15

That night, Gora returned home and began pacing upon the dark rooftop terrace.

Anger rose within him — anger at himself. Why had he allowed this Sunday to be wasted so utterly? Gora had not come into this world to squander all other work on account of a particular personal attachment. To go on straining to hold Binoy back from the path he had chosen would be nothing but a waste of time and a torment to his own spirit. Therefore, from this moment forward, Binoy must be struck from the account of life’s journey. Gora had but one friend in this world, and by relinquishing even that friend, he would make his dharma a living truth. Saying this inwardly, Gora swept his hand through the air with force, as if brushing away every trace of Binoy’s company from all around him.

At that moment Mahim came up to the terrace, panting as he climbed. He said, “When man has no wings, why build a three-storied house? When earthbound creatures aspire to dwell in the sky, the sky-dwelling gods cannot endure it. Had you gone to Binoy’s?”

Without giving him a direct answer, Gora said, “The marriage between Binoy and Shashimukhi cannot take place.”

Mahim: Why — is Binoy unwilling?

Gora: I am unwilling.

Mahim turned his hand over and said, “Well! This is a new complication, I see. You are unwilling. Pray, what is the reason?”

Gora: I have come to understand quite clearly that it will be difficult to keep Binoy within our community. A marriage between him and a girl of our household cannot proceed.

Mahim: I have seen a great deal of Hindu orthodoxy in my time, but nothing quite like this. You surpass even Kashi and Bhatpara! You hand down rulings based on prophecy, I see. One day you will say — I saw in a dream that you have become a Christian; you must eat cow dung to be reinstated into caste.

After much argument, Mahim said, “I cannot give my daughter into the hands of a fool. A young man who has studied and has some sense will inevitably step beyond the scriptures now and then. Argue with him for it, scold him for it — but why block his marriage and punish my daughter in the middle of it all? Your reasoning is entirely backwards.”

Mahim came downstairs and said to Anandamayi, “Mother, you must restrain your Gora.”

Anandamayi asked with concern, “What has happened?”

Mahim: I had more or less settled Binoy’s marriage with Shashimukhi. I had even secured Gora’s approval — but in the meantime Gora has come to clearly perceive that Binoy is not sufficiently Hindu — that his opinions diverge here and there from those of Manu and Parashara. And so Gora has dug in his heels — and you know how Gora digs in his heels when he does. If the Janak of this Kali Yuga had made it a condition that whosoever could straighten a stubborn Gora should win Sita, I wager that Shri Ramachandra himself would have conceded defeat. Below Manu and Parashara, he defers to you and you alone in all the world. Now if you can find a way out, the girl will be saved. A match like this is not easily come by.

Having said this, Mahim recounted in full the conversation that had taken place with Gora on the terrace that evening. Understanding that a conflict between Gora and Binoy was gathering force, Anandamayi’s heart grew deeply troubled.

Anandamayi went upstairs and found Gora had stopped his pacing on the terrace and was now seated indoors, one leg propped upon a second chair, reading a book. Anandamayi drew a chair close and sat down beside him. Gora lowered his leg from the opposite chair, sat up straight, and looked at Anandamayi’s face.

Anandamayi said, “Gora my child, grant me one request — do not quarrel with Binoy. To me, you two are as brothers — I could not bear a rift between you.”

Gora said, “If a friend wishes to cut his bonds, I cannot afford to waste time chasing after him.”

Anandamayi said, “Child, I do not know what has passed between you. But if you truly believe that Binoy wishes to sever your bond, where then is the strength of your friendship?”

Gora: Mother, I love to walk a straight path. Those who wish to face two directions at once will not find themselves at ease with me. One whose nature it is to stand with a foot in two boats must remove that foot from mine — whatever pain it may cost me or him.

Anandamayi: Tell me what has happened. His visiting the Brahmo household — is that his offence?

Gora: There is much to it, Mother.

Anandamayi: Much there may be — but I say this one thing to you, Gora: in all matters your stubbornness is such that no one can loosen what you have once taken hold of. But why are you so lax in Binoy’s case? If your Abinash had wished to leave the company, would you so easily have let him go? Is he less to you than all others simply because he is your friend?

Gora fell silent and sat thinking. In Anandamayi’s words, he saw his own mind with sudden clarity. Until this moment he had imagined he was sacrificing his friendship for the sake of duty; now he understood plainly that it was precisely the reverse. It was because his pride in that friendship had been wounded that he had readied himself to inflict the ultimate punishment of friendship upon Binoy. He had always known in his heart that friendship alone was sufficient to hold Binoy — that any other form of coercion would be a dishonour to affection.

The moment Anandamayi perceived that her words had touched Gora’s mind even slightly, she said nothing more and quietly began to rise. Gora too suddenly sprang to his feet, lifted his shawl from the clothes-rack, and flung it over his shoulder.

Anandamayi asked, “Where are you going, Gora?”

Gora said, “I am going to Binoy’s house.”

Anandamayi: The meal is ready — eat before you go.

Gora: I shall bring Binoy back with me — he will eat here too.

Anandamayi said nothing more and turned toward the stairs. Hearing footsteps on the staircase, she stopped suddenly and said, “There — Binoy is coming.”

Even as she spoke, Binoy arrived. Anandamayi’s eyes welled with tears. She touched Binoy’s arm with tender affection and said, “Binoy my child, have you not eaten?”

Binoy said, “No, Mother!”

Anandamayi: You must eat here this very night.

Binoy glanced once at Gora’s face. Gora said, “Binoy, long may you live. I was just on my way to you.”

Anandamayi’s heart grew light — she hurried downstairs.

When the two friends had come inside and sat down, Gora struck up some casual topic, saying, “You know, I have found quite a good gymnastics instructor for our lads. He teaches them splendidly.”

Neither yet had the courage to raise the true matter that lay within.

When they sat down to eat, Anandamayi could tell from their conversation that constraint still lay between them. The curtain had not yet lifted. She said, “Binoy, the night is well advanced — stay and sleep here tonight. I shall send word to your lodgings.”

Binoy glanced fleetingly at Gora’s face and said, “Bhuktavā rājavadācaret — it is not proper to walk the streets after a meal. Very well then, I shall sleep here.”

After the meal, the two friends came up to the terrace and spread a mat to sit upon. The month of Bhadra had arrived; the moonlight of the bright fortnight flooded the sky. Light wisps of white cloud drifted past now and then, briefly softening the moon’s face as though in a momentary drowse, then sailing gently onward. All around, to the very horizon, rows of rooftops of varying heights rose and fell, mingling in shadow and light with the crowns of trees here and there, lying spread out like some vast, purposeless, dreamlike fancy.

The church clock struck eleven; the ice-seller gave his last cry and passed on. The sound of carriages had grown sparse. In Gora’s lane there was no sign of wakefulness — only the occasional clop of a horse’s hooves on the wooden floor of a neighbour’s stable reached them, and the intermittent barking of a dog.

The two sat in silence for a long while. Then Binoy hesitated a moment at first, but at last released the words within him in full flood. He said, “Brother Gora, my heart is overflowing. I know that such matters hold no interest for you — but if I do not tell you, I cannot breathe. I can make neither head nor tail of anything — but of this much I am certain: no cleverness will avail here. I have read many things in books and for all these years fancied I understood everything. It was as if I had seen water in a picture and imagined swimming must be quite simple — but today, having fallen into the water, I have understood in an instant that this is no illusion.”

And with that, Binoy set about unfolding before Gora, with all his concentrated effort, this astonishing apparition that had entered his life.

Binoy went on to say that in these days there seemed to him no gap anywhere throughout all the hours of day and night — no crack, no opening anywhere in the entire sky — everything was filled to completeness with an exquisite density, as a honeycomb in spring fills with honey until it is ready to burst. In former times a great portion of this wide world had lain outside his life. His gaze had been fixed only on so much of it as concerned him. Now everything came toward him, everything touched him, everything had become charged with a new and overflowing meaning. He had not known that he loved the earth so deeply — that the sky was so marvellous, light so extraordinary, that even the stream of unknown wayfarers on the street was something so profoundly real. He felt an urge to do something for everyone; to give over all his strength to the world as an offering as enduring as the sun in the sky.

It did not at first appear that Binoy was speaking of any particular person. It was as though he could not bring himself to name anyone — even in hinting he grew halting and abashed. For speaking of all this he felt as though he wronged someone. It was unjust, it was a transgression — yet on this lonely night, under this still and silent sky, sitting beside his friend, he found himself altogether unable to suppress that small injustice.

What a face it was! How tenderly the radiance of the soul expressed itself in the softness of those cheeks! How wondrously her heart shone through in her smile, like light breaking forth! What intelligence lay upon that brow! And in those two eyes, beneath the shadow of their dark lashes — what depths of the ineffable! And those two hands — poised to render service and affection beautiful, as if speaking. Binoy counted his life and his youth blessed; within his breast something rose and rose in this joy. That which most people in the world pass through life without ever beholding — that Binoy should behold it so vividly before his very eyes — there was nothing more astonishing than this.

But what madness was this! What an injustice. Let it be unjust — it could no longer be held back. If this current carried him to some shore at last, well and good; and if it swept him away, if it drew him under — what could be done? The difficulty was that he had no wish to be rescued — to lose all the convictions and all the stability of these many years and be borne away seemed, somehow, the only worthy end of a life.

Gora listened in silence. On this very terrace, on many such solitary moonlit nights, the two had spoken of much — literature, the study of human character, schemes for social good, resolutions for their future lives. But never before had words such as these been spoken. Never before had so true and powerful a reality of the human heart presented itself thus before Gora. He had long dismissed all such things as the refuse of poetry, utterly beneath notice — but tonight he saw it so close that he could no longer deny it. More than that — its force gave his own spirit a jolt; its trembling thrill ran through his whole body like a current of lightning. For a moment, the veil over some hidden quarter of his youth was lifted by a breath of wind; and for that brief instant, the moonlight of this autumn midnight entered that long-shuttered room and spread across it a tender enchantment.

At some point the moon descended below the line of rooftops. To the east, a faint luminous suggestion had appeared, like a smile upon a sleeping face. After so long, Binoy’s spirit eased and a diffidence came over him. He was quiet for a moment, then said, “All this talk of mine must seem very small to you. You are perhaps inwardly contemptuous of me. But what can I do — I have never hidden anything from you; nor have I hidden this today, whether you understand it or not.”

Gora said, “Binoy, I cannot claim that I fully understand all this. Two days ago, neither did you. I will not deny that until now these surges and raptures of life have seemed very trivial to me. Yet perhaps they are not truly trivial — it may only be that because I have not directly witnessed their force and depth, they have appeared to me as something without substance, like a mirage. But how can I call your experience of it false today, when it is so vast for you? The essential truth of the matter is this: a person who stands in one field must, if the truth beyond that field is not to overwhelm him, keep that other truth at a manageable distance — otherwise he cannot act at all. It is for this reason that God has made distant things appear smaller to human eyes — He has not cast man into dire peril by making every truth simultaneously vivid. We must choose a direction; we must give up the temptation to clutch at everything at once — otherwise we shall not find truth at all. I cannot go to salute the form of truth that you perceive from where you stand — to do so would be to lose the truth of my own life. It is either this side or that.”

Binoy said, “Either Binoy or Gora. I am standing to fill myself; you are standing to give yourself away.”

Gora said with impatience, “Binoy, do not compose books aloud. Listening to you, one thing has become quite clear to me: you have today come face to face with a powerful truth in your life — there is no room for artifice with it. To have truly known a truth is to surrender oneself to it — there is no other recourse. My hope is that one day I shall know the truth of the field in which I stand with just such an intensity. For so long you were content with the acquaintance of love as you had read of it in books — and I too know my love of country only as something read about in books. Today, the moment love became immediate and present for you, you understood how much more real it is than anything in any book — it has taken possession of your entire world; nowhere can you find release from it. The day my love of country becomes equally present and total before me, I too shall have no escape. On that day it will be free to draw from me my wealth and my life, my bone and marrow and blood, my sky and my light, my everything, without any resistance on my part. What a marvellous and singular form the true image of one’s country can take — how certain and clear — how fierce and overwhelming its joy and its sorrow, sweeping past life and death in an instant like a flood — something of this I can faintly feel, listening to you tonight. This experience of your life has struck at my own life today — I cannot say whether I shall ever comprehend what you have found — but it is through you that I seem to taste a flavour of what I am seeking.”

As he spoke, Gora rose from the mat and began to pace the terrace. The glow of dawn to the east seemed to him something like a word, like a message made manifest; it rose within him like a Vedic mantra from an ancient hermitage; gooseflesh spread across his whole body — for a moment he stood transfixed, and for one brief instant it seemed to him that through the crown of his skull a luminous thread rose slender as a lotus stalk and blossomed into a radiant hundred-petalled flower, spreading across all the sky — and his whole being, all consciousness, all strength, seemed utterly and blissfully consumed within it.

When Gora returned to himself, he burst out, “Binoy, you must pass through this love too and come beyond it — I tell you, you cannot afford to stop there. The great Power that summons me — I shall show you one day how vast a truth She is. My heart is filled with a profound joy tonight — I cannot surrender you to anyone else’s keeping this night.”

Binoy rose from the mat and came and stood close to Gora. Gora clasped him to his chest with both arms in a surge of extraordinary fervour, saying, “Brother Binoy, we shall die — we shall die the same death. We two are one — no one shall divide us, no one shall be able to stand in the way.”

The deep fervour of Gora’s passion rose in waves within Binoy’s heart as well; without a word, he gave himself over entirely to Gora’s embrace.

Gora and Binoy walked side by side in silence. The eastern sky flushed crimson. Gora said, “Brother, the goddess I behold is not set amidst beauty — where I see Her there is famine and poverty, suffering and humiliation. She is not worshipped there with song and flowers; She must be worshipped with life and with blood — and to me that seems the greatest joy of all. There is nothing there to lull one with comfort — one must awaken there entirely by one’s own strength, must give entirely of oneself. This is not sweetness — it is a mighty and unbearable advent — it is ruthless, it is terrible — within it there is that hard resounding clash that strikes all seven notes at once and snaps the very strings. When I think of it, exultation rises within my breast — it seems to me this is a man’s joy — this is the Tandava dance of life — a man’s striving is directed toward beholding the marvellous new form that rises upon the sacrificial flames of the destruction of all that was old. In the blood-red field of the sky I behold a radiant, unbounded future — I see it within this very dawn that approaches — feel how within my breast a drum is being beaten.”

And with that, Gora took Binoy’s hand and pressed it against his own chest.

Binoy said, “Brother Gora, I will go wherever you go. But I tell you this — never let me waver. Be as merciless as fate itself in drawing me forward. Our path is one — but our strength is not equal.”

Gora said, “There is a difference in our natures, but one great joy will make them one. A love greater than the love between us will unite us. Until that love becomes real, there will be at every step much conflict and collision, opposition and estrangement between us — and then one day we shall forget everything, forget even our differences and our friendship, and stand merged in one immense and terrible self-abnegation, immovable and resolute — and that arduous joy will be the final consummation of our friendship.”

Binoy took Gora’s hand and said, “So let it be.”

Gora said, “Until that day comes, I shall give you much pain. You will have to bear all my tyranny — for I cannot look upon our friendship as the final aim of life, and I will not do it the dishonour of merely striving to preserve it by whatever means. If friendship breaks under this — there is no help for it; but if it survives, then friendship will have proved itself worthy.”

At that moment both were startled by the sound of footsteps and turned to find that Anandamayi had come up to the terrace. She took both their hands and drew them toward the room, saying, “Come — come and sleep.”

Both said, “We shall sleep no more tonight, Mother.”

“You shall,” said Anandamayi firmly, and she made the two friends lie down side by side on the bed, shut the door of the room, and seated herself at their heads to fan them.

Binoy said, “Mother, if you sit there fanning us, we shall not be able to sleep at all.”

Anandamayi said, “I shall see about that. The moment I leave, you will start talking again — that I will not allow.”

When both had fallen asleep, Anandamayi quietly rose and slipped out of the room. Descending the stairs, she found Mahim coming up. Anandamayi said, “Not now — they were up all night. I have only just put them to sleep.”

Mahim said, “Good Lord — now this is what you call friendship. Did the question of the marriage come up at all, do you know?”

Anandamayi: I do not know.

Mahim: Something must have been settled, I imagine. When will they wake? There are many complications if the marriage is not arranged soon.

Anandamayi smiled and said, “Their falling asleep will not cause any complications — they will wake sometime during the day today.”