Part 8

[7] The Underworld, the home of the snakes.

II

So as Aja stood upon the wall, looking out over the desert, suddenly all vanished from before his eyes. And he saw before him no city, and no desert. But he found himself in a dusky wood, thick with tall _tamála_[1] trees, and lit by a light that was neither that of the sun nor that of the moon. And all around him huge red poppies waved gently without a wind, mixed with great moon-lotuses, whose perfume went and came by turns as it hung on the heavy air. And under the shadow of the black-leaved trees large bats flew here and there with slow and noiseless flap, and on the branches monstrous owls with topaz eyes like wheels of flame sat motionless, as if to watch. And a dead silence like that of space whence all three worlds have been removed left Aja nothing else to hear but the beat of his own heart. And the hair rose up upon his head with sheer amazement. And he said to himself: Ha! what new wonder is this, and what has become of the city wall? And where in the world have I got to now, and how? Now let me be very wary, for the danger is evidently coming near.

And as he stood, grasping his sword, prepared, and looking quickly right and left, suddenly he saw a thing which rivetted his gaze to it, as if with an iron nail.

A little way off, among the poppies, was standing up like a lonely column all that was left of one of the walls of a ruined temple, whose fallen pillars were lying scattered all around it, half concealed by creeping leaves. And as he gazed intently at this upright fragment of a fallen wall, he saw upon it the image of a sculptured woman, which stood out so distinctly that he could not take his eyes from it. And after a while, he said to himself: Surely that can be no stone statue, but a real woman of flesh and blood, actually leaning, who knows why, against that bit of a broken wall. And he looked and looked, and after a while, filled with irresistible curiosity, he went nearer, but very slowly, and as it were on his guard, to see.

So as he gazed, wonder and admiration gradually crept into his soul, and stole his recollection unaware. And he became wholly intent on the stone image, and forgetful of his situation. And he ceased to wonder at finding himself in the wood, so great was his new wonder at the beauty of the woman on the wall. And he said to himself: Surely he was a master artist, whoever he was, that made this woman out of stone, if stone indeed she be. For even now, near as I am, I can hardly believe she is made of stone.

And the more he looked, the more he marvelled. For she seemed in his eyes like a frozen mass of lunar camphor, moulded into a female form, standing cold and pure and still, alone by herself in that strange half light, that hovered as it were irresolute between the natures of night and day. And she stood with her right hand on her hip, which jutted out to receive it like the curve of a breaking wave: and her bare right breast stood out and shone like a great moonlit sea pearl, while the other was hiding behind the curling fold of the pale green garment that ran around her, embracing her with clinging clasp like a winding wisp of emerald foam fondly wrapping the yielding waist of Wishnu's sea-born wife. And she was very tall, and shaped like Shrí, and she stood with her head a little bent, and her sightless eyes fixed as it were on empty space, just as though she were listening for some expected sound. And as he continued to gaze at her, a wonder that was almost horror crept into his mind. For her face was not like that of an image, but rather resembled a mask, or the face of a very beautiful woman, that very moment dead. For the colour seemed as it were to have only just faded from her cheek, and the blood seemed only just before to have left her pallid lips, and the sight was as it were hanging yet in her great long open eyes, that were fixed on the distant sky. And he stood, gazing, as if the very sight of her had made of him another image like herself.

And then, at last, he stepped forward. And he put out his left hand, and touched her with his forefinger on the shoulder that was bare.

And instantly, as if his touch had filled her with a flood of life, a shiver ran like quicksilver over her stony limbs. And as he started back, to watch, the colour came back into her face, and red blood rushed into her lips, and deep blue suddenly filled her eyes. And the tresses of hair around her head turned all of a sudden a glossy black, that shone with a blue-green lustre, as if reflecting the grassy sheen of her winding robe. And her bosom lifted slowly, and fell again with a deep sigh. And all at once, she abruptly altered her position, and her eyes fell straight on Aja, standing just before her. And she lifted up, first one eyebrow, and then the other, till they formed a perfect bow, for they joined each other in the middle. And she uttered a faint cry, as if in joy, exclaiming: Ha! can it be, and is it thou? Or am I dreaming still?

[1] A tree with very black bark and white blossoms, dear to erotic poets, such as, _e.g._, Jayadewa.

III

And Aja stood, staring at her with stony gaze, like a mirror of her own surprise. And he said to himself: Surely it is not she, but I myself, that am the dreamer. For here since the sun rose last, I have escaped the desert, and found this city without a man, and acquired a bride of peerless beauty: and now here is another, rising as it were from the dead, and seeming to expect me. And he continued standing silent, gazing at her, sword in hand. And after a while, she said: What! is my form, then, so frightful as to rob thee of thy tongue? Or art thou going to use that sword against me? Speak: but in the meanwhile, let me see whether I have lost the use of my limbs, as thou hast that of thy tongue, after so long a sleep. And she leaped from her little pedestal, and moved a little way here and there, waving her beautiful arms about: and after a while, she came back, and sat down just before him, on one of the fallen pillars that were lying about the ground. And all the while Aja watched her, as if fascinated by a serpent, saying within himself: She moves like nothing I ever saw, save a panther or a gliding snake.[1] And then, all at once, she again put up one eyebrow, and said to him with a smile: Must I, then, actually tell thee, that I am Natabhrúkutí?[2] Then Aja said: O lady, it is obvious. For thy bent brow would plant arrows even in the heart of the Great Ascetic. And she said again: O husband, is this thy welcome, after so long a separation?

And Aja bounded, as if bitten by a snake. And he exclaimed: Thy husband! What! Am I then thy husband also? Does thy whole sex want to get me for a husband? But O thou beauty of bending brows, how can he be thy husband, that never saw thee in his life before? And only this morning, I was still wifeless, and a day has not elapsed, since I became another's husband. And he stopped short, again confounded at the effect of his own words. For hardly had they passed his lips, when Natabhrúkutí started up, swelling with rage and convulsed with fury, with eyes that blazed like fiery stars. And she exclaimed: Never! never! Never shall she possess thee, nor any other than I myself. And then, like a flash of lightning, her rage vanished as quickly as it came. And she looked at him with imploring eyes, and said: Slay me now, with thy long bright sword, and send me back to that nonentity out of which thou hast just recalled me: but speak not of another woman in front of me. Alas! and am I all forgotten? And tears rolled from her great blue eyes, and fell like suppliants at her feet.

And Aja put up his left hand, and tugged at his hair in the extremity of his amazement. And he said: O thou strange offended lady, I am utterly bewildered, and resemble one that has lost his way at midnight in a wood. And thy anger and thy grief are alike altogether incomprehensible. How can I possibly have forgotten one, whom as I just now told thee, I never saw in my life before? Then she said: Nay, not in this life, but the last. For I was the wife of thy former birth.

Then Aja laughed, and he said: O beauty, who remembers his former birth? For like every other man, and like my ancestor the sun, I have risen up into light out of the sea of dark oblivion, into which I must sink again at last. And then she looked at him with a deep sigh. And she said: Alas! This is a punishment indeed, and worse by far than all the rest, if after having endured so long the state of a stone upon a wall, I am again become a woman, only to find myself repudiated and all forgotten, by him, on whose account I suffered all. Listen, then, and I will tell thee the story of thy former birth. It may be that, in the hearing, some scattered reminiscences will be as it were awakened, to stir again in the dark lethargy of thy sleeping soul.

[1] It is a wonderful thing to see a cobra move. Nothing can describe it.

[2] That is, _the Beauty of the arched eyebrows_. (Pronounce _Nat-_ to rhyme with _but_.)

IV

And then she began to speak. And as she spoke, she leaned forward, as she sat upon the fallen pillar, and fastened her great eager eyes like magnets on his own. And as Aja watched them, they played as it were upon his heart. For their colour wavered and changed and faltered, shifting ever from hue to hue, turning golden and ruddy amber, and emerald-green and lotus-blue; and over her eyes her arching brows lifted and fell and played and flickered, fixing his troubled soul like nails, and rivetting his attention, till her singing voice sounded in his head like a distant tune crooned in the ear of a sleepy man. And she waved slowly her long round arms, all the while she spoke. And she said: Far away, over the sea, lies thy own forgotten land, and presently I will tell thee, and even show thee, where it is. And there it was, in our former birth, that thou and I were boy and girl. But thou wert the son of a mighty King, and I was only a Brahmani, a poor man's daughter, and my father was an old ascetic, far below thee in everything else but caste. And I lived alone with my old father, in the very heart of a great forest, in a little hut of bark, over which the _málati_ creeper grew so thick that nothing was visible of that little hut, except its door. And then one day I was seen by thee, standing still in that very door, with my pitcher on my head: as thou wert passing through the wood to hunt upon thy horse. And that moment was like a sponge, that blotted from the mind of each everything but the other's image. And I made of thee my deity, and forgot everything in the three great worlds, for thee alone. And thou, that day, didst clean forget thy hunting: or rather, the God of Love showed thee game of another kind,[1] and from pursuing thou didst fall to wooing a quarry that wished for nothing so much as to be thy prey. And we married each other that very day, which ah! thou hast all forgotten. What! dost thou not remember how I used to meet thee every day in the little hut, when my father was away in the wood engaged in meditation? What! hast thou really all forgotten how it was thy supreme delight to bring me garments and costly jewels, which I put on for thy amusement, thy forest-queen of the little hut? Has thy memory cast away every vestige of reminiscence of thy old sweet love in the little hut? So then it happened that on a day we were together, blind and drunk with each other's presence, shut within the little hut like a pair of bees in a nectared lotus. And I was standing like an idol, dressed like the queen of a _chakrawarti_,[2] loaded with gold on wrists and feet, with great pearls wound about my neck; and thou wert contemplating me, thy creature,[3] with intoxication, and hard indeed it was to tell which of us two was the idol, and which was the devotee. And as we woke up from a kiss that lasted like infinity, lo! my father stood before us. And he said slowly: Abandoned daughter, that hast forgot thy duty in thy passion for this King's son, become what thou hast represented, an idol[4] of stone on the wall of a ruined temple far away: and thou, her guilty lover, fall again into another birth, and be separated from thy guilty love. Then being besought by us, to fix some period to the curse, he said again: When ye two shall meet again, and thy husband in his curiosity shall touch thee with his finger, she shall regain her woman's state, and be as she was before. And now all this has come about, exactly as he said. And I have found thee once again, only to find alas! alas! that thou hast left thy heart behind thee in that old delicious birth.

[1] In Sanskrit, hunting and wooing can be mixed up together by plays on words.

[2] An emperor. Hindoo idols are dressed and undressed, like dolls, by their officiating priests.

[3] She means, he was her Creator.

[4] The Hindoos have no word, because they have not the idea, of an _idol_. They call it a _god_ or an _image_. Our word _idol_ implies the antagonism to paganism involved in Christianity, and no two books are more alike than S. Augustine's _City of God_ and Ward's _Hindoo Mythology_.

V

So as he listened, Aja's soul was filled as it were with a mingled essence of wonder and irresolution and sheeny beauty and singing sound. For the tone of her voice was like a lute, and before his eyes hovered a picture of waving arms and witching curves, out of which her dreamy eyes, from which he could not take his own, seemed as it were to speak to him of love reproachful and old regret. And all at once, with a violent effort, he roused himself as if from sleep with open eyes. And he shifted his sword to the other hand, and passed his right across his brow. And he said, in some confusion: O thou strange and sweet-tongued woman, certain this much is, that I am filled by thee with emotion that I do not understand. And yet I know not what to think, or even say. For even apart from the promptings of a former birth, thy beauty and thy haunting voice, which I seem as it were to have heard before, are quite sufficient to rouse emotion even in a stone, much more in a man of flesh and blood.

Then she shook her head sadly, looking at him with glistening eyes; and she said, with a smile of ineffable sweetness: Ah! this is as I thought, and the instinct of thy former birth is clouded over and effaced, by thy meeting with this other woman in the morning of this very day. Alas! how small, how very small, the interval of space and time that divides the paradise of joy from the dungeon of despair! For had this our reunion been sooner by only a single day, I should have caught thy heart before it had been occupied by this all too fortunate other woman, who now holds it like a fortress, garrisoned by a prior claim. But what is this priority of claim? Can she, who by thine own confession has known thee only a single day, dare to dispute priority with the darling of thy former birth?[1] Wilt thou break thy faith with me, to keep thy faith with her? Aye! and wilt thou, after all, gain so much by the exchange? Is she beautiful, then, this other woman? But I am beautiful, too? And she stood up, and looked at Aja with her head thrown back and proud eyes, as though to challenge his condemnation of her own consummate beauty. And she said again: Is she, then, this other beauty, either more faithful or more beautiful than I am? Speak, and tell me if thou canst, in what I am inferior, or why I am to be despised, in comparison with her.

And Aja looked at her again, and felt abashed, and half ashamed, he knew not why. And he murmured to himself: She does not lie: for beautiful she is indeed, and need not fear comparison with any woman in the world. And it may be, she is partly right, and if I had met her yesterday, before my heart was full, she would have had little difficulty in entering in and capturing it, almost without resistance. And he stood looking at her silently, uncertain what to say or do, and half inclined to pity her, and half afraid of her and of himself, admiring her against his will, and as it were confessing by his very silence the power of her appeal. For notwithstanding the preoccupation of his heart, his youth and his sex became as it were allies with her against his resolution, compelling him to acknowledge the supremacy of the cunning god, and the spell of feminine attraction incarnate in her form.

And she stood there before him, for a little, with beauty as it were heightened by resentful reproach of the slighting of itself, and the disregard of its tried affection. And then all at once she sank down upon the ground, as if she were tired, and remained sitting among the poppies, with her chin resting on her left knee, which she embraced with her arms, watching him, and as it were, waiting with humility and patience for a decision in her case. And every now and then, she closed her eyes, and opened them again, as if to make sure that he was there.

And Aja looked round in the silence, at the poppies and the lotuses, and the great owls that seemed to watch him, and back again at her. And his head began to whirl, and he muttered to himself: Is this a dream, and what does it all mean? And is she returning to the condition of an image, disgusted by my coldness and disdain? And what is to be done? And he looked at her face, deprived, by the closing of their lids, of the moon of her eyes, and resting like a mask upon its chin. And he said within himself: Her eyebrows move, as if they were alive. And he felt as it were unable to look away from them: and at last, annoyed with himself, he closed his eyes also, as though to escape their persecution.

[1] Though, in Europe, this insidious appeal might lack force, it is otherwise in India: whose millions doubt their former birth no more than they doubt their own existence. It is not long since a woman in Cutch burned herself with her own dead son, because, she averred, he had been her husband in her former birth.

VI

And then, he said to himself: This is cowardice, and after all, no refuge; for I seem to see her still, through the shutters of my lids. And he opened his eyes once more. And instantly, he leaped from the ground like a wounded stag, with a cry. For the wood, with all its lotuses and poppies, was gone. And in its place, he saw before him a forest with its great green trees all lit by the shining of the sun. And just in front of him there stood a little hut, buried in the blossom of the _málati_ creeper. And in its doorway was standing a young Brahman woman, with a pitcher on her head. And she beckoned to him with a smile, and he looked, and lo! it was Natabhrúkutí. Then moved as if against his will, on feet that carried him towards her as it were of their own accord, he approached her. And as he drew nearer, there came from that creeper a wave of perfume, resembling that of jasmine, but sweeter, and so pungent that it entered like fire into his soul. And then she lifted the pitcher from her head, and set it down upon the ground, and caught him by the hand, and drew him within the hut. And there she cast herself into his arms, whispering in his ear, very low, so as to caress it as she spoke with her lips: My father is away, and now we are alone, and the day is all before us. Come now, what shall I do for thy delight? And she ran and shut the door; and then, taking from a chest rich clothes and splendid jewels, she began to put them on, saying as she did so: See! am I becoming more fit to be thy queen? And he watched her, stupefied, like one in a dream, and all the while she bathed him with intoxicating side glances shot like arrows from the bow of her arching brows. And at last, she came slowly towards him, walking on tip-toe, and attitudinising, placing herself exactly in the posture in which he had seen her first among the poppies on the wall, with one hand on her hip. And she said, lifting her brow, with a smile that stole his reason: Now, then, the idol is ready for the devotee. And at that moment the door opened, and an old Brahman entered through it. And he said slowly: Abandoned daughter, that hast forgot thy duty in thy passion for this King's son, become what thou hast represented, an idol of stone on the wall of a ruined temple far away; and thou her guilty lover, fall into another birth, and be separated from thy guilty love.

And then, Aja heard no more. The world whirled around him; the blackness of night closed over his soul; he uttered a terrible cry, and fell to the ground in a swoon.

VII

And when he came to himself, he was back again among the poppies in the _tamála_ wood. And he was lying on the ground, with Natabhrúkutí bending over him, holding him by the hand, with anxiety in her eyes. And instantly he started up, and seizing his sword, stood gazing at her with stupefaction. And he said to himself: Am I dead or dreaming? And what does it all mean? Is it a delusion of the Creator, or a mirage and a madness of the desert, out of which I have never yet escaped at all? Aye! beyond a doubt, I am wandering still in the waste of sand, raving mad, and dying, and haunted by phantoms that are the premonitors of approaching death.

So as he stood, balancing in the swing of perplexity, and doubting his own reason, Natabhrúkutí looked at him fixedly, with concern and affection and curiosity in her eyes. And she said: Surely thou art ill. And why then dost thou shrink from me, as though I were a thing of terror: I, who ask for nothing but to tend thee all my life? For it was but now, as we spoke together in this wood, I looked up and saw thee suddenly close thy eyes. And as I watched thee, wondering to see thee sleeping as it were erect, there burst from thy lips a fearful cry, and I had but time to catch thee falling, and let thee sink upon the ground. And I brought thee to thyself, by fanning thee, as well as I might, with this great leaf.