October 26. ‘The biology of woman — and the cardinal part it plays in her activity — you see it best, not when they are in love (for that is a melodrama) but when they want to get a man and a woman entangled for the continuance of the race. Just as a mother elephant when she senses an enemy lifts her trunk fiercely, whether the little one be hers or another’s — for maternity is anonymous — how Madeleine fights (in mind and body), against sun and rain, as it were, against hunger and cold; her one preoccupation is, a poor meal or a strong mistral might upset her astrology of events. How relentlessly, and with what instinctive wisdom, she makes every move, now pushing Catherine forward for her stability (economic and otherwise, hence talks of the sad fate of notaries, so dependent on the goodwill of everyone, more like a confessor than a doctor, etc., etc….), now for her education (for Catherine had done very well in her exams, especially in her Latin); but when it comes to Georges the maternal instinct gives way to something more unacknowledged, more shy. Madeleine, whom anyone could see has such insight into the human mind, knows Georges’s dependence on her. She knows she has just to come and stand behind us, her hand on my shoulder, as we play chess together— like all Russians, he is excellent at this ancient Indian game — and Georges will suddenly grow so agile with his fingers, and stupid in his calculations. She is the angel against his demon, and now it is not he who bears her rags, but she bears her crown of his making, and resplendent it shines, though somewhat sadly, against my Brahminic autocracy.
‘God, that invisible force in man, seems to have given the Brahmin a whip, a trident, with which invisibly he plays his chess. The elephant goes in and out of the jungle at the invisible magician’s command. The king falls or moves according to a silent imprecation or a mantra. Words are made inwardly, and a pressure here or there makes the smile, the anger, the tear. No man should have so much power over a woman.
‘But woman has no morality in this matter. For her the beauty of this earth, the splendour of houses and parliaments, the manufacture of sword and of brocade — be it even from Benares — the pearl necklace, the lovely cradle, the cinema, the circus, the church — all, all is a device for copulation and fruition, of death made far, of famine made impossible, of the smile of child made luminescent on the lap of her, the Mother of God. Perhaps as civilization grows more and more terrestrial — and civilization, as against culture, is terrestrial — the feminine permanence will grow, as in America. Death will be abolished, through the funeral parlours, and love will be made into the passion of the bed. Man is a stranger to this earth — he must go.’
October 29. ‘Today, how nearly I was on the verge of tears myself. We had gone up to St Ophalie with the young moon (Madeleine has her own astrology). Slowly and as though by accident she drew me into an olive orchard to seek, she said, some mushrooms. Georges, of course, could not follow us into this world of thickets and low branches, and Catherine and he were left to themselves. Evening fell, and Madeleine found a new path for us to make our way down.
‘I found it the other day,’ she lied. ‘And Rama, I wanted to show it you. You cannot imagine how beautiful our house looks from the bottom of this hill. Rama, I’m happy,’ she said, and kissed me on the cheek. She knew I knew that her thoughts were elsewhere.
‘The young moon slid over the olives as though he, too, were in connivance. But “Mado, Mado!” Catherine started searching for us. Madeleine did not answer, and put her hand against my mouth. “Sssh! Please do not answer.” Soon the moon would go down. And Georges had, in addition to his half-paralysed hand, very bad eyes. I always led him about on our walks.
‘Madeleine and I sat on some rocks and talked of insipid things. She was not interested in what I was saying — something about my family and India, and a letter from Saroja. Madeleine talked to me of her collége.
‘It is always a subject of major importance to her, especially her Headmistress, who is anything but a saint, and fears Madeleine for being the steadiest of all of them. They are mostly old maids, who not having enough money were not able to marry whom they wanted; the men who did not have much, mainly teachers or municipal clerks, had courted them, in the days when Madeleine’s colleagues were still quite young — and a professor is a professor after all, and they thought of their education and their future family and children, so they married no one. How Madeleine shows off before them her matrimony and her joy! Sometimes, I almost said, joy is needed for official purposes: you do not go so far and marry an Indian, however clever and well-to-do — and in the eyes of many I must at least have been a minor prince for all Aix believes it — unless you can prove on your face that joy is not a by-product, but the very stuff of your daily existence. For a woman her joy is a social quantum, a proof of her truth.
‘Georges must have been unhappy, as the wind was still quite strong — not the mistral, but the wind from the sea. He must have limped down, almost like the donkeys, with ears laid back, as they carry the olive barrels from the mountains. Catherine cannot have been happy either — she must have been shy. This was perhaps the first time she had ever been with a man alone, and of an evening. She must have been frightened too — he might have done something. But as we came down both he and she were seated on the elephant, like two children who had quarrelled over dolls, waiting for their mother to come and settle the dispute. Thus no sooner did Catherine see us, than joy rose to her face — even her voice changed, and she started blubbering like a schoolgirl.
‘“We went in search of some champignons du pays — they’re so delicious. I wanted you to taste them before you go,’ Madeleine shouted. The last sentence was for Georges — better know Catherine is not going to be here always and for ever. Catherine and Madeleine both begged Georges to stay on for dinner, and he reluctantly agreed. We made rice and curry — at least, I and Catherine did — while Georges and Madeleine were in the drawing room, talking away about Buddhism. Georges is never so happy as when he is talking abstract things, and especially if Madeleine is about. To him somehow Madeleine is the proof of recognition, the touch on the shoulder that says, “Yes, it’s perfect,” and the world then looks not so much bright as right. For Georges purity is everything in its place, like the bell, the candle, and the censer; the glory of God can thus be celebrated. Georges, in fact, is a holy bureaucrat.
‘In this again, for law is but the continuance and the determination of the Law, Catherine and he have much in common. Only the hierarchies vary — Georges’s dominion is the Heaven and Catherine’s the earth. All that one needs is a ladder, a golden ladder.
‘I am becoming a cynic — so I must stop. I am angry against someone. I must remove it in the seed, or like a cactus it will grow all over the place, and it then would need a superior intervention to clear my land. Oh, the rice-fields, the yellowing green that flows from canal to the tankbund, from the tankbund to the jackfruit-tree fields across the Himavathy, and the coconut garden of Mada above; and Grandfather Ramanna reading the Upanishads to old fogeys, who come and listen, afternoon after afternoon, saying “Oh yes, Maya, it’s like the son of a barren woman or the horn on the head of a hare”, and the shaven widows and the tufted heads say, “So it is indeed, Rammanoré.” I should have been a Bhatta, and looked after my rice-fields; should have read the Mandukya Upanishad with Gaudapada’s Karika, and then Sankara’s commentary on it; should have read the Ramayana and the Uttara Khanda especially for the villager’s benefit; carried my copper tumbler and spoon to funeral feasts, with the shawl on my shoulders, and with betel in my mouth (not to forget the fee, the silver tucked at the waist in the dhoti fold); belching and spitting would I have come home to have a Kaumudi or a Rukmini press my legs and sit beside me waving the fan: “Ah! how cool the breeze is.” The Lord sleeps, come cattle for water, come peasant for astrology. They gave one rupee eight annas today, did eight-pillared house Nanjundiah. Ramappa is having his nap after the funeral feast.