The Seed Collectors

by Scarlett Thomas

  ‘What! How long were you there?’

  ‘Ten years, give or take. That was how long it took the next anthropologist – dear old Professor David May – to hear the rumours, charter a helicopter, find the right island. By then of course I was indistinguishable from the other Lost People. When I spoke to him in English David May just assumed the language had been passed down from a missionary or something. But there were never any missionaries there. You literally couldn’t get there without a helicopter. Anyway, David insisted I travel back to London with him, although at that point I think I’d resigned myself to remaining on the island forever. I went back to Namaste House and told Oleander what had happened. Briar Rose – your mother – and Quinn and Plum Hunter were very interested in my story. They had started calling themselves ethno-botanists by then – basically drug hunters. And they were into the whole rave scene and the 1988 Summer of Love which meant drugs for pleasure, not finding a cure for cancer or anything like that . . . Oleander became interested as well. She wanted stuff for her retreats.’

  ‘But what was it like there? On this island for ten years? Did you go mad?’

  Ina shrugs. ‘It’s almost impossible to describe. I did end up considering it my home but I’m not sure I’d go back. The first year was hard. Sex rituals. Psychedelics that left you feeling upside down for days afterwards. But the main thing was the plants; the island was full of plants that did impossible things. The seed pods that you inherited – they came from the island. You know what they do?’

  ‘They kill you instantly but you get enlightened as well?’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. And of course enlightenment means being free of the cycle of birth and death, so although you die, this is a final death. This death releases you from the universe.’

  Skye shudders. ‘I’m not sure I’d want to be released from the universe . . .’

  ‘The pain, apparently, is worse than anything you could ever imagine. But then you are free.’

  ‘To do what exactly?’

  ‘Perhaps you get to go back to the creator. Experience ultimate peace and harmony. Lose the ego forever. Anyway, we’ll come to that. There was another plant that a particular shaman used to threaten me with. He liked orgies and, well, I was different from the tribeswomen, and he and his friends particularly liked to have orgies with me. One night I refused, and he said he’d make me, and I said he could kill me, and he said he could really kill me, and I said I knew all about the seed pods and the final death and I didn’t think it sounded that bad. It definitely sounded better than what he and his friends had in mind. Then he led me to his garden and showed me a tall plant with a pale blue flower. That, he said, is the plant with which I will poison you if you do not do this. He then explained what it does. If the seed pods free you from the illusion, then this blue-flowered plant keeps you trapped in it forever. Imagine that. But worse, each death you suffer takes you further from enlightenment. Just like with the seed pods, the plant is toxic and you die. But when you are reincarnated you come back in a worse state than before. Every life you have is more painful and abject than the last one. Eventually you become a wild animal, then a caged animal, then a farm animal, then a lab animal. Then a fish, a shellfish, a barnacle that someone steps on while clambering over rocks that are the only home you now remember. Eventually you come back as the very plant that did this to you in the first place, with no soul left at all.’

  ‘Did you believe him?’

  ‘Oh yes.’

  ‘But isn’t this all just a load of . . .’

  Ina shakes her head. ‘It’s complicated,’ she says. ‘But it is real.’

  ‘What do you get if you cross Bambi with a ghost?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Bamboo!’

  ‘I totally don’t get it.’

  ‘So what did my mother and Quinn and Plum and the others want from the island? It sounds awful. I mean, the plants don’t sound like plants anyone would want to have. I mean, that is where they went? Or . . . ?’

  ‘That is where they went. They were annoyed that all I brought back with me from the island was The Book. The shaman who liked the orgies mellowed over time. He enchanted it for me as a gift before I left. I read it on the plane and then gave it to Oleander. But the others wanted the plants. There was a theory that you could make the seed pods safe and get the enlightenment effect – temporarily – without dying. Your mother wanted to create a kind of religion pill, the ultimate drug.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Well, that’s the bit they never found out.’

  ‘And why India?’

  ‘Because none of the Lost People would tell your mother how to make the pods safe. They had given her a taste of a liquid, apparently made from seed pods steeped in a secret ingredient. The effects of this liquid were so staggeringly wonderful that she – and the others – became determined to find out what the ingredient was. Ketki’s sister was a famous herbalist in Cochin, and so Oleander arranged that your mother and the others would take samples to her and see what she made of the whole thing. Whatever she did, did not work and she died, along with her husband. Briar Rose, Quinn, Plum and Grace left pretty quick after that, as you would imagine. Pi was brought to the UK so he wouldn’t be able to function as a witness. It was a horrible, horrible time. On the other hand it was clear why people were going crazy over the seed pods and this liquid.’

  ‘And this Book. It’s this one here?’

  ‘Yes. Oleander gave it back to me to keep for you.’

  ‘And it supposedly changes from one thing to another and . . .’

  ‘I’m surprised you never knew about it. You must have heard Oleander talking about The Book?’

  Fleur screws up her face. ‘The whole thing with the Prophet . . . ?’

  ‘That’s right. He stole the book, became enlightened and then, being enlightened, brought it back and started working for Oleander for free.’

  ‘The Prophet is enlightened?’

  ‘Well, sort of. He’s a complex case. Anyway . . .’

  ‘So this Book thing is real?’

  ‘Everything is real.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘In the illusion, anything can be real if you want it to be – or even sometimes if you don’t. That’s what I’ve learned. I have also learned that the more complicated and strange and knotty the illusion seems to be – for example what you believe to be a law of your universe being broken or violated without any real consequence – then the closer you are.’

  ‘The closer to what?’

  ‘To it all loosening up. Unravelling. Enlightenment. Leaving the cycle of birth and death. Going home.’

  At the word ‘home’ something odd inside Fleur tingles, fizzes and is then gone. This is all really fucking . . .

  ‘So you can get enlightened with these seed pods, which is why everyone wants them, but you have to die too unless you have this mysterious liquid, which is a bit of a leap of faith, or . . .’

  ‘Or The Book, right?’ says Skye. ‘It sounds like you can get enlightened with The Book too?’

  ‘That’s right,’ says Ina. ‘The Book becomes whatever you need it to be to find enlightenment your own way. It’s not instant. In fact, it’s usually bloody hard. The Upanishads and the Bhagavad Gita are beautiful and sacred texts, but their basic instruction is to meditate through several lifetimes. And have you ever tried to read A Course in Miracles? It makes no sense. No sense at all. It takes years to study it. Years of undoing the brainwashing of the illusion. Years of re-educating yourself to basically look, act and think like a lunatic.’ Ina picks up the blue hardback and touches the edges of its pages. ‘The main part of the book is a more or less impenetrable text that sounds like Sunday School with a hangover, full of stuff about Jesus and the ego, followed by a “Workbook for Students” which you take a year to go through. The first lesson? You have to sit in a room and repeat the words “Nothing I see in this room means anything”. And then you have to go around the room
finding things and repeating “This table does not mean anything”, “This chair does not mean anything”, and so on. The Book used to turn into herbal manuals, great novels, books of poetry. It used to be the Upanishads quite regularly. I believe it spent a year with a friend of the Prophet’s as The Master and Margarita. When I first read it, it was a strange memoir about a lost martial art. But apart from its brief spell as a notebook – which at least brought you here – for the last few years it seems to have wanted to be A Course in Miracles. Regardless of who it belongs to.’

  ‘So, as usual it turns out that enlightenment is basically impossible,’ says Fleur.

  ‘Oh, it can be quite easy if you want it to be,’ says Ina.

  ‘What, like in those Buddhist stories where some old woman whacks you over the head with a poker and you suddenly see the light?’

  ‘Kind of. Or there is another way . . .’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘But it involves the seed pods.’

  ‘What did the deer say after he left the gay bar?’

  ‘Who knew there were so many deer jokes?’

  ‘No, that is not what he said . . .’

  ‘And this one sounds particularly unsuitable.’

  ‘Shut up, Mummy. What did he say?’

  ‘I can’t believe I just blew fifty bucks back there. Ha ha!’

  ‘Uncle Charlie, that sounds kind of disgusting, but you’re going to have to explain it.’

  ‘Good God, Charlie.’

  ‘What plant are the seed pods from exactly?’

  ‘You don’t even know that? I thought you were more or less running a factory down there.’

  ‘The Prophet does all that. I try not to know much about it. Are they orchids of some sort?’

  ‘Have you seen the flowers?’

  ‘No. Well, yes, but not in the way I think you mean. I’ve heard the myth, but these flowers aren’t exactly . . .’

  ‘This is what you were all talking about at the funeral,’ Skye says.

  ‘What myth?’ asks Ina.

  ‘You know. About the flowers being in the shape of religious icons. Images of Jesus, the Buddha, a cross . . . My mother told me about them once when she was stoned, before she disappeared. She said I had to look out for these flowers, watch out for them . . . Of course I’ve seen the plants around the place. The Prophet’s so good at growing them that they are everywhere. I think we’ve even got a couple in one of the treatment rooms. They basically look like orchids you’d buy in Sainsbury’s.’

  ‘And the pods are just like vanilla pods, right?’

  ‘Clem Gardener’s growing plants from her seed pod to see what they are. I think she’s making some kind of documentary about it. Charlie Gardener has already had his identified at Kew. It’s either vanilla or doesn’t exist. They weren’t sure.’

  ‘Clem’s growing plants from the pod she inherited?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Interesting.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Do you know how the pods you inherited are different from the ones the Prophet grows, or that Clem is now growing?’

  Fleur shakes her head. ‘No.’

  ‘Are they from the actual Lost Island?’ Skye asks.

  ‘Yep,’ says Ina. ‘They are. They are much, much more potent.’

  ‘And what do you get when you cross a bear with a deer?’

  ‘Er, let me guess, Uncle Charlie. Maybe a BEER?’

  ‘You are too clever.’

  ‘Do you know what a mimic orchid is?’

  Fleur thinks. ‘The ones that look like bees?’

  ‘Yes, exactly. But there are lots of others. A number of orchid species mimic things. The bee orchid is in the Ophrys genus, where all the flowers mimic insects. There’s also the Dracula genus, which contains orchids with flowers that resemble vampires, monkeys, even mushrooms. This is all pretty easy to understand. The flowers want to be pollinated and so they fool insects into landing on them, one way or another. But our orchid, the lost orchid . . .’

  ‘It pretends to be religious icons because . . .’

  ‘Because religious icons attract people who want to be enlightened. And it promises enlightenment, of course, just with this unfortunate side-effect that you die. You see a flower that looks like Jesus. Of course you will want to taste its fruit so you pollinate it, which is what it wants – the lost orchid only has human pollinators . . .’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘It relies on humans to pollinate it. You see a flower that looks like Ganesh or the Virgin Mary and you touch it, you learn what it does, you make it fruit, you eat it, you probably die. And the seeds are buried with you. But before that, in a final strange twist, the lost orchid mimics one last thing.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘If you are destined to eat the fruit of the plant and die – whether this is in the next five minutes or the next thousand years – the lost orchid flower begins to look like . . . Well, it starts to look just like you.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘Seriously.’

  ‘And this isn’t just a load of . . .’

  ‘No.’

  ‘OK, then. Bears. You’ll like this one. This is a good one. More of a life story than a joke.’

  ‘Yeah, whatever.’

  ‘OK, well, two guys are camping in the forest in Canada or something. Somewhere there are bears.’

  ‘Are there bears in Scotland?’

  ‘No. Anyway, these two guys have just fallen asleep when they are woken by grunting and shuffling sounds. It’s a big grizzly, looking for food.’

  ‘Do grizzly bears eat people?’

  ‘Yep. So there is food, but the food is in the tent and has just woken up and . . .’

  ‘Charlie, this is a bit gruesome just before bed . . .’

  ‘And one guy peeks out of the tent, kind of gulps, and says to the other, “Do you think you can outrun a grizzly?” And the other guy says, “I don’t have to outrun a grizzly. I only have to outrun you.” Think about it . . .’

  ‘Here.’

  It’s the following day and everything has gone strange, just like when they went to Sylvia’s, with the doilies and the pink wafers. Rain pounds the windows. Fleur feels more hungover than she should after just a few small nips of whisky the night before. Ina passes a photo album to her. Who has photo albums these days? And this one seems particularly cheap: the cover is imitation maroon leather, cracked in places. Inside are prints that look like bad photocopies, each one stuffed loosely inside its crackly plastic wrapper.

  ‘What am I looking for?’ Fleur says.

  ‘Just look, and you will see.’

  ‘I’m seeing some flowers,’ Skye says, ‘but . . .’

  ‘You can’t see . . . the crucifixion? Ganesh? Shiva as the cosmic dancer?’

  Again Fleur and Skye exchange a look. Yes, OK, one of the flowers does look a bit like a crucifixion. A crucifixion created by a ten-year-old on Photoshop. And the Ganesh flower is ridiculous. A pinkish, orangey blur with a peculiar trunk coming out of it, again looking as if it has been airbrushed on. Shiva is a blue orchid with limb-like petals that make it look more like a common clematis than a cosmic dancer. Fleur feels hollow, suddenly. Everything she has learned here swirls like dirty water around a plughole and is gone. All at once she feels a deep and bitter hunger for something she knows does not exist. It is as if she has turned up to the biggest banquet in the world to find only bread and water. This whole thing is a joke. And it’s not even funny. Are these pictures just projections of what she really thinks of all this? Or is this whole thing just utterly stupid? Fleur feels tired. Tired of this life, of all the others, and of this bloody universe, whatever the hell it actually is. She just wants to go home.

  ‘You’re not seeing it,’ Ina says. ‘The illusion is blocking it. You have to be able to see through the illusion. You have to learn, somehow.’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Would you want to see it, if there was some way . . .’
r />   Fleur shrugs. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘I want to see it,’ says Skye.

  ‘I just don’t think I’m actually very good at sex. Sorry.’

  ‘But what about your husband? I mean . . . ?’

  ‘We just got into the habit of not doing it. It’s been a relief. And, oh God, this is going to sound horrible, but he is just so grateful to even see me naked that just lying still and moaning a bit made me an amazing lover in his eyes. I mean, if I gave him a blow job he’d be happy for months. But with you? I realise I’m lacking in skills. I am really sorry. I think I’m actually a bit lazy. A bit heterosexual probably. I just want to lie back and let you be the guy.’

  ‘That is so not how it works.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Go down on me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Go down on me.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘If you want a really good time, go into a church.’

  ‘Right . . .’

  They are still sitting at Ina’s kitchen table. Somehow another day has passed. The rain has stopped. Moonlight is shining on the copper pans Ina has hanging above her range. The smell of peat is there, as always. The photo albums are back on the shelf. On the table is a small medicine bottle containing a clear liquid. This is the last bottle, Ina has been explaining. This is the substance that Briar Rose was trying to re-create. This is what everyone died for.

  ‘And you say it’s simply the result of steeping a seed pod in . . .’

  ‘Yes, in the tears of one of the Enlightened Ones.’

  ‘A Lost Islander?’

  Ina shakes her head. ‘Anyone who is enlightened will do.’

  ‘What, like the Prophet?’

  ‘Maybe someone a bit more enlightened than the Prophet.’

  ‘Do enlightened people cry very much?’