By The Body Of The Earth or The Sannyasin

Batcha

—Well, you were far away.

She was sitting on the steps, leaning against one of the columns of the peristyle like a round-cheeked Moghul miniature.

—Oh! Batcha, you are there...

She looked at me quietly, steadily, her head on her knees, her arms hugging her legs; a long pomegranate-coloured skirt fell down to her feet. She was white and serious, as white as Balu was bronzed, a golden white, with that black plait falling over her breast. And that little red flame in the middle of her forehead which gave her an undefinable look... Yes, “Batcha, she is the queen”.

—Did you sleep well?

No reply.

—How is your peacock, Shikhi?

No reply.

She continued to scrutinise me at leisure, but there was no curiosity; I had the feeling that she was bending over me as over a plant whose odour was unknown to her... I must have been a variety of cactus.

—Hey! Batcha, of what do I smell, the crocodile or the cactus?

She smiled slightly.

—You are too restless.

That was all.

Then I fell silent and I entered into her eyes as if it were a game... And I did enter. It was even the first time I had entered into someone, there was no barrier, it was welcoming: a great velvet door and then one sinks into something very sweet and tranquil, oh! so tranquil, like a lake, one sinks down...

I began to cough. It was over.

It was I who could not hold out, I seemed to be perturbed. She had an imperceptible smile which wrinkled the tip of her nose, I thought she was going to say something. Then she closed her eyes as though she were carrying me into her inmost depths. She was so perfectly still, like a little grebe in a paddy-field; nothing stirred, not even a ripple; I was like a mass of noise compared to that sweetness.

Finally I could not hold out:

—What is that red sign on your forehead? You are not Tantric by any chance?

She opened her eyes very wide feigning fear.

—Oh! baba! What are you saying!...

—Is it just a decoration?

This time she was scandalised. She pointed to the little temple with her chin:

—It is the blessing of the god.

—The god? Which god?

She heaved a sigh, put her head back on her knees. Decidedly I was asking foolish questions.

It depends on the days.

And she started humming:

I am the bird of the forest
I talk with the spring
I go from leaf to leaf

—Oh! Batcha, can you sing?

And I laugh
Those who catch birds
The charming princes cannot catch me...
   Nor sorrow

—It is Mâ who taught me, she sings all the songs. She comes from very far away, from the north, near Kailash. There is a lake there, with blue lotuses... What is it like farther away? Tell me? Is there snow?

—Oh! I...

—Yes, do tell me.

—I have forgotten.

—You have forgotten?... You are like Bholanath. I often go into the country on the other side.

—And what do you do there?

—I stroll about, I go adventuring, it is so lovely! Yesterday, it was a completely red island with birds... une île toute rouge avec des oiseaux, oh!... there was one golden bird which swooped down upon me... I was so happy, I cried out Appa! Appa! look.

Her eyes were sparkling, she was rosy like a peach.

—...But we are quite well here, also.

She smiled so charmingly, I was completely bewitched.

—Besides, I love the gods.

—Ah!... And why?

—Because they love me.

It was irrefutable.

—Have you seen them?

—Sometimes. When I am very quiet, I can hear.

—They speak?

She nodded her head condolently...

—Not with words, of course... It is like the wind in the dunes. It comes from far beyond. And then it changes. Sometimes it is sweet; sometimes it is strong, sometimes it is like a fluttering of wings... But it carries: we go here, we go there, we are driven, it arranges everything very well. We meet.

And just at that moment, a big wild thistle seed rolled from the dunes, tumbled, fell on Batcha, slipped through my fingers and... was gone!

Batcha burst into laughter.

—You see!

—What does it mean?

—It means they are amusing themselves well!

—They?

—Oh! how complicated you are!

She heaved a sigh.

—And then there are so many stories also... Does the great Goddess of your country too play the veena?

—The goddess... There is no goddess in my country.

—No Goddess...

She seemed amazed.

—Then you know nothing.

She scrutinised me again:

—You have forgotten, you are like Bholanath.

I must have looked baffled.

—He is my favourite God, the supreme god. Oh! he is very nice, he loves everything: the gods, the demons, the wicked, the good, all... He is a beggar.

—A beggar, the supreme god!

—Yes, he begs. He forgets everything. He even forgets that he is very rich...

That little phrase... I think if I live for a hundred years it will follow me like one of those secrets to which one has not the key.

She put her head back on her knees.

—Yet you are not as in my dream.

—In your dream?

—You were passing, I saw you. You were handsome. But you were not dressed as you are now, and then you were taller also. Now you look...

She hesitated a moment, sniffed a little, wrinkling the tip of her nose.

—But it doesn't matter, you are nice all the same.

She smiled at me, her face became round like a moon. I was completely mystified.

—Taller... Taller than what? Have I shrunk? What an imagination you have, Batcha.

—Imagination, what is that?

—It means to see what does not exist.

—If it does not exist, one does not see! How funny you are! How can you see what does not exist?... Balu told me that your name was nothing-at-all, does that exist?... est-ce que ҫa existe, ҫa?

She laughed and laughed. A delighted laugh which rippled across the dunes with a kind of impertinence.

—You are my dream here, Mr. Nothing-at-all, you do not exist

Her cheeks puffed up with suppressed laughter, she shook her head with a kind of commiseration:

—You, really!... And Appa, do you think he carves nothing at all?

—But Batcha...

Truthfully, I felt pinned down. I sensed I was out of my depth; I no longer knew very well on which side I was, this one or the other, and perhaps the frontiers did not exist at all. I looked at Batcha, at the beach, at life with a sort of wonder: and what if we are carving here an image from elsewhere, like Bhaskar-Nath? What if we were all in the process of carving the image of a god that we were elsewhere, or of a demon? The whole of life was like an image, everything is an image which becomes real little by little, inhabited by its model. And sometimes one carves nothing, one is just a piece of wood.

—You are a strange little girl, Batcha, who are you?

—I am Bhaskar-Nath's daughter.

She drew herself up to her full height, like Balu, but she was taller than Balu.

—And you?

—...

—You see.

It was categorical, I was a complete idiot.

—As for you, you understand nothing.

That was settled. And what bewildered me was the strength there was in that sprout of a woman, her presence; with Björn, with men, one could escape elsewhere: not with her. She held you there, she was present, one was obliged to be there. In fact, woman is the presence of the world.

—Batcha, tell me your dream?

But she no longer felt like it. She looked at the beach, the dunes; the sand-storm was blowing already, tiny dark blue ripples covered the sea... “You understand nothing”—Björn had also said that to me. What was it then that I did not understand? What was closed inside? There was nothing closed! As soon as I got out of that species of me, it was the vast expanse, the great, immediate ease, absolute understanding. And I did not care at all about that bit of me, it was a kind of monkey-cage to which it was necessary to return in order to eat, to think, to speak—and, in addition, all that in monkey-language.

—Here, look at that one.

She took a small pebble, threw it gently on the beach in front of the steps: a crab scampered full tilt towards its hole. Then I noticed that there were hundreds and hundreds of little greyish-white crabs... It came out a minute later, pushed up its eye like a periscope, turned it in all directions—no danger—and it began once more to scuttle here and there. Batcha went off into peals of laughter.

—The world is really funny. Do you think the gods also throw little pebbles at us like that to see what happens?

This time, it was I who laughed.

—They send very impertinent little Batchas.

—They send dreams, birds. I always see birds.

—As for me, I am rather inclined to see snakes.

—Oh! no! the gods don't send snakes. It is the demons. The gods send birds to eat the snakes. Shikhi kills all the cobras, he is the enemy of the demons.

Batcha remained thoughtful a moment.

—After all, the demons are the brothers of the gods, so... Really, they amuse themselves together.

—Do they amuse themselves by eating each other?

—Oh! they pretend to, there are always cobras, always Shikhis; there are always gods, always demons.

—In short, we are the only ones who really get ourselves eaten. She looked at me.

—Eaten?

—Yes, we die.

—You mean we are burned... there?

She made a gesture towards the other side of the dunes.

—But look here, one does not die! One goes strolling elsewhere. How funny you are!... Appa said so. And then we come back. So we play, too. And you, were you dead before you arrived here?...

Suddenly Batcha's face changed, she looked at me for a second with an overwhelming intensity:

—... Only, we suffer because we are not together.

There was such distress in that small voice.

—One must not go away, one must be together, always together!... ensemble, toujours ensemble!

She repeated those words, hammering them out with a kind of savage energy. But then to whom was she speaking?

—It is like my dream...

Then in a single movement she turned towards me and seized me with her large black eyes and it was like a cry:

—O Stranger, why do you bring me these ugly thoughts, I have not asked to know you! I do not want to be hurt!

I made a movement to calm her, she recoiled angrily:

—Don't touch me!

And suddenly, through that flame of anger, for one second, I entered into her. And I was close, very close to that child, intimate, strangely intimate, I wanted to put my arms round her shoulders, stroke her hair, console her, as though I had really hurt her.

—But look here, Batcha, what is the matter, tell me?

Her breast was heaving under her blouse.

—Tell me, explain.

—I don't know.

She looked up at me with a sort of incomprehension. Then she started to speak in a colourless, almost neutral voice:

—I met you at the gate of the temple. You seemed quite tall, I looked at you. Then I came here and made a puja. I offered flowers to the god. But I was thinking of you... It was not right. I slept... There I saw you.

She sniffed and made a funny little grimace which puffed out her cheeks.

—It was like a road... but wide, very wide, with a lot of sun, like the beach here, but it was water. It was water like sand, I don't know how to explain—it shone a lot. And you were passing by. You passed without seeing me as if you were crossing this beach there, but it was wide, as wide as the sea and shining everywhere. And you were taller than you are now, but white like the pilgrims from the north. You were not dressed as you are now either, as though... as though you had the robe of a sannyasi, orange. But it was you, I recognized you well. I even called you—three times I called... Oh! I shouted your name, but you did not reply, you heard nothing—you went on walking and walking, farther and farther, you were becoming smaller and smaller like a picture, as if you were going to melt in the distance, and then all this sand was shining, and I said: il va être trop tard, il va être trop tard—it will be too late, it will be too late! Again and again I called you, I looked at you so hard! I must not stop looking at you: if I stopped looking at you for one minute, it would be finished, you would have disappeared altogether... and I was going to die. It was so strong...

Batcha pressed her breast.

—When you became so small, I had such a pain here, I woke up...

I looked at Batcha. I was astounded.

And I saw the picture, it was alive, poignant, it reverberated deep within me with an intense light—the acute light of true things, as if the picture were already there within me and that were the shock of recognition: yes that was it. Yes, but what, “it”?... And I knew that shock well, it is the knock of the already there—oh! one is only touched by what is already there, all the rest simply does not exist, it passes by, it is the nebulous vision of things which pass by. I could see that Sannyasi, I felt him, he was alive, I almost had his weight on my shoulders, and then Batcha's look, her very small voice: “Il va être trop tard, trop tard”—”It will be too late, too late,” just a poignant little vibration. Oh! that alarming sound of things which are about to take shape—there are sounds which contain a world just as a flash of lightning contains the whole picture, and perhaps it was the same thing in another language: the music of the picture; there are sounds of darkness, violet sounds, poisonous yellow vibrations like the sliding of a snake under the leaves, and little sounds which sing like the blue-tinged frost of a victory. But this was dark red and poignant: il va être trop tard, trop tard—it will be too late, too late... I knew that well, it was familiar, already heard... Then, suddenly, I saw a hill of red flowers rise up, an island, a promontory... And then Mohini: it will be too late, Nil, too late—il va être trop tard, Nil, trap tard.

I was dumbfounded.

I understood nothing. I was completely stupefied. I heard only that voice, that very small voice, and I saw that dazzling sea before me like a mirror of ice and the shadow of the Laurelbank in the distance. A whole world which came back in a flash as if from the depths of a past life: the house, the sitars, the big aviary, the tulsi which smelt like wild mint, the monsoon, the flowers flying away like a cloud of red birds. Il va être trop tard, Nil, trop tard...

What could it mean? What had Batcha seen?... An image of the past? But I was not a Sannyasi, I was not dressed in orange robes. Moreover Batcha had nothing to do with Mohini. An image of the future?... But why suddenly that Mohini? It was all over, dead and buried! And I could still hear that same small voice: “Are you not Nil-Aksha, the blue-eyed one... I tell you, what is happening today was begun thousands and thousands of years ago and will continue for thousands and thousands of years to come.”

Batcha looked at me.

Suddenly an idea crossed my mind:

—Batcha, tell me, you say that you called me three times: three times, I called you. Whom did you call, by what name?

She tried to remember.

—It's true... I don't know now. But it was you, it was your name, your true name.

She looked at me mischievously.

—It was not nothing-at-all.

Then she smiled so charmingly. And before I could understand what was happening, she made a face at me, her eyes shut, and she stuck out her tongue from the corner of her mouth.

—Batcha!...

Then she leaped up, caught up her skirt in both hands and fled like a deer across the sands.