Bubbles of the Foam Page 3

  I

  A SPOILED CHILD

  BENEDICTION

  _A bow to the mystical evening dance of the Rider on the Mouse,[6] whowhirling round his elephant trunk, smeared with wet vermilion, suddenlyshoots it straight up into the purple sky, and stands for a singleinstant still, poised in the yellow twilight, as if to make a coralhandle for the white umbrella of the laughing Moon._

  [Footnote 6: Ganesha.]

  I

  There is, in the western quarter, a land of lonely desolation, thatresembles a very sea, but of sand instead of brine, and rightly namedMarusthali, being a very home of death, sending back to the midday sunrays hotter than his own, and challenging the midnight sky, with silentashy laughter, as though to say: What am I but the rival and reflectionof thyself, with bones instead of stars, and tracks of wasted skeletonsinstead of a Milky Way. And there, upon a day, it came about thatMaheshwara was roaming with Parwati in his arms. And as they floatedswiftly on, over the dusty waste, they watched their own huge shadowssweeping like the forms of clouds across the burning sand, exactlyunderneath, for it was noon: and the surface of the desert shook andquivered in the stillness, as if the wind, asleep, had, like a tiredtraveller, sought refuge from the fury of the sun above their heads. Andall at once, the Daughter of the Snow exclaimed: See, there is themirage! Let us descend, and sit for a little while upon the sand: for Ilove to watch this wonder, which resembles in its far faint blue thecolour of a dream. And accordingly, to do her pleasure, Maheshwara sanksoftly to the earth, settling on it like a cloud gently resting on ahill.

  So as they looked, after a while, that slender goddess said again:Surely it is a shame, and well may the poor antelopes be mistaken anddeceived. For who could believe yonder water to be only an illusion? Andwhen the eyes of even gods are bewildered by the cheat, how much morethe eyes of thirsty and unreflecting little deer!

  Then the Moony-crested deity said slowly: O Daughter of the Snow, thyown reflection on this beautiful illusion is the truth. And yet, wellwere it for the world, were its illusion limited only to its eyes, notextending, as it actually does, to its understanding also. For thisdeceptive picture on the sand is far inferior in power and importance tothe bewildering delusion of this world below, fluttering about whoseshifting dancing light, like moths about a wind-blown torch, men singetheir silly souls, and burning off their wings, drop helpless, maimedand mutilated, into the black gulf of birth and death, and loseemancipation; till, after countless ages, their wings begin to sproutand grow again, under the influence of works. Yet they who after allemerge, and soar away, unburdened even by an atom of the guilt thatweighs them down, and brings them back into the vortex of rebirth, arevery few. And yonder bones, now lying in the sand, could they but riseand speak, would be a proof of what I say.

  And the goddess looked, and saw, close by, a little heap of bones, thatlay half-buried in the sand. And she said with curiosity: Whose are thebones, and how are they a proof of thy consideration?

  And Maheshwara replied: These are bones, not of a man, but of a camel,that perished in the desert long ago. For into this body of a camelfell the soul of which I spoke, in punishment of crimes committed in thebirth before, in the body of a man; who, blinded by passion, slew threeof his fellow mortals; as, if thou wilt, I will tell thee while we sit,watching the illusion of the senses, that so closely represents theillusion of the souls of the lovers in the tale.

  II

  Know, then, that once upon a time, long ago, all the gods had assembledin the hall of Indra's palace, to listen to a singing competition thattook place among the Gandharwas. And all sat listening attentively, tillat length, all at once, came a pause in the performance. And in thesilence, while all the heavenly singers rested, it so fell out, by thedecree of destiny, that the flowery-arrowed god,[7] striving torecollect a cadence that had pleased him, hummed it, as well as hecould, over again, aloud; and like the unskilful imitator that he was,played havoc with his model, stumbling at the quarter tones, and singingfiat. And out of delicacy and politeness, the gods all turned away theirfaces, hiding their smiles, except Brahma,[8] whose face never moved.But Kamadewa, looking up suddenly, caught the vestige of a smile,hovering, just before it disappeared, on the corner of the lips ofSaraswati, as if it were unwilling to leave a resting-place sounutterably sweet as that lovely lady's mouth. And instantly, he turnedred and pale alternately, with rage that followed shame: so little doeshe who delights in making others blush like doing it himself. Andsuddenly taking fire, he cried aloud: Ha! dost thou turn me intoridicule, O thou malapert blue-stocking?[9] Then will I curse thee forthy pains. Fall instantly into a lower birth, and suffer anguish in theform of a mortal woman, for thy presumption and ill-mannered mirth.

  [Footnote 7: _i.e._ the god of love, Kamadewa.]

  [Footnote 8: It would have been useless for Brahma to turn away hisface, since he has four; one on every side.]

  [Footnote 9: _Kupandita_, the exact equivalent of our word. Saraswati isthe Hindoo Pallas Athene; with this distinction in her favour, that sheis as gentle as the Greek lady is the reverse. The _flava virago_ ofOvid becomes in India a lotus white and pure as her own celestialsmile.]

  And instantly, all the other gods, hearing him, broke out into a verystorm of indignation. And buzzing like infuriated bees around one whoseeks to rob them of their honey, they swarmed about that god of love,exclaiming all together: What! shall Heaven be bereft, even for a verylittle while, of the very crest-jewel of its brow, because of thy lossof self-control, and a fault on her part which was not a fault at all,but only the appropriate reproof of thy ill-advised endeavour to playthe musician without possessing the necessary skill? And there arose atumult in the hall; and finally, they made me arbitrator to settle thedispute, knowing that Ananga was afraid of me, as well might he be[10].And so, after all were silent, I spoke. And I said, very slowly: Obender of that bow, whose string is a row of bees, thou art surelyaltogether inexcusable, first for thy singing, and secondly for thy lossof temper, and finally for thy curse. For who could be so harsh as tostrike Saraswati, even with a _shirisha_ petal? But now, the mischief isutterly beyond repair, and once spoken, the curse cannot berecalled.[11] And whether she will or no, she must now go to earth, andleave us for a time, till thy curse has spent its force. And yet, forall that, it is not right that the doer of injustice such as thineshould escape scot-free. Therefore now I will give thee curse forcurse, and thou shalt eat the fruit of thy own tree. Fall then,immediately into the body of a man, and suffer that mortality which thouhast laid upon Saraswati. And thy fortune shall be interwoven with herown, so that thy curse shall be determined by the quality and period ofhers.

  [Footnote 10 Because Maheshwara had burned him, on a previous occasion,with fire from his eye.]

  [Footnote 11: In these and similar ideas, the Hindoos resembled theancient Romans: the letter was decisive and irremediable, _uti linguanuncupassit, ita jus esto_.]

  And then, as he listened to my doom, Kamadewa turned paler than theashes to which I had reduced him long ago, finding himself punished forhis insolence by me, for the second time. But the gods all exclaimed,with approbation and delight: Victory to Maheshwara! who has once morebitten the biter, and condemned him, by a sentence even more mercifulthan he deserved. For what could be more intolerable than even Heavenwithout Saraswati, unless it be the curse that is about to produce sucha melancholy condition of affairs?

  And then, those two deities disappeared suddenly from Heaven, anddescended to be born as man and woman on the earth.[12]

  [Footnote 12: This exordium, which has points of resemblance with thatof the insufferable Bana's _Harsha-charita_, is only the Hindoo methodof declaring that the two characters presently to be brought upon thescene are mortal incarnations of love and charm: as we call a man, anAdonis, or a woman, a Venus.]

  III

  Now just at that very moment, it happened, that there were living in thedesert two Rajpoots of the race of the Moon; and the name of the one wasBimba, and that of the othe
r, Jaya.[13] And Saraswati was born as thedaughter of the wife of Bimba, while Kamadewa was born as the son of thewife of Jaya. Now Bimba was a king: and Jaya was his cousin on themother's side. And very soon afterwards, Jaya set upon his cousin,laying claim to the throne, and driving him away, took his kingdom, andkept it for himself. And he caught the wife of Bimba, and put her todeath, as he would have done also with her daughter and her husband. ButBimba succeeded in escaping with his daughter, and ran away and hidhimself. So Jaya remained in triumph, reigning over the kingdom, whosecapital stood on the very spot on which we are sitting now. For thekingdoms of the earth come and go upon it, like the shadows of theclouds: and they grow up suddenly like grass, and perish a little later,and vanish clean away, leaving behind them absolutely nothing butmounds, such as those now lying all about thee, and fragments ofrecollections, and half-forgotten names, like the dreams of the nightwhich morning obliterates and drives away, vaguely hanging in its memorylike wreaths of mist curling and twisting on the black still surface ofa pool in some dark valley screened from the early sun by one of thyfather's[14] peaks.

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

  [Footnote 14: _i.e._ the Himalaya.]

  And of all the elements that made up Java's good fortune, there was notone which filled him with such pride and exultation as his son. And helooked upon him as the very fruit of his birth in visible form, littledreaming, that could he but have looked into the future, and seen whatwas coming, he would rather have deemed himself more fortunate to liveand die without any son at all, than to have begotten such a son as heactually had. For sons resemble winds, which sometimes lift theirfamilies 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 butgone, the joy of both his parents, when he actually arrived, was soextravagantly great, that they could not make too much of him. And as hegrew up, they spoiled him so completely, by the want of all discretionin 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, butalso by the very disposition and qualities of that son himself. For hewas so marvellously beautiful, that every time they saw him, they couldhardly believe their own eyes, and were ready to abandon the body out ofjoy. And in the intoxication of delight they gave him the name ofAtirupa,[15] which was no more than he deserved. And he became a bywordand a wonder in the world, till the heart of his mother almost brokewith the swelling of its own pride. For nothing like him had ever beenseen by anybody, even in a dream, since his beauty did not in the leastresemble that of other men, but hovered as it were half-way between onesex 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 miracleof omnipotence and skill, the fascinations of the two. For though he wastall, and strong, yet strange! his body and his limbs were rounded, anddelicately shaped, and slender, with soft and tender hands and feet thatwere almost too small, even for a girl: and as he moved, he fell as ifby accident into attitudes that as it were imitated unconsciously thecareless grace of Shri[16], caught unaware when she thinks that there isnobody to look at her, and carved by a cunning sculptor in stone upon atemple wall; so that the eyes of all followed him as if against theirwill, drawn to him by an involuntary admiration that they could notunderstand, not realising that in his case only, the beauty of their ownsex was reinforced, and as it were, reduplicated with the magic of aspell, by the mysterious and additional fascination of the other. Andhis face was so strange that whoever saw it, started, and fell, after alittle while, into a kind of dream. And yet this was not merely byreason of its beauty, though that beauty was excessive, resembling avision seen suddenly in the water by a Dryad, musing at midnight by amoonlit pool, with eyes that resembled the reflections of the shadows ofthe 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 inand half out of water, and lips that were almost too red, resemblingthat love-sick nymph's own pair of _bimba_ lips, mirrored[17] in theclear black water, and dying to be kissed by others like themselves.But wonderful! the Creator had put into his face some ingredient ofrecollection, so that without knowing why, every beholder found himselfplunged, as it were, into the agitation of dreamy reminiscence, and saidwithin himself: Ha! now, somewhere or other, in this birth or another, Ihave seen that miracle of a face before. And each went away with a heartthat was unwilling to depart, haunted as it were by dim desire forsomething he knew not what stirring in the depths of his memory, that hecould not remember and yet had not forgotten, like the thirst for therepetition of the sweetness of a bygone dream.[18] And all the more,because his voice resembled a music that was playing a melody suggestedby 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 soundstolen from the pipe of Krishna, in order to enable it itself to stealaway the senses of the world: so that as he spoke, the listenergradually grew bewildered by its tone, resembling a tired traveller,falling little by little unconsciously to sleep as he sits in the murmurof a mountain stream. And whenever he chose, he could cajole hishearer, and make him do almost anything whatever, so hard was it toresist the irresistible persuasion that lurked, like the caressing touchof a gentle woman's hand, in the tone of that quiet and insinuatingvoice.

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

  [Footnote 16: The Hindoo Aphrodite.]

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

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

  And yet, all this beauty was nothing but a mask, and a lie: and so farfrom expressing the nature of that soul which it covered and disguised,it actually added evil to its original defect; and he resembled abamboo, looking like a very incarnation of loveliness and symmetryoutside, and singing in the wind, and yet absolutely hollow and withouta heart, within. For from the very moment he was born, he did exactly ashe pleased, and nothing else, being as capricious as the breeze thatblows only as it chooses. For beginning with his parents, nobody evercrossed him, or placed any obstacle whatever in the path of his desires,which grew up accordingly like a very rank jungle impervious to thelight, 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 theirextravagant admiration of himself. For finding others worship him, hefell in with their opinion, and followed their example: and became as itwere the devotee at the shrine of his own beauty, making it a deity towhich every other thing or body was only fitted to be sacrificed. And hefilled his rooms with mirrors of many colours, made of crystal andlapiz-lazuli, and polished gold and silver, and the water of tanks whoseslabs 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 thatseemed to offer him reciprocally worship as he watched it, as if it weredoubtful 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 eyesas nothing but a playground, and all its men and women merely his ownanimated toys. And from being utterly indifferent to everything but hisown momentary pleasure and caprice, he became, little by little, firstcallous to the sufferings of others, and finally positively cruel,finding his amusement in making others victims to his own peremptorydesires. And his appetite, like a fire, grew with the fuel that it fedupon, till it resembled voracity, and an intolerable thirst for more.But as long as he remained still a child, the fire, remaining as it werewithout its proper aliment, lay hidden:
till he grew into a man. Andthen, all at once, it blazed out furiously like a very conflagration,striking terror into all the subjects of the kingdom, and threatening toconsume 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 flashof lightning, suddenly revealed to him that very object, in the form ofwoman: and he discovered, in the storm of his delight, that women werethe very victims for whom he had been blindly groping in the darknessall his life. And he threw himself upon them, like a prey, finding withintoxication that the Creator had framed him as a weapon constructedwholly for their destruction. And he said to himself, in triumph: I am,as it seems, a magnetic gem, omnipotent and irresistible, to whoseattraction the entire sex succumbs inevitably, like grass. And thisopinion was justified by the conduct of the women themselves. For everywoman that set eyes on him, no matter who she was, fell instantly, likea stone dropped into a well without a bottom, into the abyss ofinfatuation, and utterly forgot not only her relations and her home,but her honour and herself and everything in the three worlds, seized asit were by the very frenzy of devotion, and anxious only to immolateherself as a victim on the altar of his divinity. And strange! though hetreated them all as more worthless than grass, throwing them away almostin the instant that he saw them, not one of them all ever took warningby the fate of her predecessors: and so far were they from shunning himas the common enemy of their entire sex, that on the contrary, theyseemed to struggle with one another for the prize of his momentaryaffection, the more, the more openly he derided them; as if even hisderision and the cheapness in which he openly held them, increased thepower of his charm. Ha! very wonderful is the contradiction in the heartof a woman, and bitter the irony of the Creator that fashioned it out ofso curious an antagonism! For she flies to the man who makes light ofher, as if pulled by a cord; while she utterly despises the man whothinks himself nothing in comparison with her: saying as it were, by herown behaviour, that she is absolutely worthless in her own esteem.

  [Footnote 19: _Yoga._ The germ of truth, and it is a large one, in thephilosophy 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 hebecame odious in the eyes of all his subjects by reason of the behaviourof his son, who paid no more regard to his admonitions than a madelephant does to a rope of grass. And he died, consumed by the two firesof a burning fever and a devouring grief: and his wife followed himthrough the flames of yet another fire, as if to say: I will die noother 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 hisattendants round him, gazing at his own image, that was reflected in atiny mirror set on his finger in a ring. And he was plunged in thecontemplation of himself, shadowed by a melancholy that arose, not fromgrief at the loss of his parents, but dejection caused by the gloom ofthe period of mourning: and as he sat, he said within himself: I amlosing time, and growing old, and letting the opportunity slip by meunimproved, and this bloom of mine is wasted, and, as it were, lyingidle, for want of its proper mirror, which is not this ring, but a pairof 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 passionand 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? Knowye not that even the jackal is in danger, when the lion is left withouta prey? Even now I am debating with myself, whether it would not be agood thing to have one of you chosen by lot, and trampled by anelephant, to be a lesson to the rest.

  And then, as they all gazed at him with anxiety, each fearing forhimself, he looked at their confusion, as if with enjoyment, and saidagain: What, with so many idle all about me, am I, forsooth, to sitwaiting, for fortune to come to me, like an _abhisarika_, of her ownaccord? 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 nownothing is left but curd, and dregs, and whey, and like the ocean afterits churning, all its treasures are exhausted, leaving nothing butcrocodiles and monsters, and bitterness, and brine.

  So then, wishing to cajole him, one of them replied: Maharaj, were thiscity as full of beauties as the very sea of gems, how could any one ofthem come to thee in broad daylight? For is it not laid down in all theShastras, that even an _abhisarika_,[20] were she dying for her lover,must notwithstanding observe times and seasons, choosing for herexpedition only proper opportunities, such as are afforded by a winternight, or a dense fog, or the confusion caused by a whirlwind or anearthquake or an uproar, or a revolution in the state, or an illness ofthe 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 ispresent, to enable her to come to thee escaping observation. And a womanof good family is very different from a dancing girl. For when sheleaves 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 allthe other circumstances that favour her attempt.

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

  And Atirupa said: There is no difficulty in this: for could I think thatthere was even one woman in the city awaiting such an opportunity, whowas worthy of it, I would very soon oblige her, by burning the city tothe 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 nickof time, to save thy city from such a miserable end.

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

  [Footnote 21: Pronounce Chummoo.]

  And he looked at Atirupa, and laughed, rubbing his hands together, withcunning 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 theein the form of an _abhisarika_; and lo! here she is, in my form. And donot despise her, on account of my deformity: for Shri is a lady, andcapricious, and comes in strange disguises. Thou knowest, that the citybeing dismal by reason of the obsequies, I seized my opportunity, andwent away on a visit to my maternal uncle, who lives far off in avillage in the wood that lies in the eastern quarter. And on my journeyback, I lost my way in the wood, and went astray: and finally, growingvery tired, I lay down in a thicket. And as I rested, after a while, Iheard voices coming in my direction. And lying hidden, I looked out, andwatched the speakers, till one of them, as I think, caught sight of myface among the trees, and took fright at its ugliness, and went awaywith 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 veryincarnation of the _abhisarika_, since she comes of her own accord.]

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

  And Chamu laughed softly, and he said: Maharaj, he is a sage, who knowswhere to stop. But I will have compassion on thy curiosity, and thismuch 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 herin the three worlds, I will cut off my own head, and give to thee as afootstool, since it is fit for absolutely nothing else. And even as itis, I think, after all, that I must have fallen asleep in the clump ofbushes, and seen her
in a dream: compounding for myself a vision out ofold memories of Apsarases and Yakshinis, and Nagas, and fragments of oldfairy tales and stories that my mother told me long ago, when I was achild.

  And Atirupa looked at him with surprise: and he said: Chamu, this isvery strange, and thou art not like thyself. Hast thou been eatingpoppy,[23] or art thou only drunk with wine? For it is no ordinaryvision that could turn thee into a poet. Come now, go on. Describe forme the beauty that has awoken such emotion in a soul as dull and muddyas 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 itwas apparently unknown in India before the Musulman invasion.]

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

  And Atirupa laughed joyfully, and he exclaimed: O Chamu, thou artcertainly 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 itis: thou dost not believe. But when thou hast seen her eyes, and whenthou hast heard her voice, and when thou hast gazed at her, as I did,coming straight towards thee, walking, thou wilt laugh no longer: forthe scorn incarnate in the pride of her great breast will make theegiddy, and the roundness of her hips will steal thy heart and burn it toa cinder, and the jingle of her anklets will haunt thy ears, as it doesmine, like the sound of a stream, keeping time to the dance of her twolittle feet as they come towards thee, till thou wilt find thyselfwishing that some strange magic might keep on drawing thee back forever, so only that thou couldst go on gazing, as she kept on coming,like an everlasting incarnation of the rapture of anticipation oftouching and caressing what it maddens thee to see. Maharaj, I tellthee, 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 intothe sea, and seen it, and now I can take thee where it is, to see it forthyself. And as I think, thou wilt discover, she is a quarry to thytaste, who will save thee from the necessity of seeking for others inthe ashes of thy town.