By The Body Of The Earth or The Sannyasin

Too Late

If only I had been able to stay awake with Bhaskar-Nath's words! But that sand-storm pursued me; my eyes burned, the fever rose. I kept myself in my skin only by an act of will. I entered the temple, I hoped to find a shelter. I was not even hungry, I just wanted to be alone and protected, but they would not leave me in peace; they stared at me, they turned round: dorai, dorai..., the conch vendors called me, the priests murmured, the flagstones were icy under my feet. Someone pointed to me. I began to run through the north corridor. Then I stopped suddenly, breathless, in the middle of the passage-way. There was an enormous stone horse in front of me, standing on its hind-legs: but what on earth was I doing there, where was I going? Around me were those gigantic pillars, those motionless, staring gods in crowded ranks, that painted granite vault with its red and yellow striped monsters, the rumbling of drums and gongs, and I felt so totally foreign, so lost with fever in that forest at the end of the world and of all worlds, cornered, alone, on the verge of I know not what. What was I doing there, but where was I? My legs dragged as if made of lead, my chest was afire, it was suffocating... a bad dream... worse than a dream: there was nowhere to go, no outlet, no return, I was at the end of myself, it was the last stronghold, the corner from which one does not emerge. I dropped my copper bowl. It rolled over the flagstones with a Doomsday sound. I turned round, they were coming... about fifty of them perhaps: dorai, dorai... I climbed up the buttresses, ran between the pillars.

I collapsed behind a bas-relief.

I closed my eyes; I rolled up into a ball like a hedgehog, my head buried in my arms, burning with fever.

I slept like a log.

I do not know what happened or how long I slept; I was walking across moutains of red silk—brilliant red, cherry red—which undulated like a sea, and I was sinking into it up to my knees; I was ascending and descending red Arabias as far as the eye could see, all alone; each step fell in, I had to make a tremendous effort to unstick myself; I was trying to hang on with my hands but they also were sinking and slipping into that morass of silk. And then, suddenly, without any transition, I found myself at the edge of a forest (there was a path, an avenue there) I saw myself: it was I dressed as a sannyasi, hanging. A sannyasi hanging from a tree. Me, absolutely me. And a group of men with lanterns were coming to take me down. The image was hallucinating in its precision—my white face in the light of the lanterns, that orange robe, those silent men—as if I were seeing myself from the outside. But just at the moment they lifted their lanterns to get me down, the image disappeared into the dark and I awoke with a cry. A dream?... But the whole chain of the Himalayas is not more real than that image.

I sprang to my feet. The rays of the sun fell on the multi-coloured vaults—Batcha! I'm going to miss Batcha! I ran like a lunatic through that corridor. Batcha! Batcha!... The silver trumpets resounded in the passages; the yalis opened their granite jaws; I ran over those icy flagstones and I no longer knew on which side I was, here, there, in this forest or the other, running after Batcha... Batcha... she, my salvation, my refuge, my light at the end; I ran like that hanged man come out of his corpse, dead or alive, I do not know: “Never again, oh! never again...” It was a nightmare; life, death were mixed up, the concentration camps and the pyres of initiation, the orange tunics and the striped tunics—never again, never again...

I came out under the east tower. The palms crackled in the wind like flowers of sulphur, the daylight shone behind a veil of chalk. It was 5 o'clock perhaps. The beach was deserted... a pall of white powder. I advanced with slitted eyes, bent in the wind and slapped by gusts of thistles. And suddenly, she was there: a little red silhouette, the, sanctuary, the southern dunes like an avalanche of foam.

She descended the steps.

She was very erect and red in that immaculate quartz powder—red, a sanguine-red sari, lashed by the wind, her hair undone. For one second, I was seized by an insane panic: it was Mohini... c'était Mohini.

Mohini, exactly as I had left her on that beach in the sand-storm.

She advanced a step. She pulled her sari tightly over her breast; there was a gold bangle on her wrist: a very young girl, pale, with a red tilak on her white forehead.

—Batcha. Oh! Batcha...

Her eyes rested on me, luminous, deep like a pool. She took my hand:

—Come.

She drew me under the peristyle, I leaned against the wall.

—Batcha!...

—Shhh!

She placed a finger on my lips. She was so pale, almost bloodless, as after a long illness. She sat down beside me, her hands folded on her knees. She remained looking at me for a long time, motionless, wordless. For there was nothing to say. It was like water meeting water again. It was peace, the denouement. She 'smoothed away my suffering, my fever, removed my cloak of thorns, washed my burning wound; she looked at me without haste, without reproach, as if from the depths of her soul, as if from the bottom of a quiet garden where we were together, always together, infinitely, passionless, untroubled, as limpid as two children playing on the shores of the swan-lake. I sank there, I melted there. I left my shadow, my wrinkles, my sufferings; it was so simple there, it flowed from the fount and there were no two different things: no man, no woman, no thee, no me, no sannyasi, nor black nor white, nothing which gave, nothing which took; it was all even, all me, all her, like water in water, like the wing and wing of a great bird gliding infinitely on a rippleless lake; it travelled and travelled over seas of calm light, over capes of plenitude, bays of oblivion, almost roseate, wing to wing, in the sweetness of a same great flow; it floated across the nights, the days, deaths, and more deaths, painless, shadowless, it flowed together for ever—she or I, me or her—towards infinite depths, towards tendernesses of boreal clarity, motionless transparencies; and we were going to disappear over there perhaps, taken up suddenly in a rose-tinted, diamond frost.

Then it seemed to me that the great expanses above were also here, in the intimate sweetness of the heart.

—Batcha...

She was smiling.

—Shhh, not yet.

The south wind was blowing, but we were so secure, both of us, on that invulnerable island, on the serene island of no country, we were on our perpetual island, our rock of eternity, beyond all lives, all deaths, when the white or red islands have gone under. I think I smiled, and everything was so simple, everything was exorcised. She spoke:

—How thin you've become!

—How white you are!

—I have waited for you, I have waited for you so much...

—Oh! What a fool I was!

—I called you, I called you everyday and you did not reply, oh! Nil... It was as if there were nobody there... as if you no longer existed... it was dreadful... And then, I don't know when, one day, three weeks ago, you replied; you were there, warm, so warm, so vivid! Then I knew you were returning. I began to live again.

Something quivered on her lips.

—And then the birds returned.

—Oh! Batcha, I didn't know, I was a fool.

—You didn't know what? You didn't know that I loved you?

—You loved me... Tu m'aimais...

I opened my eyes. The veil was rent, it was a cry. Her eyes rested upon me so quietly... I was frozen.

—But Batcha, you were only a child!

—So what? Can't a child love?

I was crushed.

She laid her head on her knees, she was looking at the sea.

—Before, when you were there, I was at peace; indeed, it was because of that that I knew I loved you; I was at peace, I had alighted... You know, birds which alight, which have flown long? I had alighted in you. It was that, I had found you again. Did you not feel anything?

—But Batcha, you said nothing to me.

—Say what? One has to use words?

She drew herself up a little.

—And then you went away...

A tiny furrow puckered her white forehead.

—You are very wicked!

She had that mischievous little smile as before:

—But I caught you nicely! I pinched you there on the dunes, do you remember?

I was in a tumult. I felt a rush of hope, it was salvation, life opening up before me.

—Listen, Batcha...

And then, suddenly, the trap... the impossibility. Walls everywhere.

—What are we going to do, Batcha... I no longer know, I no longer understand...

—You are here, Nil, all is well.

—They will separate us.

—Who, they?

—Oh! Those over there... They hate us. If only we were shipwrecked here, without anything or anyone.

—Why no one? I love the world; I love Balu, I love Appa very much... I love Nil very much also.

And there was the same mischievous gleam in her eyes, she still had the round face of a child, that air of living in the obvious.

—You have not changed, my poor Nil, it's nothing without me or it's nothing with me! And your freedom, have you found that at least, Mr. Nothing-at-all?

—Yes... no.

She burst out laughing.

—You see.

—Oh! Batcha, let's forget everything... everything. Let's begin again.

—Yes.

—It's an error, a trap. Listen, we will go away... Do you remember... the queen of the coral country, the garland of laughter...

—Yes. Appa told me that you would begin another life through me.

My heart throbbed. She had suddenly become serious. What a strange little girl she was!

—What else did he tell you?

—Many things... He said: “Another life is not the same life with some improvements...”

—Improvements?

—Everything depends on you.

—On me?

—He said: “Souls always find each other again and each time one comes back to make a step forward.” And I, too, had a step to make... When you left, I saw Kali's Rock all the time.

—Kali's Rock?...

—I was falling there... Oh! I wanted very much to throw myself from it.

—You were falling... But Batcha what must we do, what depends on me, tell me?

I looked at Batcha and then at that village in the distance, at those people, those dunes: dorai, dorai... And then suddenly, it seemed to me that there was nothing to be done, that it was futile, that we were caught there, trapped and powerless, in front of that hostile world, and that everything was already accomplished.

—Do you know what depends on me?

She closed her eyes. She was so beautiful! The sound of the conch-shells came in waves. Then she spoke softly, as if with little pearls of words:

—When one is there, in the depths, one is quiet, nothing more depends on oneself... One is quiet, it's someone else who does. And it is well done, it's right. When one forgets, then it's difficult.

She pulled her sari a little over her toe-tips.

—Perhaps one arrives at the same thing, but... It's the same thing, but hard.

She shook herself as if to shake off a shadow.

—He said: “One must take the path on which all thirsts disappear, then the woman draws the man's dreams down into Matter and the man draws the woman's strength into the Light. And they walk together. If she does not rise, she destroys him if he does not create, he loses her.

Then she looked at me with such tenderness that I wanted to take her in my arms—a wave of blood went through me, oh! What a fool I had been!

And it was then that everything went wrong.

I took her hand, my heart was beating suffocatingly. Her hand, so soft, so delicate, trembling slightly in mine. A gesture, a tiny gesture. And at the very second I took her hand, I saw everything swerve into red.

—Listen, Batcha, it's a mistake, a tremendous mistake, we will begin all over again.

—Yes.

—I'll take you with me, we'll leave together; I'll marry you.

—But you have already married me!... Mais tu m'as déjà épousée!

—But try to understand, Batcha! I am lost without you, don't you see! let's run away!

Her hand had become ice-like in mine. Then I was seized with panic; it seemed that thousands of walls rose up on all sides, I was besieged, a prisoner on that island at the very moment I glimpsed salvation; they were all at my, heels, I could hear them: dorai, dorai... It was dreadful,-awaking dream, one runs on and on and then the legs give way; they are all there, they are ready to fall upon us... Oh! like Björn.

—Listen, Batcha, I beseech you, let's go far far away, we shall start another life.

... And then one falls to the ground on one's knees all is lost, it's the darkness.

She was looking at me; her eyes had grown wide and I felt that tide of suffocating anguish rising, tightening inside, and then that panic which was seizing Batcha also, and it was going faster and faster. And at the same time, a voice behind, icy, imperturbable: “Ah! you also want to take, you want to escape with your loot.”

And it was as if that voice threw me into a last, desperate race, as if I had to act quickly, quickly before I was stopped.

Batcha's hand was like marble in mine—like Mohini's when I had pushed open the park gate.

—You will see, we shall be happy, very happy; everything will be simple, we shall go to a village in the north...

She was shaking her head without being able to utter a word; her eyes were brimming with tears.

—We shall have a hut on a river bank, we shall be free; there will be green paddy-fields, I shall earn my living; I will teach in the village school.

—But Nil...

She took her face in her hands.

—Nil, Nil...

She repeated my name like a prayer. She was going to yield; it was the end, the deliverance, I was caught in a red cloud.

—You'll see, we'll be together, always together... toujours ensemble.

Then she drew herself up at once, she pressed her hands against the wall; she was standing in front of me, she looked like a poor little cornered animal:

—But it is not that, Nil, it's not that!... pas ҫa!

She hammered out her words with a sort of despair.

—It's not that, Nil, it's not that,—an “other” life!

—Ah! leave it, they are lying, they...

She put her hand on my lips.

—Don't speak Nil, I beseech you, don't speak, let me go.

I barred the way. It was my last chance; if I let her go, I was lost, it was the end.

—If you love me...

—But I do love you, Nil! Don't you understand? If I didn't love you, I would go away with you.

—Then come.

—But it will be your death, Nil, can't you see!...

—My death?

—You will leave me; you have always left me, you thirst always, Nil!

I saw her trembling lips. She tried to advance; she pressed her hands against my shoulders; she pushed... pushed.

—Let me go, Nil, I beseech you, let me; Appa is calling me, I feel him calling me, I must go.

I retreated slowly towards the steps; I was speechless. I only saw her white face against mine, so distressing, that red tilak on her forehead, those two arms pushing... pushing against me. I went down one step; in a moment all would be over, she would be gone. I let my arms fall:

—You are abandoning me.

—Never!

It was like a cry. Oh! until the end of my life, I shall see her standing on the top of those steps, all red in her nuptial sari, her hair flowing loose and the swirls of sand sweeping over her feet like foam.

—Never! Even if I die, I am with you. I am fused into your heart... Je me fonds dans ton coeur.

I went down another step.

—For the last time, Batcha, I beseech you, if you have really married me...

—But it is too late, Nil!... il est trop tard. You are a sannyasi.

Too late...

I clenched my fist.

I cannot give a reasonable account of what happened in that minute; everything had the sharpness of those minutes into which are condensed whole years or lives, and then the being snaps, one is as if endowed with several simultaneous consciousnesses, one lives on several planes at once, one sees in several worlds and what happens here is no longer separate from what happens elsewhere—perhaps it is madness or the bursting forth of several memories: one is no longer one being but a world of disappeared beings who return and spring up suddenly with all the multiplied intensity of a pain and a revolt never dissolved. I was like a pillar of anger—oh! so miserable, a poor puppet. I saw myself at the foot of those steps,—saw myself fully—very small, my clenched fist, livid, in front of Batcha lost, life ruined. I wanted to raise my fist to heaven... But just as I was going to raise my fist, I heard Bhaskar-Nath's voice—heard and saw at the same time, as if his voice materialised itself into letters and formed a screen of purple light between Batcha and me:

Djamon' Tomar Ichha
IT IS AS YOU WILL

It was like thunder in my ears, something suddenly split in half. And, in that very second, as rapid as a lightning flash, I saw—I saw everything from above, as if from over my shoulders—saw an image which superimposed itself on this one, deeper than this one, inside it, and which came as if to join the other one, almost an exact replica of what was happening outside, but of a sannyasi similar to me, taller than me, who was raising his fist to heaven, and of a being like Batcha, clad in red, at the top of the steps, who collapsed suddenly with a cry: “No! not that!”—pas ҫa! and her head was smashed against the pillar. She was dead.

I became like a stone—a stone, a block of frozen fire. If I moved, it would be finished, the image would enter into matter, she would be dead. I was like a statue of fury at the foot of those steps, my fists clenched against that orange robe, lacerated, beaten by those swirls of sand.

It was she who moved.

I think I closed my eyes for a second; I said: “Mâ...” Mother. She came down the steps. I did not move or make a gesture. I was somewhere, between prayer and death. She approached.

She came near to me, took off her gold bangle and laid it at my feet; then she raised her hands to her forehead slowly, she joined them together before me as before a god in the temple, and she went away.

She went away... Elle est partie.

I watched her little red silhouette going, going away, stumbling in the sand. I watched her to the end without moving, without blinking, like a stone, until she disappeared behind the tower. And then... nothing more. I closed my eyes; I was dead to the world.

I was dead.

Then I felt a great warm Power take me, envelop me with Love, like a Mother, and something from behind, far, far away, said in a quiet, almost neutral voice: “A first time you have conquered.”

What I had conquered, I do not know. There was nothing more to conquer. I was like that hanged man who had come out of his corpse. I was dead and yet I lived.

I picked up my gold bangle and took to the road again.

The sand stung my face, lashed my naked shoulders, my mouth was full of it; I walked along as in a dream. Then I foundered, I tipped over into the red. I groped my way along in a scarlet mist and that body was in my arms—she was dead, Batcha, my beloved; I was taking her away with me—ah! nobody would find us ever! I was going to hide her, I was carrying her away with me for ever! They could run after us, she was mine, mine, my loved one, my love. She was soft and warm in my arms; she was like a bird nestling in my arms. I ran along the beach, I clasped her to me; I ran, ran through the village, still clasping her; I was on the other side, I did not care, I was in the marvellous catastrophe, I had her for ever—dorai, dorai... assassin, assassin, perjurer! There were fifty perhaps... a crowd...

I collapsed suddenly, out of breath, struck by a stone in my back.

There was no one.

My hands were empty—there was no one in my arms, not even a dead body!

I drew myself up on my knees, a sharp pain darted through my back, I could hardly breathe.

A peacock screamed... un paon a crié.

Three times it screamed. A scream of triumph, there, on the terrace in front of me, in the setting sun.

Then everything became confused in my head. It was yesterday or today, I no longer knew; it was the little street in the port, the ever-cursed street, and I was running behind that Sannyasi, running to strike him, strike him until he fell into the dust—and I shall spit on him. And then suddenly that god, surging forth from the walls, mounted on a peacock... Oh! I understood all my hate now! But that Sannyasi in the dust was myself and I had lost everything.

I got up.

Balu's shadow slipped away down a little street; Balu!... I cried out.

It was the end I was going to hang myself.