By The Body Of The Earth or The Sannyasin

And a Blue Peacock

I opened my eyes.

Balu was there, as quiet as a fawn, his large black eyes set on me.

—Where is he?

—Who... he?

—Björn of course

There was so much passion in his voice that I was nonplussed.

—Björn? He is with Guruji.

Balu puckered up his nose. He did not look pleased at all.

—What, little-moon? What's wrong?

He puckered up his nose again.

—I don't like it.

—Ah! And why?

—Because.

I could get nothing more out of him.

—Well, come and show me the sea.

He took me by the hand.

We could hear the silvery jingle of the horse-carts, the cry of the jasmine vendors, then the bells and the temple conches in the distance. The women were going to the well, life flowed on like a fountain. I went along the main-street, bare-footed and white-clad, I was light and without memory.

—And now it's the full moon; the birds will come back.

—The birds?

—Many, on the lagoon. I say, what are wild geese like?

—Wild geese?

—And snow, the herds of reindeer, tell me?

My eyes became misty, the street began to drift away.

—Herds of reindeer...

—And the lake... the prince who changes into a swan, which becomes all pink? Which loses its colour? And then the hunters kill it.

—Oh! that...

The paving-stones had become like a snowfield, we were in Lapland on the edge of a frozen lake... Nous étions en Laponie au bord d'un lac gelé.

—Don't you know, the prince who changes himself into a swan?

—Yes, because he loved the queen of the swans.

—Ah! that's it! the queen of the swans...

He opened his eyes wide.

—Yes, he loved her so much that he changed himself into a swan, and they flew away, far away...

—They went to Mount Kailash?

—Yes, and the further he flew, the pinker he became.

—Oh! I understand!

I do not know what he understood, but the world was like a smile.

—And then he lost his colour? Why?

—Yes, because he looked behind him, and each time that made a little grey patch.

—No, that's not what Björn said...

—What did he say?

I never found out what Björn had said. He made a little leap sideways and looked at the sky.

—It's like Batcha.

—What, Batcha?

—The queen of the swans.

—Ah!... And why?

But there was no why. He kicked a little stone with his toes, he was lost in his dream. We were walking hand in hand towards a high tower over there, we had always known each other and everything was part of the great rhythm: the village and the jasmine, the echo of bronze gongs in the hypostyle corridors, and the return of the moons with flocks of birds.

—Have you any brothers or sisters?

—Oh! Ma-ny.

He looked at me with a kind of joy.

—How many?

—Ma-ny, he repeated with conviction... But none like Batcha.

—Ah?

—Yes, she is the queen.

He looked round for a moment. Then he stopped suddenly as if he were struck by something, his gaze fixed on the temple-tower.

—She is like Björn: they are going to die.

—What... What are you saying?

His eyes widened. He dropped my hand and began to hop on the pavement again.

—But Balu...

I was dumbfounded.

He did not even hear, he had already forgotten everything... No, it was not true, Björn was not going to die, it was absurd! Björn... I shook myself, drove away that falsehood. But it stuck, it vibrated somewhere, I was touched; something had touched me within and aroused I know not what. The whole street darkened. And suddenly, in that street which had been so clear and bright, I saw myself running hard, pursued by a crowd, just like that, for no reason at all. Just a vibration. A nasty little vibration which contained a world of agony—a past or future world, I do not know: the old Threat suddenly, like reptiles coming out of their hole—Destiny. No more light, no more immensity; it was a sudden shrinking, a dark trap, a decomposition of everything: “I”, like an illness. And why, I do not know. A brutal fall, a darkening. But it was not the usual little “I”, it was a fundamental “I”, infinitely deeper, harder and as if linked with pain. An old hinted-down memory in the depths. I was touching the point, I had come to the Fact. It was the last wall—or the first—to be demolished. And Björn's words came back to me: “We must have power for the sake of our brothers. Power, you understand?” Yes, what can one do, what is the lever of power? What can one do to heal that? Love?...

And at the same time, as if coming from afar, from the depths of an old memory, as old as that old Threat which weighs upon us, as old as that birth in the world, perhaps, I seemed to remember a Joy—which would be like the light of that shadow, joined to it, one with it—a Joy endowed with power, a triumphant and mighty Joy which carries all before it, dissolves everything, effaces everything in a smile. Oh! not the joy up there, that I have, it has always been mine, it is my indefeasible right: the joy here. This is what has to be found Up there, my joy smiles above the worlds, it is my great sweetness, my tenderness which does not move, as that of an immortal brother who leans over this body and all these bodies, and who smiles in a light of absolute understanding. But here, it does not come through. A puff of wind effaces it, a vibration demolishes it. It is here that we must find!

The image of the Sannyasi passed before me in a flash. With all his high laughter he did not have joy either.

Then I drove everything from my mind.

—Oh! Balu, where is it, the sea?

He looked at me as if he had fallen from the clouds, then he drew himself up proudly:

—Do you see the Western tower? Well, we are going the other side, to the Eastern tower; there, you'll see, it's terrific.

I took his little brown hand in mine, we mingled with the crowd of pilgrims.

—And it's high! baba! All the gods are there, milk has been poured over their heads!

That tower was fantastic! It looked like a gigantic truncated pyramid, an Egyptian pylon caught in an aberration. It was a rush, a torrent of idols and granite, a saraband of gods, apsaras, hermits, nude dancers and emaciated pilgrims who soared upwards towards the sky with the pigeons, the ernes and the monkeys—grotesque, divine, praying, suffering, hilarious,—like the very multitudes of the earth. And the blue of the sky, nothing more. The air smelt of jasmine, wet said, the sweating crowd, it was yesterday or today, the same interminable crowd soon to be vested with eternity, which bargained for its baubles of mother-of-pearl or of straw and one day blew into a conch-shell.

Then the blue of the sky again. And one begins all over again: 1 shaft, 2 shafts, 3 shafts...

—This way.

One always begins all over again, what is there that is really changed under the sun? Where is the new, the entirely new?

—We will go right round, you'll see.

He tugged at my hand. We turned into a small side-street. Then I saw that fortress, that formidable quadrilateral with three hundred metres of purple walls, planted there in the sand.

—Isn't it terrific! It's the biggest in the country. And, oh, how old it is!...

He cogitated, nodded his head, as if the grandfather would not suffice.

—It is completely sacred.

And in a peremptory voice:

—I love Björn.

And that was that.

We followed the little white street in the midst of the sound of conch-shells and gongs; the air vibrated like a huge mother-of-pearl. The little shops had given way to low houses of lime-coated granite. Children were chanting in a school.

Sometimes, a clump of palms flashed bright over the terraces.

And, little by little, a strange impression came over me—almost an emotion. Was it because of those high walls or the sands which carpeted the street? But it was more subtle than that; it was something in the quality of the air, a sort of familiar resonance, almost an odour, as in Thebes. Then I closed my eyes, there was that small warm hand in mine and I searched, I pushed against that wall of memory, I groped my way in an obscure odour peopled with presences; it was there, just on the other side; I could feel it, I could smell it still. And it was an emotion of a very special quality which I had experienced several times in various circumstances, in very different countries: suddenly, something awakens and vibrates without any reason, a quiver of recognition—in front of a being, a wall, a sky, no matter what,—like a secret at one's finger tips, something that one holds, and then it escapes; it is intimate, more intimate than all the looks and all the places in the world and yet elusive—a memory, a shock which has been lived through, and of which only the emotion remains, or a fragrance perhaps, like that of a loved one whose features have faded away leaving only this single imprint, or like that chant in the distance of which all the words were mingled, but full of presence... It is strange, the more I search for the entirely new, the more I am drawn back to the past, as if there were an old enigma to be solved before passing on to the new life.

—Appa! Appa!

He dashed into the house, shouting at the top of his voice.

–Appa! It's his brother!

We were in Bhaskar-Nath's house.

A tiny loggia in front of the entrance, statues of all sizes, all shapes, lined up on the ground like those in the temple. Balu caught my arm and pulled me inside.

—It's his brother, Nil, he has arrived.

There was a rustle of fleeing skirts. I stumbled in a dark passage, collided with an object which resounded like a musical-box... Then I came out into a patio flooded with light, covered with white sand: a. big bright courtyard surrounded by a pillared verandah and closed rooms. The whole house was bathed in the fragrance of sandalwood. I turned round: a massive presence was squatting in a corner, perfectly motionless. It was Bhaskar-Nath, the sculptor. He looked at me. Balu had become as dumb as a carp.

What that man was, I never really found out. But his look held me. And yet it was not something which took possession of me; there was no violence, it was not heavy, it did not try to probe and possess; I did not feel any inquisitiveness: it was a living mass which seemed to look at me from everywhere at the same time, or rather to draw me into another dimension, towards someone else behind me. Never have I met a man of such density—a force solidified, but soft at the same time, like himself: a Roman gladiator's body with Balu's black eyes.

—Sit down.

He pushed a mat in front of me. His wife came; she offered me a copper tray of areca nuts and a mug of water. She looked young. She pulled a fold of her sari over her forehead and smiled at me with her eyes lowered, then she withdrew silently.

Everything was silent there, except for the school-children's chanting.

—You are just in time... Tu es juste à l'heure.

I was startled.

—It is good that it is so. There is a time for everything.

He remained awhile fingering a rough-cast.

—It is the full moon. You are welcome.

And everything flowed in silence.

“The time”... “it's time”—I had heard those words so often... And I did not know what that time was, nor that moon, but it was so obviously true for me at this moment, with the chant of those school-children and that fragrance: I could not have been elsewhere, but there. I had roamed through many a country, for years and years—or centuries—thousands of steps and roads intertwining, and then I was there, just in time. It was obvious. And, suddenly, in that bit of patio, at the end of those thousands of roads and steps, I thought I had grasped the weft—the tremendous weft—the innumerable intersections of minute exactitudes which emerged here and not elsewhere, at this moment and no other; and it was not only an exactitude according to the clock—the material time was but a reflection, a mechanical and arbitrary means to fill in time which was not; it was a sort of inner coincidence which caused the time to become right: the journey happened in time outside, because it was in time within, and the concurrence of the two made the meeting inevitable, a tiny unnoticed miracle—a tremendous weft of unnoticed miracles. And, suddenly, in the presence of this man, I realised that there was a “time” behind everything, or rather a soul-moment, as if another time were unfolding behind ours, unceasingly, and when one followed that time or that rhythm, that journey, everything flowed harmoniously, smoothly, exactly as it should, with a miraculous precision, to the second; and in the other, everything jarred, collided, nothing met. And it was like two worlds exactly superimposed—a false one and a true one... An extraordinary horizon opened up before me; life became an infinitely fluid and pliable thing, almost a minute to minute creation. It was enough to be connected to the other journey.

Then everything faded, I remained looking at a tiny light playing on a chisel.

—Who led you here?

—A Sannyasi.

—Ah?

He put down his sandalwood block abruptly. His body was the same colour as the wood of his statues.

—A long time ago, he continued, someone predicted that misfortune would come to this house through a sannyasi.

I was taken aback.

—I was seventeen years old, you see, it was long ago, you were not yet born.

—But...

—Calm yourself, child, things happen as they must.

—But I am not a sannyasi! I have just arrived, it's your son who brought me to your house.

—You think so?... Then why are you so upset? You see.

I was not upset, I was in the grip of a seething anger as in front of that Sannyasi. I could still hear his voice: three times you have come, three times...

—But look here...

I stammered, I was like a Child robbed of his dream.

—These people who make predictions should have their tongues cut out. Damn it, what's the matter with you all in this country! Balu told me...

Bhaskar-Nath looked at me quietly.

—Why?... You are forewarned.

—I don't believe in your stories. It is I who make the future. I am free.

—Yes, it is you who make it.

He remained silent.

—But you are something very old... Listen, my child, destiny is not an enemy, there are no “enemies” in the world, they do not exist, everything is a help on the way. There is no “misfortune”, everything leads us exactly to where we must go, by all the necessary deviations. When one opens one's eyes, every minute is a miracle...

Then he smiled and his smile was so full of goodness!

—You are welcome here, you are at home, all that knocks at my door is good. What are you seeking?

—Your son Balu told me a little while ago that Björn was going to die.

Bhaskar-Nath nodded his head.

I was outraged.

—If Björn dies tomorrow, what do I do, just fold my arms, I suppose, it is decreed!

—But what do you think, stranger... that Destiny is a medicine for the impotent?

Bhaskar-Nath drew himself up, he looked like a lion.

—Listen, there is in you a possibility, and a great weakness. The two are together, almost necessarily together: the weakness is the crack through which the new possibility can slip in. So understand this. There are two things to understand, two poles of existence, a contradiction which is the key to everything—if you do not understand, you live in vain.

He plunged his eyes into mine, it was like a solid force.

—There is a world of eternal truth where everything already is, luminous, peaceful, beyond—free; and there is the world of apparently contrary forces, ours, where everything becomes what it is. Two sides: the light which sees, and the force which acts. And both must be held in the same grip, like the two horses of the same chariot. If you master the one without the other, you tumble into the light which sees but cannot act, or into the force, which acts but which knows nothing. And there is no choice: one has to be both. Then one is in the powerful light...

He smiled pensively:

—...The light of the next world.

Then without any transition, he added:

—You are in time. Your brother needs you. He was led not by a Sannyasi but by a Tantric—just the other pole.

—Who is this man, this Guruji?

There was a noise like thunder. I jumped up... A peacock swooped down at my feet in a whirl of feathers, blue, magnificent I heard a ripple of laughter; a small round face leaned over the patio.

—Batcha!

She disappeared, laughing.

Batcha, will you come and fetch this bird at once, I have already told you...

Bhaskar-Nath made his voice sound stern, but he did not mean a word of it. The peacock straightened its neck, planted itself in front of me and led out a resounding triumphant cry, as if to defy me. Then it started pecking on the ground. I was completely bewildered. I looked at the peacock; Bhaskar-Nath was just behind, very straight and motionless against the wall. And in a flash, I saw myself running behind that Sannyasi in the street of the port, and that warrior-god suddenly surging out of the walls, mounted on a peacock... Everything was starting all over again. Bhaskar-Nath was like a statue. The school-children were chanting. I had the impression of being thrown into a world full of signs, without the key.

—Shikhi! Shikhi!...

The little round face emerged from behind the door. She had a red tilak in the middle of her forehead, which made a little flame on a very fair face, and a long pomegranate-coloured gypsy skirt... une longue jupe couleur de grenade.

—Batcha, the next time...

The peacock swept the patio with a stroke of its tail and rushed into her skirts like a chicken.

They disappeared together.

It was the signal. The doors round the verandah opened, a servant passed by, the sculptor's wife began to pick up the sandalwood shavings. Through the door at the end, one could glimpse the foliage of a margosa tree. The girls were winnowing rice.

—You see, my son...

From that moment, he always called me “son” and I could have sworn that something had really happened at that moment, between that peacock, Batcha, Bhaskar-Nath and myself—that peacock, why that peacock?... ce paon, pourquoi ce paon?

—...From the day you look at things with true eyes, there is not a single thing in the world which, is not full of meaning and which does not contain its own message. It is as if everything were plotting to force us to understand.

I did not know what was there to understand and I barely heard Bhaskar-Nath, but something was happening. Was it the presence of that man? The air seemed to vibrate, the objects, even the walls seemed suffused with light, as though they were gliding into another dimension and were going to suddenly open, to change their appearances, and yet they were the same objects, it was the same person, but so different, almost made alive; I felt that one word, one sound, would make everything tip over and tear that veil of haziness; I was on the fringe of a dizzy frontier, and I did not understand, I did not see, but it was all there, just behind, hardly behind. I picked up a bit of feather from the ground and fingered it: the ocelli also vibrated, changed, turned from blue to green, to golden brown. And perhaps that peacock had a meaning for Bhaskar-Nath, and for me and for Batcha—three different stories, or only one? Just a little bit of feather which shimmers. And the air appeared still sharper, brighter, as if inflated with another substance of life: the chisels, this feather, the sand in the patio, Bhaskar-Nath's hands, everything seemed connected in another movement. Then my look returned once more to that peacock's ocellus, and I thought I saw the compact marvel... I had the feeling at that moment, that the world was full of superimposed depths and that one single thing falling under our eyes for one moment and passing on, could contain the entire history of the world, like the momentary configuration of the stars could trace the image of a destiny and contain, in a second's juncture, the story of a multitude. It was dazzling: suddenly I saw, I felt that world moving in a grandiose dance of which every point was the centre of all and contained all—a wondrous kaleidoscope which turns and overturns, turns and overturns; which periodically traces the signs of a new dance, another story, but it was always the same actors who acted, one unique story; and if that single flash of ruby or turquoise, that single peacock's feather on a terrace one day, happens to move, everything moves. It dances and everything dances—the world is a miracle. It was dazzling, a wind of frosty powder on the blue crest of a mountain; and perhaps, a same breath up there, at the same moment, had enchanted that Himalaya... and my heart.

Bhaskar-Nath arranged his chisels. The children were still chanting. I felt that I had lived blindly for thirty years in a flat photographic world, an exact world, minutely marked out, where each thing meant one thing and only one, a poor thing all alone like an insect impaled in its box—and that world was exactly dead and false. Thousands of silver threads connected everything to everything, a single, plumed seed rolled over fields of stars; the world opened, everything opened; each petal covered another petal which covered another petal—which revealed a single golden Sun.

I got up as if in a dream.

—My son, beware of Björn.

I looked at Bhaskar-Nath, I looked at that gladiator's naked torso, and I no longer knew what he meant—beware? of whom? There was but one light which burned a million times, in life, in death, in my heart and in everything, and which held this whole world of men and things in the hollow of a single plumed seed.

He got up. He went into a back room. Then he returned with a small sandalwood statuette which he placed in my hands. It was a dancing flute-player.