The parrot uttered a succession of low chuckles, then leaned forward from its perch on Vijaya's finger and very gently nibbled at the child's tiny ear.
"Such a good bird," Shanta whispered, taking up the refrain. "Such good bird."
"Dr. Andrew picked up the idea," said Vijaya, "while he was serving as a naturalist on the Melampus. From a tribe in northern New Guinea. Neolithic people; but like you Christians and us Buddhists, they believed in love. And unlike us and you, they'd invented some very practical ways of making their belief come true. This technique was one of their happiest discoveries. Stroke the baby while you're feeding him; it doubles his pleasure. Then, while he's sucking and being caressed, introduce him to the ani mal or person you want him to love. Rub his body against theirs; let there be a warm physical contact between child and love object. At the same time repeat some word like 'good.' At first he'll understand only your tone of voice. Later on, when he learns to speak, he'll get the full meaning. Food plus caress plus contact plus 'good' equals love. And love equals pleasure, love equals satisfaction."
"Pure Pavlov."
"But Pavlov purely for a good purpose. Pavlov for friendliness and trust and compassion. Whereas you prefer to use Pavlov for brainwashing, Pavlov for selling cigarettes and vodka and patriotism. Pavlov for the benefit of dictators, generals and tycoons."
Refusing any longer to be left out in the cold, the yellow mongrel had joined the group and was impartially licking every piece of sentient matter within its reach-Shanta's arm, Vijaya's hand, the parrot's feet, the baby's backside. Shanta drew the dog closer and rubbed the child against its furry flank.
"And this is a good good dog," she said. "Dog Toby, good good dog Toby."
Will laughed. "Oughtn't I to get into the act?"
"I was going to suggest it," Shanta answered, "only I was afraid you'd think it was beneath your dignity."
"You can take my place," said Vijaya. "I must go and see about our lunch."
Still carrying the parrot, he walked out through the door that led into the kitchen. Will pulled up his chair and, leaning for ward, began to stroke the child's tiny body.
"This is another man," Shanta whispered. "A good man, baby, kgood, man."
"How I wish it were true!" he said with a rueful little laugh. "Here and now it is true." And bending down again over the child, "He's a good man," she repeated. "A good good man."
He looked at her blissful, secretly smiling face, he felt the smoothness and warmth of the child's tiny body against his fingertips. Good, good, good . . . He too might have known this goodness-but only if his life had been completely different from what in fact, in senseless and disgusting fact, it was. So never take yes for an answer, even when, as now, yes is self-evident. He looked again with eyes deliberately attuned to another wavelength of value, and saw the caricature of a Memling altarpiece. "Madonna with Child, Dog, Pavlov and Casual Acquaintance." And suddenly he could almost understand, from the inside, why Mr. Bahu so hated these people. Why he was so bent-in the name, as usual and needless to say, of God-on their destruction. "Good," Shanta was still murmuring to her baby, "good, good, good."
Too good-that was their crime. It simply wasn't permissible. And yet how precious it was! And how passionately he wished that he might have had a part in it! "Pure sentimentality!" he said to himself; and then aloud, "Good, good, good," he echoed ironically. "But what happens when the child grows a little bigger and discovers that a lot of things and people are thoroughly bad, bad, bad?"
"Friendliness evokes friendliness," she answered. "From the friendly-yes. But not from the greedy, not from the power lovers, not from the frustrated and embittered. For them, friendliness is just weakness, just an invitation to exploit, to bully, to take vengeance with impunity."
"But one has to run the risk, one has to make a beginning. And luckily no one's immortal. The people who've been conditioned to swindling and bullying and bitterness will all be dead in a few years. Dead, and replaced by men and women brought up in the new way. It happened with us; it can happen with you."
"It can happen," he agreed. "But in the context of H-bombs and nationalism and fifty million more people every single year, it almost certainly won't."
"You can't tell till you try."
"And we shan't try as long as the world is in its present state. And, of course, it will remain in its present state until we do try. Try and, what's more, succeed at least as well as you've succeeded. Which brings me back to my original question. What happens when good, good, good discovers that, even in Pala, there's a lot of bad, bad, bad? Don't the children get some pretty unpleasant shocks?"
"We try to inoculate them against those shocks."
"How? By making things unpleasant for them while they're still young?"
"Not unpleasant. Let's say real. We teach them love and confidence, but we expose them to reality, reality in all its aspects. And then give them responsibilities. They're made to understand that Pala isn't Eden or the Land of Cockaigne. It's a nice place all right. But it will remain nice only if everybody works and behaves decently. And meanwhile the facts of life are the facts of life. Even here."
"What about the facts of life in those bloodcurdling snakes I met halfway up the precipice? You can say 'good, good, good' as much as you like; but snakes will still bite."
"You mean, they still can bite. But will they in fact make use of their ability?"
"Why shouldn't they?"
"Look over there," said Shanta. He turned his head and saw that what she was pointing at was a niche in the wall behind him. Within the niche was a stone Buddha, about half life-size, seated upon a curiously grooved cylindrical pedestal and surmounted by a kind of lead-shaped canopy that tapered down behind him into a broad pillar. "It's a small replica," she went on, "of the Buddha in the Station Compound-you know, the huge figure by the lotus pool."
"Which is a magnificent piece of sculpture," he said. "And the smile really gives one an inkling of what the Beatific Vision must be like. But what has it got to do with snakes?"
"Look again."
He looked. "I don't see anything specially significant."
"Look harder."
The seconds passed. Then, with a shock of surprise, he noticed something strange and even disquieting. What he had taken for an oddly ornamented cylindrical pedestal had suddenly revealed itself as a huge coiled snake. And that downward tapering canopy under which the Buddha was sitting was the expanded hood, with the flattened head at the center of its leading edge, of a giant cobra.
"My God!" he said. "I hadn't noticed. How unobservant can one be?"
"Is this the first time you've seen the Buddha in this context?"
"The first time. Is there some legend?"
She nodded. "One of my favorites. You know about the Bodhi Tree, of course?"
"Yes, I know about the Bodhi Tree."
"Well, that wasn't the only tree that Gautama sat under at the time of his Enlightenment. After the Bodhi Tree, he sat for seven days under a banyan, called the Tree of the Goatherd. And after that he moved on to the Tree of Muchalinda."
"Who was Muchalinda?"
"Muchalinda was the King of the Snakes and, being a god, he knew what was happening. So when the Buddha sat down under his tree, the Snake King crawled out of his hole, yards and yards of him, to pay Nature's homage to Wisdom. Then a great storm blew up from the west. The divine cobra wrapped its coils round the more than divine man's body, spread its hood over his head and, for the seven days his contemplation lasted, sheltered the Tathagata from the wind and rain. So there he sits to this day, with cobra beneath him, cobra above him, conscious simultaneously of cobra and the Clear Light and their ultimate identity."