She might then have taken me into herself as never before, not with the knowledge that she knew me, but with the conviction that she would make me know myself in the shine of annihilation. But I’m a Brahmin, and for me touch and knowledge go with the holiness of surrender, of woman not taking me there, but I revealing to her that. Pain is not of love. Pain could never be incarnate but in the dissimulation of love. The lost lover is the passionate lover. The true man takes woman to his silence and stays in her for her recognition.
Now it was I who had tears. I could not take so much beauty proffered, because man should not do what a woman would do.
She said, ‘My love.’
And I said, ‘M’ami, my friend.’
‘What is it?’ she asked, drawing herself a little away.
‘Oh, nothing,’ I answered; for that nothing, she knew, was the all.
‘I have failed your gods?’ she said.
‘No,’ I said, looking at her; and for some un-understandable reason I added, ‘You’ve failed me.’
She stood up in the full stature of her presence, her sari looking curious against that evening, and suddenly laughing she said, ‘Come, I’ll change, and we’ll go and say hullo to the elephant.’
I could not tell her, in spite of all my truth, that I had been up already. She felt that if nothing else worked our superstitions would work.
We went into the night like two ghosts who had sold their lives not to win some paradise, however brief, but as if telling themselves they were going to heaven; a red-hot star had forked the path, yet through twists and wrong turnings we had been brought where only the flesh is true. But men, all men, walk with something more than flesh, till one becomes like Circassier, to die in front of Moscow and have a cross put up: ‘Mort pour la Patrie.’ Only the dead in battle ever die a true death. All of them die for a purpose, and they have a right to a permanent cross.
‘You know,’ said Madeleine on the way up, ‘your Holy Grail is not such a mysterious affair. The more I read the Church Fathers — and Georges has been a great help to me — the more I realize that it came from the Nestorian heresy, sister to your Albigensian one. Some Orientalists I have been reading do confirm my theory that it was a Buddhist relic that came via Persia to Christendom, and that the Chalice is only the mendicant alms-bowl upturned.’
‘Very poetic indeed.’
‘Why not, pray?’
‘History should not be poetic; it is poetry without events.’
‘What remains then?’
‘Well, facts. Every fact in its place is pure poetry like your broomstick and your towels from Galeries Lafayette. But let us go on to your Holy Grail.’
‘You see there is another, more plausible hypothesis, that it was the cup in which the Mother of God gathered, one by one, the dripping globules of our Lord’s blood. When the Muslims came, naturally it had to be hidden and brought away on some galley to Gaul; yet they say this sacred cup shone like the “moon of God”, and enchanted the winds to holy beckonings, while the idea that it came from Persia was one of the Church’s tricks to steal a march on the Saracen. There are others who say it is the cup of gold that the Chaldeans took to the Temple of Ninurta, and that after they had slain a handsome slave some Semiramis, Queen of the Earth and Mother of Fertility, would drink of it; then call her hero and give it to him with musk and porphyry, that in their procreation the world might see the light of plenty. I read the other day that one still sees in some primitive tribes, they spread the first menses of a woman with the first rains, so that the crops rise yellow as gold, and there’s a glowing hearth in every hut.’
‘In some parts of India, you know, we still do that. In fact I was thinking of it just the other day. But surely there need be no connection between country and country to have a common belief? Otherwise the Mayas of Mexico, who were the only people in the world apart from the Hindus that knew Zero, could only have got it from them. Absurd,’ I said, ‘and thus everything good came from India!’ And I laughed.
‘Everything good for me has only come from India,’ she said, with that humility women know to soften the heart of the cruellest male.
‘And evil,’ I said, and fortunately for me I started such a heavy cough that I had to sit down on a rock beside the path, and let Madeleine massage me on the back. It did us good, this cough, for my helplessness made her position more urgent: she was the wife, the protector of the household hearth. It reminded me of one day, during the early months of our marriage, when I was put out by something, and she brought me a hot-water bottle to be thrust into my bed. It burst over my blanket in such a way that we rolled and rolled on the bed with laughter, happy that so small a thing could bring us together. From that day we always called it the holy hot-water bottle, ‘la sainte bouillotte’.
A hazy moon rose over the hills, but the stars right above us were very gay. We laughed to each other like children making up after a lost quarrel. I tore thyme as we went up, just to smell it, I a Brahmin from south India; Madeleine gathered hyacinths among the rocks and poured them over my head. We could be happy again.
We sat on the elephant and I told Madeleine all the inconsequent things — about Venktaramiah’s daughter, Kaumudi, who wondered how we could live without an aunt or a mother-in-law at home, or about the Benares Brahmin who asked what sort of hymns the Brahmins in Europe chanted.
‘He did not ask what they get paid for a funeral; nor would I know.’
‘A funeral is a costly business,’ said Madeleine knowingly. ‘I am happy I shall die in India. You will burn me, won’t you, Rama? But not by the Ganges, for I hate the thought of the dogs that wait to gobble you before you’re burnt up fully.’
‘I’ll burn you on the Himavathy,’ I said, ‘like we did Grandfather. I shall pile up pieces of sandalwood one over the other, and I shall sing a special hymn for you. It will be called “Hymn to the Goddess of the Golden Skin”. I will have carried some special heather and thyme from this elephant’s back, and I shall perfume the river so that the fishes and the deer will come to see what is happening. Once you have been reduced to white ash, the river will rise and carry you away — as it did Grandfather. Thus you will become a Brahmin at last.’
But Madeleine was away, her thoughts were far away, and we fell into an easy, a distant silence. The elephant did not seem to know anything or say anything. The stars were perfect: they were so beautiful you wanted to count them, just to cool your heart. Man is so far from perfection that all that is far seems wondrous bright to him.
We came down slowly and as we opened the door my half- opened case still lay there with its question unanswered. We could tell lies to people, but we could not tell lies to animals or things. When we went to bed we were so tired that I only said, ‘So, Madeleine, tomorrow the prince will bring the professor her coffee.’
‘Don’t you be silly,’ she said, ‘you must be so tired. Now that the holidays are soon coming I have little work. Besides, tomorrow is Friday, and my classes begin at ten.’
Next morning, when Madeleine had gone to college, I closed my case and left it at the other end of the corridor. Neither of us spoke about it, and when Madame Jeanne came to faire le ménage’ she dusted it and put it into the cupboard.
In the afternoon Georges came to have tea with us, and we had many interesting things to tell each other. His Chinese had made progress, and he was in contact with some Jesuit Fathers in Belgium about the exact philosophical equivalents of certain Chinese metaphysical expressions. Georges had a congenital contempt for Orientalists, and all unreligious writers as such: thus he hated Gide and loved Claudel. He read Romain Rolland, however, because he wanted to know more about India. How he wished some more well-informed and balanced mind had written about these great saints of modern India, Sri Ramakrishna, Vivekananda, Aurobindo and Dayananda.