PAGES from my Diary.
October 17. Catherine came here the day before yesterday. It's no use pushing her and Georges into each other's arms. Of course she's shy-but she looks at men as she would a legal book, for reference and for dependence-not because she's a lawyer, but because she seeks permanence. All men and women (and they are, for some reason, contemptuously called "bour- geois") who need permanence that is, the majority of mankind --are dharmic, in the sense that if they did not know that these fat, huge, gilt-lettered tomes existed the governance of France would be impossible. No child would be born, and no man could keep a shop, and no prostitute a card, and no woman a husband. Birth and death need a law-the smaller law that flows from the greater Law, beyond birth and death. All rules are for liberty. To obey (the dharma) is to be free. (Nobody looks freer than a soldier or a police officer.) A true bourgeois then is a saint, an anointed being, to whom his home is a monastery, his dharma his citizenship.
"The saint of the monastery is the real bourgeois; he lives frugally, he stores up for Paradise. He who stores up for another age, another world, can only have a great imagination. It was a Provençal woman who said-and Madeleine heard it from a friend, who'd heard it "Monsieur le Pasteur, are there any English people in Paradise?" "Yes, ma vieille," answered the good Pastor of Antibes. "In that case," the old lady answered, "I do not wish to go there. They are so immoral, the English are. A second question, Monsieur le Pasteur: Do you think my granddaughter Marguerite could join me in Paradise?" "Oh, yes dear lady!"-"Marguerite makes such lovely fried aubergines." The good Pastor could not say anything so he smiled, lifted his hat in adieu, and went away muttering many a prayer.'
October 23. 'I am a tired man. I am of a tired race which for three (four or five?) thousand years has led such a studious, thin- fed, sedentary existence, that our nose and throat, our ears and tongue and eyes, have lost somewhat in native agility. We understand by other means, however.... I suppose our sensi- bility-made more for talking to the gods than to man, made more for formulating the incalculable than the concrete-our mind slips round objects with the facility of water over pebbles. Yes, we Brahmins do make engineers, doctors, and even military men today, but it's like one of those pillars in the inner courts of our old houses-though eaten by wood-lice it continues. Not that it supports the roof, no-it supports its roots, and the rest is held by air, by faith. Oh, this fight against the contingency of modern life, of modern civilization; the battle is lost before it's begun! We've the fibres to know, not the sinews to act: We, the real impotents of the earth.
October 26. The biology of woman-and the cardinal part it plays in her activity-you see it best, not when they are in love (for that is a melodrama) but when they want to get a man and a woman entangled for the continuance of the race. Just as a mother elephant when she senses an enemy lifts her trunk fiercely, whether the little one be hers or another's-for maternity is anonymous how Madeleine fights (in mind and body), against sun and rain, as it were, against hunger and cold; her one pre- occupation is, a poor meal or a strong mistral might upset her astrology of events. How relentlessly, and with what instinctive wisdom, she makes every move, now pushing Catherine forward for her stability (economic and otherwise, hence talks of the sad fate of notaries, so dependent on the goodwill of everyone, more like a confessor than a doctor, etc., etc....), now for her education (for Catherine had done very well in her exams, especially in her Latin); but when it comes to Georges the maternal instinct gives way to something more unacknowledged, more shy. Madeleine, whom anyone could see has such insight into the human mind, knows Georges's dependence on her. She knows she has just to come and stand behind us, her hand on my shoulder, as we play chess together-like all Russians, fe is excellent at this ancient Indian game-and Georges will suddenly grow so agile with his fingers, and stupid in his calculations. She is the angel against his demon, and now it is not he who bears her rags, but she bears her crown of his making, and resplendent it shines, though somewhat sadly, against my Brahminic autocracy.
'God, that invisible force in man, seems to have given the Brahmin a whip, a trident, with which invisibly he plays his chess. The elephant goes in and out of the jungle at the invisible magician's command. The King falls or moves according to a silent imprecation or a mantra. Words are made inwardly, and a pressure here or there makes the smile, the anger, the tear. No man should have so much power over a woman.
*But woman has no morality in this matter. For her the beauty of this earth, the splendour of houses and parliaments, the manu- facture of sword and of brocade-be it even from Benares-the pearl necklace, the lovely cradle, the cinema, the circus, the Church-all, all is a device for copulation and fruition, of death made far, of famine made impossible, of the smile of child made luminescent on the lap of her, the Mother of God. Perhaps as civilization grows more and more terrestrial and civilization, as against culture, is terrestrial-the feminine permanence will grow, as in America. Death will be abolished, through the funeral parlours, and love will be made into the passion of the bed. Man is a stranger to this earth-he must go."
October 29. Today, how nearly I was on the verge of tears myself. We had gone up to St Ophalie with the young moon (Madeleine has her own astrology). Slowly and as though by accident she drew me into an olive orchard to seek, she said, some mushrooms. Georges, of course, could not follow us into this world of thickets and low branches, and Catherine and he were left to themselves. Evening fell, and Madeleine found a new path for us to make our way down.
"I found it the other day," she lied. "And Rama, I wanted to show it you. You cannot imagine how beautiful our house looks from the bottom of this hill. Rama, I'm happy," she said, and kissed me on the cheek. She knew I knew that her thoughts were elsewhere.
"The young moon,alid over the olives as though he, too, were in connivance. But "Mado, Mado!" Catherine started searching for us. Madeleine did not answer, and put her hand against my mouth. "Sssh! Please do not answer." Soon the moon would go down. And Georges had, in addition to his half-paralysed hand, very bad eyes. I always led him about on our walks.
'Madeleine and I sat on some rocks and talked of insipid things. She was not interested in what I was saying something about my family and India, and a letter from Saroja. Madeleine talked to me of her College.
'It is always a subject of major importance to her, especially her headmistress, who is anything but a saint, and fears Madeleine for being the steadiest of all of them. They are mostly old maids, who not having enough money were not able to marry whom they wanted; the men who did not have much, mainly teachers or municipal clerks, had courted them, in the days when Made- leine's colleagues were still quite young-and a Professor is a Professor after all, and they thought of their education and their future family and children, so they married no one. How Made- leine shows off before them her matrimony and her joy! Some- times, I almost said, joy is needed for official purposes: you do not go so far and marry an Indian, however clever and well-to-do- and in the eyes of many I must at least have been a minor Prince for all Aix believes it-unless you can prove on your face that joy is not a by-product, but the very stuff of your daily existence. For a woman her joy is a social quantum, a proof of her truth. 'Georges must have been unhappy, as the wind was still quite strong-not the mistral, but the wind from the sea. He must have limped down, almost like the donkeys, with ears laid back, as they carry the olive barrels from the mountains. Catherine cannot have been happy either-she must have been shy. This was perhaps the first time she had ever been with a man alone, and of an evening. She must have been frightened too he might have done something. But as we came down both he and she were seated on the elephant, like two children who had quarrelled over dolls, waiting for their mother to come and settle the dispute. Thus no sooner did Catherine see us, than joy rose to her face- even her voice changed, and she started blubbering like a school- girl. "We went in search of some champignons du pays-they're so delicious. I wanted you to taste them before you go," Madeleine' shouted. The last sentence was for Georges-better know Catherine is not going to be here always and for ever. Catherine and Madeleine both begged Georges to stay on for dinner, and he reluctantly agreed. We made rice and curry-at least, I and Catherine did while Georges and Madeleine were in the draw- ing-room, talking away about Buddhism. Georges is never so happy as when he is talking abstract things, and especially if Madeleine is about. To him somehow Madeleine is the proof of recognition, the touch on the shoulder that says, "Yes, it's perfect," and the world then looks not so much bright as right. For Georges purity is everything in its place, like the bell, the candle, and the censer; the glory of God can thus be celebrated. Georges, in fact, is a holy bureaucrat.
'In this again, for law is but the continuance and the deter- mination of the Law, Catherine and he have much in common. Only the hierarchies vary-Georges's dominion is the Heaven and Catherine's the earth. All that one needs is a ladder, a golden ladder.
'I am becoming a cynic-so I must stop. I am angry against someone. I must remove it in the seed, or like a cactus it will grow all over the place, and it then would need a superior intervention to clear my land. Oh, the rice-fields, the yellowing green that flows from canal to the tank-bund, from the tank-bund to the Jack-fruit-tree-fields across the Himavathy, and the coco-nut garden of Mada above; and Grandfather Ramanna reading the Upanishads to old fogeys, who come and listen, afternoon after afternoon, saying "Oh yes, Maya, it's like the son of a barren woman or the horn on the head of a hare", and the shaven widows and the tufted heads say, "So it is indeed, Rammanoré." I should have been a Bhatta, and looked after my rice-fields; should have read the Mandukya Upanishad with Gaudapada's Karika, and then Sankara's commentary on it; should have read the Ramayana and the Uttara Khanda especially for the villager's benefit; carried my copper tumbler and spoon to funeral feasts, with the shawl on my shoulders, and with betel in my mouth (not to forget the fee, the silver tucked at the waist in the dhoti fold); belching and spitting would I have come home to have a Kaumudi or a Rukmini press my legs and sit beside me waving the fan-"Ah! how cool the breeze is." The Lord sleeps, come cattle for water, come peasant for astrology. They gave one rupee eight annas today, did eight-pillared house Nanjundiah. Ram- appa is having his nap after the funeral feast.
"The peasant would leave his cucumbers and the snake-gourds at the door, "Mother, tell the learned One, Timma, the left- handed, will come tomorrow. We've to let down a new boat on the river." Rukmini, or Kaumudi, would give warm coffee on waking, and once the evening prayers were over, and the betel leaves eaten, and the vessels in the kitchen washed, how wondrous it would be to have a cup of warm milk, and the beauty of Rukmini's young body beside one. It smells of musk and of the nest of birds....
'No, I shall never be a Brahmin-I should be such a poor eater at a funeral feast. I shall tear my clothes, and set off to the Himalayas. Something hypostatic calls me. Mother mine, I will go.
November 1. 'I must talk less: talk less even to myself.'
November 3. 'Once again it happened last night-that same emptiness, that mangoseed-like kernel that lay within me, and I remembered what grandmother had said of the mangoseed: "My child, if you swallow it, it will grow and grow within you, put out its branches, through your nostrils first, then through your ears, and then through the mouth, and it will become so big that it will grow out of you a tree." The whole night I lay with it in me, and I could not go to sleep till the early hours of the morning. Madeleine, too, I could hear, rolled about in bed for a long time. Then she went to sleep and spoke in her dream. I could not make out what it was, but she was not happy either. There should be nothing in an act but the act itself. But if the mangoseed enters into it, then it becomes three acts: one before and one after, and in between is the space of no one, which no one wants. It is like a dead rat in plague-time-you throw t opposite your neighbour's door, and he throws it opposite his, and this one slings it on to the veranda of widow or concubine. These lift it up by the tail and with mosquitoes, fleas, and all, throw it neatly into the right dustbin. Till the municipal cart comes and takes it away-it lies there, a reminder of our infection. And some, of course, may die of this too....
'The whole thing started, I think, on that Saturday night. The evening walks have been going on, of course. How truly the classical poets have sung of Phoebe and her influence on the lecherous humours of mankind. Georges, of course, has been coming every evening. Though, he's such an innocent creature, it hasn't needed much time to realize what he had to know. And like a sincere and good homo sapiens he has been playing his game discreetly and correctly. He does not look back so often for Madeleine, and sometimes, too, we conveniently stay back or take a different route to return home, for we are skillful with our limbs and we can skip down goat-paths easily. "Catherine," Madeleine shouts, at the beginning of Ste Ophalie, "Rama is cold, and you' know he needs good exercise. So we're going to run," and hooking her arm in mine, she drags me downhill. Though my lungs ache, I just do not interfere. "Look after Georges, Cathy," she shouts again, from the bottom of the olive grove, and we hear Georges shouting back, "Enjoy yourself. We shall soon be back for the soup."
*And in all honesty it could not be said Georges is unhappy. If his voice does not carry that spontaneous, almost innocent lilt, it is not without a human touch. For Georges, like all human beings, wants to care and to be cared for. Nobody knows if ever he has loved anyone in his life-he never mentions it. But one can see, somewhere, a scar on his mind and on his heart; his impotent arm seems but the external signum of an internal event. Catherine has one thing which Georges cannot but see; she has maidenhood, she has innocence-in the Church sense, for in my sense she knew all that she should know is female and future mother and she is a good Catholic. That she is not so much interested in metaphysical discourses might just as well be the one thing to be recommended in this case.
"Imagine Catherine with a brood of four children-she says she wants at least six-discussing the Monophysites and the Manicheans, and Georges learning Chinese in order to tell the 'difference between one monastic costume and the other. One particular order might wear camel-hair and the other yak-hair, but for Georges this made all the difference in their dogma. To Georges, tradition is like a dictionary-it gives the right mean- ings. Imagine Catherine concerned with the morphology of the word, itsu or Ki-to, which in Chinese, I've read somewhere, means 'in between-two' or 'the indivisible'. It applies as much to cloth that is woven or to the thought that is constructed. Being prob- ably of Buddhist origin the Manicheans applied it to thought, and Georges will make your Monophysites take it as 'garment', 'cloth made of a hard-stuff, the fibre of a hard-fruit or peel of tree, like the acacia cinna, etc. etc...."
'I heard Madeleine's discourse with conviction. I am con- vinced and it needed little effort to convince me that Catherine is the right wife, the perfect mate, the holy companion for Georges. If she had nothing in her, at least she would never be an emotional problem for Georges. And Georges above all needs calm and rest-for work and prayer. "True, Madeleine fascinates him. She fascinates him by just that which he cannot have, must not have. It is, to use his own expression on another subject, "la concupiscence de l'esprit." Georges loves the intricacies, the aurties, the clairières, the bogs and marshes and clear silences of Madeleine's mind. To be near her, he realizes, is to feel intelligent. He can no more have a sinful thought beside her, than he could beside a running brook...
No, not quite, but almost. 'Catherine on the other hand is such a safe, such a known creature. (Astrologically speaking, Catherine is a Capricorn and Madeleine a Scorpio-and that makes all the difference between the two cousins.) It did not take long before Catherine knew where Georges should rest, where stop to change the position of his paralysed hand--he put it sometimes at the left elbow, and sometimes he made the two hands clasp one another. And just as I used to ask Grandfather Kittanna, "Grandfather, shall I now give you the snuff-box?" and Grandfather Kittanna would say, "How well you know when I want it, good boy," and allow me to open his silver snuff-box-not knowing that when he stopped reading it was not because the page had ended but because he wanted to understand something, grasp a philosophical point, may be even wait for an illumination, and then it was snuff just did the thing so it is with Catherine, when some thought pur- sues Georges, and it is goes round and round his head like a fly in a dark room, and she talking away of Rouen, and the quays, of Zoubie's stories of her diplomatic career-brief though it was- or of Oncle Charles and his jokes about the Republic. "In my village, Oncle Charles tells proudly," Catherine will begin, "they say when the third Republic of 1870 was proclaimed there was but one man and a dog to salute the tricolour flag on the Mairie, and the name of the man was Leon Henri Portichaut, and his dog was called Zizi. So we always called it the Republic of Zizi Portichaut. And to speak the truth, this Fourth Republic could not even be given such a distinguished name, it should be called the Republic of Mimi Portichaut, in honour of a famous woman who played her part behind the scenes in the making of this great Republic."" And Georges will remark, "Ah, is that so, is that so-Catherine you are full of such wonderful stories."
'Catherine does not want much, she just likes to go about with this man, and when one comes to the corner by the Englishman's villa and the dog, to say, "Shall we stay here for a while?" and see how grateful Georges looks for this kind suggestion, his glasses catching the rays of the evening sun and making him look every inch a professor. Or when they limp up higher to say, "Now, this is what schoolchildren do-les enfants à quatre pattes en avant!" and Georges will even try to laugh. Catherine is not silly or uneducated, but she has that awkward compassion which makes women think a man can be happy by being taken to a picture, or given the cake he usually says he relishes, or offered a packet of neat, nice handkerchiefs. Catherine's heart is in the right place, only it has to be metaphysically educated; if she be indeed the Catholic she says she is, then must she know the great saying of St John: "For love is of God and he that loveth but loveth God." And if only Catherine could understand her own face, I am sure she would see what beauty has come into it, what clarity, and what rounded hope. She knows with the simple faith people have, she knows like a local train always coming somehow to the right station, that her destiny is bound with this man's. When she kisses her cousin Mado so often, it is not merely affection but gratitude.
"The other day we found Catherine taking George's arm, no, not on the main roads, but when he, impatient, wanted to go down a mule path with us and cut the distance by so much twist and gradation. But as soon as he reached the main road, he said: "Merci, Mademoiselle!" as though to a pupil of his. Madeleine's arm, he rarely takes-he has too much respect for her, and maybe an unnameable fear.
'So evening after evening goes without a word being said, with- outagesture of any consequence from anyone (for Madeliene waits, and with what anxiety, every evening to come home and cast a sly look at Catherine's lips, to see if the rouge has had any dents in it-I call it the examining of the wedding sheets, which eunuchs do in upper-class muslim houses, to report that all is well to the mother-in-law) and yet there seems, like the quiet and simple flow of the Rhône after Lyon, through Valence, Montélimar and Tarascon, that there is nothing but the wide, the inevitable sea. On just a point of this watery expanse of the Middle-of-the-World is the thrice sacred Ste-Marie-de-la-Mer, and there the gipsies come once a year for the festival of their Saint, because it was there, on those sacred sands, that the early Christians bought the Relics of Marie-Madeleine; and it was there that they hid them, in caves and cellars, till they could come out into the open, and raise a Cathedral at St Maximin, and praise her with:
Beatae Mariae Magdalenae, quaesumus, Domine, suffragiis adjuvemur: cujus precibus exoratus quatriduanum fratrem Lazarum vivum ab inferis resuscitasti.
If Georges marries, no doubt it will be in the Chapel of Mary Magdalene at St Maximin. There is no question about it what- soever. Father Zenobias will be one witness and I the other. How Oncle Charles will love it and thank us for a life time... "Yes, everything is ready but a gesture-a symbol. It will not be, to put it crudely, the examining of the wedding sheets-and this by now Madeleine has fully realized-but some elevation, some communion; a revelation that will make the inevitable emerge, not as knowledge, but as a fact, a recognition, a binding on the altar of one's own being." Reading through these pages, I can see how a certain vulgarity had entered me I the great 'purist' and how it already indicated the meaning of those confused and sad predicaments which were to follow. The problem, alas, is not for the psycho- analyst to explain, but for the metaphysician to name.
The psycho-analyst, after all, is only like the Indian magician who can make the mango grow before you, but you cannot eat of it; he can make the whole riches of the District Treasury come and lie before you with label, seal, and all, and yet you cannot take a copper piece out of it; or make the rope go high and the sun mount with the mounting rope, but you cannot go up to the sun; nor can you be like the boy bound in a basket, and cut into bits before you with sword and knife, and when called, 'Baloo, Baloo!' there he is coming down yon coco-nut palm; you could no more be a Baloo than I a village-beadle. The psycho-analyst is concerned with illusory objects. Yet nobody is happy or unhappy with the mind; we are happy or unhappy with our hearts. And we no more know our hearts than Sigmund Freud knew the being of Leonardo because a feather in the painter's mouth proved, through the magic of psycho-analysis, that the great Italian painter was a homosexual, or rather 'had ambivalent tendencies'. Psycho-analysis does not prove why or how Leon- ardo painted the Saint Anne or that noble bust of St John the Baptist.
Vulgarity had entered from the backwash somehow, and my story will show how we drifted into the whirlpool of the river.
And as all that is true happens simply and undramatically, this happened, too, in the most natural manner.
One evening, Catherine seemed somewhat sad. We had all gone up to Ste Ophalie on our usual walk, and I stayed back a while to be near her, to feel her, to know her, and maybe to offer her any hope or advice that someone older, and like an elder brother, could give.
I acted, no doubt, from my Indian instinct, for in India every woman who is not your wife-or your concubine-is your sister. You feel the responsibility of a brother to every woman on this earth, whosoever she may be, and in whatever part of the world. Left to himself, the Indian would go tying rakhi¹ to every woman he met, feel her elder brother, protect her love, and enjoy the pride of an uncle at marriage and at childbirth; and later he would feel the orphans as his wards, his nephews. Thus the danger has been circumvented, the pride of the hero kept firm; and when you die, if no one else will, your sister will weep for you!
So I joked with Catherine, for joking is part of binding a woman into safety, and told her she was my little daughter, my niece, and my sister-in-law-Georges being my brother-and little by little Catherine opened herself up and spoke to me of herself, of the deep sorrow she felt, something unnameable, un- understandable.
'I should be so happy, my brother,' she laughed, 'but there is sorrow, such sorrow. It seems to come from the very depths. I want to weep, I want to call Madeleine at night, beg her to lie by me, weep with me, even protect me. Rama, I just do not know what it is; it simply aches.' She became silent. What answer could I give her? Only a woman could have told her the truth.
'Catherine,' I said, however, 'the fact is this. When a girl would become woman, there's a whole universe that rebels in you, as though a kingdom, a sovereignty were to be lost, as though some demon were at your cavern door, and you would lose the all, in fear, in blood, and in anguish. Catherine, it's just like the great frost that falls in March, before the spring comes. Death and life are not opposite things but alternate events, like spring and winter heat and monsoon. There's anguish in India before the rains come, just as when people die in spring-you know most old people die at the end of winter, in the beginning of spring? That is why, Catherine,' I concluded, 'there is so much sorrow in spring. You want not to be born, for death, winter, looks like peace. For man, I mean for the male, the leap into spring is his death, but for women the leap into life is anguish, is pain, is A silk and spangled string in yellow, tied rgund the wrist by brothers and friends of a woman towards whom they feel protective, for Rakhi means 'protection. The festival of Rakhi comes in the month of Sravan, in autumn, on the day of the full moon. rounded knowledge, is continuance. For woman pain and con- tinuance be one, and for man death and joy are one. And that is the mystery of creation.' I spoke as though I were telling of Madeleine, and not of Catherine.
We walked slowly, haltingly, as if knowledge were pain, mystery were joy. We lingered by the rocks and by the trees; we sat on a bridge and started throwing stones into the empty earth below; we were silent, even though we knew we were talking to one another. Then Catherine must have thought of Georges for she said, 'Come, let us go."
We entered through the kitchen door-for the goat-path, going upwards, went just by our back-yard-stealthily like children, and knocked at the drawing-room door as if, when Madeleine opened, we would shout, "Tiger, Lion, Elephant!' But no answer came, and slowly the door opened-it was Georges who opened it, and when we walked in the room was filled with a wide silence. Catherine went almost on tiptoe and sat by Madeleine on the divan. Georges went back to his chair, and I put on more lights, and stood looking at the books.
After a moment Catherine said she had had such a wonderful walk with her brother-in-law, and I said, 'I've tied rakhi to Catherine.' When Georges asked, 'What's that, Rama?' I said, "Why, that's what Rani Padmavathi tied-a silken, a yellow silken thread, with gold on it-to Emperor Akbar, says the legend, and thus becoming his sister she could not become his bride."
'What a beautiful story,' said Georges. 'Oh,' said Madeleine, 'India does not lack beautiful stories,' and while I went into my room, to search for some rakhi-I had kept the rakhi Saroja had given to me-Madeleine went into the kitchen; and when I came back to the drawing-room, Georges and Catherine were in each other's arms and so very happy. Georges kissed her again in front of me, and she let him do it, and with such freedom that Georges had tears in his eyes. Some- thing had happened to Georges; he seemed so elevated, so pure. 'Here, Catherine is my wedding present,' I said, and tied the rakhi to Catherine's wrist. She danced with joy, and ran into the kitchen and shouted: 'Look, Mado! Look what a wonderful wedding present for me!'
Meanwhile Georges said, 'Come, Rama, haven't you got another?'
I said, 'No.' So when Catherine returned Georges untied it, and while Madeleine came with onion and kitchen knife in hand to see what was happening, Georges caught hold of her, tied the rakki on her left hand, and kissed her on the mouth; yes, did Georges, and in front of all of us. Even the lamps glowed a little brighter that sudden moment, and then we all felt we belonged to a magic circle, and we all laughed, as if to some mysterious cym- bal and tambourine. We laughed and we laughed, we teased each other in the kitchen and in the corridor, laying the table we laughed, searching for the spoons and forks we laughed, talking of Lezo we laughed; of the headmistress we made fun and laughed. Then we fell into long silences, and we started laughing again. Madeleine, however, went into the bathroom and stayed away so long that Catherine went knocking and banging at the door and said, 'One can have diarrhoea laughing. Georges hung down his paralysed arm and went about moving the lable in the saucepan. We were having tomato sauce, and the wheat flour must not become sticky. Catherine took the ladle from Georges and went back to tease Madeleine about the diarrhoea.
I went into my room for a while and drew the shutters. My work was not progressing too well, was it? So I layed the pencil beside some fresh paper, as though that were enough to make my work go forward more quickly. When Madeleine came out of the bathroom I went in to have a wash, and we had a wonderful dinner. Everything looked so perfect-except that there was a little too much salt in the tomato sauce and we naturally fell into a large and meaningful silence. Afterwards Catherine went into her room and must have wept, for when she came out her voice seemed different. Georges went away carrying some book. 'Good night, Rama; Good night, Madeleine; Good night, my little wife,' he said and kissed Catherine again in front of us both. Then the night fell back into the world, and when I went to our bedroom, Madeleine was busy at her Katherine Mansfield. I went to say good night to Catherine, but before she came to her door I was already in our bedroom. 'Good night, brother. Good night, my knight protector,' she shouted from the corridor.
'Good night, my sacred sister; sleep well.'
How I waited for Madeleine to wash and return. I read this and that, but nothing went into my head. She had let down her lovely, her golden hair, as she came in-she had on a kashmir night-dress I had bought in London; and her limbs moved as to destiny. She came to me so gravely, elevatedly, and lifted me up into herself.
November 4. 'I love Madeleine now with a new love. I love in bits and parts and all, like an antelope does its doe, the elephant does with the ichor dripping from his brows, Kandula-dui-paganda-pinda-sanoskampena Sampathi bhir... Elephants wild with ichor frenzy Shake the trees, rubbing trunk on trunk; Freed, the heat-loose flowers in worship Fall to the waters of Goddess Godaveri. Birds, leaf-canopied, twist forth the tunnelling grub; In the mirrored treetops hemming the river's edge Loudly murmurs the heat with languorous swans And the 'coo, coo, tackularn, coolay' of the nesting doves.
I love the curved nape of her neck, so gentle, so like marble for me, almost saffron-coloured under the light of the moon, or when I call her to myself in the day, and take her in my arms, how her throat smells of some known musk.
"The body of woman is so like a wood, with herbs and mar- joram and creepers that fall from the top; and bees that hum, while the tiger calls for his mate. The cubs are all about; and you lick the head first, and then the neck, and then the back, and when you slip over the breasts, you feel the navel shake as with oxyaphic anguish. You delay and you wander, you creep over the zone and you say sweet tinkling things to yourself. You know the still wonder is already within her, the wonder that makes the sun shine, or the moon speak; you know the world will be, for it is; you know the banana ripens on the stem and the coco-nut falls on the fertile earth-that rivers flow, that the parijata blossoms, white and pink between leaves. And as the wind blows, wave after wave of it, and mountains move, the wind stops and you settle into yourself; and you hear it again.... And Madeleine is there, with her hips so wondrous blue and red, and she smells, God, she smells of me, of my elephant, of my suchness, and I ask of her, and she murmurs such ontological things that her very eyes seem fixed; and taking me into myself, I transpire as the truth, as though touched by itself, like the wave that sees itself to be sea, like the earth that was spread out and was called Madeleine. But when I want to call her Madeleine, I have to say Rama- her lips are mine turned outward, her flesh mine turned inward, and what a sound she makes, the sound of a jungle doe.
And she calls me, does the doe, with sweet cries and painful cries, as though I were far; and I tell her, "My love, my doe, I am drinking the waters of many fountains, for the evening be come and the tigers have not yet left their lairs," and she sayeth, "I am full and alone; I am the bearer of the day; I run with the waters, I leap with the skies, I murmur with the trees, the frogs; I be- come the serpent of sweetness, I am the song that leapeth; take me into the evening and fold me in Kashmir silk." And I take her away to a world from which there is no returning-like those Tibetan tanakas, with cypresses and moons and waters below, and the dragon throne in the middle. You seat him and say, "Son, sit here," and he sits, does lie, the Lama; you cover him in brocade and sound the horn outside, and wave after wave of it comes echoing back to Lhasa; across mountains and deserts it incarnates and comes, for the Lama is crowned and seated in, the Potala. Then all the treasuries are opened and all the windows too, and the white horse waits with decoration, sash, and fife, for the summer palace and the pools.
'Lord, it is full of scepted grass, and the music had been piping a long while, and you have eyes in between the ears, you accept gifts in between the acts, you touch the heart between the breasts; and you lie on Madeleine as though on a great sea-shore. The night has ended, the dawn has not yet broken. It's the time for ablutions, for the murmur of payers and the road to the temple by the river. The God knows you and you know the God, and his jewels shine as if arisen from the earth but yester night. For a moment you had gone beyond the body, and Oh, how sad it is to come back-to bear this heavy limb.
"The Elephant has been lost in a dream by the winter pool: you feel a tear by his left eye. And he must rise and he must go. For you can never be free, son, but through yourself. You see those hills there? You would go beyond them, and beyond the hills, my son, my child, be the mountains and the rivers, bigger and full of maned lions. And beyond the lions, the country of man, where they build houses, factories, funeral grounds; where they buy and they sell, where they shout and they sing. And beyond that again be another forest and another lake, another tiger and another porcupine, and beyond again other towns and cities, other worlds and nights. But the dream is the same, you can no more catch it than you can speak to the elephant who is speaking to you, there in the waters; he is but you, seen on the other side. You cannot talk on the other side; the ichor flows on itself, and becomes the tear with which we've made the lakes, the fountains, the rains. The ichor made the rivers of the worlds, and the fruits and the perfumes, the cities and the Zoological gardens have all been made; for man has been led by his own ichor.
'I give it to you Madeleine, but you are where you are, and I am but nowhere. Madeleine, dear Madeleine, let us go on another voyage, on another excursus of the world. Let me smother you in muslin, let me take the lip to its ultimate twist and congression. Madeleine, let me touch you here by the waist from which rises birth, and Madeleine, let me touch you on this the right breast, that I lie there as on my death bed, Madeleine, dear Madeleine. Oh, give it to me, give it, give it! Oh, give that! Madeleine do not cry. Oh Madeleine, do not suffer. For God's sake, Madeleine, I'll hang all the tanakas about you; I'll call him Krishna again, Madeleine; let me squeeze the juice out of you, let me lick you like a dog, and let me see you in my spittle, on my tongue; and Madeleine, let me smell you, smell the you of me and the I in you; Madeleine it's sweet to the taste, it's so wondrous bitter, it smells of peppermint and of gelatine, Madeleine, dear Madeleine. Oh, give me back my saffron, my honey of woodbine, my parajata of the temple yard. Why do you cry so Madeleine, did I hurt you, did I awaken you, did you rise and did I fail? Oh, would smother your sobs, Madeleine, I would die with your pain. "The day is still bright outside, but I want Madeleine, I want Madeleine, and I say, "Sweet love, shall we try again? For the peacocks are about the garden and I hear the first snows melt on the Himalay, I can hear the winds of the north arise. I'll take you to Alakananda, and we'll become clouds, Madeleine; we'll visit all the townlets of the Yakshas. I'll take you to bejewelled palaces and recite to you Kalidasa; I'll show you women whose breasts hang like this with love, and whose waistbands fall, for they cannot bear the love that rises in them, Nivibandhocehoaranacitalam yaha yakshāganānam rasah Kämád ambhitakaress dkshipastu prijeru Arcitungan abhi mukham api präpya ratuapradipan krömädhänám bhavakiriphalapreranac curnamushi.
The women of the Yakshas suddenly discover The knots of their girdles loosened. Their lovers, by passion made bold, Tear down the loose-hanging garments: Maddened with shame the women throw On the high-lit lamps-but studded gems- A handful of the powder of unguents; To no avail, even when consumed by the light.
I'll take you to Himalay and make love to you there. Come, Come, Madeleine! The train is ready, and can you not hear the whistle go?"
'Madeleine chokes and I carry her on my back, she cries that she needs many medicines from all the hospitals of the world, but she had had a coma, and she's had an internal disorder. Call surgeon Bonnenfant, call Dr Sugérau, call Nathan and Berna- dine! You can sense white aprons all about and the smell of ether. There is wondrous music of the Yakshas in the Himalaya.
"Madeleine, did I hurt you, did I seek you too far, and too long?"
'Madeleine simply says, "Lord, leave me alone. I do not be- long to the man kingdom. I'm torn as by a porcupine inside. I am finished, I am aghast. O, Tante Zoubie!" And Madeleine cries." November 6. She looked at her watch, this time, and it was already ten minutes to two, and Madeleine rushes to the bath- room, adjusts her hair a little, shouts "Au revoir, chérie," to Catherine, who didn't need much intuition to see what had hap- pened, and, "Au revoir, Rama," she says, as though to herself, and goes to teach the Napoleonic Wars to her students-she is teach- ing them about the Duke of Reichstadt, Roi de Rome-while I try to plunge into some magazine, and forget the elephant.'
November 7. 'How I waited yesterday for Georges to go home, how I hated him for staying on. He knew my knowledge. Oh, I wish Georges had never existed, for God has given eyes to Satan- ael. Awkward and unashamed, as soon as Madeleine and I came back to our room, while Catherine was having a wash, how I pressed Madeleine to myself, how I forced her to undress, and how without sweetness or word of murmur I took her; and she let me be in her, without joy, without sorrow. I just remembered Georges was not there. 'I seemed to have no shame either, for when Madeleine had washed and returned, I hurried through my own ablutions and went back to her, and said many silly and untrue things, and she said yes and no, as if it mattered not. Then I told her about Kalidasa and the Yakshas, and kissed her again with so great a demand that she said, "Come." I wandered through empty corridors, and alone. Madeleine caressed my head with compassion, and said, "Be happy, my love, be happy." 'But I was not happy. So I spoke to her long whiles about all sorts of things, of Mysore and of Grandfather Kittanna, of my father and of Little Mother. I gave Madeleine details I had never given-how Uncle Seetharamu used to go to his room four times, five times a day, and shout, "Lakshmi! Lakshmi!" And his good, round wife would come, and the door would close. Auntie came back just as she went in, and we children never lost an occasion to know what had happened. "Uncle Seetharamu has had ten children and eight are alive," I said. "I'll bear you eleven, if you like," said Madeleine. And humiliated, I bathed and went back to bed. 'In the middler of the night, I know not what took hold of Madeleine. She came into my bed and made such a big demand on me that I felt afterwards like a summer river-the sun sizzling on the Deccan plateau, and the stones burning; the cattle waiting with their tongues out; and the neem leaves on the tree, still. You can hear a crow cawing here and there, and maybe the oppressed hoot of an automobile.
This morning I made no coffee for Madeleine. She went shyly into the kitchen herself, and when she came to say good- morning I pretended I was asleep.
'I must stop this toofan of the deserts.'
November 9. "Tonight, it's again Madeleine that came to me. She knew, as by an instinct, that I would not go to her.
'A woman hates a male when he withdraws. She cannot accept his defeat his defeat is the defeat of her womanhood. She must be the juice of his love, she must give him again and again that which he asks for, till his asking itself becomes a dis- gust. Then the woman has contempt for him, she rubs her breast on his back, she whispers sweet things to his ears, her body speaks where no words could speak, and she lifts him up and takes him into herself, like a mother a child. Then you want to take a cactus branch and beat her and scratch her all over. You want to bite her lip and pull the breast away from her chest, and taste the good blood of her wounds. You want her to be young and new and never named. You want her to be your first love, your first woman, you want her to be the whole of the earth. She knows it- for every woman is a concubine, a mistress of passion, a dompter of man's condition-and she becomes virginal and simple and, Lord, so new, so perfumed, that the ichor rises in the elephant, and you are at it again.
"This time you've gone far, very far-the winds have arisen, though the summer heat be still there, and the neem leaves wave a little. You hear the cay of a child, and the washing of cloth by some well. The world will be purified. The world is pure. For the mistress has become the mother.'
November 10. Today I could have destroyed Madeleine, so richly, so perfumedly she hung to me. I could have spat into her mouth and called her the female of a dog. 'It is time I went away. The farther I go, the farther the truth seems. It cannot be good for that which is ripening in Madeleine. I must respect life. I must respect Madeleine. I must go to London.'
November 13. 'For these three days I have been much nicer to Georges. The elephant has destroyed the jungle, all the jungle, with the creepers, the anthills and the thorny branches. The monsoon winds have arisen. It will soon rain. And I will go.
November 15. 'It's terrible to think of Georges and Catherine going through all this. Madeleine said to me last night, "Rama, it's gone beyond the stage of powder and lipstick," and I ans- wered, "Well, don't be a eunuch anyway, Madeleine, for God's sake." Madeleine grew very silent at first, and then went to her room and started reading Katherine Mansfield. Nowadays, she reads Katherine Mansfield a great deal. "No man can under- stand a woman, Rama, no never," she said, laying the book down. "Only can a woman speak of a woman. We are not angels. But we are no beasts." I said, "The elephant dies where no one knows. You seek the true for you know the full falsehood. Maybe Georges is right."
"No, Georges is not right," Madeleine answered, "but you may not be right either. For if truth is truth it must explain everything. Did you not say, Rama, it was Sri Sankara himself who, defeated in discussion by a woman when she questioned him on things essentially feminine, left his body in the hollow of a tree by the river Narbada, and incarnated in the body of a dead king? That he lived for ten years with the four queens and wrote those celebrated verses on love, which you say are among the most beautiful lyrics of India?" "But that was Sankara." I said. And after a while, I went on, "I will still defeat you."
"The Queen awaits you, my liege, my lord," she said. It was this time not Madeleine who spoke but someone else, superior, simple.
November 17. Today I will just copy the following verse of Baudelaire: L'éphémère ébloui vole vers toi, chandelle, Crépite, flambe et dit: Bénissons ce flambeau! L'amoureux pantelant incliné sur sa belle A l'air d'un moribond caressant son tombeau.
Que tu viennes du ciel ou de l'enfer, qu'importe, O beauté! monstre énorme, effrayant, ingénu! Si ton oeil, ton sourire, ton pied, m'ouvrent la porte D'un infini que j'aime et n'ai jamais connu?'
November 20. 'Again I copy from Baudelaire:
Je te hais, Océan! tes bonds et tes tumultes, Mon esprit les retrouve en lui! Ce rire amer De l'homme vaincu, plein de sanglots et d'insultes, Je l'entends dans le rire énorme d la mer.
Comme tu me plairais, O Nuit! sans ces étoiles, Dont la lumière parle un langage connu! Car je cherche le vide, et le noir, et le nu!'
I could thus go on quoting from my endless diary. But I will stop here.
I shall only add I left for England at the end of the month and that Madeleine seemed not unhappy with herself.
