The cheap consolations of hatred are as urgently necessary for him as the satisfaction of his appet.i.tes. Bimala has often warned me, in the old days, of his hankering after money. I understood this, but I could not bring myself to haggle with Sandip. I felt ashamed even to own to myself that he was trying to take advantage of me.
It will, however, be difficult to explain to Bimala today that Sandip"s love of country is but a different phase of his covetous self-love. Bimala"s hero-worship of Sandip makes me hesitate all the more to talk to her about him, lest some touch of jealousy may lead me unwittingly into exaggeration. It may be that the pain at my heart is already making me see a distorted picture of Sandip. And yet it is better perhaps to speak out than to keep my feelings gnawing within me.
II
I have known my master these thirty years. Neither calumny, nor disaster, nor death itself has any terrors for him. Nothing could have saved me, born as I was into the traditions of this family of ours, but that he has established his own life in the centre of mine, with its peace and truth and spiritual vision, thus making it possible for me to realize goodness in its truth.
My master came to me that day and said: "Is it necessary to detain Sandip here any longer?"
His nature was so sensitive to all omens of evil that he had at once understood. He was not easily moved, but that day he felt the dark shadow of trouble ahead. Do I not know how well he loves me?
At tea-time I said to Sandip: "I have just had a letter from Rangpur. They are complaining that I am selfishly detaining you.
When will you be going there?"
Bimala was pouring out the tea. Her face fell at once. She threw just one enquiring glance at Sandip.
"I have been thinking," said Sandip, "that this wandering up and down means a tremendous waste of energy. I feel that if I could work from a centre I could achieve more permanent results."
With this he looked up at Bimala and asked: "Do you not think so too?"
Bimala hesitated for a reply and then said: "Both ways seem good --to do the work from a centre, as well as by travelling about.
That in which you find greater satisfaction is the way for you."
"Then let me speak out my mind," said Sandip. "I have never yet found any one source of inspiration suffice me for good. That is why I have been constantly moving about, rousing enthusiasm in the people, from which in turn I draw my own store of energy.
Today you have given me the message of my country. Such fire I have never beheld in any man. I shall be able to spread the fire of enthusiasm in my country by borrowing it from you. No, do not be ashamed. You are far above all modesty and diffidence. You are the Queen Bee of our hive, and we the workers shall rally around you. You shall be our centre, our inspiration."
Bimala flushed all over with bashful pride and her hand shook as she went on pouring out the tea.
Another day my master came to me and said: "Why don"t you two go up to Darjeeling for a change? You are not looking well. Have you been getting enough sleep?"
I asked Bimala in the evening whether she would care to have a trip to the Hills. I knew she had a great longing to see the Himalayas. But she refused ... The country"s Cause, I suppose!
I must not lose my faith: I shall wait. The pa.s.sage from the narrow to the larger world is stormy. When she is familiar with this freedom, then I shall know where my place is. If I discover that I do not fit in with the arrangement of the outer world, then I shall not quarrel with my fate, but silently take my leave ... Use force? But for what? Can force prevail against Truth?
Sandip"s Story
I
The impotent man says: "That which has come to my share is mine."
And the weak man a.s.sents. But the lesson of the whole world is: "That is really mine which I can s.n.a.t.c.h away." My country does not become mine simply because it is the country of my birth. It becomes mine on the day when I am able to win it by force.
Every man has a natural right to possess, and therefore greed is natural. It is not in the wisdom of nature that we should be content to be deprived. What my mind covets, my surroundings must supply. This is the only true understanding between our inner and outer nature in this world. Let moral ideals remain merely for those poor anaemic creatures of starved desire whose grasp is weak. Those who can desire with all their soul and enjoy with all their heart, those who have no hesitation or scruple, it is they who are the anointed of Providence. Nature spreads out her riches and loveliest treasures for their benefit.
They swim across streams, leap over walls, kick open doors, to help themselves to whatever is worth taking. In such a getting one can rejoice; such wresting as this gives value to the thing taken.
Nature surrenders herself, but only to the robber. For she delights in this forceful desire, this forceful abduction. And so she does not put the garland of her acceptance round the lean, scraggy neck of the ascetic. The music of the wedding march is struck. The time of the wedding I must not let pa.s.s. My heart therefore is eager. For, who is the bridegroom? It is I. The bridegroom"s place belongs to him who, torch in hand, can come in time. The bridegroom in Nature"s wedding hall comes unexpected and uninvited.
Ashamed? No, I am never ashamed! I ask for whatever I want, and I do not always wait to ask before I take it. Those who are deprived by their own diffidence dignify their privation by the name of modesty. The world into which we are born is the world of reality. When a man goes away from the market of real things with empty hands and empty stomach, merely filling his bag with big sounding words, I wonder why he ever came into this hard world at all. Did these men get their appointment from the epicures of the religious world, to play set tunes on sweet, pious texts in that pleasure garden where blossom airy nothings?
I neither affect those tunes nor do I find any sustenance in those blossoms.
What I desire, I desire positively, superlatively. I want to knead it with both my hands and both my feet; I want to smear it all over my body; I want to gorge myself with it to the full.
The scrannel pipes of those who have worn themselves out by their moral fastings, till they have become flat and pale like starved vermin infesting a long-deserted bed, will never reach my ear.
I would conceal nothing, because that would be cowardly. But if I cannot bring myself to conceal when concealment is needful, that also is cowardly. Because you have your greed, you build your walls. Because I have my greed, I break through them. You use your power: I use my craft. These are the realities of life.
On these depend kingdoms and empires and all the great enterprises of men.
As for those __avatars__ who come down from their paradise to talk to us in some holy jargon--their words are not real.
Therefore, in spite of all the applause they get, these sayings of theirs only find a place in the hiding corners of the weak.
They are despised by those who are strong, the rulers of the world. Those who have had the courage to see this have won success, while those poor wretches who are dragged one way by nature and the other way by these ava tars, they set one foot in the boat of the real and the other in the boat of the unreal, and thus are in a pitiable plight, able neither to advance nor to keep their place.
There are many men who seem to have been born only with an obsession to die. Possibly there is a beauty, like that of a sunset, in this lingering death in life which seems to fascinate them. Nikhil lives this kind of life, if life it may be called.
Years ago, I had a great argument with him on this point.
"It is true," he said, "that you cannot get anything except by force. But then what is this force? And then also, what is this getting? The strength I believe in is the strength of renouncing."
"So you," I exclaimed, "are infatuated with the glory of bankruptcy."
"Just as desperately as the chick is infatuated about the bankruptcy of its sh.e.l.l," he replied. "The sh.e.l.l is real enough, yet it is given up in exchange for intangible light and air. A sorry exchange, I suppose you would call it?"
When once Nikhil gets on to metaphor, there is no hope of making him see that he is merely dealing with words, not with realities.
Well, well, let him be happy with his metaphors. We are the flesh-eaters of the world; we have teeth and nails; we pursue and grab and tear. We are not satisfied with chewing in the evening the cud of the gra.s.s we have eaten in the morning. Anyhow, we cannot allow your metaphor-mongers to bar the door to our sustenance. In that case we shall simply steal or rob, for we must live.
People will say that I am starting some novel theory just because those who are moving in this world are in the habit of talking differently though they are really acting up to it all the time.
Therefore they fail to understand, as I do, that this is the only working moral principle. In point of fact, I know that my idea is not an empty theory at all, for it has been proved in practical life. I have found that my way always wins over the hearts of women, who are creatures of this world of reality and do not roam about in cloud-land, as men do, in idea-filled balloons.
Women find in my features, my manner, my gait, my speech, a masterful pa.s.sion--not a pa.s.sion dried thin with the heat of asceticism, not a pa.s.sion with its face turned back at every step in doubt and debate, but a full-blooded pa.s.sion. It roars and rolls on, like a flood, with the cry: "I want, I want, I want."
Women feel, in their own heart of hearts, that this indomitable pa.s.sion is the lifeblood of the world, acknowledging no law but itself, and therefore victorious. For this reason they have so often abandoned themselves to be swept away on the flood-tide of my pa.s.sion, recking naught as to whether it takes them to life or to death. This power which wins these women is the power of mighty men, the power which wins the world of reality.
Those who imagine the greater desirability of another world merely shift their desires from the earth to the skies. It remains to be seen how high their gushing fountain will play, and for how long. But this much is certain: women were not created for these pale creatures--these lotus-eaters of idealism.
"Affinity!" When it suited my need, I have often said that G.o.d has created special pairs of men and women, and that the union of such is the only legitimate union, higher than all unions made by law. The reason of it is, that though man wants to follow nature, he can find no pleasure in it unless he screens himself with some phrase--and that is why this world is so overflowing with lies.
"Affinity!" Why should there be only one? There may be affinity with thousands. It was never in my agreement with nature that I should overlook all my innumerable affinities for the sake of only one. I have discovered many in my own life up to now, yet that has not closed the door to one more--and that one is clearly visible to my eyes. She has also discovered her own affinity to me.
And then?
Then, if I do not win I am a coward.
Chapter Three
Bimala"s Story