I opened the door. Instead of the armed host that I should have seen, I perceived in a corner, leaning on a pike, a thin old man whose tall stature seemed further elongated by the presence of a narrow white beard, formed in a tress, which fell almost to his feet. He darted a terrible gaze at me and spoke a few severe words in a dialect unknown to me. Through his parted robe, I saw that he had a wooden leg.
I had such a need to speak to someone that I uttered a sigh of relief when I saw Li Tai appear. He was the one who spoke first, and in abundance.
There were conjunctions of planets that announced abortive projects. His personal method, based on rigorous calculations, permitted him to evaluate with exactitude the equilibrium of good and evil. Now, that evening, the equilibrium had been destroyed and evil had triumphed. There was a star, the mysterious star that only shines over the land of India, that was about to disappear. It could still be perceived intermittently, then it would enter into slumber; it would go to place itself in the unknown and very distant region where the stars sleep.
Fortunately, he was interrupted by the old man with the wooden leg. He seemed irritated. He struck the ground with his pike and decided to go away, having said more things that we did not understand.
“He’s a Pathan,” Li Tai told me. “A few others have come like you and gone. It’s never the courage that is lacking. When the stars are contrary, it is the direction that is at fault. Whatever the force of the wind might be, the vessel turns according to the tiller.”
My disarray was so great that I told Li Tai the story of everything that had happened to me since the moment when Assad, Man Singh and Miran had come to find me during the night.
“Do you know Mourtazan Khan?” Li Tai asked me.
I had heard mention of that powerful Rajput, a friend of the Emperor, but I had never had occasion to see him.
“By the description you’ve given me, I’m sure that it is him who is accompanying Selim and that it is him who was the first to proclaim him Emperor. He is the only one to possess a voice of such resounding timbre, the power of which is to play a role in influencing souls.”
I saw that he was considering me gravely.
“If you are wise,” he said, “you will prepare yourself for death.”
“What?”
“The first thing of which Selim will think is making sure of his power by making all the overly zealous partisans of Khosro disappear. He will not go against that custom of all sovereigns. But death is very little and it is even necessary to rejoice when it comes.”
Doubtless my visage did not express any joy, for he went on: “Think of the new worlds that you will contemplate. You must often have asked yourself questions about the state that will follow death. Your curiosity is finally about to be satisfied.”
I replied that my curiosity was exercised far more over things of this life than on what might happen in an uncertain existence in which one is deprived of the precious support of form. I hoped moreover—I only said that to reassure myself—that the powerful men who had pushed me would not fail to defend me. Man Singh was renowned for the grandeur of his soul and the wisdom of Miran was discussed throughout India.
“Child!” said Li Tai. “Man Singh has acquitted himself with you, since he defended you, Miran has become too wise. Courage decreases as wisdom grows. First of all, you are a foreigner, which is an entitlement of death at this moment. Then, those great individuals will feel that in order to maintain themselves among the other great individuals, they ought to show manifestations of disloyalty. A new period began to unfold the moment that Akbar’s soul drew away from the earth. Believe me, prepare for death.”
I objected that after drawing up my horoscope he had announced that I would be bitten by a cobra and that it would lead to paralysis.
He had completely forgotten the cobra. He shrugged his shoulders and in a tone of confidence, he said: “Death is by far the best solution. But it is necessary to prepare for it. My own life is hanging by a thread. The study of the stars is contrary to Muslim orthodoxy. The fanatical mullahs are going to demand my head. I’ve been preparing for death since this morning, and I’m joyful. Through a telescope, the stars remain extremely small. I’m certain that the soul can fly a long way, as far as the conception of infinity permits. Mine is immense.”
I listened distractedly. A prodigious appetite for life possessed me. I deliberated within myself as to what it was appropriate to do. I went to the door and studied the palace and the gardens. Night had fallen. Lights were wandering here and there, others vaguely illuminating the mashrabiyas screening the windows. I thought that I was in the one place where it was inappropriate to remain. Selim’s men might have caught wind of the rendezvous arranged for this hall, and it was at risk of being surrounded at any moment.
I heard furtive footsteps and saw a shadow coming toward me. I uttered a sigh of relief on recognizing Omar Ali.
“Come,” he said to me.
I said a rapid adieu to Li Tai and I followed him outside, but he only took me a little further than the astronomer’s house to a place where the banks of the Jumna limited the imperial gardens. While walking he brought me up to date rapidly.
Selim was Emperor, even though the Court and the people were unanimously in favor of Khosro. The fear that people had of him had brought him to the throne more easily that love would have done. That fear had paralyzed all resolutions and I was the only one to have attempted to realize what had been decided. They were searching for me. The wretched Rajoura had put armed dervishes at all the doors. I was to be slaughtered without explanation. It was necessary to flee, to quit Agra immediately.
We descended a stone stairway accommodated in the slope of the bank. I saw several boats without lanterns lined up in succession. On the water, where a few stars were reflected, they made long patches of shadow. I found them surprisingly beautiful because of the speed that their slim form revealed.
“They’ve been prepared at hazard, in case of fighting and defeat. The boatmen belong to Man Singh and they’ll take you as far as you desire. Man Singh also instructed me to bring you this.”
He handed me a small package wrapped in leather, which, I judged on touching it, had to contain gold. He approached a boatman standing on the sand and spoke to him in a low voice. Then he returned to me.
“There’s no wind. You have only to allow yourself to be carried by the current. Don’t stop at Tawah, whose governor will have been alerted. Much further on, you’ll find a small village called Kalpi, where there’s no garrison. But it would be better to quit the Jumna before then and try to reach Goa or Surat. There are Dutch trading-posts in Lahore, and even Jesuits, who might hide you. Think about the best course to take.”
One never gives thanks for the great services on which life depends. The word thanks represents trivial currency that one uses for petty transactions. I climbed into the boat silently. There were two oarsmen and a third who detached a mooring-rope and rolled it up with disconcerting slowness.
I was suddenly seized by a desire to lie down on the ground and await events. That discouragement came too late. I felt a shock, as if a large bird had fallen on me. Omar Ali had thrown me his cloak.
“The night will be icy,” he said to me. “You’ll be glad to have it at midnight.”
Was there a charm in that cloak? All my combative strength returned. I put my hand on the hilt of my sword. I had a desire to go back, to run to the palace and hurl myself at those who did not respect the will of the great dead Emperor, the admirable Akbar.
The boat started to move slowly. I felt Omar Ali’s arms around my neck.
“May God protect you,” he murmured.
THE TOMB OF THE SWORD
God protected me in accordance with that wish. He did even more. He penetrated me and transformed me. Like the warrior in the Iliad of whose name I am unsure because of my incomplete studies, whose body, steeped in a marvelous water, became invulnerable, he gave my soul the invulnerability of detachment.
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The boat glided noiselessly. Skeletal rocks loomed up on both sides of the Jumna. The beauty of the world appeared to me as hard and cold as the destiny I had before me. A fortunate arrangement of human nature dictates that when one loses certain goods, they immediately cease to be indispensable. The contrary is also true. But perhaps the words of Li Tai were acting within me. I thought seriously about death, for in weighing up the pros and cons I estimated that my chances of living were quite slim. Rajoura would be unable to forget me. He was both fat and perverse, and hated thin men of normal mores. Selim was scarcely emperor when he had started a search for me. I only had one night’s start. Couriers would depart the next day and wherever I went I would be recognized by my costume, the sumptuousness of which would cause my doom. And I envisaged above all the necessity of having myself killed while defending myself, in order to avoid certain tortures, like that of impalement, the idea of which was unbearable to me.
On the other hand, I said to myself, was it wise to die abruptly and without preparation? Li Tai was right. Death is not very redoubtable, on condition of entering the new region whose doors one is opening with a firm soul exempt from regrets.
There was a little water in the bottom of the boat. There always is, in the boats of all lands. And I wondered why those who occupy themselves with boats do not render them absolutely watertight. That problem, insignificant by comparison with those that preoccupied me, nevertheless contributed to sending me to sleep.
I woke up with a great mental lucidity, feeling that many graver problems had found their solution while I slept, as if they had been examined by a nocturnal sage who had a secret existence within me.
Dawn was about to break. The Jumna appeared to me to be narrower, between higher banks. Clumps of palm trees formed isolated groups here and there, which seemed to be making signs. In the bottom of the boat the water was no more abundant. Had someone emptied it out? It would have been puerile to make enquiries.
The sage that makes decisions during the night had settled on a plan.
The brilliant young man who had conquered the favor of Akbar was condemned. He had to disappear. The people of India have other divisions than those of Europe. There are, at the summit, those who dispose of wealth, arms and costumes and who travel on elephants or in bizarre ox-carts. They recognize one another by their facial features or the houses they inhabit. But below them, there is an immense multitude of naked men who have no house, sleep under the trees and are eternally traveling on the pretext of making pilgrimages. They live on mendicity and no one knows whether they are simple beggars or ascetics who are thinking about God. It sometimes happens that they are both, for the profession of mendicant is considered as infinitely honorable, and certain beggars are superior to the highest dignitaries. I had heard the great Katoual, who had the entire police of Agra under his orders, say that many criminals could not be apprehended because they had rid themselves of everything that made them a particular individual and become one of those anonymous naked men. I resolved to disappear into that human ocean too.
The sun appeared and the heights that bordered the Juma lowered as if it had melted them. I perceived the low houses of a village in the distance. I made a sign to the boatman that I wanted to be set down there.
I deliberated for a moment as to whether I ought not to divide between them the entire contents of the little leather bag that I had received the previous evening. I rejected the thought. A sudden and excessive fortune could only trouble those simple creatures, I gave them a gold mohur to share and they prostrated themselves, touching their heads to the sand of the shore. The word Akbar was in the words of thanks that they pronounced, and I took a bittersweet joy from that.
The blade of my épée was chipped several times against stones while I was digging. That would have afflicted me at any other time, but in digging that tomb, it no longer had any effect on me.
For it was a tomb that I was digging: the tomb of my sword.
I thought about the Rue des Couteliers in Toulouse and Jean-Baptiste Phalipon, an extraordinary artist in steel and the possessor of ancient secrets relative to that metal. It appeared to me for the first time that Phalipon had a diabolical visage. He never sold a dagger without saying: “You can open your man in two with a single thrust.”
Are not sharp and trenchant weapons instruments of evil, since, as soon as one makes use of them, one causes dolor and death?
And while digging, an extraordinary sentiment took possession of me. I had been accompanied by an evil sand cruel spirit of nature, whose body was that sword, of which I had been proud for such a long time. It had only served me to kill. It was a companion of perversity, the agent of an immense force that had delegated it to me. That companion had driven me to many evil actions. It had stimulated my pride and my violence. Why had I not rid myself of it sooner? The moment when I was about to separate myself from it was blessed among all.
When I had dug a sufficiently deep hole, I placed my épée therein, and the bag of gold coins. I threw over them my splendid turban, which had been the astonishment of men, my belt and all my garments. I cut my hair but kept, temporarily, the sandals that I had tied crudely with string, for my feet would have been too rapidly lacerated by the brambles of the path. Then I replaced the earth that I had removed and trampled the soil in order to erase the trace.
Then I felt a great calm, and a kind of joy that I had never experienced before descended into me. I had just buried the evil genius of my life. I was alone and I was free. I would have liked to thank someone, but I did not know who and I postponed until later the elucidation of the problem of the spiritual benefactor who had guided my actions and orientated my destiny.
I went back down to the bank of the Jumna and I disturbed the birds that were fluttering over the water. They must not have been accustomed to humans, for they did not fly far. I covered my hands with mud and I threw it over my face in order that the mud would have effaced my features when the sun had dried it and no one would be able to detect my age I had seen certain ascetics wearing that mask and observed that it rendered them more respectable. Then I coated my hair and the rest of my body.
The sacrifice of my cleanliness was painful to me at the time, but on seeing myself in the water, so different from myself, I was filled with satisfaction at having achieved the result that I wanted.
When I passed the tomb of my sword again, I was not surprised to see an enormous scorpion of particularly hideous appearance wandering next to the stones I had thrown over it. Nature is full of such singular correspondences.
And suddenly, the spirit of the new man that I was, by external appearance, was occupied by a single image, that of my mother. I sometimes thought about her, but, without taking account of it, I rejected the thought of her, feeling that it was inappropriate to mingle it with the life that I was leading. Was it because my life had changed direction? It seemed to me that she was beside me and that she replaced the evil genius that I had just quit.
What had become of her? Was she still alive? Was she waiting for me in the house in the Rue Malcousinat? At the moment when I was about to leave Surat I had confided to a Jesuit who was about to embark for Cadiz and was to return to Flanders via Spain, the mission of taking her news of me. He had promised me to turn aside from his route and pass through Toulouse. But had he done it?
I had such a real sentiment of her presence that when I found myself in the presence of two paths that took different directions, I thought I saw her on one of them making me a sign to follow her. That was the path I took. The one I left behind me was the one that led to the village I had seen. I did not get far without regrets, because I was beginning to feel hungry and wanted to experiment with the resources of the estate of mendicant.
I was to learn subsequently that that decision had saved my life. Soldiers sent in my pursuit arrived there the following day and I would have had every chance of being captured.
I endured great suffering. I knew hunger and thirst and the
torment that insects make you endure, the search for shelter in the bleak extends of sand, the fear of ferocious beasts and the wait for the first ray of sunlight after icy nights. I encountered poor folk so charitable that I cannot think of them without being moved, and others who chased me away, throwing stones at me, and giving as a reason the sign I had traced on my forehead with charcoal, without knowing its meaning.
Prudently, in imitation of mendicant ascetics that I had seen on the roads in Agra, I simulated a vow of silence. At first I did so timidly, but I had perceived that it caused no astonishment and assured me almost everywhere of respect and a bowl of rice. Thus, I did not have to respond to any interrogation, indicate any place of provenance, nor goal of pilgrimage. I traveled impenetrably in my robe of mud. But the nights were so cold, the rains so abundant, that I was obliged to recall the words of Sri Narinda, to whom Li Tai had once conducted me.
Remember that your robe ought not to be made of a single piece but of old fragments that you have found yourself and sewn together.
Then I searched among the ordure, on the edge of villages, for whatever cloth I could find. But I could not succeed in sewing the shreds together. It was an old man who saw me struggling with those rags who did it for me, with a long thorn, of which he also made use to scratch his head.
“O Gautama,” he said to me—and that word returned incessantly to his lips, which had not made a vow of silence—“I do not see on these fragments of cloth any trace of the putrescence of the dead. A veritable Gautama ought not to wear as a garment anything that he has taken from a cadaver.”
And, so saying, laughing, the old man turned the meager face of a joyful specter toward the sun. For it is a great enigma that one cannot resolve without having lived it, that the most miserable life incites the greatest joy.
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