A Syrup of the Bees, Page 3

  I

  A TWILIGHT EPIPHANY

  _The three worlds worship the sound of the string that twanged of oldlike the hum of bees[5] as it slipped from faint Love's faltering handand fell at his feet unstrung, the bow unbent and the shaft unsped, asif to beg for mercy from that other shaft of scorching flame that shotfrom the bow-despising brow of the moony-crested god._

  [Footnote 5: The bowstring of Love's bow is made of a line of bees. Lovewas reduced to ashes by fire from Shiwa's extra eye, for audaciouslyattempting to subject that great ascetic to his own power.]

  Far down in the southern quarter, at the very end of the Great Forest,just where the roots of its outmost trees are washed by the waves of theeastern sea, there was of old a city, which stood on the edge of landand water, like as the evening moon hangs where light and darkness meet.And just outside the city wall where the salt sand drifts in the wind,there was a little old ruined empty temple of the Lord of the MoonyTire, whose open door was as it were guarded by two sin-destroyingimages of the Deity and his wife, one on the right of the threshold andthe other on the left, looking as if they had suddenly started asunder,surprised by the crowd of devotees, to make a way between. And on anevening long ago, when the sun had finished setting, Maheshwara wasreturning from Lanka to his own home on Kailas, with Uma in his arms. Soas he went, he looked down, and saw the temple away below. And he saidto his beloved: Come, now, let us go down, and revisit this littletemple, which has stood so long without us. And it looks white in themoon's rays, as if it had turned pale, for fear that we have forgottenit.

  So when they had descended, Maheshwara said again: See how these tworude and mutilated effigies that are meant for thee and me stand, as itwere, waiting, like bodies for their souls. Let us enter in, and occupy,and sanctify these images,[6] and rest for a little while, beforeproceeding to thy father's peaks. And if I am not mistaken, our presencewill be opportune, and this deserted temple will presently be visited bysomebody who stands in sore need of our assistance, which as long asthey remain untenanted these our images cannot give him, since they haveeven lost their hands.[7] And accordingly they entered, each into hisown image, and remained absolutely still, as though the stone was justthe stone it always was, and nothing more. And yet those stony deitiesglistened in the full moon's light, as though the presence of deity hadlent them lustre of their own, that laughed as though to say: See, nowwe are as white as the very foam at our feet.

  [Footnote 6: The real divinity of a Hindoo temple is not the imagesoutside on its walls, but the symbol (whatever it be) inside.]

  [Footnote 7: A common feature throughout India. Everywhere they went,the devotees of the Koran used to smash and maim the Hindoo idols.]

  So as they stood, silent, and listening to the sound of the sea, all atonce there came a man who ran towards them. And taking off his turban,he cast it at the great god's feet, and fell on his face himself. Andafter a while, he looked up, and joined his hands, and said: O thouEnemy of Love, now there is absolutely no help for me but in the sole ofthy foot. For when the sun rose this morning, the Queen was found lyingdrowned, and all broken to pieces, in the sea foam under the palacewall. And when they ran to tell the King, they found him also lyingdead, where he sleeps on his palace roof that hangs over the sea, with adagger in his heart. And the city is all in uproar, for loss tounderstand it, and Gangadhara the minister has made of me a victim, byreason of an old grudge. And now my head will be the forfeit, unless Ican discover the guilty before the rising of another sun. And thou whoknowest all things, past, present, or to come, art become my onlyrefuge. Grant me, of thy favour, a boon, and reveal to me the secret,for who but thyself can possibly discover how the King and Queen havecome to this extraordinary end.

  So as he spoke, gazing as if in desperation at Maheshwara, all at once,as if moved to compassion, that image of the Deity turned from the walltowards him, and nodded at him its stony head: so that in his terrorthat unhappy mortal nearly left his own body, and fell to the ground ina swoon. And Maheshwara gazed at him intently, as he lay, and put him,by his _yoga_,[8] asleep. And the Daughter of the Snow said softly: OMoony-crested, who is this unlucky person, and what is the truth of thiswhole matter, for I am curious to know? And Maheshwara said slowly: OSnowy One, this is the chief of the night watch of the city; and beunder no alarm. For while he sleeps, I will reveal the truth to him, ina magic dream: making him as it were a third person, to overhear ourconversation. And I will do the same to the prime minister, so that inthe morning, finding their two dreams tally, he will gain credit andsave his life. Thereupon Parwati said again: O Lord of creation, savemine also. For I am as it were dying of curiosity, to hear how all thiscame about.

  [Footnote 8: What we should call, in such a case, mesmerism: the powerof concentrated will. There is something in it, after all.]

  So then, after a while, that omniscient Deity said slowly: All this hascome about, by reason of a dream. And Gauri said: How could a dream bethe cause of death, both to the King and Queen? Then said Maheshwara:Not only is there danger in dreaming, but the greatest. Hast thou notseen thy father's woody sides reflected in the still mirror of his owntarns? And the goddess said: What then? And Maheshwara said: Hast thounot marked how the reflection painted on the water contains beauty,drawn as it were from its depths, greater by far than does the verything it echoes, of which it is nothing but an exact copy? And Parwatisaid: Aye, so it does. Then said Maheshwara: So it is with dreams. Fortheir danger lies in this very beauty, and like pictures upon quietwater, which contains absolutely nothing at all, below, they show men,sleeping, visions of unrealisable beauty, which, being nothing whateverbut copies of what they have seen, awake, possess notwithstanding anadditional fascination, not to be found in the originals, which fillsthem with insatiable longing and an utter contempt of all that theirwaking life contains, as in the present instance: so that they sacrificeall in pursuit of a hollow phantom, trying to achieve impossibility, bybringing mind-begotten dream into the sphere of reality, whither itcannot enter but by ceasing to be dream. But the worst of all is, as inthis King's case, when dreaming is intermingled with the reminiscencesof a former birth: for then it becomes fatality. And Parwati said: Howis that? Then said Maheshwara: Every soul that is born anew lies buriedin oblivion, having utterly forgotten all its previous existence, whichhas become for it as a thing that has never been. And yet, sometimes,when impressions are very vivid, and memory very strong, here and therean individual soul, steeped as it were in the vat of its own experience,and becoming permanently dyed, as if with indigo, will laugh, so to say,at oblivion, and carry over indelible impressions, from one birth toanother, and so live on, haunted by dim recollections that throng hismemory like ghosts, and resembling one striving vainly to recall theloveliness and colour of a flower of which he can remember absolutelynothing but the scent, whose lost fragrance hangs about him, goadingmemory to ineffectual effort, and thus filling him with melancholy whichhe can never either dispel or understand.

  So as he spoke, there came past the temple door a young man of theShabara caste, resembling a tree for his height, carrying towards theforest a young woman of slender limbs, who was struggling as he heldher, and begging to be released; to which he answered only by laughingas he held her tighter, and giving her every now and then a kiss as hewent along, so that as they passed by, there fell from her hair a_champak_ flower, which lay on the ground unheeded after theydisappeared. And the Daughter of the Mountain exclaimed: See, OMoony-crested, this flower laid as it were at thy feet as a suppliantfor her protection: for this is a case for thy interference, to saveinnocence from evil-doing.

  And Maheshwara looked at her with affection in his smile. And he said:Not so, O mountain-born: thou art deceived: since this is a case whereinterference would be bitterly resented, not only by the robber, but hisprey: for notwithstanding all her feigned reluctance, this slender oneis inwardly delighted, and desires nothing less than to be taken at herword. For this also is a pair of lovers, who resemble very cl
osely thoseother lovers, whose story I am just about to tell thee: as indeed alllovers are very much the same. For Love is tyranny, and the essence ofthe sweetness of its nectar is a despotic authority that is equallydelicious to master and to slave. For just as every male lover loves toplay the tyrant, so does every woman love to play the slave, so much,that unless her love contains for her the consciousness of slavery, itis less than nothing in her own eyes, and she does not love at all. Andknow, that as nothing in the world is so hateful to a woman as force,exerted on her by a man she does not love, so nothing fills her withsuch supreme intoxication as to be masterfully made by her lover to goalong the road of her own inclination, since so she gets her way withoutseeming to consent, and is extricated from the dilemma of decidingbetween her scruples and her wish. For indecision is the very nature ofevery woman, and it is a torture to her, to decide, no matter how. Andeven when she does decide, she does so, generally as a victim, driven bycircumstances or desperation, and never as a judge, as in the case ofboth those women who determined the destiny of this dead King, the onedeciding in his favour, precisely because he would allow her no choice,and the other very much against him indeed: and yet both, so to say,without any good reason at all. For women resemble yonder waves of thesea, things compounded of passion and emotion, with impulses forarguments, and agitation for energy, for ever playing, fretting andmoaning with laughter and tears of brine and foam: and like feminineincarnations of the instability of water, one and the same essencerunning through a multitude of contradictory and beautiful qualities andforms: being cold and hard as ice, and soft and white as snow, and stillas pools, and crooked as rivers, now floating in heaven like clouds andmists and vapours, and now plunging, like cataracts and waterfalls, intothe abyss of hell. Is not the same water bitter as death to the drowningman, and sweeter than a draught of nectar, saving the life of thetraveller dying of thirst in the desert sand.

  So, now, listen, while I tell thee the story of this King.

  And as he began to speak, the wind fell, and the sea slumbered, and themoon crept silently further up and up the sky. And little by little, thedark shadows stole out stealthily, moving as it were on tiptoe, and hungin corners, here and there, like ghosts about the little shrine, beforewhich the sleeping man lay white in the moon's rays, as still as if hewere a corpse. And the deep tones of the Great God's voice seemed like amuttered spell, to lull to sleep the living and assemble the dead tohear, with demons for _dwarapalas_ at the door of an ashy tomb.