5 Indian Masters

by Welknow Indian

  Bhoothalinga Iyer’s signature was revealed by a sunbeam. Was Bhoothalinga Iyer then in Coimbatore?

  Mr. Justice Gopala Menon was the son of the late Peshkar Rao Bahadur Parameshwara Menon, and he had only three months of service before retirement. He took leave preparatory to retirement and went to the Himalayas, so people said. Govindan Nair laughed and remarked “You no more find the truth in the Himalayas than you find in the Indian Law Register. You may find it on your garden wall and not know it was it. You must have eyes to see,” he said desperately to me.

  3 The Chessmaster and His Moves

  I was in a dispirited mood that whole afternoon, as it were, half asleep and half awake, but my mind absolutely clear, sparking for an adventure. Unable, however, to work, I went to the salon, where there were always logs burning at the fireplace, – summer not being official yet – the coffee ever ready, to awaken me. I was standing warming myself by the mantelpiece, prodding the sugar to melt into my coffee, when who should I see but Michel Irene, the secretary, had brought him to me. Michel looked grim, almost unfriendly.

  “Bon jour, patron,” he said, somewhat ironically.

  “Bon jour camarade,” I laughed to unfreeze him a little.

  With his thick glasses, his short stature, his clothes ever awkward, he seemed incongruous in this magnificent salon, with so many candelabras, gilt-edged fire-shields, and the thick Persian carpet shining with mythology, transmuting shimmering colours, and deep ancientness. I showed him a comfortable seat and myself chose a stiff chair, for I always thought more logically with my spine against a straight background. We did not speak for a long time.

  The excerpt is from The Chessmaster and His Moves (1988) and contains the famous conversation between the Brahmin and the Jew. The original punctuation has been retained.

  “I have come” he said, finally seating himself on the plush sofa, green with yellow stripe, the flames from the fireplace playing on his face, giving it a sudden nobility, “I have come on une enterprise grave.” Yes, those were the very words he used, as he crossed his legs, his heavy hunch, looking more like an archaeological lump then than a physical one. “I am a strange creature, not an Indian, of course not, and not Asian or African. Hitler has told you we are not European either. But we may call ourselves, if you will, Asiatique, Oriental, something kin or kins of the Pharaohs, of your Vedic ancestors, of the Chinese, but not in species. A race somewhat forgotten maybe, but it has not forgotten itself, despite Mr. Toynbee. He thinks we are an archaic society to be dumped between the interstices of History. Sir, I am a Jew.” He had come obviously to say just that. I had an instant shudder, a tremor, as if he were not a human speaking, but a geophysic event, a volcanic sputter through time’s rude holes. He seemed, that evening, to be made as if of steel, but alchemically turned back from gold, so to say – not a steel of today, but an ancient metal, encrusted perhaps in the depths of the Pacific, from Lemuria, where legends say gold and steel were made from each other, for the benefit of primal man. It was a voice firm, dead, stomachal, but yet spoke, if you understand what I mean. It spoke not for himself, but, as it were, for the species, a whale upsurging in the ocean, leaping, cavorting, white-breasted, diving back, its mammal face prehistoric, but its movements contemporary. “You said the other day,” he continued, the neighbours of the apartment opposite and above, playing some loud raucous music, and yet his voice was distinct, finite, irreversible – each word just a fact. “You said the other day, how could I laugh, how could I joke?”

  “Yes, I did,” I agreed.

  “Now, I understand. I understand. But the truth is – and I say it as Moses must have, when he spoke to God: Who, my friend, can see my face, our face? – Is there anyone on earth who dare look on not merely the nazi stripes, broken rib-ends, gun-butt marks-holes, chunkless dimples, bumps – but the stripes and stigmata we bear from Assyrians, the Romans. The Romans even they took away our ancient city of Jerusalem, the holy, and made it their provincial headquarters. And again, what stripes from the wirewhips the Zoroastrians gave us in Babylon, and earlier still the pharaohs’ eunuchs in Egypt. We are a simple, people, we never were meant for war or government, the Moshe Dayans or the Rothschilds, as one of our great scientists, but himself an aide to Moshe Dayan, told us recently. We were made for books – for the Book and the Torah. We are a procession. We were always a procession. The nazi trains have always existed. We are ever on departure and arrival. In fact, sometimes on arrival before departure. Or on at once both. If so, and here my friend, may I say we would agree with your Vedanta – the world, in fact, a dire illusion. Going from the ghetto to the train, and from the train to a railway siding – you see, it being war, the Wehrmachi has so many trainloads of soldiers and material to carry to the Front-nach Stalingrad, nach Leningrad, nach Moskau-and then again, the train starts. And we come to another railway siding, the same evening, the next day, the day after, who can remember? We spit, squat, squeeze, dung, vomit, scratch, shout, fistfight, and sometimes even make love in corners, and fight again. And then suddenly, the train stops. Even it, the long train, seems tired. It really stops. And now the loudspeaker howls, yells, Schnell, schnell, jump down, get out, quick, quick. So man, woman and child, grandchild, granduncle, we all jump down, for we are just being transported. Taken, because of war conditions in Poland, from one town to the other, away, from the great battle to be, and for the convenience of troop movements. Then when we arrive at another railway siding, then again another, with rubble and barbed wire and snarling dogs. The stations all look alike, skies’ spittle, bombstruck, monumental. Schnell, schnell. And now a shout again. Enter, go back. And we leap, like circus animals, back to the opened-in-wagons. There is, however, no audience to clap hands. Tickets sold out. There is an SS man, and he closes our doors, seals them. And we enter our permanent night again. There’s, do not forget, there is always an SS man in history, Egyptian, Iranian, Roman, the Roman legionnaires. Why, for ought I know, there might even have been Indian, Buddist or Mughal SS men. Who knows, who knows? And schnell, schnell again. We leap out. And now we are marched off, all of us, bundles, children, grandfathers with canes, caftans, halts and shoes, to the lager, large as a hanger. They now tell you, you have just to undress, have yourself shaven, and there’s guard with whom to leave your treasures-wallets, jewels, eyeglasses, talismans – and they even give you back a certificate, you understand, a real receipt, stamped and all that in good german with Heil Hitler seals. Now, you men go this way, and you women go that way – it’s meant only for registration. And then naked and fresh, the number, your number, is tattooed on the arms, and once you are numbered, you now become a real man, a woman, why even a child. We become mathematical entities. When a man is no man, yet a man, he is a real man, the superman, you understand. Now you march, you march to music, listen to fine music, to Bach, Beethoven, Richard Wagner, played by excellent musicians, and some may be even famous-music played by our own people, and through a corridor, in which you find geraniums, in pots, on either aisle,” he said, did Michel, and crossed his leg from one side to the other. “Never, never forget the geraniums,” he said, and abruptly crossed his leg again to the other side. I was aghast. Aghast at the simplicity, the truth of the human animal. So this is man. Such is man. From the caverns of the Dordogne to the Gobi desert and beyond, man, exists, and tells his story, the same, long, hun story.

  “So, since we are what we are, and we know what has happened – and will happen, and remember, there was an Attila before Genghis Khan, Rasputin before Hitler, so we Jews, we laugh,” said Michel, and burst into a sob. It was not a loud sob, but like in death’s early agony, there’s an intake and outflow of breaths, which is like a rattle, a slight miss in rhythm. “Since we die, and we are dead – and we are always dead, remember, since Job, oh that good, good Job,” and he laughed, did Michel, this time a good grave laugh, somewhat like the Africans do, that would seem, as if, the tree or the stone laughed, and Michel added, “The good Job carried God’s dirt
pail, la merde de Dieu, tu comprends. You see, our Job was young. Thus he did not become a regular musalman. He was taken to work for the masters, to clean laboratories, factories, real ones, and for the very young like me – for I was only thirteen – we were separated efficiently, at the end of the geraniums – to dig trenches, trenches to push the dead into, the dead that died of cold, or starvation, on the bunkers. They were too costly to be sent to the crematorium. There were already too many there. Now, you understand. Now, this task had its fortunate side. Sometimes a gold tooth fell out, and this could buy things, many things on the blackmarket – the SS and the Kapos ran this – you could buy there, at this black-exchange, soap, shirts, tobacco and what not. Even a woman sometimes – for, on the other side of our camp was, so to say, Odin’s harem. Yes, that is it, you understand. And thus the woman had somehow direct contact with the golden-haired gods, and knew what was happening to Rommels in Africa, to General Paulus in Stalingrad, to our own Rommels and Ludendorffs, outside and inside, the women knew more than we did. Thus God dispensed his justice, without stint, and he never, never failed.”

  “So, sometimes we did not carry corpses, we carried man’s muckpails. I am sure you have never carried anything so heroic,” and he laughed at me again, somewhat contemptuously. “You are not an untouchable. You are a Brahmin, a Nazi. Only untouchables carry pails of human dung in your country. I know it, because an uncle of mine told me so. And what my uncle said, the good Rabbi Zeev Moshe Fervan, God bless his soul, was ever true. He never told a lie, never hurt a bee.”

  “So, the Jews have carried God’s dirt, along with footways of history. You know, it’s heavy, very heavy, the pail is. After all, it is God’s. And he is a big man, we say to him, God, you have chosen us to carry this burden. So here we are waiting for you to come out of your WC. Then it’s all there, big, fermenting bubbles. And it’s so heavy, I tell you, and we’ve to carry it to the dumping ground. And it’s a long, long way, I tell you, had you phthisis, typhus, diphtheria. You see, “said Michel, rubbing his thick back against the sofa, as if it were painful, painful to bear the burden, to talk. “You see, God forgot us. That’s the truth. But we remain over, like those dead bodies – and how many, many, many I’ve seen of these – they grow nails and hair, even after the man is sweaty, clod and dead. He also, this time, is to be carried, not on a stretcher steady eyed, but in a sack, if it’s available, if not, we roll him like one does a log, and dump him finally, with a push and kick and there it goes, the man. Yes, it’s all a part of Job’s song, you understand.”

  “Remember, I was saying, God forgot us. Thus, as dead bodies grow hair and nail, as I have said, we go on mechanically carrying the dirt pail, like we did in Birkenau. Dead but alive, you understand. That’s better, I tell you, than anything else. For if you’re still alive, you can rise, rise-because you see the ghouls are tearing the air shouting in fear, like animals, and they run. They even speak Deutsch, you know, as they decamp. The world is bloody mad. So you rise from the dead, because you were not dead, but they thought you dead, ha, ha! Thus they dumped you down there. That’s our own men, the Haftings, who had dumped us. You have typhus, diphtheria, dysentery, infectious sores, so you are dead, you understand. But you are not. At least for once, you are not. And night and day commingle to make your stay among the dead comfortable. It’s just like sleep. Then you suddenly awaken, and you jump up and out and see there’s no one, no one at all, anywhere around. None. Just gone, gone, gone, the Germans are gone. Yes they are gone. Then you see a broken home, somewhere, anywhere, far, far, for remember, by now the barbed wires are out. Who cut them? No one knows. Someone has done this, maybe many, many. The werewolves did it all. The watchtowers too are silent, dead silent, if one can say so. The dogs are gone too, those hounds of hell. You slip through the same pathways, between the lagers, by broken trees, the hanged men, their neat caps still on them, but their faces and hands covered with files and sparrows, and then line after line of cement-tubes, meant for that gigantic rubber factory to be – the Germans will win because they are Germans, and will make synthetic rubber, you understand, you Frenchies, Yankees, Mr. Churchill & Co. We are a great nation, we believe in our fuehrer. He is no mortal, you know. So make synthetic rubber, and we’ll make wheels for our aeroplanes, for our jeeps, for our gas chambers, Zyklon B. Now finally, you come to an abandoned home, a wretched home, you understand. And you crouch like a rabbit, a young hog. You can see from where you are, a dog’s pen, a dump of hay. So now you slowly crouch and move, crawl like soldiers in a trench. The back door is open, you enter to see if it’s all real. You realize there are no humans around. In the kitchen may be, there’s still bread, and fish and eggs in the larder. The cattle too are there, nervously munching their foods, between shivers, urinating, and calling for their young ones – for they too have lost something, something true, familiar, noises known. This abrupt silence is stultifying. What to make of it, you bull, you horse, you fluttering, foolish, foolish hen? Oh, how the hens are horrored by these sounds of new human, and the cattle too. You see. So you now crawl, on your belly and along the floor, curled under some table, absolutely alone, for this time God will come, yes, God himself will come. God Illych will come, and he will not touch us. The Russians are our brothers. Everything is alive, see, everything says back, I table, I pillar, I picture, one two, three – river, wood, men, medals. Yet no one, no one is there. So the good God Illych will come. He will take us in his troika, across the Polish lands to the princess who awaits us. Yes, the princess. And she awaits us, open-armed, the bitch!”

  “But now let me tell you a story. A true story. A true story for me, since then, is always false. So, history is false. It is just a chronicle of human truths, of newspaper cuttings, etc, etc. You understand?”

  My mind was too benumbed to speak. So he started again after a moment’s deep-breath silence.

  “You are a sensitive, gently, highly civilized fellow. A Brahmin, a mathematician, and soon to be member of the Royal Society, etc. And who knows, you may even win the Nobel Prize.”

  “Absurd,” I spat. “Don’t be too absurd.”

  “Absurd, sir,” shouted Michel, sitting up straight, and small.

  “Who is absurd, those pedestrians of Paris, the clerk at the Credit Lyonnais, the professors at the Sorbonne, the minister of De Gaulle – I will, for the moment, leave the great man, as much as your comfort as for my own – for withal, he is a good man, but for how long, who knows, who knows? Good becomes bad overnight, like milk left at night becomes curd next morning – does it or does it not?

  “Yes, it does.”

  “Well, I spoke it, because I had read it in one of your Buddisht books. You see I am not mad. I am sane. I am Michel, all right,” and he rose, came to me as if a little drunk, patted me on the back and said :

  “Oh, mon frere,”

  “Oui, Michel.”

  “You are too innocent. You do not know hell. I do.”

  “Yes, I know you do.”

  “When you’ve tripote so many dead, and have been tripote by so many dead, what do you think you become? You leap out, that’s if you are still alive and young fifteen, run to an abandoned house, and lie amidst the silences between the gunfire – for God has at last come. God reveals you an empty abandoned house, with a rich larder – how do you like that? Between bombs, machine gun ticktacks, Mauser rifle-shots. You see, a true, true fairy tale, better than any writ by the great Andersen.”

  “You’re right. Andersen never knew hell.”

  “Because,” continues Michel, following his own monologue, “because you see, the good Germans, grandfather, mother, children, who sat on the other side of Birkenau camp, ran – they who would visit the SS men’s family, with meat gardens, fresh clothes, and after a chat and a cup of tea, they would stroll the perambulator, and peep through those innocent windows, you know, and see the musulmans all entire, without a cry, abjuration or disdain, but tied to their God, as the exiles were in the old days of the czar, goi
ng to Siberia, hand-to-hand tied, a never ending line, on the snows, white, pure, but singing-listen. I can still remember, a song my great-grandfather is supposed to have sung coming back from the land of the snows – for he was caught in some minor misdeed done to the name of the czar, or of his henchmen and this is the song,” said Michel, and standing on a chair, as if he were performing in a drama, he sang, clapping his hands.

  “Yes, the Russian God is coming, the sickle in his mouth,” added Michel, showing his teeth, “the machine gun in hand,” and here he jumped down from the chair, and started showing how the machine gun went, in this direction and that, “Tock, tock, tock-and tock. And now, sitting beneath a table – “and here Michel sat back on his chair, and held his hand forward as if he were taking something from the table in front of him, “So my friend, you sit under a table in the kitchen, munching, munching, dead beef – after all, there is something to eat – and to laugh, to laugh at yourself, so that’s where I learnt laughter.” And Michel laughs curve by curve, into the falling evening, and as I light my cigarette, he starts: “The miracle is you laugh, and laugh again. It is so thrilling, thrilling to laugh. By next morning, as you go down to the larder, there are one, two, three skeletons like you, wondering how you could be there, and you wonder where they came from. Of course, one thinks suddenly – for thoughts come slowly, and then abruptly, as if we were children again – of course others came, one, two and three – the same way I came. Maybe there is a fourth and fifth, still not known, hiding in a big dog-kennel.”