By The Body Of The Earth or The Sannyasin

The Chandal and I

We put him on the funeral pyre, facing the north, as if he were returning to his country. Only the chandal and I were there, and, near by, the sea running over the coral. Björn would not return to the island, he would not go to the lagoon; I had brought him as far as I could, I had prayed, begged the macua¹⁷ to take him to the other side—nobody had agreed. The journey came to an end here, on this beach, near a small white lighthouse which marked the island pass. There was a cargo at anchorage; perhaps the Aalesund or the Laurelbank anchored in the same place, in the midst of the cries of the macua. There was a topaz-coloured erne circling in the sky. The chandal laid Björn on some casuarina branches; he was all enveloped in white, he seemed asleep; and I was standing near him But I do not know really whether it was me nor where I was; I felt no sorrow, I felt nothing at all: I was anaesthetised. I looked at Björn. I looked at all that, and it was like a dream. We had laid him on the sand earlier, I had knelt down and put a garland of jasmines around his neck—it was terrible, I thought everything in me was going to break. And then, all of a sudden, I let go; I saw his body on the sand, I saw my hand on his chest, the garland, the beach, the boat, I saw everything—the lighthouse, the topaz-coloured erne—and both of us, very small, very tiny and white on the sand. I was far away, on the other side. It was another world. It was another eye. It was not even Björn or me any longer, nor his death nor any special 'death: it was something that was happening—a phenomenon, an eternal rite—something which had been seen, lived innumerable times, here, there, on one side or the other, he or I, I no longer knew, in white, always in white, and an erne circling above, a small lighthouse, a ship lying at anchor as though we were about to leave or return. It was the same, infinitely the same. It was a kind of sacred catastrophe into which we entered, as one enters a deluge or thunder, or the ruins of Thebes; there was no longer any me to cry, no more death, no more life; there was no one in particular; there were thousands and thousands of times “me” entering or leaving a body; it was a great rite that was taking place, an infinite return of things like that of the birds or of the stars; it was simple like the truth; it was without sadness like the truth; it was since the beginning of time.

Then everything melted. The body was below and I was above, pulled, drawn up as into an expanse of light. My breath became immobile. I no longer knew on which side I was or if it were he or I who was leaving. It was a sheet of radiating light, soft, infinitely soft, into which one sank deeper and deeper as into snow, and it was silent, infinite, limitless; a high sea of soft snow, but as though swollen with vibrant light, moving, scintillating, as if innumerable flakes of luminous tenderness were wheeling round slowly, in an immensity of ease, a rolling of stars in an infinitude of silence and peace, and each flake was like a living being, each scintillation a circling millennium. There, one was for ever; there, one could live for ever; the silence and peace were like the air one inhaled; the light, like the pulsation of absolute life; there, one could go on for ever, without fatigue of being, without lassitude, without anything lacking, and the eyes could rest always in an unchanging vision: an ineffable beatitude of being without a shadow.

He pulled me abruptly. I heard the cry of the macua. An unfurling of sounds and colours, and then a hard crude light which struck harshly; I had a moment of suffocation as it I were drowning—but where then was death, on which side?... I saw Björn on the pyre and the chandal handing me a firebrand. I understood nothing of all this.

I took the fire.

He made a sign. I threw the fire-brand.

Then everything blazed up at once: the thorny twigs, the white scarf, the casuarina branches; I saw a stain spread over the dhoti like an expanding black flower. I saw his bare leg. The heat of a furnace. I jumped back... Everything rushed upon me: the death, the bare-torsoed chandal, his bamboo pole, his bucket of water, the pyre, Björn, that bit of madrepore full of crevices in the middle of the sands, then the little lighthouse, the cargoboat, the cry of the macua, the indigo sea which came to lap the sands as if it were going to carry Björn away in a boat of fire. It was death on all sides, nothing but death, not a single living light! And the sorrow, the crushing: me. I who had brought Björn here, I who had dragged him to that hospital, I who had prevented him from leaving on the Aalesund, I...

“I” meant death.

One looks at oneself and death begins. One looks at oneself and it is miserable, pitiable, full of falsity,—never once had I had a right thought since I had begun to look at myself, me and my destiny. I had done everything wrong, I had demolished everything. Death was not really the fact of dying, it was only an evil look. One looks at oneself and all becomes black, even Nisha starts to cross one's path and the pilgrims of the devil surge up from one doesn't know where; one enters into the wretched story, one passes into the caricature, and it dies, it dies, it can only die, because there is no truth in it. And yet it is always the same story, but seen from the wrong side. Oh! sometimes it seems to me that the whole world is wrongly seen, just wrongly seen, and that the whole picture could be turned over into a dazzling light, and death disappear like the mist in a dream, if only we had the true look. Björn, my brother, I swear that you will come back, we shall both come back, we shall be born one day with eyes of light and the world will be our vision of beauty.

I was sitting in the sand, I was near the small lighthouse. The chandal was stirring the fire with his pole. I no longer knew where to go nor what to do, I had lost my brother. I was thousands of kilometres away—from what, I could not even say, I no longer had any country. I was at the other end, that is all. And then there was that boat lying at anchor—there was always a boat lying at anchor! I was at zero point: nothing in front of me, nothing behind. That moment seemed to come back each time in my life, as if I had to pass again and again through the same point, the same, always the same, but each time more painful, more acute—it seems that one spends one's life turning around a certain point and if one really knew the point, one would have solved the problem and cut the neck of destiny. I know exactly at what instant I touched that point for the first time, my point—and perhaps it was the same for all of us, in different colours. It was at the window of a little room which looked out onto the sea, a very small triangular window with a branch of cypress in front, and sails racing on the sea, and I... I was not racing on the sea, I was looking. And I saw something—oh! not a fantastic vision—something which came with great power, almost with pain, and which was like a condensation of forces in a picture: an immense spider's web, luminous, iridescent, and I in the middle, hanging by the threads. Threads of all colours, so pretty, there, among the branches of the cypress. And all those threads were a world of things which was not me: they were my books, my father, my mother, my boat, geography and laws; nothing of me, not a single thing of mine, not one second... pas une seconde. I was that thing in the centre hanging only by the threads. And if I cut the threads?... What would remain? Ever since that moment, I have been pursuing that sole question. And everything was happening as if destiny were bringing me periodically face to face with my question, and in a very simple way: by cutting all the threads. And it seemed to me that the answer would begin only when the last thread had been cut. It was like a moment of death: all or nothing, a kind of intolerable nothingness out of which there sometimes came something very pure and very mysterious, like a new birth.

What I did not know then is that when one arrives at that point, there is such a suction of forces that circumstances are obliged to change and they change exactly as one sees them at that very moment. Oh! one has to look carefully.

I looked at that fire.

I looked at the sweating chandal who was emptying buckets of water over his head, and at the topaz-coloured erne circling above. It was like a wave of suffering which washed over me and I struggled against my pain, against that Björn who surged up from everywhere with his golden lock of hair and his muffled voice: “Power, we must have power for our brothers... What if I became mad?... All black, the little Björns, all black!...” And the chandal poked and poked with his pole as if it were only wood burning. “A great net which one hauls in... The cry of a bird, it is all that remains... Nil, we are a new race of adventurers!...” And now that little heap of ashes! Björn was only a little heap of ashes. I struggled against my sorrow and I no longer wanted to love, never again to love, no more attachments, no more ties—free, free. It was like a see-saw: I plunged into the wave and I resurfaced, I entered into that self of suffering and I emerged; and when I emerged, it was as a little while before, very sweet and eternal, a great wide expanse veiled with sweetness, an infinite compassion which leans down and looks... looks. And then it was me again, suffocation, death, tragedy, oh! not a very great tragedy but which filled me exactly to my capacity: that of a man, one day, face to face with solitude and the end—a little heap of ashes. But above it was non-tragedy, the impossibility of tragedy of any kind: it could not be, it did not exist. Two looks, two rhythms. I went, I came... And suddenly I cut loose. I passed above.

And I saw something—I was bathed in something, and I was seized with wonder.

A tremendous inexpressible Harmony; everything had its place, eternally its own place, an Architecture so fabulously compact—in the light, nothing but light, a picture of living light—from which one could remove nothing, not an atom, not a so-called shadow, not a minute fragment of being, without the whole collapsing. Everything was there, eternally there, from the first moment when the great nebula had burst its flower of fire; every point in the world, every particle of space, every heart-beat was woven with the same light; everything held together indissolubly, without a gap, without a break, without any imprecision anywhere; a Totality of being carried in an immense white trajectory linking that point of one minute, that second's absurdity, that poignant and isolated non-sense, to an infinity of other points in front, behind, and to other trajectories, innumerable trajectories of which the goal was neither in front nor above nor farther away: the goal was everywhere! At every instant it was the goal, utterly the goal, at every point of space, at every second of time, without a cleavage of future for hope, without a break of past for regret; it was that and all the time that, perfectly that, at every second—an infallible rite with millions of figurants, a myriad imperishable orbits which passed again and again through eternal co-ordinates, a single imprescriptible movement which linked that point of pain, that fragment of self, that quivering of an age, to the passage of a chipmunk and to the blowing of the monsoons, to that child's song on a little white beach, to innumerable songs, to infinite points of pain or of joy which mingled together, were lit-up together, which made but one great luminous train, an immense dress of snow woven from a myriad threads, and like a lofty, unique Person moving through eternal azure fields.

It was the ceremony of the worlds—absolute, faultless, for the sole joy of itself.

And below, far below, something which was me—which obstinately refused to deny tragedy as if that were “life”, the true life, it was to “betray life. Something which wanted to suffer.

I paid the chandal, paid for the wood. The sun was setting. A wedge of birds passed by to the south. There remained exactly three rupees in Björn's red wallet. His journey had been I well calculated.

And now I was alone and I had nothing more in front of me. I had reached the end of a cycle.