Now, having set sail on this pilgrimage, I wanted to become a pukka God. So I went to India — my virtue would now have confirmation, my miracles have rupee value, my mouth would smell of fresh roses. My shop in Avignon — where I had moved to — was kept open by a lady, pious and all that, and she put flowers and burnt sandal sticks at the right places. More men and women came to honour me when I was gone — the miracle worked even better. Papers started lamenting my departure. The confessional was filled with awaiting virgins. The blind stood at the shop window and the rich in carrioles. What a magnificent clientele said the Doctor, my neighbour. The Ministry of Health wrote to me saying I was promoted to the Legion d’Honneur, First Class. It was notified in the Gazette. The bishop himself sent me the rosette with apostolic blessing. At the Cathedral the head of the chapter said a novena for me.
In India, however, when I reached the Sanctuary of the Beacon, I lay on a cot and in between my sleep someone must have held converse with me, and I woke up in my own pus. The stitches all came off. By my bed were crows and lizards that fed on my remains. My skin hung on my shoulder like a coat and my spinal cord was all visible and white. I saw into my entrails and it was totally a world of corpuscled virtue. A man was putting his finger to the blood and tasted to see if it was human or not. I was alone.
Then it was I was given a copy of my biography, a uniform and my police number 42177 M.P. I was now returned my medals, and my service book was read out to me. It wasn’t so bad. I was a policeman, that was all. At the District Hospital I was well looked after. I ate coconut fresh from the garden, and water of coconuts I consumed — I ate mango and cashew nuts, and much milk I drank. I improved quickly and I walked the earth again — I was thin and tall, clean and clear — I walked simply. I knew I was under arrest. I knew the Travancore Civil and Police Code. I would be discharged when the time came. But now I must do my duty. Of an evening when the sun sat low and a lot of stars came up suddenly with the palm-trees and the temple music, I would open my biography and read it chapter by chapter, and find it funny and tearful. I did not forget the Promenade des Anglais. Meanwhile my shop in Avignon was sold and from the proceeds many of my debts were paid, and they erected a monument for me at the Place des Fontaines. They declared me a deceased and honoured citizen. My letters disturbed them.
And finally when I came back to Avignon, they said, the gathered virgins of Avignon, ‘Look, look, is that your face — we have done more miracles since you left us and in your name and then you come. You smell differently — you are too funnily clothed for words — we are the heirs of God, and we knew what is right and what is wrong. White is right and pink is wrong. Silver is sin and gold cataskeatic. Salt is spirit and earth fire. Miséricorde. Leave us with the statue.’ They made me offer flowers to my statue, and when I took the statue away, and brought a chair and sat me there, they rose in such a fury that I fled. They were sure I was a god — rightly stitched and all that, and well-tailored — and now I was happily dead. In Avignon you can still go to the Place des Fontaines and see me worshipped. I hear echoes of it in the papers, and in Latin gossip.
And through Paris and America I went, and Japan to Travancore.
Why Travancore? For there you’ve Two-Feet and a rose. The rose is red elsewhere, in Avignon or in Paris, and white in Travancore. The rose of Travancore is the story of a pilgrimage. I went with my red rose of aught and naught, born in a palace garden and carried in palanquin had seen the sunshine of the Himalaya, and was hidden by the moon, such a rose I carried and to Travancore I came. For Truth is Travancore, and Travancore has Two-Feet, and so Truth has Two-Feet. I placed my red rose in worship and said: ‘Lord, accept.’ The Lord took my red rose, and never did I behold it again. So I became the disciple of the Lord, and once in a while when I wake up on my wattle mat, and see the dawn hang with the mango, down below, under the tree, and not far from the fountain, you could see my white rose bloom.
For indeed the story of the red rose is fabular and fantastic. Like the policeman it was born of the atom, became earth, air, ether, fire and water, rolled into a pumpkin, grew into a tree, became a deer and frisked and frolicked in the forests of Vrindavan, became white and a cow, all with stripes and eyes of cinnamon, and took the cowboys playing to the temples of Muttra — sang, suffered and died — died again and again, was born again and again, married a monk, intellectual, army man, was carried off by the Muslims, and was given away in dowry, and head in hand wandered by the Ganges, till it came to a hut and a hearthless man, and sat there, and bewitched by his wisdom and his eyes, remained admonished into death—‘Be a rose,’ cursed the ascetic and so it became a rose of a palace garden in its next life and rode a palanquin. Everybody knew this rose from others, for it carried in its petals a mark red as the kumkum and round like a thumb, for it carried the mark of murderer and monk, and was sometimes called a weeping rose, for the spot on the petal often of an evening looked a teardrop. People gathered it and gave it to the gods — the princes and ministers that sang and serenaded by the palaces saw it and gave away petal and perfume to their lady-love, but the rose always carried the teardrop and smell of the temple garden. When the Magh winds rose and the houses were lit with jessamine-oil, they said, here cometh the red-rose wind for it smelleth of holiness. And when the elder prince married and there was such fuss and festivity about it, the gardener came and dug the roots and gave away the plant and perfume to the princess who went to Amber for marriage-making. There, near the tulasi-vrindavan, was the rose planted — and so it brought gladsome tidings to the desert oasis of Rajputana, and many a princess grew into wor-ship and holiness plucking of it. Ascetics gathered it in their hands and gave it away to the gods, but the tear was always there. Artists came and painted the rose and, the story goes, gave of it to Emperor Akbar, and painted him with it. You can still see this in the British Museum.