“Yes,” he said, and: “Not exactly.”
Now too guilty even to read.
“Well, I wouldn’t touch one,” Mrs Musto said vehemently, “not if I was carried off by a second Deluge, with books instead of animals.”
He could only stand there foolishly, weighed down by the certainly open but trembling book.
“Tell me,” she said, more sympathetic, or inquisitive, “what are you having a read of in Ralph’s encyclopaedia?”
She wasn’t laughing, so, lowering his head he read out loud, pushing the words well forward with his lips, because he almost doubted he would be able to form them, he was so excited:
“The Mandala is a symbol of totality. It is believed to be the ‘dwelling of the god’. Its protective circle is a pattern of order super — imposed on — psychic — chaos. Sometimes its geometric form is seen as a vision (either waking or in a dream) or — ”
His voice had fallen to the most elaborate hush.
“Or danced,” Arthur read.
He was so thunderstruck he was relieved to feel that Mrs Musto, in spite of her enquiry, was preoccupied.
She said: “Evelyn, I think, is on a diet. Oh, dear!”
So Arthur was able to put the encyclopaedia away, and give his most joyful attention to his friend and protectress Mrs Musto.
She was wearing a great hat, on which stiff bundles of feathers had been laid, in the manner of ears of corn in a shallow basket. Although it was still only late morning Mrs Musto was shimmering with moonlight, from her net insertion right down to her ankles, which, it seemed, were hobbled by what looked like a pair of Turkish pants. It was most dazzling. Even her arms, which the fringe of sleeve above the elbows allowed to escape from custody, were too decently powdered to offend.
“Do yer like me?” Mrs Musto asked, and smiled.
“Oh yes!” said Arthur.
He did so genuinely.
Then again a thought appeared to cross Mrs Musto’s face. Perhaps it was the shimmer of her dress which caused her thoughts to flicker on and off, or dart fishlike to the surface.
“Poor Waldo,” she said. “Something must be done about yer brother. I am goin’ to give a tennis afternoon, and ask a mob of youngsters. But yer mustn’t tell,” she warned sternly. “You understand?”
“Yes,” said Arthur, as he heard the melancholy sound of his relationship with Mrs Musto snapping.
“I shall ask that Feinstein girl,” she decided. “Does it work, though? A couple of lost souls.”
Arthur did not know how to say it often has to.
He said instead: “I’d better be getting back to the mare. She’s restless when she’s finished her nose-bag. By the way, Mrs Musto,” he said, turning in the doorway on a little mat which was threatening to shoot from under his feet, “there isn’t any demerara.”
But she was running, hat down, at a big bowl of roses, and didn’t hear.
Arthur only half-resumed his round, for thinking, as he clacked at Allwrights’ mare, how bitter it was the Feinsteins also, who might have become his private property, were being given to his brother Waldo. If the thought didn’t grow unbearable, it was because, as Mrs Musto had pointed out, Waldo was in need of a kind. What this need could be, Arthur was not yet certain, much occupied as he was in working out his own needs and relationships.
Then the thought of the mandalas made him begin again rocking on the buggy seat. If only the curtain on his mystery hadn’t stuck halfway up.
That Sunday he decided to ask help from somebody — Dad, or Waldo, either of whom was naturally better informed. Over what remained of the salmon loaf, by then reduced to a pink dribble and the little white rounds of crumbly bone, Arthur was rehearsing his speech: Now tell me, Waldo, you will know. But suddenly he knew his brother wouldn’t. Which relieved him somewhat. Because he would not have cared to ask an intellectual favour of Waldo’s face. That left their father. Why he did not propose to ask their mother, he wasn’t sure, only that their relationship depended more on obscurity and touch. So there was Dad. Cleaning his moustache of salmon.
When the others had withdrawn to their own more private corners in the house, Arthur began.
“Tell me, Dad,” he said, “there’s something I want to ask you.”
George Brown looked at first as though he had been hit.
Then he let out his breath, and said: “If you can’t ask me, son, I don’t know who you can.”
Dad did not always sound convincing. But Arthur had begun to enjoy it.
“What,” he asked, “is the meaning of ‘totality’?”
Again George Brown might have been recovering from a blow.
“Well,” he said, “it is one of those words so simple in themselves as to be difficult of explanation. So very simple,” he repeated.
Clearing his throat, freeing his teeth, finally blowing his nose.
Then, as he marched out of the room, Arthur of course had to follow, bumping one or two things in the hurry. In fact, together, Dad and he were shaking the whole house.
Dad took the dictionary down.
“Accuracy in the first place can only be called a virtue,” George Brown recommended. “Always remember that, Arthur.”
Arthur said yes he would, while concentrating on holding his breath for what might come.
Dad read out: “Totality is ‘the quality of being total’.”
He looked at Arthur.
“That is to say,” said Dad, he could not clear his throat enough, “it means,” he said, “‘that which is a whole’,” adding: “Spelt with a w — naturally.”
Then Arthur realized Dad would never know, any more than Waldo. It was himself who was, and would remain, the keeper of mandalas, who must guess their final secret through touch and light. As he went out of the room his lips were half-open to release an interpretation he had not yet succeeded in perfecting. His body might topple, but only his body, as he submitted the marble in his pocket to his frenzy of discovery.
Arthur discovered Feinsteins too.
Whenever he went up the slope to “Mount Pleasant”, climbing Feinsteins’ red concrete steps, usually the morning was at its finest stage of glitter. Sometimes there had been rain, and the droplets were still hanging. Or music. There was often music, and if Arthur did not march in time, as he would have liked to, it was because it wasn’t that kind. Cheerful enough, but music which could suddenly knife. There were glossy mornings when he was bleeding trickling through the mouth.
Round the back Mrs Feinstein, a decent sort of woman, used to come out — they did not keep a maid, either from wanting to act modest, or because they only lived there half the time — she would receive the groceries herself.
“You must tell me your name,” she said in the beginning, and ever so naturally replied: “Arthur Brown? That is a name I shouldn’t forget!”
“No, Mrs Feinstein,” he said, “and I’m glad you won’t.”
So gallant. The ladies liked that — though not all of them.
Mrs Feinstein liked it so much she gave him a cool drink in the kitchen.
“This is ice-cold lemonade,” she said, explaining its virtue.
It was certainly ice-cold, and scented, if rather weak.
“You should drink it slowly, and concentrate,” Mrs Feinstein advised. “Then you will extract the prana from this lemonade.”
“The what?”
“It is Indian,” she said, “for ‘vital force’.”
It made her grow thoughtful.
“Of course we don’t know exactly if this is a practice which has been scientifically approved of, but it’s a nice idea, don’t you think?”