Raja Rao - The Serpent and the Rope

‘Then suddenly the whole forest fell into an act of silence, and just in front of Satyakama on the little footpath, round as a river pebble, big as a temple flower-basket, and with streaks like those on an antelope, black and white, was a budumékaye. Though there was neither wind nor sound, the little vegetable freed itself from its vine, and started rolling in front of the prince. The prince was too full of tears to see it. But suddenly he heard the lion roar from some distant mountain cave, and in that instant of fear he saw with his eyes this round and rolling vegetable. Fascinated with its movement he followed and followed it, till the day melted into the heat of the noon, and the noon sheltered itself under branch and root of banyan, and not a bird moved nor a squirrel nor a bee. Rapt in himself he followed the movement of the budumékaye, till the evening set in. And in the cool of the dusk, as the birds awakened to the waters, and the animals led out the little ones to their grazings and feasting, just as the night fell the round vegetable hit against a huge rock, big as a mansion, and burst apart. And from inside this budumékaye rose a young and auspicious princess whose beauty could blind the eye, and illumine the night. “Oh!” said the prince in wonder. But before he knew where he stood, the huge rock rose as it were from inside, just as though someone had pushed the door of the loft, and golden steps appeared, and servants and eunuchs and maids, and in the world below there were halls and parlours and chambers of gold. Mirrors shone everywhere, and six white princesses gathered together to pay homage to the prince. And when they had bowed and stood aside, the budumékaye who had become a princess came from the door opposite, a garland of flowers in her hand. She knelt before him and said, “I am the eldest of seven sisters, and I be princess of Avanti, banished by a cruel father,” and they wed each other. There was but one enemy in the palace, and that was a fat old monkey-chamberlain. He sat by a milk- cauldron, sleepy. The seven sisters gathered together and felled him into the cauldron, and the servants and the maids were happy and free, for he was a tyrant.

‘Thus they lived for twice ten years, till the world became big, and overspread; for vast was the territory needed for the growing populace. And a huge capital rose just in the middle of the forest, with roads and parks and festoons, and pools for summer and shelters for the monsoon, and they watered the roads of evening mixed with the rich sandal of the forests. Dandakavathi the great capital rose, and one day, as Satyakama and Ramadevi ruled their small kingdom, they saw the elephants and the camels and the horses of another king enter the capital. It was an old king going to Benares on pilgrimage. Four were the queens with him. They were made right welcome into the palace. Though Satyakama knew the moment he beheld them who the visitors were, Ramadevi, the chief-queen, did not. A magnificent feast was offered to the visitors, and when Satyakama started serving Ganges water to his guests such a spurt of milk burst from the chief-queen’s breasts that all the world wondered. Satyakama fell at his mother’s feet and told them the story of the seven princesses. And with tears in their eyes the old king and his three queens (for the fourth was the wicked one, young and ambitious) praised the young prince for his obedience and beauty. They said that since his departure nothing but famine and penury had ruled the land, and as expiation they had started on a pilgrimage to Benares: maybe the Ganges would give them back their purity. Meanwhile the chamberlain of the old king rushed horsemen to the capital, and while the citizens of Dharmapuri awaited the young prince, with kunkum-water and silver censers, and with all the courtyards covered with rice-powder designs and mango leaves hung at every door, the old king and his four wives wended their way westwards to Benares, the holy city.

‘And as soon as the very winds smelt of the prince returning to the capital, golden grass grew on either side of the footpath, porcupines brushed away the thorns from the highways, and fledglings put out their yellow bare necks to see the prince and princess ride on elephant and howda to the capital. There was the music of the nine melodies in the air…’

‘And you can hear it as you go to sleep, little children,’ said Grandmother.

I could hear such music in the air on that clear, cold day of Provence, as the mistral had removed all clouds from the sky like the porcupines the thorns of the jungle highway.

Savithri was a real princess by birth, but what must have brought the story back to me was that as I stood at the bottom of the gangway, this somewhat round and shy thing rolled down the steps as she ran, with her august and aloof and lone brother behind her. I had almost to catch her by the hand lest she fell against some trunk or cargo, as it lay on the pier.

She readily accepted to come with me to Aix and spend a few days with us, but her brother had to be rushed on to London. He had to go back to school at once — he was already late. We had a hurried lunch at the Cannebière, and even the Marseillais seemed astonished at so much laughter on a woman’s face. She seemed, did Savithri, so innocent and true and free. Her brother, on the other hand, was shy, already learned-looking. He was to have gone to Eton, but the war had sent him to an Anglo- Indian school. He had suffered much from that atmosphere, and so to run away from the vulgarity of sons of government officers, and the fat, ugly bankers’ creed, he read English poetry, wandering through the fields reciting Shelley, Wordsworth, or Gerard Manley Hopkins to himself. He was, he had decided, going to become a professor and teach poetry.

All that he knew of France — he had read French at school— was her poetry. He admired most Victor Hugo and Lamartine, thought Gérard de Nerval involved, and Baudelaire he said he could not understand; for that matter, Paul Valéry too. I said to Anand, for that was his name, that Valéry’s home was not far away — and before I knew where I was I heard Savithri start reciting,

Midi le juste y compose de feux,

La mer, la mer toujours recommencée,

in her gentle, intimate accent, as though French were better spoken like the Braj of Mira. It was Anand who had taught her this, for after the two lines her inspiration seemed to have stopped; Anand continued with a few more verses, and I could see it was not so much to show off his knowledge as to discover whether I found his accent improper. No, his accent was much better than his sister’s. Whatever he did was done with thoroughness.

For Savithri life was a game, a song. She walked in the streets (she was a little short-sighted) like my sisters did, throwing four balls into the air and keeping them going with a puzzle rhyme and a beat of feet. She spoke rapidly, and in between her amusing chatter was a space of sorrow, large as her eyes; you could almost breathe and know that this came from no single act or thought, but from some previous karma, the sorrow of another age. She bore such sorrow, it seemed at moments, that she sang just to cover it up, or she would dramatize herself smoking or sit selfconsciously as though to hide some unnameable disease that others could see and smell but she could not know. I soon saw that her repertory of the frivolous — some light air from La Traviata or Carmen, or some Negro spiritual or jazz soprano ‘The sky is blue and I love you…’—was as rich as her deep knowledge of the Mira tradition.

We rushed Anand to his train and saw his Pullman move off, and hardly were we back in the car before Savithri started singing: ‘Oh, man cher, Ohmon amourrrr …’ I remembered Anand’s last sentence to her, ‘Sister, I saw La Traviata on the posters in Marseille. Do not forget to go and see it — and ta-ta,’ he said, as the train moved away. Savithri continued to hum to herself: ‘Oh, ma colombe, Oh mon amieeee’, forgetful where she was — she never remembered, it seemed, she was at Marseille, St Charles.