He rests. He has travelled.

With?
Sinbad the Sailor and Tinbad the Tailor and Jinbad the Jailer and
Whinbad the Whaler and Ninbad the Nailer and Finbad the Failer and
Binbad the Bailer and Pinbad the Pailer and Minbad the Mailer and
Hinbad the Hailer and Rinbad the Railer

James Joyce, Ulysses

Page 2

November 5, 1911

This same man came to see me almost every night during our run of
Fannys First Play. I noticed him because he was so homely that it was
impossible not to notice him, he was so glum, his drawn horse-like
face darkened with a deep melancholy. Yet every night there he was
in the same box seat, looking down at me, at times raising a finger, so
it seemed, in my direction. One night Mr. Shaw was in attendance,
trying his best to be incognito, a part he does not play well at all, and
so that meant he was instantly recognized by everybody and followed
everywhere by people asking him why he was here, as he had not told
anyone publicly that he was in fact the author of this play. And so
when the show was over, Mr. Shaw came backstage trailed by his
rubbernecked entourage to tell me there was someone who wanted to
meet me, someone whom he believed I should honor with my

Page 3

audience. (Mr. Shaw sometimes talked like that when other people
were listening, if we had been alone he would have probably said
something like: A friend of mine is here to see you. Dont know what
he wants. Your choice.)

The person who came to my dressing room door after the

performance was indeed the glum and homely man who had been
watching me the last several nights, and now standing before me he
appeared even thinner, more gaunt than I had imagined, older in his
face and his posture than he probably was in years. In fact, his aged
features were betrayed by a boyish mannerism, a gay nervousness,
the forced and awkward smile of an adolescent. Yet wrinkles and
shadows about his face etched in years whether rightly or wrongly, he
possessed a dark coloration, perhaps due to illness, or maybe due to
another sort of internal pain, nevertheless he was not attractive in the
least. And I could barely manage a smile of my own when he held out
his hand for mine, his fingers trembling as if with an old mans palsy. I
am Leonard Woolf, the man said to me as I meekly pressed his cold,
sweaty palm.

Yes, I said, you are a friend of Mr. Shaws I understand. I am indeed,

he said, and I have been enjoying your performance tremendously, in
this play within a play, quite creative and somewhat provocative,

Page 4

theater has changed a good deal in the last ten years it seems, he
said. Not knowing what he meant by that I smiled. He continued: and
it must be challenging I am sure, for you, as the star or the actress of
the production to play someone who is so young, he continued, in the
play I mean, not that you cant play someone young as you have that
very special look of youth, you do, a look of absolute youth that is. I
stood there and said nothing, absolutely amazed at how pathetically
awkward this man could be. And well I must say there is not much
else to watch but you, he continued, no disrespect meant to Georges
writing, which as always, is brilliant, yes brilliant.

This man who

initially had been only nervous was now on a verge of a breakdown, I

feared. Ah, so you know then do you? I asked. Know what? he asked,
wiping his brow. You know that Mr. Shaw in fact wrote this play? I
said. Well, yes, he said, that is what he told me. Then you must be a
friend of his, I said. Yes, of course, I am quite a good friend of his you
see, he said, and yes he told me that he did not want the public to
know of his authorship, that this was essential to the integrity of the
play, something like that, but I am afraid that if I sound a bit odd or a
bit strange, I must explain, you see I have just recently returned from
nine years in Ceylon, I have not been sleeping well, the change and
all....

Page 5

Where? I asked.

The island of Ceylon, in Asia, near India, he said

looking directly at me for the first time with an expression of some

concern. Tell me, he said somewhat seductively if that was possible
for him, have you never heard of this place?

I have not, I said.

Ceylon, he said, the place where Sinbad washed up on shore in A

Thousand and One Nights? Surely you have I am sorry, I said a little
annoyed, but I havent. Oh, no need to be sorry, he said with a sudden
smile that seemed so out of place on that darkly glum and wrinkled
face. In fact, he continued, I think that is grand!

I suppose it was because this Mr. Woolf was clearly a friend of both
Mr. Shaw and Beatrice Webb that I decided to accept his sudden
invitation to join him for dinner that evening, for he was in many ways
a strange man, and the years he had recently spent in this place
called Ceylon had not done him well. He was very nervous as I said, a
trait that did not diminish with time as you would expect, he was like
a rat actually, his hands always fidgeting, his nose twitching, his eyes
blinking far too rapidly as if the lights were too bright. When he told
me that he was in love with a woman and wondered if I could offer
him some advice, I felt an initial relief, but then suspected that this
was perhaps but a mans attempt to put down a womans guard. I was
further worried because until he revealed this about his lover, I had
nothing but feelings of revulsion for him, now suddenly I felt a stirring

Page 6

of curiosity, something close to an interest but not what I would call

desire, no, I was sure whatever I felt would not stir that far.

He said he would wait out front, put his hat back on his head and left.
I removed my make-up and dressed, not with any haste I might add,
and when I appeared outside the theater, I was a little dismayed to
find this Mr. Woolf ready with a hansom cab to take us to dinner. You
really must forgive my forwardness, he said to me before we arrived
to the restaurant, I am in a bit of a bind and have so little time to find
my way out of it. Naturally one does not normally seek out a stranger
in situations like this, he continued, and of course I have considered
going to friends about this dilemma of mine, but one night after
George had told me about his new play, well your play, I decided to
make an evening of it.

I have returned several times, actually

thinking in some I suppose irrational way that I would find the answer
to what I was looking for in the play itself, well, so Georges writing
can make you believe at times. But after coming here maybe four or
five times, I realized that it was you, well Fanny actually, as I did not
know you, who was in fact the person I so needed to talk with about
this, about my problem.

There was sweat visibly forming on his

forehead and droplets on his upper lip. He glanced this way and that
as he struggled to make himself clear. I know, he continued, I know,
this all sounds so terribly odd and out of place, imposing my problems

Page 7

on a complete stranger such as yourself, but bear with me and I think

you will if nothing else get some amusement out of a poor mans
terrible dilemma.

The truth was we did not talk about his dilemma until much later
when our meals were brought to our table. Instead, he told me about
his time in Cambridge, his many friends, many of whom seemed to be
quite famous like Mr. Shaw, stories that could only have been true as
they were so bland yet so unique, and I have to admit I warmed up to
this strange, mousey man, especially after a glass of wine. It was I
who brought up again his dilemma. Mr. Woolf, I said. Please call me
Leonard, he said. Leonard, I said, okay, I am ready. Ready for what,
he answered nervously, mildly choking on a crust of bread.

I am

ready to hear about your problem, I said, remember? the reason we

are here tonight?

Oh, of course, he said, wiping his lips with his

napkin, then nearly knocking over his glass of wine. He was a terribly
anxious person and I could not tell if the feelings I now had for him
were attraction to his ugliness (which can happen), a strange lust that
I should ignore like the sudden desire to buy shoes I dont need, or
most dangerously sympathy. Yes, he said, I was having such a grand
time talking with you about the past that I forgot what I really need to
talk with you about which is the future. Funny though, he continued, I
had it in my mind to talk with Fanny about this problem. You have

Page 8

made me forget about Fanny altogether.

I have been sitting here

talking with you, while Fanny, well she has seemed to have vanished.
He fumbled with his fork which clattered off his plate and fell
somewhere at his feet.

He looked up and laughed.

But I would

attribute that to your superb abilities as an actress, he said, not only

can you put on a character with ease, you can also, is it correct to say,
put it off? For some reason, the wine being the most likely, I pulled
my hair back in the fashion of my character, leaned across the table,
then took one of his trembling hands in mine and said: Ok, Leonard, I
am now Fanny.
these nights.

Tell me what you have been wanting to tell me all

He took a sip of his wine, and with that swig of

reinforcement looked at me straight on for only the second time this

evening, and with an expression of great concentration said:

Ok, I

need to tell you a story, a bit of a long story I am afraid, but a story
about Ceylon and a young man who went there as a mere boy without
a care in the world and came back a man carrying the burden of the
world upon him. At this point I must have put on an expression of
disbelief because he quickly and abruptly corrected himself. Well, it is
not quite as dramatic a story as I just made it sound, he said, but let
me tell you the best that I can.

This was his story: And so on a certain day a few years ago, I can
imagine Kudabandara or Kuda as we called him, walking briskly down

Page 9

our village road, covered loosely in his white robe, his black hair thick
and slightly sweaty about his face, his dark eyes dancing gaily from
face to face of the villagers who watched him hurry past, smiling back
with their ambivalent shakes of the head, responding to his broad and
most sincere smile, for he was a happy man, an engaging and
entertaining fellow, usually one to stop and chat, share some gossip,
crack a joke, but not today, as he was in a hurry.

Kuda was the

Diyawadana Nilame, the Guardian of the Tooth. The relic, which some
say was nearly twenty five hundred years old, well it was the Tooth of
the Gautama Buddha after all, was kept in the great Dalada Maligawa,
or the Palace of the Sacred Tooth Relic, most often called the Temple
of the Tooth. Two people were assigned to watch over the Tooth, one
was the Buddhist priest of the Maligawa, the other was a civil servant,
and for the last several years that person had been Kuda. Kuda was in
a hurry on this particular day because a royal request had been made
to show the sacred relic. The timing of this request was not the best
as it was poya, the day of the full moon, and as on every poya day he
was to sit in the temple as the families gathered around him, the men,
women, wives, husband, mothers, fathers and children, the many who
could gather in their family knots, whispering, talking, some of the
children playing, people sitting on the floor, getting up from time to
time to visit with another group, all the while the priest read from the
sacred books, the noise about him not so much an annoyance or sign

Page 10

of disinterest but a gentle humming reminder of this duty, of the

people who were in his stead. Today he had a royal request from the
GA (that being me, the Government Assistant of the region) that he
had to honor and so his assistant, a mere boy really, would have to
preside over the poya readings.

Another reason he would be walking briskly along this road was

because he knew, as all people here knew by a feel on their skin, that
any minute the rains would come as if to punish him for his haste, for
what is a worse than doing something in haste. And so before he could
make it to his destination, the heavens which had grown dark and
earthen suddenly opened and he was now hustling through a
drenching warm rain which within minutes changed the entire world
around him, where there had been dirt and dust there was now mud
boiling and bubbling everywhere, the ditches along the road quickly
filled and became raging streams, ponds spread out upon the broken
roads and these ponds grew to the size of lakes that began to ferry
their own debris from shore to shore. The sound of the rain upon the
ground was a terrible drubbing, but nothing to compare to the sound
of it slicing through the dense leaves of the trees, a roar that was
deafening, terrible, instantly drowning out all other sounds, the
shouts of mothers to their children to come inside, the wooden doors
and shutters being slammed shut, the bells upon the old bicycles, the

Page 11

creaks and rumbles of the bullock carts, the bellowing of the Brahmin
bull which was staked to a tree complaining not of the rain but of the
frail branches that snapped and lashed upon his soaking hide, all
became a mere pantomime in the roar of the rain, and then just when
Kuda had reached the steps to the Maligawa, the rain stopped, as
suddenly as it started, but for the waters running off the roof, rushing
down the ditches and dripping from the trees, and a damp, humid and
musty peace moved in, a temporary silence that was broken bit by
croaking bit by a new sound that awoke out of the rains cessation,
one that started gently then gradually but steadily grew louder, until
finally this small sound became a mighty call, a deafening chorus that
arose from millions of ecstatic frogs from every ditch and pond and
field and compound, a wild, corybantic orgasm of wet, wallowing
frogs.

Waiting for him on the verandah was a beautiful young woman,

Mythili, accompanied by her dark frail mother, and Kuda immediately
knew why they were there. He wanted to tell her before she had a
chance to say a word that he had no time, that he had other things to
do, but it was not right to put things off like that, besides, she had
brought him some flowers and more importantly six rupees, and so his
duty was to the Temple after all, not to himself. His responsibility was
not to some other time but to the here and now, for it all came

Page 12

together, it all was related, it would all join up in one miraculously

simple gesture upon the world and as long as each component was
conceived and received with grace, there was never anything to fear.
So he thought and tried to believe. And so he accepted the flowers
and let the rupees jangle into a fold of his robe as he sat down and let
the woman proceed.

Meanwhile, I had just walked two miles from a mountain village

where I had been checking on a reported incident of rinderpest, a
particularly hideous disease of cattle, one that infected hundreds of
cows and buffalo each year during the monsoons when the waters and
dampness in the air carried the spores or bacteria or whatever caused
the infections to spread. I came to the area where an infected bull had
been reported and sure enough I could see the poor animal lurking
not far off in the jungle brush, untethered which was against
regulation and punishable by fine, eyeing me from the shadows as if
the dumb beast knew what I was thinking, which of course was
absolutely impossible, before it vanished in the deep darkness. These
buffalos were certainly the dumbest of all living things, yet that did
not mean they should suffer or spread their suffering to innocent
others. The villager who owned the buffalo was desperately trying to
explain something to me, a fear quickened plea that I could not
understand despite my perfect understanding of Tamil, he was as dark

Page 13

as a man could be, as if he had been lit aflame and then extinguished,
left charred all over, the white hair on his head and chin like bits of
ash, he waved his arms and danced about in his sari as if to distract
me from my task, a task I had no choice but to do, as once I set my
mind on something, it was my nature to do it with the most efficiency
and practicality as possible, it was not in me to linger on a thought, a
decision, to wait or seek another way out, I had a constitution that
required action. Yet one action I always considered carefully was
stepping into the jungle in pursuit of a wild and deranged animal. You
see, the jungle border was a boundary as thin yet as perilous to man
as the meniscus of the ocean, indeed I was amazed at how the
smallest of distances separated man from the violence that lurked
inside these interiors.

Not only were there creatures in the jungle

such as venomous snakes that could paralyze you and leave you
writhing and foaming from the mouth within seconds, and lizards so
large they could swallow a child, but there were man-loathing beasts
such as bears, crocodiles, not to mention the elephants who seemed
far too immense to be able to manage this dense terrain yet moved so
quietly and effortlessly that you knew of their presence only by the
smell of their terrible flatulence. And so I stepped into the peripheral
shadows of the jungle, remembering the other times I had entered
into the dense foliage in some kind of search, once for a man who
gathered medicinal herbs and found but his clothes and bones, once

Page 14

for a lost child and found nothing. Once I came across a leopard in a
tree, and I stood as still as possible, knowing his eyes were on me, his
mind studying me, each of our futures conjoined in these few
moments, and I watched as that cat poured itself off that tree limb as
if it was of some miraculous fluid, vanishing out of sight. I had heard
that while the leopard rarely attacked men, it has a preternatural
attraction to the peculiar smell of small pox and will not only attack or
devour a person stricken with the diseases, as if divinely engaged to
remove the infected person from this earth. Another time I was
stalking an elephant which had stormed a village in a fit of rage.
Somehow the duty had fallen upon me to do something about this
enraged beast. I remember being gripped by a fear that caused me to
tremble uncontrollably as I battled with myself to move forward
through the brush. I indeed found the elephant and in that thick
jungle it looked blatantly primeval and malignant, his pachydermatous
grayness, his wicked little eye, the menace of his long mottled trunk.
Coming face to face with a buffalo or a bear, I felt pretty sure what
that animal would do. I never felt I had any idea what an elephant
would do. And so on this particular occasion I did not know if this
elephant would charge or flee or simply be content to shift back and
forth in that slow ceaseless fidgeting, the lifting of one foot after
another in a pattern of eternal restlessness that no elephant seems to
escape. I raised my rifle to my shoulder and watched the barrel shake

Page 15

wildly. I was but a few feet from its massive head and yet when I
pulled the trigger I knew immediately I had missed badly. And so I
was therefore greatly relieved when the leviathan backed away and
silently disappeared like a shadow into the jungle. My inability to do
my duty, which I knew could expose me as a coward and not the great
white leader I was supposed to be, turned out to be my secret as the
animal never returned.

Until I came to Ceylon, all I knew of elephants I knew from my

Mavors Spelling Book which utilized the elephant to dramatize the
letter E.

I knew it was large and strong and had a remarkable

intelligence and I knew that one thing an elephant did was it never
forgot. Once in Ceylon, I was often told of the animals sagacity and
unique gentleness by sahibs and villagers alike, who tried to convince
me of the mutual respect and veneration that existed between the
great animal and men, yet to tell you truthfully I saw little but
violence as the basis for this relationship, man doing what he can with
traps and hooks to korral the animal, with guns to kill it, and the
elephant using his fury and size and colossal might to destroy his
would be colonizers and so survive to roam freely the jungles another
day.

And so it was with this dissonance between spoken word and

action that I surmised the true nature of this animal. I could not help
but think it was more mysterious and perhaps even more insidious

Page 16

than even those who lived here believed. Even though elephants have
been domesticated since the first Punic War, the tamed elephant
seems to me to be merely drugged or anesthetized into accepting its
fate, it carries on with a plodding and depressed rhythm, shaking its
head slowly to the primeval calls of Ure-re! Ure-re! (he cupped his
hands around his mouth as he imitated these calls, his eyes suddenly
looked darker and more distant), the vocalizations the mahouts use to
direct the lumbering beast. Peaceful as they may seem, I believe they
harbor a rage that is as deep as it is vast. Fortunately the demand for
elephants in the Commission of Roads where they labored to clear
new paths through the forest had diminished as the great beasts
despite their strength and dedication are far less economical than the
horse or even the bullock. I was, I believe, one of the first to show
that it takes three men to attend to an elephants needs, one to guide
and direct it, two others to cut down its feed, and so I quite easily
demonstrated that one elephant costs as much as two or three horses
and cannot produce as much work. This led to far fewer elephants
being koralled or captured each year, these being harrowing, weeklong events that always led to the deaths of the more stubborn beasts
that refused to submit, while the others were starved into accepting a
life consisting of being chained by foot and leg. Unfortunately the
demand to hunt and kill the great, sorrowful beasts only increased in
later years and sometimes a hunting group will kill a dozen such

Page 17

animals and only bring back the tails, leaving infants to wail and crash
about parentless in the jungles. Many stories of course abound about
the elephant, none less popular than the one that says you will never
find a dead elephant in the jungle unless it has been hunted and
killed of course that elephants seek to find a special valley or
graveyard when they become aware of deaths approach. In fact, our
friend Sinbad when he washed ashore on Serendib, as they called
Ceylon back then, was captured and enslaved by a man to shoot
elephants for their ivory.

One day Sinbad falls from his hunting

station in the trees and is picked up by one of this targets who carries
him to a place where there are a great many elephant bones. Sinbad
realized that this was indeed the ancient burial place for elephants. In
other words, this myth probably began centuries ago. Other aspects of
the elephant also fascinate me, as it seems to be an animal defined
exquisitely in mathematical terms. For example, the circumference of
its foot is exactly the height at its shoulder. Amazing, huh? When I
shared this fact with some mahouts, or elephant trainers, they looked
at me as if I was the first white man to discover these hidden secrets
of the elephant and they then proceeded to tell me with absolute glee
more of these facts, for example, that the distance between its eyes is
always one half the length of its trunk, that the length of its head from
tip of the trunk to the back of it neck is equal to the length of its back
not counting its tail, that the size of its toenail is the same size as its

Page 18

grinders, its penis the same length as the distance from one ear to
another. These elephant wise men had somehow determined that the
average elephant lived to be 300 years, the exact number that
Aristotle, a sage unknown to these jungle men, came up with more
than two thousand years ago. What strange calculus did these men
share? Through my own research I had discovered that the elephant
has a head unlike any other mammals head, it is three quarters air,
much like that of a whale, filled with hollow boney sinuses that would
best serve its purpose if the animal were in water, of which apparently
the elephant is especially fond. Secondly the animal is not furless but
nearly naked, much like man is, he has a tuft of hair on his head and
thick but sparse hair all across his body, the only other mammals so
naked being the ones that frequent the rivers or sea such as the
dugong or dolphin. Finally, I believed I had hit upon something when
I discovered that the word itself, elephant, is attributed to an ancient
form of Sanskrit and means Son of the Ocean. Could it be that these
giants trample the earth by some sort of fluke of evolution, that these
marauders would be better at home in the sea and that their closest
cousins are the whales? I am sure I am not the first to contemplate
such things. Still, despite my fascination with the beast, I never came
to feel the same affection for the elephant others claimed. But never
did I kill one or try to subdue one with ropes and chains and burning
branches.

Perhaps only when one has witnessed surrender and

Page 19

slaughter does one begin to feel a different sort of sympathy and from
that derive affection for the vanquished.

So to return to my story, you can imagine how in my mind entering the

jungle even a few feet from a road or trail was to take a profound risk.
I had my rifle raised ready to my shoulder, hearing the desperate
pleas of the beasts owner grow even louder in volume, more shrill,
which I would not have thought possible, as I took several careful
steps into the damp darkness until I could hear not only the maddened
villager screaming and shouting, but I could hear others beginning to
shout, most certainly several of his village mates gathered with him
now, men who began to either shout at him to be quiet or perhaps join
with him to shout at me. As I continued my cautious journey, a new
sound arose, a deep heavy sighing, a pained breath, and just as it
happens in the jungle, I came upon the stricken bull when it was no
more than a yard from my face, merely inches from the end of my gun,
revealed as the jungle reveals things, only at the last minute but with
the full terror and detail that comes as if suddenly pulling back a
shade or curtain, and there was the bulls heavy, pitiable head, rotted
to the bone, its flesh eaten away and pulsing with maggots, the final
signs of its disease, one eye still moving shiftily in the mass of bloody,
oozing flesh. The bull was still alive, but blinded and its nose so
destroyed by the disease that it could not smell me, undoubtedly

Page 20

maddened by pain or fear or whatever these dumb beasts must

experience when they realize a scourge is ravishing them one maggot
bite at a time. The bull did not move, and then I saw that its front leg
was caught between two tree limbs, the skin rubbed down to the
bone. Its hide was covered with biting flies that were sucking its blood
and leaving their dried bloody waste in a matted coat of shit across is
back and flanks. A more pitiful beast I had never laid eyes on. I had
heard the stories of how when the disease finally reached their brains
these animals took off in their madness, a fury that sent them running
not just anywhere but towards the valley or mountainside of their
birth, the place where they first fell from their mothers womb,
dropped in a bloody mess to the grass or dirt below; now maddened
by this disease they had but one mindful determination left which was
to return to this place of origin and to fall to the ground again, a
bloody pile of flesh once more, where they would die and be picked
apart by jackals and birds. I fired one shot into the pathetic monsters
skull and it collapsed as if suddenly relieved of its torture, the trapped
leg snapping like a twig, the flies rising like a blanket that hovered for
a moment then fell gently back onto the bloody, maggoty mess
collected on the jungle floor. It was indeed at times like these that I
would hesitate and think about my role on this earth. Was I in fact
simply a man with a passion for duty and or a man who lacked any
sense of compassion? Or did I think of myself in grander terms? As a

Page 21

ruler of sorts? As a god able to determine life and death with a simple
squeeze of a trigger? I did not think so, and with that realization I also
reinforced my belief that the adulation of any one or any deity as you
indeed find in most religions was utterly and completely ridiculous. I
certainly am no god, I simply destroy things, I kill. And if there is a
god, whoever that may be, at what cost of senseless pain and misery,
of what wasteful and prodigal cruelty, does he manage to produce a
single daffodil, a horsefly or a sardine? Catholic, Buddhist or Hindoo,
I resent the wasteful stupidity of a system, a universe that tolerates
such cruelty simply because these others, either human or animal, are
not as civilized as us.

But with the report of my gun, the bulls owner immediately stopped
shouting and when I emerged from the jungle he was sitting on his
haunches while other men in saris and their clean poya shirts were
huddled about him, glaring at me: the white man, the evil white man, I
am sure that is what they were thinking and perhaps saying in their
local dialect so that I would not understand. I was evil and wrong for
killing their bull, their prized possession, I would have faced less
hostility if I had shot their wife, I am sure. It was of course depressing
to find that ones severity and commitment to rule and regulation was
so resented. I dont intend to demean these people, I had come here
to Ceylon nearly seven years ago not to change the way of life here,

Page 22

but life here had changed me, changed everything about me. And
much of that change was due to these people who I had grown to love
and admire in so many ways. Still I had been brought here to this
feudal island to maintain order, to instill structure to their lives. I did
not think of myself as the man who was trying to Europeanize these
people, I would have wanted nothing like that and do not think my
influence was about that at all.

But all men must share in certain

values, certain ideals of right and wrong, based not on principles of

religion or superstition but based on a common sense that is in fact
common to all men, just as all men and societies will benefit from
certain principles such as efficiency and accountability. That was why
I was here, that is what I was here to do. But when it comes to their
culture and religion and language, I say let them be as it was before
Adam. But to do my job meant I would not be liked. And if I do my job
well, then I would be despised. Still I would not interfere with their
true natures. I am the only sahib in a village of four hundred men,
greatly outnumbered and easily overpowered if they so desired, and
so I want them to grovel before me and touch my boots, but at the
same time I want to see that they still have within them their
independence and local manners.

Meanwhile, back at the Maligawa, the woman had begun her tale,
having gained the ear of Kuda with the six rupees she had dropped

Page 23

into his hand, those coins now buried in the fold of his robe.

He

flipped the first coin in his hand as she began to speak. I had been
born to a strict and severe father, she said, who has kept me inside
our small home except for the times I was escorted to and from
school. Like most girls I was not to appear in public, unless it could
not be avoided, and since I was considered pretty, I was not to walk
freely, especially not at night. I was too pretty to be allowed to stroll
along the dirt lanes where the men leisured, too pretty to be allowed
to be seen on the main street where the men squatted and spit and
watched all that passed by, too pretty to go anywhere at night where
men hesitated in the darkness and gathered themselves in the dust
and the dirt, lying in wait, too pretty to learn much or anything about
the real world. And so I was a nave and stupid girl who became a
naive and stupid woman when it came to the world and its myriad
ways, yet at the age of twenty two I was suddenly told that I would
marry a man I had never met, a member of a species of which I knew
nothing other than my father, a man who meant nothing to me and yet
would come to mean so much of what I would quickly learn to hate,
despise and deplore in men, and when asked by the priest to explain
these things she began to do so as Kuda flipped the second coin in his
hand buried beneath the folds of his robe. Her husband was not a bad
man, she continued, in fact she thought he was rather a good man, yet
that did not mean she would take her life and hand it to this man as

Page 24

that was indeed what he wanted and expected of her. I often think
that he is good in his heart, she said, but he is bad in his ways, or only
knew certain ways, and while I understood this from my own narrow
experience, I could not accept it either. Unlike other women, I do not
feel that I am one of my husbands cattle, although at times he
certainly treats me so.

Unlike other women, I do not fear my

husband, although at times he does grow very angry and has struck
me more than once. And unlike other woman, I do not fear the outside
world, a place I have never really seen, but instead I desire to see and
desire more and more to find my place out there, out here, she said as
if suddenly realizing she was in fact free simply by sitting here on the
verandah of Maligawa. What would you do in this world? Kuda asked,
flipping the third coin over in his hand hidden in the fold of his robe.
She was not sure, she enjoyed flowers and plants, perhaps she could
grow these things, bring them to bloom, harvest them and sell them in
the city. Perhaps I could help old people, she said, whose sons and
daughters had moved overseas, old woman who had no one to care for
them, they may only pay me a rupee a day but I could cook for them
and share their food, I could keep their house and share a floor on
which to sleep. Or maybe I could travel, maybe I could find someone
who would sponsor me and take me to London where, I have been
told, all the world convened in its harbors and mingled on its streets.
I may care for this man, my husband, but I will not care for him for

Page 25

the rest of my life.

I may acknowledge my duty to this man, my

husband, and would cook for him, would keep a clean house, would
look after the animals, and I may let him penetrate me from time to
time, but I do not desire to do any of these things for the rest of my
life. Kuda bowed his head and counted the fourth rupee in his robe,
then asked: What is it that you want? She wanted a divorce, she said.
On what grounds? Kuda asked, has he committed adultery? No, she
said. Has he abused you? No, she said. Is he in gaol? No, she said.
Then on what grounds shall you seek this divorce? On the grounds,
she said, that I cannot have a happy life with him. Ah, Kuda sighed,
and counted the fifth coin in his hand, that is a difficult case to make
for divorce. Very difficult. Why? she asked. Because you will need the
support from everyone, he said, all the people in the village. They will
all be called to testify on your behalf or perhaps against it. In any
case, I cannot help you with this matter, divorce is a civil matter and
so you must see the GA who is a strict but fair man, a man who will
listen to you and give your situation proper thought and so will render
unto you a decision that will be just and fair. All I can do is offer you a
look into what the stars behold for you.

And as the skies had now cleared he looked up at a full moon already
in the sky hours before the sun would set and there in a corner of the
universe was the tail of Halleys comet. Give me your birth date, he

Page 26

asked the woman. She did and he took from another fold in his robe a
small almanac that had been well fingered and thumbed, the pages
softened, tattered and grimy. You will have a child, it will be with the
man you are with now, that child will be a boy and he will grow to love
the earth and the sciences of the earth and he will not walk barefoot
in this village but will wear shoes on cobblestone streets and will see
the world through pieces of glass and He stopped because he could
see the woman was weeping; he flipped the sixth and last rupee that
she had given him and then clutched them all tightly in his cloth so
that they would not make a sound. He looked back into the sky as if
expecting the comet to suddenly race from view, but it held steady, a
scratch on the glassy underbelly of the universe. He stood, bowed
before the woman and her mother and went inside the temple without
any further word, as he had many preparations to make in a very
short period of time.

And so done with my duty, I cited the crying villager, which created a
further uproar not only from the man and his friends but from a
woman who I assumed was his wife who shook her fist at me as if I
was four times the white devil for penalizing him four rupees for
violating the ordinance that required a diseased beast to be separated
from other animals and to be tethered at all times. Then having paid a
rupee each to two of the villagers to bury the bull I had shot, which

Page 27

quieted them at least, I began to make my way the two miles back
down to the kachcheri, but not without hearing the final shouts from
the woman in words I understood very clearly: if the men of this
village were real men they would take to me with sticks and rocks.
Order never comes easily and always comes at some cost.

Never in my life had I walked so long and so regularly as I did in

Ceylon, yet I somehow knew that once I left this place I would never
exercise as much as I did here where walking was not only a necessity
but an activity that opened your mind and perhaps your soul if there is
indeed such a thing, and indeed a place like Ceylon will drive a man to
begin thinking in such uselessly spiritual ways. But there is a great
irony in what I would convey to you, as those of us who are animals of
the city, bred and raised there, educated there, taught how to live
there, we learn something else, we learn, maybe by accident, that the
world is small, the world is insignificant, it is but a few blocks in this
direction or that, it is but a cab ride, but a train ride through the
countryside. Ironic isnt it that we, the most imperialistic people in
the world, would grow up thinking of the world in such small,
parochial terms? And the irony is stretched further when you come to
a place like Ceylon, which is a provincial as provincial can be, these
villages but mere huts buried in a seemingly random fashion amidst a
dense mass of the rankest vegetation, these villages but a speck in the

Page 28

midst of the overwhelming, the cruel and unengaging jungle, and it is

here in this godforsaken place of beauty, amongst these people, on
these dirt roads, standing beneath these trees, surrounding by
nothing but the beauty of this cruel and inhospitable nature, that one
can truly see how large the world really is, how mammoth the planet
is on which we are not even ants, not even grains of dust, not in
comparison to all else that surrounds us. And so as we have lost our
perspectives living like we do in the civilized geometries of cobbled
streets and brick buildings and churches of flying arches, we mock the
primitives here for hanging on to their spirituality, their symbolism,
their gods and goddesses, their deities, their superstitions. We mock
them and think down on them, see them as a former, an earlier
manifestation of our selves, or, when we are feeling truly generous,
we call them the purer race. Yet send a civilized man down here for
but a few years, hell, send him for but a month, a week, a few days!
And watch him as he slowly begins to grasp for those spiritual
handholds he thought he would never need. Are we unfortunates who
are marooned here in this jungle version of Eden merely regressing?
Are we but losing the strengths and girders and suspenders of our
race and our civilization that allows us to turn away from these
barbaric thoughts? Are we but slowly losing our minds? I dont think
so. We call ourselves imperialists and we call for the civilization of the
world, the Europeanization of the primitives, the education and

Page 29

baptism of the lower races into a capitalistic totality that will become
equal when all men work their way to equality! An utopia that will
arrive when all men forget their deities and rituals, when all men turn
away from their astrologies and superstitions, when all men embrace
the sciences, the true history of the world, the grammar that is the
root of all human refinement, written like walking upright into every
mans being, but only brought to fruition by the correct training and
discipline. Yet I cannot help but feel that all this we call civilization is
but the white mans folly. I cannot help but feel that despite our socalled enlightenment, we have lost something as a race, something we
no longer recognize, something we think we see in the shadows and
blurs of these other civilizations, but nothing we can hold on to and
keep. And so these walks not only gave me time to contemplate these
many issues and ideas, they built for me a lasting perspective on the
world and our universe.

On this particular walk however, I was distracted by my own sudden

interest in some caves dug high into the side of the hills above the
trail, and I decided to create a diversion by climbing up there to
investigate. When I reached the jagged openings I was surprised that
they were larger than I had imagined and was not a little fearful that
there could be a bear or other beast inside these openings. Like a bad
joke, I was nearly frightened to the point of falling back down the

Page 30

hillside when a suddenly rustling inside one of the caves revealed a

shadow that came bounding out of the darkness. It was not a bear but
a smiling Chinaman who was a true anomaly in this country, he had
been trained in English while living in Hong Kong, had moved here
some years ago and was one of the few people I visited with
regularity, he was also one of the very few who was genuinely
interested in Western ideas, he often asked me to talk to him about
Plato and Aristotle and Galileo and Poincare, and I could see that
eagerness even today as he stood smiling before me, in his hands the
nests of birds that he had torn from their rookeries inside the caves.
This Chinaman was the only man with a license to collect these nests
which were then made into soup, and as I was in charge of these
functions I also knew that he was paid up on his taxes, hence the
smile on his face because he knew I had not climbed all the way up
here to the caves in order to ask him for money.
conquered in order to set people free.

They say Britain

If you can get your head

around that, then you can also manage another fact of imperialism,
especially Britains style, which is that we ruled not by force but by
taxation. Everything that could be taxed was taxed, not just the coffee
plantations and ships that came into harbor, or the woman who sat in
her hut stripping cinnamon bark, but the man who made a living
collecting nests in these caves, he once told me the unfinished nests
were the best for this purpose, the older nests which had harbored a

Page 31

brood of fledglings was tainted and produced a stronger and often

unappealing taste.

Each of the these impoverished workers had to

annually come to my office and pay their taxes, in return they had the
right to do what they and their people have been doing for centuries
without taxation. That was my job and that was how we ruled. But on
this day we had nothing but pleasantries to share and the Chinaman
told me a story about how the Gautama Buddha died on the very day
the white man Aristotle was born. And on the Buddhas death bed,
the Chinaman said, Gautama had said do not follow any leaders from
this time onward, and so we in the East have followed without
following from that day forward, the Chinaman continued, while you
in the West began to follow a man who gave you science and logic as
your new deities. I tipped my hat in agreement and then I left the
Chinaman and continued my walk back to the village.

My

perambulation was interrupted by a villager who had been sent to

request my presence at a house where a member of royalty was
visiting. Unfortunately this was one of the tiresome duties of being a
Government

Assistant

in

Ceylon,

overseeing

and

orchestrating

ceremonies, signing licenses, approving festivities and other activities

for the many members of royalty, the many fallen and deposed and
possibly fake members of this court or that, who came to see the
Empires outer reaches, the primitive outlands.

The particular

Empress who wished me to visit with her was not of the latter, of fake

Page 32

genealogy, but not exactly of the former, of the legitimate royalty

either. Nevertheless, authentic or not, my duties stood pretty much
the same.

She was Eugenie-Marie Motijo de Guzman, Countess of

Teba, of suspect royalty if only by her pedigree: she was a Spanish

noblewoman of Scottish ancestry who had been brought up in Paris
to me she was no more pure than the little street Arabs outside here.
Yet she was the wife of Napoleon III and so she was indeed the onetime and forever Empress of France.

To me regardless of title or

blood, she was but an old woman, bent over, frail and decrepit, who
was staying in a stately mansion in the city proper, overlooking the
lake, at the invitation of Sir Thomas Lipton, the tea buyer.

The

Empresss place of stay was but a few miles out of my way, so as I

said, duty called and I proceeded to her house.

I was led into the

waiting room where four ladies in waiting cheerfully greeted me with

their unpracticed French, these the libidinous and saltily lecherous
wives

of

the

Assistant

GAs

and

secretaries

stationed

here,

recognizable despite the layers of make-up they applied to their faces

and the false smiles that created cracks in their false masks of
propriety. They were all busy fanning themselves despite the boy who
pumped a large frond to circulate the air through the room. For me,
the intolerable aspect of this sitting area was not the heat but the
perfume which nearly suffocated me.

My eyes, I remember, were

stinging and my throat actually begin to buckle up as if threatening to

Page 33

close down lest another molecule of the vile aromatics should enter it,
and I was quite relieved when a servant finally asked me to join the
Empress in the throne room. I bid the painted ladies good day as I
was led into a large a room that was at least four or five times as large
as my entire bungalow, with no other furnishings than the throne
which was positioned in the very center and on which the aged
Empress sat like a frozen plume of smoke, bowed at the neck and
shoulders with age, veiled and dressed in black, for she was
perpetually mourning, her hands gripping the arms of the throne as if
holding on for dear life, her head bent over nearly into her lap
suggesting that perhaps death itself was a gale like force trying to
suck her away at this very moment. I was led to a place just in front
of the Empress, who, when I took my place, stirred a bit, suggesting
that I now had to do something such as kiss her hand. But that veined
and gnarly hand, deformed by age, the knuckles swollen and fused,
the skin thin as onion paper and the lifeblood cold and unmoving
below it? No, that was unthinkable. I bowed and said avec plaisir,
Empress Eugenia! with an unexpected cheerfulness as if I were
greeting a childhood friend. To my surprise yet great relief she spoke
in English. I had heard from many sources and actually read in one
book about the beauty of this woman and how she captured the
splendor that only great woman can attain, a beauty which even when
very old was retained in the shape of the face or in the most subtle

Page 34

expression, a quality that presented you with a window in which you

can clearly see back to the glamorous years of youth. This was not
the case with Empress Eugenia. I looked upon her and saw a face
that was ugly, positively ugly. Speaking with her was quite easy, she
made some small jokes, about what I can no longer remember, slight,
casual observations that barely squeaked off her dry and trembling
lips. But I do remember that at one point she gave me a long and very
detailed account of a fight that she had witnessed between a dog and
a rooster in one of the village streets, a story that actually surprised
me as it contained a style of intelligence I had not been prepared to
give this old woman, that suggested she had a mind far superior to
the minds of women I normally met from the royal class.

Her story was about a fight between two animals, but it was also, so it
seemed to me, about a struggle that took place within the nebulous
space created by the villagers who tried to stop the fight and clear the
road so she could pass, her observations not content to see the bare
details but to look for patterns and to follow the changes as if reality
was indeed of many sides and equal dimensions. The altercation had
stopped her cab as the bestial combatants gave no heed to the
onlookers who tried to shoo them off and even swung at them with
sticks and fronds. The villagers at first acted randomly and somewhat
casually, she said, stomping at them with a bare foot, taking a careless

Page 35

swipe with a long tree branch. But nothing would distract the two
animals from their focused desire to rip each other apart. As the fight
continued and these early efforts by the villagers created no effect,
the Empress said, I noticed a strange thing begin to happen, the
villagers began to coalesce, they stopped acting randomly and
casually, but began to develop a ritualized dance of sorts around the
fighting animals. At first the dozen or so men and women entered into
and fell out of this ritual as if each was trying out their place,
attempting a few steps or gestures that had been practiced long ago
but were now nearly forgotten. At first it was just the elders who did
this, then a few younger men and women joined in, finally even some
smaller children joined the human dance that had formed around and
about the animal fight taking place at its center. The Empress shifted
her attention within that story from the villagers to the animals and
back again, as if she were looking at one of those visual illusions
where if you focus your sight on the black images inked on a piece of
paper, you see a vase and if you look at the white aspect of the paper
the vase disappears and all you see are two faces nose to nose. In like
manner, she would talk of the villagers then shift her focus to the
sparring beasts, describing in great detail how the dog lunged time
and again at the breast of the bird only to be repelled by the rooster
pulling up both feet in a moment of temporary flight and scratch
savagely at the eyes and face of the canine who then had no choice

Page 36

but to back away and regroup. Then she returned to explaining how
the villagers spread themselves around and like a lasso collectively
moved in and out to try to capture the two animals. Then to the
beasts, describing how if the dog did not advance, the rooster, now
bloodied across its neck and back, would take low to the ground and
with its wings outstretched would swoop into the dog, forcing the
wearied canine to then spin in an awkward corkscrew motion until the
dog was indeed able to grab the roost by the tail feathers or even its
skin and shake it violently sending feathers flying into the air as if
from a ruptured pillow.

Then back to the villagers who would clap

their hands and give off shouts as if repeating each others words by
staggered intervals that overlapped perfectly with each other in a
sustaining rhythm of practiced song. Then back to the rooster who
now seem dazed by this violent attack but managed to regain its
position and would once again strike out at the dogs nose and eyes
with its sharp claws. Blood was everywhere, she said, dampening the
earth as if they were fighting on a bed of raw flesh, the air was heavy
with the bloody particles, like an insane and prophetic rain. But at a
certain point, she said, it became clear that for all the desires of the
villagers, their efforts were in vain, and so the purpose of their
activities became the dance itself and not to break up the fight or to
let her carriage pass. And so it seemed this spectacle would continue
on indefinitely, but finally, bloodied and exhausted, the combatants

Page 37

both hobbled off, neither one the victor or the loser, a seeming waste
of a good long fight, she remarked. The villagers were disappointed
not because they had not failed to witness the final death of one of the
animals but disappointed because the dance was ended.

I learned,

she said, that these people survive because they have long ago
learned how to dance with each other and so will always live and be
as one, that will be their guide to success, and like all human traits,
she continued, that will also be their downfall.

I myself found the Empresss story very disturbing.

For I had a

tremendous fondness for animals and I am not talking about the

momentary fascination one has for the rare or endangered oddity that
always seems to capture the heart and attention of people, I am
talking about feelings for the animals that co-inhabit our lives, our
domestic pets, and any time I imagined one in pain or being tortured
as I know is the way and process of all Nature it hurts me inside. I
do not know why I am so fond of animals, but they give me great
pleasure both emotionally and intellectually. My dog for example will
never be surpassed in terms of companionship and understanding.
Thats right.

I derive great pleasure from understanding animals,

their emotions and their minds.

If you can find a way to really

understand an animal so that he trusts you completely and

understands you to the level of his ability, there grows an affection of

Page 38

such purity and simplicity that is never found between two humans.
At the same time, there is a cosmic strangeness about animals that
has always fascinated me and reserves in my mind an affection for
them of a different kind, one that allows them mysterious depth or
unknown purpose. And here on this brutal, prehistoric island there
were plenty of animal spirits to be met with, plenty to remind one of
both the grace and the horror that weaves together our world: the
slow loris with its spot on it forehead like the mark worn by
worshippers of Vishnu, a frail creature that is so slow and defenseless
that we must confront the intelligence of the universe as if it beyond
comprehension that an animal so slow and defenseless can possibly
survive the terrors of the world. Indeed it is this timid and trusting
little beast that the Singhalese capture for the purpose of extracting
love potions, which they effect by holding the tiny childlike creature to
a fire until its eyes burst out as a charm. Other animal mysteries are
to be found here: the pangolin, an ant eater covered with beautiful
sheaths of prehistoric scales, called the negombo devil it has a long
and wicked claw on each of its front feet, would roll itself into an
impenetrable ball when frightened, and despite its appearance I know
personally that it makes for a gentle and affectionate pet. And the
white monkeys which some say roam the forests like breaths of fog;
the dugong, a phytophagus cetacean

Page 39

Fido-what? I asked as if the word itself had slapped me out of a long

slumber (for he had been talking for what seemed to be hours). Leafeating, he said, a corpulent leaf-eating sea cow that lives its life in the
waters where the rivers empty into the sea, noted for the manner in
which it raises its head and holds its suckling infant to its breast while
in the waters near Adams Break such that many a sailor, who truth be
told would copulate with anything blubberish anyway, mistook for
mermaids. He hesitated as if to end his talk, but then resumed with
renewed focus. But no animal, he said slowly, creates such a spectacle
in a mans eyes or heart than the elephant.

I have heard, I said. Ah yes! he continued ecstatically, this massive

beast rises from the earth, from the shadows, from the mind of the
beholder in a way that cannot be described. One sees in this beast
both the invincibility of his size and toughness, yet one senses a
certain sadness as if he is being forced to wander a land far from his
real or natural home. Ceylon had been the first place I had lived
where one realized that humans were nothing more than a part of the
food chain, a knot in the tapestry of life. A story told to me more than
once conveyed this perfectly: a fisherman is collecting his catch and
placing the fish in a bag next to him, a leopard has been stalking the
man and finally leaps only to miss his target and lands on the bag of
fish instead, both fish and leopard fall into the lake where a crocodile

Page 40

has been eyeing the leopard in the trees and quickly snatches the cat
in it powerful jaws and plunges the struggling feline beneath the
muddy waters. The entire cycle is illustrated in the story: the man
hunting the fish, the leopard hunting the man, the crocodile hunting
the leopard. All are equal and integral to the whole: life and death is
decided by chance, by a slip, a miss. Indeed I had cause to obtain
some statistics on deaths caused by animals in Ceylon, and of the 108
total recorded deaths, 16 were by elephants, 15 by buffalo, 6 by
crocodiles, 2 by bears and 68 by serpents. My point, I guess, is that
living is Ceylon is not to be confused with living in a natural zoological
park. Death is a result of crossing the boundary, that border between
the jungle and civilization; death as these statistics reveal are often
the result of encroachment and accident, unknowingly crossing that
line, stepping too far into that other world. Yet we find the greatest
fascination and mystery when we think we discover that an animal is
not merely a dumb beast, but shares some faculty that we believed
belonged solely to humans. Such is the remarkable ability of elephant
to hear, dance and understand music, of bees to engineer their perfect
hives, of parroquets to create vast sun-blotting tapestries across the
sky coordinated in every flap of every wing. I suppose if not for
animals I would have no spiritual leanings whatsoever, yet I stop at
assuming animals or humans have souls separate and autonomous
from the body, we have minds though, just that these minds are not

Page 41

fitted between man and animal as they are between man and man or
animal and animal. And so there comes to play that strangeness, that
mystery that tempts us to think in terms spiritual and religious. And
so in animals it is easy to see a certain grace, a certain beauty and to
then be tempted to elevate these feelings to something more. Yet I
have strayed I am afraid from my story. My feelings for the animals
were akin, I suppose, to the sudden gush of admiration I had for this
old woman, this desiccated old Empress who possessed such a rare
mind for her gender and her station.

Of course, it turns out that the purpose of my being brought here was
to grant the Empresss request. She had heard of the Buddhas Tooth
and as a follower of the now deceased Madame Blavatsky and admirer
of the Madames Theosophical partner, Colonel Olcott, who perhaps
did more for the Buddhists in Sri Lanka than any other person in
recent history and who is, some claim with no hint of sarcasm, the
reincarnation of Gautama Buddha himself, well, all of this, combined
with her being of royalty, well I am sure she assumed I would
accommodate her request quickly and judiciously. I had a boy run to
tell Kuda, the Guardian of Tooth, to make arrangements for the
Empress to come see the Tooth as soon as that could be arranged. I
assured her that this would be done, that this was my job after all, and
that I should now take my leave so that I could see to it that

Page 42

everything was properly arranged. For some reason, before turning

away, I couldnt help but notice that the Empress, by some flaw of her
dresser I suppose, had a small bit of ankle showing through the many
layers of her dress, the skin that was exposed was wormed and lumpy
with purple veins; and the urge came over me to ask the Empress a
question: Empress Eugenia, I asked, what is the secret to a good sex
life during marriage? Bah! she shouted, a fleck of spittle breaking like
a comet off her lips: Sex! she cried out. Tres degoutant! Never again
after we had little Louis!

You did not ask her that, I groaned. No, I didnt, he said, but I have
always wished I had. But I did ask her another question, he continued,
a question that I could not help but ask, not while finding myself here
in the presence of the Empress of France, even if this question was in
many ways more inciting and posed potentially an even a bigger risk
to my job. And what questions was that? I asked. I asked the Empress
if she believed Dreyfus was guilty, he said. Who? I asked. Dreyfus, a
Jewish officer who was improperly convicted of treason and sent to
Devils Island. Oh, I said. It was a case that divided not only the
French but the world, he said. Surely you heard of this? I shook my
head and asked so as to avoid another divergent set of stories, and so
what did the Empress say to that? Dreyfus! she cried out, why do you
ask me about Dreyfus? We now take our shits not in toilets but in

Page 43

Zolas! she screamed, so why do you ask me about Dreyfus! Her anger
did not last long, but she said no more and I feared with all her
trembling she would fall apart like a clod of brittle clay. Anyway, she
bowed her shaking head and looked at me with an ugly smile of
sincere gratitude, and I looked one last time into that desiccated and
shrunken face where I could find no hint or sign of that famed and
famous beauty, and I realized I then had no choice but to accept the
trembling hand that she had raised ever so slightly off the arm of the
throne and so I gently took that gnarled mass of cold fingers and
slippery sinew, gave it a gentle squeeze, unable to bring it to my lips
and then I left.

Kuda, the Guardian of the Tooth was a comical character, he was not
what I would call a seriously religions man although I would bet he
saw himself that way.

He was a card, a jokester, spend some time

with him at all, listen to him laugh, watch him rub his face with his
hands and carry on like a fool and you realized that he was nothing
more than one of the villagers draped in his white custodial robes.
His sole conception of duty was to collect as much money as possible
for the Temple.

And this he did exceedingly well.

I am sure he

envisioned that a visit by the Empress, the showing of the tooth and
maybe even a viewing inside the inner chambers where no strangers
were allowed, would allow the Temple to pocket some sizable sum of

Page 44

compensation. I am not sure I would put this peculiar man in the

category of most other capitalists, which I was ambivalent about, but
what really disturbed me was this holy mans unashamed dependence
on astrology. Kuda, through whom I was attempting to impose order
and rule on the inhabitants of this village, was so quick witted, so
intelligent and so European in many ways but simply scratch the
surface of his mind and you would find that he believed that Halleys
comet, the constellations above our head, the planets in their courses,
had been created and kept going for billions and billions of years in
order that this pseudo monk in Kandy could thereby calculate the
exact date and hour at which his infant daughter would have her first
menstrual cycle. Yet it was from Kuda that I learned most of what I
would learn about life here, what I could see and experience for
myself was plentiful but somehow that did not compare with what I
gained from stories of Kuda and even the liars and feeble minded; in
their tales was an element that was undefined but essential.

For

example, to be a citizen of London all your life, even to have the finest
education in the maths, the arts and science of administration, and
even to have some experience in commerce, could not possible
prepare you to understand how business was conducted in this jungle
outpost. Not only were you working with a society that had little in
the way of tradition and regulation when it came to business, being as
it was a confluence of Bengal, Chinese, Arab, Moor and of course

Page 45

European methods of barter, negotiation and rapscallionism, you also

had the layers of culture, religion, language, custom that came into
play to create a mosaical game of money, numbers, pride and skill that
would then, if all taken together, be understood, if ever such a thing
could be understood, as the Celyonian system for doing business. Of
course, trying to understand how business was done in Ceylon was a
very important aspect of my job, given that I was the principal civil
servant whose job was to tax and approve contracts and sign
agreements between the negotiating parties and the government as
well as to settle disputes, of which there were always plenty. First of
all, there were several segments to society in Ceylon, the Singhalese
and the Tamil being the largest constituents, but you also had the
Moors, the Arabs, the Bengals, the Christians, the Burghers and the
Chinese. The Tamils, Hindoos with dark skinned with large fleshy lips
and dark penetrating eyes, were commonly believed to have
descended from southern India during the 10th century although some
believe they were the original inhabitants of Ceylon. The Tamils who
claim ancestry to the descendants of the old Jaffna Kingdom
differentiate themselves from the Indian Tamils who were brought
here recently to work on the plantations.

The Singhalese were

generally the lighter skinned race, espousing a history that states they
came from Northern India, Buddhist for the most part, making up the
majority when it came to numbers in population. For reasons no one

Page 46

has been able to explain to me, the minority Tamils, particularly those
who came from the Northern city of Jaffna, and then more
predominantly still those Jaffnians who came from a certain quarter of
the city, are comparable to what we Jews are to London.

In other

words, the Jaffnians are the brokers, the money changers, there are
no real banks here in Ceylon and most people here would not trust
those institutions in any case, so the middle man is the one who
makes the transactions possible between customers, between the
government and private sector, between buyer and seller.

That

middle man is almost always a Tamil from Jaffna. As such the Jaffnian
Jew was respected as much as he was disdained, he was welcomed
with one hand while the other hand held a knife, he was liked as much
as he was despised, and of course he was considered somewhat
unclean. This of course was not lost on me and while I have spent
little time trying to understand the role and history of my race in
London, I took a fascination of the development of this role of the
Jaffnian Jew.

And it was Kuda who offered me the best and most

memorable example that I still carry with me today.

We were walking together to see a woman who was having a dispute

with the owner of a coffee plantation, the real reason for that walk is
now forgotten, but I can remember what Kuda and I talked about as if
it had happened yesterday. We were of course accompanied by six or

Page 47

seven of his devout followers, making this a rather noisy stroll, all the
feet slapping at the ground, the sarongs rustling, the palms that were
being held above us rattling in the wind. Kuda was telling me about a
man from Jaffna who had lived here long ago, a man who he claimed
was the smartest man he had ever met. I would not have thought so
at first, Kuda said, as the man was as dark as the night, his eyes and
teeth shone out from his skull in a way that seemed to empty him of
anything you would expect was intelligence, and his hands were
small, dainty, he held them in front of his waist as if he were always
troubled.

He always wore a snow white turban and turned up

slippers, all of this familys linen could have been tied around his
ample middle. His name was Ragu and why he came here from Jaffna,
I never found out, but one day he was here and in a way equally
mysterious to his appearance he had assumed the role of our broker.
And just what is a broker? I asked Kuda. The broker is he man who
manages the business of the village, much as a banker would in a
town such as yours. The broker was the head cashier and held all the
notes, he wrote up the promissory notes and kept the schedules for
collections and collaterization, and he was the guardian of the coolies,
the coffee pickers, the bottle washers, all the Chetties who had no
regard or interest in banks.

They even have their own system of

arbitration, as Chetties disdain going to the expense of and trouble of

lawyers. The tribunals are called nagaram and are held in the Hindoo

Page 48

Temple and the fines are paid to the Temple dedicated to one of their
idols. Most importantly he was the sole negotiator between the
villagers here and the traders from London, and on the villagers backs
he made his deals. They would haggle for days over a few rupees, but
when a deal was done, they all stuck to it, remarkably. The Jaffnians
inherited their job as brokers, their entire caste knows no other
occupation, they begin it early in life and live humbly despite
whatever wealth they may be rumored to hoard, he said. All of this
was very valuable to me personally as I had no knowledge of the
business dealings that took place in these manners and no awareness
of the naragam.

But Kudas original reasons for bringing up this

Jaffna character had not been explained. And so why do you call this
man the smartest man you have ever met? I asked him. Yes yes, Kuda
said, as I was saying and the point of my discourse was indeed to
demonstrate to you that there was nothing, other than a very capable
sense of business, to demonstrate any special intellectual characters
in this man. If nothing else, he seemed to go out of his way to give
you a dumb smile and a shrug of his shoulders rather than show off
his intellect. I only came to know his real nature after I thought I had
already come to know Ragu quite well, we used to join each other on
certain evenings for a game of cards, to have perhaps a glass or two
of arrack, and chat about the day and things like that. One evening,
however, Ragu came to the tavern and when he sat down I could tell

Page 49

by his smile and the shake of his head that he had something to tell
me. I figured he would tell me of his own accord and so I did not
bother to ask or pry it loose from him, we both ordered a drink and
began to play. Every so often I would look up and find Ragus eyes
intently on me, that look in them that clearly said he had something to
tell me, but I was resolute not to ask and we had another glass of
arrack.

Normally that would have been the extent of our drinking,

two glasses of the amber firewater, but our companionship this night
was made strange by his perfect silence, his staring at me and his
obvious desire to tell me something that was on his mind, and so we
kept refilling our glasses, who knows how many times, until finally I
looked at him and could see that while he was still staring at me, his
eyes were beginning to close, his smile was falling to sleep on his face
and his head while still shaking was now bobbing more than shaking.
Damnit! I shouted, Kuda said, what is it Ragu that you want to tell
me? With my outburst, Ragus expression did not really change at all,
he continued to stare at me and his head continued to bobble, but
then finally his lips parted and he said that he had made a certain
discovery and that he thought I should be one of the first to know.
Who else would be the first to know? I asked him. No one only you,
you would be the first to know, he said. Then why did you say I would
be one of the first to know when in fact I would be the first to know. It
is just a way we say things, he offered. So I will indeed be the first

Page 50

then? I asked.

Yes, he said. In that case, you may proceed, I said,

otherwise if I was not the first I could care less to know. You will be
the first, he said. You are sure about that? I asked squinting at him
through my arrack blearied eyes. Absolutely sure, he said, unless I
told someone else and I really dont think I have. You dont think you
have? I exclaimed, now either this thing you are about to tell me is of
enough certain importance that you would know if anyone else knows
about it, or it is not of enough importance to remember if you had told
someone else, so either it is or it isnt, you know or you dont know,
and so you will or you wont. Is that clear? I said. I have not told
anyone else, he said. But a moment ago you were not sure. That is
just a way we say things, he said. Ok, I said, then you may tell me.
Are you sure, he asked. Am I sure? I laughed haughtily, well of course
I am sure, I have sat here now for over two hours knowing you had
something to say to me, waiting here knowing yet watching you
wanting to tell me but you were not able or were unwilling or were
afraid to tell me. Isnt that right? I asked. That is right, I am afraid to
tell you, he said. Afraid why? I asked. I do not want to disturb you or
your thoughts about certain things. Listen Ragu, I said, I have a job
where every day I have to hear things that disturb me, things that
everyday disturb my thoughts, and what I have done over time is I
have learned how to contain these disturbances so that they actually
do not bother me in my daily living. All a man can do is guard over

Page 51

and enjoy his daily living, I said, dont you think that is right?

Of

course, Mr. Kuda (he always called me Mr. Kuda), and so I assume
then it is okay to tell you. Only, I said, if it does not take as long as
this discussion we have now had to tell me. It is a bit of a long story,
Ragu said. Well, then , I said, I am not sure I am any longer in the
frame of mind to hear a long story, as important as it sounds, I am not
sure my constitution is prepared for such a thing. Ragu was silent. Is
it a terribly long story? I asked. Not too terribly long, he answered,
depends on how quickly or slowly I tell it I suppose. Well then, I said,
is it one of those stories that involves a great many people whose
names I will have trouble remembering? No, he answered, there are
not that many people and their names are not that important.

OK

then, I said, will it involve a strange or complicated set of

circumstances that I will need to keep straight in my mind at all times
or else lose all meaning as to what you want to tell me? There are
some elements to the story that you need to keep in mind as the story
progresses, he said, but nothing that I would consider to be
extraordinary.

Ok, then, I said, will this involve making a moral or

value determination at the end, is it a story about right or wrong,

about good or bad? I asked, as those are often stories best told earlier
in the day when one is more confident of his abilities to reason in that
manner, I added. I can remove those elements if you wish, he said, if
that would make it easier for you to follow the story and hear what I

Page 52

have to say. Well, I said, it sounds to me like a terribly boring story

you have to tell me: no people, no complicated twists or turns, no
puzzle over right or wrong, why would I want to hear this story, I said.
You very well may not want to hear this story, Ragu said to me. Then I
suggest you save your story for another time, I said, we have played
long into the night dont you think?

Should we not be retiring

ourselves to our beds rather than puzzling our brains over boring
stories, I added. If you wish, he said. What do you mean, if I wish?
You talk as if you are my servant. That is just a way we talk, he said.
Then tell me the story, I said. I dont think so, not tonight, Ragu said.
I insist, I said. But you said I was not your servant, he said. You want
to tell me, so please tell me. And so Ragu finally got around to telling
me his story about his discovery.

So it seems that the Jaffnian Jews (my term for them not Ragus) are
especially venerated at their brokerage trade because of their use of a
mysterious set of symbols and logarithms that have been handed
down to them over the centuries. But since these brokers operated
outside the normal avenues of commerce, we civil servants never paid
much attention to the scratchings and calculations that they put to
palm leafs and presented to their clients. Apparently when Ragu was
not drinking arrack with me at the tavern he was at his humble abode
working on a particular problem presented within these mysterious

Page 53

symbols, a problem as he said had a mystical aspect to it as no one

had ever been able to solve it. No matter what numbers or qualities
you put into the equation, you did not get an answer that offered a
solution. Ragu was of the metaphysical mindset that nothing was put
on earth to be meaningless and this included not only the strange
lizards that had no legs but all the equations of mathematics and so
he took it upon himself to find the purpose and the meaning to this
ancient mystery. Each night he would sit down and put in another
number or symbol from the host of symbols he had to work with and
each time he would try to solve the equation, but instead of throwing
away the results when they did not seem to work he plotted them
down on a dried Palmyra leaf, taking the ones that came up with what
looked like a real worldly answer onto one star chart (that is what he
called it) and setting aside the answers that seemed to head off into
an infinite world of unknown values.

It was after doing these

calculations for almost six years that he suddenly began to notice

something happening on the now smudged and tattered piece of leaf
where he had been plotting the earthy results: what was slowly but
definitely taking shape was none other than the image of the seated
Vishnu.

Three years of additional work and there appeared in this

shadowy image increasing detail: the lotus on which he sat, the lotus
flowers in his crown, the jewel around his chest, the two earrings in
his ear, and in his raised hands a shell and a ring. There was no end,

Page 54

no final solution to the equation, applying further calculations only

brought the image into finer resolution in the most painstaking
manner and so he stopped, afraid to see the expression in Vishnus
eyes or the expression upon his lips, fearing he would offend the god
by bringing too much detail to his being. This equation, Ragu said,
which had mocked all attempts before me at its purpose and meaning
was in fact the equation that defined our supreme god.

What have

you done with this image? I asked Ragu. Nothing, he said, I keep it in
my bungalow.

Why have you shown it to no one? I asked. No one

would believe me anyway, he said, they would ask me why had I not
thrown this away, why had I not burned it when I had discovered what
I had done? They would have called me a fool, they would have
probably driven me away with sticks and stones, they would have
cursed me and left me with names that I could never rid myself of for
the rest of my life. Why would they have done all this? I asked. That is
just how we talk with each other, he said.

Mr. Woolf stopped and looked at me, waiting for a reaction I am sure,
perhaps testing me to see if I had been listening which I had but I had
been listening without thinking and so I just smiled back at him and
said, I am beginning to think that you are the one who has had a bit
too much to drink, Mr. Woolf. Leonard, he said, and I apologize if I am

Page 55

beginning to ramble. True enough, I thought, I had asked for it, I had
insisted that he tell me the story he wanted to tell me.

Meanwhile his story continued: Shortly after I began my walk to the

Temple of the Tooth, a monsoon rain broke out and I was forced to
take refuge in a friends bungalow until the storm showers ended.
Dobbins was a repulsive little man, with the brains of a bullock and
even duller imagination, but I had grown to like him over the last
several months. He always had a good supply of whiskey and so on
this afternoon we sat on the verandah and drank while the sheets of
rain pelted the roads and huts around us, talking about the same topic
we always talked about, Miss Garrison and the likelihood of her every
marrying poor Dobbins.

Miss Garrison was a middle aged woman,

probably a good five or six years older than Dobbins, with bright red
hair, short legs and a bulbous, cherubic body that made her a good fit
for Dobbins in that aspect. There was nothing that could be called
pretty or even handsome about her face, which was saggy and pasty
and quite formless to be truthful. Yet Dobbins saw Miss Garrison very
differently and in his ability to see beauty in this woman I think one
can find the universal secret meaning of love. I, of course, gave the
possibility of this union no more chance than frogs falling from the
clouds on this very afternoon, but just as frogs have been known to
fall

from

the

sky,

Miss

Garrison

would

indeed

defy

all

my

Page 56

understanding of human courtship and mating rituals and would

eventually accept Dobbins proposal. But today as we sat on the
verandah he was still a homely bachelor. He had been drinking until
his cheeks turned pink and he wanted to know if I could spare him
some direction on that rather mysterious act of carnal relations with a
woman. At first, I had no idea what he really meant, but he inserted a
pudgy finger on one hand into a circle created by his pudgy thumb
and finger on his other hand and I sat back to wonder in whiskeyswirling silence: what was in fact more pathetic, to be stuck on this
verandah with a short, fat, middle aged, mentally diminished
Englishman who wanted a lesson in male-female copulation or telling
this same man that I was a virgin and knew as little as he.

Mr. Woolf caught me by surprise with this admission of his own

virginity and if he didnt see it in my eyes, he heard it in my choking
on the last piece of veal left on my plate. I was able to regurgitate the
piece of poorly chewed meat which I then spat into my napkin,
discreet and ladylike as I somehow remembered doing in a play where
I was playing the character of a fashionable gentlewoman who
discovered she had ingested a bit of rat. Mr. Woolf did not seem to
mind and so he continued: I am not sure Dobbins knew this, but there
was a fairly widespread story about Miss Garrison, a story that would
come up at odd times amongst men, usually during a bout of heavy

Page 57

drinking, one that I think was started by one of the GAs here who
grew ill and actually died a few years later, but he fomented a tale
which lives on and will undoubtedly one day reach the ears of poor
Dobbins, a story we called, for reasons that will become obvious, Miss
Garrisons Cunt. Like most good stories, the story of Miss Garrisons
Cunt changes with the story teller but retains its basic elements and
theme, which I guess is that Miss Garrison is gifted with an unusual
and somewhat perplexing pudendum, one that both intrigues and at
the same time frightens the man who contemplates it intimately,
eliciting

pangs

of

revulsion

at

the

thought

of

its

seemingly

exaggerated features while creating an equally strong desire to take a

peek, cop a feel all the same. I am not certain how many men have
really seen Miss Garrisons privates, while I am certain Miss Garrison
has allowed quite a few gentlemen to reach up her skirt to that very
place, although she has not permitted much more than that. And so I
think the story is based on a blind feel of that large womans sex, and
from those weak palpitations evolved the following story.

Being such a large woman, Miss Garrison was not well suited to the
hot and often unforgiving clime of Ceylon. She sweated profusely and
often was on the verge of a faint when she had to wear all the clothing
and underclothing a woman who deigned to be a gentlewoman had to
wear. So she took up the habit of wearing a long muslin dress with

Page 58

nothing beneath it when she was home by herself, the light fabric
allowed air to breathe as well as light to penetrate to her skin. It was
often remarked that the sight of Miss Garrison in this thin cottony
dress was not one for the weak of heart to behold, the spectacle had
indeed frightened many of her own servants, who remarked to others
that there was nothing wrong with a fat white woman in a thin, loose
dress, but that Miss Garrison had a fiery red beard between her
thighs which looked to some like a burning fire, to others like a slab of
freshly butchered meat and to still others a mans bearded face that
hung between her legs, pressing nose and chin against that cotton
veil. This in and of itself would not have been enough to create and
perpetuate the story of Miss Garrisons Cunt, although it was enough
to pique the interest of nearly any man who had been starved of
carnal enjoyment on this feudal island. But where the story gets its
mileage comes from a purported incident in which Miss Garrison,
wearing her cotton Mother Hubbard and nothing else, sat down upon
her sofa not noticing her Maltese lapdog asleep there upon a pillow
and before she knew it that dog had somehow inserted itself inside
her vagina, only its tail hanging out of Miss Garrisons ample canal.
Miss Garrison tried in vain to pull on that tail to extract the animal,
but the dog it seems was holding on for dear life inside there, perhaps
having experienced once the pain and terror of being born and so was
decidedly unwilling to enter the world again now that it had another

Page 59

chance to live in those warm and safe surroundings. Failing to tear

the small animal from her womb by its tail, Miss Garrison stood up
and with great heaves of her body tried to express the stubborn beast,
jumping up and down, stomping with her feet, but again with no
success.

Her face had grown red and her breath labored and she

collapsed to the floor when one of the servant girls who had been
standing outside listening to the strange elephantine commotion
finally walked in and to her horror discovered Miss Garrison supine on
the wooden floor, her chest and stomach rising and falling as if in
labor, her great white thighs completely naked and a white tail
wagging peacefully from that massive red bush. The poor servant girl
screamed and ran from the house which of course only brought
several more servants to the room and Miss Garrison, beside herself
with humiliation and fear, started to roll about and cry and wail. This
of course helped with nothing as the servants too began to cry and
wail and so when the doctor finally arrived there was Miss Garrison
lying on the sofa, her legs parted on her fiery red bush where a small
furry white tail protruded and sometimes wagged with a silent
contentment, everyone else standing back, wringing their hands,
mumbling what could have been prayers and cowering in fear. The
doctor, unable to talk with anyone in the room and certainly not Miss
Garrison who simply wailed and cried as if she was being torn
asunder, did all he could think to do which was first grab the tail and

Page 60

pull, which produced no results, then reluctantly he parted the fleshy

hirsute curtains of Miss Garrisons pudendum and felt for the monster
that apparently was being birch-born, retracting his fingers with a
shout of his own when he felt the sharpness of the little claws. When
Miss Garrison began to wail even louder, the doctor finally decided it
was his duty and his duty alone to perform this terrifying deed, and
that somehow in some annals of some journal he would find a
prominent place when he successfully resolved this terrible anomaly,
and he stuck both hands into her vagina, amazed that such a feat was
possible, and felt his fingers close around the body of the bony fetus
inside when all of a sudden he received a sharp bite on his finger. He
again yanked out his hands and held up a hand with two fang marks
on one finger. As the blood dripped off his hand, the villagers began
to scream and wail even louder and more pathetically than Miss
Garrison. The doctor was in a terrible state of mind believing that if
he did nothing Miss Garrison would surely die from this beast that she
was giving birth to, yet wondering all the same what manner of bloody
beast had she copulated with to produce such a fiendish infant? In his
mind was the desire to strike this woman through the abdomen with a
stake to kill both her and the bleeding monster inside her rather than
bring to term this terrible thing and more terrible yet to allow Miss
Garrison to live with the stigma of having fornicated and conceived a
baby with a monkey or worse the devil. Just at this time when the

Page 61

doctor had no idea what to do and the villagers were growing ever
more frantic, the adhan was heard being recited by the muezzin,
calling the Muslims to prayer from the Mosque which was only a block
away from Miss Garrisons home. When that monotonous chant began
the tail suddenly vanished inside and so all external traces of the
monster disappeared, but in her abdomen a terrible struggle began to
take place, one that caused Miss Garrison to gasp deeply and hold her
breath in pained silence as what seemed to be tiny fists and feet
began to beat at her womb from the inside, rolling and pushing and
making the most horrible bulges and welts against her skin, until
finally the fiery and inflamed lips of her vagina parted and out popped
the head of her wet, breathlessly panting but otherwise unharmed
Maltese. A few women and some men fainted, the doctor himself felt
his knees buckle, but at least one servant recognized the hairy face
and helped the puppy back into the world who immediately and
without fanfare trotted to his place on the balcony and howled as he
did during every Muslim prayer to the singer down the street.

That certainly is not a true story! I exclaimed having found this small
story within the story rather interesting. Maybe not, he said, but no
less true that other fairy tales, and besides this is not a story for
women, it is a story that holds certain fascination and meaning for
men, a story that Freud would say was truthful in ways that are not

Page 62

readily apparent on the surface. Who? I asked. Sigmund Freud, he

said, you have not heard of him either I take it? Not around here, I
said taking a long drink from my wine goblet as if I deserved it. Well
anyway, he continued, after the rains had stopped and the flow of
waters has subsided and vanished into the jungle like some liquid
animal spirit, I walked the remaining mile to the Maligawa and met
with Kuda who had already making the arrangements for the Empress
to come see the Tooth.

As she was an Empress and again as this

would certainly mean rich compensation for the Temple, Kuda was
organizing an affair that would rival Perahera, the annual festival of
the Tooth of the Buddha. It would take one weeks time to put it all
together, he told me, but we will have the procession, the arches of
flowers and foliage, we will have the elephants and the chattas
burning on the lake, the Empress will place this event as one of the
finest of her final, but magnificent years in royalty.

True enough, it took every day prior to the planned event to make
ready, but hundreds of people joined in to create the many arches out
of bamboo that lined the road, covering the scaffolding with all kinds
of flowers and foliage, sweeping the streets and wiping away the mud
puddles, tying long colorful scarves of cloth across the roadway, and
putting up hand painted signs along the route, some of the signs
carrying dubious but certainly well intentioned messages such as:

Page 63

May the Empress Live Long in Tooth, Long Live the Very Old
Empress, and Cherish Life as Death Is Harder to Remember which
were fortunately lettered in Singhalese and unintelligible to the
Empress herself. We were lucky in that it did not rain for an entire
week. This of course was fortunate for the procession planners, but
devastating for the village which needed the monsoon rain to fill the
rice beds with water. But few seemed to worry about that, perhaps
believing that once this deed was completed all would look upon them
with grace and charity and the rains would come, the beds would fill,
the rice would grow tall and the harvest a success and offered during
the real Perahera as was the tradition.

Every house and building

along the procession route was gaily decorated and even the animals
had gained necklaces of flowers. All vestiges of the villages daily
wontedness and filth was carefully disguised behind cloth and floral
arrangements, flowers hung by bright red cloth. All along the street a
bazaar had taken shape, and as we came close to the day itself, the
streets were filled with the smoke and fragrances of all the things
smoldering and cooking. Others had set up thatched lean-tos
protecting their bangles and scarves; rice, jaggery and sweetmeats
were offered to eat; people had walked for days down from the
mountains to sell their coffee and tea; the crowd was made up of all
the people of this amazing isle: the poor tillers of the soil, the
scabrous

fisherman,

mendicant

peelers,

half-starved

coolies,

Page 64

undernourished children hanging on to sickly mothers as they all

buried their individual miseries during a few nights of mirth and
reveries.

On the day of the procession the noise and confusion extended far
beyond the Temple. Every faith decided to take part in the gaieties,
and so as I walked past the Hindoo temple there was a strange
cacophony of music coming from the main halls, inside women in
robes and veils danced and strutted about, while children ran through
the corridors in their hands pieces of sugar cane. Further on at the
Muslim mosque, dozens of men were on their knees in prayer, and in
the Christian church a full house of men and women sang hymns
while torches cast their wavering light on the figure of Jesus displayed
in a small glass enclosure just outside the main doors. A week had
passed since the full moon, and a good bite had been ripped from that
glowing orb, yet it was still bright enough on this clear night to wash
the impact the many torches and lighted candles and lanterns would
have had. It was only with difficulty that I could make my way through
the crowds although there were a number of sights that I stopped to
take in. There was the local Chettie with his trained monkey that he
dressed up in a grotesque and grimy clown outfit, the monkey
exhibiting a certain mean spirited attitude, a threat to bite cruelly
stretched into its monkey smile as it had long ago been conditioned to

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the abuse and had learned along the way that all that counted were
the rupees it could scoop up and put in its masters metal can. Yet the
Chettie was entertaining to the children and some adults as well as he
told the same stories he always told, behind him the circular cane
baskets in which he held the cobras he would later charm. Given some
space by the jostling crowds, a group of Indian jugglers performed,
their troupe consisting of two men, a girl and a child probably no
more than three years of age. They were dressed in strange saggy
dresses with heavy necklaces of black beads around their necks. The
girl had silver bangles around her wrists and ankles while the child
had silver earrings that hung weightily from her ears. It was an
extraordinary performance, an art that was stranger than anything I
had ever seen or read about.

Over the course of their act they

swallowed every imaginable kind of metal object, ten penny nails,

clasp knives, corkscrews and even a small horseshoe, with the same
relish as if they were eating puddings. Closer to the entrance to the
Temple, two fakirs were stationed, two of the most hideous and
pathetic looking men you could ever lay eyes upon, one of these
wretched creatures, in order to fulfill a vow or please some other
fanciful act of righteousness, had raised his arm above his head and
kept it there for so long that the arm had withered and hardened into
what looked like a dead branch from a tree, no longer a human
appendage. The other man stood silently facing the crowd, his hands

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which he held clasped in front of him had been held in this manner for
so many years the fingers had fused together and the nails of each
hand had grown into the palms of the other and out through the
backsides.

Neither man seemed to exhibit any discomfort and

together they were garnering a good harvest for their misery.

As Kuda had promised it was a procession that would have rivaled the
Perehera, and the elephants had been brought into town by their
owners, the gilded saddles and bejeweled leather head pieces were
polished and readied for the parade. The streets were filled with
people dressed in the gayest clothing, except the Muslims who were
often in either white or grey gowns that covered them head to toe.
The procession for the Empress formed on a road outside the
Maligawa and moved so slowly that it was like watching a slow motion
picture. The Empress in her black clothes, the black hat and black
veil of mourning surrounded by two of her men also dressed in black
and one woman who carried the Empresss possessions, also in a
black dress and blouse, was a black clot moving slowly through the
jiggling, dancing artery formed by the colorfully dressed villagers who
had gathered to join the procession or simply partake in whatever
kind of festivity it offered, the women in their splendidly colored
sarongs, gay purples and oranges, greens and yellows, the men in
their mismatched but equally colorful sarongs and shirts, surrounded

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the procession as if the villagers were the light and the sun and the
living planets, and the Empress and her coterie in black was the cold
dark center of the universe where nothing lived or could ever live.

Eventually, we made it to the Maligawa where Kuda and the priest

greeted us at the gates and led us into the vihare where candles
illumined the gilded interior, the giant tusks of elephants cast long
shadows on the walls and ceiling, elaborate tapestries were hung
throughout, while other walls showed off finely carved wood, gilded
figures and paintings depicting but a fragment of the long Buddhist
history of past lives. The strong glare of a hundred lights, the sickly
smell of the Buddha flowers that had been heaped before the shrine
by the villagers, the deafening discordant din of the tom-toms and
chants outside, were all having a disquieting effect on me but seemed
not to bother the Empress in the least. We were then ushered into the
locked inner shrine inside the vihare where the Tooth was kept.

In this shrine there was a table and on that table were five bell-shaped
caskets that Kuda carefully explained were called karanduas, one
within the other like those Chinese boxes, and inside the last and
smallest casket lay the Tooth which when it was revealed to the
Empress, who until this time, had been shaking and nodding
impatiently, now suddenly lifted her head so she could see into the

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tiny karandua and she raised her hand as if to reach into the box but
almost instinctively Kuda moved the box away, leaving her hand held
up in the air as if in some gesture of benediction, telling her softly
that no one, not even the highest priests can touch the Tooth. I could
not tell if this disappointed the old Empress, but she seemed pleased
overall and I could almost swear there was a tear on her wrinkled
cheek and I wondered if there was a synthesis going on in her head
bringing together as only love can do the legend of her beloved
Colonel Olcott as the reincarnation of the Gautama Buddha, a
blustering thought that may have swirled and danced along with her
memories of the Emperor Napoleon as well.

What a triumvirate to

have in ones heart and mind when defining ones final place among
lovers and men, that alone must have fueled the Empresss longevity I
thought. I had seen the Tooth on many occasions and was convinced
that it was not a human tooth. It was a long, curved canine about
three inches in length, a tooth you would except to find in a dog or a
large monkey. As there are no images that I know of depicting the
Buddha with such elongated canines, it is curious how this relic has
come to be so accepted and venerated as to create wars during times
of conflict and in times of peace to invite processions from many
countries to worship its presence.

Some stories say that Hindoo

deities such as Vishnu and Kali are often depicted with projecting
canines and so this helps explain the peoples acceptance of this

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nonhuman tooth.
Buddhism.

I enjoy the civilization and thoughtfulness of

Hindooism, however, was entirely different for me.

However they may have borrowed from each other, sharing myths,
names and stories (even to the point of sharing a footprint on Adams
Peak the indention belonged to the left foot of Buddha according to
the Buddhists, to Shiva according to the Hindoo, to Adam who stood
there for 1,000 years after being catapulted from the Ceylon, the
original Eden, according to the Muslims and as for the Christians they
squabble over claims that it belongs to St. Thomas or the eunuch of
the Queen of Ethiopia) I saw these religions in very different terms. In
Hindoos ordinary everyday form, with its multiplicity of floridly
despicable little gods, the grotesque and paltry images, the ugly
cacophony of their temples, the horrible juggernauts and the filth
those created, all repulsed me.

All this prejudiced me against

Hindooism and made it for me something inferior to Buddhism,

because it was a tiresome symbolism that had not disengaged itself
from superstition, that had not mentally cogitated its own set of
meanings, instead allowing meanings to multiply and allowing each
element to be its own, while the progress and evolution of the human
mind is always toward synthesis, towards distilling from many down
to one, a clarification from the multitude to a more singular essence,
that can hopefully be called the Truth. Even if we dont believe in this
grand synthesis, or some Hegelian path to perfection, even if we find

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that the matter of the world or the spirit of the world does not seem to
follow this path, that is irrelevant if that is how the mind works as it
matures. And as the mind works, so does society in many ways, each
generation tries to buck the past, but with time each new generation
takes on the same synthetic process, in its own way perhaps, but in
the same manner.

But back to the Tooth, I dont believe one needs to bring in the
Hindoos to understand anything about the Tooth, as the similarities
are not that great (even though one could argue that with a thousand
Buddhas and hundreds of past lives for each, there are as many
figures sequestered in the Buddhist reliquary as in the Hindoo).
Personally, I think that you only have to look to the ancient likenesses
of the Singhalese Devils who have long canine teeth that project
upward to find an explanation as to why this tooth would be accepted
as the scared tooth of the great Gautama Buddha. In any case, their
dubious shape and superstitious origin did not damper anyones
curiosity or devotion. It was without comparison the most frequently
made request of me by visitors from around the world. Opening these
scared chambers to Europeans has angered many of the strictest
Buddhists and after an event like this one with the Empress I can
assuredly expect to receive a letter from the priest from another
temple questioning my actions.

I believe, however, that bringing

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Europeans into this tiny world, unlocking these holy doors, and open
these tiny caskets is a good thing, if only for the ultimate survival of
the Singhalese and Tamils alike who live here. What this experience
does is challenge the arrogant European with something so strange
and unknown that they do not know how to process it, yet at the same
time it touches them with the peaceful sentiments that surround its
holiness so they are not so intimidated they will react like most white
men who seek to destroy what they do not comprehend. Only then,
and such too is the effect of the giant Buddhas carved from stone in
Aukana or Polonnaruwa, do I think we can begin to instill in the
Europeans the idea that it is not in the best interest of anyone to
Europeanize these others cultures. Individuals like the Empress will
never reside here long enough to feel the effects of the land and the
people upon her, despite her remarkable curiosity and desire to be so
challenged, she will never succeed ultimately to convey this new way
of thinking, not when she must transport her thrones and entourages
to this damp and feudal village. Many others come here to hunt for a
few weeks or bathe in the sea and while that this is not enough to
accomplish what I feel occurred in me after living here for many
months and allowing the land and the people to enter into you, this
exposure cant hurt and who knows maybe one of these people, one of
these tired and stodgy Europeans will take back with them an idea, an
emotion, a sentence that will somehow be the beginning of a

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difference in how we act abroad. I dont think that anyone who has
gotten close to a primitive society such as this one in Ceylon, who has
to some extent lived within and observed it passionately and at the
same time critically, can truthfully deny that on the surface it has a
satisfying depth, harmony and beauty. And it is perhaps not only or
entirely on the surface. I do not idealize or romanticize the people or
this country. I just like them aesthetically and humanly and socially. I
truly dislike the European, the white sahib side of life in Ceylon, and
all its second rate pomp and circumstance, but I am deep down an
extremely ambitious person. I came here an unconscious imperialist
and discovered over time the uselessness of this ambition. However, I
always believed in the universal need for order and regulation. And if
I have to do something I almost always get a consuming desire to find
the best way to do, the most economical, the quickest, the most
efficient and the most methodical.

This was dangerous as it could

quickly, for me, become a ruthless obsession to achieve the highest

efficiency at any and all costs.

Unfortunately I was ruthless too

ruthless it turns out both to them and to myself.

By this time we had finished our dinner and our wine and the waiters
had cleared our table, raked off the crumbs and brought us some
coffee. I had listened for what seemed to be hours about this place
called Ceylon, a rather dark and primitive place if you ask me, but

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nothing yet about this woman, nothing that I could possibly offer any
advice on.

I was so lost in his meandering and seemingly endless

story that at this point I felt it would be rude and improper of me to

ask him to get to crux of his problem. Here I was buried in a story
that was buried in a story that was buried in a story until I felt myself
confined in those little caskets of the tooth, a new lid coming down
upon me with each turn of Mr. Woolfs tale. I was beginning to make
up excuses to myself as to why it was okay to be trapped here like
this: I was being fed reasonably good food, for example, although I
would have picked a nicer joint had I known we would be here most of
the night; I did not have to go home, was another; I was not going to
have relations with this man, that was a decent enough excuse had I
had to bear all this and then have sex with him I think I would have be
unable to bear that. Perhaps I was missing something, perhaps this
story was part of a thousand and one stories as he had said, perhaps
this story would in fact never end, perhaps I had unknowingly
stumbled into something from which there was no escape. Any desire
I may have had to sleep with this man had been wrung out of me first
by his monotonous voice and the steady rhythm with which he moved
from tale to tale to tale, all of this relating to nothing but him, which is
I guess where the real story lied, but any carnal desire was finally
whisked away by his confession that he was a virgin until but a few
years, which after all made his body and features even more repulsive

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to think they knew so little about a womans body.

As coffee was

served, I had nothing to say and so he continued.

So after nearly a decade in Ceylon, he said, I once again boarded a

ship to take my leave and return to Europe.

Whereas I distinctly

remember the voyage over from London as one where the passengers
including myself began our journey as a random collection of
individual atoms that eventually over the passage of time coalesced
into a human constellation with structure, castes and classes, this was
not the case on the way back. Perhaps the forces that created the
feeling of form and structure on the way over here was due to the
great looming unknown of our destination, the fear we all tried to hide
about what lay before us, not just a strange land, with strange people,
but more abstractly (for isnt fear often abstract in nature?) how a
strange land would change us, scar us, mark us indelibly and so set
our course for such a different and unknown future. On the way back
we were carrying those very scars, we were wounded even if we were
healed, we were not heading into the unknown but to the great
known, we were leaving behind the mystery and strangeness that
molds the greatest of men and women into who they will be heroes
or scoundrels and we had no idea yet as to our own individual
metamorphosis. We may have begun the trip coalesced in some tribal
form that we instinctually used to cover ourselves and peer towards

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the all too well known shores of Europe. But we all come to know of
the folly that human camaraderie brings when it is not tied to life,
when it is not a force pitted against death, when it is simply an
activity we create to while away the drudgery of everyday life, to shoo
away our boredom, to look at ourselves in a more dignified manner
and group ourselves in small pockets of enlightenment that can
somehow stand against the ruthless ignorance with which we
ultimately plunder and rape the world. No, we shook off those tribal
yearnings quite early in our trip and reverted back to the state of
atoms that we were before the trip, changed of course, but alone and
ununified. And it is once I returned back to this state, this isolated
and lonely state, that I reflected again on the way of human
development. We begin by leaving the dim safety of the womb, and
are expelled like a bolus into a world that is full of danger and
disappointment. For the first several years we see and understand
little while at the same time these are the years in which we learn
most of what we will ever learn in our lifetimes. Yet, this feeling our
way through the world, as an infant does, is the way of maturity
throughout our lifetime, the process never leaves us, we never
outgrow it, and who knows how brightly lit the world ever becomes,
perhaps it is but a shade lighter at death than it was at birth, measure
your knowledge and your understanding against that of the entire
history of mankind, measure yourself against the many cultures and

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civilizations that have struggled for centuries to gain a purchase on

knowing, to establish a base of understanding. How insignificant my
mind

seems

in

unsophisticated,
capability.

all its

intelligence,

worthless,

infantile

how
in

all

terribly
its

incompetent,

experience

and

At the same time I was aware of a deep and profound

change in me. I had in fact left London a boy and a virgin and now I
was coming back a man who had been defiled and at the same time
matured and strengthened. During my sojourn in Ceylon, I had rarely
missed London in any deep or lasting way.

And in fact, I often

remarked that I had settled into becoming a man of the world, or that
I had gone wild as they say of men who lose their minds, culture and
manners when living abroad for extended periods of time. But I have
to admit that of my return for which I was now preparing, I was not
thinking of the city, the cobble stone streets, the horses, the home, the
familiar beds, the family meals, the theater, friends around a piano I
was thinking of none of that. The only thought I had, one that had
grown considerable in the months leading up to my departure, was
about Virginia. Had she thought of me ever during this time? What
would she think of me now?

I made a movement to get up for I desperately had to pee, but the

poor man took this as a sign, I guess, that I wanted to leave.

He

actually grabbed my hand and looked at me with this desperate

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expression and so he continued: Even though I now look at it as a silly

adolescent sentiment, one born more out of fear than actual feelings
of integrity or fidelity, I am still somewhat disappointed that I was
unable to save myself for the woman I loved, instead I spent those
first emissions on a fertile but never to be known woman who
vanished as quickly as she appeared during the night of many
darknesses.

I was as I said a virgin when I set foot in Colombo.

During my first few years in Ceylon, I had been tempted many times
by many women of higher caste and class, Europeans that is. But
these white women gave me the creeps with their tired, pale, dried up
faces, their obese flabbiness and drawling voices and their vacant
lascivious thoughts. As much as I love and admire the Singhalese,
their women are not what I consider to be attractive. And the Tamils
are simply too dark and coarse in their appearance to even receive my
consideration. Yet I must admit I have always been attracted by the
simple and undiluted female mind, and so most by her body as well. I
am not thinking of course of the exceptional female minds of a Jane
Austin or a Virginia Stephens, no, I am describing the lust I naturally
feel for the simple and ordinary woman, the undistinguished woman
who has no hobby of introspection, no joy in intellectual pursuits. It is
that simple female mind that tempts me most and was the kind of
mind that was certainly most available in Ceylon, the daughters of
GAs, the nieces of royalty, they had never been offered a chance to

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look inside themselves or even imagine that they had a fleshy

instrument that could give them pleasure in nonphysical ways. Yes I
had been tempted, and often not in a very subtle manner as these
women had often reached a point where there was no more time for
subtlety, but during these first years in Ceylon I never fell to one of
them, perhaps believing in my mind and stopped in my behavior that
this would have been a form of betrayal that would have been
inexcusable. And so to conclude, later that night after I had safely
seen the Empress back to her abode, after I had walked back to
Dobbins and relaxed a second time with a few more whiskeys, after I
had walked the two miles back to my bungalow, after I had stopped at
the mosque to try to help calm down a confrontation between some
Hindoos and the Malays, the former upset that their part of the
procession had been obstructed; the latter were offended by the
beating of tom toms in front of their Mohammedan shrine. One
Moslem man spent several minutes trying to tell me how the drivers
of these carts and portable shrines had no respect for the people of
the streets, threatening to crush every child and mother who dared to
cross their own street. I may add here that I had witnessed many a
procession in many a village and the myths that Englishman bring
back with them from their trips to Asia describing how these huge
juggernauts were pulled through the towns in such a reckless frenzy
and without a care for human life and so would crush people

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underneath well, let me tell you that I never saw such a thing ever
happen and doubt that these boys and girls, even old men and women,
who are masters at getting out the way of anything that comes down
these streets whether it be a cart or elephant or a rampaging horse,
could ever manage whether drunk or sober to fall beneath the wheels
of such a slow and clumsy thing as one of these moving shrines.

And

so on this occasion I fined the Hindoos two rupees for disturbing a

religious procession and then fined the Buddhists four rupees for tomtomming without a license, thinking my actions were fair and
deliberate and partisan. Well, such an outrage from both groups you
could not have imagined. Both sides took to cursing me in their own
languages, even going so far as to blame me, the hamadoru, for all
that had been wrong with life including the poor monsoon season, the
proliferation of termites, the pregnant woman killed by a snake, the
clouds that would not leave the peak of the mountain, the failure of
the Ceylon Cricket Club team to defeat the touring team from Britain,
and finally, of course, Halleys comet. Anyway, after all this and after I
had sat out on my porch enjoying the cooling effects of night, I was
watching the glowing tail of that silly comet, and I reflected on how
from my point of view, which I consider to be a human point of view,
there is something blatantly ridiculous about the universe, these
absurd comets racing around the sun, the absurd suns flaming and
flaring while spinning at impossible speeds through illimitable, infinite

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empty space, how all of this is such futility that it is sinister in its
silliness, when a figure appeared at my porch, alarming my dog and
alarming me, as it was a beautiful young Singhalese woman, a rarity
in this country where so many of the women had either occluded front
teeth or other grotesquely exaggerated features, and as I was often
told there were many beauties in Ceylon, you never saw the beautiful
girls as they were always kept in home, kept under lock and key by
their fathers, never allowed out in public, never allowed out at night,
and yet here she was, standing right before me as beautiful and as
stunning as any woman I had ever set eyes upon. She immediately
and effortlessly brought to mind all my thoughts about woman and
beauty which seemed to have been ushered forth in both their
grandeur and ridiculousness all on this very day; I thought back to the
old Empress and her wrinkled face, her puss of pure ugliness, her
legacy of being one of the most beautiful women in the world, the
most striking beauty of her time and now nothing but an ugly old
woman. I thought back on my discussions with Dobbin, his desire to
make a wife of the doughty, cherubic and saggy faced Miss
Garrington, of how he wanted to finally hold and cherish a woman he
thought was beautiful and above anything else in his eyes. I thought
of my phony attempts to provide him with some drunken guidance,
with inebriated encouragement and direction on how to do what and
what to do and when with a woman, especially a woman that he held

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in such esteem as Miss Garrington.

And I reflected back on my

thoughts about how beauty in animals and Nature was one thing and
in humans was another. How beauty in what we dont know compares
with the beauty in what we do in fact understand. And to bring all
this thought and reflection and philosophical rumination to a climax, I
thought now of how beauty is a moment, it is an instant, it is not a
memory, it is not a promise, it is something that appears and becomes
and sustains itself only as long as it so desires, the finest example of
this being the woman who stood before me on this very night. The
only sure thing about beauty is that it will vanish and fade, it will no
longer be at some time when you desire it most. And how like Truth it
was. And here was that beauty before me now. May I help you? I
asked. Yes, she said in a wonderfully lilting Singhalese, I need to talk
with you about my desire to divorce my husband. And so I listened to
her story, a long story about her short life, an even longer story about
her even shorter marriage, a divided tale about a man she somewhat
admired but detested all the same, about a life she could not tolerate
and now wanted to live all the same, about many things that touched
me but in the end I had to tell her that divorce requested on the basis
of failure to attain happiness was the most difficult case to present, I
was not sure she would have her request granted and her life could
then take a turn for the worse, much worse in fact as her husband
may seek revenge and her chances of being heard again were slim.

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Then what is the best cause for divorce, she asked.

Infidelity, I

answered in her language. Then sleep with me, she said in mine.

And so I fornicated with a beautiful village girl who smelled of urine

and with whom I lost my virginity and she lost her shackles to the
past. We made love as I assume people rarely make love, we fought
for that moment together, both for different reasons, both seeking
something the other had no idea of, we were both engaged in a battle
much like that dog and cock on the road, neither truly understanding
the other but neither willing to give up and so we went, for hours, all
night, until dawn, locked in that battle, locked in that embrace, losing
everything and gaining it all at the same time. Freud has an answer
for all this as he has answers to so many perplexities of the human
mind and human emotion and so I wondered does Freud describe us
as we are or do we live our lives as we believe Freud would approve?
But as pivotal as this experience was for me, I came away, I believe,
changed in so many ways, changed in how the future would open up
to me, how each day would be different, how I would begin to step
through the lessons and stories of life, how I would begin a journey
through places and bodies and minds to get to a new place each time,
how I would learn about history and tradition and time and
civilization, I would feel and taste and battle with and copulate with
and struggle against the real concepts of truth and beauty not the

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fantasies we created in our minds; yet after all this, which would take
me through several years of my life, I would emerge with little more
to show for it than a reoccurring rash that affects my scrotum, flaring
up at times of stress, as it does now at this moment, red and swollen
and bleeding, it is my curse, it is what will define me for now and
forever.

I didnt know what to say, and so I said nothing.

Yet the terror of all this is that if Virginia were to know, well, she
would be repulsed as would anyone by the sight of the rash, but she
may still accept me. It would not be the rash but the cause of that
rash that would repel her.

She would certainly reject me once she

knew everything, and so would ensure my decision to get back on the

boat and return to my post in Ceylon this week. So now I am to the
point that made me ask you to dinner: I need to ask Virginia if she will
marry me. In fact, I need to ask her twice. The first time, I need to
ask her without her having any knowledge of my sordid past or my
scrotal malady. If she says no, my future has been decided, I face no
further humiliation and I immediately sail back to Ceylon to resume
my post. If she says yes, then the most painful event is then destined
to take place. I must show her my deformity. I must unclothe the red
and peeling monstrosity that afflicts my scrotum, the bleeding flaking

Page 84

masses that cause me no end of pain, itching and suffering, I must

stand before her like Job, my drawers to the floor, my scrotum in front
of her eyes and then I must ask her again, I must ask Virginia to
marry me, rash and all, past and all, betrayal and all.

I looked behind me a little peevishly, noticing that we were the only

ones remaining in the restaurant and that the waiters all had their
eyes on us, either because they were listening to this story or were
seeking some opening by which to ask us to leave. Leonard noticed
my concern about the others in the now empty and noiseless
restaurant. He lowered his voice and brought his face down near the
table. But maybe I am wrong, he whispered, maybe that is not what I
should do. And this is why I asked you to come with me tonight, to
help me, to advise me.

In his face was the expression of a man

terrified by his own terror. What should I do? He asked me. I looked
at him and asked: Do the two of you want to have children? What? he
said, why, I am not sure, I dont think so, well we have talked about it
and both of us are not real sure, no, I would say no. Then its easy, I
said. Easy? How? he asked. Cut them off, I said.

What? he cried, what do you mean cut them off? That is where your
rash is right? I said, so then just cut them off.

Ha! he exclaimed

throwing down his napkin. You dont need them, I implored, and to tell

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you the truth I doubt she will ever notice. Then, as if they had finally
found the opening they had been waiting for, the waiters stepped in
and asked us kindly but firmly to leave. I for one was ready to go.
Leonard looked a little stunned. One thing for sure, I now had no
interest whatsoever in fucking him. Not with this knowledge of his
scrotal affliction. All I wanted at this moment was to get into my own
bed all by myself. We finally left the restaurant and walked outside. I
could see that Leonard had entered a period of quiet contemplation,
in fact I am not sure he even knew I was with him. We passed by a
couple who were publicly and noisily engaged in some amorous
activities.

We walked on for a few more minutes in silence. I was

about to speak up and tell Leonard that it was time I went home, but
he spoke first.

Only a few months ago, he said, I came back from Ceylon and upon
meeting with everyone, with all my friends and family as they call
came out to greet me, I felt I was in a play. I was in a play in a play,
much like your play tonight.

But I was in an Ibsen play that was

within a Shaw play that was within a Shakespearean comedy or is this

a tragedy? Am I Othello from the Moorish realm of the dark seeking
Virginia my Desdemona, or am I Puck from the mischievous
wilderness of Ceylon casting spells upon my sleepy, sordid group? But
within the bards play there were the Shaw-like struggles of morals

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and manners, and then within the Shaws play there was the Ibsenian
forces of life and mans innate weaknesses that Ibsen so beautifully
portrayed. Surely you could appreciate this, he said.

I nodded

helplessly squeezing my thighs as tightly as I could.

I returned, he continued, and found out that a decade is a long time

indeed. Our little group, our society had found more and more ways
to entangle itself about itself. My dear friend Desmond McCarthy was
married. Virginias brother Thoby had died. Her sister Vanessa was
engaged and then married to my friend Clive Bell.

My dear gay

companion Lytton had the idea that he should marry Virginia if I

wouldnt. Meanwhile my old pal Walter Lamb had been proposing in
one way or another to Virginia for five years now. It was to Walters
slight dismay that Lytton was sodomizing his brother Henry.

We

found out Clive had been having an affair with Virginia, and that was
before he had been pursuing Desmonds sister Mary McCarthy. And
of course there was my dear, dearest Lytton chasing after young men,
virgins he called, them, while pining for me, his nonhomosexual lover
and wife. In years past we had been but a big family, engaged in a
free spirited give and take, sharing being a large part of our love for
each other, most of it merely games though. And all of this made us so
happy, so proud to be friends, we were all in love and in lust with each
other and with pleasure and with pain and with failure and with

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success and most of all with our confidence of creating a new world
order. But now at this later point in our lives a certain seriousness
had begun to take over as age was suddenly a factor and decisions
that never mattered now had to be made. Amongst the intellectuals
and elders of our group there was probably just as much drama, and
most of that came from real life changes as well: the need to make
money, to have security, values that we scoffed at years ago when
ideas and ideals were supreme. There was Maynard Keynes, the most
brilliant of us all, and probably the most successful, who could be
heard engaged in conversation about sodomy with Duncan.

Henry

James had visited with us but outside of our earshot deemed us little
more than a filthy band of intellectual vagrants.

There was E.M.

Forrester whom we call Talpin because he looks and acts like a mole,
but he was a great writer and unlike James, Forrester knew us and
appreciated us for who we were. There was Bertie Russell with his
quick and nimble mind and George Shaw with his slow and pontifical
manners.

There was Beatrice and Sydney who were by far the

smartest couple we knew, but both restricted by limited faculties that

shortened their view of certain things. Rumors swirled about me after
my return, someone said that I had inherited a vast fortune from
someone who had died on the Titanic, another rumor had it that I
made a killing off the race tracks, and yet another came up with the
idea that I had found a bottle with a note on a beach in Ceylon which

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gave me access to untold wealth. Family events added to the feeling

of permanent change and pending chaos. We had Virginias brother
who had caught syphilis from a whore and now seemed to have
infected his child. (Did Ibsen describe us in his works or are we living
our lives according to his plays?) We have my brother who married
and had children with the same defect as our homely institutionalized
sister. We had lovers who died of consumption, we had friends who
lost their minds, we had mentors who lost their jobs and were since
banished to places unknown.

Our pasts were catching up on us,

secrets were not so benign as before, we were discovering that we

were cripples, that we were limited, that the future cared not a thing
for any of us. All of this was being acted out without direction, yet all
the cast knew their lines and their positions expertly and carried out
their roles with selfish and unabashed relish. These dizzying events,
the affairs, the talk and rumors did little to distract me from the one
person in my focus: Virginia.

And this is just the beginning, the

Opening Act. Am I boring you? he asked.

Not at all, I said caught in a yawn. I am afraid, I continued, that I am

not one for these complex passion plays, or your passion play My
passion play? he said with a nervous laugh, as in Jews slaughtering
the Messiah? Well, I said, I suppose they did, but And maybe that is
what I need to do! he shouted. Maybe I need to kill off the Messiah!

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In fact are not the Jews ritually killing off the Christians now? Seems I
read about that just today! But that is not what I meant, I quickly
interjected, I meant rather that these plays of passion, all the
characters, all the changes in relationships, I am afraid my head is
swimming and the wine is not helping.
Play? he asked.

Have you seen the Passion

Yes, I said, Yes I have, I saw it in Oberammergau

years ago. And what did you think? he asked. I said what came to my
mind: I thought it was a play about the workers, I said, about the
downtrodden, the men who were cast beneath the heavy timber of
industry, capitalism. I said this all with ease until I came to the last
word, capitalism, which kind of squeaked out, effectively making a
mockery of my little speech, but truth was I had not really thought
this at all, this was in fact Beatrices interpretation which I thought
was ridiculously inaccurate and boringly Beatrice but it was all I had
at my immediate disposal. That is admirable interpretation, he said,
and somewhat original. I saw a different play than you of course, he
continued, I saw one in Rome. Many years ago, and it wasnt until
recently that I understood what it was about. You know what I
thought? he asked. Please tell me, I said.

Well, I do not greatly

worship the Jesus type in any form but I do think the bloke should
have taken it a bit more like a man, with a at least a bit of fight, and
who knows maybe that would have even enabled Pilate to save him. I
dont know, he continued, but it is the figure of Mary that interests me

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most, it brought home to me the martyrdom of motherhood, the

burden of life on the mother, the heavy heart she must bear not just to
see her son wronged, not just to see him tortured like that, and not
just to see him killed, but to see him martyred too and then have to
take upon his shoulders the sins of an entire race. Actually, I said, I
thought it was a play not simply about workers, but about women, I
too saw much in Mary but what I saw told me that women should be
less docile towards men, they need to stand up, to fight and of course
that means be willing to be hurt, to be destroyed even. Ah yes, he
said, well, it raises many issues, now doesnt it, and I suppose I should
look more closely at the Jewish ones, though I find that hard to do. I
suppose there is part of me that simply seeks a savior of my own. You
know, he continued, if we had a savior in our small closet of a world
back at Cambridge that would have been Moore. Your interpretation,
he continued, well both of them to be exact, sound much like I would
have expected from your friend Ms. Beatrice Webb who by the way I
think was right, something I hate to admit, when she said that we had
exploited Moores genius solely to give ourselves license to do what
we want and when it pleased us. We had each embraced Moore and
dedicated our lives to him, believed we had a foundation on which not
just knowledge but morality was based. But something changed. I had
gone away to a strange and in some ways terrible and terribly
beautiful place. I was sure that I was the one who had been bent,

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rent, changed and warped.

Yet in so many ways I felt that I had

grown with the challenges presented to me, the solitude, the

wickedness, the foreignness, the heat, the stench, the dirt and the
lack of anything intellectual to keep ones mind focused and alive. I
was the one who should have been dulled and depraved yet indeed
not a few of my friends thought I was more interesting now that I had
gone abroad, that I was more a man of the world with my experience,
a more interesting conversationalist, a wild man with a certain
wildness in my eyes.

Yet they are the ones who were now bowed

under some unforeseen pressure, they were the ones who had
changed. Was this simply a way with them, or was this some sign of
what is taking place in our society, in this a symptom of a collective
disease we share, a disease I escaped for nearly a decade by being
away, and so as thin and gaunt as I am upon my return, my back
remains straight, my head I high, my eyes focused, while they,
hobbled it seems, bent and supine, what has become of them? What
will become of them?

I had thought that with the new direction we had forged, he said, one
that came to us from so many directions, but one that I feel had taken
its roots in the famous Dreyfus Affair, the event which catalyzed a
generation of intellectuals, from which the word intellectual was born,
first as a derogatory term applied to this Jews defenders, then as a

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title of honor as this Affair played out, and it was indeed a play, a
thoroughly modern play superior perhaps to any of Georges plays, a
stage play in which the heroes are the ones who are found to have
deep faults, the villains are redeemed with heroic traits, the twists
and turns would better your Miss Fanny play by far, with all its
uncertainties and ambiguities, it was a vortex of passion, ideologies,
ambitions, blunders and mistakes. But from that, like from all great
works of art, there was a chance -- I like so many others thought -- to
re-see, to redesign and rebuild the pillars of our new society, a global
society that would move forward on the basis of truth and beauty and
rationality. Had this all been a dream? Had this all been but youthful
fantasy?

Was what I was seeing now in the wearied faces of my

friends but the effects of wear and tear on what are simply mortal and
ordinary souls, who without any real weight upon them still bend and
fall away from purpose and duty? What is it that we ought to do? I
wanted to ask the question that Moore had instilled into our minds,
but instead of calls to wisdom, I felt as if I had been reciting a
childrens nursery rhythm all this time. It was hopeless. Perhaps you
are right, the savior needs to be killed. Before I had left London, I had
felt fully engaged in the building of something new, together we have
forged a common commitment to create a new set of values, a new
direction, a new life, one that was to be based not on the inferior
building blocks of the past but on the blocks and pillars of common

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sense. The new society was to be one based on truth and beauty, it
would be free, rational and civilized, it would be a place where one
could pursue things like truth and beauty without persecution or
ridicule. It was all tremendously exhilarating. Yet when I returned,
nine years later, I disembarked and set myself back into the same
room, back into that same chair that I had occupied before,
surrounded by the same faces I had left, faces now a bit plump,
bloated and distracted, some empty where they had been full of
enthusiasm and ideas, some showing real signs of what I could only
think was self-defeat. Yet for all this time they had been fighting the
fight we had been struggling to obtain, only somewhere along that
course, and I knew it had nothing to do with my departure, the goals
had been lost, the purpose faded from view, yet the energy continued
to be expended as if there was nothing to stop the minds in their futile
pursuit, only now, after years and years of senseless flailing and
railing, they were left only with a few silly bits of flesh and their
mighty speech now but obscenity filled harangues told tongue in
cheek while freedom had been replaced with sex and values had been
replaced with pleasure and cynicism had been replaced with a tired
satirical attitude that few even have the energy remaining to snigger
at.

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Through the dim darkness the figure of a horse broken free from its
hansom loped strangely through the fog. He did not seem to see it
and continued: Back then, we had been in revolt, at war against
values that we were certain had to be defeated. Now I look and think
we have replaced the drunkenness we felt at feeling our youthful
power with simply drunkenness, the intellectual fervor dulled but still
simmering in a slow bacchanalia, a dance that was winding down, not
so much as dance as a writhing of sorts. I had gone to the land of the
wild, I had been banished into the depth of Nature, there I had
witnessed myself the effect of the wilderness upon the mind and body
of man, I had come to know and feel the animal in myself, and yet
here I was feeling all the more civilized than any of these others, as I
was indeed the impure one, the dark and uncivilized race which had
the purer intentions, the stronger mind, finer control over ones body.
I learned what I already knew, that the world outside was a terrible,
hostile and violent place, I went into the heart of darkness, into the
jungle, into the wilderness and found there that life is but a frothing
battle for survival, I was shocked and at first even disgusted at the
cold savagery, the pitiless cruelty. I saw things in Ceylon I would have
never seen in London, I saw my dog chase and kill a cat, I saw that
same dog kill a venomous snake, I saw another small dog get
snatched up by an alligator and taken beneath the cess still yelping
for its life, I saw bulls decimated by diseases, I saw men kill

Page 95

elephants, shoot down cats and bears, I saw these animals and their
hatred for us, I could not call it fear, I had to call it hatred, for they
had no fear only the desire to kill, to maim, to destroy, fear would
have been to show submission, this is you did not see in the wild, fear
would have been to see only flight, this you did not see amongst the
most viscous animals, the ones with tooth and claw and sinew to make
quick deed of the soft and flabby human being. I crossed the border, I
ventured past that boundary where civilization completely stops, and
beyond that line man does not stand a chance, the only men who live
there are the men who have given up being men, who are brutes and
beasts themselves. This is Darwins message in all its sobriety and all
its horror. I had gone so deep and so long into that darkness of
humanity, that now as I stood here in the cozy, structured flats of
London, I could only wonder: did Conrad write about what he saw as
the wilderness of our minds, or do we seek to define our minds in the
manner of Conrad?

A man ran across the street shouting and waving his arms, but Mr.
Woolf did not notice and continued: But as I said, when I returned I
had only one thought on my mind: Virginia. And yet here was Virginia
too, like all the others, with her talk about fucking and fornication,
this was her way it seemed of wooing me, and all that when in fact
her, her he stumbled.

Her quim? I offered.

Her cunt, he said.

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When her cunt was as untouched and untested, unpoked and

undamaged as any. So you are a beast, I said, ashamed with myself
that I was now becoming aroused, titillated upon learning now that
this man was more than the mere mouse I had taken him for all this
time. Yes, he said becoming visually agitated, I was the one who had
discovered and then unabashedly reveled in the bacchanal of
licentious fortification, I was the one who debauched and whored and
sacrificed myself to the pleasures of the carnal. I am a whorer, and a
vicious one at that, because I know the refinements of vice. I know
the filth of the brothel and yet I gladly take up with the ugliest whore
there. I was the one who had fucked young beauties just as I had
fucked fat old painted women, I was the one who had fucked the
heiresses just as easily as I had fucked dark, smelly native girls. I was
the one who fucked barren old women as easily as I fucked the wives
and daughters of my friends and superiors. I have no morals as I have
no compass. Look at me! I was the one who fucked Miss Garrison and
so came to know Miss Garrisons cunt right there on the Dobbins
wedding bed of all places, yes! after she drew me there and confessed
to me that Dobbins was a pathetically queer little man and should
never be married to anyone and she began to undress, to peel off
layer after layer and with each piece of clothing she removed I
recalled an entire telling of the story of Miss Garrisons Cunt, until
finally she was down to her knickers and beneath those diaphanous

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linens there purred and sputtered that fiery red face, the slab of horse
flesh, that fire of all fires burning, sweating, aching, marching
towards me and I took and saw and felt and measured and heaven
knows what else

As we walked, a noise grew all around us, firecrackers and metal

crashes and shouts as if riots were taking place in the city. A low haze
was dropping like a curtain to the ground and against this dense
tapestry one could see dim flashes of light, like bombs going off. Mr.
Woolf seemed to not notice a thing, as he continued: The fact is I did
what most men only dreamed about.

I was the one who knew the

smells, the feels, the rhythms, the pain, the pleasures that they only
read about, fantasized about. I was the one who lusted and sought to
satisfy that lust not simply admire it, I was the one who felt desire and
knew that I would give in to that desire, I was the one who saw
temptation and knew it would always have the better of me. These
friends, these people I had left behind, they were all children still,
dreamers. They all lived in a pristine and virginal world of fantasy.

I was suddenly reluctant, no I was afraid to say anything else to this

man, he seemed a bundle of nerves that at the slightest provocation
would flare up and burst apart.
feared him in some way.

I worried about him and perhaps

But as we walked he had also become

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smaller, diminutive, and so in that way he was less of a threat, more of

a friend who needed to be consoled.

As we walked some children

were gathered around a tin of fire, chanting:

Guy, guy, guy
Poke him in the eye,
Put him on the bonfire,
And there let him die.
He smiled at the children and then at me as if we had suddenly shared
something I could not determine.
Who's that knocking at the window?
Who's that knocking at the door?
It's little Mary Ann with a candle in her hand
And she's going down the cellar for some coal
He seemed not to notice a thing and continued: But I had fallen in
love with Virginia, I had no other thought and no other feeling than
this blazing love I felt for her. I knew that I was but one of a million
who felt such love, who experienced that height of emotion. The two
of us talked about marriage, I could not help myself, she said she
needed an indefinite period of time to consider it, I told her all the
risks there were to marrying me, that I was selfish, that I was jealous,
cruel, a liar, that I was lustful and violently lustful, probably even
worse than all that. She grew physically ill with all my talk about love
and marriage and destiny, her sister and family told me to stay away
that I was in fact killing her. I knew however her sickness was deeper
than that. I have to agree with the psychiatrist who said that women

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are overeducated and easily disturbed by the stress of sexuality. Yet I

felt that it was I and I alone that could cure her. Our love and her cure
would come through truth, it could come through beauty. I told her I
was not one of her family, that I was of a different stock, a different
caste. She told me that my being a Jew was actually helping my case
with her: you seem so foreign, she said.

I had never considered

myself as a Jew before, not before today, on this day at this moment
my Jewishness came into being. This awakened my love for her to an
even greater height, which I had not thought possible. I was born in
Jericho, I said to Virginia, and like the inhabitants of Jericho I have a
long nose and black hair, I would like to live on Olympus but all the
Syrians have since wandered off. But I have to tell you, Virginia said
to me, I feel no physical attraction for you at all. Ah! he continued,
she, Virginia, she was my Aspasia, the cultivated mistress of Pericles
who built Athens into the model of civilization. I was but an insect,
not even a man, Miss Garrison said she liked to fuck my insect stick, I
have since childhood worn a carapace that is now fully enmeshed with
my soul, perhaps secreted by my soul, but now for the first time,
brought out by this deep love for Virginia, I know that that child is
there still, cowering beneath this insect shell, he still resides deep
down within me, vulnerable, sensitive, eager and nice.

When we

kissed, Virginia said to me, I felt nothing but a rock. Ah! he said, I
accepted the limitations of her desire for me. I had enough love for

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her as well as for me.

Before when I thought of love I was only

thinking of copulation. I had always thought that I would fall in love

with a prostitute that that would be my fate.

But now, I know

differently, now I have to decide. I need to make a choice.

The agitation in his body had gone now, it was spent. We walked for a
bit longer outside, his head down in thought, his hands behind his
back.

Ah! he said, and I finally understand you!

You do? I asked,

about what? About cutting off my testicles, he shouted prompting a

look from a man holding the horse of a hansom cab. Yes, of course, he
said, you are telling me to quit looking at this like a man, to stop being
a man, to change my perspective, I am caught up in all these emotions
and decisions because I am seeing all this in the narrow and simplistic
and juvenile way every man views his balls. Have you read Freud? he
asked. I told you before I dont know him, I said. My god! he said, I
was right, you did know how to help me! The answer came to you
without the contrivance of an education. You knew but you didnt
know. What is that? I asked. That I have had troubles before with my
testicles, he said, I had an operation right before I left to Ceylon, back
then I simply took that as just one part of many parts of my
punishment. Have you read the Book of Job? he asked me. Of course,
I said, that I know about. Well then you know my story. I wouldnt
exactly say that, I said, now ready to leave if I could only find a way,

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not knowing where this was now headed but seeing a spot of blood, an
accident, a bit of severed flesh in this story somewhere. At one point
in my travels I had this rash on my balls, he said, I had boils across my
face, I had a fever deep in my bones, blisters upon my lips, I would
walk and look down to find leeches sucking at my skin just below my
knees. All of this made me happy, he continued, believe it or not, I
was never happier than I was during that time when I had these open
sores, broken lips, haunting headaches and endless streams of
diarrhea. He suddenly clapped his hands and smiled to the skies. You
are much more intelligent than you first appear, he said. Well thank
you, I said. It seems that the simplest people such as yourself always
know more than the smarter ones. Well, I said, I am glad that I could
help. And with that he got us a cab, took me home without any sign
or gesture of affection and from my gate he wished me good night and
I went on to bed. It was nearly four in the morning.

* * *

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December 2, 1911

Leonard returned to the theater tonight. This time a woman came

with him, tall and forlorn looking, dressed in a nearly ridiculous dress;
they were accompanied by Beatrice and her husband, Sydney. I know
that Beatrice did not care for the theater and yet she and her husband
seemed to be having a childishly good time, as if they were out at
their first night in the theater, the way they looked about and pointed
and laughed and remarked to each other. After the performance, all
four of them came to my dressing room where Leonard introduced the
tall ill-dressed woman as his fiance, Virginia. They all loved the play,
of course, raved about my performance, as they must, and invited me
to come with them back to their house, where George would join us,
as well as a certain Mr. Bertrand Russell and Mr. Wells. This should
be fun, Leonard said with a wry smile. But then we are always fun,
his finance answered, then said to me, you must come, of course!
Which I did, of course, but must write about later.