Raja Rao - The Serpent and the Rope

‘What do you want?’ he added, as he turned towards the Salle Guizot, ‘You have the wisdom of ages — you’re not barbarian like us.’ He had a class, and he begged me not to come. ‘I am going to speak on Henry IV, for soon it will be his fourth centenary and our university thinks every decent Frenchman should know something about him. Well, compare Henry IV, crude, brave, confused, to say, Akbar. Goodbye, mon ami, work well, and lots of greetings to your wife. Goodbye… and remember me and say a prayer for me when the sun shines in Aix!’ he laughed; turning round on himself, he was gone.

I felt bewildered with so much generosity. If generosity of thought built cathedrals, no wonder, I said to myself, Rodin was right when he said: We have no Shakespeare, we have no Dante, perhaps, but we the French have cathedrals.

Nous te batissons de nos mains tremblantes

nous entassons atome sur atome,

mais qui peut t’achever

toi, cathédrale.

Au crépuscule seulement nous te laissons seul:

et tes contours futurs paraissent comme une aube.

Dieu, tu es grand!

Oncle Charles came from Rouen to see me. ‘Ah, je suis si content de voir mon neveu,’ he said, as though to himself. He always stayed in one of those large and well-established hotels near the Gare Montparnasse, and this time he had come in his car so that we could move about more easily. He looked so happy, so childishly happy to be in Paris with me, as though I being the younger would reveal something new and surprising to him. But what did I know of Paris?

‘Au Périgourdine pour le dîner,’ he decided; ‘Montmartre pour la nuit — et Les Halles pour le petit matin,’ he concluded, and I agreed with him. He chuckled constantly and was enormously amused with everything.

‘Coming to Paris with you is like the times we came to the city when we were doing military service; nous venions chercher les filles. Ce n’est pas des choses a dire, Rama, mais la vie était belle avant l’autre guerre. My father gave me a lot of money — my mother was dead — and those were the days when we were very sentimental all over France. An only child had the whole world at his feet— the good parents just gave it to you, saying, “Take it, take it! You will grow old one day and there will be time then for other more serious things.” You are too young to know the France of Monsieur Poincaré, of Déroulède and of Maurice Barres. Life was simple, gay, and rich. There was always a war, but far away somewhere — not like the Russians sitting at our doors here. Yet a cough or a sneeze from the Kaiser brought all of us back to the barracks.

‘We liked barrack life — it made us patriots and comrades. We spoke of our mothers or sisters feelingly, and in nine cases out of ten it was some comrade’s sister we married: a fellow went to the country house of a friend, had champagne, and knew so much about the girl opposite that he felt nobody could make him a better wife — so he proposed to the father. The father always accepted, for no one ever proposed without knowing it would be a “yes”—and usually we wore our uniforms; it made us look more distinguished. Then we went about from boite-de- nuit to boîte-de-nuit faisant la noce — for marriage is a very serious affair — and then the wedding came: the smell of new clothes and of perfumes, hats, invitations, the ball, and the honeymoon in Corsica. That’s how I married my first wife — Catherine’s mother. She was a good woman. I was constantly unfaithful to her, and she knew it, she smelt it as it were, but never said a word. Sad and almost without a word, she died in her second childbirth. In those days people still died in childbirth: it was not as it is today — going to have a baby as though you’re going to Biarritz… But one thing I will tell you, as I always tell Zoubie, the younger generation is more honest, more true, and stand less nonsense. We were the sacrificed.’

He laughed to himself and suddenly looked silent and lost.

‘This France,’ he started, gazing at the moving crowds of the Boulevard St Michel and the Luxembourg, for we were at La Capoulade, ‘this France is a healthier, a much better France. Mais qu’est-ee que vous voulez, one does not become younger by wishing! At best one can cut one’s hair or colour it as I do. I hate to look like a grandfather: I hate the thought that Catherine may soon have a child… By the way, tell me, Rama, what sort of a fellow is your friend, Georges Khuschbertieff? — oh, la, la, what a difficult name to pronounce! But you know, I’ll tell you before you say anything: I like him — I trust him because he is your friend — otherwise I don’t trust foreigners,’ he said, and laughed again. ‘After all, you’re not a foreigner, you’re Madeleine’s husband; “Notre Rama”, as Zoubie always says. I feel I have always known you — always.’

‘Georges,’ I replied, ‘is a considerate, clever, devoted, and pious man. Outside a monastery you rarely see a man loving the Church or God as he does. Georges is something of a saint,’ I said, with no great conviction. But to make up for it I added, ‘He will make a wonderful husband for Catherine. To see them together is to believe in happiness.’

‘Oh, that’s all your making. You and Madeleine are so happy, it reflects on all around. When we are with you even Zoubie and I are so loving and sensitive to one another. She’s a romantic, you know, Zoubie is, and she did not care so much for Madeleine before — though she was fonder of her than she ever will be of Catherine. Zoubie has not a particularly loving nature, she’s more like a man, fond of ideas, of poetry, of music — more like you in fact — well, she just loves and respects you. She says you are either an idiot or quite admirable to treat any woman like you do Madeleine.’

‘Oh, nonsense!’ I protested. ‘Besides, Oncle Charles,’ I said, looking at my watch, ‘if you do want to go to Montmartre, and as we have no tickets, don’t you think we’d better get in early.’

‘Grand, magnifique. It’s so nice to think you like going to such places: I thought you were an ascetic. You know we can never be true to each other — we men, I mean — when we are with women. Something in the woman is so complicated, so tortuous. I think a woman is just good enough to have babies and nothing else, don’t you?’

He was not interested in what I said. As we came down from the first floor of La Périgourdine, he tried to adjust his tie, and rubbed some dust off his black evening hat. Downstairs he looked at all the tables and at the bar, wondering if there was anyone he knew, or who would recognize him. It is nice to meet fellow-countrymen in Paris — it makes you feel younger. Maître Lefort is twenty years younger in Paris than in the rue St Dominique at Rouen, and Charles Hublot the advocate’s belly looks less ridiculous in Paris than in the Rouen Palais de Justice.

‘The Seine is greener here than in Rouen,’ he concluded as we got into the car.

Later that evening, as we came down from Montmartre, he winked at me several times and I did not know whether it was the songs — the ribald ones — or the cognac, or the champagne, or just the atmosphere of women half or completely naked, but like a tired horse turning to familiar alleys he went round and round the Place Clichy. He looked up one or two addresses and said ‘Ah! la vie, la vie!’—the houses had changed hands, he said. He seemed tired of living or of driving the car, so he deposited me near the Pont St Michel and I took a taxi and went to my hotel.

The next morning he rang me up at ten to say he had a bad headache. But we could still meet chez Weber at one o’clock upstairs. ‘We can have a light lunch — after the escargots de Bourgogne, and the coq-au-vin of last night, anything would be good, even a simple salad. And at Weber the vegetables are excellent.’