A Smile in the Mind's Eye

2

Among so many subjects we were apt to lose our way from time to time — Chang replying to my eager questions no less eagerly; he seemed glad to have someone at hand with whom he could discuss these matters, albeit in English. My knowledge though highly provisional and sketchy was quite a help towards my understanding of his text, which was an outline of a sort of love-therapy — not rigidly schematic and fossilized like the Kama Sutra, though much upon the same lines. I asked him about yoga and told him I dabbled in the Indian method. ‘I do Chinese yoga,’ he said. ‘it’s a bit different — more fluent, less static.’ Waving a wooden spoon he did a couple of swooping figures, not unlike ballroom dancing, gliding out into the old glassed-in verandah like an ice-skater. I tried to copy him to see how it felt. At that moment the morose existentialist gardener who sometimes works for me came down the drive, and peering in saw me apparently waltzing with a Chinaman. We did not see him ourselves. But his nerve was badly shaken by the sight and he retreated to the village tavern. Oblivious to all this we danced on, Chang and I, until a simmering noise called us back to the cooking pots.