Island - Aldous Huxley [130]
“Which one is that?”
“The one that doesn’t talk—just looks and listens and feels what’s going on inside. And sometimes,” Mary Sarojini added, “sometimes she suddenly sees how beautiful everything is. No, that’s wrong. She sees it all the time, but I don’t—not unless she makes me notice it. That’s when it suddenly happens. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful! Even dog’s messes.” She pointed at a formidable specimen almost at their feet.
From the narrow street they had emerged into the marketplace. The last of the sunlight still touched the sculptured spire of the temple, the little pink gazebos on the roof of the town hall; but here in the square there was premonition of twilight and under the great banyan tree it was already night. On the stalls between its pillars and hanging ropes the market women had turned on their lights. In the leafy darkness there were islands of form and color, and from hardly visible nonentity brown-skinned figures stepped for a moment into brilliant existence, then back again into nothingness. The spaces between the tall buildings echoed with a confusion of English and Palanese, of talk and laughter, of street cries and whistled tunes, of dogs barking, parrots screaming. Perched on one of the pink gazebos, a pair of mynah birds called indefatigably for attention and compassion. From an open-air kitchen at the center of the square rose the appetizing smell of food on the fire. Onions, peppers, turmeric, fish frying, cakes baking, rice on the boil—and through these good gross odors, like a reminder from the Other Shore, drifted the perfume, thin and sweet and ethereally pure, of the many-colored garlands on sale beside the fountain.
Twilight deepened and suddenly, from high overhead, the arc lamps were turned on. Bright and burnished against the rosy copper of oiled skin, the women’s necklaces and rings and bracelets came alive with glittering reflections. Seen in the downward-striking light, every contour became more dramatic, every form seemed to be more substantial, more solidly there. In eye sockets, under nose and chin the shadows deepened. Modeled by light and darkness young breasts grew fuller and the faces of the old were more emphatically lined and hollowed.
Hand in hand they made their way through the crowd.
A middle-aged woman greeted Mary Sarojini, then turned to Will. “Are you that man from the Outside?” she asked.
“Almost infinitely from the outside,” he assured her.
She looked at him for a moment in silence, then smiled encouragingly and patted his cheek.
“We’re all very sorry for you,” she said.
They moved on, and now they were standing on the fringes of a group assembled at the foot of the temple steps to listen to a young man who was playing a long-necked, lute-like instrument and singing in Palanese. Rapid declamation alternated with long-drawn, almost birdlike melismata on a single vowel sound, and then a cheerful and strongly accented tune that ended in a shout. A roar of laugher went up from the crowd. A few more bars, another line or two of recitative, and the singer struck his final chord. There was applause and more laughter and a chorus of incomprehensible commentary.
“What’s it all about?” Will asked.
“It’s about girls and boys sleeping together,” Mary Sarojini answered.
“Oh—I see.” He felt a pang of guilty embarrassment; but, looking down into the child’s untroubled face, he could see that his concern was uncalled for. It was evident that boys and girls sleeping together were as completely to be taken for granted as going to school or eating three meals a day—or dying.
“And the part that made them laugh,” Mary Sarojini went on, “was where he said the Future Buddha won’t have to leave home and sit under the Bodhi Tree. He’ll have his Enlightenment while he’s in bed with the princess.”
“Do you think that’s a good idea?” Will asked.
She nodded emphatically. “It would mean that the princess would be enlightened too.”
“You