Cedilla

by Adam Mars-Jones

Perhaps there was something subtler involved in the whole elliptical-motto business than I noticed at the time. It’s rather suggestive: if even the motto of the place doesn’t make sense unless you supply what’s missing, then perhaps this is a sort of manifesto for the education being offered, where nothing will be served up on a plate. Nothing in fact can happen until you throw yourself into the void. More things than verbs can be ‘understood’ even when they’re not there.

  Bit late to understand that now! It wasn’t that I was expecting to be spoon-fed even at the time, in fact that was just what I didn’t want. And I was unusual as a freshman in that I had actually spent time in (theoretically) educational institutions where some of my fellow pupils had very much needed to be spoon-fed, helped to masticate and swallow.

  I didn’t need a welcoming committee, but I wouldn’t have minded a welcome. No doubt this is an impossibly subtle distinction, and I was just being difficult.

  If you encounter difficulties for long enough, you become ‘difficult’ yourself. Karma-particles migrate from situations to the persons who find themselves in them, and before long people are saying, ‘John’s a terrific character, of course … but he can sometimes be rather hard work, don’t you find?’ I hadn’t yet found the means to reverse the current, to install myself at a hub of radiant ease.

  The first Saturday of term found me at a real loose end. I had great difficulty filling my time. Suddenly I was overwhelmed by a feeling of confinement far more intense than I had ever experienced during the years when I was kept in bed. Entrapment clamped its lid down on me and sucked out all the air. Time crashed down on me in a tidal wave of stone. I would be struggling in this room – with this room – for a little eternity.

  According to Hindu cosmology we live in the Kali Yuga, a Dark Age many thousands of years long. I had absorbed this as an outlying part of my faith, but now I began to experience it as real.

  During the Bathford years of bed rest I was isolated by a body that was turning against itself, and by doctors’ orders that banned any sort of adventure – but now some more obscure force was holding me under, so that I experienced my liberty as house arrest.

  At that moment there came into my mind a strangely soothing set of injunctions: You need not leave your room. Remain sitting at your table and listen. You need not even listen, simply wait, just learn to become quiet, and still, and solitary. The world will freely offer itself to you to be unmasked. It has no choice. It will roll in ecstasy at your feet.

  It sounded like Ramana Maharshi’s voice murmuring in my ear. The only thing was, I had read it and been struck by it before I had read a word of his, before I had even heard of him. It was actually Kafka, a favourite writer of Eckstein’s and someone he was always quoting to baffled students at Burnham Grammar School. He had written it on the blackboard, that sentence about the world rolling in ecstasy at your feet. He knew how to get me intrigued.

  Now, though, established as a student of German and Spanish at an ancient university, I gave the passage a fresh mental reading. It didn’t sound like Kafka at all, however well attested. It sounded like the opposite of Kafka, who was so attuned to the negative. That’s why it sounded like Ramana Maharshi, who was as far from Kafka in temperament and background as it was possible to be. Here was Kafka, of all people, preaching on a text of Ramana Maharshi, and expounding the liberating principle that you don’t have to change your life to change your life.

  Kafka’s wooden head

  Was it really Kafka, though? I mean, I know that passage is by Kafka now, but was it by Kafka before Eckstein wrote it on a school blackboard in 1968? Perhaps Ramana Maharshi had reached across time and space to send me a message of encouragement. It would be very much in his character as a worker of miracles to manage something so discreet, something which blended into its mundane surroundings. A miracle in camouflage. No commandments in skywriting for Ramana Maharshi, no burning bush, just a nudge of Eckstein’s chalk. Divine intervention as sly and cryptic as the crossword clues (not for idiots) which I could never manage to crack. ‘Gangster ducks five hundred and fifty in the general buzz (7)’. Answer: hoodlum, apparently. Please explain.

  The question that always gets asked in such circumstances is this: how do you get the nerve to think you’re worthy of a miracle, however low-key? Over time I’ve learned to give myself the answer: where would I get the nerve to think I’m not?

  I remembered the saying of Ramana Maharshi, which Ganesh had quoted to me in India. He who is in the jaws of the tiger cannot be rescued; so also a person who has fallen into the grace of a guru cannot escape from it … Grace is a serious business. So, yes. Perhaps Ramana Maharshi turned ventriloquist on my behalf, and made comforting words emerge from Kafka’s wooden head.

  In any case I decided I would take the hint, whether it was transmitted from an æthereal or mundane source. I would make the experiment. I would stay in my room and see what happened. After lunch I installed myself in the Parker-Knoll, but then I mounted an expedition to the door, which I opened and left open. Nothing had been said by Ramana Maharshi / Kafka about the door, but it seemed sensible to give the world some encouragement in its unmasking of itself. Then I returned to my chair.

  Every few minutes someone passed my door, but no one came in. Few even glanced inside. Perhaps I hadn’t learned to be properly quiet and still.

  The next day, Sunday, I left the door open all day. I was baffled by the lack of interest shown by my staircase-mates. If I myself had been free to wander at will round a building, really free, I would have investigated everything just as thoroughly as I could, but clearly I was an exception in this respect. I could only think that curiosity declines proportionately with ease of access. People to whom doors had yawned open all their lives seemed to take no interest in what lay in front of their eyes.

  I fought the urge to get in the car and explore my surroundings in that way, but my mobility was more apparent than real. Either the wheelchair stayed where it was, in A6 Kenny, or it came with me in the car – in which case it needed firstly to be installed there, and then to be unfolded and put at my disposal when I had arrived wherever it was that I was actually going. The smallest trip had to be planned like a military campaign. I stayed in, waiting for the world to make its move. There was space for it, just, to roll in ecstasy in front of the Parker-Knoll. If need be I would pull the lever and lift my legs out of the way, to make sure the world had enough room to disport itself.

  Finally on Sunday afternoon there came a shy tap on the open door. It was a student with creamy skin and pale splotched freckles. He looked deeply into my eyes. That’s such a rare thing that it can be very stirring when it happens. His own eyes were very green.

  Perhaps I really hadn’t seen such colouring since my brief glimpse of one of the ambulance men who accompanied me from my Bathford home to the train that took me to CRX. Since then it had reverberated in my mind, steadily acquiring a sexual overtone, but this newcomer somehow didn’t prompt sexual thoughts. He wasn’t exactly beautiful, but his looks had the unreal quality that often goes with beauty. He asked if he could sit with me a bit. I said he should suit himself, and we exchanged names. His was Colin Moulton. He lived on B staircase.

  Small talk could get us only so far. When he had said, ‘What are you reading?’ and I had said Languages, and I had asked him back (he was an engineer), there was nowhere much to go conversationally. There was no point in pretending that these disciplines reached out strong hands of greeting to each other.

  We sat in silence, which I found very soothing. The world might not be rolling on the dishonoured carpet just yet, but it was sitting with me in companionable silence. Finally Colin asked, ‘Shall we pray together?’ It turned out that this visitor wasn’t an answer to prayer after all – he was a summons to it instead. And with that the whole event went prayer-shaped.

  Foolishly I avoided conflict by saying that my body did not permit kneeling, instead of coming out honestly with ‘Not today, thank you.’ A
s a result I received a long lecture on the unimportance of physical posture since God knew what was in my heart. I was exasperated to be proselytised by someone who only lived on the next staircase – I know I can be a bit fussy about mobility and its obligations, but does it really count as missionary work if you’re still under the same roof as when you started out?

  Fat drops of grace upon his tongue

  I couldn’t help noticing, all the same, that Colin Moulton wasn’t as sure of himself as a man who intends to make converts needs to be. He didn’t use set prayers, and this may have been a matter of pride with his sect, to speak to God without a script, but he fumbled badly in his choice of words. ‘God, whose eye is on the sparrow and the hawk, God who heareth the lion and the lamb … we thy unworthy …’ His voice trailed away. He had none of the professionalism I remembered from the travelling Billy Graham spectacular I had attended as a teenager, where the acolytes had the brimstone verses ready marked up in red. He was making it up as he went along, and eloquence wasn’t raining down in fat drops of grace upon his tongue.

  In the matter of kneeling, though, he took unilateral action, dropping to his knees with an audible impact. This made a pious thud. He started off kneeling parallel to me in my Parker-Knoll, but from this position it hardly looked as if he was leading me in prayer. He edged round until he was facing me, but that was worse. There was no easy answer to the riddle of body language I presented. To an outsider – to anyone passing my open door – it might actually have looked as if he was worshipping me.

  He stood up and placed a hand on my head instead. He must have thought this made a better picture, but still his tongue was tangled. ‘Oh Lord,’ he intoned, with a second-hand cadence, ‘Lord who knowest every secret thought, to whom every sinning heart is as clear as … clear as crystal …’ Then he took his hand off my head and prostrated himself in front of me. This was such an unusual posture that I took a mental photograph, deciding I quite liked it. I was fascinated by his hair, not blond but so pale that it seemed to avoid colour altogether. But Colin was just getting started. Now he was gazing at my ankles as soulfully as he had earlier peered into my eyes. Flat on his belly on the floor, he looked as if he was gathering himself for a holy press-up. ‘Lord, turn these feet …’ he said. ‘Turn these feet … towards Jerusalem …’

  That was when my patience departed, leaving me furiously angry. I did my best to give him a kick, knowing even as my brain formed the command that my legs wouldn’t be up to it. I swung my feet at him. It couldn’t really be called a kick. He felt the breeze from my little lunge, and looked up wide-eyed. For a moment he must have thought that he was detecting the first stirring of a miracle cure.

  This was not the world rolling in ecstasy at my feet, this was someone at least as isolated as I was, taking up space on my floor. It was time to sweep him off my carpet. I told him that I didn’t need converting, that I had plenty of faith of my own, even if it wasn’t the same brand as his.

  He blushed fiercely as he got to his feet, but now he couldn’t look me in the eye. Instead he looked at the wall and blurted out, ‘You’ve got a lot of empty space on that wall – why don’t I brighten it up with a poster?’

  I had so little practice in saying No that I found myself unable to refuse. I’d rejected his religious advances, and it seemed to make sense to give him back a bit of dignity by playing along.

  My nature was not yet steeled against its own obligingness. I didn’t anticipate that the wretch would of course return immediately, carrying not only his gift but also a roll of Sellotape in his mouth. He set about putting his poster up on the wall. ‘You can’t do that!’ I squeaked, but he had already done it. That was even before I saw the message I would be broadcasting: that no one comes to God except through his son Jesus Christ. I’m afraid that’s just the side of the cult I can’t tolerate, that blocking off of avenues. It doesn’t take much of that sort of thing to give me spiritual claustrophobia. But quite apart from religious outrage, there was the matter of adhesive. Colin Moulton had been so busy reading the Bible he had neglected more worldly rule-books, and Downing’s strict ban on the use of Sellotape to fix things to walls.

  ‘You’re only supposed to use Plastitack!’ I shouted. Plastitack – Blu-tack’s anæmic kid brother.

  His skin betrayed him with another blush (I was beginning to see the disadvantages of pale colouring, that octopus-transparency to emotion), but he managed to keep his voice even. ‘That’s not important, is it?’ he said. ‘Not when we’re talking about your immortal soul.’

  Nothing marked him out as a fanatic so much as this attitude to fixtures and fittings. Normally you’d be safe in saying that an English believer, however fervent, would have some respect for the bye-laws. An English Luther would have Plastitacked his 95 theses to the door of Schlosskirche in Wittenberg, out of respect for the varnish and the maintenance staff, and the Reformation would have fallen at the first fence, its founding documents effortlessly binned.

  On his way out Colin Moulton said two things. First that he would pray for me. Well, I couldn’t stop him from doing that. Secondly that his door was always open. That last part was rich. I decided that from then on my door had better not be. I was my own doorkeeper, and now I had better practise being my own bouncer too. The world was welcome to come and roll in ecstasy on my carpet, but from now on it would at least have to knock and identify itself, to give some sort of password.

  Doors are either open or closed (don’t talk to me about that ‘ajar’ nonsense). If doors are open anyone can come in, and if they’re closed they restrict me more than anyone else. Having to choose which way to leave my door seemed to restrict my options to either defencelessness or claustrophobia. Like most people I’m an ambivert, turned both inwards and outwards, but my door couldn’t mimic that double perspective.

  Clearly I was still a sad case of spiritual impatience. I had gone to India and demanded self-realisation double quick, chop chop, shine a light and make it snappy. Now I had set aside a whole weekend for the solitude and stillness which would compel the world to unmask. If the world had rolled at my feet, then the world was a freckled zealot.

  I fumed when I looked at my new wall decoration. A poster of that sort on a student’s wall in 1970 was about as big an attraction as a big cross on the door in a plague year, but I wasn’t thinking of the possible repercussions on my social life. It wasn’t clear that my status could fall any lower as a God-botherer, but I didn’t want to find out. I just wanted it down sharpish.

  Snails in their morning slime

  Colin had cannily put the poster up on the wall beyond my reach. The only way I could get it off the wall was by slipping my stick under the edge and tearing it down in ragged stages, breathing hard with the effort and the anger, and leaving scraps of paper held by stubborn twists of sticky tape.

  Mrs Beddoes tutted with disapproval and removed the remaining scraps and twists of tape on the Monday morning. I would almost have preferred to leave them there to go yellow and brittle, as a reminder of my first lesson at this new palace of learning: it was easier for people at large to get at me than for me to find my way to the company I wanted. Whatever that would turn out to be.

  I’ve always woken up cheerful, without needing to have a particular reason. I’m sure this isn’t an exclusively human privilege – I dare say snails in their morning slime feel much the same thing. I was still far from waking up depressed, but there wasn’t the usual shine on my morning mood.

  Monday, when it came, was better. Some sort of routine could be imposed on a Monday. There had been a brief orientation for freshmen to give us some idea of what was expected of us. There were lectures, for one thing, and it was a source of grief to me that they weren’t compulsory, since that would have organised my life at a stroke. In fact there were too many lectures for any one person (and for once I mean an able-bodied person) to attend. They were listed in a special issue of the University Register, swelling its pages until it amounted to qui
te a little book.

  It was part of university lore that lecturers were paid whether or not anyone turned up to hear them. If they were alone in the room then in theory they were expected to give the lecture just the same. In fact few of them were natural performers, and many would have been relieved to be spared the ordeal of catering to an audience.

  The only compulsory academic activity was the writing of essays for your supervisors. ‘Writing’ at the time really meant writing – making marks by hand on paper. I pecked out my essays, though, on the trusty Smith-Corona. I was making life easier for my supervisors by not submitting anything in my dismal scrawl, but there was no doubt about typing being second best, in the Cambridge way of looking at things. Typing was the province of the subliterate or American.

  In those days supervisors, like pharmacists, prided themselves on their ability to decipher illegible scrawls. If handwriting truly became impossible to make out, a supervisor always had the option of getting you to read your essay aloud. This was also the choice of supervisors who hadn’t found the time to give your prose even a once-over.

  It wasn’t a tightly policed system. As long as you kept your supervisors (and your director of studies) happy, the question of how you worked was left up to you. This was almost an academic version of Ramana Maharshi’s teaching: many ways up the mountain, some steeper than others, all leading to the same peak.

  I, on the other hand, didn’t enjoy having the freedom to construct my own course. I wanted to be roped in with a like-minded group, climbing under escort. I had only been a schoolboy in any real sense for the two years at Burnham, and I wasn’t ready to move on so soon to a more solitary version of the learning process, clambering up above the tree line where the academic air is thin.

  I had wheels galore, what with the wheelchair and the Mini – nine in all, counting the spare in the boot – but mobility was still in short supply. I was snookered on a regular basis. I needed to have the wheelchair in my room, or else I would be reduced to tottering pathetically about. Without it I would have gone arse over apex before the end of the first week. The Parker-Knoll was for special occasions.