Adonis Diaries

“Perfect harmonious spheres”

An “East -West” novella of Salman Rushdi

Piece of “fractal” in the Metaphysical puzzle?

I am reading the French version of “East West” by Salman Rushdi, and I liked one of the novellas.  I love stories that have this taste of vivid current background (like recollection or introspection types), this smell of jasmine of an account that keeps revisiting in our life, in all ages.  I will retell the story my own style.

“I befriended Eliot in my last year at Cambridge.  We had nothing in common in activities and passions. I liked heat and warm weather; he preferred humid gray skies.  I wore Zapata mustaches and hair reaching my shoulders; Eliot had red hair, was slender and tall, and wore tweed and velour.  I was interested in experimental theater, inter-racial relationships, and participated in anti-war demonstrations; Eliot spent his week-ends hunting fouls in luxury castle circuits.  Eliot would claim: “Nothing like killing fouls and animals to uplift morale…”  Eliot threw a feast as Edward Heath was elected PM, and I couldn’t stop cringing.

We had two things in common: our singing was off-beat, and we were interested in the “sciences” of the occult, this good old black magic.  Once, Eliot imposed on me a post-hypnotic suggestion every time he said “banana”.  I had to undress as I hear “banana”.  We were in a nightclub and I could not fight off this slumbering urge of undressing.  By the time I was unzipping my jeans, we were kicked out of this “decent” establishment. My wife Mala said: “Say you two guys. You go sleep together. We are going back home…”

The language of the counter-culture was imbibed with terms such as pentacle, illuminates, Maharishi, Gandalf, the secrets of the Great Pyramid, the mystery of numbers, of gold, and complexity of the spiral, ecstasy (Muchu), coma (Shissi), hypnotic transe (Saimin-Jotai), out-of-body experience (Mugen no Kyo)…

For example, Mesmer wrote on the theory of animal magnetism: “There is a significant influence among celestial stars and planets, earth, and all the animated bodies. A universally subtle fluid, subjected to unknown laws of mechanics, is diffused among all the bodies…”

It was Eliot who introduced me to my future wife Mala.  She was studying to be medical doctor and she kept my balance with the real world.  Mala was vegetarian and never drank alcohol or smoked; she was originally from the Maurice Islands in the Indian Ocean, and loved the Romeo-Juliette version of Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, taking place in her original Islands.

My wife was a descendent of agricultural families who immigrated to England after the abolition of black slavery.  Mala spoke an Indian slang of the bhojpuri that no Indian could understand… and Mala never visited India, and my being originally from India (Bombay) fascinated her.  Mala didn’t speak much and looked cold, except at night as sex generated constant loud screams and babbling like: “Come inside you. Enter where you belong…”

In our honey moon in Venice she said: “Get out of all these grotesque superstitions. Stay away from your certified crazy of friend.  You are meeting very frequently and this is not healthy.  Are you following me writer sahib? Drop Eliot like an old pair of socks.  Eliot is incapable of being of any aid to anyone.  Listen carefully, you don’t own Eliot anything for introducing us…”

Eliot had married the blonde Lucy, a rich girl, originally from India.  She was my neighbor in Bombay. I knew her when I was 14 and she 12 of age.  We used to go on camel ride on the beach of Juhu, drink fresh coconut milk, and we kissed.  We parted ways as we immigrated to England. Eliot re-introduced me to Lucy at a chichkebab restaurant on Charlotte Street in 1971.  Lucy recalled every details of our youth, but we never talked about our former friendship and hot kisses.

The four of us, the two close couples, hiked to a hill in the Borders to watch the Jubilee bonfire. Eliot said: “This is not a real “bon feu”. It should be ignited with bones and skeletal of “hetre zumains” (etres humains, of mankind skeletal).  We drank a lot, and Eliot recounted frightening stories.  Eliot was driving 140 miles an hour in our way back. And he stopped abruptly and pointed to a small cemetery downhill where sheep were sleeping, and said: “That is where I would like to be buried.” I said: “This is impossible. You are still among the living!”.  Lucy cut me off saying: “Shut up Khan sahib. You are giving Eliot ideas…”

Lucy inherited a very old boat that was used in 1940 for repatriating the English troops, trapped in Dunkerque (Belgium?), by the Nazi German army. The old motor Thorneycroft Handybilly responded only to Lucy’s.  Lucy baptized this old schooner “Bouguinvillee” in remembrance of her cherished early life in Bombay.  We boarded this boat several times.

Once, Mala refused to join us on a river trip claiming: “Listen, hygiene is priority to me. I love my Dunlopillo mattress and my real WC at home. I cannot withstand pissing in the archaic facilities and spending the night in sleeping bags…”  It happened that Eliot too had a serious excuse to jump out a couple of hours later.  Eliot said that he forgot he had to listen to a conference in Cambridge on the relationship of the Nazi with the occult sciences…

So, Lucy and I were left to continue alone two glorious days, navigating the rivers from Trent, the Mercy canal, to Middlewich, to Nantwich, to Shropshire Union canal.  One night, as I finished the walking adventure of leading the boat through a one-way tunnel, carrying a lantern, Lucy said: “Finally, I made you transgress a law, and I am madly contented with your courage”  In bed, she huddled by my side and said: “Crazy. Love” and she turned her back to me.  It was so close transgressing another law.

Lucy knew that Eliot had mental trouble, sort of schizophrenic paranoid bouts and she agreed to move out of London, where she had a great job, and they purchased a small cottage, which they called “Crowley End” (Allister Crowley founded the satanic circles in the early 20th century).  Once, Lucy called me and said: “Khan sahib, you must come now”  Eliot was caught driving against traffic, wearing a black night band over his eyes, these kinds of things…

For an entire year, I refrained from meeting with Eliot.  Lucy would call me and deliver Eliot mental health diagnostic.  She would fill me in with stories like medicines have good effects on Eliot, except that Eliot refuses to take them; he feels better when he is not writing, but he retrograde quickly when he quits writing…feeling depressed, passive, and inert.  There was nothing I could help with.

The irony was that Eliot knew he had a serious case of mental illness and he seemed very lucid and rational explaining his problems.  For example, he would tell me that he had a case of chemical imbalance, that scientists are close to discovering a treatment, that he is in conference with many specialists in the matter, and that he is doing research on his mental case…

One night, the 32 year-old Eliot lodged a bullet in his brain and left a note on how to clean and grease the gun.  Lucy returned late from work and saw the bloody body of her husband.  Lucy went up and slept as she normally did saying: “It is over”.  She called her brother Bill in the morning, who called the police and then undertook to clean the bits of brain everywhere.

Lucy asked me to take a look at the manuscripts that Eliot left behind.  I went through all the lunatic lucubrations of Eliot’s writings for a week, and gave up:  There was nothing worth publishing but gross and dirty descriptions of Mala, Lucy, and I… Lucy said: “You know, it was not really him writing…”

After the burial in the small cemetery that Eliot had pointed to us on our way back from the Borders, I shook hands with Lucy and never saw her again.

I opened my heart to Mala and could not stop apologizing for not taking her warning seriously, at the first day of our honeymoon in Venice.  I told Mala how she vehemently protested my frequent meeting with this a certified crazy of Eliot, and that he does not owe me nothing in introducing her to me…

I told Mala: “You know, I read the stories he invented, all these stories of strange meetings like the “Last Tango in Paris”-kind, of how he arranged for us Lucy and I to navigate alone for two days, and how he arranged the excuse of listening to a conference in Cambridge in order to meet with you…” Mala stood up and turned her back to me and said: “What Eliot wrote about me and him was not a fable”

These perfect harmonious spheres shattered in my frozen heart.” End of story

I preferred the title Piece of “fractal” in the Metaphysical puzzle.

Are you relentlessly striving to see the big picture of what is life and the universe?

Is it a normal urge?  Many accredited crazies have attempted to go for the big picture.  What if the pig picture is just a nauseating repeat picture, a plain portion of this tiny fractal in the puzzle that generates the one of the perspectives of the fancy Big Picture?

What if there is no big picture, and we spend life on the wrong adventure, instead of focusing on comprehending our behavior, passions, weaknesses, and strengths?

Why this urge for metaphysical longing, this hooking to gurus, “masters in special metaphysical” teaching, masters in charlatanism?

Note 1: British author Salman Rushdi, was born in Bombay (India) in 1947. He immigrated to England at the age of 14.

He published his first novel in 1981 “The children of midnight”.  The “satanic verses, 1988″ angered the Mullahs of Iran and a fatwa was issued to assassinate him.  Salman has been under heavy guard and in hiding ever since.  He published “Harun and the sea of stories”, “Fury”… Queen Elizabeth made him Sir Rushdi in 2007.

Note 2: Rushdi mentions a collection of gurus in metaphysical teaching, sort of big charlatans, such as Gurdjieff, Raja Rammohun Roy, Brahmo Samaj, Aleister Crowley, Blavatsky, Dunsany, Lovecraft…

Note 3: I reviewed extensively the two chapters of the satanic verses, related to Prophet Muhammad https://adonis49.wordpress.com/2008/11/04/satanic-verses-revisited/