As if by Magic

by Angus Wilson

  Elinor turned on him. “Oh! for God’s sake! Who knows what positive etheric waves you’re neutralizing with all that infantile defensive humour?”

  Immediately Alexandra’s spark of reassurance was extinguished. It was exactly in just such hideous suburban bungalows with just such hideous front gardens that lived all the most sinister destroyers of reason—half-charlatans, half-magi—in London suburban terraces and in South-coast sea-side villas, in undistinguished apartment blocks in outlying Paris arrondissements and probably in dreary decayed Spanish-style residences with empty pools in Hollywood. There they sat, the fat ear-ringed medium women, the pale thin clairvoyant men with suave white hair and burning eyes, waiting like half-gorged spiders for specially thinned-up flies like Elinor to walk into the loss of their fortunes (or Thelma’s, or the Senator’s), to the loss of their virginity, of their reason, of their lives. It was all in the horror comics. They had been warned from childhood. And now, to keep Elinor doom company, marched Alexandra Grant straight into the trap.

  How would the cruel silken web appear? Bead curtains, dimmed lamps and burning incense? Or Hindu drums and fearsome masks and mantra scrolls? Or emptiness, a bare cell room to isolate and startle the victim, a sting to paralyze the nerve centres?

  When they came up the steps of the villa and in through the half-open yellow pitch-pine door with ornamental ironwork facings painted in silver, they found themselves on a cheaply tiled floor of the diminutive hall of a diminutive bungalow. Led by their guide, they walked in ungreeted.

  No more than three or four rooms, all little more than large cupboard size, all with doors half-open. That pervasive nose-prickling scent of curry came surely from the kitchen; there was a foot-rest Asian privy where a youth squatted, his dhoti half unwound; in a larger room were six bunks made up for sleeping, and on the floor a plate of orange segments and some liquefying white cheese; in the largest room, another bunk, and, beside it, some chewed-over paperbacks stacked in a pile.

  “That is the room of Sant Sarada Maharysh. When cold winds blow from the Ocean he receives all here.”

  But in the present sweltering heat, it appeared, he received upon the back porch; and, from it, Alexandra could hear a din like a cow bellowing from the pains of over-swollen udders, and against that, some high crowing noise, perhaps a cock’s, and then peals and peals of giggling laughter as from a bus-load of schoolgirls. Wild though the sounds were, they calmed her down, although as a rule she thought uncontrolled laughter rather scary. “A holy woman and her daughter are with the Swami,” they were told. “They are the cause of the cosmic laughter.”

  And, sure enough, as they came out into the sunlight, that dazzled them the more for winking and glittering at them through the thick meat-safe mesh of the old-fashioned mosquito wiring, Alexandra found herself peering straight down the pink slobbery almost toothless open mouth of the holy man himself, as his huge body rolled back and forth on the old motor-car seat on which he was perched cross-legged and helpless with laughter. To her relief he appeared not to notice their arrival and they were led by the guide to a far corner of the large and various circle of people who were seated on the ground a little below the Master’s level. All of him worried her—the huge fiery multi-folded face into the creases of which his little eyes seemed to have disappeared entirely, his bristly pendant jowl, his large bald ostrich-egg head on which some mysterious lost continents had been sketched in patches of scurfy copper-coloured skin, his great, heaving, smooth shoulder, protruding from his shapeless white gown draped like a robe—a monstrous great dowager, or a sergeant-major in drag, and, dangling over the edge of the dark red imitation leather seat, beyond the hem of the white cotton gown, two scrawny hairless legs, two feet as neat and small and shapely as the Little Mam’s.

  In the centre of the circle was a dark-skinned Indian girl with long black matted hair, dressed in some greenish filthy rags that appeared to Alexandra most like a washing-up cloth long due for replacement. She was crowing loudly and scratching the dusty concrete of the veranda floor with her left foot, striking backwards like a hen, so that clouds of minute reddish particles had filled the air. Coughing and suppression of coughing came from all parts of the audience. The Swami, however, was untouched by the dust’s contagion as his mouth opened wider and wider with convulsions of hysteric mirth. Looking at the girl’s sad vacant eyes and her idiotic-looking loosely hanging jaw, Alexandra felt a revulsion from the Swami that was more than the physical disgust with which he had immediately inspired her.

  But even more titillating to the Swami’s glee was an old stout woman, also raggedly dressed, who stood beside the crowing girl. This shapeless creature, all rolls of fat around her vast waist and buttocks, but exposing a pair of the skinniest dugs, had raised her voluminous skirts high up to her huge loins and, squatting, was pissing energetically in turn into the pink and black of a row of half water-melons which, at the Swami’s orders, one of his austere young grey-robed attendants had placed before her.

  Suddenly, in the midst of a bouncing fit of apparently helpless laughter, the old man sat bolt upright and pointed at a thin, white-faced, red-haired European woman in a lemon-coloured sari who sat with an array of expensive groceries before her—her offering to the Master. One of the attendants came forwards and, removing the packets of Ceylon tea, Kenya coffee, marmalade, jam, biscuits, rusks, candied fruits, and pickles, placed them between the crowing girl and the pissing woman. Instantly the two creatures set upon them like hungry beasts, as no doubt they were, but for the half of what they swallowed of coffee-beans and tea-leaves compounded with wrapping-paper and jam, another half they threw wildly into the air or spread upon their faces and bodies. For a while the Swami seemed intent upon the spectacle, but then he grew bored and ordered the removal of the two women who were led out, crowing and moaning.

  The Swami turned to the red-haired woman and gave her what, to Alexandra’s astonishment, truly appeared to be, despite his monstrous face and figure, a gracious smile and a gracious bow. He spoke in English with a very guttural German accent. But his tone and the words he used, she thought, were more like a conventional English vicar.

  “We are very blessed, you and I,” he said, “to give to the simple is to receive the divine scattering of their wits.”

  The words, Alexandra noticed, served, like those of some artful stage manager, to distract attention from the less edifying spectacle of the attendants sweeping up the remains of glass, torn packets, and mess of marmalade stuck with coffee beans, all that was left of the lady’s offering.

  She seemed delighted, however, and was about to answer equally graciously, when a loud squawking rose from the far side of the circle and a boy of twelve or so, with pale greenish-coloured skin and a half-open mouth, suddenly stood above the seated people. Tearing at his tunic collar, he let out a series of shrieks that were choked in his throat before they reached their full note. The Swami listened to them gravely, “as though,” Ned whispered, “he’s trying to measure the inaudible scale of bats.” But when Alexandra, cheered by the joking tone, turned to look at Ned, she saw that he was following the Swami’s looks and movements with intense concentration. Elinor wore an expression of high-born disdain. The boy’s choked crowing stopped as suddenly, and he fell rigid to the ground. The Swami signalled for the body to be brought to his side. Almost as soon as it was laid there, the fit or whatever it was came to an end. With a convulsive heaving of the limbs, an awful high scream came from the boy’s grey open lips, through which his teeth glistened white as pearls set in grisaille. The Swami stretched his arm down and touched the boy’s forehead. Immediately his own fat body began to shiver and his apoplectic face broke out in sweat. The boy’s cries ceased abruptly. He sat up. The Swami smiled and stroked his hand. Then he began to fill the sloppily open mouth with toffees which he unwrapped one by one. And he continued so to feed the boy during the rest of the audience. A murmur of astonished awe ran through the assembly. A Japanese young man in horn-rimmed s
pectacles crouched over Alexandra’s head and took photographs in rapid succession. A group of Indian pilgrims began chanting.

  The Swami stopped all this with a gesture. Pointing at one among a number of pretty, choir-like American youths and girls dressed in cream linen gowns like surplices who were ranged in a row beneath a banner which read “San Francisco Chapparti”, he asked: “What is actionless action?”

  The youth, blushing beneath his crew-cut, said, “I guess it’s sleepless sleep.”

  “You guess. What do you mean you guess? No. Good boy. You are right. And what is thoughtless thought?”

  “Sightless seeing?”

  “Sightless sight,” amended the Swami. “Very good, my dear boy. Now you ask your Swami a question.”

  The youth looked at a loss when confronted by so positive a command, but the girl next to him asked, “Swami, can we young ones also learn the initiate wisdom?”

  The Swami smiled with infinitely tender pity.

  “You will not learn it from the Brahmins,” he said. And suddenly shouting wildly, he pointed now at one Indian and then at another. “No, not from you, who give service to the merry Lord Krishna and yet never laugh. Nor from you who are baptized into the Church of the travelling Lord Francis Xavier and sit like a filthy toad at your fireside.”

  This second, stout, European-dressed Indian gentleman protested, “But Swami! True, I am a Christian Brahmin. But I am not from Goa. I have travelled from Malabar. From the country of Saint Thomas.”

  “More fool you to come away. We want no doubters here.” He turned with elaborate courtesy to the American girl. “Please forgive our Brahmins their manners. Now, I will tell you a thing. There is a God for you also. Ten miles from here is a stream. The name is Pahadavi. The God of that stream is called Cabolim. Give him offering. The people’s gods, not the gods of the Brahmins, these will lead you to the True Wisdom. Among the simple, the divine fools, like those whose blessed presence you have seen here today.”

  “Can’t we learn it from you?”

  “I? I am only a seeker, my poor dear young lady.” He tucked his huge head down as well as he was able into his armpit and simpered. “You are from San Francisco? You are welcome to stay. Welcome in the name of Chapparti, spouse of that merry fellow Vishnu. Please see my secretary.”

  He turned to a group of hippies, some of whom Alexandra recognized from the Colva Beach community. “And you too. But remember—no careless collective living. We are in the age of Smritis now. We have our code of behaviour as well as our Veda.” And he laughed sympathetically. As both groups were filing out, he called after them, “And no Esalen please. No touching, you from California. Do you think you can reach the true cakras by such childish means? My dear, what an absurdity.”

  He shrugged his shoulders with a high giggle. A little appreciative laugh ran through the audience. One of the youths among the Bay area worshippers of Chapparti commented: “That’s the Swami’s famous high camp.”

  Elinor, from the heights of Nob Hill, looked away with contempt.

  With the hippies and the San Francisco devotees gone, the audience was greatly thinned out. Alexandra felt at once more exposed and yet more at home. She shook herself. Whatever happened she must not allow herself to be drawn into this nonsense, perhaps shameful and pernicious nonsense.

  An elderly pale-faced Indian gentleman, exquisitely dressed, with a fur hat and pince-nez—like someone out of Chekhov, Alexandra thought—stood up.

  “Swami, is it true that you predict that with the end of Ramadan there will be some divine sign?”

  The Swami looked intently at the questioner. Smiling to himself, he turned and whispered to one of his attendants. Then, addressing the well-dressed man with great severity, he said: “I think you know very well that God has given his sign once for all in his holy law of the Koran.”

  “I am of Islam. Yes. But I ask what you think, Swami. They say that because Ramadan this year begins on Divah and ends on the day of the procession of Saint Francis Xavier that you draw strange auguries from these conjunctions?”

  “They say. Who say? Look at your diary. The dates are there. I am sure that an important man of affairs like yourself will not be without a diary for his grand arrangements. For centuries your Indian brothers in Islam have set forth for Mecca in all devout simplicity from this very port of Goa and you come here with guileful questions.”

  The Swami’s voice had turned to an angry shout. The man began to protest in his turn, but the Swami would not listen.

  “What of your beautiful mosque that adorns these very shores at Namazyah. Wasn’t that built by your Akbar on his visit here? Akbar, that merry fellow, who loved to give pleasure and smile, and you bring here nothing but anger and suspicion. Go away.”

  There were murmurs from all over the gathering against the Moslem gentleman and he was jostled by his immediate neighbours. Wisely, as Alexandra thought, he withdrew. But as he went the Swami called after him.

  “Come back again tomorrow. But let your heart speak, not your nerves. I like you. They’ll tell you it’s for your money bags, but it isn’t. I like your face.”

  Then he leaned back relaxedly and began to skin and eat a large plantain.

  “Give fruit all round,” he ordered, belching. As the attendants went round with baskets of oranges and bananas, he said, giggling slyly, “Any more trap questions for the poor silly old Swami? No?” A plump, spectacled elderly European held up his hand. “Well?”

  “Was können wir hoffen, von dem weisen Hermes Trismesgistus zu lernen?”

  The Swami burst into delighted laughter and clapped his hands. He answered in German in a mocking childish falsetto. Then he translated, “This gentleman asks what we can hope to learn from that great learned man Hermes Trismegistus. I tell him I hope to learn nothing, for Hermes Trismegistus never existed. Er hat nie existiert, wissen sie das nicht?” he shouted. “My friend, I will tell you a thing. No, better, I will show you a thing.” He gave some orders to an attendant who returned with a long loaf of bread and a paperback book from the house. The Swami broke open the loaf, smelt it, felt it. “Stale, dry,” he said. Then he showed the cover of the paperback to the semicircle before him. It read The Mysteries of Paris. By Eugène Sue. The Swami irritably tore out a leaf from the book and, putting it between the two halves of the opened loaf, made a sandwich. “There is your Hermes Trismegistus, my friend. A bit of fake mystery to sweeten the dry doctrines of Christianity.”

  Ned said, “Oh, Lor’!”, and Elinor, “My God!”

  Alexandra felt the elaboration was embarrassingly feeble. The audience was clearly unimpressed, for only one pretty young Indian girl in a silver-starred pink sari and silver shoes gave a trilling laugh. Perhaps she hadn’t understood. But the Swami understood failure at once.

  He called out, “Where are these dancers? Let them dance.”

  Alexandra sat back, thinking, well at least that would be a change from all this super-quiz stuff, when to her horror, she realized from their handsome guide’s demands that they were the dancers. Ned had only time to say, “Not ‘Batteries’. That batty girl’s stolen our thunder. Let’s try ‘Territoriality’.”

  As soon as they had started a few steps, Alexandra felt, well, really, yes, they were rather good. The audience was held, too. But not the Swami. He was hoisted up by two attendants and led to a small altar at the end of the porch where he set about prostrating himself before some figure, placing a bowl of rice or something before it; then he looked as though he was smearing it with some kind of butter and a bright scarlet powder, then at last, taking a garland of frangipani from one of his acolytes, he decked the god with it. Once more he prostrated himself, and, rising with great difficulty, smeared his head and cheeks with ashes. All this, as Alexandra could see by squinting, he did very perfunctorily. The attention of the audience was drawn away from their dance to this ceremony, but their trio kept dancing, and she could tell from Ned’s expression that he was proud of their performance.r />
  The Swami now gave it his notice. He returned and stood watching them, arms akimbo, like some washerwoman giving a moment’s attention to her children’s hopscotch. Then he shouted: “Rubbish! Rubbish! You can’t dance at all! This is terrible. Stop it at once. Go back to your places. Never mind. You are good souls I can see that. But the English are not for dancing. Who ever heard of the English dancing? No, no. The English are in this world to give orders and to look dignified.”

  Ned said, loudly for him, “She’s, like, American,” and he pointed at Elinor.

  “Don’t be angry, little redbeard. I like you. I think you will find what you are seeking. Come here often. And the American African giraffe, she has achieved some posture. Is it she who wishes to attend the classes in prayana? Permission is granted. Sit down. Sit down. Even the great ones of England are now showing some spiritual concern. I have letters from Sir James Langmuir. Wise letters. The little girl is related to him, nicht wahr?”

  Alexandra longed to run away in fear at his knowing even so much. I must stop him knowing about me. She concentrated very hard.

  “No,” she said.

  It was true, too, she wasn’t related. Perhaps the truth would stop his power of getting at her.

  Ned said, “Our best friend’s his secretary.”

  Elinor said, “It’s happened quite recently, Swami,” as though he would be pleased to have such up-to-date news.

  “Ach, so,” said the Swami. He gave no indication of how interested he was in this information, for he returned to Alexandra. “I think you are related to Sir James.”

  “She is,” Ned said, “it’s through her uncle or something who’s a plant geneticist.”

  “I’m not.” Alexandra was near to tears. “Hamo’s only my god-father. That isn’t a relation. And anyway this Sir James is only some sort of distant relation to him.”

  “Ah! Langmuir, the discoverer of Magic,” the Swami laughed. “The Magician of Rice, the symbol of fertility. Is this rice magician as fertile as his magic?”