The Rebellion of Yale Marratt (50 page)

 

 

"Oh, Sunanda, not when they can have a lovely Indian girl."

 

 

"Indian women get old quick. Sunanda will be an old woman at twenty-five."
Anne knew that Sunanda was seventeen. She had had two children already.
The philosophy is fine, Anne thought. The Hindu adores women. He accords
the female supremacy, but practically . . . she withers before his eyes,
and he can do nothing about it.

 

 

When Sundari and Mat Chilling came out to the village later that day,
they found out what Chatterji had meant by his statement that all women
were Parvati. Anne remembered that Sundari had looked at Yale with
amusement. He made some comment about white men lying naked in the sun
to achieve the color of the Asians they despised.

 

 

"It's not the color," Yale said, grinning. He made no attempt to dress,
although Anne had appeared with his pants. "It's the cool breeze blowing
across one's testicles . . . gentle as the touch of a woman who loves you."

 

 

Sundari had been delighted. He turned to Mat. "I think this young man
already understands the Sakta theory . . . that the ultimate and active
principle in the universe is feminine. I do think that since Sahib Marratt
and his Memsahib have asked me to officiate at this marriage I would be
remiss if I didn't attempt to give them an understanding of Bhakti Yoga
and some of the Hindu concepts of love."

 

 

Anne had asked him if this was what Helen Axonby had meant by "Love Yoga."

 

 

Sundari smiled. "What I tell people in my lectures is an ancient
formulation, based on the Tantras. Love Yoga somehow fails to render
the idea. It has journalistic overtones in my mind." Chatterji opened
cocoanuts for them. They had sipped the cool milk as they talked.

 

 

Anne remembered that Yale had pointed out to Mat that it sounded to him
a little like Mat's idea of "Seek the True Love."

 

 

 

 

Surya Gupta interrupted Anne's reveries. He bounced into the room with
a happy grin. "We are ready for the bride, Memsahib."

 

 

Her legs trembling, Anne listened to the sigh of approval as Surya Gupta
led her through the crowds of spectators forming a pathway for them to
the wedding tent. She saw only a blur of faces through her veil. In a
moment she was kneeling yoga fashion before the sacrificial fire. Yale
dressed in suntans was beside her. She caught a glimpse of admiration
in his smile. He touched her hand gently. Sundari was busy chanting in
Sanskrit what he had told them would be an extended invocation to the
ancestors. As he sang the verses, assistant priests to his right and
left fed rice and ghee into the fire. The tent was crowded. The sides
were lifted. In every direction Anne glimpsed happy brown faces following
the ritual with great seriousness.

 

 

In the long discussions they had had concerning the Vedic marriage
ceremony, Anne knew that it would be some time before they reached the
Kanyadan, or wedding itself. Honor must be paid to the Gods. The Spirits
must be propitiated. Without understanding the language (something which
she had protested to Sundari as seeming a little false to her), Anne
was able to grasp the essential meaning of what Sundari was saying.
He had explained to her and Yale that very few Hindus understood Sanskrit
. . . any more than Catholics understood Latin. It should be easy for
them to participate as long as they understood the ceremony generally.

 

 

The heat was overpowering. Kneeling so close to the fire, smelling
the ever-present warm smell of dung and burning of rice and ghee
in the sacrificial pot, Anne felt suddenly faint. She clenched her
hands. She prayed. Somehow she must get through the ceremony. She knew
how much effort the villagers . . . Surya Gupta, Sundari . . . all of
them had put into the wedding. It was an occasion they would remember,
an honor that these Americans had bestowed by accepting their beliefs
and rituals. Anne knew the marriage had been a continual subject of
discussion in the village for weeks. Sunanda had asked if she really
were a Hindu in her beliefs. Anne parried the question by telling her
that "all paths lead to Brahma." She wondered as she said it what her
religion was. Not Christian, certainly . . . for wasn't living with Yale
. . . wasn't this marriage a blasphemy in Christian eyes?

 

 

Again, she felt a wave of dizziness spread over her. She swayed
slightly. Sundari continued his oblations. I'm really pregnant, she
thought, wondering when she would have the courage to tell Yale. Oh,
dear God, let him care for me when he knows. Let not these wonderful
discussions of love and philosophy that we have had be just abstractions
that fold their tents and disappear when the hard reality is known. What
had Mat Chilling said to her that day? Her mind drifting over the peaks
and valleys of Sundari's singsong chant, she remembered:

 

 

"You see, Anne," Matt had said, "'Seek the True Love' was a very crude
formulation of an idea that has gradually come to obsess me, and made
it impossible for me to preach Christianity in the accepted theological
ways. For years I have been searching for the ultimate fulcrum that
will pry man loose from his hatreds. Idealistic sexuality seemed the
answer. Here is a common bond for all men which our established religions
have unfortunately renounced. No human consciousness can ever know another
human consciousness. We are circumscribed by our own existence. Yet in
the sexual giving and receiving of a male and female, not only bodies,
but minds themselves, finding the unity of two lovers with the universe,
can participate in the Ultimate. Isn't this really the best and only
approach to God for man? By our understanding of the microcosm, which
is all man, we can approach to an understanding of the macrocosm, which
is God. What I was trying to say in 'Seek the True Love,' Anne, was that
the truly sacred love of God could be achieved just as blessedly for any
man or woman in a clean warm sexual act, as for the saint or mystic in
the transports of his ascetism. Maybe even better . . . because with the
communion possible in the sexual act, properly enjoyed and understood,
moves not the 'still sad music . . .' but the joyous music of humanity."

 

 

Anne remembered. As she had listened to Mat she wondered about the
strange affinity that he and Yale had for each other. She wondered what
Cynthia thought about Mat's ideas. Was she, Anne, simply an outsider to
an established triumvirate, with the unknown Cynthia in the center?

 

 

She recalled Yale answering Mat, "I think I have always felt this way."

 

 

She remembered he had touched her arm. "This sexual rapport takes a very
complete understanding of a man and a woman for each other. Perhaps this
molding of two people is as difficult to achieve as Nirvana itself. If
it can be brought about, a man and woman will transcend the sexual act
itself. It has happened to me."

 

 

Anne remembered the reminiscent tone in Yale's voice. Had he meant with her
or with Cynthia? Again, that gnawing doubt.

 

 

Sundari had finished his long apostrophe to Krishna and the ceremony of
the marriage itself was about to begin. For several weeks she and Yale
had studied their parts like actors in a play. Sundari had translated
some of the Sanskrit ritual into the ultimate vows that she and Yale
would take. As if she were a spectator instead of a participant, as if
the significance of the ceremony were not for her but for some person
she was watching with unconstrained interest, she heard Sundari ask,

 

 

"Who giveth this woman?"

 

 

As they had previously agreed, Surya Gupta answered, "I do, acting as
the father."

 

 

Oh, yes, Anne thought, Anne's father is dead. But he was alive when
Ricky and Anne were married. What would he have thought of this
heathen ceremony, Anne, the watcher, wondered? Horrible! Indecent!
A blasphemy! Even broadminded Ricky would have been shocked. For Ricky's
liberalism embraced science and biology, but, wherever he was now, if he
could see his wife pregnant, being married before a fire representing
a Hindu divinity named Agni, he would have shouted his protest loudly.

 

 

"What is her name?" Sundari asked.

 

 

"Anne Meredith Wilson."

 

 

Sundari ordered them to throw rice into the fire. Anne, the participant,
was aware of Yale's voice. He was speaking to her. She heard the words
he had practised, spoken, now tenderly, with a warmth of affection that
made her tremble.

 

 

"Look upon me with no angry eyes; be not hostile to me; be tender to
animals, be amiable, be glorious; be the mother of males; be devoted to
God; be the bestower of happiness; be the bringer of prosperity to our
bipeds and quadrupeds."

 

 

She grinned, remembering how she had kissed him and murmured to him, "I
didn't know I was marrying a farmer. Oh, Yale, my dearest, I do love you."

 

 

The ceremony was proceeding. She was being linked to this man she had
known only a few thousand hours.

 

 

Solemnly Surya Gupta said, "In the attainment of Dharma, Artha and
Kama. She is not to be transgressed."

 

 

"Transgress her I will not," Yale said quietly.

 

 

How delighted Mat and Sundari had been with these vows! "You see the
point?" Sundari had asked her. "No Hindu wife is chattel. She is very
much the mistress in her home. Anne is your equal in every way, Yale."

 

 

Yale had quibbled. "Well, not quite every way," he had demurred.
"Ultimately a woman receives, and a man gives."

 

 

And now Sundari was passing the yoke to Yale. Smiling, Yale placed it
over her head. Anne knew her eyes were bright with tears; for this was
the act of submission, the passing of authority to her husband. Sundari
continued the ceremony, speaking a flowing river of sound that embraced
them. Sunanda had moved forward to assist in the symbolical tying of their
garments. Since Yale was wearing a chino shirt, they had planned this
so that a piece of ribbon from Anne's sari was joined loosely to his arm.

 

 

Looking at her, with a tiny grin; an expression of love on his face, as
tangible as a caress, Yale said, following the translation Sundari had
prepared for him, "First Soma had thee for a bride; Gandharva obtained
thee next; Agni was thy third husband; thy fourth husband is myself,
born of man. Soma gave thee to Gandharva, then Gandharva gave thee to
Agni, and Agni has given thee to me for wealth and sons."

 

 

Anne remembered the discussion that this had engendered when Sundari had
explained it to them. "I know that these Gods take care of a girl during
her youth and protect her virginity," Anne said, teasing them. "But
unfortunately I'm not a virgin. Even if I had not lived with Yale, I
have been married before. You see, Sundari, even your Eastern religions
want their women inviolable."

 

 

Sundari was equal to any problem. "Love properly understood," he had
told her, "occurs only between virgins. What does virginity mean? I
will tell you. Pure, unsullied . . . not yet used for any purpose. Note
the word
use
. It cannot exist in love or in the sexual act.
Use
implies a destruction of value. It implies that this is a
contact that
depreciates the flesh. This, I tell you, is not so! Love exists without
man or woman. Participation in this never born, never ceasing love is
possible for man and woman through the wondrous commingling of their
minds and bodies. In this world of Maya, or illusion, we must recognize
the truth; for those who are pure the sexual act is a perpetual renewal
of virginity."

 

 

Listening to him chant the Sanskrit marriage texts, Anne remembered the
night that Helen Axonby persuaded Sundari to explain in more detail his
Tantric conceptions of Love. "I think it is time," he had admitted. "This
man, Yale Marratt, and his woman Anne Wilson, should know as much as
possible. A good place to start is in this village. These people are
Vanamargis, or left-hand worshippers, known as Tantrics. Their complete
worship of sex, and the active female principle in the world, is not
easily understood by ascetics. You from the West believe that the only
final way to reach God is in the renunciation of life. A Christ-like
detachment. That is understood by Hindus, too. Hence many forms of
yoga seek God through self-abasement. This is the right-hand path which
denies the world. The left-hand path embraces the world. You might call
the right-hand path the male principle, the left-hand path the female
principle. In China our Buddhist friends call this the Yang and the Yin.
But there are many ways to reach Atman. All paths converge. The Sakta
principle which attributes all things in the universe to an active feminine
drive; the feminine principle, absorbing the male . . . containing it,
is more acceptable to many of us in the East, perhaps, because it is
compassionate . . . something a society based on male dominance cannot be."

 

 

Sundari had smiled at his bewildered listeners. "Do not look so worried,
the Tantric accepts this as an image. Parvati, the wife of Shiva,
symbolizes it for him with a wealth of story and myth. Similar to
your Christian Mary in a way. I understand in certain South American
countries there is much more actual worship of Mary than of Christ."
He chuckled. "A more logical trinity perhaps would be The Father, The Son,
and Mary. But not a Virgin Mary. Oh, dear, no!"

 

 

"Now, I understand what Chatterji meant," Yale had said, "when he said
all women are Parvati."