Raja Rao - The Serpent and the Rope

I was fascinated all the more as there was nothing that Savithri could not understand. If I said, ‘This is donkey-grass and is called oenanthera in Latin; and this the cypress of Barbary for the Saracens brought it; and this is where Queen Jeanne was shut up for her father had gone mad; and this is the hell that Dante describes’ (for we had now come to the plateau of Les Baux) it mattered little, all was an instant, an illumination. And it brought on her face a wonderment, a parted-lipped astonishment, that indeed grass should be called oenanthera, and that the kings of Baux be descended from Balthazar, and Balthazar, the mage, he came from India, as tradition spoke, and that Dante did say,

Vergine Madre, figlia del tuo Figlio

umile e alba più che creatura

termine fisso d’eterno consiglio

tu se’ colei che l’umana natura

nobilitasti s’l che ‘l suo fattore

non disdegnò di farsi sua fattura

and indeed that I was and she existed, that anything was not thus and that anything was thus; all seemed truths to her needing no proof. She was, herself, the proof that night did not imply the day or day the night, that France was this and so India was not this, that she was a girl, a woman, and I a man— all seemed a known mystery, an acknowledgement — and so to the next precipice, and then the moon that shone on to the distant sea. She could be filled with silence, and a steadiness filled the air then, as though the world was made real because one never saw it. This explained why Savithri so often closed her eyes, and then when she spoke, it was as if she spoke to the me that I did not know, but the me indeed, the only one, which hearing did not hear, seeing did not see, and knowing did not know but was knowledge itself.

What could I not recite to her? She said gently, sitting on the grass, ‘Perhaps you know some Sanskrit verse that would befit this moment?’ So I sang out those beautiful lines of Bhartrhari:

Mātar medini tāta māruta sakha jyoth sabhando — jala

O mother earth and father air,

O friend fire, great kinsman water,

O brother ether — to you all

In final parting I make obeisance.

Through your long association

Have the right deeds been performed.

Through you I have won pure shining wisdom,

Unweaving the sweet delusions of the mind.

Now I merge in the supreme Brahman.

We walked under the moon. On the ridge of Les Baux the dogs were barking in the village, some car was making a dreadful screeching noise as though the road were slipping underneath, and there was the shadowy flap of the night-wolves above us. I wondered if man could ever possess this earth, this moment; whether the world was not treading in me, and I walking into myself. Savithri gave one the sense that, do what you would you could only be, and since you could only be, nothing could happen to you. Virtue for her was not a principle, a discipline; it was the acceptance that whether she married Pratap or ‘liked’ that Muslim in London — she vaguely referred to both— they were both instants of an experience, always happening to itself. For her truth was not tomorrow or yesterday — that is why she scarcely ever referred to India; truth was wherever one is— for there is no anywhere or anywhen, but all is, for one is not. I had never felt, no not even in Saroja, a presence that made a gift of life to itself, and as such had a natural purity that showed up your vulgarities as the X-ray the bones. Madeleine had said to me that very morning, just before we had started for Les Baux, ‘But Rama, she is not real. She lives in a world of fantasy — a dream. One cannot imagine her on the top of an English bus — and yet she walks, talks and laughs like everyone. She is strange, she just bewilders me.’

‘Is it long you’ve been married?’ asked Savithri as we were going back towards the car. Not that it mattered what she asked or what I answered, whatever happened the moon alone shone — indeed, truth alone illumines.

‘Some three and a half years,’ I said.

‘Madeleine is such a truthful creature — she seems to say what she feels with a humility that moves me deeply. Tell me; is it possible always to speak the truth?’

‘No,’ I answered. ‘At least I do not. Not that I lie a great deal, but it seems to me truth is a question of perspective. We’re all like men and women and children at a wrestling match or a holy procession: the tall father sees the wrestler hit or the God bejewelled, and the son says, “Papa, why is it you laugh, what did you see?” And he has to take the child on his shoulder and tell him the name of the Muslim wrestler from north India or of the Goddess whose Lord is awaiting Her at the temple door. But in either case the child, being higher than his father now, sees differently. Nobody can see at the level of your eye — and so nobody can speak the real truth. Not even the scientist.’

‘No, not even the scientist?’ she asked.

‘No, not even the scientist, for at best science is an equation within an equation, two symbols, first accepted by yourself, then compared in measurement, composition, and action, to see whether they coincide with each other. It is just as if this moon, looking at the pool and seeing itself and knowing itself to be the moon, were to say “I am the moon”. All science is only tautology. Do you know the famous story of Euler and God? My father used often to tell it to me. Euler and Diderot were both at the court of Catherine the Great. Someone said to Diderot, “There is a man come, a great man, a German, and he can prove to you that God exists.” “Excellent,” said Diderot, “what a remarkable man!” So Euler was called in to prove God to Diderot. The court was all assembled. There was much powder, wig, garter, and handkerchief about the place. Euler went straight to Diderot and said, and with a lifted finger,

“Monsieur, Hence God exists.”

A huge laugh shook the assembled court, and the humiliated Denis Diderot, says the story, asked permission of the empress to return to France. Catherine the Great consented cordially, and Denis Diderot returned to his mansard in Paris and to his dictionary.

‘We are all a set of Denis Diderots, for X explains away everything.’

‘A funny story,’ said Savithri.

‘Well, it’s the whole history of so-called “progress”. To say electricity is such and such an equation, simply means electricity is electricity. It is just like saying I see a thing, or God is equal to X. When seeing goes into the make of form and form goes into the make of seeing, as the Great Sage says, “What, pray, do you see?”’

‘You see nothing or, if you will, yourself,’ answered Savithri, and I wondered at her instant recognition of her own experience.

‘Therefore, what is Truth?’ I asked. By now we were near Fort Sarrasine at the edge of the plateau of Les Baux, with the whole of La Camargue beneath us.

‘Is-ness is the Truth,’ she answered.

‘And is-ness is what?’

‘Who asks that question?’

‘Myself.’

‘Who?’ ‘I.’

‘Of whom?’

‘No one.’

‘Then “I am” is.’

‘Rather, I am am.’

‘Tautology!’ She laughed.

‘Savithri says Savithri is Savithri.’

‘And you say Savithri is what?’ she begged. ‘“I.”’

And the moon and the silence seemed to acknowledge that only the ‘I’ shone.

‘There is no Savithri,’ I continued after a while.

‘No, there isn’t. That I know.’

‘There is nothing,’ I persisted.