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G.M and Marcia have insisted to give us a puppy. It is a cross, I think, between a
German shepherd and a Doberman. Today we have brought it home; I gave it the
name of “Kritu”: a tiny, bear-like creature, playful…
This evening I have a chance, while Diane is out for a walk, to talk a little with
Barbara, and she helps me, with her common sense and her knowledge of each of
us, to see Diane’s state in a simpler perspective…
*4-5-1982, Auroville:
We leave early this morning, as we have a lot of purchasing to do for Diane’s
Maintenance Service, now re-named “Nandini”. It is crushing hot, but we are calm,
and it goes rather well.
We have lunch at “La Maison” and there Krishna comes to tell me of some stolen
parts from his cycle, implying it is somehow, this too, my responsibility… I keep
quiet.
We are unpacking and putting things away in the “Unity” building, mid-afternoon,
when it all takes a sharp turn: Cristo comes to me with some confused story of
accounts he had mixed up and that had been left unsettled between him and
Krishna and me about cement, and saying that Krishna is very angry at him for
having mixed “his” account with “mine”: the very same elements as two years ago,
when Krishna had cut from me so dramatically… But since then, Krishna’s
contradictory statements and attitudes have made me understand that there is a
double game being played there, and I have better keep a distance…
… Myrtle has returned from the US recently; we haven’t seen her yet, but on the
road we pass Aurienne and hardly recognise her eyes: she is so bloated,
monstrous…: the American creature’s comforts…!
… Back home, I mentally go the wrong way: I do not want to discredit Krishna; I
want still to believe and to trust and to honour…
So, when I later see him walking across the garden, I call out to him and go to
meet him; I tell him what Cristo has said and I ask him what he really want: either
to be precise and exact and carefully separate, or to be open and sharing and
caring and trusting…
He reacts fast, with ready anger.
I say then that I have had my share of his big speeches on our true union and the
divinity of friendship, etc.
He becomes enraged and with a fantastic force he turns and shouts that we are
now at the end, and he will have to kill me or I him, this is it; he is the negro and
the fool and I have asked for it…
He begins to hit me full swing; I fall once, twice; he tries to tear away my
“blessings” locket from my neck, to pull my hair out, he hits me more, on and on;
then he walks over to the house, where Diane is waiting, intent on destroying it.
I follow him…
Not once, not for a second, did I feel the impulse to fight back, it was nowhere in
my consciousness… I could see fear crawling toward me, but a sort of physical
blankness prevailed, a strange calm; there was not a shiver in my body, nothing…
In front of Diane, near to the house, he hits me again, with even more force; I fall
once more, and my face starts to bleed…
He goes to fetch a couple of tools and begins to break down windows, but the flow
of energy is receding…
I sit down, quietly. Diane is weeping.
After a while, he leaves.