The four robbers would surrender the money in return for being left in peace; the money itself would be redirected to fund a local school. The story became one of the defining myths of the Atlanteans: it proved to them that they had been utterly accepted by the local people.Some locals even came to live in the commune I asked what such Colombians got out of it. "Economic security," replied Jenny, "and more freedom than they've got at home. In Consuela's case, the guy she was living with is in prison for murder. She's just attracted to Ned, basically." The middle-class friends of the commune, such as the contact I'd met in Bogota, apparently came for the scenery, and the spiritual refreshment.The Atlanteans also told me that they had made the great discovery that therapy - or their kind of therapy - worked even in this poor corner of the Third World. As an example, they told me that there had been three days of almost continuous bilingual encounter groups after it was discovered that Consuela's 12-year-old daughter was sleeping with Fernando - a Colombian commune-dweller in his early twenties."We don't set an age at which a child is a sexual creature. If they want to sleep with each other at nine or 10, that's fine," said Jenny.
"In this particular instance it was Consuela's own daughter who started an affair with Fernando Consuela did not know Now that is unforgivable You absolutely do not have that sort of secret here. When I happened to hear, I threw a violent fit at Ned.""I hadn't told Consuela because I was very afraid of losing my relationship with her," explained Ned "But after Jenny found out I went to Consuela. She had an absolute fit."Jenny was eager to establish the point of principle involved. "The girl is very undeveloped - a sulky little vixen, actually.
But whether I like her or not, I'm going to stand up for her rights. There were lots of people here at the time - some peasant women, middle-class Colombians, and we had a very constructive three days. This older peasant woman who had only been here a few days was giving me therapy! And by the end of the few days, there was a lovely feeling of friendship around."I never actually saw one of these prolonged sessions, but I did see an evening outburst of therapeutic piggy-back riding. Ted and Ned took children on their backs, and leaped around the verandah shouting and yelling and bumping into each other in mock battle. After dark, a battery of candles was set up, and a sort of dance began.This turned by degrees into a game.
Ted and Ned performed a mock ballet while Jenny played the violin and Jesus battered a guitar. When the possibilities of this were exhausted, the dancers armed themselves with percussion instruments. Soon the stringed instruments, wrenchingly detuned by the heat and damp, were drowned out by a cacophony of spoons on tin plates and saucepans. Ted, armed with a wok, crouched in the corner, and howled at Ned, who leaped up and down and howled back while banging a saucepan. This went on for about 15 minutes, quieter than the thunderstorm, but less musical. Behind the leaping Ned, two of the children read a Tintin book by candlelight.
At last, Ned sat down and launched into a dialogue with Ted."Did you attain.. ecstasy?""I don't know. I didn't count the chakras.""Are you coming down from Nirvana now?"I resolved to leave shortly afterwards, and, the next morning, Jenny and Ted guided me down the steep horse-track that leads through the jungle to the lower village The scene the previous night still preyed on me. Perhaps I should not have been consulting Dr Seuss but The Golden Bough; the dancing of ecstatically castrated priests in Isis's honour must have been quite like the therapeutic thrashings of Ted and Ned while Jenny sawed at her violin in the middle of the Andean jungle. But it was impossible to think of Jenny as sinister for very long. As we toiled down the path, it suddenly seemed obvious that all we had here was a kind of displaced public school, where matron managed the Lost Boys, all for their own good.
