo said to Mahalingam. Mahalingam, groaning, blind, tried to rise. "You know the situation," Carlo said. "We will not talk of Jesus Christ 2 and the devil. We will just say that you and I are on different sides, as in a game of football, but you have been doing all the kicking and what you have been kicking is a human soul. You must cease to do this, do you understand?" To keep Mahalingam on the floor Carlo did another womanish lift of his kirtle and kicked him again in the belly. Mahalingam groaned and stayed where he was. Carlo looked up and saw the framed prospectus of Hindu hell pains in cartoon colours and said, "Very crude." He detached it partly from the wall with a finger and thumb at its lower right-hand corner. Something slid from behind it and planed to the floor. "Look at that," Carlo said to me. "Though perhaps you will not wish to."