Chapter 2

And he took the goddess in his arms, and set her as she sobbed upon his knee, and rose from the peak of Kailàs, and shot like a falling star down into the plain below. And coming to Haradwára, where Gangá issues from the hills, he began to follow the holy stream down its course, gliding along just above it like a cloud that was unable to refrain from watching its own beautiful reflection in the blue mirror of her wave. And so they went, until at last they reached an island that was nothing but a sandbank in the very middle of the river, covered with crocodiles lying basking in the sun. And then he said: See! we will go down, and rest awhile among the crocodiles on this sand, whose banks resemble nothing so much as the outline of thy own graceful limbs. And Umá said tearfully: Pish! what do I care for crocodiles, that sit for hours never even moving, like a _yogí_ in a trance?

Then said the cunning god: None the less, we will go down: for it may be that the island contains something besides its crocodiles. And as they settled on it, he said again: Did I not say we should find something? for yonder it lies, and it is a very great curiosity indeed. And now, canst thou tell me what it is?

And she looked at it with scrutiny, and presently she said: I can tell this only, that it must have been in the water for a very long time, before it was washed up at last upon this bank by the river's flood: since it is but a shapeless lump, covered with sand and rust and dirt. Who but thyself could even guess what it might be? And Maheshwara said: It has had a very long journey, and been not only in the river, but in a crocodile too. For crocodiles swallow everything. And long ago, this was carried by a man, who was drowned in another stream by the upsetting of his boat, and became with all he carried the prey of an old crocodile, which died long ago, and rotted away, letting this at last escape out of its tomb, and roll along, till at last it got into the Ganges, and was thrown up here in the rainy season, only the other day. And when at last the water sank, lo! there it lay, as it has lain until this moment, as if expecting thy arrival, to provide thee with entertainment. And when all is over, thou wilt very likely bless Nandi, instead of cursing him; since but for his awkwardness in rolling on thy elephant, thou wouldst never have known anything about it.

And Párwatí said peevishly: Where is the entertainment in this foolish lump of flotsam, of which thou hast related the adventures without ever saying what it is?

And the Moony-crested god said: Aha! Snowy One, do not be too sure. For many things hold in their heart things not to be anticipated, judging by their outside: and this lump which thou despisest is like a coco-nut, whose coarse skin is full of nectar. But it has been shut so long, that it would not easily be opened by anyone but me.[5] And he touched it with his foot, saying, Open, and it opened like a shell. And he said: See! it has in it a very strange kernel, preserved safe and sound only because all its adventures added to its case, sheath after sheath. And all the leaves are still there, a very little mouldy, and the silk that tied them, and the seal. And the goddess said: But what is it after all? And Maheshwara said: It is a case of urgency, that all came to nothing in the end, being a letter that never even reached its destination, because the sender was in so great a hurry that he defeated his own object, bidding his messenger go so fast that in his haste his boat turned over, and he and his message were eaten on their way by a river beast. For those who go too fast often go so slow as never to arrive at all, as was the case here. Then said Umá: He that sent it must have been a fool. And Maheshwara said! Nay, O Snowy One, not at all: far from it: and yet he became, as many do, a fool for the occasion, under the influence of passion, which blinds the eyes, and shuts up the ears, and twists the whole character awry, so that it acts in a manner contrary to itself, as if the man had been suddenly changed into another, or his body entered by a Wetála, in the temporary absence of his soul.

And Párwatí said: What was the passion here? And the Moony-crested god said slowly: It was a threefold cord, and very strong: love, and love turned by intense disappointment into hatred, and rage against a rival: each by itself alone enough to turn reason into madness. But the whole story is told, by its hero himself, in the very letter: and if thou wilt, I will read it aloud to thee, exactly as he wrote it, word for word. And the goddess said: Thou knowest all: why not tell it in thy own way, without the trouble of reading? And Maheshwara said: Nay, on the contrary, it is far better to let him tell it for himself: for who knew everything better than he did? And moreover, every story told by a stranger is imperfect, since he is obliged to fill up the gaps in his knowledge by imagination or conjecture: whereas, when the actor in it all is himself the narrator, it is the very truth itself, unless he expressly desires to conceal it, which is not the case here. For he was very anxious indeed to tell his enemy everything, on purpose to offend him: and he only made one mistake, which I will show thee in due time. So I will read it exactly as it stands, omitting absolutely nothing. And the Daughter of the Snow said: Read. But she thought: If it is not worth hearing, I will simply go to sleep as he reads. And Maheshwara said: Nay, O Snowy One, I will guarantee that thou dost not go to sleep.

And then, the goddess suddenly threw her arms about his neck, and hid her face on his breast. And she said: What is the use of trying to hide anything at all from thee? Read. But for all that, I will go to sleep, if I choose. And the Moony-crested god said with a smile: Aye! but thou wilt not choose.

And then he began to read, throwing away the leaves as they ended, one by one into the stream, which carried them away. And the crocodiles all lay round him in a circle, worshipping their Lord, as he read.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 2: Maheshwara is the ascetic _par excellence_, who punished Love for trying to tempt him by burning him up like a moth with a fiery glance from his third eye. And yet for all that, the Master Yogi was not always proof against feminine fascination: he might be chaste as ice, yet he has not escaped scandal.]

[Footnote 3: Nandi is the divine Bull, on which, or whom, the Great God rides.]

[Footnote 4: Had the awful words passed her lips, Nandi was a doomed bull, as a curse once uttered is irrevocable.]

[Footnote 5: Because he is the Lord of Creatures animate or inanimate, which all obey him.]

II

The heart of a Woman

I

As the black cobra sits up, and puffs his hood, and hisses, giving warning to his prey, ere he strikes: so I, Shatrunjaya[6] the lute-player, son of a king, do send this my menace to thee, Narasinha, the lover of a queen too good for so vile a thing as thou art: that none hereafter may be able to say, I struck thee unwarned, or took thee unawares. Know, that night doth not more surely or more swiftly follow day, than I and my vengeance will follow on the messenger who carries this threat: whom I have bidden to reach thee with his utmost speed, so as to allay my thirst for thy life; since every day that I wait seems to me longer than a _yuga_. And I will slay thee with no other weapon than my two bare hands--

And suddenly, the great god stopped, and he laughed aloud. And he exclaimed: See now, how this poor lute-player deceived himself! For his message not only never reached his enemy at all, but almost as soon as it had left him, he was himself slain by the emissaries of the very man he meant to kill, who never sent him any warning at all, but took him unawares, and slew him, escaping by anticipation the fate that was in store for himself, without even knowing anything of all that this letter would have taught him, and so far from dying, living to a very great age. And this instance shows, that the most dangerous of enemies is the one that never threatens till he actually strikes, resembling not the cobra, but the adder, as Shatrunjaya discovered to his cost, too late.[7]

And the Daughter of the Snow exclaimed, in wrath: Why hast thou stopped, to tell me the end of the story, before even reaching the beginning?

And Maheshwara said: Aha! Snowy One, thou art not yet, as it seems, asleep. Many are the beginnings that never reach an end: but it will do this story no harm at all, to begin with the end, since all the essence of it lies in the middle, and as thou wilt find, it ends in the middle, and yet never ends, even when it is done.

What I have told thee does not matter in the least; what matters is the Queen, for she was the most extraordinary of all women, past, present, or to come.

And Párwatí said: Let the letter speak for itself: and if thou hast anything to say, keep it for the end. For nothing is more unendurable than a commentary upon a text which is unknown.

II

And Maheshwara said: Thus the letter continues:--for there is not room in one world for us both. And well thou knowest the reason why. For the Queen told me, the very last time that I saw her, that it would be the very last time, as indeed it was. And when I asked why she would see me no more, she said, that thine was the order, to send me away. Dog! was she thine to command, or was I? And yet, I knew very well, it was all thy doing, before ever she told me. For never would she have behaved as she did, had she not been pushed from behind: and the very first time that we met, when she told me of thee, I understood, and foresaw, and expected, the very thing that has happened, looking to find thee hiding behind her, to rid thee of a rival whom thou hadst not the courage openly to face. And dost thou dare to condemn me for doing the very same thing thou wast doing thyself? Was not my claim to love her as good as thy own? Or what, O cowardly dastard, does that man deserve, who screens himself behind the clothes of a woman to strike at a foe? I will answer the question, and show thee, by ocular proof, very soon. But now in the meantime, I will open thy eyes, and tell thee, from the very beginning, all that took place. And thou shalt learn how I stole her away from thee, in spite of thee, as presently I will come to rob thee also of thy life. And I will embitter thy life, and poison it, first: and then I will take it away.

III

And yet, strange indeed was the way that I met her. I cannot tell, whether it was a reward or a punishment for the deeds of a previous birth. For the joy of it would have been cheap, bought at the price of a hundred lives: and yet the sorrow is greater than the joy. And it happened thus. I was roaming through the world, with my lute for my only companion. For all men know, as thou must also, that I turned my back upon my hereditary kingdom, and quarrelled with all my relations, and left them, all for the sake of my lute. For ever since I was a child, I have cared for absolutely nothing but my lute, and as I think, I must have been a Gandharwa[8] in the birth before, since the sound of the tones of its strings, touched by the hand of a master musician, leads me like an ox that is pulled by a cord, the very moment I hear it, and I stand still, like one that listens with tears in his eyes to the memory of the voice of a friend that is dead. Ha! very wonderful are the influences of a forgotten birth! For I was an anomaly, behaving not according to my caste, which was that of a Rajpoot; and not music, but fighting, was my proper work, and my religion.[9] And it was as if my mother had been caught sleeping in the moonlight on the terrace of the palace in the hot season by some king of the Widyádharas passing by, and looking down from the air. For heavenly beings often fall into such temptations, and even an ascetic would have found it hard to laugh at the arrows of Manobhawa, coming in the form of such a feminine fascination as hers, lying still in the lunar ooze at midnight, with her head pillowed on her arm. And yet, for all my music, I was the tallest and strongest of all my clan, and a hunter, when I chose, that could bear fatigue even better than a Bhíl.

And then at last there came a day when the King my father sent for me. And when I came, he looked at me with approval, and he said: Thou art a man at last. And yet they tell me, thou dost nothing all day long but sit playing thy lute. Canst thou really be my son, or art thou some musician's brat, foisted into my son's place by some dark underhand intrigue, when I was looking the other way? For who ever heard of a Yuwarájá,[10] destined to sit upon the throne when I have entered the fire, neglecting all his duties for the sake of a lute's strings? Come now, throw thy lute away, and leave music to the professionals who have nothing else to do, and apply thyself to policy, and the things of a king's trade. And I said: What do I care for a kingdom in comparison with my lute? I will not throw it away, no, not for a hundred kingdoms. I am a devotee of Rádhá's lover,[11] and I care nothing for any ráj. Then my father flew into a rage. And he said: Thou shalt do, not as thou wilt, but as I will. Choose, between thy wretched lute, and the ráj: and if thou dost not obey, I will turn thee off, and put thy younger brother in thy place. And I said: There are kings in abundance everywhere, but those who can really play on a lute are very few indeed. And I am one. Let who will be a Yuwarájá: I will choose the lute. And he said, in wrath: Be off! and play dirges to the memory of thy dead succession, for thou art no longer heir. And I laughed in his face, and went away, and got on my horse, and turned my back upon it all, and rode off laughing with my lute hanging round my neck, counting the kingdom as a straw. And thereafter, I wandered up and down, from place to place, living as I pleased, and utterly disregarding the messages that reached me nearly every day from my mother, who sent me bags of money and entreaties to return, all in vain. And my story, like my playing, went from mouth to mouth, and everywhere I went, the people said: Ha! there goes Shatrunjaya, the mad musician, who cares more for a discord than the loss of his hereditary ráj! Ha! and if his policy were only equal to his playing, what a king he would have made! And what a fool he must be, to care for nothing in the three worlds but a lute's strings!

IV

And yet they were all wrong. For there was another thing that nobody knew anything about, that I cared for even more than for my lute. And all the while I wandered, I was looking for a thing that flew before me the more I kept pursuing it, like the setting of the sun. And yet it hung, so to say, always just before my eyes, like a picture on the wall, so that often I used to talk to it, as if it were alive, as I sat. And yet it never answered, looking back at me in silence with strange kind eyes, and seeming to listen to me gazing at it wistfully, and playing on my lute. And this was a woman, that had come to me in a dream. For but a little while before I quarrelled with my father, I was lying, on a day, at noon, when I had been following a quarry in the jungle till I ached with fatigue, resting on a river bank: and so as I lay, unawares I fell asleep. And I thought that I wandered through a palace that I had never seen before, till suddenly I came upon a terrace that stood on the very margin of a lake, that was filled with myriads of lotuses, all turned red by the rays of the setting sun, which stood never moving on the top of a low hill, as if it were watching me to see what I should do, before it went away. And there was such a strange silence that I began to be afraid, as if of something that was just about to happen, without knowing what. And so as we all stood waiting in the dusk, I and the lotuses and the sun, all at once I heard behind me a voice like a _kokila_, saying quietly: I have kept thee a long while waiting: wilt thou forgive?

And I turned round, and looked, and lo! there was a lady, looking at me with a smile. And she was standing so absolutely still, that she resembled an image made of copper, for exactly like the lotuses, she was all red in the rays of the sun, and her dark clothing shone like the leaf of a palm seen at midnight in the glow of a fire. And her hair was massed like that of an ascetic high over her brow, and on its dull black cloud there shone a gem that resembled a star, shooting and flickering and changing colour like a diamond mixed with an opal: while underneath, her eyes, that resembled pools filled with dusk instead of water, were fixed on me as if in meditation, as if half in doubt as to whether I was I. And yet her lips were smiling, not as if they meant to smile, but just because they could not help it, driven by the sweetness of the soul that lay behind them to betray its secret unawares. And the perfect oval of the outline of her face was lifted, so to say, into the superlative degree of soft fascination by a faint suggestion of the round ripeness of a fruit in its bloom, as if the Creator, by some magical extra touch of his chisel, had wished to exclaim: See how the full loveliness of a woman surpasses the delicate promise of a girl! And she was rather tall, and she stood up very straight indeed, so straight, that my heart laughed within me as I looked at her, for sheer delight, so admirably upright was the poise of her figure, and yet so round and delicious was the curve of her arms and her slender waist, that rose as if with exultation into the glorious magnificence of her splendid breast, on which her left hand rested, just touching it very lightly with the tips of her fingers, like a wind-blown leaf lying for a moment exactly at the point of junction of two mounds of snow, as if to chide it very gently for challenging the admiration of the three worlds. And she stood with her weight thrown on her left foot, so that her right hip, on which her right hand rested, swelled out in a huge curve that ran down to her knee, which was bent in, and then turned outwards, ending in a little foot that was standing very nearly on the tip of its toe.

And so as we stood, gazing at one another in dead silence, all at once she smiled outright, holding out both her hands. And at that very moment, the sun sank. And as I strove in vain to move, rooted to the spot like a tree, she faded away, very slowly, back again into the dark, growing little by little paler, till she vanished into the night, leaving nothing but her star, that seemed to glimmer at me from a great distance, low down on the very edge of a deep-red sky. And I strove and struggled in desperation to break the spell that held me chained, and suddenly I woke with a loud cry, and saw before me only the river, on whose bank I was lying alone.

V

Aye! then for the first time in my life, I knew what it meant, to be alone, which had been to me but a mere word, without any meaning at all. For as I sat by the river, I knew I had left my soul behind in the dream that had disappeared. And my heart was burning with such a pain that I could only breathe with great difficulty, and tears rose into my eyes, as it were of their own accord. And I said sadly to myself: Now, beyond all doubt, I have seen some feminine incarnation of a fallen star, and unless I can find it somewhere on earth, I shall lose the fruit of being born at all. So one thing only remains to do, and that is to look for her, and keep on looking until I find her. For if only I was sure, that she was absolutely beyond finding, I would not consent to remain in this miserable body without her, even for a single moment. But she must be alive somewhere, and able to be found: for how could such a thing as she was exist only in a dream? For nobody could possibly have invented her, no, not even in a dream: and it must be that my soul went roaming about as I slept, and actually caught sight of her. And if the soul could find her, then, she is somewhere to be found, even by the body; but alas! the body cannot travel so easily as the soul: since, in his haste, the Creator has forgotten to give wings to anything but birds. And yet, the only thing to do is to hunt for her incessantly, and go from place to place without stopping for a moment: since very certainly she will never be discovered if I remain here as motionless as a hill. So I must escape at once, on some pretence, without letting anybody know why.

And as I said, I did: and this was the very reason why I broke with my relations, and became a vagrant instead of a king's heir. And every night I went to sleep yearning to dream the dream again, and yet it never came, though even in my sleep I seemed in every dream to be roaming everlastingly in jungles, and along roads that never ended, always on the very point of finding something that I never found. And strange! instead of driving me to despair, this constant failure actually gave me courage, for I said: If the dream had really been only a dream and nothing more, it would surely have returned, beyond a doubt: since, as a rule, dreams are only pictures in the night of what men think of in the day. And yet she never comes again, although I think of nothing else, all day long, and she was very certainly no picture of anything that I ever saw before. And clearly, it must be that my soul did actually find her, though now it has lost its way, and does not know how to return.

And in the meanwhile, as time went on, the less I found her, the more I fell back upon my lute, which became the only confidante of my secret, and my sole refuge in my desolation. And I used to sit playing, thinking all the while of nothing but herself, so that she gradually became as it were the theme and the undertone of every air. And the listeners would say: Ha! now beyond a doubt this player on the lute must be some incarnation of a Kinnara, for the sound of his music resembles that of the wind singing in the hollows of the bamboos that wave over waterfalls on the sides of the snowy mountain: and his lute seems to sob, in the vain endeavour to express some melancholy secret that for want of words it cannot articulately tell, wringing as it were its hands of strings, for very grief: And I became a byword, and the fame of my music was carried into the quarters of the world, like the scent of the sandal that the breeze blows from the Malaya hill in the region of the South.