Island (5 page)

“He’s certainly doing a great deal for Rendang,” said Will noncommittally.

A cloud passed across Murugan’s radiant face. “They don’t think so here,” he said, frowning. “They think he’s awful.”

“Who thinks so?”

“Practically everybody!”

“So they didn’t want you to see him?”

With the expression of an urchin who has cocked a snook while the teacher’s back is turned, Murugan grinned triumphantly. “They thought I was with my mother all the time.”

Will picked up the cue at once. “Did your mother know you were seeing the Colonel?” he asked.

“Of course.”

“And had no objection?”

“She was all for it.”

And yet, Will felt quite sure, he hadn’t been mistaken when he thought of Hadrian and Antinoüs. Was the woman blind? Or didn’t she wish to see what was happening?

“But if
she
doesn’t mind,” he said aloud, “why should Dr. Robert and the rest of them object?” Murugan looked at him suspiciously. Realizing that he had ventured too far into forbidden territory, Will hastily drew a red herring across the trail. “Do they think,” he asked with a laugh, “that he might convert you to a belief in military dictatorship?”

The red herring was duly followed, and the boy’s face relaxed into a smile. “Not that, exactly,” he answered, “but something like it. It’s all so stupid,” he added with a shrug of the shoulders. “Just idiotic protocol.”

“Protocol?” Will was genuinely puzzled.

“Weren’t you told anything about me?”

“Only what Dr. Robert said yesterday.”

“You mean, about my being a student?” Murugan threw back his head and laughed.

“What’s so funny about being a student?”

“Nothing—nothing at all.” The boy looked away again. There was a silence. Still averted, “The reason,” he said at last, “why I’m not supposed to see Colonel Dipa is that he’s the head of a state and
I’m
the head of a state. When we meet, it’s international politics.”

“What do you mean?”

“I happen to be the Raja of Pala.”

“The Raja of Pala?”

“Since ’fifty-four. That was when my father died.”

“And your mother, I take it, is the Rani?”

“My mother is the Rani.”

Make a beeline for the palace
. But here was the palace making
a beeline for him. Providence, evidently, was on the side of Joe Aldehyde and working overtime.

“Were you the eldest son?” he asked.

“The
only
son,” Murugan replied. And then, stressing his uniqueness still more emphatically, “The only
child
,” he added.

“So there’s no possible doubt,” said Will. “My goodness! I ought to be calling you Your Majesty. Or at least Sir.” The words were spoken laughingly; but it was with the most perfect seriousness and a sudden assumption of regal dignity that Murugan responded to them.

“You’ll have to call me that at the end of next week,” he said. “After my birthday. I shall be eighteen. That’s when a Raja of Pala comes of age. Till then I’m just Murugan Mailendra. Just a student learning a little bit about everything—including plant breeding,” he added contemptuously—“so that, when the time comes, I shall know what I’m doing.”

“And when the time comes, what will you be doing?” Between this pretty Antinoüs and his portentous office there was a contrast which Will found richly comic. “How do you propose to act?” he continued on a bantering note. “Off with their heads?
L’état c’est moi
?”

Seriousness and regal dignity hardened into rebuke. “Don’t be stupid.”

Amused, Will went through the motions of apology. “I just wanted to find out how absolute you were going to be.”

“Pala is a constitutional monarchy,” Murugan answered gravely.

“In other words, you’re just going to be a symbolic figurehead—to reign, like the Queen of England, but not rule.”

Forgetting his regal dignity, “No,
no
,” Murugan almost screamed. “
Not
like the Queen of England. The Raja of Pala doesn’t just reign; he rules.” Too much agitated to sit still, Murugan jumped up and began to walk about the room. “He rules constitutionally; but, by God, he rules, he
rules!
” Murugan
walked to the window and looked out. Turning back after a moment of silence, he confronted Will with a face transfigured by its new expression into an emblem, exquisitely molded and colored, of an all too familiar kind of psychological ugliness. “I’ll show them who’s the boss around here,” he said in a phrase and tone which had obviously been borrowed from the hero of some American gangster movie. “These people think they can push me around,” he went on, reciting from the dismally commonplace script, “the way they pushed my father around. But they’re making a big mistake.” He uttered a sinister snigger and wagged his beautiful, odious head. “A big mistake,” he repeated.

The words had been spoken between clenched teeth and with scarcely moving lips; the lower jaw had been thrust out so as to look like the jaw of a comic strip criminal; the eyes glared coldly between narrowed lids. At once absurd and horrible. Antinoüs had become the caricature of all the tough guys in all the B-pictures from time immemorial.

“Who’s been running the country during your minority?” he now asked.

“Three sets of old fogeys,” Murugan answered contemptuously. “The Cabinet, the House of Representatives and then, representing
me
, the Raja, the Privy Council.”

“Poor old fogeys!” said Will. “They’ll soon be getting the shock of their lives.” Entering gaily into the spirit of delinquency, he laughed aloud. “I only hope I’ll still be around to see it happening.”

Murugan joined in the laughter—joined in it, not as the sinisterly mirthful Tough Guy, but with one of those sudden changes of mood and expression that would make it, Will foresaw, so hard for him to play the Tough Guy part, as the triumphant urchin of a few minutes earlier. “The shock of their lives,” he repeated happily.

“Have you made any specific plans?”

“I most certainly have,” said Murugan. On his mobile face the triumphant urchin made way for the statesman, grave but condescendingly affable, at a press conference. “Top priority: get this place modernized. Look at what Rendang has been able to do because of its oil royalties.”

“But doesn’t Pala get any oil royalties?” Will questioned with that innocent air of total ignorance which he had found by long experience to be the best way of eliciting information from the simpleminded and the self-important.

“Not a penny,” said Murugan. “And yet the southern end of the island is fairly oozing with the stuff. But except for a few measly little wells for home consumption, the old fogeys won’t do anything about it. And what’s more, they won’t allow anyone else to do anything about it.” The statesman was growing angry; there were hints now in his voice and expression of the Tough Guy. “All sorts of people have made offers—Southeast Asia Petroleum, Shell, Royal Dutch, Standard of California. But the bloody old fools won’t listen.”

“Can’t you persuade them to listen?”

“I’ll damn well
make
them listen,” said the Tough Guy.

“That’s the spirit!” Then, casually, “Which of the offers do you think of accepting?” he asked.

“Colonel Dipa’s working with Standard of California, and he thinks it might be best if we did the same.”

“I wouldn’t do that without at least getting a few competing bids.”

“That’s what I think too. So does my mother.”

“Very wise.”

“My mother’s all for Southeast Asia Petroleum. She knows the Chairman of the Board, Lord Aldehyde.”

“She knows Lord Aldehyde? But how extraordinary!” The tone of delighted astonishment was thoroughly convincing. “Joe Aldehyde is a friend of mine. I write for his papers. I even serve
as his private ambassador. Confidentially,” he added, “that’s why we took that trip to the copper mines. Copper is one of Joe’s sidelines. But of course his real love is oil.”

Murugan tried to look shrewd. “What would he be prepared to offer?”

Will picked up the cue and answered, in the best movie-tycoon style, “Whatever Standard offers plus a little more.”

“Fair enough,” said Murugan out of the same script, and nodded sagely. There was a long silence. When he spoke again, it was as the statesman granting an interview to representatives of the press.

“The oil royalties,” he said, “will be used in the following manner: twenty-five percent of all moneys received will go to World Reconstruction.”

“May I ask,” Will enquired deferentially, “precisely how you propose to reconstruct the world?”

“Through the Crusade of the Spirit. Do you know about the Crusade of the Spirit?”

“Of course. Who doesn’t?”

“It’s a great world movement,” said the statesman gravely. “Like Early Christianity. Founded by my mother.”

Will registered awe and astonishment.

“Yes, founded by my mother,” Murugan repeated, and he added impressively, “I believe it’s man’s only hope.”

“Quite,” said Will Farnaby, “quite.”

“Well, that’s how the first twenty-five percent of the royalties will be used,” the statesman continued. “The remainder will go into an intensive program of industrialization.” The tone changed again. “These old idiots here only want to industrialize in spots and leave all the rest as it was a thousand years ago.”

“Whereas you’d like to go the whole hog. Industrialization for industrialization’s sake.”

“No, industrialization for the country’s sake. Industrialization to make Pala strong. To make other people respect us. Look
at Rendang. Within five years they’ll be manufacturing all the rifles and mortars and ammunition they need. It’ll be quite a long time before they can make tanks. But meanwhile they can buy them from Skoda with their oil money.”

“How soon will they graduate to H-bombs?” Will asked ironically.

“They won’t even try,” Murugan answered. “But after all,” he added, “H-bombs aren’t the only absolute weapons.” He pronounced the phrase with relish. It was evident that he found the taste of “absolute weapons” positively delicious. “Chemical and biological weapons—Colonel Dipa calls them the poor man’s H-bombs. One of the first things I’ll do is to build a big insecticide plant.” Murugan laughed and winked an eye. “If you can make insecticides,” he said, “you can make nerve gas.”

Will remembered that still unfinished factory in the suburbs of Rendang-Lobo.

“What’s that?” he had asked Colonel Dipa as they flashed past it in the white Mercedes.

“Insecticides,” the Colonel had answered. And showing his gleaming white teeth in a genial smile, “We shall soon be exporting the stuff all over Southeast Asia.”

At the time, of course, he had thought that the Colonel merely meant what he said. But now…Will shrugged his mental shoulders. Colonels will be colonels and boys, even boys like Murugan, will be gun-loving boys. There would always be plenty of jobs for special correspondents on the trail of death.

“So you’ll strengthen Pala’s army?” Will said aloud.

“Strengthen it? No—I’ll create it. Pala doesn’t have an army.”

“None at all?”

“Absolutely nothing. They’re all pacifists.” The
p
was an explosion of disgust, the
s
’s hissed contemptuously. “I shall have to start from scratch.”

“And you’ll militarize as you industrialize, is that it?”

“Exactly.”

Will laughed. “Back to the Assyrians! You’ll go down in history as a true revolutionary.”

“That’s what I hope,” said Murugan. “Because that’s what my policy is going to be—Continuing Revolution.”

“Very good!” Will applauded.

“I’ll just be continuing the revolution that was started more than a hundred years ago by Dr. Robert’s great-grandfather when he came to Pala and helped my great-great-grandfather to put through the first reforms. Some of the things they did were really wonderful. Not all of them, mind you,” he qualified; and with the absurd solemnity of a schoolboy playing Polonius in an end-of-term performance of
Hamlet
he shook his curly head in grave, judicial disapproval. “But at least they
did
something. Whereas nowadays we’re governed by a set of do-nothing conservatives. Conservatively primitive—they won’t lift a finger to bring in modern improvements. And conservatively radical—they refuse to change any of the old bad revolutionary ideas that ought to be changed. They won’t reform the reforms. And I tell you, some of those so-called reforms are absolutely disgusting.”

“Meaning, I take it, that they have something to do with sex?”

Murugan nodded and turned away his face. To his astonishment, Will saw that he was blushing.

“Give me an example,” he demanded.

But Murugan could not bring himself to be explicit.

“Ask Dr. Robert,” he said, “ask Vijaya.
They
think that sort of thing is simply wonderful. In fact they all do. That’s one of the reasons why nobody wants to change. They’d like everything to go on as it is, in the same old disgusting way, forever and ever.”

“Forever and ever,” a rich contralto voice teasingly repeated.

“Mother!” Murugan sprang to his feet.

Will turned and saw in the doorway a large florid woman swathed (rather incongruously, he thought; for that kind of face and build usually went with mauve and magenta and electric
blue) in clouds of white muslin. She stood there smiling with a conscious mysteriousness, one fleshy brown arm upraised, with its jeweled hand pressed against the doorjamb, in the pose of the great actress, the acknowledged diva, pausing at her first entrance to accept the plaudits of her adorers on the other side of the footlights. In the background, waiting patiently for his cue, stood a tall man in a dove-gray Dacron suit whom Murugan, peering past the massive embodiment of maternity that almost filled the doorway, now greeted as Mr. Bahu.

Still in the wings, Mr. Bahu bowed without speaking.

Murugan turned again to his mother. “Did you
walk
here?” he asked. His tone expressed incredulity and an admiring solicitude. Walking here—how unthinkable! But if she
had
walked, what heroism! “All the way?”