But as soon as he quits his city and his homeland, a man loses a power that he had thought his own, but which remains attached to places that could not accompany him. Carried on the Santa-Fé, balanced on the vast and unknown element that is the ocean, my importance had become almost negligible, in relation to men, and what was more serious, I had diminished in my own eyes. The young woman I had admired was placed at the summit of a hierarchy of which I occupied an inferior degree. If it had happened that the sister of the Viceroy of India had asked who the young man in the dazzling costume was that she sometimes saw sitting on a few ropes on the Santa-Fé, the reply she would have received was that he was a subaltern gentleman in the pay of the Jesuits. I did not doubt that the question had not been asked; but I could not doubt the character of the reply. I saw then a long ladder analogous to the one of which there is mention somewhere in the Bible, and I was sitting on the bottom rung, while he splendid Inès de Saldanna was at the other extremity, very far from the subaltern gentleman.
I knew that the young woman, accompanied by the double of Catherine de Medici, her servants, and doubtless her rose-bush, had received hospitality in the house of the governor of Surat, in the fortress that dominated the city.
The following day, as I was gazing at the accumulation of beggars and lepers not far from the port of Brampour and was wondering why they did not put bandages, or even leaves, on their wounds to prevent thousands of flies from covering them and laying their eggs in them, I heard a sound of trumpets and the noise of horses. A whirlwind of dust overflowed the zigzags of the road that ended at the fortress.
Several policemen with their sticks surmounted with steel balls parted the crowd. A man of immeasurable stature whose head was surmounted by a green turban was playing the trumpet. He was followed by thirty horsemen clad in dazzling uniforms with flat metal helmets analogous to the silver plates on which soup is served in rich Toulousan families. Those horsemen surrounded two palanquins whose drawn curtains were, doubtless by coincidence, the same color as the trumpet-player’s turban. Behind them were four or five individuals on horseback with turbans of various colors, whose rich garments indicated an elevated status. One of them had a long gray beard, which he allowed to float ostentatiously, and one sensed, by the gesture favored by the wind that was lifting it, that that beard was a subject of care and pride for its possessor.
The cortege passed by rapidly. I flattened myself against the vault of the monumental gate of Brampour in order not to be jostled by the horses. The horseman who came immediately after the bearded man gave me a little amicable sign, and I recognized Francisco Manoël.
I had no need of the gift of second sight to know that the first palanquin held Inès de Saldanna, alongside—of that I was less sure—the rosebush that never quit her.
I nearly started running under the stone vaults of the gate of Brampour. The crowd of lepers had closed up behind the cortege. The insects, above their wounds, made a kind of cloud with the dust. I returned at a slow pace.
MY FIRST MEETING WIH THE EMPEROR AKBAR
The Portuguese mission was en route to Agra. It comprised four Jesuits, chosen from among the cleverest and most eloquent, those who had the greatest knowledge of the religions and languages of Asia.
My cousin Pierre Du Jarric surpassed them all, in my opinion, because he had a sense of the comical in life, and disguised it under a severe gravity. Now, the man is very strong who always laughs internally but never permits others to know that he is laughing.
Father Pimenta was a fat man of jovial aspect, who had in reality no joy in him, with the consequence that his external appearance constituted a permanent lie. He sensed that lie and suffered from it. Sometimes he tried to conform with his physique and gave his words a false joviality. Sometimes he abandoned himself to his true nature, which was bitter. He was talkative and interested in little things and trivia. Perhaps those who had chosen him had mistaken his qualities as a talkative man for a noble eloquence and a knowledge of the human heart.
Father Monserrate,14 who came from Goa and had joined us in Surat, was reputed to be a saint. But were they not all saints, more or less? He was full of seduction because of the radiation of faith that animated him. His seduction also came from the desire he had to exercise it. He suffered if he did not inspire a visible and active amity in all the people he approached. A fortunate illusion led him to believe that he drew all hearts after him. He had been part of the first mission that had sojourned with Akbar. He assured us that he had left extraordinary sympathies in the Court of Agra. He even thought that if his arrival had been announced in advance, many great lords would come to meet him on their elephants.
The Emperor Akbar, he told us, had been on the point of converting to the Christian religion, thanks to him, and but for the incompetence of Father Pignero…. His desire to please was so great that he even had need of the amity of the insignificant individual that I had to be for him. If a taciturn expression lingered on my face he thought that I was holding something against him for some trivial cause. So, in order not to sadden him, I put a broad smile on my face as soon as I looked in his direction.
Father Antoine Pignero15 was dominated by the idea of geography. He dreamed of nothing but the traces of rivers and designs of mountains. For him, India was a geographical map. He did not want to die without realizing a great work: the exact map of Asia. But there was an obscure region there, the kingdom of Cathay. According to the accounts of travelers, the kingdom was immense, but for some, it was confounded with China, for others it was different, a vaster neighbor of that already-vast kingdom. That was a very important difference for a designer of maps who has geographical verity as an ideal.
Father Pignero no longer had any but one subject of conversation: the confusion of the geographer Ortelius. For him, all the maps in the Ortelius atlas were erroneous. He lived with all the falsities of Ortelius present in his mind. But he had a singular form of character. He grasped with extraordinary rapidity whatever might be most disagreeable to his interlocutor, and said it immediately. He wanted to confound not only Ortelius but all men. Everyone had to be put in his place, he said. If a river had two outflows, it was not him who would give it three. I estimated privately that a nature so scantly conciliatory was poorly chosen for the conversion of a sovereign.
A taciturn officer was charged with accompanying us. He had doubtless been chosen because of his grave humor, because it was a matter of escorting monks. The fathers, who liked making speeches, would have preferred a more talkative man. He had a guard of six men with him. It was not a matter of defending us, because one enjoyed a perfect security on the roads. I wondered, on the journey, how the roads were maintained. They reminded me of the residues of Roman roads that I had seen between Toulouse and Narbonne. The difference was that those of India were bordered, about every hundred meters, by a heap of admirably white stones, which permitted couriers bearing messages to see their direction on dark nights. Another difference was that they were sometimes traversed by a tiger, which seized the messenger. That happened quite rarely, I was assured. Savage tigers pullulate in the region. They are courageous and extremely cruel.
Although journeys were made in palanquins carried by men or carts pulled by oxen, we were, exceptionally, all on horseback. Brother Benoît de Goes went on foot. He was not part of the mission but was going to Agra to obtain letters of recommendation from the Emperor that would favor his journey to the limits of the empire and even further. Further on was the mysterious and infinite domain that extends beyond the Himalayan mountains. He had to reach on foot the kingdom of Cathay, which might not exist. That involved a very long march, and he said that he did not want to soften himself at the outset by having himself carried by a horse. When we drew ahead of him he shouted at us to go more rapidly, in order to force him to start running.
Father Pimenta joined him and walked, holding his horse by the bridle, in the hope of getting thinner, but he stopped on the second day, claiming that he had
noticed a slight augmentation of his plumpness after a day’s walking.
A mule carried presents from the Jesuits to the Emperor. Those presents were simultaneously modest and splendid. They were contained in a chest from Cordova, lined inside with metal in order to protect its contents from damp. The chest was a work of art in itself. There was a Bible printed by Gutenberg’s own hands, and in which the great man had written something, a kind of dedication to God. It had been bound in Venice by a great artist in bindings whose name I forget. The material of that binding, which was, I believe, skin cut from the back of a young calf, reproduced angels around a Jehovah with an irritated face and a large sword.
The chest also contained the Ortelius atlas that had appeared a few years before and had excited the enthusiasm of European scholars and navigators—with the exception, of course, of Brother Antoine Pignero.
That brother did not weary of making the slightest pleasantry. If the mule stumbled or passed over a steam he would run up with a simulated zeal crying: “Protect the Ortelius atlas!”
The Jesuits’ third present was not in the chest with the Ortelius atlas and the Gutenberg Bible but in front of it; it preceded them. That was me: I was a gift offered to the Emperor Akbar.
Ought I to be humiliated by that or to glory in it? When my cousin and the Provincial Father of Toulouse had first decided to send me to India, they had spoken in my presence in Latin, an ancient and scholarly language of which I did not have the comprehension. During the evenings spent on the deck of the Santa-Fé the brothers who had expressed themselves in Portuguese or French had sometimes suddenly employed Latin and I noticed that it was always when it was a matter of the Emperor’s gifts, the word equus recurred again. I had asked what the word signified. It meant “horse.”
I learned that the Emperor, a great lover of horses, had asked for one of the marvelous French or German chargers of which he had heard mention. Now horses, more delicate than humans, cannot stand up to six months of navigate. Why was that, given their robust physique? I guessed that the movements of the sea, which are atrocious in nature, are only tolerable because one knows that they will come to an end. Horses placed on the deck of a ship do not know that they will arrive in a port some day, and, not being sustained by hope, they die.
Anyway, it did not matter. The Jesuits, being unable to offer a fine horse, were offering a fine man instead. Akbar was a warrior and prized courageous men. That reduced me somewhat to the level of slaves whom one compels to show their teeth and the strength of their biceps in Oriental markets. On the other hand, it is honorable to be presented as a model of strength and courage. I had told the Jesuits that I knew what my role as a substitute for the horse entailed, and that I would dispense them of the ironic delicacy that caused them to express themselves in Latin in my presence.
I aspired to show that I was no kind of slave. The opportunity to do that was promptly given to me.
It was the middle of the day, and we had just traversed the so-called city of Nader, which consists of houses with straw roofs disseminated on the sides of a mountain, amid ponds and fragments of exceedingly thick and high ramparts. One wonders what function such stone constructions can serve. Undoubtedly there was once a vast city there of which only a few vestiges remain. It is a curious custom in India to build cities with ramparts and monuments and abandon them fairly quickly, in order to go and construct others in more distant locations.
A guard with a steel ball came to inform us that the governor, informed of the passage of monks on their way to see the Emperor, was awaiting us in his palace in order to offer us refreshments.
That palace was situated outside what was known as Nader and was a kind of country house of rather magnificent appearance, the architecture of which was reminiscent of that of many palaces in Spain.
The governor received us with a great deal of affability. He was a short, thickset man with bow-legs. That defect was all the more visible because they were bare. He had us sit down in a large room covered with precious carpets, inviting us to take our places beside him on cushions. He had abundant hair gathered on top of his head, like a woman. I supposed on seeing the quality of the objects d’art arranged on a set of shelves and he complicated beverages that he had served to us that he was a very refined man. That was also attested by the jewels that he wore on his fingers. He must have been afflicted by some skin disease because he had a bandage on one knee and another on his arm. As soon as he was seated he took off his shoes, telling us that his feet were hurting. He expressed himself in Persian but he told the Brothers that he knew Latin.
He’s a great literate, I thought.
He had only cast a single glance at me, a singular one, such as one casts at a women in order to assess her physical value, or a catamite, or even a servant. Then he paid no more attention to me. I seemed to discern a slight astonishment when I sat down.
I had experienced a surge of blood of a dolorous nature at that and had blushed, which always vexes me because I feel diminished in my own eyes. Nevertheless, I had conquered it.
All went well. Nothing could have caused the anticipation of the slightest incident. I noticed, however, that my perspicacious cousin darting a sideways glance at me in which there was a kind of recommendation.
Our host had a servant behind him with broad shoulders, who was fanning him with a peacock feather fitted to the end of a pole at least six feet long. To one side, an old black woman, her legs folded, was crushing betel leaves and areca nuts with a massive golden pestle in an ivory mortar. She worked very rapidly, took the paste that was in the mortar, made a ball of it and introduced it into her master’s mouth. At each new pellet, the latter spat on the cushions—which was not the action of a distinguished man, and must have necessitated an extraordinarily frequent renewal of the fabrics. And he seemed to have the obligation to chew a large number of the pellets, for he was moving his jaw with an extreme rapidity.
Suddenly, he clapped his hands, and, leaning toward Father Pimenta, addressed him particularly as if to a connoisseur of what he was going to show him, and said to him in a low voice: “You’re going to see pretty dancing girls.”
And indeed, several dancers and musicians irrupted into the room.
I almost exclaimed that it was unbecoming to give monks a spectacle of dancing girls, which normally had a lascivious character. I even opened my mouth to do so. Perhaps the governor of Nader had been misled by Father Pimenta’s jovial appearance. A fat man always suggests the idea of carnal enjoyment. It was necessary to inform the governor of his impolite error.
But the Fathers must have been aware of customs of which I was ignorant, for I saw them nodding their heads gravely, appearing to thank their host, who seemed to me to be very inappropriate.
The dancers numbered five and had their faces uncovered. Only Muslims are veiled. The others profess the unknown and strange religions that are called pagan. The musicians numbered three, and one of them, who was holding a minuscule tambourine, had a physique so majestic that I immediately thought of Moses, and to whom I gave that name mentally.
At first the dancers appeared to me to be ugly. Their robes were perfectly virtuous, falling all the way to the feet and not allowing the slightest gleam of flesh to show. When they began to dance, though, I saw that one of them, who must have been very young, was ravishing.
The dance appeared to me to be devoid of interest. It was more a dance of arms and shoulders than legs. The music was slow and had something ensorcelling about it. The governor seemed to take an extreme pleasure in it and leaned forward to gaze at the youngest dancer, but without interrupting the movement of his jaws for an instant. Every time a dance concluded, he clapped his hands, and the dancers resumed a new step. He never gave them time to breathe.
But what happened, all of a sudden? Was the young dancer, who was the star of the troupe, and whom I had heard named Sita, fatigued? She seemed to be giving signs of impatience, stamped her foot, said something in a language I did not know, an
d fell back among the cushions. There she struck a nonchalant pose and began to fan herself with a silken fan that was suspended from her belt. She supported her head with her arm and darted amicable glances, smiling, sometimes at Father Pimenta and sometimes at me.
What followed happened with extreme rapidity, and tends to make me think that the events had been mapped out in advance and were unfolding without conscious control.
The governor gave an imperious order in the dialect that the dancer had employed. She replied with two or three words that must have been of an injurious nature, and emitted a burst of insulting laughter.
He stood up, spat out a large pellet of betel and seized a large stick that seemed to emerge from the ground in a miraculous fashion. Without any restraint, he struck the dancer on the shoulder with it; she uttered a cry of pain. He was about to give her another when I leapt forward, my arms extended, and intercepted the blow, whose force I was able to measure.
The movement I had made tipped over the tray of refreshments with a great racket of breaking glass. The dancing girl, whose face was distraught with terror, attempted to flee. She was about to receive a further blow of the stick, which would have fractured her skull, but I seized the governor’s wrist, tore the stick away from him recklessly, and threw it on the floor.
I immediately took account of the fact that I had done something unusual. The old man’s features altered under the empire of an indescribable rage. At the same time, disorder broke out around me. The bearer of the peacock feather attempted to strike me with the long pole. The old woman threw the pestle of her mortar at me. A kind of guard, who had introduced us, obedient to a furious sign from his master, aimed a great blow at me with a curved saber that he had taken from its scabbard and which would have been sufficient to slay me if I had not stepped backwards. At the same time, he uttered a bizarre and guttural cry analogous to a war cry. Other armed men invaded the room, while the dancers and the musicians uttered howls and the Fathers surrounded the governor.
Jean de Fodoas Page 7