In fact that is how Malraux looked, as he stood, in full elegance and height, at the entrance to the Shanghai or whatever the restaurant was called. In a black suit and with stuffed waistcoat, his sparse hair turned back, square in face, his quick round eyes darting now left now right, like marbles, as he sought us. Meanwhile a young Chinese ran to him, a book in hand, and it was Malraux’s Condition Humaine, of course, and Malraux stood there like a general giving orders to his aides for instructions to the army: The attack will begin at 2.31 a.m. There was something Napoleonic about Malraux, the same self-assurance, because there was so much doubt—there is no faith without doubt, says the Catholic tradition—his gestures were firm but his nerves palpitant, thin. He went left because he did not know which way to turn right. Danger is danger, so why choose? Act. Thus, like a general, he signed his book, in Chinese and with a flourish, and came towards us as we rose to meet him. Panditji stood up almost like a schoolboy as Guehénno introduced him to André Malraux. Yes, it was he indeed, André Malraux, and André Malraux always knew himself to be André Malraux, for destiny had made him so. And destiny had brought about this meeting. Of this he was sure. He was as sure of his déstin, as he would say, as Napoleon, I suppose, was of his. But Malraux knew no Waterloo. Except it be at death. He had cancer and he finally met it as a hero—so his friend told me. He dared death and died, André Malraux.

There is something childlike about great men, I have observed. So it was with Gandhiji. So to a larger degree it was with Panditji—a punky innocence. Malraux too had this childlike innocence. He at once understood—dived into his destiny—to know Pandit Nehru was at least his equal. Panditji was shy, almost as if he would hide his face, with his trembling hands, from himself. Malraux faced the world to hide himself there. He, Malraux, needed men. The world was a theatre—a theatre of war, not Waterloo but St Helena. There was yet no St Helena for him. Bangladesh was his St Helena.