I STAYED at the Hotel d'Angleterre. It opened on to the north, and from my room the Pic du Midi seemed but a leap, a touchable stretch of murmuring, unsubsiding green. From the mornings the mist rose and floated about the sun, then hid itself like a serpent, and by afternoon great big trails of cloud coloured the sky. The evenings were intimate-and as September was cold, there were not too many people on the Promenade des Pyrénees. Life seemed as though reality had spread itself out with a pneumatic curve, and I and the moun- tain were points in some known awareness. The sun, when he did set, had a familiarity that I had never observed either inf the Himalayas or in the Alps, as if he was a private planet that revolved at our command, for our benefit, and to our entire knowledge. The sun knew you and you knew the sun, and when he set it was just like a father, a friend leaving you, telling you you had just to call and he would come, if you needed him. No wonder that under this familiar sun Don Quixote thought the windmills were knights or that d'Artagnan was the valiant knight of France.
By day my lungs were filled with the sun's kindness, but when night came, and in the darkness the valley rose and filled the air, there was a sense of immensity, of a truth that was hid but too long; one felt that the sun indeed had cheated us, had made us characters of a commedia dell'arte, that night was a vacancy which no sun could ever fill, no valley ever bear. There was an absence that seemed familiar; known, seeable but not with these eyes, knowable but not with the mind; something young, and of a single elevated melody. The château of Henry IV might be early Renaissance, but there was a Rajput touch about Pau, something of Chitor, and a queen that would sing of a Rathor. Dreams, too, I had, wonderful muslin-like dreams, made of purest cotton white, and beneath which shone breasts "ike the down of doves. I could hear the whole night full of song, and sometimes I would wake myself beating time with my hands, and feel warm with the coming sun of India.
Khelatha, nanda kumar,- Kumararé
He plays, does he, son of Nanda He plays in Brindaban.
How very far seemed Madeleine at such moments. In fact she had said to me that if the X-ray were unsatisfactory and the doctors had the slightest fear it was serious, I had just to send her a wire and she would come down immediately. Otherwise, she was going to be driven to Paris by Oncle Charles-for Catherine was now to think of getting married. She had to be taught how to dress, and even how to use lipstick, and how to make up; and Madeleine was supposed to buy her the right dresses, take her to .the right hairdressers, and buy her the right handbags and ear- rings. There was to be a ball at the Hôtel de Ville, and Oncle Charles wanted her to be beautiful for the occasion; he himself had a special suit made. For nothing in the world would I have liked Catherine to miss her ball-or not to be pretty enough. for she was a lovely girl-and have her possible marriage put off because one piece of my body, and a small portion of it, round as a lamb's head, would not pump properly. Therefore when Dr Drager gave me the result of the X-ray I was so happy I almost sang with the sun, and wired Madeleine that the report gave no need for alarm; good luck for Catherine's ball!
Two days later there came a beautiful letter from Madeleine. She had had terrible dreams the first few days-of serpents and elephants and of India, and she was saying to me, 'Take me away from here, away to Grandmother!' And when she went to Arras, it was not the same house, nor was it Grandmother there but her father standing, dressed as an Indian soldier. The whole thing was terrible, and someone was cremated somewhere, and Madeleine left the Cathedral a well-dressed Hindu bride with kunkum on her forehead and her ear pendants touching her jaws. But my wire had put an end to her worries: she immediately started thinking of the ball, and she and Catherine drove down in Oncle Charles's car to Arras and paid a yisit to Grandmother. Grandmother had treated Madeleine as though she had never left Rouen and as if Madeleine had never been married. 'When do you go back to Paris?' she had asked. She wanted to believe that nothing had changed. She gave Madeleine a chain that her father had had made when he was engaged, and which was to be given at Madeleine's engagement. "Take it, my child and be happy. I am old, and one never knows what can happen to an old thing of eighty-seven. After a moment's silence she had added:'And when you get married, there's that diamond brooch that your father brought when he came back from Turkey, after having constructed some railway there. It is Arabian, and they say it brings happiness to the wearer.'
'Grandmother showed it to me,' continued Madeleine, 'Oh, it is so lovely, Rama, with black beads at the bottom, and a half-moon diamond and sapphire setting at the top. How I wished I could have worn it immediately for you. I will at Aix. The days are so long without you, my love, and during the nights for some reason I have wanted to howl, to cry. Maybe it was only an anxiety, a feminine anxiety about your state of health, for last night I had such wonderful sleep. All evening I had talked of you to Tante Zoubie and to Catherine. I spoke especially of the respect you show to me-for you, a woman is still the other, the strange, the miracle. You could never show the familiarity European men show towards their wives. You worship women even if you torture them. But I like to be tortured and to be your slave.'
No, of course I did not want a slave. I wanted a companion of pilgrimage, for if you gaze long at the mountain, where after twist on twist of the bridal path the bells ring and the evening of worship has come, you want to lie at the feet of God together and unalone. Oh, to go to God and alone....
During the day I often worked on my Albigensians Strange, so strange it seemed to me, that after Indian non-dualism had passed through different countries at different epochs of history men came to affirm just the oppopite-that instead of Advaita, where both duality,, and contradiction are abolished-men affirm that purity is not of the flesh, and so leap into the flame like Esclarmonde de Perelha. For in denying the flesh you affirm its existence. Just as thought cannot be transcended but has to be merged in that which is the background of thought, neither can evil be destroyed, but can only be merged into that from which it arose; the essence of evil, the root of evil, can only be the spring of life. Dostoevsky said that the tyranny of two and two making four was terrible-to think man could never escape it! But if Dostoevsky had studied the theory of numbers he would have known how all numbers merge into Zero, from which they arose. There cannot be how could there be?-a tyranny of Zero. The absurd is the escape, the escape into phenomena of an urge for the noumenal. You cannot be happy and be a man. You can be Happiness or be Man. For Man and Happiness, these be One.
To be pure in the world is like being a human being when you are Man. It is like when India was under British rule and Indians carried British passports-Indians, I was told, had to say they were British at every European frontier. Sometimes an ignorant policeman would stop and say: 'But you can't be British,' and tried to find the meaning of his statement in his book of rules. Finding nothing there, he would say: "You can't be britannique,' and yet he would let you go, for his rules never told him what to do. What is beyond logic must be the truth, thought Dostoevsky, like that frontier guard. But Truth may be simpler. You can never be a Cathar, a pure; you have to be purity. When there is purity there is no you. That is the paradox, and neither Christianity nor Islam have ever been able to transcend it.
The Cathars took this docetism from a mixture of Buddhist psychology and Zoroastrian dualism. Manicheanism had its origin not in Indian thought but when it re-passed through Persia. (After all Mani was a Persian by birth though he had been to India and was profoundly influenced by Indian thought.) In fact the origin of dialectic might itself be the Ahuramazda. (For Plato, evil was about as true as it is to the Indian to-day-a thing to be expiated with a dove or a coco-nut.) But wifen Light and Darkness play against one another you have the hero, the saint. Strange that Nietzsche should have evoked Zarathustra, from which arose Hitlerism. The Parsees sometimes remind one of the Zinu Indians-the best tribal society is also the most moral one. There, good and evil are distinct, known categories of phenomena like the night and the day, sun and moon, monsoon and summer. In the whole Parsee community for a century no man has been committed for murder, they say, but nor has any man been known to rise to the heights of many a Hindu sage. Parsee honesty has led them to banking, just as it led the Quakers to make chocolates. If the Cathars had remained they would have built a city of steel, in which virtue and vice would have been tested by electro-magnetic oscillographs. And inside you would have seen beautiful men and women walk through well-heated corridors, almost naked; and they might have produced children in crucibles, and through chemical tests created the Cathar that would have no evil thought or baccilli. Only when he went out-when he crossed the iron wall-would he catch cold, and be sold to a prostitute. The Cathars created the noblest communist society of the western world.. No wonder therefore, I argued, that early Buddhism was fought against by Hinduism, which ultimately defeated Buddhist moralism and integrated Buddhism into itself so that today one does not know in what way Mahayana differs essentially from Vedanta. Similarly Catholicism, with its virile tradition that came not only from the Church but a great deal from the pagans too, had such truth about it that had Catharism not been de- stroyed European humanity might have been. The war was not between Christianity and the Cathars, but between the living principle of Europe-from the time of Homer on to the present day and this defeatism of life, against the endura and the slow death: Darwinism may not only be a biological principle, it may well be a spiritual one too. The Bhagavad Gita, however Gandhiji might interpret it, is an affirmation not of the good but of Truth. Truth can take no sides--it is involved in both sides. Krishna is the hero of the battle, but seemingly a hero greater than he is Bhisma, the great warrior. Yet Bhisma's courage was Krishna's gift. Krishna fought himself against himself, through himself, and in himself, and what remained is ever and ever himself the Truth., The Cathars were the Theosophists of the thirteenth century. If I had been a contemporary I would have joined Simon de Montfort, not for the love of money or of glory, not even for an indulgence-I would rather have fought against indulgences than against the Cathars but I would have fought for the clear stream of truth that runs through Roman Catholicism. There's always a Karna and an Uttara in every battle, whether their names be changed to Innocent III or Hugue de Noyers, Bishop of Auxerre, *ce prélat guerrier, apre au gain... ce pourvoyeur de bachers....' It was the same battle between Pascal and the Jesuit Fathers.
Pau, with the purity of its air and the intimacy with oneself it gave because one could see and participate of space-allowed me, strange as it may seem, an insight into Christianity as noth- ing else, so far, had done. It was from here that Henry IV, that noble Prince, went over from the Protestant side to the Catholic, for he didn't want the French to become bankers, he wanted them to be saints and men of heroic thought. And Hitler's enemy was not Churchill alone, but verily, Saint Louis and Henry IV as well. France would one day have to become a monarchy: Georges, that strange Russian fanatic, was right. If you knew and loved France truly you rould only be a royalist, even if the Bourbons committed all the crimes of humanity, and poor Monsieur Vincent Auriol did not. Despite all the sins of Pope Innocent III, or later on of Pious XII with his pact with the Fascists, it is the papacy and not the British House of Commons, as people believe, that has saved Europe from destruction. The Resistance created a spiritual climate in which the abstract research of the Existentialists, those crypto-Catholics, was made possible. And the inspirer of the Resistance was not some Rousseau, it was Péguy-and Jeanne d'Arc. And so on....
France alone has universal history. Every battle of France is a battle for humanity. India is free to-day not because of Jeremy Bentham but because of Napoleon. Napoleon was not, as historians think, a child of the encyclopedists, but of those superstitious Catholics of the maquis. He made himself an Emperor, by the grace of God, anointed by the Church of St Peter.
India has no history, for Truth cannot have history. If every battle of France has been fought for humanity, then it would be honest to say no battle in India was ever fought for humanity's sake. Or if fought, it was soon forgotten. Krishna fought against Bhisma by giving Bhisma courage. Mahatma Gandhi fought against the Muslims by fighting for them. He died a Hindu martyr for an Indian cause. He died for Truth.
Lezo was my constant companion in Pau. He had been to Biarritz to visit his friends, and heard I was in Pau-perhaps I had told him myself. I saw him walking along the Promenade des Pyrénées, with his bent and learned air, and no sooner did he see me than he ran to me as a schoolboy to his master. After that he made me visit several of his refugee friends, the Cathars who had left because of the new Inquisitor. Little as I approved of the Cathar heresy, I would not join Franco or fight for this jackal royalist. I was 'corrupted' by noble socialist ideals, and my Monarchy would be the ideal society of castes and functions equally distributed. I would have cooked for Enfantin and for Saint Simon, but I would have shouted 'Vive le Roi! A stupid idea indeed.
Lezo and I discussed Buddhism a great deal. His learning was almost alarming: he could quote Chinese, Japanese and Indian texts with a facility that astonished me. He not only quoted, he seemed to understand. He also knew modern India and Mahat- ma Gandhi. I was always introduced to his Basque friends as 'ce monsieur qui vient du pays de Gandhi'. Lezo said to me one day, 'You know, as a student in Germany I became a vegetarian for a trial period. I shall try it once again when I get back to Aix. I want to go to India, a Buddhist mendicant."
Of Madeleine we almost never talked. He mentioned her only once to ask if she would soon be in Aix. I told him yes, in two weeks.
I did not propose to Lezo, interesting as it might have been, that he should come along with me as I went visiting the various Cathar sanctuaries, day after day, talking to the peasants and to heads of monasteries. The Albigensian traditions, I had heard, still remained alive everywhere. They even spoke of a mysterious cave where the Cathars had hidden their treasures, and on some nights one could see on that particular hill near Ornolac a bright star shine, of a blue that touched more the red than the yellow. Shepherds still saw it from their hills, and when you saw it you automatically said a Pater Noster, for it was some soul from be- neath, some heretic, who must at last be going to heaven. I, who have a feel of presences in places historic, I should have liked to have looked on a pure, a Cathar. I am sure I would have loved him as I loved the Buddhists. But Lezo was too crude for my sensibilities. I did not want merely to write a thesis, but to write a thesis which would also be an Indian attempt at a philosophy of history. I wanted to absorb more than to know.
I felt splendid, and my weight had gone up so quickly that Dr Drager laughed and called me 'le malade imaginaire'. Of course he did not believe it, it was only to give me good cheer. He gave me the new X-ray photographs and told me to have myself examined every three months.
'With modern medicine,' he said, 'phthisis is as much a superstition as sprue after the discovery of Folic acid. Folic acid, as you know, was discovered recently, just about the beginning of the war. Actually it was one of your own countrymen, an Indian, who discovered it,' he said, as though it were enough for me to know I had nothing to fear: I should be cured.
The plan to travel down to Languedoc was an old promise I had made myself, which Madeleine was eager that I should follow up before I started writing my thesis. On our first visit to the Basque country two years before we had passed through the Cévennes, but she had been so unhappy that we did not stop anywhere to see anything. But this time I would see the scarred Church of Béziers in which seven thousand men, women and children were put to flame, I would visit Narbonne and see the monasteries near by. I would, of course, visit Carcassonne and see the register of the heretics, in which they were named, and the day they went up the pyre shown. It was going to be interesting indeed. I left Pau not on a bright day, but when autumn was already showing signs of an early winter. Languedoc, however, was beautiful, with cypress and heather and hawthorn, and the Garrigues had a severe beauty that you could not get in soft Provence. I visited Sète, for Madeleine so loved the Cimetière Marin, and I could never forget that beautiful passage of his autiobiography where Paul Valéry speaks of his native city:
'Je suis né dans un port de moyenne importance, établi au fond d'un golfe, au pied d'une colline, dont la masse de roc se détache de la ligne générale du rivage.... Tel est mon site originel, sur lequel je ferai cette réflexion naïve qu je suis né dans un de ces lieux ou j'aur aimé de naître.'
Montpellier, as ever, was beautiful with its Arc de Triomphe and the Panorama of the Perou. But I was anxious to get home: perhaps I could drive on and arrive that night and be able to keep Villa Ste-Anne open for Madeleine. How happy she would be! I passed through Nimes towards the evening, and it was so dark at the Pont du Gard I could only hear the deep roamings of the river. I was worried about not having brought my keys, then remembered Madame Jeanne always had a pair. By nine o'clock I was at Aix. Madame Jeanne was already in bed but she had been to Villa Ste-Anne and had cleaned up everything for Madame. 'I have left the mail on Monsieur's table,' she told me, giving me the keys. I was happy to be back. I was going to be happy again.
The bull was almost roaring through his nostrils as I climbed up. I gave him grass and went in for more information. Villa Ste-Anne was so familiar. As I undressed to wash, I saw my suitcases still in the corner. I shut them away in my cupboard. The past is past and the past is history. Yes, I would be happy with Madeleine. I went over to my room to see the letters; there were five from India, and one from Paris. I made myself a hot chocolate, prepared a hot-water bottle and slipped in slowly to my bed. I was comfortable. The letters from India intrigued me. Little Mother was full of hope. She had just heard that the University were expecting me the next summer. A formal resolution had been passed about the vacancy, which had to be kept open till my return. Obviously I had good friends in the Senate. She would be happy to welcome Madeleine to India. Of course we would have to stay in a more *European house, with butlers and a "commode" and all that'. She thought Saroja would be a good friend to Madeleine. Saroja always seemed lonely and sad. Sukumari on the other hand had such vitality! She would soon pass her matriculation- no doubt in the first class-and join the University. Little Mother imagined me already, I am sure, a Professor at the University, with Sukumari as my pupil. I would drive Little Mother back home from the College and she would come and speak to Madeleine in her childish broken English, which she would have learnt by then, for she proposed starting on her English lessons soon. Sukumari was to be her teacher. She hoped the toe-rings were of the right size; she did not know European feet, or she would have taken them to a goldsmith and had them all ready for Madeleine. 'With affectionate blessings to my son Rama. Vishalakshi,' she signed.
Saroja's letter was one of despair. She said she must come to Europe and continue her studies: she could not live another year in the house. Since Father's death it was a river of tears, and nothing else. Now even Grandfather Kittanna was dead. There were no elders left. I, I was very far away. I had only to make up my mind, and all would be well. She would be no burden on me, and she would be such a good sister-in-law to Madeleine. She knew Montpellier had one of the best medical schools in the world, and maybe I could get her a scholarship there.... Saroja and Sukumari always thought there was nothing their brother could not accomplish.
There was an instinct in me perhaps an instinct of self- preservation, something mysterious and unnameable-which was happy at the thought of Saroja at Villa Ste-Anne; it might just add that steadiness of a sister's sensibility, which would give me a centre to radiate from We all seek such an exterior point for ourselves a party, a teacher, a father, a confessor-but in, India, with our joint-family system, it has become a pyramid of many different shapes of a triangle, and we equalize each other's vagaries with our own steadiness. Especially a sister, she with the woman in her without the woman's demands, she in whom family pride and devotion made of you a god, she could make the un-understandable known, the mysterious simple and reverential. Besides, Saroja had a perfume that would fill my days and my nights the perfume of the body breaking into the simple principle of womanhood.
I was happy, very happy at the thought, though I knew she would never come. In any case we could not afford it. Yet I almost saw her with her white sari and her large kunkum on her forehead, her eyebrows meeting over her nose, and the bent gait of a deer. Her hand on my head would cure me; it would take the evil out of my lung.
The next letter was from Pratap. It spoke with such trust in my power to change his fiancée's heart. He said that from the reports he had heard my brief visit had been most promising. My affirmation of Indian values had found an echo in the young lady's heart. She who had never come down to the prayers in the sanctuary below was full of song and worship now. The Mother was surprised. The Mother had wondered if I could come again -but I had already gone to Hardwar.
"There is a further truth I could not tell you in Allahabad. Savithri seems to have found interest in a young Muslim boy in London. It may be absurd in the year 1915 to be shocked with this, but the Mother is very orthodox, and of course there could be no question of a marriage. The Father is a weak person-he goes wherever the family pulls. Besides, he can never say no to anything Savithri wants to do. The old rogue, I have reasons to believe, is not particularly enamoured by my attainments: how could a ruling prince (of however small a state) be satisfied with a petty Jagirdar, whatever his prospects? I think therefore your persuasions would be of immense help to a helpless fellow like me. I just do not know what to do.
'I told the Mother, or rather I sent word to her through my own mother, that if Savithri could be persuaded to see more of you it might help. She is only nineteen and she does not know France. It would be wonderful of you to invite her. If this does not inconvenience you in any way how very grateful I should be. You are like a brother to me. And forgive me.
'Yours affectionately, PRATAP.'
The next letter, too, was from him. It was a hurried note to say Savithri had left by boat this time, because the doctors thought her heart was not good enough yet for air travel. The S.S. Maloja would touch at Marseille on October the third. Could I meet her there, and perhaps she could spend a day or two with me and my wife? Gratefully Yours, etc., etc. The last letter was one from Savithri herself. It was posted from Port Said, and simply stated that her mother had given her my address, and that she would be happy to see me in Marseille if I had a moment to spare. She did not say whether she would stay with us or not. 'It was wonderful seeing you in our home. The vulgarity of the surroundings I hope did not hurt your sensibilities. We in the north are new to civilization. I want to see you. May I come to see you? I want to know France. I want to know India.
"Yours very sincerely, Savithri.'
I have kept that letter to this day. It was written on one of those white thick P & O notepapers, with the flag on the left, and not much space to write on elsewhere. But it was a good letter, I felt. It brought me news.
Somehow I felt Saroja herself was coming.
The last letter in my mail was from Oncle Charles. Madeleine and Catherine, he had himself driven down to Paris. He was happy to see them both so close to one another.
"What a beautiful couple you make,' continued Oncle Charles, 'and how Zoubie's heart and mine are filled with gratitude that our daughter for Madeleine is like my own daughter-should have found such an asylum of peace and elevation in the home you have given her. If Christian prayers mean anything to you, I pray to God that he fulfil you in your life, and that your noble competence may find an adequate use in your own ancient and great land. Already India is playing a big role in international affairs. I am sure a person of your stature-I almost said, of so distinguished a family will be called to places of eminence and of service. And I know how very devotedly and with what dis- tinction you will serve your country. Thanks to Madeleine, I am sure Catherine will find a worthy husband. Already I have two or three young men in mind. But Catherine is difficult; like Madeleine, she's frightened of men. In fact we need another Ramaswamy in the household.
*Bien affectueusement.
'ONCLE CHARLES." For a man who had been sick, such a flood of affection and regard could only be most consoling. What was more consoling still was that I would see Madeleine again in the morning. I would see her young, luminous face, as the train came into the Gare St-Charles. I would buy her a bouquet of azaleas, like the one Henri the taxi-driver had bought her, and would bring her home like a new bride.
Suddenly my whole life seemed centred in Madeleine. There was no spot on earth or air which did not contain her presence and which isolated in time, was not going to be ever and ever mine. I had not forgotten about Esclarmonde, but who could know the future? Astrologers did, and they had spoken of many children. My lung ached but I forgot it-I was thinking of Madeleine. The night would soon be over and morning would come.
I had to rise at four to meet her train. The cocks were still very active and the day was fresh as a pomegranate as I let go the brakes and was off to Marseille. The whole of the earth smelt of roses.
The next morning, I brought coffee to Madeleine. Collège was beginning. There was so much to fill a year with-and a life.
George, came along in the afternoon. He had been spending his usual fortnight with Father Zenobias-the twisting hand, his flashing eyes, the way he 'threw back his head now and again, showed that Georges was like a good horse, champing for a ride and a leap. He had been discussing the theory of evil in the Church, and was sorry I had not been present during those remarkable talks at the monastery.
'You know, Ramaswamy,' he said, 'the evenings were full of light and silences. Father Zenobias and I spent hour after hour; he digging his grave with his long blunt spade, and I standing under the giant oak in the yard, talking away of the majesty of the Christian Dogma. It is not often that you see the beauty of man when he has the means of existing in splendour-it is when a human being touches the cup of misery that you see the fine lines on his anguished face. The Face of Christ on the Cross must have been more luminous than when He preached in Galilee. Evil is fascinating, for without it there would be no good, no world, no Christ. I can now understand the temptation of Lucifer. One can be drunk with evil as one cannot be drunk with good.'
'Naturally,' I retorted, 'for in evil you seek good, but in the good you are goodness yourself. To be drunk you need the drunkard and he who sees himself drunk. You remember the saying in the Bible-the right hand must not know what the left hand has done? The good cannot know itself, any more than light can know itself."
"Then how does light know itself?'
I said: 'It is like a man who is going to Paris, and who has been telling himself, "Still four hundred and fifty kilometres, I am in Dijon; two hundred kilometres, I am in Auxerre; fifty eighty kilometres, I am at Fontainebleau." And suddenly he reaches the Porte de Vanves, and says, "Only seven kilometres." Then when he enters the city, he asks someone, "Monsieur, Monsieur, can you tell me where Paris is?" And if the person is a clever Parisian-and all Parisians are clever he will say, "It's still thirty-seven kilometres from here, Monsieur. You go straight down this Boulevard, then you turn right. You see that road just where the sun shines? You go straight up it, past the aerodrome and the bridge, and the long cobbled streets, with poplars on both sides, and then a valley again, a cemetery, a station and the city." But a few minutes later the visitor comes to a gendarme; asks him. "Parish Why this is Paris, Monsieur." Paris is not there, Georges, because Auxerre is or Porte de Vanves is; Paris is there because it is Paris. You do not ask in Paris where Paris is-nor, once in Paris, do you know anything else but Paris. All distances, as you know, my friend, start from Notre-Dame, and Paris begins at zero."
'But Paris is made of the Etoile and the Buttes-Chaumont. Paris is made of the Louvre and the Usines Renault. Paris is not a whole. The whole exists because the parts exist."
'Now, now, let us be logical! The part implies the whole but in the mind of no man does the whole-the complete imply the incomplete. "When the whole is taken from the whole, what remains is the whole," say the Upanishads. Resurrection is not because death is, resurrection is because life is. Nobody has died. Nobody will die. Death is just a negative thought."
'Oh, you are at it again-at your Vedanta. Maya is Maya to Maya Maya cannot be where Brahmin is.'
'But,' interjected Madeleine, 'was not Maya also the name of the mother of Gautama, the Buddha? Did it not mean, Truth was "born" to illusion? And because Truth came into existence Maya died, the illusion died, and so the mother of the Buddha died.'
"That is what Oldenberg or someone like him says. No, that is not how it is to be understood. Truth, which always is, and is therefore never born and can never manifest itself in any way, cannot have a mother or a father. Maya, on seeing the Truth born from herself that is, man in seeing his own true nature as Truth-sees that illusion has never existed, will never exist. So Maya did not die; Maya recognized truth being truth; Maya was as such nothing but the Truth. Who has ever seen nothingness-- Nirvana? The Void is only the I seen from within as the not-I. Evil is a moral, I almost said an optical, reality. Optics is no more real than gravitation is real. A certain distance beyond the earth there is no gravitation. A certain torch in the cerebral nerve can change your optics, and make you see long things short or short things long, as the surgeon wants. The relative cannot prove the absolute. The moral reflex is, after all, a biological reflex.'
'And God?' whispered Georges, in exasperation. He had led me somewhere in Montpalais, and he had come prepared, after penitence and prayer, to finish off his work. 'God after all is. And God is good.'
'God is, and goodness is part of that is-ness. The good can only be the true, as the Greeks say."
"Then what makes the night?'
'Absence.'
'And day?'
'Itself."
There was a long, unsteady silence, like some silence on a mountain. If one went to the east or to the south, in either direction the snow was deep, and one could see the avalanche go down on the other side of the valley. It was now not a question of the path, but of instinct-something in the silence, not in the geography of the mountain, that spoke. Truth is withdrawn- ness. God is affirmation. Georges, who saw the avalanche, stood fascinated. He only heard the stream murmur below, and the flight of birds.
*Cézanne, you know,' I went on, 'knew Baudelaire's La Charogne by heart. And Rainer Maria Rilke, who was deeply moved by the works of Cézanne-I don't understand painting, but I admire Rilke-well Rilke said, "The presence of La Charogne has added a new dimension to human understanding." Indeed, the recognition of evil is the beginning of sainthood. Do you remember those terrible lines of Baudelaire?
Alors, o ma Beauté, dites à la vermine Qui vous mangera de baisers, Que j'ai gardé la forme et l'essence divine De mes amours décomposés.'
"There you are!" said Georges, happy.
"Yes, there I am, and that is why Rainer Rilke got lost amongst the angels, and gave his body such importance that when he fell mortally ill, he would not allow a doctor to touch him. The holiness of the body is like the duty of the devadasi-it functions within its own dimension. The body can no more be holy than the mind be pure.'
1 The temple dancers who are dedicated to the gods. They belong to the concubine class. 'So?'
'So man must seek not purity of mind and body but to be purity itself. Man must not wish to taste the sweetness of sugar like that old Bishop Madhavacharya said in the thirteenth century-I always think of someone sucking a bonbon!--but one must become, like the Vedantins say, sweetness itself."
Who is there to know it is sweet?'
'Are you serious?' I asked.
'Serious? Why yes, of course.'
"Then come,' I said. I knew the path in the mountain. I had in my feet the knowledge of the avalanche, I had in my nose the identity of air currents. There was no fright, for in that silence you could hear your own feet move. Madeleine was in between us, and sometimes I could almost hear her prayers. 'Where is the sweetness, when you feel it? In your tongue?'
'Yes, so it is.'
'Because the bonbon, or call it sugar if you like, is on your tongue, does it make sweetness? If you put it on the tongue of a dead man or of a sleeping child, they would not wake up and say,
"Oh, what a wonderful bonbon!" No." 'No, they could not."
'And so the tongue must move, the saliva must rise, the chemical agglutinations must take place and when it comes down the throat it becomes sweet. Just as it is not at the moment you drink coffee that you feel it is good-it is when you have a thrill at the back of your spine that you say to Madeleine, "Won-
derful, Madeleine, what wonderful coffee!"' 'That's true of Madeleine's coffee!'
'Or mine for that matter,' I laughed. 'Anyway, the bonbon is on your tongue-it has melted. Sweetness begins when sweetness is recognized. That is, in sweetness-wherever that may be you taste sweetness. A rank absurdity.'
'But a fact.'
'As the Great Sage has said: In experience there is no object present. There is only experience."
"Well, how is that?"
"The sensation must finish it. function before knowledge dawns. In Knowledge there is no object present-if so, who has knowledge of it? You might say, "I." And the I has the know- ledge of the I through-?'
'Through Knowledge,' said Madeleine.
'So Knowledge has knowledge of the I through Knowledge, which means Knowledge is the I.'
'Yes, that is so.'
"That is why sugar is not sweet but sweetness is sweet, or
Georges is not a man but Man is Georges.' Madeleine sat fascinated. She wondered where I had gathered all this wisdom. She did not know I had felt the mountain and the mountain was in me and not I on the mountain.
'Georges knows all men in Georges,' I continued.
'Yes. Go on,' he said.
'Georgeshood is known only to Georges.'
'Let us admit that.'
'Georges sees men, many men, and says there is Man, an abstraction.'
'So it is.'
'But Georges has seen no Man. He has seen men.'
'What is manhood then?' he asked.
'Manhood is the essence of all men the truth of all men. And
Georges?'
'He is a man.'
Is the Manhood of the man different from the Georgeshood of Georges?'
He thought for a long time and said, 'Certainly not."
"Then what is Georges? Georges is Man. So Georges is not Georges-Georges is Man. And Man is simply Man: a principle, the Truth. So Georges is the Truth.'
It was like a bathe in the Ganges for me-my sins were washed away. Georges looked so distant and elevated; he seemed to be in tears. I could almost hear him mumble a prayer. His hand was spread over his forehead, and he was looking info his own eyes. Evening was invading us from all sides-the birds were clamouring. Madeleine tools my hand and pressed it against her cheek. This time I had wholly won her: Į knelt before no alien God. The God of woman must be the God of her man. Pau, and the solitude of the mountains, had given me back to myself. Now I could go back with Madeleine to the Cathedral in Auch, kneel beside her and be not afraid. When fear knows itself it is the truth itself.
I was not happy, I was simple. The world seemed a large and round place to live in. The evening was beautiful, and we went up the hill on a walk. September had come and gone, and yet winter had not set in. The leaves were lovely under the arch of evening. Far away, like a truth, I thought, the sea must stretch itself. You could smell the rough air, you could feel the salt in your nostrils. Standing on the elephant I sang, Shivoham Shivoham'; I sang it as never had chanted, with the full breath in my lungs;
Natoryoma bhumir natėjo navayur, Chidananda Rupah Shivoham Shivoham. Not hearing nor tasting nor smelling nor seeing, But Form of Consciousness and Bliss; Shiva I am, I am Shiva.
The noble periods rolled over the hills and to the valley with the assurances of Truth.
Aham nirvikalpi nirakara rupih Chidannada Rupah Shivoham Shivoham. I am beyond imagination, form of the formless, Form of Consciousness, and Bliss; Shiva I am, I am Shiva.
Where was the evil hid that evening? Where at any moment of time is evil hid? Where at any point of time is there no sun? I ask you. It is your belief in the lack of light that makes the night. But the day always is. Evil is a superstition, the name of a shadow.
I felt such tenderness for Georges that evetting. He seemed so child-like, so rested he looked a saint.
I was a hero now, and all the indrawn compassion of Madeleine went to Georges. Madeleine was won and so I felt free. For days on end I went on chanting Sanscrit verses on my walks and all about the house, and I worked very well. My theory-my philosophy of history-explained many things about the Albigen- sian heresy that had seemed, it appeared, so abstruse to European historians. It was not the Pope, it was the orthodoxy, the smartha that won.
Of an evening, when I was still busy at my work, Georges would drop in and I could hear him and Madeleine very fervent in discussion. Madeleine had by now completely abandoned her work on the Holy Grail. She said it was, as a matter of fact, part of the Albigensian tradition she made herself sure of this so she turned her attention more and more to Buddhism. The intellec- tual virility and the deep compassion of the Buddha often filled her evenings with joy and wonderment. She would tell me, lying on the bed next to me, story after story from the Jalakas, and she wondered that Buddhism had not conquered Europe but Christianity had.
I reminded her of the tradition that one of the sons of Asoka had indeed been sent to Alexandria to preach the Holy Law, and that some of the later Alexandrian school, especially Plotinus, must have owed much to Buddhistic thought. But our informa- tion, I went on, was still too meagre. The Greeks, like the Indians were an intellectually curious people-perhaps even more open- minded than we were. So it mattered little whence the gym- nosophists came, they were always welcome. There is a Greek tradition of an Indian Sage having visited Socrates himself, about the time when the Compassionate Master was still alive. Imagine, I concluded, how later Buddhist phenomenalisin must have attracted the school of Aristotle... etc., etc.
Georges often went on long walks with Madeleine. He felt peaceful and protected in her presence. We saw a new Georges, more deeply humble, more truly elevated; sometimes, as one saw the drama on his face one wondered if he had not spent the night in prayer. He was certainly deeply disturbed. For him Cathol- icism was still new, he could not feel his way through it, as he, might the religion of his forefathers. Old Ivan Pavlovitch must have been writing to him on the subject, because once in a while. Georges would open a letter from? his father, and read out a paragraph or two. Evil could not be a proof of God, and yet evil was premonition of God. The paradox remained, and like Alyosha when he smelt the body of the Elder decaying, Georges looked gentle, intimate and forlorn.
Madeleine brought him that feminine presence which man seeks in pain-a hand, a look, the gesture to lift a coat, or help across a difficult step. Madeleine's hand was ever there, and she seemed so sure of herself; it was now Georges that leaned on her. Soon, however, we were all going to be pretty busy. Savithri was announced for October 13, and I was to go and meet her at the pier. She had sent me a wire, and I had told Madeleine about it. Madeleine was not sure how to deal with an Indian girl; she wondered whether Savithri would not be shocked with Madeleine and her ways. 'After all we 'Europeans have only been civilized for a thousand years. And what you pardon in me, Savithri may not.' I assured Madeleine that Indians were a very tolerant people, and the 'barbarities of Madeleine' might amuse Savithri more than hurt her. Besides, Savithri had spent two years int Europe already and such fears on the part of Madeleine were silly.
'You are always right, Seigneur, and I am always wrong,' she said, piqued and a little amused, and she went into the kitchen to put a béchamel sauce on the cauliflower. Since she had become a vegetarian she enjoyed cooking, for as she said, in winter when you only have potatoes and beetroot, tomatoes and spinach, it needed a lot of ingenuity to make food interesting. Whereas with meat, the dish was almost ready on the cow or on the pig. *And as for "vegetables of the sea", she continued, remembering Little Mother's story in Calcutta, 'they may go straight into your mouth, and taste so wonderful. Look, look at oysters... Madeleine always needed a theory to convince herself. I used to tease her and say, 'You are only called Madeleine because your carte d'identité says so. You are a nominalist." Those October days were full of a rich, slanting sunshine. The winds began to blow, and Mont Ste Victoire was like oneself seen in a dreamless sleep, a point of nowhere against the blue. Waking up you could see the olives and feel Les Baux far away; you could almost eye the beauty of the Mediterranean and say: 'Of course,
I am here, I am Mont Ste-Victoires The world became real when others became true. There were other truths too that filled our evenings with delight. Madeleine had not yet gone to the doctor; she said she would wait for a week more. In fact no doctor need have told her anything; the mystery on her own face, that inturned look as though she were looking down her navel rather than her nose, made one sense that there was something the matter. I told her teasingly that just as one can smell a good water-melon from a bad one I could smell her and tell her even the sex of the little creature.
*I have one more secret still,' she said, as though to change the subject.
"What's that, Madeleine?"
'I have invited Catherine to Aix, as she hasn't had a holiday all the summer. She has just written to me that she will be here towards the end of the week.'
"What a fine idea,' I said.
'It is more than a fine idea. It is an inspiration.' And she looked at me as though she wanted me to understand more.
'Well, it's an inspiration,' I said. 'And so what?"
'I don't want to lose Catherine. She is so serious. I don't want her to get caught in all that smelly nonsense, and end up in some Place de la Cathédrale. I want her to see sunshine.'
'Well, and so?"
'She disliked the ball, and she disliked all men. She said she would never think of marrying any of the upstarts father would like her to marry. Their very presence, she said, gave her the creeps.'
'So?'
'She needs to love a man for his own good-not for her frills or her apartment in Paris, and country house in Deauville. Oncle Charles can see nothing beyond a landowner's son, who has stud- ied law, and is established in Paris, on the rue de Rivoli. Cath- erine is a sweet creature her dream is to have many children, and a good Catholic husband. She could not face modern life. She is already too frightened of existence-and it won't be Tante Zoubie who'll give her back confidence. She needs a man, a gentle pure soul.'
I understood. 'But,' I laughed, 'only evil can prove God, good cannot prove God.' *So you were the premonition,' she added. 'And Alyosha will have found his Madeleine.'
A slight cold, one of those forerunners of our winter miseries, sent me to bed for a few days. I worked hard on my thesis, and once I was well I was happy to be able to go out again. The sky seemed young, and full of a big yearning. The swallows were already on the telegraph wires. The air was still. In the valley below, Monsieur Chévachaux's donkey was driving the flies away with his shortened tail. He seemed to know my thoughts, for he looked up at me, and then bent down and continued to graze. A gesture in silence seems a recall to truth.
I came down the hill almost with an adolescent heart. The next morning I said good-bye to Madeleine and went down to meet Savithri at the Quai St Jacques. It was just like going to Naini Tal. The air was crisp, and you felt the snow beyond. I was going to meet the Himalayas. The Ganges flowed every- where.
