“It’s true,” I said. “We’ve had champagne.”
“Tell me about fishing, please.”
“You fish for compliments. You dangle a well-baited hook like, ‘Do you think so-and-so is prettier than me?’; and up comes a salmon, ‘My dear, you make her look like an old bicycle saddle.’ Or else you get your dessert in the form of an old boot, ‘There’s normally no comparison—only she’s not looking her best tonight.’”
“I am going fishing,” Sabby said. “Please look round at me. Do you think I am prettier than old bicycle saddle?”
I turned round. She stood with her towel held up to her chin. Her bare arms protruded at the sides, and her knees below.
“Do I?” she said wistfully.
“You look quite unlike anything I’ve ever seen before,” I said.
“Is that salmon or old boot?”
I went close to her. She did not move, but she kept the towel held to her chin. I kissed her lightly, and her lips were cool; she had just come from the shower. I could feel her body touching mine through the towel. I wanted to clasp her; but there was an intimacy in this faint contact that we had not experienced before. We looked at each other for one of those moments that are timeless because afterwards they live more vividly than whole meaningless weeks. And then because feelings on this level wear themselves out—it was perhaps only for a few seconds that it lasted—she reached up on her tiptoes and brushed her lips over me and then scurried into the bathroom with the towel trailing behind. A second later her head appeared round the door.
“Please, Michael,” she said sadly, “did you say salmon or old boot?”
“Salmon,” I said. “Very pink.”
She disappeared again, and from the bathroom I heard her singing, “Sabby is a salmon, a salmon, a salmon . . .”
At a quarter to eight we went off to Mr. Headley’s. We went to his flat that was close to the office which I had already visited. The Indian ‘scheduled class’ boy opened the door to us, and a moment later Mr. Headley appeared, a little whirlwind in bedroom slippers, extending both his hands, one for each of us.
“Hullo hullo, hullo. No need to have dressed up, you know. Pot-luck—not a dinner party. All the same—” He looked at Sabby’s dress, still holding her hand. “Charming. Quite charming.” His thinning hair was tousled. He wore an open khaki shirt and short khaki trousers. Indicating the latter he said, “You don’t mind, do you? I’m on the right leg this month. Saves undressing. Pump it right in. What did you say your name was?”
“This is Miss Wei,” I said.
“Really?” He extended his neck to look at Sabby closely, as though he were short-sighted. His eyes were screwed up quizzically. “Nonsense,” he said. “Count on your fingers. Count up to five.”
Sabby looked bewildered; she did not know whether this curious man was being funny or savage. She held up a doubtful hand.
“That’s right. Count. One, two, three, four, five.”
“One, two, three, four, five,” Sabby said uncertainly. Mr. Headley burst out in delight.
“There you are. Did you see? Did you see the way she did it? Started with an open palm and closed the fingers one by one. Ever seen a Chinese do that? Of course not. They count like the English, starting with a closed fist. Japanese!” he diagnosed triumphantly.
Sabby’s expression was shamefaced; she thought for a second that she was going to be thrown out of the house. She began to apologise for the deception in the name, until Mr. Headley held up a silencing hand.
“Not a bit of it! Very fond of Japan; been there myself and made a lot of friends. Don’t need to hide your name, though. We’re glad to have you. Not a war of nations, is it? War of ideas. You’ve got our ideas. That’s fine. Not always perfect by any means; but not so bad, eh?”
“I told you I was bringing a Japanese,” I said.
“That’s right, you said schoolmistress though.”
“I am schoolmistress,’’ Sabby said.
“Nonsense. You a schoolmistress? Wouldn’t mind being at your school.”
During dinner Mr. Headley talked about Japan. He let off explosive questions at Sabby.
“What are your politics?”
“I really haven’t got any,” Sabby said. “I suppose it seems silly. I don’t think I understand politics.”
“Why should you? Don’t understand them myself. But you have feelings?”
“I think if only everybody could be nice to one another—if only they weren’t so selfish . . .”
“That’s it! Doesn’t matter if you can’t read or write so long as you know that. Bad people, bad world. Good people—and everything solves itself. Think of India. I’ve no idea what the political solution is. Nor have you. Damn tricky. The trouble is the attitude—my attitude, your attitude. A week after I arrived here I bought a bicycle. Peddled off down the road and almost bowled over an Indian; don’t know whether it was his fault or mine, probably both. Do you know what I nearly said?”
We shook our heads.
“You’d never guess. I’m a missionary. Rum kind of missionary you may think, but that’s what I am. And what I darn nearly said was, ‘Get out of the way, you black so-and-so!’; words were on my lips. No idea where I picked them up; probably overheard someone once. ‘You black so-and-so!’ I nearly said. Well it was a good thing I didn’t say it. Because once you say that kind of thing, you’re done for. You find it’s the easiest thing in the world. Fellow doesn’t hit back. Makes you feel a little bit bigger, and for that matter it makes him a little bit more of a so-and-so. And it solves the whole problem—it was his fault. It would have served him right if he’d been run over. Just saying something like that begins to create an attitude. Words. You’ve no idea what words can do to you. Don’t be too eloquent. You may fool other people; but you’ll certainly fool yourself. This young woman’s got the idea; I can see it all right in her eyes. Wonderful eyes. They tell everything. Don’t try and express things in words. Be yourself.”
“That’s not always easy,” I said. “You can get wrong ideas about yourself just as you can about other people.’’
“Naturally—you’re a youngster. Just go on living. You’ll find out about yourself in time. Get some surprises. And disappointments. Wonderful what there is in life. I tried to write a book about it once—about life. Words, words. What’s the use of it? Life is smells and pain and hopes and regrets, and winding up your watch and pumping insulin into your thigh. Don’t worry. Just go and live.”
Later, as we were walking back to the hotel beneath the deep blue canopy of the night sky, Sabby said:
“I like Mr. Headley, he is so gruff, and then you discover it is not gruffness at all. It is a pity that she died.”
“That who died?”
“Oh, he did not say, did he? I think it must have been his wife, or else the girl that he loved very much indeed.”
“I didn’t hear him mention it.”
“He didn’t say anything, but you can tell. You can tell that she meant everything to him. But please, what does he mean when he says that you must live? I don’t see how you can help living unless you are dead.”
“You can be dead and alive at the same time; it’s even an expression in English. You can be dead to everything that goes on—dead to beauty, and to ugliness, too; you can be dead to all the little subtleties of experience, just as you can be numbed by cocaine in the dentist’s chair.”
“Perhaps it is sometimes a good thing to be dead. It would be good to be dead to suffering.”
“It works both ways. You can’t be dead to suffering without being dead to happiness, too.”
“Oh dear.”
“But why do you always have to think of suffering?” I said. “What are you going to suffer, darling?”
She did not say anything. She clung more tightly, more dependently, on to my arm, as she might
have done if there had been a cobra in our path.
“That is the child in you,” I said. “You have never got rid of the fear that there is a dreadful supernatural thing in the corner of the nursery.”
“Yes, that is it. I shall not be child any more. I shall be grown-up.”
We walked on silently. The air was warm, a soft night air. The deepening blue of the sky overhead was faintly dusty with stars. And suddenly I began to wonder: Is it Sabby who is grown-up already, and I who am the child? The child who plays at being big and important and protective . . . until something frightening happens and then it runs away in tears?
Chapter Three
(1)
About a week later I ran into Mr. Headley in Marine Drive.
“I meant to ask you about yogis,” I said. “I’d like to know about them. I’d like to know something about spiritual Indian.”
He laughed. He only had a few teeth, but he looked very merry when he laughed.
“When you go to heaven,” he said, “you’ll buttonhole St. Peter at the gate and say, ‘Look here, St. Peter, tell me all about angels.’ As though he could put you au fait with the subject with a few brief sentences.”
“But one must know something about these things. When we go home, everyone will ask about them. I’d like to see a yogi. Just one.”
“I expect that could be arranged.”
“I know you have all these things at your finger-tips,” I said.
“No, I’ve never met a yogi. But I can put you in touch with a connoisseur. Go and see Scaife. Eastern Empire Bank man. An expert. Say I sent you.”
I remembered that it was Scaife who was supposed to be looking after Sabby’s interests in India, and when I saw Sabby again I asked her to take me to see him. I explained about the yogis.
“Oh, darling,” she said. “I don’t want to take you. Please don’t let’s go.”
“But aren’t I presentable?”
“It isn’t that.”
“You needn’t tell him all about us. You can just say I’m a student. An exceptional student bent upon discovering the secrets of the East.”
“Please, I don’t want to go.”
“But why not?”
“I don’t like him,” she said sadly and with shame, as though confessing to a sin. “He is very queer. I don’t want to meet him.”
“In that case it doesn’t matter.”
“You see, it is true, I am selfish. Poor darling, you would like to know about yogi, and I am not trying to help you.”
“You don’t mind if I go and see him alone?”
“Of course I don’t. It is so stupid of me. Please go and enjoy yourself, darling, and find out about yogi.”
I went on the following day. I went to the bank, and sent in a slip to Mr. Scaife to say that I should like to see him on personal business. I was kept waiting for ten minutes, and then a Major came out of his office and the chaprassi waved me in. Scaife sat behind a massive, highly polished desk. Everything in the room was polished, and it was a big, airy room with two fans swirling from the ceiling. A secretary sat typing on a noiseless machine, facing the wall.
I remembered Scaife’s face, for I had seen him with Sabby that night in the Yacht Club. I remembered that he did not look like a bank manager; though in the East it is less easy to judge an occupation by an appearance, because the social life has a greater moulding influence than the office files, or the chemicals, or the mining machinery, or whatever is one’s stock-in-trade. He wore horn-rimmed spectacles, which lessened the effect of his broad forehead, but because they were so large his mouth looked tight and small. He might have been a scholar; and, in fact, I found out that he was something of the kind—an intellectual who had taken the wrong road at the beginning, being directed by his parents to a place behind the grille of an English bank. And then when he had woken up to find that he had been already five years counting notes and checking ledgers, he had only had sufficient courage to compromise with circumstances—to take half a new life out East, with the other half still given to drudgery he hated. Nevertheless, I believe he was a good manager. He despised the work and, despising, conquered it. He did not care for spit and polish, but his room was like an operating theatre. He was like someone who disliked football but, dragged into a game, plays with an energy and ferocity unequalled by the devotees. I told him Mr. Headley had sent me. I was interested to learn something about yogis and fakirs and maharishees—a rather casual interest, but I should be glad of his help.
He would gladly assist me, he said. He leaned back in his chair and opened his mouth and looked at the ceiling. The tips of his fingers were together. I wondered if this was a yoga attitude of meditation; but it was only that he was pleased for a moment to forget the business of the Empire and turn his thoughts to something else. Yes, he said, looking down again, he could arrange something for me. He would ask Mr. Munshi to meet me, and Mr. Munshi would be a willing guide. What about supper? An early supper—say seven. I could manage it? Good.
I went to the Mayfair to tell Sabby. It was the first time since I had come out of the hospital that we had not had dinner together, and now, having accepted Scaife’s invitation, I felt reluctant to go. Imagining an evening with Sabby, I visualised a happy instant that would no sooner have come than gone; but this evening seemed to stretch before me like a sweep of desert, without oases, that I wondered how I could bring myself to cross. Nevertheless, I was glad I had accepted. I told myself it was good to break the habit of being with Sabby, to go without the drug once in a while to prove that it could be done.
But I did not like telling her. I knew what she would say and how she would look.
“That is lovely for you!” she said brightly. “You are going to see just what you want, lots and lots of yogi.” Even her eyes were bright; but it was not a real brightness. I did not want it to be. If she had not been at all sorry that I was going away, I should have been more unhappy than I was because I had made her a little sad. And then she said quickly, to cover up anything that I might detect as reproach, “Darling, what is yogi?”
“I will tell you tonight. Or else you could come, too, and find out.”
“But it is Scaife.”
“I don’t know why you dislike him so much.”
She shrugged.
“Oh,” she said. “I don’t understand him. He is funny. Perhaps it is because he likes yogi. Please, don’t go and care for yogi so much that you are like Mr. Scaife.”
“Are you afraid that I shall?”
“Perhaps that is it,” she said, and she sniffed in the pathetic, humorous way that made me feel so big and protective and loving, and that made the evening seem blanker still. But I kissed her and went, and if leaving her left a hole in me, it also made me think I was being strong-willed and sensible. I might have been resolving to renounce her for ever.
Mr. Scaife’s house was a fine porticoed building on Malabar Hill—the arm of land that forms one side of the bay and is the exclusive suburb of the town. As my ghari went up the drive I saw Mr. Scaife through a window. He also saw me. But he did not come out; a servant came out, and I stood on the doorstep while my presence was announced. After a minute he appeared.
“Ah!’’ he said. “You have arrived.” He led the way into the lounge. “Mr. Munshi—Mr. Quinn.”
I shook a soft, good-humoured hand.
“Dis is a pleasure,” Mr. Munshi said. His round, fat face was full of well-fed smiles. “I am so pleased we are meeting.”
We sat down. Mr. Scaife waved a hand. The servant brought whisky and began to pour it out. He did not make a sound. We indicated our needs mutely. Mr. Munshi took only lemonade, holding up a flabby finger to indicate the amount. He sat on the edge of a chair, and I could see his brown legs beneath his dhoti, and his sandled feet turned outwards. He looked as though he was very used to feeling out of place in a drawing-room
on Malabar Hill. Mr. Scaife held a cigar in his teeth passively. The lenses of his horn-rimmed spectacles were thick, and behind them his eyes floated like something seen through the glass of an aquarium. In the office I had not noticed his eyes; perhaps they were his business eyes for studying balances. These were curious, off—duty, detached eyes, for reading the books on the shelf at his elbow—a handsome collection of books whose vellum and leather binding spoke of first editions and recondite subjects.
The servant moved silently into a shadowy part of the room and hovered there.
Mr. Scaife gazed at nothing.
“To de host I drink good health,” said Mr. Munshi.
“Ah!” When he said “Ah!” Mr. Scaife opened his mouth like a fish and looked at the ceiling. He lowered his gaze to me. “Mr. Munshi has kindly consented to show us something interesting tonight.”
The Indian grinned self-deprecatingly. He lowered his head and looked at his hands.
“I hope you will find dat it is so. I hope so very much.”
“It is very good of you,” I said.
“Please do not make mention of it. It is so rare dat de visitors to dis country are interested in de spiritual India. But I have not de same knowledge as Mr. Scaife. He has a fine knowledge of dese things. He has taken much time to study.”
“Alas,” Mr. Scaife said, “only study by halves. A dangerous thing, very dangerous. Now, if you don’t mind, we shall start supper. Best to get off early, don’t you think, Munshi?”
(2)
We took a taxi. It was a huge car with a tattered hood and no side-screens, and the three of us sat in the back. Mr. Scaife on one side of me was thin and bony; and on the other side I could feel the ample flesh of Mr. Munshi bouncing comfortably with the motion of the car. He kept his hands folded in his lap. There was still the smile on his face which broadened for a moment whenever we went over a pot-hole or swerved to avoid a pedestrian, and then resumed its normal dimensions.
“Where are you taking us, Munshi?”
“I dink we might pay a visit to Lala Vikrana.”
The Wind Cannot Read Page 12
