A Meeting by the River Read online

  When I realized what the Swami wanted, I was embarrassed and disconcerted and a bit scared. I think if he had tried to rush me I might even have run out on him. But he didn’t, quite the reverse. In fact, he behaved as though the whole decision were beyond his control and mine. ‘If the Lord wills,’ he was fond of saying. That kind of talk used to disgust me and indeed it still does, when lazy people use it to excuse their laziness. But I had already discovered that the Swami meant it. It was the way he lived. So I started saying to myself, ‘Well, let’s wait and see if the Lord does will it,’ and I stopped resisting the idea or even trying to make myself like it. This was all the easier for me because there I was, living with the Swami anyway, as an unofficial disciple. To take the first monastic vows would simply be making my status official, it wouldn’t mean any immediate drastic change, because the Swami fully approved of my going on working for the Red Cross, for the time being. (He was definitely not opposed to social work or to any other kind of constructive activity in the world. That’s an idea which is always being spread around about the Hindus, that they disdain activity and withdraw from it, and it’s a complete libel. They absolutely agree that the world’s work has to be done. Only they point out that the attitude of the worker toward the work is all-important, and that, in the cultures of the West, this attitude is usually distorted. But I’d better not get started on this subject. I’m supposed to be writing a letter, not a lecture!)

  In 1961, the Swami said I could take the first monastic vows—they are called brahmacharya—and I decided to take them. You’ll agree that this was hardly a sudden decision, on either side. I had been with him the best part of three years. It’s true that this is less than the normal period of probation, which is five, but I suppose he thought he could take the risk of cutting it short, since he had me where he could keep his eye on me, all the time!

  The vows themselves are pretty much the same in spirit as the Christian ones—continence in thought, word and deed—only they aren’t so much vows as resolves. I mean, they aren’t some kind of trap which you get yourself into, like marriage. No offence! But you know what I mean, marriage as an inhibition which automatically makes possible the concept of adultery.

  Even if you do understand why I kept quiet about the Swami to begin with, it may still seem strange to you that I didn’t tell you all later. I suppose it is strange, looked at from the outside. I think I wanted to be absolutely sure that I really had committed myself, before I said anything. After all, one may take brahmacharya and still change one’s mind about becoming a full-fledged monk. Does that sound very weak and insecure of me? Perhaps it does. But oughtn’t one to feel insecure about something as important as this?

  Of course I should have realized that you and Penelope would feel cold-shouldered, when I came to England and saw Mother but didn’t look you up. Well, why didn’t I? The explanation might be, I suppose, that I feared that X-ray eye of yours! It’s never much of a problem to sidestep Mother’s curiosity, provided you tell her something. But I couldn’t have fooled you by rattling on about my work, and the beauties of Munich and the mountains! One glance at me, and you’d have seen instantly that something mysterious was going on under the surface!

  Anyhow, the time kept slipping by and I kept putting off telling you, and then about eighteen months ago the Swami started to get seriously ill. The doctor told us he had four or five things wrong with him—the liver and the kidneys and his heart and blood pressure—he couldn’t be expected to last long. The Swami knew this and he took it very calmly. He didn’t seem to have any particular regrets about the work in Munich, it was the Lord’s will that it was coming to an end. But he did say several times that he was sorry he couldn’t return to his monastery in India and be cremated there beside the Ganges. Also, he wished he could have been present when I took sannyas, the final monastic vows. In our Order, it’s a rule that sannyas is only given here at the Head Monastery of the Order. I couldn’t have taken sannyas without coming to India, even if the Swami had still been alive.

  He died in his sleep one afternoon, quite without warning. The doctor had said there was no immediate cause for alarm, and I had gone out to work as usual. That was on October 11th, 1963. When I notified them in India, the Head of the Monastery wrote and suggested I should come out to them anyhow. Then I could bring the Swami’s ashes with me, to be committed to the Ganges. And I could live at the Monastery, and we could all get to know each other, and eventually I could take sannyas. The Swami had evidently told them a lot about me already in his letters, so they were more or less prepared to accept me, sight unseen.

  After a few doubts and deliberations, I came to the conclusion that this was the right thing for me to do. So I wound up the Swami’s affairs, such as they were, and bought a plane ticket out of the money I’d saved from my Red Cross salary, and here I am.

  Just before I took off I sent Mother a cable, saying simply that I was leaving for India. As you may imagine, I was less than ever in the mood for explanations at that particular moment, and, as it turned out, I didn’t have to tell her any lies. She took it for granted that I was being sent by the Red Cross to work there. My address here hasn’t betrayed me, because, as you’ve seen for yourself, it’s just a P.O. box at a local post office at which the Monastery picks up its mail. By keeping my correspondence with Mother down to occasional postcards, on which I’ve commented on her news without giving any of my own, I think I’ve avoided arousing her suspicions.

  But I’m truly thankful that this period of deceiving you all is over! It was a silly, petty business and I’m not proud of it. I hope this letter has given you enough background material to use on Mother. Just let me recapitulate the main points—

  I am well. I am being properly fed. I shall take sannyas soon—toward the end of next month, on January 25th actually—with about twenty of my brother monks. My decision to become a monk is of long standing, made after careful deliberation and absolutely final.

  I am not and shall never be held incommunicado, as you suggest. This Monastery is not run by Trappists! You ask if I shall ever come to England again. That’s a question I can’t answer definitely at present. During the next few weeks, that’s to say until after I take sannyas, I must deliberately avoid thinking about the future, because it is irrelevant. And when I become a swami of the Order I shall naturally be subject to the decisions of my seniors. Still, I suppose it’s on the cards that they might want me to go back to Europe in one capacity or another. So there’s no harm in your telling Mother that such a thing is quite possible.

  You don’t say whether or not Penelope is in Los Angeles with you. No doubt she’ll be astonished when she hears what I’ve done, and amused too. Well, she’s entitled to her laugh. Considering my former opinions and behaviour, the joke is certainly on me!

  Hoping you are both of you well and happy, and the Children too.

  Oliver

  My dear old Olly,

  your letter in answer to mine arrived this morning, and I’ve reread it at least a dozen times already, it fills me with such happiness and relief. Yes, that first letter did sound a little bit like an ultimatum, as you say! But this one sounds like the Olly I used to know, which reassures me enormously. It was so generous of you to take the time and trouble to write me this long intimate account of your conversion (should one call it that?) and of this truly remarkable swami of yours. The picture is getting much clearer to me now, though of course I still have many questions I long to ask you.

  I’ve already been on the phone to Penny (no, she isn’t with me here) and to Mother. Long-distance between Los Angeles and London is perfect, these days, you might as well be talking in the same room, so while I’m out here I always have the feeling I can conjure up Penny at any moment. But the telephone link between London and Chapel Bridge had something very wrong with it when I put through the call to Mother—it sounded like an antique wireless set in a thunderstorm, and I couldn’t get them to get me a better line. So, when Mother an
swered, I only managed to convey to her that I’d heard from you and that you were still in India and in splendid health and very very busy, and that you’d asked me to call and tell her you were thinking of her and give her your love. That was as much as I could get across, in the midst of all the screaming and whistling and growling static. I’m sorry. But I was afraid, if I yelled ‘Oliver’s a monk!’ she’d have understood it as ‘Oliver’s a drunk!’ or something equally misleading and unhelpful. However, I’ll get a long letter off to her today, I promise, and I’ll try to bring out clearly all the points you want emphasized.

  You were wrong about Penelope. She didn’t laugh—though I wouldn’t swear she wasn’t a tiny bit amused, as she is by all of us, most of the time, in her own subtle way. Furthermore, she claimed that the news didn’t surprise her in the least. Either she knows you a lot better than I do—from a different angle, bien entendu—or else she was showing off her feminine intuition! She sends you her love and says she hopes you’ll return to England in due course and instruct her in The Way. She also asks if there’s a Hindu order of nuns into which she may aspire to be received, because she wants to renounce the world as soon as the children have grown up. I accused her of simply wanting to renounce me, but this she denied hotly!

  In your first letter you quite correctly surmised that the business of book publishing doesn’t exactly thrive in Los Angeles. I might have ventured to construe this as a hint of curiosity about what I am up to here, if you hadn’t immediately added that you didn’t wish to pry into my affairs—meaning, I took it, that you couldn’t care less! This silenced me for the time being. But now the tone of your second letter encourages me to be bolder, so I’ll tell you what I’m doing in Los Angeles, anyway. I have a very good reason for wanting to tell you, which will appear in a moment.

  I don’t know just how well Mother has kept you informed of my doings, in her letters. I doubt anyhow if she herself realizes the extent to which I’ve been earning the reputation of an enfant terrible with our firm. Some years ago, I think while you were still away in Africa, I had my first minor scandal, over the memoirs of a certain Anita Hayden. (You wouldn’t have heard of her, but she was one of the leading British musical comedy and film stars of the thirties.) Her memoirs were pretty hot stuff as well as skating thinly over libel, and I, as a very junior partner, had to use all my arts of persuasion to get Uncle Fred and dear old G.B.V. to touch them with a barge-pole. G.B.V. said, referring to Anita, ‘give me a good honest Piccadilly tart, any day of the week!’ He asked me if I wanted to bring disgrace on a firm whose list had been adorned by the names of some of the noblest (and least-read) Edwardians. However, persuasion won the day, the memoirs were published and they made us such a shamefully large sum of money that the matter was never mentioned again. But that was only the first of my various ventures into vulgarity. I’ve made some miscalculations of course, not all dirt is pay-dirt. But on the whole I’ve been so outrageously lucky, up to now, that my elders and betters have become a little superstitious about my luck, in spite of themselves. They warn me tearfully against going too far, they almost wish I’d come a cropper even though they’d have to pay for it, and yet they daren’t actually say No to any book I recommend!

  Well, this time I have gambled far more drastically than ever before—got myself involved in making a movie! It’s to be based on a novel we published before the War—a morally spotless story, I may add, which sold less than five thousand copies. Then, twenty years later, some American writer rediscovered it and recommended it to the film studio he was working for in Hollywood. The studio was interested and got in touch with us about the rights, but lost interest again when they couldn’t put together what’s called a package-deal. (Forgive me for parading my newly acquired show-biz jargon!) It was at this point that I suddenly became reckless. I canvassed the few people I know who are connected with the films here and finally found two who were ready and able to put a new deal together. They asked me if I wanted to run the show. I said I certainly did. The experience of masquerading as a movie-producer is too much fun to be missed! As for Uncle Fred and G.B.V., they prophesy my ruin and stipulate that not one penny of the firm’s money shall be risked—to which I gladly agreed, because we don’t need it. However, each has come to me behind the other’s back and asked if he might make a small investment in the film out of his own pocket! Which will show you to what an extent I’ve already corrupted them. I sometimes feel slightly satanic.

  Well, now you know why I’m here in Los Angeles—to talk the project over in all its aspects with our American opposite numbers, and then come to a final decision. Now at last I really think we’ve reached one. We’re going ahead with it. During these long weeks of negotiations I have felt severely inhibited because I’ve had to school myself in discretion, and I was so excited about the whole thing I longed to tell everybody I met. But, until the contracts have actually been signed, we just might possibly have trouble from competitors, if the news leaked out. That, no doubt, is why I’ve been somewhat evasive in my letters to Mother, even—so please don’t be so hard on her, poor darling, for her vagueness!

  I notice one phrase in your description of the first meeting with your Swami which seems to suggest that you now believe there is no such thing as accident in life—am I right? Well, here’s another most dramatic proof of that belief! You see, this projected film of ours (it’s to be very spectacular indeed) will have to be shot almost entirely in Malaya and Thailand. As soon as the deal is concluded, I’m planning to fly to Singapore and join our director on a tour of the proposed film locations. And there you are in your Monastery outside Calcutta which, the B.O.A.C. people here tell me, is only four hours’ flying time from Singapore, the merest hop, when one’s come halfway round the world already! This move of yours, which was apparently taking our paths about as far apart as possible, was actually bringing them closer together again.

  You tell me Mother wrote to you hoping I might visit you in India, but I note that you make absolutely no comment on this suggestion, in either of your letters. Is this to be taken as a warning that you wish to be left alone? Probably it is, and probably I should take that warning, but I’m an indecently persistent creature. I don’t believe in giving anything up without at least asking for it. So here goes!

  Now please be completely frank with me, Oliver, because the very last thing I want is to embarrass or annoy you. My proposal is simply this—couldn’t I break my journey in Calcutta on my way to Singapore and stay a few days somewhere near your Monastery, in some inn or hostel? Never mind how dirty or uncomfortable it might be, I’m quite prepared to rough it. I know, of course, that you’ll be busy most of the time, especially now that you have this solemn ceremony of sannyas ahead of you. I would most carefully avoid getting underfoot. Believe me, that’s one lesson I have learned from that unfortunate visit to you in Africa! I remember with shame how tiresome I must have been, bothering you with questions while you were up to your ears in work with the Quakers. You were so courteous, doing your best to entertain me in your few spare moments, but I must admit I came away feeling that I was the most useless of onlookers and that the best I could do to show my respect for the dedicated lives you were all leading and the help you were giving to those poor sick villagers was to take myself off to the nearest luxury hotel, which was where I belonged!

  Even if I could see you for half an hour a day, the visit would be well worth while, from my point of view. I’m sure it would do me good, just to be within the ambience of your Monastery and breathe in its atmosphere.

  Besides, there’s Mother. She’s so hungry for real news of you. I don’t, for Heaven’s sake, mean this as any kind of reproach! But if I can tell her that I’ve actually seen you, and that you’re not only well and well-fed (that isn’t all she cares about, Oliver, and you know it isn’t!) but also happy in your new life, that will support her and keep her going for a long long time. Do you altogether realize how much you mean to her? I can say this now without
any resentment. I quite frankly admit to you that for many years I was hurt and resentful, because I knew that I meant very little to her indeed. She lives for you. And therefore only you have the power to hurt her, which I know of course you’d never dream of doing, intentionally. She’s such a spartan person that it’s only too easy to assume that she’s self-sufficient and impervious, oh, but she isn’t, Olly, she most certainly isn’t! She minds things terribly. I’ve seen her minding and not been able to raise a finger to help, or even let her know that I knew.

  Perhaps I have no right to talk to you like this, any more? After all, I have no idea what system of values you may have adopted, along with your new philosophy. I’ve been talking to you as a brother, but it may well be that in becoming a monk you’ve renounced all such ties. If so, forgive me for presuming. I’ll only venture to tell you this—you may renounce your family, but we firmly refuse to renounce you!

  As for my coming to see you, that’s something only you can decide. I promise you, I’ll never question your decision. I’ll respect it, knowing it will be made by your conscience only, not your emotions. However, I must ask you, please don’t just ignore this request. Let me have a word, at least. You don’t have to explain, if you’d rather not. Simply write Yes or No.

  If the word is Yes, and of course I desperately hope it will be, then there’ll be time to discuss details such as accommodation, your own schedule, what rules I must observe during my stay, what kind of clothes will be suitable for me to wear, and so forth. Also, is there anything I can bring you? Books, for instance? And don’t I seem to remember that you used to have a weakness for that dark butterscotch which comes wrapped in silver foil (Callard and Bowser)? I notice they stock it in the markets here, too. Or are all such luxuries renounced or forbidden? I certainly don’t want to be responsible for a new temptation of St Antony!