A Syrup of the Bees

But in the meanwhile Arunodaya fled as it were from Makarandiká to take refuge in his dream. And he found Sarojiní as it were waiting for him with anxiety, with eyes that seemed to say to him: Amidst all this tumult of the pandits, thou and I are as it were alone together. And it seemed to Arunodaya as he watched her, that her lips moved, and were striving to say to him something, that by reason of the distance and the shouting, he could not understand. And in his delight, he began to laugh in his sleep, and murmur back to her in answer: Sarojiní, Sarojiní. And filled with unutterable desire to approach her, and take her in his arms, he was on the very point of rushing forward, urged by the irritation of an impatience that was becoming unendurable, when once again that maid devoid of modesty came straight towards him, and almost broke his heart in two by taking by the hand not himself, but the king who stood beside him. And as he muttered to himself: Out on this interloping king, who comes between me and my delight! beginning to tremble all over as he lay, that maid said again: King, listen and reply to the question that the husband of Sarojiní must answer well.

And Sarojiní turned half towards him, leaving as it were her eyes behind, fastened still on Arunodaya, as if unable to bear again the pain of separation, and calling as it were to him, from over the sea of time. And then she said, as if her words were meant for him alone! Maháráj, Maháráj, say, shall I choose the past or the present, the living or the dead?

And then, ere that unhappy king could answer, Arunodaya leaped towards her, while all his body quivered as he lay upon his bed, as if struggling in desperation to accompany his soul. And he cried out, not only with his soul, but his body: Sarojiní, Sarojiní, never shall thou choose, since I will not leave the choice to thee at all. Dead or living, I am thine and thou art mine. And as she threw herself into his arms, he caught her, and pulled her to his breast, while she put up her face to him, as if dying to be kissed.

And then, strange! that face suddenly eluded him, with a derisive sneer. And his ears rang with a din composed of the shouting and laughter of pandits, mingled with the roar of the wind and the sea. And she and the dream together suddenly went out and disappeared. And he saw her face, for the fraction of a second, change, as if by magic, into the face of Makarandiká, pale as ashes: and then, something suddenly ran into his heart like a sword. And his soul abandoned his body, with a sharp cry, never to return.

XV

So then, the very moment it was done, Makarandiká woke, herself, as it were, from a dream. And horror at her own action, as if it had waited till the very moment when it should be unavailing, suddenly flowed in upon her soul. And as she gazed at Arunodaya, lying still in the moonlight with her dagger in his heart, and found herself with absolutely no companions but the dead body, and the darkness, and the wind and the waves, alone on that palace roof, she murmured to herself, as if she hardly understood: What! can this be of my doing? What! have I actually slain the husband of my own choice, jealous of his very dreams?

And she stood, for a little while, with one hand upon her head, and then, she uttered a scream. And she seized him by the hand, and shook it violently, as if endeavouring to wake him and recall him from a dream, in which she herself had buried him for ever, cutting off its termination, and prisoning his soul in an everlasting dungeon, like a stone dropped beyond recovery, fallen with a hollow echo into the black darkness of a well.

And lo! that shriek reverberated as it were in heaven, and was answered by a peal of laughter that fell on her from the sky. And she looked up into the air, and saw, hovering in rows above her, all those Widyádhara suitors whom she had rejected long ago, gazing down at her with faces that were distorted with malice and derision. And as she stood, confounded, with their laughter ringing in her ears, Smaradása swooped towards her, and called to her ironically: Ha! Makarandiká the scornful, how is it with thy mortal husband? How could he prefer another to such a beauty as thyself?

And Makarandiká gazed at them all for an instant, with eyes that exactly resembled those of a fawn, on the very verge of escaping from its pursuers by leaping from a cliff. And her reason fled away from her, as if anticipating her own flight. And strange! at that moment, as if bewildered by her own deed and the very sight of those Widyádharas of whom she had been one, she utterly forgot for an instant that she herself was no longer a Widyádharí, and had lost her own power of flying through the air. And she made a bound to the edge of the parapet, and leaped off, thinking to fly over the sea, and escape, and be at rest. But instead of flying, she fell, and was broken to pieces at the bottom of the wall, in the foam of the waves that were also broken, at the foot of the palace rock.

So then, when at last Maheshwara ended, the Daughter of the Mountain asked eagerly: But, O thou of the Moony Tire, tell me, how as to the dream. Was it the very truth, and Sarojiní the very wife of his former birth?

And Maheshwara said slowly: Nay, O Snowy One, not at all. For it was not even a true dream. For if it had really been a dream, it would not have continued, as it actually did, in spite of its interruptions. But the whole was a delusion, and a contrivance of the Widyádharas, who lured his soul out of his body by means of a magic drug, and acted all before him, exactly like a play. For the Widyádharas were the pandits, and the great hall was nothing whatever but the sky. And the noise was nothing whatever but that of the wind and waves, and Sarojiní herself was Makarandiká's own sister, who hated her for her beauty, which was greater than her own. And as for Makarandiká, she was all the time her own rival; for she herself, and no other, was the real wife of his former birth.

And the Daughter of the Mountain started, and she uttered a little cry. And she exclaimed: Ah! no! O Moony-crested, it cannot be. Surely thou art only jesting? What! was their happiness divided from them by so thin a wall as that? What! when they would have given, each his soul, to know it? Alas! alas! what cruelty of the Creator, to bring the cup of happiness as it were to their very lips, without allowing them to taste! simply by reason of a film of utter darkness, that prevented them from seeing it was actually there!

And after a while, that Lord of Creatures said slowly: O Daughter of the Mountain, yet for all that it was true. And many a traveller crosses over seas and years of separation, surmounting every peril, to perish at the very last moment, when the ecstasy of reunion is almost in his grasp, on the step of his own door. And be not thou hasty to lay cruelty to the door of the Creator, who is absolutely blameless in the matter, seeing that all these and similar misfortunes come about, as the necessary consequence of works. And though the extremity of happiness, arising from mutual recognition, was divided from Arunodaya and Makarandiká by a screen thinner than the thickness of a single hair, they could not reach it, for thin as it was, that screen had been erected by their own wrong-doing, and was nothing whatever but the doom pronounced against themselves by their own misbehaviour in a former birth. And thus it came about, that Makarandiká played the part of Arunodaya's former wife, never even dreaming that she was only claiming to be what she actually was: while Arunodaya shrank, in his ignorance, from the very wife whom he would have given the three worlds to discover, in pursuit of a phantom, that was substituted for her by his own unilluminated longing for a treasure that, all unaware, he held already in his hand. For souls that wander to and fro in the waste of the world's illusion resemble chips tossing aimlessly up and down on the heaving waves of time, driving about at random they know not how or where, under a night that has no moon, in an ocean without a shore: for whom the very quarters of heaven are lost in an undistinguishable identity, and even distance and proximity are but words without a sense.

So, now, let us leave these our images to become once more, by our departure, nothing but the stony guardians of this empty shrine. And to-morrow Gangádhara will learn, by listening to the story of yonder sleeper, what Smaradása meant, and unriddle his enigma of the poisoning of the soul.

notes

1

Some kindly critics of these stories have objected to the W, here or elsewhere. The answer to this is, that European scholars have taught everybody to pronounce everything wrong, by e. g. introducing into Sanskrit a letter that it does not contain. There is no V in Sanskrit, nor can any Hindoo, without special training, pronounce it: he says, for instance, walwe for valve.

2

This "detached reflection" of Russia's national poet is endorsed by Dostoyeffsky, the greatest master of jealousy that the world has ever seen.

3

The title has a secondary meaning (with reference to its place in the series), she that is loaded with the nectar of Maheshwara, i.e. the moon that he wears.

4

No mere learning will remove them. Pundits, as a rule, end where they began, "lost in the gloom of uninspired research."

5

The bowstring of Love's bow is made of a line of bees. Love was reduced to ashes by fire from Shiwa's extra eye, for audaciously attempting to subject that great ascetic to his own power.

6

The real divinity of a Hindoo temple is not the images outside on its walls, but the symbol (whatever it be) inside.

7

A common feature throughout India. Everywhere they went, the devotees of the Koràn used to smash and maim the Hindoo idols.

8

What we should call, in such a case, mesmerism: the power of concentrated will. There is something in it, after all.

9

(Pronounce daya as die, with accent on preceding o.) It means the rising of red dawn.

10

The Recorder, who keeps account of all the sins that each soul must answer for, at the end of every birth.

11

i. e. son of a nobleman, the term used by a queen in addressing her husband.

12

i. e. a wife who makes a god of her husband: the highest of all possible praises. Sawitri is the Hindoo Alcestis.

13

Sati, which means a good woman, is always understood by Europeans to refer to what is only the last manifestation of her quality, the burning herself on her dead lord's pyre. But the term does not necessarily contain any reference to that stern climax of her virtue.

14

Another name for Yama, the god of death, which we may here take as equivalent to "Justice."

15

i. e. the God of Love and his principal wife.

16

As we might say, bachelor, but the Hindoo expression is stricter, meaning, one who has taken a vow of virginity.

17

The two wives of Love.

18