Raja Rao - The Serpent and the Rope

Not having made much impression on us, he rose and said, ‘Monsieur, say what you will. You go to fifty other notaries in this city; they will say, the storm has come, it has blown away my car, my house, even my wife, and they will close their offices and go to a cinema. I belong to the older generation: even if there is a storm there is always a light. Is that not so, Henriette?’ He turned to his secretary. She was middle-aged all right, and her check overall gave her an air of respectability.

‘We work whether others work or not,’ she confirmed. ‘Maître Sigon is always here, ill or well. At nine-thirty he is here, before the postman is here. Even before I am here,’ said Madame Henriette, smiling. She wanted to please.

‘Her aunt,’ said Maítre Sigon, ‘her good aunt, was brought up in our house. We saved her from an orphanage, and that was after the wars of 1870. She served us well at home. And now Madame Henriette is such a faithful secretary. I tell you, if I die she can run this office. That is France, Monsieur, that is France.’

The lamps outside were lit, but in the building the electric connections had still not been made. The little kerosene burner continued to spread its yellow light on the green tablecloth. Madame Henriette had a pen in her hand as she opened the door.

‘By the way, Madame,’ said Maítre Sigon, as if he had suddenly remembered something. ‘You never told me the name of your excellent father, my colleague. You have signed here, “Catherine Khuschbertieff”.’

‘My father is Maítre Roussellin, because my cousin is Madeleine Roussellin.’

‘Of course, of course,’ he said, ‘that is true. And he is from Rouen, did you say, Madame?’

‘Yes, Papa’s notariat is in Rouen. Rue St-Ouen.’

‘My regards to Maitre Roussellin, your excellent father, Madame. Remember, France is mainly run by its notaires and huissiers. Our red seal,’ he said, unhooking the seal from its peg, ‘this rules France. Au revoir, Madame, au revoir, Monsieur. Madame Henriette will lead you down the staircase. The candle will be of help — otherwise you might do the wrong thing with one another, and have to come back again to me. Au revoir, Monsieur.’

The candle-light lit parts of the staircase here and there. Once at the bottom we shouted, ‘Merci. Au revoir, Madame Henriette,’ and the light disappeared. The locksmith was still hammering at something — he also had a little oil-lamp. The cold wind blew on our faces. Spring was coming.

‘27. 3. 54. Yes, I say to myself: “I must leave this world, I must leave, leave this world.” But, Lord, where shall I go, where? How can one go anywhere? How can one go from oneself?

‘I walk up and down this mansard, and say: “There must be something that exalts and explains why we are here, what is it we seek.” And suddenly, as though I’ve forgotten where I am, I begin to sing out aloud, “Shivoham, Shivoham,” as if I were in Benares, on the banks of the Ganges, sitting on Harishchandra Ghat and singing away. In Benares, it may still sound true — but here against the dull sky of Paris, this yellow wallpaper, with its curved and curling clematis, going back and forth, and all about my room… I say, “Clematis is the truth, must be in the truth.” I count, one, two, three, simply like that, and count 177 clematis in my room. “If I add a zero,” I say to myself, “it will make 1770 and they would cover ten mansard rooms.” I look out and count the number of windows in the Lycée St Louis. It has eighteen windows: one, two, three, five, eleven, eighteen windows. And I say, “If they had clematis on their walls, how many would there be? Each room there is about three times the width of my room.” My arithmetic goes all wrong, for I must subtract one wall out of every three, and that’s too complicated. I roll back into my bed. “Hara-Hara, Shiva-Shiva,” I say to myself, as if I were in Benares again, then “Chidananda rupah, Shivoham, Shivoham”, I began to clap hands and sing. The Romanian lady next door again knocks to remind me I am in Paris. I go out, with my overcoat on, wander round and round the Luxembourg Gardens by the Rue d’ Assas, feeling that three times round anything you love must give you meaning, must give you peace. Buses still go on the streets, and students are still there chez shining, mirrored Dupont. I wish I could drink: “It must be wonderful to drink,” I say to myself. The students get drunk and are so gay. That Dutch boy, the other day, was quite drunk; he sat in the hotel lounge, with his mouth on one side, and started singing songs. If you don’t feel too warm at heart, you can always warm yourself in the Quartier Latin. You never saw more generous girls in the world. Existentialism has cleared the libido out of the knots of hair. Wherever you go, girls have rich bosoms, fiery red lips. They don’t need cards — not because the gendarme does not ask for them, but because girls have grown too pure. Purity is not in the act but in the meaning of the act. Had I been less of a Brahmin, I might have known more of “love”.’

‘29. 3. 54. I go down the Boulevard St Michel, stand before the lit fountain and come back. I am sure I am much better. I go round the “100, 00 °Chemises” shop, who know their arithmetic. I see that a cravat costs 1990 francs, the good ones — shoes cost twice as much; the best one four times in the next shop. There is a brawl on the corner of my street, and I look at everyone, thinking as if I am not looking at them, but I am counting them. “One, two, three, four, five,” I say, and one threatens to beat four and four threaten to beat me. Fear is such a spontaneous experience — I slink away, I run and run till I reach my hotel. I think it was a political battle of some sort. A group of Moroccan and Indo-Chinese students were having a brawl with some elderly Frenchman. Then I understood. They thought — the fat, threatening Frenchman thought — that I must be a Tunisian. You must fight for something. You cannot flow like the Rhone, dividing Avignon into the Avignon of the Popes and Petit Avignon.

‘I get my key from the concierge and come up to my room. I feel the room to be so spacious, so kind; I could touch the sky with my fingers. You can have 177 clematis in your room and yet touch the sky of Paris. A Brahmin can touch anything, he is so high — the higher the freer. I look at the carefully arranged manuscript of my thesis. It has 278 pages. It has been finished for over a week. Dr Robin-Bessaignac said it is very interesting, very very interesting indeed, but blue-pencilled several passages. One in particular, in my preface, made him laugh. “History is not a straight line, it is not even a curved line,” I had written. “History is a straight line turned into a round circle. It has no beginning, it has no end — it is movement without itself moving. History is an act to deny fact. History, truly speaking, is seminal.”

‘“You don’t know our professors,” Dr Robin said. “They would hide behind their notes if they saw a girl with too much rouge on her lips. Besides, my friend, there is an ancient tradition in this country: Beware of too much truth. We French live on heresies. If only poor Abelard had ended with a question mark and not with a ‘Scito Teipsum’, he might have walked Paris un-castrate, and be canonized a saint by now. You must go to the end of philosophy, go near enough to truth — but you must end with a question mark. The question mark is, I repeat, the sign of French intelligence; it is the tradition of Descartes, that great successor of Abelard. And as for anything imaginative… There’s a famous story about Sylvain Lévi, the orientalist, you know. He had said, and that was seventy good years ago, something about Kalidasa’s plays. His books ended, as all good literature ended in those days, with a noble sentence, rounded like one of Mallarmé’s. Would you believe it, the thesis was refused: he had to write it again. I do not want to see your thesis refused. I knew what they will say.’ This is supposed to be a thesis on the philosophical origins, mainly oriental, primarily Hindu, of the Cathar philosophy. But it is too poetic. It lacks historical discipline!’ Get someone — preferably a professor — to help you to remove everything that does not end in a question.