The world gave parties to itself, and everybody felt everywhere, drank champagne at the prime minister’s party, and drank beer at home. No one was another’s adversary, for there was no other and all was simplified, till politicians must have sat and wondered where the next world would be. Politics had lost its acuteness, vulgarity had lost its burthen, and man sang himself a song and went to sleep dreaming of the new birth. The hospitals had never been so full — for London was crowded — but nurse and doctor seemed to know of a common knowledge, in which giving and receiving were not two oppositions of a single act, but two acts of a single living; diseases seemed inappropriate, and some had the shyness of a dog or a thief that has strayed into wide-wakened worlds. Man was simple, simple as the road on which he walked, straight as the pathway of his park; and the sun seemed to come to him with a facility and an assurance, as though the globe were made for each individual, for his elliptical system; the sun came to him, to his face, his eyes, his hands, his breath. Many persons opened their cages and let out their parakeets and their minas, so that the London trees heard such talk and song as never had seemed permissible; and song linked man and woman over the brow of time, as though death were a superfluity. For a moment everyone looked into himself and found he had nowhere to go. Man was happy, he was very, very happy.
During those days I was reading Thomas le Trovere, that Anglo-Norman poet, to whom England and France were as Tristan and Iseult, and London that beautiful city:
Lundres est mult riche cité
Meluir n’ad en cristienté,
Plus vaillante ne meltz preisiee,
Melz garnie de gent aisiee.
You could imagine Tristan le Preux moving on the boat, with Iseult, the daughter of the king of Ireland, she, the beautiful, who was to be married to King Mark. And the nephew was bringing her to him, for it was a promise that the young had made to the old and come fire, come water, it had to be respected and obeyed. But the winds rose on the sea, and the sun was hot on the oceans; and one night while they were playing chess they asked Brangien, the faithful, for wine and for more wine to drink. Brangien, the faithful, being full of sleep, it was the potion of love meant for King Mark that she gave unto one first and the rest to the other; and such passions rose in them that not even the waves in the sea would know of such rising and such demand. Just as the castle of Tintagel rounded itself and shone, on the rocks there, in the country of King Mark, in Cornwall, Iseult gave herself unto Tristan, who through fire and forest, through torture and exile was to be her love. And when he went away and tried to warm his heart through another Iseult, Iseult of the White Hands, no warmth came for there was no love in him. So the ships brought the news of his illness and hopelessness to Iseult of Cornwall, and she took her boat and sped towards him. But when she came Tristan was just dead, and she lay beside him dead. A bramble linked them even in their grave; it rose from the grave of Tristan—’Et de la tombe de Tristan sortait une belle ronce, verte et feuillue, qui montait par dessus la chapelle; le bout de la ronce retombait sur la tombe d’Iseut et entrait dedans. Ce que virent bien les gens du pays qui le rapportèrent au roi Marc. Le roi la fit couper par trois fois. Le lendemain, elle était aussi belle et en tel état qu’auparavant. Ce miracle était sur Tristan et sur Iseut.’
Sometimes I thought how beautiful it would be to have a tomb over oneself.
Banners flew in the air, trumpets were tried in the streets, and like thoughts seen in consciousness little aeroplanes returned to their starting-points; perhaps in one of them, I thought, looking out of my hospital window, was Savithri. I had not heard from her for a long time, but I knew she was coming. I knew she would come. And no sooner had she come would I know.
There was about London a restrained effervescence, as though princes, Zulus, soldiers and politicians; theatrical actors, workers on the arches, policemen on horses; the very manipulations of electric lights on houses and towers, were, so to say, interchangeable entities, as though man were discovering himself. To be many is to be one, for when the many speak to the One in the many, one seems to speak to oneself. Objects seem to sink into voices, and voices seem to procreate objects; the streets seem wide or narrow according to considerations of mind, while objects seem to vanish and reappear according to distances and desires. Man gave himself for those thirty days a wide freedom.
The very aeroplanes seemed sure of themselves, like storks when they go a-mating — and nobody thought the Thames could be anything but a river, or that music would not sound wheresoever you touched. Indeed one wondered why every man did not touch every woman and turn her into a monument, and then falling in love with himself (for ever and always does one fall in love but with oneself) he could hook his arm to a statue and walk through London as in a procession, with banners on both sides, and arches everywhere. For it was not that a queen was being crowned, but that man was discovering his integrity as a being, like the sound in silence, or the swan in the cool, long waters. We were free, so we shone.
The walls were of cristal,
The heling was of fine riwal
That schone swithe brighte.
In the hospital the nurses all seemed reassured, as if the queen would visit us, would visit every one of us. When they tucked us into our beds, or, when looking at the thermometers, they saw the width of the broad and sunnery sky, they were sure the queen would visit us, and would shake hands with us, and with a whisk (made of pink feathers and birch-grass) she would drive away our maladies pronouncing our sacral name. Yes, she would come and visit us, every one of us, the queen would, the nurses thought, though they never said it; and the patients sat on their beds at night and asked themselves, were they wondering or was this the truth? There was a Malayan doctor next door who had dengue fever, and who roared in his bed saying some prayer — a Muslim one no doubt — which seemed like a speech made to oneself: ‘Calm yourself, my son, my child, the great day of resurrection will come.’ And you heard trumpets and you saw flags fly. And nobody could die during those days, for there was no space or time for hearses. The horses were busy elsewhere, and man’s thoughts were on such important objects that nobody thought of death. That was why every aeroplane flew with the assurance of a train seen in a dream, which goes everywhere inventing its own rails. There are no stationmasters nor accidents in that kingdom, your children are at the station, and the station covered with flowers flies into the air. You felt you could just walk down the parks and the trees would be lit, and that you could talk to anyone and he would speak to you your language. When the train at Euston Station whistled, it was like Uncle Seetharamu’s dhobi’s donkey braying in the backyard, dreaming it was carrying the washing of a king.
Everything, in fact, lived in the reality, in such a way that each time the lift came up you thought the door would open and anyone, the one person — anyone could only be one — would step out, and you would hear her jaltarang voice. Water and vessel produce a sound, and you can hear it many a while.
It seemed to me during those days as though the world had asked itself a question sometime at the beginning of the Ice Age, at the beginning of the first man, and that the answer would now be accorded; that with trumpet and march of soldiery, with the procession of prime ministers and ministers of State, in the assembly of kings and prelates, the answer would be given; not as a word, or as a gift, but as a dot, a sign, a recognition. That a spot would be shown, where man concentrated on himself, all in a point; where man freed of himself — would ultimately know the other, the Truth — that the kingdom of God was interior and well-built. ‘Our feet shall stand in thy gates, O Jerusalem: Jerusalem is built as a city that is at unity in itself. O pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee. Peace be within thy walls, and plenteousness within thy palaces.’ And like the palace and empire of the budumékaye, the six sisters would come and the chamberlain-monkey be thrown into the milk; one would hear sounds, see objects, touch life. The world was not before, the world would not dissolve hereafter, but in the instant is the recreation of the whole; the Te Deum Laudamus will sound, and the bells will peal, whereunto, for an instant, one stopped and became queen. Everybody was born a king and became a queen. Everybody was born a king, and became a queen the instant the second hand had moved on itself — for nothing ever moves, nothing is ever said, one is oneself the truth.