Raja Rao - The Serpent and the Rope

‘I am sure it would also be wise to give Rama his freedom. He must marry someone younger from his own country. He will be happy with an Indian woman, I have no doubt. I know talking like this is painful, but truth has some day to be faced. In any case Rama must go back to his family; his lungs cannot bear our climate any more. Besides, why would he want to stay in France? Nowadays divorce has become so easy. You could perhaps tactfully put it to Oncle Charles. Better still, why don’t you consult someone there, while I consult someone here?’

It was, of course, the inevitable, and by the inevitable nobody has yet been surprised: you know what is going to happen before surprise dawns on you. So quite simply I accepted to go to a lawyer in Paris. Georges knew of a very able Russian- born advocate, who would make everything easy. Meanwhile Madeleine went to see a notary in Aix, and a letter came from a Maître Charpentier, asking me to consult a colleague of his. And on a Saturday, only the other week, we went over, Catherine and I, into some obscure district off the rue St Denis. Past the Porte St Martin and the Boulevard Sébastopol was a little lane.

‘You know what these streets are, do you, Rama?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘You are so simple and innocent that I am sure you will never have heard about this quarter.’ I understood. ‘Formerly,’ said Catherine, ‘the police used to insist on cards; now these ladies have the same profession, only they need not pay any municipal tax.’

It was the day after that terrible March storm, you remember. The wind had blown away chimney-pots, wireless wires, laundry hangings, and papers out of offices: even children’s toys and old chairs had been thrown into backyards. It howled through garage doors, through school archways, and sang in the chimneys. Through windows and chimneys birds had been blown in, leaves, handkerchiefs. In these back-alleys of the Boulevard Sébastopol they had not cleared up everything.

‘It smells of spring,’ said Catherine, as she parked the car. ‘Wrap yourself up, Rama. Nothing is so treacherous, we say, as the winds of March.’

Yes, spring seemed to be in the air. We wandered to and fro, along the rue St Pierre, looking for the house number. We could not find 17 anywhere, so we looked in at a locksmith’s, a round, portly man with an apron, who came out and showed us the narrow entrance to the building. We went up the smelly, dark staircase, and wondered why it was not lit.

‘Ah! là là,’ said someone coming down, ‘it’s not enough to be blown at hot and cold, now the electricity must also give us the go-by. Funny, funny this country. You pay income tax through the nose, and you don’t have light to see beyond it.’ He held a match against my face, to convince himself I was another man. When he saw Catherine, he thought the world even funnier. ‘You never can say what the world will be,’ he concluded at the bottom of the staircase, ‘white or dark. What do you say to that, Pierre?’

Higher up, the afternoon sky gave some visibility through the skylight. Maître Sigon was there.

‘The lights have all gone,’ said his secretary from behind the counter, ‘but please sit here, Monsieur et Madame.’ And she planted a lit candle behind us, ‘Monsieur Sigon has a client at the moment. He will see you immediately.’ We sat for ten miserable minutes, and we did not seem to have anything to say to one another.

‘To think that everything must end in darkness, even when spring is in the air,’ I said, eventually, and added, ‘The law is the death of truth.’

‘Don’t condemn me so easily,’ pleaded Catherine. ‘Where would I be if Oncle Charles had not piled up money by counting on the crookedness of mankind?’ Somehow this gave me an assurance, a feeling of positive goodness — life flowed deeper in the bowels of existence. ‘You must have a son this time, and soon,’ I said, to assure Catherine of my goodwill.

‘Oh, it’s enough to have one, for the moment. By the time you come back from India I shall have a second one, I promise.’

The wooden door behind me opened. Maitre Sigon, a little round man, with a pince-nez and a black ribbon to hold it, called us in. A white round spot of light — a kerosene lamp, such as we have in India when babies are asleep — lit the green baize of Maitre Sigon’s desk. He looked up at me, asked my name, father’s name, mother’s name, date of birth, and assured himself that everything sent by the notaire from Aix was correct. ‘You married Madeleine Roussellin, on February tenth, nineteen-forty-nine at the Mairie of the VIIth Arrondissement. Is that right?’

‘Oui, Maître.’

‘Now, you ask for a divorce.’

‘No, not I, but Madeleine Roussellin does.’

‘Yes, yes,’ he said, looking first at the paper in front of him, and then at me, unconvinced. ‘We men are so virtuous, Monsieur. It’s always the women who cuckold us,’ and the storm was on me before I knew. I brushed it away with a broomstick. Catherine looked at me, as if to say, ‘What can one do? They are like that, the huissiers of Paris.’ But I still felt I could not let such vulgarity pass unnoticed.

‘So you do not love your wife any more, Monsieur?’ continued Maitre Sigon.

‘I never said that, Monsieur.’

‘But you have to say that. That is the law. Do you think they are copains of ours at the bench, and will arrange our affairs as nicely as a baby’s nappy, and offer us an aperitif after that?’

‘I am a foreigner, Maitre,’ I reminded him, ‘and I do not know French law.’

‘I know French law, Monsieur. Yes, of course, you are a foreigner. You are an Indian.’ Saying this, he told himself, that since Indians were inferior, what did it matter when he spoke ill of France or not. You could shout at your wife before your servant at home, but you kissed her hand, when you went out. For Maitre Sigon, India had not yet been free. It was a colony far away, where bananas grew, and men sang funny songs, like a mélopée. It was the country of the Buddha: it was the country of Lakmé.

‘You are a student,’ he said, after a moment’s silence.

‘Yes, Maitre, so I am.’

‘Living in the Rue de Vaugirard.’

‘Yes, that is so.’

‘You can sign here. You can say you seek divorce for ‘incompatibilité de tempéraments’. I hope you get the divorce, Monsieur. Oh, French justice is not so bad. It’s a little odd, rather like this building is, like this light. This light, now, Monsieur have a good look at it. It has seen three generations of huissiers, just as this building has seen three generations of Sigons. Once a huissier, always a huissier, is a very good proverb, I tell you.’

‘This lady,’ I said, as though to give myself some dignity, ‘this lady, the cousin of my wife, is the daughter of a notaire.’

‘Ah, I thought so, Mademoiselle, when I saw your face. Ah, I can smell a notaire like I can a good Burgundy. Where would France be without her notaires? We do not make laws like those pompous politicians at the Palais Bourdon; we keep laws functioning, that is all, and you know that is a great deal. We protect the child from the greedy grandmother, we protect the woman from her husband, we protect virtue from being sold like the girls in the opposite street. We make the continuity of France.’

‘Yes, I know,’ I said, very proud. I had heard the same discourse from Oncle Charles.

‘Well — Mademoiselle,’ said Maître Sigon.

‘No, Madame,’ I corrected.

‘Madame, will you kindly sign here, as witness. Funny, what the world is coming to,’ he said, looking up at me. ‘Formerly, if a wife separated from her husband — for divorce in the time of my grandfather was a very difficult business, what with the Church and all — I was saying, when you separated, you swore enmity to one another. If you saw her brother, mother, sister, cousin, you looked away, Monsieur, you turned your face away; and if they came too near, you looked up insolently, you insulted them; you swore from the opposite corner of the room. You even sent your card for a duel. Now, Monsieur, cousins come to sign for one another. Now, the cuckold and the lover both sit at the same table, and play bridge. Oh, Monsieur,’ concluded Maître Sigon, ‘the world is changing, changing too rapidly for me.’