Now, Mouzaffer Khan, a great administrator of the Empire, a man devoted to Akbar, had been dead for many years.
In his embarrassment, Assad took a few steps, hesitated, and came back. He adopted the attitude that he habitually struck when he wanted to announce an Emir. The Emperor lowered his eyebrows gently and smiled in satisfaction. He made another sign to Assad. This time he asked for Todor Mal. Todor Mal was a man of war who had often fought beside the Emperor. He had been elevated to the highest dignities, because of his fidelity and also, it was said, because of his Buddhist faith. But he was dead.
Assad undertook the same pantomime, and thus the Emperor summoned and seemed to see grouped around his bed many faithful companions of his youth: friends, warriors and philosophers that he had loved, and whom the inexorable separator, death, had stolen from him. Thus appeared the mullah Azamuddin, who had instructed him in matters of religion when he was a child, and old Bayard, who walked on crutches, and Mounim Khan, who had the stature of a giant and had taught him to shoot a bow. There was Bairam, who had been with him at the siege of Tchitor, had run by his side through explosion of mine, had stood to his right when he had killed Djamal the Lion, had lent strength his soul before the pyre on to which the vanquished had precipitated the Rajput princesses. There were the Brahmins who had taught him the mysteries of Siva and the Parsees with whom he had measured the relationships that might exist between the element of fire and the divine spirit.
Every time that Assad received an order he took a few steps, and could not help repeating in a low voice the name of the man requested by the Emperor, and that name was repeated by the audience, who stepped back, as if to make way for the invisible newcomer.
There was also the ascetic Tchichti, celebrated for his sanctity.46 Often, alone and on foot, Akbar had gone in pilgrimage to the village of Sikri and he had meditated with him, sitting on a stone burned by the sun. Now the ascetic came in his turn to find the Emperor. When Tchichti’s name was pronounced, it was if a breath of veneration had blown between the colonnades of the hall, everyone bowed and made the taslim prescribed in the ceremonies for the greatest individuals.
Then the Emperor face brightened very slightly, and he had the appearance of listening to words that did not resonate. He had spoken the name of Faizi, the poet who had spent many evenings reciting fragments of the Mahabarata to him, and other sacred books of India. Faizi was the brother of Aboul Fazi, and it was Aboul Fazi, his friend, his adviser, almost his brother, whose measure, wisdom and sense of justice had guided him, that he named last. Aboul Fazi had been the intelligence of the Empire, and when his name had been pronounced, all heads bowed.
A great void was made around the Emperor’s bed; but it was only an apparent void. It was filled by all the companions who had followed the Emperor in the course of his long life. And everyone understood that a choice had presided over their summoning. There was not one Muslim among them. All of them were among those who, although penetrating to a greater or lesser extent the meaning of his work, had aided him to realize it. All of them, including the warriors, had had a human love of the ideal. They had wanted, with their master, to suppress hatred by suppressing the barrier of religions.
Some had aided him with their weapons, others with their intelligence, the poets by means of the meaning of their poems, the administrators by the exactitude of their accountability. And in designating them to witness his final hour, in pronouncing in a low voice the names of those he had judged good and just during his life, the Emperor had designated his successor. He had set aside his son Selim, the enemy of his work, and given the crown to Khosro. All the witnesses of the scene understood that, at the same time as they perceived the silent gathering of invisible friends.
In the hours when the soul is about to quit the body definitively, a man must already find himself in a region where the difference between the living and the dead is already not very sensible, if it even exists. The Emperor’s face had taken on an expression of calm quietude. The cares that tormented him had disappeared. All those he had loved were around him and his circular gaze contemplated them in turn as if to thank them for having come at the hour of his final deliberation.
The presence of the dead was so real that I had the sensation that they were crowded in the space that had been reserved for them. I headed toward the officer in command of the Gourzeberdars in order to indicate to him the urgency there was in moving back a little further the living grouped around the Emperor’s bed. But I stopped before reaching him. I had the perception that something had just happened. I was not the only one to take account of it. Assad quit his official attitude as the announcer of Emirs before the throne. I saw that Miran, who had kept his head bowed, raised it now and passed his hand over his long beard, wiping away the brilliant droplets that speckled it.
The summoning of the dead was over. The dead had come. They had grouped around the man who had summoned them. But, doubtless by virtue of a different custom and another conception of the measure of time, visits are infinitely short in their world, and they had departed as rapidly and as silently as they had come.
I considered the Emperor’s face. It had lost the tranquil peace that it had had before, and even its benevolence. He was no longer looking around. His eyes were fixed much further and much higher. He was already participating in a mode of life unknown to us. But what was distinguished was not, as is announced by the age and the just, a very seductive promise; nor was it a threat. He must already have glimpsed things absolutely foreign to human conceptions, incomprehensible things, toward which the soul only launches itself because it is borne by the unchangeable rigor of the law.
“What admirable serenity!” someone nearby said. It was less by virtue of serenity than a limited vision.
“At present, he can see the Unique God,” said a Parsee philosopher, mechanically raising toward the sky the shaft of a long golden pipe from which he was never separated, and which he had hidden in his garments.
For myself, I thought that it was not the Unique he was seeing, but that he was searching for a path in an immense dusk. And that dusk was floating, so far as I was concerned, above a desert of stone strewn with stunted cacti, exactly similar to the desert of Thar, where I had accompanied him in the course of an antelope hunt and which had made him say: “How lugubrious this desert it! I wouldn’t like to cross it.”
For in that unknown world, perhaps there are great deserts to cross.
But I did not have to search any further. The scene changed abruptly, as if another face of life and souls appeared after the stroke the invisible wand of death.
Hakim Ali, who had not ceased to hold the Emperor’s hand, put it down with infinite precaution on his breast and, turning toward the nearest witnesses he raised his arms slightly and made two or three movements of his head that signified: “It’s over.” Grief possessed him, but I would have sworn that at that moment, he was not penetrated by any other sentiment than the importance of his role.
A mortal silence ran through the fall like a wave, a silence that no one dared trouble and was strangely prolonged.
No one could tell how long that silence would have lasted, so much did everyone feel the impossibility of breaking it. Suddenly, a frightful cry rang out, at the same time as an old man fell to the ground as he uttered it. I recognized that cry; it was that of a hyena, in the evening, in the jungle. Kaouf, the old servant who accompanied the Emperor everywhere, imitated perfectly, and his master often asked him, in jest, while hunting, to utter it. There was an eddy around Kaouf, who was carried away without him ceasing to utter the cry of the hyena, a desperate snigger announcing the ineluctable victory of evil.
A few had run to Akbar’s beside, but the majority left the hall in haste, and it was visible in their gleaming eyes that they were hastening toward material interests more powerful than vain grief. I remembered then the role that I was to play and I searched with my eyes for the Gourzeberdars who had been designated as companions. I perceiv
ed near the door the tall stature of Abdullah, nicknamed the hirsute, and headed toward him. I had thought that a bad choice had been made in selecting him, for he was a Muslim and very pious.
My soul was full of excitement. I was about to collaborate in keeping alive the thought of the great man who had just died.
Glory to courage! Glory to the spontaneous impulse that victory gives! I do not regret anything, and if time went backwards, I would accomplish the same actions.
I took a few steps toward the courtyard paved with mosaics, where jets of water were making an unusual sound, and I cried, as had been prescribed:
“Khosro is our Emperor! He has been designated by his grandfather!”
I do not know why my words seemed not to spread, and to fall back in pieces around me. I saw Miran beside me and I searched for his gaze, but could not find it, and was surprised to see him drawing away rapidly, hiding his face in a large blue cloth, suddenly exaggerating the sobs by which he was shaken.
“Shut up”!” Abdullah said to me, as an order. “The moment has not yet come.”
It was, on the contrary, the decisive moment. But it passed.
“They’ve gone to fetch Sultan Selim” said another of the Gourzeberdars who had received the same order as me, in passing, and he made as if to draw away. But when he had taken two or three steps he came back toward Abdullah and me. His face, broadened by large side-whiskers, had taken on a cunning expression.
“Why are you still there?” he said to us in a low voice. “Believe me, the wise thing is to disappear.”
I was about to cry that his duty was to stay with us, but there was a great movement at the other extremity of the courtyard.
Selim had just appeared, surrounded by his friends and other unknown courtiers. He was standing very straight, with a deliberate majesty; a false grief caused him to make a grimace. He cut obliquely across the courtyard as quickly as possible, like a son who is running too late to a dead father, a beloved father. Weapons glinted all around him.
Everything happened in a matter of seconds. I darted a glance at Abdullah, at the same time as I braced myself to run.
“God is one and Mohammed is his only prophet!” He cried, raising his arms toward the sky, with an inspired expression.
The stupor of hearing such an inopportune speech but, faithful to my original promise, I cried again: “Khosro is our Emperor!”
And I precipitated myself toward Selim.
He did not even see me. Twenty arms seized me and threw me back. While I struggled, a great rumor rose up, and I heard nothing but the name of Selim repeated a hundred times over.
A man dressed in a crimson brocade robe with a mantle of the same color made a great solemn gesture and with a voice whose timbre was enormous, to which he skillfully gave an official character by the monotony of the intonation, as if he were rep[resenting the entire land of India and all the sky that covered it, he said:
“In accordance with the ancient usage of the Tchagatai Tartars, and in accordance with the will of Allah, the living son receives the heritage of the father, and Selim Shah becomes our Emperor.”
The voice was so powerful that it must have been audible far into the distance.
Half-fallen backwards, I saw a Mongol with a long beard who raised a sword above me as broad as that of an executioner. I drew my épée and parried the blow.
“Grief has rendered him mad! Leave him! I’ll guarantee his fidelity to Selim!” cried someone who threw himself between me and my aggressors.
It was a man who had traversed the courtyard to Selim’s left and whom I had not seen.
With amazement, I recognized Man Singh, who had renewed his orders to me an hour before.
“Lower your weapons!” he said, imperiously. “It is appropriate to meditate and not to fight.”
“God is one and Mohammed is his only prophet!” cried the Gourzeberdar Abdullah, raising his arms—and for the first time, in spite of the gravity of events and the death suspended above me, I noticed the astonishing stupidity of his features.
“God is one!” was repeated on all sides. The courtyard filled up. There were prayers, cries of dolor, and conspiratorial discussions. Dusk was falling rapidly. I lost myself among the groups and started running as soon as I was out of the courtyard.
My ideas were dancing in my head like insensate cavaliers in an obscure grassland. Where could I go? During the day, Man Singh had gathered the few men who were to lay their hands on Selim. He had recommended us, in case of failure, to go to a recently-constructed hall at the extremity of the palace and the gardens, where a few hundred soldiers were hidden, all Hindus, forming part of the elite troops who bore the sign of future Omrahs on their foreheads and were faithful to Khosro. The Daroga was to command them personally. There, all the Omrahs determined to impose Akbar’s grandson as Emperor would gather. That troop was to spread through the palace as seize all Selim’s partisans.
While I was running I sensed on all sides the manifestations of a strange and new life, made of dolor and the hope that all transformations give, even when they are bound to be unfortunate.
On the pacing stones, alternately black and white like a chessboard, I saw several Brahmins in yellow robes, arms raised in an ecstatic pose. They must have fallen into prayer at the news of Akbar’s death and they were still there, like the pawns of a mysterious game that God alone could move.
At the entrance to the garden, where two large white marble elephants stood guard, servants were arguing. Custom dictated that at sunset, two large lanterns placed on the elephants’ foreheads, should be it. The servant responsible had just lit one. He was one horseback under the neck of an elephant. But another was affirming that it was sacrilege and that mourning should be manifested by darkness. He picked up a stone and tried to break the lighted lantern.
A little further away, behind the walls of gray earth, real elephants were trumpeting strangely and agitating, as if they had understood the grandeur of the event that, if it did not trouble the life of the elephant population, was about to render more miserable the life of the human population. And above the walls I saw their trunks raised to the heavens as if for a funereal adieu, an animal prayer whose uncertainty rendered it more moving.
“Hakim Ali is a wretch!” said a grave man near to whom I passed, and whom I recognized as a physician from Delhi.
He was arguing with an old man who never ceased stamping his foot and repeating: “He gave him Ganges water every day, I witnessed that!”
“Yes, but it’s necessary that the Ganges water be passed through a saltpeter filter,” replied the physician from Delhi, sniggering. “The wretched Ali didn’t even know that Gages water only has all its powers if it’s poured into a silver jug.”
“Ganges water ought to be drunk without preparation!” said the old man, at the peak of exasperation.
“My master the Emperor Selim has already fixed the fate of the ignorant Ali.”
“Khosro is our Emperor!” I cried, in passing.
I launched myself into the great avenue of palm trees that bordered the circular canal that the Emperor had recently had dug, and on which junks had been placed for evening excursions.
I saw the two battens of the entrance door of a hall reserved for musicians open. With a solemn air they formed a cortege. The trumpeters placed themselves at the head, then came the cymbal-players and drummers, and the great ceremonial drum appeared last, with its guards. Where were they going and under what order?
I knew that Mourtazan Khan, a considerable individual, and the high functionaries of the Empire determined to raise Khosro to the throne, had gathered a large number of warriors in the city and ought, as soon as the news of Akbar spread, to appear at the main gate of the palace and make their entrance with Khosro. Perhaps I had only witnessed one episode in the drama. It was the arrival of Mourtazan Khan and the Omrahs accompanying Khosro that would decide everything. Perhaps they were already masters of all the exits and summoned the musicians for
I know not what ceremony.
“Who has been proclaimed Emperor?” I asked a man with a bird-like head who seemed to be leading the musicians.
He looked at me attentively.
“Who knows!”
“Where are you going?”
“Who knows?”
I continued on my way.
The canal was always furrowed by junks carrying the women of the harem, who hid behind colored veils disposed at the rear, but this evening it was deserted, or nearly so. A single junk was gliding slowly there is the declining dusk, and came to the shore near me, at a place where an oblique path lined by strange stone figures formed a communication between the canal and the palace where the harem was.
I ran. I nearly collided with a woman who was emerging hastily from the junk. The state of agitation that I was in did not permit me, at the time, to measure the audacity of her gesture—the abrupt, willful gesture with which she moved aside, or rather ripped away, the light fabric that hid her face. I had seen it for a second. It was Inès de Saldanna.
Consciousness requires an interval of time in order to make sure of the reality of an event. That interval went by while I continued running. I stopped. I went back. Perhaps I had been deceived by an apparition. The oarsman of the junk was striking the water with regular strokes and drawing away. The silhouette of a woman was running between the stone forms. I saw her turn round. I believe that she lifted a hand that held something, perhaps a rose, and she disappeared into the palace. I heard the door close.
I was only a few paces from the hall of the rendezvous. It was an immense room adjacent to the observatory of Li Tai and the court astronomers. It had been constructed with vast dimensions in order to contain a large telescope, on which Chinese workmen were laboring. Those same dimensions had caused it to be chosen for the assembly of Khosro’s partisans. It ought to have been vibrant with the presence of a numerous troop. It was, on the contrary, silent.
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