‘And she calls me, does the doe, with sweet cries and painful cries, as though I were far; and I tell her, “My love, my doe, I am drinking the waters of many fountains, for the evening be come and the tigers have not yet left their lairs,” and she sayeth, “I am full and alone; I am the bearer of the day; I run with the waters, I leap with the skies, I murmur with the trees, the frogs; I become the serpent of sweetness, I am the song that leapeth; take me into the evening and fold me in Kashmir silk.” And I take her away to a world from which there is no returning — like those Tibetan tanakas, with cypresses and moons and waters below, and the dragon throne in the middle. You seat him and say, “Son, sit here,” and he sits, does he, the lama; you cover him in brocade and sound the horn outside, and wave after wave of it comes echoing back to Lhasa; across mountains and deserts it incarnates and comes, for the Lama is crowned and seated in the Potala. Then all the treasuries are opened and all the windows too, and the white horse waits with decoration, sash, and fife, for the summer palace and the pools.
‘Lord, it is full of scented grass, and the music had been piping a long while, and you have eyes in between the ears, you accept gifts in between the acts, you touch the heart between the breasts; and you lie on Madeleine as though on a great seashore. The night has ended, the dawn has not yet broken. It’s the time for ablutions, for the murmur of prayers and the road to the temple by the river. The God knows you and you know the God, and his jewels shine as if arisen from the earth but yesternight. For a moment you had gone beyond the body, and oh, how sad it is to come back — to bear this heavy limb.
‘The elephant has been lost in a dream by the winter pooclass="underline" you feel a tear by his left eye. And he must rise and he must go. For you can never be free, son, but through yourself. You see those hills there? You would go beyond them, and beyond the hills, my son, my child, be the mountains and the rivers, bigger and full of maned lions. And beyond the lions, the country of man, where they build houses, factories, funeral grounds; where they buy and they sell, where they shout and they sing. And beyond that again be another forest and another lake, another tiger and another porcupine, and beyond again other towns and cities, other worlds and nights. But the dream is the same, you can no more catch it than you can speak to the elephant who is speaking to you, there in the waters; he is but you, seen on the other side. You cannot talk on the other side; the ichor flows on itself, and becomes the tear with which we’ve made the lakes, the fountains, the rains. The ichor made the rivers of the worlds, and the fruits and the perfumes, the cities and the zoological gardens have all been made; for man has been led by his own ichor.
‘I give it to you Madeleine, but you are where you are, and I am but nowhere. Madeleine, dear Madeleine, let us go on another voyage, on another excursus of the world. Let me smother you in muslin, let me take the lip to its ultimate twist and congression. Madeleine, let me touch you here by the waist from which rises birth, and Madeleine, let me touch you on this the right breast, that I lie there as on my deathbed, Madeleine, dear Madeleine. Oh, give it to me, give it, give it! Oh, give that! Madeleine do not cry. Oh Madeleine, do not suffer. For God’s sake, Madeleine, I’ll hang all the tanakas about you; I’ll call him Krishna again, Madeleine; let me squeeze the juice out of you, let me lick you like a dog, and let me see you in my spittle, on my tongue; and Madeleine, let me smell you, smell the you of me and the I in you; Madeleine it’s sweet to the taste, it’s so wondrous bitter, it smells of peppermint and of gelatine, Madeleine, dear Madeleine. Oh, give me back my saffron, my honey of woodbine, my parijata of the temple yard. Why do you cry so Madeleine, did I hurt you, did I awaken you, did you rise and did I fail? Oh, I would smother your sobs, Madeleine, I would die with your pain.
‘The day is still bright outside, but I want Madeleine, I want Madeleine, and I say, “Sweet love, shall we try again? For the peacocks are about the garden and I hear the first snows melt on the Himalay, I can hear the winds of the north arise. I’ll take you to Alakananda, and we’ll become clouds, Madeleine; we’ll visit all the townlets of the yakshas. I’ll take you to bejewelled palaces and recite to you Kalidasa; I’ll show you women whose breasts hang like this with love, and whose waistbands fall, for they cannot bear the love that rises in them,
Nïvibandhocehvasanacitalam yaha yakshāganānam
rāsah Kāmād ambhitakaresv ākshipastu priyesu
Arcitungān abhi mukham api prāpya ratuapradipan
hrōmūdhānām bhavaki riphalapreranac cūrnamushi.
The women of the yakshas suddenly discover
The knots of their girdles loosened.
Their lovers, by passion made bold,
Tear down the loose-hanging garments:
Maddened with shame the women throw
On the high-lit lamps — but studded gems—
A handful of the powder of unguents;
To no avail, even when consumed by the light.
I’ll take you to Himalay and make love to you there. Come, Come, Madeleine! The train is ready, and can you not hear the whistle go?”
‘Madeleine chokes and I carry her on my back, she cries that she needs many medicines from all the hospitals of the world, but she had had a coma, and she’s had an internal disorder. Call surgeon Bonnenfant, call Dr Sugérau, call Nathan and Bernadine! You can sense white aprons all about and the smell of ether. There is wondrous music of the yakshas in the Himalaya.
“Madeleine, did I hurt you, did I seek you too far, and too long?”
‘Madeleine simply says, “Lord, leave me alone. I do not belong to the man kingdom. I’m torn as by a porcupine inside. I am finished, I am aghast. O, Tante Zoubie!” And Madeleine cries.’
November 6. ‘She looked at her watch, this time, and it was already ten minutes to two, and Madeleine rushes to the bathroom, adjusts her hair a little, shouts “Au revoir, chérie,” to Catherine, who didn’t need much intuition to see what had happened, and, “Au revoir, Rama,” she says, as though to herself, and goes to teach the Napoleonic Wars to her students — she is teaching them about the duke of Reichstadt, Roi de Rome — while I try to plunge into some magazine, and forget the elephant.’
November 7. ‘How I waited yesterday for Georges to go home, how I hated him for staying on. He knew my knowledge. Oh, I wish Georges had never existed, for God has given eyes to Satanael. Awkward and unashamed, as soon as Madeleine and I came back to our room, while Catherine was having a wash, how I pressed Madeleine to myself, how I forced her to undress, and how without sweetness or word of murmur I took her; and she let me be in her, without joy, without sorrow. I just remembered Georges was not there.
‘I seemed to have no shame either, for when Madeleine had washed and returned, I hurried through my own ablutions and went back to her, and said many silly and untrue things, and she said yes and no, as if it mattered not. Then I told her about Kalidasa and the yakshas, and kissed her again with so great a demand that she said, “Come.” I wandered through empty corridors, and alone. Madeleine caressed my head with compassion, and said, “Be happy, my love, be happy.”
‘But I was not happy. So I spoke to her long whiles about all sorts of things, of Mysore and of Grandfather Kittanna, of my father and of Little Mother. I gave Madeleine details I had never given — how Uncle Seetharamu used to go to his room four times, five times a day, and shout, “Lakshmi! Lakshmi!” And his good, round wife would come, and the door would close. Auntie came back just as she went in, and we children never lost an occasion to know what had happened. “Uncle Seetharamu has had ten children and eight are alive,” I said.