Under the flapping awnings of the Shanghai (or whatever the restaurant was called) Malraux took Pandit Nehru’s stretched hands, and pressing them with his own—looking away shyly to a side—said: ‘I am a fabulist. I love fables. There is among the legends of the French Middle Ages, somewhat belonging to the thirteenth century, a book called Historia de Preliis, written by a Church Father, called Leo, a story of Alexander, with which I would like to conclude. Alexander had not yet reached India, and maybe one of those Iranian magi had met him after the fall of Persepolis and said to him: “There’s in the right middle of this Universe, the City of the Sun. Its steps are made of sapphire—for it’s on the top of a mountain, a thousand steps high. When you go step after step—and therefore a thousand steps—you come to a great high hall lit brilliantly with only a large precious stone. And in the proper middle of the hall seven steps above the altar, made of pure gold and emerald, will lie a sage clothed in ochre and silks. Go there and he will give you a message . . .”

‘And on reaching there, across the land and up the great hills, the sage said to Alexander: ‘Trace your steps back, young man. Go back. India is death to you.’ India is even death to death. Alexander would not listen. He smiled. The sage had warned the great conqueror of his death. The City of Gold was Les Indes, say our texts. And you know what happened to Alexander. After wanting to bring all of disparate humanity together, he died of a stomach ache. That’s what comes when you do not listen to the sage of the Holy Grail. Laws are what we impose upon the world to understand ourselves. Adieu, Monsieur Nehru.’ And he let go Nehru’s hand and jumped into the standing taxi. Guehénno followed him with a polite bow.

Panditji was so bewildered, he did not say a word after that. As we crossed the Boulevard St Michel amidst the noise of grumbling students and chattering Sorbonnardes, he must have felt a student again. He knew of Sylvia Beach’s Shakespeare & Company on the Rue de Seine. He went in, still ruminant, and bought himself a copy of Ulysses. He held it shyly in his hands, and looking mischievously at me, he remarked: ‘You know, in India, it’s a proscribed book.’ And he smiled back to me as if in an act of connivance. He could play.

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