Island (35 page)

“It would be bad,” Lakshmi explained, “if it were really
my
pain. But somehow it isn’t. The pain’s here; but I’m somewhere else. It’s like what you discover with the
moksha
-medicine. Nothing really belongs to you. Not even your pain.”

“Is the light still there?”

Lakshmi shook her head. “And looking back, I can tell you exactly when it went away. It went away when I started talking about the pain not being really mine.”

“And yet what you were saying was good.”

“I know—but I was
saying
it.” The ghost of an old habit of irreverent mischief flitted once again across Lakshmi’s face.

“What are you thinking of?” Susila asked.

“Socrates.”

“Socrates?”

“Gibber, gibber, gibber—even when he’d actually swallowed the stuff. Don’t let me talk, Susila. Help me to get out of my own light.”

“Do you remember that time last year,” Susila began after a silence, “when we all went up to the old Shiva temple above the High Altitude Station? You and Robert and Dugald and me and the two children—do you remember?”

Lakshmi smiled with pleasure at the recollection.

“I’m thinking specially of that view from the west side of the temple—the view out over the sea. Blue, green, purple—and the shadows of the clouds were like ink. And the clouds themselves—snow, lead, charcoal, satin. And while we were looking, you asked a question. Do you remember, Lakshmi?”

“You mean, about the Clear Light?”

“About the Clear Light,” Susila confirmed. “Why do people speak of Mind in terms of Light? Is it because they’ve seen the sunshine and found it so beautiful that it seems only natural to identify the Buddha Nature with the clearest of all possible Clear Lights? Or do they find the sunshine beautiful because, consciously or unconsciously, they’ve been having revelations of Mind in the form of Light ever since they were born? I was the first to answer,” said Susila, smiling to herself. “And as I’d just been reading something by some American behaviorist, I didn’t stop to think—I just gave you the (quote, unquote) ‘scientific point of view.’ People equate Mind (whatever
that
may be) with
hallucinations of light, because they’ve looked at a lot of sunsets and found them very impressive. But Robert and Dugald would have none of it. The Clear Light, they insisted, comes first. You go mad about sunsets because sunsets remind you of what’s always been going on, whether you knew it or not, inside your skull and outside space and time. You agreed with them, Lakshmi—do you remember? You said, ‘I’d like to be on your side, Susila, if only because it isn’t good for these men of ours to be right
all
the time. But in this case—surely it’s pretty obvious—in this case they
are
right.’ Of course they were right, and of course I was hopelessly wrong. And, needless to say, you had known the right answer before you asked the question.”

“I never
knew
anything,” Lakshmi whispered. “I could only
see
.”

“I remember your telling me about seeing the Clear Light,” said Susila. “Would you like me to remind you of it?”

The sick woman nodded her head.

“When you were eight years old,” said Susila. “That was the first time. An orange butterfly on a leaf, opening and shutting its wings in the sunshine—and suddenly there was the Clear Light of pure Suchness blazing through it, like another sun.”

“Much brighter than the sun,” Lakshmi whispered.

“But much gentler. You can look into the Clear Light and not be blinded. And now remember it. A butterfly on a green leaf, opening and shutting its wings—and it’s the Buddha Nature totally present, it’s the Clear Light outshining the sun. And you were only eight years old.”

“What had I done to deserve it?”

Will found himself remembering that evening, a week or so before her death, when Aunt Mary had talked about the wonderful times they had had together in her little Regency house near Arundel where he had spent the better part of all his holidays. Smoking out the wasps’ nests with fire and brimstone, having picnics on the downs or under the beeches. And then the
sausage rolls at Bognor, the gypsy fortuneteller who had prophesied that he would end up as Chancellor of the Exchequer, the black-robed, red-nosed verger who had chased them out of Chichester Cathedral because they had laughed too much. “Laughed too much,” Aunt Mary had repeated bitterly. “
Laughed
too much…”

“And now,” Susila was saying, “think of that view from the Shiva temple. Think of those lights and shadows on the sea, those blue spaces between the clouds. Think of them, and then let go of your thinking. Let go of it, so that the not-Thought can come through. Things into Emptiness. Emptiness into Suchness. Suchness into things again, into your own mind. Remember what it says in the Sutra. ‘Your own consciousness shining, void, inseparable from the great Body of Radiance, is subject neither to birth nor death, but is the same as the immutable Light, Buddha Amitabha.’”

“The same as the light,” Lakshmi repeated. “And yet it’s all dark again.”

“It’s dark because you’re trying too hard,” said Susila. “Dark because you want it to be light. Remember what you used to tell me when I was a little girl. ‘Lightly, child, lightly. You’ve got to learn to do everything lightly. Think lightly, act lightly, feel lightly. Yes, feel lightly, even though you’re feeling deeply. Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.’ I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig. Lightly, lightly—it was the best advice ever given me. Well, now I’m going to say the same thing to you, Lakshmi…Lightly, my darling, lightly. Even when it comes to dying. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic. No rhetoric, no tremolos, no self-conscious persona putting on its celebrated imitation of Christ or Goethe or Little Nell. And, of course, no theology, no metaphysics. Just the fact of dying and the fact of the Clear Light. So throw away all your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck
you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly. Lightly, my darling. On tiptoes; and no luggage, not even a sponge bag. Completely unencumbered.”

Completely unencumbered…Will thought of poor Aunt Mary sinking deeper and deeper with every step into the quicksands. Deeper and deeper until, struggling and protesting to the last, she had gone down, completely and forever, into the Essential Horror. He looked again at the fleshless face on the pillow and saw that it was smiling.

“The Light,” came the hoarse whisper, “the Clear Light. It’s here—along with the pain, in spite of the pain.”

“And where are
you
?” Susila asked.

“Over there, in the corner.” Lakshmi tried to point, but the raised hand faltered and fell back, inert, on the coverlet. “I can see myself there. And she can see my body on the bed.”

“Can she see the Light?”

“No. The Light’s here, where my body is.”

The door of the sickroom was quietly opened. Will turned his head and was in time to see Dr. Robert’s small spare figure emerging from behind the screen into the rosy twilight.

Susila rose and motioned him to her place beside the bed. Dr. Robert sat down and, leaning forward, took his wife’s hand in one of his and laid the other on her forehead.

“It’s me,” he whispered.

“At last…”

A tree, he explained, had fallen across the telephone line. No communication with the High Altitude Station except by road. They had sent a messenger in a car, and the car had broken down. More than two hours had been lost. “But thank goodness,” Dr. Robert concluded, “here I finally am.”

The dying woman sighed profoundly, opened her eyes for a moment and looked up at him with a smile, then closed them again. “I knew you’d come.”

“Lakshmi,” he said very softly. “Lakshmi.” He drew the tips
of his fingers across the wrinkled forehead, again and again. “My little love.” There were tears on his cheeks; but his voice was firm and he spoke with the tenderness not of weakness, but of power.

“I’m not over there any more,” Lakshmi whispered.

“She was over there in the corner,” Susila explained to her father-in-law. “Looking at her body here on the bed.”

“But now I’ve come back. Me and the pain, me and the Light, me and you—all together.”

The peacock screamed again and, through the insect noises that in this tropical night were the equivalent of silence, far off but clear came the sound of gay music, flutes and plucked strings and the steady throbbing of drums.

“Listen,” said Dr. Robert. “Can you hear it? They’re dancing.”

“Dancing,” Lakshmi repeated. “Dancing.”

“Dancing so lightly,” Susila whispered. “As though they had wings.”

The music swelled up again into audibility.

“It’s the Courting Dance,” Susila went on.

“The Courting Dance. Robert, do you remember?”

“Could I ever forget?”

Yes, Will said to himself, could one ever forget? Could one ever forget that other distant music and, nearby, unnaturally quick and shallow, the sound of dying breath in a boy’s ears? In the house across the street somebody was practicing one of those Brahms Waltzes that Aunt Mary had loved to play. One-two and three and One-two and three and O-o-o-ne two three, One- and One and Two-Three and One and…The odious stranger who had once been Aunt Mary stirred out of her artificial stupor and opened her eyes. An expression of the most intense malignity had appeared on the yellow, wasted face. “Go and tell them to stop,” the harsh, unrecognizable voice had almost screamed. And then the lines of malignity had changed into the lines of despair, and the stranger, the pitiable odious stranger started
to sob uncontrollably. Those Brahms Waltzes—they were the pieces, out of all her repertory, that Frank had loved best.

Another gust of cool air brought with it a louder strain of the gay, bright music.

“All those young people dancing together,” said Dr. Robert. “All that laughter and desire, all that uncomplicated happiness! It’s all here, like an atmosphere, like a field of force. Their joy and our love—Susila’s love, my love—all working together, all reinforcing one another. Love and joy enveloping you, my darling; love and joy carrying you up into the peace of the Clear Light. Listen to the music. Can you still hear it, Lakshmi?”

“She’s drifted away again,” said Susila. “Try to bring her back.”

Dr. Robert slipped an arm under the emaciated body and lifted it into a sitting posture. The head drooped sideways onto his shoulder.

“My little love,” he kept whispering. “My little love…”

Her eyelids fluttered open for a moment. “Brighter,” came the barely audible whisper, “brighter.” And a smile of happiness intense almost to the point of elation transfigured her face.

Through his tears Dr. Robert smiled back at her. “So now you can let go, my darling.” He stroked her gray hair. “Now you can let go. Let go,” he insisted. “Let go of this poor old body. You don’t need it any more. Let it fall away from you. Leave it lying here like a pile of worn-out clothes.”

In the fleshless face the mouth had fallen carvernously open, and suddenly the breathing became stertorous.

“My love, my little love…” Dr. Robert held her more closely. “Let go now, let go. Leave it here, your old worn-out body, and go on. Go on, my darling, go on into the Light, into the peace, into the living peace of the Clear Light…”

Susila picked up one of the limp hands and kissed it, then turned to little Radha.

“Time to go,” she whispered, touching the girl’s shoulder.

Interrupted in her meditation, Radha opened her eyes, nodded and, scrambling to her feet, tiptoed silently towards the door. Susila beckoned to Will and, together, they followed her. In silence the three of them walked along the corridor. At the swing door Radha took her leave.

“Thank you for letting me be with you,” she whispered.

Susila kissed her. “Thank
you
for helping to make it easier for Lakshmi.”

Will followed Susila across the lobby and out into the warm odorous darkness. In silence they started to walk downhill towards the marketplace.

“And now,” he said at last, speaking under a strange compulsion to deny his emotion in a display of the cheapest kind of cynicism, “I suppose she’s trotting off to do a little
maithuna
with her boy friend.”

“As a matter of fact,” said Susila calmly, “she’s on night duty. But if she weren’t, what would be the objection to her going on from the yoga of death to the yoga of love?”

Will did not answer immediately. He was thinking of what had happened between himself and Babs on the evening of Molly’s funeral. The yoga of antilove, the yoga of resented addiction, of lust and the self-loathing that reinforces the self and makes it yet more loathsome.

“I’m sorry I tried to be unpleasant,” he said at last.

“It’s your father’s ghost. We’ll have to see if we can exorcise it.”

They had crossed the marketplace and now, at the end of the short street that led out of the village, they had come to the open space where the jeep was parked. As Susila turned the car onto the highway, the beam of their headlamps swept across a small green car that was turning downhill into the bypass.

“Don’t I recognize the royal Baby Austin?”

“You do,” said Susila, and wondered where the Rani and Murugan could be going at this time of night.

“They’re up to no good,” Will guessed. And on a sudden impulse he told Susila of his roving commission from Joe Aldehyde, his dealings with the Queen Mother and Mr. Bahu.

“You’d be justified in deporting me tomorrow,” he concluded.

“Not now that you’ve changed your mind,” she assured him. “And anyhow nothing you did could have affected the real issue. Our enemy is oil in general. Whether we’re exploited by Southeast Asia Petroleum or Standard of California makes no difference.”

“Did you know that Murugan and the Rani were conspiring against you?”

“They make no secret of it.”

“Then why don’t you get rid of them?”

“Because they would be brought back immediately by Colonel Dipa. The Rani is a princess of Rendang. If we expelled her, it would be a
casus belli
.”