Raja Rao - The Serpent and the Rope

Madame Chimaye had one enemy. It was the man who did business with birds opposite. She hated him more than she hated the Americans. This man had larks, parakeets, canaries, herons, birds of paradise; and he sold grain for them, and medicines for the birds he sold too. He also made lovely cages—’These are the cages of Pekin,’ he would show his clients, ‘and these are Cages Cambodges, these Cingalaises; and these are Arab ones, and these from the Iles Martiniquaises.’ You could imprison your birds in lacquer, steel, or oak, it all depended upon your purse and taste.

‘Better, Monsieur,’ Madame Chimaye went on, ‘to be like those booksellers. Look at that friend of mine, Jean there. I have known him for thirty years. He has never grown older, always serving good people like you. And when the young come, foreigners, do you think our Jean would ever sell those horrible novels about naked women? Never, Monsieur, never. Tell him, “Jean you should have become a curé. You are so virtuous,” “Ah,” he laughs, “my virtue ends with my business. I am a tyrant at home. I have two children and a terrible woman; she is Spanish-Andalusian. I beat her sometimes, you know.” Maybe he does beat her; how would I know? My good man, he would touch me only with a feather. Been married for these thirty-one years, Monsieur. Happy as a bird, I am, and my son is happy too. Better sell books. Monsieur, those learned books, and even drawings and medals if you will, but to sell birds…! Ah, I would dip that fellow there with a hook in his ankle and his mouth in the Seine. Do they catch birds in your country, Monsieur?’

My friend Jean, the bookseller across the road, used to keep me supplied with my needs. I had just to tell him I wanted this text or that, and he would throw his scarf back and wink his eye; he knew exactly the person who would have it. Thus it was I got my Bédier, Lea, Gaston Paris and others. My work progressed.

I was not in a hurry to go back to India: what was there to go back to, after all? Little Mother had gone to live with Saroja in Allahabad, where Subramanya had now been transferred. She was so happy, for she could take her bath every morning at the Ganges. Sukumari and her husband were both in Bombay. Sukumari had joined the Communist Party. Her letters to me became more and more scarce. I was the arch-reactionary for her, and she hated me with the hate brothers and sisters have for one another when they cannot agree. Besides, Sukumari having married Krishnamachari, her politics became an act of faith, a duty she owed to her happiness. She had to love and worship her husband — she was too much of a Hindu not to worship her Lord. Then must she find an adversary, her enemy. Trotsky is an endocrinal need.

Saroja was moody. Her letters were inconsequent. Only in one letter did she say: ‘For me life has come to an end. By life I mean hope, work, fulfilment. I expect nothing, except that I long for you. Brother, come back soon.’

Working in the Bibliotheque Nationale I would sometimes open Saroja’s letter and read it again and again, thinking there must be someone in the world at some point of space to whom I could go with an open free warmth, and clear, tearful eyes. But for that I must have a home, I must get back home. I would then ask Saroja home, and Little Mother would spend six months with me and six months with her daughters. And one day, I said to myself, I would take Little Mother to Europe. She enjoyed sightseeing; I would show her the lake of Geneva, I would show her les Invalides in Paris, and maybe I would take her to London and show her St Paul’s, the Abbey, and the Tower of London. ‘Oh, no more sea-aubergines!’ I was sure she would say, remembering the fish she had been served at the Calcutta Terminus (Like the wise Brahmins of Bengal, the Cathars too, I now read, could eat these ‘vegetables of the sea’, as the fishes were not born ‘ex impuro coitu; for when out of water they die!) I could perhaps persuade Little Mother to come. Maybe even Saroja would come. I was day-dreaming. I cleaned my glasses and went back to my bulls of Innocent III. This very wise and good man had to choose between the purity of the heretics, and the continuity of the Roman Church. He belonged not to the Church of Christ but to the Community of the Virgin Mary. The woman must rule the world.

I suddenly remembered Savithri’s last words, not to me, but to the nurse at the hospital in London. ‘How men suffer!’ she had exclaimed to Sister Jean outside, just before the door was closed; I think she wanted to linger, to say something to someone, to anyone. ‘How men suffer, Sister Jean! A woman’s suffering seems physical: it has a beginning, so it has an end.’ ‘You are right, Madam,’ said Sister Jean. ‘I always prefer women’s wards to men’s. Women seem to think that once the body is all right, everything is perfect.’ ‘And men?’ asked Savithri. ‘Oh, with men, Madam — Oh, I am not speaking of Mr Ramaswamy he is such a good patient, but I mean generally speaking — Man has sorrow in him. Every man is like a Christ on the Cross.’

Poor Innocent III was such a Christ on the Cross. He paid his dues to the Virgin and founded the Inquisition.

Yes, indeed, how men suffer. The woman’s suffering is, one might say, somewhat biological. It has a beginning, so it has an end. But man’s suffering is like one of those trunk roads by the Ganges, that the avenue of trees, ancient and, as it were, bent with time, hide from rain and sun. But night comes and penetrates all, night goes through sleeping villages, round Customs houses, travellers’ bungalows, and riverside caravanserais. And there is always a pilgrim, a pravrajika moving — men going with baskets and blankets, women crying, the children asleep; the bullocks unable to drag any more, cars driving them mad, so much the cars hoot. But at break of dawn a parrot may sit on a banyan tree, and eat of its red fruit, and sing. That is all man’s joy. Man’s sorrow is not to belong to this earth. For him to marry is to belong to this earth, like the marrying of Catherine made Georges a Frenchman. He could now say, ‘Nous autres français,’ and with pride. Man must wed to know this earth. ‘The womb (bhaga) is the great Prakriti (nature), and the Possessor of the womb (Bhagavan) is Shiva.’

In the evenings I often went after dinner to Georges and Catherine. I used to go up the Boulevard St Michel and take the 83 at the Gare Montparnasse, which would take me through Avenue Bosquet, and behind les Invalides to Place d’Alma. I would linger a while by the river and then take the 63 straight to La Muette. From there I walked down to the rue Michel Ange. As I went up the staircase what memories came back to me, of Madeleine, of Oncle Charles, and of Tante Zoubie. Letters from Madeleine had become very scarce, and often they would only be to ask some information about a bill I had not paid or about some book I had not returned to the library. She never asked me any more about my health, and of her own news she had nothing to say. ‘I am no more a person, so why speak of it? Of the body’s news let the body hear, and of the rest nobody but oneself can tell oneself. So in fact, there is nothing to say. That is why I do not ask anything of you,’ she had written to me in London. I knew, however, through Catherine, who had friends visiting Madeleine, that she was constantly ill. She had, while pruning a branch of the pine tree in the garden, cut her finger, and the infection had lasted for over six weeks. She tried fasting, and when it seemed all but cured she developed a fever. Then she went on to fruit juice, but it did not bring the temperature down. Eventually she had to take penicillin injections, and she got much better.