by F. W. Bain
So as he gazed, wonder and admiration gradually crept into his soul, andstole his recollection unaware. And he became wholly intent on the stoneimage, and forgetful of his situation. And he ceased to wonder atfinding himself in the wood, so great was his new wonder at the beautyof the woman on the wall. And he said to himself: Surely he was a masterartist, whoever he was, that made this woman out of stone, if stoneindeed she be. For even now, near as I am, I can hardly believe she ismade of stone.
And the more he looked, the more he marvelled. For she seemed in hiseyes like a frozen mass of lunar camphor, moulded into a female form,standing cold and pure and still, alone by herself in that strange halflight, that hovered as it were irresolute between the natures of nightand day. And she stood with her right hand on her hip, which jutted outto receive it like the curve of a breaking wave: and her bare rightbreast stood out and shone like a great moonlit sea pearl, while theother was hiding behind the curling fold of the pale green garment thatran around her, embracing her with clinging clasp like a winding wisp ofemerald foam fondly wrapping the yielding waist of Wishnu's sea-bornwife. And she was very tall, and shaped like Shri, and she stood withher head a little bent, and her sightless eyes fixed as it were on emptyspace, just as though she were listening for some expected sound. Andas he continued to gaze at her, a wonder that was almost horror creptinto his mind. For her face was not like that of an image, but ratherresembled a mask, or the face of a very beautiful woman, that verymoment dead. For the colour seemed as it were to have only just fadedfrom her cheek, and the blood seemed only just before to have left herpallid lips, and the sight was as it were hanging yet in her great longopen eyes, that were fixed on the distant sky. And he stood, gazing, asif 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, andtouched her with his forefinger on the shoulder that was bare.
And instantly, as if his touch had filled her with a flood of life, ashiver ran like quicksilver over her stony limbs. And as he startedback, to watch, the colour came back into her face, and red blood rushedinto her lips, and deep blue suddenly filled her eyes. And the tressesof hair around her head turned all of a sudden a glossy black, thatshone with a blue-green lustre, as if reflecting the grassy sheen of herwinding robe. And her bosom lifted slowly, and fell again with a deepsigh. And all at once, she abruptly altered her position, and her eyesfell 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 Idreaming still?
III.
And Aja stood, staring at her with stony gaze, like a mirror of her ownsurprise. 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 escapedthe desert, and found this city without a man, and acquired a bride ofpeerless beauty: and now here is another, rising as it were from thedead, and seeming to expect me. And he continued standing silent, gazingat 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 touse 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 thytongue, 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 oneof the fallen pillars that were lying about the ground. And all thewhile Aja watched her, as if fascinated by a serpent, saying withinhimself: She moves like nothing I ever saw, save a panther or a glidingsnake[9]. And then, all at once, she again put up one eyebrow, and saidto him with a smile: Must I, then, actually tell thee, that I amNatabhrukuti[10]? Then Aja said: O lady, it is obvious. For thy bentbrow would plant arrows even in the heart of the Great Ascetic. And shesaid again: O husband, is this thy welcome, after so long a separation?
[9] It is a wonderful thing to see a cobra move. Nothing can describe it.
[10] That is, _the Beauty of the arched eyebrows_. (Pronounce _Nat_- to rhyme with _but_.)
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 fora husband? But O thou beauty of bending brows, how can he be thyhusband, that never saw thee in his life before? And only this morning,I was still wifeless, and a day has not elapsed, since I becameanother's husband. And he stopped short, again confounded at the effectof his own words. For hardly had they passed his lips, when Natabhrukutistarted up, swelling with rage and convulsed with fury, with eyes thatblazed like fiery stars. And she exclaimed: Never! never! Never shallshe possess thee, nor any other than I myself. And then, like a flash oflightning, her rage vanished as quickly as it came. And she looked athim with imploring eyes, and said: Slay me now, with thy long brightsword, and send me back to that nonentity out of which thou hast justrecalled me: but speak not of another woman in front of me. Alas! and amI all forgotten? And tears rolled from her great blue eyes, and felllike suppliants at her feet.
And Aja put up his left hand, and tugged at his hair in the extremity ofhis amazement. And he said: O thou strange offended lady, I am utterlybewildered, and resemble one that has lost his way at midnight in awood. And thy anger and thy grief are alike altogether incomprehensible.How can I possibly have forgotten one, whom as I just now told thee, Inever saw in my life before? Then she said: Nay, not in this life, butthe last. For I was the wife of thy former birth.
Then Aja laughed, and he said: O beauty, who remembers his formerbirth? For like every other man, and like my ancestor the sun, I haverisen up into light out of the sea of dark oblivion, into which I mustsink again at last. And then she looked at him with a deep sigh. And shesaid: Alas! This is a punishment indeed, and worse by far than all therest, 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 allforgotten, by him, on whose account I suffered all. Listen, then, and Iwill tell thee the story of thy former birth. It may be, that, in thehearing, some scattered reminiscences will be as it were awakened, tostir again in the dark lethargy of thy sleeping soul.
IV.
And then she began to speak. And as she spoke, she leaned forward, asshe sat upon the fallen pillar, and fastened her great eager eyes likemagnets on his own. And as Aja watched them, they played as it were uponhis heart. For their colour wavered and changed and faltered, shiftingever from hue to hue, turning golden and ruddy amber, and emerald-greenand lotus-blue; and over her eyes her arching brows lifted and fell andplayed and flickered, fixing his troubled soul like nails, andrivetting his attention, till her singing voice sounded in his head likea distant tune crooned in the ear of a sleepy man. And she waved slowlyher 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 tellthee, and even show thee, where it is. And there it was, in our formerbirth, that thou and I were boy and girl. But thou wert the son of amighty King, and I was only a Brahmani, a poor man's daughter, and myfather 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 greatforest, in a little hut of bark, over which the _malati_ creeper grew sothick, that nothing was visible of that little hut, except its door. Andthen one day I was seen by thee, standing still in that very door, withmy pitcher on my head: as thou wert passing through the wood to huntupon thy horse. And that moment was like a sponge, that blotted from themind of each everything but the other's image. And I made of thee mydeity, and forgot everything in the three great worlds, for thee alone.And thou, that day, didst clean forget thy hunting: or rather, the Godof Love showed thee game of another kind[11], and from pursuing thoudidst fall to wooing a quarry that wished for nothing so much as to bethy prey. And we married each other that very day, which ah! thou hastall forgo
tten. What! dost thou not remember how I used to meet theeevery day in the little hut, when my father was away in the wood engagedin meditation? What! hast thou really all forgotten how it was thysupreme delight to bring me garments and costly jewels, which I put onfor thy amusement, thy forest-queen of the little hut? Has thy memorycast away every vestige of reminiscence of thy old sweet love in thelittle hut? So then it happened that on a day we were together, blindand drunk with each other's presence, shut within the little hut like apair of bees in a nectared lotus. And I was standing like an idol,dressed like the queen of a _chakrawarti_[12], loaded with gold onwrists and feet, with great pearls wound about my neck; and thou wertcontemplating me, thy creature[13], with intoxication, and hard indeedit was to tell, which of us two was the idol, and which was thedevotee. And as we woke up from a kiss that lasted like infinity, lo! myfather stood before us. And he said slowly: Abandoned daughter, thathast forgot thy duty in thy passion for this King's son, become whatthou hast represented, an idol[14] of stone on the wall of a ruinedtemple far away: and thou, her guilty lover, fall again into anotherbirth, 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 meetagain, and thy husband in his curiosity shall touch thee with hisfinger, 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 foundthee once again, only to find alas! alas! that thou hast left thy heartbehind thee in that old delicious birth.
[11] In Sanskrit, hunting and wooing can be mixed up together by plays on words.
[12] An emperor. Hindoo idols are dressed and undressed, like dolls, by their officiating priests.
[13] She means, he was her Creator.
[14] 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 mingledessence 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 apicture of waving arms and witching curves, out of which her dreamyeyes, from which he could not take his own, seemed as it were to speakto him of love reproachful and old regret. And all at once, with aviolent effort, he roused himself as if from sleep with open eyes. Andhe shifted his sword to the other hand, and passed his right across hisbrow. And he said, in some confusion: O thou strange and sweet-tonguedwoman, certain this much is, that I am filled by thee with emotion thatI do not understand. And yet I know not what to think, or even say. Foreven apart from the promptings of a former birth, thy beauty and thyhaunting voice, which I seem as it were to have heard before, are quitesufficient to rouse emotion even in a stone, much more in a man of fleshand blood.
Then she shook her head sadly, looking at him with glistening eyes; andshe 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, bythy 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 dividesthe paradise of joy from the dungeon of despair! For had this ourreunion been sooner by only a single day, I should have caught thy heartbefore it had been occupied by this all too fortunate other woman, whonow holds it like a fortress, garrisoned by a prior claim. But what isthis priority of claim? Can she, who by thy own confession has knownthee only a single day, dare to dispute priority with the darling of thyformer birth[15]? Wilt thou break thy faith with me, to keep thy faithwith 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? Andshe stood up, and looked at Aja with her head thrown back and proudeyes, as though to challenge his condemnation of her own consummatebeauty. And she said again: Is she, then, this other beauty, eithermore faithful or more beautiful than I am? Speak, and tell me if thoucanst, in what I am inferior, or why I am to be despised, in comparisonwith her.
[15] 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.
And Aja looked at her again, and felt abashed, and half ashamed, he knewnot why. And he murmured to himself: She does not lie: for beautiful sheis indeed, and need not fear comparison with any woman in the world. Andit may be, she is partly right, and if I had met her yesterday, beforemy heart was full, she would have had little difficulty in entering inand capturing it, almost without resistance. And he stood looking at hersilently, 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 hissex became as it were allies with her against his resolution, compellinghim to acknowledge the supremacy of the cunning god, and the spell offeminine attraction incarnate in her form.
And she stood there before him, for a little, with beauty as it wereheightened by resentful reproach of the slighting of itself, and thedisregard of its tried affection. And then all at once she sank downupon the ground, as if she were tired, and remained sitting among thepoppies, with her chin resting on her left knee, which she embraced withher arms, watching him, and as it were, waiting with humility andpatience for a decision in her case. And every now and then, she closedher 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, andthe great owls that seemed to watch him, and back again at her. And hishead began to whirl, and he muttered to himself: Is this a dream, andwhat does it all mean? And is she returning to the condition of animage, disgusted by my coldness and disdain? And what is to be done? Andhe looked at her face, deprived, by the closing of their lids, of themoon of her eyes, and resting like a mask upon its chin. And he saidwithin himself: Her eyebrows move, as if they were alive. And he felt asit were unable to look away from them: and at last, annoyed withhimself, he closed his eyes also as though to escape their persecution.
VI.
And then, he said to himself: This is cowardice, and after all, norefuge; 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 theground like a wounded stag, with a cry. For the wood, with all itslotuses and poppies, was gone. And in its place, he saw before him aforest with its great green trees all lit by the shining of the sun. Andjust in front of him there stood a little hut, buried in the blossom ofthe _malati_ creeper. And in its doorway was standing a young Brahmanwoman, with a pitcher on her head. And she beckoned to him with a smile,and he looked, and lo! it was Natabhrukuti. Then moved as if against hiswill, on feet that carried him towards her as it were of their ownaccord, he approached her. And as he drew nearer, there came from thatcreeper a wave of perfume, resembling that of jasmine, but sweeter, andso pungent that it entered like fire into his soul. And then she liftedthe pitcher from her head, and set it down upon the ground, and caughthim by the hand, and drew him within the hut. And there she cast herselfinto his arms, whispering in his ear, very low, so as to caress it asshe spoke with her lips: My father is away, and now we are alone, andthe 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 richclothes and splendid jewels, she began to put them on, saying as she didso: 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 withintoxicating side glances shot like arrows from the bow of her archingbrows. And at last, she came slowly towards him, walking on tiptoe, andattitudinising, placing
herself exactly in the posture in which he hadseen 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 dooropened, and an old Brahman entered through it. And he said slowly:Abandoned daughter, that hast forgot thy duty in thy passion for thisKing's son, become what thou hast represented, an idol of stone on thewall of a ruined temple far away; and thou her guilty lover, fall intoanother birth, and be separated from thy guilty love.
And then, Aja heard no more. The world whirled around him; the blacknessof night closed over his soul; he uttered a terrible cry, and fell tothe ground in a swoon.
VII.
And when he came to himself, he was back again among the poppies in the_tamala_ wood. And he was lying on the ground, with Natabhrukuti bendingover him, holding him by the hand, with anxiety in her eyes. Andinstantly he started up, and seizing his sword, stood gazing at her withstupefaction. And he said to himself: Am I dead or dreaming? And whatdoes it all mean? Is it a delusion of the Creator, or a mirage and amadness 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, ravingmad, and dying; and haunted by phantoms that are the premonitors ofapproaching death.
So as he stood, balanced in the swing of perplexity, and doubting hisown reason, Natabhrukuti looked at him fixedly, with concern andaffection 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 ofterror: I, who ask for nothing but to tend thee all my life? For it wasbut now, as we spoke together in this wood, I looked up and saw theesuddenly close thy eyes. And as I watched thee, wondering to see theesleeping as it were erect, there burst from thy lips a fearful cry, andI 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, withthis great leaf.