The Substance of a Dream Part 7

And I laid her down very gently, turning carefully away, that I might not see her face. And I went away very quickly, and all at once, as I went, I fell down and began to sob, as if my heart would break. And at last, after a long while, I got up, and stood, thinking, and looking back under the trees. And I crept back on tiptoe, and looked and saw her at a distance, lying in the moonlight, very still, like the tomb of my own heart. And then I turned sharp round, and went away for good and all, without a soul. And I said to myself in agony: Now I have made the whole world empty with my own hand, and it was myself that I have killed, as well as her. And now I will go after her as soon as I possibly can. But there is one thing still to do, before I go, for I have to give another lesson to Narasinha. Only this time I will not use a lute-string, but crush out his soul with my bare hands.

Ha! Narasinha, I have told thee, and thou knowest all. And now thou hast only to count the hours that are left to thee, for I am coming very soon.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 6: p.r.o.nounce in three syllables _Shut-roon-jye_: it means, _one who triumphs over his foes_. So again, in three syllables, _Narasing_: which means, _man-lion_, alluding to one of Wishnu's incarnations. (Europeans do not adequately realise that the short final _a_, in Sanskrit, is always mute. They p.r.o.nounce e.g. _Rama_, _Krishna_, as if the last letter were long. They are monosyllables.)]

[Footnote 7: "The menace prevented the deed," observes Gibbon, of a would-be a.s.sa.s.sin of Commodus. That was also the error of the Germans, in 1914.]

[Footnote 8: A heavenly musician.]

[Footnote 9: _Dharma_ does not mean religion in our sense of the word.

It means, for every man, that set of obligations laid on him by his caste or status: thus everybody's _dharma_ is different.]

[Footnote 10: A crown prince. Palace intrigues were common in the old Hindoo courts. Each wife thought of nothing but providing the heir to the throne, if not by fair means, then by foul.]

[Footnote 11: Krishna, the lute-player, and flute-player, _par excellence_. He resembles Odin in this particular.]

[Footnote 12: i.e. _the city of lotuses._ The final _a_ is mute.]

[Footnote 13: i.e. _a line of stars_; _a constellation_; _a star intensified._]

[Footnote 14: That is to say, abandoned, dissolute: independence being, in old Hindoo ears, a synonym for every possible species of depravity.]

[Footnote 15: There is here an untranslatable play on _manasa_ and _manasi-ja_ = a feminine G.o.d of love.]

[Footnote 16: There is no vulgarity in this idea: it is a poetical degree in the scale of pa.s.sion. An _abhisarika_ is a lady so mastered by her love that she cannot wait for her lover, but goes to him of her own accord. There are all sorts of conditions laid down to regulate her going: she must not go in broad daylight, but in a thunderstorm, or dusk.]

[Footnote 17: _Lawanya_ means loveliness as well as salt.]

[Footnote 18: The exact equivalent, and indeed the only possible translation of _kupandita._]

[Footnote 19: This is due to the peculiar dress of Hindoo women, all in one piece, and put on so that the edge that runs around the feet afterwards runs up diagonally and winds around the whole figure. No national costume was ever better calculated to set off the sinuosities and soft grace of a woman's figure to advantage than the marvellous simplicity of the _sari_ which is nothing more than a very long strip of almost anything you please.]

[Footnote 20: i.e. _the clever one_: a name, like Nipunika, employed in Hindoo plays to denote the qualities of a _grisette_: _Suzanne._]

[Footnote 21: _Anuraktamritam bala wirakta wisham ewa sa._]

[Footnote 22: A female door-keeper. This appears to have been customary in old times. Runjeet Singh had a body-guard of women, dressed like boys.]

[Footnote 23: The roots of these great figs "grow down" (hence their name) from the branches, often coalescing with the trunks into the most extraordinary shapes: it needs no imagination to see Dryads under the bark: they are visible to the naked eye. The huge leaves and great white blossom of the _shala_ make it one of the most beautiful of earthly trees: as the champak is one of the most weird, like a great candlestick of innumerable branches whose pale flower-cups grow out of the end of its clumsy fingers without leaves.]

[Footnote 24: Durga, _the inaccessible one_, is one of Parwati's innumerable names. It has reference to a mountain steep, with accessory meanings, moral and theological.]

[Footnote 25: There are constant references in Hindoo poetry to swinging, which is a national pastime in India, with a special festival in its honour.]

[Footnote 26: p.r.o.nounce as a trisyllable: Haridas.]

[Footnote 27: The Indian women used to send little earthenware dishes, with a lighted wick in their oil, floating down the Ganges, to symbolise their children's lives. Perhaps they do it still: but all these beautiful old superst.i.tious practices are dying away, in the light of "representative inst.i.tutions." New lamps for old ones!]

[Footnote 28: That is Shri, the Hindoo Aphrodite. Only those who have studied Hindoo G.o.ddesses on the old temple walls, where they stand with everlasting marble smiles in long silent rows, buried in the jungles that encircle their deserted fanes, will enter into the atmosphere of this strange description.]

[Footnote 29: _Daiwatam hi hayottamah_, says Somadewa: _a good horse is a divine thing._]

[Footnote 30: The Hindoo aesculapius. Ayurweda, the science of medicine.]

[Footnote 31: A gem that attracts straws, presumably amber. It is always employed by Hindoo poets as an equivalent of our _magnet._]

[Footnote 32: _i.e._ the mirage.]

[Footnote 33: That is, as if she were a character in a play, coming at her cue. The phrase is common in the Hindoo plays.]

[Footnote 34: This is due to the coal-black stem, which gives to a palm tree shorn of its head the look of a tumble-down smoke-grimed chimney. Unshorn, leaning to the wind, it is the most graceful thing in the world, especially seen against the setting sun.]

[Footnote 35: The great jewel on Wishnu's breast.]

[Footnote 36: Literally, with a _sashtanganamaskara_: i.e. _with an obeisance made by falling prostrate with the eight corners of the body_, a form of profound reverence made as to a divinity.]

III

A Story without an End

And then, Maheshwara tossed the last leaf into the air. And as it floated away down the stream, he said to the G.o.ddess, as she listened with attention: And yet he never came, as I told thee at the beginning. For Narasinha was beforehand with him, after all.

And the Daughter of the Snow sat silent, looking away down the river after the floating leaf, until it was lost to sight. And then she said slowly: Why didst thou say in the beginning that Tarawali was the most extraordinary of all women, past, present, or to come? For I was deceived by thy encomium, expecting a woman altogether different from her, who was only but a specimen of her s.e.x.

And the Moony-crested G.o.d burst into loud laughter. And he exclaimed: Speak low, O Snowy One: for if thy mortal sisters overheard thee betraying their secrets and their cause, they would be very angry, and perhaps begin to curse thee as a traitor, instead of offering thee wors.h.i.+p, as they all do now. What! dost thou actually deem her to be but a type of all the rest? Surely, thou must have been asleep all the time that I was reading, after all: since thou hast either misunderstood her altogether, or it may be, wilt not do her justice, out of jealousy: since no woman in the three worlds can ever be trusted to judge another fairly, treating her always as a criminal and a rival, and falling on her tooth and nail, especially if, like Tarawali, she sets custom at defiance, going by an independent standard of her own. But now, let me help thee to see how utterly mistaken is thy estimate of a character so rare as hardly to be matched in the whole of s.p.a.ce and time for her cleverness and her candour and her tranquillity of soul, leaving her beauty out of the account, as that one element in her common to a very host of others.

For the Creator was not such a bungler as to confine all feminine beauty to a single instance, but scattered it universally, since almost every woman in the world, no matter what her face be like, shares in the wonderful fascination exerted over men by the shape essential to her s.e.x, which is far the most important thing of all, being general instead of special, as every woman seen dimly in the dark, or at a distance, or with her face hidden by a veil, will prove, being then above all most attractive when her face cannot be seen at all: as the story that I told thee of the ugly lady, not long ago, shows, if thou hast not forgotten it.[37] Whereas the thing special to Tarawali was her incomparable soul, in which were mingled elements hardly ever to be found combined, gentleness and strength, and simplicity almost naive, with subtlety beyond all comparison, and pride that never took offence, and superlative beauty with humility, and submissiveness with extreme independence of spirit, and kindness without weakness, and feminine sweetness of disposition with the intellectual vigour of a man, and his courage, and his candour, all of which combined with her extraordinary bodily beauty to make her a paragon of intoxication utterly irresistible to every male[38] she came across, like a very Prakriti in a woman's form.

And Parwati said: How canst thou lavish such praise on a woman so deservedly slain by her infuriated lover, when he suddenly awoke to the discovery of the real nature behind the mask?

And the great G.o.d laughed again, and he looked at her shrewdly and he said: Aha! Snowy One, said I not that thou wert asleep as I read? I shall have to repeat to thee the story all over again another time.

Dost thou actually not see that all she said, from beginning to end, was absolutely true? For Shatrunjaya told the whole story very well, as he understood it; but he did not understand completely, and made a terrible error in the most important point of all, being led astray by what he had heard, and easily taken in. For blinded by his rage against his rival Narasinha, he came suddenly to the wrong conclusion, and slew her by mistake, never so much as giving her time for any explanation. For her eyes never wavered, as he thought, for guilt, but for quite another reason. And Narasinha really was, exactly as she said, her tyrant, nor had she anything to do with his a.s.sa.s.sination of her lovers, which he committed all on his own account, out of jealousy, paying no attention at all to her intercession. But in her gentleness, she shrank from the very idea of any violence, and this was the true cause of the wavering of her eyes, foreseeing as she did another attempt on Shatrunjaya, which she could not avert. And my heart was grieved at her death at the hands of a lover whose life she had saved, and would have saved again if she could. For she was worth far more than he.

And the Daughter of the Snow said: But what was she doing with such a mult.i.tude of lovers at all?

And Maheshwara said: Thou art like Shatrunjaya himself, biased against her by the insinuations of Haridasa, and the discreditable behaviour of that little liar Chaturika, who betrayed her as well as others, and by the idle talk of the people, which she rightly compared herself to the croaking of so many frogs. For low people always put the very worst interpretation upon the actions of kings, and especially of queens, of whom all the time they know less than nothing, exactly as she said. And Shatrunjaya's opinion of her wavered, in spite of all his wors.h.i.+p, being coloured by the scandal that he heard, so that he saw her through its mist, as strangers always do. And if she had too many lovers, it was all the fault of the Creator, who endowed her with such fascination, combined with the kindness of her heart: since she blamed herself for their misery, and could not bear to send them away without making them as it were some reparation for her crime of being beautiful beyond all resistance. And this was her only fault.

Then said the Mountain-born, with emphasis: I hate her: for a woman should confine herself to one.

And Maheshwara said, looking at her with affection: Ah! Snowy One, thou art right, and thou art wrong. For not every woman is a counterpart of thee. And moreover, to be rigidly inaccessible[39] is terribly hard, when a woman is as she was, a very incarnation of bewildering intoxication, and kind into the bargain. For then she resembles a fortress, besieged night and day and mined everlastingly by innumerable hosts absolutely determined to get in; and sleepless indeed must be the garrison that guards it; and often it yields of sheer weariness and fatigue, unable any longer to endure the strain.

And Tarawali was absolutely right when she said that her lovers drove her, against her inclination, into the reputation of a lady of many lovers, since they were all so infatuated by the very sight of her that they never let her alone. For love that really finds its object will face ten thousand deaths to reach it, and is very hard to repel.