There was a tap at the door. Will looked up from his book.
"Who's there?"
"It's me," said a voice that brought back unpleasant memories of Colonel Dipa and that nightmarish drive in the white Mercedes. Dressed only in white sandals, white shorts, and a platinum wrist watch, Murugan was advancing towards the bed.
"How nice of you to come and see me!"
Another visitor would have asked him how he was feeling; but Murugan was too wholeheartedly concerned with himself to be able even to simulate the slightest interest in anyone else. "I came to the door three-quarters of an hour ago," he said in tones of aggrieved complaint. "But the old man hadn't left, so I had to go home again. And then I had to sit with my mother and the man who's staying with us while they were having their breakfast..."
"Why couldn't you come in while Dr. Robert was here?" Will asked. "Is it against the rules for you to talk to me?"
The boy shook his head impatiently. "Of course not. I just didn't want him to know the reason for my coming to see you."
"The reason?" Will smiled. "Visiting the sick is an act of charity-highly commendable."
His irony was lost upon Murugan, who went on steadily thinking about his own affairs. "Thank you for not telling them you'd seen me before," he said abruptly, almost angrily. It was as though he resented having to acknowledge his obligation and were furious with Will for having done him the good turn which demanded this acknowledgment.
"I could see you didn't want me to say anything about it," said Will. "So of course I didn't."
"I wanted to thank you," Murugan muttered between his teeth and in a tone that would have been appropriate to "You dirty swine!"
"Don't mention it," said Will with mock politeness.
What a delicious creature! he was thinking as he looked, with amused curiosity, at that smooth golden torso, that averted face, regular as a statue's but no longer Olympian, no longer classical—a Hellenistic face, mobile and all too human. A vessel of incomparable beauty-but what did it contain? It was a pity, he reflected, that he hadn't asked that question a little more seriously before getting involved with his unspeakable Babs. But then Babs was a female. By the sort of heterosexual he was, the sort of rational question he was now posing was unaskable. As no doubt it would be, by anyone susceptible to boys, in regard to this bad-blooded little demigod sitting at the end of his bed.
"Didn't Dr. Robert know you'd gone to Rendang?" he asked.
"Of course he knew. Everybody knew it. I'd gone there to fetch my mother. She was staying there with some of her relations. I went over to bring her back to Pala. It was absolutely official."
"Then why didn't you want me to say that I'd met you over there?"
Murugan hesitated for a moment, then looked up at Will defiantly. "Because I didn't want them to know I'd been seeing Colonel Dipa."
Oh, so that was it! "Colonel Dipa's a remarkable man," he said aloud, fishing with sugared bait for confidences.
Surprisingly unsuspicious, the fish rose at once. Murugan's sulky face lit up with enthusiasm and there, suddenly, was Anti-nous in all the fascinating beauty of his ambiguous adolescence. "I think he's wonderful," he said, and for the first time since he had entered the room he seemed to recognize Will's existence and give him the friendliest of smiles. The Colonel's wonderful-ness had made him forget his resentment, had made it possible for him, momentarily, to love everybody-even this man to whom he owed a rankling debt of gratitude. "Look at what he's doing for Rendang!"
"He's certainly doing a great deal for Rendang," said Will noncommittally.
A cloud passed across Murugan's radiant face. "They don't think so here," he said, frowning. "They think he's awful."
"Who thinks so?"
"Practically everybody!" ;! "So they didn't want you to see him?"
With the expression of an urchin who has cocked a snook while the teacher's back is turned, Murugan grinned triumphantly. "They thought I was with my mother all the time."
Will picked up the cue at once. "Did your mother know you were seeing the Colonel?" he asked."Of course." "And had no objection?" "She was all for it."
And yet, Will felt quite sure, he hadn't been mistaken when he thought of Hadrian and Antinous. Was the woman blind? Or didn't she wish to see what was happening?
"But if she doesn't mind," he said aloud, "why should Dr. Robert and the rest of them object?" Murugan looked at him suspiciously. Realizing that he had ventured too far into forbidden territory, Will hastily drew a red herring across the trail. "Do they think," he asked with a laugh, "that he might convert you to a belief in military dictatorship?"
The red herring was duly followed, and the boy's face relaxed into a smile. "Not that, exactly," he answered, "but something like it. It's all so stupid," he added with a shrug of the shoulders. "Just idiotic protocol."
"Protocol?" Will was genuinely puzzled.
"Weren't you told anything about me?"
"Only what Dr. Robert said yesterday."
"You mean, about my being a student?" Murugan threw back his head and laughed.
"What's so funny about being a student?"
"Nothing-nothing at all." The boy looked away again. There was a silence. Still averted, "The reason," he said at last, "why I'm not supposed to see Colonel Dipa is that he's the head of a state and I'm the head of a state. When we meet, it's international politics."
"What do you mean?"
"I happen to be the Raja of Pala."
"TheRajaofPala?"
"Since 'fifty-four. That was when my father died."
"And your mother, I take it, is the Rani?"
"My mother is the Rani."
Make a beelinefor the palace. But here was the palace making a beeline for him. Providence, evidently, was on the side of Joe Aldehyde and working overtime.
"Were you the eldest son?" he asked.
"The only son," Murugan replied. And then, stressing his uniqueness still more emphatically, "The only child, I" he added.
"So there's no possible doubt," said Will. "My goodness! I ought to be calling you Your Majesty. Or at least Sir." The words were spoken laughingly; but it was with the most perfect seriousness and a sudden assumption of regal dignity that Murugan responded to them.
"You'll have to call me that at the end of next week," he said. "After my birthday. I shall be eighteen. That's when a Raja of Pala comes of age. Till then I'm just Murugan Mailendra. Just a student learning a little bit about everything-including plant breeding," he added contemptuously-"so that, when the time comes, I shall know what I'm doing."
"And when the time comes, what will you be doing?" Between this pretty Antinous and his portentous office there was a contrast which Will found richly comic. "How do you propose to act?" he continued on a bantering note. "Off with their heads? L'etat c'est moi?"
Seriousness and regal dignity hardened into rebuke. "Don't be stupid."
Amused, Will went through the motions of apology. "I just wanted to find out how absolute you were going to be."
"Pala is a constitutional monarchy," Murugan answered gravely.
"In other words, you're just going to be a symbolic figurehead-to reign, like the Queen of England, but not rule."