by Anita Desai
He said no word but placed his arm about my shoulders and, drawing me to him, led me out. The lantern waved in the storm, the waters rose to engulf us, but as we stepped into the deluge the rains ceased, the clouds parted, the moon appeared and the storm was stilled. Peace reigned, complete and utter peace. He spoke. ‘You will come and live with me within my ashram,’ and by the light of the washed and silver moon, we crossed the courtyard and entered his Abode.
Here I dwell now where I was always meant to dwell and where I resolve to live, never leaving His side, His true Devotee and Lover.
EPILOGUE
Matteo has left. He is not at the hospital, he has been gone for some time and no one can tell Sophie where he went. She stands confused in the corridor. The urgency to see Matteo, to tell and reveal, had so overtaken her, she had not thought that for Matteo, too, the wheel had turned.
In silence she returns to the rickshaw and makes the journey to the ashram where she had not thought she would need to go again. She finds herself fighting panic as she approaches it, walks through the gates and down the paths that lead through the gardens. She realises she had hoped she would not have to confront Matteo here, on his own territory, but very quickly she sees that here too is a scene of endings and departures.
As she walks through the gate, which is standing open, and down the garden paths, she senses abandonment and loss in the air; everything is left hanging loosely, no longer held together and cared for. There are flowers in the beds still, but wilted, unwatered, and fruit on the trees, but unpicked, left to rot. Many of the cottages seem to be deserted: there is no washing hanging around them, no children playing.
Sophie finds she does not want to go into the hut where she lived once with Matteo and the children. Instead she makes her way slowly to the dispensary in the hope of finding Montu-da there, busy with his pills and powders. But already from a distance she can tell it is shut – no one is waiting on the veranda for their medicines.
So she must go to the Abode of Bliss after all. And it is here that she finds others, sitting crosslegged in the shade of the trees, meditating by the samadhi on which flowers are still placed. Their faces are intent and concentrated.
Seeing her appear between the hedges, Diya gets to her feet and, raising her hands to her eyes as if she cannot believe what she sees, comes hurrying to Sophie and puts her arms around her. ‘Sophie, Sophie,’ she cries, ‘oh, Sophie, you have come. But the Mother is dead and Matteo has left, Sophie. He was here but he is gone.’
They sink down onto the ground by the hedge together, holding each other closely. Diya tells Sophie how the Mother died, how Matteo received the news in hospital, how he came back to the ashram and spent days and nights lying on the gravel by her samadhi – there it was, freshly whitewashed and garlanded, beside the Master’s.
‘We thought he would die, Sophie. He wouldn’t eat, or drink, and he wept so much. We didn’t know what to do. No one knew. Then he just got up one day and told us he would travel north to the mountains where the Mother received enlightenment, and he left. No one could stop him. We didn’t think we should stop him. Perhaps over there he will find peace.’ She strokes Sophie’s hair as Sophie sits with her head bent over her knees, grey-faced with fatigue.
After a while Diya persuades Sophie to come with her to her hut. She starts to cook food for her – no one eats communally any more, those who remain look after themselves. They sit making a pretence of eating, and then Diya spreads some bedding on the floor and urges Sophie to lie down and sleep. Diya has always been good to Sophie and Matteo, and she has loved their children – she still sends them cards on which she pastes coloured chocolate paper and small photographs of the Mother which they greatly prize.
Turning out the light, she stretches herself beside Sophie. The room swelters with the day’s accumulated heat; they are pressed down by it as by a thick and heavy cover that makes it difficult to breathe.
After a while Diya asks, ‘Where did you go, Sophie? We tried to send you news but no one knew where you were.’
Sophie is staring into the dark. Through dry lips she tells Diya, ‘I went on a long journey. I went to find out the truth about the Mother.’
‘What did you find?’ whispers Diya.
‘Nothing much.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ Diya comforts her. ‘Not a bit.’
‘I suppose not.’
They are both silent for such a long time, they might have fallen asleep. But then Diya is heard whispering again. ‘What will you do now, Sophie?’ she asks. ‘Will you follow him?’
Sophie is lying as still as a stone, with an arm across her eyes, thinking in the dark of that first pilgrimage she went on in India that had ended in the death of a child. Now she knows why the mother went on that pilgrimage, why anyone goes on a pilgrimage, and why she must go too. She says in a flat voice, ‘I’ll have to,’ and adds, ‘what else?’
*
Grandfather is sitting on his chair under the lamp, half asleep, but not able to go up to bed till the clock on the stairs has struck ten. His eyelids droop low and he has so far given up the pretence of reading as to take off his spectacles and sit with his fingers pinched to the bridge of his nose with an expression of agonised weariness.
Everyone knows he must wait for the deep, harsh hum to start up in the heart of the clock till it finally gathers enough momentum to spit out the hours in short, rasping coughs – and then he will be free.
Ten o’clock, but outside there is still light, the trees and shrubs float like bluish daubs, accretions of shadow, without substance, in its opalescent pallor. Low over the grass a late swallow skims lightly, cutting through the blueness, and disappears. In the distance an owl is calling, in such a deep voice as if it means to frighten small children and send them running home to bed.
Then Giacomo enters the room, his face white as the petunia in a pot outside the door. He is breathing heavily as he does when he has an asthma attack coming on, and it makes Grandfather drop his hand and stare at him.
‘Are you not in bed, Giacomo?’ he asks, surprised at this breach of routine. He looks around to see if Grandmother is not there to re-establish it.
Giacomo does not answer. He walks towards his grandfather and stands very stiffly at his knee, staring into his face as if about to make a confession. The old man puts out a freckled hand to stroke the boy’s head and that makes Giacomo crumple. He sinks onto the floor at his grandfather’s feet and bends over his slippers, his head on his knee.
‘Is it not time for bed, Giacomo?’ Grandfather repeats, and now the clock is striking – both its harsh whirring and its tinny coughs proceeding out of the stiff upright clock on the stairs like the voice of authority asserting itself.
Giacomo answers by pressing his face into his grandfather’s trousered leg. He sits in the attitude of a frightened animal, and Grandfather can feel how tense he is.
‘What is it, my boy?’ he asks.
‘I saw my father,’ Giacomo says at last, into the flannelled trouser.
Grandfather was about to stroke his head but now his hand is halted in mid-air, uncertainly.
‘I saw my father,’ the boy repeats.
‘Where?’
‘In the garden.’
‘Where in the garden?’
‘He came out of the hedge as I was going up the hill to look at the owl’s nest.’
‘And – how – what?’
‘He stepped out and stood there, waiting for me.’
‘And?’
‘And I went to him. He was very thin. He was wearing no clothes, Nonno.’
Grandfather is gripping Giacomo by his shoulders now. He shakes him angrily. ‘What are you saying? You are talking rubbish, you know.’
‘No, he was wearing just a white cloth, tied like an apron. No shoes. Nothing else.’
‘Nothing else? Don’t be a fool, boy. That wasn’t your father.’
‘Then who was he?’ Giacomo wails, raising to his grandfather a face
blurred with tears. ‘He smiled at me. He said Giacomo, Giacomo –’
‘You heard him?’
‘Yes, Nonno. He said Giacomo –’
Grandfather gives his shoulder another shake. ‘Rubbish, boy, rubbish. Do you take him for a parrot?’
‘Then he said – but I don’t know what he said,’ Giacomo wails. The clock has stopped striking, the house is filled with silence into which falls the sound of someone thumping down the stairs.
Grandfather gives him a little push. ‘It’s all rubbish,’ he says angrily. ‘You’ve learnt to make up stories like a girl. A fine thing. Inventing all these lies. Your grandmother needs to give you a good smacking.’
Giacomo is crying into his knees. ‘I don’t know what he said,’ he repeats. ‘He talks – like a foreigner.’
Grandmother hurries in, tightening the cord around her dressing gown and looking grey with sleep and suspicion at the same time. ‘What’s the boy doing here? What are you crying for, Giacomo? Why aren’t you in bed?’
Grandfather answers for him. ‘He’s come to me with a pack of lies. Spends all his time inventing stories.’
‘What’s this? What’s this?’ Grandmother pulls Giamono to his feet. ‘What’s he saying?’
‘He says he saw his father.’
Nonna stares fiercely into Grandfather’s face and then into Giacomo’s. ‘No, you did not.’
Giacomo nods and tears fly off his cheeks. ‘I did, Nonna. In the garden. He called me and he said – but he talks like a foreigner and I couldn’t understand, Nonna.’
‘And then?’
‘And then he went away.’
‘Where?’
‘I don’t know,’ Giacomo cries, and flings himself at his grandmother’s soft woollen middle. ‘I don’t know.’
She pushes him away. ‘Get to bed, boy. Get to bed at once.’
Isabel emerges from under the duvet at the sound of the door opening. It is dark now but against the white wall by the door, she sees Giacomo standing.
She draws up her knees to her chest and lies against the pillow, looking at him. ‘If Nonna hears you –’ she warns.
Giacomo tiptoes up to her, setting the floorboards creaking. He stands then, not looking at her lying against her pillows but at the window behind her bed, as if looking at someone in the silent garden.
She reaches out her hand and pulls at him till he sits down on the edge of her bed. ‘Now tell me, where did you go?’ she asks, and her voice sounds very like her grandmother’s, it is so prim and censorious.
When he does not reply but continues to stare, she gives his wrist a pinch.
It makes him talk. ‘I went up the hill to look for the owl,’ he says. ‘You know, it lives in the wall by the pine tree –’
‘And did you see it?’ Isabel asks in her grown-up voice, not really interested.
‘No,’ says Giacomo, ‘but I saw Father.’
Isabel flings away his hand in contempt. ‘You are a liar, Giacomo.’
‘I am not lying. I saw Father.’
‘Oh, so you saw Father,’ she mimics in a mocking tone. ‘And what did he do – give you chocolate, I suppose?’
‘No. He had nothing. Not even shoes. He was barefoot. And –’
‘And?’
‘He had no clothes.’
Isabel gives a whoop and slaps his knee playfully. This is play after all, not serious. Her legs unfold, bare under the duvet. She grins at Giacomo’s joke. ‘And – what did you see?’
‘Nothing. He had a white cloth tied around his waist, like an apron,’ Giacomo tells her, ‘and he was very thin.’
‘Yes, Father is thin,’ Isabel agrees, wanting to join in the joke. ‘And what did he do?’
‘I said – Father, and I went to him, and he said, Giacomo, Giacomo –’
‘Oh, like that?’ Isabel mocks. ‘Like an owl? Perhaps it was the owl.’
Giacomo looks down at her at last. ‘He spoke to me but I couldn’t understand him.’
‘Father mumbles,’ Isabel agrees. She likes to pretend she remembers him.
‘No, he didn’t mumble. He spoke very clearly – but in a foreign language.’
Isabel’s eyes look blurred. ‘Father can speak many languages,’ she says, bored.
‘But I couldn’t understand. Then he went away – and I don’t know what he said,’ he wails in spite of himself.
‘Don’t be a baby,’ Isabel says serenely.
‘I’m not –’
‘You are. You’re crying like a baby.’ She grasps his arm and tugs. ‘Lie down here and be quiet, you baby,’ she orders him, and shifts to make room.
He unfolds himself upon her sheets but will not come under her duvet which she holds up invitingly. He lies stretched out straight, his hands folded on his chest. ‘Father has a beard,’ he remembers. ‘He looked like the painting of Jesus in church.’
Isabel edges close to him, her knees hunched, touching him with them. ‘Perhaps it was Jesus,’ she teases.
‘Perhaps,’ he sighs sadly, and suddenly yawns.
She does not want him to sleep. She puts out her finger, digging him in the ribs, and sets about tickling him till he laughs.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I wish to acknowledge my debt to the following books for much of the material of my novel:
The Mother by Wilfried, Sri Aurobindo Society, Pondicherry, 1988; Mother’s Chronicles (I – Mirra; II – Mirra the Artist; III – Mirra the Occultist) by Sujata Nahar, Institut de Recherches Evolutives, Paris, 1985; Divine Dancer, Ruth St Denis by Suzanne Shelton, Doubleday & Company Inc, 1981; An Unfinished Life, Ruth St Denis, Harper & Brothers, 1936.
I have also drawn upon the following for information and instruction:
Iravati Karve’s essay ‘On the Road’ in The Experience of Hinduism, ed. Eleanor Zelliott & Maxine Berntsen, State University of New York Press, Albany, New York, 1988; Autobiography of a Yogi by Paramahansa Yogananda, Jaico Publishing House, Bombay, 1985; Hidden Journey by Andrew Harvey, Henry Holt & Co, New York, 1991; The Thousand-Petalled Lotus by Maha Sthavira Sangharakshita (aka D.P.E. Lingwood), Heinemann, London, 1976; My Guru and His Disciple by Christopher Isherwood, Eyre Methuen, London, 1980; The Ochre Robe by Swami Agehananda Bharati (aka Leopold Fischer), Allen & Unwin, London, 1961; Confessions of a Sannyasi by Mukunda, Atlantic Publishers & Distributors, New Delhi, 1988; Flowers of Emptiness by Sally Belfrage, The Dial Press, New York, 1981; Siddhartha and The Journey to the East by Hermann Hesse, translated by Hilda Rosner, Peter Owen Ltd, 1954, 1956; Flight of the Swan by Andre Oliveroff, E.P. Dutton & Co, Inc, New York, 1932; Inayat Khan by Elisabeth de Jong-Keesing, East-West Publications, The Hague, 1974; The Mystics, Ascetics, and Saints of India by John Campbell-Oman, T. Fisher-Unwin, London, 1903; The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, translated into English by Swami Nikhilananda, Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center, New York, 1977; The Other Mind by Beryl de Zoete, Victor Gollancz, London, 1953; Indian Dancing by Ram Gopal & Serozh Dadachanji, Phoenix House Ltd, London, 1951; Dances of the Golden Hall by Ashok Chatterjee, Indian Council for Cultural Relations, New Delhi, 1979; Forbidden Journey, the Life of Alexandra David-Neel by Barbara and Michael Foster, Harper & Row, San Francisco, 1987; A Mystic Link with India, Life Story of Two Pilgrim Painters of Hungary by R.K. Raju, Allied Publishers Ltd, New Delhi, 1991; articles by Joan L. Erdman in Bansuri, The Drama Review, Selected Reports in Ethnomusicology and the collection Arts Patronage in India: Methods, Motives and Markets, edited by her and published by Manohar Publications, New Delhi, 1992; the paintings of Nicholas and Svetoslav Roerich, Elisabeth Brunner and Edward Hopper; and information on education in Egypt provided by Carolyn Berkey.
Special thanks to the Rockefeller Foundation Center in Bellagio, Italy, where I started work on this book in March 1992.
Anita Desai
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Epub ISBN: 9781409015529
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Published by Vintage 2001
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Copyright © Anita Desai 1995
Anita Desai has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
The author is grateful for permission to quote ‘Muerte’/‘Death’ from Poet in New York by Frederico Garcia Lorca, translated by Greg Simon and Steven White (Viking, 1989), copyright © the Estate of Frederico Garcia Lorca 1940, translation copyright © the Estate of Frederico Garcia Lorca and Greg Simon and Steven White 1988. She also expresses her thanks to Chatto & Windus for permission to quote from ‘Ithaca’ from Collected Poems of C. P. Cavafy, translated by Rae Dalvern; to Milan Kundera for permission to quote from Immortality by Milan Kundera; and to Peter Owen Publishers for permission to quote from The Journey to the East and Siddhartha by Herman Hesse.
First published in Great Britain by William Heinemann 1995
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