Then I died — I knew many other signs and conditions — and I was eaten by a horse in the army of Rama. And I was reborn here and there, as cactus, oleander, cymbalicum gadder, otter, polivel, civet-cat, leopard, hog, bungam bao, loripel, caesar-dog, walking elephant, horse and panicky hound — I rushed up branches and shewed my teeth, and I ran up the forest and sang through the leaves, the rivers knew me as tom-fish and proggered-crocodile, they knew me as pigmy, iron-man, moon-man, Aryan, Dravidian, Druidic, Hindu — I was policeman here, I was policeman there, sometimes very big, sometimes small — Turk, Ethiopic, and Dayad, I was born and reborn, till I came to Rama Krishnayya and Parvatamma, in the said Aswija-Shuddha, when the moon was bright and of the eleventh day in the year 19—in the city of Madurai at noon and twelve minutes, and then my real story begins. The policeman, as I have related, made the said speech and I understood. I knew all of course. I was free. I knew also who the policeman was, I was under arrest. I knew also I was a child but I had a mother. And so I grew up.
And growing up is a very easy thing. You eat and you wake up, you go to school and you sleep. You hear father, mother, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, the two grandfathers and grandmothers, widowed grand-aunts, servants in the fields, and pariahs in the village outskirts, birds in the trees and lamentations for the dead — you hear all of them and all there, and you say: this is the world. The policeman says go left — and you go left. The policeman says this is good food, and you eat it. And you fall ill and the doctors are called, who give you herbs in juice and metals in powder, and you wake up, and you smile, and all are happy with you. Grandmother gives you a pair of bangles in gold, and you can shew them to your school fellows saying: ‘Say, I had pneumonia, and I saw the God of Death. But since I returned to life grandmother went to the goldsmith Ramachetty, and these were made. Aren’t they nice for Divali?’ They are all jealous and they say, ‘Of course!’ but their bellies burn with red capsicum. You wake up. You want the whole world to see you are alive. You can walk, and you can talk. No, nobody wants to talk to you — nobody wants to hug and embrace and call you brother. Why should they? Your father is rich and lives in a city. Your grandfather is old and learned in Vedanta. Your uncle is a municipal commissioner. You are a bad fellow— besides, you had pneumonia, and you look so good. At night the policeman sits beside you and tells you, ‘Child, you know what that is — it’s me. It’s all me. Don’t worry.’ ‘How is it you?’ ‘Well, you see, as soon as you are born, in fact from many lives, we’ve your charts made. If there is red light here — there must be green light there. If there is right here — left is there. It’s all like that, male and female, birth and death, pain and pleasure are green lights and red lights of the metropolis. And you are a citizen: the only citizen.’ ‘I do not understand.’ ‘Grow up and travel,’ says the policeman. ‘You will see wonders everywhere. .’ I grew up. I excrete and try to fornicate. I miss and try again, and there’s incarnation and sorrow and the killing of the child in the womb, and the marriage papers for a regularized marriage. I am married, you know, and the policeman has made all this so splendid, so ordinary. You go to the municipal officer and say, ‘I marry this lady,’ and she says, ‘I obey you as long as I live,’ and you go home married. And you weep. On the first night of marriage the policeman sits by you and says, ‘Son, why weep? Male and female, etc., etc. . ’ And I understand. Yes, left and right. I jump the wall. The glass-pricks tear my skin. I came to the Western world — world of honour and liberty. France of Robespierre: the crown of flowers on the Queen of Reason. And a whole world in acclamation. France, dear France of liberty. In a room in Rue Vaneau — exactly 48-bis Rue Vaneau— the policeman sits by me and recounts me my story. ‘Saturn in the fifth house,’ he says, ‘and Mercury in the fourth, the Moon making a trine with Jupiter in the seventh, and the Sun, lord of the sixth, in the second house, casting his uncharitable looks on Venus in the eighth — what else do you expect, Son? When you want to go left — you go left, left-right. When you want to go right, you go north. When you want to go anywhere, you go to Paradise — you see God face to face.’ How I saw God is a story that nobody shall know. That is the only thing the policeman did not note correctly in his diary. He just saw me disappear. He thought I was dead. But I was all a-glorying in God. I woke up. He smiled, a little angrily. He hated to erase his notes. I wept for joy. That was written in the stars. One thing I saw. The policeman had suddenly grown two inches shorter, and his clothes had grown shabbier. I said, ‘Why this look?’ and he said, ‘I’ve had an inspection. My diary was inaccurate. So I have been demoted.’ But I was strangely happy. And it is from then started the rivalry between him and me, which can only end in his death. Old and tattered, when he sits beside me, listening to my inner words, he stretches his ears lower and nearer to listen. He has grown so small, he can only reach up to my black mole above the right breast. This pigmy of me brings compassion to the heart and that is why you sometimes see me with a tear in my left eye. I weep for myself.
Tattered and torn of ligament, seedless in loin, and with round booing holes in heart and head, I walk this earth interminably, I, the policeman. My beat is everywhere — and wheresoever I go that place is and takes shape and buildings rise and mountains and the endaemonic Mediterranean, with castles and sunsets and beautiful women coming out with big bosoms and in white-horse carriages — I like the lace hats of l’Arlésienne and Mado of Avignon, and I like sail-boats — I am old and red-lipped and lecherous — my casquet stuck to a side, my belly hanging in my hands, I stand and gaze at my own pure shadow. I see him. Do you see him? He is so funny and round and stumpy, his face against the shadow of the battleships. I am drunk because I can love no one — I am impotent — and can only fornicate with low women, for I have genitals. I live on the splendour of others — I steal the stealer. All policemen live on sin. The policeman alone is sin — otherwise the world would be a mountain-lake of white floating swans. The moon claims the policeman — not so the sun. In fact, the policeman arrested himself and that is the whole of the truth.
So it was in Paris I walked with the policeman and talked with him and found him everywhere, in shop windows, with big bulging eyes and each eye a wonder to see. I saw eyes in Paris bookshop windows such as I have never seen anywhere, small eyes, big eyes, green eyes, white-feathery eyes, lathery eyes, parroty eyes, pepper eyes and progressive eyes — red eyes for the red and all the world grew into Red beauty — (and this you will find in Rue Racine) — and green eyes and scarlet eyes, soutane and sepulchre beads and biblical eyes — you find them just behind in smutty shops with big squares and courtyards and bright red geraniums at the bay windows — sooty eyes bespeaking of paradise, yellow eyes in Luxembourg, eyes of the young, eyes of children and lovers and of the autumnal falling leaves — everywhere you see eyes in Paris, and they all had colours and I loved them. I lived in Rue Servandoni later — and had two eyes there that had needle connection and logic was its palaetiology. For on the point of the needle was my love born— and it started stitching my tatterment. Oh, the love-needle, the pertinence, the power, and the purity of the stitching needle. My heart was made into a Hindu sack with prayer-verses on the top as of Benares — and I counted the doubtful beads. I was virtuous and I took on an assigned form. The needle stitched and stitched me, and I took on a white and wandlike shape. I became a magician of looks, and I gave eyes to many. I opened a shop of Hindu eyes — I the policeman — and Oh, what a chatter and a clamour was there. God, God is my business, I cried— Hindu gods. Five sous a hundred tricks — standing on the nose and breathing through the umbilical stitch, practising celibacy through baths and kundalini — etc., etc. . — eating milk and nuts to walk in the air, eating bitter neem leaves and sherbet for swallowing nails and toothbrushes and broken glass — for telling the future — motor cars, mansions and marriages, and all, fortunes — I opened such a shop. The trade was good. I did much business. The Municipal Council of Perpignan — for I had moved there by now — voted me a certificate of fine conduct. And all the virgins came to my confessions. I dealt in potions that increased physiological virginity — gave no scratches or itches or leucorrhoea — you touched me and you were cured. It was wonderful. And God was the message they got. I was virtuous and good. And I grew big. I became fashionable. Newspapers spoke of me. I was the Policeman of God, and my certificates hung on all my four walls. I was given the Legion d’Honneur, Second Class. God seemed to speak to me from the heavens every night — and all day all night the logical needle stitched my sores, and when I woke up, I had a good bath and I looked so fresh and young. I could walk the Promenade des Anglais with the agility of a tennis player. They said, here goes the Policeman of God — and later they came and sat me by them in chaises longues, and as the sun poured on me tender and golden, I became a legitimate divinity. I had fruits and flowers offered to me, and I was right happy. I was God.