Raja Rao - The Serpent and the Rope

Of an evening, when I was still busy at my work, Georges would drop in and I could hear him and Madeleine very fervent in discussion. Madeleine had by now completely abandoned her work on the Holy Grail. She said it was, as a matter of fact, part of the Albigensian tradition — she made herself sure of this — so she turned her attention more and more to Buddhism. The intellectual virility and the deep compassion of the Buddha often filled her evenings with joy and wonderment. She would tell me, lying on the bed next to me, story after story from the Jatakas, and she wondered that Buddhism had not conquered Europe but Christianity had.

I reminded her of the tradition that one of the sons of Asoka had indeed been sent to Alexandria to preach the Holy Law, and that some of the later Alexandrian school, especially Plotinus, must have owed much to Buddhistic thought. But our information, I went on, was still too meagre. The Greeks, like the Indians were an intellectually curious people — perhaps even more openminded than we were. So it mattered little whence the gymnosophists came, they were always welcome. There is a Greek tradition of an Indian sage having visited Socrates himself, about the time when the Compassionate Master was still alive. Imagine, I concluded, how later Buddhist phenomenalism must have attracted the school of Aristotle… etc., etc.

Georges often went on long walks with Madeleine. He felt peaceful and protected in her presence. We saw a new Georges, more deeply humble, more truly elevated; sometimes, as one saw the drama on his face, one wondered if he had not spent the night in prayer. He was certainly deeply disturbed. For him Catholicism was still new, he could not feel his way through it, as he might the religion of his forefathers. Old Ivan Pavlovitch must have been writing to him on the subject, because once in a while Georges would open a letter from his father, and read out a paragraph or two. Evil could not be a proof of God, and yet evil was premonition of God. The paradox remained, and like Alyosha when he smelt the body of the Elder decaying, Georges looked gentle, intimate and forlorn.

Madeleine brought him that feminine presence which man seeks in pain — a hand, a look, the gesture to lift a coat, or help across a difficult step. Madeleine’s hand was ever there, and she seemed so sure of herself; it was now Georges that leaned on her.

Soon, however, we were all going to be pretty busy. Savithri was announced for October 13, and I was to go and meet her at the pier. She had sent me a wire, and I had told Madeleine about it. Madeleine was not sure how to deal with an Indian girl; she wondered whether Savithri would not be shocked with Madeleine and her ways. ‘After all we Europeans have only been civilized for a thousand years. And what you pardon in me, Savithri may not.’ I assured Madeleine that Indians were a very tolerant people, and the ‘barbarities of Madeleine’ might amuse Savithri more than hurt her. Besides, Savithri had spent two years in Europe already and such fears on the part of Madeleine were silly.

‘You are always right, Seigneur, and I am always wrong,’ she said, piqued and a little amused, and she went into the kitchen to put a béchamel sauce on the cauliflower. Since she had become a vegetarian she enjoyed cooking, for as she said, in winter when you only have potatoes and beetroot, tomatoes and spinach, it needed a lot of ingenuity to make food interesting. Whereas with meat, the dish was almost ready on the cow or on the pig.

‘And as for “vegetables of the sea”,’ she continued, remembering Little Mother’s story in Calcutta, ‘they may go straight into your mouth, and taste so wonderful. Look, look at oysters…’

Madeleine always needed a theory to convince herself. I used to tease her and say, ‘You are only called Madeleine because your carte d’identité says so. You are a nominalist.’

Those October days were full of a rich, slanting sunshine. The winds began to blow, and Mont Ste-Victoire was like oneself seen in a dreamless sleep, a point of nowhere against the blue. Waking up you could see the olives and feel Les Baux far away; you could almost eye the beauty of the Mediterranean and say: ‘Of course, I am here, I am Mont Ste-Victoire.’ The world became real when others became true.

There were other truths too that filled our evenings with delight. Madeleine had not yet gone to the doctor; she said she would wait for a week more. In fact no doctor need have told her anything; the mystery on her own face, that inturned look as though she were looking down her navel rather than her nose, made one sense that there was something the matter. I told her teasingly that just as one can smell a good watermelon from a bad one I could smell her and tell her even the sex of the little creature.

‘I have one more secret still,’ she said, as though to change the subject.

‘What’s that, Madeleine?’

‘I have invited Catherine to Aix, as she hasn’t had a holiday all the summer. She has just written to me that she will be here towards the end of the week.’

‘What a fine idea,’ I said.

‘It is more than a fine idea. It is an inspiration.’ And she looked at me as though she wanted me to understand more.

‘Well, it’s an inspiration,’ I said. ‘And so what?’

‘I don’t want to lose Catherine. She is so serious. I don’t want her to get caught in all that smelly nonsense, and end up in some Place de la Cathédrale. I want her to see sunshine.’

‘Well, and so?’

‘She disliked the ball, and she disliked all men. She said she would never think of marrying any of the upstarts father would like her to marry. Their very presence, she said, gave her the creeps.’ ‘So?’

‘She needs to love a man for his own good — not for her frills or her apartment in Paris, and country house in Deauville. Oncle Charles can see nothing beyond a landowner’s son, who has studied law, and is established in Paris, on the Rue de Rivoli. Catherine is a sweet creature — her dream is to have many children, and a good Catholic husband. She could not face modern life. She is already too frightened of existence — and it won’t be Tante Zoubie who’ll give her back confidence. She needs a man, a gentle pure soul.’

I understood. ‘But,’ I laughed, ‘only evil can prove God, good cannot prove God.’

‘So you were the premonition,’ she added. ‘And Alyosha will have found his Madeleine.’

A slight cold, one of those forerunners of our winter miseries, sent me to bed for a few days. I worked hard on my thesis, and once I was well I was happy to be able to go out again. The sky seemed young, and full of a big yearning. The swallows were already on the telegraph wires. The air was still. In the valley below, Monsieur Chévachaux’s donkey was driving the flies away with his shortened tail. He seemed to know my thoughts, for he looked up at me, and then bent down and continued to graze. A gesture in silence seems a recall to truth.

I came down the hill almost with an adolescent heart. The next morning I said goodbye to Madeleine and went down to meet Savithri at the Quai St Jacques. It was just like going to Naini Tal. The air was crisp, and you felt the snow beyond. I was going to meet the Himalayas. The Ganges flowed everywhere.

~

Grandmother Lakshamma used to tell us a sweet story: ‘Once upon a time, when Dharmaraja ruled Dharmapuri, he had a young son of sixteen, Satyakama, who had to be sent away on exile because his stepmother wanted her own son, Lokamitra, to be placed on the throne. Weak this Dharmaraja was, and the minister one day took young Satyakama away, and left him at the white beginnings of a jungle path on the frontiers. And Satyakama, beautiful in his limbs (“As though moonbeams had been melted and made solid as silver for the hands and feet of this prince,” said Grandmother), he walked down the path forlorn, now asking for advice from a butterfly, and now from a roaming elephant. Neither had anything to tell him but shed tears in compassion — which explains why the elephant has such poor sight, and the butterfly two additional eyes on its wings— and the trees, made hollow with the winds, rolled a lamentation that all the forest could hear. So much virtue had never walked that jungle path before; even the jackal went immediately to the rabbit to bring the gladsome tidings that a prince was walking amongst them, shining with the disc of truth over his head.