Island - Aldous Huxley [105]
“Hurrah!” the twins shouted in unison, and picked up their spoons.
For a long minute there was a silence, broken only by the twins who had not yet learned to eat without smacking their lips.
“May we swallow now?” asked one of the little boys at last.
Shanta nodded. Everyone swallowed. There was a clinking of spoons and a burst of talk from full mouths.
“Well,” Shanta enquired, “what did your grace taste like?”
“It tasted,” said Will, “like a long succession of different things. Or rather a succession of variations on the fundamental theme of rice and turmeric and red peppers and zucchini and something leafy that I don’t recognize. It’s interesting how it doesn’t remain the same. I’d never really noticed that before.”
“And while you were paying attention to these things, you were momentarily delivered from daydreams, from memories, from anticipations, from silly notions—from all the symptoms of you.”
“Isn’t tasting me?”
Shanta looked down the length of the table to her husband. “What would you say, Vijaya?”
“I’d say it was halfway between me and not-me. Tasting is not-me doing something for the whole organism. And at the same time tasting is me being conscious of what’s happening. And that’s the point of our chewing-grace—to make the me more conscious of what the not-me is up to.”
“Very nice,” was Will’s comment. “But what’s the point of the point?”
It was Shanta who answered. “The point of the point,” she said, “is that when you’ve learned to pay closer attention to more of the not-you in the environment (that’s the food) and more of the not-you in your own organism (that’s your taste sensations), you may suddenly find yourself paying attention to the not-you on the further side of consciousness, or perhaps it would be better,” Shanta went on, “to put it the other way round. The not-you on the further side of consciousness will find it easier to make itself known to a you that has learned to be more aware of its not-you on the side of physiology.” She was interrupted by a crash, followed by a howl from one of the twins. “After which,” she continued as she wiped up the mess on the floor, “one has to consider the problem of me and not-me in relation to people less than forty-two inches high. A prize of sixty-four thousand crores of rupees will be given to anyone who comes up with a foolproof solution.” She wiped the child’s eyes, had him blow his nose, then gave him a kiss and went to the stove for another bowl of rice.
“What are your chores for this afternoon?” Vijaya asked when lunch was over.
“We’re on scarecrow duty,” Tom Krishna answered importantly.
“In the field just below the schoolhouse,” Mary Sarojini added.
“Then I’ll take you there in the car,” said Vijaya. Turning to Will Farnaby, “Would you like to come along?” he asked.
Will nodded. “And if it’s permissible,” he said, “I’d like to see the school, while I’m about it—sit in, maybe, at some of the classes.”
Shanta waved good-bye to them from the veranda and a few minutes later they came in sight of the parked jeep.
“The school’s on the other side of the village,” explained Vijaya as he started the motor. “We have to take the bypass. It goes down and then up again.”
Down through terraced fields of rice and maize and sweet potatoes, then on the level, along a contour line, with a muddy little fishpond on the left and an orchard of breadfruit trees on the right, and finally up again through more fields, some green, some golden—and there was the schoolhouse, white and spacious under its towering shade trees.
“And down there,” said Mary Sarojini, “are our scarecrows.”
Will looked in the direction she was pointing. In the nearest of the terraced fields below them the yellow rice was almost ready to harvest. Two small boys in pink loincloths and a little girl in a blue skirt were taking turns at pulling the strings that set in motion two life-sized marionettes attached to poles at either end of the narrow field. The puppets were of wood, beautifully carved and clothed, not in rags, but in the most splendid draperies. Will looked at them