Raja Rao - The Serpent and the Rope

Yours affectionately,

Pratap’

The next letter, too, was from him. It was a hurried note to say Savithri had left by boat this time, because the doctors thought her heart was not good enough yet for air travel. The S. S. Maloja would touch at Marseille on October the third. Could I meet her there, and perhaps she could spend a day or two with me and my wife? Gratefully Yours, etc., etc.

The last letter was one from Savithri herself. It was posted from Port Said, and simply stated that her mother had given her my address, and that she would be happy to see me in Marseille if I had a moment to spare. She did not say whether she would stay with us or not.

‘It was wonderful seeing you in our home. The vulgarity of the surroundings I hope did not hurt your sensibilities. We in the north are new to civilization. I want to see you. May I come to see you? I want to know France. I want to know India.

Yours very sincerely,

Savithri’

I have kept that letter to this day. It was written on one of those white thick P & O notepapers, with the flag on the left, and not much space to write on elsewhere. But it was a good letter, I felt. It brought me news.

Somehow I felt Saroja herself was coming.

The last letter in my mail was from Oncle Charles. Madeleine and Catherine, he had himself driven down to Paris. He was happy to see them both so close to one another.

‘What a beautiful couple you make,’ continued Oncle Charles, ‘and how Zoubie’s heart and mine are filled with gratitude that our daughter — for Madeleine is like my own daughter — should have found such an asylum of peace and elevation in the home you have given her. If Christian prayers mean anything to you, I pray to God that he fulfil you in your life, and that your noble competence may find an adequate use in your own ancient and great land. Already India is playing a big role in international affairs. I am sure a person of your stature — I almost said, of so distinguished a family — will be called to places of eminence and of service. And I know how very devotedly and with what distinction you will serve your country. Thanks to Madeleine, I am sure Catherine will find a worthy husband. Already I have two or three young men in mind. But Catherine is difficult; like Madeleine, she’s frightened of men. In fact we need another Ramaswamy in the household.

Bien affectueusement

Oncle Charles’

For a man who had been sick, such a flood of affection and regard could only be most consoling. What was more consoling still was that I would see Madeleine again in the morning. I would see her young, luminous face, as the train came into the Gare St-Charles. I would buy her a bouquet of azaleas, like the one Henri the taxi-driver had bought her, and would bring her home like a new bride.

Suddenly my whole life seemed centred in Madeleine. There was no spot on earth or air which did not contain her presence and which isolated in time, was not going to be ever and ever mine. I had not forgotten about Esclarmonde, but who could know the future? Astrologers did, and they had spoken of many children. My lung ached but I forgot it — I was thinking of Madeleine. The night would soon be over and morning would come.

I had to rise at four to meet her train. The cocks were still very active and the day was fresh as a pomegranate as I let go the brakes and was off to Marseille. The whole of the earth smelt of roses.

The next morning, I brought coffee to Madeleine. College was beginning. There was so much to fill a year with — and a life.

Georges came along in the afternoon. He had been spending his usual fortnight with Father Zenobias — the twisting hand, his flashing eyes, the way he threw back his head now and again, showed that Georges was like a good horse, champing for a ride and a leap. He had been discussing the theory of evil in the Church, and was sorry I had not been present during those remarkable talks at the monastery.

‘You know, Ramaswamy,’ he said, ‘the evenings were full of light and silences. Father Zenobias and I spent hour after hour; he digging his grave with his long blunt spade, and I standing under the giant oak in the yard, talking away of the majesty of the Christian dogma. It is not often that you see the beauty of man when he has the means of existing in splendour — it is when a human being touches the cup of misery that you see the fine lines on his anguished face. The face of Christ on the cross must have been more luminous than when He preached in Galilee. Evil is fascinating, for without it there would be no good, no world, no Christ. I can now understand the temptation of Lucifer. One can be drunk with evil as one cannot be drunk with good.’

‘Naturally,’ I retorted, ‘for in evil you seek good, but in the good you are goodness yourself. To be drunk you need the drunkard and he who sees himself drunk. You remember the saying in the Bible — the right hand must not know what the left hand has done? The good cannot know itself, any more than light can know itself.’

‘Then how does light know itself?’

I said: ‘It is like a man who is going to Paris, and who has been telling himself, “Still four hundred and fifty kilometres, I am in Dijon; two hundred kilometres, I am in Auxerre; fifty eighty kilometres, I am at Fontainebleau.” And suddenly he reaches the Porte de Vanves, and says, “Only seven kilometres.” Then when he enters the city, he asks someone, “Monsieur, Monsieur, can you tell me where Paris is?” And if the person is a clever Parisian — and all Parisians are clever — he will say, “It’s still thirty-seven kilometres from here, Monsieur. You go straight down this Boulevard, then you turn right. You see that road just where the sun shines? You go straight up it, past the aerodrome and the bridge, and the long cobbled streets, with poplars on both sides, and then a valley again, a cemetery, a station and the city.” But a few minutes later the visitor comes to a gendarme; asks him. “Paris? Why this is Paris, Monsieur.” Paris is not there, Georges, because Auxerre is or Porte de Vanves is; Paris is there because it is Paris. You do not ask in Paris where Paris is — nor, once in Paris, do you know anything else but Paris. All distances, as you know, my friend, start from Notre Dame, and Paris begins at zero.’

‘But Paris is made of the Etoile and the Buttes-Chaumont. Paris is made of the Louvre and the Usines Renault. Paris is not a whole. The whole exists because the parts exist.’

‘Now, now, let us be logical! The part implies the whole but in the mind of no man does the whole — the complete — imply the incomplete. “When the whole is taken from the whole, what remains is the whole,” say the Upanishads. Resurrection is not because death is, resurrection is because life is. Nobody has died. Nobody will die. Death is just a negative thought.’

‘Oh, you are at it again — at your Vedanta. Maya is Maya to Maya — Maya cannot be where Brahmin is.’

‘But,’ interjected Madeleine, ‘was not Maya also the name of the mother of Gautama, the Buddha? Did it not mean, Truth was “born” to illusion? And because Truth came into existence Maya died, the illusion died, and so the mother of the Buddha died.’

‘That is what Oldenberg or someone like him says. No, that is not how it is to be understood. Truth, which always is, and is therefore never born and can never manifest itself in any way, cannot have a mother or a father. Maya, on seeing the Truth born from herself — that is, man in seeing his own true nature as Truth — sees that illusion has never existed, will never exist. So Maya did not die; Maya recognized truth being truth; Maya was as such nothing but the Truth. Who has ever seen nothingness— Nirvana? The Void is only the I seen from within as the not-I. Evil is a moral, I almost said an optical, reality. Optics is no more real than gravitation is real. A certain distance beyond the earth there is no gravitation. A certain touch in the cerebral nerve can change your optics, and make you see long things short or short things long, as the surgeon wants. The relative cannot prove the absolute. The moral reflex is, after all, a biological reflex.’