By The Body Of The Earth or The Sannyasin

The Departure

Water was singing through all the cracks in the harbour, the air smelled of hot mangoes and the ebb-tide, and my Laurelbank was there, firmly moored to the second wharf. I sang, too. Each time I sang. I was as light as foam on budding life. Mohini had foundered there with her island, in the Tartarus of a previous existence, and hop! to windward! Indeed, it is the best part of life—I have spent my time making impossible lives for myself for the unique joy of that moment. Unfortunately, it does not last. No sooner does one get out of one life than one fabricates new ropes for oneself and everything has to be started all over again—one should be absolutely free; at the departure, always at the departure, there, just this moment of freedom between two countries, and chin up boy!

Suddenly, I stopped... sobered. I was soaking wet under a Street lamp. The beacon from the lighthouse swept away a chaos of streaming shadows, disappeared, then reappeared, caught the temple tower, disappeared, reappeared, caught the temple tower... The pavement, the palisades, the deserted quays shone... The scene had shifted in a flash—I had made the whole round in one second:

It was Port Moresby,
   which resembled Belem which resembled Goa;
I had found the gold mine, the chromium mine,
   the yellow isle, the black isle;
I had married a Negress and committed suicide one evening.
   A lightning life.
Fifteen thousand kilometres in the sweep of a beacon;
   I had made the round, it was finished.
It was the tenth time I was landing under that street lamp;
   I was at the starting point.
   I had never started.

The pools of water had goose-flesh under the street lamp.

With a kick, I sent my shadow spinning. A rat scuttled away. It was exactly that, one always came back to the Monkey-cage; everywhere the thinking monkey-cage. There was nothing more to do but to rush to Eastern Traders and change my shirt.

A real departure... would perhaps be to quit the subject?

And the tea-vendor's kettle glistened at the corner of the street—exactly what I needed.

—O stranger, there you are again?

I stopped short. He was there, his eyes sparkling, squatting on a packing-case in front of the tea-vendor's stall.

—Well, well, don't you recognize me?

For a moment, I just stood staring at that tall shadow clad in orange, and then at the candle, the sacks, the copper pots, the stall which looked like one of Breughel's dens... Anger suddenly seized me, a blind, murderous rage, as it had first time. With one bound, I pounced on him, grabbed him by his scarf and raised my hand.

He burst out laughing.

A triumphant, explosive laugh, which shook the crate and filled the whole street. I was flabbergasted. The tea-vendor rushed between the sacks and gripped my shoulder. The Sannyasi stopped him:

—Leave him, Gopal, leave him; bring him some tea.

He laughed again. The other had tucked up his lungi and placed his foot on a sack; the oil-lamp cast fantastic shadows; and I remained there hanging onto that orange scarf, stupid, facing those white teeth which grinned as if they were going to swallow the whole night.

—Leave him, Gopal. Do as I say.

The man looked at me once more. I was the devil, to be sure. He jumped over his sacks and disappeared. I was furious. Then I fixed my eyes on that species of hilarious owl:

—If you think...

My hand let go of the scarf.

—You are a good boy. Sit down.

I wanted to yell, to hit out, to spit in his face. To escape, to remain, to kick those copper vessels. Finally I found my voice again.

—You sonofa...

He placed a finger on my lips.

—Do not use words that hurt.

A spark of anger flashed into his eyes. Then the curtain fell again. There was nothing but that sort of jubilation which stupefied me, like a giant who looks over the mountains and farts, laughing in the face of the world.

—You are going to explain yourself...

—What am I going to explain to you, boy? That you are just in time, that you have run a lot? That you are going to miss your boat if you go on?

His stomach shook once more with laughter, but he controlled himself.

—Go on, drink.

I was completely fascinated by that face. It was almost black, with piercing eyes and a hooked nose, like an erne in its tawny coat. It was above all that kind of intense vitality which could instantly become rigid like the mask of a mummy. He pointed a finger at me:

—What have you got there? You're hurt?... Eh, Gopal, bring some water.

I rubbed my forehead: there was a streak of blood running down to the end, of my nose. It was smarting. I must have looked pretty. My clothes needed wringing out, my shirt was torn. For one moment Mohini's image floated before my eyes:

—You are going to explain what you said to me yesterday. Here, in this very place, this very street, you said... You said to me: Three times you have come, three times you have killed—trois fois tu es venu, trois fois tu as tué...

—I said that?

He raised his eyes so innocently.

—Then it is true.

Quietly, he took off his scarf, dipped one end in his copper pot and tried to sponge my forehead. I jumped back. The boiling tea spilled and splashed over my feet. I thought he was going to laugh again. He rolled his scarf into a ball and threw it at my face:

—Here, wash yourself.

And he remained with clenched teeth, looking into the night. I felt like an imbecile, reduced to nothing, emptied, left with that scarf in my hands and my bowl of tea, staring at that long-haired, louse-infested creature. And I was no longer angry. He had taken away my anger, too. All that remained was that kind of absurd, impotent snarl, as though I were facing an old, mortal enemy.

I pulled myself together.

—Do you hear, you are going to speak...

Why did I persist? I do not know. I ought to have gone away at once, cleared out—but the more I felt my folly, the more I clung to it, as if I had an old account to settle with him. Besides, that wooden implacability in front of me was beginning to make my ears burn.

—Do you hear, you charlatan! Imposter, quack, how long have you been telling people this humbug, eh?

He hardly turned round and simply, as one states a fact, said:

—A man seeks only the contentment of his soul.

And he spat vigourously on the ground, three metres in front of him.

—And you, you are not content.

Then he bundled his rags, tied his scarf, took up his staff, his beggars' sack, his begging-bowl, and jumped onto the road.

—Come on, let's be on our way, it's time—Allons, en route, c'est l'heure.

And suddenly, without knowing why, I found myself in the street with that man, walking at his side. We were going back up the little street towards Eastern Traders. We walked by the pottery-stalls, bumped into a beggar, passed the temple-gate... But whatever was I doing there? For a moment my gaze lingered on the rose pottery and the flower seller's faded garlands. He had said, “Let's be on our way,” and I was going, as though I had heard that dozens of times. I began to feel a strange headiness. I pulled up the collar of my shirt and walked into the night.

—Hey! Sannyasi...

But he did not hear. It was ten minutes to ten by the Eastern Traders' clock. I still had the whole night before me—what did I risk? This time, a cunning little challenge began to whisper in my ear: “Pourquoi pas?” ...“Why not?” And when I heard that pourquoi pas, I was good for the devil. All the same, I would have liked to know why... But I did not even know what I wanted to know! I was seized by a strangeness, and I followed that tall, orange-clad shadow gliding its way bare-foot amongst the puddles of muddy water and the decaying mangoes, as if I did not exist. To know what? The night filled me with sweetness... it was light and floating. I had given way—I was borne along by a current. Destiny was perhaps that? One asks questions, but it is not really to get an answer, it is only to make the monkey walk, and if one stops for a minute to find out what one really wants, if one lets oneself float and be carried, one finds that there is no need of questions at all, nor even of answers; one only needs a certain density, like a fish in water. And when the density is not there, one asks questions. That is all. But it, is neither the question nor the answer which makes the density,

—Sannyasi, tell me, where are you going?

He turned round as if he had just noticed my presence, then continued on his way without a word, his neck thrust forward like a cachalot in warm water. A taxi went splashing by, followed by rickshaws, lorries full of cotton and shadows trotting under straw umbrellas. We had arrived at the station.

He stopped under the clock and looked at me for a moment gleefully, as if he were about to bite into an apple, then he left the station and went in the direction of the warehouses. I was no longer curious; I just wanted to be with this man, to walk with him, to be completely absurd with him, to go to the devil with him if he wished, and to plunge into such an improbable life that I would no longer recognize anything. Why not?... My eyes fell suddenly on a poster: Neem, in white letters, in the middle of a hoarding with an enormous tube of tooth-paste. Everything became fixed for a moment. My eyes seemed to open inordinately and to absorb everything, enter into everything with a fantastic precision, as if the least little: drop, the smallest groove, the tree by the railway tracks, were suddenly bursting with eternal life, and I passed through. I was there, everywhere—not inside, my eyes, but in a million nooks and corners and little rustling leaves: the drop, the tree, the word: the shadows, all living, eternally living, immobilised. One second of respite in the tremendous avalanche. Then the word flared up in a white spark—it was obvious, I was leaving. My eyes came back to the tall, stooping shadow, striding through the night: it was he, it was simple, I had found him again. I was on the way after a century of meandering. I was picking up the thread again, setting my feet on the path. I had remained hanging in mid-air, nowhere, absolutely nowhere for years and lives, and then suddenly I was there, I was disembarking, I was finding the point again.

I seemed to hear a peal of bells in my ears. The Eastern Traders had been shipwrecked, my luggage was at the bottom of the sea, I no longer had anything! Nothing, not even a tooth-brush, no passport, no name. I felt suddenly disencumbered. I wanted to take the Sannyasi by the shoulder, to laugh and to tell him... Nothing, I kicked a piece of old tin, and slipped with him through a hole in the palings. We came out onto the railway lines.

A swarm of crickets invaded the night. The railway lines sped away in a yellow stridulation and myself with them, as if I had let go of my body—a tiny cinder of a body on the ballast—and then I was high up, very high, and transparent all around, like a crystal field vibrating with a single cicada. The Sannyasi began to run towards a red light. I jumped behind him from crossing to crossing; the platforms shone, the night was beautiful like a princess in a gown of rubies. Ah! I know a beauty which is not of the flesh and a music which no sitar can imitate, and the signs of the night are my imponderable treasures.

The last compartment was for us. There were twenty inside, in all positions, in the midst of a noisy bazaar which smelt of Tamilian sweat and turmeric powder. The Sannyasi squatted on the step and wedged his stick in the door. I sat down beside him, my feet dangling in space. The train rumbled on. I was in the dress circle.

—Hey, boy, what do you say to all this?

A wave of joy swept over me, I felt my pockets, took out the leather wallet, found my ticket: “Port Moresby, via Colombo and the Sunda Isles”. You bet!

—You see that?

He looked at me, laughing. Then I took the ticket, tore it into a million pieces and flung it out the door. The Sannyasi did not turn a hair. Then I burst out laughing. A marvellous side-splitting laugh which rocked me, as if I were casting off thirty years of lies, oh!... I have been in prisons where they neatly trussed up the dead—and the living, too—like turkeys. I have floundered about in the virgin forest, sweated with fever and anguish, dug into eagle droppings at the end of a rope in search of the treasure of Rajput princes, and I have performed a few outrageous tricks which do not bear mentioning, but it was still in the unreasonableness of their reason, still the tail of the same monkey! and suddenly, I was emerging from that unreason—from all the possible reasons and explanations, from all the negations, the oppositions, the antipodes which still have one foot on the other side: there was no longer any “side”! I was not even on the “other” side anymore, with the outlaws, the rebels, the law-abiders in reverse. I was no longer “outside” because I was no longer inside. It was something else. It was regal and hilarious.

I now understood the Sannyasi's jubilation: it was splitting my sides.

—Where are we going?

He looked at me, as if surprised.

—Nowhere, we are there... nulle part, nous y sommes!

I was nonplussed. Then the light dawned! we are there! Of course we are there, completely there! There is nothing to seek, there will be nothing more in thirty years or in three centuries, nor anywhere, if nothing is there right now, here and now, the time to swallow my spit and say flûte! From where would it come, that “elseness”? We are there, fully in the goal. I am now exactly as I shall be when they drive the first nail into my coffin. Besides, I shall get myself burned. It's safer.

—Here, eat.

He took out a bundle of cloth and shoved a handful of grains into my hand.

—Come on, boy, don't be so serious—the night is beautiful.

His eyes were sparkling like the foam of the sea; he was leaning against the door, his body bare, his rudraksha beads round his neck and his orange rags on his mahogany skin. He really looked like a king.

But I had come back to my monkey-cage:

—Tell me, if we are there already, why did we leave at all? We might just as well have stayed at your tea-shop.

He blew out his cheeks and belched:

—And why did you come out of your mother's womb, eh boy, tell me? A man has to be on the move.

—I have moved much.

—It is your head that has moved much. When that becomes still you will be still anywhere and everywhere, and you will run like a rabbit before God's wind.

—First of all, I. don't believe in your God, and your Asiatic wisdom makes me sick.

—And I do not “believe in” cholum²: I eat it...

He stuffed a handful of grains into his mouth.

—... And the wisdom of Asia makes me laugh.

He made another of his loud clucking noises and spat all over the place. I was doused. I couldn't decide whether I loved this man or hated him. I chewed on a grain. It tasted like boiled chalk.

—Little one...

He almost became grave for a moment.

—... You want me to show you the true life, and you will hate me and perhaps love me and hate me again...

Decidedly, he was reading my thoughts. I was beginning to get exasperated. After all, there was something inhuman about that laugh.

He continued:

—Men do not love joy. It insults them. They love pity. And it is true that they are miserable and pitiable. But it is no use crying with them: they will pull you down right to the bottom of their hole, until you are in the same mire—then they will recognize you. But then you will no longer be able to do anything for them because you will be like them.

He looked at me succinctly.

—First, you must get out of all that, you understand.

—Get out, how?

He paused a moment, fingering the beads of his necklace.

—When I say “get out”, it does not mean run away it means to get other eyes—un autre regard. When you stop hating me and loving me, you will begin getting out of it. When you can keep your precious papers in your pocket with the same joy with which you tore them up a moment ago, you will be ready to laugh the good laugh.

—Then, everything will be the same to me.

—No, everything will be as it is.

—And what is it?

—Listen, boy, if it is philosophy you want, go and see your Asian sages; I have nothing to tell you: I can show you, that is all.

He withdrew again into a wooden silence. I began to think that I had embarked upon a difficult journey.

The night was perspiring its way through at 35° C. I chewed another grain, then I threw them all out the door. I was sobered, empty, completely ridiculous, without a destinations without a ticket, sitting beside this man who didn't give a damn about anything or anybody. We were there—yes, nowhere, we had not even gone to the devil, in that exotic tube which was bumping along who knows where, and I looked at the night, drawn down like a curtain, hardly pierced by a glimmer, and I waited for I know not what. I am waiting, oh, how I wait for that marvellous adventure!—I am always ready to believe in the marvellous, I, the unbeliever, I have tremendous faith! I seem to have a memory of some miracle I have lived through—I seem to be a man because of some oblivion. And, sometimes, little, golden glean come and dance in my night, little fire-flies which are not of this world, and I rush, ah! how I rush towards them, as if I had waited a thousand years in the darkness, as if I had had a sudden stroke of memory: here it is, at last I am there, I am going to be there! I run towards the song of a golden cicada... One crazen gleam passing through my night, a wink at a street-corner is enough, I am ready, I am going, in one second I have packed my bag, I, the vagabond of a tiny little gleam. Everything falls from my hands, nothing holds me back, I am held by the thread of another song—what am I doing here? Have I not lived through everything—their joys, their sorrows, their pity? I have played all the roles, I know the humbuggery by heart; it is enough to encounter a look to recognize the old story, I know them all as if I had sung in their inn: the rich, the poor, the sons of God and the Devil. Where, then, is the cry I have not uttered, the misery I have not known, the fault I have not committed? I have chanted all their prayers and I have fornicated in their nights, I have been “man” a million times—I am through with the job of being a man! Ah! I believe in the miracle which is not in their formulae, nor in their heavens. And, could it be that we are on the brink of an unbelievable world which is about to be born? I no longer know or I have known, and I am journeying in the night like a blind pilgrim of a great memory flecked with gold.

O pilgrim
You are walking in my sun
Indeed
Everything is sun
Only my image is inverted
Every gesture below
Repeats a gesture from above
And all reveals
An eternal coincidence