The Bell-Boy Read Online Free PDF

this hotel. Never mind that if they’re richer they may go to the Golden Fortune or the Seven Blessings. Even the poorest hippy is still rich. He’s rich enough to travel. He’s rich enough to pay for healing sessions or a meditation course or fork out those scandalous ashram fees. We say nothing about his drugs bill, either. What’s more, he’ll certainly have relatives back home who can lay their hands on real money if things go wrong. You don’t need to rip them off, either; you just need to get their confidence. Never steal a watch when y ou can steal a heart. Well, then.’
    â€˜It’s difficult knowing how to start these things, uncle.’
    â€˜Nonsense. Muffy tells me we’ve got some new guests. Who are they?’
    â€˜Some woman and her kids. They’re English. Or maybe Italian – but they speak English. She’s come for psychic surgery. She says she’s got an introduction to hadlam Tapranne.’
    Raju looked at him triumphantly. ‘There you are. She’s rich. Remember that Indian film star? Of course she is. Think of those air tickets. She can even afford to bring her children. Big children? Little children?’
    â€˜A boy of twelve and a girl of fifteen. She’s not bad, the girl. Old Muffy was giving her the eye.’
    â€˜Think of going abroad,’ said Raju dreamily. ‘Imagine getting a job in – for instance – Europe. Or even America,’ he added, this being the golden dream to end all others. How they did shimmer, those mythic lands at the ends of impossibly difficult roads which were essentially a never-ending series of toll gates. Roads beset with bribes, extortion, bent recruitment agencies, visa fixers, corrupt passport officials, travel sharks, queues; doors shut at every turn which would open only for hard cash. ‘Do you know what I’d do if I were young again?’
    â€˜What, uncle?’
    â€˜I’d marry a foreigner,’ said Raju wickedly.

High in the Apuan Alps
    High in the Apuan Alps between Lucca and Carrara lay the remote village of Valcognano. In common with thousands of other remote Italian villages, it had been abandoned some time after the Second World War. The young men left to look for work, the girls to look for husbands, and the last of the ancients tottered down the mule path to lie in a cemetery near enough to civilisation for little lights to burn beside their names through the harsh winter nights. For twenty years Valcognano was left open to foxes, wild boar and the weather.
    Then one day had come a wise man from the East, Swami Bopi Gul, riding in a Boeing, a rented Maserati and finally on a donkey to set up his Community of Pure Light.Dismounting stiffly, he performed certain rites and meditations and declared the place ideal. It would be a haven of serenity and bliss. Far removed from the impurities and distractions of modern life, the Community’s members would drink pure mountain water and warm themselves before fires of chestnut wood from the forests, while relying for illumination on wisdom and kerosene. The kerosene arrived on mule back, together with sacks of flour, jars of oil and other provisions. The wisdom would simply grow of its own accord, declared the Swami, being the bountiful harvest of Presentness.
    Among the earliest Pure Lighters were the Hemony family; in those days Tessa’s husband Bruce had still been around. After the first year or so Swami Bopi Gul’s absences became regrettably more protracted as he busied himself with the running of his spiritual empire in places such as Srinagar and Zurich. Consequently the Hemonys and another couple found themselves the elders at Valcognano and newcomers inferred that they had been entrusted by the Swami to carry on the Community’s work – as indeed they had.
    It is not often appreciated by those who have never lived the simple life up a mountain how complicated it is, nor how much of each day is taken up