Raja Rao - The Serpent and the Rope

‘Rama, I have a question.’

‘Yes, Savithri? What is it?’

‘To whom does one belong?’

‘To one’s self, Savithri.’

‘What shall become of her that does not belong to herself?’

‘Then must she belong to someone.’

‘But if she belong to one wholely, or rather almost wholely, and to another she be tied, as a calf is tied to the tether, or as the plane is tied to the radar.’

‘The plane must accept the direction of the radar, that there be no accident. Either you are a plane and you follow national and international conventions — or you do not fly.’

‘And no garland put on your wings, and no coconut broken as you make your first flight.’

‘Yes, that is what I mean.’

‘So, when the plane refuses the radar, and only loves the beauty of the broad sky, the sea below and sands of Santa Cruz shining in the sun…’

‘Then must it crash.’

‘So the plane must obey the radar?’

‘Yes, that is dharma. The law is dharma. To disobey dharma is to give pain.’

‘Pain to whom?’

‘Pain to the infinite sky — knowing,’ I said, smiling, ‘that the plane is not a flying saucer.’

‘Pain — what is it?’ she asked, intent, stopping near me for a moment.

‘Pain,’ I answered, ‘is the residue of action.’

‘And joy?’

‘Joy is the identity of love.’

‘So what shall I become?’ She heard her voice choke in herself.

‘A wife, Savithri, a wife. A true wife.’

‘I have not been one yet, you know,’ she said, laughing. ‘I have been waiting for Brindavan.’

‘Wheresoever there be no pain, Savithri, my love, that is where Krishna plays the flute, and the cows come and listen to the music, their faces uplifted, their ears stretched against their wide white shoulders. And the trees will flower and the peacock spread his wings, and the gods will come to see this festival of life.’

‘And what shall one do with one’s pain?’

‘Know that to have pain is to give pain. Rejoice, Savithri! Rejoice in the rejoicement of others. That is the Truth.’

‘You ask too much, my Love. Can I still call you that?’

‘Yes, my principle, my queen, you can. Love is rejoicing in the rejoicing of the other.’

She touched me with the tip of her lips as though Truth had been there, just there, and the moment was the whole of Truth. Then she left me. A few days later she left London. The sky was blue with summer in the air, one’s lungs felt compassionate towards oneself. ‘Yes, the queen has been crowned, the queen,’ I said, as my train left Waterloo. The next day I was in Paris, and in a few days I was in the Engadine above the snows. I was happy, very happy. I was white and young as the snows. Snow is the benediction of the earth. It tells you joy is whole, is permanent, and your lungs speak it to you. Oh, the marital air of the mountains, the convexity of spring; the anemones and the blue irises of the Alps; the lavender, the thyme, and the rosemary; they seemed like death become white, like blood in the limbs and freshness in one’s eyes.

Saroja wrote letters and I could understand, Madeleine did not write and I understood silences — words and silences again began to have meaning, and the earth was not the ecstasy of fever, but was solid; with milestones and trees, with the smell of tobacco-shops selling picture-postcards, the odour of rich, warm coffee, and the smell of Switzerland that makes the room feel the forest and the waters immaculate.

Man is born in pain. His rebirth is solitude, his song is himself. Thus spake Zarathustra, and thus indeed Savithri to Ananda. 4Parsifal is the king of the earth, and he will walk mountains and stand tiptoe on the peaks, seeing wave after wave of iridescent snow; and he will sing unto himself, for singing unto one’s self is prayer. And when the planes shine over the Alps, you know they are led away through the mysteries of space into the kingdom where you will never be. Man, tell yourself, tell yourself in the simplicity of the night, you must go as you came, and assure yourself that the Ultimate is the solitude of joy. Rejoice, rejoice in the rejoicing of others, and know that you include the world as joy in the depth of your sleep.

~

When I came back to Paris I found Catherine, and the baby so pretty, so happy. It seemed as though happiness was near at hand, could be cut from a tree like a jackfruit, like a bel. I took a room near the Boulevard St Germain, not far from the quay, thus in the evenings I could run down to the river and feel Paris in my nostrils. These October days were very beautiful, with the wind coming from the sea, and not from the north, thus making it seem like a prolongation of the high summer. A single lung seems to make your limbs lighter, your breath deeper and wise. I knew a little, very old restaurant opposite Notre Dame, Le Coq d’Or, and when I went up, Madame Chimaye always had good petit-pois, salade Niçoise and artichokes for me.

‘Pauvre Monsieur,’ she said, as though I had to diet because of medical advice — she could not understand vegetarianism on any other grounds. ‘Pauvre Monsieur, he must be well fed,’ she told the Patronne. ‘He already looks so thin. When the north wind comes, he will be blown over the river and get stuck, like some saint, on Notre Dame,’ I think she knew, somewhere beyond understanding, more of me than she put into words. ‘Allez’ she protested, ‘you must be gay when you are in Paris, Monsieur. Otherwise why should your father send you so far? I have a son who goes to school. He’s sixteen and he’s not bad at his studies. I say, “Study, my son. But there’s time, too, pour les amusements. If you are not gay when you are young, you may never be gay again.” Look at all the wars one has. The Americans want to take us to war again. “And as for the Russians,” I tell my son, “leave the happiness of humanity to the fools.” There is no happiness for humanity, except in work, in washing bottles, peeling potatoes, or in carrying loads at les Halles. And even if the Bon Dieu himself should come down, don’t you worry, Monsieur, you would still have to pay income tax.’

She looked after me, did Madame Chimaye, as though I were some lost fraticello. She used to protest against the Patronne charging me too much.

‘Poor student that he is, and so far away from his parents, Madame la Patronne, and how he must languish for his country, his people. It must be such sunshine there, and here the winter weeps like some war-widow at the cemetery of Aulnay-sous- Bois. I tell you, Madame la Patronne, we shall have war again this year. Look at the Americans!’

You could not argue with Madame Chimaye. You could not argue with the printed word of a newspaper. There were no duels in France any more: You could say what you liked, print what you wanted. La France Libérée — a paper founded in the Resistance by les braves gens must speak the truth. So many dead spoke through its columns, said Madame Chimaye. Her husband worked at the Renault Motor Works, and there they knew much that even a minister would not know.

‘What does a minister know,’ was Madame Chimaye’s sound argument, ‘he hardly goes out, except with police motorcycles on either side and his secretary in front. It is his assistants who bring him the information from the whole of France, from the whole world.’

Madame Chimaye, of course, knew things through her husband and such terrible things, too, she knew. And he knew them direct from his comrades.

‘Oh, the world should never have lean men like you,’ she repeated, ‘nor sick. The world should be gay like the people at the Parc des Princes, play while you play and work while you work. Do you know Monte Carlo, Monsieur?’ she asked. ‘There you have so much sunshine that you want to loose all the birds from their cages.’