We walked slowly, haltingly, as if knowledge were pain, mystery were joy. We lingered by the rocks and by the trees; we sat on a bridge and started throwing stones into the empty earth below; we were silent, even though we knew we were talking to one another. Then Catherine must have thought of Georges for she said, ‘Come, let us go.’
We entered through the kitchen door — for the goat-path, going upwards, went just by our backyard — stealthily like children, and knocked at the drawing-room door as if, when Madeleine opened, we would shout, ‘Tiger, Lion, Elephant! ‘But no answer came, and slowly the door opened — it was Georges who opened it, and when we walked in the room was filled with a wide silence. Catherine went almost on tiptoe and sat by Madeleine on the divan. Georges went back to his chair, and I put on more lights, and stood looking at the books.
After a moment Catherine said she had had such a wonderful walk with her brother-in-law, and I said, ‘I’ve tied rakhi to Catherine.’ When Georges asked, ‘What’s that, Rama?’ I said, ‘Why, that’s what Rani Padmavathi tied — a silken, a yellow silken thread, with gold on it — to Emperor Akbar, says the legend, and thus becoming his sister she could not become his bride.’
‘What a beautiful story,’ said Georges.
‘Oh,’ said Madeleine, ‘India does not lack beautiful stories,’ and while I went into my room, to search for some rakhi — I had kept the rakhi Saroja had given to me — Madeleine went into the kitchen; and when I came back to the drawing room, Georges and Catherine were in each other’s arms and so very happy. Georges kissed her again in front of me, and she let him do it, and with such freedom that Georges had tears in his eyes. Something had happened to Georges; he seemed so elevated, so pure.
‘Here, Catherine, is my wedding present,’ I said, and tied the rakhi to Catherine’s wrist. She danced with joy, and ran into the kitchen and shouted:
‘Look, Mado! Look what a wonderful wedding present for
me!’
Meanwhile Georges said, ‘Come, Rama, haven’t you got another?’
I said, ‘No.’ So when Catherine returned Georges untied it, and while Madeleine came with onion and kitchen knife in hand to see what was happening, Georges caught hold of her, tied the rakhi on her left hand, and kissed her on the mouth; yes, did Georges, and in front of all of us. Even the lamps glowed a little brighter that sudden moment, and then we all felt we belonged to a magic circle, and we all laughed, as if to some mysterious cymbal and tambourine. We laughed and we laughed, we teased each other in the kitchen and in the corridor, laying the table we laughed, searching for the spoons and forks we laughed, talking of Lezo we laughed; of the Headmistress we made fun and laughed. Then we fell into long silences, and we started laughing again.
Madeleine, however, went into the bathroom and stayed away so long that Catherine went knocking and banging at the door and said, ‘One can have diarrhoea laughing.’ Georges hung down his paralysed arm and went about moving the ladle in the saucepan. We were having tomato sauce, and the wheat flour must not become sticky. Catherine took the ladle from Georges and went back to tease Madeleine about the diarrhoea.
I went into my room for a while and drew the shutters. My work was not progressing too well, was it? So I laid the pencil beside some fresh paper, as though that were enough to make my work go forward more quickly. When Madeleine came out of the bathroom I went in to have a wash, and we had a wonderful dinner. Everything looked so perfect — except that there was a little too much salt in the tomato sauce — and we naturally fell into a large and meaningful silence. Afterwards Catherine went into her room and must have wept, for when she came out her voice seemed different.
Georges went away carrying some book. ‘Goodnight, Rama; Goodnight, Madeleine; Goodnight, my little wife,’ he said and kissed Catherine again in front of us both. Then the night fell back into the world, and when I went to our bedroom, Madeleine was busy at her Katherine Mansfield.
I went to say goodnight to Catherine, but before she came to her door I was already in our bedroom. ‘Goodnight, brother. Goodnight, my knight protector,’ she shouted from the corridor.
‘Goodnight, my sacred sister; sleep well.’ How I waited for Madeleine to wash and return. I read this and that, but nothing went into my head. She had let down her lovely, her golden hair, as she came in — she had on a Kashmir nightdress I had bought in London; and her limbs moved as to destiny. She came to me so gravely, elevatedly, and lifted me up into herself.
November 4. ‘I love Madeleine now with a new love. I love in bits and parts and all, like an antelope does its doe, the elephant does with the ichor dripping from his brows,
Kandula-dui-paganda-pinda-sanotkampena Sampathi bhir…
Elephants wild with ichor frenzy
Shake the trees, rubbing trunk on trunk;
Freed, the heat-loose flowers in worship
Fall to the waters of Goddess Godavari.
Birds, leaf-canopied, twist forth the tunnelling grub;
In the mirrored treetops hemming the river’s edge
Loudly murmurs the heat with languorous swans
And the ‘coo, coo, tackularn, coolay’ of the nesting doves.
I love the curved nape of her neck, so gentle, so like marble for me, almost saffron-coloured under the light of the moon, or when I call her to myself in the day, and take her in my arms, how her throat smells of some known musk.
‘The body of woman is so like a wood, with herbs and marjoram and creepers that fall from the top; and bees that hum, while the tiger calls for his mate. The cubs are all about; and you lick the head first, and then the neck, and then the back, and when you slip over the breasts, you feel the navel shake as with oxyaphic anguish. You delay and you wander, you creep over the zone and you say sweet tinkling things to yourself. You know the still wonder is already within her, the wonder that makes the sun shine, or the moon speak; you know the world will be, for it is; you know the banana ripens on the stem and the coconut falls on the fertile earth — that rivers flow, that the parijata blossoms, white and pink between leaves. And as the wind blows, wave after wave of it, and mountains move, the wind stops and you settle into yourself; and you hear it again… And Madeleine is there, with her hips so wondrous blue and red, and she smells, God, she smells of me, of my elephant, of my suchness, and I ask of her, and she murmurs such ontological things that her very eyes seem fixed; and taking me into myself, I transpire as the truth, as though touched by itself, like the wave that sees itself to be sea, like the earth that was spread out and was called Madeleine. But when I want to call her Madeleine, I have to say Rama — her lips are mine turned outward, her flesh mine turned inward, and what a sound she makes, the sound of a jungle doe.