Brian Aldiss - The Squire Quartet

He moved suddenly, turning down side streets which he had memorized from his map, down the Via Scarlatti, down the Via Archimede – very dark and crooked, the Via Archimede – through the Piazza O. Ziino, into the modest avenue next to the Giardino Inglese where the British Consulate stood.

As he walked through the warm evening, Squire thought over what he had said to Ajdini; as ever, he had hedged on the question of religion. One could never get free of religion, yet wasn’t it all out of date?

Some three years ago, when Squire was still collecting material for ‘Frankenstein’, he and Teresa had visited the Britannic Centre for Demystified Yoga, to interview its founder, Dr Alexander Saloman. They drove across London to St John’s Wood, where the centre was, and found themselves at a Lebanese house. Two Arab women in white robes, complete with yashmaks, were leaving the building as they entered. A dark man in dark glasses wearing a snappy blue suit was on guard, and let them only reluctantly through a mahogany door.

Inside, all was heavy and sumptuous and dark. Large black plastic sofas, upholstered with the wet-look, greeted them. On the walls hung claymores, nineteenth-century sporting prints, and musical instruments from some obscure corner of the East. A gilded lift took them grandly up to the second floor, and to an audience with Dr Alexander Saloman. Teresa held Squire’s arm.

Dr Saloman rose to greet them. He was dressed in black – black shirt, black pullover, black slacks, black shoes, with incongruous blue socks. He wore ebony-rimmed spectacles. He was possibly in his late forties. The skin of his face was dry and folded, his hair had been reduced to stubble, either by decision or natural erosion. He had been born in Vienna, and had lived in Argentina for many years before founding Demystified Yoga and returning to Europe. They shook hands formally.

‘What is the purpose of your television series? Is it merely entertainment?’ he asked Squire, when they had sat down and Squire had refused a Balkan Sobranie cigarette.

‘We hope to be entertaining. I want to show people that there are new things in the world to be enjoyed.’

‘Why do you come to me?’ The eyes were searching and not unfriendly, though they frequently darted to Teresa, who sat staring at Dr Saloman with her head on one side. One would not trust the doctor with women.

‘I practise yoga. I like the way it puts actions before words. To my mind, that’s the right priority. Someone told me you might be interesting.’

‘Wouldn’t you say there are old things in the world to be enjoyed?’

Squire hesitated. ‘Isn’t that obvious? But my series will not be about them.’

Dr Saloman exhaled smoke. ‘Are you ambivalent about old things?’

‘Old ideas, yes.’

‘Are you religious, Mr Squire?’ He spoke almost faultless English, without accent.

‘I don’t believe in God. Yoga cured my lingering belief. I feel most days that God is within me – if he exists at all.’

He wanted Dr Saloman’s response to that, but instead the doctor turned sharply to Teresa and asked, ‘Do you believe in God, Mrs Squire?’

She smiled. ‘We all go to church every Christmas. As a matter of fact, Dr Saloman, I don’t like being asked personal questions. That’s more my husband’s line.’

‘We are persons, Mrs Squire. We must sometimes be personal.’

She laughed. ‘Oh, I’m a very personal kind of person, Dr Saloman; but on the whole only with friends.’

As she spoke, she shot a glance at Squire; he thought with some approval that she was always able to take care of herself.

The founder of Demystified Yoga nodded seriously and turned back to Squire.

‘So you have a belief in yoga?’

‘I use yoga because it creates a stillness I enjoy – a stillness in me, I mean. If God exists, he exists in stillness, or so sages have always imagined. Perhaps pranayama is God – the breath of life. Let me ask you a question – do you consider Demystified Yoga a new thing or an old thing?’

Dr Saloman said, without pause, ‘Is a young oak a new thing or an old thing?’

‘I was asking about yoga, not trees.’

‘All things connect. Only we have to look for the connections. I am myself a connection. I have to find if that is why you and your wife seek me out. If not, I will not be of use to you. Among other things, I am a connection between East and West, and that is an important connection for our times.’

He looked squarely at Squire. His mouth was wide and blunt, and bracketed powerfully at either end with lines that ran from the flanges of his nostrils.

‘I like both yoga and demystification, Dr Saloman, though I’m not sure whether I like them in conjunction. Why do you see the connection between East and West as important at present?’

Dr Saloman put the end of his cigarette in the glass ashtray on his desk and spread his palms wide, so that Squire could see he concealed nothing.

‘There are answers to suit cases. I will put one to your case. In the West, there are many old dead ideas which people still cling to. For instance, the idea that the poor must struggle to overthrow the rich is long dead; yet it is kept alive by many petty demagogues who have no other slogans to mouth. Once-living ideas die and become embalmed into single words – Marxism, socialism, liberalism, democracy. Of course I don’t speak politically, that’s not my sphere. But this is an age of new possibilities. In different circumstances, we must behave differently in order to think differently. Then salvation is not far away.’

A door opened, and a young Indian woman in a bright blue and orange sari entered, bearing a tray. She placed the tray before Dr Saloman, and smiled and nodded at the visitors. He watched her with his dark eyes and his blunt mouth as she left.

While the doctor poured coffee, Squire looked about the room. There were lace curtains at the two tall windows, making the air dim. Everything in the room, including Dr Saloman’s enormous desk, was new, gleaming, foreign. Elaborate psychedelic acrylic pictures adorned one wall; there was also a photograph of somewhere that could have been a clinic in Buenos Aires. Perhaps the birthplace of Demystified Yoga, Squire thought.

His wife rose, walking over to him and placing a hand on his shoulder.

‘I don’t want any coffee,’ she told the doctor. ‘I’ll leave you two to talk. I have some shopping I have to do.’

Squire rose to his feet. ‘We won’t be long, Tess. Hang on.’

‘I’ll see you,’ she said. ‘Goodbye, Dr Saloman.’

Dr Saloman made no comment. He came round the desk and gave Squire a cup of coffee. The cup was small and gold-rimmed; its fragile handle was difficult to grasp.

‘My wife gets rather restless,’ Squire said, by way of apology. ‘I’m very interested in what you say about our being surrounded by dead ideas. I was born with a neutral mind, and consequently have trouble in deciding which ideas are alive, which dead. How does a meeting of East and West help? There are plenty of dead ideas in the East.’

‘Of course. We need cross-fertilization. I’ll give you another old idea – racialism. But racialism is really ancient, and still has power. It is a true idea although, like Siva, it can be destructive. We must use its power correctly. We must test ourselves on the diversity that still lives between races – use it like a cold shower for our health. Increased travel accords that opportunity. My belief is that inter-racial contact can gradually obliterate fascism and communism and the other -isms by generating new ideas. Have you been to India? You should go at once.’

‘It’s not so easy—’

‘Of course it’s easy. For you it’s easy. I can tell it just by the cut of your suit. I also see that you should take your wife with you, for her inner harmony.’