The Substance of a Dream Read online

  III

  A Story without an End

  And then, Maheshwara tossed the last leaf into the air. And as itfloated away down the stream, he said to the goddess, as she listenedwith attention: And yet he never came, as I told thee at thebeginning. For Narasinha was beforehand with him, after all.

  And the Daughter of the Snow sat silent, looking away down the riverafter the floating leaf, until it was lost to sight. And then she saidslowly: Why didst thou say in the beginning that Tarawali was the mostextraordinary of all women, past, present, or to come? For I wasdeceived by thy encomium, expecting a woman altogether different fromher, who was only but a specimen of her sex.

  And the Moony-crested god burst into loud laughter. And he exclaimed:Speak low, O Snowy One: for if thy mortal sisters overheard theebetraying their secrets and their cause, they would be very angry, andperhaps begin to curse thee as a traitor, instead of offering theeworship, as they all do now. What! dost thou actually deem her to bebut a type of all the rest? Surely, thou must have been asleep all thetime that I was reading, after all: since thou hast eithermisunderstood her altogether, or it may be, wilt not do her justice,out of jealousy: since no woman in the three worlds can ever betrusted to judge another fairly, treating her always as a criminal anda rival, and falling on her tooth and nail, especially if, likeTarawali, she sets custom at defiance, going by an independentstandard of her own. But now, let me help thee to see how utterlymistaken is thy estimate of a character so rare as hardly to bematched in the whole of space and time for her cleverness and hercandour and her tranquillity of soul, leaving her beauty out of theaccount, 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 femininebeauty to a single instance, but scattered it universally, sincealmost every woman in the world, no matter what her face be like,shares in the wonderful fascination exerted over men by the shapeessential to her sex, which is far the most important thing of all,being general instead of special, as every woman seen dimly in thedark, 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 atall: 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 toTarawali was her incomparable soul, in which were mingled elementshardly ever to be found combined, gentleness and strength, andsimplicity almost naive, with subtlety beyond all comparison, andpride that never took offence, and superlative beauty with humility,and submissiveness with extreme independence of spirit, and kindnesswithout weakness, and feminine sweetness of disposition with theintellectual vigour of a man, and his courage, and his candour, all ofwhich combined with her extraordinary bodily beauty to make her aparagon of intoxication utterly irresistible to every male[38] shecame across, like a very Prakriti in a woman's form.

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

  And the great god laughed again, and he looked at her shrewdly and hesaid: Aha! Snowy One, said I not that thou wert asleep as I read? Ishall 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 aterrible error in the most important point of all, being led astray bywhat he had heard, and easily taken in. For blinded by his rageagainst his rival Narasinha, he came suddenly to the wrong conclusion,and slew her by mistake, never so much as giving her time for anyexplanation. For her eyes never wavered, as he thought, for guilt, butfor quite another reason. And Narasinha really was, exactly as shesaid, her tyrant, nor had she anything to do with his assassination ofher lovers, which he committed all on his own account, out ofjealousy, paying no attention at all to her intercession. But in hergentleness, she shrank from the very idea of any violence, and thiswas the true cause of the wavering of her eyes, foreseeing as she didanother attempt on Shatrunjaya, which she could not avert. And myheart was grieved at her death at the hands of a lover whose life shehad saved, and would have saved again if she could. For she was worthfar more than he.

  And the Daughter of the Snow said: But what was she doing with such amultitude of lovers at all?

  And Maheshwara said: Thou art like Shatrunjaya himself, biased againsther by the insinuations of Haridasa, and the discreditable behaviourof that little liar Chaturika, who betrayed her as well as others, andby the idle talk of the people, which she rightly compared herself tothe croaking of so many frogs. For low people always put the veryworst interpretation upon the actions of kings, and especially ofqueens, of whom all the time they know less than nothing, exactly asshe said. And Shatrunjaya's opinion of her wavered, in spite of allhis worship, being coloured by the scandal that he heard, so that hesaw her through its mist, as strangers always do. And if she had toomany lovers, it was all the fault of the Creator, who endowed her withsuch fascination, combined with the kindness of her heart: since sheblamed herself for their misery, and could not bear to send them awaywithout making them as it were some reparation for her crime of beingbeautiful beyond all resistance. And this was her only fault.

  Then said the Mountain-born, with emphasis: I hate her: for a womanshould 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 acounterpart of thee. And moreover, to be rigidly inaccessible[39] isterribly hard, when a woman is as she was, a very incarnation ofbewildering intoxication, and kind into the bargain. For then sheresembles a fortress, besieged night and day and mined everlastinglyby innumerable hosts absolutely determined to get in; and sleeplessindeed must be the garrison that guards it; and often it yields ofsheer weariness and fatigue, unable any longer to endure the strain.And Tarawali was absolutely right when she said that her lovers droveher, against her inclination, into the reputation of a lady of manylovers, since they were all so infatuated by the very sight of herthat they never let her alone. For love that really finds its objectwill face ten thousand deaths to reach it, and is very hard to repel.And it laughs in utter scorn at arguments, and bribes, and barriers,and dangers, and refusals, bent with a burning heart upon one thingonly, to reach its goal, dead or alive, no matter which. And when awoman is an incarnation of that object, she moves the whole world withher little finger, and is fatal, and raised into a category above allordinary rules. And Tarawali was moreover in a peculiar position, forher husband had thrown her away of his own accord, so that sheactually belonged to nobody but herself, and injured herself alone, ifshe could not always help yielding when a lover pushed her terriblyhard, by touching her heart like Shatrunjaya in the matter of hisdream. And very few indeed are the women who would not have done thesame, for he was a great musician, and a man among men, and veryyoung. And very rare indeed is the woman who is qualified to censureher. For most women keep their wheel upon the track, either becausenobody ever tries to make them leave it, or simply for fear, either ofbeing punished, or of other women's tongues. And not one in a crorecould have resisted half the pressure that Tarawali had to bear, forthe very greatest of a winning woman's charms is exactly the one whichshe possessed in supreme perfection, her soft and deliciouswillingness to oblige and please, and place all the sweetness of herpersonality at the absolute disposal of her lover, as Shatrunjayaunderstood at the very first sight of her: a thing so utterlyirresistible, that when it is combined, as it was in her, withintelligence masculine in its quality, its owner sweeps away everyman's reason like a chip in a flood. And there was a special reasonfor Tarawali's intelligence.

  And the goddess said: What was the reason? And the Moony-crested godsaid: It was the necessary consequence of the actions of a formerbirth. For in the birth before, she was a man, doomed by _gati_[40] tobecome a woman in the next, by reason of a sin. And she said again:What sin? Then s
aid Maheshwara: Ask me another time, O thou cajoler:for it is a long story, and now I have no more leisure: since I mustgo and bestow the favour of my presence on a ceremony performed by apious devotee who has built me a new temple at Waranasi. And canstthou guess who it is?

  And the Daughter of the Snow said: How in the world can I guess hisname, of whom I never heard before?

  And the Moony-crested god said: It is not a he, but a she: being noother than Tarawali herself, in yet another birth. And she is stillonly a woman, for she has not yet succeeded in raising herself bymerit into the condition of a man. And it may be long before shesucceeds. For it is easy to sink, but it is hard for any creature torise into a status of being superior to its own, and the women whoemerge into manhood are very rare. For the goodness that is synonymouswith real existence[41] is only to be found in those who have behindthem the accumulated effort and desert of ages, standing on a peakloftier by far than any of thy father's snowy summits, which cannot beattained in any single birth by no matter what exertions orausterities. But when once any being has attained it, emancipationdawns, touching it into colour more beautiful by far than any tintsthe rising sun has ever thrown on newly fallen mountain snow.

  FOOTNOTES:

  [Footnote 37: A very beautiful story in the MS., which has not yetseen the light. The opinion of the deity is corroborated by that veryclever woman, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, who says in one of herletters from Constantinople that if women went without clothes, theface would hardly count at all. Nearly all of them would gainimmensely by wearing a permanent veil, but the pretty ones would neverconsent to it.]

  [Footnote 38: Purusha is the philosophical term for the PrimordialMale, of which Prakriti is the female antithesis. The god is combiningGoethe and Swinburne: the "eternal feminine" and the "holy spirit ofman."]

  [Footnote 39: See note _ante_, p. 47.]

  [Footnote 40: A very short word for a very long process, anduntranslatable by any English equivalent. It means the whole system ofthe laws of metempsychosis, running in a long chain forward into thefuture, and back into the past.]

  [Footnote 41: That is, _sat_ or _sattwa_ = goodness, or true being.]