Malraux became polite, and explained himself. ‘Europe is destructive, suicidal. Europe, as Nietzsche understood—and who understood Europe better than Nietzsche did—so he had to go mad. You remember what Dostoevsky said: Europe is a cemetery of ideas—yes, we cannot go beyond good and evil. We can never go, as the Indians can, beyond duality. India had Sankara. France had Descartes. Aristotle made a mess of Europe—he created good and evil. He created science and distanced us from Socratic wisdom. So it took almost two thousand years for Nietzsche to come and say: The Truth is beyond good and evil. But you know better than I do, advaita of Sankara is not Nietzsche’s non-duality. Thus our cemetery—even when we grow roses in them. You remember that is why, our cemeteries are on hilltops, so that we look up always at death. But you in India have grown a civilization,’ and here Panditji looked up, ‘you, sir, you have created the Upanishads, and the Gita, where Sri Krishna says, ‘standing beyond duality, you Arjuna, kill and be killed, for there is neither the killer nor the killed’.

‘But,’ started Panditji, slowly, with a deliberate voice, ‘but Krishna tried every politic way to stop the war, non-violently. He said to the Kauravas to give the Pandavas five provinces, five districts, five villages, or even five houses, as they were the rightful heirs to the kingdom—’

‘Would Gandhi say this to the British?’ interrupted Malraux.

‘You know, I am sure, how Gandhi the Prophet of Non-violence, how he offered to raise volunteers for the British Army, during the First World War. He always believed: The adversity of your enemy should never be your opportunity. But the British . . .’

‘But if you believe in metapsychosis, you have the whole of eternity before you. Good is good because there is eternity. Time creates duality. You Indians will die because Krishna taught you there is no death—’

‘Not merely Krishna but the Vedas as well. We are a rational people. Time is of the mind. The mind is of what—’

‘Of Brahman,’ shouted Malraux, pressing down his cigarette on his plate. ‘Yes, that is it. Death makes man a man. Man does not make death. Death is a mask man wears. A mask as we wear at the Carnival. But at the end of the Carnival is the Crucifixion. For the Indian there is no Resurrection.’

‘But we too have death,’ said Panditji, almost in a whisper.

‘But you mock at death with fire—’

‘And you?’

‘The cemetery, that is with wood and cement. And that’s Europe,’ concluded Malraux.