By The Body Of The Earth or The Sannyasin

The Silver Birch

We took a short-cut through the dunes to return home. Björn walked heavily, his eyes fixed on the sands, shoulders stopping as if he were carrying a weight. The sky was a blazing blue. Without a word we moved forward between the great white hills, we went up and down the great swell so smooth that I no longer knew whether it was I who was going down or the wave which was rolling or if, in the distance, great eiders were not going to fly away in a flurry of blue leaving behind a field of dazzled snow. Björn did not see that great Norway with fjords of down, he was still sailing in the tropics with his cargo of heavy metal and dark thoughts, with a stubborn little shadow which covered the lovely snow. Björn, don't you see? The world is white and smooth like a child, it is sweet like a swan's neck if you catch the great tranquil bird which glides through the expanses of the soul. O Björn, the world reverses like a moire, in which direction are you sailing your boat? I go where you go, but enchanted snows have invaded my eyes and my steps are borne by a sweetness which does not move any more... une douceur qui ne bouge plus.

He stopped at the summit of the last dune. The buried palms sprang up in a cascade of whispering emerald at the level of our heads, then slid down the dunes in a flight of black trunks, higher and higher, dishevelled, lunging forward as if they were running towards the immense scintillating lagoon which fused in the distance with the beach and the foam of the sea.

A house in ruins was hiding amongst the palms at the foot of the dunes, a hundred yards from us. The southern track ended there.

—That is Guruji's house.

But his eyes looked farther, towards the east, and I felt something strange in him which filled me with uneasiness, something which I was to feel several times hence, and each time with the same malaise, like the sudden intrusion of some foreign element, a non-human element, a very special vibration, like that of a cat. And it was very strong. I followed his eyes: a solitary fire was burning at the edge of the sands, where the blue waters of the sea lost themselves in the sparkling lagoon.

—That's where they burn the dead.

He said that with a sort of venomous satisfaction. Yes, he could not forgive me for having missed his boat.

—They burn them and throw the ashes into the sea.

And there was that nasty little poisonous vibration in his voice. Oh! I know, he wanted to strike but I could not be touched, I was caught in that great white expanse, I felt like lying down flat there and merging with it just like a little grain of sand on the great dunes,—it was so sweet to no longer exist. Oh! Björn, don't you see, the world is sweet like a flight of egrets and silent like a well of eternity.

I closed my eyes and it was all white inside also, and so quiet.

Whitewashed, no trace left.

—...

—So your plan has succeeded, hein, you're pleased, we are prisoners on the island; that's what you wanted, isn't it?

No sound passed my throat.

—Go on, speak!

—Oh! Björn...

—What do you want?

—But I don't want anything!

—You don't want anything! Then what were you doing all the time in the canteen of that boat... pushing me from behind?

—...

—You wanted to prevent me from leaving, heir, that's it.

—It was you who said no.

—Ah! what next... You have not stopped being against: against Guruji, against the Aalesund, against Erik, against everything. What do you want? That I die?

—You're suffering, Björn.

That hate in his eyes. But why, what was it that he hated in himself?

—And now, I am trapped like a rat.

He flopped down on the ground. He locked his arms around his knees. He seemed like a mask. That mask which falls upon men when they pass over to the side of the shadow, that hardened god, that instantaneous possession like death entering. And always, in the background, there was that high cadence, so supple, so vast; that bedrock of sweetness in the world where everything glided in absolute harmony, that perfect rhythm in which everything sank into total love, without reason, without question—an absolute Yes which opens its wide eyes of flame and looks, oh! which looks!... And each time it was an abyss of such intense emotion that perhaps it was joy or pain, such a burning life that it was perhaps a death which looked from the other side—it looks, it looks, it says yes and yes again to everything, to evil, to good, to suffering, to non-suffering, it understands everything, purifies everything, it is supremely right, supremely good: it simply looks and carries away everything in its white Harmony like great wings of snow for all the sorrows of the world.

—Don't you understand?... I can no longer go and I can no longer stay!

Oh! the world is a strange fiction: we look at it from one side and everything is dark and blocked; we look at it from another side and everything is possible, wide, as it wills. The tragedy is to look in the wrong direction... le drame, c'est de regarder dans le mauvais sens. There is no tragedy! But Björn was in the purple shadow of the painting and saw nothing but that.

—I cannot go back to the past, Nil, but there is nothing ahead! It's blocked on all sides.

—But there's Balu, there's...

I've had enough of this furnace, 106° Fahrenheit, 42° Centigrade, I'm fed up.

Yes, I know, there is an impossible point, a point of suffocation: one walks... and walks, one is borne along by a force, and then suddenly it closes off, something refuses, something says no—a minute unyielding hardness: anything but that. The instant cage. One is at the foot of the street-fountain... I still felt the Sannyasi's terrible slap on my back.

—I shall never see Erik again, I shall never see the lakes...

—Ah! that will do.

Björn started.

—You are a little slug!

He looked at me for a moment with murder in his eyes. I saw his hand go to his belt. I was completely indifferent, a million leagues away, he could have killed me, it made no difference.

He melted.

—Oh! Nil, Nil, I no longer know, I no longer understand anything... To begin all that work over again... that japa, those mantras, six million mantras?... I can't any more, it doesn't mean anything any longer, nothing has any meaning. Three years lost. It is impossible. It is impossible on whichever side I look. I am lost.

Abruptly, he turned back towards the pyre.

—It is there that I am going.

And he did not move any more.

I have often gone over that minute since, and every time I have heard Balu's little voice: “He's going to die... He's going to die...” as if it were accomplished in advance, decided, enacted and there were nothing to do because it was already done... I do not know if it was done, but I know that at that second I saw death enter into Björn, consciously, voluntarily. It was there, he had said yes, it was done. A nasty little poisonous vibration like a microscopic steel snake. There is a second when one says yes, a black second, he had chosen to die. A kind of illumination in reverse. Death outside meets the dead inside. Afterwards one catches the accident, but it is done, one has chosen.

Then one has to be reborn from top to bottom, or catch death.

I turned back to that transfixed Björn. A palm-leaf was caressing his shoulders.

—You are a swine.

It came out in spite of myself. He hardly moved, he fixed his big blue eyes on me, so candid.

—How funny it is, Nil...

And his voice was so changed.

—It's odd, I have come all this way to end up here. I've wandered through Europe, through Africa, the East, the Himalayas, I've made that whole tour to arrive here, in front of this pyre, at the foot of this tree...

He laid a finger on the sand.

—At this minute point.

And he drew a circle round himself.

—How strange it is, Nil. And yet, I thought life was large, infinite, always new, and then I find that I have been drawing a circle which is closing, and it's finished, I am inside.

He looked at me again with that air of a surprised child. We could hear the temple bells in the distance. Everything was so perfectly quiet on those dunes... crystalline. And that changed voice which sounded like a child's.

—I remember, one day with Erik, we were dreaming... It was on the shore of a lake, long, long ago. Life was so beautiful, it seemed to me that one life could not be enough. It was in May when the birds return from the south. We were there, Erik and I, dreaming that a magician appeared one evening at the crossroads, at the foot of the silver birch. There was a silver birch there, near the lake. And the magician gave both of us a boon. Erik asked for the boon to go anywhere at will—he wanted to travel, to know the world. As for me, I dreamed that the magician gave me four lives. I wanted to live a lot, oh! all kinds of lives, So: that evening, under the silver birch, at the crossroads, I divided myself into four and went away by four roads...

I almost saw him, that Björn under the silver birch: But it was a palm tree on the lagoon and the birds had not yet returned from the north.

—... I went away by four roads, and I wondered if all four of us would come together again one evening, after many many years, at the foot of that silver birch, and if we would be sufficiently alike to get back into the same skin, or if three of us would have to die so that one could survive?

A small gong sounded on the lagoon. I could see those four little characters climbing the dunes to the rendez-vous, by the southern track in front of the Tantric's house, by the western track, having disembarked from the Aalesund, by the northern track... All those little selves that one drags along... And then what, really? what difference?

—It's humbug, Björn. One arrives at the same point. By all paths one reaches the same point. There is but one person.

He drove his finger into the sand:

—Yes, at the same point.

—And what did they do, your three “brothers”?

—First there was a sailor. Then a revolutionary. Another seeking the “secret”. And another: the unknown. I am not very clear as to what the seeker of the secret was looking for, but there was a secret to be found. And I remember something which was like the sign, or the key to the secret: it was one day, or one night rather, in my nursery, I was playing on the floor with my toys when suddenly I noticed that my body was asleep on my bed; I saw myself asleep in my bed and I myself was on the floor, playing. I looked at that body on the bed for a minute and then at myself playing, and I was so astounded! Then I became afraid and rushed back into my body. I have never forgotten that; I did not tell anyone about it but it troubled me a great deal. And since that moment I have asked myself if the body were only a part of me, a sort of dress for the day—but who was the “me”? Me without a body? Me elsewhere? Elsewhere, where? It was very mysterious... Because I was playing very well, existing very well without my body; it was only because I raised my eyes and saw the other—which other, who was the other?...

—And your sailor?

—Oh I him... he just died aboard the Aalesund. He was the integral failure, an artist of failure. I don't know why, but he had to fail at all costs, he would not have known any peace, unless he had failed... The peace of damnation—nothing more to be saved.

He rubbed out the circle with the back of his hand.

—It is like dragging a weight, Nil, I don't know what, a horrible mistake to be wiped out.

—Of course! It is all the false selves, the little liars that one drags along, it is that which is stifling.

—I don't know. It is linked with the cry of those wild geese on the lake, as if I had heard something there... something unbearable, which takes away the taste for everything except for that.

—...

—He is dead, he just died on the Aalesund. They have all died on the way—Erik is dead, we have not returned to the foot of the silver birch.

—And the other two?

—There was the revolutionary—it is me: the one who wanted to save his brothers, change the world, find the secret!

He turned his head towards the Tantric's house.

—... Poor secret. That one, too, is about to die. He is perhaps only the battle-field for the other three—it is lie who loves. He loves, that's all. He understands nothing but he loves. Sometimes, he tells himself that he is stronger than the gods because he loves...

Björn looked at me for a moment; and I wanted to hug him—I had never hugged Björn.

—Erik did not love, he could not love. One day, he married his prostitute out of defiance—My “fine de joie” as he used to say.

—Your brothers are very much alike... And the fourth?

—Don't know. Without news.

—Well, that's it Björn, now you know I... Listen, imagine for a moment that you have been a mother-of-pearl merchant on this island; and then a desperado, a saint, a seaman or who knows what in four skins—but they would all have arrived at the same point! They would all have met with the same destiny or the same impossibility one day, that something within which plunges us into the heart of the matter—then the masks fall off, one is at the true moment. There is but one moment. There is but one point. There is but one person. When we have exhausted all our roles, then we arrive at the person. We spend twenty or thirty years of our lives believing we are what we are not—merchant, doctor, rebel or king,—and then we are something else completely. That is the passage. A rebel, yes, because we are not what we are... Do you remember the prince who changed into a swan, the little black feathers which grew every time he looked behind?

—There is no more “behind”. The Aalesund has gone.

—Then, there you are, your fourth is here.

He swung around like a cornered animal.

—Or else it's you, the fourth, and one of us is too many.

—You're mad!

—Then why do you pursue me? What do you want, what are you doing here? What have you never stopped telling me ever since the first day we met?—I'm wrong, hein: wrong to seek love, wrong to seek power, wrong to feel sorrow for Erik, wrong to go away on the Aalesund. Wrong right down the line. Then what remains for me?

—...

—You have closed all the doors. I am trapped. You have blocked them all.

—But you axe completely mad, Björn!

—So I have nothing more. Or else it is you who must go away.

—You are dramatising.

—Dramatising...

He tossed back his lock of hair.

—You soar, hein? You're up above, you look down at the play. Well, I have no heart to soar, I have no heart to be up above. Ah! I saw you on that boat, you were pretty, Mr. Crystal-man, you looked down, eh, on those poor fellows spitting out their lungs full of phosphate.

—But Björn...

—There is no but, I am getting out.

—So you think it's by drinking beer in the mid-decks that you will set everything right?

—Nobody can argue with you, Nil, that's your glass prison. One day I shall come and break your glass... et je briserai to glace.

He got up, it was over.

Batcha's little image pierced my heart. An overwhelming emotion flooded me. He must not go! He must not. Björn must not die! I caught him by the wrist, and with all the strength of which I was capable, I held him in front of me and bored into him with my eyes, under that palm-tree of the meeting-place:

—Listen, Björn, you're going to listen to me, you must listen to me...

He looked at me with murder in his eyes. But I did not care:

—You can kill me if you wish, you can go on your pyre if you wish, but you must listen to me, it's our life, Balu's life and Batcha's which are at stake...

Suddenly the Sannyasi's words came back to me: three times you have come, three times you have killed. And I felt that it was not Björn nor Björn nor I who was in danger, it was Batcha, it was she who was the pivot of Destiny. So I seized hold of Björn's death as if it were Batcha I wanted to save.

—One cannot, do you hear, one cannot live truly so long as one has not passed through one's own death. As soon as one steps onto the path of the true life, one meets death. And one does not meet it once, but ten times, at different levels—every time one opens a door one meets it, it is the guardian of the threshold; if one is not pure, one cannot pass through. Death is the defeat of impurity. So the mechanism is like this, listen carefully: we draw a circle, as you say, we spend our life drawing a circle and putting in to it all our strength, all our ideas, all our aspirations, all our little contradictory brothers—it is our network of waves, our vibratory medium; it is our tonality of light, our power content, our psychological bubble. We build our circle, we secrete our bubble. And so long as we have not filled up the circle, we cannot get out of it; and when we have filled up the circle, we are held by all its force. It is the knot of the story, the key to the mystery. As if the force of gravity of the circle is also the force necessary to get out of it. But we can get out of it. There is a moment, a point where we can get out of it. It is the moment of choice, and it is like a death. And if we don't choose, we die. We can go onto the funeral pyre, we can go onto the moon, it does not matter in the least, we are already dead, walled up in our circle, solidified in the bubble. I know the point, I have passed through it three times; and each time it is harder, more ruthless, as if each time we have to conquer a greater power, demolish an amplified force of self—we are our own more and more solid enemy. But it is nothing really, it is merely a bubble... A bubble, a pretty bubble, more or less clear, more or less powerful—it is red or sapphire blue, grey or cerulean, all the colours depending on what we have put into it, but it is a bubble and it holds you. It is your own force and your own destruction. Ids all that we have built in a life and also all that prevents us from passing into a greater life. But there is an escape-point. There is a passage. It is the moment when everything is going to close up. Then in a flash we can pass through with all the force accumulated in the bubble. We pass over to the other side or we die. In fact, we die because we cannot pass through; if we could pass continuously from one circle to another, we would not die. And, perhaps, there is a point where there is no longer any circle at all, no bubble: we die only if we want to. That is “accelerated evolution”. Instead of crossing one circle in one life, we cross two, three... I have already crossed three. Perhaps I am in the process of closing my circle also, prisoner of a white bubble.

Björn did not take his eyes off me, I felt that he was going to yield.

—So you can go on your pyre if you wish, it does not matter in the least, I too will go when my time comes: we cut our hair, trim our nails and roast in the end. It is the garment that burns. But that pyre is not the real one, it is an imitation of the other, the real one, in which we have to throw all our old skins one after another, all our victories, all our triumphs, all our beautiful experiences: the pretty red or blue bubbles which hold us—and the more beautiful they are, the more they devour us... But the beauty, the force and the vision always grow, from one circle to another. And finally, we lose nothing: we contain more and more—we must contain everything. And perhaps that is the final destiny: to be everything. It is for that that we die: one breaks the vase until it can contain everything. But when we reach that point, we must not miss it, Björn. There is a crossing, a conjuncture—however small we may be, however minute the circle, there is a moment when we see and when we can. In each life there is a soul-breach, a sudden rent into the other circle. And every time, it is like a mortal fever, we roll up like a hedgehog upon the cadaver and do not want to let it go. And I know of only one way really to cross the point; it is not to strain, exert the will, or struggle, because we are still using the strength of the bubble to fight against the bubble: it is to open our hands and throw ourselves overboard—to let go of everything and surrender: I no longer know, I no longer see, I no longer will: I open my hands and call the archangel of the next circle. Then, in a flash, one goes through. It is done, it is over. One laughs. There, that's all I know.

Björn was like a statue. His each and every pulsation was vibrating in me, he was at the very brink of victory. The scales were going to tilt at any moment. Oh! there are whole lives that hang on one mere little second—and it really is a mere nothing, and yet it is so fantastically hard! All the coagulated strength of the bubble in a flash.

He controlled himself once more.

—One does not escape destiny.

Silence fell over the dunes. The wind was ruffling the palms, a bell could be heard in the distance. Then all that odour of sand rose in me again with I know not what poignant memory; it was old, familiar like the dunes, it was in Ramnad or the Fayoum, charged with a burning weight like this sand-laden wind. Oh! what do we know? We believe, we think, we say, and then comes the south wind which carries away our lives as if they had never been. The world is a great inexplicable stage and we mean something completely different.

—The gods are like stones, Nil, the Law is the Law.

O Child
You know only
My face of stone
My inflexible law
Because you know of me
Only what you are
You are the stone which does not yield
The iron law
And the night and destiny are your children
But I, I am ever waiting
Since stone is stone
Since Beauty smiles
I wait behind your god-masks,
Your devil-masks
In every second
Every defeat
In the night and in the sun
Everywhere
The same
With no up or down
With no virtue or fault

The little flute-player flashed before my eyes, so charming, so smiling... And all this tragedy of the world appeared so false to me: a fantastic, morbid fiction plastered, stuck upon such a calm, charming smile, behind everything, everywhere. An invention of our senses. We were the ones who were adding on the drama and fabricating it—we who were giving a false meaning to the whole story. We act out a fabulous play with the eyes of a grub! We have not yet our true eyes, we understand nothing of the world.

—Your destiny...

—What, my destiny, don't you believe me?

—But I know nothing about it, Björn! Destiny is not that, it is not a blind force which strikes: it is the line of our own past which closes in—we open up into a greater destiny. One is struck only by oneself.

He sneered.

—All right, we shall see.

He felt in his pockets. A horrible anxiety took hold of me.

—We shall play heads or tails.

He drew out a four-anna piece. He looked terrible.

—Tails you go, heads...

He sneered again.

—Hein? Suppose we cheat the gods with a stroke of luck!

I was frozen. He threw his coin in the air, caught it on the back of his hand.

Björn, you're mad!

—You think so? Then why do you want to stay?

—...

You see, you're afraid.

He was as white as death. He hid the coin in his hand, it was absurd, it was a malefic lie.

—You're a coward!

He blinked.

—You're running away, you're selling your soul to a wretched little coin, hein, this is what your destiny is, a dirty little four sous coin.

He looked haggard. His eyes went back to the pyre and then again to me.

—What you don't know, Nil, is that a little while ago, when I arrived on this dune, I saw that pyre, I saw it suddenly, as if I were going to it. It grew larger, larger...

—You're dreaming.

—It was coming to me. I'm twenty-seven, Nil! I don't want to die!

Then Björn's panic caught hold of me:

—Come on, let's clear out, let's get out of here, wherever you like. Let's split!

Then, a second time, I heard the Sannyasi's voice: “Three times you have come, three times you have killed...” We must escape, leave at once, get out of that curse before it is too late. A train whistled behind the dunes.

—Go where, Nil? There is no longer any Aalesund. There is nowhere to go. That's what you don't understand, we are shut in on all sides. Go where? To the Sahara, to drill shafts?

I put my arm round his shoulder; gently, I stroked his fair hair. He looked at me for a moment as if he were going to cry. Then I know not what fell upon him, he shook himself, tore himself free of me. In a bound, he was up and he rushed across the dunes towards the house of the Tantric.

The coin glittered in the sand: it was tails.