Raja Rao - The Serpent and the Rope

‘I was in another world, Rama, and what a beautiful world it was. Rama, why must one come back to this?’

‘This one or the other, Madeleine, they’re both worlds,’ I remarked, which did not take the discussion any further.

Spirits came, strange, bewildering in their tongues, sounds, sizes, and specialities — some to wash and whirl, others to sound nostril and dance; some making noises like the turning of a quern, and speaking as if their voices came from hollows of the bone; some talked in French, others in Hindi or Tibetan, but they all seemed destitute, utterly helpless. I did not see them much, for I just did not care, but could feel them behind doorways, or between the sink and fireplace in the kitchen; they sat on the dustbins, they sounded from trees; they chattered, they talked, they became flame and walked in front of you; small, short creatures, they begged you to have desires, then they showed the red or the pink of your desires — they spoke to Madeleine and to me, but with me they seemed at once arrogant and ashamed. Sometimes I would say to them ‘Get out!’ If they did not understand English or French I shouted to them in Sanskrit or Kanarese, and these often seemed to have greater efficacy. They leapt like monkeys. And sometimes when Madeleine talked to them in her room, I just wanted to howl, to weep.

But the twenty-ninth day soon came nearer, and the house which was hot as fever began to grow cooler; gentler sounds came, tenderer, and the colours of the spirits became more refined — you saw more mauves and greens, and you often thought them a wisp of cloud or petal of sky-flower. The music had more elevated notes, and the spirits seemed to waft unbelievable perfumes, like those of roses or lotuses. You heard the sound of mountain birds, and they seemed more familiar to you, they came beside you, not in front of you, and had gracious forms. They looked like deer or small, sleek horses. Some floated and flew, like swans musical. Madeleine’s delight was deep and grave. She just felt the world was spread out before her, and there was no thought or desire she could not ask that the gods would not accomplish. They came less frequently, however, than the other spirits, but the world changed as from monsoon to the Dussera festival. You could see elephants in procession, the sword of kings, and the Lotus of the Throne; and maybe soon, very soon, the Buddha seated on the Jewel of the Nine-Rays.

Joy, if I had ever truly seen on Madeleine’s face, I saw it then. She marked thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three days on her door, as our milk-women do with cow-dung on the walls, to show how much milk we have taken. Virtue was flowing back into the world. The ‘pale-gold light’of the subtle worlds filled the valley of Aix; the earth floated on its own light. With the thirty- sixth day Madeleine looked as if she could last no longer. Her eyes were deep set and she could not eat much. Whatever she ate she threw out, and for a day or two she just drank Vichy water. I added a little camphor and honey to it, quoting the texts to make it taste sweet and wholesome. I gave her honey and hot water constantly. When the thirty-eighth day came, she was unable to walk about. But she smelt like a thousand-petalled jasmine, or like the blue-lotus. I liked sitting beside her and feeling the sweet breath of her presence. She looked a saint: I worshipped her.

I gave her the sainte-bouillote, but now this too she discarded. It was too artificial, she said. So I strewed some lilies and marguerites on her bed.

‘Oh this, this is perfect,’ she said, ‘but not lilies, please; they remind me of First Communion.’ And she continued with her ‘OM DHIM-OM GIH-OM JRIH’. She slept very well indeed.

On the fortieth day she would not take the honey and water.

‘Then take lemon and water, if you will,’ I pleaded. ‘Even Mahatma Gandhi took lemon and water.’

‘Let me follow my own gods.’

I understood and went back to the kitchen.

On the forty-first day she woke up an hour earlier — that is, about one o’clock — and sat in austere meditation till six. I heard no sounds or noises any more. I felt a great, true, compassionate presence in the house. I felt lighter, my breathing improved. At six, while I was in my bath, I heard a strong, singing, superterrestrial gong go, a long chanting, waving, unsilencing, universal sound. ‘The Palace of Dhamma is hung round with two networks of bells,’ says the Mahasuddasana Suthanata. The earth became earth, trees became trees, the sound of tramways became normal; the speech of men became crude and simple, the milk of Monsieur Béguin was actual, we paid our electric bills, and the newspapers came in; Madame Jeanne had a headache and smelt bad; when I went down to Aix, I smelt the acridity of tobacco and dust in the air.

That evening Madeleine gave me a bitter orange to rub on my chest, first one, then a second one, and then a third. For twenty-one days I was to rub thus, and my fevers and evil breath would be taken away from me. For Madeleine had had a vision between eleven o’clock on the fortieth day and then on the forty-first, it was made clear to her: an Arab doctor with beard and authority appeared to her in her dream. ‘Twenty-one days and bitter oranges on the chest,’ he said.

I did not believe it, of course. As days passed, nothing happened. I only saw the birds were even more familiar with Madeleine: sparrows came to eat from her hands, owls flopped near her windows, and she took them back and laid them on some precise tree.

But the tree, it is true — the Bodhisat Pine — put on new shoots, and it was unbelievable. Madeleine gave water to Madame Jeanne for her second child, which had very bad asthma. The asthma stopped; Madame Jeanne herself assured us of this. Madeleine made me visit the ‘Black Madonna’. ‘She must once have been a Buddhist Tara, a Druidic goddess. I now know her name — and even her epoch. Oh, Rama, how wonderful it is to live in the world!’ she said, as we sat before the chapel of the ‘Black Madonna’.

The ‘Black Madonna’, I might say, looked Byzantine, with her long nose, refined hands, and dark, slant, oriental eyes. Looking at the quivering blue of the Alpilles and the Durance flowing white at our feet, I was reminded of Uttararamacarita and chanted out to Madeleine:

‘Etat tad eva hi vanam punar adya dṛṣtaṃ

yasminn abhūma ciram eva purā vasantaḥ

āranyakāç ca gṛhiṇaç ca ratāh svadharme

samsarikeṣu ca sukheṣu vayaṃ rasajnāh.

Ete ta eva girayo viruvanmayūrās

tāny eva mattaharṇāni vanasthalāni

āmanjuvanjulalatāni ca tāny amūni

nirandhranīlaniculāni sarittatāni.

Meghamāleva yac cāyam arād api vibhāvyate

giriḥ Prasravaṇaḥ so’yam yatra Godāvari nadī.’

‘What does it mean?’

‘Kim idam apatitam adya Ramasya?’ I said, as if I were talking to Madeleine in Sanskrit.

‘Which means…?’

‘What’s happened to Rama?’ I answered, and continued,

Cirād vegārambhi prasṛta iva tīvro viṣarasaḥ

kutac cit saṃvegāt pracala iva çalyasya çakalaḥ

vraṇo rūdhagranthiḥ sphuṭita iva hṛnmarmani punar

ghanibhūtaḥ çoko vikalayati māṃ nūtana iva.

Madeleine still sat on the slab between the chapel and the road. Now and again a pine-cob fell on the chapel roof, and rolled noisily into the gutter below. The day was very warm for a mountain afternoon in February and singing like the honeybee. I continued to recite Bhavabhuti, as if I were explaining something to Madeleine.

‘ekaḥ saṃprati nāçitapriyatamas tām adya Rāmaḥ kathaṃ