Island - Aldous Huxley [15]
5
THE SUN WAS JUST RISING AS DR. ROBERT ENTERED HIS WIFE’S room at the hospital. An orange glow, and against it the jagged silhouette of the mountains. Then suddenly a dazzling sickle of incandescence between two peaks. The sickle became a half circle and the first long shadows, the first shafts of golden light crossed the garden outside the window. And when one looked up again at the mountains there was the whole unbearable glory of the risen sun.
Dr. Robert sat down by the bed, took his wife’s hand and kissed it. She smiled at him, then turned again towards the window.
“How quickly the earth turns!” she whispered, and then after a silence, “One of these mornings,” she added, “it’ll be my last sunrise.”
Through the confused chorus of bird cries and insect noises, a mynah was chanting, “Karuna. Karuna…”
“Karuna,” Lakshmi repeated. “Compassion…”
“Karuna. Karuna,” the oboe voice of Buddha insisted from the garden.
“I shan’t be needing it much longer,” she went on. “But what about you? Poor Robert, what about you?”
“Somehow or other one finds the necessary strength,” he said.
“But will it be the right kind of strength? Or will it be the strength of armor, the strength of shut-offness, the strength of being absorbed in your work and your ideas and not caring a damn for anything else? Remember how I used to come and pull your hair and make you pay attention? Who’s going to do that when I’m gone?”
A nurse came in with a glass of sugared water. Dr. Robert slid a hand under his wife’s shoulders and lifted her to a sitting position. The nurse held the glass to her lips. Lakshmi drank a little water, swallowed with difficulty, then drank again and yet once more. Turning from the proffered glass, she looked up at Dr. Robert. The wasted face was illumined by a strangely incongruous twinkle of pure mischief.
“‘I the Trinity illustrate,’” the faint voice hoarsely quoted, “‘sipping watered orange pulp; in three sips the Arian frustrate’…” She broke off. “What a ridiculous thing to be remembering. But then I always was pretty ridiculous, wasn’t I?”
Dr. Robert did his best to smile back at her. “Pretty ridiculous,” he agreed.
“You used to say I was like a flea. Here one moment and then, hop! somewhere else, miles away. No wonder you could never educate me!”
“But you educated me all right,” he assured her. “If it hadn’t been for you coming in and pulling my hair and making me look at the world and helping me to understand it, what would I be today? A pedant in blinkers—in spite of all my training. But luckily I had the sense to ask you to marry me, and luckily you had the folly to say yes and then the wisdom and intelligence to make a good job of me. After thirty-seven years of adult education I’m almost human.”
“But I’m still a flea.” She shook her head. “And yet I did try. I tried very hard. I don’t know if you ever realized it, Robert: I was always on tiptoes, always straining up towards the place where you were doing your work and your thinking and your reading. On tiptoes, trying to reach it, trying to get up there beside you. Goodness, how tiring it was! What an endless series of efforts! And all of them quite useless. Because I was just a dumb flea hopping about down here among the people and the flowers and the cats and dogs. Your kind of highbrow world was a place I could never climb up to, much less find my way in. When this thing happened” (she raised her hand again to her absent breast) “I didn’t have to try any more. No more school, no more homework. I had a permanent excuse.”
There was a long silence.
“What about taking another sip?” said the nurse at last.
“Yes, you ought to drink some more,” Dr. Robert agreed.
“And ruin the Trinity?” Lakshmi