by Aashish Kaul
Waves lashing against stone. How I loved that sound, now coming to me all mixed up with the noise of the evening traffic on Quai d’Orsay. My pace had slowed down, and soon I fell under the spell of random thoughts.
I imagined us in a garden, walking along a path that cut through a flower bed beyond which lay a carpet of green, lush under a bright sun. The path dipped so very slightly and in time exposed a split – in the distance could be seen a baroque palace on whose white walls towering palms, standing like minarets in four corners, left interesting shadows as the rays broke over them. The branching paths met again at the palace gates.
At the fork, then, we parted. But why? That first step was the wrong step. In a moment everything vanished, and the palace hovered like a flame on the edge of vision. Only the path remained; unchanged, testing, as each walked for days, for months, for years, never meeting the other. Yet the desire did not extinguish even as the body perished and the soul melted away in its own nothingness.
Now we were at the fork again, and a fine rain was falling. It fell all the while we walked through disparate landscape, through water, air and ether, fell for an immeasurably long time. At last we entered the palace, time or rain seemed to have changed little. But what was this? Why did she look at me as if seeing me for the first time? Her eyes were lifeless like a mirror, reflecting all that fell to their lot. Eyes that had become a mirror, not of within but of without.
And yet I stood right there looking at her. She came a step closer and held me in her arms. Something remarkable happened then: in an instant we were inside the palace gates, amid the palms, the lawns, the flowers, the fountains. Off its courtyard, we found a room, empty except a huge triangular bed in a corner. Large mirrors on opposite walls expectantly waited to endlessly multiply the one image.
A careless nudge of a jogger broke my reverie, dissolving the last tremors of dream. What took form was the lustrous water of the Seine, the din of automobiles, lovers delighting in each other, the Tower – Paris.
It is then that I notice her, sitting on a bench, held captive by a book with a black leather binding. She appears to be enjoying herself, for a smile is collecting at the corners of her mouth. Her face, mysteriously elegant, is remotely familiar too, smooth forehead, hair straight and lustrous that curls very slightly near the shoulders. My stare disturbs her, and she moves her attention away from the book, directs it at me. Now her sight rests on me (or pierces through me?) for a moment or two, but then, dismissing me, promptly returns to the script. It is enough, this slight gesture on her part, revealing to me those clear brown eyes that mock me faintly.
Waiting in the queue for the ferry, I see her again, at the other end, enjoying the evening breeze. She is alone, unperturbed. At times, she looks away to gaze at the Tower that deflects the sun’s rays.
I found a seat in the penultimate row where the glass cover did not obstruct the view and observed how the wind and the dying sun had made the scene painting-like. About me, people moved chaotically to find seats of their choice.
Next to me is an unoccupied seat. Just then she walks into the ferry and comes up to me and inquires if I am holding it for someone. When I decline, she smiles and sits beside me. This is the time the dream has me in its clutch. She is saying something to me but I don’t hear or can’t hear. She is already inside me, she is me. Her face is my face too. How incredible! I can hear myself. And here, in Paris, of all places! I see the book in her lap. It is a Mallarmé. Oh, now she is telling her name. What was that? Tahiti? It depends, she says. It changes from one season to the next, from place to place, like names always do or appear to. But, I resist, that’s an island in the Pacific. That is how she is is all she offers. Yes, I think, you are an island drifting in a sea of countless, unknowable faces.
IV
Sitting beside her, consuming her presence, allows me hope. It drowns me in a sudden, vague happiness. She is listening to the voice from the handset that is describing the history of the palaces, the bridges, the museums that watch over the Seine. Light is fast fading from the air, letting in the darkness. The ferry’s slow pace, the darkening of the sky, the softly glowing façades, and her sweet, spicy smell, together work as a calmative. Now she is telling me that the tempo of the commentator’s voice is harmonious with the boat’s speed (in what all can women see harmony!). It gives the impression, she says, of someone whispering in your ear, someone here, next to you, watching the world as if through your own eyes but understanding its enigmas better.
For a moment, I look at her closely. Then I search for the handset which is dangling beside my seat. Pulling it by its metallic coil, I hold it to my ear. She strains a bit to control her laughter. Where are you? What are you thinking? First, I say nothing. But later, like a fool, I let her in. I tell her that she makes me happy.
I do? That’s all there is to it. A doubt, a pose. No, there’s more: It’s the evening, she says. Serene yet mischievous. Full of surprises, revelations. On evenings like these wishes come true.
I still held the handset to my ear. The voice coming from it was speaking of gargoyles, that they are nothing but sculpted gutters acting as spouts to carry water clear of a wall. Scores of them jutted out of the walls of Notre Dame, its edges, and its spire. The lady in front of me hurriedly clicked pictures before it or whatever was left of it vanished into the darkness.
The ferry took a turn about the cathedral, circumscribing Ile de la Cité. Wasn’t that Hugo peeping from behind a gargoyle? Because of Notre Dame, of course. Hugo, and not Proust. Proust could never have been up there. His image was of a ghost lying in bed, half-covered by a blanket, writing in the light of a lamp, and hemmed in by those cork-lined walls, silently sinking to death in the web of his own memories or what he was trying to make of them. It was too prodigious an impression to overcome: to interrupt his undertaking seemed a disservice to literature I could ill afford. I settled with Hugo.
The ferry has just crossed Pont Neuf on its way back when she speaks again. This time she probes the past: Where is she? I don’t know, so I shake my head.
She is looking at me, but her gaze is soft and there is just a flicker of irony in it. Her lips are now nearly touching my ear. She’s made a suggestion. A place where we can go dancing. In fact there are two. A close friend, she confides, plays at a nightclub in Montmartre – Odéon it’s called – and sometimes at a bohemian jazz bar, too, in St-Germain-des-Prés. Tomorrow, at eight.
The Tower was sparkling with a colourful display of lights. My dream was nearing its end; come to think of it, it couldn’t go much longer. Soon, I reasoned to myself, the ferry will hit the dock, passengers will disembark one after the other, and so will she. No, I thought, not yet.
Tomorrow, certainly. But what now? I’d like you to stay a bit longer. I am almost ashamed of myself. Little control over my tongue off which words bounce forth impetuously. She says she has to meet somebody. A friend who once bailed her out of a fix. She doesn’t need to say more. But she does: You’d agree that friendships formed in adventure, tragedy, or misdeed are closer to heart than those cemented by affection or respect. Darkness is more beautiful than the light, is it not? So full of intrigue and infidelities. Besides, he leaves for Egypt tomorrow and proposes never to return.
Ah, the poet she is turning out to be! What can I say to hold her back? Already I see them drinking and eating, discussing their past that somehow binds them intimately. I see her in his arms, their bodies close as they dance to soft music. What is this? Jealousy? Perhaps she has seen it too, for she speaks from under the shade of empathy: We can meet early tomorrow if you aren’t busy. We can roam around and then later we can go to the club.
Although I plan to visit the library at Sorbonne the next day, I keep this to myself. She is fast learning the game, offering me a continuum. I just have to pretend that her evening away is a part of the dream, and in no time she will be with me once more. We are the last to disembark, walking close to one another. On climbing the stairs that join the
pier to Pont d’léna, standing beneath the shining Tower, the shaft of light at its crown rotating above the darkened city like the outstretched limb of a compass, she suggests we meet at the Boulevard Saint-Michel, near the entrance of the Luxembourg.
That is close to where I stay, I reply for the sake of it.
So much the better. You won’t be late then. See you at noon!
O you poor bastard, full of expectancy and loneliness, what an engaging phantom you had crafted to lighten your burden.
Once she had left, I started walking towards the train station. Not far from the station I saw an Italian bistro and thought of having something to eat. I found a table next to a window from where you could watch the trains cross the Seine every once in a while. There, waiting for my order, I reconstructed, little by little, the day that had not been uneventful.
V
Of the time I speak, the city was not as one sees it today. Like any other old city, it was a metropolis of reserve and character. Modern capital had not yet punctured its melancholy; life was more or less peaceful and without pretence. Under the veil of political and bureaucratic torpor, there was a certain playfulness in its spirit.
Winter was coming, that time of the year which always made the sky clear and blue. With a hint of chill in the noon wind, the sun’s warmth gave comfort. We had been to the cinema, and were now sitting on a bench beside an ice-cream parlour digging our spoons in a sundae. Close to the bench was a fig tree from where a myna whistled to us from time to time. Asya had been uncommonly reticent, and I had asked her about it a few times. She had denied this, yet I knew there was something to it. Nothing though that I couldn’t have dispelled as pointless.
But how wrong you are, how foolish. How you think light and bliss will last forever when the void is opening at your feet. And to fall into it is your only destiny. Oh, but why deviate? Come forth without further circumlocutions, and speak of how when night fell over that day and anytime thereafter you have known little peace. Tell how when you saw the void only too late you felt vertigo from which you could never recover. Like a ghost you wandered, consuming days aimlessly with a wish to reach the end of time and see beyond, to embrace it and at long last begin anew.
Her house wasn’t far away and we began walking towards it. She lived in one of those pretty places in the south of the city, close to the institute of technology, where it is so enjoyable to walk in the evenings. She was talking to me, but I was lost in strange images of the days ahead. Lamps that lit up the street threw faint shadows on the ground, a sickle of a moon was slowly climbing up in the sky. Suddenly there swelled in me an irresistible urge to embrace her, to make one final effort. First I held myself back, but then, unable to hold my reserve, I put my arms around her. She did not resist, but her body felt slightly stiff. I wasn’t discouraged: where the bond is strong, discouragement doesn’t come easily. I moved to kiss her, but she bent her head a little and my lips ended up brushing her cheek. Tears welled up in my eyes and, turning away without a word, I walked into the growing darkness.
I did not see her again. But my mind, rather obstinately, kept reliving the past – a past which had already started to look obscure and meaningless. A past you have to fight, a duel from which you don’t emerge free of scars.
In time time went astray. I couldn’t keep up with it. Days melted into each other, and I went tumbling through them, all along thinking of those eyes that had been so still they reflected whatever fell to their lot: those clear brown eyes had been a mirror not of within but of without.
Having spent a month or so in this timelessness, I decided a change of place might do me good. I called up my sister in London, where she taught at a city college, and on a damp December morning left the city.
VI
Whereas it had snowed in the night, a bright morning sun was shining above the mountains, stoking the air with light. Snow that had collected on the ground and in solemn nooks was starting to melt under its warmth. Misty vapours rose from it and quickly vanished into the brightness. Although I had watched the snow fall all night, I was not tired. The evening before, having drained away the weariness in the shower, I had gone to the clubhouse.
When I left the bar at about ten it was dark and cold outside, and I wasted little time to get to my room. It was comfortably warm, with the electric heater in the hearth doing the job well. I decided to play Goldberg Variations. In a while, it began to snow.
Next morning I thought of exploring the place. The previous day, walking through the bazaar, I had seen the spire of a church, and to its side the cupola of a building which had appeared round and big. I asked the caretaker about it. He told me that it was an old library, perhaps the oldest in this part of the country. It felt like a piece of luck, and seeing that I was interested he handed me a few more details. Thus I came to know that the library had some very rare books and first editions, and that it was more or less neglected by the authorities and would have fallen into disuse had it not been for the librarian, a foreigner, old and solitary, half blind, who continued to petition for and receive a yearly grant to run it. He informed me that the old man (they had never learnt how to pronounce his name, and now nobody remembered it) had no family and no one could tell exactly why and how he had come here of all places. He rarely left the library these days, but twice a week gave lessons to a few children from nearby villages. Aside from these children, he said to me, people up here have forgotten the old man and the library.
By then my mind was made up. A library hidden in the mountains seemed a little misplaced. It appeared as if, upset with the world, it had chosen its exile and with a half-blind old man for a guardian created for itself a peaceful oblivion.
At about noon I walked to the library. Amid the pines it was fairly cold, but the climb warmed me up a little. Here and there light broke through the green cover and birds chirped in chorus. The path went rising and falling and curving into the mountain. Then all at once the vista opened and I saw the abandoned church that in the silence appeared majestic; icicles that hung from its eaves were slowly melting away. To my left was the library which, together with the old church stood at the edge of a precipice that gave away into a deep narrow valley from where came the faint gurgling sound of a stream.
One of the large heavy doors was partly open and I slipped in. I came into some sort of a hallway. Here it was bright and warm, but the air had a whiff of that distinct smell which is produced by the slow decaying of paper. Beneath a large circular dome there were wide glass ventilators through which the outside light came into the building. From the centre-space beneath the dome tall open cabinets stretched out in every direction. Even-sized metal plates affixed at the top of each cabinet indicated the different categories: ‘PURE SCIENCES’, ‘LITERATURE’, ‘PHILOSOPHY’, so on and so forth. To my left was a large librarian’s desk that nearly concealed a wide cabinet made of pigeonholes. It was entirely free of cards. The whole place seemed to have turned inwards.
At first I saw no one, for the man who was quietly working in a corner under a feeble lamp was so small that it was not difficult to miss him in the vast surroundings. Merrily enjoying his work, he had not seen me. I felt a little apologetic to disturb him, but I called at last. My words had no effect on him. I called again. This time he raised his head and looked at me. I saw that his face was in proportion to his body, small and thin with a reddish complexion, a beak of a nose, and tiny eyes as if made of glass like a sparrow’s. His head nearly free of hair was kept warm by a woollen balaclava rolled up to just about his ears. His eyes had in them a somewhat searching look and at the same time a certain inner quiet.
About him were two stacks of paper. One blank and another covered with minute well-formed letters in purple ink, written in a delicate hand. A red hardbound book lay next to the stack of blank pages. Its spine told me it was a Carlyle – Sartor Resartus. I wanted to say something – anything – when, recovering from his thoughts, he asked in his faint and very slightly accented voice what I
thought of his library.
At last I managed to say something. He seemed to weigh my words in his mind. Then his eyes appeared confident and he offered me a chair. I sat down and for a moment watched how the sun’s rays fell on some of those books, accentuating the slow process of their decay.
We spoke of libraries. The power they possess, the lure to lose oneself in them. Now his eyes were glowing – what can be of more interest to one who has given his life to books?
Are you a poet, sir? Not quite, I replied. Only a writer. This seem to pique his interest and he asked about my books. What could I say? I haven’t written a book in years, I finally revealed to him, and the few slim titles I wrote years ago dropped like stones in water. But in the first place, I was sort of expecting this. In a way, the book that will define me lies unwritten.
He said he would make his own judgement if I could show him one of my novels. I didn’t have any with me, but told him I would arrange one for him in due course. Then, not knowing why, I said something stupid: These books are quite old. What would you guess their age to be?
They’re old, yes, aren’t they? Most of them are from the fifties or before. If I recall well, no book has entered the library in a decade. The grant is barely enough to pay for maintenance.
His words made me look. Maybe it was the way he spoke, as if he could very nearly see the end of one of those books. Countless unread stories awaited me to set them free of the very words that held them captive. If only I would read them and allow them refuge in my head where, free of a form or structure, they could float at leisure. I was tempted to liberate them, to read them, one after the other, till I had set the very last one free. How ephemeral, I thought, is the process of creation, of writing books, of lending random words to equally random thoughts merely to grant another the privilege of release.
The voice of the old man broke into my thoughts: But there’s little sense in preserving these books for posterity. I tell you, the day they lose their perishable nature they will cease to interest us. Only through their mortality do they live in us.
