Coromandel! (39 page)

Crops sloped gently away in front. An opal-starred mist hung over the ground. A cock crowed from a clump of feathery trees. Jason yawned, rubbed his eyes, and looked.

He blinked. His eyes widened. His knees began to buckle, and he sank to the earth with his fingers locked on his chest and his breath altogether stopped.

Above the crops spread the white mist. Above the mist green hills climbed slowly upward. Above the hills the air was hazily blue and dense with distance. Now out of that blue sea of air rose the golden battlements of heaven. Their walls swept down in falls of pearl. Their diamond towers soared up from oceans of sapphire. From their black portals unseen archers streamed red arrows at the paling stars. A thousand cathedrals thrust up thin golden spires.

The light changed; the colours ran down from dazzling white cones to purple deeps. The sun rose, and for a moment the miracle hung, all gold and black above the abyss, stretched from the rising sun to the setting moon, and from earth to heaven.

Catherine whispered, ‘I see the City of God.’ Jason closed his eyes.

When he opened them the mist had risen, and all was gone. He stood up slowly and said, ‘Father, what have I seen?’

The old man said, ‘The Himalaya--a hundred and fifty miles away. We are going beyond that. We had better get back and eat. See, they are packing up the camp already. Oh, look at those ducks!’

But Jason did not want to look at anything. He wished he might be struck blind at that moment and never see anything again. Or sit here for a year, at the edge of the grove, facing north, and every morning at dawn watch the light lift that City of God out of the darkness. No, he would rise two hours before dawn, and wait alone through those last chilly hours in contemplation, thinking. Sometimes the mountains would not be seen, because of mist or cloud or rain. In a way, that would be better, because he could imagine them.

Still, he could not do it now. He had to go on, following the map and Ishmael and Catherine. He walked pensively back through the grove to their tent. Catherine busied herself over the fire. Jason sat down, cupped his chin in his hands, and stared into space.

Ishmael said, ‘What’s the matter with you, Jason? You have been very quiet all the time. Are your bowels loose? Are you constipated?’

Jason said, ‘I was thinking. I understand why the Hindus think that most of the gods live up there in the Himalaya. I could watch them all my life.’

Ishmael said cheerfully, ‘Many people do exactly that and nothing more. They are mystics. I’m hungry!’

An hour later they trotted out on to the road and continued their journey. Towards midday Ishmael drew up to Jason and said, ‘There, see! There’s a man such as I told you about--a mystic.’

Jason reined in. He had seen these ash-smeared figures from Manairuppu to Agra, but he had never before understood them. Now he thought he did understand, at least a little. It was a life of inward and outward contemplation. It was not his life, but it was nearer to it than any other he had known.

He rode on thoughtfully. Yes, he could understand. He could live that life, exploring ever farther among dreams and visions. Then farther still--what would there be? Would dreams become thoughts, and thoughts, facts? Did they change their nature as you followed them? So that what you thought, was? Or perhaps came back on themselves? Or returned to God? He closed his eyes momentarily. There was a rare exhilaration in this contemplation, almost like danger, or temptation to a great evil.

But supposing he turned his back on the world, one way or another, as either scholar or mystic, what would happen to Catherine? She and he had gone through many perils together. He thought back over their long journey. She was a woman of action. She was determined and forceful. She loved travelling and the smell of campfires and the stamping of the ponies in the hour before dawn, and dancing. ... He had used to like dancing. This was not her life.

Tenderly, in his reverie, he touched her hair, and tenderly told her to go and leave him and find her happiness. He was not worthy of her. Nor was his life hers. He would sit under a peepul tree and explore in the mind. He would sit in a library and travel among books. Ishmael did not understand that he, Jason, had already exhausted the shallowness of desire and lust and action.

But he loved her. He said it twice to himself: I love you. Yes, he loved her, but not with earthly desire. She must go and find her happiness. He rode along, bathed in a warm, satisfying glow of self-abnegation.

Ishmael rode up alongside him, slapped him on the back, and cried, ‘What is the matter with you? I’m sure you need a purgative. There are a thousand things to see, and you moon along like a stuffed duck. Look, the hills! This is where the Ganges comes out into the plain.’

Jason shook the reins, and smiled soulfully. ‘It is beautiful, Father,’ he said. ‘Tell me about it.’

Catherine turned sharply towards him, and he smiled at her too; but of course she could not see. She could not know how much he loved her. Perhaps it was as well. When she set her mind on something she was like an elephant in persistence and strength.

Next day they entered the foothills. In the plains the heat had been spread over the whole large horizon. Here in the river valley the hills enclosed it, the sun glowered overhead, and no air flowed, except that sometimes the cooler air above the river spread out so that a tendril of it lay across the path. When they came to such a place they stopped and stood for a minute, believing themselves cool, until Ishmael cried, ‘On!’

Their horses plodded on and up the gradual rise of the rocky trail. The hills rose higher on either hand. One by one the heavy trees gave place to pines; the smell of hot resin filled their nostrils, and brittle pine needles crackled under the horses’ hoofs. Lone pines stood like sentries on the shoulders of the hills; the grey rock thrust up through the grass; the river began to make a sound of bells. Always the pilgrims, struggling towards the source of the holy river, climbed with them. Sometimes they recognized people they had passed farther back--a hillman now hurrying past, his energy doubled by the sight of snow; a rich man changing horses. Usually it was only the backs that they saw, the anonymous, dragging heels, the heavy load. Sometimes one turned to watch them go by, and then they saw the exhaustion, the illness, or the strength of that traveller--and always the shining hope, whether it was a man squatting against a pine while he smoked, or a woman bowed under her palsied son.

Each day they lifted themselves a little higher. At any moment, round any corner, they might be given a single passing sight of far snow; or the mountains would stride from hiding at a pace as slow as their own. As the path climbed, far ahead they would see a slope of trees; then, hour by hour, the lesser hills fell back, the slope soared, shedding in turn trees, grass, and rock, until at last it stood out white and unencumbered against the sky; then, hour by hour, the hills closed in and ate away the sides of the mountain until they had altogether swallowed it.

On the fourth night Jason shivered from the cold and spent the night huddled close against Catherine’s back. On the sixth day Ishmael bought blankets and long-skirted sheepskin coats from a Hindu store beside the trail. On the tenth day the river roared down beside them, all young and white and foaming, and that day every pilgrim on the road seemed to have left his weariness at the night’s camping-place and stepped out with the river’s power flowing in him.

Jason said, ‘They are near the end now.’ And Ishmael answered, ‘Near the beginning. They are travelling backward, to the source!’

Jason’s horse began to trot out, blowing jets of crystal air from its nostrils. It trotted over a pass; the wind blew strong in

Jason’s face from sloping snowfields, and he saw in the distance, under the mountain wall, a huddle of stone buildings and a thousand rude tents.

Ishmael said, ‘Badrinath!’

Catherine cried, ‘The Castle of the Holy Men!’

Jason examined the place thoughtfully as he rode forward. Perhaps it was here, or in some similar shrine, that his life would lie. A temple would be a good place to combine scholarship and contemplation. A balance must be struck. He had thought more about the mystic surveying the Himalaya, and decided that that life was not for him. The man who only thought did no good to anyone else, because he did not share his discoveries. Besides, there might not be enough inside himself to provide sufficient food for contemplation. What if, after examining it for a couple of years, he found he had reached the bottom of his soul, and there was nothing more there? Then what?

No, he must put something in--ideas and facts he would find in books--and
then
contemplate, and then write books himself so that others could profit from his work. He might think about the world, for instance, and God and Man. And then write a history of the world!

They reached the camping site. As soon as the tent was set up and the small fire lit--wood was scarce and expensive here, every faggot carried up the valley four days on the backs of the hillmen--Jason wandered away towards the temple.

At the main entrance a priest greeted him impassively. Jason asked to be shown round. The priest said, ‘You may not see the sanctuary. The rest I can show you.’

Jason said, ‘Please.’

He followed the priest, speaking little, hardly listening while the priest rambled on about the uses of the various parts. Books he saw--yes, they had books here. And men at prayer. A priest writing--good! And idols. He wouldn’t like the idols. The priests were taking money for the idols. The pilgrims were paying the money. Not quite right; money was unnecessary, if not evil, in the contemplative life. Still, this was a stage closer to the goal he sought. Not a library, not a peepul tree, not a Hindu temple--something combining all those; but bigger, more glorious, more awful. He would go on looking and thinking. Soon he would find what he wanted, or it would find him.

Outside again in the twilight, and having paid the priest, he saw Ishmael wandering round the temple, peering at the carvings. He did not want to talk with Ishmael just now, so he walked round the other way and returned to the tent.

As he approached he heard low singing.

Alas, my love you do me wrong
To cast me off discourteously,
And I have loved you so long,
Delighting in your company.

Greensleeves was all my joy,
Greensleeves was my delight.
Greensleeves was my hart of gold,
And who but my lady Greensleeves?

She was lying on a blanket in the mouth of the tent. She did not stop her song as he sat down, though she had heard him coming. She turned her face to him and sang softer, looking at him.

She finished, and he said, ‘You have a beautiful voice.’

It was not so beautiful--small and clear and true, that was all. But he loved her with a pure, empyrean love, all passion and vileness purged, and all that she did was beautiful.

She said, ‘Come and sit close to me. It’s cold round my back.’

He moved over, and she lay back against him. It was warmer indeed then, and the dusk fell silently on the high snowfields, and a hundred fires twinkled, and the river sang beside them. She leaned her head against his chest. He stroked her hair, just as he had dreamed he would. Pure love flowed in his fingers, the love of a scholar, of a monk. They must part. They would turn, like angels, in mid-air, and, loving, go their ways.

She said softly, ‘Don’t you love me yet?’

He said, ‘Yes.’

She turned her head and kissed his shoulder. Half muffled against him, she whispered, ‘I’m your wife, then.’

Mechanically he stroked her hair, down the back of her neck. He remembered what she had said on the sand dunes by the pearlers’ cove. Now she would lie with him. Now he must not. Now he did not even want to. What hurt had he done, to how many women, by that act! There could be no lying with women in a world of the mind. He would say nothing now, but wait till a time and a circumstance came when he could tell her she was free of her promise.

She said, ‘Ishmael won’t come back for a time yet. It’s dark.’

He got up quickly. He could not resist this much longer. He said, ‘I love you--too much.’ He began to blow up the fire, puffing furiously until he felt his eyes starting from his head, until the nag of desire had gone.

Catherine began to sing ‘Greensleeves’ again, and later Ishmael returned.

The next day they set out for the Mana Pass and Tibet.

Ishmael gripped with his knees and leaned back as the pony scrambled down the steep. One enormous plain lay behind them, and another, but a little smaller, in front. This land was all plain, split by ridges where the horses had to climb wearily up and carefully down. The Himalayan snows rose out of India a hundred miles back; nameless peaks glittered along the horizon in front. The air came thin into the lungs here, and in the shadow it was always cold. He felt better than he had for many years. Why didn’t he come to live up here? Or go off on such a wild journey every year? But that wasn’t the reason; it was the young people, the wonderful Jason and his wife. In some ways she was even more remarkable. She had no genius, as Jason had; but she had the wisdom. The young man would not be happy without her. That reminded him. He must talk alone with her and find out what was the matter with the boy.

He screwed up his eyes against the glare and peered forward. He was looking for the black tents of nomads, for a caravan or a wall or crops--anything that would show the presence of other people besides themselves. They needed information about twin-peaked mountains. They needed butter and more of the ground barley called tsampa. The horses were thirsty and walked sadly, their jaws drooping open.

But it was good up here on the high plateau. There were marmots beside the trail, and stone walls in the middle of a forty-mile plain, and on every stone the same inscription:
Om mane padme hum
--’O hail, the jewel in the lotus’; and, all day and every day, the howling wind; and swirling herds of the wild ass; and a long column of sheep, each hurrying, with a sack of salt or borax across its back, towards India; and men with fur caps turning their horses at full gallop beside an icy lake where the wind rippled the salt water and a thousand ducks whirred up from the reeds as they approached.