Island - Aldous Huxley [26]
“You’re forgetting Purity,” said the Rani severely. “Purity is fundamental, Purity is the sine qua non.”
“But here in Pala, I gather, they don’t think so.”
“They most certainly do not,” said the Rani. And she went on to tell him how her poor Baby had been deliberately exposed to impurity, even actively encouraged to indulge in it with one of those precocious, promiscuous girls of whom, in Pala, there were only too many. And when they found that he wasn’t the sort of boy who would seduce a girl (for she had brought him up to think of Woman as essentially Holy), they had encouraged the girl to do her best to seduce him.
Had she, Will wondered, succeeded? Or had Antinoüs already been girlproofed by little friends of his own age or, still more effectively, by some older, more experienced and authoritative pederast, some Swiss precursor of Colonel Dipa?
“But that wasn’t the worst.” The Rani lowered her voice to a horrified stage whisper. “One of the mothers on the committee of guardianship—one of the mothers, mind you—advised him to take a course of lessons.”
“What sort of lessons?”
“In what they euphemistically call Love.” She wrinkled up her nose as though she had smelt raw sewage. “Lessons, if you please,” and disgust turned into indignation, “from some Older Woman.”
“Heavens!” cried the Ambassador.
“Heavens!” Will dutifully echoed. Those older women, he could see, were competitors much more dangerous, in the Rani’s eyes, than even the most precociously promiscuous of girls. A mature instructress in love would be a rival mother, enjoying the monstrously unfair advantage of being free to go the limits of incest.
“They teach…” The Rani hesitated. “They teach Special Techniques.”
“What sort of techniques?” Will enquired.
But she couldn’t bring herself to go into the repulsive particulars. And anyhow it wasn’t necessary, for Murugan (bless his heart!) had refused to listen to them. Lessons in immorality from someone old enough to be his mother—the very idea of it had made him sick. No wonder. He had been brought up to reverence the Ideal of Purity. “Brahmacharya, if you know what that means.”
“Quite,” said Will.
“And this is another reason why his illness was such a blessing in disguise, such a real godsend. I don’t think I could have brought him up that way in Pala. There are too many bad influences here. Forces working against Purity, against the Family, even against Mother Love.”
Will pricked up his ears. “Did they even reform mothers?”
She nodded. “You just can’t imagine how far things have gone here. But Koot Hoomi knew what kind of dangers we would have to run in Pala. So what happens? My Baby falls ill, and the doctors order us to Switzerland. Out of harm’s way.”
“How was it,” Will asked, “that Koot Hoomi let you go off on your Crusade? Didn’t he foresee what would happen to Murugan as soon as your back was turned?”
“He foresaw everything,” said the Rani. “The temptations, the resistance, the massed assault by all the Powers of Evil and then, at the very last moment, the rescue. For a long time,” she explained, “Murugan didn’t tell me what was happening. But after three months the assaults of the Powers of Evil were too much for him. He dropped hints; but I was too completely absorbed in my Master’s business to be able to take them. Finally he wrote me a letter in which it was all spelled out—in detail. I canceled my last four lectures in Brazil and flew home as fast as the jets would carry me. A week later we were back in Switzerland. Just my Baby and I—alone with the Master.”
She closed her eyes, and an expression of gloating ecstasy appeared upon her face. Will looked away in distaste. This self-canonized world-savior, this clutching and devouring mother—had she ever, for a single moment, seen herself as others saw her? Did she have any idea of what she had done, what she was still doing, to her poor silly little son? To the first question the answer was certainly no. About the second one could only speculate. Perhaps she honestly didn’t know what she had made of the boy.