By The Body Of The Earth or The Sannyasin

The Vermilion Isle

—You see, it's the smallest of the three; they call it the “Vermilion Isle”.

I looked behind me, my port was drowned in a shining mist; only the black outline of a cargo-boat could be seen against a glassy light.

—It's not far, you know, you'll be back in forty-five minutes.

—Not far... And it's to see this boulder for monkeys that you've brought me out here?

—It's to see how far you can go.

With a toss of her head she swung her plait back:

—When you are touched by grace, you will perceive perhaps that you have not lived a minute of your existence—you have gone everywhere in your head, and your legs have followed suit just by chance. And with a heart like an unripe guava.

I wanted to take her in my arms, and then I was furious.

—Here, look, she said.

We could hear the birds twittering. A rocky promontory rose straight out of the green waters, humming with birds, roped by the roots of an old banyan tree growing right on top and which seemed to haul the whole island out of the water like a fabulous wreck in a revelry of parakeets and macacos. Slowly, our sail changed tack, sheering off the rock; a creek appeared. I was wonder-struck. Thousands and thousands of blazing Gul Mohur trees in full red bloom swept down towards the sea in close clusters, like a scarlet tidal wave.

She was watching me out of the corner of her eye; I was like a stone.

It was all very beautiful, but where was she taking me?... The fishermen's colony was deserted, my port had disappeared behind the promontory: only one path came out on the beach and plunged among the cacti towards this crimson hill. I tried to repeat my formula: “Laurelbank-Friday-Seven-O'clock”, in order to ward off the evil spell, but everything seemed hazy, the world had lost its line of force and I was going to founder in that mash of exotic honey.

With a kick I sent a heap of mussels spinning away and teeth clenched, started on my way.

—It's not far, you know, it's very small.

There was so much distress in her voice, as if she wanted to ask forgiveness, to tame me, but I was knotted around that “no” deep down in me, and it was like the cry of my liberty. I know, she would have liked to bring me the world in the hollow of her hand, a pretty little world, very nice, very clean, where she would have walked on tiptoe so as not to scare me away.

—If you wish, I know another island.

—Already?

—Oh! Nil...

I am a brute, no doubt, but the more I soften, the tougher I become. It is my last line of defence: if that gives way, everything gives way.

I shall have to face the fact one day.

And perhaps there is only one fact in life, everything else is an imitation, a false likeness—where is the Fact? I have seen twenty countries and yet not a single one, I have covered tens of thousands of kilometres and not moved a centimetre, I have lived millions of seconds and they are just like dust—where is the thing, the second? What has happened? The forests of Brazil are painted very realistically in aniline by Thos. Cook & Son—I have just returned from there. The Himalayas are hung on the twenty-ninth parallel, crimped, exact and perfectly starched. Everything is as in the geography book, there are no surprises; Mexican hogs and the red monkeys are waiting for us in A-8, it is mathematical and programmed. Knowledge of the world has demolished the world as surely as photography has demolished painting—we must re-view the world or dry up in an album.

But this burning country in the depths of my heart, which no one can touch, this is my treasure, my only treasure, all the rest can plash down the drain—and Mohini too. And yet—yet—I would like to cry out “yes”—yes to everything, to things, to people, and to take this world in my arms and melt into it. No hardness anywhere. There is a deadly point there, an insoluble yes-no which makes a fiery friction. It is the place of the Fact, it is the pure Brazil, I feel it, I am drawing near to the ultimate bastion.

There was a wrought-iron gate. A gate, yes, as in a Louis XIVth park, here in these beet-red tropics. Besides, it was all alone, between two crumbling pillars in the middle of a jungle of yucca trees. Mohini was as silent as a corpse. And on a marble slab: Salvaterra.

—Here we are.

I took her hand and pushed open the folding door. Her hand was ice-like. There was no sound, not a breath of air. It was another world. A world so totally motionless that it was dense, steeped in aromas and silence. And everything was red; a riot of red flowers which crackled on almost leafless branches as far as the eye could see—a motionless fire. Or perhaps a fabulous aviary of fire-birds, silence-stricken.

—Moni, it's pretty, your island... elle est jolie, ton île.

A faint smile touched her lips and she drew her sari over her bosom.

There was an avenue, or what must have been an avenue once, which intercepted the hill in a great arc. A chipmunk scuttled away in front of us. Some white gravel was still visible under the leaf-mould.

—Moni, it's as if...

She leaned against me. I fell silent. Everything was spellbound. I had a strange impression of having seen and lived all this before. And it did not come from the flowers or the place, but from that ice-like hand in mine. We were both walking along hand in hand. She was so white against that extravagant nuptial scarlet, and I was groping my way ahead, my eyes half-closed, in that fragrance of crushed flowers; I was advancing towards an old memory, an ancient country perhaps, which would suddenly arise round the bend of the avenue—I always seem to recall a “country” which had to be discovered (it is perhaps for this that I have so long wandered) and a “she” who leads me to the country. And each time I have run away. I don't know why. Or rather, yes, I know, always the same story—love, the trap. The trap and the key together. An ancient country where I shall suddenly sink into absolute recognition: that.

—Moni, tell me, if one forgot everything, what would remain? ...Everything, yes, everything that one has learned. Everything that they have crammed into our heads: country, family, passport, religion. The false remembrance. A pure memory, you understand, without any additions—a real nugget.

—You have already burned everything, Nil, with one glance, this island and me with it! You are not here, you are never here, Nil! You are always catching the next boat. And if you burned your boat also, what would remain, tell me?

My hand let go of hers. The meeting had lasted three minutes.

She looked at me:

—As for me, I love, and I have forgotten everything.

I love, I love... they all have that word in their mouths—priests, women, idiots—and then they find themselves with a lot of little brats on their hands, good for war, and love was yesterday.

—Well, I don't love.

—You are a brute.

—Oui, libre... Yes, free.

She was so white in that blaze! But I did not see her. I was in my absurd temper,—as with that Sannyasi. A dark thrust from the depths as if she had reopened an old wound. Oh! there are wounded corners in man, which seem to carry the memory of a thousand ravaged lives—or perhaps of a same recurring defeat—and which are charged with a terrible electricity. In one second it fuses, nothing more exists; as if that were the memory.

—You are suffering, Nil.

—I am not suffering, I am free. And I have a horror of sentimentality: it's gluey, and then it's finished, one is under the waters—I have come out of the waters, I was born under the sign of fire!

She stood still at the side of the avenue and looked at me with that ineffable sweetness:

—When you have burned me as well, you will understand.

She said this quietly, without emphasis, without the least trace of emotion, as if she were seeing from somewhere else.

I softened at once.

—Forget it, Moni. Come, let's run. We'll start everything all over again—you'll see: I open the garden-gate, you enter...

We ran together like mad people. An immense sunny terrace opened onto the other slope of the island. One could still see avenues under the weeds; clumps of red hibiscus bushes sloped gently down to the sea. A vine-covered house was leaning against the hill. It resembled an old colonial residence with its stucco columns eaten away by the monsoon rains, a triangular fronton between two wings, and a verandah. There was no one. The place looked completely deserted. One could only hear parakeets squawking in the vines.

—So, Mani, shall we explore?

She was quite rose under her bronzed complexion; I had never seen her so beautiful.

—Not now, this evening, you'll see. It's a surprise.

I ran up to the West wing—a torrent of green feathers burst forth from everywhere with strident cries. Then, silence.

It was really a strange place... There were red lacquer screens on the verandah, a flute-player on a bronze pedestal, broken bits of ceramics, a gigantic empty cage for I knew not what bird. The creepers had surreptitiously slipped out of their pot and were growing up to the ceiling. Feathers and bird-droppings were everywhere—there was even a peacock's feather. I absent-mindedly tore off a leaf near the flute-player; it smelt like wild mint. Then I heard Mohini's low sweet voice behind the pillars:

—Do you know, in my country, we call it “tulsi”. It is an auspicious plant.

I approached the high door and drew back the bamboo lath; a streak of sunlight burst in—a crystal chandelier, the entire ceiling was light-splintered. There were crystal lamps everywhere, in all the corners: in brackets with tarnished pier-glasses, in candelabra, in fancy lamp-stands: a scintillating riot, a stream of Venetian glass turned suddenly into an impromptu gala.

—But where are we? What is this place?

Mohini was quiet. Then my eyes fell on an Indian sitar, then on another, and another, then on the most extraordinary collection of musical instruments I had ever seen in my life: sarods, veenas, ektaras... scattered in all the corners, hanging on the walls, lying on the chests, on low divans: esraj, lyres, long crosiers carved like antique zithers or encrusted with ivory; bellies in amaranth wood or in polished colocynth, of all sizes, all shapes, glowing softly; and unknown instruments which resembled lutes or mandoras.

—It was my mother's house. She was a great musician.

I looked at Mohini without seeing her. I had a queer impression of slipping and sinking I know not where,—but without any violence, gently. I was entering into something else with a noiseless tread, something which was not the world of dreams, but which changed all the appearances almost imperceptibly, as though inadvertently: a slight shifting of the lines, and the objects took on a sudden depth instead of being flat against the walls and became more intense, almost living; or, perhaps it was only a trick of the eye which suddenly caught another pattern of things within the same design, and at the same time—it was strange,—the air began to take a certain odour corresponding with that sudden depth; an odour which did not come from any scent, but as if from another country, very familiar, which I could not identify. It was at my fingertips, on the tip of my tongue, like a very sweet memory, like a dream just dreamed and which is still present, warm and vibrant, but of which the pattern has disappeared, leaving only that odour of memory.

I took an ektara in my hands. It was very small, with a single string; it looked like one of those instruments in Egyptian frescoes. I touched the string... A small, quivering metallic sound echoed through the whole room, ringing the crystals one by one.

I do not know what I touched there, but it vibrated far, far away, as if something were going to open up right in the depths of my memory and I would suddenly disappear through a trap-door.

—Come. Not now. This evening, we shall have a celebration.

She took me by the arm. I dropped the ektara. It broke with a poignant little sound. The trap-door closed again.

Everything was as before; once more, I had lost the thread.

—And then you will see the Portuguese Senor's treasure.

—The treasure?...

She drew me outside. The terrace was dazzling in the sunlight.

—Yes, in the east wing. The Portuguese ship-owner's treasure; he sold everything to my mother... My mother died here.

I shook myself abruptly. I was suffocating in there. I pulled Mohini by the arm and rushed down from the terrace towards the sea. The brambles tore our clothes; a marble Venus was undressing herself energetically under the hibiscus bushes. I felt like playing havoc with all that—kicking Venus' bottom or doing something incongruous in order to exorcise that whole island and myself with it. Mohini cried out; in three leaps I had crossed the beach, thrown her into the sea, fully dressed. Then I dived and swam out towards the open sea; if I could, I would have swum to the port—alone.

—What would His Excellency, your father, say if he saw you here?

—I have forgotten everything.

—And if I made you my mistress?

She blushed to the roots of her hair. Evidently, here one did not throw girls into the sea, nor speak to them in that tone. Besides, they are not “girls”; they always look as if they had just come out of a temple, carrying with them three centuries of contemplation.

—Then why did you drag me here? To put me in your parrot-cage, or what?

—Because you are leaving tomorrow, Nil, because I love you, because...

I thought she was going to cry. But I did not know yet of what stuff she was made.

—Because you cannot go like that, Nil. Things have not been fulfilled.

—What do you mean fulfilled?

She stood straight in her soaking wet sari, with an expression so motionless that it was almost powerful, as if she were going back into the womb of centuries.

—In your country, things happen, perhaps by chance. Not in mine. Chance means that one doesn't know the law of things. You do not know the law, Nil.

She gathered a handful of sand and let it run through her fingers.

—In your country, even the atoms do not revolve by chance. In our country, even the birds do not pass by chance... même les oiseaux ne passent pas par hasard... Only it is a finer law.

—And so what?

Then she dug her eyes into mine and added, detaching each word:

—What is happening today was begun thousands and thousands of years ago, and will continue for thousands and thousands of years to come.

—You are mad.

—I am not mad, I can see. There are no gaps.

—Gaps?

—You don't understand anything: gaps between your so-called “chance”. There are no gaps. If you throw a will, it reaches its goal. Do you think it stops because you go away or because you die? It catches up with you thousands and thousands of years later.

—Provided I return.

—It is that which makes you come back. We go right to the end, Nil. Nothing remains unfinished.

—The end? The parrot-cage with you?

—Joy, precisely. When one has joy, everything is dissolved. One comes and goes: one does what one likes, one is free. And nothing is ever more separated. You have no joy, Nil, you have not finished the story. You can leave tomorrow, we...

I bent over her and kissed her on the mouth.

The air was like a scorching mass. She relaxed, abandoning herself. Her wet sari clung to her body. She looked like an apsara who had stepped out of a bas-relief of Konarak.

—There will be a storm this evening, she said.

But what did I care! There were little salty drops on her round, golden face; her throat smelled of sandalwood. I was quashed, limp, ripe for defeat—love is always a defeat. She drew closer to me. Something was still repeating: “Laurelbank-Laurelbank...” But what in hades was I going to do over there? Had I not everything one could want of life: beauty, love, a fortune if I wished? What else? She was twenty, I was just twenty-nine. Which of my brothers would not have run across half the world to possess all that, my brothers on the fourth floor to the left in the semi-darkness? What more? What is it I was still seeking—was I not mad?

She seemed to hear my thoughts:

—What are you going to do there?

—Where? In New Guinea?

I tried to hang onto something concrete; everything was slipping through my fingers.

—They say there is chromium and cobalt to be found there.

—Chromium? Of what use is it?

Yes, I wonder.

—Special steel for metallurgy.

—Metallurgy...

She opened her eyes wide, looking for that monster in the palms. I was exasperated.

—But I don't care a damn about chromium, don't you understand!

In fact, it was I who could no longer understand anything. I was going to land there without a sou, run about from one consulate to another, to the immigration authorities, the mining offices, the Negro quarters, the dirty holes for the hungry—the nothing at all for anybody at all—I would always be one too many or one not enough. And once I had found their chromium mine or groundnuts, I would flee from their abominable success.

—But if you really want to go, why don't you return to your own country? to the West?

The West... That revived me at once.

—I have no country.

—But you have already looked for gold in South America?...

—Yes, and mica for your father, cocoa plantations in Brazil, Greco-Buddhist ruins in Afghanistan and non-existent treasures—they are the best, for one is sure of not being disappointed. And then Egypt, the Ivory Coast... I have devoured virgin forests and countries at a gallop—I have even savoured prison.

—Then, why...

—The trouble is that one always finds the same thing ...toujours la même chose; Buddhist heads or the rivers with the “green rocks”, they are all right so long as one has not found them. Once found, it's all the same: transparent and nil, like the Special X of your father's mines—not a real find anywhere—one passes right through.

Yet... once, I remember, in Egypt, years ago... There I did not pass through (it was he, or rather she, who passed through me), a strange visage which looked at me. A look... It was in a temple on the banks of the Nile, a tiny temple, completely dark, with only a small aperture in the vault and two eyes which gazed—and gazed. Those eyes... An eyelid which opened onto centuries, far, far away, and there at the end, right at the end, one is something else completely. One has always lived.

That undressed me, pierced through me, and I felt so completely ridiculous in my twentieth-century skin with a camera in my hand—I was suddenly emptied, diminished, false in front of that... I didn't know, but with all my “civilisation”, I was like a degenerate gnome—degenerate and false, with false garb, a false life, a false science, a false self, and a small Kodak in my hand to tickle the Sphinx.

—Listen, Nil, I don't know what you're seeking, but I can feel, because I love you. You are going to end up in despair. You will be all alone with your chromium mines, which are not worth any more than my mica mines. You are running away.

—It's not true.

—Death is upon you.

—This is blackmail.

—Death is upon us, Nil. Destiny is upon us. What you are fleeing from, you will meet again ten times, twenty times, until you have the courage to untie the knot. And each time it will be more difficult. But you will come back, I swear it, until things are fulfilled.

—Watch out, don't try to corner me.

—But I don't want anything for myself, you blindman! I don't want to keep you for myself. Oh! You understand nothing, Nil, you are like a wounded animal. Who has hurt you? What has happened?

—Nothing, precisely.

—Oh yes it has—and I have something to do with it, I can feel it—I felt it right from the first day. When you plucked those tulsi leaves at the door, I felt that I had already told you those words. When you pushed open the park gate, we seemed to have already made this gesture together. Everything seems to be beginning all over again. What are you going to do there, Nil? What are you seeking?

She squeezed my arm until it hurt. And I felt caught in a snare, but I didn't know which.

—Oh! Nil, life is so familiar that one doesn't recognize it, one has already lived it so often. And then, there are little, hard, concentrated points which seem packed with the past... Everything one seeks is here, Nil, at any moment, without moving, without adding or subtracting anything—it is here... c'est là. Nil, I feel that we are constantly on the verge of a miracle, without knowing it, and we could just stumble upon it accidentally as one stumbles upon a stone on a roadside, as one picks a tulsi leaf by chance. And if one captures that, everything changes! I saw that once, like a little click inside: all the colours change—life changes. The miracle is everywhere, Nil; it is here, at this minute, if you wish.

—You are too beautiful, Moni.

—Oh! How shallow you are I You see only my body.

—And so? I know very well where your little miracle leads: every year there are sixty-three million little miracles that don't happen.

—I hate you.

She dropped my arm. The palm trees cast a crab-like shadow around us.

Yes, what am I seeking?... Sometimes, I have the impression that one is not really “seeking”, rather one is drawn towards a certain point, drawn faster and faster, like a straw in a whirlpool; so we say that one is “seeking” because one feels the pull, but it is none of our doing: it is the movement which is accelerated. Deep down, one knows. It seems that each life tends to rediscover an ancient point—a memory, a fact, an accident, an old failure, I don't know, a certain type of situation—which contains the disaster and the key to the new life; the two together. One has to go right to the bottom and wring the neck of the Sphinx. That is the whirlpool, and it goes faster and faster. Indeed one goes backwards into the future. It is like this crab-like shadow around us: one doesn't go out of the shadow, one goes to the point where it is resorbed into its own light.

—Nil, for the last time, answer me. Why are you going?

—But I don't know! Where is the secret, Moni? Who has the secret of the true life? I have been here ten months now; I have seen only temples and still more temples—here you are prisoners of the gods and of destiny. And there, they are prisoners of time and machines—they lose their lives in trying to win their living. No one lives, Moni, where is life? It is betrayed everywhere, by the gods or the Machine, or by I know not what in the belly which always brings us down: the little family, commerce, sex. A true life, you understand, a free life, under the sign of no crab neither from above nor below—that's what I seek. No one has the secret And the more I seek, the more I find just the opposite of what I am seeking. It is like my dream of the poles: for ten years I have been dreaming of Greenland, and the more I dream of Greenland, the farther I go down towards the Equator.

---

Thus spoke Nil on that small white beach, in this age or another, on an island of the sunlit countries. On that beach he was small, as if seen by a bird, with his pretty dark-braided companion. He did not see, did not understand, he heard only the noise of his own words; but I saw him well, my brother beneath a shadow, I had borne his destiny more than once. I had entered into him here and there, I had followed the long procession of lives, like the figurants on the walls of Thebes under the great serpent of Destiny. And each time, I had entered into his difficulty, entered into a living contradiction, as though men donned body after body only to unravel a particular impossibility.

O seeker
In everything, every being on earth
There is a knot of contradiction
An impossible point
Hard and compact like pain
Tenuous like the last thread of life
Miraculous
O seeker
There are a thousand faces of things
A thousand contradictions
But it is always the same
There is only one pain in the world
Only one sorrow through many eyes
One single place where everything meets
Or separates
If you find the point
    You live
        Or you die

---

If she had not left me at that moment for preparing that so-called “fête”, perhaps nothing would have happened. Sometimes destiny seems to be suspended on a breath, as if it were there also, in that idle look, that step here rather than there, in that basil-leaf plucked by chance; and, perhaps, everything is there already, to the minutest detail—that wrought-iron gate forced open, that stone happened upon by the roadside—as much as in the most formidable acts; the latter are only the magnifications of the former. Everything, every instant, is the microscopic and surreptitious rehearsal of a great bursting forth ...un grand éclatement which will seize us one day, and leave us dumbfounded. Only, we do not see the little breath, we have not the proper eyes.

And everything is infallible: it is that which is haunting Everything is of a vertiginous exactitude, to the very nth. Even the birds do not pass by accidentally!... She is mad, perhaps, but if I am here on this beach this evening, it is because every step has led me here, without missing a single one—all the holes, all the detours, were a part of the way—and everything is direct, by a million indirections. At what point in the story can a single step be missed without missing everything? Where, then, is the minute when I could not have crossed that line or that street without demolishing the whole stupendous game?... One day, the golden egg burst into a million worlds, and that little scar was already there on my forehead! Or have I just gone mad? If, on the other side of the world also, everything is mathematical and pre-programmed, where is my liberty? In A-8 on a more terrible map, I have already lost the game.

O Child
Everything has already been acted out
And everything is free
According to whether you look here
Or there

—Nil, Nil, look!

She had climbed onto the vine-covered terrace, and was pointing to something in the sky.

—The birds are coming! The birds are coming, les oiseaux arrivent! The monsoon is here!

A black triangle was drifting in the north-east, the sky was like a dazzling vapour. I shrugged my shoulders and went off to the beach at random. Small red and white crabs ran about in all directions, a flight of plovers took off from among the stones. I would have liked to pierce them all, every pebble and the clawed shadow of the palms, to hold them all under the fire of my look until the tiny secret burst forth. And always, that obsessing impression of a cardinal memory that I could not find again—what, then, had I forgotten...what? quoi?

Then I sent everything to Hades and started off again.

There were rocks at the far end of the beach—a pile of granite as after some terrible sort of explosion. I climbed along the coast. The air was close and stifling. The sun was already setting. There was another plateau above the first one. I climbed still farther. I was becoming quite interested, as if I had come to this island only to scale these rocks—and Mohini there, her gods, her destiny, her birds, all seemed so ridiculous and unreal to me—a kind of morbid invention. What did I care, I laughed up my sleeve (except that I had no sleeves at all—I had cut them out that very morning, just for the occasion). I climbed onto the third plateau... and it was there that something happened. Something that I have never been able to explain since. Oh! there must be a very simple explanation for it, but I am wary of simplicities: the simpler the thing, the more miraculous it is; it is the last hideaway of the miraculous. Or is it perhaps the breaking-through of the A-8 from beyond into the A-8 here below? A “coincidence”... It was like music. I would have sworn that it was music; a voice or an instrument, very sweet, like little drops of notes, and very short—a call, just a call. Two little notes that rose into the air, rose and expired. I stopped. My heart was beating fast, as if the call were for me. I turned around; the house was hidden down there behind the hill of Gul Mohur trees—it could not have come from there. Yet, it was like the sound of an ektara: the plucking of a string. But I had broken that ektara... Then, who? I climbed still higher. Nothing moved. The air seemed solid with heat. And suddenly, I heard strident cries. I looked up: an enormous banyan-tree, a tumult of frightened parakeets and some monkeys grinding their teeth. Then, silence.

I was on the Promontory.

And the sea. The wide scintillating sea, as far as the eye could imagine, rippleless, tremorless, like a sheet of molten mercury; a blinding white. Even the port had disappeared. There was no shadow anywhere, no human being. It was like a lake at the beginning of the worlds, a white birth on a day when eternity was smiling to herself... une genèse blanche un jour où l'éternité se souriait à elle-même. And then, they rose: two notes, from between the rocks, two very tiny notes, pure, pure, oh so pure! I went round the banyan-tree: nobody. Two excruciatingly pure, poignant notes, as if they were going to break—but nothing broke: they rose, rose—it was I who was suddenly going to break. And a third one... Oh! I do not know, a sudden chasm, a hole in the memory; it was melting, melting—everything was melting: the past, the present, memories, ideas, beauty, countries, faces, everything that one has lived and willed, the thousands of threads which hold one—and nothing any longer held. Everything melted, one was no longer there. One had never been there—it was a delusion! As if one had lived lives and lives for nothing, completely beside everything: beside oneself, beside others, beside things, and then, suddenly, it crumbles, one is on another journey. Just the time to say oh! and there it is. Everything cracks... one looks out from another window. And nothing extraordinary, nothing hallucinatory, nothing theatrical; it, was even the contrary of an hallucination: a pure little note, and it was like the true note of the world, the right note—the note. As if there were only one. I felt like crying out: oui, oui, c'est ҫa, ҫa y est... yes, yes, it is that, here it is! Absolutely that. That which I have been waiting for, for millions of years! A sweetness of absolute recognition.

An invasion of sweetness.

It lasted only a few seconds.

I was in front of a dazzling emptiness—was it in front of me, in me? I looked at the sea, at the returning catamarans, the crimson dome of the Gul Mohur trees, and I no longer understood. I understood nothing; it was false, empty, hollow, an exotic decor superimposed over that luminous reality. But what was I doing here, what the devil was I waiting for? I must go away, go away immediately, move, set out, find the thread again—go away... but where? Another country, my country, the true country from which I came. Ah! I no longer know, my memory is clouded and all my names are false; I am dressed in borrowed clothes, my life is a lie—ma vie est un mensongel! Who will tell me from where I come, my birth, my name, my place? Have I not lived something else once, in truer times, was I not absolutely something other?... Sometimes, I seem to remember a vast country whence I came, and a music, and great snow-fields under a motionless sun. Where is my route, my silver thread? Everything is blurred, I no longer know, I have lost the password. There is a burning in the heart of man, that is all I know; it is my latitude and longitude of fire, it is my ceaseless bearings. There is something abysmally absent in the heart of man,—and if that is not there, nothing is there; a tiny little note which pulls and pulls, and if one misses one's note, the world is false and everything is false.

—Oh! Nil, I was so afraid.

She was dressed all in rouge, the mad thing! Bright, sanguine-red.

—I looked for you everywhere. What were you doing? How strange you look!

Her unplaited hair swept over her face. She was breathless. Then the world fell upon me like a grating cartage: the parakeets, the monkeys, the sizzling vapour, and that woman who enveloped me in a ruby-red haze.

—Come, Nil, the house is so beautiful! I have lit torches everywhere...

Everything clouded over suddenly, as if I had passed into the dark country: I must have been dreaming.

—There are torches in all the rooms. The sitars are glowing, the ektaras, the sarods... I shall play for you.

Was I dreaming, or had I moved into another dream?

—O Nil, Nil, where are you? What are you looking at? Don't you see the storm approaching?

And one passes from one dream to another, from one country to another, high countries, low countries, delightfully volatile, instantaneous like an odour or a cry; reds, blues, never-ending greys with nobody inside. And one goes on without respite, a wanderer of more than one world, with no safe place.

And I was ashamed of my bouts of dreaming. But was this one more real because it was red and seized me in my entrails?

—The storm is brewing in the west, Nil, don't you see? A country which does not move, a home which lasts.

—Come on, Nil, let's go. I don't like this place. It is only good for killing oneself.

I stroked her hair. The rock was burning.

—Come, please, let's go home. The house is like a fête.

Her breast was soft against mine, her bronze skin was glowing in the sun. Yes, Moni, yes, I like you to be ruby-red and umber; to-night we shall have a fête.

Umber, oui; women were always a return to half-light and oblivion.

—I have taken out the Kashmiri carpets. We will walk on a forest of blue cedars.

I have already lost myself in your forest.

—Nil, my beloved, are you really going away?

—Stop it, Moni, stop it. I no longer know.

A breeze touched the sea, dry leaves fell down.

—In the evening when the wind blows, the house vibrates like a big sitar.

—Yes, Moni...

—Do you know, when I was very small, I used to come here. I was afraid.

—Of what?

—I always had the impression that I was going to fall there, and then a white stranger came, and he saved me. It's funny...and now you are here.

A wedge of cranes flew by swiftly. The sea took on a leaden hue.

—I saw that in a dream... I was only a child: I was going to fall, I was there, exactly where you are now, and then... Nil, I have the feeling that the world is full of images which become true. They are there, they exist, sometimes one sees beforehand and then the accident happens. Nil, Nil...

—What is this tale?

She pressed herself against me. The image of the Sannyasi suddenly flashed before my eyes.

—I don't know, Nil. Sometimes, I'm afraid.

—You are mad.

—No, Nil I I'm not mad. Destiny is inscribed.

—What nonsense!

She raised her eyes towards me. They had that almost unbearable sweetness.

—Look, for heaven's sake, open your eyes!

She was looking behind me, and I felt something heavy,... ominous, forboding—I must run away, escape immediately. But there was that look which bound me. She took me by the arm.

Don't you see... The world is full of images, Nil!

—I don't know what she was looking at behind me, but the air was stifling—I was beginning to lose my presence of mind.

—Oh, Nil, if you wished, we could change our destiny; we could call forth the beautiful image which changes life. There are also beautiful images in the world, we could chase away death, invite the beautiful story and make it real. We could create a life of beauty together. Look, Nil, look well, a beautiful look, that is the look that creates, and are you not Nil-Aksha, the blue-eyed one?

—I am Nil-rien-du-tout, nothing-at-all, and I hate complications. I am free, do you hear? And as for your Destiny, I spit in its face.

At that very moment, a violent gust of wind swept over the island. All the parakeets flew away with a cry. Something happened at that moment, I could swear it. Something stopped in me, looked and photographed the place, as if I were opening my eyes for the first time, and I felt that I had uttered words that I should never have uttered.

She let her arm drop. She was like a statue in her red sari:

—Let's go home.

I didn't move.

—Let's go home. Night is falling, don't you see that the sky is all purple?

A seething mass rolled in the west. Little driving gusts began to ripple over the sea.

—Come, Nil, it will be too late.

Drops of rain splashed down spasmodically. The hot earth smelt like a sweating Negress. Then she began to speak rapidly, as if she were suddenly afraid:

—I have taken out white clothes for you, our house is like a festival, chandeliers are burning everywhere...

—But what's the matter with you, Moni? Are you afraid of the rain?

—Nil, don't leave me, I'm afraid.

She had a queer look, but it was not fear, and I could not make out what it was. Suddenly, there was a clap of thunder, a squall swept over the island: all the flowers flew away like a cloud of red birds.

—It is going to be too late, Nil...

I was petrified. I felt the danger, but where? What danger?

—Too late, Nil, too late...

Then, in a flash I understood: my boat! The Laurelbank, my boat, bon dieu!

I tore my hands away.

—I implore you...

The horizon was purple, the sea was foam-covered. For a moment, I looked at those distressed eyes, those moving lips:

—Nil!

Then I ran like a madman towards the landing-platform.

Mon bateau, mon bateau... my boat, my boat... I am going to be cut off from the mainland, trapped like a rat. I scrambled over the rocks and just missed falling over a rotten schist. In half an hour, it would be dark; tomorrow, it would be too late, the sea would be raging. I jumped onto the beach, charged through the sea-weed, tripped and fell into a hole. Mon bateau, mon bateau... It throbbed against my temples, hammered the nape of my neck, I was like a cornered animal, suddenly suffocating—freedom, freedom... The wind was blowing hard enough to tear the horns off a bull. I ran and ran.

For ten years I have been running. I think I would still run over half the globe if need be, to the devil if need be. And each time, I say NO. No to their petty happiness—nauseous little happiness, the tender rat-trap, decay in flower. I say no, and I would still say no for a hundred and seven years if need be. No to your stringed-music, your padded joys, your islands of honey or of feathers and your exquisite suffocations; no to all that art of dressing up the emptiness and stuffing the mannequin. I, I am the nil, the void, the skin of the mannequin who wants the real thing and no nonsense. I want the full, the real. And no revolt: I say no to you’re a yes and no to your nays—nothing to curse, nothing to forget, all is the same: your liberties are slammed shut like your doors, your tendernesses are the two grasping arms of your misery; your good, the reverse of your bad, or the same side; and everything marches in pairs, like a wedding, your black with your white, your joys with your sorrows, your god with his devils. As for me, I am getting out of the cavern, and good-night to you all! I have nothing to keep, not a day, not a minute behind me! Nothing to take with me, my bag is empty. I have lived on borrowings, and I am born only on your registers. I am nothing, three times nothing, he who does not want your straw. I leave the mannequin and what remains?

The house was lit up, “our” home... The verandah was streaming with light under the gusts of rain; my forehead was bleeding. No, I was not in revolt, and I cried out “liberty”, but it was simply that, just a gasping for air—autre chose, autre chose... something else, something else... a complete “elseness”, ah! which was not other. I ran in that red forest like a sleepwalker running after his body, like a drowning man gulping for air... No, I have no home, no country, no wife, no name, no future, and I am not at the wedding party. I will not make any little Nils, who will make other little Nils, who will make still other little Nils ...je ne ferai pas des petits Nil, qui feront des petits Nil, qui feront des petits Nil, and begin again. And nothing has begun! Not one second to salvage, not one real minute. Where is the single drop which matters in all that? I seem to have spent lives looking at non-existent tons and tons of Euphrates and Brahmaputra flowing by, pour rien—for nothing.

I ran through the night as if they were all at my heels, the little Nils who have made the little Nils who have made the little Nils, all packed into one insufferable moment, with the single cry: “When do we begin?” ...“Quand est-ce qu'on commence?” The whole family galloping through the night. I flew like a thief on that carpet of red flowers, accompanied by music which was not of their world, and heady like wine: freedom, freedom, freedom, the Laurelbank and no nonsense!

And I am still running.

They were three on the beach, running a catamaran aground. There was a howling wind, thorns, flying foam; my mouth was full of sand. I accosted the oldest.

—Take me to the port.

—To the port?... You want to go to the port?

He looked at me, yelling in the wind—then he turned his back on me. I yelled, too.

—I will pay!

He threw his paddle on the beach; an empty basket rolled into the cactus bushes.

—Listen, you idiot! Here, look...

I waved my wallet like one possessed.

He stopped, holding one end of the rigging in his hand.

—You can't see this wind, I suppose?

—Listen, I'll give you all you want. We can sail before the wind—in twenty minutes we shall be at the port.

He looked at the sky behind me and then at the wallet. I regained hope.

—I'm a sailor. I will help you.

The others began to get impatient. He sniffed the wind.

—In ten minutes it will be dark.

—And so what! We shall be going straight to the coast—we can't miss it ...

I drew out two bank-notes, two ridiculous bank-notes—they were soaking wet, sticking together. It was absurd.

—Here.

He shrugged his shoulders. I was done for. My watch! I still had my watch.

—Look.

I was beside myself. I would have hit him if I could. He glanced at the watch. Then he spat out sand and began again to haul in the catamaran. I was trapped like a rat.

My legs were giving way under me. The catastrophe unfurled before my eyes: without money, without a job, my ticket lost, and only half paid back, six months' labour to pay for another passage... I was mad with rage. There was nothing to do but return home and make the little family.

Suddenly I swung round, ready to strike: she was there. If a look of hate could kill, I killed her at that moment.

Then I stayed rooted to the spot. She was there, motionless, standing straight in her red sari, a little above me as though on a high step of sand, so perfectly calm in the midst of that furious wind and the torn-off flowers that she looked like an adorned goddess out of a sanctuary, placed there for a rite, her hair undone, her eyes so large that they seemed to swallow her entire face, without a plea, without a tear, without a reproach, as if already seized with eternity, alive only by that sweetness that looked at me, looked right into the depths of my soul, and which seemed to have always looked at me, so warm, so sure—we were not losing each other. We could not lose each other! We were together, always together... ensemble, toujours ensemble, eternally together.

Then, for one second, I loved her.

She approached without a word. She drew off her gold bangles and put them in the man's hands. Then she looked at me again with that intolerable sweetness, greeted me with folded hands, as one greets gods in a temple. And she was gone.

—Let's go, stranger. Hurry up, the darkness is upon us.

Thus they go
Lovers or enemies
Brothers and passers-by
But who goes, who stays?
Only the clothing changes
Or the colour of a sky over a little, white beach
Only the sorrow goes
And a child
On a pure, little beach
Looks with wonder
At those who come and go
And no longer recognize each other.

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