Raja Rao - The Serpent and the Rope

It was a poor argument, and it showed how we were all trying to hide ourselves from each other. Meanwhile the postman brought the mail, and Savithri went down to have her bath. Madeleine said she would start cooking, for Savithri’s train, the Mistral, left at two-thirty, and I sat looking at the letters, some from India and some from London and Paris, feeling I wish I were not, and were I, I should never be again.

There was also a letter from Oncle Charles, which spoke of Catherine’s visit. He would put her on the Saturday morning train in Paris — they would have to leave Rouen early (at four or thereabouts) but she could always sleep sitting in the train. He did not like the idea of a night journey for a jeune fille. Of course he was being old-fashioned, but you could not cut away his years, even with a knife from St Etienne. What was was, and he knew I would accept him as he was. I did — at least I tried to. He hoped Catherine would learn much from her contact with me. ‘Give her bright ideas so that she can build a happy and a solid home. For a woman her home is her paradise,’ he concluded. He was sure that the sieht of me and Madeleine together would be an inspiration, an example for a whole life. ‘A father’s hope is always that his children should be happy. I have done practically nothing for Madeleine’s happiness — she almost grew up like a blackbird. But Catherine was different. Rama, she needs advice and help. Help her, and Zoubie and I will be ever grateful to you. Je vous embrasse tous les deux et bien affectueusement, Oncle Charles.’

Catherine’s impending visit brightened my horizon. It encouraged me to think of other things, more concrete. I liked Catherine too, her shy joviality, her suppressed joie de vivre, her maternity (for you could not think of Catherine without a brood of children), and her natural affection for all men and things. She was what the French call ‘une bonne maîtresse de maison’. He who would wed her would not just wed an heiress — for her father had made considerable money — but a good housewife. And she was pleased with that, and when Father retired she would inherit the notoriat. Like this the orchard would not change hands…

The lunch was rather a sad affair — everyone was merged in his or her own thoughts. Georges dropped in to say goodbye to Savithri. He was always so elegant in his thought, as though life were a series of genuflections, said not in Latin but in French. God was the immediate ground of every gesture. He bent low, and lifted his hat to Savithri and to Madeleine, then waved his hand to me as he walked down the steps.

‘He is one of the finest human beings I have met,’ Madeleine averred. ‘If only he didn’t make a lifelong apology for not being in a soutane. A man left to himself,’ she went on, looking at me, ‘will end in a mathematical puzzle. He needs to clothe his thoughts with the cry of children — with the sobbing of a woman. If man wants to be a superman he has just to be a man.’ They both laughed.

‘I may still be a yogi, some day,’ I said. ‘I shall follow Sri Aurobindo, and abolish death.’

‘Oh, Rama, to think that you will have to be bored with me for eternity — a sad thought.’

‘Eternity is only for men,’ I remarked. ‘Women will die at the opportune time. I have always told you polygamy is man’s nature. Both the Hindus and the Christians are wrong about these single-hearted devotions. Islam is the better religion, from that point of view — it treats life naturally.’

‘And leads you thus — straight to Pakistan,’ added Savithri, somewhat bitterly. This was the only time, I felt, she showed any personal feelings.

‘We’re in France,’ I reminded her, ‘and French trains don’t have the euphoria and the fantasy of Indian railways. If we want to catch the Mistral let’s get the cases out. And while the ladies drink coffee, the he-man will put the luggage into the car.’

‘There’s no he-man in the world of God,’ said Madeleine, rising. ‘But the she-woman of France is just made to carry the burden for a Brahmin.’ She knew with my lungs I should not carry anything. When the coffee was finished we all came down, and with what absolute acceptance did Madeleine carry down Savithri’s luggage. Savithri gave some grass to the bull, and she looked a long, long while at the two big eyes of Villa Ste-Anne while Madeleine rested the cases against a rock, and then at one stretch we reached the car.

How incompetent we two Indians felt before things.

‘I am a peasant woman, after all,’ said Madeleine, excusing us. ‘My great grandmothers must have carried potatoes and eggs to the fair of St Séver.’ And we all got into the car.

Madeleine was gentle, sad, and understanding. Savithri’s thoughts were already in London. Hussain Hamdani awaited her, with his violence and his devotion. ‘I dread going to London,’ she said. ‘I wish all the world were Provence.’

‘Then you’d have the farandole every evening, a big snore every afternoon, and in between you’d hear Mistral sing of Mireille. Never saw anything more lazy than this,’ was Madeleine’s confirmed conclusion.

My silence was pitiful. Madeleine had her feet on the ground; Catherine, after all, was coming on Saturday, and Madeleine had such grand plans for everything. She even knew what gateaux she would buy, and when she would invite Georges. Latterly, feeling Georges might be too shy in the beginning, she had begun to think Lezo might be of some use. So this evening there was going to be a comeback for Lezo, and the first Sanskrit lesson again. No, she was going to learn Pali direct. Lezo was even more happy, for thus he proved his importance. The more obscure a thing, the more familiar Lezo was with it. Georges was coming at five o’clock to have a chat with me. At six all of us would go on a walk, say hullo to the elephant, and if the mistral were not too severe, go up to St Ophalie, coming back through the olives under the moonlight.

Madeleine seemed almost light-hearted, happy. ‘Rama is either a thousand years old or three,’ she said to Savithri. ‘He cannot do anything wrong, for he’s either so wise or so innocent. He drives a car well, but just let it purr a little and he jumps from his seat as if he’d heard a cobra hiss. He is very frightened of machines. But let him have silence to himself, and then he’ll talk to you of trees as though he’s been a tree in his last life, and will become one in the next. He’s been born a man by mistake — for my joy,’ she said, convinced she was convinced of her own happiness. ‘To think that a man born in Hariharapura should marry a girl from the Paroisse de St Médard. Strange, very strange, isn’t it? Rama says, when a Mysore peasant woman sees a rainbow, she exclaims, “There, there! It must be the wedding of the dog and the jackal! There must have been a rainbow somewhere,” she finished, ‘on that dull, rainy sky of Rouen.’

Madeleine spoke a great deal like this, almost to herself, when she knew what was not true should be true, and could be a truth, by repetition. She put her hand on her belly afterwards, as though some greater truth lay within her, and my eyes catching her gesture gave me confidence that life would continue; for men are born and men ‘die’—even women are born and marry and continue to live. Life was like a railway line, it went and went on almost as though by itself, slipped into a branch line, stopped at the small country gare, and whistled and ran off when the bell rang. Then the cypresses would come, and the marshes, and after St Pujol and St Trophime and Ste Madeleine would be Tarascon. And all who know Tarascon, know the Rhone flows through her, and the Rhone broadening out, flows all over the place, and reaches Marseille.