Island - Aldous Huxley [129]
“They’re not being asked to think about it. They’re being helped, if there is such a thing, to experience it. If there is such a thing,” she repeated, “if the universal life goes on, when the separate me-life is over.”
“Do you personally think it does go on?”
Susila smiled. “What I personally think is beside the point. All that matters is what I may impersonally experience while I’m living, when I’m dying, maybe when I’m dead.”
She swung the car into a parking space and turned off the engine. On foot they entered the village. Work was over for the day and the main street was so densely thronged that it was hard for them to pass.
“I’m going ahead by myself,” Susila announced. Then to Mary Sarojini, “Be at the hospital in about an hour,” she said. “Not before.” She turned and, threading her way between the slowly promenading groups, was soon lost to view.
“You’re in charge now,” said Will, smiling down at the child by his side.
Mary Sarojini nodded gravely and took his hand. “Let’s go and see what’s happening in the square,” she said.
“How old is your Granny Lakshmi?” Will asked as they started to make their way along the crowded street.
“I don’t really know,” Mary Sarojini answered. “She looks terribly old. But maybe that’s because she’s got cancer.”
“Do you know what cancer is?” he asked.
Mary Sarojini knew perfectly well. “It’s what happens when part of you forgets all about the rest of you and carries on the way people do when they’re crazy—just goes on blowing itself up and blowing itself up as if there was nobody else in the whole world. Sometimes you can do something about it. But generally it just goes on blowing itself up until the person dies.”
“And that’s what has happened, I gather, to your Granny Lakshmi.”
“And now she needs someone to help her die.”
“Does your mother often help people die?”
The child nodded. “She’s awfully good at it.”
“Have you ever seen anyone die?”
“Of course,” Mary Sarojini answered, evidently surprised that such a question should be asked. “Let me see.” She made a mental calculation. “I’ve seen five people die. Six, if you count babies.”
“I hadn’t seen anyone die when I was your age.”
“You hadn’t?”
“Only a dog.”
“Dogs die easier than people. They don’t talk about it beforehand.”
“How do you feel about…about people dying?”
“Well, it isn’t nearly so bad as having babies. That’s awful. Or at least it looks awful. But then you remind yourself that it doesn’t hurt at all. They’ve turned off the pain.”
“Believe it or not,” said Will, “I’ve never seen a baby being born.”
“Never?” Mary Sarojini was astonished. “Not even when you were at school?”
Will had a vision of his headmaster in full canonicals conducting three hundred black-coated boys on a tour of the Lying-In Hospital. “Not even at school,” he said aloud.
“You never saw anybody dying, and you never saw anybody having a baby. How did you get to know things?”
“In the school I went to,” he said, “we never got to know things, we only got to know words.”
The child looked up at him, shook her head and, lifting a small brown hand, significantly tapped her forehead. “Crazy,” she said. “Or were your teachers just stupid?”
Will laughed. “They were high-minded educators dedicated to mens sana in corpore sano and the maintenance of our sublime Western Tradition. But meanwhile tell me something. Weren’t you ever frightened?”
“By people having babies?”
“No, by people dying. Didn’t that scare you?”
“Well, yes—it did,” she said after a moment of silence.
“So what did you do about it?”
“I did what they teach you to do—tried to find out which of me was frightened and why she was frightened.”
“And which of you was it?”
“This one.” Mary Sarojini pointed a forefinger into her open mouth. “The one that does all the talking. Little Miss Gibber—that’s what Vijaya calls her. She’s always talking about all the nasty things I remember, all the huge, wonderful, impossible things I imagine I can do. She’s the one that gets frightened.”
“Why is she so frightened?”
“I suppose it’s because she gets talking about