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. Maunauyakya 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 dinger 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 balk 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, ahard, 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 Madelaine 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 afr 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.
'Ah, I hope you were not so silly as to have forgotten I'd leave the grated cheese in the kitchen. Oh, Rama!' she exclaimed, like a child. 'Oh, you are still the same old fool.' She pushed the entremets towards me, and the nuts. 'You must get stronger. Now let me have a good look at you. It must be your stay at Kodai- kanal: you look less dark than when you returned from India last time.' I spoke of the X-rays and the blood-test. She went up and found my medicines. 'We won't go to the elephant today,' she decided. 'It's already a bit cold this year. Let us go up to my room.'
Her room was a smaller one than mine, but opened on to the garden, as mine did. A cypress almost touched her window, and you could, as it were, caress it while counting the stars. "This house has no central heating like Villa Ste-Anne, but look what a wonderful fireplace. It is more economical this way, and besides, you will be so much away this year in Paris and London. For me, coming from La Charente, this is enough.'
I looked at the room. The walls were of a yellow-grey and on the table by her bed stood the huge head of a Khmer Buddha. I had this sent from the Musée Guimet. Isn't it beautiful?' She had other, more lovely Buddhas on the walls, especially the one from the Hadda, the Greco-Buddhist one. She had a tanaka too, with ferocious heads, monsters with arms of lions and feet of buffaloes, dhyana-Buddhas and nimbus lotuses, with a serene Bodhisattva seated in the blue middle.
'Oncle Charles bought it for me in Paris,' she explained; 'now I meditate and sleep here. You won't mind your room, will you? Besides, you can work so much better.'
We talked of Saroja's marriage, of Hyderabad and my job.
'This cold country of ours is no good. I am glad the job there awaits you. You must finish your thesis this year. I'll help you, now that the house is small and we are far away from anyone."
I asked news of Catherine.
'She's splendid as a rose, and to see her is to know that hap- piness is possible. Georges just adores her, and you cannot imagine how like a schoolboy he has become. They've got a nice apartment near the Bois, rue Michel-Ange, "deux pièces, cuisine, salle-de-bain". It's some distance for poor Georges to get to Louis-le-Grand, but Oncle Charles has bought them a small Morris he got it through a client who has business in England- and it's Catherine who takes her husband to the Lycée. I'm glad we don't have the car any more. It's not good for your lung, and I am too exhausted to drive a car. Anyway, where's the need? So much income tax the less."
'You look tired. I'll bring you a hot-water bottle-"la Sainte Bouillote", she laughed, and you had better go to bed now. There's an electric heater in your room, and I've put it on the whole afternoon. Go, get undressed, Rama,' she begged.
I went to my room. Looking at my mother's picture I was filled with such pain that I was on the point of sobbing my heart hollow. But I rubbed my eyes carefully, undressed, and like a schoolboy I went to bed. Madeleine brought me my hot-water bottle, drew the light nearer me so that I could read, laid all the recent Revues d'histoire des religions on the table-she had even marked the articles useful for my work-and then sat at my feet playing with the tassels of the bedspread. 'I'm learning Chinese now, and Tibetan, from Lezo. Tibetan is only a form of Sanscrit, but Chinese is really difficult. I want to get to know more of Chinese Buddhism. Besides, some of the best Buddhist texts, as you know, no longer exist in Pali-destroyed by the Muslims when they burnt Nalanda and Vikramasila. The intellectual brilliance of Buddhism has no equal in the world: it's the religion of the modern age. Some Buddhist texts read like a novel by Aldous Huxley-so curiously intellectual, almost perverse. For the European, Truth can only be attractive when it is perverse. Your Dr Robin-Bessaignac is right; since we could not accept God, we had to invent a Mother of God, make her into a Virgin, and then accept her Son and find out how he was born. How simple and beautiful is the birth of the Buddha, in comparison. Maya Devi has been pregnant for nine months. She is going to her mother's house. She has birth-pains, and she stops, holds to the branch of a mango tree in blossom, and the great Buddha is born, like any other, in the normal physiological way. To be normal is to be whole,' she said, and stopped.
I, too, was playing, with the paper cutter-an ivory one I had had for many years and my Revue d'histoire des religions.
"You probably want to look at your magazines,' she said, rising. Tomorrow there's a slight change in the programme. Nowadays I rise like a good Buddhist at dawn, wash and say my mantras. My Buddhas are kind: the early morning meditations are wonderful. I shall speak of it all to you tomorrow."
She came near me, and as she tried to tuck in my bed, I slipped my hands over the smoothness of her hair. It was still golden and true, and mine own. But it did not smell of eau-de-Cologne. And there was no powder on her face, I observed for the first time, and not even the slightest tinge of rouge. I felt helpless- and moved my legs to the other side, towards the hot-water bottle.
'Good night, Rama,' she said at the door, 'and sleep well. "Worry is of the mind," says the Buddhist text. Do not worry, mon ami.'
I fiddled with my paper cutter, went to the window and breathed a little fresh air, and went back to my bed. All night I dreamt of Little Mother and a puppy-dog, playing with her in our Bangalore courtyard. I smelt the monsoon and they put me to bed and gave me some brandy. The doctor came a little later, a fat and angry man, and gave me an injection. The X-ray had something written on it, maybe in Chinese. Georges stood on the table, explaining Prospero to his class. All the students laughed. They were all Indians and they wore black or coloured glasses. They smelt bad and they all seemed sons of Princes.
With the wake of dawn I heard such a grave and long-drawn mantra 'OM DHIH-OM GIH-OM JRIH, that I thought I was in Hardwar, and the Ganges flowing by me. It is beautiful to live, beautiful and sacred to live and be an Indian in India.
The next few months were spent in peace and hard work. We worked together, Madeleine and I, on a task which ultimately, 'I thought, would destroy her theogony: the anthropocentric civilization, whether it be the Purist (or Protestant) the Buddhist (or Jain) must be self-destructive. The abhuman civilizations the Greece of Socrates, the India of the Upanishads and of Sankara, Catholicism (and not Christianity), Stalinism (and not Leninism, Trotskyism or Anarcho-Syndicalism) had permanence, because they were concurrent with the Law, Man is isolate-and in his singleness is the unanimity of the whole: 'when you take away the whole from the whole purnam-what remains is the whot:.' The job is to build bridges-not of stone or of girders, for that would prove the permanence of the objective, but like the rope-bridges in the Himalayas, you build temporary suspensions over green and gurgling space. You must feel the mountain in your nostrils, and know ultimately you are alone with silence.
Death is our friend in that sense-life after life it faces us with the meaning of the ultimate. To be is to recognize integrity. The moral universe insists-whether it be according to Newton or Pascal-on the reality of the external world. That dhira (hero) of whom the Upanishads speak, enters into himself and knows he has never gone anywhere. There is nowhere to go, where there is no whereness. Alas, that is the beautiful Truth and man must learn it-beautiful it is, because you see yourself true. Thus heresy proves the truth-as the world proves me. Buddh- ism proves Vedanta, the Cathars the Church of Christ. Ours was a sort of anonymous collaboration. We spoke in symbols to prove our point. We would often rise in high indig- nation over some abstruse text of heresiatic commentary. Know- ing little Latin, as I did, Madeleine always had the upper hand. Whether Father the Heresiarch de Rodol's 'obumbrare' meant simply the shadow in the etymological sense, as Jean Guiraud explained, or the same as the 'obumbraverat' in: 'Deus non venerat in there for any interpretation we needed. The right would natur- ally be on the side of Madeleine. Sometimes too, and of late, consult dictionaries and patristic commentaries, but also the Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum and Lezo was always there for any interpretation we needed. The right would naturally be on the side of Madeleine. Sometimes too, and of late, Madeleine would easily and quickly lose her temper. On one such occasion she broke out:
"You haven't our academic discipline! How bad your Univer- sities must be to lead an intelligent man like you into such con- fusions. A child of nine in one of our schools would be less muddled.'
I pleaded that neither French nor English were my mother tongue and that I might feel Sanscrit a little more than I did Latin.
"Then you should not have started writing a thesis on a subject so specifically French, and based on Latin."
But I thought you were writing a thesis on the Prajnaparāmātīta Pindartha of Dinnaya,' I hit back.
'I am not writing a thesis. I am studying Buddhism for my own spiritual benefit.' *And I Catharism to prove that I am metaphysically right.' There would be one end to such discussions, especially as Lezo was usually waiting downstairs for one of our evening walks.
Sometimes it would be the shelling of petit-pois that would retain Madeleine, or the buying of Gruyère cheese-'I forgot it this morning, coming back from Collège. You both go on your walk. I shall be a good housewife, and make you nice macaroni with black olives.'
On the whole I think Lezo rather liked these quarrels on dog- ma, as his linguistic help was more often in demand. We used to beg him to stay-especially Madeleine-on rainy, dismal Satur- days when the discussion would have gone on the whole after- noon, and we wished to have some refreshment and repose. 'His presence made the discussion more superficial, so that we never got anywhere, and that is what we ultimately needed. After dinner I would return to my Church Fathers good, serious men, who burnt people singing hymns, but who nevertheless loved their Church well, even if they sometimes loved their callings more. Madeleine would go back to her Prajna-parāmātīta. She always had questions to ask on some Pali or Sanscrit word, and Lezo would demonstrate his knowledge of Pal, Sanscrit, and Chinese with the dexterity of an Indian pandit. (The book has been translated into Chinese by She Hu, and in Tibetan it was included in mDo agrel: a P'ags pa ses rab kyi pa rol tu p'yin pai ts'ig le'er bya pa, which in Sanscrit means, Prajna, paramatita-san- graha-karika'.) 'Lakshmana Bhatta,' I often called Lezo in fun and he liked it, because there were not so many Bhattas in the Indian texts.
'But there are so many in our Brahmin streets,' I once consoled him, 'And Benares is filled with Bhattas.'
'Ah, Benares,' he said, 'near Sarnath, where the Sakyamumi turned the wheel of Law. And he recited with his strange European intonation the whole of the Sermon of Fire. 'Foucher tranclates Chakra as "wheel", but it means in the original Sanscrit the support, the point of being, the withdrawn centre, which comes from the Buddhist idea of the Void. The hole is in the middle of the Wheel-even so is the Void in man. Oh, these European Orientalists!' he exclaimed. 'I must go to India and wander as a Buddhist monk. Then I would understand Bud- dhism, but not till then. No, not till then.'
'I prefer to go to Tibet,' Madeleine put in. 'A country of Devil-worshippers and Devil-dancers,' Lezo teasingly protested. 'Women like Devils!' spat back Madeleine. "They are better than homo sapiens any day.' Then, feeling she had said too much, she retired to the kitchen and to her macaroni or petit-pois.
She came back after a moment and added: 'Cooking is a biological function of woman: it gives respite to her already small brain. If all the phosphorus in our brains were used up in discussion, woman would easily be fooled by man. So she must retire cook macaroni or wash men's clothes-and thus she recuperates her strength. If you want to rule women just let them talk: they will fall into a coma."
'Franco's police know that very well,' said Lezo. 'A woman détenue is just made to laugh and talk, and she quickly exhausts herself. They did that with my sister. When they had allowed her to talk herself out they asked discreet questions, and my sister very discreetly said everything about me. Now she's married to a Franquist. He's Sous-Préfet at Bourgos, the old University town. Do you know it?' he asked, suddenly turning to me.
'Women,' interrupted Madeleine, 'like to hear their own voices and not those of men, however learned.' And she went back to her petit-pois.
I took only one meal a day, despite the doctor's advice. The business of masticating and digesting was, I thought, such a waste of the human element. I had even considered, once when I was younger, eating those herbs that Yogis eat, and do not need to eat anything again, they say, for six months. The performances of man seem always so much nobler when his belly sticks to his spine, that when like a Brahmin of Benares-or like Oncle Charles -rotundity protrudes from his vertical system. The syphon should be a necessary apparatus for such enormous combustion.
I always wondered what it would be like to die with a big belly. It must make you feel less certain of the other world. Gluttony must indeed, as Dante says, lead one to the Inferno Cerbero, fiera crudela e diversa con tre gole canina-mente latra Sopra la gente che quivi e sommersa li occhi ha vermigli, la verba unta e atra e'l ventro largo...
Lezo was, in fact, glowing in girth. The way he was constantly adjusting his trousers round about the waist began to look some- what indecent, to speak the truth. There is, of course, every reason for a poor man to make the best use of the clothes he has, but lechery must be bad for the human form. Madeleine heard through a nun who came to collect subscriptions for an orphanage and never stopped talking, that the seamstress was going to have a baby. 'It will no doubt have the fat lips of the mother, allez, *said the bonne soeur as she took the twenty francs. 'It's no use being learned if one does not know right from wrong.'
'Strange, this world!' exclaimed Madeleine one evening to me. 'You can never predict human behaviour, no more than you can predict the virtue of a cat. When you were away,' she continued, in almost the first personal conversation we had had since my return, 'when you were away, and Catherine came, I was so happy she was going to be here. We were almost brought up together, and though she's just five years younger than me, we have always been like twins; besides, she's a clever girl and was only two classes behind me I could almost say "This is Cather- ine" from the smell of her clothes. And yet how little I knew her.' She became silent for a while, as though taking courage before going any further.
'Doesn't matter,' she went on, 'I will tell you all about it. Georges came every evening as usual, and we went out on walks. Georges will always make a perfect husband, except perhaps for his moments of dull humour. All Slavs have that self-absorbing sorrow, something that we Europeans-I mean we of Western Europe will never know.' Madeleine again stopped and looked at me, as though asking if she should go on.
'Yes, I listen,' I said.
'Well, what devotion little Catherine had for Georges-still has for Georges. It was "Georges, will you eat this?" "You have a bad cold, you must do that." "Georges, you mustn't stay out in the cold too long-you yourself said that arm of yours gives you pain night after night." And what fine dishes she prepared-she is a good cook-cèpes provençals, les olives fargies aux anchois, la Pissaladiera, le chevreau roti et les aubergines sautées. God knows where she'd learnt all these southern dishes. I was glad of all this, for as you know, I hate cooking. And Georges this and Georges that, and "Chéri, you are beginning to cough," and "mon cheri, demain, on fera celle randonée en Camargue, etc., etc...." In fact you never saw such lovers in your life, I thought. I longed for their happiness for myself to be happy at their coming happiness. "Then Catherine went to her Mass every morning before dawn, and sometimes dragged poor Georges from his attic bed- she wanted them to be the perfect Catholic couple. Georges found all this a little encombrant, but I understood Catherine: the more she made Georges a good Catholic-although you would think you could never make a better one, yet, you could in a way -the better her life was going to be. Georges seemed to look forward to a long and fruitful life of work and children. He would now become a Frenchman not only by conviction, but as it were also by right. His children would become French citizens and there would always be a war somewhere or other, and they would fight for France as he had fought for her. Even so, whenever he said "Nous autres Français" it always sounded a little ridiculous, don't you think, and he knew it.' She suddenly stopped and said,
'Are you listening? I don't know why I want to tell you all this.' 'Go on,' I said, nodding my head. 'Of course I am listening."
*Lezo, too, came every evening as usual. His behaviour to- wards me was impeccable: I have been too long among young boys in the Resistance, not to know how to deal with this curious type. Besides, after that one wildness on his part-and the fault was mine, for I should have known men better--I can deal with him as any simple toreador with a bull from our Camargue. But...'
'But?'
... With Catherine it was a different matter. He knew just how to play with her sentiments, as a cat plays with her kittens. He was full of attention for her, but being a close friend of Georges's, and knowing Spanish extravagance, we took no notice of their hide and seek. They played together like children, often in front of Georges, so that being the elder I sometimes had to call them to order, and tell them not to make fools of themselves before Georges. Georges I think somewhat loved this exhibition of childishness, feeling all his tiredness come back to him. He must have thought, well, let her play like this while she could- very soon, this middle-aged professor would sit on her like a grinding machine. There is about the Slavic mind something angelic, simple, exalted, and whole. For Georges a man, or for that matter a woman, is either a saint or the very devil. There is no in between, no nuances of temperament and character." 'After all they are a young people,' I said.
'From India all must look young. If the French are so im- mature for you, what about the Russians?"
And so, Lezo...? I interrupted, trying to bring the conver- sation back on to the impersonal level.
"The hide-and-seek among the olives in moonlight does notc always end in innocence.' Madeleine stopped for a moment and then continued, as though in fact she was talking of herself unknowingly. One day I could not move about much by then, and Georges was busy with some committee meeting at the Collège-Lezo and Catherine were as usual in the garden, laughing and playing about. The fault was mine, probably. I said, "Cathy, you've been doing so much work at home; washing, cooking, sweeping. Don't you think you should take a walk together-say, as far as the elephant?" "You think so?" she asked, perhaps sincerely, for women may have a deeper defensive mechanism than men possess. I said, "Of course, Cathy, and I'm sure Georges would be very unhappy if you didn't go for a walk just because he isn't here. In fact I am sure he would positively be angry with me for not saying this to you." Well, they leftinnocently, throwing grass-stalks at each other, and behaving like children out on a Thursday with their curé. I waited and waited for a long time. They came back very late: it must have been pastning o'clock when they returned. Catherine immediately went to her room on some excuse, while Lezo spoke of a footpath they had taken in Val Ste-Anne and how they got lost. They had to ask someone and they had to wander far, very far, before they came to a hut-and so on. Rama, I was alone, and what experience did I have to warn me of anything? I convinced myself they were speaking the truth-I saw how silent Catherine was, how utterly devoted and almost like an Indian wife withGeorges. I should have been more careful. I am such a fool. week later I found them in each other's arms.
'I happened to come home unexpectedly in the afternoon, as my lesson had been cancelled because of the death of a pupil. It must have been half past two. I entered quietly so as not to disturb Catherine, for she usually had a siesta, and what should I find but Catherine's hair undone, rouge all over her face; Lezo's cravat was pulled to one side, and his belt as usual opened up. "Oh, it's so hot here," he said, as soon as he saw me. "I was passing by and thought I would say hullo to Catherine. She was having her siasta. I said, 'Come and lie in the drawing-room, and we will talk.' She made me coffee, and it made me hotter still. You can be born in Spain, you can have an Andalusian mother, and yet sweat like a bull in summer when the sun shines-even in midwinter. I must have too much sun in me," he finished. Catherine did not say anything. She kicked her legs and mut- tered, "I think I need a wash. Oh, this house is so hot." And she went to the bathroom.
'I did not know how to face Georges that evening. But women have their protective sensibility. Catherine understood what Georges was to her. Nothing was said by anybody. The kitten games of Catherine and Lezo came to a sudden stop. Even Georges remarked one day, "Why have the children become so well-behaved of late?" "Oh," I answered, "there is a time for play and there is a time for work." Catherine was so grateful to me. One morning she left the broom with which she was cleaning the corridor and came and kissed me on the cheek. Fortunately I fell ill the week after, so the story was over. "What a perfect bride she looks!" said Tante Zoubie at the wedding. They are so happy now, she says, it would make the angels weep. Happy, happy, happy. It's now Georges who plays with her. They will soon have a baby and they will both play with it. That is what the world is: 56 évam samsarah.'
'Why did you tell me the story anyway, Madeleine?' 'I wanted the Brahmin, with the clever inversions of his cere- bral system, to explain to me why these things happen.'
L'homme moyen sensuel,' I started, using the banal expression to hide myself from any untoward discussion.
'I cannot understand how Catherine could even touch that bulging red flesh. When Lezo touches me to say " Bonjour," I have to go and wash myself You must have glandular deficiency,' I laughed. "Thank you,' she said, and kept very silent.
"The fact is,' I started again, after a moment, feeling I should not give up the challenge sb easily, "we're not biologically so far from the animal. Love is a game; even peacocks have to play to their mates, and the gejaga bird has to make extraordinary involutions in the air to prove his manliness. A hero is the perfect mate for a tender-hearted woman. The sweeter the woman, the more she needs extravaganza. I know one of the most serious and lovely girls in Paris, who now always reads books on philo- sophy, and refuses parties and balls. She once fell in love with a racing driver, who ultimately killed himself, very nobly, in an accident. He had many lovers, and yet she was the girl he chose, she was so feminine, simple, and virtuous. When he died many women publicly shed tears, but this girl continues to live in her widow's weeds, reading Bergson, Maritain, or Indian philosophy. That is how I met her, chez Dr Robin-Bessaignac. She was a very good student of his at the Sorbonne."
"That is not love,' protested Madeleine.
"What is it then? To be a lovely girl and at twenty-six to mourn the loss of an automobile hero husband so much-and read philosophy to understand what it is all about."
'I suppose it is.'
'Anyway, Georges is thirty-two years old, but he's ill, he has only one arm, and though he may have been heroic and his lost arm was the gift of a young Russian to France, he feels very old. Catherine did not want a confessor or a father-she wanted a mate."
'And so?'
'And so, when it came so damn near of its own accord, she took what she could. However fat his waist may be, Lezo looks like all Spaniards, a hero, a chevalier, with a buckler and a sword; not like a smelly old priest with one arm. That is why the Hindus are right: no man can love a woman for her personal self.'
"Then how does one love?'
'For the Self within her, as Yagnyavalkya said to Maitreyi.' And I continued, 'All women are perfect women, for they have the feminine principle in them, the yang, the prakriti...'
'And all men...?'
... Are perfect when they turn inward, and know that the ultimate is man's destiny. No man is bad that knows "Lord, we be not of this kingdom"." 'And when he does not?'
"He forfeits manhood, as Lezo has, and lives with a seamstress."
And what about the womanhood of a seamstress?'
'For her, Lezo is a hero. She's probably a Communist, and for her all enemies of France are heroes. She will call her child Vladimir Illyitch, or Passionara if she be a girl, and Lezo will dandle the child with a revolutionary song."
'Yes, you are right; I think she is a Communist-anyway she's red all right. The nun said so.'
"You see how wise I am,' I said.
'Yes, Rama Bhatta.' And she laughed as before, with a simple, carefree laugh.
'Some show physical prowess-and with some, their ancestors, generation after generation, have so sharpened the febrility of their cerebral fins that thoughts go involuting and leaping like whales in the Pacific.'
*And some virtuous female Professor admires this involved masculinity, and marries one of them.'
'Oh
'And then?'
"The whale goes back to the sea,' I remarked, and became silent.
"They found a Pacific whale off the coast of Brittany just the other day,' said Madeleine.
'And what happened?'
'It lay dead on the shore."
'I told you so. What did they do with it?'
"They placed it at the Esplanade des Invalides, so that all the Parisiens and Parisiennes could see it.'
'I wonder what his Antarctic ancestors would have said. I hope it teaches the Pacific whales a good lesson."
We had dinner soon after that, and we went back to our work. There was a clear, a pure space between us. Something had hap- pened to Madeleine; I knew it, but I could not name it. In Aix who was there to ask? When I went to Paris maybe Aunt Zoubie would tell me. Aunt Zoubie had lately been struck with a mild attack of paralysis, but I would be bound to visit her in Rouen. Meanwhile life at the Villa Les Rochers moved on in a civilized, almost limpid way. I rarely, if ever, went to Madeleine's room. Whenever I went I could smell incense. Often when I had something urgent to ask her a signature for the postman, or the electricity bill to'pay- Madeleine did not answer me at once; and she would take some time before coming out. Later I hardly ever knocked at her door when anyone came and I needed her help. I kept a small note- book in which I made entries, and she saw them and did what was to be done. I went to the Library often, and I wrote down in the blue book the time I would return. She generally went on walks alone, and when she came back she had real peace on her face. I often heard her in the night, saying some mantra or doing japā, and I wondered where she had gathered so much ritualist wisdom. She spoke with greater and greater authority on Buddhism. Her insight into Buddhism was more psychic, I should say, than religious. She read Sri Aurobindo, too, and found a great deal to approve of in the philosophy of this great philosopher and saint. "This is what the world needs,' she said once, 'but I, I prefer mysteries and things ancient. I shall stick to my bonzes,' she concluded, laughing.
