So much of Paris rises up, evening after evening, as I sit in this room and work — ghosts, dignitaries, crusaders, kings, poets — that I want to get out, to walk out where no man has ever walked, no one has ever borne his own torture.
J’ai plus de souvenirs que si j’avais mille ans.
Then I go down the steps, ring up Georges from the bureau of the hotel, for I have no telephone in my room, and when they say come — they always do — I jump into the 83 bus at the Gare Montparnasse, linger a little by the river as usual, then cross over and take the 63. Down La Muette I walk as if I were in Hyderabad or Mysore, and the street were one that father and son we had walked, so personal it has become. It is always Catherine who opens the door, with her splendid rich smile— as if one could possess happiness with the same certitude of holding a baby in one’s arms.
‘Vera is sleeping,’ she said one day, knowing Vera had become a great friend of mine. ‘She’s had fever, you know, Rama, and I was so frightened. But Georges said it was nothing, just the effect of the temperature outside going up and down in a way that even our adult bodies are not strong enough to bear. Tell me, how are you?’
Georges was standing behind me, as I removed my coat; I could feel him take my scarf and hat, and hang them on the rack. ‘It’s nice to see you, Rama. How terrible to think France is becoming like Russia. It has been twenty-five degrees below at Luxeuil. Can you imagine it! In the Luxembourg even old men have begun to take to skating.’
‘Georges will not allow me to do any patinage in the Bois. But when I see men and women carrying skates I want so much to go, and say, “Gee” like that, and swirl and fall on myself. I love snow and all that is white,’ Catherine said. ‘White, snowwhite is my colour.’
I went in and we sat on the green plush from Aix. Oncle Charles had been very ill.
‘When the strong fall ill, it’s like a bull falling — you need three other bulls to help you out of it,’ said Catherine, ‘not like a horse. Georges falls ill and rises as if it were a game he were playing; I never can believe in his illness. Tante Zoubie is so worried.’
I promised we would go there the week after. And then Catherine gave me a letter from Madeleine.
Madeleine spoke of my visit to her. ‘It’s all like a ghost story,’ she wrote, ‘Rama, India — and the world. Contemplation is the only truth one has. I pray that I be forgiven for my sins— my ignorances, the Buddhist text would call them. By the way, Cathy, before Rama leaves for India, don’t you think it would be wise for the legalities to be settled, once and for all? My own future is settled. I want nothing: what I earn teaching will suffice me for a lifetime. So I have been thinking that Vera, and others who will come after her, should have everything. Anyway it all belongs to the family, my properties in the Charente, in Rouen, and even that plot of land in St Médard. I will just keep mother’s house at Saintongel. Just a spot to call my own, that is all; and that again only as long as I live.
‘I am sure it would also be wise to give Rama his freedom. He must marry someone younger from his own country. He will be happy with an Indian woman, I have no doubt. I know talking like this is painful, but truth has some day to be faced. In any case Rama must go back to his family; his lungs cannot bear our climate any more. Besides, why would he want to stay in France? Nowadays divorce has become so easy. You could perhaps tactfully put it to Oncle Charles. Better still, why don’t you consult someone there, while I consult someone here?’
It was, of course, the inevitable, and by the inevitable nobody has yet been surprised: you know what is going to happen before surprise dawns on you. So quite simply I accepted to go to a lawyer in Paris. Georges knew of a very able Russian- born advocate, who would make everything easy. Meanwhile Madeleine went to see a notary in Aix, and a letter came from a Maître Charpentier, asking me to consult a colleague of his. And on a Saturday, only the other week, we went over, Catherine and I, into some obscure district off the rue St Denis. Past the Porte St Martin and the Boulevard Sébastopol was a little lane.
‘You know what these streets are, do you, Rama?’
‘No,’ I said.
‘You are so simple and innocent that I am sure you will never have heard about this quarter.’ I understood. ‘Formerly,’ said Catherine, ‘the police used to insist on cards; now these ladies have the same profession, only they need not pay any municipal tax.’
It was the day after that terrible March storm, you remember. The wind had blown away chimney-pots, wireless wires, laundry hangings, and papers out of offices: even children’s toys and old chairs had been thrown into backyards. It howled through garage doors, through school archways, and sang in the chimneys. Through windows and chimneys birds had been blown in, leaves, handkerchiefs. In these back-alleys of the Boulevard Sébastopol they had not cleared up everything.
‘It smells of spring,’ said Catherine, as she parked the car. ‘Wrap yourself up, Rama. Nothing is so treacherous, we say, as the winds of March.’
Yes, spring seemed to be in the air. We wandered to and fro, along the rue St Pierre, looking for the house number. We could not find 17 anywhere, so we looked in at a locksmith’s, a round, portly man with an apron, who came out and showed us the narrow entrance to the building. We went up the smelly, dark staircase, and wondered why it was not lit.
‘Ah! là là,’ said someone coming down, ‘it’s not enough to be blown at hot and cold, now the electricity must also give us the go-by. Funny, funny this country. You pay income tax through the nose, and you don’t have light to see beyond it.’ He held a match against my face, to convince himself I was another man. When he saw Catherine, he thought the world even funnier. ‘You never can say what the world will be,’ he concluded at the bottom of the staircase, ‘white or dark. What do you say to that, Pierre?’
Higher up, the afternoon sky gave some visibility through the skylight. Maître Sigon was there.
‘The lights have all gone,’ said his secretary from behind the counter, ‘but please sit here, Monsieur et Madame.’ And she planted a lit candle behind us, ‘Monsieur Sigon has a client at the moment. He will see you immediately.’ We sat for ten miserable minutes, and we did not seem to have anything to say to one another.
‘To think that everything must end in darkness, even when spring is in the air,’ I said, eventually, and added, ‘The law is the death of truth.’
‘Don’t condemn me so easily,’ pleaded Catherine. ‘Where would I be if Oncle Charles had not piled up money by counting on the crookedness of mankind?’ Somehow this gave me an assurance, a feeling of positive goodness — life flowed deeper in the bowels of existence. ‘You must have a son this time, and soon,’ I said, to assure Catherine of my goodwill.
‘Oh, it’s enough to have one, for the moment. By the time you come back from India I shall have a second one, I promise.’
The wooden door behind me opened. Maitre Sigon, a little round man, with a pince-nez and a black ribbon to hold it, called us in. A white round spot of light — a kerosene lamp, such as we have in India when babies are asleep — lit the green baize of Maitre Sigon’s desk. He looked up at me, asked my name, father’s name, mother’s name, date of birth, and assured himself that everything sent by the notaire from Aix was correct. ‘You married Madeleine Roussellin, on February tenth, nineteen-forty-nine at the Mairie of the VIIth Arrondissement. Is that right?’