XXVIIITHE RACK OF SEX
DICKY and Nagar sat under thepunkahsin the room at theEntresden—that stillest, hottest night. A fierce stimulus was driving the American. Moment by moment he realized it more clearly—that his love had come back to him, or some strange new fire from it, as he had talked with Mahatma-ji. It compelled him, mind and emotion now, and his questions were insatiable, but he was slow and roundabout in getting to the core of matters that fascinated.
“For instance, what makes him starve himself?” Dicky asked.
“He has no illusions about fasting,” Nagar answered. “Mahatma-ji objects to the distractions of the body. He keeps down this drum of the senses by severity of handling, an old well-tried way of the East. Ask an expert horseman what to do with a spirited saddle horse that has a tendency now and then to take the bit and run away. ‘Cut down his grain, and he will be easier to handle,’ you will be told.”
Dicky was groping feverishly within himself as the other talked. “But what has celibacy to do——” he halted and finished, “with politics and all that?”
“Mahatma-ji has made himself free from the rack of sex and the drum of the senses—enough to realize his great work for others, for India. We who follow him wish to do the same. We understand that we have not the great gift for India, until we are free; that is, only a man who has freed himself from his own desires can help greatly to free others, or his country. We are not free agents so long as we are on the rack of sex. We cannot hate ourselves off that rack; in fact, we must learn to love more, not less, to escape.”
“Tunnel,” Dicky said. “No man educated on the Hudson can get that sort of thing. Have a heart, Nagar.”
“It is my poor telling——”
Dicky smiled and smoked: “I can’t see how he’d have anything left to give the world,” he added—“a man who got on top of himself that way.”
The thing that Dicky had found in the same room with the Little Man wasn’t happiness, but it was better than the deadness he had known; good to feel the tissues of his heart alive again, not a leaden lump.
Again the next day, he went to sit with Mahatma-ji, but nothing happened, though he remained two hours. On one side he had come to doubt the whole business; on the other he had been naïve enough half to believe that all he had to do was to enter the presence of the Indian leader to get this living thing back in his heart, this pain that had the breath of life in it. Two daysafterward, however, while he was deeply involved with Gandhi’s explanation ofSatyagraha, taking notes so that he could put down the other’s words almost exactly, the sense of Pidge Musser’s presence and plight was suddenly with him again, renewed within him, the pity of it almost more than he could endure.
There were hours also when Dicky could believe almost anything at theAshrama, where he was permitted to sit with the native students (Gandhi often halting his speech in Hindi or Guzerati, to talk English for the American’s benefit). And occasionally during long evening talks with Nagar, on the banks of the Sabarmati or under the muffle-wingedpunkahsin theEntresdenroom, Dicky’s mind had sudden extensions of range. Still he had a vague foreboding that he would not be able to hold all this hopeful stuff when he was away from India, for slowly and surely he was being pressed to depart.
“America needs your loyalty now,” Nagar said. “We will send for you to come when the curtain rises here. The drama of India is not being played now, but the Play is written. This that you have heard, so far, is only a rehearsal of minor parts.”
In June, a letter came fromThe Public Square, pressing its correspondent to return to France, or at least to some of the points where the American troops were gathering.
... As for magazine conditions, Dicky [John Higgins wrote], they couldn’t be worse. Our little oldPublic Squarehas fallen into sorry ways.... If you’ve had a German neighbor for thirty years and learned cautiously to respect the beast, you’re supposed now to know him no more, in trade or whist or home or club, nor his woman nor children. Old England’s bloomed out more seductive than ever, and this country’s infatuated. You couldn’t believe it. We’re more English than Canada right now. She’s borrowed everything in sight and is so tickled over herself that she’s beginning to laugh at us already. It’s a fact, her big business men can’t keep the joke any longer.... But I only meant to tell you thatThe Public Squarehas nothing to say, nothing to do. We tried a critical study of the architecture of a federal building in Des Moines, and we’re being looked into for unpatriotic motives. A lot of American business men, who once gloried in their breadth and toleration, have taken positions in what they call the Department of Justice, and their business is to probe into speeches and writings like ours. They are looking for heresies of citizenship. If we’re not suspended for making a croak, we’ll likely be forced to suspend for not having the breath. Otherwise, we’re quite well, and the trade world—you ought to be able to hear American business boom, even in India—if you’re not too far inland.
... As for magazine conditions, Dicky [John Higgins wrote], they couldn’t be worse. Our little oldPublic Squarehas fallen into sorry ways.... If you’ve had a German neighbor for thirty years and learned cautiously to respect the beast, you’re supposed now to know him no more, in trade or whist or home or club, nor his woman nor children. Old England’s bloomed out more seductive than ever, and this country’s infatuated. You couldn’t believe it. We’re more English than Canada right now. She’s borrowed everything in sight and is so tickled over herself that she’s beginning to laugh at us already. It’s a fact, her big business men can’t keep the joke any longer.... But I only meant to tell you thatThe Public Squarehas nothing to say, nothing to do. We tried a critical study of the architecture of a federal building in Des Moines, and we’re being looked into for unpatriotic motives. A lot of American business men, who once gloried in their breadth and toleration, have taken positions in what they call the Department of Justice, and their business is to probe into speeches and writings like ours. They are looking for heresies of citizenship. If we’re not suspended for making a croak, we’ll likely be forced to suspend for not having the breath. Otherwise, we’re quite well, and the trade world—you ought to be able to hear American business boom, even in India—if you’re not too far inland.
For the first time John Higgins’ views looked diminished to Dicky Cobden’s eyes. This personal treason he laid to India. He made an arrangement, however, to helpThe Public Squareto keep alive.... Gandhi was called to Lucknow, and Dicky saw him into his third-class coach, with a catch in his throat and a sadnessof heart. A day or two later he left Nagar at the station where he found him—and the day looked dull and gloomy from the windows of the BombayInter Provincial, as the American started south alone.