By The Body Of The Earth or The Sannyasin

Three Cowries for the Gods and one for Nothing

The sea was all granular. It smiled through a thousand little dimples, expanded with well-being, stretched, then let a tiny puff of bubbles and contentment run over the sand as after a good bath. I knew that Batcha had seen me; she took her time, which was no more measured than the pink cowries on the beach or the black and white zigzags of the wagtail. Sometimes, she tossed back her plait and remained squatting before a sudden marvel. I could almost see her smile, I felt that lightness which charms everything. Indeed, the world is a fable to give millions of fingers and eyes and surprises to a marvel which hides from itself, and constantly re-invents itself in the hollow of our hands. Sometimes I think we have invented death, and we could just as well re-invent immortality when we have enough joy to discover joy everywhere. Is not the world as we like it?... I blow here or there, and the vast robe becomes iridescent with gold or amaranth.

—There, it's all for you!

She opened a fold of her skirt and a cascade of shells came tumbling out onto the steps of the little temple.

—All that for me?

—Wait, let me give some to the god.

Carefully, she chose three cowries which she carried before the raised stone, with a slight bow. Then she rubbed her hands on her pomegranate-coloured skirt and remained on the threshold for a moment, looking at me. Her red tilak blazed on her forehead, she was like a goddess out of a sanctuary. She looked at me quietly, like a queen—I entered there as if into my house. At last she smiled, satisfied.

—We had so many adventures, Balu and I...

—Aah?

—Yes, we sailed the sea, we reached the banks of a river. There was sand, like here, but yellow, and dunes also. The river flowed, there were white pigeons. We followed the path; there was a big house, it was quite old, with pillars. Balu found the gold coin—a gold coin big like that, with writings on it. He said: “It's Björn's treasure, we'll go and find Björn.” I didn't want to, because we should have had to go underground, it was full of thorns, and there were cobras also. He pulled out his sword: “I will kill them all,” he said. And he was tall, very tall, he had a red belt. We went in and then everything changed... I don't know where Balu disappeared to, it was a big hall, very pretty, like a temple, with blue paintings, and you were up on top. But it was almost empty.

—On top?

—Yes, it was your house.

She stopped for a moment as if struck by something.

—There was that man who wanted to stop me.

—A man?

—Yes, a Sannyasi. He said: “You don't exist.” Then I laughed and he disappeared!

Batcha laughed with her heart, her teeth sparkling.

—And right on top there was a lovely big terrace, as if moonlit. I felt so much at ease... I didn't see you but you were there, I could hear you, you were playing the ektara. It was so sweet that I fell asleep. It was like sinking into moon-froth.

—Well!... But first of all, I don't play the ektara.

—But yes, you were playing.

Suddenly she became serious:

—Where were you yesterday afternoon?

—...

She was sitting on the steps and sorting out her shells.

—I couldn't find you.

—Why? Did you come to look for me at the caravanserai?... I had gone out with Björn.

—Of course not I came... not with my legs, I came “like that”...

She was seeking for words.

—I came inside. You did not reply.

—Ah?

—You replied a while ago when I was gathering the shells.

—I replied?

She sighed. I was decidedly silly.

—You said: I am happy, I am very happy!

—And what did you say?

She rolled a shell with the tip of her finger, then looked at it for a moment with her head bent.

—Nothing, I am at peace when you are there.

And in a flash I felt myself facing a completely strange world which was opening up, or rather, of being completely strange myself, before a world that I knew well but had completely forgotten, resurfacing suddenly from I know not where, as if I had lived another life all the time without knowing it and then it was there. And everything I was doing here, outside, seemed queer to me, beside the point; I felt myself on the wrong side of a dream, dressed in clothes that were not mine, a silly shirt and the shoes of a rustic. I woke up, and the sea was so lovely with its sparkling little bubbles; it was clear, limpid, so easy: one had only to turn one's head a little and say “I wish”. It was so simple! I wish, and everything flows as I wish, veers, changes colour, one is here, there and in many places at once, just the time to think of it and there it is: it appears, disappears, is tinted red or blue. And it was simply a way of smiling which did everything, made things flow one way, the other way, moulded them, filled them with colour and sudden depths like a dream come true inadvertently; and at the same time, I saw my two heavy clogs there on the sand, incongruous, and I understood nothing, as if I had lived all my life in the wrong scene... I looked at Batcha, I listened to that sweet little voice, I moved with that finger-tip pushing a shell, and it seemed to me that the curtain had been drawn on another scene within the scene and that the strangeness was no longer there but here, in this Nil disguised in the costume of the XXth century, who knew how to solve all the problems of existence by a brain-wave and who did not even know how to rejoin Batcha from a distance, nor hear the language without words, nor feel without seeing nor touch the invisible hands which knock at the door and light their little coloured lantern in things. I had been taught everything except the essential; I had been stuffed from head to foot with false tales! I had spent thirty years of my life like a trained chimpanzee which adds, subtracts, smokes a cigar and rides a bicycle.

—Batcha, tell me, what do you do to be with me when I am not here?

—Nothing, I listen.

She laid her cheek on her knees and looked at the sea. She was absolutely still like a robin redbreast in the thicket.

—I listen, and sometimes I seem to lay my head on your shoulder. At other times I can't, it's hard, complicated; or else you have gone up above, I exist no longer. Yesterday, you were like an iron house.

—You listen? How?

—But nothing, I simply listen! I let it come in. I lean as over the river, then I feel how you flow. Don't you feel Balu, Shikhi, Appa?

She raised her head and looked at me with surprise.

—Then how do you do to live?

—But how do they “flow”?

—Certainly, not like you! They have another way. Each has his own way. It depends on the days also. Don't you hear?

I was a little bewildered.

—But what do you feel, Batcha?

—I feel the music. It moves. It's like the waves—waves which tell.

—And Shikhi?

—Shikhi?... You do ask funny questions! Shikhi perches on the terrace and cries out in triumph... Il se perche sur la terrasse et it pousse des cris de triornphe.

I leaned over my knees, I too tried to listen. I groped my way into the great river of stories, it was deep and soft like a velvet train, I let myself flow. Then I thought of Bhaskar-Nath (or was he thinking of me?). I repeated his name and remained very quiet, very still; I should not move, not a breath over my water; I was like a lake, so limpid that I no longer knew where I was, so still that it seemed a crystal block and yet weightless, light as a wing, volatilised... there was still just a trace of breath which kept the link with myself and then I disappeared as if I had passed in the twinkling of an eye into a multiple self which contained everything; I remembered myself, I forgot myself. Then everything became even, smooth, vast like a river sinking into itself and slowly, very slowly something began to form therein: an image. Not even an image: a cascade of waves which was like the vibration of the image, just before the image, a kind of moving atmosphere, and it was pale gold—if I had been blind, I would have said: Bhaskar-Nath, Instantly, it coagulated: it was a mass, mighty, golden—a golden fire—and I felt that I had only to lean a little in order to flow into that current of fire. And that current had a particular movement, I fancied, that it almost spoke, but not with words, just a vibration—which could make words or contained the force of the word, its inner meaning—and which could make images also or streams of light, but all that said the same thing: one leans a little to one side or the other and it makes an image or a sound. And it was very clear, infinitely clearer than any words, fuller than images—all possible shades were there, unerring, inimitable—when it said “joy”, all the content of joy was there, with its power, its quality, almost its intensity of colour. It was a living sound, a living light, a substance of joy: one could enter into it and bathe as in a torrent. Things became concrete: the joy was solid—a torrent of motionless fire. And suddenly our concrete world seemed to me an imitation, a kind of shrivelled dictionary opening all at once and pouring out syllables of ruby and sapphire on the floor. Then I felt another substance near Bhaskar-Nath; it was soft and almost silky. It was Ma. And there, I felt I touched a mystery, perhaps the secret of this country; a very tiny form without angles or hardness, nothing hurt, and it was very still—very intense—like a flame, and very secret, like a buried treasure hidden from all eyes and which would retain all the force of its accumulated light, concentrated, veiled. Centuries could pass, but that did not move. Only a smile which filtered through and a hand which drew her veil over her forehead. An extraordinarily powerful sweetness. It seemed to me that she held out a very fine tray of fruit and said: khao, khao, eat. And that fruit filled me with a sweet force like hibiscus juice... Suddenly I barged into a black whirlwind: it was Björn.

—An'mona! An'mona!

Oh! the whole world is there! We go in all directions, we are at once everywhere! We know only a translation of the world in a barbaric tongue.

—An'mona, you should be called An'mona: he whose spirit is elsewhere.

—Batcha, it's marvellous!

She sighed.

—You look carefully but you don't see what's under your nose.

—Batcha, I'm glad, so glad, oh!...

She pushed aside her shells and gave me a sort of pitying look.

—Tell me, Batcha, how does it happen? We are here on this beach, the two of us... Oh! I feel as if I've known you intimately, since ages, it's strange...

Then the words were gone. I was lost in a sort of foolish delight, as if the little wave came sparkling just against me, the sand flowed into me, the conch-shells blew in my breath, and it was limpid, simple, life was like a vast crystal in which a myriad little bonfires were kindled everywhere, in all the corners, and I smiled, I waft here, there, there, I was feeling everywhere, I was living everywhere, I was bursting marvellously into a multitude of little joyous lights. I was a complete, gaping simpleton.

—Batcha, how is it done?

I no longer knew what I wanted to say, everything was a kind of miracle. Then she put her head on her knees and began to hum. It was as if little word-drops flowed:

—Nothing-at-all, Mr. Nothing-at-all... There are many beaches in geography... but, you are here, and I have gathered these shells for you...

She closed her eyes, she looked like a smiling sphinx.

—There are days... many days in the calendar... but, it is today. You are here and I am here—what wind has driven us?... What wave has brought you these shells?... There are shells, many shells in the sea... but these are for you, only for you... Nothing-at-all, Mr. Nothing-at-all... it is today on many beaches... in geography... But only one wave... brings to each one... a single... cowrie... Mais une seule vague... apporte à chacun... un cauri unique... That and no other.

I was saucer-eyed. She chuckled. And suddenly I was panic-stricken, I don't know why, that fear, as if... I don't know. Then I took hold of myself.

—There are many cowries, Batcha, you're raving. Whether this one or another...

She lifted her head and made a face at me.

—There are many Nothing-at-all, so I wonder why this one has come!

—Another would have come.

—And you, where would you have gone?... On a beach in the white countries? And whose place would you have taken?...

She raised her eyes towards me.

—...Then everything would be upset.

Those wide black eyes looked right into me. And in those eyes, I followed with a sort of stupefaction that Nil who would take somebody else's place, who would take somebody else's place, who would take somebody else's place... And with tremendous clarity, I saw her draw herself up and take a rose shell, blue-veined, and she smacked it down in the hollow of my hand:

—There, this one has waited a thousand years for you.

And she burst out laughing.

I remained looking at that shell... completely non-plussed, that “unique” shell. And, instantly, it was so crushing, I seemed suspended in a fantastic, unbelievable world where the smallest grain of sand, the smallest pebble on the beach, was bathed suddenly in an absolute light, as if that absurd shell had really waited a thousand years to come into my hand, put there by Batcha and by no one else, at that second and no other, in that place on the earth—and where else could I have been? Taken whose place?... It was a sudden phantasmagoria, a prodigious ballet of breath-taking precision, a mad, single totality—a single earth-body—and it moved in a single movement through the ages and across space; a fabulous clockwork of which each point was the intersection of the whole world, the symbol of all the rest, the microscopic reduction of the universe; a gigantic puzzle in which one could displace nothing, move nothing, change nothing, without throwing everything into chaos, and it was like that, really like that: every minute of the world with its millions of meetings and combinations, each point in space with its millions of objects and beings on the move was unique, really unique, and nothing could be otherwise without everything having to be otherwise.

It was the second time I had seen that, and each time with Batcha.

—You look like an owl coming out of the night.

I felt as if I were going to break apart.

—An owl with blue eyes, has anyone ever seen that?

—Tell me...

But I no longer knew, I simply saw—I saw, it was seeing-light, I was suspended in it like in an incomprehensible comprehension. And there was that tiny foot on the steps, barely sunburnt, under a long pomegranate-red skirt, the sand and our foot prints which zigzagged towards the dunes over there... Two lines, two little meandering tracks composed of thousands of points of which each one had to be exactly in its place in order to intersect the other at that minute, today, on the steps of this little temple...

—We-ell speak!

I wanted to speak, to try to formulate my question. But it was really impossible to formulate; it was an immense, scintillating cloud which seemed pregnant with one question, a pure question, which could have taken thousands of forms but it was the question. And I see clearly now, I know what fascinated me at that moment like a tremendous mystery: it was that Liberty—marvellous, unknown—a sort of minute-to-minute world-creation; and the more I perceived that liberty the more I discovered simultaneously a kind of inexorable trap in which there was not even the possibility of making one false step: we take the wrong path, but the wrong path was also part of the right one!

And both were true simultaneously.

—Listen, Batcha, if I am meeting you here and not elsewhere, you and not another Batcha, who brought it about? Where does it begin? Why is it you I meet and no other? Björn and no other? Balu and no other? And only on this beach today... Who drew or pushed me here and not elsewhere? What, what force?

Batcha looked at me intently. She was silent. I turned and returned my shell between my fingers; that unique, absurd shell... If it has waited a thousand years for me, it must surely have a message for me! What message?... A blue-veined rose message which uncurled its tiny spirals wider and wider, more and more distinct, like Princess Anne's hennin, and which emerged into a violet opening. And then, a point. A very tiny hard point at the bottom from which the spiral unfurled. Everything was so vibrant, so miraculous that morning with Batcha—oh! there are moments in life when everything yields and opens out like a legend; a fragile veil separates us from a thousand worlds or perhaps from one only which shimmers like a great pearl from the islands—I felt that the smallest bit of mother-of-pearl, the simplest wagtail on the beach, contained the whole key to the mystery, and that everything was contained in everything; one had only to look. Then I saw the whole of this existence in the hollow of my hand, that tiny symbol which unfurled its spires, its pretty irised circles, mauve, rose, blue, an unbelievable, perpetual story... une incroyable histoire perpétuelle, always wider, always more living, from spire to spire, as though there were the same characters, the same circumstances, the same possibilities or impossibilities, almost the same scenes which returned from one stage to another, but each time more precise, more intense, more charged with meaning and power, as if we passed again and again, endlessly, through the same places, the same soul-points, the same blue track, then rose, purple, but magnified, enlarged, and as if surrounded by a sharper light—each time nearer the key which reveals all. But perhaps there was no key anywhere, simply the light of an ever-increasing revelation, no final point, but an ever-travelling point on an eternal spiral. On the heights, the spiral mounted into a white infinity, or fell back into that purple mouth, eaten by itself—ou bien quoi? or else what?... And perhaps each of the spires represented one life only, and at other points of the curve, in other times—just the homologous point below—I had looked one day at a rose cowrie on a little white beach and smiled at an eternal child...

And now, I seemed to see the great shell of the world which uncurled its pretty spires round great rose Indias and mother-of-pearl Egypts, and which turned and turned, repeating at every moment the whole history in each country as in one being, at every epoch as in one season, each time enlarging the same single destiny, and which shot up towards that white infinity... or that hole of purple shadow—or else what?

—An'mona! An'mona!

—Oh! Batcha...

—Where are you, Mr. Nothing-at-all? You are always elsewhere. Then, of course, there is nothing at all, you wake up when it is all over.

She pouted.

—Listen, Batcha...

—I am not Batcha. Have you at least found what you were looking for?

—Yes... No!

—Then, you have wasted you time. I have given my shell to nothing-at-all.

—Are you annoyed?

—I'm not annoyed. I find that you are behaving like my moon-froth.

—Your...

—Does one speak to moon-froth, tell me?

She puffed out her cheeks:

—You are like Chavan.

—Chavan? Who is Chavan? Yet another god?

—First of all, he is not a god, and in any case what do you have against my gods?

—Why nothing, little wisp!

—They are very nice.

—Yes. And then?

—He lived completely naked, he did not eat anymore: he simply stared.

—At what?

—Don't know, he stared. He stared like you, up there. And then he stared so much that he became hard like a skeleton. He didn't move any more. Only his eyes went on shining. Then the white ants came and made their hill over him.

—Listen, Batcha, I can't understand...

—You are hard like a problem in arithmetic.

—But look, Batcha, you are very nice and I like you very much, but it is not a question of sentiment: why is it you I have met, and not another? You, Bhaskar-Nath's daughter?

Tranquil, limpid, she looked at me:

—Because it was always me and we were always together... Parce que c'était moi depuis toujours et nous étions toujours ensemble.

I felt my eyes widening. Everything became fixed, magnified: the smallest ripple on the sand, the black and white wagtail, the sound of the conch-shells under the high tower, her pomegranate-red skirt—a pause. A drop of rose eternity in the hollow of my hand. A sudden opening on the flight of centuries, like a scared cluster of crimson birds captured in full light. I was gaping...

—Nil! Look!

She extended her arms towards the sky.

—The birds from the north, the birds from the north! The birds are returning! The monsoon is coming!

She jumped up.

—The birds are coming! The birds are coming!... Les oiseaux arrivent!

She clapped her hands.

A big black triangle veered in the north.

Then she rushed towards the palm grove, so red, her arms outstretched, and ran, ran towards the high tower. I stretched out my hand... She had gone.

There was only the south wind beating against the door of the little sanctuary and that chanting in the distance which had been rolling on for centuries, like the migration of the birds, like the spires of the turritellas and the periplus of souls on an invisible globe... et le périple des âmes sur une invisible mappemonde.