Vikram and the Vampire

IN WHICH A MAN DECEIVES A WOMAN

In Benares once reigned a mighty prince, by name Pratapamukut, to whose eighth son Vajramukut happened the strangest adventure.

One morning, the young man, accompanied by the son of his father’s pradhan or prime minister, rode out hunting, and went far into the jungle. At last the twain unexpectedly came upon a beautiful ‘tank’47 of a prodigious size. It was surrounded by short thick walls of fine baked brick; and flights and ramps of cut-stone steps, half the length of each face, and adorned with turrets, pendants, and finials, led down to the water. The substantial plaster work and the masonry had fallen into disrepair, and from the crevices sprang huge trees, under whose thick shade the breeze blew freshly, and on whose balmy branches the birds sang sweetly; the grey squirrels48 chirruped joyously as they coursed one another up the gnarled trunks, and from the pendent llianas the long-tailed monkeys were swinging sportively. The bountiful hand of Sravana49 had spread the earthen rampart with a carpet of the softest grass and many-hued wild flowers, in which were buzzing swarms of bees and myriads of bright-winged insects; and flocks of water-fowl, wild geese, Brahmini ducks, bitterns, herons, and cranes, male and female, were feeding on the narrow strip of brilliant green that belted the long deep pool, amongst the broad-leaved lotuses with the lovely blossoms, splashing through the pellucid waves, and basking happily in the genial sun.

The prince and his friend wondered when they saw the beautiful tank in the midst of a wild forest, and made many vain conjectures about it. They dismounted, tethered their horses, and threw their weapons upon the ground; then, having washed their hands and faces, they entered a shrine dedicated to Mahadeva, and there began to worship the presiding deity.

Whilst they were making their offerings, a bevy of maidens, accompanied by a crowd of female slaves, descended the opposite flight of steps. They stood there for a time, talking and laughing and looking about them to see if any alligators infested the waters. When convinced that the tank was safe, they disrobed themselves in order to bathe. It was truly a splendid spectacle —

‘Concerning which the less said the better,’ interrupted Raja Vikram in an offended tone.50

– but it did not last long. The Raja’s daughter – for the principal maiden was a princess – soon left her companions, who were scooping up water with their palms and dashing it over one another’s heads, and proceeded to perform the rites of purification, meditation, and worship. Then she began strolling with a friend under the shade of a small mango grove.

The prince also left his companion sitting in prayer, and walked forth into the forest. Suddenly the eyes of the Raja’s son and the Raja’s daughter met. She started back with a little scream. He was fascinated by her beauty, and began to say to himself, ‘O thou vile Kama,51 why worriest thou me?’

Hearing this, the maiden smiled encouragement, but the poor youth, between palpitation of the heart and hesitation about what to say, was so confused that his tongue clave to his teeth. She raised her eyebrows a little. There is nothing which women despise in a man more than modesty,52 for mo-des-ty —

A violent shaking of the bag which hung behind Vikram’s royal back broke off the end of this offensive sentence. And the warrior king did not cease that discipline till the Baital promised him to preserve more decorum in his observations.

Still the prince stood before her with downcast eyes and suffused cheeks: even the spur of contempt failed to arouse his energies. Then the maiden called to her friend, who was picking jasmine flowers so as not to witness the scene, and angrily asked why that strange man was allowed to stand and stare at her? The friend, in hot wrath, threatened to call the slave, and to throw Vajramukut into the pond unless he instantly went away with his impudence. But as the prince was rooted to the spot, and really had not heard a word of what had been said to him, the two women were obliged to make the first move.

As they almost reached the tank, the beautiful maiden turned her head to see what the poor modest youth was doing.

Vajramukut was formed in every way to catch a woman’s eye. The Raja’s daughter therefore half forgave him his offence of mod – . Again she sweetly smiled, disclosing two rows of little opals. Then descending to the water’s edge, she stooped down and plucked a lotus. This she worshipped; next she placed it in her hair, then she put it to her ear, then she bit it with her teeth, then she trod upon it with her foot, then she raised it up again, and lastly she stuck it in her bosom. After which she mounted her conveyance and went home to her friends; whilst the prince, having become thoroughly desponding and drowned in grief at separation from her, returned to the minister’s son.

‘Females!’ ejaculated the minister’s son, speaking to himself in a careless tone, when, his prayer finished, he left the temple, and sat down upon the tank steps to enjoy the breeze. He presently drew a roll of paper from under his waist-belt, and in a short time was engrossed with his study. The women seeing this conduct, exerted themselves in every possible way of wile to attract his attention and to distract his soul. They succeeded only so far as to make him roll his head with a smile, and to remember that such is always the custom of man’s bane; after which he turned over a fresh page of manuscript. And although he presently began to wonder what had become of the prince his master, he did not look up even once from his study.

He was a philosopher, that young man. But after all, Raja Vikram, what is mortal philosophy? Nothing but another name for indifference! Who was ever philosophical about a thing truly loved or really hated? – no one! Philosophy, says Shankharacharya, is either the gift of nature or the reward of study. But I, the Baital, the devil, ask you, what is a born philosopher, save a man of cold desires? And what is a bred philosopher but a man who has survived his desires? A young philosopher? – a cold-blooded youth! An elderly philosopher? – a leucophlegmatic old man! Much nonsense, of a verity, ye hear in praise of nothing from your Rajaship’s Nine Gems of Science, and from sundry other such wise fools.

Then the prince began to relate the state of his case, saying, ‘O friend, I have seen a damsel, but whether she be a musician from Indra’s heaven, a maiden of the sea, a daughter of the serpent kings, or the child of an earthly Raja, I cannot say.’

‘Describe her,’ said the statesman in embryo.

‘Her face,’ quoth the prince, ‘was that of the full moon, her hair like a swarm of bees hanging from the blossoms of the acacia, the corners of her eyes touched her ears, her lips were sweet with lunar ambrosia, her waist was that of a lion, and her walk the walk of a king-goose.53 As a garment, she was white; as a season, the spring; as a flower, the jasmine; as a speaker, the kokila bird; as a perfume, musk; as a beauty, Kama-deva; and as a being, Love. And if she does not come into my possession I will not live; this I have certainly determined upon.’

The young minister, who had heard his prince say the same thing more than once before, did not attach great importance to these awful words. He merely remarked that, unless they mounted at once, night would surprise them in the forest. Then the two young men returned to their horses, untethered them, drew on their bridles, saddled them, and catching up their weapons, rode slowly towards the Raja’s palace. During the three hours of return hardly a word passed between the pair. Vajramukut not only avoided speaking; he never once replied till addressed thrice in the loudest voice.

The young minister put no more questions, ‘for,’ quoth he to himself, ‘when the prince wants my counsel, he will apply for it.’ In this point he had borrowed wisdom from his father, who held in peculiar horror the giving of unasked-for advice. So, when he saw that conversation was irksome to his master, he held his peace and meditated upon what he called his ‘day-thought.’ It was his practice to choose every morning some tough food for reflection, and to chew the cud of it in his mind at times when, without such employment, his wits would have gone wool-gathering. You may imagine, Raja Vikram, that with a few years of this head-work, the minister’s son became a very crafty young person.

After the second day the Prince Vajramukut, being restless from grief at separation, fretted himself into a fever. Having given up writing, reading, drinking, sleeping, the affairs entrusted to him by his father, and everything else, he sat down, as he said, to die. He used constantly to paint the portrait of the beautiful lotus gatherer, and to lie gazing upon it with tearful eyes; then he would start up and tear it to pieces and beat his forehead, and begin another picture of a yet more beautiful face.

At last, as the pradhan’s son had foreseen, he was summoned by the young Raja, whom he found upon his bed, looking yellow and complaining bitterly of headache. Frequent discussions upon the subject of the tender passion had passed between the two youths, and one of them had ever spoken of it so very disrespectfully that the other felt ashamed to introduce it. But when his friend, with a view to provoke communicativeness, advised a course of boiled and bitter herbs and great attention to diet, quoting the hemistich attributed to the learned physician Charndatta —

the unhappy Vajramukut’s fortitude abandoned him; he burst into tears, and exclaimed, ‘Whosoever enters upon the path of love cannot survive it; and if (by chance) he should live, what is life to him but a prolongation of his misery?’

‘Yea,’ replied the minister’s son, ‘the sage hath said —

And the wise, knowing that there are three things whose effect upon himself no man can foretell – namely, desire of woman, the dice-box, and the drinking of ardent spirits – find total abstinence from them the best of rules. Yet, after all, if there is no cow, we must milk the bull.’

The advice was, of course, excellent, but the hapless lover could not help thinking that on this occasion it came a little too late. However, after a pause he returned to the subject and said, ‘I have ventured to tread that dangerous way, be its end pain or pleasure, happiness or destruction.’ He then hung down his head and sighed from the bottom of his heart.

‘She is the person who appeared to us at the tank?’ asked the pradhan’s son, moved to compassion by the state of his master.

The prince assented.

‘O great king,’ resumed the minister’s son, ‘at the time of going away had she said anything to you? or had you said anything to her?’

‘Nothing!’ replied the other laconically, when he found his friend beginning to take an interest in the affair.

‘Then,’ said the minister’s son, ‘it will be exceedingly difficult to get possession of her.’

‘Then,’ repeated the Raja’s son, ‘I am doomed to death; to an early and melancholy death!’

‘Humph!’ ejaculated the young statesman rather impatiently, ‘did she make any sign, or give any hint? Let me know all that happened: half confidences are worse than none.’

Upon which the prince related everything that took place by the side of the tank, bewailing the false shame which had made him dumb, and concluding with her pantomime.

The pradhan’s son took thought for a while. He thereupon seized the opportunity of representing to his master all the evil effects of bashfulness when women are concerned, and advised him, as he would be a happy lover, to brazen his countenance for the next interview.

Which the young Raja faithfully promised to do.

‘And, now,’ said the other, ‘be comforted, O my master! I know her name and her dwelling-place. When she suddenly plucked the lotus flower and worshipped it, she thanked the gods for having blessed her with a sight of your beauty.’

Vajramukut smiled, the first time for the last month.

‘When she applied it to her ear, it was as if she would have explained to thee, “I am a daughter of the Carnatic;”54 and when she bit it with her teeth, she meant to say that “My father is Raja Dantawat,”55 who, by the bye, has been, is, and ever will be, a mortal foe to thy father.’

Vajramukut shuddered.

‘When she put it under her foot it meant, “My name is Padmavati.”’56

Vajramukut uttered a cry of joy.

‘And when she placed it in her bosom, “You are truly dwelling in my heart” was meant to be understood.’

At these words the young Raja started up full of new life, and after praising with enthusiasm the wondrous sagacity of his dear friend, begged him by some contrivance to obtain the permission of his parents, and to conduct him to her city. The minister’s son easily got leave for Vajramukut to travel, under pretext that his body required change of water, and his mind change of scene. They both dressed and armed themselves for the journey, and having taken some jewels, mounted their horses and followed the road in that direction in which the princess had gone.

Arrived after some days at the capital of the Carnatic, the minister’s son having disguised his master and himself in the garb of travelling traders, alighted and pitched his little tent upon a clear bit of ground in one of the suburbs. He then proceeded to inquire for a wise woman, wanting, he said, to have his fortune told. When the prince asked him what this meant, he replied that elderly dames who professionally predict the future are never above ministering to the present, and therefore that, in such circumstances, they are the properest persons to be consulted.

‘Is this a treatise upon the subject of immorality, devil?’ demanded the King Vikram ferociously. The Baital declared that it was not, but that he must tell his story.

The person addressed pointed to an old woman who, seated before the door of her hut, was spinning at her wheel. Then the young men went up to her with polite salutations and said, ‘Mother, we are travelling traders, and our stock is coming after us; we have come on in advance for the purpose of finding a place to live in. If you will give us a house, we will remain there and pay you highly.’

The old woman, who was a physiognomist as well as a fortune-teller, looked at the faces of the young men and liked them, because their brows were wide and their mouths denoted generosity. Having listened to their words, she took pity upon them and said kindly, ‘This hovel is yours, my masters, remain here as long as you please.’ Then she led them into an inner room, again welcomed them, lamented the poorness of her abode, and begged them to lie down and rest themselves.

After some interval of time the old woman came to them once more, and sitting down began to gossip. The minister’s son upon this asked her, ‘How is it with thy family, thy relatives, and connections; and what are thy means of subsistence?’ She replied, ‘My son is a favourite servant in the household of our great king Dantawat, and your slave is the wet-nurse of the Princess Padmavati, his eldest child. From the coming on of old age,’ she added, ‘I dwell in this house, but the king provides for my eating and drinking. I go once a day to see the girl, who is a miracle of beauty and goodness, wit and accomplishments, and returning thence, I bear my own griefs at home.’57

In a few days the young Vajramukut had, by his liberality, soft speech, and good looks, made such progress in nurse Lakshmi’s affections that, by the advice of his companion, he ventured to broach the subject ever nearest his heart. He begged his hostess, when she went on the morrow to visit the charming Padmavati, that she would be kind enough to slip a bit of paper into the princess’s hand.

‘Son,’ she replied, delighted with the proposal – and what old woman would not be? – ‘there is no need for putting off so urgent an affair till the morrow. Get your paper ready, and I will immediately give it.’

Trembling with pleasure, the prince ran to find his friend, who was seated in the garden reading, as usual, and told him what the old nurse had engaged to do. He then began to debate about how he should write his letter, to cull sentences and to weigh phrases; whether ‘light of my eyes’ was not too trite, and ‘blood of my liver’ rather too forcible. At this the minister’s son smiled, and bade the prince not trouble his head with composition. He then drew his inkstand from his waist-shawl, nibbed a reed pen, and choosing a piece of pink and flowered paper, he wrote upon it a few lines. He then folded it, gummed it, sketched a lotus flower upon the outside, and handing it to the young prince, told him to give it to their hostess, and that all would be well.

The old woman took her staff in her hand and hobbled straight to the palace. Arrived there, she found the Raja’s daughter sitting alone in her apartment. The maiden, seeing her nurse, immediately arose, and making a respectful bow, led her to a seat and began the most affectionate inquiries. After giving her blessing and sitting for some time and chatting about indifferent matters, the nurse said, ‘O daughter! in infancy I reared and nourished thee, now the Bhagwan (Deity) has rewarded me by giving thee stature, beauty, health, and goodness. My heart only longs to see the happiness of thy womanhood,58 after which I shall depart in peace. I implore thee read this paper, given to me by the handsomest and the properest young man that my eyes have ever seen.’

The princess, glancing at the lotus on the outside of the note, slowly unfolded it and perused its contents, which were as follows:

I must not forget to remark, parenthetically, that the minister’s son, in order to make these lines generally useful, had provided them with a last stanza in triplicate. ‘For lovers,’ he said sagely, ‘are either in the optative mood, the desperative, or the exultative.’ This time he had used the optative. For the desperative he would substitute:

And this was the termination exultative, as he called it:

The Princess Padmavati having perused this doggrel with a contemptuous look, tore off the first word of the last line, and said to the nurse, angrily, ‘Get thee gone, O mother of Yama,59 O unfortunate creature, and take back this answer’ – giving her the scrap of paper – ‘to the fool who writes such bad verses. I wonder where he studied the humanities. Begone, and never do such an action again!’

The old nurse, distressed at being so treated, rose up and returned home. Vajramukut was too agitated to await her arrival, so he went to meet her on the way. Imagine his disappointment when she gave him the fatal word and repeated to him exactly what happened, not forgetting to describe a single look! He felt tempted to plunge his sword into his bosom; but Fortune interfered, and sent him to consult his confidant.