Earthly Powers (39 page)

       At Port Said with the heat really starting the gullygully man came aboard and performed a trick straight out of the Old Testament. He had a drugged snake that was locked into a sleep of absolute straightness, an olive-hued cane with snakehead handle. He threw it to the deck of the lounge and it coiled out of its trance and wriggled. Gullygullygullygullygully. "As for miracles," the bishop said that evening as we drank Stella beer in a shore café where a fleshy Greek belly dancer performed, "when we reach the stage we must some day reach, they will be the first of the discardables. Optionals for the superstitious, of course, no harm in a bit of superstition, like that bloodlike stuff that melts in Naples under the auspices of Saint Januarius. The Eucharist—Carlo and I had a long argument about that in Rome or somewhere. That's where Rome and Canterbury don't see eye to eye, but there must be a way out somewhere—"

       The belly dancer oozed toward our table, her cuplike navel apout. The Bishop of Gibraltar gravely tried to insert a British sixpence in it but she grabbed it and said, "Eucharisto."

       "What," I asked, "is going on precisely? A unification of the Christian churches?"

       "It will take a long time." This, remember, was late August 1924. "A hell of a time. But there are a few of us—I mean, it was I who proposed a kind of subterranean doctrine that could be called plain substantiation. I don't know why I'm telling you all this. Not much of a religious man, are you?"

       "Either," I said, "it's really the flesh and blood or it's not." She now had her complicatedly working bottom toward us, charming an embarrassed table of beef-red laughers.

       "A kind of modification," he said vaguely. "Metaphysical, epistemological. It will all have to be thought out."

       We were easing through the Suez Canal the following day, Sunday, and the Bishop of Gibraltar held a well-attended morning service on deck. The final hymn sung was "For Those in Peril on the Sea," which was bawled without irony or smiles, though our only peril seemed to be that of grazing the canal embankments. You could see a town clock on one side and one on the other, and they showed the same time. When we entered the Red Sea the heat really raged.

       The bishop, in deck-game vest and shorts, sweated under lank hair, an empty pipe between his yellowing teeth, and he pointed to the grim pentateuchs of red rocks and the arid texts of bitter custardpowder desert. He removed his pipe and it nearly tumbled to the deck from his sweaty butterfingers. He pocketed it and pointed again at the fearsome aridity in the grinding churning heat. Women went by positively wilting, underwear straps visible beneath frocks that sweat had rendered transparent. My dear, I'm positively wilting, my dear. Soon be in Aden, my love, demiparadise. "Islam," the Bishop of Gebel-al-Tarik said. "A desert faith, sworn enemy of Christendom, though they have Jesus as a prophet, Nabi Isa or Esa. The inveterate foe. Though can we say that now when a newer foe has arisen, that of Soviet materialism? Once the Christians fought the Muslims, and then the Christians fought each other. Faith is hard to sustain unless it is either beleaguered or dreams the imperial dream. So what fight do we fight now? Are those who accept the dominion of the spirit, Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, to unite against its despoilers? God versus Notgod? I must go to my game of quoits."

       Halfway between Aden and Bombay there was a dance, evening dress not fancy (that would come the night before Singapore), and the bishop to applause performed a demonstration tango with a Mrs Foxe. During "Felix Kept On Walking" a typhoon struck. I found myself toiling uphill with my partner, a little girl, Linda something, astonished at the behaviour of the chandelier which, with a tinkly warning, agitated all its tentacles to starboard. People passed me downhill as I climbed, bright silks and tuxedos and one woman tumbling to show peach camiknickers. Then the tilting floor recovered and the yelling-andscreaming-no-longer dancers sought the bijou bulkheads, the bandstand, tables before we tilted the other way. Spray and then slogging knouts of water hit the windows or lights like snarling disaffected at a mansion of the rich and frivolous. The Bishop of Gibraltar had somehow got to the bandstand and was clinging, as to a rock, to the fixed grand piano, shouting Courage courage or some similar word. The violinist-saxophonist and drummer were packing up, the pianist swigging from a bottle. The ship seemed to labour forward a space without rocking, rolling in a slow and brief rutting movement, then plunged like an otter, then emerged, it seemed, shaking itself, and I and little Linda sat on the bandstand's edge, my arm round a piano leg, she with her arms about me. Could that singing of "For Those in Peril on the Sea" work proleptically, cash paid into the musical bank against an eventually like this? Ship's dancing officers, ready to leave discipline and encouragement to the man of God, this being an act of God, embraced their temporary girl friends, some of them married women, comforting. Then everything steadied, and the bishop, as in a child cyclist's no-hands gesture, raised arms of supplication or praise to heaven. The ship lurched again and he went sickeningly over, embarrassingly, drunk at the altar, cracking his head on the bandstand's sharp selvage. This was shocking, a 2 senior officer of God struck by brutal agents of his own master. He was out and bleeding, and the orchestra leader, who had, I saw, a Craven A between his lips, bent down to inspect the damage.

       Ready tars appeared with ropes that they anchored to pillars, gnarled unafraid men smoked like kippers, their bare horny feet holding the deck, or posh dainty floor, like suckers, except where there was broken glass which, with their own digital wisdom, they avoided without the prompting of their owners. The frightened passengers were encouraged to get up and grip the ropes like tug-o'war teams and, in a temporary settling, move out to other ropes and their cabins. The ship's doctor was busy elsewhere, but two orderlies came in with a stretcher for the Bishop of Gibraltar. "Right out, Jack," the orchestra leader said through his Craven A smoke. "Poor bugger's concussed."

       I went to the sick bay the following morning, when the Indian Ocean was as quiet again as a bluefleeced lamb, and the Bishop of Gibraltar was conscious after a long blackout, though exhibiting the classic symptoms of concussionirritability, a tendency to drop off without warning, patches of lost memory. "Who the hell are you?" he asked.

       "Never mind. How are you, how are they going to get you ashore, how's your control of your limbs?"

       "I can't remember the Athanasian Creed." He began to cry.

       "It begins Quicunque vult, doesn't it?"

       "That's Latin, the damned thing's in English, I can't remember it, a damned fool I'm going to look to the Indians."

       "Ah, you've not forgotten that anyway. Tomorrow morning we reach Bombay. The Athanasian Creed will all come back, you'll see, you'll be right as rain in a couple of days."

       "What's rain to do with it? Is it the season of the rains? Have the rains come? Falleth alike on the just and on the unjust. Why did God strike me down?"

       "That wasn't God, that was Mother Nature."

       "God rides on the storm. There's a hymn about that, Isaac somebodyorother. You'd better hear my confession."

       "No, no, you know I can't. Besides, you people don't have concussion. I mean, you don't—"

       His bandaged head fell sideways and he began to snore. Poor devil. His poor church. Deck games and tangos. When we arrived at Bombay in great grey humidity, there was a welcoming party of brown clergymen, girls in saris, choirboys singing a hymn unidentifiable as to either words or tune, and an old white man in glossy alpaca who seemed to be the retiring bishop. There were wreaths of frangipani wilting in the damp heat. The quondam Bishop of Gibraltar tottered but was much better. Indian bearers took his baggage ashore which included, as far as I could tell through the crush, a full-size crucifix perhaps used as a hatstand, and he fussed over everything, waving a walking stick. A 2 Dravidian photographer enlivened the greyness with flashes, and a Eurasian in a topee from The Indian Express (Bombay) asked questions. But the bishop, looking like a haji with his head bandage, spoke words to all in a forward-placed professional baritone. "Struck," he said, "by God's hand but fast recovering, though I cannot remember the Athanasian Creed, I am happy to be with you." Laughter and applause. "Good old bish," one of the Malayan planters said. "We will march forward together in our fight against vicious materialism." Applause and laughter. "All who believe in God, quicunque vult, are one body. First things first. May the creeds sink their differences and unite in the face of the threat of a common enemy." This, in early September 1924, was the first public statement ever made, I believe, in favour of an ecumenical movement. God works in a mysterious way His wonders to perform. He somethings His footsteps in the sea and rides upon the. This should have been a historic moment. The retiring bishop got his successor ashore as quickly as he could. Laughter and applause. A couple of Buddhist monks in daffodil robes came aboard later to ensure a continuing religious presence, but they were sailing to Colombo in steerage. We missed the Bishop of Gibraltar, now of Bombay.

       Of Colombo I remember one thing only. The local madrigal society gave a concert in the Mount Lavinia Hotel, and a local baritone interspersed some solos, among which was that aria of Gay and Handel, "O Ruddier Than the Cherry." Instead of "Or kidlings bright and merry" he sang "Or kiplings." No one seemed to notice. It is possible that there was an inverted d in his copy. He accepted perhaps without question that there was a class of things called kiplings. I have been haunted by this all my life. Colombo and the collective nightmare of rooks in the great raintree over the hotel and a Handel aria with kiplings in it.

       And so at last Singapore came up from the sea in the night, greeted by revellers in fancy dress. I was Julius Caesar, all things to all men, my moustache having been removed distractedly by the ship's barber while I dozed. Disembarkment at noon the following day. My dear, the heat. Life in a slow oven. Someone had chalked, as in welcome, a gross caricature of buggery on the wall of one of the godowns. Singapore duly smelt of boiling dishrags and cat piss. I stayed at the Raffles Hotel which Willie Maugham, under their later notepaper heading, was to laud as breathing all the mystery of the Fabled East. The mystery lay perhaps in the provenance of the meat for the curries. The lounge was as big and bare as a football stadium, ringing with the frustrated thirsty crying "Boy!" The boys or waiters were ancient soured Chinese wandering unheeding forlornly under the ceiling kipas or fans. I picked up one tale from a bank manager. Forbes, his young assistant, had had to get to work each morning by way of the Botanical Gardens, which were full of monkeys. He got into the habit of bringing a loaf of Chinese bread with him and throwing bits of it to them, who pranced and gibbered about him, bolting without gratitude. They 2 grew used to his coming and soon took Forbes's bounty as their due. One night he took home a Malay prostitute from the Park of Happiness, was vigorous with her at dawn and then overslept. He had no time to get a loaf for the monkeys. The monkeys were enraged when they saw Forbes breadless and they tore him to pieces. Literally. The entire monkey population of the Botanical Gardens tore Forbes to pieces. You may know the story I made of this, "A Matter of Gratitude."

       I took the night train to Kuala Lumpur, the muddy estuary, and stayed at the station hotel for three days. I picked up the materials for "The Smoking Sikh,"

       "Little Eleanor," and "Without a Tie" (the tale of a man who tried to get into the Selangor Club without a tie). Then I went to Ipoh, the tin town, chief city of the state of Perak (whose name means silver, or tin), and there a visit to Kuala Kangsar was recommended to me, the royal town at the junction of the rivers Perak and Kangsar. Picturesque, I was told, with a fine mosque and istana where I must make my number, meaning sign the book. Also there was the Malay College, a public school on English lines for the sons of the Malay aristocracy. There was also a peaceful rest house where they served the best damn cup of tea in the entire FMS. From now on for a time my story must seem to be a Tale of Horror and Imagination, but it is all true. In Kuala Kangsar I met, if I may be permitted the novelettish locution, my love.

CHAPTER 34

"Full house," I said, showing two kings and three nines, and then my heart behaved strangely. It bounced at my ribs as though dangled and my arms swiftly filled with air. The air was evidently being drawn off from my lungs. I gasped, tried to stand, then went over. I saw the weave of the fallen rattan chair like some mysterious page of the codex of the dead and then I was out. I came to in, so the planter Fothergill was to tell me, three minutes flat and felt well again though weak. I tried to rise but they said stay there. Greene the planter said he was going to telephone Doc Shawcross. The Chinese boy said it because very hot very hot for new tuan. I was, then, on the floor of the Idris Club, saying at least let me have my drink there, so Booth the planter allowed me a sip or two of my Booth's gin pahit or merah, meaning bitter or pink (red really), holding my shoulders like Hardy Nelson's. The kipas spun above my 2 eyes, but the boy, Boo Eng, fanned me with an ancient copy of The Illustrated London News. I'm all right, really. You wait, titan doktor he come. You all right, old chap? Really all right? You have to get used to this climate, the humidity causes the trouble not the heat. So I was allowed to sit. You do look all right now but that seemed to me to be rather nasty.

       Doe Shawcross found me sipping brandy and ginger ale. "Well," he said, "what's this I hear?" He was a young man in white shirt and shorts and white long stockings, very brown and pared, I could tell, by duty and heat and an athletic or certainly ascetic mode of living, unlike the planters, who were all paunched. The tropical egg, the French called it. "Toomey?" he said. "Kenneth Toomey? But I read you. I've some of your books at home. Well well, we can't allow anything to happen to Kenneth Toomey." He said that with evident sincerity.