Thy blessed unction from above
Is comfort, life, and fire of love.
Lord, such a queen shall be crowned, such a queen shall be crowned, I said to myself and went to sleep.
Then one day I heard, ‘Thoracoplasty, Thoracoplasty’. It became the sound of a beautiful song, and whether I called Little Mother or Uncle Seetharamu, they always said to me, ‘Thoracoplasty’. The operation-table straps said: ‘How do you do? ‘and I was all so white. It is good to be white. It is so light to be white. Dr Burnham said: ‘Achchajee namaste! I told you, it’s solid as silver. I pray for you.’
The operation-table straps sang again like clappers of church bells, ether seemed precious and the world re-created out of nothing — the emptiness — and sound was so true. Evil is just part of a lung, and the evil of evil is evil. To awaken is to see the world as a promise made in sleep. Truth is seen inside. When seen outside, reality is as a name given to memory; as a waterfall heard from above, it is light, indeterminate. Man seeks his knowledge in the world but must know it is himself without him. Then the world shines as at a festival.
Death had been made into a poster, and left at the door. He could not come in. Nobody could come in — only the queen could come in clad in muslin white, single and followed by sixteen maids. She would come by the stone path of the hospital yard, mount up the steps, and all in united silence come along the lit corridors, with red and green lights, and kneel by us and pray. And after prayer she would laugh and we would open our eyes. The temperature charts would go shooting through the window, like evil become birds, and sit on plants, and flower. The queen would remain with us for a long time, and the world resound with luminous song.
And with them eke, O Goddesse heauenly bright
Mirrour of Grace and Maiestie divine
Great Lady of the greatest Isle…
Then she came — she came again, and yet again.
One day she came to me — at that time she used to smoke a great deal — and she said after a long silence:
‘Woman should not be.’
I said, ‘Why, Savithri?’
‘Woman is coeval with death.’
‘Which means?’
‘Woman is the meaning of death.’
‘I don’t understand,’ I protested.
‘You said: The woman is the world. The truth of the world is dissolution. Or rather Truth can only be because death is. If the world were the world, there would be no Truth.’
‘Yes, that is so. If oxygen be oxygen or rhinoceros rhinoceros, there would be no Truth. There would be death, and that crown of death the pyramid. But death is not despite Tuk-Ank-Ammon and his crown. Death itself cannot be, for he who says it cannot be is.’
‘Then the woman is Tuk-Ank-Ammon. The woman must die, with crown and pyramid. Or rather the woman must become death. Woman is the disease, the historical lineage of man.’
‘And man?’
‘The Truth,’ she said, ‘the Supreme Light. We are the fakers, the makers. We make the falsehood that is life, the trinkets. That is why man has such contempt for us.’
‘Will you exchange places with me?’ I asked.
‘Yes, if you like this wretched cloak.’
‘If you become me, then there is no problem.’
‘How so?’
‘Then you, become me, will be the real Savithri.’
‘And who’s the Satyavan?’2
‘The self, the Truth,’ I said, and heaved a sigh. My stitches seemed sweet and tranquil to feel, they lived their own cutaneous existence. No, Satyavan cannot die. Man must unto himself be himself and his bride. You remember I told you, all brides be Benares born.’
‘If Benares is inner, my Lord, the bride too is in Benares.’
‘Man must die, Savithri, nevertheless.’
‘There never was a woman. There never can be a woman. When Tristan died, Iseult came. Iseult always comes too late.’
‘If Iseult had died?’
‘Iseult was death itself. When death dies…’
‘Tristan is born. And there, never, never is an Iseult.’
‘What happens to Iseult, then?’
‘She is Tristan.’
‘Tristan, do not die!’
‘Satyavan will not die, Savithri.’
‘Truth must be,’ she said.
‘Why?’
‘Because Savithri must live.’
‘The woman is crowned a queen,’ I said.
‘How so?’ she asked.
‘Man rejoices in his own death. For man, death is transcendence.’
‘And transcendence?’
‘Transcendence is splendour. For man, glory is transfiguration. Not Ascension, but Assumption is the true nature of the Mother of God.’
‘And so?’ she asked.
‘So woman is the sacrifice.’
‘And what rose out of the sacrifice.’
‘The world.’
‘The world.’
‘And of the world?’
‘A kingdom.’
‘And in the kingdom?’
‘A queen. Thus man gave himself back.’
‘So man is eternal — he is deathless,’ she said. ‘He is crowned a queen.’
‘Indra the deity, the Tristubh metre,’ I chanted,
The Panchadasa stone. Soma the king,
I have recourse to the lordly power,
I become a Kshatriya,3
O God, O fathers, O Father, O gods,
I offer, being he who I am.
This is my sacrifice, my gifts, my toil, my offering,
Be Agni here my witness, Vayu my hearer, Aditya
Yonder my proclaimer,
I who am I am I.’
The set of four-lions has now the face of a young queen, and Rig Veda the sound of aftermath.
During those days she came to see me often — she came unannounced, for even the hospital rules seemed to have been relaxed during that month, and visitors came in and out as they liked. Only the nurses were often overworked, and one was sorry the temperature charts did not, like some meteorological charts, go marking their own lines. Savithri would come and look long and intently at the chart, take my temperature, making excuses to Sister Jean for her presence, and say, ‘Today you have less fever, my love,’ or ‘Oh, I know I am the fever, I the temperature.’ And then she would sigh, and as she wiped her eyes the collyrium would trickle down, and she would rub it all away, giving her Bangalore blue sari or the white Lucknow a mark and a distinction of me. ‘Promise to burn me with this,’ she would plead romantically. And I would answer:
‘Death is feminine and not masculine. So she must burn herself.’