There was another burst of screaming. On its perch in the dead tree the bird was turning nervously this way and that, then, with a final screech, it dived into the air. Without taking her eyes from Will’s face, the girl held out her hand invitingly. The bird fluttered, settled, flapped wildly, found its balance, then folded its wings and immediately started to hiccup. Will looked on without surprise. Anything was possible now — anything. Even talking birds that would perch on a child’s finger. Will tried to smile at them; but his lips were still trembling, and what was meant to be a sign of friendliness must have seemed like a frightening grimace. The little boy took cover behind his sister.
The bird stopped hiccuping and began to repeat a word that Will did not understand. ‘Runa’ — was that it? No, ‘Karuna’. Definitely ‘Karuna’.
He raised a trembling hand and pointed at the fruit in the round basket. Mangoes, bananas … His dry mouth was watering.
“Hungry,” he said. Then, feeling that in these exotic circumstances the child might understand him better if he put on an imitation of a musical comedy Chinaman, “Me velly hungly,” he elaborated.
“Do you want to eat?” the child asked in perfect English.
“Yes — eat,” he repeated, “eat.”
“Fly away, mynah!” She shook her hand. The bird uttered a protesting squawk and returned to its perch on the dead tree. Lifting her thin little arms in a gesture that was like a dancer’s, the child raised the basket from her head, then lowered it to the ground. She selected a banana, peeled it and, torn between fear and compassion, advanced towards the stranger. In his incomprehensible language the little boy uttered a cry of warning and clutched at her skirt. With a reassuring word, the girl halted, well out of danger, and held up the fruit.
“Do you want it?” she asked.
Still trembling, Will Farnaby stretched out his hand. Very cautiously, she edged forward, then halted again and, crouching down, peered at him intently.
“Quick,” he said in an agony of impatience.
But the little girl was taking no chances. Eyeing his hand for the least sign of a suspicious movement, she leaned forward, she cautiously extended her arm.
“For God’s sake,” he implored.
“God?” the child repeated with sudden interest. “Which God?” she asked. “There are such a lot of them.”
“Any damned God you like,” he answered impatiently.
“I don’t really like any of them,” she answered. “I like the Compassionate One.”
“Then be compassionate to me,” he begged. “Give me that banana.”
Her expression changed. “I’m sorry, she said apologetically. Rising to her full height, she took a quick step forward and dropped the fruit into his shaking hand.
“There,” she said and, like a little animal avoiding a trap, she jumped back, out of reach.
The small boy clapped his hands and laughed aloud. She turned and said something to him in their incomprehensible language. He nodded his round head, and saying “Okay, boss,” trotted away, through a barrage of blue and sulphur butterflies, into the forest shadows on the further side of the glade.
“I told Tom Krishna to go and fetch someone,” she explained.
Will finished his banana and asked for another, and then for a third. As the urgency of his hunger diminished, he felt a need to satisfy his curiosity.
“How is it that you speak such good English?” he asked.
“Because everybody speaks English,” the child answered.
“Everybody?”
“I mean, when they’re not speaking Palanese.” Finding the subject uninteresting, she turned, waved a small brown hand and whistled.
“Here and now, boys,” the bird repeated yet once more, then fluttered down from its perch on the dead tree and settled on her shoulder. The child peeled another banana, gave two-thirds of it to Will and offered what remained to the mynah.
“Is that your bird?” Will asked.
She shook her head.
“Mynahs are like the electric light,” she said. “They don’t belong to anybody.”
“Why does he say those things?”
“Because somebody taught him,” she answered patiently. What an ass! her tone seemed to imply.
“But why did they teach him those things? Why ‘Attention’? Why ‘Here and now’?”
“Well …” She searched for the right words in which to explain the self-evident to this strange imbecile. “That’s what you always forget, isn’t it? I mean, you forget to pay attention to what’s happening. And that’s the same as not being here and now.”
“And the mynahs fly about reminding you — is that it?”
She nodded. That, of course, was it. There was a silence.
“What’s your name?” she enquired.
Will introduced himself.
“My name’s Mary Sarojini MacPhail.”
“MacPhail?” It was too implausible.
“MacPhail,” she assured him.
“And your little brother is called Tom Krishna?” She nodded. “Well, I’m damned!”
“Did you come to Pala by the aeroplane?”
“I came out of the sea.”
“Out of the sea? Do you have a boat?”
“I did have one.” With his mind’s eye Will saw the waves breaking over the stranded hulk, heard with his inner ear the crash of their impact. Under her questioning he told her what had happened. The storm, the beaching of the boat, the long nightmare of the climb, the snakes, the horror of falling … He began to tremble again, more violently than ever.
Mary Sarojini listened attentively and without comment. Then as his voice faltered and finally broke, she stepped forward and, the bird still perched on her shoulder, kneeled down beside him.
“Listen, Will,” she said, laying a hand on his forehead. “We’ve got to get rid of this.” Her tone was professional and calmly authoritative.
“I wish I knew how,” he said between chattering teeth.
“How?” she repeated. “But in the usual way, of course. Tell me again about those snakes and how you fell down.”
He shook his head. “I don’t want to.”
“Of course you don’t want to,” she said. “But you’ve got to. Listen to what the mynah’s saying.”
“Here and now, boys,” the bird was still exhorting. “Here and now, boys.”
“You can’t be here and now,” she went on, “until you’ve got rid of those snakes. Tell me.”
“I don’t want to, I don’t want to.” He was almost in tears.
“Then you’ll never get rid of them. They’ll be crawling about inside your head forever. And serve you right,” Mary Sarojini added severely.
He tried to control the trembling; but his body had ceased to belong to him. Someone else was in charge, someone malevolently determined to humiliate him, to make him suffer.
“Remember what happened when you were a little boy,” Mary Sarojini was saying. “What did your mother do when you hurt yourself?”
She had taken him in her arms, had said, ‘My poor baby, my poor little baby.’
“She did that?” The child spoke in a tone of shocked amazement. “But that’s awful! That’s the way to rub it in. ‘My poor baby,’” she repeated derisively, “it must have gone on hurting for hours. And you’d never forget it.”
Will Farnaby made no comment, but lay there in silence, shaken by irrepressible shudderings.
“Well, if you won’t do it yourself, I’ll have to do it for you. Listen, Will: there was a snake, a big green snake, and you almost stepped on him. You almost stepped on him, and it gave you such a fright that you lost your balance, you fell. Now say it yourself — say it!”
“I almost stepped on him,” he whispered obediently. “And then I …” He couldn’t say it. “Then I fell,” he brought out at last, almost inaudibly.
All the horror of it came back to him — the nausea of fear, the panic start that had made him lose his balance, and then wor
se fear and the ghastly certainty that it was the end.
“Say it again.”
“I almost stepped on him. And then …”
He heard himself whimpering.
“That’s right, Will. Cry — cry!”
The whimpering became a moaning. Ashamed, he clenched his teeth, and the moaning stopped.
“No, don’t do that,” she cried. “Let it come out if it wants to. Remember that snake, Will. Remember how you fell.”
The moaning broke out again and he began to shudder more violently than ever.
“Now tell me what happened.”
“I could see its eyes, I could see its tongue going in and out.”
“Yes, you could see his tongue. And what happened then?”
“I lost my balance, I fell.”
“Say it again, Will.” He was sobbing now. “Say it again,” she insisted.
“I fell.”
“Again.”
It was tearing him to pieces, but he said it. “I fell.”
“Again, Will.” She was implacable. “Again.”
“I fell, I fell. I fell …”
Gradually the sobbing died down. The words came more easily and the memories they aroused were less painful.
“I fell,” he repeated for the hundredth time.
“But you didn’t fall very far,” Mary Sarojini now said.
“No, I didn’t fall very far,” he agreed.
“So what’s all the fuss about?” the child enquired.
There was no malice or irony in her tone, not the slightest implication of blame. She was just asking a simple, straightforward question that called for a simple straightforward answer. Yes, what was all the fuss about? The snake hadn’t bitten him; he hadn’t broken his neck. And anyhow it had all happened yesterday. Today there were these butterflies, this bird that called one to attention, this strange child who talked to one like a Dutch uncle, looked like an angel out of some unfamiliar mythology and within five degrees of the equator was called, believe it or not, MacPhail. Will Farnaby laughed aloud.
The little girl clapped her hands and laughed too. A moment later the bird on her shoulder joined in with peal upon peal of loud demonic laughter that filled the glade and echoed among the trees, so that the whole universe seemed to be fairly splitting its sides over the enormous joke of existence.
CHAPTER THREE
“WELL, I’M GLAD it’s all so amusing,” a deep voice suddenly commented.
Will Farnaby turned and saw, smiling down at him, a small spare man dressed in European clothes and carrying a black bag. A man, he judged, in his late fifties. Under the wide straw hat the hair was thick and white, and what a strange beaky nose! And the eyes — how incongruously blue in the dark face!
“Grandfather!” he heard Mary Sarojini exclaiming.
The stranger turned from Will to the child.
“What was so funny?” he asked.
“Well,” Mary Sarojini began, and paused for a moment to marshal her thoughts. “Well, you see, he was in a boat and there was that storm yesterday and he got wrecked — somewhere down there. So he had to climb up the cliff. And there were some snakes, and he fell down. But luckily there was a tree, so he only had a fright. Which was why he was shivering so hard, so I gave him some bananas and I made him go through it a million times. And then all of a sudden he saw that it wasn’t anything to worry about. I mean, it’s all over and done with. And that made him laugh. And when he laughed, I laughed. And then the mynah bird laughed.”
“Very good,” said her grandfather approvingly. “And now,” he added, turning back to Will Farnaby, “after the psychological first aid, let’s see what can be done for poor old Brother Ass. I’m Dr Robert MacPhail, by the way. Who are you?”
“His name’s Will,” said Mary Sarojini before the young man could answer. “And his other name is Far-something.”
“Farnaby, to be precise. William Asquith Farnaby. My father, as you might guess, was an ardent Liberal. Even when he was drunk. Especially when he was drunk.” He gave vent to a harsh derisive laugh strangely unlike the full-throated merriment which had greeted his discovery that there was really nothing to make a fuss about.
“Didn’t you like your father?” Mary Sarojini asked with concern.
“Not as much as I might have,” Will answered.
“What he means,” Dr MacPhail explained to the child, “is that he hated his father. A lot of them do,” he added parenthetically.
Squatting down on his haunches, he began to undo the straps of his black bag.
“One of our ex-imperialists, I assume,” he said over his shoulder to the young man.
“Born in Bloomsbury,” Will confirmed.
“Upper class,” the doctor diagnosed, “but not a member of the military or county sub-species.”
“Correct. My father was a barrister and political journalist. That is, when he wasn’t too busy being an alcoholic. My mother, incredible as it may seem, was the daughter of an archdeacon. An archdeacon,” he repeated, and laughed again as he had laughed over his father’s taste for brandy.
Dr MacPhail looked at him for a moment, then turned his attention once more to the straps.
“When you laugh like that,” he remarked in a tone of scientific detachment, “your face becomes curiously ugly.”
Taken aback, Will tried to cover his embarrassment with a piece of facetiousness. “It’s always ugly,” he said.
“On the contrary, in a Baudelairian sort of way it’s rather beautiful. Except when you choose to make noises like a hyena. Why do you make those noises?”
“I’m a journalist,” Will explained. “Our Special Correspondent, paid to travel about the world and report on the current horrors. What other kind of noise do you expect me to make? Coo-coo? Blah-blah? Marx-Marx?” He laughed again, then brought out one of his well-tried witticisms. “I’m the man who won’t take yes for an answer.”
“Pretty,” said Dr MacPhail. “Very pretty. But now let’s get down to business.” Taking a pair of scissors out of his bag, he started to cut away the torn and bloodstained trouser leg that covered Will’s injured knee.
Will Farnaby looked up at him and wondered, as he looked, how much of this improbable Highlander was still Scottish and how much Palanese. About the blue eyes and the jutting nose there could be no doubt. But the brown skin, the delicate hands, the grace of movement — these surely came from somewhere considerably south of the Tweed.
“Were you born here?” he asked.
The doctor nodded affirmatively. “At Shivapuram, on the day of Queen Victoria’s funeral.”
There was a final click of the scissors, and the trouser leg fell away, exposing the knee. “Messy,” was Dr MacPhail’s verdict after a first intent scrutiny. “But I don’t think there’s anything too serious.” He turned to his granddaughter, “I’d like you to run back to the station and ask Vijaya to come here with one of the other men. Tell them to pick up a stretcher at the infirmary.”
Mary Sarojini nodded and, without a word, rose to her feet, and hurried away across the glade.
Will looked after the small figure as it receded — the red skirt swinging from side to side, the smooth skin of the torso glowing rosily golden in the sunlight.
“You have a very remarkable granddaughter,” he said to Dr MacPhail.
“Mary Sarojini’s father,” said the doctor after a little silence, “was my eldest son. He died four months ago — a mountain climbing accident.”
Will mumbled his sympathy, and there was another silence.
Dr MacPhail uncorked a bottle of alcohol and swabbed his hands.
“This is going to hurt a bit,” he warned. “I’d suggest that you listen to that bird.” He waved a hand in the direction of the dead tree, to which, after Mary Sarojini’s departure, the mynah had returned.
“Listen to him closely, listen discriminatingly. It’ll keep your mind off the discomfort.”
Will Farnaby listened. The mynah had gone back to its f
irst theme.
“Attention,” the articulate oboe was calling. “Attention.”
“Attention to what?” he asked, in the hope of eliciting a more enlightening answer than the one he had received from Mary Sarojini.
“To attention,” said Dr MacPhail.
“Attention to attention?”
“Of course.”
“Attention,” the mynah chanted in ironical confirmation.
“Do you have many of these talking birds?”
“There must be at least a thousand of them flying about the island. It was the old Raja’s idea. He thought it would do people good. Maybe it does, though it seems rather unfair to the poor mynahs. Fortunately, however, birds don’t understand pep talks. Not even St Francis’. Just imagine,” he went on, “preaching sermons to perfectly good thrushes and goldfinches and chiffchaffs! What presumption! Why couldn’t he have kept his mouth shut and let the birds preach to him? And now,” he added in another tone, “you’d better start listening to our friend in the tree. I’m going to clean this thing up.”
“Attention.”
“Here goes.”
The young man winced and bit his lip.
“Attention. Attention. Attention.”
Yes, it was quite true. If you listened intently enough, the pain wasn’t so bad.
“Attention. Attention …”
“How you ever contrived to get up that cliff,” said Dr MacPhail, as he reached for the bandage, “I cannot conceive.”
Will managed to laugh. “Remember the beginning of Erewhon,” he said. “‘As luck would have it, Providence was on my side.’”
From the further side of the glade came the sound of voices. Will turned his head and saw Mary Sarojini emerging from between the trees, her red skirt swinging as she skipped along. Behind her, naked to the waist and carrying over his shoulder the bamboo poles and rolled-up canvas of a light stretcher, walked a huge bronze statue of a man, and behind the giant came a slender, dark-skinned adolescent in white shorts.
Complete Works of Aldous Huxley Page 288
