Journey to Ithaca

by Anita Desai

  Matteo went up the bricklined path as he had been instructed, left his slippers at the foot of a flight of stairs leading to the veranda, and continued barefoot. The door stood open and he found the Mother seated on a pile of cushions on the carpeted floor under a gigantic painting of the Master that hung on the wall above her and was garlanded with roses carved out of sandalwood, lavishly perfuming the air. It depicted a bare-bodied figure, indigo in colour, seated upon a mountain top that was silhouetted, a deep violet, against a sky of rose pink. Around his massive head, a halo was tinted in the colours of a rainbow. In the midst of all this celebratory colour, the heavy, fleshy face seemed sombre, almost stern.

  On a small, three-legged table of intricately carved walnut wood stood a photograph of the same figure, in a silver frame. Here he was shown upright and clothed and beside him was the Mother. It had been taken in the days of their prime, evidently, and both were smiling, resplendent in white silk robes and gold scarves, garlands of tinsel and blossom around their necks. It could have been a wedding photograph, and they a bridal pair – although of course Matteo knew it was not: if there was a marriage, then surely it was a spiritual one.

  Incense swirled through the room from smouldering sticks in a small brass holder, and in its lavender haze the Mother reclined, wearing that day a robe of plum red with sleeves lined in pink. Caught up in its voluminous folds, she might have been a small aged idol had she not been in a state of constant motion.

  Her mornings were clearly very busy: a fleet of secretaries attended her, kneeling to show her memos, standing with bowed heads to listen to advice, going in and out with ledgers and files, or seated to take dictation. She was at that moment giving instructions to Swami Kripa about a change of feed for the cows – cows! As if aware of Matteo’s astonishment, she turned to him with a wonderfully girlish smile and, dismissing Swami Kripa, who hurried off busily, stretched out her arm and picked a banana from a tray of fruit before her.

  ‘Please,’ she cried, ‘don’t look so sad, so hungry. Come, eat this banana! The banana is a fruit that drives away sorrow and makes one as happy as a monkey!’

  Matteo hoped she did not really mean that and took the fruit from her, knowing he was being teased, but she cried, ‘Sit here, and eat. I want to see you eat!’ To his great embarrassment, there was nothing for it but to peel the fruit and eat it, watched by the amused devotees who stood about the room. He felt its sticky substance bulge in his mouth, felt aware how his cheeks puffed out, how long his jaws took to masticate it, and then nearly choked when he tried to swallow. Laughing, she bent forward and plucked the peel out of his hands. ‘There,’ she said, ‘that is better. I don’t want anyone to starve. I want you to feel well, sat-is-fied –’ She pronounced the word slowly, dividing it into three, four syllables.

  Wiping his mouth, Matteo gulped, ‘I am, I am satisfied –’

  ‘I want no one to starve. No one to feel pain,’ she went on, straightening her back, looking more idol-like, the laughter retreating. ‘We are here,’ she said, ‘to experience Bliss. There can be no bliss if you are thinking: I am hungry, I want food; I am sad, I want love. All that must go –’ she waved her long fingers and tossed away the banana peel – ‘so Bliss can enter. Only on that should your mind focus.’ Her face assumed a somewhat vague expression, as if her thoughts had drifted away.

  Before she retreated altogether as she seemed likely to do, Matteo slipped in the question he felt he must ask. ‘Mother,’ he said, ‘I have studied some Sanskrit. Please tell me what to read. I must learn.’

  She opened her eyes very wide, as if stunned. Turning to the other devotees in the room, drawing them in to be witnesses to this phenomenon, she pronounced, ‘Read nothing. Nothing. You have not come to a university. I am not giving out degrees. Mat-te-o of I-tal-y, Master of Mystical Ex-per-i-ence: will you take this degree and go out and show it to the world? Please, I beg you, close your books. Clear your mind. The way of jnana – the way of knowledge – is nothing compared to the way of bhakti – the way of love. Here we teach only Love.’ Her eyes were sparkling within the rims of kohl that outlined them and made them so prominent in her gaunt face. She spoke with a fierceness, that of a younger woman. ‘Here we dedicate ourselves to Love,’ she pronounced, and her gaze rested on the framed photograph on the three-legged table that was placed so that she faced it, whereas the painting on the wall was behind her, framing her. ‘What we do here, we do out of love,’ she added. Then a smile began to tug at the corners of her mouth that had been so stern a moment before. ‘We do very much, verry verrry much,’ she drawled, and some of the devotees began to giggle. ‘Ask them, they will tell you. I make them work. We all work. You too, Matteo, will work, no?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he agreed ardently, thinking she would now disclose her plans to him, the plans whereby he would at last transform himself, leaving behind the old, sick, unhappy self, the self he despised and desired to get rid of, and assume the new one made wholly by her.

  But she was not looking at him; she was twisting her head around, looking at the others in the room. ‘What shall we assign him? Library? Accounts? Laundry? Dairy? Or –’ she rolled her eyes dramatically – ‘kitchen?’ The others doubled over with laughter as at a great joke. Matteo did not know what the joke was but squirmed, knowing himself to be the butt. Now she was smiling directly at him, a sweetly arch smile. ‘No-o-o,’ she cooed, ‘let us not send him to the kitchen. He will be frightened. He may run away. N-n-o-,’ she repeated and patted the cushion beside her. ‘Mat-t-eo from It-a-ly, I will keep you here, by me. You can write my letters for me.’

  It was more than Matteo could have hoped for, or anticipated. That it was also more than anyone else had expected for a total newcomer was evident from the murmur of surprise that arose, and the expressions of envious congratulation. Only known, trusted and dear devotees had been invited into such close proximity before, and Matteo could appreciate that, for what could be more intimate than her letters? Now he would enter not only into her physical presence – overwhelming enough, more powerful than anyone else’s, including Sophie’s – but into her mental presence, her intellectual world, of which only hints and glimpses had been vouchsafed till now. With that expectation, he hurried towards the Abode of Bliss in the early morning light.

  Each day began so hopefully and propitiously – he never failed to pause and bow before the samadhi of the Master before proceeding through the grove to the house – but nevertheless each day dealt him a severe blow. The Mother’s letters were not to swamis and yogis elsewhere on the finer points of theology or philosophy; they were not even letters to her devotees who appealed for help or clarification. They were her official correspondence with various departments of the town council about matters such as the clearing of garbage from the ashram grounds (which the council claimed lay outside their jurisdiction), the sale of a bumper crop of guavas that the ashram inmates could not alone harvest or devour, the building of more cattle sheds and the distribution of surplus milk in the town. Then there were the endless memos to the devotees who ran different enterprises – all remarkably detailed, precise and revealing a knowledge of housekeeping, animal husbandry, fruit and vegetable farming, health and hygiene and other specialised professions, stunning Matteo with their scope and profusion of detail.

  She herself remained unflagging. ‘Yes, yes, everyone is busy as a bee over here,’ she said happily to Matteo. ‘So many busy bees in my hive. I can see Matteo thinking – why? why? No, don’t protest, I can see it, I can see it. He does not think so much of the little bee, eh? But is this hive to be empty and dry and useless? Or is it to be filled with honey, a store of good, sweet honey? And do not think I mean fruits and vegetables and milk, please. You must know I mean honey made from spiritual nectar, nectar to nourish your souls. All organisations are useless, Matteo, useless and dry and empty, if they do not contain the nectar of the spirit. I want it to be rich, rich, rich with this nectar.’

  In deep shame and guilt, M
atteo bent over his writing block and scribbled frantically, hardly able to keep up with her dictation and yet feverish with the need to do so. To be in her presence, involved in her work, and not worthy of it, not measuring up to it, would compound all the failures of his life and condemn him to an endless cycle of failure too terrible to contemplate. At times he wondered if she was putting him on trial to see if he could prove himself. He worked without pause, except for an hour in the afternoon when she let him go to eat with the other devotees and rest briefly before returning to her for further orders, further dictation.

  When he flagged at the end of a particularly demanding and frustrating day in which messages regarding the publication of the Master’s books by a small press in the city flew back and forth with countless misunderstandings and no resolution at the end to show for all the labour, he was devastated to hear her say, ‘And what do you think, Matteo, of setting up our own printing press at the ashram? Would it not be better to take over from these in-comp-et-ent swindlers? Could we not run it much more eco-nom-ic-ally and pro-duct-ively ourselves? Hmmm?’ She raised her eyebrows high and focused her great kohl-rimmed eyes upon him.

  Matteo quailed as he thought of the mountain of work rising before him, obscuring – he feared – his true goal, that revelation for which he hungered and to which he knew he had come tantalisingly close. He had neither the time nor the strength to meditate any more, or to read, or even to think or reflect; his mind seemed stuffed and cluttered with the most minute details of the ashram’s organisation and functioning. The regime – or the trial, if that was what it was – was taking its toll upon him and he trembled a little.

  She saw that. Dipping her head to one side, she murmured, ‘No, I see Matteo is not ready for that yet, hmmm? He must tell me when he is ready because I, I am ready. I am waiting for that day!’

  What did she mean? Did she mean that day as one when she would accomplish some particular desire of hers, or one on which her mastery over Matteo would become complete and total? Matteo was utterly confused.

  She leant across to him, her hand extended from a long sleeve of brilliant orange silk, her fingers nearly touching him but not. ‘Poor boy, it is so hard,’ she murmured. ‘Hard, hard. Do I not know how hard? Do I not drive myself too? All for the sake of the Beloved? So the Beloved’s life and work may con-tin-ue?’

  This brought him so abruptly back to the true purpose of his labour that he hung his head in remorse at the egoism in the thought that he might figure in her plans and programme. She saw his change of expression and seemed pleased. Touching him on the wrist lightly, she spoke with that sweet lightness of tone that made her seem at times like a young girl. ‘I must remember I should not drive you as I drive myself. You don’t yet know that love that I have known, its pow-err, its forr-ce! You are young. You need laughter and play. Love is too, too hard.’ Then she fell silent, began to adjust the folds of her robe, and her face became distant and remote.

  She meant what she said, however, and that evening she had a neglected badminton court re-chalked and sent for a net and racquets and shuttlecocks from a sports goods shop in town, announced an hour of play and appeared herself in sports clothes – baggy white pyjamas, a long white muslin shirt exquisitely embroidered at the neck and wrists, and very large white canvas shoes – swinging a racquet and challenging the devotees to play.

  From then on, every evening, no matter how hot it still was, and how the sun beat on the court, she insisted that they take turns at playing. Although the devotees, unused to playing games, found it heavy going and huffed and puffed through the games, they clapped with delight when the Mother herself played, marvelling at her agility, the speed with which she moved in order to chase the shuttlecock around, bringing to it that superlative will and concentration she brought to everything.

  ‘Oh, see how beautifully Mother plays!’ an elderly devotee exclaimed, nearly weeping with admiration as she came off the court, perspiration streaming from under the folds of her white turban down her cheeks. She tossed away the racquet lightly, saying, ‘If you love the game, you can play. Love is what drives the player. Love is the game,’ whereupon the elderly devotee gave a sob of joy.

  Sophie, who was still confined to bed with a periodic slight bleeding that Dr Bishop needed to watch, listened to him describe these activities with an absent expression on her face; she was concentrating on knitting a baby garment – one of the nurses had shown her how – and wished him to see that his activities were of lesser importance.

  Finally she said, ‘It sounds like school, like a British boarding school.’

  Irritated, he said, ‘And in which British boarding school do they preach the doctrine of love?’

  ‘Oh,’ she said, giving the ball of wool a sharp tweak, ‘is that what your ashram wishes to rectify?’

  ‘Sophie, I am trying to tell you how different it is from all other ashrams. You will like it. You will be happy.’

  Sophie put down her knitting. ‘I wanted to go to the mountains,’ she said to him bitterly. ‘I hoped we would go to the mountains, by ourselves.’

  ‘Later,’ he promised, ‘later. Now we must be together at the ashram. The doctor said you’re well enough to leave.’

  ‘I’m not! I’m not!’ she cried, and grew so agitated that Dr Bishop, passing by, stopped to see what was the matter and sent Matteo away and stayed to pat and stroke and calm Sophie.

  Matteo now had work that taught him how the organisation worked, and introduced him to the other devotees. Yet all of them brought him back to the centre again, to the Mother.

  From Kripa, who ran the dairy, he learnt that the Mother had had to teach herself dairying and even veterinary science in order to run the place so impeccably. ‘She knew nothing, of course, nothing,’ Kripa smiled, fondling the pinkish dewlap of a placidly chewing cow. ‘How could she have known anything about cows and milk and butter? But the Master had to have pure milk, pure butter, pure ghee, nothing adulterated, so she wouldn’t buy from the market. She said, “We will keep cows at the ashram and make our own butter and curds and ghee. We will be the gopis who tended cows along with Krishna.” When I am milking the cows,’ Kripa said, fondling the cow who flicked her tail and went on chewing, ‘I remember that.’

  From Prema, who stood over the vats of boiling water in which everyone’s pink robes bubbled and steamed, he learnt that the Mother was as fanatical about personal purity as about the purity of the heart. ‘We can’t just sit about, purifying our minds,’ cried Prema through clouds of steam in the laundry room. ‘We’ve got to go everywhere, see into everything, make sure there isn’t a single germ left, not for miles!’ She stood with her hands on her hips, her golden curls streaming down her damp cheeks, and made Matteo very aware of the dust and sweat of his own body.

  Even the small children of the ashram grew up on such tenets of the Mother. Matteo, plodding from one end of the ashram to the other, carrying the Mother’s messages, discovered that there was a large number of them living on the premises. Although the Indian devotees were mostly elderly, retired men or widows whose children and grandchildren occasionally came to visit them but did not stay, many of the foreign devotees had young families and were settling down into a life at once devotional and domestic. For such families there were separate cottages at the fringe of the ashram grounds, at the other end of the large vegetable garden. Many of the devotees who lived there were set to work in these fields, raising the tomatoes and spinach and carrots they needed for their children as well as the ashram. There was also a playground and a nursery school and crêche (at the furthest corner from the Abode of Bliss: the Mother was very prone to migraines, and noise could bring on an attack). Passing by their grounds, Matteo watched as their young teacher, Diya, held up a card with a picture of a bee and called out, ‘Bee-ee!’ Then she asked, ‘What does the bee make?’ and the children called back ‘Hunn-ee!’ ‘And where do the bees live?’ ‘Ha-eev!’ Then she beamed and raised her voice to call, ‘We too are bees!
We live in a hive! We make honey out of nectar! And what is nectar?’ Then they threw their arms up in the air and yelled, ‘Lo-ove!’

  Walking away from the school building – painted all over with flowers and on its classroom wall a great photograph of the Mother smiling out of the frame – Matteo wondered if Sophie would be pleased with what she saw when he brought her here. He hoped she would be pleased; how could she not?

  Reaching to hand her a sheaf of letters to sign, Matteo found the Mother smiling at him enigmatically. ‘It is beginning, is it?’ she murmured. ‘Yes, yes, I see it. Mat-t-eo is planning to join us. Mat-t-eo is going to stay.’

  He was touched by her quick insight, the welcome implicit in her voice, and it gave him the courage to say, ‘And can I bring my wife to stay?’

  She continued to gaze at him, her expression barely changing. He had not spoken of Sophie earlier but had assumed she knew of her. Now it appeared she did not and that she was adjusting to the idea. Finally she said, very smoothly, ‘You must ask to be allotted a cottage. All families stay in cottages. And I would like you to start work on a kitchen shift.’

  The day he brought Sophie to the ashram there was a thunderstorm, the kind that precedes the monsoon, breaking the terrific heat of the summer’s zenith. They were together in a cycle rickshaw, pedalling along the road on which the dust blew in great yellow gusts, almost blinding them so they had to tie their bandanas over their mouths and noses, when the clouds broke and rain pelted down in large icy drops with a great roll of thunder.