Raja Rao - The Serpent and the Rope

Rumour of Savithri’s marriage reached my ears through people coming from the north: there was Captain Sham Sunder himself, to whom the news of my ‘flame’, as Lakshmi called her, was duly carried; and there were anyway so many people at the Cricket Club who came and went between Bombay and Delhi and always had something to say about the great gods up in the capital. So that when the news really came — first in the papers — I was not surprised, and then there was a line from Savithri herself. It ran: ‘Surajpur Palace. This evening, at four forty-seven, entered into the state of matrimony. I married Pratap at last. I shall be a good wife to him. Bless me.’

In a day or two Lakshmi yielded to me. I thought to myself it was like eating a pickle. My days and nights would be spent in luxurious enjoyment. I put off my trip by another week. Captain Sunder himself seemed happy — for he knew what it was all about! How splendid Lakshmi looked now! When once in a while I coughed, she was ever so tender to me, sitting by my side and fanning me, pressing my legs, my arms. She began to have some respect for me. She found me straightforward and simple, and not like those manly men — unclean, she said, so unclean— who were about the place. ‘I would not touch them with my left foot, those fat, moustached fools, those friends of Sham’s. They prefer fair skins. Let them.’ She asked me questions on Hindu sacred texts, started reading the Mahabharata and the Gita regularly. She wished to visit Europe with me. She discussed the education of her children. Often lying by her I wondered whether I was Rama, Saroja’s loved brother, Little Mother’s stepson?

Then one day I remembered the damsels with wide- opened mouths, lying naked and full in Kapilavastu. ‘There were palaces of silver for Summer,’ ran the story, ‘and palaces of sandal for Winter, and palaces of gold when the Young Spring came. Musicians, too, there were and diverse. So that when the Raja Sudhodhana saw the Bodhisattva playing among them, he thought Gautama will be crowned my heir, the king. And never shall he leave the palace, nor know the cry of sickness, the sorrow of death, the totter of old age, the misery of want. The palaces were well guarded, and not a girl of the kingdom was there that could not accomplish the joy of youth.’

I booked my seat on the plane, somewhat secretly, for I had become a great coward. The night before I was to leave, I told Lakshmi. She made such a scene I thought the whole building would know.

‘You eunuch,’ she cried. ‘You lecherous coward!’ I thought she would beat me, but she was still very handsome. I took her in my arms and calmed her.

‘Don’t leave me. What will happen to me?’ she sobbed. ‘Come to me again,’ she begged, and as I covered her she seemed lost in her sorrow and firm passion. ‘I’ll thank you always,’ she cried, laying my small head on her swelling bosom, ‘for you at least treated me with respect. I know you will always be there when I want you. And you know, if ever you need me, I will come and look after you. Sham would be happy if I could make you happy. He thinks you are a helpless fellow and a good friend.’

Strange to say, it was this Lakshmi who saw me off at Santa Cruz. My Indian pilgrimage was ended.

Madeleine had moved to a new house. ‘I could never again live in Villa Ste-Anne,’ she had written to me. The new one was called Villa Les Rochers, for the sloping garden was strewn with brown and white rocks. It was a little farther away from the town, and the house itself was smaller, but the olive trees that went from step to step, up to the gateway, gave the villa a sense of isolation and of abandon. Far away you saw only the Alpilles and the sun somewhere on the Camargue. Madeleine had decided on the house as though she had decided on her own life. ‘There’s no question now of my going to India,’ she had written, and I never asked her why.

How true the unsaid sounds against the formulated, the uttered. Words should only be used by the perfect, by the gods, and speech indeed be made incantatory. For speech is sound, and sound is vibration, and vibration creation. To create would be to know what the creator is, and to claim creatorhood for ourselves is indeed to commit a noumenal sin. Silence is golden, say the Europeans. No silence is the Truth. Maunavyakya Prakatitha parabrahma Tatvam, said Sri Sankara. ‘The publishing of Truth is the vocable of silence.’

The day I arrived was a sad day. I remember it was the seventeenth of October, and a raz-de-marée had risen in the sea, and had dragged a horse and its rider and two bathers on the beach of Cassis away. Our plane was three hours late — what with the changes in the Mediterranean air currents — and Harry was not there at the aerodrome. Life had changed everywhere. I took the bus to Marseille, and took a taxi from there on to Aix. The afternoon was clear as prayer, with a touch of autumnal gold on the hills. Madeleine was writing a letter when I entered. She seemed calm, fresh, and big; it was true, she had become very large. She carried my bags up the garden steps. It was a nice house she had taken, I thought, as she led me to my new room. My books were all arranged neatly, my large table laid against the window. She had burnt sandal-sticks for I could smell them the moment I came in. My mother’s portrait was hung on the wall above my divan.

‘Have a bath quickly, Rama, and I’ll give you dinner at once.’ Her voice was gentle, deliberate, and strange. This time I undid my trunks quickly, hung my clothes and went into the bathroom. ‘This is a funny geyser; he’s so temperamental,’ she explained, and let the water flow. ‘Just remember to turn off the gas when you get in. Otherwise it escapes, and you’d have to crawl out of the bath, like I did one night. We must get a plumber,’ she added, and went back to the kitchen.

I was too tired to think, so I slipped into the bath. When I got out I felt surprisingly fresh. The evening was cool, and I felt young and whole. My breathing seemed less heavy. I was back home.

There was a dining-room in this house. It was downstairs and opened on to the garden, so that you could hear the crickets in summer, and see the fireflies among the olives. The kitchen was to one side, and I could smell rice and tomato again. It was to be risotto as usual, but with a difference: this time she had added curry powder to it.

‘I thought you would like your wretched spices for some time,’ she said. ‘I never know how to cook for you — I never shall.’

The table was laid and she brought the food. There was the same familiar saucepan with the burnt wooden handle, the same squares-and-triangles kitchen oil-cloth, the same bent fork, with a broken recalcitrant tip. I suddenly realized there was but one plate. I stood up and took another out. Meanwhile Madeleine placed the food on the table saying:

‘Rama, will you forgive me if I do not eat? It’s the eighth moon today, and I’ve taken to fasting. I’m going to be a good Buddhist.’ She spoke quietly, undramatically. ‘Poor child,’ she went on, ‘you must be hungry after such a long journey. Rama, serve yourself, and I’ll just go down to the post office and back. I must catch the last mail: it’s for Tante Zoubie.’

She went up to her room, then ran down the staircase and into the garden. It was such a lovely, large evening, with a bunch of stars above me, and the olives shaking with the sea breeze from the south-west. The big cypress at the door stood straight like a redemptor, and the evening was full of birds, sheep, and cries of children. Far away on the other side was the silence of the hills.

I sat at the table and I ate. I concentrated on my food and I was convinced I had to eat. Food is meant for eating; of course it is: ‘OM adama, OM pibama, OM devo varunah Prajapatihi savihannam iharat, anna-pate, annam i hara, ahara, OM iti,’ says the Chandogya Upanishad. But lungs have temperament. My breathing became suddenly difficult. I stopped, however, any exhibition of the extraordinary. I was just the normal Ramaswamy, husband of the Madeleine who taught History at the Lycée de Jeunes Filles, at Aix. There was nothing strange about anything. I had come home from India, and it made no difference to the earth or the air or the olives, or the stars for that matter, that I came from India rather than, say, from Paris or London. True, time exists in clock-hours, in days that you can count, even on the postal calendar in the kitchen — March, April, etc… up to October. The lungs can be very bad, you know, and so you stayed on in India. But Madeleine is Madeleine, the same Madeleine.