The Bell-Boy (9 page)

Thus as he sat beneath the heavy-scented vine he sketched out the Auld Strait Kirk of Laki, Malomban Rite, whose temple was a building bare of all needless extravagance but for a plain table piled high with virgins … No, he thought crossly, trying to shake the drowsiness out of his head, he would have to do better than this if he were to be sending money home this week. He got to his feet and moodily kicked a chunk of mud brick from the dovecote wall, loosing part of it into the Redemptorist Fathers’ garden with his catapult. The garden lay in total darkness but for swarms of fireflies, and it gave him satisfaction to hear the dried mud smack against the invisible pagoda, which was what he had been aiming for.

On impulse he thrust the catapult away and hurried downstairs. Behind the desk in the hall Raju sat staring glassily at a picture of a paddy field on the opposite wall. The picture concealed a hole caused by Mr Muffy’s attempt to put up a fusebox which had been mysteriously stolen before it could be screwed in place. Laki recognised the porter’s glassiness as authentically that induced by palm toddy, a flagon of which would be set down out of sight by his feet.

‘Are they in, uncle?’ he asked.

‘Who, boy?’

‘Those foreigners. You know.’

‘Ah. Er,’ Raju twisted his head and squinted up at the board, ‘no, doesn’t look as if they are. The keys are all here. And no, you can’t have the pass-key.’

‘I don’t want it,’ Laki told him with virtuous surprise. ‘Why would I?’

‘If Muffy ever found I’d given you the key so you could go skulking about guests’ rooms after dark, it’d be as much as my job’s worth. You’d lose yours, too, but not before you’d also lost a few inches of skin off that handsome little backside.’

How dreadfully drunk he is tonight, thought Laki as he went upstairs once more. He passed through to the servants’
staircase and sat down on the dusty brick landing which led to Mrs Hemony’s corridor, turning off the light and slightly opening the door so he might hear her approach. He had scarcely begun to doze before he heard the sound of voices and feet on the marble steps. To his relief the two children went straight up to their rooms after mutual good nights, leaving their mother to make her way slowly along in the gloom to her own door. Just as she reached it Laki produced a handkerchief and, pressing it to his face, stumbled through the landing door towards her as his other hand groped for the switch. The light came on and, catching sight of her, he affected to pull himself together.

‘Good evening, missus,’ he said thickly.

‘Lucky! Why, whatever is the matter?’ Tessa paused in the act of unlocking.

‘Oh, missus. Oh, it is nothing.’

‘Are you hurt, then? Ill?’ She withdrew the key and pushed the door, reaching round its edge to turn on her own light.

‘No, not ill, missus. Not sick. Oh!’

‘Then what? You can tell me, Lucky. We’re friends, aren’t we?’ She put a maternal hand on his shoulder and drew the overcome bell-boy into her room. ‘Maybe I can help.’

Laki was shaking his head and sniffing. ‘No, missus, you very kind. Everyone say how kind the missus. But no help can give. It my mother. Oh!’

‘Your mother? She isn’t dead?’

A wail, bravely stifled, escaped the handkerchief. ‘Not dead, missus. Or maybe now she dead.’ From his pocket he drew the letter and gave it to Tessa.

‘Oh dear, oh dear, Lucky, I can’t read your language.’ She turned the grimy sheet over and over as if looking for familiar roman letters among the elegant curlicues of the script.

‘It from my brother. He say’ – Laki took back the letter
and skimmed it distractedly as if searching for a single recognisable word amongst the illiterate scrawl – ‘he say here my mother very very sick to Red Fever.’

‘Red Fever?
Scarlet
fever? Oh Lucky, how awful! I’m truly sorry. When was the letter sent?’

‘One week. Oh.’

‘She’s at home in your village?’

‘Yes, yes. Saramu Province. Very far, very poor. I am thinking she to dying without medicine.’

‘Well,’ said Tessa, being practical, ‘first you must telephone to find out how she is.’

‘Oh missus, no telephone. No telephone arriving in Saramu.’

‘What, none in the entire province?’

‘No telephone, missus. I think she to needing medicine not telephone. But no have money. How much they pay me here to Nirbana Hotel is nothing. Oh.’

‘I see.’ As indeed she did, being suddenly reconciled to funding his poor mother’s recovery. ‘How far away is this village of yours?’

‘Eighty miles, missus.’ The alarming thought struck him that she might insist on going in person. ‘Very bad bus. Very danger road because of freedom fighters. Bandits, they kill. Also Saramu Province close now.’

‘The province is closed?’

‘Yes, yes, closed. No are going. Policemen to stopping. Too much bandit. Too much Red Fever.’

‘Poor Lucky.’ Tessa was visualising his mother lying sick in a rude hut on a remote littoral isolated by indigence, guerrilla activity and contagious disease, and was not stuck for a remedy. ‘Pennyroyal,’ she said. ‘We must see how we can get her some oil of pennyroyal at once. Is she pregnant? I mean, she’s not having a baby?’

‘No, no, my father he tie.’

This syntax made her unwilling to pursue the subject further. ‘In that case she can have pennyroyal. It’s wonderful
for the kidneys and that’s where the danger lies in scarlet fever. Oh, and cypress oil.’

‘I think she wanting antibiotic, missus.’

Poor child (thought Tessa); I haven’t the heart to explain the dangers of conventional medicine to him at this moment. As soon as the crisis was over, though, she resolved to set him straight. But first things first. His evident upset must be calmed since the bond between mother and son was such that if his spirit were distraught it might materially affect her chances of recovery. This was one of the Swami’s greatest Teachings, that mental distress produced far worse imbalances than any physical yin-yang disequilibrium. She sat Laki down on the edge of her bed, where he perched with the unease of a child who knows himself to be out of bounds even though in extenuating circumstances. ‘Now look,’ she took one of his hands. ‘Your mother will be all right.
I
know.
She will be well, do you understand? We’ll send her antibiotics.’

‘Oh missus, you kind kind lady. But it better we send money for to buy.’

‘But can she get antibiotics where she is?’

‘Yes, yes, village shop they have.’

‘Antibiotics in a village shop?’ Even in a country as bizarre as this it seemed unlikely.

‘Yes, yes. But very expensive, missus.’

Well, she supposed they would be. ‘How much do you need, Lucky?’

‘Oh missus, too much … You too kind … No, no. Oh.’ This babbling, during which he blotted his eyes once more, gave him the chance to think for a moment. What was it reasonable to ask for? He had been resigned to getting Raju to lend him a twenty-note under the veiled threat of reneging on his part in the toddy-tapping. In the best of all possible worlds – that obtaining within minutes of getting his salary on time from Mr Muffy – he might have aspired to fifty
piku.
How high would she go? ‘A hundred is …’ He choked tactically.

‘Of course, Lucky.’

‘… not enough, missus. I think maybe two hundred okay. But you must not to giving me. I am nothing. I am unknown boy.’ And he dabbed afresh.

But Tessa was taking four fifty-notes from her purse. ‘Don’t be silly, Lucky, you’re our friend. You’ve helped us and now we’re doing a bit in return. Even if you were a complete stranger it’s bliss to be able to help people, isn’t it? Now look.’ She folded up the notes and tucked them into the pocket of his jacket. ‘You go right off and send your mother what she needs with our love and tell her she’s already getting better. All right?’ And she patted the back of his hand encouragingly.

Laki grasped her fingers and impulsively drew them to his lips. By now he firmly believed his mother’s life had been saved and real tears stood in his eyes. ‘Oh missus, missus, you too too kind for me. I always be your friend. I always be your bell-boy.’

‘Why, Lucky.’ Tessa sat next to him with her hand imprisoned at his mouth, somewhat embarrassed by the effusiveness, the absurdity of the situation, the disparity between them. But even as she blushed she was conscious of their proximity and above all the elusive scent his clothing gave off, some kind of exotic flower maybe. At that instant he looked up at her from beneath long, tear-fringed lashes and met her gaze with something besides dumb gratitude. ‘How silly,’ she heard herself say. ‘Of course we shall always be friends. But you won’t always be my bell-boy. Or any kind of boy,’ she added. One of her hands detached itself of its own accord from his mouth and, with the halting delicacy of a butterfly, alighted for the briefest moment before fluttering away to rest in her own lap. ‘Goodness,’ she breathed. ‘Come along then.’ She stood up purposefully but carefully in case her back were suddenly painful. ‘Off you go. The sooner your mother gets the medicine the sooner she’ll get well. But come back sometime and I’ll show you
how to heal a person at a distance. If I knew you better and we’d had a chance to get on the same spiritual wavelength, I could have helped to heal your mother through you, right here in this very room. But first I’d need to get a special oil and do some reflexology on you.’

Laki, having pulled his jacket down as far as it would go, got awkwardly to his feet and made for the door. ‘Thank you, missus,’ he said huskily. ‘One day I to showing you my room. Very beautiful the vine there. You will come see?’

‘I promise,’ said Tessa. ‘Good night.’

‘Good night, my missus. Oh.’

He went softly away up the corridor. Once through the door on to the brick landing he gave a little skip and raced lightly upstairs to his den. From the depths of the vine he dug out one of the hotel’s smudgily-printed envelopes, addressed it to home, scrawled a brief message and enclosed a fifty-note. The other three notes he thrust into the bowels of the plant before trotting downstairs and out into the street in search of the dried-fish merchant. All within an hour his fortunes had changed and things were looking up. Now anything was possible. As he passed the Lingasumin, its glowing ruby rekindled the embers of a considerable ardour he had felt at the end of his visit to the missus. He was right; these people really did want something to happen.

When the pain in her back became intractable enough to make her plan this trip, Tessa had spoken to Swami Bopi Gul on the telephone. This instrument was screwed to a wall in the bar below Valcognano, and allowing for the transatlantic time difference she usually found herself making such calls in the evening against the din of card
games and television. The Teacher was not an easy man to speak to; generally she got through to Ed, who would then vanish off the line in search of him. A fifteen-minute wait was not uncommon, during which the little counter behind the bar clocked up the
scatti
at an alarming rate. It had never occurred to Tessa to mention this. One did not trouble swamis with such trivia, still less did one ask an incarnate god to accept reverse-charge calls.

On this occasion he had been quite prompt and within seven minutes was saying, ‘Of course, my dear Tessa, you absolutely must go to Malomba. There are wonderful things in that place. It will be arranged for you to see
hadlam
Tapranne, a great and good healer who is close to us. While you are there—’

A deafening burst of cheering from behind her blotted out the Teacher’s gentle tones. Someone had scored a goal on television.

‘— many new essences for Pure Light Products, maybe. You understand, my dear, this has never been done before. Is it not exciting? To this person it is the greatest bliss to know that at last a serious effort is being made to coordinate the world’s most potent healing substances in order to attack the modern evils. The work of our movement is to become a united healing agency, able to supply any essence from anywhere, able to use any of the sacred techniques the ancients practised and which have been temporarily – temporarily, mind – smothered by the three modern evils.’

‘Technology. Speed. Mass media.’

‘Technology. Speed. Mass media,’ echoed the Swami from seven-odd thousand miles away. ‘Exactly. But then you are one of our oldest and dearest disciples, even though I know you have been a little troubled.’

‘Master, I am in bliss.’

‘Of course. But we
know,
my dear. We
know
you did not at first understand our plan when Ed came and explained it to you. Come now, you were troubled.’ The Swami’s delicious laugh sounded down the wire.

‘Perhaps just for an instant, Master. It was stupid of me.’

‘But now you perceive?’

‘With all my heart, Teacher.’ For she really did. To combat the degeneration of human spiritual life on this planet, one needed to borrow certain leaves from the book of so-called Progress.
Turn
their
weapons
on
themselves,
but
with
love.

‘Good. So turn their weapons on themselves, but with love. Organise. Be efficient … And how is your delightful family? Ed tells me your daughter is becoming truly beautiful. He describes her as a creature of the most delicate light. I am now wondering whether she ought not to come to California. She—’

Another goal was scored. Someone knocked a metal chair to the marble floor. When the noise had diminished Tessa discovered Swami Bopi Gul had gone, and all she could hear was an expensive electrical hum as she clamped the receiver to her head.

This conversation explained why some weeks later in Malomba she took Laki’s advice and engaged Mr Tominy Bundash, official guide, to help her track down a good local source of natural medicine. Zoe decided to accompany her. Before they left the hotel that morning Tessa had a brief, confidential word with Mr Muffy.

‘I want you to do something for me,’ she said. ‘A simple act of kindness. My son Jason wants to go swimming and your bell-boy Lucky has very sweetly offered to take him somewhere he knows where boys go. I’d like you to lend us Lucky for a bit – on a sort of half-day, you know? He’s been most considerate to us.’

Mr Muffy, who had initially faced her with an expression of benign accommodation, began to exhibit signs of incredulity.

‘Considerate, madam? Laki? Half-day?’

‘Come on, why not? I presume you’re obliged by law to give all your employees time off? Especially child employees,’
she added with what she imagined was a hint of the official reprisals which could always be called down. But the proprietor was still shaking his head.

‘Here in Malomba, madam, it is not customarily to giving bell-boys half-days off. They are at the onset of their careers when they must acquire the correct attitude to work which will see them through the rest of their lives. One cannot begin by giving them holidays. Laki has duties.’

Tessa glanced pointedly at the board behind his head. A key hung from nearly every hook.

‘I’m sure he has duties. But I’m asking this as a favour and not just for my own convenience, either. The fact is’ – she leaned forward and lowered her voice – ‘the poor boy’s most upset about his mother.’

‘His mother?’

‘Yes. I’m sure he won’t have told you, but she’s actually very ill with scarlet fever. She’s going to be all right, though.’

‘Scarlet fever?’

At this moment Jason and Laki appeared. Mr Muffy gave his bell-boy a look and thought he had never seen anyone less upset. In the circumstances, however, a group of foreign guests leaning on his desk constituted
force
majeure,
so he contented himself with a resigned nod.

‘You’re a truly kind man,’ Tessa told him. Zoe shot him a brilliant smile which produced a watery sensation in his stomach and practically reconciled him on the spot to this unheard-of arrangement. She really was, Mr Muffy thought, at the most perfect moment of ripeness. She was like a farewell-fruit as it acquired its rich colours of dusk but before it attained its squashy midnight purple … Without visualising anything definite he experienced the psychic sensation of
biting,
of a soft and sweet firmness around his mouth parts which were not located on his face, particularly, but over his whole body. The farewell-fruit, delicious and dangerous … To think of that ragamuffin creeping his way into such company! He directed a stony glare at Laki’s back
as the boys went out. Scarlet fever? What nonsense had the little rogue been selling them? There were things here which needed investigation.

Mr Bundash, special guide, was at his best this morning. Tessa explained what she and Zoe were interested in finding, and when he had listened gravely he announced an itinerary.

‘It is evident that a certain quarter of the Wednesday Market shall be our destination. Our way will take us past the celebrated Temple of Ashes. You have visited this yet, madams?’

‘I’ve lost count,’ said Zoe.

‘I think we haven’t,’ Tessa told her. ‘I believe it’s the only major one we’ve not yet seen.’

The Temple of Ashes was certainly eye-catching from the outside, being shaped more or less like a huge marble wigwam. It was regularly rubbed with cinnabar and it burned at the junction of two streets, a silent stone bonfire. The inside was as unrelievedly grey as the outside was vermilion. Light – and, during the monsoon, rain – came from a circular opening at its apex and fell on the Burning Floor immediately beneath. The sound of their feet was muffled by grey powder which puffed greasily about their ankles as they entered.

‘This,’ said Mr Bundash in a reverently hushed voice, ‘is the world’s foremost centre of Spodist worship. It may be that you are not fully conversant with the history of Spodism, so I will recount it briefly. It is believed to have had its origin in Asia Minor some two thousand years before the birth of the Holy Prophet Mohammed, probably as a reaction against the relentless symbolisation of spring, rebirth and fertility as commonly celebrated by cults such as Adonis-Tammuz and the Canaanite Ras Shamra ritualism. The name, of course, is of Greek origin, from the word
spodos,
ashes. I’m not going too fast for you, madams? No, excellent.

‘Veiled in obscurity as it is for us – although the Spodist priesthood has its own somewhat tendentious account – this religion must certainly predate Zoroastrianism in what is now Iran. One uses the expression “religion” loosely, perhaps. It is more of a philosophy since there is no real deity. Scholars nowadays consider it was this very lack which made inevitable Zarathustra’s reforms as well as his widespread acceptance as Servant of the Supreme Wise Lord, Ahura Mazda. We might also agree,’ said Mr Bundash, glancing cautiously around, ‘that the Spodists’ belief was too fatalistic, too bleak for mass appeal.

‘Now follow me closely here, madams. For them the supreme principle of the universe is what modern science refers to as
entropy,
which is the innate tendency of things to become disordered, to incline towards their own destruction as discrete systems. Thus the only abiding thing is fire. The ancient Spodists looked into the skies of Asia Minor and saw fire: the relentless sun by day, the unchanging stars by night.’ He lowered his voice once more. ‘Naturally, they did not have the benefit of telescopes so they could not know that many of the stars they saw were not on fire at all but dead and freezing and merely reflecting light, like our moon. Nor could they have known that even our sun is steadily being consumed.’

‘O naïve, naïve Bundash.’ A soft but penetrating voice came from a dim grey boulder rolled against one wall and now slowly getting to its feet.

Mr Tominy Bundash clutched at his chest. ‘Your forgiveness, reverend sir,’ he said. ‘I had not realised you … I mean …’

‘O Bundash, how many times have I heard you in this our temple giving your account of our beliefs? You think you are not heard, but I tell you the least whisper carries. I believe,’ he added in a mischievous imitation of the guide’s voice, ‘I believe it is what modern science refers to as
acoustics
.’

‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ said Mr Bundash unhappily. This was
terrible; if there were a complaint by any of Malomba’s religious he could well lose his official status and with it his ID card in its leather wallet. ‘Oh, dear me.’

‘It’s the fault of the system, madams.’ The High Priest was addressing Tessa and Zoe as he advanced genially with little puffs of dust. ‘It’s one of the inherent ironies of mass tourism which has Moslems explaining Spodism to Christians, to say nothing of philistines lecturing the indifferent about masterpieces of art and architecture. But I would not dignify this irony with the name of entropy. No; I would simply call it
Bundashism
and leave it at that.’

‘I say, I say,’ protested Tominy Bundash. Tessa smiled at him and took his hand sympathetically.

‘Actually, we aren’t Christians,’ she said.

‘I have an appointment, madam,’ said the High Priest, pulling back his ragged grey vestments to glance at his watch. ‘Otherwise I should be delighted to set the record straight at some length. But I cannot go without correcting your guide’s naïve misapprehension. It is not of the least consequence whether we know or do not know that the sun is being consumed. Neither telescopes nor any other instrument can weaken or enhance the Spodist position. We are not talking about literal fire, you understand, but metaphorical fire. It is the Incandescence in whose midst we are nothing, and with us the world, the solar system and the universe. It is the same all-consuming Incandescence which can be found blazing at the heart of a sun and in the entrails of a corpse. We do not worship it but the
thought
of
It.
That is all. The good man is he who contemplates not the fire but its ashes. And so each year we make a model of the world and burn it here on the Burning Floor. It is a symbolic act. Otherwise the Burning Floor is used only for Spodists themselves, many of whom are sent thousands of miles from their native lands for incineration in this our holiest shrine.’

‘When … when they’re dead?’ asked Zoe nervously.

‘Of course when they’re dead, young madam,’ said the
High Priest with an air of magnificent patience. ‘Do you take us for barbarians? For them it is the final honour to lie here. Who dares walk on dust and not know himself dust?’ His voice had taken on the plummy richness of somebody quoting scripture. ‘For all seeing is this: that the flame which will consume us was lit at the moment of our birth. Now I must be going.’ And with a slight bow he made off, trailing clouds.

‘You don’t think …?’ said Zoe presently, scuffing the toe of a sandal.

‘Oh yes,’ said Mr Bundash, following her gaze. ‘I was coming to that. We are of course walking on his congregation.’

They left and headed for the Wednesday Market. On the way Mr Bundash regained some of his self-confidence; it was evident he was grateful for Tessa’s reassurances that his was indeed a difficult job involving feats of memory and discretion. How could anyone reasonable expect a guide to get the most finicking points of doctrine correct in all thirty-nine of Malomba’s temples?

‘Yes, yes, madam, you perfectly understand. Exactly. I am a good Moslem and yet I tell you in strictest confidence’ – glancing round for a disguised imam – ‘sometimes I almost begin to forget the tenets of my own faith. It was worse still when there were more tourists here. I would go to bed at night with my head full of texts and think how beautiful these scriptures often were, how like poetry in their truthfulness. Then with a horror I would sit up on my bed because I realised they were not always from the Holy Qu’ran at all but from a dozen infidel books. Oh yes indeed, they were from the Sayings of Rimmon or the Book of Mormon or the Vedas or the Testament of Wisdom. They were from the Talmud or the Torah or the Kabbalah. They were from the Bible or the Book of Splendour, the Revelations of Mithras, the Sublime Recipe, the Analects of Confucius, the Bhagavad-Gita and on and on until my head
was whirling with noble truths instead of allowing me to go to sleep and rest my tired feet.

‘I was no longer certain even of who I was, madams. My dear wives would say, “Tominy-
da
, Tominy
-da
,
what are you becoming? This is not the good Moslem gentleman we married.” It was my head, you see. Can you believe it was bursting with commandments, edicts, laws, injunctions and precepts? Oh yes.
Do
this.
Don
’t
do
that.
Never
do
the
other
except
on
the
last
Thursday
in
the
month
when
there
is
no
menstruating
woman
in
the
house.
I wish I had a fifty-note for every Last Judgement which I’ve been obliged to attend in my nightmares, madams. Oh, it is grisly. Over and over again the universe destroyed in various ways: floods, plague, holocaust, nuclear war. And over and over again this poor Bundash condemned to burn for ever, to drown for ever, to lie in a tent eating dates for ever. Oh, he is beaten and winnowed and flayed and broken on wheels. And once, madams,’ their guide gave a mildly crazed laugh, ‘I awoke screaming because an archangel was to give me enemas of chillies for the rest of eternity. But I see we’ve arrived now.’