“But I was going to tell you a fairy tale, the tale of a princess and true.”
“Now I will tell you. There was a madman in my town, crazy, crazy. He too had read books, too many, many of all religions, and though his father was a good hasid, a rabbi, too. And this young man, who for convenience we’ll call Isae, his real name though was different. His mother, a widow, was a laundress. Yes, and a very good laundress in Lvov. Being an important town, and she having a reputation, she made money laundering for the rich. And the Polish rich in those days were rich, rich. He, Isae knew them well as a boy, so my mother told me. For as a boy, he played with things electrical like wires, bulbs, brackets, sockets, etc, because his uncle, his mother’s brother, had an electrical shop, in the richer part of the town. Isae was a very clever boy, so everybody told me. And at school, he was very bright. Since he wanted to be an engineer, his mother said, son, go to Warsaw. There you will have teachers such as you will not find here. Your sister will stay to look after me. But Mother, said the good Isae, you will be alone. I am the only man in the house. Father died so long ago. Since your father died, said Isae’s mother, your father entered me, and I have become him, and she put her chin forward to show how manly she had become. When one has lost a husband, while young, and you have children to bring up, you become a man, work, earn, fight, pray, die, you understand. Anyway, Isae’s mother, dreamt her son would become an engineer in Warsaw, and she would make for him a good wedding her brother had told her of Simon Katz and Manes Satorsky, who became famous engineers, despite government obstructions raised against the Jews, became rich men and even lived in villas. And why would not Isae, her son, Isae, build a villa in Poskya Street, off the great boulevards. So her bother had told her, for her brother too hoped, if his nephew became rich, he too could open a bigger shop and in Warsaw. This you see the world is round, round” laughed Michel, good-heartedly. “Don’t ask me,” he continued. “if the mother wanted to be rich, or if the brother of the mother wanted the nephew to be rich, maybe he wanted to be rich to make his wife think better of him, for she same, said my mother, from a family of apothecaries. Who knows, who knows? You know the world is full of Suzanne Chantereuxs.” I did not understand why he said what he said, and then after a moment’s silence, he continued: “Well, well, my Isae, our Isae, being a bright boy – my mother told me he looked just like me, broad and short, and with thick glasses, but of course I never was very bright in mathematics, or in anything, nor did I have an uncle who ran an electrical appliances shop. My father wrote petitions for the unlettered: Your Excellency, the Prefet, the Magistrate, the Count, etc, etc. For there were may counts. And we have even a count in my story.
“Well, well, Isae went to Warsaw. But, like an untouchable, sat at a separate table, at the University of Warsaw, for remember, that was how we were treated, even under Marshal Pilsuduski, so I was too. And our Isae read all the electricity which could be read, finally wore a gown and became an engineer, and was given a minor post in Warsaw municipality. But by now, his real interests were elsewhere. He never wanted to be a rabbi, even when very young, that his mother knew, and he knew. He wanted, however, to save mankind. Remember, we are all like that. We Jews are. If some Tahitian say, Tahiti, is dying of venereal disease – a venereal disease, as you knew only one virtue, and that is to be a woman – so this white man gave the disease to a woman, and that woman to a Tahitian, and he is, the Tahitian is, covered with small and big boils. And somebody, another white man, a good Pole, maybe, because he had heard of the beauty of Tahitian women, goes there, you know, like Gaugin went, but this time, not to paint, but to enjoy, to enjoy the thick juicy richness of Tahitian women – and there it comes, the news to say, Isae. And he will say, Tiens, tiens, someone, some people, in Tahiti are suffering from venereal disease. So I will study medicine. Become a doctor. And then go to Tahiti and help the Tahitians get better. How do you like that?” smiled Michel, slapping his thighs with both hands.
“So that our Isae was involved in trying to help mankind in every way – therefore, he joined the Theosophcal Society. Do you know that organization at all? It is something to do with your country. It’s sort of Gurdjieff, with Tibet and Mongolia and the Himalayas, and all that. And saints of course, many, many saints, and masters several thousand years old, sitting on top of your Himalayas which guide mankind etc, etc.”
“Well, I knew something about it, just a little,” I said.
“So my Isae studied theosophy. And when one studies anything so outlandish as all that, you always meet – especially in faraway Poland people of the upper classes – like, say, at the Rotary Club in Paris today. So, my Isae met many counts and countesses, studying, you understand, esoteric, yes, esoteric philosophy.” And by now Michel was exhausted, he asked for a glass of water, and I went to my room to fetch him some cool nice water. And when I returned, he sat there, silent as a rock, as solid and natural as the rock of the Trocadero hill, which rose in front of us, across the garden.
“So to go on with my story, my Isae fell in love with a countess, with a real countess, a highborn lady. He was five-foot-three-and-a-half and hunchbacked like I am – his back was like an accordion, my mother used to say, and therefore, when he spoke, it was like music like some psalm. He spoke not words, but long musical syllables; and many were often like words from the Bible. He lisped – he did not talk – as a child does or a dumb person, and so it carried rich meanings. Says my mother. But let me go on with the story. He was hunchbacked like me. I told you he had fallen from a tree when young, like I had from a colt-and though I had never seen him, but it’s as if I know him, even sometimes I feel I am him. Since he is not alive, I’d even believe in your theory of reincarnation and cry I am Isae, I am he indeed, our Isae,” said Michel, and laughed again, tenderly, as if he had no reason to hurt me.
“Whether you believe it or not, it might still be true, like in the Middle Ages, whether you thought the earth was flat and the sun went round the earth or not, for which Galileo had to be burned at the stake, the sun still was the centre of our planetary system.”
“May be you are right. Often what we suspect to be true turns out true. Why, the reincarnation theory might even explain the story I am going to tell you. Listen.”
“Yes, I will.”
“I said, Isae fell in love with the countess, but to be true, it’s the countess who fell in love with him. She thought him a genius and perhaps he was one, who knows? The countess was from a famous Polish family, with castles in Silesia, on one side Greek and on another German, and she was at least a palm-wide taller than he was. But he had a mind, my mother tells me, so brilliant, the rabbis refused to discuss with him. As I have said before, maybe he was a genius, a new Spinoza.”
“Now, now,” I protested, “Spinozas are not born so often. Please?
“But, said my mother,” continued Michel, without listening to my own remarks, he spoke in biblical Polish, as I have said before, or sometimes, Yiddish, with a touch of softness that made one think he loved vocables, he loved to pronounce vocables, like a good rabbi. And he must have spoken sweet things, to the countess, and she must have adored him, much, much. She said, the countess said, I would wed you today were it not I have two daughters to marry. If you can wait a year or two we will surely get married. But she boldly, openly, for she was a courageous woman, became his mistress. She took an apartment in the city and moved him there. And spent evenings with him, as much as she liked.”
“A beautiful story,” I said.
“But wait, wait. So my Isae said, as all good Poles thought at that time, I will go to Paris, like Madame Curie had gone, or like the good Chopin, and I will make money, so that I may keep my Helen, for that was her name, Countess Helena Volonsky, I will make my Helen happy. And so to Paris he went. His mother, thinking her son was going to Paris to make money for them, said, Oh what a fine son I have, he thinks of us, of me, of his sister Liza. And he will build us a nice house here in Lvov – after all, we still have land
there that Maximilian, my husband, had bought outside the town for a nice house. And that was when he was working at the grain-exchange. And we shall have a grand marriage for his daughter.”
“Just like in India.”
“All the world is India, sir,” he said somewhat in mockery. One always felt, talking to him, or in fact with any Jew, as if there was a sort of supernal rivalry between the Hebraic and the Hindu. Of course, we the Hindus, especially the Brahmins, always felt we were the eldest beings of creation. And the Jews of course were the “chosen people.” So, who would decide? God would. But he did not exist. So?
“She was, Helen was,” he started, “Some sort of a shekina.”
“Now, what’s that? It sound almost Indian.” And he laughed again, somewhat compassionately, and added, “Oh, why, as I have said before, all that’s good comes from India, does it not, mon cher ami?” and he came over and once again patted me on the shoulder good-humouredly.
“Well, well maybe,” and I joined him in laughter, as though it were a private joke.
“So, she was his, Isae’s shekina.”
“Now, now, Michel,” I said, smiling within myself, “what’s all that?”
“Well, if God is a He, the feminine aspect of God is, of course, a She.”
“Lime Sakti and Shiva,” I said to understand.
“Yes, more or less so,” and he laughed again. “And if God is a He,” and this time he laughed so loud, loud enough for the whole building to hear, and even the concierge must have heard, and as if in sympathy, the fire in the hearth shot up, or so it seemed.
“How is it Michel,” I asked very grave, “how is it you can laugh at God in that manner. I thought you shouldn’t even pronounce his holy name,”
“That, my friend, is the trick. God, Dieu, is not the unpronounceable. Because it is Latin and not Hebrew. You know, pandit,” he added smiling, “I think we are prisoners of our language. So it is that I have become involved in linguistics, one notes there is no plural in Chinese. Those chinois are so materialistic, for them their object, la chose, is very, very real. So real they can see only thing at a time. In our linquistic laboratories, when we have to choose the computer for the chinois, we are in a fix. So we have to give to Chinese letters a plus, an algebraic symbol like x or p. Yes, we are prisoners of language, for example, the Jews have no vowels. We too in our own way love objects, because we use consonants. God is beyond, therefore we have no vowels, so you explained to me once, you remember, and I think that is precise.”
“But –”
“No, no, let us get back to my Isae and his shekina. Now I have said to you already, all that I say is pure legend, the legend of the ghettos. You know, when the Germans entered my country, Poland, they created a ghetto government, so to say, and they named a fuehrer for us, and our fuehrers could be as terrifying as the one you know, all fuehrers, can, were they even Hindus –”
“Now, now Michel, don’t be so hard on us.”
“No, sir,” he said, sitting up and crossing his legs, “we are all les etres humains. And I am speaking of La Condition Humaine.”
“Well. Let us go on.”
“In the ghettos of Lvov, the legend of Isae was one of the most enchanting. It was like some ancient fairy tale. Our parents sat on their frontsteps on summer evenings, listening to our grannies talk. So, we would, had we more time, have written a ballad, an epic poem, like Roland, to extol the exploits of our Isae le Bossu. And Isae le Bossu would have become tall, bent and noble as a rabbi. His words were so clear, they could sound Talmudic. He was a saint, there was no doubt of it. For the story said, he made so much money, Isae did, in the very first year of Paris, taking patent after patent, so his mother is supposed to have said – and that was in the good golden days before this heionous war – that our Isae made much, much money, and sent her enough money to live in peace, and even put aside some in the bank for his sister’s marriage-”
“So he had a sister?”
“Yes, a sister, I told you so, and she studied pharmacy. She was already engaged to a young man, even before Isae went over to France, and that must have been around 1930 or 1931.”
“Oh, as long ago as that?”
“Yes, does it not all sound prehistoric!” Anyway, our Isae then made so much money, but he would not send too much home, lest our government get suspicious, as to how a laundress had so much money, and we Jews have prudence in our fingernails, so to say, you understand, counting our rosaries – turning the pages of the Talmud,” and he laughed again. And this time, I understood his nerves had become so frail, he had to laugh, laugh and laugh, at himself, at his own people. “Thus our Isae then made so much money, so his mother said again to my aunt, or to my aunt’s aunt, or my aunt’ aunt’s aunt, who cares. She told it all to my mother, and Isae in two years’ time had bought a home on the outskirts of the Bois de Boulogne. But I, in my own way, made enquiries here in Paris and found through a Russian, a restaurant keeper, that had helped him in the beginning – the Russian, survived because he was some sort of prince before the revolution, so the Hitler people spoilt him and the Russian talks of Isae with contempt, for he did not know who I was, and he said, A house, a house! That Yuopin lived in Clichy, in a hotel with a gasring. True, he was generous with all his friends. Tenez. He said, he gave me money to bet on horses. And if I lost, I said to him, Isae, I will not live, if you do not give me any money, and I will hang myself, like I’ve done once before, you remember, and Isae would give me another fifty or a hundred francs – and in those days it was a grand sum, and I would go betting again. In fact, he helped two or three refugee girls from Lithuania, Latvia – good girls who did not want to go on the streets to make money. Yes, he was a man of heart, the Russian concluded, and clapped his hands, as if he was paying off a debt to Isae, and took the bill of the next customer. Yes, that’s how I made enquiries everywhere.”
So, to go on with my story, my Isae had indeed taken many patents. I, I went out of curiosity to the patent office here, and found that he had in true fact taken some twenty two patents in a year. That must have brought him a lot of money. And despite the Russian prince, Isae must have lived in comfort. And here we come to the last part of the story.”
“Our Isae then decided it would soon be time, in a year or two, to get married to Helen because her two daughters were by now engaged. And I found on enquiries from other Jews here, who knew him then but did not know the story, that he had bought an apartment on rue dcs Sts Peres, no 7 or 9,. I do not remember a comfortable one. It’s now an office. And he waited and he waited, like Balzac did, his shekina, who, as you know, was a Polish countess, and all that.”
“No, I did not know that.”
“However, the apartment once found, the shekina had to come. And here the story becomes complex, tragic. She’s supposed to have written one day, imagine, to this anxious, all awaiting Jew, that she had met a famous count, elegant, tall, and an admirable dancer – met him at a party, and they danced the evening away of course it was in Warsaw. He was so exquisite a dancer, they danced down till almost the light of day, and this shekina is supposed to have said, I went and married him as soon as the papers were ready. I am sorry, very sorry, to have done this to you. I am really sorry. You know I am a woman of impulse, Polish to the core. But don’t come here, she seemed to have added, for Victor knows everything about you. He said he would shoot you if he saw you. So please do not come. Yet I love you, I love you, etc.”
“But, but Michel, why are you telling me this story?”
“Well, you will see why. Just wait. I thought Hindus had a lot of patience, because, with you, time is cyclic and all that. Any way, our Isae, then, heroic, charismatic, brilliant, had only one thing to do. A good Jew he would understand anything. He would forgive anyone – even a former prisoner, a murderer whom he is supposed to have befriended in Paris, and gave him money – to live in honour. So, he took the first train to Warsaw, and a short tacko to the castle, some seventy miles or so away, and pr
esented himself. Yes, presented himself, like Rolland before the Saracen, and at the castle door. He knew the guards would never let him in, so he pretended he was a county engineer who had come on government inspection. And he looked intelligent, well-groomed, and efficient. So, they let him in. And once up and inside the castle, he just said, he wanted to see the countess, to ask about the electrical repairs. He had learnt about such matters from his uncle. And imagine what a shock it was, she in her nuptial splendour, so to say, before hunchbacked Jew, here in this fifteenth century castle.”
“Yes. I understand – it’s like when I visit Jayalakshmi in her palace at Vilaspur “
“Well, well, the Brahmin of India is not quite the Jew of Poland. But you understand what I mean. Then openly, quietly, she went and told her husband what had happened. And believe me, and I have been assured of this here by two or three Polish noblemen in exile – impoverished and humble, now polishing hotel floors, running lifts – and they say the story is true that the count came out and said in his chest high and mustached manner. Well, engineer, what is it you want? – You know who I am; I have come to settle some business with you. – Business in the castle is done by the bailiff – and he almost walked away. Yes, I know, but I have another business, and the legend says, so sweet was the voice of Isae, so true, and may be the count did not want to offend his new bride, the two men settled down to business together. Isae said he loved his shekina so totally, he would only wish for her happiness. He said he had become, while in Warsaw, a liberal catholic priest, so even more did he understand love. Thus, in the name of God, His son, and the Holy Ghost and here Isae, must have sincerely crossed himself, and in the name of the Trinity, can we make a pact. And he had asked for Helen to be present. And Helen came out, trembling ashamed, proud, heroic, while all the maids and butlers were amazed at this historic confrontation. A Jew, and this is how the count talks to him! Well, human nature is magical. Yes a hasid, I tell you, a zadik, can work miracles, prayer can. Then Isae said, and this was in the large hall of the castle with the portraits of all the count’s ancestors in armour gold and ermine, looking down on him in pride and protection, So make a promise to me: If she is happy, she stays with you. If not, if not, – Yes, if not? – If not, she come to me. And the count, a real chevalier, was so moved, and Helen, so proud of her Isae, they shook hands ceremonially, had lunch together, and he, Isae, left for Paris by the evening train.” Here Michel stopped, mopping his head, perspiring, and went over to the coffee machine, which was still blinking red, took a cup of coffee, came back and sat down. And I sat there, of course, thinking of Jaya. How could I not have? If I went to Raja Ashok and told him the same, then what would he say? He might say: “Mon vieux, or old chap. Let us wait and see. She is not yet mine, and when she is mine and if ever, we can always settle the accounts!” He would use, I was sure, I am sure, the same expression, having been brought up in the Anglo-Saxon, the upper-class, background, that is, a European background. So, it’s all a common story, you see. Then why is Michel shifting about his legs so often? One has to wait and see. The evening had not yet set in, and all one heard was the Orpheus singing out the waters to the naiads below. It sounded so much like his own story too. He and Eurydice, and all that, as Suzanne had explained to me – a barbarian from India who did not know Greek mythology. “For the European, the French, he who does not know Greek mythology is indeed a barbarian,” she had said one evening on rue des Bonnes Soeurs, au 7e, and added with a passionate kiss, “but I love my barbarian Brahmin prince.” “Yes, my queen,” I had said and smiled thinking of Jaya of course.
5 Indian Masters Page 7
