‘But I don’t believe it. I can’t. It’s all lies, lies and more lies.’
She let him talk on.
‘Love, marriage, home, children, parents, friends, relations; charity, fidelity, nobility, brotherhood, religion. Everything is a lie. Myths created to keep the world going, to preserve it from chaos, to prevent people from being too inquisitive... Don’t you agree?’
She smiled. ‘If I said yes, it would be a lie, too.’
He pondered, and said slowly, ‘I guess you’re right.’
His voice rose again. ‘But I can’t bear the people accepting all of it blindly, believing it and defending it with all their heart and soul. I feel like asking everyone: Why do you live? What is it that you live for? What makes you live?’
He laughed a sudden, bitter laugh.
‘Imagine stopping everyone in the streets and asking them such questions! Imagine their complacency-corsets melting and leaving them limp and invertebrate, their smoke-ring haloes vanishing and leaving their dull, bald heads visible, their three-piece suit of stupidity flying away, exposing their pink middle-age fat rolls! Imagine!’
She cut in gently, yet firmly, ‘You have no right to ask such questions. You will shake them, you will startle them, you will make every one of them commit suicide. It will be the end of the world.’
‘Then you think they should be left alone - to play, to be three blind mice?’
‘Until you have something definite to offer instead, you have no right to take away what they have now. All you have, at present, is doubt. A diet of thorns.’
‘Can there be anything final except doubt? Perhaps everything ends in a question mark.’
‘Perhaps. We can only search and keep on searching.’
‘I wonder how you can be so quiet about all this. I envy your quiet. I hate it, too.’
She smiled silently.
‘How is it that you’re so happy?’
‘It’s not happiness, my dear, it’s peace. You know what Disraeli said: Peace is better than happiness. Happiness is relative; peace is absolute.’
He was about to retort something sarcastic, but he looked at her and kept quiet.
‘I wonder how you know so much. After all, you’re even younger than I am.’
‘I didn’t tell you anything new. I merely pointed out some of the things that were in you, of which you were not very familiar.’
He shook his head.
‘No, I’ve never known these things. Particularly peace. I’ve always thought, it’s just around the corner, there will be a stretch of silent blue sea shore, but it has always turned out to be merely a busy Silent Zone street. A few yards, and then there’s again the usual clamour.’
He threw his head up. The intense tortured voice went on...
*
‘Years ago, when I was young, when the self was one, there was only one need, there was the need of only one. Then the self split and I thought the parts complemented each other, supplemented each other. I thought I would be self-sufficient, complete in myself. I felt very independent and proud and happy.
‘But it wasn’t true. Each of the selves began demanding things, needing things. Now there are so many needs, so many desires.
‘And the torture of writing. The task of translating into words every scene and sound, every feeling, every thought, every shred of music. An almost impossible task. I curse it, yet I can’t leave it. It’s like an asthmatic gasping for breath. If you stop struggling, you cease living. I love it and I hate it.
‘It’s the same with people, too. This huge, heaving love in me for people. I would crush them to my lotus heart, to my granite heart. It almost makes me incapable of concentrating love on one particular person. Yet -
‘I walk with people, I love them, yet I’m not merged with them - except rarely.’
‘Don’t let it worry you,’ she interrupted, ‘you have found others. You are finding yourself now. Later, you will find that you and others are really one.’
‘And then the torture of feeling, of thinking, of desires, of dreams. To carry the pain-burden of the times; to sort out the dirty, torn, bloodstained bandages, to fling them into the boiling cauldron of poetry and bring them back, fresh, white, strong and clean...
‘I’m also worried by the flaws in me -’
‘Don’t. Insincerity, hardness, egotism. Yes, they are there. And it’s a good thing, too. They act as an astringent. They tone feeling, mould it into form, prevent it from going flabby, soft, vague and useless. You can’t sculpt with a rose petal; you need to use a chisel.’
‘You once said that the end of everything is, or should be, saintliness. You still believe it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Perhaps too many people believe it. That’s why there are so many crosses, so many graveyards, so many bleached bones strewn in the desert.’
‘I never said goodness should be synonymous with weakness, did I?’
He agreed reluctantly.
‘All right. Agreed: The end of everything is, or should be, saintliness - or goodness, call it what you will! But what about the beginning?’
‘I don’t think the beginning matters very much. There are too many births taking place in mangers, prisons, groves and huts.’
‘You say flaws don’t matter - in the beginning. But what about the conflicts that tear you? As for me, it’s the same with society as it is with people. I love it and yet I hate it.’
‘Every man is an island balanced precariously in the very hungry, very angry sea-mouth of society.’
‘One false step and you’re in quicksand!’
‘Then there’s life. Being young and impatient, I’m against all escape. But sometimes I can’t decide what is escape and what is not. Everything seems to have two sides - at least two!’
‘Everyone escapes. You escape into your writing, I into thinking.’
She raised her head and looked through the window at the moonlight-strewn world.
‘One should live in life, but it’s suicidal to escape into life. It is equally suicidal to escape from life.’
He sneered. ‘You mean lotus leaf and dew drop and all that sort of thing?’
She looked at him and smiled. ‘Lips always poised for a kiss or a sneer!’
He softened and smiled back.
‘Then there’s love. The heart blows a soap bubble, claps its hands in joy at the rainbow girdling the globe, and goes to live in it, disregarding the warnings and sneers of the cold, dry, wise head.’
She nodded. ‘The heart is ever young, the head sometimes wise.’
‘Yours seems to be an exception. How cleverly you set me on my feet! You don’t know how infuriated and humiliated I felt.’
‘You are very young and impressionable and I was worried to see you becoming a faithful shadow, a stagnant pool. You are too precious to be a mere reflector. Also, it confines me and I’m still too young to stop growing.’
‘What is mirrored is imprisoned. To set it free, the mirror must be broken.’
He shook his head. ‘I hope to understand you some day.’
‘In the meanwhile, don’t go searching for love. Remember it’s always in you, an unlimited supply... Flood drought-affected areas with it. Raise green, make it flower.’
He mocked. ‘And in the meanwhile, walk with thunder in your blood and lightning in your teeth, and whole fields of stubble covered black cotton soil in your heart.’
He suddenly became serious. ‘But peace? And quiet? And silence? You do not know the heavy traffic in my blood, the heavy machinery plant, the race tracks.
‘All the roar of city streets, all the roar of waterfalls, night seas, hurricanes, aeroplanes, machine guns, printing presses, railway junctions, bus and tram terminuses, popular coffee houses, election meetings, cinemas, all of this runs in my blood. Instead of red corpuscles, I have these roars.
‘But,’ his eyes widened, ‘all the silence of suburbs, forests, pools in deserted places, moonlit skies, love-lit nights, of winter, of proud sorrow, of exquisite grace, of small pale flowers - all this is in my blood, too. Instead of white corpuscles, I have these silences.’
She listened attentively, nodding now and then.
*
He shook his head slowly. ‘I never talk like this. It makes me - and others - afraid of myself. But with you, it’s different. When I talk with you it’s as if I talk with my soul.’
She nodded, her face grave.
He laughed. ‘You know, when I first began to write, I vowed I’d never use words like love, heart, heaven, soul. I was sick of seeing them on every printed page - and in every unpublished line!’
‘It was natural. But I’m glad you grew out of that stage.’
‘Still, I haven’t been able to reach any definite stage, as yet.’
‘Be thankful for that. Arriving is ending. Never be in a hurry. Pollen dies when you force a bud open.’ ¸
‘But the lone long journey with only myself for company? I sometimes get sick and tired of the whole thing.’
‘Take a holiday from yourself. It may help you.’
‘But that is impossible. There is no myself. There is no country green to run away and bury myself in. There is only the fort area sea, Gateway, mansions, hotels, shops, theatres, buses, trams, taxis, cars, people, sun, heat, dust, din - and there is the rambling bourgeois suburb. There’s also, perhaps, the outskirts, villages, slums, backbays, with their hidden store of illicit liquor, opium dens, torn fishnets, salt heaps, manure pits, hideous orphanages, scrap dumps, cage brothels and dark narrow twisted alleys where knives flash, women scream and the children have no teeth. I haven’t, however, explored the area minutely.
‘That’s all. There’s no myself.
‘I can’t escape from myself because there is no such thing as myself. It’s like trying to escape air. Wherever I go, it is there.’
‘Then renounce holidays, strike the red dates off the calendar page. Don’t be eager to escape yourself. Be prepared to find it. Above all don’t be afraid.
‘You have still to walk farther. You have still to see silver clouds grow in hard black fields, still to see milk drops gather in the plumed heads of grass, still to see rainbow fish leaping from sea to strings.
‘You will see men and women stamping the earth and pressing their lips to it. Seeking to wring the dishcloth clouds and singing incense to the sky. You will see homes built of two eyes and a lamp.
‘You will. Have patience and walk on.’
He sat with bowed head. But his eyes glistened.
She looked at him, eyes narrowed with love. Then they rose and flew out of the window, to the bright, high, winter moon.
‘I think it’s time for you to go.’
His eyes jerked up and fastened to hers in appeal. There was a slight tremor in her calm, smiling lips.
He drew night from her eyes. Slowly he got up.
*
They stepped into the world snowed under with moonlight. Stars with sweet, fresh, shining young faces, innocent of all makeup and design, crowded the sky. Ballerina moon cast an indulgent yet demanding eye over them.
They stood looking at the night, at the light, at the darkness, at the foam-flecks of cloud. His face melted, breath cascaded out of parted lips: ‘It was a dark, inscrutable night. The moon, lead-eyed dissipate, caroused with giant negresses rolling their flame-white eyeballs in protest and delight.
‘A star sailed into view, trailed the moon patiently, like an old-fashioned wife - or a nymphomaniac.
‘This, the sky paved with cow-dung cakes, this, the moon, frightened but putting on a brave brass front, this, the incredibly agile star with its easy, opaque optimism, this is real and eternal.
‘Thus was it when the earth tore itself free, a gem fallen from its setting, and thus will it be when you and I and we are mica smithereens shrouding the bombed remains of Beauty.’
He was silent for a moment and then turned to her. She held out her hands and nodded slightly, as if to say, that’s good, or that’s right, or merely, you’re a dear.
He grasped her hands for a minute. Then there was a movement, the gate clicked and the world was bare again. She stood there for a while looking at the retreating figure, steadily growing small, the deep-etched smile on her face gentle as moonlight. Then she looked at the sky and the moon-drenched smile rippled.
The ripple was farewell, it was benediction.
17/2/1957
Deccan Herald
Editor: Winter is the fourth and final story in the quartet of stories Pastorale.
Rajalakshmi N Rao bio
Chandan Gowda bio