The journey of the soul, from cycle to cycle, towards the same knot of destiny where man must choose between catastrophe once more and the emergence to another consciousness.
They were walking towards a port in the burning dust of the hot season. They were golden-brown, for they had basked in the sun for ages, and their eyes were alive like the light in the depths of a well. They were walking in close procession, wheeling their burdens and their dreams, dressed in white like Pharaohs, or naked like the bronzes in their temples; they were going towards the port in an odour of incense-sticks and buffalo dung. It was in this age, or any other, under the curved flight of the great ernes; it was in that country where the sun breaks open souls like tamarind-husks.
The Eastern Traders Shipping Company Limited
He was white. His name was Nil. His hands were fingering his pockets; he was looking right and left without knowing where to fix his gaze, like the blind or like monkeys. She was from here; she was beautiful and grave, dressed in a white sari, and was looking at him without moving.
—You are really going?
She raised her hand to her forehead as if to brush aside a lock of hair; gold bangles glittered round her wrist.
—Tomorrow morning; it is settled. I've left my luggage there. He fingered his pockets again.
Now, in the main-street of Time, I entered into that man; I entered into that role once more, forgetful of old gestures and of beings once loved, of ancient words of good or evil; only borne by that small, restless flame, perhaps always the same one, drawn by thousands of lost memories—thirsty, always thirsty; I am a thirst, it is all that remains in me, it is my memory of fire. Let us take our bearings, where are we?... It is simple. In any place in the world, at any point of the old story, I can stop and say: “Not that, it's not that”—it is never that. No, I am not there and I have never been there; it is always almost, always beside, and I live as if I were going to find myself there, one day, right in the midst of the irrefutable catastrophe. And perhaps I shall have done with roles—over there, yonder, there is a brother of light, and I am walking towards him and I am going home, I am going to find myself back at last, in my real skin.
Then it will be absolutely that. No more bearings to take; everywhere I shall be there.
Ninety-seven pounds on deck; hardly three pounds and some change left over. But what does it matter, it is always the same thing;
—Come along, let's go.
They melted into the crowd in the midst of bales of cotton and rose pottery, separated, brought together again, carried along in a helter-skelter of baskets of mangoes, greedy goats, and pink and green lemonade bottles on movable stalls.
—But why are you in such a hurry? You still have till tomorrow. You are rushing towards what?
I stopped. I looked in the depths of those eyes for one second; I plunged a whole lifetime into that second and I saw many eyes, but it was never the look I was seeking. And I am still walking. I have changed the man, I have changed lives, and I find myself in this street again as if I had done the job twenty times over.
—Nil, please...
Sweat was forming in beads on Mohini's forehead. There was such beauty in that almost immobile face: emotion hardly stirred it; as though it had to travel through centuries of sweetness for breaking through in those two little bronzed veins. I looked at her, I looked at a pink gourd, a crow, the tower of the temple. Once more, I was seized with that absurd dizziness: go away, why go away? All this world of things to move and rouse, gestures to make—millions of gestures for nothing. That thickness of time like a curtain of seaweed, why? As though one could grasp oneself only in suffering—without a drama, there would be nothing more to grasp.
—Listen Nil, you have planned your folly well. As for me, I have arranged a little happiness: one day of happiness. Only one day, I ask you for one day. After that, you can do as you wish.
What trap had she invented this time? They are all setting traps to hold you and devour you at leisure. I do not want to be caught. By anything or anybody. I want to be free. I am Nil=O, for no pocket.
But I would like to sit down here too and let everything slip through my fingers, like an absent-minded child, and there would be nothing more to will. Sometimes, the door opens on a strange sweetness where one no longer is anything, because one no longer wills anything. I know that dizziness well and I know that the hour draws near.
—I ask you for one day, only one day.
Mohini was standing straight as a statue in the midst of the rose pottery, on the temple pavement. A child was playing with sea-shells. I can still see the place, it followed me for a long time. One could smell the fragrance of the jasmine garlands in the trays of offerings.
—Listen, I know an island...
They assailed us like flies, hanging onto my white skin—this confounded skin of a sick man! Everywhere the white stigma, the mark of the foreigner; shall we never be able to merge and mingle like the air into the wind! Mohini opened her purse and began distributing coins in the midst of the clamour.
—Come, let's be off. Go away!
They were clinging to my legs. And suddenly, I turned round, furious, with an urge to hit out.
—O stranger...
A man was there, dressed in a flame-coloured robe, looking at me. He remained silent a moment, holding his begging-bowl in his hand. I hated him instantly; there was a smile in that look... Not even a smile: a huge amusement, as if the laugh were going to explode. But nothing exploded, it was caught in the light of his eyes.
—O stranger, you have come back!
I was absolutely thunderstruck. Then, in a completely different voice, almost neutral in tone, as one recites a ritornelle, he said:
—Trois fois, tu es venu; trois fois, tu as tuè... Three times you have come, three times you have killed.
And before I could say a word, he had disappeared.
—Nil, Nil, don't go there!
I plunged after him. I absolutely had to catch up with him, to know, know at once, finish with it before it was too late; something in me seemed deeply touched, stung to the quick, suddenly roused with a desire to strike and strike that man until he fell in the dust. And then I shall spit on him.
—Nil...
Mohini was calling. I ran like a madman, swerved into a side-street, ran round the temple, knocked down a child who began to scream. There was no sign of him. Hostile eyes stared silently at that brute of a foreigner. And then, suddenly, a god sprang forth from the walls, armed with a lance and mounted on a peacock.1
I came back, wiping my forehead, ashamed of myself. This hot season would finally tear my nerves to shreds, it was time to leave. Mohini was motionless in the midst of the rose pottery, as pale as a corpse, her eyes staring blindly in front of her, her plait over her breast.
—Ah! Nil...
She looked at me as though I were returning from a long journey, as if she were returning from another world her voice was very soft, almost choked:
—I thought you had left already.
Her hand brushed my shoulder lightly. Once again, I was struck by that air of ancient times which surrounded her: there was no expression, not the flicker of an eye-lash; she was there, erect, in her white veil like an ancient Choephoroe, like someone who knows and is once mere watching the unrolling of the same destiny.
—What did he say to you? What does he want?
—A lunatic. If I find him again... You know him?
—A sannyasi. I don't like sannyasis.
—I don't either.
—Be careful, Nil, they know what we don't know, they are dangerous.
—How, dangerous?
—They have denied the earth. They are thieves of heaven. She said that in such a tone! I was taken aback. Then she recovered herself immediately:
—They are not from here.
—Neither am I... Moreover, I don't know from where I am. Come, let's clear out, I've had enough of these painted gargoyles!
Then she grabbed my arm and pinched me like a little girl, till my arm turned red.
—Be quiet, you don't know what you're saying.
The pistachio and lead monoxide gods on the high tower with the monkeys were on the look-out for the passer-by; the golden palms swayed gently above the street.
—Listen, I know an island. Don't say “no”, please. I shall not hold you back, I ask you for one day, only one day, for the peace of my heart. Afterwards, you'll be free.
A siren rent the air.
The tea vendor's kettle blazed in the sun.
—The Laurelbank will weigh anchor at seven o'clock tomorrow morning for New Guinea, do you hear—or for the devil.
—I have arranged everything, a boat is waiting for us.
—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.
—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.
Water was singing through all the cracks in the harbour, the air smelled of hot mangoes and the ebb-tide, and my Laurelbank was there, firmly moored to the second wharf. I sang, too. Each time I sang. I was as light as foam on budding life. Mohini had foundered there with her island, in the Tartarus of a previous existence, and hop! to windward! Indeed, it is the best part of life—I have spent my time making impossible lives for myself for the unique joy of that moment. Unfortunately, it does not last. No sooner does one get out of one life than one fabricates new ropes for oneself and everything has to be started all over again—one should be absolutely free; at the departure, always at the departure, there, just this moment of freedom between two countries, and chin up boy!
Suddenly, I stopped... sobered. I was soaking wet under a Street lamp. The beacon from the lighthouse swept away a chaos of streaming shadows, disappeared, then reappeared, caught the temple tower, disappeared, reappeared, caught the temple tower... The pavement, the palisades, the deserted quays shone... The scene had shifted in a flash—I had made the whole round in one second:
It was Port Moresby, which resembled Belem which resembled Goa; I had found the gold mine, the chromium mine, the yellow isle, the black isle; I had married a Negress and committed suicide one evening. A lightning life. Fifteen thousand kilometres in the sweep of a beacon; I had made the round, it was finished. It was the tenth time I was landing under that street lamp; I was at the starting point. I had never started.
The pools of water had goose-flesh under the street lamp.
With a kick, I sent my shadow spinning. A rat scuttled away. It was exactly that, one always came back to the Monkey-cage; everywhere the thinking monkey-cage. There was nothing more to do but to rush to Eastern Traders and change my shirt.
A real departure... would perhaps be to quit the subject?
And the tea-vendor's kettle glistened at the corner of the street—exactly what I needed.
—O stranger, there you are again?
I stopped short. He was there, his eyes sparkling, squatting on a packing-case in front of the tea-vendor's stall.
—Well, well, don't you recognize me?
For a moment, I just stood staring at that tall shadow clad in orange, and then at the candle, the sacks, the copper pots, the stall which looked like one of Breughel's dens... Anger suddenly seized me, a blind, murderous rage, as it had first time. With one bound, I pounced on him, grabbed him by his scarf and raised my hand.
He burst out laughing.
A triumphant, explosive laugh, which shook the crate and filled the whole street. I was flabbergasted. The tea-vendor rushed between the sacks and gripped my shoulder. The Sannyasi stopped him:
—Leave him, Gopal, leave him; bring him some tea.
He laughed again. The other had tucked up his lungi and placed his foot on a sack; the oil-lamp cast fantastic shadows; and I remained there hanging onto that orange scarf, stupid, facing those white teeth which grinned as if they were going to swallow the whole night.
—Leave him, Gopal. Do as I say.
The man looked at me once more. I was the devil, to be sure. He jumped over his sacks and disappeared. I was furious. Then I fixed my eyes on that species of hilarious owl:
—If you think...
My hand let go of the scarf.
—You are a good boy. Sit down.
I wanted to yell, to hit out, to spit in his face. To escape, to remain, to kick those copper vessels. Finally I found my voice again.
—You sonofa...
He placed a finger on my lips.
—Do not use words that hurt.
A spark of anger flashed into his eyes. Then the curtain fell again. There was nothing but that sort of jubilation which stupefied me, like a giant who looks over the mountains and farts, laughing in the face of the world.
—You are going to explain yourself...
—What am I going to explain to you, boy? That you are just in time, that you have run a lot? That you are going to miss your boat if you go on?
His stomach shook once more with laughter, but he controlled himself.
—Go on, drink.
I was completely fascinated by that face. It was almost black, with piercing eyes and a hooked nose, like an erne in its tawny coat. It was above all that kind of intense vitality which could instantly become rigid like the mask of a mummy. He pointed a finger at me:
—What have you got there? You're hurt?... Eh, Gopal, bring some water.
I rubbed my forehead: there was a streak of blood running down to the end, of my nose. It was smarting. I must have looked pretty. My clothes needed wringing out, my shirt was torn. For one moment Mohini's image floated before my eyes:
—You are going to explain what you said to me yesterday. Here, in this very place, this very street, you said... You said to me: Three times you have come, three times you have killed—trois fois tu es venu, trois fois tu as tué...
—I said that?
He raised his eyes so innocently.
—Then it is true.
Quietly, he took off his scarf, dipped one end in his copper pot and tried to sponge my forehead. I jumped back. The boiling tea spilled and splashed over my feet. I thought he was going to laugh again. He rolled his scarf into a ball and threw it at my face:
—Here, wash yourself.
And he remained with clenched teeth, looking into the night. I felt like an imbecile, reduced to nothing, emptied, left with that scarf in my hands and my bowl of tea, staring at that long-haired, louse-infested creature. And I was no longer angry. He had taken away my anger, too. All that remained was that kind of absurd, impotent snarl, as though I were facing an old, mortal enemy.
I pulled myself together.
—Do you hear, you are going to speak...
Why did I persist? I do not know. I ought to have gone away at once, cleared out—but the more I felt my folly, the more I clung to it, as if I had an old account to settle with him. Besides, that wooden implacability in front of me was beginning to make my ears burn.
—Do you hear, you charlatan! Imposter, quack, how long have you been telling people this humbug, eh?
He hardly turned round and simply, as one states a fact, said:
—A man seeks only the contentment of his soul.
And he spat vigourously on the ground, three metres in front of him.
—And you, you are not content.
Then he bundled his rags, tied his scarf, took up his staff, his beggars' sack, his begging-bowl, and jumped onto the road.
—Come on, let's be on our way, it's time—Allons, en route, c'est l'heure.
And suddenly, without knowing why, I found myself in the street with that man, walking at his side. We were going back up the little street towards Eastern Traders. We walked by the pottery-stalls, bumped into a beggar, passed the temple-gate... But whatever was I doing there? For a moment my gaze lingered on the rose pottery and the flower seller's faded garlands. He had said, “Let's be on our way,” and I was going, as though I had heard that dozens of times. I began to feel a strange headiness. I pulled up the collar of my shirt and walked into the night.
—Hey! Sannyasi...
But he did not hear. It was ten minutes to ten by the Eastern Traders' clock. I still had the whole night before me—what did I risk? This time, a cunning little challenge began to whisper in my ear: “Pourquoi pas?” ...“Why not?” And when I heard that pourquoi pas, I was good for the devil. All the same, I would have liked to know why... But I did not even know what I wanted to know! I was seized by a strangeness, and I followed that tall, orange-clad shadow gliding its way bare-foot amongst the puddles of muddy water and the decaying mangoes, as if I did not exist. To know what? The night filled me with sweetness... it was light and floating. I had given way—I was borne along by a current. Destiny was perhaps that? One asks questions, but it is not really to get an answer, it is only to make the monkey walk, and if one stops for a minute to find out what one really wants, if one lets oneself float and be carried, one finds that there is no need of questions at all, nor even of answers; one only needs a certain density, like a fish in water. And when the density is not there, one asks questions. That is all. But it, is neither the question nor the answer which makes the density,
—Sannyasi, tell me, where are you going?
He turned round as if he had just noticed my presence, then continued on his way without a word, his neck thrust forward like a cachalot in warm water. A taxi went splashing by, followed by rickshaws, lorries full of cotton and shadows trotting under straw umbrellas. We had arrived at the station.
He stopped under the clock and looked at me for a moment gleefully, as if he were about to bite into an apple, then he left the station and went in the direction of the warehouses. I was no longer curious; I just wanted to be with this man, to walk with him, to be completely absurd with him, to go to the devil with him if he wished, and to plunge into such an improbable life that I would no longer recognize anything. Why not?... My eyes fell suddenly on a poster: Neem, in white letters, in the middle of a hoarding with an enormous tube of tooth-paste. Everything became fixed for a moment. My eyes seemed to open inordinately and to absorb everything, enter into everything with a fantastic precision, as if the least little: drop, the smallest groove, the tree by the railway tracks, were suddenly bursting with eternal life, and I passed through. I was there, everywhere—not inside, my eyes, but in a million nooks and corners and little rustling leaves: the drop, the tree, the word: the shadows, all living, eternally living, immobilised. One second of respite in the tremendous avalanche. Then the word flared up in a white spark—it was obvious, I was leaving. My eyes came back to the tall, stooping shadow, striding through the night: it was he, it was simple, I had found him again. I was on the way after a century of meandering. I was picking up the thread again, setting my feet on the path. I had remained hanging in mid-air, nowhere, absolutely nowhere for years and lives, and then suddenly I was there, I was disembarking, I was finding the point again.
I seemed to hear a peal of bells in my ears. The Eastern Traders had been shipwrecked, my luggage was at the bottom of the sea, I no longer had anything! Nothing, not even a tooth-brush, no passport, no name. I felt suddenly disencumbered. I wanted to take the Sannyasi by the shoulder, to laugh and to tell him... Nothing, I kicked a piece of old tin, and slipped with him through a hole in the palings. We came out onto the railway lines.
A swarm of crickets invaded the night. The railway lines sped away in a yellow stridulation and myself with them, as if I had let go of my body—a tiny cinder of a body on the ballast—and then I was high up, very high, and transparent all around, like a crystal field vibrating with a single cicada. The Sannyasi began to run towards a red light. I jumped behind him from crossing to crossing; the platforms shone, the night was beautiful like a princess in a gown of rubies. Ah! I know a beauty which is not of the flesh and a music which no sitar can imitate, and the signs of the night are my imponderable treasures.
The last compartment was for us. There were twenty inside, in all positions, in the midst of a noisy bazaar which smelt of Tamilian sweat and turmeric powder. The Sannyasi squatted on the step and wedged his stick in the door. I sat down beside him, my feet dangling in space. The train rumbled on. I was in the dress circle.
—Hey, boy, what do you say to all this?
A wave of joy swept over me, I felt my pockets, took out the leather wallet, found my ticket: “Port Moresby, via Colombo and the Sunda Isles”. You bet!
—You see that?
He looked at me, laughing. Then I took the ticket, tore it into a million pieces and flung it out the door. The Sannyasi did not turn a hair. Then I burst out laughing. A marvellous side-splitting laugh which rocked me, as if I were casting off thirty years of lies, oh!... I have been in prisons where they neatly trussed up the dead—and the living, too—like turkeys. I have floundered about in the virgin forest, sweated with fever and anguish, dug into eagle droppings at the end of a rope in search of the treasure of Rajput princes, and I have performed a few outrageous tricks which do not bear mentioning, but it was still in the unreasonableness of their reason, still the tail of the same monkey! and suddenly, I was emerging from that unreason—from all the possible reasons and explanations, from all the negations, the oppositions, the antipodes which still have one foot on the other side: there was no longer any “side”! I was not even on the “other” side anymore, with the outlaws, the rebels, the law-abiders in reverse. I was no longer “outside” because I was no longer inside. It was something else. It was regal and hilarious.
I now understood the Sannyasi's jubilation: it was splitting my sides.
—Where are we going?
He looked at me, as if surprised.
—Nowhere, we are there... nulle part, nous y sommes!
I was nonplussed. Then the light dawned! we are there! Of course we are there, completely there! There is nothing to seek, there will be nothing more in thirty years or in three centuries, nor anywhere, if nothing is there right now, here and now, the time to swallow my spit and say flûte! From where would it come, that “elseness”? We are there, fully in the goal. I am now exactly as I shall be when they drive the first nail into my coffin. Besides, I shall get myself burned. It's safer.
—Here, eat.
He took out a bundle of cloth and shoved a handful of grains into my hand.
—Come on, boy, don't be so serious—the night is beautiful.
His eyes were sparkling like the foam of the sea; he was leaning against the door, his body bare, his rudraksha beads round his neck and his orange rags on his mahogany skin. He really looked like a king.
But I had come back to my monkey-cage:
—Tell me, if we are there already, why did we leave at all? We might just as well have stayed at your tea-shop.
He blew out his cheeks and belched:
—And why did you come out of your mother's womb, eh boy, tell me? A man has to be on the move.
—I have moved much.
—It is your head that has moved much. When that becomes still you will be still anywhere and everywhere, and you will run like a rabbit before God's wind.
—First of all, I. don't believe in your God, and your Asiatic wisdom makes me sick.
—And I do not “believe in” cholum2 I eat it...
He stuffed a handful of grains into his mouth.
—... And the wisdom of Asia makes me laugh.
He made another of his loud clucking noises and spat all over the place. I was doused. I couldn't decide whether I loved this man or hated him. I chewed on a grain. It tasted like boiled chalk.
—Little one...
He almost became grave for a moment.
—... You want me to show you the true life, and you will hate me and perhaps love me and hate me again...
Decidedly, he was reading my thoughts. I was beginning to get exasperated. After all, there was something inhuman about that laugh.
He continued:
—Men do not love joy. It insults them. They love pity. And it is true that they are miserable and pitiable. But it is no use crying with them: they will pull you down right to the bottom of their hole, until you are in the same mire—then they will recognize you. But then you will no longer be able to do anything for them because you will be like them.
He looked at me succinctly.
—First, you must get out of all that, you understand.
—Get out, how?
He paused a moment, fingering the beads of his necklace.
—When I say “get out”, it does not mean run away it means to get other eyes—un autre regard. When you stop hating me and loving me, you will begin getting out of it. When you can keep your precious papers in your pocket with the same joy with which you tore them up a moment ago, you will be ready to laugh the good laugh.
—Then, everything will be the same to me.
—No, everything will be as it is.
—And what is it?
—Listen, boy, if it is philosophy you want, go and see your Asian sages; I have nothing to tell you: I can show you, that is all.
He withdrew again into a wooden silence. I began to think that I had embarked upon a difficult journey.
The night was perspiring its way through at 35° C. I chewed another grain, then I threw them all out the door. I was sobered, empty, completely ridiculous, without a destinations without a ticket, sitting beside this man who didn't give a damn about anything or anybody. We were there—yes, nowhere, we had not even gone to the devil, in that exotic tube which was bumping along who knows where, and I looked at the night, drawn down like a curtain, hardly pierced by a glimmer, and I waited for I know not what. I am waiting, oh, how I wait for that marvellous adventure!—I am always ready to believe in the marvellous, I, the unbeliever, I have tremendous faith! I seem to have a memory of some miracle I have lived through—I seem to be a man because of some oblivion. And, sometimes, little, golden glean come and dance in my night, little fire-flies which are not of this world, and I rush, ah! how I rush towards them, as if I had waited a thousand years in the darkness, as if I had had a sudden stroke of memory: here it is, at last I am there, I am going to be there! I run towards the song of a golden cicada... One crazen gleam passing through my night, a wink at a street-corner is enough, I am ready, I am going, in one second I have packed my bag, I, the vagabond of a tiny little gleam. Everything falls from my hands, nothing holds me back, I am held by the thread of another song—what am I doing here? Have I not lived through everything—their joys, their sorrows, their pity? I have played all the roles, I know the humbuggery by heart; it is enough to encounter a look to recognize the old story, I know them all as if I had sung in their inn: the rich, the poor, the sons of God and the Devil. Where, then, is the cry I have not uttered, the misery I have not known, the fault I have not committed? I have chanted all their prayers and I have fornicated in their nights, I have been “man” a million times—I am through with the job of being a man! Ah! I believe in the miracle which is not in their formulae, nor in their heavens. And, could it be that we are on the brink of an unbelievable world which is about to be born? I no longer know or I have known, and I am journeying in the night like a blind pilgrim of a great memory flecked with gold.
O pilgrim You are walking in my sun Indeed Everything is sun Only my image is inverted Every gesture below Repeats a gesture from above And all reveals An eternal coincidence
I awoke in the midst of a cavalcade of bare feet trotting on all sides. I was on the platform of a station. There was an orange scarf under my head, a pile of bags, and above my head a poster. With one bound I was on my feet; he was there, squatting on the ground, upright, as if he were watching over me. The sun was beating on the corrugated iron, I was splashed with mud. Our train had gone.
Dazed, I looked at the crowd, the crows hopping about, my filthy clothes. Suddenly, last night's dream flashed into my mind with a surge of joy, clear, clearer than the crowd. It was alive, intense, compact, as life never is: a thousand meanings packed into a whiff of odour. I closed my eyes, letting the image rise, I was almost breathing it. I was completely awake. The odour of an image that was unfolding like a flower ...Une odeur d'image qui s'ouvrait comme une fleur. And each petal opened up a new layer of feeling, a new depth of the same thing. Here, our odours are flat, they mean jasmine or filth—they are silly odours; there, they contain a world. They are the odours of feelings: fear, hate, joy: and fantastically precise as if, at one go, one swallowed the terror of the Inquisition or the scent of wild Himalayan rhododendrons. Just a vibration. I always have the impression that life here is an abstract copy of a true image behind; one enters into it as if into a caricature: it sticks to the face, it is hard, dry, masked, and terribly inadequate.
I was in a rather gloomy medieval fortress—a European fortress, it was in the West—and I was walking down a narrow alleyway paved with huge flagstones. I can still see them, solid, polished, uneven, and the high walls with small wrought-iron balconies which seemed to lean down towards me. I was walking there, feeling quite small in the midst of an obscure foreign crowd. It was this. Crowd which: had an odour. A strangely silent crowd: each being crouching in silence. A subterranean odour. I saw myself in the midst of them, quite small, almost somber; as if I were looking at myself over my shoulder (it is curious. In certain: cases, I see myself fry: the. Outside and above; as if I was entering into someone taller behind or above me, and: I am a witness. One might say that I am an onlooker at myself. And in that case, the image is indelible, fixed for eternity in all its details, by an eye which will not close. Perhaps it never closes and it is I who, from time to time, pass into that eye). I was going towards a door; I knew there was a door at the bottom. But as I advanced I felt that I was not dressed as I ought to be, that I was not doing what I ought to be doing, I was not like them, I belonged to another place or another time perhaps, a sort of intruder, and they were staring at me. And those looks were getting more and more menacing and aggressive. The more alien I felt, the more their hostility rose. It rose from all sides, even from the walls, the stones—a world of stone. And I did not know what to do; I was searching desperately for the right gesture, the right word: I bent double, hugged the walls, filled myself with grey—it was no good. I was singled out by that mute crowed. Then my uneasiness increased and became almost intolerable, stifling, as if my clothes were horribly false, even my face and my colour—I was caught in a sort of dwarf-self which was me all the same: I could not find anything that suited me, I could not do as they did, I did not know the word, I did not know the gestures, everything was oppressive. And, of course, the policemen would come, and I, had no passport either, I had nothing—I was locked up, a prisoner in that horrible stone fortress... Suddenly, springing from I know not where, in the middle of the alleyway, a great white horse appeared—white, radiant, oh! a superb animal, and tall, so tall that it almost reached the top of the walls and dominated the crowd. A gigantic, formidable breast. And before I could even understand what was happening, I found myself on its back and galloping away: a fantastic gallop. A god-like gallop. Everything gave way before me: the crowd, the doors, the guards—nothing resisted. Then, suddenly the wide open spaces, freedom, pure air—all the rhododendrons of the Himalayas in one breath. My lungs were full, I expanded, widened, lit up almost—I recovered my height and my colour. A liberation.
—Here, drink.
I could still feel that white inane in my hands, the warm flanks against my thighs, and then the wind which lashed my face, the joy in my veins. Carried away by a triumphant, irresistible power... We were entering a forest.
—Up! boy.
He held out a bowl of tea and some cholum. Iron trollies were rolling by in the dampness. The crows were flapping about around me, the place was like a bunker.
—And our train?
He looked surprised, then majestically, he pointed to two trains being stoked near the opposite platforms.
I looked at the sun. The east was over that way, so these trains were going westward.
—But we have come from there!
He shrugged his shoulders and picked up his staff.
—Come on, let's be an our way, it's time.
This began an infernal journey. We went towards the west, then to the east, and sometimes to the north only to come back immediately to the south, and perhaps we were still in the outlying area of the port? I looked at the time; but whether it was a quarter to six or seven o'clock, it was all the same, it was always the time to sweat and to chew cholum, and when it was night, I knew it. Disgusted, I threw my watch out the door. He laughed, as usual. I hated him. And so what? I had embarked, so I might just as well go through to the end go where? I had exchanged my two banknotes for a copper bowl and a piece of soap. I was rigged out like a beggar. Even if we reached port one day, what difference would it make? I had not even a cent for a shave and I had also thrown my shoes out the door. If I went to the consul... Repatriated compulsorily, I know the refrain and the red tape. And repatriated to where? I return to the Fortress and everything starts again.
—Will you tell me why I have come here?
He did not reply.
—And not only once: three times—you said so yourself.
He did not move. He was like a log.
Three times? It was not three times that I had come here, but thousands of times E It was like black lava, as old as the Valley of Kings. But it was not a “here” of corrugated iron and rails, but an inner “here”, infinitely more torrid, acute, more and more acute—like the smell of that silent crowd. Sometimes, I was afraid to stretch out my hands, as if I were going to touch still more dreadful walls. Perhaps Destiny was that: I could see it, I could almost touch it in that dampness. No, Destiny is not a mystery; on the contrary, it is a well-known, oft-repeated situation. Slowly and surely I was being pushed into a trap, and I was going to be caught there without any escape-hatch, in front of... in front of what?
—Whom had I killed?
He was silent. He was rolling the rudraksha beads of his necklace. To kill... To kill, was only a news item; there is a point of radical guilt deep within, before which all the crimes on earth are as nothing—it is the crime, naked, unique, the same for everyone. Something on the watch in the depths like a cowering animal suddenly caught in the glare of a head-light. Something that struggles to the death, which does not want, which says no! And it is clamped onto oneself, harder than iron. It is there, right at the bottom... I know it; I have always known it and I am awaiting the hour, as if all the minutes of my life were only a rehearsal for that moment.
—What do you want me to say, boy? What is the use of speaking, you have to understand... To understand does not mean to know, it means to stand inside. When the time comes, you will understand. You people, in your countries, you have seen the whole world through your binoculars, and you have understood nothing.
I was exasperated. He was leaning against a pillar on the platform, squatting cross-legged, perfectly at home—he was always at home: on platforms, in compartments, warehouses, filth, the hissing of boilers (he seemed to choose those places purposely) or mosquito-bites—and all those people hurrying on the platform were the servants of his palace. A full-fledged log. And when he was not playing the log, he was laughing, or lecturing the goats. It was disgusting. In fact, he was constantly and silently lying in wait for me; I had the feeling that he was turning a screw into me, millimetre by millimetre, and he was approaching an invisible point.
—It is simple, little one. In fact, everything is admirably simple. I am going to tell you...
He sniffed and pulled at his scarf.
—Listen, one day, when I was a child, there was someone I loved very much. She went away; they took her to the hospital. I suffered. Then I found that it was really unnatural not to be able to see her simply because her body was no longer with me. I wanted to see her always... “And suppose I thought of her very hard?” I thought of her very hard, I clasped her to my heart. And then she was there. I saw her, I knew what she was doing. She was a silly goose, I realised it afterwards. After all, one gets tired of a face. Then I started thinking very hard of the river that I loved so much. It was there also, I saw it, I knew when the ferryman would leave the shore, I even knew when it would rain. But, after all, one gets tired of a river. I thought very hard of the morrow, because I was always expecting a miracle; and then I saw that I would fall into the tank while fetching water—the next day I almost drowned in the tank. I thought of all kinds of things, and everything was there, it was enough to think of it—one pushes, one extends oneself and then one sees. But after all, one knocks against the curb one day or another, the neighbour's daughter has rubella and the river flows on still. Then I thought very hard of something which remains, something which always brings contentment...
His look rested on a flock of pigeons, then he closed his eyes—he had gone... Nothing, nobody. It was the suddenness with which he. cut contacts that always astonished me., Or he would open one eye suddenly, to make the most unexpected gesture, getting up abruptly in the middle of the night and taking a train, or begging for a bowl of tea when I-was thirsty, or pulling me by the sleeve when I was thinking of the devil. Then, hop! he had disappeared again, and all the mosquitoes in the station would not be able to move him the length of a thumb.
—Something that one can always look at, eh, do you know what it is?
He opened his eyes and sniffed again.
—In your country, they do not know how to look. So they always invent new things to look at again; they invent in order to look far, to look close up, to look through, to look askance—but their eyes are never filled, neither: are their hearts nor their ears. You are excellent inventors. But it is not so, you have not invented anything at all—you have imitated everything. Later on, people will say that you were the great counterfeiters. But the tail of the Real Thing you have not caught... The world is simple, child, I have told you, there is only one thing to find and not two; then everything is invented, every day and every minute of the day. An inexhaustible invention of life. And one is content, always content, oh!
He took his nose between his fingers and blew it vigourously. I was overpowered.
—Sannyasi, you see the future. So tell me what it is that I feel weighing upon me, coming upon me...
—But I do not see the future, ignoramus! I do not try to see it. I am not trying anything at all! It comes of itself when it is necessary. It is perpetually being invented. The head is empty, then it is filled with an image, just at the right moment.
—Then why do you say that I have come here three times?
—How do I know? I have no wisdom, except what is put into my mouth.
—You are as slippery as an eel, Sannyasi, it is very convenient. But I want to know, you understand, I want to touch, I want to see.
—You will see and you will touch. Only, you cannot reasonably ask an ass to touch an eel, eh? Your ass will have to learn how to swim. It's logical. You say: “I want to see”, and then you put your hand over your eyes because you are afraid that it will not be exactly like your sack of bran. And if it's not exactly like your sack of bran, you do not even see it! You are right in the middle of the miracle, O simpleton, and you do not see it!
He took his copper pot and thrust it into my hands.
—Here, as clear as that. In short, you would like something, else; while remaining the same. Besides, men do not really ask for “something else”, they only ask for the same thing with a few improvements, they ask to become superior asses. But they will never catch the eel: they will only make a dictionary of the eel.
—Then, tell me what one must do in order to see?
—One must not do, my boy. One must undo.
—What?
Everything that impedes.
Suddenly, he stretched out his arm towards a pigeon near the Refreshment-Room:
—You see this pigeon..., what does it do? It pecks at lime. Why? Because it is going to lay its eggs and it needs lime for the shells. Does it like lime? No. Does it know? No. But it acts. You do not like lime or cholum, you also do not like policemen, mosquitoes, goats and... who knows what else. But you like freedom, music, birds and guava-jelly, and who knows what else. So you do not know and you do not act. You are full of your own story, you hear only your own music. But I tell you that when you have emptied yourself of your music you will begin to hear something else. You will go and peck directly at what is necessary, and at every moment you will have the right thought. When I say “it is time”, it is time, and I do not need to consult the time-table: the train leaves. Did not wait for you at the tea-shop?
This time, I was riveted. A door opened, and a mass of little details sprang out from all sides: his unpredictable gestures, his almost alarming way of doing things abruptly, without any connection, and yet it was always the right thing. Like that night when I was lying on those sacks of raffia; he pulled me off brutally and lifted the sacks: there was a nest of scorpions underneath!
—You knew the scorpions were there?
—No, idiot! I know nothing at all, I act. Besides, it is not true, I do not act: “that” acts... ҫa fait. “I” do nothing at all: he copies, imitates—and makes mistakes.
—But how...
—Oh! What a slowcoach you are! There is only one life, child. Nothing is separate: the sack, the scorpions, you and I. It is one life. The scorpions are not hidden! It is you who are hidden in your head!
And his way of catching trains just when they were starting, of begging from just the right person (and never twice) or waking me up when I was struggling with horrible snakes... And suddenly, I had the impression that there was a much more radical secret in this than having divine visions.
All the same, I hated him.
—Your right time is all very well, but what purpose does it serve since we are going nowhere?
Then he became serious. I even thought that he was going to thunder:
—I am going somewhere and that somewhere is everywhere, and it is important to be exactly on time at every minute. Because if I am not on time here, I shall never be on time anywhere.
—But, confound it all, ifs no life to go from east to west and from west to east as though we were crazy about railways, and to go on eating soot with cholum or cholum with soot! What the devil am I doing here, tell me? Life is made to serve some purpose, isn't it? I don't know...
—No, you don't know.
—And the world and the others? What are you doing for others, eh, tell me? You laugh? Of what use are you? (I don't know why I suddenly appeared to be a philanthropist—as if I were a bell-ringer for the offended Salvation Army.) We are in the world to do something, non? What are we doing in these damned stations, I ask you? Look at this leper, what about your hospitals...
—They are full of ignorant people—like you.
He stared at the leper.
—This one drags behind him a swarm of completely black leeches... Listen, child, there is only one illness in the world; I have told you, the world is simple. As long as men do not want to be cured of that illness, they can build millions of hospitals, and nothing will be cured. You are seeking something else—well, you have got to rid yourself of the old thing. And the most difficult thing to get rid of, mind you, is not evil, but what you think is good. There is nothing more sticky than goodness. It is the last thing to leave. It is the final wall; and the most solid,—because one does not see it. But if you do not empty yourself of your evil and your good, you will have no right to the wide, wide truth. You will see nothing, you will hear nothing, you will know nothing but your own noise or your own virtues, which have never cured anything, not even you. Now, that's enough. I have spoken.
It was the first time he had spoken at such length, and it proved to be the last. Besides, I had no more questions to ask, I was caught in a kind of struggle for life.
Thus believed Nil.
He believed, but men believe many things. They believe they are good, wicked, merchants or kings, and wise men. They do not know what they are, they are not yet born... He believed he was struggling for life, but it was death that was struggling in him, it was my life that wanted to enter into him. Men are not born if they are not dead to death, they are living corpses, merchants or kings who die. Indeed, I was watching over him, I had never ceased to watch over his destiny, here and there, this traveller without a real name, for they go nameless and meaningless whilst I approach:
Pierre or Paul and Paul or Pierre They have landed in a body They move like marionettes They know not from whence they come Nor where they go. They are grey, they go fast Ils sont gris, ils vont vite
But I approach stealthily while the centuries go by, while the carapace wears away; one day, I place my hand on his shoulder, I cast my shadow over them, or so they think, for they discover they are dead before they have even been born, they discover me through this growing shadow:
They wake up clothed in black Ils se réveillent vêtus de noir And shod with lead With a flame of anguish which cries out their first name They are completely black And discontented They are going to die, perhaps They want to die and do not want to die
They wake up clothed in black Ils se réveillent vêtus de noir And shod with lead With a flame of anguish which cries out their first name
They are completely black And discontented They are going to die, perhaps They want to die and do not want to die
And when my last shadow has enveloped his last cry, I pass into him, he passes into me, for we are always one: I, his brother of light, his peaceful immensity who watches over the journey across eternal hills; he, my tenacious discoverer, my pilgrim with the dark lantern, my great bonfire on the revealed heights; I, his deliverance; he, the deliverer of my abysses.
He hardly spoke again; he even pretended not to see me, as if I were a passenger sitting beside him by chance, and when I wanted to attract his attention, he turned his back on me and went on counting the rudraksha beads of his necklace. Sometimes, I was so full of despair in those stations that I would have kissed his hands if he had had only one word of affection for me, or perhaps I would have started weeping pail-fulls of tears like an idiot. So, I gritted my teeth and counted the carriages going by. There was nothing, nobody. I was not even at the end of the world, not even a negation, which would still be a positiveness of something: I was in nothingness, in that sticky humidity, with the goats trotting along the lines and that leper with his hands eaten away; the only difference between him and me was that he no longer had any hope whilst I did have hope—but for what? I do not know. Perhaps he wanted me to abandon all hope. Perhaps, he wanted to reduce me to the state of a sieve, like my shirt.
I had the impression that he was assassinating me in small doses.
And the days, the months went by. Or were they years? I no longer know, time had lost its meaning. I even had a sensation that it was not really going forward, but backward, far, far back towards a very old story, a world at the end, and every day I had to demolish one story in order to approach the place.
And in that burning chaos, the same question kept coming back, acute, gratingly like the carriages: what? meaning what? What is there... Qu'est-ce qu'il y a? So I fabricated lightning lives for myself: a man on a boulevard with a brief-case under his arm—what? meaning what? A brief-case which walks and walks; there is nobody, only a small brief-case which walks. A man on a bed of bauxite—what? meaning what? A small hammer which strikes and strikes, there is nobody. A man with a stethoscope, a man at the helm. All my little men collapsed one after the other, not a one that held up! If I took away the gesture and the instrument, there was nothing left but a tramp on a platform and the old question which burned underneath: quoi, quel sens? what? meaning what? Where is that real moment, the fragment of being without a décor and without a gesture, without anyone around to make a fuss? There is no fragment, there is nothing! There are axles which grate and crows that roam about on the platform. There is the stark, burning question.
Yes, there is this fire below, there is only that. Man is fire first of all, like the primeval nebula.
—Come on, let's be on our way.
He woke me up in the dead of night, and we ran after a phantom train—only to come back here tomorrow, perhaps—and I did not know whether I was here or there nor whether the chaos was inside or outside. I collapsed with exhaustion in a corner and everything collapsed around me: houses, castles, temples, places I did not even know, from another country, another age. Each night, everything collapsed around me. It was the same; I went into a new region as if I had always been seeking the place—there was that column last night, a huge pillar, and me, very tiny, always very tiny, in that vast stone hall with inscriptions on the walls, two great open wings painted blue like those of an Egyptian god—and then, suddenly, a noise of thunder. Everything collapsed, a fantastic chaos, the earth opened up. I was underneath. And just at the moment I was about to wake up with a cry, I saw myself tall, dressed all in white and almost luminous, crawling out of the ruins—each time the same vision. That being, dressed in white, emerging from a cataclysm—invulnerable. He seemed to emerge from a life, or one kind of life (or perhaps from a kind of experience which creates a castle, a fortress, a temple) and everything is very familiar at that moment: it is a place where I am “at home”; and the following night I enter another place, another life, and everything starts all over again. And it is never the place, never my home! I have no place, no refuge.
—Sannyasi, what does all this mean...
—It does not mean anything. Things do not have a meaning, my boy, they are... elles sont: and you, you are—or you are not. If you are, you understand, if you are not, you have no meaning.
I hated him. Sometimes, insane ideas crossed my mind; to push him under a train and be done with it—ah! to be done with it com-plete-ly. But the idea of pushing him from behind repelled me; I would have liked to seize him by the neck, and strangle him slowly, face to face.
He looked at me suddenly.
He handed me his knife.
—It may be of use to you one day, keep it.
And he started counting his wooden beads again.
I became as white as a sheet. I took the knife. I turned it over my hands. My eyes widened. Everything stood still around me: the crows, the leper, the notice over the tap, “for external use only”, the naked child splashing water over his head... That notice, I am sure I shall take it with me into another life, even the patch of sulphur on the child's loins. Perhaps, one day, in a station from the twenty-second millennium, I shall awaken once more at the foot of a collapsing street-fountain.
Then I began to think that it was not he who should be made to disappear but me. But disappear? Disappear where?... Into death? There is no death! It is a myth: And in a flash, on that platform, I saw something like fabulous conspiracy: to the right, to the left, above, below, inside: walls, walls, everywhere; here, on the other side and on all possible sides—no outlet. The complete programmation, mathematical and planned. One dynamites one corner only to enter another. There is no death; one simply passes into another room! Where that never-neverland specimen—the free man?... I drew out the knife. I opened it. It was a Nepalese kris with a swastika on it. The Sannyasi was counting his wooden beads. He, too, was a prisoner in an orange robe, just like the rest of us—tout pareil.
I felt dizzy. I did not know whether I could turn my head to the right or the left; I was caught in a leaden strait jacket. That was it: the “X” point, the impossible point. I was there. One can no longer retreat or advance, go up or come down, not even seize a reassuring thought. Every thought was a trap. Then everything happened very quickly as at the moment of drowning, an accelerated film: ten years of life in one second, ten little-fellows-me who came to burst like bubbles, each with his own little story—one image per life. And it was always the same image, under all latitudes, in all costumes: rolled up in a hammock, shivering with fever—my first night in the virgin forest in South America—no, not malaria, not tropical fever: the fever; it was always the fever, as the only way out, the only ultimate way of catching the boat. I had just left the boat, I could not return to it! I had just landed from Europe in my town shoes and it was full of snakes in that forest. I had two iron rods instead of legs, hands swollen With blisters, and that night which hissed like a boiler—it was not possible, pas-pos-si-ble.
The next day, I laughed out loud and, found my first speck of gold. I had become a gold-seeker.
And that night again, in the Brazilian Sertao, rolled up a shack, without a cent, without a map, without even knowing where I was going or what i was doing, and then suddenly those planters who stowed me away on a lorry with sacks of cocoa; and I drove through the night as though I were being taken to a firing-squad—then I laughed. I planted cocoa. I had become a planter. Each time, there is someone who is going to die, someone who has to be executed. And if he is not executed, it is pas-pos-si-ble, one dies completely. But they grow again like weeds. And each time it descends one degree; it is deeper, more relentless; at each degree the fellow comes up, harder to die, clinging more and more, as though one were going step by step towards an ultimate stronghold, a final rebellious and infernal marionette a sort of unyielding No right at the bottom. And this time, too, I was going to have my fever, but I was no longer a gold-seeker, a planter or a, sailor. I was nothing-at-all, and it was the twenty-second waggon of coal. I had already marked out the corner near the tool-shed; I will go there and roll up on the cadaver like a hedgehog—and leave the anchorage in the dark.
—You little slug!
He brought his fist down on my back. The knife slipped from my hands.
I turned preen, then white—I passed through all the colours of the rainbow. Blood spurted out of my left hand. There was not the least trace of laughter in his eyes.
—You are a slug.
I sobered up.
—Are you sure, I said, that it is not you I have returned to kill?
He looked at me calmly, steadily. Then he went back to counting his rudraksha beads.
My fever had passed.
—Sannyasi...
He spat in front of him.
I looked at the blood dripping onto the cement, the knife lying on the ground. I did not know whether I was going to weep like a woman or throw myself under a train.
—Sannyasi, I've had enough of your filth! Enough of your journey, enough...
I stopped. I had no more words. I was like a dead man who looks on. He got up.
Five minutes later, he came back with a barber.
—If you think this will cleanse you, go ahead, man. They are clean in your country, apparently.
The barber installed himself. I didn't move.
I was not dead, no. I was only wondering how that could live: if I closed my eyes for five minutes holding my breath, I was sure to slip away. “I”... but there is always an I which slips away, like an eel out of a glass jar, and as long as there is an I, everything will have to be redone! No, there is only one enigma in the world: without the “I”, one cannot live, (or can one?), with the “I”, one suffocates... sans je, on ne peut pas vivre... avec je, on étouffe. It is the central contradiction, the knot which holds everything. And the more one approaches the centre, the more it burns like Hades.
The barber opened his bag. There was everything inside—for a shave, for cleansing the ears, paring the nails and powdering the armpits. He filled his basin at the tap, then squatted in front of me on the platform. I looked at him—looked without understanding. I was there, but seized with a kind of aloofness: it is true there was something that was being shaved on the platform; there was also a plump nymph brandishing a tin of Dalda oil on the tool-shed, and little bits of dirty cotton in the bag, the locomotive on Track N° 9, the travellers... The world seemed to be going away in little pieces, trotting, trotting, each with his own separate bit of existence, his little business under his arm—they had plundered everything. They had robbed me of myself on the way. There was only a plump nymph winking, and this fellow hacking away at my beard as though on a sugar-plantation, sprinkling it from time to time. It was smarting. It was even that which held everything together: the burning. If there were not that pain, perhaps the world would go off in fireworks like a flock of sea-gulls leaving behind a bare rock under a searing sun?... I began to slip into something around me, to almost see myself from the outside, but I was no longer the main object: it seemed that I could just as well be something else—it seemed only a matter of looking: one places oneself here, there or somewhere else. One is the barber, the coolie, the nymph. And I had the vague impression that the “one” was everything, at will. But there was the black head of that barber in front of me; which held me. He had prigged my look, like my portrait in a mirror. Perhaps, the other also, the man who was being shaved, had prigged my look for the last thirty years... Then suddenly, everything camp back to me: the same scene, the same image, clear, oh! so clear...—everything, repeats itself. There are moments when life repeats itself. Destiny is perhaps that... those moments of repetition... C'est peut-être cela, le Destin, ces moments de répétition. I was going into a bathroom, flanked by two policemen, after three days of interrogation. I plunged my head into the wash-basin, I straightened up... there was that other in the mirror. An absolutely strange face, and those eyes—above all, those eyes—which looked at me with a crazed intensity, riveted there suddenly, as if I had passed into the mirror: “No, it is not me!” A sort of stupefaction, and then that no. It was an eighteenth of November. I was twenty years old. It was there that everything began. It was the starting point, the first true minute of my existence as if, there, I had left the civil-register for the first time. We all have une fausse tête... a false head in life, but we are accustomed to it, and, suddenly, I had stopped being accustomed to it: I was going about with a false head on my shoulders and everything was false: my name, my country, my papers. And since that day, I have been looking everywhere for someone to replace the head I left in the mirror.
—Thirty paise.
Only, there was that burning which held everything together. When it burns no longer, perhaps I shall fly away also, leaving a small black barber on the platform and a wallpaper smile?
—Do you want me to tell you, boy?
He bent over me with his shining dyes; and “I” was just a hard point against something—obstinately against—against him, against that barber, against everything.
—You are banging your head against a wall—a formidable wall...
He blew into the air.
—As thick as a sheet of rice-paper!
And he laughed like a sea-lion coming out of the water. I looked at him. I no longer had any hatred in my heart. I was too far away.
—If you stopped thinking of things for a minute, boy, it would be over. One minute only and you switch off. The comedy would be over! It is a screen, you understand, a smoke-screen. Ah! Men are mad, boy, if they stopped thinking about it they would be kings!
—Sannyasi, I am worn out.
—You are wriggling pretty hard for someone who's worn out!
—I am at the end of my tether, Sannyasi. I implore you, listen to me, my body is tired and my eyes are burning, too. Could we not go up there, to the Himalayas, where everything is white?
—The Himalayas!
This time, he threw his head back. I. thought he was going to explode.
—The Himalayas... But when you come down from your Himalayas, my friend, it will be just the same! Everything will have to begin again. Do you want to be a spiritual tourist?... Don't you understand, you stupid fellow, that I an offering you pure honey, eternal snow on every latitude.
He stretched out his finger and pressed it firmly in the hollow of my chest.
—The Himalayas are there ... il est là.
And it burned there, also.
—Come on, let's be on our way, it's time.
I plunged into a landscape of rails and burning platforms interspersed with miraculous paddy-fields whence white birds took wing. We were going towards the east, but the north or the south would have been just the same, and I no longer knew whether I was moving outside in a rocky desert strewn with mounds of huge stones, or into the chaos of my soul under the blaze of a white-hot furnace. I was going on endlessly, backwards in time, emptier, older, burning, like a carcass eaten away by the sun.; I was descending into a prehistory of the soul, a first fold of pain under a great, fiery, motionless eye—which felt nothing, wanted nothing; I was descending into cataracts of stone and yawning holes, and ascending again; I was crouching in black folds and suffocating; I was waiting for I knew not what cataclysm or what erosion, as if some scaly, iron monster would finally emerge from the hill and devour all this nightmare, or, perhaps, perish open-jawed from sunstroke, and me with it?
I came to the end of the journey at last. I no longer had even the shadow of a refuge: I was void and ravaged. In truth, we need a carapace to house our petitesse, and when the hurricane has demolished the house, one finds oneself stripped of everything, unless one has the courage to contain everything. And perhaps destiny will come and demolish our houses, our bodies and our loves, one after the other, until we are capable of loving everything and creating our refuge in a body that does not die. We are there, yes. Life goes, by at an infernal speed, it goes by madly in our boxes of iron or of fluff, our lovely furnished rooms. It runs towards no station, or perhaps towards the Constellation of the Swan at one hundred and forty thousand kilometres a second, in a myth that we call tomorrow. And tomorrow never comes—the train never reaches the Constellation of the Swan. It just runs on and on, dragging with it our boxes of miseries or of feathers and our chosen thoughts, it runs on and nothing happens—no one, for millions and millions of years to come, not a cat on the planet, not a living soul! Or always the same shadow, endlessly repeated, through autumns and winters, the Acropolises, the Pyramids, the dreary suburbs—the stone or the concrete age; we are already in tomorrow—it was yesterday, and everything begins again. Yes, we are there, I have ridden on all the trains, and they turn in circles. But where is my Constellation of the Swan, my refuge which never moves?
O traveller Nothing happens On this little planet Except yourself You are the only happening
So I closed my eyes. There was really nothing more to be seen. I put my carcass down on a packing-case, squatted in the acrid smell of beedies3, withdrawn and alone like squatting Peruvian mummies. Was I not really dead? Who was pulsating inside? What? I stretched out my hands inside that tomb which was my body and I seized nothing, only that burning question, that very small “what?”—wordless, meaningless—that warm thrust against my walls. I had nothing, I was nothing, but that—a fire that burns—what else was there?
O brother, just like me in the depths of a tomb, what makes a man live?... qu'est-ce qui fait vivre un homme? What? That single question. I do not ask for greatness nor for wealth, nothing sensational, no apparitions, no hallucinations, no fabulous powers, but simply that: what makes my heart beat, what makes it be? Only that little question, no bigger than the light of a glow-worm... I have asked so many questions in my life, and this evening, I see that it is always the same one: there is only one question in a man, a little cry within which always says “what”... quoi—purely, “what”. It is all I have, all that I hold in my night, my sole belonging, my sole life—my blind life, my burning life, my life truer than life. One can take away everything, but that remains. One can add everything, and that is unchanged. One can put that in a prison, a palace, a train, it is always the same; throw gold or mud at it, it still shines, it burns within; it is man's cry, perhaps the animal's cry, the plant's cry; a small flame within which burns everywhere, which inhabits everything, like a golden spark in the heart of things, like a pure sound in the depths of everything, which fills everything, which prays everywhere; which vibrates, vibrates in the desert and in the stars, in pain and in joy—that, that everywhere, at the beginning and at the end, in the midst of everything: one unique life of a million fires.
I drew the curtain on the world. I took that fire like a bird in the hollow of my hands and I did not know what to do. It was all dark and oppressive in the depths of this body, it was perhaps nothing—but it was everything. Ah! what else is there? Outside, trains rumble by, people pass—it is like a death with open eyes; within, it is like a life which has not yet been born. And I looked at that nothing, that minuscule nothing which burned; it was imperceptible, but it was alive. It seemed to be in the hollow of my chest. I took that bird-warmth and clasped it so strongly to my heart that perhaps it would live, I looked at it so hard that perhaps it would spread its wings and carry me away. And I spoke to my bird (or was it he who spoke?). It was like a murmur, a prayer belonging to no church, a lonely sound which stammered: “I do not know, I do not know, but I feel; I do not see, I do not see, but I feel—I feel, I feel.” A slender flame of something which wanted to live, needed so much to live: “Oh it must be since I thirst so much, it must, it must.” It was almost painful in the hollow of my chest. “Where is it? Where is it? I have lived for millions of years, I have knocked at all the doors. Where is the space, the life? Where is my great sun to plunge within with wings outspread, and it would be that at last—that, that. Ah! life is not alive, life is not yet, and what is? Weeks and days go by, bodies walk, bodies die, hearts believing that they love, hours and hours to adorn, feed, and clothe a body—where is the true moment, the vast moment, for nothing, for the sheer joy of being? Where is life like the plunge of a sea-gull's wing on the high back of the tide?” And my whole heart was gathered there, in that thrust of flame, that wordless cry, and I pushed, pushed against those walls. I was a compact density, a suffocation, a ball of circumscribed space, as if all the tides of the world and all the cries of wild sea-gulls were gathered there.
And suddenly, everything became very silent. There were no more prayers, no more words, no more feelings. A silence unknown to me. It was not an absence of sound, nor even the fading of a worn-out prayer, nor the appeasing of the heart—it was, strangely, a substance made of silence, like a flow of solid silence, a frost of silence which fell upon me. Something which seized everything: the thoughts, the heart, the stirrings of the body and enveloped them or wrapped them up in a soft, invisible snow. It was compact and transparent simultaneously, crystalline, like a frosted dawn whence rises the chanson of Chantecleer. I was caught, transfixed, in that cool compactness, and I no longer knew very well who was caught: that was caught. It was like a snowy irruption that seeped through all the pores of the skin, instilling itself slowly, softly, as if it were filling all the cells of the body with millions of little bubbles of air; it was subtly aerated, it dilated, swelled almost; the body became porous, and all that self-contained density began to escape through thousands of minute little holes in a sort of expansion of easiness. It was like innumerable little breaths which puffed out in all directions making a foamy coolness. And at the same time, I or what was me, poured out horizontally. It unfolded, spread out, lengthened indefinitely in all directions, and I... I do not know—it had melted, it had gone. It was the screen which had blocked the space. It had gone and everything entered; a sudden breath which ceased not to fill up and flow, flow everywhere like the limpid coolness of the great bluish fields of the night. There were no longer any barriers, nothing which obstructed: I had passed through all the pores of my skin, I had lost myself in the sweet waters of the night. There a train rumbled past—towns, villages, stations flashed by, voices hailed across motionless fields; and the sounds no longer knocked against me; they rose from a great, clear night and lost themselves in distances, in the tall grasses of my silence. And everything was perfectly still. So still that there was no longer a breath of me nor weight—not the least pebble of the I anywhere: it passed through. I was far away, yet there; I was at thousands of points but did not know where I began nor where it ended—cicadas chirped in me as in a great Asian paddy-field, the train ran inside without the slightest displacement. Everything was captured in a millennial quietude. The world moved in a perfect immobility. But it was neither a disintegration, an annihilation, nor a sleep: it was a living, awakened, teeming immobility, as if innumerable eyes had opened at the end of a million antennae—awake and motionless. A motionless, multiple look, without comments, without feelings, without interpretation: it simply looked—at what? I do not know. It was the immense night. A look containing all, bearing all, self-sufficient, self-fulfilled; an objectless bliss, content to be itself, for ever. And sometimes that perfect eye seemed to come back on “me”, and then there was a slight contraction at one point, a tiny malaise, but it was really so tranquil that it was like a non-existence, or perhaps like a limitless existence; like an imperceptible fold of being, a thin image, which plunged downwards perhaps thousands of feet, or like a blue depth bearing this reflection of me.
But it was still night, a nocturnal bliss, almost vegetal—as a fruit steeped everywhere in its own succulence. And something touched an invisible frontier of dissatisfaction—just a limitation which automatically created a dissatisfaction—and instantly, I was thrown back onto myself: the fire, the asphyxiation, the suffering, that cry again. That impossibility which drags us like doleful ghosts. Ah! we come back, but it is not from death! And it was even more stifling now; I held it, I almost touched it down to my flesh, that single crime, that root of everything—of all maladies, all suffering, all revolt, all the aberrations that perturb man: that simple sorrow of being small, so very small—in a body. In the immensity, there is not a single scar of suffering. It was that which I held in both hands, or rather-that which held me by the throat, like a thief caught in the night: the radical fault of not being in the immensity. It was evident, as evident as a ton of lead. It crushed me from all sides. I thought I was going to let go of everything, open my eyes, plunge again into my desert of rocks and definite dwarfdom—roll on again with that Sannyasi. Then, there was something like a crying out in my being, something so deep, so intense; all at once I was in front of the wall of sorrows—the great ancient sorrow of being there but without being able. to get out of it. Oh! as if I had been there millions of times; all paths, all detours had led there; I found them all again, my brothers in misery, my pilgrims in the night, my hopefuls of I know not what—all gathered together in a cry. I was at the foot of the wall, at the end of the journey. I was facing the Fact, there was nothing more to be done!... Then, simply, there was one second of abandon. I opened my hands, I said yes. Yes, as one throws oneself into the fire. I sank into it, disappeared—body and soul and everything, without a second of memory, nothing to retain, nothing to keep, not a single item of worth; I was only that fire... J'étais seulement ce feu... that pure, pure fire.
And behold, that fire was like love. A pure love, for nothing, for everything, comme ҫa, simply because it burned. It burned all, devoured all: the past, the present, the future, good and evil, hopes and despair—it did not want anything, did not ask for anything except that one merge with it—annihilate oneself in it. It had no need of anything, but to burn, to keep on burning, to burn for ever. An abyss of sweetness. And it rose, rose... It grew, filling me with gold; a flaming thrust which vibrated and vibrated, which seized everything, invaded everything, without my having to do anything, without my wanting anything, oh! above all, I wanted nothing, I did not want a single second of anything: only to burn and go on burning and to let everything be abolished in that burning. Then, I understood the marvel. It became compact. It was like a tide of power: an ascension of dense force, warm, solid, which hardened my loins, my back, expanded my chest, tightened my throat. I was as though solidified. A pillar of fire. Next, the nape of my neck. I heard a cracking in the vertebrae.
Then I emerged.
Light, nothing but light! De la lumière, rien que de la lumière... Space, the open air, great bowlfuls of it! An immensity of light which became clearer as it rose, more intense, azure-blue, silver-blue. No more “I”, no more “I will”, “I strive”, “I think”, “I feel”... plus de moi, plus de je veux, plus de je tends, plus de je pense, je sens: it was carried away, vacuumed upwards, lost in its own flight. It rose,... rose: a linear, imperturbable flight into pure silence, solitary, effortless—a missle of being with a wake of white. It rose,... rose by itself as towards its source, its twin density; it winged its way like an Arctic bird towards a great snow up high, it soared as in an infinitude of release... Then the movement slowed down, I tilted into another horizontalness as if nearing the end of my course. Then everything became very vast and wide and slow. It was another journey. A rhythmic, bluish expanse.
A great eternal rhythm like two wings beating across eternal hills, travelling on and on through steppes of soft light, Labradors of peace; gliding endlessly through rippleless ages, seas of calm vision, beatitudes surprised like bays of smiles. A smooth, slow flight through centuries of ermine, a luminous white migration through an eternal sweetness. And a prodigious Harmony. A breath of harmony behind the suffering and the chaos, a great, tranquil respiration which draws upwards the moons and the breasts of men and the song of the galaxies, makes joy rise like a myriad golden bubbles, like a sparkle of gratitude everywhere; which descends, descends endlessly through rapids of mute meditation, gulfs of sudden adoration, sweet glades of nameless love, for no reason, but simply because it loves, loves to distraction. And the peace of being for ever, the unshakable Force! The powerful blue flow of silence through the grand canyons of eternity... I spread my wings, my heart, my body, and the whole fortress; I was borne along for ever, I was in the great motionless Rhythm which upholds the worlds. I gazed, and it was full—it was the Fullness. A golden smile under the closed eyes of the world.
Then my body fell asleep.
Someone seemed to call me. I pulled together all the strands of my being. It took a long time to reassemble them, as though I had to haul them in from a faraway country. Then I saw a silvery flame passing by in the silence, like a coloured, vibrating streamer. I pulled that light toward me; and it produced an ever so slight rhythm, like a fragment of some song in the distance, and at the same time I saw the image of a brother passing by—which brother? I could not say. But it was evidently a brother. I pulled again, and that slight rhythm issued the words:
O Brother What are you waiting for? It is time And life passes in vain
The refrain repeated itself: what are you waiting for? What are you waiting for?... A slight poignant sound at the edge of the world. I descended a few more degrees towards my body, and the further I descended, the clearer and more logical it became: the whole ladder of the descent became visible. First, the Light—the immense light—then the great Rhythm (but really, it was not “then”: it was the light which created the rhythm), then forms, sounds, rhythms more and more sporadic and broken, colours more and more opaque; and I saw so clearly the forms, the words, the sounds like condensations of coloured light more or less pure. I had touched the source of true language, of true music perhaps. And suddenly I saw the whole vista of creation; I knew whence those things came, which I had heard sometimes creating a kind of music in the distance and sometimes words, if I insisted a little. In a flash of joy (because that light created joy also, it was the joy-light), the whole of life appeared to me like the art of condensing luminous vibrations, which created events just as they could create music or architecture. And the suffering below was the absence of light—the absence of rhythm, the absence of everything. The further I descended, the harder, more opaque and partitioned it became—no rhythm any longer; only noise, confusion, fragmentation; a kind of buzzing blackish-grey atomisation. The mechanism had started again. The asphyxiation too. One re-entered the cavern. Then I invoked the silence. It came down massively: a dark blue invasion petrifying that swarm of thinking flies; a litmus-dye which turned everything instantaneously to blue. Just one drop of that. And all was motionless blue. Peace again, and aquamarine coolness.
The powerful tranquillity of the True.
I remained there between two worlds; I seemed to hear the train rumbling over a bridge for a long time, with a very supple rhythm. Someone shook me by the shoulder. I opened my eyes: we were entering a station.
And suddenly the avalanche: the cries, the rush, the crowd, the grinding rails—grinding lives; a gigantic iron invention which one had to traverse very quickly from one compartment to another, the automatic doors close and one runs. One goes into another identical compartment—a clever super-mechanism to measure the degree of intelligence of rats. But intelligence was not vision, it was to chew faster and faster. I watched that strange thing. I took one step... And I found myself light, unencumbered, as though I had been dragging my baggage for a long time, and then, pfft! gone, no more baggage! The density of my substance had changed. I skip-jumped onto the platform and made three little bounds; I heard a burst of laughter, he was there, upright, looking at me, his staff in his hand. Then, such a joy came over me, clear, overwhelming; I caught him by the arm; my heart babbled, I could have hugged him, told him... I looked at that tall triumphant Asiatic in his orange robe, who dominated life with his insolent laugh and demolished our wind-mills with one push of his shoulder, and that crowd, that other one over there, on a platform, in front of a small black barber, with his false head on his shoulders, and I too, felt like laughing in the face of all-the misery of the world, the comedy of the world, this fabrication of lies, each one holding fast to his own sordid little business, his little baggage, rolled up on the cadaver like a hedgehog—the great pity of so many men in a box. And in a dazzled glance, oh! luminously, sovereignly, I saw them all running from one room to another, from one corner to another, from one idea, one feeling to another, chewing, chewing... grignoter, grignoter—nothing true! A tremendous fabrication. Not a single living minute... not a single true minute in the world. There is only one minute—the minute when one opens the door and walks out on the cadaver.
He turned his back on me...
Then he changed his mind, groped in his belt and drew out a handful of grains:
—You know...
—I know. Don't choke. You have taken only half of the first step.
And that night, in the corner of a warehouse which smelt of fish-paste, I heard a divine music. Perhaps people will say I am mad or suffering from hallucinations, but I know now that the world is profound and full of marvels, and that behind our vain noises, there is a great kingdom of light which sings—and we are today, perhaps, like the ancient barbarians before unimaginably peopled oceans. Oh! I have heard sublime music, and some of Beethoven's deaf-notes had seemed to me higher than many a cathedral, but that night I heard as if for the first time in my life. In truth, until that day I had heard only thin little sounds, a translation of music, and then it was no longer a translation; it was no longer the expression of something, else behind which one felt was divine; it was not even like “to hear” music—I did not “listen” to the music, I was not outside the music: I was in the music as one is in an ocean or in a cataract; it surged up from everywhere, it was an immensity of music. And blue, everything was blue, a pure cerulean blue; every drop of space, every particle of blue radiated its own music. It was a blue which sang out everywhere, an immensity of symphonic light. It was not split up, splintered into little fragmentary notes which formed a melody: it was a plenitude of music, a unique total Sound which contained all possible sounds and chords, and true! So true that one was struck with absoluteness—one drop of that and everything became real, beautiful, pure, full, that, absolutely that, the concrete divinity. A single golden vibration across space, an immense welling-up, a plenitude of pure song which swelled the lungs as if one were swallowing all the infinity of the heavens, as if the music were only space, only the sound of the infinite, and one expanded, spread out everywhere in that singing blueness... and the joy! Or perhaps, the joy first. An abundance of being, an effusion of being which created the music—which created all that light and that space, and the whole world of things—a single substance of joy which sang of itself, a grandiose flow of one single note like a myriad violins which rose in an apotheosis, like a myriad voices modulating endlessly on great azure wings—or perhaps a solitary flute, very pure, welling forth from the eternal, lost in the eternal, which would leave that single quivering trace on the blue waters of the world... I do not know, but it was that.
When I awoke the next day, I was leaning on a sack, my head in my hands, and I repeated like someone thunderstruck: Ce n'est pas possible, ce n'est pas possible... “It is not possible, it is not possible...”
But it was there. I got up, I wandered about the platforms. Then I looked around me: the Sannyasi had disappeared.
I had wandered in those stations for so long that I no longer dared to leave them, it would have been like leaving the shore for an unknown land. I stayed in the shade of a margosa tree and watched the little jingling horse-carts go by on the sandy road which made a bend and dipped into a palm-grove. I did not know where I was, and it was very pleasant to be there without knowing, simply holding the thread of that little vibration which filled me with wonder and a feeling of absolute security. It had been there since yesterday, it was really something which vibrated very softly in me, around me, like a current or like a light little stream which linked me to that great blue silence, so light that I was afraid of losing it, almost afraid of moving, but I had only to remain quite still for a moment and remember, and it was there—it was always there! That was the wonder: it did not vanish, it did not disappear like the other countries of one day or of one minute; I had only to pull the thread a little, take a little breath within, and the great blue country flowed limpidly.
J'étais partout chez moi... I was at home everywhere.
I had only to think of it.
And I felt that I could go anywhere, do anything, I was borne along, enveloped, as it were, in a great azure mantle, I was safe.
—Oh! you have arrived.
He had magnificent black eyes! A child—of about eleven perhaps—who stood planted before me and stared at me with a sort of voracity as one might stare at the window of a sweetshop. He smiled, I smiled. I was at ease, one did not knock oneself against a wall.
—You want me to show you the way?
I had not a single paisa.
—Are you going to your brother's first or to the temple?
—To my brother's?
He took my hand and we set out. The air smelt of salt, life scampered by like a little chipmunk, it was simple, it was limpid. I had done so many strange things with that Sannyasi that I no longer tried to understand, and when I tried to understand, everything vanished, re-entered the hole, like the little animals of the forest. Another law seemed to govern life, a charming law, which disappeared as soon as one looked at it. It was like a softy almost amused, light breath, which pushed here, pushed there, to make a certain gesture, another gesture, a certain step, a certain turn, to cross this road without any reason, and it was always the right thing. A small, right law... Une petite loi juste. And as soon as one noticed it, it escaped through one's fingers as if thought chased it away automatically. And sometimes, one stopped right in the middle of a station or a gesture, astonished, as if one had trapped a host of little winks everywhere.
—Have you come for the temple?
—The temple?... No.
He looked surprised.
—Everyone comes here for the temple. Your brother also goes to the temple. Your brother is so handsome!
—Aah...
—He is a prince.
—And you, little frog, who are you?
He drew himself up to his full height:
—I am Bala-Chandra, son of Bhaskar-Nath, the greatest sculptor in the country.
—My father is a hero, he added with an air of finality. And who are you?
I was taken aback.
—You don't want to tell me your name?
I had to pull at a shadow from far behind me, it was dark like a lie.
—My name is Nil.
—And what does that mean?
—Ah! well... you see...
I wonder. A name, one should have a name! A real name, something which says what one is, like a bird's cry which says what it is. And suddenly I realised that the Sannyasi had never asked me my name.
—It means nothing.
—Oh!... nothing—nothing at all?
He seemed struck with respect.
—As for mine, it means “little moon”... They also call me Balu. Here, look.
And I stood open-mouthed. It was an extraordinary landscape. I had seen beauty many times in the forests of Brazil, in Rio and on the banks of the Loire; but this was not simply “beautiful”, it was “my” country all of a sudden, as when one discovers the face of one's beloved.
Dunes, nothing but dunes of white sand as far as the eye could see, resting there like Arctic birds against a dazzling sky, and palms, great clusters of green, golden palms, almost buried in the sand, which emerged at the end of stunted black trunks... I bent down and let the sand run through my fingers. It was soft, cool, smooth, it flowed; all the dunes flowed towards the village like a great white tide. And the high violet towers of the temple dominating the coconut-grove and the white terraces of the houses.
—It's terrific, eh?
Balu looked at me with perfect understanding.
—It's over there, at the end of the street. There are only two streets, you can't go wrong, one to the station and the other to the temple.
The silvery tinkle of little jingling horse-carts filled the whole street. It was almost white, with its uneven flagstones covered with sand. It was yesterday or today—very long ago. It was in this life or another. I was Nil or somebody else. We plunged into the strong scent of jasmine garlands and spices, amidst little shops, wandering goats and rose pottery; it was in this country or another, under the curved flight of the great ernes, and I was going towards I know not what story or what destiny, led by the warm hand of that child. Was it really another destiny, or still the same one, centuries afterwards? I walked as at the beginning of a life, it was vast and light, it was soft like the dunes, I was in a great tranquil rhythm, I was above or behind myself; and perhaps I was Nil, but I really had no name, or not yet, I had lost it on the way, I was coming back from the great journey.
—Do you want some pistachios?
He pulled me by the arm. I returned to the small shadow.
—Oh! Balu, where are we?
—Where do you think? In the street of course!
He looked at me with a comical face. However, it was of no importance, it could have been the north or the south, before or after Christ—I was borne along, guided, every step was exactly as it should have been that one and no other, on that paving-stone and no other. Everything was microscopically precise. And immense at the same time. At that moment I had the impression that in any other village in the world, in any other town, and, perhaps, during any other period in history, I should have taken exactly the same step, made exactly the same gesture, in the same way, at the same moment—only the name changes!... il n'y a que le nom qui change. And little primrose and green villages on latitudes marked in Indian ink. Life does not happen only where one thinks—it spreads out in all directions, we are moving all the time in another geography. And sometimes that coincides, then it is perfect precision: the inner degree touches the outer degree, every step is thousands of years old and one moves in the great rite.
—It is here, we are in it.
The house was dilapidated. It was the last one, at the end of a little street of balconied houses; after that, there was just a path of ochre sand and a forest of thorny trees. Balu leaped up three steps. I found myself in a sort of smoky caravanserai, full of pilgrims, bundles of clothes, kitchen utensils, children in all the corners, and insatiable goats which feasted on some laundry hanging between the blackened pillars—an exotic “cour des miracles” which nevertheless smelled of incense. Balu ran up to the first floor. It was deserted. I was in a long corridor lined with tiny monk-cells on either side, which ended abruptly above the thorny forest, like a carriage at the end of the line. The cells were empty. I went forward. In the last one on the left, his legs in the air and his head on the ground, a man was performing the sirsasana. A white man. An alarm-clock under his nose. Balu rushed up to him:
—Nil has arrived, yes, your brother, he is here!
The stranger fell back on all fours, amazed. He looked at me. He had a curious red triangle between his eyebrows, flaxen hair like ripe wheat, a sailor's build—he looked like a Nordic type. For a fraction of a second he stared at my rags, then took me by the shoulders and kissed me.
—Sit down, brother, you are welcome.
His voice was so warm that I felt silly. He pushed a mat towards me. Balu was devouring him with his eyes.
—Sit down. Don't be afraid... my name is Björn.4 I'm glad to see you.
The cell was bare, except for a tin-trunk and graffiti on the walls.
He's called “Nothing”, you know—Nothing-at-all!... Il s'appelle “Rien”, tu sais—Rien du tout!
—You are tired and hungry... Balu, go to Minakshi's and get some dosais,5 coffee, and some pistachios for yourself.
The child did not want to leave Björn.
—Go on, run along!
I had not a word in my head. I had forgotten how to speak as well.
—How happy I am, brother, you are heaven-sent!
—...
—Don't speak, you need not explain, you are my brother, Balu said so. Wait...
He started rummaging in his trunk, took out a white dhoti6 and a scarf of fine cloth. I was completely bewildered.
—Balu is never wrong. You are not a tourist, I can see that, so... It is rare to meet someone from there...
He seemed apologetic.
—Oh! I'm so lucky, brother... Look, the well is down there. You'll need a towel and some soap.
He began to rummage again in his trunk.
—So you have come from Europe, eh, you have run away. Oh! brother, men do not know how to love. It is good to love. Go, and be careful of the monkeys, they steal everything. Yesterday, they guzzled up all my tooth-paste.
He pushed me by the shoulder.
—I have been waiting for my brother for three years now. Do you realise... three years. And it is you who have come. How strange destiny is! Go, tell you all about it, we shall make discoveries together...
I went down to the well like an automaton. I was completely bewildered and far, far removed from all that sentimental fuss, without the slightest reaction: a stone, nothing responded. All Björn's vibrations pursued me, pulsating, battering in my head, I could almost measure their intensity and frequency: they were dark red, dense, in little dashing waves and extremely disturbing. I wanted to get out of there—only the sun and the blue over my head. And no more words. I felt ashamed. I emptied a bucket of water on my back and swept Björn away. Then I realised that I had become someone else. Yes, transparent—like crystal; not frozen, because it was very sweet, but without reaction: that saw clearly, received everything with acuity and an extraordinary exactitude—simply it looked, without moving, without a trace of feeling. A wide, exact look. And I discovered that I had lived months—or years?—in a place without human beings, right in the midst of the crowd, in trains, in stations, and yet I was thousands of kilometres away from everything! It was like having to learn life all over again, from another point of view. I pulled the thread of my little vibration once more; it was there, always there, limpid, jerkless, cool like a spring, so sweet. I was overwhelmed, I was filled with such gratitude, there, at the edge of that well, because there was that... ҫa, because that existed, it was there—that inexpressible sweetness, that secret royalty, and free, free, thousands of kilometres away from all that noise of the world, that confusion of the world, that separation in a body. Oh! who can understand the miracle of that royalty in the midst of everything: one is a prisoner in one's own skin, and then, one second of remembrance and one soars above; one looks, one laughs!... I emptied a bucket of water over my body, and all the waters of the world could not have been as soothing as that coolness. I picked up my rags... The Sannyasi's knife fell onto the edge of the well. For a second, I felt like throwing it into the well—I can still see myself with my arm raised—and then, I do not know why, I hid it in my belt and went back to Björn.
He was squatting at the end of the corridor, wrapped in white like a prince. A strange prince, indeed, with that red mark between his eyebrows... A little theatrical, I thought.
All the same, I liked him.
—You see, this is my poop-deck.
The corridor opened onto a forest of acacias. There were no dunes, no palms: only thorny trees like Chinese umbrellas leaning over the sands, and sometimes, the tall pale green foliage of a tamarind tree or the fretted shadow of a banyan. Then a solitary rock over there, at the edge of the sands, like the colossus of Memnon.
—That is Kali's rock.
—But where are we?
—To the north of the village.
—But which country?
—You didn't see the signpost at the entrance to the bridge?
—The bridge...
—But from where have you fallen! Didn't you cross a bridge to enter the island—2054 metres... 6739 feet, it is written at the entrance, you were sleeping? A one way bridge—the White Isle.
—An island...
—You! really!
—Can one see the sea?
—Calm yourself. First eat, and then we'll go.
He spread out a banana leaf with some dosais.
—My island is beautiful, you will see. Every morning, when I get up, I come here and prostrate myself before the beauty of the world...
I looked at Björn, somewhat taken aback.
—Good. And who brought you here?
—A sannyasi.
—Ah.
He made a face.
—I don't like sannyasis.
—Why, what have they done to you?
—Nothing, precisely. They have chucked everything. They do not know the secret of the beautiful world.
I felt rather nettled.
—And you, do you have the secret... with your feet in the air?
—Oh! that's nothing, I do it for my health. There is something else, I tell you, my island is a treasure island!
Björn took me by the arm, he looked feverish:
—But, first of all, you tell me, what are you seeking?
—I... I no longer know.
—Well, I am seeking power. Oh! not for myself: power for my fellow men—power, you understand—to change the world. In fact, I am ashamed, we have run away—we are deserters.
—Deserters?
—Ashamed to be here. They are miserable, they live like madmen. But I'm on the scent, we are going to find out; I tell you, my isle is a marvellous isle...
He threw off his scarf, his blue eyes were shining like a child's.
—Tell me, brother, they eat, they sleep—they are miserable. They have central heating, libraries—they are miserable. They do not know the Great Adventure, they know nothing, they do not know the secret of life!
Björn stopped suddenly.
—What are you seeking?
—But I don't know, Björn! It's simple, it's there. It flows.
—You fled from them, eh, they are detestable. But I love them. Listen, brother, we'll work together, we shall discover the secret, I am going to introduce you to Guruji...
His gaze was fixed on Kali's7 rock, then he began to speak forcefully, slowly, as if he were seeing something:
—The fact that you have come here this evening has a meaning, an object, no? But what meaning? What does this meeting here this evening mean, thousands of kilometres away from everything, like exiles?
—But I am not an exile!
—If one is not with them, if one cannot breathe their air, what sense has it? What does it mean? This is what I ask. For the last three years I have been asking the same question. And one stifles more and more, oh! Nil, it's as if we were at the end of one world, or at the beginning of another... Never has the earth been so bound and never have they spoken so much of liberty; it is the age of gnomes, it is the reign of anti-life, anti-liberty, anti-fraternity; it is the age of Falsehood, Kali Yuga, the Dark Age.
A crow began to caw above the well, I started to slip away elsewhere. But Björn would not let go of me.
—And I have looked everywhere: I have looked in Europe, in Oslo, in Paris, I have looked in Africa, in the Himalayas, in the confines of Tibet. I have been a nihilist, a buddhist, expelled from the navy as a saboteur. It's as though all the doors have closed one by one in order to compel us to find the secret. And what remains, tell me? Let's take our bearings... There are no more Americas to discover, it is the end of adventure, it has been commercialised, revolutions are faked, conquests at an end—they will go to the moon, yes, they will carry their Falsehood to the moon... ils emporteront leur mensonge sur la lune, they will take themselves everywhere, they will be miserable right up into the seventh galaxy. So where is the door, the way out, what is there to breathe? The fatherland sends us to the barracks and the Churches promise us heaven, and the others... their mechanised future resembles a gigantic week-end in Deauville. They will not even leave a pyramid behind them, they will leave only a heap of scrap iron. Here...
Björn got up. He seemed to be bathed in a red vapour.
—You will see.
He dashed towards his room-cell and came out with a letter.
—It is from my brother Erik, it's dated a week ago. Listen... He was seeking also, and he left everything. We wandered all over the world together. And then, the Sahara, that's all he found: the desert. Now he bores for petrol in Ouargla. Listen:
Ouargla, September
c/o S. A. M. E. G. A. B. P. 77 (Dept. of Oases)
I shaft, 2 shafts, 3 shafts, 4 shafts... Whether there is oil or not, it's all the same to me. Yet, I am wrong, for I am “in petrol”. I may even succeed perhaps, in getting used to these shafts, pulleys and gears but at what price, damn it?
Affectionately, Erik
Björn remained silent. I saw his brother's suffering on his face, it was hard, contracted, a sudden darkness—almost a lie. Suffering is a falsehood... La souffrance est un mensonge.
—Nil, what can we do for our brothers? We must have power, you understand, to love is not enough.
He fixed his eyes on me, I was completely engulfed in that avalanche, I could no longer see clearly, I could no longer see anything. He had befogged the whole atmosphere.
—You have nothing to say?
He had become aggressive now. Everything could change into hatred in Björn... And it was the other side of the same thing. And that dosai which lay heavily in my stomach and gave me a vague feeling of nausea, everything vibrated in my body as though I had swallowed Björn's revolt and Erik's darkness as well. I was like a sieve, everything entered.
—Yes, I know, the sannyasis have found the trick: they give up everything; they run away to the heights. It is very convenient.
—Oh! Björn, you don't know what you are saying. Does one give up a prison?... One gets out of it, that's all. And I assure you the air is devilishly light and clear when one gets out of the box. So?...
—So that's the whole question. One gets out, and then one can do nothing more for life.
I closed my eyes. I felt beaten by that tide of little red waves.
—Nil, are you listening? Where are you? Have I tired you?
He took my hands. It was the real Björn coming back, affectionate, fraternal.
The atmosphere began to be less tense; one could breathe again. And suddenly, I understood. What could men see in that mental chaos? They wanted to see, they wanted to know the cause, the course of events, the line of action, but every thought was like a pebble in the pond: one could no longer see anything.
—There is a secret, Nil...
He sat up straight. I was struck by Björn's beauty. A small silvery flame began to float into that red mass which became paler, almost roseate, and Björn's voice was no longer quite like a noise:
—It's curious, Nil, for three years I have not ceased to study the story, our story, and the more I study it, the more it seems to me that it's not at all what one thinks it is... a series of progress, of discoveries which pile up, and we become more and more knowledgeable, more and more intelligent, until the moment when we shall know everything... No, it is not that.
And at that instant, there was a tiny white spark, like a diamond.
—It's rather a series of exhaustions... as if each epoch knocked at a door, explored a domain, arrived at a dead end: a series of perfectionings without any outcome. Then it breaks down and one begins again on another line. There has been the spiritual knowledge of India, the occult knowledge of Egypt, Greek knowledge and scientific knowledge... And our epoch is not more knowledgeable than the others, that is the illusion I It is not nearer to the goal; it has only perfected one line. One way of looking. It has, perhaps, only the merit of being at the last door and there are no more.
I looked at Björn against that breach of light, and he was really handsome, a Viking conqueror who had come back here for I know not what adventure. And I saw myself at his side, smaller, but of another colour it seemed. I was looking at all that, I heard Björn, but I was not really there; I felt as if I were held somewhere, far, far away, and that I had to cross expanses of sweetness to find Björn, a great meadow of blueness, so enchanting that at every moment I wanted to slip into it with closed eyes, and to merge into that noteless, voyaging music. And my body... I do not even know whether I was in my body; rather, the body was in me, and Björn too. I was only sensitive to the modulation of his voice, which was like a silvery spiral sometimes punctuated by a spark... une étincelle, and it was that little flame that I followed, as if the words had meaning only because of it, were carried by it, contained in it, and that formed an exact music—the words were a sort of useless outgrowth, I knew instantly everything he had said.
—...So, the time has come to invent. When we touch that secret, all the lines will meet simultaneously and we shall be at the heart of the Thing.
He took me by the arm.
—You have gone away again.
—But no!
—We have no right to go away, do you hear! It's our only excuse. We are here to discover.
Then I buckled myself to the words it was an immediate degradation, a lowering of tension.
—I do not know, Björn, but when one is in a certain condition, everything seems so simple.
—For you.
—But it's a true state, in it one sees truly!
—Of what use is your true state, if it can do nothing for the world?
—Oh! Björn, how impatient you are.
—Do you see this triangle?
He placed his finger between his eyebrows.
—It is the Tantric triangle, the point turned downwards, towards Matter. No escape towards the summits: the descent of Power into life and into matter. We are here to discover, you understand, to invent—to invent something which neither science nor religion has found. We are at the last door, we are at zero hour, we are a new race of adventurers!
He stared at me with his lavender-blue eyes.
—We have looked for continents, oil-wells, laws, machines and still more machines—we have exhausted everything. We are sitting on the gold-mine and we don't know it! Power is within... Le pouvoir est dedans, Nil, the adventure is within. Our machines are not the sign of our progress, but of our impotence. We are at the doors of a world which will create by the inner vision, we are the adventurers of the powers of the soul.
He hesitated a moment.
—Moreover, it is not without danger.
—Björn!
Someone rushed into the corridor.
—Guruji is calling you.
He jumped up, his gaze fell on me and I felt uneasy: he looked like a haunted man.
—You will find some money in the tin-trunk, in a red wallet. If I return late, go and dine at Minakshi Lodge.
He wrapped himself in his scarf. But it was no longer Prince Björn, it was another person.
—I shall explain to you, he is my Master, he has great powers. It is he who has the key. We are going to find the secret together.
Then he left hurriedly.
I remained a moment looking at the acacias, the sands, and the mauve shadow round the well. The tumult had ceased with Björn's departure, everything was as peaceful as at the beginning of the world except for the lone cry of a raven, but even that cry was a part of the silence—it is men who make a noise, even when silent they make a noise!... même dans le silence ils font du bruit! And suddenly; all the weariness of having listened to Björn fell over me; I felt wrinkled all over—thousands of little wrinkles were pulling at my face, constricting my temples, and that tiny trepidation vibrating in my head, so artificial—the noise of artificial things.. A mask. I had entered into a mask and all life was a mask—a complete lack of truth, even in suffering. In half an hour with Björn, there had been one true second, just when that little white spark had burst forth. Everything else: noise supposedly to understand each other. Yes, they speak of their suffering, they speak of their hope, their revolt, but it is not even the cry of an animal which is thirsty or in pain, it is simply superimposed noise, plastered on... something which does not suffer, which needs nothing, sorrows for nothing; a bedrock of tranquil reality which is there, so tranquil, and really very near, like a well of tenderness for all the miseries of the world—one leans forward, one lays one's forehead there, and everything is refreshed, de-wrinkled for ever. And no one wants it! How can this be?... I looked at Björn, Erik, and all those men, my brothers, those strange artificial creatures who no longer had even the qualities of the animal—who constructed iron towers, steel wings, and who did not even fly; who heard nothing, saw nothing, except with antennae and a helmet; who suffered, laboured in order to try and reproduce the simple miracle of the ages without man. And they sang, they sculptured and poetised to express the misery of their lives, their powerlessness behind all that false power, or something behind which they wanted so much to grasp. And when that was grasped, it was finished—there was no man any longer! No world, nothing, one streaks to heaven, so be it. To become man, was it simply to forget man at the end of the story, that moment of artifice, and return to the peace of unthinking things—to the tranquil vast which no longer says “I”, because it is “I” everywhere nowhere...
a drop of blue water a sea lost in its millions of clear drops?
O apprentice Be patient awhile, Nothing is lost But your foolishness
I closed my eyes. Everything dissolved instantaneously, bluified, spread out—words, miseries, questions; they were only hardenings, creases of the “I” which wants to retain immensity in a cage and cannot and suffers because it cannot—”I” lets go of itself, and everything is filled with infinity. It is smooth, full, without a ripple—where is the suffering, where the evil? Where is the question? There is not one ripple! It is, and it is perfectly. And everything is the same but flexible, vast, rhythmical, instead of being full of knots and broken up by that obturating “I” who makes hollows, bumps, moments, pain—and everything is a pain because everything is cut up... Et tout est une peine, parce que tout est coupé. I sank there, melted into that smile. But I do not know whether it was Björn's shadow or some particle of the “I” in a corner, I thought I felt a kind of limitation in that immensity, a sudden inadequacy—it was full, as full as a jar could be, but it was a jar all the same, something which was closed at a point. And there, also, I touched an invisible frontier of dissatisfaction.
There was still something to be demolished.
I opened my eyes.
Balu was there, as quiet as a fawn, his large black eyes set on me.
—Where is he?
—Who... he?
—Björn of course
There was so much passion in his voice that I was nonplussed.
—Björn? He is with Guruji.
Balu puckered up his nose. He did not look pleased at all.
—What, little-moon? What's wrong?
He puckered up his nose again.
—I don't like it.
—Ah! And why?
—Because.
I could get nothing more out of him.
—Well, come and show me the sea.
He took me by the hand.
We could hear the silvery jingle of the horse-carts, the cry of the jasmine vendors, then the bells and the temple conches in the distance. The women were going to the well, life flowed on like a fountain. I went along the main-street, bare-footed and white-clad, I was light and without memory.
—And now it's the full moon; the birds will come back.
—The birds?
—Many, on the lagoon. I say, what are wild geese like?
—Wild geese?
—And snow, the herds of reindeer, tell me?
My eyes became misty, the street began to drift away.
—Herds of reindeer...
—And the lake... the prince who changes into a swan, which becomes all pink? Which loses its colour? And then the hunters kill it.
—Oh! that...
The paving-stones had become like a snowfield, we were in Lapland on the edge of a frozen lake... Nous étions en Laponie au bord d'un lac gelé.
—Don't you know, the prince who changes himself into a swan?
—Yes, because he loved the queen of the swans.
—Ah! that's it! the queen of the swans...
He opened his eyes wide.
—Yes, he loved her so much that he changed himself into a swan, and they flew away, far away...
—They went to Mount Kailash?
—Yes, and the further he flew, the pinker he became.
—Oh! I understand!
I do not know what he understood, but the world was like a smile.
—And then he lost his colour? Why?
—Yes, because he looked behind him, and each time that made a little grey patch.
—No, that's not what Björn said...
—What did he say?
I never found out what Björn had said. He made a little leap sideways and looked at the sky.
—It's like Batcha.
—What, Batcha?
—The queen of the swans.
—Ah!... And why?
But there was no why. He kicked a little stone with his toes, he was lost in his dream. We were walking hand in hand towards a high tower over there, we had always known each other and everything was part of the great rhythm: the village and the jasmine, the echo of bronze gongs in the hypostyle corridors, and the return of the moons with flocks of birds.
—Have you any brothers or sisters?
—Oh! Ma-ny.
He looked at me with a kind of joy.
—How many?
—Ma-ny, he repeated with conviction... But none like Batcha.
—Ah?
—Yes, she is the queen.
He looked round for a moment. Then he stopped suddenly as if he were struck by something, his gaze fixed on the temple-tower.
—She is like Björn: they are going to die.
—What... What are you saying?
His eyes widened. He dropped my hand and began to hop on the pavement again.
—But Balu...
I was dumbfounded.
He did not even hear, he had already forgotten everything... No, it was not true, Björn was not going to die, it was absurd! Björn... I shook myself, drove away that falsehood. But it stuck, it vibrated somewhere, I was touched; something had touched me within and aroused I know not what. The whole street darkened. And suddenly, in that street which had been so clear and bright, I saw myself running hard, pursued by a crowd, just like that, for no reason at all. Just a vibration. A nasty little vibration which contained a world of agony—a past or future world, I do not know: the old Threat suddenly, like reptiles coming out of their hole—Destiny. No more light, no more immensity; it was a sudden shrinking, a dark trap, a decomposition of everything: “I”, like an illness. And why, I do not know. A brutal fall, a darkening. But it was not the usual little “I”, it was a fundamental “I”, infinitely deeper, harder and as if linked with pain. An old hinted-down memory in the depths. I was touching the point, I had come to the Fact. It was the last wall—or the first—to be demolished. And Björn's words came back to me: “We must have power for the sake of our brothers. Power, you understand?” Yes, what can one do, what is the lever of power? What can one do to heal that? Love?...
And at the same time, as if coming from afar, from the depths of an old memory, as old as that old Threat which weighs upon us, as old as that birth in the world, perhaps, I seemed to remember a Joy—which would be like the light of that shadow, joined to it, one with it—a Joy endowed with power, a triumphant and mighty Joy which carries all before it, dissolves everything, effaces everything in a smile. Oh! not the joy up there, that I have, it has always been mine, it is my indefeasible right: the joy here. This is what has to be found Up there, my joy smiles above the worlds, it is my great sweetness, my tenderness which does not move, as that of an immortal brother who leans over this body and all these bodies, and who smiles in a light of absolute understanding. But here, it does not come through. A puff of wind effaces it, a vibration demolishes it. It is here that we must find!
The image of the Sannyasi passed before me in a flash. With all his high laughter he did not have joy either.
Then I drove everything from my mind.
—Oh! Balu, where is it, the sea?
He looked at me as if he had fallen from the clouds, then he drew himself up proudly:
—Do you see the Western tower? Well, we are going the other side, to the Eastern tower; there, you'll see, it's terrific.
I took his little brown hand in mine, we mingled with the crowd of pilgrims.
—And it's high! baba! All the gods are there, milk has been poured over their heads!
That tower was fantastic! It looked like a gigantic truncated pyramid, an Egyptian pylon caught in an aberration. It was a rush, a torrent of idols and granite, a saraband of gods, apsaras, hermits, nude dancers and emaciated pilgrims who soared upwards towards the sky with the pigeons, the ernes and the monkeys—grotesque, divine, praying, suffering, hilarious,—like the very multitudes of the earth. And the blue of the sky, nothing more. The air smelt of jasmine, wet said, the sweating crowd, it was yesterday or today, the same interminable crowd soon to be vested with eternity, which bargained for its baubles of mother-of-pearl or of straw and one day blew into a conch-shell.
Then the blue of the sky again. And one begins all over again: 1 shaft, 2 shafts, 3 shafts...
—This way.
One always begins all over again, what is there that is really changed under the sun? Where is the new, the entirely new?
—We will go right round, you'll see.
He tugged at my hand. We turned into a small side-street. Then I saw that fortress, that formidable quadrilateral with three hundred metres of purple walls, planted there in the sand.
—Isn't it terrific! It's the biggest in the country. And, oh, how old it is!...
He cogitated, nodded his head, as if the grandfather would not suffice.
—It is completely sacred.
And in a peremptory voice:
—I love Björn.
And that was that.
We followed the little white street in the midst of the sound of conch-shells and gongs; the air vibrated like a huge mother-of-pearl. The little shops had given way to low houses of lime-coated granite. Children were chanting in a school.
Sometimes, a clump of palms flashed bright over the terraces.
And, little by little, a strange impression came over me—almost an emotion. Was it because of those high walls or the sands which carpeted the street? But it was more subtle than that; it was something in the quality of the air, a sort of familiar resonance, almost an odour, as in Thebes. Then I closed my eyes, there was that small warm hand in mine and I searched, I pushed against that wall of memory, I groped my way in an obscure odour peopled with presences; it was there, just on the other side; I could feel it, I could smell it still. And it was an emotion of a very special quality which I had experienced several times in various circumstances, in very different countries: suddenly, something awakens and vibrates without any reason, a quiver of recognition—in front of a being, a wall, a sky, no matter what,—like a secret at one's finger tips, something that one holds, and then it escapes; it is intimate, more intimate than all the looks and all the places in the world and yet elusive—a memory, a shock which has been lived through, and of which only the emotion remains, or a fragrance perhaps, like that of a loved one whose features have faded away leaving only this single imprint, or like that chant in the distance of which all the words were mingled, but full of presence... It is strange, the more I search for the entirely new, the more I am drawn back to the past, as if there were an old enigma to be solved before passing on to the new life.
—Appa! Appa!
He dashed into the house, shouting at the top of his voice.
–Appa! It's his brother!
We were in Bhaskar-Nath's house.
A tiny loggia in front of the entrance, statues of all sizes, all shapes, lined up on the ground like those in the temple. Balu caught my arm and pulled me inside.
—It's his brother, Nil, he has arrived.
There was a rustle of fleeing skirts. I stumbled in a dark passage, collided with an object which resounded like a musical-box... Then I came out into a patio flooded with light, covered with white sand: a. big bright courtyard surrounded by a pillared verandah and closed rooms. The whole house was bathed in the fragrance of sandalwood. I turned round: a massive presence was squatting in a corner, perfectly motionless. It was Bhaskar-Nath, the sculptor. He looked at me. Balu had become as dumb as a carp.
What that man was, I never really found out. But his look held me. And yet it was not something which took possession of me; there was no violence, it was not heavy, it did not try to probe and possess; I did not feel any inquisitiveness: it was a living mass which seemed to look at me from everywhere at the same time, or rather to draw me into another dimension, towards someone else behind me. Never have I met a man of such density—a force solidified, but soft at the same time, like himself: a Roman gladiator's body with Balu's black eyes.
—Sit down.
He pushed a mat in front of me. His wife came; she offered me a copper tray of areca nuts and a mug of water. She looked young. She pulled a fold of her sari over her forehead and smiled at me with her eyes lowered, then she withdrew silently.
Everything was silent there, except for the school-children's chanting.
—You are just in time... Tu es juste à l'heure.
I was startled.
—It is good that it is so. There is a time for everything.
He remained awhile fingering a rough-cast.
—It is the full moon. You are welcome.
And everything flowed in silence.
“The time”... “it's time”—I had heard those words so often... And I did not know what that time was, nor that moon, but it was so obviously true for me at this moment, with the chant of those school-children and that fragrance: I could not have been elsewhere, but there. I had roamed through many a country, for years and years—or centuries—thousands of steps and roads intertwining, and then I was there, just in time. It was obvious. And, suddenly, in that bit of patio, at the end of those thousands of roads and steps, I thought I had grasped the weft—the tremendous weft—the innumerable intersections of minute exactitudes which emerged here and not elsewhere, at this moment and no other; and it was not only an exactitude according to the clock—the material time was but a reflection, a mechanical and arbitrary means to fill in time which was not; it was a sort of inner coincidence which caused the time to become right: the journey happened in time outside, because it was in time within, and the concurrence of the two made the meeting inevitable, a tiny unnoticed miracle—a tremendous weft of unnoticed miracles. And, suddenly, in the presence of this man, I realised that there was a “time” behind everything, or rather a soul-moment, as if another time were unfolding behind ours, unceasingly, and when one followed that time or that rhythm, that journey, everything flowed harmoniously, smoothly, exactly as it should, with a miraculous precision, to the second; and in the other, everything jarred, collided, nothing met. And it was like two worlds exactly superimposed—a false one and a true one... An extraordinary horizon opened up before me; life became an infinitely fluid and pliable thing, almost a minute to minute creation. It was enough to be connected to the other journey.
Then everything faded, I remained looking at a tiny light playing on a chisel.
—Who led you here?
—A Sannyasi.
He put down his sandalwood block abruptly. His body was the same colour as the wood of his statues.
—A long time ago, he continued, someone predicted that misfortune would come to this house through a sannyasi.
—I was seventeen years old, you see, it was long ago, you were not yet born.
—But...
—Calm yourself, child, things happen as they must.
—But I am not a sannyasi! I have just arrived, it's your son who brought me to your house.
—You think so?... Then why are you so upset? You see.
I was not upset, I was in the grip of a seething anger as in front of that Sannyasi. I could still hear his voice: three times you have come, three times...
—But look here...
I stammered, I was like a Child robbed of his dream.
—These people who make predictions should have their tongues cut out. Damn it, what's the matter with you all in this country! Balu told me...
Bhaskar-Nath looked at me quietly.
—Why?... You are forewarned.
—I don't believe in your stories. It is I who make the future. I am free.
—Yes, it is you who make it.
He remained silent.
—But you are something very old... Listen, my child, destiny is not an enemy, there are no “enemies” in the world, they do not exist, everything is a help on the way. There is no “misfortune”, everything leads us exactly to where we must go, by all the necessary deviations. When one opens one's eyes, every minute is a miracle...
Then he smiled and his smile was so full of goodness!
—You are welcome here, you are at home, all that knocks at my door is good. What are you seeking?
—Your son Balu told me a little while ago that Björn was going to die.
Bhaskar-Nath nodded his head.
I was outraged.
—If Björn dies tomorrow, what do I do, just fold my arms, I suppose, it is decreed!
—But what do you think, stranger... that Destiny is a medicine for the impotent?
Bhaskar-Nath drew himself up, he looked like a lion.
—Listen, there is in you a possibility, and a great weakness. The two are together, almost necessarily together: the weakness is the crack through which the new possibility can slip in. So understand this. There are two things to understand, two poles of existence, a contradiction which is the key to everything—if you do not understand, you live in vain.
He plunged his eyes into mine, it was like a solid force.
—There is a world of eternal truth where everything already is, luminous, peaceful, beyond—free; and there is the world of apparently contrary forces, ours, where everything becomes what it is. Two sides: the light which sees, and the force which acts. And both must be held in the same grip, like the two horses of the same chariot. If you master the one without the other, you tumble into the light which sees but cannot act, or into the force, which acts but which knows nothing. And there is no choice: one has to be both. Then one is in the powerful light...
He smiled pensively:
—...The light of the next world.
Then without any transition, he added:
—You are in time. Your brother needs you. He was led not by a Sannyasi but by a Tantric—just the other pole.
—Who is this man, this Guruji?
There was a noise like thunder. I jumped up... A peacock swooped down at my feet in a whirl of feathers, blue, magnificent I heard a ripple of laughter; a small round face leaned over the patio.
—Batcha!
She disappeared, laughing.
Batcha, will you come and fetch this bird at once, I have already told you...
Bhaskar-Nath made his voice sound stern, but he did not mean a word of it. The peacock straightened its neck, planted itself in front of me and led out a resounding triumphant cry, as if to defy me. Then it started pecking on the ground. I was completely bewildered. I looked at the peacock; Bhaskar-Nath was just behind, very straight and motionless against the wall. And in a flash, I saw myself running behind that Sannyasi in the street of the port, and that warrior-god suddenly surging out of the walls, mounted on a peacock... Everything was starting all over again. Bhaskar-Nath was like a statue. The school-children were chanting. I had the impression of being thrown into a world full of signs, without the key.
—Shikhi! Shikhi!...
The little round face emerged from behind the door. She had a red tilak in the middle of her forehead, which made a little flame on a very fair face, and a long pomegranate-coloured gypsy skirt... une longue jupe couleur de grenade.
—Batcha, the next time...
The peacock swept the patio with a stroke of its tail and rushed into her skirts like a chicken.
They disappeared together.
It was the signal. The doors round the verandah opened, a servant passed by, the sculptor's wife began to pick up the sandalwood shavings. Through the door at the end, one could glimpse the foliage of a margosa tree. The girls were winnowing rice.
—You see, my son...
From that moment, he always called me “son” and I could have sworn that something had really happened at that moment, between that peacock, Batcha, Bhaskar-Nath and myself—that peacock, why that peacock?... ce paon, pourquoi ce paon?
—...From the day you look at things with true eyes, there is not a single thing in the world which, is not full of meaning and which does not contain its own message. It is as if everything were plotting to force us to understand.
I did not know what was there to understand and I barely heard Bhaskar-Nath, but something was happening. Was it the presence of that man? The air seemed to vibrate, the objects, even the walls seemed suffused with light, as though they were gliding into another dimension and were going to suddenly open, to change their appearances, and yet they were the same objects, it was the same person, but so different, almost made alive; I felt that one word, one sound, would make everything tip over and tear that veil of haziness; I was on the fringe of a dizzy frontier, and I did not understand, I did not see, but it was all there, just behind, hardly behind. I picked up a bit of feather from the ground and fingered it: the ocelli also vibrated, changed, turned from blue to green, to golden brown. And perhaps that peacock had a meaning for Bhaskar-Nath, and for me and for Batcha—three different stories, or only one? Just a little bit of feather which shimmers. And the air appeared still sharper, brighter, as if inflated with another substance of life: the chisels, this feather, the sand in the patio, Bhaskar-Nath's hands, everything seemed connected in another movement. Then my look returned once more to that peacock's ocellus, and I thought I saw the compact marvel... I had the feeling at that moment, that the world was full of superimposed depths and that one single thing falling under our eyes for one moment and passing on, could contain the entire history of the world, like the momentary configuration of the stars could trace the image of a destiny and contain, in a second's juncture, the story of a multitude. It was dazzling: suddenly I saw, I felt that world moving in a grandiose dance of which every point was the centre of all and contained all—a wondrous kaleidoscope which turns and overturns, turns and overturns; which periodically traces the signs of a new dance, another story, but it was always the same actors who acted, one unique story; and if that single flash of ruby or turquoise, that single peacock's feather on a terrace one day, happens to move, everything moves. It dances and everything dances—the world is a miracle. It was dazzling, a wind of frosty powder on the blue crest of a mountain; and perhaps, a same breath up there, at the same moment, had enchanted that Himalaya... and my heart.
Bhaskar-Nath arranged his chisels. The children were still chanting. I felt that I had lived blindly for thirty years in a flat photographic world, an exact world, minutely marked out, where each thing meant one thing and only one, a poor thing all alone like an insect impaled in its box—and that world was exactly dead and false. Thousands of silver threads connected everything to everything, a single, plumed seed rolled over fields of stars; the world opened, everything opened; each petal covered another petal which covered another petal—which revealed a single golden Sun.
I got up as if in a dream.
—My son, beware of Björn.
I looked at Bhaskar-Nath, I looked at that gladiator's naked torso, and I no longer knew what he meant—beware? of whom? There was but one light which burned a million times, in life, in death, in my heart and in everything, and which held this whole world of men and things in the hollow of a single plumed seed.
He got up. He went into a back room. Then he returned with a small sandalwood statuette which he placed in my hands. It was a dancing flute-player.
Björn had returned in the middle of the night; he seemed on edge, his voice was hollow. I could hardly see him in the semi-darkness around the well, the dawn was still only a green transparence in which the first crows were cawing hoarsely, but I felt his distress, it was a kind of hardness in the air: I could not get through. Only men are impermeable! They are the most opaque mineral in the creation. And when man forgets himself, he radiates everywhere like a diamond. It is a strange thing. Just a veil: one thinks of it and it is dark, one no longer thinks of it and it is clear.
—Are you worried?
—I don't understand anything.
He flung a bucket of water over his head in a sort of rage.
—And then, it takes all this time, it is like Erik with his shafts: I shaft, 2 shafts, 3 shafts... Three years have gone by—three years, do you hear, not three months—since he promised me the initiation, the supreme mantra,8 and then... he calls me (I don't ask him anything, mind you), he tells me: “Today, you will receive the initiation.” I jump for joy. I am brim-full, I sweep his house, I empty buckets of water as if it were the resurrection. He speaks, he says all sorts of things, the hours go by; and then finally, he asks me what the deuce I am doing there! As if he had forgotten everything. He has played the same trick on me ten times. Yesterday... Or suddenly, when I am not thinking of anything or when I am completely desperate, he calls me, makes me sit down, gives me a mantra: “The final mantra,” he says. And oh! it is really like an intiation, just one syllable and the body seems to open. As if one is lifted from the ground and one spreads out in a powdering of particles. It is tremendous. A dark blue powder. And the following day, by chance, simply, in the conversation, he says: “Hey! Gorom (that's what he calls me), you will repeat this one a hundred thousand times. Afterwards, we'll see if you are ready for the final mantra”... Do you see?
I did not see, but I felt Björn's revolt, and it was dark and painful.
—Drop it, Björn, let's go and have a look at the sea.
The air was almost cool. The street was deserted, the sand-storm had not yet started. A siren filled the dawn with a journey-call.
—Is there a port here?
—On the other side, on the mainland. Here, there are only coral-divers.
He clenched his teeth and added:
—I should not complain when I think of the others, of Erik... We, at least, know we are going somewhere, even if that somewhere is at the end of a hundred thousand shafts of mantras, we know there is something to find... It doesn't matter, I will go through to the end.
And there was despair in that “through to the end”. The siren rent the air again.
—I remember, Erik used to say: “The siren is the journey; afterwards, it is as before.” And it is true, there is no journey! No journey at all—one simply wants to justify the shriek of a siren.
He kicked an empty gourd and sent it flying. I thought I saw my own portrait in another existence. Oh! those we encounter are always like the ghosts of a previous life, or the heralds of a life to come—a past, a future,—and they come and cling to us (or we to them) by a strange attraction, as if they were bringing us the picture of what we must shed, or conquer. And it is always precisely those we meet. The others disappear as though they did not exist: they have no message.
—Do you regret?
—Nothing. I'll go through to the end, that's all. But, damn it, it's long! One must have power, Nil, we must change the world... For thirty million years we have been begetting children—thirty million, you understand—simply to end up with a B.A... Hell!
—But what do you want to change?—If you change nothing in yourself, you change nothing in the world!
—All right. But I don't care a damn about reason, I want to do something.
—Do you want to open hospitals, schools? Cure the sick, divide the wealth of the world, or what? And afterwards, when you have made your poor rich, they will rob the others, just the same, and then it dies and we die and everything dies, and it begins all over again. And as long as there is a single man to die, everything will be the same—it is not the outside that must be cured, it is the inside! Or else what? Do you want to perform miracles? To fly in the air, pass through walls, appear in a glory of light above the market in Oslo? They will take you for a god, they will worship you—they will hate you. And babies will flourish as before. That is the illusion, Björn, people want to have all the attributes of the gods without being like the gods, so it breaks down. But if they do not change within, their journey will not take place, that is all. Afterwards is as before.
—But if one could show them the power of the Spirit? Show them...
—You want to perform in a spiritual circus?
—Oh! How irritating you are! Well then, let us flee to the Himalayas and contemplate our navels. The misfortune is that I am not interested in my own salvation, my own liberation, I am interested only for others.
—Listen, Björn, you want power—very well. Let us suppose you have all the powers, you are all-powerful. What are you going to do with it, tell me? Do you know, at least, for what you want to use this power? Do you know what is good, what is bad? And what is really bad? That is still another question. You are going to abolish illness, death, misery?—And that misery is perhaps just the means of passing to another state? You want to make your B.A. babies live to be ten thousand years old? They will fill the libraries and the savings banks... Never once in my life have I seen a single evil which did not have its full meaning. So? You are going to cut out evil, and you will cut out the good with it. What do you know of the good of the world, what vision have you?... Björn, let me tell you, if we had the true vision, we would automatically have the power; we have no power, because we have no vision, For we would eliminate just those things which should not be eliminated.
—Then I'll clear off with bag and baggage and go to plant shafts with Erik. And the world can go to hell. Amen. Everything is for the best in the best of worlds.
—Oh! Björn, how violent you are... But really, there is nothing to eliminate, nothing “to change” as you say, it is something else... Sometimes, I feel that it is a complete error to look for something “tremendous”—the secret is not tremendous, it is simply something else. Perhaps, simply a look to be changed. A glance which changes all!
—As for you, you'll end up croaking in a crystal look. Well, as for me, I want to do, even if I do wrongly; I want to live, I want to mould matter, I want... In fact, I grumble, but I have found. I have found a lever, I know the secret—or at least one secret,—a rational secret, a rational miracle, something that men can grapple with and forge. It's only a question of time and tenacity. A hundred thousand mantras, that's nothing. One must go through to the end, that's all.
The siren rent the air a third time. We arrived at the temple.
An erne flew away into the blue. As for me, I could not understand a word of their stories. It swerved in flight, melted into the sky. Oh! each time, it is like a cry within, as though I were left behind. There is a bit of the bird in us, which remembers. Each time I suddenly discover that I am a man as one finds oneself dwarfed in a dream—no, it is not that that I seek! Not intelligence, not virtue, greatness, powers, not a superiority over all this mediocrity: but something else, something else, a complete elseness... autre chose, autre chose, une autreté complète. A new vision is what I want, it is my very own story, my own mantra, like a mule!
And the gigantic teak gateway... The crowd, the scramble, a torrent of colours. A turmoil of odours and beggars, smelling of rancid oil, jasmine, bats. A mixed bazaar of arborescent corals and shells, of red and green powders piled up on each side of the corridor and assaulting the pillars with painted glass-ware like icons, ribbons, straw baskets—everything swerved and whirled like the sculptured multitude above: the beggars with the merchants of mother-of-pearl, the monsters with the wise men, the pilgrims, the monkeys and the girls with their plaits, all swept along equally in a huge polychrome kermis where even ugliness becomes divine, even the junk seems suddenly caught up into an irresistible sacred rush. And I too wanted to merge into it, to disappear, to annul myself in a complete strangeness, oh ! I know now what is so familiar to me in these places: all my life I have sought a radical uprooting—or a re-rooting perhaps—as if, in the grip of I know not what upheaval, I would suddenly find my true face again and come out of that leaden forgetfulness. There is something like the memory of a fabulous transmutation in us; our fairy tales remember better than we do! And I have sought. I have sought through emptiness, negation, destruction; I have demolished like a vandal, hammered the idols like the invaders of Thebes, and now I was caught into this crowd of sculptured gods in a sort of devastation by fullness and flood—a breaking out into the great cosmic revelry. And something in me said no. A flame within, like a sword of light against this invasion: I did not belong to this temple! I belonged to no temple, no place, no country—I was from that light within, that is all. Or perhaps from a pure white minaret amongst the sands, with a cry up there. And it was Björn who had dragged me into the heart of that contradiction.
—We shall pass through the northern corridor.
He flung himself out of the crowd, I breathed again.
—They all pass through the southern corridor. There are four like that, immense, which go right round the sanctuary. One goes out through the eastern gate, by the sea.
We turned left into the northern corridor. Then I was thrown into another world without any transition. There was that stupendous, fabulous corridor with its sculptured pillars that plunged into the mists of time, almost as fantastic as those of Luxor, but a present, living Luxor, vibrating to the beat of gongs. Abruptly, I had the impression of disappearing. Somebody else emerged. Somebody who looked at all that, encompassed all that corridor and that tiny fragment of me there who walked... A great sudden look which opens out, and everything is different. The eyes are different, the perspectives are different; the rhythm is different, and yet extraordinarily intimate, as if one were entering into the heart of the thing. And all is enveloped by that look, or rather all is in that look: the world is no longer outside, it is no longer “looked at”, it is lived at once. It is within, one contains the whole scene. And it is no longer an isolated, flat scene; it is a deep inner scene, a series of scenes one inside the other, and as though seen one through the other; one enters into the archetype of the place, into its millenniums, its history, its living depth; and at the same time, one is that tiny character who walks in the old scene, or perhaps one should say a series of characters rolled into one, a multiplicity of stories in one, as if one were moving in several lives at the same time, several world strata—one single gesture contains thousands of gestures, a single step crosses many lives, one is like a living symbol; and behind, or around or above, one is that something which looks—which looks eternally,—the actor and the witness, the image and he who looks at the image; one has picked up the thread of an old legend again, a countless life, familiar and strange, as after a long journey elsewhere, and one goes on, one is that little image which walks under a great serene eye.
I was going there as if after centuries, and nothing had changed; I had lived elsewhere perhaps, it was a dream, and I found again the smooth coolness of the great flagstones under my feet. We were going together, Björn and I, clad in white and barefooted, in that gigantic corridor, three hundred metres long, which plunged on towards a breach of sunlight in the distance, amidst a hundred pillars like the timbers of a ship surmounted by motley leogriffes; we were walking on great flagstones smooth and cool like the centuries of the Nile, small and luminous hierophants under the acquiescent gaze of the dragons and the mystic circles painted in yellow ochre and brick-red as in the corridors of Thebes. I had left my shadow at the door with the noises of the world, I had left my names and my costumes, and I advanced with only that little flame of being in the hollow of my hands, with only that light coolness under my feet, my eyes almost closed, and as though borne along by the silence. I had lived in daylight, perhaps, and I had made so many gestures elsewhere, in other places, other countries, but everything had fused into that white flame, everything was concentrated into the rhythm of that single walk, and I held my breath as if I were going to hear the word once more and renew the gesture. I groped my way along in a great memory of gongs and of cinnamon towards a sunlit breach in the distance, a minute pilgrim on the backward march of time, I climbed the curve of the ages, of lost existences; vain and luminous lives under a great look, tale upon tale in the heart of that hull, and I clasped that little flame to my heart, that single drop of light at the end of a myriad centuries; and my light was almost singing. It was like a rhythm which rose with each step, which rose from the depths of time, from the depths of my vain efforts, from the depths of my million walks through forgotten plains, it was as smooth as those flagstones, it was endless and clear like the smile of the dead, and of all the dead that I had been, and everything had fused into that music: all the faces and the loves, all the prayers upon prayers, the temples, the thousands of temples where I had hoped, prayed, worshipped, and all the gods once loved, the mysteries upon mysteries; a single thread of music linked all my steps, a high white tension which sang, almost motionless by its lightning speeds of existence, a unique eternal vibration. I was going like a luminous blindman under sacred slabs, a very tiny image borne along by a smile, and everything was lived through in a flash, misery upon misery, the hopes and the despair, ah! what remained? A single love had ensnared all my eyes, veiling with light the unending race, the abysses after abysses, the deaths, the fruitless lives, and I was advancing as if to a sacring, I was walking towards a triumph over there which rose with every step, which rose from the depths of my soul in a great white rhythm, as if all the sorrows and sorrows of my lives were surging up together, purified, released, changed into their content of light. Oh! that pure song, that triumphant light at the end! A million tendernesses springing from a million sorrows, and which have known everything—darkness upon darkness, villainy and baseness and wisdom; which have committed every evil, every good, loved, hated and which are choked by too much understanding! A same look of love in the heart of shame, a nameless something which was always there and which recognizes everything: a fulgurating recognition like a million cries of, love returning from a million nights, a single cry of fusion at the end as if one were a living holocaust of all the sorrows of the world, an epitome of the earth, an infinitesimal image which carries a million men, ah! as if everything were going to burst at last and I were going to lay my forehead in the sun, open my hands and give back that flame for ever.
Björn pulled me.
We turned into an inner corridor.
Then we entered into a vast chant which resounded everywhere like bronze and swept into a maze of corridors and sculptured pillars surging back to strike again the high walls and fill everything with a full-toned flow, as powerful as the rumbling of the sea itself. We were at the doors of the sanctuary.
Björn went down the steps.
I was alone on the threshold and I followed that little white silhouette which was advancing into the forest of pillars. He stopped for one moment as if lost, his arms dangling, and very small under the high vault; he reascended the steps of the sanctum sanctorum like a granite island in the midst of the immense quadrilateral, and I was there, near him, looking on. Then everything became fixed, magnified; time widened, my eyes became immense, the minutest detail began to live intensely like an absolute—everything had a meaning, a total fullness, as though each thing contained a unique eternity—and nothing moved any more... I was there, looking on.
I had always been there and I knew all the gestures, was as old as the pillars and the flagstones, and I had so often looked at that little golden flame draw its circle round the sacred stones that I had perhaps become that stone myself, become that ancient immobile look which sees everything, understands everything, without passion and without a cry, which takes all these beings into its silence and dissolves the sorrows in its great sands of eternity—they cry out, they lament, they pass, while I am always there I Through my half-closed eyelids, my great peaceful look has already beheld the end of all these peoples, and this little flame which shines in my eyes is the reflection of their own eternity. I give what they give me, and I have all the eternity that they possess, my joy is at their feet, my peace smiles on their lips, and if they are hard, am I not made of their stone?
But will they see this light in their hearts, and the god who stirs here because he stirred there?
Then there was a slight drop in tension; that look fell back on Björn, on me, or rather it concentrated, narrowed down, it was like passing from one altitude, to another, from an expanse to a point of the expanse; and just at the moment of passing, I perceived a fugitive secret, as if one could pass freely from one to the other at will, come and go from the great look to the small one and live simultaneously in two worlds or two beings. And it was like the key of liberty. Just a small step back and everything widens, unifies, takes distances and depths of time—it is the great royalty outside everything; then a slight dip and everything condenses here or there, as a play, and if one lets oneself be caught up in the play, then there is nothing else but that little condensation, hard, separate, which sees nothing more, understands nothing more than a small crust of its existence, a small scene of its immense story. I came back to that small image, and there remained with me like a memory of all those depths—vague, fleeting, but familiar—as if every odour, every gesture, every person were ready to give me the thread of a multiple legend that had been lived. And then nothing, it had gone. I looked at Björn, my brother, who was repeating the rite, and I was alone under the high portal as though on the verge of a dream-landscape: was it he or I who moved under ancient pylons, and had I not lived the whole of that story also, here and there? If I had pushed a little, crossed that threshold it would have been enough: it was there at my finger-tips. Oh! I seem to remember an unforgettable life, I still know, I almost remember that rapture of sinking into a world of marvellous abandon where the little person is drowned in a haze of gold, and with a look from above one walks to a triumphal sacrifice—one passes elsewhere, everything has passed! And that cry of tremendous release as if one were changing one's species. I know, I have lived that; I almost remember a child who stood one day under other pillars: a golden disc had descended into my heart and everything had burst into flame—the pillars were aflame, the stone was aflame, everything was flaming as if the world were made of sun. I almost remember, it is there, if I went down those steps again it would be enough... And then, something said no: you will not pass. As if I had to forget. Oh! shall I never finish retracing the track and counting my pebbles of gold or blackness? And perhaps this too was a trap, perhaps one had to conquer one's luminous past as well as one's dark past, and go beyond both.
O Pilgrim You are the old-comer Of many a shadow And of some victories You come down to the task Wilfully forgetful Until the day when In the great tranquil Memory You can embrace The snare of ancient victories And the headiness of old shames
Then I sank into that chant. And it was there that I made my discovery...
It sprang from all sides at once, from a group of choristers squatting among the columns, then from another and still another, and each chanted his own recitative, each wave rolled over the other, swelled into the other, fused with the other, until the whole sanctuary was nothing but a great surge of song which vibrated, vibrated, struck the walls like a high tide of bronze, rolled into a maze of grottos and sculptured divinities, then returned to strike against the vault, while from the depths of the crypts, like an endless breaker, the same syllables rose: AUM namo namo namaha, AUM namo namo namaha... And that AUM was a marvel of full-toned power, a golden bronze which seemed to roll out from the depths of time, steeped in a million cries never lost, never extinct, and it was not even a prayer nor a call nor a chant, it was only a surge of being, only the voice of Man,—stark, grave, eternal,—like the voice of the sea, like the voice of the wind; a sound which told of man only, like the river tells of water, and perhaps it was the cry of the world through his lips, one day, under the migration of the stars when he stood up erect and alone to grasp his own mystery; and that first verb rose, making him man on the stony field of the world, seizing him of himself as the first stylet stroke had seized the aurochs on the walls of a cave. AUM namo namo namaha, AUM... I let that verb rise in me, let that mystery flow from the depth of my night until it filled my whole temple of flesh: I was that ancient man, alone and erect under the unnamed vault, I was that conjunction of obscure forces and there was something to articulate, something unique that I was, and it had no name, no language, but it was there like a child in the womb of my night; it was my secret of being, my own pure sound, my real name, “that” which had to be named in order to live, and if I did not find my name, I was like an inexistence, crushed under the stars, lost in the darkness with the cry of the jackals. And I leaned over that mystery, I listened to that something in the depths, that sound of my forest, that murmur of my waters, and deeper still, further inside, like the end of my breath, or perhaps the beginning of myself, a very tiny pulsation, a warmth which made a cry—it was like a swell of gold... and so tranquil: the tranquillity of what is. Just a tiny vibration, but solid! It was certitude itself, the rock, the warmth, the fullness of my being. It was like an adoration in the depths, for nothing, for everything, because that is and I am, that vibrates and I vibrate and everything vibrates—that and nothing but that, as simple as breathing, the warmth of the world, the rock, the full of tenderness, naked love; that only that I am, that cry which makes me be! And which makes everything be! A tiny breath in the depths which holds everything in its warmth, which coagulates the worlds, the stars, the beasts—which coagulates bodies and bodies in its song,—a unique cry of the eternity in things, a single syllable which makes be, AUM... Ah! what need had I of a temple! There, there is nothing to pray to: that itself prays, that itself vibrates, that sings ceaselessly; there, there is neither fear nor hope, nothing to expect, nothing to will: it is always there, it is always full; there, there is no more mystery, nothing to name, nothing to understand: it is all understood, everything is that and everything says that, everything is the obscure prison of that singing stream!
I opened my eyes, I looked at the temple. And for the third time something said no. It was obvious, as vibrant as that verb in my flesh, as clear as the blue of the sky overhead and over all the cages of men, whether gothic or exotic: oh l there is something which no temple, no Church can. seize, something that no being, no prophet, no god, no pope can hold whether he be from the East or the West; that no book, no mystery can imprison in its formula of stone or of blood, its letters of ink or of light; something greater than all the saviours of the world, all the interceptors and gaolers of the True; a Truth vaster than all the heavens, too simple for their greatness, too natural for their miracles—something which smiles everywhere, sings everywhere, which plays at priest, plays at pagan, which suffers with, the day, suffers with the night, and which still smiles beyond all the sorrows and all the days of the world, the sacred, or less sacred prisons: a very tiny golden vibration which tingles everywhere, breathes everywhere, which shines and shines in spite of all our light and darkness, all our Bastilles of the Spirit or of the flesh. And I say no and three times no!—I am not of this temple I am of no temple, no formula, no prison of the gods, or of men!
Then I opened my eyes, very wide this time. I took hold of that chant under my stone archway, that music of man under the stone, here and there, five thousand years ago or yesterday, in all languages, all hearts, all miseries black or white, under the gods and the devils—under, always under and a prisoner. And that chant in my heart did not pray, did not implore, was fearless and lawless; that cry of my heart struck, struck against that great wall like a bird in its cage... And suddenly, I saw—my eyes wide open I saw that surprising mystery; I would call it THE MECHANISM OF IMPRISONMENT IN LIGHT: they were chanting, like others in other places, under other vaults, and I saw the surf of their chant break against the walls, rebound from them and then fall back upon the choristers like a stream of electrum streaked with powerful, dark blue vibrant pulsations, which enveloped them, illumined them, encircled them with gold and filled the whole place with a mass of power like the very reverberation of their chant, the coloured translation of their own force of invocation—and it, was again their own sumptuous reflection which lit up walls as it lit up the eyes of their gods. And I, standing erect in there, alone under my stone archway, struck and struck against that vault, that prison of light, and the more I struck, the more I saw that dark blue pulsation swell with intensity, with force, and almost with hardness, as if I too were caught like those men, in the luminous snare of my own incantation, imprisoned in a sapphire ringed with gold like an insect in an amber bubble. Then I understood, I saw, I touched the secret of the Churches, that boxed illumination, that summit of light in a cage, that salvation in a bubble. And suddenly I let go of everything. I opened my hands, left my chant, left my force, my lights, my poor light in a cage and all my pompous reflections; I fell into a precipice of nothingness—the sudden sweetness of a lost child, torn away, carried off in I know not what triumphant cataclysm like a great thrust of the shoulders against the walls, as one passes into death; and I went through in an infinity of white light, white, white, free, free!... blanche, blanche, libre, libre!
The drums, the conches, the silver trumpets burst forth under the vault. Björn prostrated himself. The whole place was nothing but a sacred, dark blue, powerful precipitation—yes, divine, one could plunge into it and lose oneself in a triumph of light. It was the perfect magic spell, the irrefutable illumination, it was the powerful magic of the Churches. A luminous concentration of millenniums of prostration. The trumpets sounded a second time, then the high-pitched shenais. Then a third blast as I went out of the sanctuary. Their echo vibrated in my heart like a great signal of departure, like a sailing off into the open sea, as if I had walked and walked, worn out lives, millenniums, gestures, thousands of gestures and sorrows in all ages, all places, gone through infernos, illuminations, pyres upon pyres within, without, unending revelations and salvations—which all collapsed against the same wall. I had lived and suffered all that time in order to reach this one point, this white moment, and all was exorcised: the victories and the snares, the illuminations and the devils—I was going naked and free for what must be, like God's pagan,
The great dunes rippled in the sun in front of the portals of the sanctuary and flowed, so white, towards the sea, naked like my heart. And it was there that I felt like prostrating myself, without a vault overhead and without walls in front of me.
Then she passed in front of me, the little peacock-girl. She looked me straight in the eyes without blinking. Then she disappeared towards the dunes with her tray of offerings in her hands.
And that look flowed into me like the first smile of a new world... Et ce regard a coulé en moi comme le premier sourire d'un nouveau monde.
The pilgrims were praying to the sun, waist-deep in the water, the high dunes sloped down into the sea, so pure, so soft, like a white. Arabia; one felt like staying there for ever, watching the suns go by, without wanting anything but that smooth luminous whiteness which flowed into the rippleless water, that simple perdition without a murmur. Then the dunes curved inwards, formed a flat bay, a small beach of fine sand without a rock, and there were the green burst of the palm grove, the sound of conch-shells, the bronze bells, the same endless chanting under the high towers. Two worlds. And a little white beach... Et une petite plage blanche. My eyes wandered from the dunes to the palms, from the palms to the dunes and to the pilgrims, and I too wanted to fold my hands, to pray, to worship, I don't know—simply to worship. Perhaps that was the oldest religion: the first murmur of beauty in man because something suddenly opens in him and he wants to fold his hands, to pray, to sing—no matter what—to clothe in a verb or a colour that very tiny thing within which stirs and which would like to let flow one drop of its eternity. I stretched out my hands and everything was illumined that morning because I loved—the world is sometimes a glory which reveals itself; I folded my hands as if to love were primarily to recognize, and recognize everything: a totality of love which would leave nothing outside, not a single thing, because everything vibrates with the same thing, the same tiny thing within which recognizes itself everywhere—the world is a total unity which sometimes marvels at itself. And in that look there was no longer any “I” or others, nothing “other”: it was like an immensity of love which responded to itself everywhere, at every point, a swelling of being in which the heart seems to beat everywhere—there is no longer any centre, everything is the centre! No within, no without, everything communicates; no eyes to look and discover beauty and love; it is everything which loves, it is the bursting forth of a myriad looks as if one loved everywhere at once, a great snow of light in which every crystal is a fragment of me which sings: that sings, everything sings, it is the light which sings—the world is a great ever-singing rhythm, and sometimes the heart is aware of it.
O Tara,9 O Mother
A beggar stretched out his hands in the sun, he was alone on the little beach, he seemed to be begging to the sun.
O Tara Everything is thy will Thou art the all-will Thou, the doer of the action, O Mother10
He sang, and his words did not matter, they were in tune, they contained the music of the truth. All the dunes sang through that beggar.
It is Thou who doest O Mother And they say: it is I who do
And just when he pronounced “and they say”, there was something like a sadness; a small sudden rift, a second's pause, his voice broke. And all the suffering of the world was there... Was it really he or I who sang? I no longer knew, it was that little break of a second, that rift of the “I” in the totality, and a sudden acute suffering like a. suffocation: the “I” was the suffering, the intolerable suffering of not being able to contain that. An immensity of music which breaks, something which suddenly yawns, and one feels like throwing oneself into it as if nothing and no one in the world could fill that hole.
O Tara, O Mother...
And I say: have you heard that little note which breaks within, that sudden cleft of infinity in a second? There is one second in a life, one tiny little second that counts... une toute petite seconde qui compte.
—Well! crystal-man?
He placed his hand on my shoulder. Everything rushed back into this body: an instantaneous shrinkage, a second of suffocation—we are habitually suffocated.
—Did I frighten you?
And just as. I was re-entering my body, on the way, in a flash, I thought I saw a total Person who was us, Björn, I, innumerable, vast—a Body, a single Body,—and to say “I” there in that bit of a shell was as absurd as taking oneself for a coccinella on a white beach.
My presence of mind returned, though it was more like an absence.
—Did you get a sun-stroke or what?
He shook me. The sea-water trickled down from his flaxen locks, he looked like a Nordic god.
—Ah! brother, how beautiful life is. I could devour it!
It was Prince Björn, alive, greedy, childlike.
—Come, let's sit in the shade, I am going to tell you the secret.
Everything darkened. Then Balu's words came back to me, clear, clear, crystalline, with that little sound of obviousness “He is going to die.”
—Yes, the secret, my secret, come.
And he drew me towards the dunes.
It was so absurd that “secret”, it sounded so false here. I looked at Björn, Prince Björn who was towelling himself, and then at that other who seemed to be stuck on him, “the man of secrets”—perhaps it was that, Björn's death?
—When I was in Zinder with Erik...
But I no longer heard him, I was intent on the shadow following Björn; if I found out... perhaps I could save him?... What did it mean, “death”?—It is there all the time, one carries it around with oneself, but at what moment does it become death? Yes, the moment... I was intent upon it, as if I were going to catch it, that moment, that second when one veers into death—Why? What was there in Björn which called death? A man dies only because he calls death. The false Björn?...
It was a revelation.
I stopped dead in the sand and everything became clear, precise: Björn's violet shadow, his tanned back with little drops of sea-water on it, all the physical details were magnified, engraved luminously, and then that piercing look which sees through: a world in the sweep of a microscopic clear second. And at that moment there was nothing to understand, it was understood, it was the living light containing all explanations without a shadow of explanation—afterwards, the thread has to be pulled and unrolled but it is no longer exactly that, it is an approximation, a translation into a foreign language. A white little second—which could, far, far below, create pictures or music, events, philosophies, but it had already become petrified and fallen back into the box half dead. And what I saw at first was a luminous death, as it were, all white, a death which was not an anti-life—we understand nothing of death because we see it as black, “against”, the enemy, a negation, the defeat... The defeat of what? And I saw, from the other side, a black death, that kind of anti-self which comes and sticks to us, the false Björn—”death”. But a death which comes and sticks to compel us to be ourselves, the true ourselves! It is the guardian of the true life. And each time one goes over to the wrong side, the self of death takes the place... le moi de mort prend la place—it takes the place, not in order “to kill”, but to compel us to re-establish the true. Death: it is the incapacity to re-establish the true. It was luminous. And at the same time, simultaneously, in that white second, I looked, and there was no death anywhere! Not an atom of death, no shadow, no negation, no anti-self, it was utter light—an absolute positiveness of everything. Everything flows, towards that, for that, irresistibly, like these dunes, towards that total Self where death is no more because we have become totally true. And in a single sweep, all the whites and blacks in the world disappeared into thin air, the “for” and “against”—there is no death! There is no against, no “anti” anything at all! Everything goes there, everything flows towards that, through all the “for” and all the “against”, there is nothing but light! There has never been anything but light—we are completely outside the issue, we attach words to something which does not exist, there is only That which exists, That which becomes, That which grows, That which moves towards the precipice of That, and even if we were for our “against” and against our “for”, we would go there just the same, exactly where we should go, in this language or any other. Indeed the world escapes us completely, except for a second by chance we do not know the language.
—Wait, we shall sit down here.
And I returned to that kind of darkness we call day.
—Every morning I come here.
There was a tiny building at the foot of the dunes. At first I did not make out what it was. Then I realised that it was a temple, quite a, small granite temple, microscopic, hardly taller than, Björn, surrounded by a miniature peristyle with four sculptured columns. The dunes dropped behind it like a great awning, the steps were almost buried in sand. There was not a sound, not a breath of air—only the drone of the chanting in the distance and the frail voice of the beggar:
Then a strange impression took hold of me while I was going up those steps, something seemed to sweep away my light, a new layer of being which surfaced—it welled up incessantly that morning, like worlds which came and burst one after another like coloured bubbles, each one with its own rhythm,—and it was not a feeling of anguish, it had no raison d'être because I was as tranquil as the dunes, but it was very deep, a sort of throbbing, like a child who discovers a deserted house, or as in a dream when one comes upon a strange, forgotten place, suddenly recognized, intimately recognized: it is there. And I knew that kind of emotion well, it was always accompanied by an odour... One day, I will have to understand.
I peeped in through the tiny doorway. A ray of sunlight fell on a sacred stone, completely bare: a rock. There were fresh flowers on the ground, a little bowl of red powder; incense was burning, there was an Egyptian atmosphere in that tiny place, and everything was dark except for the stone. And just as I was about to come out, I saw on the ground, in a corner, leaning against a wall... Batcha—Batcha, one cheek resting on her knees, quietly asleep.
I did not breathe a word and went back to join Björn.
He was silent. He was squatting under the peristyle, facing the north, looking at the palm-grove. The sea was only ten metres away from us like a dark blue lake; the great dunes flowed into the deep like turquoise. There was not a bird, no rolling of waves; only that incessant chanting, and that strange odour which stirred me. Then that solitary voice again, slightly shrill, almost derisive in the midst of the sands:
O Tara, O Mother Thou art the guide Thou art the tree in the seed Thou art the mango and the shade of the mango-tree And the winding of the path under my feet As Thou goest, so go I
I listened in the silence; I was as smooth and naked as the sea and I seemed to hear far, far away, the murmur of another story, the same story always, but more hazy, and which had that odour and that song. It was like a memory in the distance, hemmed in by sand and granite, a day similar to this one when things bad begun: a beginning of the story, a moment charged with power which came back from life to life, like wave upon wave on the same beach. Ah! we return from more than one island and we cross this little beach today, coming from where, which lost archipelagos? It was like a door opening deep down with an odour of sand and a song, something which suddenly yawned; and life was swept away in one breath as if one had lived beside the point, all the time beside the point, pretending to bustle on some solidity, and then one comes to the fact: it is there—there is nothing to see and everything is charged with a presence. Björn also felt something; he remained silent, he looked at the dunes, the palm-grove and again at the dunes.
—Nil, sometimes I feel that we know nothing at all. We think we have the secret, and then... we are futile.
With a wave of his hand, he pointed to the dunes.
—One has to fight, otherwise one is finished... it means dissolution.
He clasped his arms round his legs and set his jaw. And I remembered myself in that train, squatting in the same way, jogging along in my rocky desert.
—Nil, what are we doing here, tell me? Sometimes, I no longer know what I mean, it's like a story I have invented and then it's all wrong... It was so simple when I was a child: there was the cry of wild geese on the lake—you understand, the call of the ganders—I used to stay there, hidden in the rushes and listen for hours... The call of the ganders, that I understand well. And the mists of May, the floating sky, and then that call... et puis ce cri. All the rest... I have sailed, walked, changed colour and jobs, I have done... I don't know what—it's as nothing. It is like an invention, it doesn't exist. But the cry of wild geese... that exists.
He laid a finger on his cheek. He was such a charming Björn!
—Well, this is perhaps your secret?
He looked at me uncomprehendingly. Then his face hardened again, it was that kind of fierce determination which made him so pathetic.
—It doesn't matter, one has to hang on, that's all. Besides, I am on the eve of discovering. Even if this eve comes to another six months, I am drawing near. And after all...
He swept away the sand on the steps.
—...After all, it's the same thing; what I am seeking here, is what I was seeking there; it is the same but it is an active dream, you understand, a cry which has power, not the cry of those stupid geese. Listen...
He had become enthusiastic once more; he was back in his dream again.
—When I met Guruji on the lagoon, one day, during the season of the birds, I said to him: “I know how to call the birds; I know the cry of the Arctic terns, the cry of the fulmars, the cry of the coots; I call them and they reply...” Do you know what he said to me—it was my first revelation: “If you call the gods, they reply also.” He said: “When I call “Gorom”, you turn round, there is a reply—everything replies, if you know how to call. But one must know the name.” Everything replies, that's the thing, Nil! Well, the mantra is the cry of things, it is their name. It's like the cry of the ganders: one must know how to call.
—And so, what do you want to call?
—Why, everything! Listen, I'll explain to you, it's tremendous...
—If it's tremendous, then I am suspicious.
—Oh! you... Listen, everything has a cry: water, fire, people, the sap in the palms, even stone, everything. Each thing has a cry, a true name. Well, that cry is the sound produced by the movement of the forces which constitute the thing—we are a field of forces, we are made of a thousand lines which imprison forces; they say “atoms”, they say “molecules” or I don't know what, but that's only one way of seeing, it's a system of notation. There are many systems of notation physical, chemical, religious, musical, poetical, each has its system. And actually, each one tries to call one species of things, that is, to master or to reproduce one thing. But the scientists, when they want to reproduce the thing, they need a tremendous mechanism; the musicians also try to reproduce, the priests as well. But if one knows the sound which constitutes the thing—the stone or the fire, the god or the devil—one produces it automatically, you understand? To name is to have the power. Well, the Tantrics have the secret of sounds. They have the power.
—It is magic.
—But everything is magic! What is not magic? We are all manipulating forces without knowing it. It's only a question of choosing one's kind of magic, the one which has the most power, the one which makes the most beautiful music in the world.
—And what do you want to “produce” in fact?
—But everything, I tell you! Mastery.
—And why?
He was flabbergasted for a moment, his face twisted as if he were going to be angry, but he recomposed himself.
—I shall give you an example. It is I who look after Guruji's house (by the way, I'm late, I shall get scolded!), I clean the house, I do the shopping...
—It's you who pay?
Björn was taken aback.
—Yes, of course... I bring his wood also. One day returning home, I remembered suddenly that there were no more matches; I ran to the bazaar, I bought some matches; I went back, Guruji was in meditation... his lamp was lit. There was not a single match in the house!
—So what! One can get a box of matches in the bazaar for six paise... It's perhaps quicker than learning the fire-mantra, no?
I thought he was going to explode.
—But what do you want, crystal-man? Do you want to destroy me, or what? Is it that that you want?
There was panic in Björn's eyes.
—I am nearing the goal, I am on the verge of victory, I... Then I knew that I had put my finger on Björn's malady, the point to be demolished—the point of death. And all my life I have asked myself whether I was wrong to want to demolish that... I do not know, I no longer know. It was his life and it was what prevented him from living, the two together, as if the surest point were also the most deadly point. Sometimes, I wonder if the summit of a man is not his innermost abyss. It is the same thing, the reverse and the obverse: the mortal malady and the salvation together. And perhaps it is not a mortal malady, but only the means of liberating oneself from an obsolete summit.
—You don't understand anything...
He was so pathetic, this Björn, he wanted so much to convince me. Or so much to convince himself?
—To light the fire is nothing, there are all kinds of powers. One can combine the mantras, mix the sounds; one can cure, one can kill, induce illness, integrate, disintegrate, change the course of thoughts—one can call the gods, fill life with a superhuman force. It is a chemistry of sounds, a concrete poetry: one calls. People are constantly calling with their thoughts; they call sickness, death, catastrophes; they call all kinds of evil spells while going down a boulevard, they are covered with flies—so one calls the pretty birds from the invisible world... les jolis oiseaux de l'invisible.
He was so golden in the sun; and I almost saw his birds. But it had no substance, it was mere dream-froth. Behind, oh! behind, I felt, I heard something else which made no sound, no froth, which flowed, flowed so simply, so clearly, which was like the true substance of the world—oh! no marvellous invisibilities but a greater visibility, something which swelled with truth the smallest grain of sand.
The shadow came back over his face.
—The trouble is that one needs a lot of time. Five hours of japa a day—japa means the repetition of the mantra,—one hundred thousand times this mantra...
—But if you know the sound...
—But I know it t Only that's not enough, one must “awaken” the mantra. One must “charge” it. It's like an accumulator that you charge through repetition, and then suddenly, it awakens, one establishes contact. Then one is master of the force, it is enough to name it, it is there. But there are many forces, you understand, many different “gods”, that's the difficulty. For the last three years I have been going from one mantra to another, and then... He tells me that I too am in the process of “charging” myself and that one day I shall reach a saturation point. Of course...
—You are completely beside the point, Björn.
—And you, you get on my nerves.
—One sound is enough.
—Which sound?
—Listen, Björn, you want to call the gods, but let me tell you one thing: for five thousand years now we have been calling the gods and it has not changed anything in the world. In fact it is very simple, you can have all the visions in the world, you can make all the gods appear under people's noses but finally they will not be more dazzled than by their television or their cinema. And I tell you that if the world had the power of vision, it would not be more advanced than before: they would press their psychic button and treat themselves to an hour of invisible cinema; then they would go and drink a glass of beer and would be as bored as before. Because nothing changes so long as something inside does not change!... Björn, the miracle of the world is not at all tremendous, on the contrary, it is something very simple—so simple that one does not notice it. That is the secret. All the rest, as you say, does not exist, it's just noise and fuss, dust thrown in people's eyes. They are all theatrical: your Tantric, the priests, the Churches, all of them—they are barn-stormers of the Spirit.
Björn was as white as a sheet.
—I have been working for three years, I have staked everything on it...
I do not know what passed in his eyes, he stared at me, it was cold like a knife. Then, emphasising each word, his steel-blue look holding me like an insect under a microscope, he said.
—You need a catastrophe.
And he fell silent.
There was a blank in me, a second's pause.
Then a tiny wave broke on the beach with a purling of shells.
I was suddenly far away, completely outside the story, placed there for a moment on that beach, as if awakened from a dream. And then that intense look which grasped the slightest little thing with a fulgurating intensity, that glance as from another planet—ten times, a hundred times that look opened in me, and each time it was the same: a second of eternity which rents the décor, and the soul looks... l'âme regarde. Everything is seized instantaneously, without the least perturbation, the least emotion, seen as in a snowy silence, and it moves no longer, it is photographed for all eternity. And like that, here and there, small ineffaceable pictures, little bursts of white or black, on a limitless road which goes one knows not where, nor why, beyond this life.
That little wave, I think I shall still listen to it even after centuries; and I shall no longer know what it means; but it will stir in me like that odour of sand, like that distant chanting, that turquoise sea or the shadow of the peristyle, or the white cascade of little buried steps which no longer lead to a temple from here, to a present-day beach, a moment of this sun or this creek, but to a vast uninterrupted story in which I have walked, prayed, suffered, listened in the same way one day to an identical little wave which came to whisper on the beach in a purling of sea-shells.
—And your catastrophe, you shall have it.
He banged his fist on the steps.
Yes, I know, I was waiting for that thing, that “catastrophe”, that old Threat. But what?... I looked at the beach, the dunes, the pilgrims at their prayers; everything seemed to me so. simple, so luminous; where was the catastrophe in that? It did not exist, it was not, it was an impossibility, an invention of those who thought themselves outside that... And suddenly I saw the illusion—the formidable illusion; it was like two worlds, separated by a stupendous abyss, and yet it was one and the same world, one and the same substance—luminous, totally luminous, without an interstice of shade, without a rift of pain, it was that and nothing but that, immortal, glorious, untouched for ever by any breath of pain—and then a wrong look and everything tilts over: it is the antipodes, night, death, suffering, the total contradiction of that, uncertainty bordering on terror—the Threat, everything crumbles beneath one's feet. And the Threat was not the possibility of catastrophe or death, it was the fact of being outside that, or rather of thinking oneself to be outside that—everything was threatened because it was not that. One restores the look, and everything disappears; it no longer exists, it never existed I And yet, it is the same thing, the same world with the same events, the same “accidents”: on the one hand, the accident does not exist; on the other, everything is an accident, an inexorable accident. Just a wrong look and everything is reversed: a sudden swarm of snakes—Destiny.
In the distance, the beggar was still singing:
O Tara, O Mother Thou hidest the lotus in the mud And the lightning in the clouds To some thou givest light To others thou makest choose the precipice O Tara, Tara As thou wiliest me to move, so I move
And I wondered whether that change of look could also change fate, cancel out the catastrophe?
Then everything faded, there was only Björn in front of me, his face twisted, and a small self of shadow who looked.
—One day I shall see the gods.
He got up. I caught him by the arm:
Something had to be done, he was going to die. I could feel that death, it was hanging over him!
—Björn...
He avoided my eyes.
—There is only one thing that saves...
—One day, I shall receive the initiation.
He repeated it like an obstinate child, and I was full of anguish, I could do nothing for him. Anger seized me.
—He has promised, he said I shall receive the initiation.
—He is pulling your leg, he is exploiting you.
—You are lying, you have no right to.
—The right...
The image of the Sannyasi reappeared before my eyes. I saw myself again running behind him in that street by the port, with that anger, that desire to hit and hit until he fell to the ground—and I shall spit on him. It was as vivid as if it were yesterday. And Björn in front of me was like myself, the same story—there is only one story, one single story, one single drama in all men!
—Björn, there is only one catastrophe in the world: one is a slave—and one becomes free. Or one dies... il n'y a qu'une catastrophe au monde: on est esclave—et on devient libre. Ou on meurt.
—But I am free!
—Oh! Björn, I don't know whether it's because I have suffered so much at their hands, but these teachers make me vomit, they and all their initiations, it is like a nightmare that I have lived through, it is engraved, branded into my flesh...
Then, the whole story came back to me in a flash, the image, the scene; it rose from far, far away in my memory, with that weight of obscurity and threat—oh! the greater the light becomes, the more darkness I discover!
—The last image of a dying man, you know, something which is fixed and which one takes away with one: that image.
Björn looked at me, amazed.
—I saw that a long time ago, several times, in dreams—each time the same dream—but it's more than a dream, it is a lived memory, something which must have happened in a certain life... And it is always the same man, powerful, a shaven head, his body bare, flashing eyes, and then that blue light around him—my so-called “master”—and I am standing there before him, powerless, in his grip, a puny little thing which he looks at—oh! that look... And I spit my liberty in his face. A battle, without a word, without a gesture, there, round a fire. And that curse which he throws upon me. Then it is as if I were going to hang myself. That is the image... Björn, it is dreadful. And they are strong, they are powerful, they are “full of light”, oh!—I spit upon them, I vomit them up, them and all their initiations, I want no more of it!
Björn looked at me, completely staggered, and I was as staggered as he was in the face of that totally forgotten image rising from I knew not where, and which came back in a flash with a great power of repressed pain and revolt. And there was a sequel to that “dream” which I never told Björn, that was almost as abominable as the rest: I was wandering in a forest looking for someone—someone I had absolutely to find again, who was my salvation, my deliverance—I don't know who, but it was “she”, and I was searching and calling, it was a terrible distress. And then... no one. And then I was going to hang myself.
—You dreamed it.
—Perhaps. But if it is a dream, then nothing in life is more alive than that dream—what do we know of the prolongation of things, Björn? In two directions we dream, towards the past and the future, and everything goes together. If one can seize the image, one can defend oneself, one can beat it back again and again and prevent it from returning. I met you also in dream, in a train, before having met you here.
—Humbug. He is not like that, Guruji is not like that.
—No, I can smell him round you... Listen Björn, I shall tell you, they are the charlatans of the Truth. They will, show you fireworks, they will show you gods, devils, angels, they will show you supernatural powers, but I don't need the supernatural: I need a truer “natural”; I don't need miracles: I need the Truth—the pure, simple, real Truth—one single password is enough: That... Ça. And to find that mantra, there is no need for teachers: one day it wells up by itself because one has called it so much; one day it is there like a friend who leaves you no more, like a country in which one is born for good, an air in which one can breathe... un air où on respire... Björn, the sign of the supreme Truth is that it is within the reach of everybody. What is highest is also nearest...
Then, something really crashed on my head.
—... While to find all these miraculous, shimmering small truths, intermediaries are necessary. And the smaller they are, the more miraculous they are.
Björn was struggling with himself in front of me, I thought I was getting through to him.
—It is simple, very simple Björn, it is all there, you have everything that is needed. A single password is enough.
He recoiled as if he were afraid, his forehead touched the top of the peristyle.
He pointed to the dunes:
—That is where your supreme mantra leads, to dissolution.
He went down a step.
—As for me, I'm going there, towards men.
He turned his back on me and went away towards the palm-grove.
Everything relapsed into silence.
A beating, droning silence.
I nearly ran after him to take him by the arm. But I stayed rooted to the spot, empty, my head battered by that chaos—where was it, my beautiful Truth? It was like a swarm of wasps around, me, the whole light of truth buzzed away by those wasps, and so futile! Not for one moment had I helped Björn, nothing had happened between us, nothing had got through: just noise, fracas, wind. Each one draws the circle of his thought and sits right in the middle of it like a castaway on an island. And I saw this Björn seated on his little island, and the others and everybody else, and I on my little island of truth—and these were all little true falsehoods, little commodities of one day, little habitable mole-hills scooped out from something else, which was neither truth nor falsehood... which was That... immense. A totality of That. Not a falsehood anywhere, not a rift of a lie! Falsehood lay in seeing only one point of the whole. And all the time I wanted to jump into that whole—my country, my vast light, my rippleless freedom. Ah, I can land on their islands and play the savage for a moment, I can go from island to island and build pretty castles, but I am not really there! Hardly have I drawn a circle around me, than I want to jump out of it and shout: “Yes-No!” “it-is-true-it-is-false!” everything is true! But leave me alone, let me breathe the air of the open sea, I need only to be in the vast, only to breathe the great bowlful, I have finished playing the savage!
Then I swept everything away, cut off the current.
And I was king everywhere.
—Well, you were far away.
She was sitting on the steps, leaning against one of the columns of the peristyle like a round-cheeked Moghul miniature.
—Oh! Batcha, you are there...
She looked at me quietly, steadily, her head on her knees, her arms hugging her legs; a long pomegranate-coloured skirt fell down to her feet. She was white and serious, as white as Balu was bronzed, a golden white, with that black plait falling over her breast. And that little red flame in the middle of her forehead which gave her an undefinable look... Yes, “Batcha, she is the queen”.
—Did you sleep well?
No reply.
—How is your peacock, Shikhi?
She continued to scrutinise me at leisure, but there was no curiosity; I had the feeling that she was bending over me as over a plant whose odour was unknown to her... I must have been a variety of cactus.
—Hey! Batcha, of what do I smell, the crocodile or the cactus?
She smiled slightly.
—You are too restless.
That was all.
Then I fell silent and I entered into her eyes as if it were a game... And I did enter. It was even the first time I had entered into someone, there was no barrier, it was welcoming: a great velvet door and then one sinks into something very sweet and tranquil, oh! so tranquil, like a lake, one sinks down...
I began to cough. It was over.
It was I who could not hold out, I seemed to be perturbed. She had an imperceptible smile which wrinkled the tip of her nose, I thought she was going to say something. Then she closed her eyes as though she were carrying me into her inmost depths. She was so perfectly still, like a little grebe in a paddy-field; nothing stirred, not even a ripple; I was like a mass of noise compared to that sweetness.
Finally I could not hold out:
—What is that red sign on your forehead? You are not Tantric by any chance?
She opened her eyes very wide feigning fear.
—Oh! baba! What are you saying!...
—Is it just a decoration?
This time she was scandalised. She pointed to the little temple with her chin:
—It is the blessing of the god.
—The god? Which god?
She heaved a sigh, put her head back on her knees. Decidedly I was asking foolish questions.
It depends on the days.
And she started humming:
I am the bird of the forest I talk with the spring I go from leaf to leaf
—Oh! Batcha, can you sing?
And I laugh Those who catch birds The charming princes cannot catch me... Nor sorrow
—It is Mâ who taught me, she sings all the songs. She comes from very far away, from the north, near Kailash. There is a lake there, with blue lotuses... What is it like farther away? Tell me? Is there snow?
—Oh! I...
—Yes, do tell me.
—I have forgotten.
—You have forgotten?... You are like Bholanath. I often go into the country on the other side.
—And what do you do there?
—I stroll about, I go adventuring, it is so lovely! Yesterday, it was a completely red island with birds... une île toute rouge avec des oiseaux, oh!... there was one golden bird which swooped down upon me... I was so happy, I cried out Appa! Appa! look.
Her eyes were sparkling, she was rosy like a peach.
—...But we are quite well here, also.
She smiled so charmingly, I was completely bewitched.
—Besides, I love the gods.
—Because they love me.
It was irrefutable.
—Have you seen them?
—Sometimes. When I am very quiet, I can hear.
—They speak?
She nodded her head condolently...
—Not with words, of course... It is like the wind in the dunes. It comes from far beyond. And then it changes. Sometimes it is sweet; sometimes it is strong, sometimes it is like a fluttering of wings... But it carries: we go here, we go there, we are driven, it arranges everything very well. We meet.
And just at that moment, a big wild thistle seed rolled from the dunes, tumbled, fell on Batcha, slipped through my fingers and... was gone!
Batcha burst into laughter.
—You see!
—What does it mean?
—It means they are amusing themselves well!
—They?
—Oh! how complicated you are!
She heaved a sigh.
—And then there are so many stories also... Does the great Goddess of your country too play the veena?
—The goddess... There is no goddess in my country.
—No Goddess...
She seemed amazed.
—Then you know nothing.
She scrutinised me again:
—You have forgotten, you are like Bholanath.
I must have looked baffled.
—He is my favourite God, the supreme god. Oh! he is very nice, he loves everything: the gods, the demons, the wicked, the good, all... He is a beggar.
—A beggar, the supreme god!
—Yes, he begs. He forgets everything. He even forgets that he is very rich...
That little phrase... I think if I live for a hundred years it will follow me like one of those secrets to which one has not the key.
She put her head back on her knees.
—Yet you are not as in my dream.
—In your dream?
—You were passing, I saw you. You were handsome. But you were not dressed as you are now, and then you were taller also. Now you look...
She hesitated a moment, sniffed a little, wrinkling the tip of her nose.
—But it doesn't matter, you are nice all the same.
She smiled at me, her face became round like a moon. I was completely mystified.
—Taller... Taller than what? Have I shrunk? What an imagination you have, Batcha.
—Imagination, what is that?
—It means to see what does not exist.
—If it does not exist, one does not see! How funny you are! How can you see what does not exist?... Balu told me that your name was nothing-at-all, does that exist?... est-ce que ҫa existe, ҫa?
She laughed and laughed. A delighted laugh which rippled across the dunes with a kind of impertinence.
—You are my dream here, Mr. Nothing-at-all, you do not exist
Her cheeks puffed up with suppressed laughter, she shook her head with a kind of commiseration:
—You, really!... And Appa, do you think he carves nothing at all?
—But Batcha...
Truthfully, I felt pinned down. I sensed I was out of my depth; I no longer knew very well on which side I was, this one or the other, and perhaps the frontiers did not exist at all. I looked at Batcha, at the beach, at life with a sort of wonder: and what if we are carving here an image from elsewhere, like Bhaskar-Nath? What if we were all in the process of carving the image of a god that we were elsewhere, or of a demon? The whole of life was like an image, everything is an image which becomes real little by little, inhabited by its model. And sometimes one carves nothing, one is just a piece of wood.
—You are a strange little girl, Batcha, who are you?
—I am Bhaskar-Nath's daughter.
She drew herself up to her full height, like Balu, but she was taller than Balu.
—And you?
—You see.
It was categorical, I was a complete idiot.
—As for you, you understand nothing.
That was settled. And what bewildered me was the strength there was in that sprout of a woman, her presence; with Björn, with men, one could escape elsewhere: not with her. She held you there, she was present, one was obliged to be there. In fact, woman is the presence of the world.
—Batcha, tell me your dream?
But she no longer felt like it. She looked at the beach, the dunes; the sand-storm was blowing already, tiny dark blue ripples covered the sea... “You understand nothing”—Björn had also said that to me. What was it then that I did not understand? What was closed inside? There was nothing closed! As soon as I got out of that species of me, it was the vast expanse, the great, immediate ease, absolute understanding. And I did not care at all about that bit of me, it was a kind of monkey-cage to which it was necessary to return in order to eat, to think, to speak—and, in addition, all that in monkey-language.
—Here, look at that one.
She took a small pebble, threw it gently on the beach in front of the steps: a crab scampered full tilt towards its hole. Then I noticed that there were hundreds and hundreds of little greyish-white crabs... It came out a minute later, pushed up its eye like a periscope, turned it in all directions—no danger—and it began once more to scuttle here and there. Batcha went off into peals of laughter.
—The world is really funny. Do you think the gods also throw little pebbles at us like that to see what happens?
This time, it was I who laughed.
—They send very impertinent little Batchas.
—They send dreams, birds. I always see birds.
—As for me, I am rather inclined to see snakes.
—Oh! no! the gods don't send snakes. It is the demons. The gods send birds to eat the snakes. Shikhi kills all the cobras, he is the enemy of the demons.
Batcha remained thoughtful a moment.
—After all, the demons are the brothers of the gods, so... Really, they amuse themselves together.
—Do they amuse themselves by eating each other?
—Oh! they pretend to, there are always cobras, always Shikhis; there are always gods, always demons.
—In short, we are the only ones who really get ourselves eaten. She looked at me.
—Eaten?
—Yes, we die.
—You mean we are burned... there?
She made a gesture towards the other side of the dunes.
—But look here, one does not die! One goes strolling elsewhere. How funny you are!... Appa said so. And then we come back. So we play, too. And you, were you dead before you arrived here?...
Suddenly Batcha's face changed, she looked at me for a second with an overwhelming intensity:
—... Only, we suffer because we are not together.
There was such distress in that small voice.
—One must not go away, one must be together, always together!... ensemble, toujours ensemble!
She repeated those words, hammering them out with a kind of savage energy. But then to whom was she speaking?
—It is like my dream...
Then in a single movement she turned towards me and seized me with her large black eyes and it was like a cry:
—O Stranger, why do you bring me these ugly thoughts, I have not asked to know you! I do not want to be hurt!
I made a movement to calm her, she recoiled angrily:
—Don't touch me!
And suddenly, through that flame of anger, for one second, I entered into her. And I was close, very close to that child, intimate, strangely intimate, I wanted to put my arms round her shoulders, stroke her hair, console her, as though I had really hurt her.
—But look here, Batcha, what is the matter, tell me?
Her breast was heaving under her blouse.
—Tell me, explain.
—I don't know.
She looked up at me with a sort of incomprehension. Then she started to speak in a colourless, almost neutral voice:
—I met you at the gate of the temple. You seemed quite tall, I looked at you. Then I came here and made a puja. I offered flowers to the god. But I was thinking of you... It was not right. I slept... There I saw you.
She sniffed and made a funny little grimace which puffed out her cheeks.
—It was like a road... but wide, very wide, with a lot of sun, like the beach here, but it was water. It was water like sand, I don't know how to explain—it shone a lot. And you were passing by. You passed without seeing me as if you were crossing this beach there, but it was wide, as wide as the sea and shining everywhere. And you were taller than you are now, but white like the pilgrims from the north. You were not dressed as you are now either, as though... as though you had the robe of a sannyasi, orange. But it was you, I recognized you well. I even called you—three times I called... Oh! I shouted your name, but you did not reply, you heard nothing—you went on walking and walking, farther and farther, you were becoming smaller and smaller like a picture, as if you were going to melt in the distance, and then all this sand was shining, and I said: il va être trop tard, il va être trop tard—it will be too late, it will be too late! Again and again I called you, I looked at you so hard! I must not stop looking at you: if I stopped looking at you for one minute, it would be finished, you would have disappeared altogether... and I was going to die. It was so strong...
Batcha pressed her breast.
—When you became so small, I had such a pain here, I woke up...
I looked at Batcha. I was astounded.
And I saw the picture, it was alive, poignant, it reverberated deep within me with an intense light—the acute light of true things, as if the picture were already there within me and that were the shock of recognition: yes that was it. Yes, but what, “it”?... And I knew that shock well, it is the knock of the already there—oh! one is only touched by what is already there, all the rest simply does not exist, it passes by, it is the nebulous vision of things which pass by. I could see that Sannyasi, I felt him, he was alive, I almost had his weight on my shoulders, and then Batcha's look, her very small voice: “Il va être trop tard, trop tard”—”It will be too late, too late,” just a poignant little vibration. Oh! that alarming sound of things which are about to take shape—there are sounds which contain a world just as a flash of lightning contains the whole picture, and perhaps it was the same thing in another language: the music of the picture; there are sounds of darkness, violet sounds, poisonous yellow vibrations like the sliding of a snake under the leaves, and little sounds which sing like the blue-tinged frost of a victory. But this was dark red and poignant: il va être trop tard, trop tard—it will be too late, too late... I knew that well, it was familiar, already heard... Then, suddenly, I saw a hill of red flowers rise up, an island, a promontory... And then Mohini: it will be too late, Nil, too late—il va être trop tard, Nil, trap tard.
I understood nothing. I was completely stupefied. I heard only that voice, that very small voice, and I saw that dazzling sea before me like a mirror of ice and the shadow of the Laurelbank in the distance. A whole world which came back in a flash as if from the depths of a past life: the house, the sitars, the big aviary, the tulsi which smelt like wild mint, the monsoon, the flowers flying away like a cloud of red birds. Il va être trop tard, Nil, trop tard...
What could it mean? What had Batcha seen?... An image of the past? But I was not a Sannyasi, I was not dressed in orange robes. Moreover Batcha had nothing to do with Mohini. An image of the future?... But why suddenly that Mohini? It was all over, dead and buried! And I could still hear that same small voice: “Are you not Nil-Aksha, the blue-eyed one... I tell you, what is happening today was begun thousands and thousands of years ago and will continue for thousands and thousands of years to come.”
Batcha looked at me.
Suddenly an idea crossed my mind:
—Batcha, tell me, you say that you called me three times: three times, I called you. Whom did you call, by what name?
She tried to remember.
—It's true... I don't know now. But it was you, it was your name, your true name.
She looked at me mischievously.
—It was not nothing-at-all.
Then she smiled so charmingly. And before I could understand what was happening, she made a face at me, her eyes shut, and she stuck out her tongue from the corner of her mouth.
—Batcha!...
Then she leaped up, caught up her skirt in both hands and fled like a deer across the sands.
I was about to leave the caravanserai when Balu fell headlong upon me, with his hair tousled, his forehead covered with sweat, his satchel under his arm.
—So, little frog, what's happening to you?
—With the king of the cobras.
My reply was stupid. Balu was furious he stamped about, pulling me by the arm.
—Where is he, but where is he then? Something has happened to Björn.
—But look here Balu...
—I tell you that something has happened to Björn.
—Perhaps he is at Guruji's?
—No, not at this hour.
—He did not have lunch with me, he may have been detained by his Guruji.
—Oh! him... he doesn't give anything to eat.
And he spat on the ground.
—It's his fault, everything is his fault, I hate him.
Balu was grey with anger. He looked to the right, to the left, his nose in the air as if he were on the scent of a trail. Then he grabbed my arm.
And he started running towards the north, in the direction of Kali's Rock. I began to feel anxious. I ran, I cut my feet on some coral banks, stumbled in the sand. No one was there. The track plunged into dales of thorny bushes and tormented banyan trees, as in a dreamscape. Balu had sped on ahead like a goat, his satchel under his arm. But what then was there between that child and Björn?
Panting, we came to a halt at fifty metres from the crag. The air was burning hot, the banyans twisted their muscles like tortured giants.
—Come, there are some steps here.
He penetrated into a jungle of acacia trees with long dagger-like thorns. It was a chaos of fallen rocks and sharp-edged branches which stood out against an indigo sky like barbed lace. Oh! how beautiful was this island and how wild!... Oh! qu'elle était belle, cette île, et sauvage!
—Björn! Björn!
The western face of the rocks rose to a sheer thirty metres high. To the east, the massif formed a back. It looked like an enormous Egyptian cat crouching in the sand.
Balu's small, shrill voice rang out in isolation. Some mynas flew away between the rocks, an erne circled overhead in the sky. There was no sound, not a breath of air, only the smell of acacia trees and burnt stone. An uneasy feeling began to tighten my throat. I climbed behind Balu. We could hear the cries of the birds. Sometimes a handful of stones rolled into space with a crackle of dried leaves. Then I stopped, filled with anguish. But it was not because of Björn, it was something else; it was that rock, that odour which took hold of me. I raised my head; suddenly I knew: the cry of the parrots, the promontory, the banyan, the red island. And then that Threat which fell upon me. I looked for Balu, he had disappeared on the other wall of rock. I turned round—the island was floating in seething foam like a vestal virgin on an angry sea. Then I heard Balu's cry.
I came out onto the ledge of rock—he was there.
A hard Björn, his jaw set, his lips compressed into a thin line. Balu rushed up to him and hugged his legs.
—Leave me, clear off! Let me alone!
He was leaning against a grotto hewn out of the rock. There were bird-droppings everywhere. One could imagine oneself on a guano-island in the middle of the sky.
—Björn, but what's the matter?... It's the child, it was he who was worried about you.
Balu rummaged hurriedly in his satchel, threw his textbooks and exercise books in the air and triumphantly extracted a handful of pistachios:
—Here, look, eat. Eat, they are good!
Björn closed his eyes. He slid to the ground, his legs giving way beneath him. He stroked the child's hair and remained silent looking towards the port in the distance. There was a port. One could see the railway bridge and the froth under the arches, then the coast, the piers, a small white lighthouse on the mainland.
A cargo boat at anchorage was stoking its boilers.
—But what's the matter, Björn?
He turned towards me; there was such a painful intensity in his eyes. He had been crying.
—Erik has committed suicide.
He made a little spasmodic movement and turned his head away. Balu feasted his eyes upon him as on an idol: he had understood everything. Then I put my arm round Björn's shoulders, I stroked his hair, I took his suffering into my heart. We were all three of us there, huddled together before that death as one huddles together before a storm, the wind, the night; and if one dies, each one understands his own death.
—... Erik, you understand, my brother.
Balu had laid his head on Björn's knees, an erne circled round in the sky.
—I say, Björn, I love you, you know.
I looked at the child, the sea, at Björn: I listened to that death, oh! as soon as one stops moving, it is there; it is always there... like that erne it hovers around, its breath is as light as a wing. There was the face of my brother, the gold-panner, who had died over there in the forest: he looked so serene in his hammock, swayed by the wind, a small lizard ran amongst the dead leaves... un petit iguane courait dans les feuilles mortes... the same silence. He was dead. And that same blue sky overhead...
—You are hungry, Björn, eat, it's good. Here, look, I have found a nautilus shell!
One day, I grabbed that sky and I said no to death. Oh! we have understood nothing of life so long as we have not understood our own death. It was in their prisons when everything was dying around me, I looked at that sky, I saw all those microscopical bodies being killed and there was such a cry in my heart: “No! I was not that thing that one kills, I could not be that, it was not true, it was a falsehood, I was not mortal, I was not a body that dies!” That death was so outrageous. And then all at once I laughed; I emerged, sprung out, slipped from my moorings as if my cry had made a hole in that human carapace, and I rocketed upwards. It was the first time. It was marvellous. A little bit of detachable body that one held at the end of a string, a little puppet dressed in striped sack-cloth, and I... I was above. Oh! that cry of wonder when one breaks loose, that sudden royalty like a galloping wind in the blue steppe... cette royauté soudaine comme un vent de galop dans la steppe bleue, I was free! And what can touch that? Nothing. No one. I was free, immortal. Then I laughed. I opened my great blue look and I am king and free everywhere.
Björn turned back to me. It seemed I could still hear Batcha's sweet little voice, rising with the warm air, rising with the face of my brother, dead in the forest, with Björn's suffering, with this world of suffering: “Toujours ensemble, toujours ensemble...” “Always together, always together...”
—I am going away.
—What!
He looked at the steamer at anchorage.
—I have nothing more to do here, all that I was doing has no longer any meaning.
—Going away, where? Back to them? But you are mad!
I was appalled. It was the catastrophe, the hole under my feet. Björn's departure meant the end of this island.
—Do you also want to commit suicide?
—Erik is dead, Björn repeated obstinately.
—And so?... It is cowardice.
—Perhaps, but he is dead.
Björn searched in his waistband, brought out a bit of crumpled paper: a newspaper clipping.
—My sister sent me this. He returned from the Sahara deliberately to commit suicide... as if the Sahara were not deserted enough. Listen:
“Yesterday, towards 9h 30, in a place called “Bellevue”, a district of Gjoevik, policemen of the local squad accompanied by a doctor alerted by a local inhabitant, could only confirm the death—which had occurred several hours earlier—of a motorist found half stretched out on the front seat of his car which he had parked near the kerb of the Lillehammer Road, a few metres from Route 23. In a note addressed to the police, Erik Sorensen (age 27) declared that he had deliberately taken his own life. To do this the unfortunate man had put a tube through the back window of the car with one end fixed to the exhaust-pipe. He had left the motor running and was found asphyxiated. The reasons for his desperate act remain unknown.”
Björn's face was as hard as marble.
—That is his dark humour, he chose the place called “Bellevue”... and he returned from the Sahara for that.
—It is disgusting.
—He was suffering.
—So what!
—Their world is ugly, Nil.
—Oh!... But there is no beauty in the world, Björn! Beauty is not here, it lies in our eyes of beauty. Where is it, your “Bellevue”, tell me, one can commit suicide there just as well.
—There was a letter also:
Björn,
I am going to commit suicide tonight after a good drinking bout. My last message is for you. What will there be afterwards? Probably nothing lasting, but if there is a little something sufficiently coherent and you make a sign to that something, I shall be there, at your call. I do not think I shall be harmful on the other side of the barrier, but one never knows?
Be careful, it is not beautiful when one looks at oneself too closely.
Your brother, Erik
—Not beautiful...
A kind of fury swept over me; if I yielded to Björn's suffering, he was lost. And his loss would be mine—Balu's and Batcha's too. It was like a pivot round which we were all turning.
—But what the devil does your brother think!
—He married a prostitute from Oran, as a challenge.
—So what? We are all full of uglinesses and shame! We only have to scratch a little to see that. Ah! Björn, I have seen them, I have seen them in all colours, and every time I was able to say: there also, I am; that also is me: that also is possible—everything is possible! What is inhuman, tell me? Where is he, that solitary man, pure and unscathed? We are all in it, and there is only one Man in the world! I have seen enough to cover four continents at a gallop. I have exhausted my hell by walking. And when I was at the bottom of the hole there was a light that shone. And now, I see. I see through the old trickery: there is a headiness in evil, and it is not what one thinks. True misery is not in being miserable, but only in believing in one's misery... Listen Björn, every time I fell into darkness, what I found the most difficult was not to recognize my pettiness, but to recognize what was great in me, in spite of everything. To do that needs courage, I assure you. One is not beautiful, one is full of misery and mud, and in spite of everything one sets one's teeth, one says no: I am beauty, I am light, truth, purity, I am That which shines in the depths, That which is free, That and only That... Ça et seulement Ça, and they will not get me! Then it is like a flame of suffering which is kindled deep down, so intense that it burns like love. Afterwards, one can understand everything. Björn, evil is not really evil, it's the secret door to love. As if the intensity of the evil kindles a corresponding intensity of love.
—He is dead, that's all I know.
—But you are alive!
—It does not interest me for myself.
—But, good heavens, what do you think it means... “others”? If you cannot save yourself, you will never save anyone else!... Oh! Björn, don't you see, one is like a battlefield, it is not a question of you or me or “others”: one is born to win a victory, each one of us has a victory to win, a special victory, and all circumstances are made to force us to win our victory. In fact, it is like a tremendous conspiracy—a conspiracy of light—in each detail. Sometimes, when I look at it, it is overwhelming... It seems that one is born with all the darkness necessary to win one's victory. So, when I see an abyss, I say to myself: this is the moment. Björn, one has understood nothing of evil so long as one has not understood that it is the other hand of the same Angel of Victory; Batcha said it... the demons are the brothers of the gods.
—Voilà three years I have searched.
—Good. Then, there is nothing better to do than to seek. And I tell you, the real treasure is not in the finding but in the seeking. Oh! sometimes it seems to me that this burning in the depths, this need of something, something else—I don't know,—this something within which wants, which searches, which needs, needs so much, is like the real treasure—it burns: it is. It thirsts for: it is. It has need of: It is—It is the only thing that is... c'est la seule chose qui est. All the rest... We are not great because of our discoveries, but because of our need to find.
—It is for him that I searched, it is because of him that I wanted power.
—But he told you himself: if you make a sign to me, I shall be there at your call. Would you have really known how to make a sign to him?... Listen Björn, you yourself have said we are a new race of adventurers; very well, what do you think adventure is? To discover magic potions? To remain with one's feet in the air, to hold one's breath?... The adventure is to be conscious of everything and in everything: in waking, in sleep and in death, here, there and in all possible ways, with the gods, in hell and everywhere. Then nothing more will separate us from our brothers, not even death. We must find the place where we are always together... toujours ensemble.
—You can talk, you were the first to spit on Guruji.
—But, imbecile, there are not umpteen things to find! There is only one. If you enter into that, you enter into everything.
—I am waiting to see you do it.
—One must know what one wants Björn, one must be coherent, as your brother says, one must not want umpteen powers—only one. And it is that which holds everything! If you don't know that, you break into bits: one day, your bag opens and everything is scattered. That is coherence, supreme coherence; if you have that, you hold the thread, all the threads, that goes everywhere, here, there, on this side of the world and the other side and on all possible sides.
—I don't know, I no longer know...
Björn took a handful of pistachios.
Balu relaxed and smiled: his friend was saved. He was eating, he was saved.
Quietly, he slipped another handful of pistachios into Björn's hand, then he turned towards me with a kind of gratitude in his eyes. My hands were moist. I had a fever as if I had swallowed Björn's suicide.
—I say, Björn...
There was not a breath of air on that rock, only that odour of acacia and hot sand which rose in puffs. Balu dared not move. Björn looked at the port... I looked at that broad-shouldered Scandinavian, his red triangle between his eyebrows, and at that child who did not take his eyes off of him.
Balu clutched his friend's knees.
—You won't go back to him, eh?
Björn was red with anger.
—But what's the matter with you, what have you all got against him!
Balu made a funny little face. Then he snatched his nautilus shell and crushed it on the rock with his fist.
—He does not love you.
—Who told you that?
—First of all, he is a vaishya.11
There was so much contempt in Balu's voice that Björn seemed dazed.
—You are the king.
—The king...
—Besides, you are handsome.
Björn melted. He stroked the child's hair.
—And you, little bit of moon, who are you?
—I am the king's guardian.
He looked up at Björn. I felt a current pass between them.
—I guard you.
He pressed his satchel hard against his chest. He was erect and pale, as if defying death. What was the link between this child and Björn—that Björn who, one day, had come from ten thousand kilometres away to this island at the other end of the world?... What joined our three lives, what story? Oh! I have looked for miracles, and now that I don't look for them any more, I seem to see them everywhere... Oh! J'ai cherché des miracles, et maintenant que je n'en cherche plus, il me semble en voir partout. They say “chance”, but what does it mean? The smallest of these chances shines like a star in the great forest of the world; and sometimes I feel that a casual gesture, a small second of inattention, a hop to the right instead of the left, a bird's feather, a mere nothing which fleets by, contains a world of vertiginous premeditation—and perhaps... Perhaps we do not see all that links these moments together, the invisible thread which stretches across the centuries and connects this dazzled second, this sudden crossing of roads, this winged thistle seed, to another unfinished story, an old unfulfilled promise, a forgotten hill, a fountain once upon a time where two beings had smiled at each other in passing. Where is the beginning of the story?... Où est le commencement de l'histoire? To what sign, to what bygone call do we reply today? We do not hold all the threads! We hold mere smatterings of seconds which pass unnoticed, fragments of stories like sudden little windows in the heart of a great legend which plunges through intimate Scandinavias, lost islands, and which will still continue when all our winters are counted. Sometimes I think there is more mystery in a trifle that one stumbles upon by chance than in all the infinitudes of heaven and that the key to the world is not in the infinitely great, but in the minute twinkling of an eye caught unawares... He, Balu, lived those minute natural miracles, and so did I for dazzled seconds, in a puff of warm air which rose in that odour of sand and acacia; he caught them in flight, as he had caught Björn's call in his arithmetic class and he ran because he had understood everything. Our thoughts and our words are thick disguises; we understand nothing, we clothe in noise a very small direct sound which goes to the heart of things and which crosses in a flash all ages and all places—every sound of the heart goes to its goal, and we shout outside as if we were deaf.
Without a word Balu gathered up his books, his exercise books, then stood up; bowing slightly he folded his hands before Björn, then bowed deeply before the idol in the grotto and disappeared.
—What a quaint little mosquito!
Björn picked up the remains of the nautilus.
There was a statue in the grotto, a strange goddess who blessed with one hand and cut your throat with the other. She was jet black, stark naked, with four arms and a garland of skulls round her neck, and she danced open-mouthed as if about to swallow the world. What sign also did she bring us?
—But what have you all got against Guruji? Really, this story is silly. Guruji worked for Erik, he wanted to save him, he used his power...
—Oh! he was in touch with Erik?
—I gave him his photo, he was working for him to come here.
—Oh!
—What, oh?
—He wanted to make him come...
—First of all, he wanted to separate him from that girl.
Then suddenly I understood.
—Exactly. But instead of making him come, he killed him. What!
—Listen, Björn, it's simple. He wanted him to come, so he sent a force to make him come, but you cannot apply a force without arousing the corresponding resistance, you cannot apply a light without touching the corresponding darkness, and the more powerful your ray, the deeper is the darkness touched. And if you are not ready, it breaks—you become mad or you die, like Erik. One dies because the sum of darkness is too great for the onrush of light, do you understand? I have seen that, Björn, every time I have taken a step forward or touched a new height, I have fallen into the exactly corresponding hole, the next day or three days later, automatically. And it is not even that one “falls”, it is as if the light pushes the darkness out of its hole, do you understand? A kind of law of descent... Why? I do not know. But one cannot descend lower than one's capacity for light, otherwise it breaks; that is why Erik is dead. A sort of dark equivalence. But it is mathematical: at each landing, one descends. One cannot take a step upwards without taking a step downwards... On ne peut pas faire un pas en haut sans faire un pas en bas. It is a strange thing Björn, but it is as if our capacity for heaven were directly tied to our capacity for hell.
—But damn it...
Can't you see? Erik felt something which was pushing him to get out of his rut—and he went out through the wrong door. You cannot push people faster than they can go—really that's why the world is advancing like a tortoise! If one would or if one could make it divine all at once, it would explode, that's all. It must be purged in small doses. So our own adventure is to accelerate the movement: one crams ten lives into one. One accelerates evolution, with all the risks involved.
And everything became clear: Erik's suicide, the boomerang shocks, Björn's storms, my revolts with that Sannyasi, the whole of this story of the passage upwards which nose-dived each time. But why? Why this law of descent?... Björn looked at me uncomprehendingly.
—Why, Björn? Why this automatic fall? Why can't one just simply free oneself... Evil? But I don't believe in evil. There is no evil, there is only something which we don't understand.
Björn shrugged his shoulders.
—Yes, but I am going away.
—Oh! Björn...
There was nothing more to say.
The steamer was smoking in the roadstead, his Laurelbank. The sun was going down. The idol looked almost alive, as if about to cut our throats or else bless us perhaps. I closed my eyes, cut off the current. Oh! one drop only, one little drop of that Harmony upon the earth, and all the jarrings of the world would be cured.
—Then it is I who have killed Erik.
I felt I was banging my head against a wall. He was stammering:
—If it's really Guruji who pushed Erik, then it's I who am guilty.
I who have done wrong, I who have killed my brother.
—You...
—Yes.
—I gave that photo.
—I, who is the “I”?—We are all “I” and nobody is guilty.
I felt the idol opening wide its eyes.
—Where is the “I”... I don't know Björn. There are currents which pass—some red, some black, some blue, some light like snow, and one intercepts these currents, one hardens them into the little human self, one makes them into hard and tragic destinies, but all is simple when one opens one's hands; and, to tell the truth, when one opens one's hands, nothing but light goes through. Where is the darkness Björn, I don't know? We must open our hands and go above our head. Then everything changes and everything is the same... alors tout change, et tout est pareil, without the hardness... It is like two worlds accurately superimposed; in one, everything flows so harmoniously, so simply, so naturally, without all our human cries, our human tears, which are almost like a drama added to the true world, a fabrication of misery.
—Erik's death is no drama.
—Oh! it is the last histrionics of the I. He prefers to die by his own hand rather than to disappear.
Björn stood up, a flame of hate leapt in his eyes. And from that moment, I struggled with him as with my own death.
—Let me tell you, your way “above the head” is a heartless way.
He wanted to kill me, it was evident, it was the old enemy returning, the brother of shadow, the one we meet at the last door.
—You are not of our world, you do not belong here. I hate you.
A wave of suffering came over me, whether his or mine, I hardly knew, it was so much alike. Oh! I did not want any more of that human sentimentality, that knot of impotent pity, that slavery of suffering which believes in death, believes in pettiness, believes in the fatality of laws—I believe in joy! I believe we are great, strong, luminous, divine, I believe that we can!
Then I don't know what took hold of me; I stood up, caught Björn by the shoulders as if I were grappling with my own death. The sun was setting, the sky was like an orange blaze, everything was orange: the erne over the grotto, the sands, the sea, the rock covered with bird-droppings; it was an effulgence of light like a descent of the other world.
—You are suffering, Björn, but it is a falsehood, suffering is a falsehood, death is a falsehood, pain and pettiness are falsehoods, and until the end, even if I perish, even if I fall, I shall repeat like a mad king: we are truth, we are light, we are greatness and beauty, the joy which sings, because we are divine. There is an immortal Flame, within, a Fire from the supreme joy which laughs behind all our sufferings and all our nights; a Fire of Truth which burns away all blackness and all shame, and our sins and our virtues, which burns away all destinies and all laws, because it is the Destiny and it is the. Law—a little flame within which can remake the world... une petite flamme dedans qui peut refaire le monde. And I say: one day, the sacred fire will possess men and we shall build the earth like a fairy-tale; one day, the fire within will burn outside and this obscure matter will become the radiant image of the soul which inhabits it: plastic to its vision, light to its joy, obedient to its command. Then each one will create his world according to the colour of his soul; each one will say what he is by the quality of his fire, visibly, materially, without subterfuge, without artifice, without deceptive words, simply by the power of his fire; each one will take his place in a high luminous hierarchy according to the beauty of the dream which inhabits him and his power to mould matter into the substance of his dream. Then the earth will emerge from falsehood and the night, life will liberate the Flame from its prison of flesh or spirit; a world of truth will take birth. And we shall be here below as we are above, free, vast, true, that and only that. And death will cease to exist because we shall be true in our body as in our soul.
Björn picked up a pebble and threw it into space:
—You will end up in the hole, all alone.
Björn was in peril; Erik's death had opened a door in his strong-hold and the enemy had entered. But I often wondered who that enemy was and I seemed to see the Friend smiling under his black cape; perhaps it is his way of entering our faultless prisons and of drawing us out of them in spite of ourselves, covered with mud and free of an old hardened goodness.
The just are impregnable, they are solidified in their light.
—We are going to clear out, I've had enough.
I looked at Björn incredulously.
—Yes, enough, we are going, there's a Norwegian or a Swedish cargo boat at anchorage, I don't know exactly, Meenakshi's cook told me.
—There is no but. If you let me down, I'll go alone.
He was standing on the threshold of my monk's cell, his fists no his hips. His eyes were dark grey.
—Are you afraid?
A terrible anguish took hold of me, my temples were throbbing. He continued to hammer out his words with a sort of hate:
—You are having an easy time here, eh, while I pay But I've had enough. Let's get going. if you stay here, you will have to beg from door to door.
I was petrified. Batcha's image pierced my heart.
—And Balu? I stammered.
He blinked.
—You don't expect me to stay here for a child, do you?
—He will grow up, he will forget. You can do what you like, but I am going.
And Björn turned his back on me. I followed him to his cell; he began to rummage through his trunk, throwing his books and clothes in the air.
—Brothers of the good days, eh, it's convenient... All the brothers are going away. Besides, I can kick the bucket for all you care; you are “in the light”.
—I am fed up with this kind of walking dream, what the hell are we doing here, tell me?
He seized his mala12 and flung it against the wall.
—You don't care, eh, you find it amusing.
—That's enough, Björn, I'm going with you.
I was sick at heart.
To go away... I was always ready to go away, no matter where, in five minutes I had packed my bag, and the more unexpected it was, the happier I was, but this time I was not the same. Naturally, one cannot stay here “for a child”, of course, one is reasonable, one “does” something in life. What? I don't know. Perhaps one begets children to atone for the one one has betrayed.
—Six million mantras, do you realise! Six million... Three years' work!
Björn was kneeling in front of a pile of shirts and ties. There was also a map of the Sahara and the Sannyasi's knife which he had taken from me.
—Of what use is all this? One doesn't need anything.
His voice softened, he stopped a moment, he looked at me like a lost child. And suddenly I had the impression that he wanted to cry.
—Of what use is it Nil, I've lost everything ... I've even lost my dream.
—Do you think we shall find it again over there?
—We shall do something else, we shall start another life.
—Something else? Do you think one does something else?
One always does the same thing under different names.
He gave an ugly little laugh:
—I know mantras to cure scorpion bites, mantras to neutralise poisons, to cure nervous tics, precocious hysteria and to make pregnant women give birth in thirty minutes! It is all copied here.
He waved an exercise book.
—We could even open a maternity clinic or a hathayoga school, ah! indeed.
I wanted to take him by the arm and caress him, but an absurd bashfulness kept me rooted in my corner.
—And I don't even know how to live.
He stuffed his clothes back into the trunk.
—We don't need anything—yes, a pair of trousers, we can hardly go aboard disguised as Brahmins.
He threw me a pair of blue jeans and a shirt, then he stopped at the sight of my knife.
—Yes, that can also be useful...
He closed the trunk with a bang.
—I haven't even seen the gods, I've seen nothing at all!... I wanted to see the gods—you understand, to see, to love—to love, you understand? One shuts one's eyes and then one sees, and then it is there and one loves for ever. One day I saw Kali—oh! a picture,—she was so beautiful, all black, with her long hair, and I said to myself: if only I could see her always, at any time, anywhere...
He remained for a moment looking into space.
—We are really a miserable species: each one for himself, all die and the gods keep silent. The one who loves us the most is our own dream.
—I've lived twenty-five years in a dream.
—All right, you must pass into a greater dream, that's all. If you don't pass, you die.
—I have searched, I have seen nothing.
—But it is there! It is already there. You are trying to see something else Björn, but it is not something else that we have to see, it is the same thing with other eyes!... ce n'est pas autre chose qu'il faut voir, c'est la même chose d'un autre ӕil!... That's it Björn, we have rotted because of the supernatural. So long as we cannot get it out of our heads that the thing to be found is not elsewhere but here, we shall perhaps end up in the glories of heaven, but continue to rot here. I know, I too have suffered a long time because I fancied that the true world was elsewhere, a sort of private super-cinema, to which one treats oneself with crossed-legs. But it is not that! It is all here... here. Oh! I don't know Björn, everyone has his own way of having difficulties but it is always the same really... the difficulty. You cling to the gods, others to money, others to women, others to morality or immorality—it is their way of having difficulties,—they cling in any case, even to the spirit, even to beauty, to good, or to evil, but it clings, that is the difficulty of the world, the only difficulty: it is the “I” which clings and everything becomes rotten. There is not a single good which is not rotted by that I—you let go of it and everything is good. And when one lets go of it, the gods are no longer the reverse of the devils, nor the devils the reverse of the gods, one passes above, one is in that.
For a fraction of a second, I wondered to what I was clinging.
—I'm fed up, that's all.
He got up, picked up his shirt and his trousers; then he remained with a pair of shoes in his hand.
—In any case we are not going to dress here; the whole village will stare at us... We'll change on the beach.
He gave a sneering laugh:
—We'll disguise ourselves as Europeans.
I went to my cell. There was only a mat on the ground. I picked up my little flute-player, he looked so smiling. I looked around me... There was really nothing to take, I was as poor as Job. And so rich! I closed my eyes for a second: everything dissolved—the chaos, the departure, Björn's anguish; there was only that little flame within, so warm, so quiet. One draws the curtain and it is there, it is always there: the infallible wonder. And then that noise outside, the false departure which leads nowhere; one bustles about, one moves, makes gestures, millions of gestures for nothing, a terrible nothing which walks in nothing... un affreux rien qui marche dans rien, and the only place to go to is there, quiet, noiseless, smiling: it waits. And the whole of life suddenly seemed to me so futile, a kind of virgin forest into which one hacks one's way, one walks, one makes such fantastic, dramatic efforts and then one stops for an instant, out of breath: there was that flower under the bush. Then everything is swept away in a single stroke, the forest, the sweat, the labour. Nothing remains but that flower. It was there, always there, it had never ceased to be there! It was for that that one had walked, laboured... Oh! that look which veers suddenly, and everything is pierced through, dissolved, fulfilled; one rounds the cape of mists; one is like a surprised child who sees the world change colour.
But one does not want smiles, one wants drama.
—So, are you coming?
He slammed the door.
We followed the western track, crossed the island up to the coral fishery. There was a cargo boat at anchorage, and the port was on the coast in front of us. Björn did not unclench his teeth, he was like a bottled-up storm. We changed our clothes on the beach; my trousers were dragging on the ground, I turned up the ends.
—And try not to make that face.
We took a felucca with a triangular sail. I felt like an automaton.
Little gusts of wind were blowing over the sea.
—Look, a Norwegian!
It could have been a Zulu or a Peruvian, for all I cared. And we could have sailed for Tierra del Fuego or the devil, it would have been the same to me.
Björn was excited, he moved from one side to the other.
—A Norwegian, can you believe it! Look at the blue cross! We are going to see snow again, Nil! And then the lavender of the fiords, ice—finished the furnace. You, who were dreaming of the poles...
I no longer knew of what I was dreaming; the cold or the heat, Norway or the equator, I no longer needed anything but a little inner degree; all the rest... It was like these trousers: a disguise, or like that boat: noise.
—Aalesund!
I dangled my hand in the water, the sea was lapping gently against the sides of the boat. Aalesund, but what could that matter to me! I was on another voyage and the world seemed veiled in tenderness. It is strange, but ever since I left that island, I felt myself borne by a force greater than my own, so sweet, as if I were going outside of myself or to the side of myself, and were leaning over that little body, over Björn, over that boat; I was looking at all with that tenderness, as from someone who is already dead and far, far away, borne by something else, or someone else, and the world recedes, fades, is seized in a haze of sweetness.
—You will see how beautiful my country is, it is wild and rugged and full of white birds...
I heard Björn's voice from afar, but it was a complete Björn that I perceived, with all his hidden depths, his story surrounding him, a sort of coloured network with fluctuations, little flames, dark streaks,—yes, a dark streak. Then another voice rose: “How beautiful my island is! Every morning I come here and prostrate myself before the beauty of the world,” and that Björn was dressed in white. Already his island had lost its beauty; tomorrow his beautiful Nordic country would turn grey, there would have to be other countries—I know the song and I have worn out all the maps; the white birds are stuffed with straw.
—Eh, Nil, to which country do you belong? You have never said from where you come.
—I...
—You look like a dazzled owl with a French accent.
—I am from a country which does not move... un pays qui ne bouge pas.
His eyes widened, he looked at me for a moment with the air of a stubborn child. Then I noticed that he had forgotten his red triangle:
—Your tilak.
He blushed to the roots of his hair. He rubbed out his triangle with the back of his hand in a kind of rage. He had become a very ordinary Björn.
—If Balu saw you, he would not recognise you.
I said that mechanically as one states a fact or points out an error in the colour of a picture. But it was the whole picture which looked false; that furious, ashamed Björn, that enormous bulge of cinnabar, those feluccas moored alongside, awaiting their turn under the grinding cranes, the sacks of phosphate which made the air stink, and the cry of the macua;13 all that floated before me like a fiat, artificial picture, a sort of imitation of a two-dimensional world. And that immense tenderness behind, so quiet, which looked at the story as through an orange mist. And Björn who wanted to bite.
—As for you, you don't need the North Pole, you are already like an iceberg.
He went back to the starboard.
His distress also came to me; everything came to me with precision, even the smallest vibration, but as if caught by that look behind, transmuted, seen with that sweetness of eternity which leans over the world and which hears the cries of children: everything is already golden on the hill and the ray will soon touch this valley... Perhaps it was an altering of time, a sort of acceleration of consciousness which caused that orange mutation?
—What, you're sleeping?
I jumped like a puppet. A fellow was posted at the bottom of the ladder—three brief words, a sharp glance which undresses you. Björn climbed up first. A second fellow wearing a peaked-cap, a glance at the lower abdomen: click, clack, it's done, three words like biting and up you go. Phosphate powder and the masts which veer about, hurry up, you're in the way. A third fellow on the bridge, another glance... But who is looking I don't know, it is a zinc eye which opens on to a mechanism, and they cut your neck, clack, cleanly: seen, sized-up, pigeon-holed... and no time wasted. Next one.
—Don't say anything, I'll manage.
Oh! no, I was not saying anything. It was the door. And hop! I was inside, at the blow of the whistle.
A man was seated there, sweating, bare-chested. Bleub, bleub, blob! another glance, this time undressed quickly and always straight to the lower abdomen: that must be the meeting place. I don't understand anything but it does not matter, they talk. And that also is like a mechanism, it is mechanical speech, in iron wire, which make compartments, angles, and piles up: all that floated before me like a fiat, artificial picture, a sort of imitation of a two-dimensional world. And that immense tenderness behind, so quiet, which looked at the story as through an orange mist. And Björn who wanted to bite.
A man was seated there, sweating, bare-chested. Bleub, bleub, blob! another glance, this time undressed quickly and always straight to the lower abdomen: that must be the meeting place. I don't understand anything but it does not matter, they talk. And that also is like a mechanism, it is mechanical speech, in iron wire, which make compartments, angles, and piles up: one cube, two cubes, three cubes, a small netting, the right-hand drawer, it is there. He pulled out his pipe. Björn sat down, I sat down. He brushed back his lock of hair, I brushed back mine, but I had no lock, it did not matter—let nothing stick out, above all, nothing must stick out. I did not move again.
There I was, in the dwarf-box.
Blob-blob-blob, neutralised, stupefied, ratified.
A pause.
Suddenly, I realised that I was playing the ape. I was seated next to Björn, discreetly, respectfully, on a sofa covered with a green floral print, watching with a sort of rapture, almost compunction, a Chinese junk all yellow, or rather canary, bobbing on a sea of olive oil which reflected a pinkish sky, the whole thing painted on silk, just behind the fellow's head.
That Chinese junk was one of my life's discoveries. If he had asked me at that moment who I was, I would have pulled out my diplomas, my military cross, my uncle who was minister of the Navy and my baptismal certificate—I was in it up to the neck. A real electric shock. I saw Björn, I saw that individual, I saw that junk suddenly magnified like the close-up on a cinema screen, and then there was a reversal: I went through—I was no longer in it: gone in a flash, cut loose! It was like an intense flame which lit up instead, with a cry. Then I saw, I saw all kinds of things in a flash, and first of all, the difference, the tremendous difference: one minute before, I believed in it, I was in it, fully in the dwarf and it was so natural, a sort of hypnosis, thousands of habits which came back with a whole curriculum vitae, even my grandfather's cancer was there and I was fit for the cancer—a tremendous habit of being. It was like that and it will be like that and it has always been like that. A habit of feeling, thinking, of reacting, believing; a sort of stupefied dwarfing, as thought making oneself all grey, all small, as one does in enemy territory in a dream. One is in the box, it is the regulation asphyxia... c'est l'asphyxie réglementaire. The world is a formidable habit: it looks at its Chinese junk and gets shipwrecked on a make-believe olive-oil sea. And then just that cry of awakening, and it melts, everything melts, even the cancer along with the military cross: one quits the death-sentence. And then... Then yes, my obedient monkey was there, outside, trying to look presentable for the measurements, and I... Oh! I was that flame, so warm within, that clear expanse, that child's delight who discovers its unimaginable kingdom, that secret lightness in the midst of barbarians... cettte légèreté secrète chez les barbares. And that sudden-gratitude like an abyss, because there was that. The release. And there, in front of that Chinese junk of painted silk, with its little man at the end of a boat hook, I was so moved—I wanted to kneel down and prostrate myself and weep like a child, because there was that, that wonder which sweeps away everything in its flow of tenderness, those crumbling walls, those open doors, that great white wave which releases. Oh! I do not know if God exists, but that exists, that is true, that is wide, it is the great unmooring, the “open sesame”, the fabulous wealth in a million banalities as if everything glowed, changed under one's eyes, lit up under one's fingers; it is the great awakening, freedom for ever, inalienable royalty. Oh! they could throw me into the hold or into hell, I was free in hell and free in their prison, and death could die a thousand times, I was alive for ever! Where was the fear, the anguish, the end? Everywhere I bad my inviolable dwelling, in the twinkling of an eye I had gone thousands of light years away, to fiery distances, I was in the great sweetness which spins the worlds and which would so like to smile through our millions of eyes. And everything is possible... Everything becomes possible in-stan-ta-ne-ous-ly. One minute before, it was the implacable sequence, the ineluctable law; the cancer passed from father to son, the military cross for life, the unremitting cage—a formidable cage of which all the lines were traced, known, drawn once and for all and none can escape, it is the inflexible gravitation downwards, the iron hierarchy, communion through the lower abdomen—and then, poof, and it has gone?... Really gone; it is as one wills. An illusion, a fantastic illusion! As if one had drawn little geometrical lines on a virgin world and put oneself inside and then “it is the law”: a fantastic curriculum mortis, a gigantic intellectual cancer.
My look came back to that man, then to Björn, who kept his hands folded between his knees. A loud-speaker was blaring out orders on the deck. Then a sort of deep compassion came over me; I felt like going down there, me too. I was almost happy to go away, Oh! I was happy anyway, outside, I was in a great white steppe and, inside, like a little flame which loves, simply, for nothing, because it loves no matter what. But they do not know that they love! They do not know that they are vast, light-years away, with lost hearts, ils ne savent pas—they do not know. So they are afraid. They think they are small and full of misery, they build steel walls to protect themselves from their own immensity, they lay traps in order to retain one drop of their treasure. They are weak because they do not know, they are hard and evil because, they have forgotten; if they knew, they would open their doors wide and draw handfuls from the great treasure, they would drink their fill from the ocean of joy.
One day, their walls will crumble and they will stand amazed.
—Eh! Nil.
He nudged me in the ribs. I saw the man in front of me become as red as a beetroot, he coughed, put down his pipe, I thought he was going to explode or throw me out. I understood. I lowered my eyes. I made myself small, colourless, odourless, I crawled back into the hole. Yes, I know they cannot bear that, it is like an insult for them, or a threat; one must veil oneself. They cannot bear to be loved, they cannot bear joy... And what about us? Had we not already left our island for this box of cinnabar? Oh! we have all the quantity of joy we can bear!
The man scribbled something on a slip of paper.
And suddenly, as he bent over his table, I felt with an overwhelming certainty that the divine totality of the world was there, the totality of joy, the totality of love, the totality of everything, simply waiting for us to be able to contain more. We run after a miracle which is already there, like an empty jug floating on the ocean of nectar.
Björn got up, he made his little bow; I got up, I made my little bow; he pocketed the slip of paper, I pocketed my look and we went out.
—Now we must go and see the second officer.
Björn was as white as chalk.. As for me, I was completely elsewhere.
We went down to the deck below, a man called out to us. It was the radio-telegraphist. A little Mediterranean type with a turned-up nose, seeming to sniff the direction of the wind, who gave vent to a torrent of words in English with an imitation American accent. Björn was explaining I didn't know what, the other was gesticulating.
...Chittagong, Rangoon, and then return to Trondhjem. You're lucky, two deserters at Colombo. Ah! Colombo, what about! What about! There was a little Singhalese girl...
The holds yawned in a cloud of white dust, men ran hither and thither in a clatter of windlasses, diesels, orders shouted in Norwegian, in English, in German; the derricks moved over, leaving a trail of chemical powder in the sticky humidity. I leaned over the side—Chittagong, Rangoon... In a quarter of an hour, I shall be done for. It was like a dream. But everything was a kind of dream: the little chap who was running with his winch, the radio-telegraphist, the boat, and then the world over there—Rangoon, Trondhjem, Oslo——which ran... ran and there was not a single real minute. It was “life”, but who lived in it? I do not know. They were lived, toiled, worked upon by life, a formidable current which passed inside, and when the current had stopped passing through the machine, it was the end, they were lived out. A fantastic unreality. There was nothing, not a single thing existing by itself, it was like a film unfolding on a screen—little flat chaps, a flat boat, a flat world; it simply unfolded, it was unfolded, a fantastic projection in the void. And the more that unreality took me by the throat, the more I felt that flame rising within, burning, living, intense, as if its power increased tenfold under the pressure of the void, as if it were fanned by that suffocation—and then I saw that if I went down a few more steps, there was an intolerable Fire right at the bottom.
I was like a living fire.
And it was that which was living... the only thing alive in all that, it was the only substance, the life of life. If that were not there, there would be nothing but hot air.
—I tell you I don't know.
I turned round. Björn looked like a shadow.
—You're joking?
—But I don't know, I tell you.
This time, Björn's voice had changed. The little Italian was gesticulating:
—That's too much... You are not going to make me believe that after three years here, you don't even know where one sleeps!
Björn looked haggard, he seemed drained of his substance.
I took him by the arm.
—Come Björn, we must go and see the second officer.
The radio officer showed me the way to the mess.
—Ѐ matto!14
Björn's arm was ice-cold.
We went down the iron ladder, whistle-blasts rent the air, a smell of saltpetre and warm oil rose from the deck. Then that smell plunged me into a stupid panic, I felt I was being filled with lead. But what the devil was I doing there? What?... A man started to shout in French: “Ah! the swine.” I raised my head... And the whole island was there, white, fringed with foam. Björn followed my gaze. An incredible island, with a blue peacock and a child clad in a long pomegranate-red skirt.. And suddenly, I felt an intense pain there, in the hollow of my chest, like a wrench. And that whole sea like a sheet of dazzling light... Björn clenched his teeth:
—Let's go.
And I heard Batcha's little voice, clear, clear, poignant: “It was like a shining sea and I was calling you again and again... je t'appelais, je t'appelais... It hurt so much here, that I woke up.” Björn pulled me towards the mid-decks. The steps, the bridge, were glittering in the sun, but what the devil was I doing here?... Chittagong, Rangoon and back. What did it mean? I was sinking in a clang of iron, engulfed like a drowning man; a fellow rushed up the gangway four steps at a time, cursing under his breath. And suddenly, like a drowning man, I saw the whole picture unfurl before me: Balu's little figure in a corner of the station: “Shall I take you to your brother?... Your brother is so handsome!” and it was the Sannyasi who had led me to Balu, and Mohini who had led me to the Sannyasi... What chain of events, what whim of a minute or a second had brought me upto here? And who had led me to Mohini? A whim or a staggering precision? And in which direction were the cycles turning—Batcha after Mohini, but was it really after? Or had it not always been she, the same, and everything revolved round the cry of a peacock, from life to life, from one island to another? One day I pinpointed my finger on a map and I left for Guiana but Guiana led to Norway, inexplicably, via Rangoon and Chittagong, and all the maps are false! The maritime routes pass twenty-thousand leagues under strange seas and emerge suddenly under the nose of a war-god mounted on a blue peacock.
Aalesund 54.000 t. Skipsverft Bergen
Or was it the Laurelbank taking its revenge?... There are acts begun one day and completed twenty years later when one no longer thinks of them. And perhaps, one day in other lives I had started a voyage which was ending only today on the Aalesund with Björn; and Batcha was another voyage, Mohini another, the Sannyasi still another—or always the same one turning on invisible latitudes, and which would end when, where? One touches one point, another and still another—Mohini and Batcha, the white island, the red island—one loses the trail: the point has gone to draw an invisible arc across aeons of fire, nameless seas, lost times, it has pitched over into the blue Tartarus and it re-emerges here, or there, with another colour, another face and other arms, and yet with some indicible resemblance—et pourtant je ne sais quelle ressemblance—or was it always the same story, and the same arms like a great shimmering radiolarian which rolls through eternal gulf streams?
—You are supposed to have smashed your sailing-boat in the Palk Strait.
I looked at Björn uncomprehendingly:
—Don't worry, I know the trick, we are going to oil the engines.
We stumbled onto the mid-deck... the yellow bulbs, the stench, the rat-trap, the stifling fumes of tepid oil in the whirring of the bellows. What other voyage again?... Björn's heavy shoulders plunged below me into that throbbing, clanking, hammering boiler-room. Who had really led me here, what was the true bearing, the co-ordinates of this story?... The question was so intense in my heart that it made me feel giddy. Björn 's two fists were plunging down and down, all yellowed, gripping the iron hand-rails, and I was going to be swallowed up by that hold... and then all those faces, those places came spinning in front of me, Batcha and Mohini, the red island, the white island, the Laurelbank, the Aalesund; I did not understand, I did not see, only these little coloured bubbles, yellow, red, white, orange, incoherent, which passed for a second, smiled, burst, passed, smiled, burst... What did it mean?... For a moment, I stopped to catch my breath, my real breath, one single inhalation of truth in that drowing! And suddenly I saw a luminous hand passing in front of my eyes as if to throw something—to sow something, I don't know, in a sweeping-sleeve movement: a diaphanous hand in billowing white muslin; and its gesture seemed to catch all those coloured bubbles, those smiles, those islands, those faces and it wove them together, filled in the gaps, carved out blue valleys and went off like an arrow, drawing a luminous hill sown with white birds—a picture. For the fraction of a second, I saw a picture clearly in front of me, as one sees a Cézanne hanging in a gallery, but a light-picture bursting with meaning, which gave the whole meaning, the complete meaning: the mountain, the blue valley with purple patches, and as though a beam of sunlight on the hillside with those white birds up above—and I was in the valley. I was in the picture, a tiny purple spot walking towards a hill sown with birds. It was a flash, everything was in it, everything fitted in. I was no longer going down into a hole, I was going towards that hill white with birds, carried away on a shaft of light. Then the picture became still bigger (or was it my eyes?) but they were no longer lines nor patches of colour, it was the Picture, the essence, the great wonder of the world. A kind of total understanding which blazed into a white trail with that archangel's hand. I saw myself, I saw all those little purple daubs, those drops of microscopic life rolling in the valley and which did not know, which saw nothing, just that patch, then another and yet another, a burst of orange, a bit of a red island, a white haven, a child passing, and shadows, endless shadows, but the archangel had already brought forth the great hill, leaped over the abysses, over lives, sown its white birds on the ineluctable summit, and we were walking through centuries, blind walkers in a little shadow, in an orange or blue bubble, in evil, in good, we were advancing across the great nameless canvas, forgetful of the great vision, the golden track, believing that our life stopped at the ford, knowing no longer that this purple shadow led to a sunny hill, and that abyss to a bird's velvet-throat, nor which stroke of hand had thrown the wonder of a million lives on the whiteness of a divine dream.
Everything faded.
I went down the iron steps. I was going with Björn I knew not where, and it was like a dream. But where was the dream, on which side? I went down into that hold like a sleepwalker fraught with memory, like men and men by the millions in a body, ah! what remained? Little bubbles, red, yellow, orange, without any sequence, happy and painful islands, glances of a second opening on intimate millenniums, and that Thrust behind, that luminous stroke of hand which draws us, it is all that remains: little coloured seconds, gestures which burst suddenly like a clap of thunder, encounters like the green buoy's signal of a wreck on old submerged routes, flashes of memory like a sudden shipwreck in calm waters, and faces, faces which surge up again like dream-smiles, odours of panic like a familiar country—chances and chances by the thousands, and all are premeditated.
—It is on the starboard side.
And a tenacious memory as of a treasure to be re-discovered, of a true life, another vision—something else, something else; a great Memory behind, a great Thrust which pulls us towards a future already lived, towards a Goal from which we come, over there, over there, over the islands and the abysses, over the sufferings and the days, with that golden bird winging swiftly—towards the joy of the great picture, towards the glance which embraces everything. And one begins again another canvas.
I entered that electric tunnel as one enters into an old life. The companionway disappeared in a drift of phosphate, Björn was pitching and tossing in front of me, his shoulders bent. The ventilators mixed the fuel-oil with the odours of cooking. Abruptly he stopped in front of a door and wiped his brow with his hand. He kept still for a second. And I felt exactly what he was feeling: the distress, the shame, the rage, as if his heart were beating in mine. Then he pulled open the door violently and remained standing on the threshold, his hands in his pockets.
There was a huge table covered with a brown moleskin. Bursts of laughter, stale tobacco-smoke, whiffs of frying grease and beer under the hardboard ceiling. Some ten men in singlets were sitting round the table under a hanging lamp. I plunged there as into a life of hell already known a thousand times, something which opened in the lower abdomen and which decomposed everything; and then those little dwarfs laughing in there, laughing, laughing their full-throated laughs. I felt submerged, tossed about under the wave. There was an empty counter on the right with cases of Brooke Bond Tea; the least little object burst open as if I had lost myself everywhere—the greasy shelves, the stuffed gull, the catacomb twilight,—poured out suddenly in a multitude of glances which fixed everything, entered into everything. And then Björn, his hands in his pockets, like a statue on the threshold.
But it was no longer Björn, it was Prince Björn, so erect, his head held high, his eyes flashing, who was surveying his destiny... Then I don't know what happened, whether it were he or I, my cry or his:
—No!
He turned towards me without seeing me.
—No, he repeated.
I shall see that second for ever, and each time there will be the same question: he chose, Björn chose at that second, his soul chose, and yet he could have been saved if he had said yes and gone away on the Aalesund.
—No, not that.
He abruptly let go of the door. Then, his head thrust forward, he began to run through the tunnel towards the deck ladder, as if he were suffocating. He shoved aside two men who were passing, bumped into a grating, upset a pot of coaltar and rushed down the gangway like a madman. We jumped into the first felucca.
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!
—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!
—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.
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.
—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?
—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.
I took the northern track by chance, but today I know that there is no chance. I was not going anywhere special, simply towards the Rock of Kali. I was happy or almost, it was a kind of happiness which had grown in me imperceptibly and did not really depend on anything, needed nothing in order to exist: it was a simple clarity, it was the clear bed-rock of existence; I was light, tranquil and as if borne by the wind; but the slightest thought made a shadow—it was an instantaneous shadow—and no sooner did anyone think of me than I felt the vibration: it came and touched me, made little ripples and eddies, or sometimes streams of sudden tenderness like stepping into a bush of honeysuckle. And now it was Björn who came whirling into me. In fact, I had gone out to get rid of him: “I am doubling the dose”... His voice buzzed in the heat, “and so, you see, I have held out for forty minutes!” It was Björn standing on his head in his monk-cell, Björn sitting for hours during the night, meditating—on what?... “I'll go right through to the end”—of what? Perhaps it was necessary to go right through to the end of the effort, to the other side: the effort was yet another shadow on that clarity. And I wondered what one could do for Björn. Sometimes it seems to me that human beings have something to exhaust and once exhausted, everything is there.
I turned to the right without knowing why, perhaps to find shade, and I entered the acacia forest. I wanted to drive Björn away, to walk, but he stayed there, he stuck. One could hear the silvery jingle of the little horse carts far away, the cry of the cart-drivers in the south; then everything faded away around me, there was nothing but that ochre-coloured sand almost burning under my feet and the dales of thorn bushes relieved by an occasional banyan tree. Not a breath of air. It was a motionless density of odours like a bath of wild honey: it was so dense that the silence itself seemed made up of coagulated odours; then the lacy shadows of the trees, the endless undulating sand like a surge of coral under the wide, slanting parasols. I walked at random, the sand was very soft, the sky was like an immense, shredded blue net; sometimes, little yellow clusters flowered suddenly straight out from the spiky branches. I plunged deeper and deeper into those scented ochre dales, a little lost as on the frontier of a dream, but vaguely troubled, drawn by I knew not what. A tiny lizard fled into the thorny thicket. And suddenly, it was no longer clear.
It was heavy, threatening.
I wanted to turn back. Something oppressed me, pushed me, I didn't know what, like a breath with a will in it... I swerved to the right, skirted the huge banyan tree which rose solitarily in the midst of the acacias; how beautiful was that tree, with its dishevelled roots like the rigging of a vessel in distress. I took one more step... And then, suddenly, I stopped dead, aghast. I heard a cry.
I never understood what happened: that girl was lying on the ground, half naked, her breasts tanned almost black, and then Björn at her side.
I only heard that cry. Then the sand yawned under me. I should have gone, run away—but I was paralysed. She yelled again. Then she pushed Björn away, caught hold of her sari—a bright yellow sari; in one bound, she was on her feet. Björn turned towards me. She fled through the acacia forest hugging her garments to her... It was Nisha, Meenakshi's daughter.
Björn sat up, he looked at me calmly. I must have slipped down on my knees, my legs folding under me. He leaned back against the banyan and looked at me without speaking. There was that smell of alcohol round him. Then he slowly took out his knife; he took it by the blade and in a single movement he threw it at me.
The knife planted itself straight in the sand, twenty centimetres from me.
A Homeric laugh, hideous, full-throated—the whole forest resounded with his laugh.
—What about!
I was stunned. I looked at Björn. That stranger Björn, a great bare-bodied hirsute Northerner, laughing as if he were about to give up his soul, and then that knife in front of me.
—You were jolly scared, heirs, admit it!
He laughed some more:
—You have arrived just for the end of the marriage.
He laughed and laughed as if he had never had so much fun in his life.
—We shall have a lot of little children, all black, and you will be the godfather of the first!
He raised a finger in the air.
—Wait, we'll drink to that.
He caught hold of a bottle of toddy behind him.
I took the bottle. I could no longer see clearly, I was in a sort of scarlet bath in which that half-naked girl was floating—suddenly, I had entered a world of rape and terror.
—Drink, I say! You're going to drink or I'll break your jaw.
I swallowed a bumper. It smelled of grass. I was floundering in a nightmare, I was someone else, I was coming back from I knew not where, a lost life—an instant change, the yawning of a secret dungeon. And it was that.
—Not bad for a beginner. Ah! I am going to ruin your saintliness! Nil...
He took back the bottle.
—What about! What about!... What a drinking bout, I am waking up after twenty years of sleep, feeling hungry!... In fact, what are you doing here, hein? You were spying on me?
—All right, all right. I don't care. I don't care about anything, it's marvellous—in short, it's liberation, an upside-down liberation... Let's drink to liberation!
He threw back his head and emptied half the bottle.
—The whole point is not to care a good goddamn about anything, one way or another. And then... Not bad, hein, Mrs. Soerensen?... Yes, seventeen years old, and her skin as fresh as a muscadine grape. First of all, I'm going to marry her, no kidding, she loves me, can you imagine that,—there's actually someone who loves me!... “You are my white Rajah.”
He laughed again.
—My white rajah!... We're going to set up housekeeping in a but at the coral fishery, and then I'm going to make a canoe, some nets and we'll go fishing. And I'll have lots of little black Björns—all black, the little Björns!... tout noirs, les petits Björn!
He sniffed with a kind of satisfaction.
I was lost, discomposed.
—And then from time to time, we'll have a little white one... who will go and seek salvation with the Christians!... Oh! Nil, what a farce!
This time he was no longer laughing. He was speaking through clenched teeth, with a sort of rictus which twisted his mouth:
—And he'll marry a little Norwegian girl who will give him very fair children who will come and be damned in the arms of a Negress... And one starts all over again.
He snatched up the bottle by the neck. I thought he was going to drink again but, with a blow of his fist, he smashed it against the tree.
—It's too long, Nil, it's unending. I must go right to the end, immediately. The end, you understand... immediately.
He wiped his lips.
—What end, hein? Do you know that, you, the clever one?
Everything became silent. The air was scorching. I bent down; in front of me there was a golden bangle in the sand, broken. It was a glass bangle.
—What end, hein?... It's already done, it's all over! I have married her already: built the hut, made the canoe, I have four bastards running wild on the beach.
He wheeled around with a sort of fury, as if he had been cheated, I saw him clench his fists. Then he yelled out:
—And th-en?
His voice resounded in the silence. There was that odour of alcohol in the hot sand, my head buzzed. A siren rent the air in the distance, far, far away in the west, as if from behind a veil.
—In four years, she will have fiat breasts and her mother's mug.
He closed his eyes.
—I'm lost, Nil.
I was the one lost; I was adrift in that red steam, with that gold bangle in my hand and the sound of the ship's siren.
—In the twinkling of an eye, it's done, the story's finished.
The siren bellowed a second time. I was imprisoned in a dreadful dream; one can no longer walk, no longer run, cry out... and the train is hurtling forward and one is going to be crushed.
—Speak! Say something.
And then that odour of black girl clung to me with a whiff of faded marigolds and rancid coconut oil. Björn came towards me crawling on all fours. He was coming to strangle me.
Then I cried out suddenly:
—Bhaskar-Nath!
—What, Bhaskar-Nath?
He straightened up, furious, I could feel his hot breath fanning my face.
—What do you mean, Bhaskar-Nath? What has he too got against me?
—Bhaskar-Nath, we must go and see Bhaskar-Nath...
He sneered:
—What, for the nuptial blessing?
—We must go, Björn, we must go, we must...
—I'm going straight to my Negress.
He got up, he fell back on the ground.
—Come, Björn.
—Guruji said no.
—Guruji...
He was drunk, I should have kept quiet; but I was angry, I saw that damn Guruji, oh! I saw them all, those little sharks of the Spirit.
—What has he done for you, your Guruji? What has he done to get out of this?
Björn became pale. He sprang up, he took hold of his knife.
—No, Björn, no...
I wanted to check his arm, it was mad, absurd, an evil-spell, I wanted to take him in my arms, raise him up, press him to my heart, Björn! He freed himself with a blow of his fist, I saw a flash; the blade slashed my left hand and severed the top of my forefinger, the blood spurted out everywhere.
Björn looked at me, dumbfounded.
There was not a sound in that forest.
—It's nothing, Björn.
He stood speechless, horror-stricken. I took his scarf, I pressed it against my hand.
—It's nothing Björn, I assure you, it's nothing.
He dropped his knife.
—Get out.
—Get out, I tell you.
My heart turned over, I wanted to weep, to hug him, to tell him...
—Björn, you are my brother.
—I'm not your brother, go away. I am good for nothing but destruction, that's all. That's my power, go away.
He jumped to his feet and planted himself in front of me with his hands on his hips. His eyes were terrible.
—Get out!
Then I got up. I tied the scarf round my hand, my throat felt tight like a vice.
I looked at him once more and went away into the forest.
I walked in that acacia forest without knowing where I was going, my temples throbbed, my heart pounded, I was like a shadow carried by a pain; oh! it was not Björn nor his hate—he needed to hate me as well as to love—nor the smarting of my hand; it was that sudden abyss before that black girl, her cry, that frightened look, that flight; a whole world surging up again from I knew not where with an odour of panic; all at once I was faced with the fact: it was that—what? what fact? It had no name, no face, it was not even that black sex; it was just that trap-door opening up under my feet, that swarming of shadows which rose, and then the flight, the flight, that cry, the great black sluice-gates which opened as if I had plunged there, drowned there many times, lost body and soul in an odour of sand and decaying flowers—but what? I don't know, it was “that”. This was the second when I touched “that”, the ancient cursed thing that one drags through the ages, the dark memory, the knot of pain, the absolute interdiction which rises—what? what interdict? An ancient, nameless, burning forfeiture, an inverse that, a dark origin of things. It was there; it had always been there, I knew it, it had never ceased to be there; one scratches a little and it is there, one scratches still more and it is the same—under the great unmoving Light, the great Shadow has not moved, it is there at every moment, intact. Oh! where is the pure, the unsullied, where is he, that singular man? I have roamed three continents, I have burned everything in order to burn that single shadow—but what? It was that, that's all, the old Threat, the Shame, the millstone that one drags, that halo of darkness which surrounds us and surrounds everything, the slightest gesture, the slightest encounter, the most fleeting glance, as if at every moment, at the least tear, the slightest scratch, the smallest crack, everything were going to turn suddenly into a vertiginous opposite: in one second it is done, a heart which beats to bursting, a giddiness, a flash, and everything is reversed, one passes to the other side—one walks in the dark country. At every second, it is there, under each smile, each fragment of light; and the more I touched that Light above, the greater grew the thing below, as if I became capable of a greater darkness—oh! “I”, who is the “I”? Where, me? I don't know... It is the faceless night, the swarming multitude, the old story, life ruined in a second: an obscure, innumerable “one” as heavy as the night of the dead and of all the dead that one drags along, as old as the suffering of men and the fury of the gods. It is the great rout in front of the pack, the lapidation at the gates of the city, the sorrow, the great Sorrow in the depths like two eyes which open on an immensity of sadness.
Ah! I understand! Now I understand why we erect our termite's ramparts and make our little revengeful laws: when one breaks the wall on top, one also breaks it below, everything enters, hell along with heaven In the depths of the night, as in heaven, there is no more “I”, it is an explosion of darkness like the explosion of light above, and all the sufferings of the world rush forth with all the shames. And I was there. I was Björn,—was I not him?—I was his darkness, his fall, his shame—where then are the “others”, where is that which is not me? Where is the fault from which I am absent, heaven for one alone, I wonder? Where are they, those world-delivered, those so-called “saved”, those counterfeiters of liberation? If one single man is in bondage, the whole world is in bondage! Because there is but one Man!... Si un seul homme est enchaîné, le monde entier est dans les chaînes! Parce qu'il n'y a qu'un Homme!
I walked in that acacia forest, walked blindly, interminably, as I had in the creeks of Guiana, in the minas of Brazil, as I had walked round and round in their prisons, walked everywhere, that long ancient walk of misery with a fire in the heart and unseeing eyes—one step, another step, one step, another step, and it is the same, there is no one, one is the night which moves, the old misery, the blood which throbs; and even the misery is dead, even the night, one no longer knows who is suffering or why—one is a moving rhythm, a burning fire. One is the self of fire. A fire, that is all one is. It burns, that is all one has; it has always burned, it is old like misery or love, it goes back to the depths of time, to the first step, to I know not what which suffers; it has no name, it is without reason; no face, it has no destiny; it has lived so much that it is like everybody, suffered so much that it understands everything... It was almost singing in that forest, it was a singing fire, a singing sorrow, or love, I know not, it was all melted into that. I am the self of fire, the ancient burning, where is my suffering, my downfall? I have no more night, no more misery, I have that which burns, that is all; I have no more shame, I have no. more past, no more “yes”, no more “no”, no more good, no more evil, all is burned; I have lost everything, I have that which burns, for nothing, for everything, for whoever wishes. It burns, it is all I have: it is my hell, my heaven, my misery or my joy, I know not, it is all the same; it is my great fiery rhythm, my very smallness which burns, my immensity of a single flame—where is my fall, my deliverance? There is only this fire which burns everywhere: where is the fault, the downfall? they burn; where is death? it burns; at the end there is this fire which burns, and on high also: everything is burned. I have no more high, no more low, no more black, no more white, it is all the same—where is my liberty, my slavery?
I raised my eyes and everything had changed.
Was it that ochre-tinted sand, my fever, or that fire in my heart? Or perhaps the heat haze which shimmered amongst the tormented trees? The world seemed bathed in orange. And it was not a “colour”, not something which “coloured”, which tinted the world; it was the very substance of the world which was different. Or perhaps it was not “different”: it was its false appearance of solidity which fell away and the true matter which emerged and radiated everywhere; the world became what it really is, the eyes saw the true world. It was warm, powerful like that fire in my heart, it had an extraordinary density—a radiation of warm, compact power—as if everything were alive, vibrant, coherent, made of the same substance as that flame in my heart, and of an indefinable tenderness—I was leaning over everywhere, in everything, burning everywhere, loving everywhere, recognizing everything. Oh! a love which was not the opposite of hate: not the opposite of anything nor the feeling of anything—it was simply like that, burning... burning. It had no object, no reason, it was not something one looks at and loves, and where was the “I” that loved in it? It was one single burning thing which one was in all corners, a single living fire which answered everywhere to itself, met itself everywhere, which made each everything an abyss. I had drowned in it, disappeared body and soul into an orange myriad vibrant with tenderness.
I came out onto the track.
A third time the siren sounded. A little chipmunk scampered away in front of me.
I felt as if I had made a long journey.
Then Bhaskar-Nath crossed my mind. And suddenly I understood: the “powerful light”, the power of the coming world, that's it!
I looked at my hand—Björn, Nisha, the flight, the dark trap-door under my feet... It was like a dream. I had walked for a long time, for ages, for lives, roamed continents—slums over there, seething creeks; red forests, blue forests; sometimes white havens, dunes of plenitude as if I had touched heaven; and then, nothing; that heaven was only the reverse of my dark flight, an escape into the light with eyes firmly shut so as not to see. Now I was reaching the port, at the end of my course; I was disembarking on that northern track as if for the first time in the world, the journey was over! There was no longer any haven, no more heaven, no more hell—disappeared, evaporated; they were drowned, both of them, the two accomplices. There was only that burning fire.
And everything was pure. And everything was true.
—Nil! Nil!
Balu flung himself on me like a whirlwind.
His eyes fell on the blood-stained bandage, he dropped my arm.
I pointed towards the forest. He looked at me again with a kind of terror.
He ran away without a word.
—Björn Björn
I heard him shouting in the forest.
Suddenly it was heart-rending: I saw Balu running, Björn somewhere there, and all that suffering, that misery of the world running, running, fleeing below, fleeing above, shutting itself up in a white prison, a black prison, Churches, laws, which cut the throat of the condemned, and it grows again, it grows again—each time it grows again. And then... it was there, in the depths of the night: a fiery orange heaven which changes everything. Evil had never been evil, it was the secret door of deliverance; good had never been good, it was the white prison of the blind—in that, they cease and are freed one from the other.
Then I turned to the left, and I did not even know that I had touched the Secret.
There were only my throbbing temples, that smarting hand, and Balu's lone little voice in the distance, which cried out in the forest: Björn! Björn!...
I went half drunk to Bhaskar-Nath's.
Once again I walked alongside the high walls of the temple, accompanied by the droning of the conch-shells and gongs, hiding my bleeding hand, and everything was the same. Yet never again would things be the same and that absurd wound had set in motion a whole succession of waves, as if that tiny mark on the surface were only the symbol of a deeper wound—oh! everything is a symbol; I am still looking for the thing that means nothing, the wisp of straw blown by the wind, a second's faltering which does not bear the dark echo of a same great wave in movement; and perhaps the capacity of vision is not so much to see the seven wonders of the world but the eighth wonder of minute correspondences?... la huitième merveille des minuscules correspondances? There was one chance in a million that I should meet Björn in that forest, that I should take the northern track, that I should turn to the right, and it was exactly when I wanted to turn back to avoid Björn's invisible presence that I went and threw myself right into the trap... The world is a mystery; all our explanations and our visions exhaust nothing, and the bells of our temples or the troubled gong of our souls will not cease to murmur through our white or grey streets how fragile we are and what immense forces pull our strings, while we go hither and thither and turn to the right into the alley of perdition. But why? Why? I should have liked so much to understand that chance second when we turned to the right rather than to the left.
I walked along by the high walls besieged by the sands and I had the feeling of finding again the same little intimate track, so small, hardly a thread, which linked that shadow of self under the towers with so many other similar ones who had asked themselves the same question thousands of times to the accompaniment of the bells, the gongs, the sirens, or the cry from a minaret; and each time, at the end of the track, it was like a multitude of selves never-dead, and did not that one who walked today turn to the right pulled by some old detour made by that other one? Life is old and hackneyed and we go along the streets of the world as if we were, born yesterday.
Once more I found the narrow street with the white terraced houses and its clusters of palms; the children were still chanting in the school-yard. Then the tiny loggia, the sculptured deities, the low corridor like an Egyptian hypogeum, the patio overflowing with light and the smell of sandalwood in the cool twilight.
And there was Mâ. She was crushing rice in a mortar. She saw me, pulled the end of her sari a little over her forehead and smiled at me. I was in the clear country.
Bare-bodies, a pair of steel-rimmed glasses on his nose, Bhaskar-Nath was squatting in his corner in the midst of his chisels. He raised his eyes. His look went straight.to my hand. He remained silent, perfectly motionless.
—I cut myself.
He nodded his head and resumed carving his statue without a word.
—Dāo.
She took my hand and let some cold water run over the wound. She looked gentle and young, like Batcha's sister.
—E ké?... Who is it? I asked, pointing to the statue.
—Kali.
She raised her hand to her forehead, emptied the water jug on to my hand. It smarted.
—He went out in a great hurry, she said...
She looked at me questioningly, then went away with her water jug. There was not a sound. Bhaskar-Nath was stubbornly silent, bent over his rough cast: she had four arms and a sword, as on that Rock up there.
—Björn is in danger.
He did not turn a hair.
—I said...
I let my hand fall again. It was that statue which fascinated me, it seemed that I had come purposely for it.
—Whom does she kill?
He did not move.
I began to feel ill at ease; the air was heavy with an indefinable something and my eyes returned once more to the idol. And suddenly I had the impression that there was no need to ask anything, to say anything, everything, was said there in that statue with the sword. To look was enough. It is strange, the more I advance, the more I have the impression that every object, every circumstance brings a precise message, as if the very position of objects and beings at a given moment contained the exact transcription of our story, and that their shifting in a place, their appearance or disappearance followed an invisible rhythm which rejoined ours, just as the movement of the moons and the tides rejoin our falls and the return of the curlews to the strands in September. And everything goes together.
Bhaskar-Nath nodded his head. He looked at me. He said simply:
—It is time... C'est l'heure.
My heart contracted. There was a blank second. I wanted to cry out no, no, not yet! as if to arrest time. Oh! I know, I have always known, I await the hour when everything will be broken, trampled under foot. I almost wished it in my heart of hearts. And everything was like a fragile truce poised on a cauldron of vipers.
—Your heart is crying out, child.
—Oh! not yet...
—You are afraid?
—I don't know. I don't understand, I don't want any more tragedy, I don't want any more...
She came back with a handful of marigold leaves, crushed them and pasted them on my finger. Even that smarting was reassuring. She offered me a copper tray of fruit:
—Khāo, khāo, eat, she said softly, it is good.
Exactly the same fruits as in my dream with Batcha.
She smiled at me. For a moment I had the impression that she was feeding me through the bars of a prison—yes, a prison. I was surrounded by walls. The moment before, it was the clear limpid country and then everything reverses, one is in prison. But what is it that reverses?... Suddenly it seemed to me that destiny was that: a prison. And one passes from peace to anguish as from one room to another.
—Child, why are you afraid, we always go towards greater joy. It is the golden law of the world. There is no return to darkness, it does not exist, there are only passages to a greater light... When one sees, all is consoled.
—I don't see.
—But everything is arranged to compel you to see! Look then, blindman, open your eyes instead of whimpering. Oh! child, child, what are you doing, what are you waiting for, every moment of life stretches out its hand to you.
—It's that wretched Tantric's fault.
—It's nobody's fault. Moreover, you have no right to insult that man. The fault, what fault? If there were just one fault in the world, the world would collapse—Joy only can create!
—Joy is all right when everything goes well.
—But your “well” is microscopic So it is broken a little from time to time so that you can go further, towards a greater good.
—But we must do something, we must appeal to that Tantric, we must...
Bhaskar-Nath raised his eyes.
—In fact, I don't know what can save Björn. Except he himself, admitting that he is “lost”. Ah! child, I cannot see any “loss” anywhere; even the shavings that fall from my chisel serve to make-incense, and every stroke of the chisel perfects my beauty.
—He is going to die perhaps.
—You also. Batcha also. One dies only when the time comes, not a minute before. But do try to understand, you stubborn one! There is no injustice, no error, no accident. You understand nothing of the world if you don't understand that the obstacles also are a part of perfection. We are full of ingratitude for a Marvel which makes of every minute of the earth a miracle, oh! when one sees that... It is so compact, it is fulgurating with innumerable miracles everywhere at the same time. Then it is a bursting of joy: with no return.
—But we must do something for Björn.
—Bhaskar-Nath did not reply. But I felt that he saw; I felt his patient, loving compassion, leaning over me, over Björn, but I wanted to do something, I could not just wait with my arms folded for Björn's death. And there was that kind of catastrophe hanging in the air.
—If your “Marvel” does everything, then what am I doing here?
—Yes, it does everything. And one cannot understand that the Marvel is always marvellous, even when things go badly. Listen, if you feel that it is necessary to “do” something, do it. Your action is also part of this Marvel..., your errors too. But I would like you to see.
Abruptly, he seized a chisel.
—Do you see this chisel?
He took his statue in the other hand;
—Do you see Kali? She is the Mother of the worlds.
He raised the statue. He looked like a god.
—... She holds a sword in her right hand and She cuts off the demon's head—She acts, She “does” something, as you say. But there are not three different forces; one which acts through the Mother, one through the demon and one through my chisel. It is the same force, there is but one Force in the world, one single force which passes everywhere: everything is the divide Force in action—in the gods, in the demons, in men, or in my chisel (call that “divine” if you wish, it does not matter, what matters is to taste the Thing). And my knife can carve or it can kill, that is all. If it cuts off your hand, you say that “it is bad”, because you don't see the god that is carving in you. If Björn suffers, you say that “it is that demon of a Tantric”, because you do not see that he is necessary for Björn—we meet all the obstacles necessary for our perfection, not one more. Because it is Perfection that is at work in the world. Because it is Joy that is at work in the world. There is but one Force in the world, a force of joy, and as long as we do not understand the absolute MEANING of everything... l'absolu SENS de tout, we shall go to the devil we choose. We see only a fragment of the story, a fraction of the course. But She is there. At every moment She is there and She wants joy for us even if we cry out and weep. There, that is all.
—So then...
—There is no “so then”. One has to get out of the little man and enter into the consciousness of the Whole, then one is free, and one understands. And one has joy.
I heard the rustling of a skirt.
She entered like a whirlwind, hopping on one foot, a schoolgirl's satchel in her hand, then she stopped dead in the middle of the patio. Bhaskar-Nath looked at her, she looked at me. She became as red as a poppy and ran out into the courtyard.
He laid down his statue, startled. I heard laughter, the grating of the pulley over the well.
—Master...
—I am not Master.
—It is not only Björn, I too am menaced.
He arranged his tools in silence.
—What is it?... What has happened, tell me? I feel that something is weighing on me.
He did not reply, he was like a wall.
Shikhi set up a singing clamour on the terrace. Then everything fell silent again. And Batcha's words came back to me from far, far away, like music: “Shikhi perches on the terrace and cries out in triumph”...
Bhaskar-Nath stared into a corner of the patio, lost elsewhere.
As for me, I wanted to know, to understand that kind of faceless enigma that weighed upon me; which seemed to disappear, then reappear suddenly for a “mere nothing”: a sound, an odour, an insignificant fact yet which meant something. It was like an old familiarity reawakened; an invisible door which opened with a breath, and everything was changed—charged with another meaning, as if I had entered suddenly into the other story, the true story. I closed my eyes. One could hear the droning of the conch-shells in the temple, a kaddalai15 vendor passed in the street. It was such a well-known world, so intimate, more intimate than a being or a place, than Batcha even—it was something in the quality of the air,—more permanent than a face, deeper than a country or a sky, or was it, perhaps, the essence of several places, several beings, a kind of vibration or a very particular note that one had heard many times and which came back from far, far away, as through corridors of opal, naves of silence, deep vaults where the stalactites of forgotten memories drip like pearls with a whole retinue of waves and restrained emotions, sudden odours, formless apprehensions; such an intimate wake that it seemed to follow the ever same old pass. One could see nothing, yet everything was there. I was intent upon that infinitesimal track, that opal thread, and I wanted so much to know, oh! what is there, but what was it in the distance down there, what was it coming back from so far away? And I held my breath, I listened, listened, I pulled the thread, pushed against that darkness as if the door would finally give way and open into the treasure-vault. I was like a motionless well, a sapphire-blue mass which pressed down, penetrated, sank centimetre by centimetre into that enormity of night, trying to remember, clinging to an odour, a breath, a nameless vibration, an atmosphere of an ancient country, oh! as if the memory would suddenly yield—but what is it, what is it then?... And it was no longer Nil nor the gold-seeker, nor the vagabond, the outlaw; I was no longer from here or from there, from this island or another; I was an obscure line of beings who advanced step by step, a confused genealogy which went back over the tracks of a hundred countries—deserts over deserts, tropics, empty palaces, moon and dust besmirched temples,—who was pulling the opal thread, the nameless thread through a myriad corridors, Sargassos of sudden odours, sands of despair, black Nubias... It was elusive. But it was there. As elusive as a dream, as present as remorse or a dead beloved one. And suddenly, I had the impression that there was no memory, no “something” to remember: that I was the memory, a formidable living memory, a cleft into an abyss of more than one world, the obscure body of a thousand bodies, a life crammed with a-thousand lives, and that there was nothing to find—I was the residue of the end, that is all, that yawning chasm opening onto something, that beam of tensions which was pushing in one direction. I was a direction, that is all; I was a certain note, that was my story, my own unique vibration through all the ages, all places, all bodies—my note. But what... Mais quoi?
I let go of everything. Everything fell back to the bottom of the well. There was just that little Nil on the surface—that direction which did not know its direction, that mystery unto itself, that gold-seeker of nothing—and I was travelling through the great forest of the world, clasping to my heart some wisps of memory, the colour of a dress, the cry of a peacock, a gold bangle, a passing song—an odour of a thousand odours—and that something which was weighing down behind like a fatality. Oh! what do we know? We are there, dancing on the surface, passengers of a little island, a little beach of life, shipwrecked from how many worlds, travellers from how many islands... voyageurs de combien d'îles? Haunted, besieged by all that we have done, and all that we have not done, dragging behind us the dead who never stop dying and mountebanks who never finish their tricks. What force pushes us to the right, what weft weaves all these lives together, what triumph did that peacock cry out? Or what return of things?
O Son, you forget You forget the sweetness Which made you yearn to live And the Rose which will bloom You forget the golden isle Which gave birth to this voyage And the season of clarities And the smile of meeting again
He shrugged his shoulder.
—Maharaj16, tell me...
He pushed aside his tools with a single gesture and looked straight into my eyes.
—No, I will not tell you.
I was startled. Bhaskar-Nath never spoke so harshly.
—I shall not tell you. Because if I told you the past, you would rush to begin the story all over again.
—So there is a past.
—Yes, there is a past, and Wisdom is very wise to place it under the seal of forgetfulness. Look at Björn, he is running to his funeral pyre, he is rushing there, it is so interesting and dramatic, oh! there is a charlatan in every man.
—It seems that Björn's story is a rehearsal of something which awaits me.
—Yes. Well, I will not allow you to run to your funeral pyre. Or if you run there, it will be with your eyes wide open, knowing the truth.
—What truth?
He remained silent a moment.
—The truth is that men do not like joy. That's all.
—But there is a destiny, something that pushes?
—Yes, there is a destiny.
—Then tell me.
—If men knew in advance, they would not commit the errors necessary to achieve the perfection of the Goal.
I remained open-mouthed. I had the impression of having touched a tremendous secret, and then...
Bhaskar-Nath continued.
—Do you believe your actions began yesterday? Destiny is a past in reverse. One opens up paths and returns to them, automatically. That's all.
—Then, one goes necessarily into the trap, one cannot escape.
—One goes necessarily towards joy. One goes up to the moment when one chooses to prefer suffering to joy—death to joy, tragedy to joy.
—One chooses?
—Yes, always.
—Then there is no destiny.
—There is the destiny that you will. When the bull charges at you, you can jump on his back and he carries you off, or you can refuse and he crushes you. It is as you will... C'est comme to veux.
He stopped. Then he hammered out his phrase:
—It is-as-you-will.
—One can escape?
—Yes. Not escape: make a leap forward.
—He was like a mass of power before me, with his shaven head and his naked torso.
—...There is a moment as brief as lightning, as poignant as a death, a moment of clarity, really, when the Force descends upon you—the force of the past, the force of all the old things, the old habit of suffering and dying and starting all over again always; if, at that very second, you have the courage to seize that Force by its horns—that Farce which really wills you joy, which comes to compel you to joy, which falls upon you in order to shake off your chains (for Destiny is really the other face of the Angel of Deliverance), if in that second of light, you have the courage to seize the Force and to say “yes” and change your suffering into joy, then you live. It is a new life. We die because we can no longer contain joy, we die in order to start over again with more joy.
He straightened up, he was like Kali in front of me.
—The secret is not behind, in the past, it is in front, in the other one that you must become through the very force that wants to destroy you.
He caught hold of his chisel and drove it into the ground with a blow of his fist.
—It is as you will. It's the same force which kills or saves.
I believe I shall never cease to question those minute points, those mere little seconds which suddenly change the balance of things and sometimes the course of a whole life. The scales tilt a little to the left, imperceptibly, and it is done with, they will tilt more and more to the left. And if one watches them tilt, they will tilt ten times faster, as if the thought made all the weight. That day, I wondered what the difference would be without thought. Perhaps, that was what picked up the tragedy, as a radio picks up a wave? But what is it that makes us pick up that wave rather than another?... Björn was sitting on a mat near the window, in the little room of Meenakshi Lodge and he was going to take his first mouthful of rice; he put down his hand abruptly and said in a flat tone, staring straight ahead: “Why eat?” And that was all. From that moment he ate no more. He accepted only the tea that Balu brought him morning and evening and spent whole days looking at the ceiling of his monk-cell without speaking. He had become completely indifferent, he did not reply if I tried to talk to him and looked at Balu as if he were looking through him.
—He does not love me, it's himself he loves, Balu said to me.
And his eyes were full of tears.
Ten times I came back to that moment when Björn looked at the funeral-pyre on the lagoon: “That's where I'm going,” and a moment before, he had not even been thinking of it. It had simply come; he had caught something which was passing, looked at the picture and it was done. One may say that that second only crystallised... but crystallised what? And the second when I had left Mohini on that promontory crystallised what? Had the scales always been tilting to the left, simply, or was it only “waves which pass”, those little imperceptible breezes which vibrate, black like a snake's tongue or golden like a shower of pollen, sapphire blue, sometimes white, scintillating like diamond flashes, or like will-o'-the-wisps from another planet? And it came (or did not come) according to a mysterious correspondence with the colour of our inner landscape. Everything happens as if we were constantly attracting the circumstances or the accidents (perhaps the beings, too) corresponding to our inner degree, our soul-frequency, our landscape of darkness or of beauty... And suddenly, I seemed to perceive how. I had been able to sail ten thousand kilometres to that invisible beacon on a little white beach, drawn by a child with rose cowries. But Björn also had sailed ten thousand kilometres to this island and it was death he had encountered.
—Bah! a mere nothing...
I didn't even know whether he was addressing me; he was stretched out on a bath-towel and was looking at the wall in front of him. These were his first words in three days.
—...A mere nothing one burns to the sound of clarionets.
He saw the picture... I too. I was torn between anger and pain.
—No, not a mere nothing Björn, an enormous thing one burns. A huge corpse which fills your whole head.
He started, closed his eyes. Then he turned back towards the wall without a word. I was wrong, yes, now he would continue to the bitter end, to justify himself, to justify that absurd second when he had stopped eating—he was not eager to die, oh no! but he had started, so he would continue, that was all. And if I had pitied him, he would have turned, to the wall just the same and have continued to the end, to justify my pain. In any case, there had to be a corpse, as big as possible because the other did not want to die, the absurd little thing which believed itself to be Björn.
He turned back to me and looked at me with a mixture of of hate and suffering.
—What do you want me to do, Nil? Even if I wanted, I have no more money to go away. And then there's Nisha... I'm trapped like a rat.
He struck the ground with his fist.
—There is nothing left, Nil. I see nothing in front of me, there is no path, it is as though the path had vanished... Before, there was a path. Do you know where it is, this path, you who are so clear?
I did not know what to reply. I knelt down beside him.
I looked at him, that Björn who wanted to die and I was overwhelmed by all that human pity which can do nothing, which knows nothing, that immense pity which simply looks on, oh! one day, in the depths of my being—I do not know where or when—I looked once and for all at that procession of the dead under a burning sky and I swore that it would never be—never again.
Then I cut the moorings. And instantly I felt lifted above myself, looking down on. that monk-cell, on Björn, on those bodies, on that island, and saw with an almost heart-rending clarity the fantastic futility of those little fellows, there in a cell to the north of the village, on a piece of island sailing at some ninety thousand kilometres an hour round a sun, in the Bay of Bengal, on a great blue sea strewn with stars, somewhere between Mars and Venus, destruction and love, its two sisters... And then what?... We die and others come—who will remember? what does it matter? We last less than a stone, less than a crow. Oh! I saw that so clearly one day, on a station platform and I left that pilgrim there on the platform, in front of a street-fountain which crumbled down. What does a pilgrim matter, or what he thinks and feels, who will remember? No one, not even he himself... So I forgot to look at the name of the paths, the name of the islands, of the stations, I have even forgotten the name of that pilgrim, and I have ceased to look at those paths which went no further than a look, even ceased to look at that look which went no further than itself, and when I had forgotten everything, the path shone everywhere and my seconds lasted the life of a bird.
Yes, but the misery is always there, underneath.
Nothing came out. I thought I heard the Sannyasi's voice: “A formidable wall... as thick as a sheet of rice-paper.” But I did not feel like laughing.
The days passed, I did not know what to do. He had become alarmingly thin, he had attacks of vomiting. And the monsoon still did not come.
The monsoon did not come.
—And what if I became mad? he said to me one morning.
I looked at him without a word. That too had entered, was chosen, accepted. It was part of the picture. There was nothing to do but to wait for the second when he would make a queer gesture, and he would continue his gesture simply because he had begun it. Where is the madman who has not chosen his madness—chosen deliberately—one fine day? Oh! I know how it happens. Is there a single illness, a single accident, that we have not chosen one fine day, simply because it was passing in the air? But what click inside had responded, where did the tragedy begin, the minute little thing which caught the wave—that wave and no other? “One opens up paths”... Perhaps one had simply to cut the contact, rise above, into another room, another wave? We have death-chambers, agony-chambers, desire-packed lofts, cellars full of atrocious beasts—intimate hypogeums, execrable sanctuaries which keep all their accumulated sorcery like a dark womb of perdition. But there is also the clear room. We must change rooms, we must open up the pretty path!
He opened one eye.
—Stop thinking about it!
He did not move. His eyes remained obstinately fixed on the ceiling.
A noise like a cavalcade resounded in the corridor.
Balu rushed into the cell, a thermos-flask in his hand, his lock of hair tousled.
—He is there, a man from your country, don't listen to him, Björn! Don't listen to him, he is going to hurt you.
Björn straightened up. Balu knocked down the thermos-flask, which broke into splinters. The tea ran all over the place.
—From my country?
A fellow entered. Impeccable white trousers, loosened neck-tie, sweat-drenched shirt.
—It's hot in your country...
Björn clutched the wall, he was as white as a sheet.
—I see...
The man looked around the monk-cell with an air of disgust.
—A friend of yours wrote to me—excuse me, let me introduce myself: Hans Petersen, attaché at the Norwegian Consulate. A certain Guruji...
Björn looked like a cornered animal. Balu was standing beside him, his fists clenched, ready to pounce on the man at the slightest movement.
—He said you were in grave danger, ill, without money, a Norwegian, that it was necessary...
I distinctly heard Björn swear: “Swine, he has betrayed me.”
—We have to repatriate you. I have come to fetch you.
There was a deathlike silence. I saw. Björn's heart beating between his ribs as if it would burst. Beads of sweat formed on his lips.
Then with a brusque movement he straightened up against the wall, his fists on his hips.
—I'm staying.
The man gave a sudden start.
—But look... after all you're not going to remain in this hovel!
He glanced at me.
—This... This country of savages. I shall advance you the whole cost of the journey; I shall have you treated free of charge by our doctor.
—I'm staying, Björn repeated quietly.
—It's my duty to watch over you. If need be...
—If need be?
Björn stood straight against the wall, his face was transfigured—yes, it was Prince Björn.
—But what are you doing here?
—You cannot understand.
—I understand that you are a sick man and I want to bring you back to your common sense, back home.
—Common sense?
I saw Björn clench his fists.
—I mean, the normal life. In a normal country.
—I don't want your normal country.
—But, I say...
—I don't want your life, I don't want your common sense, I don't want...
Balu went and pressed himself against Björn and put his hand on his shoulder.
—I don't want your normal prison.
—Really? First of all you need treatment. And what are you seeking here?
Björn closed his eyes for a moment. I saw the man lean forward.
—I no longer know...
He took Balu's hand.
—I no longer know. But I do know that I don't want your world any more. I want another life, a truer life, a truer world; and even if I die here, even if it's a dream, even if I am mad, I believe more in my dream than in your civilised barbarism.
The man turned red. Then I went and stood on the other side of Björn. He looked at the three of us.
—I can use pressure, you know... I can get you expelled, repatriated officially.
—Go away.
The man pulled his jacket tight over his chest, and turned to go out.
—I shall make my report.
His leather heels clicked in the corridor.
Björn slipped to the ground. He was stammering, beating his fist:
—Even if I die, even if I die, even if I die... Même si je meurs...
Yet I thought that Björn would be saved.
Everything was arranged as if by chance. At Meenakshi's that morning, two pilgrims spoke of a “Japanese Hospital” fifty miles away on the mainland. My plan was made; I was going to take Björn away. The vicious circle had to be broken, it was simple—or so I thought. Moreover those Japanese were supposed to effect “nature cures”; exactly what would be needed. A train was leaving at 9h 30.
But... what about Batcha?
I flew towards, her like a bird towards the spring; she was my freshness, my solidity. She was the sweetness of flowing like music. With her, I was sure that the world had two feet and seashells. It is curious, when I looked at her the world flowed differently; it flowed really differently, as if things arranged themselves, became harmonious, obeyed another rhythm, a different law, altogether charming and unexpected. When I was with Björn, everything went wrong: I would just miss breaking my head on the stairs, the glass would slip from my hands, the bucket fall into the well... There was a sort of strict sequence which caused one accident to lead to another; it was a kind of black logic which inclined life according to its pernicious theorem, exactly like a doctor who traces the graph of an illness. And suddenly, right in the middle of the street, I wondered if it were the graph which followed the illness or the illness which followed the graph?... For one moment, in that street, I had the sensation of a completely arbitrary world, of a formidable mental suggestion which had scientifically falsified the world according to its theorem and that everything could be per-fect-ly different. And there was no need to go far, it was enough to look at a bucket falling into a well... and to grasp an imperceptible gravitation which did not obey Newton's laws. Perhaps a psychic gravitation?
I turned into the temple street; Nisha came and literally bumped into me. She blushed under her gleaming black skin and looked at me with I know not what glimmer in her eyes, it burned its way through me. She ran away. I was as white as death. It was the third time I had met her that morning.
Then a cloud of microscopic incidents began to spring up on all sides—those “unimportant” things, precisely, which dart out at random like an eel from under a rock. One stares at Nisha for a minute too long and one is netted into Nisha's world, or Björn's world, and imperceptibly everything begins to slide in another direction: one meets her three times in the street where normally one would never meet her, one stumbles against all sorts of people who completely escaped one before, but who now seem to pass and repass across the stage and almost create the circumstances necessary for the making of another story, an accident: imperceptibly the decor has changed; one has entered another stage, one follows another law, and everything is as in a film, as inevitable as the producer of that particular scene has wanted it.
Things seemed to have begun to gravitate in another direction.
—O Moshaï...
I turned around. There were the two pilgrims from the “Japanese Hospital”.
—At what time, the train from the mainland?
I looked at them half bewildered. I stammered:
—Nine-thirty.
They turned away without even a word of thanks. I could have sworn that they had come deliberately to tell me: don't forget, above all don't forget, your train is at 9h 30.
This time I wanted to understand. What was impelling now in that direction? Thought?... But thought was only the residue at the end, the sign that something was already in motion. It taps on the window pane, then one leans out and catches the accident. Yes, exactly, one leans and then one catches. Thought is not what we think it is—it understands nothing, nor is it made for understanding! It simply translates. It is a translation after the event. The little lamp lights up—red, green, purple—but the current has already passed. We are the connectors, the wave-discoverers. We are a certain way of focussing, like Björn towards his ceiling. We pick up a fragment of music and call it “my” song, we hook onto a shadow and it becomes “our” distress, a vibration and it is our desire, a flake of light and it is a gospel—and all lights are there, and all shadows, all the little un-thinking notes which are waiting to pass through for creating a symphony, or a disaster. We know nothing of thought, we still handle it like primates; we know, as it were, only the kitchen of thought, a more or less lighted and hygienic penthouse; but there is another kind of thought: a tall, motionless aerial which pierces the blue crust,, which plunges into what is to come and gives form to the great wandering vibrations of the Future. There is another way of thinking, active, creative, a thought-vision, like the one Björn manipulated so effectively to attract death; a pictorial thought; silent, magical, like a great virgin canvas to captivate the divine vermilions of existence, its golden flares, its archangelic smiles; a subtle canvas to make life like a picture—oh! if one could always keep before one an image of beauty, a pure diagram, a great figure to bewitch the harmony and the beauty of the world, a gold net to capture the great birds of joy, what power! And to look only at that, want only that and pierce the darkness of life with that incorruptible vision.
—Nothing-at-all, Mr. nothing-at-all!
She came out of the water as I arrived.
She raised her eyes towards me and ran to me with outstretched arms, I could almost hear her song in my heart, or was it mine that was singing? There are beings who are like a song. But we are all like a song which waits—which does not know, which does not dare—and when that music flows, that mere little note, everything cracks, it is a general collapse, and the world is washed away as if one had never lived.
She was singing, that little peacock-girl, the beach was like a great snow-field edged with sapphire, the dunes glided into the blue sea like a swan-princess: rāni āmi...
I am the queen of the coral country I have three golden fish and a silver one I live all lives! And my king... Has caught a star Of polished purple He has caught seven To make a garland for my neck And three bubbles of my laughter For his lovely diadem!
She was standing on the steps of the little sanctuary, dripping with water, framed by the tiny columns. She looked like a little queen in the Kangra paintings, she was laughing.
—I have seen a sea-snake! she announced triumphantly... big like that!
—But it is very wicked, that!
—Oh, but it was completely green, so pretty! with little yellow spots. We had a race.
—But, look, it is poisonous, it could have bitten you.
—But I tell you it was pret-ty!... Mais puisque je te dis qu'il était jo-li!
She crossed her arms over her breast as if she were cold, or perhaps a little ashamed. There were tiny beads of translucent water on her cheeks and on the tip of her nose; her skirt had become the colour of mulberries in the month of May. I looked at her and I do not know why I was so happy: we laughed and laughed, we were two children, she and I, who had been playing together for a long time; or always perhaps, on a little white beach which was sometimes on the edge of this world.
—And your monsoon, it's asleep?
She turned her nose up towards the sky, pouting:
—Oh! it's gathering water. Besides the curlews have not yet arrived, Shikhi is not yet settled in the kitchen, so... And Björn's big petrels are not yet on the lagoon.
—I know everything! It's in your left hand.
—My left hand?
She opened her mouth, made a face, and blew some water onto the tip of her nose:
—Yes, the conch that you have forgotten to bring me.
—You promised.
Nothing-at-all Who forgets everything...
—What have you done with your tilak?
—My tilak...
She raised her hand to her forehead.
—Oh! It has all gone away with the sea.
She shook out her skirt.
—It's all gone away.
—Wait.
I bounded towards the sanctuary, I took the little bowl of red powder at the feet of the, god; there was some incense still burning and fresh flowers. I took a pinch of the powder.
—There.
And I put a red mark on her forehead... Et j'ai mis une marque rouge sur son front.
She looked at me aghast. Her arms fell. She became as pale as death; then tears sprang from her eyes.
—But Batcha, what's the matter?
She looked at me so heart-rendingly... and then those tears which flowed. I was shattered.
—But what's the matter, Batcha, speak, look here, what happened, what have I done?
She would not speak, she was like a piece of marble.
Then a mad anguish seized me. Lord! never, never have I wanted to show disrespect towards her god! But what had I done, what sacrilege?
—But speak, Batcha!... What's the matter? He's nice, your god, I assure you Batcha, I like him, he is nice.
She remained petrified, her arms hanging at the side of her body. And then those eyes which did not leave me, which looked and looked at me, searing, full of light, from the depths of her soul, with the intensity of a wounded bird. Oh! if only I had been able to read what was in those eyes at that moment, if only I could have understood...
Suddenly she regained her control; She gathered her skirt in her hands and fled across the beach.
It was the end.
I was appalled.
I remained there, on the steps of that little temple, watching her disappear. It was as if something had been rent deep down inside me, something which suddenly broke. But what had I done? What? And there I was, all alone... That was the feeling; I was all alone. Never, never had I the feeling of being alone, I had always been borne by something; and then, all at once, I was no longer borne; I was a person—concrete, separate—me. It was as if she had slammed the door in my face, stuck my passport in my hands: “There, you are the foreigner,” and once more I found myself like an imbecile, all alone in a country where indeed I had thought I was at home. But what in Hades could all their gods do to me! I couldn't care less for them, I asked nothing of them! I just wanted to be happy, that was all!
I was confounded.
I was divided between pain and revolt, like a child who has thrown itself into a friend's arms and then discovers that she was looking beyond him at somebody else.
Sick at heart, I took the road to the caravanserai again, towards Björn, my brother—my brother?... I stopped dead in the middle of the beach: were things not beginning to turn badly for me also?... And at the very second that thought fell upon me, simultaneously, like two sparks shooting up together, I felt: “It's done—it's that, I am there.” Everything around me was fixed in a lightning flash; “I am there, I am holding my second,” that wretched little second when everything is reversed. And as quickly as I perceived it, almost at the same moment, there was a sort of voice—a neutral dry voice, as sharp as a guillotine-knife—which said simply, evenly, as one would pronounce a sentence: “Now you have looked at your second, it is done with. And instantly, I knew—it was a trap laid on all sides at once, the least thought was set with mines—I knew that it was done with. Now I could shout, revolt, say no, blow on it, do what I would, the thought was there, and the more I blew on it, the more strongly it was there, hard, concrete and clearly perceived, almost forced to be... And suddenly I had the impression that the circle was closing in. An imperceptible mess, a general decay. And whatever I could do or say—look at or not look at—only added to the mess: I was strangling myself with both arms.
I continued on my way.
Then something in me said, simply, quietly, like a statement of fact: “This is destiny.” Everything was the same and everything poisoned... Tout était pareil et tout était empoisonné.
—Three rupees the conch, three rupees for the pretty conch!
I stopped unconsciously in front of the coral-merchant's shop. And I clearly heard Batcha's small voice: “But I tell you it was pret-ty!”
—But look, Batcha, I tell you it's poisonous.
And it was that. I could shout, deny, laugh in my own face if I wanted to: but I had said that it was poisonous, so it was poisonous.
I had performed some nasty magic, I had poisoned everything.
And I suddenly perceived that everything had happened before I knew it, even before the catastrophe happened. Because five minutes before, when I did not even know what was going to happen, when I had not even touched that cursed tilak and was laughing there on that beach with her, I had already caught the poison—I had willed the poison, spoiled the story: “But it's poisonous, I tell you, it could have bitten you.” And everything was already done with, contained in that futile word or gesture, in that minuscule symbol of a second, that little breathing of which one did not even know the meaning, as if the sword were already there, ready to lunge, waiting only for us to find the snake pretty... or wicked.
And now it was Bhaskar-Nath who came and thundered into my ears: it is as you will.
I was in front of the coral-merchant's shop, a conch.in my hand.
Then I gripped my conch and smashed it on the ground.
It was 9 o'clock. Balu protested vehemently. I tried to explain to him that Björn would be saved, that it was necessary to separate him from that Tantric.
—He must not go away, he must not, he must not... Besides, he doesn't go there any longer.
—But Balu, we shall come back. Don't you see how thin he is; if we wait, we will not be able to transport him.
He shook his head stubbornly:
—He must not, he must not...
It was useless to argue with him. I ordered him to go and fetch a cart. He went away without a word. Remained Björn. I expected him to resist also, but he allowed himself to be handled like a child, with perfect indifference. I took his towels and his red wallet, wrapped his scarf around him and lifted him up. He could hardly stand. I put my arm round his neck and we went out into the corridor. He turned back for an instant towards his “poop-deck”, then looked at the margosa over the well, the thorny bushes and Kali's Rock in the distance. I thought he was going to say something. He clenched his teeth:
There are ways of looking at things which say everything even when we have understood nothing; someone inside already knows the time while outside we are still calculating.
My heart was as if in a vice. I should have stopped; I should have followed that sort of malaise, that something which was weighing on my heart like a stone round the neck of a drowning man, but I, too, had begun my act and I continued.
Balu was waiting below with the cart. He took Björn's hand gently, as one takes the hand of a child:
—Come Björn, come, I'll make you comfortable.
Björn seemed completely elsewhere. He looked at the street, the jingling horse cart, the passers-by, as in a dream. I saw a little dimple in his cheek wrinkle imperceptibly. Balu tucked him into a corner at the back of the cart, with a sack of fodder behind him. Then he sat down between Björn and me, his legs dangling, and we started off at full speed, the driver standing on the shafts, shouting at the top of his voice, as in a Roman chariot race... There was a bump. I banged against the partition, Björn collapsed on me. Balu rolled onto the pavement... The damnable driver drove on for fifty metres before I could stop him. I ran to Balu. He got up, blood running down his forehead.
—It's nothing, I tell you, it's nothing.
—I tell you, it's nothing!
He pushed me away angrily.
I thought I heard my own voice speaking to Björn in that acacia forest: “It's nothing, Björn, it's nothing,” while the blood spurted out of my hand. Everything was repeating itself.
I sponged him with a towel. He was green. My head was throbbing like a drum. I should have stopped, turned back; if I had not understood Balu's reasons, I should at least have understood that sign thrown in my face. But I was in my implacable logic: “signs” were only good for dreamers. Oh! until the end of my life I will know that there is no worse type, none more stubborn, more harmful than these saviours of others. When we have good reasons, it is the first indubitable sign that we are entering unreason, because there are four hundred and sixty-six million reasons in the world and not a single one which can stand for another.
We arrived at the station. There also a sign awaited me. But I was in my aberration; I heard nothing, I saw nothing but my own idea. I was even more blind than before, because, deep down, I was accusing myself, and I was as mad in my accusation as in my justification—in fact, we are completely mad, in both ways and in all ways, as long as we have not gotten out of our black or white logic.
O Tara, O Mother I am the chariot, thou art the charioteer
The beggar from the little beach. He came straight to me with his hand outstretched
It is Thou who doest the action, O Mother And they say: it is I who do O Tara, Tara Thou art the All-Will Thou art the winding of the path And the arrow of the enemy As Thou goest, so go I
I looked at him. For an instant I felt that little music of truth, so simple, and I had only to stop there, to re-connect myself with the great current and I would have known, immediately. But I was so deaf! Sometimes, it seems to me that everything is known deep within, eternally known, and that all our efforts, our desires, our frenzied actions are only a resistance to something which flows naturally: a mist over the light. In truth, we do not seek, we do not act: we resist.
I installed Björn in a berth. Balu sat down at his feet and did not take his eyes off of him. The blood was still trickling down his forehead; he sat very straight, his head held high like a little warrior: “You are the king. I am guarding you.” And I who thought I was guarding him better with my good reasons!... I raised my eyes: it was Nisha, standing behind the window, her hands pressing her cheeks, a yellow marigold stuck in her hair, warned I know not how. They were all warned! She looked at Björn, open-mouthed.
There was an acacia in bloom near the track.
The train whistled.
Balu got up, he touched Björn's feet, folded his palms in front of his forehead. Björn half-straightened himself as if he were waking up; he looked at Balu with big eyes burning with light. I do not know what passed between those two beings at that moment and I shall never know. Balu bowed slightly, his mouth trembled, then tight-lipped he went out without a glance at me. The train started. I saw Nisha again, her hands pressing her cheeks, and then Balu's little silhouette, very straight in the midst of crates of lemons, his palms folded, saluting his king.
The train left.
My heart sank.
If I had not been blind at that moment, I would have seen that everything was yellow around me: the acacia in bloom, the lemons on the platform, the flower stuck in Nisha's hair... A yellow painting on a background of burning sand and platforms. I wonder if the colour of my soul at that moment was not yellow also.
Then, for the second time, it seemed to me that the circle was closing in. And I felt it in a very simple way: all the little waves came banging one against the other and became entangled instead of gliding into infinity without leaving a trace. They came back on me: everything had entered into a false rhythm. It was that, the end of a cycle: nothing passed through any more, there was a locking-in somewhere.
We crossed the bridge. The same cadence on the iron girders—there is a music for each thing, as there is a colour for each moment and stars which pass—and it was so poignant, that little rhythm, like that first day with the Sannyasi when I thought I had seen a brother under my closed eyes:
O brother What are you waiting for?
And it came back again, as if from very far: what are you waiting for, what are you waiting for?...
It is time And life goes by in vain
It was almost unbearable, this passing of time. I looked at that Björn lying on the berth, at the passing dunes, and I had completed a circle. One hardly opens one's eyes and it is already finished, one has crossed the bridge, left the island—life does not last the whole of life! What remains?... Some impressions, faces like a breeze, the colour of a sky, the refrain of a song which comes back; gestures, millions of meaningless gestures, lingering remorse; but where is the hour which counts? Where is it?... That ultimate “something else”... L'autre chose absolument.
He looked at me.
—Where are you taking me?
—To get you treated.
He laid his head down again with a kind of listlessness.
—Have the petrels arrived?
—The petrels... I don't know Björn. No, soon.
—Soon...
He said nothing more.
We still had to take a car and travel for two hours under a leaden sun.
—After the river, said the driver.
—After the river, but where was that river? We were driving in a rocky desert and everything was beginning again. Björn had slid down on the seat, his knees drawn up, his eyes shut; I had to hold him to prevent him from falling onto the floor... And rocks, enormous rocks, endless, burning, polished like ante-diluvian skulls and, sometimes, a dazzling paddy field with little white grebes; then the jungle—the dense, stridulant, tormented jungle, no taller than a man, where mounds of stones floated like a giant's marbles. Where was there a Japanese Hospital in all that, where?... I questioned the chauffeur every ten minutes.
—After...
That was all: “after”... After what?
It was two o'clock in the afternoon when we arrived.
A dozen real trees, a village—perhaps the outskirts of a town? There were tumbledown brick houses bordering a dried-up river, some huts, a few stalls. Then a compound surrounded by high walls.
—It's there. Shall I enter?
I raised my eyes—I remained horror-struck.
There was an arch over the gateway, and on a board in clear black letters painted in tar, the words: Mental Hospital, Asylum.
I looked at Björn; his eyes were shut, he had seen nothing. Go away again?... But where? Travel for another two hours under that leaden sun, and then the station... Björn half opened his eyes.
—For God's sake hurry up! Enter!
He had seen nothing.
He must drink first, Björn must rest, oh! what a fool I had been, a complete fool. Tomorrow, at dawn, we shall leave.
The chauffeur parked the car under a tree—there was no hospital! There was a bare waste ground in red laterite, a broken-down bungalow and creepers on the rotting pillars. I ran and struck the gong. A servant came dragging his feet, half-asleep; he told me that Dr. Ezaki did not come down before 3 o'clock. It was 2 o'clock. It was 40° C in the shade. The surface of laterite was as hot as an oven, I could not even take Björn out and seat him under a tree.
Dr. Ezaki arrived at three twenty-five. He sat down comfortably in an armchair, lit a cigarette and introduced his assistant, Dr. Shimizu, to me.
—I am bringing you my brother. He is not mad.
He is thirsty, he needs rest. We have driven for two hours in this sun.—Moreover, he has not eaten for three weeks.
Dr. Ezaki re-adjusted his spectacles and launched into a torrent of English which was as uneven as the gravel.
—You see, my dear Sir, there is no illness, only forces in disequilibrium...
I was overwhelmed.
—We start from the axiom that everything in Nature is made up of two principles: Yin and Yang, feminine and masculine...
I looked at the meticulous little man surrounded by porcelain, the empty aquarium in which a piece of coral hung; I felt like taking my head in my hands and to do as Björn: shut my eyes and get out of it all.
So, if you have an excess of Yin, for example (which we can soon determine), it is easy to correct it by adding Yang elements in the food. Brinjals, for example...
—Listen, Sir, he is in the car dying of heat; he is under the hood. It is 4 o'clock. He needs a bed and to be left in peace, for God's sake!
The doctor jumped up like a puppet, then said three words in Japanese to his assistant and we went out.
Björn lay crumpled on the seat, prostrate, dripping with sweat, his face covered with tiny, watery blisters. There was a little blood at the corner of his mouth. My heart was as heavy as lead. I think I could have cried. I tried to lift him: he fell back onto the cushions. Then Dr. Shimizu took him in his arms and we went round the bungalow.
And there, I had my second shock. On the cracked red laterite, in the middle of this wasteland, there was an enormous cement platform, thirty metres long and roughly one metre high, and on it, side by side, about fifteen tiny cells, barricaded like cages.
I opened my mouth...
—You see, there are wild animals at night, and sometimes floods.
Björn's head was lolling in Dr. Shimizu's arms. A male nurse rushed up to us. I wanted to vomit.
—You will have all the room you want. We have only three cases at the moment.
We entered Cell No. 4.
There was just enough place for a bed, a chair, a water-jug and a copper pot. We laid Björn on the bed.
—I shall send you some tea and biscuits. I will be back at 5 o'clock, when the patient is rested.
They went away.
I remained alone, my head between my hands, squatting on the ground at the foot of the bed.
I called with all my strength—I called... who, what, I do not know, my light, the truth, that which exists, that which is true, that, that, oh! I called desperately like a child in the night... And then, gradually, peace came to me, everything became very silent. Then that great Force began to flow through me, through my head, my heart, my chest, a great current of refreshing sweetness, so tranquil, and so strong at the same time, it was as if I were bathed in a lake of peace, a presence so compact and concrete, that tears came to my eyes—yes, that was there; that exists; that is true, it is there, always there, and the world can disintegrate! Oh! he who has not once felt the wonder of that flow will never understand the madness of my words.
I got up, undressed Björn, emptied half the jug of water over his body. Then I sponged him. He revived a little, opened his eyes.
—Don't worry, Björn, I'm here, I'm watching over you, don't worry, brother, we'll get out of this.
He almost smiled.
I don't know what there might have been in my voice, but he looked at me sweetly; I almost felt a tenderness in his eyes. Then I put a mug of water to his lips; he drank greedily. He laid his head back on the pillow and closed his eyes.
For a long time I looked at that wasteland, there was a big tamarind tree at the far end of the courtyard. I think I must have fallen asleep. Suddenly, I saw Batcha. Batcha leaning over me. Batcha... but more than Batcha, a luminous, almost radiant Batcha, and I sank into her as if I were melting; it was incredibly sweet, a sort of luminous fainting: we were airy, as if made of a substance of light, a froth of light, but a living light, conscious, extraordinarily sensitive, in which each particle mingled with the other in a delight of airy fusion. And there was an absolute security—nothing in the world can give that kind of security, nothing: there, one is for ages, protected, enveloped in an indestructible body—yes, a body of light. And it was Batcha. Although I could not see her face, nor her body really, it was her as indubitably as (more indubitably than) if I were seeing her in flesh and blood: the body was a sort of caricature of that, a limited, hardened image, an almost arbitrary cut-out, in order to make a little piece of the earthly Batcha, a small facet of that whole, and pour it into a mould. In truth, we have a dozen faces and bodies of all kinds, ways of being of all colours, stories that are profound and of all ages, which make a great secret efflorescence, but we see only one face, only one story; and there, it was Batcha complete with all her faces, her depths, almost all her different stories, gathered together into an ineffable essence of softly sweet light.
It was the first time I was seeing that.
It gave me a little shock; for a fraction of a second I wondered if she were really angry with me... and everything vanished. There was that tray of tea in front of me. I still had time to remember that she was taller than I had thought. Then I fell back into that kind of troubled greyness that one calls “life”.
—Do you want some tea?
He started and looked round him with a sort of bewilderment; then he remembered, he looked at me with such distress:
—Let's go, Nil, help me, let's get out of here, I don't like being locked in.
I carried him outside, settled him on the cement platform in front of the cell, with a pillow behind his back. He drank his glass of tea in a single gulp.
—Give me some more, I'm hungry.
My heart leapt. I gave him a biscuit—two, three. He was eating! I wanted to shout with joy, to clap my hands. But I dared not say anything for fear of frightening away the miracle. Then he began to look at the barricaded cells, the ochre-washed walls round that wasteland, the scraps of bandages hanging on the tufts of thorns. There was a dispensary-smell coming from an isolated hut.
—You have chosen a funny place
His voice was sweet like that of a child.
There was not the least trace of bitterness, not a reproach; all the hate he had been flinging at me for weeks seemed suddenly dissipated.
His gaze returned to the tamarind tree.
—It's beautiful...
He looked at the tree for a long time, smiling, quiet. It was huge that tree, almost leafless; it seemed as though it had been struck by lightning; only great bursted pods and a tangle of twigs remained on which the sky hung a myriad flakes of light.
—It's beautiful, Björn repeated... Just as it was back there, under the silver birch. I knew there would be a tree.
—Tomorrow morning, we'll go away, I promise you Björn, we'll leave this place and go back to the island.
—Oh! you know...
He nodded his head. Then I noticed that tears were running down his cheeks.
He began to speak in a clear, slightly high-pitched voice, fitfully, like a feverish child.
—It's strange Nil, I have the feeling of being at ease here. I don't even know whether I wish to go back there... I feel fine. It's all empty. Like this courtyard. But it's fine, it's almost sweet.
His eyes swept over the rough laterite, over the thorny bushes.
—It doesn't matter, you know. Oh! (he gave a small broken laugh) I wanted so many things, Nil, I ran after so many things, I wanted so much... and now, I no longer know what I want, I even think I no longer want anything—there is nothing left: no more Balu, no more Guruji, no more Erik—no more anything, look, it's quite empty. It's as if I had found everything. Everything. It's quiet. I seem to be exactly where I should be; for once in my life, I have the feeling of being where I should be, it's strange.
He looked round him with a kind of surprise. His eyes returned to the tamarind tree. A child began to cry in the dispensary.
—It's strange Nil, it's as though I have waited for this day all my life. Do you realise what a roundabout way one takes... And it's so simple, hein, there's no need of anything: one is there... some pebbles and a tree.
Once again he gave that cracked laugh.
—I wanted initiation. Initiation, just imagine!... Oh Nil! I have the impression of an enormous falsehood—being ripped to pieces. An enormous lie. Something which was there all the time, in front, over life, stuck onto life: a screen. And now there is no longer any screen—there is nothing to find!
He closed his eyes for a moment and I felt something like a breeze of light enveloping him.
Then Dr. Ezaki arrived with his small packets of filing-cards and a stethoscope on his stomach.
Björn was smiling at the tamarind tree.
—Ah! here is our patient. We are eating biscuits, we are good, let's see, let's see...
He rubbed his hands together. The assistant followed him with a phial, a sphygmoscope and some rubber tubes. Björn allowed himself to be carried onto the bed, he was still smiling. I heard him reply quietly and patiently to the doctor's questions while Shimizu turned him about in all directions. I watched through the bars, I don't know whether I wanted to cry or sing: Björn was saved, Björn, my brother! It was so simple!... I looked at the tamarind tree, at the bits of cotton hanging from the bushes, the ochre-washed walls. And suddenly, I was back on the Appelplatz of that camp—my striped clothes, my serial number, my head shaved like a criminal... What a farce! A formidable farce, everywhere—at all levels, on all latitudes, in all forms: an invention. An invention of bad and an invention of good, an invention of hate and of illness, of folly and of wisdom—there was nothing of all that! There was only something which smiled.
—And you were eating wheat semolina how many times a day?...
Now he was putting a tourniquet around Björn's arm, feeling his ribs. He was going to discover that Björn had galloping consumption or what? And Björn was in the cage, smiling. He was smiling and there was no cage, not a vestige of consumption! But if he forgot to smile, he would have a fantastic consumption and he was doomed. It was like that, really like that. I was going to die on the first occasion from the boot-kick of an SS guard, but I didn't believe in the SS, oh no! I didn't believe in them at all! A farce, a terrific farce, and not an ounce of truth, either on one side or the other: not in the victim, not in the executioner, not in the lunatic, not in the doctor—there was only that second, that pure second when one draws back the curtain... cette pure seconde où on tire le rideau... and that shines. Then one smiles, it is over. One is invulnerable. But we cling to that curtain, oh! we cling to it, we daub it in all colours—yellow, red, blue, philanthropy, religion, love, hate, initiations—but it is all the same, nothing but a curtain of falsehood. One draws back the curtain, and that is true. Everything is true. True everywhere, in the courtyard of an asylum or on the prettiest little beach in the world.
—I see what it is...
Dr. Ezaki went out, I stood up like an automaton.
—Tomorrow morning, we shall perform an intubation, but I have formed an opinion.
I looked at him. He was perhaps expecting me to ask him what his opinion was.
—It's a Yang deficiency.
—A deficiency...
Oh! a Truth deficiency, of course, there is only that deficiency!
He gave me a disgusted look and went away again with his phials. I jumped towards Björn and clasped his shoulder:
—Brother, tomorrow we'll go away, we will start a new life!
He smiled. He sat up on his bed in order to see the tree better.
—I heard them, you know.
—The birds.
—The birds...
—Yes, everything had melted.
—Oh! Björn... You are not going to do anything silly again?
—But why? You know, I watched them just now, they were feeling me all over, it was so queer... Nil, I no longer see as I used to see. Before, it was hard, full of asperities, it resisted, and was also opaque, one barged into something at every step. Now, it seems as though everything is extended, yes, as if things trailed an immense past, an immense future, spaces of sweetness—you know, as when one hauls in a huge net and so many things come with it? Like that. One hauls in a big net, and one is small, very small, things recede, become distant, they are very sweet. Then suddenly there is nothing but the cry of a bird in the distance. That's all there is. A bird's cry... un cri d'oiseau... There's no more Erik, no more Balu, there's nothing more, it's vague, fused—but that bird's cry, oh! that's so sure, so true, so much there... You know, the cry of ganders on the lake, behind the mist: that calls from so far, so far away... And then it's so full, oh! it melts everything.
He opened his hands on his bed.
—It's like a door which opens... A door of snow. Tranquil, tranquil. And one goes through.
I caressed his forehead.
—Don't worry, Nil, you did well, all is well. And all the knots are undone. Tomorrow we shall leave.
I left him. I went to find the chauffeur to arrange for the departure:
—Above all, not a word to the doctor.
Then I went to the well behind the bungalow, I wanted to take a bath. My head was burning.
The sun was already setting, little chipmunks were chasing each other amongst the stones. Everything was so peaceful, it was like the end of a long journey. Oh! “all is well”, Björn was right, in reality all is always well! But we only see part of the story, a fragment of the note, a portion of the film, that is why it is never well! And perhaps I had been right after all in bringing Björn here? Perhaps I had done nothing at all, but follow the little impulse which, leads things?... When I look behind me, it is like a tremendous complicity, such a minute organisation which uses even our absent-mindedness, our good-bad will, as if all were equal, all good for the goal—always nearer, always the imperturbable golden meridian which leads directly to the little door without losing a second, without an extra grain of dust, without any useless suffering. And I wonder, I wondered that evening, if that little impulse—those pilgrims bobbing up from I know not where with their Japanese Hospital, these chance encounters, those turnings—could not be conditioned by a certain inner state, a certain clarity, an inner tonality which made one grasp one kind of vibration rather than another, that yellow, red, or blue frequency, and, perhaps, constantly, the picture could be infinitely variable; the encounters, the circumstances, the accidents, infinitely fluctuating; and yet it is always the same picture, the same events, but coloured this way or that: Nisha or Batcha, the white island, the red island, or this cement island in the midst of the laterite. Sometimes I feel,—I have felt in this life—that I am a spectator of a caricature of something which could have been different and which is nevertheless always the same thing, but travestied, with a grimace instead of a smile. And perhaps we are watching a fantastic magic lantern show unfolding the same indestructible story: now a green castle, now a shower of stars, a tragedy or a song. And when the white door opens, it is the great eternal picture. Then, here or there, clothed in wisdom or in shame, in folly or in rectitude, in yellow or in red, we are in the vast smile for ever and the stars can come crashing down out of the sky... et les étoiles pouvaient crouler.
I was about to empty the last bucketful of water over my head when I heard shouts coming from the village. I stopped, something froze in me. But it was from the village, Björn could not be in the village! A terrible anxiety gripped me. I dressed and ran to the gate. There was a crowd at the end of the street. I ran towards the crowd; I followed the gaze of the people. I looked up... and remained petrified. Björn was there, stark naked, on the grain merchant's terrace, menacing the crowd with bricks in his hand.
Then I saw Dr. Shimizu advancing stealthily behind him with his arms outstretched; I shouted: Björn! Björn!... In one bound, Shimizu jumped on him, caught him in a stranglehold. Björn struggled frenziedly. Then he collapsed. Two minutes later, Dr. Shimizu was in the street, Björn in his arms, inert. Dr. Ezaki arrived. They carried him to his cell. He was white.
—But what happened, what? Tell me, for heaven's sake!
Dr. Shimizu was pouring water over Björn's face.
—Don't know.
Björn opened his eyes. He looked round him like a hunted animal and then caught sight of me. Oh! that look, never in my life shall I forget that mad accusation as if he were saying to me: “You! You!” Then he turned his head away and closed his eyes.
I never saw his eyes again.
Dr. Ezaki was waiting calmly outside, a cigarette between his lips. He was watching all that coldly; I wanted to strangle him:
—But, good God, what happened? Are you going to speak or not?
He blew out the smoke from his cigarette.
—I saw your brother going out into the street. He stopped for a minute in front of the gate, looking at the board. Then I told Shimizu to go and help him, he could hardly stand on his feet. When he saw Shimizu, he ran away. You saw the rest.
I spent a long time near Björn, fanning him. It was night. The cell was full of mosquitoes, not a breath of air, we were stifling in there. I spoke to him; I said anything, whatever passed through my head; I knew that he was not sleeping, I knew that he heard me. He did not speak, he did not move. Only, from time to time, in the hollow of his cheek, I saw a small hardened dimple which creased imperceptibly, as if he were saying to me: you have betrayed me, you have betrayed me... I looked at that small dimple for hours. I took his hand, I sponged his forehead—nothing moved except that little line: you have betrayed me, you have betrayed me...
Exhausted, I went to lie down in the neighbouring cell. It was pitch dark. Tomorrow, at dawn, I would get him out by fair means or foul, oh! what a fool I had been, what a fool... I slept heavily.
When I woke up the next day, the sun was already shining on the tamarind tree. With a bound I rushed to Björn's cell. He was doubled up on the ground, his head against the bars. The door was locked. I screamed, yelled for those damnable doctors
—But why did you lock the door, why, good God Why?
—The wild animals, you understand, there are wild animals at night.
I lifted Björn up. He had a bruise on his shoulder. He must have hurled himself against the door.
He was dead.
We put him on the funeral pyre, facing the north, as if he were returning to his country. Only the chandal and I were there, and, near by, the sea running over the coral. Björn would not return to the island, he would not go to the lagoon; I had brought him as far as I could, I had prayed, begged the macua17 to take him to the other side—nobody had agreed. The journey came to an end here, on this beach, near a small white lighthouse which marked the island pass. There was a cargo at anchorage; perhaps the Aalesund or the Laurelbank anchored in the same place, in the midst of the cries of the macua. There was a topaz-coloured erne circling in the sky. The chandal laid Björn on some casuarina branches; he was all enveloped in white, he seemed asleep; and I was standing near him But I do not know really whether it was me nor where I was; I felt no sorrow, I felt nothing at all: I was anaesthetised. I looked at Björn. I looked at all that, and it was like a dream. We had laid him on the sand earlier, I had knelt down and put a garland of jasmines around his neck—it was terrible, I thought everything in me was going to break. And then, all of a sudden, I let go; I saw his body on the sand, I saw my hand on his chest, the garland, the beach, the boat, I saw everything—the lighthouse, the topaz-coloured erne—and both of us, very small, very tiny and white on the sand. I was far away, on the other side. It was another world. It was another eye. It was not even Björn or me any longer, nor his death nor any special 'death: it was something that was happening—a phenomenon, an eternal rite—something which had been seen, lived innumerable times, here, there, on one side or the other, he or I, I no longer knew, in white, always in white, and an erne circling above, a small lighthouse, a ship lying at anchor as though we were about to leave or return. It was the same, infinitely the same. It was a kind of sacred catastrophe into which we entered, as one enters a deluge or thunder, or the ruins of Thebes; there was no longer any me to cry, no more death, no more life; there was no one in particular; there were thousands and thousands of times “me” entering or leaving a body; it was a great rite that was taking place, an infinite return of things like that of the birds or of the stars; it was simple like the truth; it was without sadness like the truth; it was since the beginning of time.
Then everything melted. The body was below and I was above, pulled, drawn up as into an expanse of light. My breath became immobile. I no longer knew on which side I was or if it were he or I who was leaving. It was a sheet of radiating light, soft, infinitely soft, into which one sank deeper and deeper as into snow, and it was silent, infinite, limitless; a high sea of soft snow, but as though swollen with vibrant light, moving, scintillating, as if innumerable flakes of luminous tenderness were wheeling round slowly, in an immensity of ease, a rolling of stars in an infinitude of silence and peace, and each flake was like a living being, each scintillation a circling millennium. There, one was for ever; there, one could live for ever; the silence and peace were like the air one inhaled; the light, like the pulsation of absolute life; there, one could go on for ever, without fatigue of being, without lassitude, without anything lacking, and the eyes could rest always in an unchanging vision: an ineffable beatitude of being without a shadow.
He pulled me abruptly. I heard the cry of the macua. An unfurling of sounds and colours, and then a hard crude light which struck harshly; I had a moment of suffocation as it I were drowning—but where then was death, on which side?... I saw Björn on the pyre and the chandal handing me a firebrand. I understood nothing of all this.
I took the fire.
He made a sign. I threw the fire-brand.
Then everything blazed up at once: the thorny twigs, the white scarf, the casuarina branches; I saw a stain spread over the dhoti like an expanding black flower. I saw his bare leg. The heat of a furnace. I jumped back... Everything rushed upon me: the death, the bare-torsoed chandal, his bamboo pole, his bucket of water, the pyre, Björn, that bit of madrepore full of crevices in the middle of the sands, then the little lighthouse, the cargoboat, the cry of the macua, the indigo sea which came to lap the sands as if it were going to carry Björn away in a boat of fire. It was death on all sides, nothing but death, not a single living light! And the sorrow, the crushing: me. I who had brought Björn here, I who had dragged him to that hospital, I who had prevented him from leaving on the Aalesund, I...
“I” meant death.
One looks at oneself and death begins. One looks at oneself and it is miserable, pitiable, full of falsity,—never once had I had a right thought since I had begun to look at myself, me and my destiny. I had done everything wrong, I had demolished everything. Death was not really the fact of dying, it was only an evil look. One looks at oneself and all becomes black, even Nisha starts to cross one's path and the pilgrims of the devil surge up from one doesn't know where; one enters into the wretched story, one passes into the caricature, and it dies, it dies, it can only die, because there is no truth in it. And yet it is always the same story, but seen from the wrong side. Oh! sometimes it seems to me that the whole world is wrongly seen, just wrongly seen, and that the whole picture could be turned over into a dazzling light, and death disappear like the mist in a dream, if only we had the true look. Björn, my brother, I swear that you will come back, we shall both come back, we shall be born one day with eyes of light and the world will be our vision of beauty.
I was sitting in the sand, I was near the small lighthouse. The chandal was stirring the fire with his pole. I no longer knew where to go nor what to do, I had lost my brother. I was thousands of kilometres away—from what, I could not even say, I no longer had any country. I was at the other end, that is all. And then there was that boat lying at anchor—there was always a boat lying at anchor! I was at zero point: nothing in front of me, nothing behind. That moment seemed to come back each time in my life, as if I had to pass again and again through the same point, the same, always the same, but each time more painful, more acute—it seems that one spends one's life turning around a certain point and if one really knew the point, one would have solved the problem and cut the neck of destiny. I know exactly at what instant I touched that point for the first time, my point—and perhaps it was the same for all of us, in different colours. It was at the window of a little room which looked out onto the sea, a very small triangular window with a branch of cypress in front, and sails racing on the sea, and I... I was not racing on the sea, I was looking. And I saw something—oh! not a fantastic vision—something which came with great power, almost with pain, and which was like a condensation of forces in a picture: an immense spider's web, luminous, iridescent, and I in the middle, hanging by the threads. Threads of all colours, so pretty, there, among the branches of the cypress. And all those threads were a world of things which was not me: they were my books, my father, my mother, my boat, geography and laws; nothing of me, not a single thing of mine, not one second... pas une seconde. I was that thing in the centre hanging only by the threads. And if I cut the threads?... What would remain? Ever since that moment, I have been pursuing that sole question. And everything was happening as if destiny were bringing me periodically face to face with my question, and in a very simple way: by cutting all the threads. And it seemed to me that the answer would begin only when the last thread had been cut. It was like a moment of death: all or nothing, a kind of intolerable nothingness out of which there sometimes came something very pure and very mysterious, like a new birth.
What I did not know then is that when one arrives at that point, there is such a suction of forces that circumstances are obliged to change and they change exactly as one sees them at that very moment. Oh! one has to look carefully.
I looked at that fire.
I looked at the sweating chandal who was emptying buckets of water over his head, and at the topaz-coloured erne circling above. It was like a wave of suffering which washed over me and I struggled against my pain, against that Björn who surged up from everywhere with his golden lock of hair and his muffled voice: “Power, we must have power for our brothers... What if I became mad?... All black, the little Björns, all black!...” And the chandal poked and poked with his pole as if it were only wood burning. “A great net which one hauls in... The cry of a bird, it is all that remains... Nil, we are a new race of adventurers!...” And now that little heap of ashes! Björn was only a little heap of ashes. I struggled against my sorrow and I no longer wanted to love, never again to love, no more attachments, no more ties—free, free. It was like a see-saw: I plunged into the wave and I resurfaced, I entered into that self of suffering and I emerged; and when I emerged, it was as a little while before, very sweet and eternal, a great wide expanse veiled with sweetness, an infinite compassion which leans down and looks... looks. And then it was me again, suffocation, death, tragedy, oh! not a very great tragedy but which filled me exactly to my capacity: that of a man, one day, face to face with solitude and the end—a little heap of ashes. But above it was non-tragedy, the impossibility of tragedy of any kind: it could not be, it did not exist. Two looks, two rhythms. I went, I came... And suddenly I cut loose. I passed above.
And I saw something—I was bathed in something, and I was seized with wonder.
A tremendous inexpressible Harmony; everything had its place, eternally its own place, an Architecture so fabulously compact—in the light, nothing but light, a picture of living light—from which one could remove nothing, not an atom, not a so-called shadow, not a minute fragment of being, without the whole collapsing. Everything was there, eternally there, from the first moment when the great nebula had burst its flower of fire; every point in the world, every particle of space, every heart-beat was woven with the same light; everything held together indissolubly, without a gap, without a break, without any imprecision anywhere; a Totality of being carried in an immense white trajectory linking that point of one minute, that second's absurdity, that poignant and isolated non-sense, to an infinity of other points in front, behind, and to other trajectories, innumerable trajectories of which the goal was neither in front nor above nor farther away: the goal was everywhere! At every instant it was the goal, utterly the goal, at every point of space, at every second of time, without a cleavage of future for hope, without a break of past for regret; it was that and all the time that, perfectly that, at every second—an infallible rite with millions of figurants, a myriad imperishable orbits which passed again and again through eternal co-ordinates, a single imprescriptible movement which linked that point of pain, that fragment of self, that quivering of an age, to the passage of a chipmunk and to the blowing of the monsoons, to that child's song on a little white beach, to innumerable songs, to infinite points of pain or of joy which mingled together, were lit-up together, which made but one great luminous train, an immense dress of snow woven from a myriad threads, and like a lofty, unique Person moving through eternal azure fields.
It was the ceremony of the worlds—absolute, faultless, for the sole joy of itself.
And below, far below, something which was me—which obstinately refused to deny tragedy as if that were “life”, the true life, it was to “betray life. Something which wanted to suffer.
I paid the chandal, paid for the wood. The sun was setting. A wedge of birds passed by to the south. There remained exactly three rupees in Björn's red wallet. His journey had been I well calculated.
And now I was alone and I had nothing more in front of me. I had reached the end of a cycle.
From dawn, I waited for her near the small sanctuary, our meeting place. The sea was as still as a lake; the dunes were floating over the darkness. But my heart was not at peace; I was making plans, I willed, I did not will; I was no longer borne by the current, I had “to do” something. In fact, everything had started the day I had put that tilak on her forehead, as if I had touched a tiny spring there which had changed the whole course of things; and I wonder if these trivialities which seem to set in motion consequences disproportionate to their size are not traces of the past that one stumbles upon inadvertently and which suddenly awaken a whole lost history, like the stray stone which leads to the ruins of El Amarna. But we do not believe in signs, we do-not believe in the lost ruins of our private Egypts, and-we go hither and thither like puppets taken by surprise. And I also was going without knowing, I wanted to “do” something, but what? I had wanted to “do” something for Björn as well, I had “saved” him in that Japanese Hospital, I had “freed” him from that Tantric, and each time I had zigzagged straight into the trap. Oh! we are really marionettes—and what else was I going to do?... I could not very well stay in this village and beg from door to door?... Or marry a girl like Batcha one day and become a sculptor like Bhaskar-Nath? ... And then procreate a lot of little Nils, all white, who would start all over again.—Ah! no.
And that “no” was as irreducible as stone; I could see myself again in that forest of Gul Mohur trees, running like a hunted animal, lashed by the rain, stung by the sand, and that carpet of red flowers: freedom, freedom, the Laurelbank, and no nonsence!... And no matter what plan or detour I made, I always arrived at that same hard inexorable point which seemed to cry out no and yes at the same time, freedom, freedom... As if the purest force and the most implacable enemy were hidden in the same box. Until the end I will never cease to wonder about this total ambivalence: when one touches the supreme password, the devil raises his head immediately, as if our most powerful ideal conceals our most powerful enemy also. That is the knot of hardness—it is the union of the two. And sometimes everything gives way, one is borne by the current, there is no longer any hardness anywhere; it is another force which does not arouse opposites. Then everything begins again on a higher level. And it is always the same thing, in all forms, behind all faces, in all beings, the same little induration that returns again and again, more powerful and more tenacious from cycle to cycle, as if it had inherited all the force of past truths. And perhaps it was the residue of the cycles, a kind of white dross—for it is not obscure, not dark, on the contrary; it is a point of intense light, but hard. The supreme hardness of good. Destiny is perhaps only the moment of dissolution of the dross? And in that rising, emerald dawn, I remembered the story of Batcha: of her supreme god who forgot his wealth and went begging from door to door, blessing the gods and the devils in the same box!
She arrived in the midst of the sound of conch-shells and gongs. She was so slender on that big beach, in her long pomegranate-coloured skirt; she advanced slowly, clasping her tray of offerings in her arms with the gravity of a priestess. My heart leapt, I ran towards her; everything was swept away, simple, smooth like the beach. She did not say anything, she just looked at me. For a moment I thought I was in front of Mohini with her tray of offerings in her arms, that same immobile look in the midst of the rose pottery. Then she mounted the steps of the little sanctuary and disappeared. I would have liked to follow her, to be with her, to burn incense with her, I don't know, do as she did, enter into her world; and everything was so clear that morning, the faintest sound of a conch-shell resounded against the dunes, the chanting ran over the beach like a great wave of bronze; I too, would have liked to offer some flowers, make a gesture, any gesture, merge into the rite, let myself be carried on the great wave, find the thread again—simply worship, for nothing, as one breathes.
I closed my eyes to find her again; I knew how... she had taught me; it was enough to lean forward a little, silently, as one leans over a river, and flow gently into her. I tried... I came up against Björn: he was there, his eyes haggard, showing me something that terrified him; I pushed him aside... I fell upon Mohini. She said nothing, she had big, vacant eyes, she was looking straight ahead of her, standing on a rock. I pushed her aside also. And I could not find Batcha, everything was blurred by those shadows. Then the Sannyasi sprang up suddenly, his staff in his hand, his arms extended like a cross, he wanted to block my path... Here, there was a blank. I forgot. And each time, it was like a wave enveloping me with a grasping, sticky, gluey world, from which I had to extricate myself, as if each being represented a special prison, a more or less dark actinia which was swallowing me: I was advancing towards Batcha as with a machete in a jungle.
Then everything became very calm; I began to descend, to plunge into something very sweet and soft, as if I were going to pass into another, but deeper expanse. And they were not at all paths with which I was familiar; it was not the great blue-hued expanse where one meets the whole world, it was more intimate, of another colour, of another quality, as yet indefinable; and it was not “that” either, up there, immense and white, luminous, where everything is free, where there are no more questions, no more people. It was something else, another degree of “that”, all enveloped and warm. And it began to take on a faintly rose blush, oh! it was so exquisitely smooth,—and Batcha was leading me gently, I could almost feel her cool little hand; it was like slipping into a well of tenderness, I was on the brink of something... And then, brutally, the Sannyasi sprang up like a flame, caught me by the arm, drew me upwards.
I opened my eyes. The beach was like a torrent of light. There was a cavalcade of dark clouds to the south-east.
If I could have rejoined Batcha at that moment, if only I had been able to follow the tiny strip of path she had wanted to show me, it is probable that none of what took place later would have happened... I know my words seem enigmatic, but I am going step by step into the miraculous forest and each time I skim the secret a little more—little glints of secret. That morning I almost touched the secret: a law which could completely change the course of human lives if only we could understand it—it has taken me twenty years to undersand—penal servitude, a virgin forest and a few despairs. But I have descended so deeply into the misfortune of men that the light was given to me one day, as a grace, a pure grace, and I saw this: all outer roads seem to be doubled by an inner road, and the obstacles, the obscurities, the accidents that we have not overcome on the inner road come back to us on the outer road, but a road infinitely harder, longer and more relentless, because it swallows up a whole life for one, single little experience which one day makes us say “ah!”—that is all. A very tiny ah! of surprise. In fact, we are the representations of a drama enacted within and one single victory on the invisible roads can gain a whole life or even several.
And perhaps there is not only one degree of representation on a small inner road but several degrees which fit into each other like a series of concentric circles, on roads which become longer and longer, harder and harder and much more obscure as one goes farther away from the centre; and every time one can pass over to a more inner circle, to a more and more correct, truer and purer representation of the eternal multi-degreed drama, one gains the power not only to live better and to see better, but to modify the law of the outer degrees and to refashion the whole of life according to the new vision—for, to see more truly is to live more truly—until the day when, having reached perhaps the eternal centre, we can illuminate this Matter with a divine look and make the most external world an untravestied representation of the eternal Joy which conceived it.
And that small strip of road which I did not follow that morning, it took me years to cover and a great agony.
—Oh! Batcha, there you are...
She shook out her skirt, threw her arms up in the air, pirouetted and dropped to the, ground with a burst of laughter. Then she pulled her skirt carefully over her toe-tips and leaned against a column of the peristyle.
—You are not angry?
—Angry?
She opened her eyes very wide; she had such enormous eyes, that child, like the offering-bearers of the Nile. She had the antiquity of beings who live in their soul,—and their smile.
—What do you think, that I am angry with myself?
She looked at me, I winced—every time, I winced—as if I were afraid.
—Björn is dead.
So she knew.
—Balu has been ill since yesterday. He has a fever; he was delirious the whole night, he cried out...
What?
She hesitated a moment. She became serious.
—Things... He wanted to open a door. There was a door that had to be opened. And he was looking for his sabre, to open the door. And then he could not find his sabre, so he was weeping.
—And then?
—Nothing.
—Yes, speak.
She shook her head. There was nothing to be gotten out of her.
—I was nearby, Batcha, and I did not even know that his door was locked... Oh Batcha! you know why he left? He used to prostrate himself here before the sun, “how beautiful life is!...” I no longer know, Batcha, I no longer understand anything.
She leaned towards me.
—What is it you no longer understand?
—Nothing, what to do.
—But you are with me, so...?
She pointed to the beach: one had only to play, it was simple.
—I no longer know, Batcha. Sometimes, I. think I understand, it's wide open, it's vast; and then I open my eyes and I no longer understand anything, I strike against things, I make mistakes... Batcha, where is the secret, there's something I don't understand; I have found only half the secret. Batcha, I have made a mistake; there's something missing!
She looked at me intensely, and I do not know what she understood, but Batcha always understood, she was never mistaken.
—Have you had any breakfast this morning
—Yes... no.
—Ah! you see, it's yes and then it's no. But you must know; you will fall ill if you go on like that.
She jumped to another subject.
—Yesterday, the birds arrived on the lagoon. The birds come straight onto the lagoon from far, far away, over there, and they make their nests on the lagoon, without mistake.
—But I am not a bird!
—You come from far away also, straight, so then?
The birds do not say “but”... Les oiseaux ne disent pas mais.
—But what must I do?
—But you are doing something! What are you doing here, tell me?
—I wonder.
She smiled, and there was a kind of tenderness in her eyes:
—You have not yet arrived on the lagoon. The waters of the lagoon are shining. Perhaps you have come to be born on the lagoon!
—Oh Batcha! you are talking nonsense.
She stretched out her arm and pointed to the clouds far away in the south-east.
—And the clouds, do they talk nonsense?... They let fall their drops and there you are, it's the rain... et puis voilà, c'est la pluie.
She laid her cheek on her knees.
I do not say “but” I am the drop which falls I am the spring which flows...
Her plait was touching the ground—she was so beautiful that morning!
I gather the cloud drops I go with the rhythm I listen to the sound within...
—But look, Batcha...
And I sing while there is yet time
—... All that is very pretty, but one can't be expected to spend one's whole life like that, on a beach, looking at the clouds! I am no longer a child!
—No?... One can't? How silly you are! One does not remain “like that”: one travels. Do you at least know how to travel?... I know some countries, you know some countries, we are travelling together.
She raised her head suddenly.
—Toujours ensemble, toujours ensemble... Always together, always together. Together here, there and in all the worlds!
She said that so forcefully, looking straight into my eyes, as if she were challenging me, like Bhaskar-Nath. Then she laughed.
—You are Mr. Nothing-at-all, so what can you do!
And she began to sing such a pretty song. I would like to be able to repeat every word of that singing tongue, it was so simple, so limpid, a kind of flowing obviousness. And all my questions did not exist any more.
Over the dunes from here Over the dunes from there Our steps go together Our isles are travellers Then the wind Over the great sands of the world Blows my song away Blows my images away But I am forever, I leave, still I am With other eyes And other faces And I look On the isles over here On the isles over there At the rose cowries on a white little beach At the pretty wave that flows from life to life At the beautiful never-ending story
Everything was so simple with Batcha, almost eternal. There was nothing to do, nothing to find! It was there, and all was found for us. We were two children on the steps of that small temple, and we were walking up above as well, on sands of light, on an island which never dies, and it was like that, always like that, infinitely like that, without reason, without cause, without ever an accident, like a game. And perhaps it was enough to allow the image from above to flow into the one below. Then every gesture became right and life flowed like a fountain.
—Batcha, sometimes I have the impression that life goes far, far back, with the sound of conch-shells and gongs, like your song, and one has always been, always been, and one will still be and for always; that life goes far, far in front also, that we shall always be, also, in other bodies—bodies of light, changing and colourful bodies, always more beautiful,—and that life slowly brings to us our dreams like these birds... But it is far away in front. Oh Batcha! we are in a sorry plight.
—Why sorry?
—There are still too many nasty things inside.
She gave a start.
—Oh Nil! you destroy everything!
She said this in such a heart-broken tone. And it was a fact that from that very moment, everything took a wrong turn, like on the day I had put that tilak on her forehead.
—You invoke the nasty things.
—No indeed! I don't invoke them, they are there. Last night... Again I had a horrible dream. I saw that man again near a fire, you know that man... And then I was wandering in a forest, I was frantically seeking someone... I don't know who it was—but it was “her”. It returns again And again—someone I am seeking desperately as if I had lost my life. Perhaps it is the memory of the past?
—Well, I see pretty things. It is perhaps the memory of the future!
She looked surprised for a moment.
—It was a road on the sea, a long, long road; you know, as when the moon rises, it makes a path on the sea, like that, almost rose, and it moves like little fish. I felt so nice, it was so pleasant! And you were there also, but behind. You were moving very slowly. And then we arrived in a country I did not know. From then on, I don't remember any longer, there were many things, but at one moment, there seemed to be two roads...
She remained awhile with upturned nose.
—On the left it went far away, into the distance, and there was a mountain over there, the colour of... gerua, you know, orange. The road was also orange. I turned to the right and there was a big park, very green, with peacocks everywhere, many peacocks of all sorts of colours: blues, whites, one golden, completely golden, and I was showing them to you, I was saying: Come, come, look how pretty they are, they are crying “victory”! But you did not hear, you looked preoccupied. Ah! yes, and then there was a zebra! Only one zebra with black stripes, and also a great rock which plunged into the sea...
Her face suddenly became clouded.
—No; I saw an ugly thing also.
—But tell me!
It was useless, she was as stubborn as a mule.
—But Batcha, I must do something, musn't I, I am not going to stay here for the rest of my life just listening to songs, no?
—No?
She looked perplexed for a moment.
—You are big, you could be a school-master
She looked disconcerted, almost panicky suddenly.
—You aren't going away, are you?
—Don't be silly!
—Then what do you want?
—But what's the matter with you, Nil, it seems very dark around you. What's the matter, what did you do in that hospital? Somebody has changed you. Did they hurt you?
—No, of course not!
—Then why do I get knocks? This morning also, I got a knock, look.
She pulled up her skirt a little and showed me her ankle. She looked nervously to the right and left. There was a glittering heat haze over the whole beach; the air seemed dense with heat.
—Come Nil, let's go home, the monsoon is coming.
—Home, where? I have no home.
She looked at me, dumbfounded.
—But what's the matter with you, Nil? You are the son of the house; Appa said so!
—Are you afraid of the rain?
She remained motionless for an instant, her hands joined together between her knees as if she were trying to calm herself.
—I don't know Nil... I love the rain very much, I dance in the rain, but today... I don't know, I'm not at peace.
Then she cried out:
—Nil, you are not going away?
—But, look here Batcha, didn't I say no!
—Come, let's go home.
The sea was perfectly smooth like a sheet of mercury. There was not a bird in the sky.
—Let's go home, I tell you, it's going to be too late.. il va être trop tard.
—Nil, you are no longer the same. You are hard, you are completely closed, something is surrounding you.
—Why? Because I don't want to be a school-master?
She became pale as if I had slapped her.
Then she gave up. She did not struggle any more. She opened her hands on her knees.
—You see, she said softly pointing to the beach, when I called you in my dream, it was a light like that.
—What dream?
—Here, the first day, when you came out of the temple: you became smaller and smaller and the sand was shining like water...
She looked so defenceless—I was ashamed. And I could not understand why I was so exasperated. Things seemed to clash everywhere.
Then a gust of wind swept over the beach; the sea became leaden.
—But what's the matter, Batcha? What did I do, why are things clashing?
She said no more; she simply looked at me, her hands clasped between her knees, and her look sank deeper and deeper into my heart, so luminous, so clear, almost unbearably sweet—and the deeper it entered, the more it became knotted inside, as if, right in the depths, there were something which refused, which said no—no to what? I don't know. It was I-do-not-want. A point of absolute rebellion.
—All the same, you don't want me to settle down here as a school-master, do you? And then what? Make little children on the beach...
Tears rolled down her cheeks. I felt absurd; I was like an angry beast.
—It's not that, Nil, not that... pas ҫa, Nil, pas ҫa, there is something else...
She was stammering; she was like a poor wounded bird pressed against that pillar.
—I want to be free, you understand.
—Free, she murmured without understanding.
And there was such a sadness in that look. I almost yielded, almost took her in my arms and pressed her against my heart. For one second I hesitated. And then it was too late. I saw her eyes widen; she became as white as a corpse, she was looking at something behind me. I turned around.
—Hey, boy...
He was standing there against the dunes, his staff in his hand, his flame-coloured robe, his teeth shining as though he were about to laugh again. And then that mahogany-coloured skin standing out against that blinding mist.
—Let's be on our way, it's time... En route, c'est l'heure.
He raised his head defiantly, then turned his back and went away towards the dunes. I got up like a tin-man. For an instant, my eyes lingered on that pale little face which was looking at me with a kind of stupefaction, on those widened eyes, on that red tilak in the middle of her forehead. Everything broke over me like a tempest; Bhaskar-Nath was dinning into my ears: “It is as you will”. But what could I will! There was nothing to will: it was all willed, decided in advance. I was caught, swept along by a force greater than my own, calm, imperturbable, which rolled things along like a straw and cast off lives with a shrug of the shoulder, like a coat one takes off. He had said “it's time” and it was time. It was evident. That is all.
I took the path through the dunes behind him. The sand shone like a sea. Little crabs ran about in all directions. And suddenly, I cried out with pain. I turned around. I saw two eyes flaming with anger and Batcha running over the dunes, her red skirt clutched in her hands. She had pinched my arm till it turned red, just like a little girl.
Then the monsoon broke, gigantic, thundering, hot like a sulphur-bath.
And everything vanished behind a veil.
We walked for days, for months, under the monsoon and the sun, through red, crevassed plains, parched rivers, lands of fervour and famine, paddy-fields on paddy-fields, stridulant and egret-scattered; we passed sulphur torrents, angry rivers, inundated jungles where blue herons chattered; slept in temples, slept on the roads, kept vigil on moon-laved banks where jackals yelped; we walked and walked until all the roads were alike and all the days merged into a same rhythm of dust; there was no longer cold nor hunger, heat nor sleep, no more haste nor attachment; there was something which went on endlessly, painlessly, like the flight of rose-starlings through the paths of the setting sun or like the prayers of the Brahmins, without lift and fall, indefinitely. We were going north, always north, barefooted and in rags, never spending more than one night in the same place, never begging more than once in the same place, and if the first door closed, we simply took to the road again. It was the law, the simple law. He never said anything and I had nothing to may; we just kept on going, for ages perhaps, and we came from nowhere, for everywhere was the same; there was no goal in front, no memory behind, no expectations, no hopes; there was only that which kept moving, one knew not why or how. And if I stopped for a moment, with closed eyes, he would pull me brutally:
—Hey! boy, what are you meditating about!... Come on, let's be on our way.
Sometimes, a wave of revolt swept over me.
—But what the...
Then he picked up a handful of dust from the road and threw it in my face with a burst of laughter:
—Ah! you rascal, you want to eat dust? Well then, eat it!
And I did not know whether to laugh or cry. What did it matter anyway? There was no reason to trouble oneself for that little old thing which was walking; was I not seeking something else anyway? And why meditate, on what? To give myself more weight, to make a fuss?... Then everything seemed to fade into such an acute absurdity that even the something else was reduced to dust: it was nothing any longer, walking in nothing, seeking nothing more, with just a bit of something still sufficiently alive to feel dizzy. It was a critical moment. Then that also went away; it was only a passing wave of “I”. And when everything relaxed, spread out, the Sannyasi stopped by the roadside as if by chance and drew out a handful of grains from his belt:
—Here, little one, eat, it's good.
And he looked at me with such tenderness that I felt like crying as well, and then I laughed, I caught hold of his staff:
—Hey, sannyasi! let's be on our way, it's time!
And we went along together, laughing. Everything tipped in the opposite direction; it was regal, light, oh! 40 light; there was no day, no night, no tomorrow, no yesterday; no time, not even something to be surprised about: it laughed, it went along, it was nothing marvellously, which was perhaps something, but without a look at oneself; it flowed like the river, it went with the wind, it was stupid like the sparrow or perhaps wise like the crane in the paddy-field? And it knew everything instantly: the approaching rain, the goat's discourse, the question of the passer-by, the snake under the leaves; it was a small cascade which cascaded everywhere: it was simple, it came upon itself everywhere. But one second of reflexion, one look too many, and everything became blurred; one no longer understood anything it was cut off. Then the Sannyasi stopped again in the middle of the road, put his hands on his hips and looked at me, blowing out his cheeks:
—You are an ass.
And it was true.
The days passed, and the weeks, the months or the years. Then that lightness passed away too, or perhaps it was still there, but underneath, showing itself in a flash sometimes, which shook the Sannyasi and me with laughter. It was only the great foam of life, a universal sparkling of millions of bubbles, and one could lose oneself in it marvellously like the drop in the ocean, the insect in the forest or like the sap in the plant. But something was pulling, calling... further... higher... more... or was it simply the worn-outness? I had walked so much on these roads, melted so completely under that sun, that sometimes I no longer knew whether it was in this life or another, in the Stone Age or the Bronze, years ago or only a minute; I walked even in my sleep, and when he pulled me abruptly, was I on this side or the other? I sank slowly into a great griefless country where there was no scenery any more, no seasons, no more me, no more thought; I followed the rhythm of my steps which followed the rhythm of I know not what, and they were not even my steps any longer; it was a cadence which walked without me or flowed through me; I followed the paths of the great country which opens up at the end of all the paths, when the body and pain change into a rhythm of silence, when the silence expands and becomes a swell, which becomes a song, which becomes peace and carries a little shadow along with stones and thorns—where then is misery and the pity of being “me” when everything flows into the great river? There are thorns only in the heart of man, and my heart had become so worn out on the roads that there was nothing left of it, or perhaps it beat everywhere with the grass and the cicadas. Where was that strange invention—”me”? It was vast and tranquil and infinitely sweet, like the sweetness of the worlds from before man, or after him; it was even like a Gregorian chant and moved by the great Law; it was a great, flowing solemnity, without a shadow, without a ripple, immense and impossible, as if we disturbed everything with our cries, our tears, as if one had to cease being man in order to enter into the great sovereignty of the world and to share the calm empire of the gods or of a small egret in a rice-field. And sometimes I felt that I would disappear completely; I had a moment's suffocation and everything contracted; a tiny hardness knocking against itself—the pain of being “me”, the thorns which tear; and just at that very moment, I had the impression that it was Batcha at the other end of the thread and that she was pulling: An'mona! An'mona! And instantly, I found the question again, my question, the only one I had left, as if “I” were only a question in the world, a sole, unique interrogation in a no man's land of immediate knowledge.
—Sannyasi, tell me...
His eyes pierced through mine. I had to struggle a moment, I felt that light which was going to dissolve my question; I was going to give up, shrug my shoulders, take to the road again. But suddenly, I saw—saw as one sees at the moment of dying—the whole picture; the Sannyasi's stained scarf, the drops of sweat between the rudraksha beads of his necklace, the branch of the fig tree over the road, the ochre dust on the path which went down to the river. If I did not ask my question immediately, it would be the end, I would leave, disintegrate completely.
And a furore rose in me:
—You are going to speak this time.
I caught him by his scarf.
—Sannyasi, do you hear, I am going to die perhaps, but it's all the same to me, I am not afraid of dying, I only need to know. I want to know, you understand. To know why, why all this? Why all these lives, this misery of being, this walking, this suffering, if it's only to be done with it all? Why? Why all these years, these millions of years to conquer life if it's only to throw it away at the end? And all this work, this labour of thought, the pains we take to build ourselves, this suffering to create, if it's only to demolish everything in the end, tell me? What does it mean, what does it add up to, will you tell me?
He was like a stone in front of me.
—Liberation? Beatitude?
Then I saw red. I was like an absurd little puppet on the side of the road, but suddenly it was as if millions of men came to cry out in my body, a world of suffering which fell upon my shoulders. Oh! it was not metaphysics, it was utter physics.
—So... your heaven, I don't want it, I spit in its face.
I saw his cheeks swell... I did not know whether he was going to laugh or explode. Then I plunged into a sort of burning prayer which sprang from the depths of my heart:
—If this earth has no meaning—a meaning, you understand, here, on this very earth itself—if it is only a passage towards the Beyond, a trick to get out of it, then what heaven, tell me, what beatitude will ever atone for all this suffering? If there is no heaven for the earth, if there is no meaning for the earth, then the whole of this world is an insanity, and I have no use for paradise, let it stay up there, I am with the dead!
He looked at me quietly, and there was that sparkle of a huge amusement in his eyes. My temples throbbed, I felt as though I were going to collapse suddenly in the dust, with gaping mouth, and that would be the end, so much the better!
—Not yet there, he said simply.
And he continued on his way. Then I summoned up all my strength, I caught him, by, the arm—if I did not get it over with immediately, I was lost.
—But when I am there, there will be no person left!
—You're afraid?
I can still see that river, that enormous mouth which carts away the sands in the setting sun, those waters, slow and heavy from having dragged the mud and the ashes of the dead and the prayers of the living. And then the sea in the distance, in a haze of golden dust; and one no longer knew whether it was the tawny flow of the great river or the blazing quicksands, or if the earth were not setting out from here for some golden periplus—the earth, this earth... cette terre.
—Afraid of what? Will you tell me? I have nothing more to lose.
—Except yourself.
There were tall tufts of grass on the bank, and sand, banyan trees, a village opposite with its rose-tinged minaret. A jackal began to yelp behind us. The river flowed soundlessly like lava. The Sannyasi was motionless, leaning on his staff, his orange robe almost melting into that fiery radiation.
—Except myself...
Who, “myself”?
Behind us the jackal yelped once more, a long hysterical laugh which ran through the grass and seemed to echo from all sides. Then the silence, broken from time to time by some rumblings. Myself, who was the “me”, where was the “me”? It was nothing any longer; not even a life, not even a person—where was that person? There were grasses, beasts, waters; “Me” came from afar like the river, carting away a world of mud and pain and prayers, soon to be thrown into the sea and dissolved into nothing, without more ado, while the jackal yelped and would yelp again. The “me” had been rolling on for centuries; it was only an immense oldness which was dragging along miseries, mud and all possible shame in its heart and some wisps of joy so mixed with pain that it was all the same; it went on indefinitely, it understood everything, bore everything, oh! what had it not rolled in its water? And then, someone, on the bank, who looks on, a very tiny something leaning there, which waits as if it had waited millions of years, since the cycles of the ice-age, since peoples have come and gone, with the jackal's yelp, with the breeze in the grasses, with the cries of all those who have come and gone and their sorrows and their lost stories. I have always been there, on the banks of the great river, I was that look at the end, that little breath of all their breaths, that little pain of all their pains, that stark question at the end, oh! I have had that look thousands of times, here and there, at the end of a life, that mere little breath, as if everything were gathered together in a single soul: the miseries and the days, the faces and the gestures, the millions of gestures for nothing in an ultimate prayer, which was not even a prayer any longer, which was only that cry at the end: I am waiting, oh! I am waiting for the moment of true life, the living life, the world of truth—not that caricature of life, walled in, sealed, dying, which knows nothing, which can do nothing, which does not even remember from whence it came nor why it goes on, that blindness in a body, without a sign, without a key, except for dreams and fables, oh! to know, to be infinitely, to live infinitely, to have direct perception, to find the thread again! To live, to love, to spread out everywhere, to feel everywhere, to see everywhere, as much as one might will, as much as one might love, with no separation, with no distance; to sing, to smile everywhere, in all that is, in all that lives, all that throbs; to die, to be reborn at will, to keep the thread indestructibly and to fill every moment with a totality of existence as full as all the millenniums together. I am waiting, oh! I am waiting for the hour of truth when our millions of dissolved, burned-out loves, rolled down the river, might love again, love forever, when our millions of gestures might touch the living glory they have fashioned in the dark, our flouted lives might know the joy they forged in ignorance, and our lost breaths sing the great paean of the divine world—and we will touch heaven with our hands, we will build the earth in the image of our soul and incarnate the light in a body. Oh! I am waiting, I am waiting for the hour of that “Something Else”, I am waiting for another being on this earth.
—Let's be on our way.
—Listen...
—What now?
I looked at him without anger, I was in the truth-breath; I was in the calm certitude of the truth which imposes itself.
—There is something else, Sannyasi, I swear to you, your dissolution is not the end.
He stopped short.
—What do you know, my fine fellow, you have not even been born yet!
Then he jabbed his finger into the hollow of my chest, as on that day in the train:
—If you want the lion's reply, you have to become like the lion. If you want man's replies, very well, continue to whimper, to suffer and to die.
And he turned his back on me. Then he changed his mind suddenly and fell on me like the wind:
—Men ask questions which do not belong to their state, so they get no answer. They get only ideas. You must change your “state”, Mr. Foreigner, you must become like the lion!
And he strode away towards the river.
He hailed the ferry-man.
There was a rose-tinged minaret full of pigeons. There was a forest of banyan trees on the other bank, and the village was all golden as if in a fairy-tale, one could hear the Muezzin's cry. And just as I set foot on the other bank, I had the impression that I was living a marvellous adventure—oh! I could end up badly, or not end up at all, lose myself, find myself, be dissolved or not, what did it matter! I was in the Adventure, the true story, in that sort of living question that one asks from life to life, which is like the life of life, the true “why” of all these millions of steps for nothing—I was there, I was holding the thread, it was for that that I was born: to hold that unique thread, that unique little burning question which was like the reply itself, and I could die a thousand times, what did it matter! I was holding the only thing that stands fast, dead or alive, the knot of the story, the moment which weaves together all moments. Indeed, we do not need a reply, we need only to live to the breaking-point a certain question which haunts us.
—Are you ready? he asked me abruptly, right in the middle of the bazaar, in that odour of saffron and marigolds, while the pigeons passed with a clapping of wings.
I looked at him, and everything seemed to me so simple, so natural, so exactly timed—why did I need to be ready, and for what? Everything was ready for me at each minute, even those pigeons passed by at the right time. It was miraculous, quite simply; that moment in the middle of the bazaar was miraculous, it vibrated with I know not what quivering of eternity as if it were carrying in its orb an infinitude of moments which came only to make that clapping of wings round a minaret. The miracle of the world is not to see miracles! It is to perceive suddenly what really is.
—A-n-y-thing, I replied.
His teeth glistened in a broad smile, he seized a bunch of hanging bananas and dumped it in my arms.
—Here, eat!
Then he bought some rice and two pieces of white cloth; he borrowed a copper bucket and we went towards the bank of the river into the banyan forest.
There were two sannyasis sitting round a fire. They seemed to be waiting for us. One was very old with long hair twisted into a plait and coiled on the top of his head; the other was young, he was meditating. The Sannyasi filled his copper bucket in the river. The sands were shining like water.
And that evening, he took out a shingle of orange clay which he crushed into powder on a rock, and he dyed the white cloths gerua.
—Tomorrow you will receive the initiation.
When I awoke the next day, I had a very peculiar sensation, like a man who has just passed through a cataclysm of the memory—one of those gigantic cave-ins that sometimes rent one's sleep, as if one were being dynamited into another layer of being. I found myself in a strange state, a kind of astonishment. That banyan forest was familiar and I was someone very familiar but suddenly hurled into another story, almost another age, and I was reliving something well-known, but with a body of time-present which did not understand very well though it let itself be led like a child one takes through a mysterious rite.
—... C'est l'heure... It is time.
He appeared before me all at once, very tall, enveloped in shadows. I straightened up. My body was lying in the sand, my head on a banyan root; the day had not yet dawned. There was a big river flowing and tall grass; one could hear the cicadas. The twilight was a great cicada-song. I looked at that tall silhouette in front of me; it was like an old, old story repeating itself. I picked up my scarf, I went towards the river unknowingly; but I knew everything very well, it was all foreseen. A man was there, waiting for me.
—Sit down. Take off your clothes.
I did as he told me. The cicadas were silent for a moment, then resumed once more their high-pitched stridulation, immense, as in the night of time; we were two tiny shadows in the murmur of the worlds; there we were, less than the cicadas, less than the grass,—we had not to make a sound, above all not disturb anything.
I did not move any more.
He pulled out his paraphernalia. It was the barber.
—Hold your head straight.
I held my head straight and looked at the great river in the rising dawn. The air was light, it smelt of vetiver. The sand was cool like the feet of a divinity in the heart of a sanctuary. He sprinkled a little water over me and began to shave my head, snipping off little tufts, gripping my head at arm's length. Perhaps he was going to cut my throat in the end and offer me to the river, all neat and clean. And there was a sweetness; there was nothing more to want or not want, no more fear, no more expectation: it was there. I was in the eternal fact. I was borne by immense hands, with the grass and the cicadas; I was part of a great, rising celebration. It was today or yesterday and always, it was a vast singing Sacrifice without tragedy, without fear, like a simple act of love, because each one had to give what he is, each one had to sing his song—for nothing, for everything, for the river and the rising day, for the fading stars, for that great mysterious thing which throbs in each one. It was thus, it was the Law, the true movement of the world—a great rising rhythm of offering—and we were doing neither, more nor less than the cicadas, only we did not know it, we had lost the rite and the music; but it was there, it was the same, and we made the offering unknowingly. Oh! I remember a day like this when I walked to the sacrifice unknowingly, and perhaps there had been many other sacrifices of tears and blood before that one, perhaps many barbarous offerings were necessary to rediscover the song, and when it sings there is no further need for sacrifice, perhaps no further need to die even, because that very song makes us invulnerable. It was in winter in the barbaric countries, in the place called Buchenwald; we had passed through the portal and had entered a white-tiled, neon-lit catacomb; they had undressed and numbered us, they had examined our mouths and removed the gold teeth; we were naked and ready, drawn up in close ranks in the great white-tiled tunnel. We passed in groups into the immense hall. There was not a murmur, not a cry. There was only the crackling of the electric clippers which hung from the high vault, and men, perhaps, who passed two-by-two under a deadly white light; they were scoured, shaven, washed, they looked at the little tufts of hair on the ground, the last remnants of their person, there in little blond or white heaps, in the staggering silence of a herd of shadows being led to the sacrifice. They had passed the second portal, they had entered the room with chemical baths, the immense, white-tiled creosote pit; they had left behind their impurities, abandoned their hopes, their despairs, their names, their ages, their times; they went two-by-two in silence, bereft of hate, of fear, of surprise even, under the fiery sprays, the icy sprays, under the fierce white light of a frightful ceremony; they went through immense immaculate corridors, without a word, without a cry—then, at the end, were thrown abruptly, dazzled, into a courtyard white with snow, among men perhaps, their heads shaven, dressed in sackcloth, numbered—nul and void like nothing on earth, dead or alive, without any distinction.
And then, in that non-world of the world, as everything became drowned in stupefaction something lit up within: a flame, a cry, an intensity of pure life—pure—absolute, unconditioned, equal only to the intensity of an onrushing death. And that was invulnerable. It was the life of life, even death lived by that! A fire of being so imperiously puissant that it made eternity break out suddenly like an archangel in the night, as if the very heart of death had a face of eternal light.
And it sang.
I left my head between his hands and everything began again following another rite—or perhaps it was always the same, but willed this time: we always pass and repass through the same place, amidst a scenery of light or shadow, of beauty or terror, by the oui or by the non, under the high vault of the banyans or the underground of the condemned, and when one arrived at the point it was the same, there was no longer any oui, any non, nor any terror. It was a cicada-song. Little tufts of hair were falling, years and years were falling away, oh! how that man was liberating me... so simply; he shaved and scraped away' the old grimace—that immense old habit of being like one's portrait, as if one had passed one's life copying a false image—and then it was inimitable. It was quite fresh and it looked on. It looked on, like a child through another window: a great flowing river and tall grass full of cicadas. And it was so ancient at the same time! When one opened that window, one had been as if leaning there forever, with one's cheek resting on an immense tenderness, and it was the great river of all rivers, the one moment of all moments, the cicada of a million lives.
Then the sun rose suddenly, piercing the forest with fire, scattering its little flames of gold on the river. The barber prostrated himself in the sand. I went towards the river. I was light and naked, I was clear like a cicada; I threw my clothes on the bank and went forth as though held by a great hand. Everything was so familiar that morning, like a dream which becomes true, like a film which suddenly stops on a single image and we say: oh! it's that, I know, I know!
That morning I knew everything.
The Muezzin began to chant in his minaret.
I remained rooted to the spot on the bank of that river, I no longer moved. Oh! there is an eternal image behind us and sometimes it emerges. There is a profound cry which sometimes carries us away. That morning there was nothing but that great cry which seemed to come from far, far up there, which devoured everything, filled everything. It was like a sudden chasm, a hole in the memory, something which gaped: there was no longer any river, any “me”, anybody; there was nothing but that great cry up there, so heart-rending, something which called, called as if it had never ceased to call throughout all the ages, through all places, all times, all sufferings and triumphs, all the skins of man, black or white; I had always been that single cry, that something which does not see, does not know, but which cries out, oh! which cries out as if from the depths of time like someone immured alive. And then it collapses. Everything collapses: my names, my forms, my life, my lives and all the gestures, the millions of gestures, the faces, the memories, the hopes and all that one seeks and all that one wants—what else could I want? For a million years I have wanted that!—That, that only, to cry out that as one drowns, as one loves, body and soul, that single cry which fills everything, carries away everything, lives, deaths, the future, the past; which makes the soul burst, barriers collapse, which sweeps everything away—not a trace of anything else, not a single thing to want, not even a single truth to attain: that, utterly that, to cry out that as one breathes, as one dies or as one lives, for nothing, simply because that cries out, that cries out, because it is that, that unique thing that one is, that pure cry of being. A formidable white devastation.
Then I prostrated myself in the sand. And I no longer knew where I was, whether it was the east or the west, the north or the south: it was Mecca everywhere.
I went into the river. A bird flew away with a shrill cry—blue, green—the air was like a golden powder. And I felt there was something to be done, a gesture to be made. The Sannyasi came out of the banyan forest over there, he advanced like a flame through the tall grass. I took some water in my cupped hands, I stretched out my palms towards the sun, I would have liked to sing out, to make an offering, I don't know, to give something... participate; I offered my water to the sun, murmured I know not what, but it was myself I would have liked to make an offering, to cast myself into the river; it was so small, so limited in that great torrent of adoration which flowed, vibrated everywhere, sang everywhere, with the water, the grass, the sand, the foam over there: it gave itself with such an abundance, it rose up towards the sun. And then that little naked body, so white, so clumsy! Thus I cast myself into the river: “Take, take all that, take.” Oh! it was so beautiful, the great river, so harmonious, so full of love. Thrice I dived in—thrice, why? I do not know; there was a number, a rite, it had to be attuned to something; and I could feel, I could touch that rite, I advanced, as if gropingly into a great ceremony. Each drop, each gesture had a meaning, a number, something which made it sacred—it was sacred, the world was sacred, the river was sacred,—but for no reason; it was simply like that, the rhythm was like that, it was the rhythm which created the sacredness, the rhythm which gave the meaning, the direction of things, automatically, like the infallible flight of the bird which comes straight from Siberia. And I was reaching out so tensely towards that impalpable, vibrating “Thing”, I too would so much have liked to know the gesture, to be in it. And suddenly, I had the impression that someone was behind me: a Presence.
A great Presence.
A being, a light; something which knew, which was guiding me. I closed my eyes for an instant and I felt that one should be clear, clear, absolutely clear, let that flow pass through one, let it act above all let it act, be white, completely white and motionless—given over. And it passed through me: it pushed my hands, my body, it knew the gesture.
Then I stretched myself out flat in the water, my arms like a cross. And it was the gesture, the unique gesture: an instantaneous sweetness. I was in the rhythm; I was at the goal, there was nothing to be sought, nothing to be attained: an instantaneous royalty.
—O, boy...
I returned to the bank. That presence was still behind me, and everything was very supple; my body had become very supple; each step, each movement was driven by an infallible rhythm, a vibration which perceived and acted at the satire time; one had to be as pure as possible, precise, transparent. It was like a great luminous movement, the luminous trajectory of someone behind me, who almost became one with me; and sometimes, for a second, the two coincided, it was the perfection of truth: I was true and everything was true. And in that very second, I saw that everything was like that; the whole world was the projection of an immense luminous trajectory, and that perfect coincidence was the sacred thing, the truth of the world. Thus everything flowed in a spontaneous marvel, with an inconceivable precision: it was that, the living truth.
He put his arm on my shoulder.
—Little one, you are going to celebrate the last rites.
I looked at him; I understood nothing.
—Yes, for your family.
My family?... I felt myself instantly shrunken.
—Afterwards, you will no longer be able to. It is the last time. Do as I say.
I did as he said. I took a little water in the hollow of my hands. There were tiny translucent fish which came to suck the grass. Then he chanted a verse in that bronze language which surged like a sea, and, immediately, it was something else, there was a meaning behind the words, a music which created the truth:
—For the appeasement of your kin, you pour this water.
I poured the water. I let it trickle drop by drop into the great river. The river carried it away. I did not understand very well, but it was part of the rhythm, it was right and in accord.
—Now you no longer have a family.
He got up; he threw a little water over his shoulder.
—Come, follow me.
I followed the Sannyasi.
I cannot really say what happened from that moment on. It was no longer me, and yet it was me as I had never been before: a concentration of me, a luminous essence, something which was no longer my thousands of gestures, a habit of living this life, nor even the memory of everything I had been and of all my adventures, that kind of veneer which gives us a face or a grimace; it was not a total denudation either, an emptiness of me, and yet I was walking naked through the tall grass, a little embarrassed by this too white body as one might be by an ill-fitting garment; nor was I diffused, or mingled as before, with the river, dissolved in the great rhythm. There was something which was supremely me behind all those gestures, all those memories, and which created a rhythm also, a vibration which coagulated all that; a kind of memory of all memories, a note of all notes, a something which had inhabited all the adventures, all the stories, vibrated identically in all the forms, all the faces, all the colours of the good, the bad—yes, like a similar music, my music, here and there, in a black skin or white, in lost times, in times retrieved; a same story of the story which created all stories, like the same blue in the hands of an eternal artist who son times creates tormented skies or at others smooth and blessed ones, but always the same hue, my hue: an eternity of “me”, unique, unlike anything, oh! so much “me”, a concentration of “me” like twenty generations gathered together in a single stroke, which walked with me, felt with me, prayed with me, an epitome so intense that it blazed, a fusion of beings so compact that it was like a radiation round me.
And everything had that orange hue.
We entered the forest. The Sannyasi walked in front of me, his robe sometimes flaming in a ray of sunlight. The sand was very soft under my feet and smooth like a gazelle—I could hardly see where I was going: I walked from one golden beam into another golden beam amidst strange fulvous pillars entwined together into a mêlée of pythons, then hurtling themselves towards the sky and re-entwining into a vault from which a liana sometimes fell like a fiery stalactite. I advanced without quite knowing where I was going, my eyes seemed veiled with a sweetness; I felt very small, very white, there was that great Presence behind me; there was like a fire blazing in my heart and everything became fused: those flaming banyans, those orange sands, that great gaze upon me; an infinitely sweet fire which flowed from my heart towards all things, and I recognized them all, I had a glance for them all, I would have liked to touch them, take them into me, embrace them all, like a dead man who is leaving and who looks for the last time, from above his body, with a single seizing glance, at that body and all bodies and all things, with the tenderness of absolute understanding. I walked in the midst of that orange sweetness with the recognition of an eternal lover. I had been walking for ever perhaps, I was there as though at the end of a thousand years, I was only a small image, a symbol borne by an orange radiation and each step seemed charged with an infinite meaning, as if all walks, all roads, culminated in that single little wake of sand, as if all steps, the thousands of steps led to that single little step, all days fused into that one, all joys, all sufferings dissolved, transmuted into that unique golden, roseate vibration which enveloped me, filled me, so warm, so full that it seemed to caress everything, bathe everything, love everything, as if those thousands of beings I had been came to be unknotted here, to look with me, burn with me, love with me, to carry their offering of pain and hope, to open their hands in that forest and give back their good, their evil—give, give, there is nothing but giving at the end; to close one's eyes, to abandon oneself. Oh! I had never lived for anything else but that giving, that single moment when everything melts; everything drops away, that ultimate royalty of giving, that end of all roads, that orange unravelling in which one bathes oneself as in a fire of tenderness, as in a love-song, that deliverance of going forward without anything, without expectation, without hope, like a dead man who has already died so many times that he has nothing more. to fear, nothing more to lose, like a living being who has already lived so much that he wants nothing more for himself, and what could he want—what heaven? What could he still fear? He knew all heavens, all hells, he had wandered everywhere, known all riches, all miseries, what could he still expect? There was that song at the end, that tenderness for nothing, for everything, that deliverance of laying one's forehead on the great sacrificial table, of opening one's hands and giving back one's note. There was only that small image beneath a great gaze, there was my brother of light, my brother of all-time, and I advanced into him at the end, I went back into his eyes, the small image into the larger, the myriad miseries into a great fire which loves, the myriad steps into a great trajectory of love, the thousands of days into the single day which counts. And all was like an orange hymn.
They were chanting.
It was a big clearing on the edge of the sands, the sea rumbled in the distance, the roots of the banyan trees hung round us like the rigging of a sailing-boat.
They brought some wood.
—Nous y sommes... We are there. Sit down.
He drew a circle around me. Their voices filled the whole clearing like a tide of golden bronze which mingled with the sound of the sea.
—You will do as I say.
He placed a bowl of ghee18 and some grains of coloured rice near me.
They lit a fire as though for my own funeral pyre.
I was alone.
I was facing the rising sun.
I was naked in the middle of the clearing.
They drew away from me, chanting.
—You renounce the three worlds. You cast into the fire the three lives... Tu renonces aux trois mondes. Tu jettes dans le feu les trois vies.
I took three grains of rice, I took a little ghee; I cast them into the fire.
—You renounce the mental world, the brilliant world, all its gods and its forms, you cast them into the fire: Aum Svaha.
I cast them into the fire.
—You renounce the vital world and all its lights and powers, you, east them into the fire: Aum Svaha.
—You renounce the physical world, your flesh and its desires, your emotions, your thirsts, you cast them into the fire: Aum Svaha.
—You renounce all the worlds. You have no more home, no more ties, no more country, you are the son of the Fire.
I am the son of the Fire.
—You are That. In that you live, to That you return, thus art thou.
They were chanting behind me, and I no longer knew who I was nor for what nor by what; I knew only that fire which burned in my heart, which burned in front of me and everything had mingled; I knew only that chant in the clearing, that offering of fire which sang forth in my heart, I was that living fire: O Fire, O great Fire, I know not what they say, I understand not their words or their worlds or their gestures; I understand that I am here, at the end of the worlds, at the end of the gestures, alone and naked before thee, and what is needed? What is the truth, the simple truth, tell me, I ask for nothing but the truth, utterly pure, utterly true? What is the truth?... And mutely it burned, as if the truth were simply to burn.
Then I threw everything into my fire: everything which questions, everything which demands, everything which encumbers, everything which knows, does not know, shines, does not shine, everything that can make a fire, nothing but the fire of truth. O Fire, O great Fire, I cast this life into thy flame because it is not the life, because it is small, limited, because it dies, because the truth cannot die! O Fire, O great Fire, I cast this thought into thy fire because it knows nothing, can do nothing, because it turns endlessly in circles, without a remedy, without a solution, without ever a certitude, because the truth really knows, because the truth can! O Fire, I cast these emotions, these feelings, I cast this confusion into thy fire and these errors, this misery of the senses and this yoke with no respite, this thirst, this perpetual thirst, I cast my humanity into thy fire, Aum Svaha. I am the son of another race! I am of another birth. O Fire, O great Fire, I have not come into this world in order to repeat the rituals of the dying! I am the lover of another life, I am the son of another Light, where is life, tell me? What should I renounce? Life is not yet!... La vie n'est pas encore!
Then I took the last grain of rice in the hollow of my hand and I looked at that flame for the last time, with all my strength, with all my soul, with a supreme call to the truth, as if it were the truth which had to pronounce the word, enunciate, as if I were going to die at that instant: I ask for the truth, the truth—and if there is no truth, then let everything be consumed.
And something replied.
An influx of fire into my body, a crushing pressure—no fear: simply the impression that I was being burned alive, inside. No nerves, no cells, not even a body: a dense fire which absorbed everything. Then all around (or within, I don't know which) like an onslaught or a precipitation, a gathering; they were all there, leaning over me, pressed against me, like fires, they too: all those beings of my being, all those lost lives equally burned, all those dead-never-dead, that long interminable burning procession of which I was the residue of the end, the final chant, the ultimate living question; they were all present, they looked with my eyes, touched with my hands, vibrated with my body, all suspended there in a last second. And there was that grain of rice in the hollow of their hands. Then I heard something like a distant chant which rose, rose, indistinct and subdued, like the sound of the sea, like the chant of those sannyasis, a long chanting theoria which came from the depths of lives, from the depths of deaths, each one with his offering of fire: all the forms they had adored, sung, carved or painted, all their hopes, their despairs, their sacrifices, all their given loves, their dead beauties, their summits of greatness and their eversame distress: pyre upon pyre and imperious idols, white gods, black gods and robes of all colours, of all miseries, cries for help, cries for nothing, futile and ephemeral illuminations, realisations of dust, flecks of gold or of snow, white moments which always ended badly, pure salvations which saved nothing—a great immense procession of fire which mounted from the depths of the nights, from the depths of my lives, which had all the faces, all the looks, even the face of the sannyasis, even the grimace of the tortured, even the smile of the blessed—all alike—one single great supplication from the depths of the ages... une seule grande supplication du fond des âges..., from the depths of those thousands of men who were pounding in my heart like the primate of old in the millennial forest; and it was the reply, like an orange outburst: something else, something else, another man, another life on earth! It sang that morning, it resounded in my heart like the clarion of the new world, like a tocsin of the end of an age: something else, something else, another being who will be born from our fire, another earth which will be born from our cry of truth, something we do not know yet, but which will be born by the power of our fire as Matter is born of a fire, as Beauty and Love are born of a fire, as Man is born of a cry.
Then I opened my hands and cast my last grain of rice into the fire.
And something happened.
He placed his hand on my shoulder, I started. I had forgotten him and his initiation completely; I was in another story; I was thousands of miles away—perhaps in the story of the world of tomorrow. Oh! I had been that Sannyasi so often—once, twice, three times and many other things besides, with those circling around me and I had come back to make the gesture, to burn the world once more but as a supreme incendiary, a final iconoclast, to burn even that very fire and wring the, neck of the old story.
—Now, you are going to receive the initiation.
He sat down in front of me.
—Do as I say.
I did as he said.
He placed his right hand on my head, I placed my right hand on his right knee. He leaned towards my ear.
There was no sound, they had all gone away.
One could hear the rumbling of the sea in the distance.
He pronounced three syllables.
I repeated three syllables.
It was over.
He got up. I got up. He took the orange cloth and put it in my hands—oh! I understood well now why those clothes were of that colour. Then he handed me a staff, a begging bowl. He took off his necklace of wooden beads and put it around my neck.
—Now you are a sannyasi.
He stood very erect in front of me. His naked torso shone in the sun, he looked like a tawny erne.
—You are alone with Truth.
Then his face suddenly relaxed; he looked at me with a sort of jubilant tenderness and he gave one of those thunderous, triumphant, royal laughs, his head thrown back as if he were drinking the wine of the gods. And he turned his back on me.
I never saw him again.
But as for myself, I had burnt his initiation with the rest. I was alone.
I was in another state.
There was a little heap of ashes in the middle of the clearing.
I was in another thing which was perhaps the “something else” that I had called down, I do not know. I was completely outside the story, radically outside, transported into another gravitation. And I cannot really tell, because there was nothing to see, nothing supernatural, no apparition, no revelation, nothing miraculous, and yet it was like a revelation: I had the impression of seeing something without seeing it, of touching something without touching it, or rather of being touched by something, like a blindman or like a new born baby, in a world so radically different that there were no corresponding organs, nothing that could translate. And yet it was massively there. It was not an illumination or a sublimation, nor was it a glorification of everything already known to me—it was something else. A total “Elseness”. I was in that clearing as might have been an anthropoid touched by the first wave of thought. But it was not thinking, it was another vibration of being. And it was there: there was no need to close one's eyes, no need to meditate, to abstract oneself on vertiginous heights nor to go into ecstasy—it was there, with one's eyes wide open, standing like a man on his two feet; no need to spread or flow into a cosmic stream nor to be dissolved; it was the opposite of dissolution; it was a concentration, a tremendous concentration of being, almost a gravity, such a heavy density that I was like a solid, vibrant, radiant block—a mass of compact vibration: it vibrated. But it was not like a thought or an emotion which vibrates: it was a dense beam of vibrations a vibrating mass, perhaps myriads of vibrations which were so rapid that they were going to coagulate, become solidified, fused into one, like an energy about to turn into Matter; just one more degree, one more acceleration, and everything would solidify. I was caught within that, held, immobilised like a bee in a stream of honey. And it was warm—a warm power—almost a swell of fever of which the heat did not resemble material heat, but which was more like intense love, a paroxysm of love or of joy perhaps, a love-joy which had nothing to do with human feelings or emotions or soul-states: a substance of love, a stream of solid joy which held one in its ray. And quiet—quiet without any shadow of excitement or of upheaval, not even of a quivering, or such a rapid quivering that it too was caught, struck with eternity. And time changed. One was as if on the brink of a second so accelerated that it was about to turn into eternity; it was like time not yet solidified, in the same way as it was a matter not yet solidified; to live in it was to live for eternity. A vast centreless immobility. And yet, it was there, one's eyes wide open, a kind of material eternity which extended in the twinkling of an eye, which spanned all time—past, present, future. And it could not die any more than energy could cease to be energetic: it was Energy itself, a centreless super-sun which wove together all suns, all atoms, all bodies; it was the life of life. It was perhaps the life that is not yet born, the future life—or which is already born perhaps, which is there, always there, and for some mysterious reason one enters into it, one crosses the threshold, as matter crossed over the threshold of Life one day and emerged into a more rapid movement, as the anthropoid crossed over the threshold of mind one day, and entered into another acceleration which made him think and reflect. But it was imperceptible, it was inexpressible, I did not know the mechanism—it was simply. I cannot even say “I saw”—there was nothing to see! It was not yet born for our eyes—one was simply seen by that. And that was the true Sacred. It was the puissant Mystery of no past, no memory, no initiation; it was the absolute Future, nameless, signless, without a trace of recognition, without even a quivering of being—it was simply there, a radiating, massive, imperious solidity: “I WILL”. A motionless “I will” which looks at the earth and awaits the hour—which awaits, perhaps, our millions of cries in order to open the golden door and draw us onto its threshold. A new Power for the world which came neither from thought, nor from matter, nor from life, nor even from soul. A motionless cataract of warm power charged with love.
Then I drew my scarf over my chest and set out straight ahead.
I never again found that great warm Power which seemed to be able to change everything. It had come and gone—gone or returned underground like a spring, in order to gush forth elsewhere, in another age, another place. And this interminable plodding outside, to find the moment again, this immense circuitous way for ploughing up matter, to clarify, to exhaust; and at each burst of light, that dark descent, as if one had to go over the whole way again, all the levels, all the forgotten recesses, the lost islands; and it is always the same circle but as if aggravated, accelerated also, round an invisible pivot: a major vibration which returns each time and seems to organise the slightest variation in order to ring out better its one imperious note—my name, my true name.
I have done everything, tried everything. I have meditated, walked, contemplated, but the contemplation was of no avail. With closed eyes, one goes elsewhere, in immutable joy which does not care a straw about what is happening below. One goes farther and farther away, higher and higher, starker, purer, into something more and more incompatible with the thickness of the earth and when I came out of it, I was like an ultra-sensitive radio set, so sensitised that the slightest coarse vibration put everything out of order: I imbibed fever with peoples' looks. I have walked and walked, lost myself in temples, bathed in crowds, known the immense goodness of people; I have knocked at the doors of the poor, begged, sung kirtans to the point of collapsing with dizziness in a clangor of cymbals and drums; but the single door did not open. I have heard incantations which ended up in a trance, black chants, drums and flutes which rent the night unveiling an even greater night, and ceaseless cicadas on the banks of rivers, as if light would burst out of everything at last, pierce right through, but nothing was pierced. I have worshipped, prayed to the gods of compassion, to terrible gods, to dreadful and naked Mothers painted in vermilion. I would even have prostrated myself before a heap of stones so great was my thirst to see the living god; but I found nothing greater than an old woman, one evening, who laid her forehead on a bare stone and collapsed with fatigue while repeating His Name. I have met wise men, madmen; I have known vagabonds who knew the future, but none who knew the secret of the present; recluses who knew the secret of the worlds beyond and the ineffable Plenitude, but none who knew the plenitude of the world here. I have seen little dark beings who gave great, brilliant powers, I have seen powerful men who captivated with a single look, but none was stronger than that small flame within. I have bathed in icy springs, in foul rivers, I have meditated with the dead on cremation grounds and done many strange things, but I have found nothing simpler than the cry of my heart. And at the end of everything, in the depths of everything, behind the darkness or the light, the ice or the fire, I encountered once more my thirst, my cry, my old question which was now even wordless, which was only a growing, hammering “what”, more imperious than all the drums and more piercing that all the cymbals of their sacrifices—quoi?... what?
And time passed.
Was I not also going to end up like Batcha's ascetic, shrivelled and dried-up in his spiritual ant-hill, with two great staring eyes—which stared at what?
Hardly had that thought come to me (or was it coincidence? But everything is a coincidence and a miracle and everything is decreed) than my life began to take another bent, as if a certain cry within, a tiny call, a small door which opens, were enough to change all the circumstances almost instantaneously; one passes onto another wave-length and everything is interlinked.
That day, a Nanga-sannyasi entered my life.
It was high up in the north where the snows are motionless. He arrived round the bend of a path, he was young and radiant, perhaps twenty years old; he was nude, covered with ashes like those of his sect, and went along sounding his chimta.19
—Ohé! Sannyasi, Shiva! Shiva!
—Ohé! Shiva! Shiva!
—Where are you going?
—Nowhere.
Then he laughed:
—I, everywhere!
We travelled together. He had the eyes of a child, he spoke without time or reason, sang stotras or remained silent for days at a time, and his silence was light like the mountain air.
—I think the gods love us, he declared to me one morning.
And the mist was still hanging over the cypresses.
—Yes, I feel them.
—You feel? How?
—That...
He scratched his head.
—They love me, so I love.
—Oh! love... love, I understand nothing of love.
—Then you understand nothing of yourself.
—Why?
—Because you are the one-who-loves.
—What do you know about it?
He leaned slightly towards me he had two little smiling dimples.
—Because you love!
We crossed mountain chains and icy passes, valleys of wild rhododendrons, sacred confluences seething with blue clay. He was always nude, except for a rag which he passed between his legs and attached to a string round his hips.
—Life is beautiful, friend, it is like Shiva's smile... so light!
After his bath in the morning, he rubbed his body with ashes and that was all. My orange clothes seemed like a pretentious ostentation, almost a disguise, next to him. I felt like chucking everything and going naked too.
—Oh! brother, are you not cold?
He smiled with a victorious air.
—Shiva himself covers me, he loves me!
We were on the bank of a torrent; there were pines, dolerites, an enormous cedar with a purple trunk; the sound of the gongs could be heard rising from the depths of the valley, and in the distance, above a thin, almost transparent pearl-grey mist, the ice seemed barely to float, tinted with pale gold, and as if even more eternal being borne by the sound of that frail little gong: tim-tim-tim, tim-tim-tim, three times, always three times, repeated indefinitely in the valley and so frail under the mist.
Then I took a handful of still warm ashes and rubbed them all over my body, from head to toe.
He looked at me open-mouthed as if I were committing... I do not know, a profanation, perhaps
—But you are a sannyasi!
—So what?
—So it is not your law.
He was stupefied.
—My law...
I felt like telling him off; but he was so nice, standing there scratching his head; besides, this body was so white in spite of the ashes that it looked like that of a leper. I plunged into the torrent and recuperated my wretched white man's skin and I will keep it to the very end—at my birth I must have put on the wrong skin by mistake.
—It is so cumbersome.
—Ah! you said it, brother.
He poked his fire between the stones. There was always a fire near him wherever he stopped; it was the law of his sect. And if the fire went out, he had to take to the road again, that's all.
—In short, I said to him, in jest, the last encumbrance is the body.
—You said it, brother, when one is free, one is done with the body!
This time, it was I who looked at him dumbfounded.
It was like a revelation. A revelation in reverse... I was standing there naked, perched on a stone in the torrent, and then there was that immutable ice, that feeble sound of the gong rising, rising from the depth of the valley,—so futile. I was scandalised, suddenly horror-stricken: the last encumbrance... Then I saw the whole picture: that valley-under the mist, that call, that cry of the dead, those lives which toil, which rise, that search for truth the truth—that burning ascension, and all that purified, sublimated existence straining towards the light—pour quoi... for what?
—For... what?
He started. I heard my voice like a clap of thunder. He was squatting on the ground, his hands on his knees, his chimta dangling.
—But what's the matter with you?
—Then one clears out, it's finished. One is free... into the fire with the rag.!
He had such a shock that his chimta banged against his pot of rice overturning it into the fire. For me, it was a thunderbolt from heaven which came crashing down on my head, a kind of black apocalypse. I looked at the tree, my orange scarf; I was going to hang myself—hang myself immediately, spit on that body, finish with it. A torrent of revolt, I raised my fist. He threw himself upon me.
—No, no, brother, not that, stop, what's the matter, but what's happening?
He was completely bewildered, he understood nothing. He simply sensed, like an animal. He stroked my forehead.
—Calm, calm, quiet...
I was clammy. In three seconds I was drained of all my energies, as if I had vomited up thirty years of meditation.
—Baba! you look like a bhout!20
He drew me near him My eyes remained fixed on that tree. And suddenly I knew what had happened; I knew it, it was obvious: I could see that sannyasi hanging from the tree. And it was me. And then that leap into space. It had already happened. And I had come back to untie the knot. Everything turned on that second of revolt. That was the point, I was there; I had come back to pass the test. Oh! now I know the signs; by force of repetition I know what returns from the past—and they are not at all fabulous and romantic memories! It is a certain intensity of vibration; moments that are inflated with an invisible content, as if that particular second, that particular place, that particular incident were “charged”, crammed with a power of emotion or of reaction completely disproportionate with the fact. Then I knew: this had already happened. And the past did not at all consist of tremendous events, great or small characters, adventures, sensational places: it was simply that intensity of soul which remained as if clinging to a detail: the branch of a tree, the reflection of light on the sand, the sudden song of a child passing through fields of rye; a “something” which has a quality of sudden eternity and which impregnates the most futile gesture with an imperishable substance.
—Well, well, you are a curious sannyasi.
He looked at me. He looked at the overturned pot of rice in the fire, at the smoking wood.
—When one has bad thoughts, things go wrong all around one.
He shrugged his shoulders.
—It is simple, we shall not eat today.
—Eat?... But why do you want to eat! You want to feed that carcass?
He recoiled a step. Evidently I was an unexpected sort of sannyasi, perhaps poisonous.
—Why? You want to feed your body?
Then Björn's words came back to me: “Why should I continue to eat?...” And that also was like a door opening in the darkness, letting in a whole cortege of waves.
—Listen brother, I have no wisdom...
He stood there, all embarrassed in front of his fire, and so sweet in his desire to be good. I softened a little.
—I have no wisdom, brother, I know only one word which my Master told me; I must go all over the country on foot and when I have finished the whole tour, I shall meet my Master again and he will give me another word. And when I have made the tour several times, he will give me Wisdom. So, you see, I know nothing but I am happy because, one day, he will give me Wisdom.
My heart melted. I took him by the shoulder.
—And what is it, your word?
He lowered his eyes; he seemed to be blushing under his ashes.
—That, one must not tell. It is only for me, it's good for me only...
Then he raised his eyes with such candour... golden brown like mountain honey.
—He said: “Go and look at each thing as a secret.” That's all... Each thing as a secret. So I look and I look at the secret; I don't understand, but I look, the secret is there. Sometimes it is painful to look and not understand... but there is the secret, there is the secret; I look and look.
He picked up his pot, tightened his string and threw the rice into the torrent.
—Now, it is extinguished, we must be on our way.
—You must not sleep often, with your fire?
—Oh! one day, I shall be so much awake that I shall no longer need to sleep; it will burn always—my Master never sleeps.
We started out again on the path towards the plains. And it is exactly from that day that I started to go down within as well as outside.
We again found the odour of burnt earth and the humidity of exacerbated plants, and the cawing of crows and the motley crowds in a musty odour of sweat and saffron. We sank into the fervour of the August skies and the dust everywhere. My companion opened his eyes wide at everything, every plant, he looked at the secret, he questioned without questioning—and the secret was, I know, to let one's look dwell long on things, until the crust melted, then the look breaks out everywhere. Yes, but...
There was always that but.
—All that is very nice, but...
—Brother, he said, clasping my arm—and the sweat made little furrows on the ashes on his skin—you see these old cans on the road and the tender new leaves peeping between the stones...Sometimes, it seems as if everything is very tender, even the stones.
And he sounded his chimta:
—I am very happy.
That was all. He sounded his chimta and we continued on our way.
—Et après?... And after?
—After what?
He looked at me so sweetly; I shrugged my shoulders and kicked away the stones. And I do not know why, but I suddenly saw myself again, exactly the same, kicking away an old calabash on the deserted quays in that western port, and the puddles of water under the street-lamp, the Laurelbank at the second wharf. It was cold... old, and it was just the same—ten years like a second. The only difference was that I had not the same clothes. Ah! what is it that changes... what?... qu'est-ce qui change, quoi? And Mohini foundered in the red Tartarus: freedom, freedom... And then?
—Then what?
He started. We were near the ramparts of a city; there was an old cistern, with foot-worn granite steps, full of frogs. The night had fallen. Lotuses shone in the moonlight; he had lit his fire. I think I had a fever.
—... What, brother, tell me! I, too, have looked at the stones on the road and found something, but afterwards? That's what I am asking: afterwards?
—After... what?
—Yes, exactly, after!
—So what did you find? You say you found something.
—It was a long time ago, in the western countries, in Brazil.
There was a road near a river. It was the Rio das Contas...
He raised his nose in the air; he had thick, bushy eyebrows, he resembled my brother the gold-seeker in the forest. “We must find, Job, we must absolutely find...” And we had found the heap of gold and he had died on it.
—... The River of Pearls. I was looking at the pebbles on the banks of the river, and then it seemed to me so horribly futile—futile, unbearable—all those minutes which passed like that, for nothing, empty, as if that did not exist, as if one were dead—a cadaver on two legs, there. Then in a flash I saw all the roads I had gone up and down, those countries, those streets, those ports, all those futile steps, those thousands of minutes which do not exist... I wanted that to exist. So I looked at those pebbles,—looked until my head was bursting—at every pebble on the road, as if they were God-the-Father, the unique event of my life. I wanted to remember—you understand, not to live another second without remembering. Ah! I swear to you, there is one bit of road there which I shall remember through all eternity... And I went through it again everywhere: in Africa, in Asia, in the lorries, the boats, the cafés, the ports—until finally it burned all by itself like a flame an automatic memory like a fire. This is the fire which no longer goes out! And it was my wealth, my only wealth; I was a king everywhere with my fire—it burned, it existed; I couldn't have cared a tu'pence for the rest. It was my wife, my country, my companion; I was rich, I was full with my fire!
He looked at me flabbergasted, his chimta in his hand.
—That's just it... there is no “then”.
He remained silent, troubled. And I felt a furore rising 'in me. He dropped his chimta:
—The devil is behind your words.
—So much the better. If there is the devil, it's already something!
—My Master said: “There is the great expanse, and one is free.”
—But I am free! I know that great expanse of yours, I go there at will.
He remained open-mouthed as though he were about to swallow the moon.
—Yes, there is a world up there, and one is free, and there are no more questions.
He said nothing.
—It is afterwards I am asking about, afterwards.
He recoiled a little behind his fire as if he were afraid of me. Of course, I did not have an ecstatic air or a white beard. Perhaps I had a devil inside, but free I certainly was!
—You speak angrily, you have no wisdom.
—Perhaps. But I close my eyes for a second—three seconds—and I am there, I don't care a damn about anything, it is perfect peace—peace, peace, a bournless life. And then I open my eyes; pfft! gone, everything is the same—the body ages, life decays, cold, fever, hunger, the beast, oh!... and all that is good for the pyre.
—My Master said: “One must save one's soul.”
—But, bon dieu, it is completely saved! It is free, eternally free; it is enough to remember and one streaks into the light—three seconds, I tell you. But life is not saved. The body is not saved; it is they who must be saved because they die t Heaven I have always, it does not need me to exist!... Or else we can all run off into beatitude and life is a lie.
—He said: “We are the sons of heaven.”
—Oui, par le corps de la terre... Yes, by the body of the earth.
He straightened up suddenly as if I had struck him; he crossed his legs, closed his eyes and went into meditation.
And in me there was that terrible vibration of anger. A wind of devastation. Then I understood that I was lost: if I moved, it was finished: my fist to the heavens, and I would hang myself... I stilled everything; I no longer moved. I became a nullity, like stone.
A snake slid into the cistern.
And at that moment, paralysed with furore, I saw something. “Saw” as one penetrates into a painting. I saw that that force of being, that concentration of energy and of light which one accumulates day after day, year after year, like an infallible accumulator which retains everything: the slightest syllable, the slightest cry, the smallest aspiration; that subtle fire endowed with power which is like our colour of being, our degree of soul, could change into its precisely opposite intensity of darkness, atom for atom, flame for flame, and one could become just as dark as one was illumined, because it is the same thing in reverse: one touches the precise shadow of one's own light. And in that second, I understood Björn's death. That Force—truly creative—instantly turns back upon itself in a correspondingly destructive intensity: it is one or the other, and it is the same thing, seen from one side or the other. When one abandons Truth, one enters instantaneously into death. In fact, when one takes to the path, one must not leave it by a hair's breadth, for the power of catastrophe is as great as the power of new creation, in the individual, in peoples or in the destiny of souls. And I saw also, but later, that the power of the reversal is not the “fall” one imagines, but the dynamite explosion of the Light which clears the path so that one can go further—where is the darkness? where is it?
He was smiling.
My furore had passed.
His body danced in the flame, blue-tinted with ash and moonlight; he looked like a Vedic god behind his curtain of fire. The frogs started to croak again in the cistern. A dog howled at the. moon. And everything was so fragile, and everything was eternal... Et tout était si fragile, et tout était éternel.
I closed my eyes, I too, could smile: one closes the lower door... one takes the key to the fields of light... And that evening, I found myself in front of the great. Contradiction.
Yes, one day, bodies open like flowers. One day, under the pressure of an inner fire, the shell of obscurity bursts open, the great captive bird opens its wings of victory, and one glides—infinitely, marvellously—through smooth, luminous plains, through drifting constellations, above bodies, above the blue spell of the mind. One glides into a pearly sweetness, one flies through light years; one has laid one's forehead on great snows of silence, left the tomb, the phantom, one has returned to one's real home. Oh! the deep breath of those expanses of light. And it is so pure, so simple: it is that and one breathes; it is that and one flows without limit, one becomes uncrumpled, one goes to the infinity of oneself; it is the peace of being at last what one really is, the great calm freshness of being in oneself—eternity, eternity like one second! Transparency everywhere like a million white lotuses under an invisible Sun.
And far, far below, a point of being. A fire. A very small fire which burns, which would have liked so much to merge, it also, into that immensity of light. A burning of being, a crying out—full of infinite gratitude because that exists, that fresh spring, that inconceivable marvel; full of an infinite thirst because that could not be here also, in a body. Oh! a truth which is not all cannot be the whole truth!
Ou bien quoi?... Or else, what?
The next day, we arrived at a village in the midst of the paddy-fields. The sun was already high, the air smelt of moist earth and new rice. There was a festival going on; an arch of banana trees adorned the first door; one could hear the drums. The village was like an island of leafy mango trees under a sky scattered with billowy white cumulus clouds; each house had its mango tree and high, mud walls which cast some cool shade on to the single dusty little lane.
My companion made a sound with his chimta.
—Shall we go in?
—There are too many people, let us go farther on.
He insisted:
—Farther on, the houses will be empty.
—Are you hungry?
I had no wish to enter that house; I felt a kind of repugnance—why? I do not know, but I had learned to trust my instinct... In fact, I really think events must have small fine tentacles which are projected into the invisible and we touch them before they close over us, as if the story were always played in two stages: the key-image above or around, and its precipitation into matter. And I have never been very sure that one could prevent that precipitation.
I shrugged my shoulders. He entered. I followed. And it was there that I met Destiny. I have always wondered whether things are not rigorously interlinked, not only the dreams of the previous night and the accident of the following day, but from our first steps in the world, just as the tree and all its leaves are contained in the green mango seed.
We were in a fairly big courtyard. Women in colourful sarees were bustling about; children were running helter-skelter from every corner. Men were squatting in small groups under a mango tree. Nobody had seen us. Half a dozen rooms opened onto a pillared verandah; garlands of jasmin were hanging on the doors. The mridangam player was beating his drum.
—Try to cover your chest.
I blushed. He could go nude, but I had to cover myself... Some children approached the Nanga-Sannyasi. I went towards the left to the end of the courtyard; I wanted to be alone (I think I could beg for ten years without ever getting used to stretching out my bowl). There was a room there, at the end. Now, it was exactly because I wanted to avoid that crowd and sit down quietly in a corner that I fell right on the very spot that I ought never to have found.
There was a basil plant in front of the room. It was encircled by a carved stone basket which reminded me vaguely of something—but that morning, everything reminded me of something, or called out to me, I do not know, I was as though in a state of alert. I felt that the air was full of little signs and presences, or of threats perhaps. Mechanically, I plucked a basil leaf and put it to my lips... the odour of wild mint, a cortege of indistinct waves, and right at the end of that odour it was as if a little door opened and I could hear far, far away in the distance, as if from the other side of a curtain of vine-branches, a small voice: “You see, in my country, we call it tulsi; it is an auspicious plant...” And it was Mohini. A whole world re-emerging in an odour of basil, and so vivid, as if it were right there, in the next room: scattered bird feathers... the vines which climbed to the roof... the huge cage... the festive crystals... the broken ektara—there was even a peacock's feather on the ground. One opens the door inadvertently and nothing has moved... We have in us hundreds of dungeons and Atlantises which have never foundered.
I raised my eyes...
And I remained as if turned to stone.
A man was standing there with his back to me in that room at the end of the verandah, right in front of the basil plant. There was a woman in front of him—a white forehead. I could not see her face clearly; I saw only her forehead: a young peasant woman. She was dressed in red like a divinity, facing the man. A white forehead, so white. I saw the woman's hand lifting her veil and the black line of her hair on her forehead. Then the man raised his right hand slowly, he held something between his index finger and thumb; I saw him place his hand on that white forehead—that very white forehead above the black curve of the eyebrows. Then I felt dizzy. I understood nothing; all this had no visible meaning for me and yet I was petrified as if I were witnessing something known and lived, almost as though I were making the gesture.
Someone pulled me violently by the arm.
And I saw the man's hand slowly descending, and the red mark of a tilak on a white forehead.
—You're going to get out of here immediately.
I was crushed.
He pulled me by the arm, I heard murmuring. People were looking at me, I understood nothing. I was as if stupefied, like a man who awakens suddenly in a dead temple and sees the gods move. He dragged me out like a thief.
—You're mad, no! But you are mad!
He was grey with rage. The door banged behind me. We were in the street. There was a vault of mango trees and beyond... the sky... blue, dazzling.
—Don't you know that such a thing is not done? Are you a sannyasi or what?
He brandished his chimta. I was as though mad.
—But what were they doing...
I stammered, I had completely lost my senses.
—What were they doing?
—Don't you know that one must not look?
—But what were they doing?
I could only stammer out my question, I was struck with idiocy, with Batcha's face before me, her white forehead, her eyes full of tears and that red tilak I had put on her forehead.
—What was happening... but what were they doing?
—Didn't you see? It was his wife.
—His wife...
I felt a kind of dizziness.
—Don't you know that it is sacred?...
He dropped my arm abruptly.
—You are a strange sannyasi and your words are strange. He spat on the ground.
—I think it is better that we separate here.
He tightened the string round his loins and looked at me once more.
—The night is upon you.
And he turned his back on me.
I followed him in a stupor; I saw his naked silhouette going down the little street... all erect, all bathed in sunlight... towards that dazzling blue sky in the distance where the mango trees ended.
He disappeared.
I remained there, standing in front of that door for a long time, incapable of moving or thinking. The mridangam player was beating his drum frenziedly. I came out of the village.
There were paddy-fields as far as the eye could see, luminous, intense, emerald green, relieved in the distance by one island of glaucous mango trees and the limpid, cerulean sky in which a cloud drifted slowly like a ball of white cotton.
I was in utter chaos.
I no longer understood anything, my head was ringing like an empty calabash. I understood only Batcha, Batcha, Batcha... She was my lifebuoy, my luminous island: Batcha, Batcha—why Batcha? I don't know. I had not thought of her for a second since... oh! for years, which were perhaps lives, and then she was inexplicably there, she, she alone, as if she had never ceased to be there—I had only closed the door and now the door was opening. It was like a bursting dam, a green invasion, everything was carried away, swept away: the light up there, the peace, the white expanse—what did I care! But what had I done, what had I really done during all these years... what? Where had I disappeared to?... I was planted there in front of those paddy-fields, in a state of aberration: I looked at that green deluge in front of me like Jonah in the jaws of the whale.
Abruptly everything stopped.
A complete void.
I saw all those paddy-fields expand and swell like a sea—almost stalk by stalk, microscopically and all together... and that enormous cloud of white cotton overhead casting a greenish shadow. One second's pause. It was fixed, photographed, nothing moved any longer: it is that. And this that did not correspond to anything—to no thought, no plan, no will: it was simply seen. And what was seen in that second became true—a creative glance. The glance of the future: that will be. The whole world may well collapse, men may bar the way: that will be, it is decreed. And I knew well that second: it was empty and yet it contained everything, like that second aboard the Aalesund when I had said “no”, like that second in a port when I had followed the Sannyasi. Indeed, there is a field of creative force up there, an expanse of vision where the whole future is like a ball of light, and when one can see there, think there, it becomes true: ten years or ten days later it becomes true. One catches the vibration, one hooks into it, one pulls the thread and it unwinds like a cocoon—it becomes a creative thought, a bubble of luminous power which goes infallibly to the goal. All my life I have pulled that thread: a stroke of light on a Boulevard and I became a gold-seeker; a lightning flash on a creak in Guiana and I dropped my gold. I have made myself new lives in five minutes and I have torn through continents at a gallop, forward, always forward, pulling that luminous substance, like a magic to mould life; and when it was finished, another, yet another, always another—something else, something else, something else always... autre chose—as if one must hack into it, snatch the flash, invent new lives, until the indubitable life. emerges,—that—then one stops. But I have always begun again. And that same second was coming now, clear, dazzling... I pulled the thread—I was leaving for the south. I was going to find Batcha again, it was obvious. I was going immediately.
I got up. I picked up my begging-bowl, my staff, tightened my belt.
Then the sweet fragrance of young rice-fields entered into me with a humming of elytra and the raucous croaking of bull-frogs and the dull beat of the mridangam. I came back into my body as if I had been absent for ten years.
And at the very moment I crossed the first paddy-field, on that little mound there, which cut through the field, the vision of Batcha came back to me. It was clear, I understood everything: “Three times I called you... three times. It was a light like sand, and you were going away, you had become smaller and smaller as if you were going to fade away and I called you, I called you, and you did not answer; and that hurt me so much, here, it was as if I were going to die...” And she was there, alive, smiling, at the end of the thread: she was pulling. She had never stopped pulling! She had brought me back into my body. Without her, I would disappear, be completely digested inside the white whale.
And at the same moment anguish overwhelmed me: what was she doing, was she alive?... I was in a fever. I thought I would never reach the end of that road.
Now, that same night, I had a dream.
I have had many dreams in my life, strange or diabolical, sometimes divine, but none tore me like that one because of its poignant simplicity. It was evidently not a “dream”, for I had gone into a world as real as Peru or China. And I wondered with terrible anguish whether what I had seen was an image out of the past or a premonition of the future. Oh! everything is already there, and we pull down here a few glimmerings from elsewhere, we struggle against shadows older than ourselves and try to change dark decrees with an insufficient light. But perhaps, the shadows hound us to force us towards more light?
I was in a “foreign country”, far, far away, in the countries of the west and I absolutely had to find her again. It was of supreme importance, a question of life or death. And there were all kinds of obstacles between us, enormous distances, guarded frontiers, ruthless officials who would assassinate you with a rubber stamp. At last, I saw myself in a train: the corridor of a train. But it was not like the trains here: it was immense, with a corridor spanning the whole length like a thread of light. And I was running along that corridor, I was running like a madman, as if the train were not going fast enough! I jumped over luggage, jostled people, bounded over ropes—I ran, maddened by anguish, towards a light at the end which was Her. And at the end, I suddenly tipped over into another country which was unlike anything I knew. A world of silence. Everything was muffled, padded, soundless. And the air also had a strange quality, it seemed pearl-grey; a kind of thin, transparent mist, not thick enough to be a mist really, but substantial enough to form a veil, like a vaporous tulle which enveloped everything. Everything moved or rather glided behind that “veil” in an absolute silence. People were strolling about there. They were alone or in pairs, but never more than two together, and most often alone. It was a kind of garden, or a park perhaps, an immense cinder-grey park, with avenues, lawns, shrubs, but everything was merged in that pearl-grey, vaporous light; the beings of that place seemed to be made of the same substance as that light, but slightly more compact: they moved slowly with great suppleness, hardly touching the ground and without the least sound. I had the impression that they were all plunged in deep meditation, rather like strolling monks. And I asked each one: “Where is she, where is she?” and I felt the anguish of my question, I was the only one making a noise there, I was heavy and uncouth: “Where is she...?” And it's curious, but I do not remember searching particularly for Batcha: it was “her” and she was perhaps Batcha also, but not especially with that particular face, or perhaps a “her” of many times and many faces but always “her”, the same “her”. And they did not know. They did not reply. Or they vaguely stretched out a hand in a gesture which seemed to lift centuries. The more I advanced, the more my anguish rose, rose, became intolerable, like a death-stone in my heart: “Where is she? Where is she?... Où est-elle? I was the only one to call in an echoless world. There was not a sound in that park, not even a flower. Then, for the last time, I approached one of those strollers, and it was like a cry in my heart, so intense that the man stopped: “Où est-elle?” He raised his arm slowly and pointed to a corner of the park which went down to another level.
I descended there. They were like terraced gardens, pearl-grey also, and the one I was seeking was right at the bottom. There was a wood on the left. I entered into the wood. There were trees, but they were unknown to me, with very delicate, slightly ash-coloured leaves, and high ferns. Everything was absolutely silent. But silent like nothing here on this earth: a total absence of vibrations, as if the world had stopped. And I knew she was there... I arrived in front of a tree. There was grass and small leaves on the ground like lucerne, and a mound. And suddenly, without my knowing how or from where they came, I saw some very small russet foxes come out of that grass and flee in all directions. And that was where she was. Just some very small russet foxes fleeing in all directions, without a sound, without a trace... And Batcha no longer ex-is-ted.
It was dreadful. More dreadful than seeing her dead in front of me.
I woke up. My body was ice-cold like a corpse.
I reached the White Island on a new moon day and in a sand-storm. I was exhausted and burning with fever. It was in October, the time of Scorpio, the time of obscure upheavals, of double or quits, of breaches of light or of sudden crumblings—not that I attach any special importance to the stars, but everything is significant to me and the farther I go, the more I see that everything moves together; each detail brings me a sign of the whole and I listen at every moment, in this rising fever or that dark stumbling of chance, to the ebbing of a great tide which drives the peoples and sends the worlds spinning—and woe unto us if the instrument is attuned only to sham images and soulless rhythms. But I too had lost the rhythm, I was caught up in the insane rush of men and I looked at those crates of lemons on the platform as if I were going to see Björn spring up suddenly, having escaped from the Japanese Hospital.
—Hey, Sannyasi, your staff.
“Sannyasi, Sannyasi...” Will they never leave me in peace! He held out my staff. It was a pilgrim from the north. Then I don't know what came over me: I seized my staff and broke it in two across my knee. He was thunderstruck. I thrust the two pieces into his hands:
—Here, it's for you, I have reached the end of my road.
And I went out.
I went through the warehouse where I had heard divine music, but there was no longer any music in my heart, there was only that pounding of a drum in my temples, like the angry march of Shiva. I saw the margosa again near the station and heard once more the silvery jingling of the horse carts, but not the child who had led me to my brother. I had no brother any more, he was dead—or was it he who came and whispered in my ear: “One day I shall return and break your glass.” I was no longer borne by the smiling grace which arranged each step, each encounter; I was burning with fever in a sand-storm, and in the great misery of being only oneself.
—Hey, Sannyasi, take my cart, it is light.
Sannyasi, Sannyasi... I lowered my head each time, as if I were an outcast... stigmatised, branded, cut off from others and from everything by that orange symbol. The wind was blowing from the south, the dunes rolled over the palms, threw up crests of sand which swept down the main-street like sprays of thorns; my robe was flapping; people pointed at me, women whispered on the balconies: dorai, dorai... the white man, the white man... The passers-by turned round, I heard a rumour spreading: dorai, dorai... I advanced with my back bent, clutching my orange scarf to my breast like a thief filled with shame: dorai, dorai... The white man, the white man, the reprobate, the cursed Sannyasi, the deserter from no country, disguised in orange here, disguised in black there; disguised in any case and not even knowing in which skin to dress—not even that of a naked sannyasi; the nil, the null, the nothing-at-all who was not from here, nor elsewhere, not from above, not from below, oh! who will tell me from where I come, my name, my country? Will not a great white horse come once more to bear me away on its victorious back and deliver me from this spiritual fortress as he delivered me from the fortress of the white man?
—Balu!
He opened his mouth, looked at me with a kind of stupefaction, almost fear, as if I were a ghost—Balu! grown taller, thinner, in front of the grain merchant's shop. I held out my hand, oh! like a beggar.
—Balu!...
He dropped his handful of grains and ran away as fast as his legs could carry him. They all turned their backs on me.
I took the temple street, my head was throbbing, my body was furrowed by white waves, my mouth felt like paddy-husk. I asked for a glass of water at Meenakshi's. The mother appeared on the door-step, her fists on her hips, dressed in a purple sari. She looked at me... Her eyes seemed to tell me: “She's dead Nisha threw herself into the well.” I went away. I walked in the temple street, walked amongst the jingling carts,—through the whirling sand; I went towards a distant tower, a high dark blue watch tower silhouetted against a sky of white cirrus, and I was puny and absurd in that robe, I was alone and at the end of everything; there was no longer any road to follow, nowhere to escape, it was over, the trick was played: I had covered all the roads, even the roads of liberty, even those from which one should not return. There was no longer anything but a little door in the distance, a child so white, and I went forward like a blindman, groping in my fever, with that sole mantra ringing in my heart: where is she, where is she... où est-elle? Is she alive?
I climbed the three steps. My heart was pounding as if it would burst. The loggia was open—the divinities, the odour of sandalwood, the patio ablaze with light... I stumbled against something which broke with a sharp sound. I bent down: it was a child's ektara.
He was there, seated in his corner, alone, surrounded by his tools, torso nude—he looked at me. I don't even know whether I greeted him, I sank into that look, plunged there, into that great calm power which washed away all my suffering, smoothed out my wrinkles, bathed my misery in coolness and peace, as if I had walked for centuries, rung through lives, my body covered with scales... I wanted to throw myself at his feet. He stopped me with a gesture.
—Mani!
A young girl appeared. She held a jug of water in her hand and a towel. There was not a sound in the house.
—Serve him. He is a sannyasi, he is at home here.
Sannyasi... Sannyasi... She approached; I wanted to cry out: no, no! I am not a sannyasi! Stop, but leave me alone! I am not a sannyasi, I am nothing at all!... She poured water over my feet. Oh! he had done it on purpose, it was planned, he wanted me to understand that I was the stranger, the sannyasi received according to his order. I was filled with shame. I wanted to leave, I was lost like a child. And then, suddenly, that also was riveted before my eyes: the girl bending over my bare feet, her hair trailing on the ground, that bit of orange clothing—everything sank as if into a well before my eyes, the image became deep, deep, intense, slipped into another world, unveiled superimposed layers, and it was no longer “me”, but me upon me and times without number which came back; each gesture from the foreground was repeated on other planes—twice, three times, or was it perhaps the reverse, and I was there, outside, beginning the old story over again, gesture for gesture. It was a kind of giddiness. Or was it my fever—was I raving?
The girl placed a mat at my feet. A carrom game had been left unfinished—they had all fled. Mâ arrived.
My heart leaped; I would have liked to have taken her hands, touched her feet. She drew back a step, pulled a corner of her sari over her forehead, held out a tray to me, and went away without a smile.
I was frantic with anxiety.
—Maharaj...
—You have returned, he said at last... You had to return.
—Maharaj, where is she?
He looked at me. Oh! I know that I should never have asked that question.
—She lives, he said simply.
A wave of blood rushed into me;. I closed my eyes.
—She will see you... if she wishes.
She lives, she lives... I was burning, frozen, I gulped down my glass of water at a draught. Then Bhaskar-Nath's gaze held me and with the brutality of a wrestler, he said:
—Don't you see how you have shrunk?
I thought he had slapped me. I could still hear the voice of the Sannyasi behind me: “You little slug!”
—Listen, Sannyasi, I see everything very well...
He laid his clasped hands on his knees—exactly like Batcha. He looked straight ahead at the sand of the patio. I became sane again.
Then... silence.
And that odour of sandalwood, the chanting of the schoolchildren, the sound of the conch-shells entered into me, and everything was the same: it was today or yesterday, or lives ago... it was infinitely the same, oh! what is it that changes?... oh! qu'est-ce qui change? We are in the heart of Egypt under our débris, we are in unlost times, and that moment's odour, that ray of sunlight on the sand of a patio seizes us all at once and leaves us like an eternal child in the midst of the rush of things.
—I could have slammed the door in your face.
I started. He clenched his fist.
—But one does not slam the door on Destiny. One does not change destiny by closing the door, one changes destiny by being greater than destiny. Oh! if I were still capable of sorrow, it is with tears of blood that I would speak to you...
With a sweep of his hand, he pushed aside his tools. There was a sheet of accounts in front of him.
—You have arrived at the appointed time. One cannot blame you; you have followed the law of your nature. But now the time has come when you can change that law if you so will. Because there is a time when one can.
—But why...
—Be quiet, listen. I want you to see clearly; only Truth can save you; it alone has the Power. It is the only power. Batcha is going to die, perhaps... so understand this. Destiny is not made to crush or to punish us, Sannyasi, it is made to compel us to grow—you are a sannyasi and the time of sannyasis is over, and you do not know how to get out of it; you have never known how to get out of it. You have always repeated the same foolishness. Understand that one does not get out of it by cries or revolt or through fever, but by emerging onto another level of consciousness. When you have changed your inner state, you will change the outer state and you will have conquered destiny.
He leaned towards me. I could see the veins throbbing in his neck.
—The difficulty that you have not overcome once will come back upon you ten times and each time stronger because of your failure, until you have the courage to dissolve the ancient knot and be greater than yourself. That is Destiny—the passage to the other state.
—But what wrong have I done, tell me? I wanted... I came to this island by chance... I met Balu...
—By chance! But what do you think! And that glass that you are putting to your lips, do you think it touches your lips by chance?... There is but one Body in the world! a single body... un unique Corps. And if the tiny point that you are has come to this island, it is because an arm bigger than yours, of which you are a part, has brought you here for a purpose.
—We are puppets!
—Then what can I change?
—Everything. You can change your state. You can choose to be the puppet which can do nothing or the Body which is everything and which knows what it does and why it does it, and how it goes and where it wants to go.
—What must I do?
—It is not a question of doing; one must be.
—I wanted to be; I have left everything for that.
—That is exactly your mistake.
—I found a Light up there, it was... Oh! It was marvellous. And then it was the end of the earth. One is dissolved... gone is life.
—That is not true!
Then he hammered out his words. He was like a mass of power in front of me:
—If you eliminate everything in order to reach the Light, you will have a glory of empty light. If you include everything in order to reach the Light, you will have the glory of full light.
And I could have sworn that there was that same orange radiation round him, dense, almost golden, as in the banyan forest.
—Because everything that touches that light becomes full—it is the fullness of all things; it is the luminous foundation of all that is. You can choose to fall asleep there for ever and you can choose to be dissolved in it, you can choose to go into it naked like a little saint—in fact, you can choose all you wish, because that light welcomes all with an equal look. It is the great Look which makes be what it sees. If you see just one little thing in that light, you become that one little thing; if you see a microscopic divinity, that microscopic divinity becomes an absolute of luminous totality which leaves nothing more to be desired, or seen—all that touches that, becomes that, full of that, absolutely that. It is paradise—yes, the paradise of what one wishes... le paradis de ce que l'on veut.
He drove his eyes into mine.
—And if you have renounced everything in order to reach there, then yes, you will get an enormous empty divinity and it is the end of the earth. But I say...
Then he raised his folded hands in front of him slowly, as if he were greeting an unknown divinity.
—I say that it is the beginning of the builders of the spirit. It is the coming reign of the divine workers who will re-fashion the earth in the image of their vision of beauty. It is the time of concrete visionaries who will seize the great eternal Look, not in order to fall asleep there in an inert beatitude, but in order to draw the Power from above into everything they do, every being they meet, every particle they touch and make it yield its content of light because, indeed, heaven is everywhere, in every thing, every being, every circumstance of the earth, and it is for us to make the outside become what it is already within... But it is a more difficult heaven; it is not for the spiritual sleepers.
Björn's image fell upon me; I had the impression that I was there exactly as he was before he died.
—Björn also wanted Power and he is dead. If I have taken the wrong path by seeking up above, and he has taken the wrong path by seeking down below, then where is the path?
—You were not wrong and neither was Björn. You have covered only half the distance. When you found heaven up above, you found only half of it—the other half is to be created here, on the earth. You found Him, but not Her.
—Who, her?
—And Björn was not wrong when he sought down below; he simply began where he should have ended; he laboured below without the light from above, so everything collapsed. Listen, child, Power is one, it is everywhere; there is only one Power in the world and not two—in the atoms, the monkeys and the gods—but if you take it from below, it is full of the filth of the earth and it performs monstrous miracles one must go right up and bring it right down. I too am a Tantric but I have no red triangle on my forehead and I do not perform miracles—I release the quiet miracle which is in the heart of things. I am also a Sannyasi but I have no orange robe; and I have renounced everything without running away from anything—but my heaven, I carve with my chisel at every moment, in all I do and all I see, even in my accounts. And I am neither a Sannyasi nor a Tantric; I am still something else... Listen, my son, there is a secret...
Bhaskar-Nath was leaning forward, his look riveted on the ground as though he wanted to pierce it with light.
—You have returned here and Destiny weighs upon you, and sometimes, one falls on the way like Björn—there is always a moment when one falls on the way. It is called a, “fall”, but at that rate the whole of life is a fall from a heaven from which we should never have come out. The Truth is greater than our morality, Sannyasi, greater than our virtues, and in error is hidden a heaven that we have not foreseen... And I say: we fall again and again; we break our necks in life; we are robbed of our good each time because, at each stage, we have to bring down the degree of heaven that we have reached—if we did not fall, never would heaven touch our earth! It would remain where it is, all alone and perfectly null. And the higher you climb, the deeper and more painful is the descent. But there lies the secret... Listen. In truth, each descent kindles your impeccable heaven with a warmth of suffering which has the power to transform the level of darkness it touches. And in descent after descent, one transforms: the world of thought, first of all, then the world of the heart, of the emotions, the life of every moment, the hidden depths and obscure recesses, then the body—your body,—sickness and death. Death is the final enemy to be conquered... La mort est le dernier ennemi à vaincre. And the deeper you descend, the more your sclerotic white heaven is kindled by a fire of power and love, as if the pain of the night forced it to become greater than itself—in truth, the heaven of the Spirit is only a pale copy of itself as long as it has not plunged into the flaming crucible of the earth. And when you approach the last stages of the descent, your heaven, up above, hurled down, fallen, is lit with a burning gold, dynamic, all-powerful, even down to the most obscure cell, the most rebellious matter, as if it were going to burst under the pressure of that Night; as if the true Sun were in the depths of the body. And I say this: the power of the fall is the very power of the Transmutation. When we have drawn our heaven right down, into our bodies, it will touch the other half of its Truth the two will-become one and matter will be changed.
He stopped a moment and looked around him as if he saw something.
—Then we shall no longer need to fall or die because heaven will be everywhere, down below as well as above; each point will be the summit, each being will be his own heaven, each moment will be the goal, and the pallid beatitude of the empty immensities will become the countless felicity of the divine myriads on the earth.
Bhaskar-Nath raised his eyes and looked at me. And I saw.
—Now go, it is time.
I got up like a robot.
—And do not forget, it is as you will. One day, you will have the delight of the two worlds, but first of all, you must break the attachment to the one and to the other.
I went out. One could hear the sound of the gongs and the conch-shells in blasts. I almost tripped over that ektara again. Then I found myself in the street, dazzled. The south wind was blowing furiously.
I turned round. It was Balu—Balu, hard faced, tight-lipped. He clenched his fists in his pockets, raised his head:
—She will wait for you over there this evening.
He pointed to the beach with his chin. Then his eyes came back to me and he looked at me with such hate that I was stunned.
—Balu...
He turned his back on me; I was alone.
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.
—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?
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.
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?
She burst out laughing.
—Oh! Batcha, let's forget everything... everything. Let's begin again.
—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.
—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.
He was hurrying to hang himself, that Sannyasi; he thought he had lost heaven, lost the earth, the beloved and the light which makes one love well. He did not know, he no longer knew, his eyes were burning, he was running along that track which seemed to vanish in a cloud of sand-storm. It was the northern track. Night was falling, the odour of the acacias mingled with the salt of the sea, with a wind of thorns and malediction. He was going to Kali's Rock.
And all the voices of the past came back:
—O Stranger, hurry up, darkness is upon you.
I had pushed the boat in the wind; she was clad in red, she had put her gold bangles in the man's hand, windward ho! And I am running still, I have never reached port.
—I have taken out some white clothes for you, the Kashmiri carpets, we are walking in a forest of blue cedars...
But it was Björn's forest: “I'll marry her, we'll have a hut, we'll make a boat, fishing nets... All black, the little Björns!” I could still hear him shouting behind me: “In four years, she will have flat breasts and her mother's mug.”
—But it's not that, Nil! not that, not that... pas ҫa, pas ҫa...
It was not that—and it was nothing at all; it was the night and the wind that were blowing behind me.
—Nothing-at-all, Mr. Nothing-at-all, there are millions of beaches in geography... but only one wave... brings to each one... a single cowrie.
I have even lost the single sea-shell she had given me; I have always lost it: “Here, this one has been waiting a thousand years for you,” and I went away. I am still running.
—Every time, you made the same error.
Error? What error? There is no error, there is never any error, you yourself said so.
—I ask you for one day, only one day...
But in the depths of my madness, in the depths of my distress, there was something which repeated stubbornly: “You were right to go away, even if it had to be started all over again, I would still do it a thousand times...”
—I want to be free, do you hear, free!
Well! you have your freedom; what are you complaining of? You are not at the wedding party, so what else do you want?
—Too late, Nil, too late... trop tard...
And that was the most poignant of all; it had no reason, no meaning; it burned deep in the depths like an ever-open wound.
—Trois fois tu es venu, trois fois tu as tué... Three times you have come, three times you have killed.
And the Promontory; I am on it.
It was Balu, he was running. Some mynas had flown away from between the rocks; he was running with his satchel: “I tell you something has happened to Björn, something has happened...”
—Erik is dead; he committed suicide.
One shaft, two shafts, three shafts... Erik is dead and Björn is dead, they are all dead; they did not want any shafts, they did not want any nauseous little happiness, and I, what did I want?
—Something else, something else, another life on earth!...
And I burned everything for that. I ravaged everything. And now I was running to hang myself for that nauseous little happiness. “All white, the little Nils! We'll have a hut; we'll be free; we'll go far, far away to the north, there will be green paddy-fields...” Oh! was I going to hang myself for that? But could I deny Batcha also? I could deny nothing, not even the Sannyasi! And I was running in that acacia forest, running in a poignant, growing contradiction which was clutching at my throat. —It is closed on all sides, Nil, I am trapped like a rat, a prisoner on the island!
And then, suddenly, Björn, on the roof of the grain merchant's shop, naked, some bricks in his hand.
—Hein! Suppose we cheat the gods with a stroke of luck? Tails you go, heads...
I climbed up onto the Promontory. My hands were torn by the brambles; the island was foaming like a mad woman. And Mohini was there, leaning over my shoulder:
—A beautiful place for killing oneself.
They were all there: Balu, Björn, Batcha, Erik... There was even that naked idol—with its mouth open, a sword in its hand. An erne flew into the sky with an angry cry. I was driven against the wall of the sanctuary, facing the void; the wind was flapping that orange robe as if it willed to tear it: dorai, dorai... assassin, assassin, perjurer.
—Ah! So you wanted to be free, Sannyasi, well, you are!...
Even Balu had stoned me; they had all turned their backs on me.
—You renounce the three worlds, you cast them into the fire.
I took a grain of coloured rice and I cast it into the fire.
—You have no country any longer, no family any longer, no home any longer; you are the son of the Fire.
—I am the son of the Fire.
—Then what more do you want?
—I say that I have found a great Light up there; I have left everything for that.
—That is precisely your error
And that void at my feet, that hole of darkness, it was only the obverse of their heaven: I could just as well have disappeared into an abyss of light with the halo of a little saint!
—I called you, I called you every day but you did not reply, Nil, there was no one, no one, it was dreadful; you no longer existed!... tu n'existais plus!
And that little voice was like a knife in my heart. I had lost her; I had lost everything, what could I still want?
—I walked towards the river; that great presence was behind me, and all was like the luminous trajectory of a great being behind me, who almost became one with me, and sometimes, for a second, the two coincided, it was the perfection of the truth. Thus flowed everything in a spontaneous marvel, with an inconceivable precision: it was that, the living truth.
Oh! How could I deny that?
—An'mona! An'mona! Nothing-at-all, Mr. Nothing-at-all!
—Batcha, oh! What a fool I was!
And Mohini hanging onto my arm:
—Death is upon you, Nil.
—You are lying, it's blackmail.
—It is over us, Nil, Destiny is hanging over us. What you are fleeing from, you will meet again ten times, a hundred times... Until things are fulfilled
—Watch out, don't try to corner me!
And it was I who was cornered now, driven against the wall, like Björn. But what the devil had I done, where was the wrong, what wrong?
—I love and have forgotten everything.
—Well, I do not love.
—Yes, free... Oui, libre.
—You are running away, Nil.
She was so white in that red forest... Elle était si blanche dans cette forêt rouge.
She had said that so quietly. She was so pale against that extravagant nuptial scarlet. And I did not understand, I could not understand—I was not going to say “no” to that freedom, and could I say “no” to Batcha, “no” to this earth? On both sides, I was the deserter! And could I say “yes” to their nauseous little happiness? It was the supreme perjury, the abominable success. I had not come here to make little Nils who would make little Nils who would make little Nils!... It is not that, Nil, not that—the true life!... pas ҫa, la vraie vie!
To both sides, I was a traitor, as if heaven and earth were real, one without the other.
O Child Heaven needs the earth to become real, As much as the earth needs heaven to be free, And they will become real, one by the other: Heaven by the pain of earth, And earth by the freedom of heaven.
And I had not found either the place or the key; I had found Batcha only to lose her.
—Ah! You see, you too wanted to take, you too wanted to run away with your loot.
Oh! I know, that is my error; as soon as one speaks of love, everything goes wrong. But did I love her less when I did not know that I loved her? And what could I have done, really? Things had gone wrong of themselves without my knowing it, on the very day I had put that tilak on her forehead—and it was through that red tilak that I found her again in the paddy-fields. Oh! everything is an impossible contradiction—one does things, and that is all, it is done... c'est fait. And I was turning in circles round a minute, burning point, poignant and elusive: the knot of the story. There was always that yes-no, that running away and then that return, that freedom and that love; and I felt that the “no” of my running away had as much meaning as my return, as if the error contained the key of the complete truth: its red mark which separates and reunites.
O Child I have told you there is no error, ever. The error is not to understand the true meaning of what one does You think you went away to be free, and you think you are returning for her; you think it is through revolt that you raise your fist and you think it is to kill yourself that you have climbed up here. But you know nothing. In truth, men do what I will, they make the necessary gesture without knowing why, and when all is done, they realise that they had never run after gold nor killed for a petty happiness, and that this dead one had never died—no one dies, and who kills, if not I? Their gesture prepares an end unforeseen by them and for which they had run so much unknowingly. Go forth, my drama has not the meaning you give to it, and when your eyes are opened, you will see that there never was any drama—everything is the same, and everything is clear... tout est pareil et tout est clair.
Then, for the last time, I gathered my strength together; my hands were burning, my body was like a cord in the wind. It was the end:
—For the last time, if live I must, if this life has a meaning...
O Child For each one, there is an impossibility A burning contradiction If you have found your impossibility You have found the supreme possibility It is the obstacle and the lever
—I ask only that she be given back to me!
No one replied.
Then Balu's image flashed suddenly through the darkness, hopping on the pavement, that first day:
—Batcha is the queen... Batcha, c'est la reine.
—Ah! and wby?
—Yes, she is like Björn; they are going to die.
They are going to die. He had said “they are going”; he had not said “he is going”.
—It is too late, Nil.
I turned round.
There was that idol in the depths of the grotto, with its sword, its arms like a wheel. Anger gripped me, I seized it by the neck. I was going to throw myself into space with it—I was not going to die without settling my old score with her, oh!... I bent down...
—Ah, stony-face, you jeer. You lead us like puppets...
And I could have sworn that she smiled.
—Puppets... You would be too happy if I threw myself also into space!
Everything fell silent; even the wind seemed to stop.
—Well, I am stronger than you! I have something that you have not—I have the filth of the earth, I have the night of the earth. I have the suffering of the earth. I even love a dead one whom I shall never see again. Oh! Kali, you can bless, you can kill, you can crush me under your law, but I love... j'aime. I love, it is all I have, it is all that remains. I have no offerings, no drums, no trumpets, no paradise at the other end. I love, that is all there is... j'aime, c'est tout ce qu'il y a. I have no powers, no light, nothing worthwhile, I am the perjurer, nil, nothing-at-all; I have no country, no family, no home—they have all turned their backs on me,—but my love, I give, I give it to whomever wants it, for nothing, for everything: for the wind, the night, for the sorrow of the world, the sorrow of nothing, for all shames which pass, for whomever cares not. I love, I love, it is all I have. I am, because I love! And even in the depths of hell, I shall still love.
And then, there was no more wind, no more anger. No more sorrow in my heart; nor night, nor day. Even death had lost its meaning. There was only that little flame which burned in my heart, that one last treasure at the end.
I stood alone on that rock and I looked.
There was no one left. And even people were superfluous, even memories crumbled away into dust. It was the great calm shipwreck, and even the shipwreck was behind me; there was no more ship, no more tears, no more separation—everything was already separated; one is silent and sorrowless, one is the last survivor and one looks. One looks. There is no more death, even death has passed; it is with the living, it is before the shipwreck; it is loving and not loving, willing and not willing; there was no more abyss, no more anguish, no more fall, no more despair, nor even the quiver of a hope; only the great smooth waters of the beginning, only a great tranquil lake filling itself with its own eternity, and something which gazes... gazes, as if it had always gazed, beyond lives and deaths, beyond happy and unhappy islands, resurrections and shipwrecks again.
A cricket began to chirr in the sanctuary. One solitary cricket. I raised my eyes...
The droning of a plane could be heard. The sky was as clear as an aquamarine and studded with stars. Two little green and red lights drifted along in the north-east, going towards Rangoon or Singapore. We were in the twentieth century of history.
—In our country, even the birds do not pass by chance... Chez nous, même les oiseaux ne passent pas par hasard.
Even the planes. We were under the same parallel, thousands of miles away in a South American forest, with my brother the gold-seeker. It was the beginning of the story. It had happened twenty years ago. We were both lost in the great stridulant night of the Oyapock, puny and absurd under the high vault of the balata, and we thought we were seeking gold; we listened every evening at the same hour to the plane to Rio flying high, so high over our heads—and we laughed, we were so much higher than the plane, we two insignificant fellows slaving the whole day in the marshes to extract a few unlikely grains of gold. And our dream was so much truer, our impossible road in the dai-dai amid the falling trees, so much surer than their planned route between two cities gorged with gold. And this evening also, high, so high over my head, that same plane signalled to me, and I was alone and nil on that rock, in orange rags which were as unlikely as my gold-seeker's rags; and I was still seeking the vein of gold, the indubitable life, but I had not found it: even my dreams betrayed me, even my brothers would have disowned me had they seen me.
—Hey, Job, what are you seeking?
—A heap of gold to ruin all the gold of the world!... Un tas d'or pour ruiner l'or du monde!
And it was I who was ruined. Who was right then?...
One day, I set out in quest of a truer life, and I had taken a chance on the gold adventure as I might have taken a chance on lyre-birds or the North Pole: anything, as long as one could breathe wideness; but I had found frontiers, police forces, charted forests, explorers who explored only their black misery. I had found that the adventure lay elsewhere, under no tropic, and that all roads without ended within; I had become a Sannyasi as I might have become a whirling dervish or a Corybant: anything, a beggar, naked and ash-smeared, as long as one could breathe wideness, as long as life was free and true; and I had found the great paths above where the light irradiates, I had heard the unforgettable music, the Rhythm which gives the rhythm to all things; I had drunk the great liberating bowlful; and then I had lost the earth. And every road closed in on its opposite; every adventure ended up in an anti-adventure; as if every “yes” led to a “no”. Or was it only the end of a curve, the passage to a greater yes, a truer adventure? And perhaps there had never been a “no” anywhere, at any moment—nothing to deny, nothing that denies: only a greater and greater “Yes” which spiralled upwards like the spires of the turritellas.
The Rangoon plane had disappeared with its cargo of men sure of themselves. The night was limpid. There were lights on the coast. There was a steamer at anchorage which looked like a Christmas toy in a great tree of night. And a lighthouse... It was exactly there that Björn had been cremated. He was dead. They were all dead: Erik, Björn, the Sannyasi, the gold-seeker—dead, Erik, my brother of a Sahara which did not end at the 33rd parallel; dead, Björn, who wanted power for his brothers; dead, the Sannyasi who wanted freedom. They were all dead; I was the last survivor, the fourth of the silver birch—the absurd nothing-at-all who was not from here, not from there, not from above, not from below, and from where was I?... Et d'où étais-je?
—Would you like me to tell you, Job, you and yours, are from nowhere.
From nowhere,—or from a place which is not yet born.
And it was Björn who cried out:
—Even if I die, even if I die! I believe more in my dream than in your normal prison.
I believe, oh! I believe... je crois, oh! je crois... even if I die, I believe. We do not know from where we are and we knock at doors like the blind; we are the sons of a new race, the adventurers of a truer life, and even if our rags betray us, they are truer than ourselves! We are the sons of a new world in the twilight of the intellect and the machine—the sannyasis of a “nothing known”—and we are knocking in the dark, we do not know the way, we do not even know our words or our meaning, but we are knocking at the doors of the future, we are babbling the words of the other man, we are delivering the lights which will build the world of tomorrow as surely as the first glimmers in the monkey built the man of today. And we will compel the earth to become greater than its matter and its heavens. I believe, oh! I believe... Je crois, oh! Je crois... sheerly, like the primates in their cave, like the deluge which falls, like the fire, the plant, like the mineral in the bottom of its pit—and even if I die, I believe!... je crois.
And I was dropping with sleep at the feet of that idol, I heard a tranquil, neutral voice say: “A second time you have conquered.” But I did not know what I had conquered; I was like a corpse on his bed of stone and I had lost everything.
Now, that same night, at the feet of that divinity who blessed on the one hand, and cut your throat on the other, I had the most extraordinary vision of my life. A grace, a pure grace was sent to me there, when I had lost everything, and I want to disclose it for all those who are suffering the pangs of separation and who do not see and do not know. But now I know. I know there is a place where souls are eternally together and that the death of the body is not really death; I know there are other lives and that this futile, miserable, incoherent life, like a story without beginning or futurity, is a link in an immense and endless Saga and that our acts of yesterday explain our acts of today. We all go from life to life through our myriad sufferings and calls and quests, towards a complete explanation, a total moment, a rounded consciousness in which nothing is separate or truncated or hurt, in which we hold, simultaneously, the thread of all our lives and the joy which wove that rainbow step by step. For, in truth, we are a growing light, we are a widening consciousness, a joy that is forged from body to body, and we go from separation to unity, from ignorance to the truth which knows, from the body's oblivion to the soul's memory; we go towards the complete story and the total revelation; we are pilgrims in a marvellous adventure: each life is a step in the ascension; each shadow a fold of the inevitable flowering; each death a passage towards other and greater lives; the result is sure! And if there are any who say I am mad, I say that the whole Himalayan range is an hallucination of the geographers and that the beauty conquered, the harmonies freed, the touches of azure captured by all those who have searched, sung, carved or painted, are a marvellous madness, more real than all the reasons in the world—and perhaps, that very madness and those very hallucinations are preparing the earth of tomorrow. The world is a vision that is becoming true. We are the builders of an eternal Image.
That night, I entered death consciously and returned from it with knowledge. And not only did I see death but I lived, or rather re-lived a past death, bringing back with me the indelible memory of the continuity of existences. And I wonder if the future we discover step by step is not an old past: an eternal seed is unfolding. It was suddenly like the pieces of a puzzle which fell into place and formed a complete picture: scenes seen here and there, incoherent, unlinked, sometimes even years apart, were assembled together in a single moment and gave me the key to the story. And well it seems to me that each one of us must have his own key, only he does not know that there is a story, that each image counts and has a meaning, and because we see them surge up unexpectedly years apart, like little will-o'-the-wisps in the night, we do not know that they form part of a great uninterrupted film, and we push them back into oblivion—but everything has a meaning, the signs of the trail are plentiful! Only one must know that these are signs and that there is a trail. And I fully believe that what I saw that night was not only an image of the past, but also an image of the future and, perhaps, an eternal Image.
The first “scene”, if one can call it that, is the least clear because it was not so much a precise image as a very familiar atmosphere, a kind of odour of remembrance which remains floating in the twilight of the memory with a sharp intensity. Several times, I had seen that with variations.
I was wandering in a forest. And it was that walk in the forest which had an overwhelming intensity. I was lost; I had lost everything; I was seeking her; I was seeking her everywhere, her... elle; I was calling... calling, and still I did not find her, and it was as if Death fell upon me. She was my life—more than my life—and she did not reply, and no one replied... I had seen that same image several times; I knew it well; it usually came after another scene in which I was standing in front of that man enveloped in a deep blue light, sitting before a fire, who threw his curse upon me, and I spit my liberty in his face. But on that particular night, after having wandered in the forest, I suddenly found myself at the top of a tree, clinging to a branch with my two hands—very white hands, I can still see them—and I saw myself plunging head first into the void. I was committing suicide. And it was from that point that my vision began to take on a fantastic precision, as if someone had actually filmed the whole story (but, in fact, I think there is someone in us who always films everything).
And I entered death.
Suddenly, I found myself in a tremendous darkness—one calls it “night”, but our night is luminous in comparison to that darkness! An absolute black which was like the very essence of blackness with no vibration which permitted one to say “it is black”: it was not “black”, it was THE black, like death, without a vibration, without a spark of blackness. A density of suffocating blackness. It was suffocating; one was in it as in death—and, in fact, it was death.
And then I had the impression (I say “impression” but it was not at all vague; it was atrociously concrete, except that I did not “see”: I felt, I touched) of being suspended over an abyss with my feet on a tiny ledge a few centimetres wide and my back against a wall—a formidable, vertical, black wall, like a flow of basalt—which plunged into a gulf. And I was there, in the middle of the gulf, stuck, pressed against that wall, that tremendous wall, clinging to it for dear life, unable to move. And I had to move, I had to cross that gulf, I had to get to the other side; it was life on the other side, it was salvation on the other side—to fall there was worse than death; it was death in death. And I could not move; I was paralysed, frozen against that wall; I could do nothing, I could see nothing, there was nothing; it was atrocious—and then... the silence; crushing, massive, like a world of absolute, implacable negation, in which one must not be, one cannot be. And both my hands were clinging to that stone.
And suddenly, in that formidable darkness, I heard Batcha's voice... Batcha's voice, her voice, oh! Lord, I do not know if miracles exist, but that voice in the darkness was the ineffable miracle—her voice, clear, clear, crystalline, miraculous: “PULL ... PULL ...” Tire...
She was saying: Pull.
And at the same time I felt something like a rope that she threw to me, something which touched my hands. I clung to the rope: “Pull... Pull...” And in that child's voice there was such a tremendous force of love, as if it were her soul which grasped mine and pulled it out of the night. “Pull... Pull...” tire... tire. An unshakable force which pierced that monstrous blackness like a sword of light. And it was a child's voice.
I pulled, I clung, I advanced step by step in that night, hanging over that ledge; I was like a drowning man groping towards the fresh air, and there was that voice, that little voice, so warm, so sure, so quietly powerful, which was calling me from the other side, oh! so full of love: “Pull...” tire.
Never, never in this world, in any circumstances, at any moment of my life, in any accident of my life have I been more atrociously conscious and living as in those few minutes of “dream”. If I dreamt, then death is a dream and the whole of life is a copy less living than death.
Abruptly, without any transition, I found myself on the other side of that abyss. And I saw, a little ahead of me, a kind of luminous shell—like the hull of a boat, all luminous and white, shining, radiant, and at the very moment I saw that hull (or that shell, I do not know), a strange phenomenon took place: I saw my body (saw it from the outside, as if I had gone out of it) making a sort of somersault in the air, but slowly, very slowly, as if in a slow-motion film—revolving slowly, turning over completely, and even before I had time to understand what was happening, I found myself inside that shell, completely dazzled.
It was luminous, luminous, extraordinarily luminous; a pure, radiant, white light like that of a diamond. And everything was like that... the air, the shell; it was as if light surged from all sides at once without any particular source of light: it was living light, vibrant light... a substance of light.
She was there... Elle était là.
It was her, all white and luminous, lying on a bed to the left in front of me. It was Batcha... But Batcha... It was more than Batcha, infinitely more than Batcha; one could say the luminous essence of Batcha, the pure reality of Batcha—her—as if the little Batcha of the earth were only the image of this one. And of what beauty! oh! radiant... It was her, indubitably her, unique, unlike any other. Eternally her. She was as if plunged in a deep sleep.
There was another “bed” by the side of hers, to the right (I say “bed”, but the substance of the objects was also luminous, snowy). I knew it was my bed; hers was on the left, mine on the right. Then I began to look at that “shell” round us—that luminous shell, so perfectly closed: we were at home, marvellously at home, enveloped, protected for eternity, clasped in an absolute security. Nothing could touch us there. It was our age-long dwelling, our trysting-place. It was our everlasting reunion, our eternal centre.
I turned round. There was a being there. But curiously enough, he was not a stranger, not “different” from the place; he was as though made of the same substance as the place. He was a guardian or a help. He was all in white, but less luminous than Batcha, more neutral he seemed like a nurse. He was watching over us.
He came towards me to help me undress. Then I suddenly felt very tired and dirty, dusty, exhausted, as if I had been on a long journey. I wanted to have a bath. I took a step to the right, I looked at my feet... and, suddenly, I realised that I was dead. I “was dead”: my body was dead. It gave me a shock; a very slight shock which cut the thread. I remember a second of embarrassment before that body and saying to myself: “So there is no need to...” And I woke up.
The idol was there in the darkness.
A solitary cricket was chirring.
I remained a long time with my head in my hands, leaning against the wall, in a state of complete bewilderment and wonder at the same time, as on that day when I had heard divine music in a station.
And then I knew.
Then everything was clear. Now I know, I know that never again will there be darkness in my heart. I know that death is a myth and that beings meet again in death as in life, and that we journey together, always together... toujours ensemble, through all lives and all deaths, and beyond.
And daylight broke.
In the white main-street, the pilgrims come and go; the great ernes circle over the high tower; the women go to the well; the call of the conch-shells mingles with the sound of the sea, with the dull rumble of the monsoon and the return of the moons. It was yesterday or today, centuries ago and always. The children were chanting in the school-yard, the jingling horse carts were trotting by in the main-street, and I was going away. I was going away. I saw all those little signs in the main-street: the tea-vendor, the passing goat, the jasmine garlands, the rose pottery... les poteries roses; I would have liked to take all that away with me, the least odour, the smallest gesture and that old woman over there, and that running child.
—Hey! Gopal, hurry up, it's late.
It is late... and the time has passed already. I would have liked to make all enter into my heart, oh! how quickly life passes!... comme la vie passe! And, sometimes, my eyes merged into that street; the passers-by, the shops, the laughter at the fountain, the silvery jingle of the horse carts, everything was dissolved in an infinite haziness, an immense tranquil sweetness which seemed to caress all with eternity, and what is it that passes? I was there, eternally there, I was coming and going: “Hey! Gopal, hurry up...” I was pulling a great sweet memory behind me, my steps were a thousand years old.
—Who wants the pretty conch? Three rupees, the pretty conch!
It was so much the same under the blue sky, yesterday or today, and what is it that changes? I had gone away and come back, come back thousands of times, ah! What remained?... Qu'est-ce qui reste? And then, suddenly the look narrowed—everything became hard, accelerated; it was the fulgurating present, precise, poignant, I was caught, torn apart on all sides, as if I were going to die here, there, there, in those eyes, that smile, that old woman, that passing cry, die everywhere; everything became so intense and painful—I was going away, I was going Away... I would have liked to retain everything in my eyes, glean the least little shadow of a smile, oh! how one goes away! I was so old—and so futile; what remained of all those lives? “Hey, Gopal, hurry up, it's late...” And then Batcha... Batcha, there, less than five hundred metres away. Batcha in a small white-washed patio with a peacock's cry. I was going away, I was going away.
I stopped near the fountain. There was a dragon-fly on the edge. My throat felt like lead. I held out my cupped hands; a woman poured water into my hands, she smiled at me.
She smiled at me.
Then, for a second, I looked at her, and such love flowed into my heart! Love... I know not, a cry of gratitude, an instantaneous flame, as if it were always the same in all eyes, the same encounter in the depths. A very tiny second which was like the sole luminous drop of all these lives, the grain of gold in the depths, the “all-that-remains” of a thousand gestures and days. Oh! I have been neither prince nor king, but I have been that little flame within, I seem to recognize it everywhere, on all faces and in the smallest gestures, as if I had existed thousands of times. One runs... one runs, and then it is there; one runs after a tiny drop of “that”: and it is the complete story, in one second... en une seconde.
—O sadhuji,21 are you going to the station?
He was young, twenty years old perhaps. He was a sannyasi.
—I don't know. Yes... No.
He looked at me. And suddenly I wanted to cry like an animal: “You see NiI, you have not changed; it's yes and then it's no!... If it continues you will make yourself ill.” I stopped dead. We were at the cross-roads. The station was to the west, the dunes rolled away towards the south. And I no longer knew what I wanted. I no longer knew anything.
—The train leaves in half an hour; we can travel together if you like.
He had clear eyes, he was dressed in a saffron robe; I saw, him as if through a mist—go where? To what other paddy-field did he want to drag me? There were no more paddy-fields! had lost Batcha.
I walked with, him towards the station. The pilgrims were hurrying along; a water-carrier passed by; we could hear a song:
He was alone near the station he stretched out his hands towards the sun:
O Tara, O Mother, Thou art the creatrix The All-Will It is thou who doest the action, O Mother And they say: it is I who do I am the walker on thy journey Thou art the winding of the path under my feet Thou art the hand which strikes And the hand which heals As thou goest, so go I
And I did not want to go away any longer, I wanted to cry out: no-no... And I looked at those dunes, I looked at that drifting sand.
—And your staff?
—My staff...
A little chipmunk crossed the path, scampering... scurrying... I whirled round and ran towards the southern track.
O Tara, Tara, Thou hidest the lotus in the mud And the lightning in the clouds; To some thou givest the light, Others thou makest choose the night O Tara, O Mother, As thou goest, so go I
The dunes were poised like great Arctic birds against the blue sky. I took the southern track in the midst of the palms; the crows cawed; the afternoon was coming to a close. A child passed with a copper pot on its head:
—Are you going to the Tantric's house?
His hair was tousled, he had big black eyes like Balu. It seemed that everything was beginning again. But I no longer had any brother here, the story was finished, or did it want to begin all over again?
—The Tantric's house...
—It's over there.
And something said no-no, it is not there, it is not that that I am seeking! I was like a leaf driven by the wind.
I turned to the right, climbed the dunes. The sand was soft, like Kashmiri wool; sometimes a black trunk emerged from a cascade of golden palms. It was there that I had talked with Björn for the last time, there that I had listened to the story of the Silver Birch. I climbed still higher. All was quiet and sweet in the dunes, even our footprints had gone, oh! what remained?... oh! qu'est-ce qui reste? I bent down, I took a little sand in my hands and let it run through my fingers, and everything was so peaceful here, as if our misery had never been! I felt, I almost touched that bed-rock of sweetness of the world, that peace so fresh and candid, oh! which does not know—which does not know that there is misery, anguish, death; it was only thought which drew its veil of tragedy over that patient sweetness—one draws the curtain and everything disappears, the misery, the false music of the world. And everything starts to sing.
Over the dunes from here Over the dunes from there Our steps go together Our isles are travellers I leave, still I am...!
And the sky was so blue over the great dunes, a thick purple cloud drifted through isthmuses of snow. She was there, so close to me, we were walking together, always together, and it was really like that; only my eyes saw badly, only my blind body did not believe... Oh! one day in a truer, clearer, less animal world, we shall be able to see and live in all the worlds at the same time, without separation, without distance, without blindness of the flesh—all will be there, instantaneously there. The body is only a shell! Thought veils, it cuts up into a grey matter the great unbroken rainbow of our lives.
Then everything narrowed again, the look hardened, became opaque: it was misery, anguish again. It was the implacable present and the cawing of the crow, and the train whistling behind the dune—and it was that, death, the falseness of the world. Our time is false, we know nothing of time! We have invented clocks which mark only our misery and our idea of the world. We are not yet in complete time, we are not really “man”!
In twenty minutes, the train will leave.
Then I came out from under the Silver Birch... and I stood rooted, wonder-struck.
Hundreds and hundreds of black, or perhaps dark grey-blue birds were circling over the lagoon, when all at once, as though at a sign, at the far end of the dunes, they veered on the wing all together, threw back their immaculate, shining throats, in a burst of sunlight, transmuted suddenly into great polar birds, then swooped down over the sands as though over a great smooth-flanked swell; drew out into a single file, passed in front of me, and disappeared in the distance, jet black amidst the scintillating waters of the lagoon and the mauve, foam-rimmed quicksands.
And hardly had I time to catch my breath, than they came back; veered again... black... white... black... white... And each time they veered, immaculate, shining, and I veered with them, caught up in that snow-white flight at the end of the dunes, by that cry of light, like the cry of my soul suddenly torn, asunder: yes, that, that, that absolute rending of no return,-with nothing behind, that fusion of light, that “yes” fore ever, that traceless bursting into the absolute; and then that blackness which returned, glided, plunged, disappeared into the distant foam. My eyes turned to and fro, and each time it was like a cry, a strand of my soul which snapped at the end of the duties, a tiny white flare: yes, yes! there, there I am going! there I am; from there I come; to there I return; there is my home, it is my eternal country, my great white-winged truth, my primal flight; there, there I abdicate; there I merge; there, it is true, it is purely true, it flows from the source, it is life truer than life; that exists, that alone exists, that alone is true, it is my cry, my fullness of light, my primal fire, my great, white fire above the worlds, it is there that I am going!
And then the blackness again. And then Batcha's little voice which returned to pull at me: An'mona! An' mona! Nothing-at-all, Mr. Nothing-at-all!... Rien-du-tout, Monsieur-rien-du-tout! And I was so small and so poignant in those great dunes, a mere nothing, so alone and so lost; no! it was not possible, I could not go away; I am going to run over there, to throw myself at Bhaskar-Nath's feet; we begin all over again, we forget everything, it will be a festival with tears of joy! I shall be a fisher of shells, I shall be the guardian of your temple, I shall sweep your sanctuary, your door-step, I...
And then... nothing.
I came and I went, and every time a strand snapped in my soul, a very tiny strand which caused an intense pain... If I closed my eyes, it would be the end. I was going to leave. It was annihilation, death in the light: the great white peace, the void of-everything, one goes off into a crystal smile—and after?
After?
The train whistled a second time.
I closed my eyes, I called the truth, the truth—the light, the god of the earth, something, anything, an answer, a sign!
Then I heard a little gong, far, far away in the distance behind the dunes, the sound of a very tiny gong which rose in the clear air... It seemed that everything had stopped; a breath of silence had fallen over the sands, even the crows no longer cawed in the palms. The rumble of the sea could be heard in the distance. I turned round. There was nobody—nothing, only the black trunks of the palms sliding down to the Tantric's house, and then that faint, quivering little sound which rose, rose behind the dunes: tim-tim-tim... tim-tim-tim... Three times, always three times, three distinct little notes repeated endlessly, three, and again three: tim-tim-tim... tim-tim-tim... which filled me with anguish, filled me with panic; I was fixed there, staring at that track where it turned round the dune in front of the Tantric's house: tim-tim-tim... tim-tim-tim... Three little staccato sounds which rang out, which filled all the dunes.
And suddenly, I knew. I knew. A cold sweat broke out on my forehead. No, it is not true!
They appeared at the turning of the track: first the little gong-carrier, then a group of white-clad men, and then a little red form, there, over their heads: her.
I was horror-stricken.
I stared. I stared like one demented: that pure white forehead, the jasmine garlands, the red sari—Batcha. They passed in front of me. They turned to the left at the foot of the dune. She was white, so white. And then her long black hair flowing over her breast. They turned again. I could no longer see her face, I could no longer see her... I could only see that small red form which floated over their heads. A little spot which wound through the dunes. And I stared... I stared without believing. The little gong resounded across all the dunes. I looked at that little red spot which was moving away, moving away, so small amid the dunes.
Who was staring? I do not know. There was no longer anyone in there. There were only two great, open eyes which remained fixed there, stupefied, looking across centuries of stone and malediction in an Egypt turned into dust.
They laid her on the pyre.
They left the little gong. The dunes were completely silent in their whiteness of eternity. She was alone now on her pyre, all alone and red, there where the waters of the lagoon meet the waters of the sea.
They chanted.
They went round the pyre seven times.
Seven times, they went round. She was enveloped in, and as if rocked by the foam of the sea. She was facing north.
Then they moved aside. Only one remained.
Their chanting stopped.
A flame sprang up.
There was no chanting any more.
There was nothing any more.
Nothing more.
I looked right to the end; I looked, motionless.
I do not know how long I looked. I suddenly heard a crow cawing. I heard a voice say: “Now, it is time.” Then I took a step. My legs were like cords. I was like an old puppet set in motion again.
I descended the dunes.
The voice said: “That way.” I went that way. I crossed the dunes. The sun was setting. I walked through great purple valleys... and then I came out again. I was going towards the pyre over there. I could hear the roaring of the sea.
There were some men near the pyre squatting in the sand. There was a small heap of fire in the sand. I stopped in front of it. I looked.
I looked.
And then I fell on my knees in the sand. And then I prostrated myself in the sand, I buried my head in the sand; I sobbed, sobbed all I could.
The sea roared on.
I got up again onto my knees.
There was still a little flame. I said, “Mâ...” Mother.
The wind blew on my face.
There was a blank second—I saw no more, I heard no more; I was emptied, dead—without sorrow, without anything: nil. I was on the other side.
And then that flame suddenly sprang up. I opened my eyes on a flame—I was that flame. I was only a burning flame, oh! without pain, without sorrow, without memory: a flame, a simple solitary flame which burned—everything. It burned me, it burned the sorrow, it burned today, yesterday, Batcha, the Sannyasi, and all the faces, the times, the places, the memories, it burned everything. I no longer had any pain, I no longer had any “I”. I no longer had anything at all. I was the fire that burns. It was like love. It was pure like the fire, with nothing else but the fire. A love-fire. And it rose... rose. It was like burning joy. It was intense like joy. A love-joy. But without a trace of sentiment, without anything in it, absolute: only burning fire, clear, clear—imperious. I said Mâ once again. Then I felt as if my whole being tilted over, expanded, were sucked up, drawn into a great orange flame. There was no Batcha any more, no more life, no more death, nothing more, no more dunes, no sea: only orange fire. And then it descended:
A cataract of warm Power.
It took everything, filled everything, immobilised everything. I was inside it like fire in fire, like the torrent in the torrent, the joy in joy, without I, without you, without difference, without elsewhere, without here, without there, without far nor near, nor inside nor outside. There was only that. A motionless cataract of warm Power—golden. And above that cataract or behind it something like a white light, pure, dazzling, scintillating, full of an absolute, triumphant joy, oh! which looked at all that with a love so joyous, so translucent, sparkling... an immensity of luminous delight, a scintillation of delight, and tranquil, tranquil, unshakable: a rock of eternity. And there death no longer existed, there had never been any death, it looked and there was not a trace of death: there was an inexpressible Joy, a joy which loves, a radiant love-joy which pierced through everything, changed everything, changed the look—oh! it is for that, for that, that one lives! A total plenitude. A vermilion fire-flower sinking into its own fire as in a delight of sheer meeting, as if the body touched at last the living truth: that! that! I am in it, I bathe in it, it is there, there, the living heaven! A motionless cataract of living joy which swept away the shadows, irradiated bodies, kindled things, as if death were only an invention of our senses, suffering an invention of our senses, the fixed hardness of the world an invention of our senses, and yesterday and the day before yesterday and all the pasts of the world, the separations of the world: there was only that, present, eternally present, here-present, continuous, without a break, the true substance of the world! A solid, golden, immutable eternity, and yet unimaginably vibrant, intense, active, like the gold powdering of an endless world creation—She, only She.—Elle, seulement Elle... a torrent of creative joy which recreates everything at every second, as if everything which touched that entered into a completely new life without limits; a breaking of all frontiers, of all possibilities, all impossibilities—that could do everything. It was Power. It was the great reversal of the senses, the shattered appearances, the fulgurating golden look of the Future. And all the millions of faces and beings of the world were only a spark of that. Where was the other, where is she not? Where is tomorrow, yesterday, the night, the day? There is only that everywhere, and which loves everything for ever and which is everything: Batcha and the Sannyasi, Mohini, the flute-player, and all those men and the birds on the lagoon. And what is missing? Where is the void, the absence, the gap, the not-there? Where is the side which is not of here, where then the beyond? Everything is there and I have everything for ever—burn, my love, burn... brûle, mon amour; brûle...; a million times I love you, in all that is, in all that lives; you have merged in me, I have merged in you, merged everywhere, in all that loves, in all that cries out; we have passed the portals of death, we are born for ever, millions of times we are! O Tara, O Mother, it is Thou who doest, Thou who lovest, Thou who drivest, Thou who drawest us through day and night, through good and evil, through sorrow and joy, towards the Light which loves; O Tara, Tara, O Mother...
I stood up, I walked towards the sea.
It was like an immense turquoise at the foot of the dunes. I left my clothes on the beach; I plunged into the sea. Then I heard a quiet, impersonal voice which said: “A third time you have conquered.” But who had conquered and who could conquer? The “I” was the screen, the resistance, death in the dark. It was misery alone in a body.
The great birds veered over the lagoon: white, black, white, black..., it is as you will. Already the sun was going down behind the dunes, their wings were tinted with gold. In truth, a great golden heaven inhabits the night of the world.
I climbed back onto the beach. I picked up my rags.
—Leave this robe, child.
Bhaskar-Nath approached. He laid his hand on my shoulder he held out some white clothes for me:
—Go, now you are free, you can wear the robe of the world.
Then I opened my eyes once more onto the world of men. Batcha was in front of me, she ran towards me with her arms outstretched: she was dressed completely in white:
—Look, the birds are coming, the birds are coming!... Les oiseaux arrivent!
We were going through the great dunes, it was at Fayoum or Ramnad, in this age or another, under the curved flight of the great ernes. The sea was scintillating, I was playing the ektara. We were on the happy isle; we were on the isle of Truth. We were walking together towards a greater beauty... Nous marchions ensemble vers une beauté plus grande.
Only the clothing changes; 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.
Pondicherry 15th September 1968
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