Raja Rao - The Serpent and the Rope

I slept in the chapel. There was nothing left of the sanctuary but its niche for l’eau bénite, and over my door was a very lovely cross. Lezo jumped to the conclusion — for the cross had here and there some little twists and scratches making it look like a swastika — that the chapel must secretly have been used by the Cathars. The swastika, that emblem of the Aryans, was brought from central Asia by the Nestorians, the Bogomils and the Cathars, so that before Hitler had any knowledge of it, all the Basque and many Béarnais houses had this noble symbol on their outer walls.

‘Your anti-heretic, Henri de Montpalais, must have been pretty much of a heretic, like all the people in these parts at one time; and like many noblemen who preferred when the battle was lost to save their skin rather than be burnt on the stake, he must have joined the Bishop of Auch as an afterthought. As for his heroism, it must have come, as with so many others of his kind, not from conviction, but from wanting to be convinced. Veni Creator Spiritus …’

Lezo was an incorrigible cynic, to whom human history, indeed mankind, was one large question of grammar and dates. For the rest he believed, like most Spaniards, that man is a fine animal. There is something of the Arab tradition in this division of life into enjoyment — and God.

Lezo occupied the large northern room, the one used by Henri de Montpalais himself, and he always had curious dreams there. How much of it was his own invention — for like most Latins he could enjoy a story simply for its own sake — or how much of it was true, was difficult to say. He would sometimes call in Marie, the maid, to bear witness, and Marie would describe in the most elaborate and emphatic way how she had a similar dream of the comte riding wildly into battle, stopping suddenly and shouting, ‘Cowards, give me a glass of water.’ Water, of course, could only have meant death — for wine meant life.

Georges had a small room in the corner by the stables. He liked to live near the animals — it came from his Russian sense of intimacy with all living things. But I think that like people who love concentration he wanted the isolation in which one feels the intimacy of one’s own presence. In a larger place you become one with the fields and the sky, and your eyes seek the height of the mountains.

For the Pyrénées were only a hundred kilometres away, and on a good summer day it would look from Montpalais as though you had only to go right ahead on the white charger to come to this straight wall of white mountain and the heavy Saracen.

Au porz d’Espaigne en est passet Rollant

Sur Veillantif sun bon cheval curant…

Vers Sarrazins reguardet fièrement

E vers Franceis humeles e dulcement,

Si lur ad dit un mot curteisement.

From the tower-room, where Madeleine slept, you could contemplate the withdrawn arrogance of a mountain that seemed more a bastion of Spain than a fortress of France.

Outside in the fields such lovely blue and green vines stood, and aubergines grew in the garden behind. Sometimes, as in India, the heat rose and one smelt the acridity of grass. Often when my cough did not trouble me much I woke early; then I would jump on Blanche, the mare, and go romping down to the river. It was as if Blanche could speak to me what no man could. Not that she understood my problem, but she could tell me to contemplate the Guadalupe, the little white stream that meandered with such tranquillity on the yellow countryside.

What after all was the problem? Where exactly did it begin? For Madeleine had never been sweeter. There was nothing I needed which she did not know beforehand, and bring to me: my medicine after lunch, my handkerchief when I started on a walk, my pencil, duly sharpened and laid on my notebook — for I continued to work on my Albigensians. Yet she herself was not there. She was nowhere. Sometimes she used to incarnate in a glance, in the smile of a second — when Georges spoke.

But Lezo she began to detest, and wished to God he had never come. For Lezo like all Spaniards — though he hated being called a Spaniard and insisted he was a Basque — could not help being somewhat frivolous, either with Madeleine or sometimes even with Marie, the healthy-looking servant-girl. Marie’s young man came only on Sunday afternoons and in between Lezo had his little moments of innocent fun. Sometimes while on a walk he would sing, ‘Oh, ciel d’amour!’ at the sight of a young girl with her pail under a tap and then suddenly would make eyes at Madeleine, as though to say, ‘Isn’t she splendid?’ The more Lezo felt isolated, the more his vulgarity appeared. But he was no fool. One evening when he said something quite crude — at coffee after dinner — Madeleine went straight up to her room. He understood, and in a few days left with a stupid excuse. He said he was too near the Spanish frontier, and one never knew with the French Police… Of course, we all knew that Franco’s henchmen had better things to do — bigger fish to capture than this poor philologist Lezo.

Lezo’s departure, though it seemed so inevitable, created an entirely new situation. Looking back at my diaries of those days — for I started writing down things to myself about myself, at Montpalais; it gave some mental relief to see myself in black handwriting against white paper; it made me more objective to myself — I was saying, looking over those diaries I have come across some bewildering remarks.

August 3. ‘Virtue is more difficult to accept than vice. Vice has a way of saying, “Here I am; take me, and forget the rest.” Virtue has a way of saying, “Here I am; you cannot take me, and you cannot forget me.” Virtue seems to defeat itself, whereas vice conquers.

‘This is not strictly true. Lezo, before he left, seemed so intimate, so personal, so generous; as though if you asked he would give his cloak, and bow before you in homage to your presence. But Madeleine is like the choking in my breath. The doctors say the less I cough the better, but when I have coughed little, one day it rushes up with such a burst that my whole bed is covered with blood. And then Madeleine, like her saintly namesake, sits me back and, with such beautiful eyes, wipes the blood off my face, and carries the basin as though she were carrying the blood of a martyr. Sainthood, I think, is natural to man or woman — not virtue.

‘Yesterday when Madeleine had tucked me back to bed and had stayed a while to see whether my breathing were regular and normal, and went back to the central hall, I could hear her whispering voice all through the night talking to Georges. I heard them discuss my illness with deep concern: not for three years had such an effusion of blood appeared. Georges has a voice so grave and deep, especially at night; it makes one think it’s the walls that speak a prophecy.

‘Madeleine looks much more beautiful now: her virtue makes her conspicuous. She reads a great deal out of St John of the Gross, and about Buddhism. She feels happier with the latter, but prefers to read the Christian mystic with Georges. Now it is I who give her Sanskrit lessons. She had begun to loathe Sanskrit, she said, because of Lezo. But Georges has a different opinion: he thinks I “feel” Sanskrit, I do not “know” Sanskrit. Lezo, on the other hand “knew” a language — and did not care whether it were Icelandic or Hebrew. The classical mind has a grandeur I shall never possess. I am too weak, so I see stars where others see planets.’

August 17. ‘This week has been a glorious interlude. Georges has come so near to me. His gentle, vibrant, withdrawn presence makes one feel so selfish, so crude. How the Christian humility has beauty — even as some lovely women wear mourning because it makes them beautiful. The Brahmin, the Vedantin, has such arrogance. It was Astavakra who said, “Wonderful, wonderful, am I”; he with the eight deformations. Yes, one is wonderful— when one is not one, but the “I”.