Book: Bubbles of the Foam

U >> Unknown >> Bubbles of the Foam




[Footnote 13: _i.e._ _the disc of the moon_, and _victory_. Pronounce Jaya
to rhyme with _eye_.]

[Footnote 14: _i.e._ the Himalaya.]

And of all the elements that made up Java's good fortune, there was not
one which filled him with such pride and exultation as his son. And he
looked upon him as the very fruit of his birth in visible form, little
dreaming, that could he but have looked into the future, and seen what
was coming, he would rather have deemed himself more fortunate to live
and die without any son at all, than to have begotten such a son as he
actually had. For sons resemble winds, which sometimes lift their
families like clouds to heaven, and sometimes dash them to the earth,
like hail.

For having waited so long to get a son at all, till hope was all but
gone, the joy of both his parents, when he actually arrived, was so
extravagantly great, that they could not make too much of him. And as he
grew up, they spoiled him so completely, by the want of all discretion
in their admiration and the flattery of their affectionate caresses,
that after a while he became utterly intolerable, even to themselves.
And this came about, not only by reason of their own foolishness, but
also by the very disposition and qualities of that son himself. For he
was so marvellously beautiful, that every time they saw him, they could
hardly believe their own eyes, and were ready to abandon the body out of
joy. And in the intoxication of delight they gave him the name of
Atirupa,[15] which was no more than he deserved. And he became a byword
and a wonder in the world, till the heart of his mother almost broke
with the swelling of its own pride. For nothing like him had ever been
seen by anybody, even in a dream, since his beauty did not in the least
resemble that of other men, but hovered as it were half-way between one
sex and the other, as if the Creator when he made him, unable to decide,
whether to make of him a man or a woman, had combined, by some miracle
of omnipotence and skill, the fascinations of the two. For though he was
tall, and strong, yet strange! his body and his limbs were rounded, and
delicately shaped, and slender, with soft and tender hands and feet that
were almost too small, even for a girl: and as he moved, he fell as if
by accident into attitudes that as it were imitated unconsciously the
careless grace of Shri[16], caught unaware when she thinks that there is
nobody to look at her, and carved by a cunning sculptor in stone upon a
temple wall; so that the eyes of all followed him as if against their
will, drawn to him by an involuntary admiration that they could not
understand, not realising that in his case only, the beauty of their own
sex was reinforced, and as it were, reduplicated with the magic of a
spell, by the mysterious and additional fascination of the other. And
his face was so strange that whoever saw it, started, and fell, after a
little while, into a kind of dream. And yet this was not merely by
reason of its beauty, though that beauty was excessive, resembling a
vision seen suddenly in the water by a Dryad, musing at midnight by a
moonlit pool, with eyes that resembled the reflections of the shadows of
the lotuses, and eyebrows that met together, in the middle of his brow,
each drawn exactly in imitation of the other, like a lotus-fibre half in
and half out of water, and lips that were almost too red, resembling
that love-sick nymph's own pair of _bimba_ lips, mirrored[17] in the
clear black water, and dying to be kissed by others like themselves.
But wonderful! the Creator had put into his face some ingredient of
recollection, so that without knowing why, every beholder found himself
plunged, as it were, into the agitation of dreamy reminiscence, and said
within himself: Ha! now, somewhere or other, in this birth or another, I
have seen that miracle of a face before. And each went away with a heart
that was unwilling to depart, haunted as it were by dim desire for
something he knew not what stirring in the depths of his memory, that he
could not remember and yet had not forgotten, like the thirst for the
repetition of the sweetness of a bygone dream.[18] And all the more,
because his voice resembled a music that was playing a melody suggested
by the theme of his face. For it was low and soft, like that of a woman,
and yet deep, like that of a man: and it seemed to be made of sound
stolen from the pipe of Krishna, in order to enable it itself to steal
away the senses of the world: so that as he spoke, the listener
gradually grew bewildered by its tone, resembling a tired traveller,
falling little by little unconsciously to sleep as he sits in the murmur
of a mountain stream. And whenever he chose, he could cajole his
hearer, and make him do almost anything whatever, so hard was it to
resist the irresistible persuasion that lurked, like the caressing touch
of a gentle woman's hand, in the tone of that quiet and insinuating
voice.

[Footnote 15: _i.e._ _of extraordinary and surpassing beauty_. Pronounce
Uttirupa.]

[Footnote 16: The Hindoo Aphrodite.]

[Footnote 17: There is here an untranslateable play on _bimba_, the
fruit, (as we say, cherry lip) and _pratibimba_, a reflection in the
water.]

[Footnote 18: All this depends on an elaborate play on the double
meaning of _Smara_, a name for the God of Love, which means _memory_ as
well as _love_.]

And yet, all this beauty was nothing but a mask, and a lie: and so far
from expressing the nature of that soul which it covered and disguised,
it actually added evil to its original defect; and he resembled a
bamboo, looking like a very incarnation of loveliness and symmetry
outside, and singing in the wind, and yet absolutely hollow and without
a heart, within. For from the very moment he was born, he did exactly as
he pleased, and nothing else, being as capricious as the breeze that
blows only as it chooses. For beginning with his parents, nobody ever
crossed him, or placed any obstacle whatever in the path of his desires,
which grew up accordingly like a very rank jungle impervious to the
light, in which his will wandered like a wild young tiger-cub, wayward,
and passionate, and absolutely uncontrolled. And he gave in to others,
and was guided by them, in one point only, and that was in their
extravagant admiration of himself. For finding others worship him, he
fell in with their opinion, and followed their example: and became as it
were the devotee at the shrine of his own beauty, making it a deity to
which every other thing or body was only fitted to be sacrificed. And he
filled his rooms with mirrors of many colours, made of crystal and
lapiz-lazuli, and polished gold and silver, and the water of tanks whose
slabs were of marble of every variety of hue; and he used to sit alone,
when he had nothing else to do, for hours, watching his own image that
seemed to offer him reciprocally worship as he watched it, as if it were
doubtful which of the two, the reality or its reflection, was the deity,
and which the devotee.

And gradually the world with all its objects came to appear in his eyes
as nothing but a playground, and all its men and women merely his own
animated toys. And from being utterly indifferent to everything but his
own momentary pleasure and caprice, he became, little by little, first
callous to the sufferings of others, and finally positively cruel,
finding his amusement in making others victims to his own peremptory
desires. And his appetite, like a fire, grew with the fuel that it fed
upon, till it resembled voracity, and an intolerable thirst for more.
But as long as he remained still a child, the fire, remaining as it were
without its proper aliment, lay hidden: till he grew into a man. And
then, all at once, it blazed out furiously like a very conflagration,
striking terror into all the subjects of the kingdom, and threatening to
consume them all, like forest trees and grass.

For whereas, till then, the fury of his self-will had been scattered,
for want of concentration[19] on one object only, manhood, like a flash
of lightning, suddenly revealed to him that very object, in the form of
woman: and he discovered, in the storm of his delight, that women were
the very victims for whom he had been blindly groping in the darkness
all his life. And he threw himself upon them, like a prey, finding with
intoxication that the Creator had framed him as a weapon constructed
wholly for their destruction. And he said to himself, in triumph: I am,
as it seems, a magnetic gem, omnipotent and irresistible, to whose
attraction the entire sex succumbs inevitably, like grass. And this
opinion was justified by the conduct of the women themselves. For every
woman that set eyes on him, no matter who she was, fell instantly, like
a stone dropped into a well without a bottom, into the abyss of
infatuation, and utterly forgot not only her relations and her home,
but her honour and herself and everything in the three worlds, seized as
it were by the very frenzy of devotion, and anxious only to immolate
herself as a victim on the altar of his divinity. And strange! though he
treated them all as more worthless than grass, throwing them away almost
in the instant that he saw them, not one of them all ever took warning
by the fate of her predecessors: and so far were they from shunning him
as the common enemy of their entire sex, that on the contrary, they
seemed to struggle with one another for the prize of his momentary
affection, the more, the more openly he derided them; as if even his
derision and the cheapness in which he openly held them, increased the
power of his charm. Ha! very wonderful is the contradiction in the heart
of a woman, and bitter the irony of the Creator that fashioned it out of
so curious an antagonism! For she flies to the man who makes light of
her, as if pulled by a cord; while she utterly despises the man who
thinks himself nothing in comparison with her: saying as it were, by her
own behaviour, that she is absolutely worthless in her own esteem.

[Footnote 19: _Yoga._ The germ of truth, and it is a large one, in the
philosophy of _Yoga_ is the doctrine, which is proved by all experience,
that _concentration_ is the secret of mastery.]


IV

So then, after a while, the heart of King Jaya broke within him. For he
became odious in the eyes of all his subjects by reason of the behaviour
of his son, who paid no more regard to his admonitions than a mad
elephant does to a rope of grass. And he died, consumed by the two fires
of a burning fever and a devouring grief: and his wife followed him
through the flames of yet another fire, as if to say: I will die no
other death than his own.

And when the funeral obsequies had been completed, there came a day,
soon after, when Atirupa was sitting in his palace, with some of his
attendants round him, gazing at his own image, that was reflected in a
tiny mirror set on his finger in a ring. And he was plunged in the
contemplation of himself, shadowed by a melancholy that arose, not from
grief at the loss of his parents, but dejection caused by the gloom of
the period of mourning: and as he sat, he said within himself: I am
losing time, and growing old, and letting the opportunity slip by me
unimproved, and this bloom of mine is wasted, and, as it were, lying
idle, for want of its proper mirror, which is not this ring, but a pair
of new eyes, which would look back at my own, not as this does,
vacantly and without a soul, but lit up by the soft lustre of passion
and admiration. And all at once, he started up, and exclaimed aloud:
What! do ye all sit easily, when I am dying for lack of recreation? Know
ye not that even the jackal is in danger, when the lion is left without
a prey? Even now I am debating with myself, whether it would not be a
good thing to have one of you chosen by lot, and trampled by an
elephant, to be a lesson to the rest.

And then, as they all gazed at him with anxiety, each fearing for
himself, he looked at their confusion, as if with enjoyment, and said
again: What, with so many idle all about me, am I, forsooth, to sit
waiting, for fortune to come to me, like an _abhisarika_, of her own
accord? Nay, it were well enough, could I even see coming towards me an
_abhisarika_ of any kind. But the women of this city grow, as it seems,
older and more ugly every day: for I have skimmed its cream, and now
nothing is left but curd, and dregs, and whey, and like the ocean after
its churning, all its treasures are exhausted, leaving nothing but
crocodiles and monsters, and bitterness, and brine.

So then, wishing to cajole him, one of them replied: Maharaj, were this
city as full of beauties as the very sea of gems, how could any one of
them come to thee in broad daylight? For is it not laid down in all the
Shastras, that even an _abhisarika_,[20] were she dying for her lover,
must notwithstanding observe times and seasons, choosing for her
expedition only proper opportunities, such as are afforded by a winter
night, or a dense fog, or the confusion caused by a whirlwind or an
earthquake or an uproar, or a revolution in the state, or an illness of
the king, or a festival, when all the citizens are drunk, or sleeping,
or when the city is on fire. But as it is, not one of these occasions is
present, to enable her to come to thee escaping observation. And a woman
of good family is very different from a dancing girl. For when she
leaves her home, on such an assignation, she wraps herself up,
disguising her identity, and creeps along timidly making herself small,
wishing even darkness darker, in addition to the screen provided by all
the other circumstances that favour her attempt.

[Footnote 20: There is a ludicrous pedantry about the elaborate
categories of Hindoo sages: they make grammatical rules even for every
department of erotics: as if it were necessary for ladies to learn the
grammar of the subject, before they could make love!]

And Atirupa said: There is no difficulty in this: for could I think that
there was even one woman in the city awaiting such an opportunity, who
was worthy of it, I would very soon oblige her, by burning the city to
the ground, reducing it to ashes for her convenience and my own.

And all at once, one answered from behind, who had entered as he spoke,
unobserved: Ha! Maharaj, then, as it seems, I am come in the very nick
of time, to save thy city from such a miserable end.

And Atirupa turned, and exclaimed joyfully: Ha! Chamu,[21] art thou
returned? I was beginning to think thee lost, like a stone dropped to
the very bottom of the sea. And Chamu said: Thou art right: for I am
like the oyster, and contain a pearl.

[Footnote 21: Pronounce Chummoo.]

And he looked at Atirupa, and laughed, rubbing his hands together, with
cunning in his eyes, that resembled those of a weasel. And he said:
Maharaj, as I entered, I heard thee wishing for Shri[22] to visit thee
in the form of an _abhisarika_; and lo! here she is, in my form. And do
not despise her, on account of my deformity: for Shri is a lady, and
capricious, and comes in strange disguises. Thou knowest, that the city
being dismal by reason of the obsequies, I seized my opportunity, and
went away on a visit to my maternal uncle, who lives far off in a
village in the wood that lies in the eastern quarter. And on my journey
back, I lost my way in the wood, and went astray: and finally, growing
very tired, I lay down in a thicket. And as I rested, after a while, I
heard voices coming in my direction. And lying hidden, I looked out, and
watched the speakers, till one of them, as I think, caught sight of my
face among the trees, and took fright at its ugliness, and went away
with his companion. And afterwards I rose myself and came away; and now,
here I am.

[Footnote 22: The goddess of Fortune and Beauty. She is the very
incarnation of the _abhisarika_, since she comes of her own accord.]

And Atirupa looked at him, with disappointment: and he said: O Chamu, is
this thy story, and is this all?

And Chamu laughed softly, and he said: Maharaj, he is a sage, who knows
where to stop. But I will have compassion on thy curiosity, and this
much I will tell thee in addition, that one of the speakers was a woman.
And yet I am not sure about it, for if there is another woman like her
in the three worlds, I will cut off my own head, and give to thee as a
footstool, since it is fit for absolutely nothing else. And even as it
is, I think, after all, that I must have fallen asleep in the clump of
bushes, and seen her in a dream: compounding for myself a vision out of
old memories of Apsarases and Yakshinis, and Nagas, and fragments of old
fairy tales and stories that my mother told me long ago, when I was a
child.

And Atirupa looked at him with surprise: and he said: Chamu, this is
very strange, and thou art not like thyself. Hast thou been eating
poppy,[23] or art thou only drunk with wine? For it is no ordinary
vision that could turn thee into a poet. Come now, go on. Describe for
me the beauty that has awoken such emotion in a soul as dull and muddy
as thy own.

[Footnote 23: _Ahiphena_, "snake-foam," said by Udoy Chand Dutt in his
_Materia Medica Indica_ to be derived from the Arabic _afyoon_, as it
was apparently unknown in India before the Musulman invasion.]

And Chamu said: O Maharaj, who can describe the indescribable? There are
things that cannot be described, but only seen: hardly even then to be
believed, when gazed at by the eye. Can anything imitate and reproduce
the beauty of the blue lotus, but the pool in which it is reflected? The
wandering wind may carry, like myself, its fragrance to a distance, but
cannot perform the work that belongs only to the mirror of the pool. So
take counsel of the wind, and go thyself, and become the pool.

And Atirupa laughed joyfully, and he exclaimed: O Chamu, thou art
certainly bewitched, and this wood-nymph has cast over thee a spell:
turning thee into a very breeze of sandalwood from Malaya.

And Chamu said: Laugh, Maharaj: and as I told thee it would be, so it
is: thou dost not believe. But when thou hast seen her eyes, and when
thou hast heard her voice, and when thou hast gazed at her, as I did,
coming straight towards thee, walking, thou wilt laugh no longer: for
the scorn incarnate in the pride of her great breast will make thee
giddy, and the roundness of her hips will steal thy heart and burn it to
a cinder, and the jingle of her anklets will haunt thy ears, as it does
mine, like the sound of a stream, keeping time to the dance of her two
little feet as they come towards thee, till thou wilt find thyself
wishing that some strange magic might keep on drawing thee back for
ever, so only that thou couldst go on gazing, as she kept on coming,
like an everlasting incarnation of the rapture of anticipation of
touching and caressing what it maddens thee to see. Maharaj, I tell
thee, that were the three great worlds but one colossal oyster shell,
she is its very pearl. And like a cunning diver, I have been down into
the sea, and seen it, and now I can take thee where it is, to see it for
thyself. And as I think, thou wilt discover, she is a quarry to thy
taste, who will save thee from the necessity of seeking for others in
the ashes of thy town.




II

THE THIRST OF AN ANTELOPE




I

_Gazelle, gazelle, dost understand
Why the old skulls grin in this silent land?_
My feet are fleet, and I drink at will,
There is something blue in the distance still.


II

_But the old skulls grin in the silent waste,
Gazelle, gazelle, make haste, make haste!_
I travel fast, and I fear no ill,
There is something blue in the distance still.


III

_The old skulls grinned in the silent sand,
They beckoned her like a bony hand:
Gazelle, gazelle, hast drunk thy fill?
Is there something blue in the distance, still?_

KURANGI.




I

A DAPPLED DAWN




I

A DAPPLED DAWN


I

Now in the meanwhile Bimba, when his cousin drove him off his throne,
had fled away to the eastern quarter, taking his daughter with him. And
he took up his home in the forest, and there he lived, in a little hut
on the side of a hill, just where the desert ended, and the trees of the
wood began, having fallen from the state of a King to that of a fugitive
and a hunter, living by the chase and the fruits of the forest trees,
and drinking streams instead of wine. And so he continued to live, year
by year, mourning for his wife, and bitterly hating his cousin,
disgusted with the world, with no companion but his daughter. And
gradually, as time went on, he utterly forgot his kingdom and all his
former life, growing ever fonder of the forest that he lived in, and
saying to himself: Now is the wood become my wife, since my other wife
is gone.[24] And the only thing that matters now is the daughter that
she left behind, as if to keep my memory green of what she was herself.
So now, then, I will change her name, lest some day in the future it
should betray her to my cousin: for her name would be a clue, leading to
her destruction. And as a rule, to lose a name is the same thing as to
disappear, and die, and be forgotten. So she shall die, as Alipriya, to
be reborn as Aranyani. And what does the title matter? For the bees will
love her just as well, by one name as the other.[25]

[Footnote 24: An untranslateable play on _dari_, wood, and _sundari_, a
beautiful woman.]

[Footnote 25: _Alipriya_, "beloved of the bees," a name of the trumpet
flower, _Bignonia suaveolens_. _Aranyani_, a forest goddess, nymph, or
dryad. Pronounce Urrun-nyani.]

So then Aranyani grew up alone with her father in the forest, with her
identity disguised, turned as it were from a queen into a woodman's
daughter, and lying hidden and unknown, like a pearl in an ocean shell.
And yet she resembled fire, that refuses to be concealed, betraying its
true nature through no matter what envelops it, and shining through, by
chinks and holes, the wrapping that would hide it, even when it does not
burn. For brought up in the forest though she was, and half alone, since
her father often left her by herself, all day long, yet strange to say!
the rudeness of her wild condition ran over her, leaving her soul
untouched, like the water running in crystal drops that beautify but do
not wet the neck of a royal swan. And one day she was discovered like a
treasure in the wood by a band of hermits' daughters, that were roaming
at a distance from the hermitage, away in the forest's heart. And those
daughters of the sages all fell suddenly in love with her at once, not
only for her eyes, that reminded them of the deer that were their
playmates in their home, but still more for the strange and wild
sweetness of her soul, that resembled absolutely nothing but itself. And
every now and then, they used to come and play with her, when they
rambled in the wood, telling her innumerable stories which they heard
from their fathers, those mines of sacred wisdom. And then, very soon,
those daughters of the hermits found, to their amazement, that they
resembled fools, pouring water into a well. For she remembered
everything when she had only heard it once,[26] and meditating over it
alone, not only squeezed out of its mango all the juice which it
contained, but planted its kernel like a seed of heavenly wisdom in her
heart, and watering it with her own imagination, turned it presently
into a new and strange tree, loaded with peculiar flowers and fruits of
its own: so that as she grew gradually up, she resembled a receptacle of
the essence of old lore, mixed with a native and original savour of
herself. Ha! very wonderful indeed are the influences that rise up out
of a former birth, since even in this lower form of a hunter's daughter
the nature of that incomparable goddess overflowed, like a holy sap in
the dark heart of a forest tree, and welled out abundantly, till it
covered the coarse bark with fragrant buds and shoots, and flowers of
immortal scent and hue. For her body kept pace with the progress of her
soul, as if out of rivalry and jealousy unwilling to lag behind it, in
the acquisition of ornaments and graces. And having no other models, it
found itself obliged to imitate the objects that made up the atmosphere
and soil in which it grew: till at last the deer and the blue lotuses
gazed upon her eyes, and the red fruits and _gunja_ berries at her lips,
and the creepers at her arms, with envy and amazement: and the _tamala_
shadows turned pale when they looked at her hair, and the trunks of the
_nyagrodha_ trees despaired, gazing at the curve of her waist as it sank
into the outline of her heavy hips, and the swans and the elephants
blushed with shame to see her walk, and the gourds swelled till they
burst with jealousy, unable to rival the protuberance of those two
disdainful sisters, her inimitable breasts, and the bees grew mad, as if
intoxicated with honey sweeter than their own, at the fragrance that
floated from the flower of her mouth.

[Footnote 26: _Ekashrutadhara._ This word exhibits the opinion
entertained by the Hindoos as to the close connection existing between a
powerful intellect and a retentive memory. Such a quality indicates the
highest kind of pundit: and it should be recollected that Saraswati is
the divinity of wisdom, the pundit _par excellence_.]

Copyright (c) 2007. knowncrafts.net. All rights reserved.