Raja Rao - The Serpent and the Rope

Beatae Mariae Magdalenae, quaesumus, Domine, suffragiis adjuvemur: cujus precibus exoratus quatriduanum fratrem Lazarum vivum ab inferis resuscitasti.

If Georges marries, no doubt it will be in the Chapel of Mary Magdalene at St Maximin. There is no question about it whatsoever. Father Zenobias will be one witness and I the other. How Oncle Charles will love it and thank us for a lifetime…

‘Yes, everything is ready but a gesture — a symbol. It will not be, to put it crudely, the examining of the wedding sheets — and this by now Madeleine has fully realized — but some elevation, some communion; a revelation that will make the inevitable emerge, not as knowledge, but as a fact, a recognition, a binding on the altar of one’s own being.’

Reading through these pages, I can see how a certain vulgarity had entered me — I the great ‘purist’—and how it already indicated the meaning of those confused and sad predicaments which were to follow. The problem, alas, is not for the psychoanalyst to explain, but for the metaphysician to name.

The psychoanalyst, after all, is only like the Indian magician who can make the mango grow before you, but you cannot eat of it; he can make the whole riches of the district treasury come and lie before you with label, seal, and all, and yet you cannot take a copper piece out of it; or make the rope go high and the sun mount with the mounting rope, but you cannot go up to the sun; nor can you be like the boy bound in a basket, and cut into bits before you with sword and knife, and when called, ‘Baloo, Baloo!’ there he is coming down yon coconut palm; you could no more be a Baloo than I a village- beadle. The psychoanalyst is concerned with illusory objects. Yet nobody is happy or unhappy with the mind; we are happy or unhappy with our hearts. And we no more know our hearts than Sigmund Freud knew the being of Leonardo because a feather in the painter’s mouth proved, through the magic of psychoanalysis, that the great Italian painter was a homosexual, or rather ‘had ambivalent tendencies’. Psychoanalysis does not prove why or how Leonardo painted the Saint Anne or that noble bust of St John the Baptist.

Vulgarity had entered from the backwash somehow, and my story will show how we drifted into the whirlpool of the river.

And as all that is true happens simply and undramatically, this happened, too, in the most natural manner.

One evening, Catherine seemed somewhat sad. We had all gone up to St Ophalie on our usual walk, and I stayed back a while to be near her, to feel her, to know her, and maybe to offer her any hope or advice that someone older, and like an elder brother, could give.

I acted, no doubt, from my Indian instinct, for in India every woman who is not your wife — or your concubine — is your sister. You feel the responsibility of a brother to every woman on this earth, whosoever she may be, and in whatever part of the world. Left to himself, the Indian would go tying rakhi 2to every woman he met, feel her elder brother, protect her love, and enjoy the pride of an uncle at marriage and at childbirth; and later he would feel the orphans as his wards, his nephews. Thus the danger has been circumvented, the pride of the hero kept firm; and when you die, if no one else will, your sister will weep for you!

So I joked with Catherine, for joking is part of binding a woman into safety, and told her she was my little daughter, my niece, and my sister-in-law — Georges being my brother — and little by little Catherine opened herself up and spoke to me of herself, of the deep sorrow she felt, something unnameable, un-understandable.

‘I should be so happy, my brother,’ she laughed, ‘but there is sorrow, such sorrow. It seems to come from the very depths. I want to weep, I want to call Madeleine at night, beg her to lie by me, weep with me, even protect me. Rama, I just do not know what it is; it simply aches.’ She became silent. What answer could I give her? Only a woman could have told her the truth.

‘Catherine,’ I said, however, ‘the fact is this. When a girl would become woman, there’s a whole universe that rebels in you, as though a kingdom, a sovereignty were to be lost, as though some demon were at your cavern door, and you would lose the all, in fear, in blood, and in anguish. Catherine, it’s just like the great frost that falls in March, before the spring comes. Death and life are not opposite things but alternate events, like spring and winter heat and monsoon. There’s anguish in India before the rains come, just as when people die in spring — you know most old people die at the end of winter, in the beginning of spring? That is why, Catherine,’ I concluded, ‘there is so much sorrow in spring. You want not to be born, for death, winter, looks like peace. For man, I mean for the male, the leap into spring is his death, but for women the leap into life is anguish, is pain, is rounded knowledge, is continuance. For woman pain and continuance be one, and for man death and joy are one. And that is the mystery of creation.’ I spoke as though I were telling of Madeleine, and not of Catherine.

We walked slowly, haltingly, as if knowledge were pain, mystery were joy. We lingered by the rocks and by the trees; we sat on a bridge and started throwing stones into the empty earth below; we were silent, even though we knew we were talking to one another. Then Catherine must have thought of Georges for she said, ‘Come, let us go.’

We entered through the kitchen door — for the goat-path, going upwards, went just by our backyard — stealthily like children, and knocked at the drawing-room door as if, when Madeleine opened, we would shout, ‘Tiger, Lion, Elephant! ‘But no answer came, and slowly the door opened — it was Georges who opened it, and when we walked in the room was filled with a wide silence. Catherine went almost on tiptoe and sat by Madeleine on the divan. Georges went back to his chair, and I put on more lights, and stood looking at the books.

After a moment Catherine said she had had such a wonderful walk with her brother-in-law, and I said, ‘I’ve tied rakhi to Catherine.’ When Georges asked, ‘What’s that, Rama?’ I said, ‘Why, that’s what Rani Padmavathi tied — a silken, a yellow silken thread, with gold on it — to Emperor Akbar, says the legend, and thus becoming his sister she could not become his bride.’

‘What a beautiful story,’ said Georges.

‘Oh,’ said Madeleine, ‘India does not lack beautiful stories,’ and while I went into my room, to search for some rakhi — I had kept the rakhi Saroja had given to me — Madeleine went into the kitchen; and when I came back to the drawing room, Georges and Catherine were in each other’s arms and so very happy. Georges kissed her again in front of me, and she let him do it, and with such freedom that Georges had tears in his eyes. Something had happened to Georges; he seemed so elevated, so pure.

‘Here, Catherine, is my wedding present,’ I said, and tied the rakhi to Catherine’s wrist. She danced with joy, and ran into the kitchen and shouted:

‘Look, Mado! Look what a wonderful wedding present for

me!’

Meanwhile Georges said, ‘Come, Rama, haven’t you got another?’

I said, ‘No.’ So when Catherine returned Georges untied it, and while Madeleine came with onion and kitchen knife in hand to see what was happening, Georges caught hold of her, tied the rakhi on her left hand, and kissed her on the mouth; yes, did Georges, and in front of all of us. Even the lamps glowed a little brighter that sudden moment, and then we all felt we belonged to a magic circle, and we all laughed, as if to some mysterious cymbal and tambourine. We laughed and we laughed, we teased each other in the kitchen and in the corridor, laying the table we laughed, searching for the spoons and forks we laughed, talking of Lezo we laughed; of the Headmistress we made fun and laughed. Then we fell into long silences, and we started laughing again.