A Syrup of the Bees

But Smaradása summoned instantly all his brother suitors. And he told them all about it, and he said: This matter is no longer what it was. For if she flouted us all, by refusing to choose a husband from among us, yet no one could compel her, since she did but exercise the privilege of all kings' daughters. But now, not only has she placed this mortal above us all, but by marrying beneath her caste, she has degraded all the Widyádharas at once, and broken the constitution of the universe. Therefore she deserves to be punished. Moreover, she is at our mercy, since she has lost all her magic sciences, by marrying a man.

So then, when they had all unanimously pronounced her worthy of death, one suggesting one death, and another another, Smaradása said scornfully: What is the use of putting her to death? For death is absolutely no punishment at all, since she will abandon one body only to enter another. Rather let us find some punishment suited to her crime, and worse than any death. And the best way would be, to contrive some means of making her behaviour recoil upon her own head. And this could be done, if only we could get this husband she has chosen to desert her for another. For as a rule, a rival is like kálakuta poison to every woman: and she is not only jealous, but as it were jealousy itself. And thus she would become her own punishment. But first let us discover all about her: for then we can determine how to go to work.

So, when they all consented, Smaradása went back to Garuda, and he said: O Enemy of Snakes, do me one more favour, and I will trouble thee no more. Find out for me only, how matters stand with her husband and herself: since her independent conduct is a matter of concern to all the Widyádharas, of whom she is one.

And Garuda said: Smaradása, this commission is very different from the first. For if I am not mistaken, the Widyádharas mean mischief, and it is no business of mine. And yet, I will not do thee kindness by halves: but let this be the last. So after meditating for a while, he sent for the crows. And he said to them: Crows, you know everything about everybody, and see the world, and fly about the streets of cities, and eat the daily offerings,32 and listen to all the scandal of the bazaars, and penetrate even into the palaces of kings. Go, then, to the city of Arunodaya, and spy about and listen, and bring back a full account of all you can discover, about him and his wife.

And, after a week, the crows returned. And their spokesman, who was called Kálapaksha,33 said: Lord, this King and Queen are never apart, being as inseparable as Ardhanári.34 And as for Makarandiká, it is clear that she is a patidewatá, who loves her husband more than her own soul. And though he has nothing to do with any woman but herself, yet something is wrong, though we cannot discover what it is. But the citizens think that she is jealous, because she suspects that he is always dreaming, not of her, but the wife of his former birth.

And as Smaradása listened, he exclaimed in delight: Ha! what difficulty is there in doing a thing which is half done already? For this is a situation which will ripen almost without assistance, resembling as it does a balance already trembling, in which the addition of a single hair will turn the scale. And it wants only a touch, for Makarandiká to turn her suspicions into certainties of her own accord. And thus she will become the instrument of her own torture, and expiate her error, the victim of her own choice, with nobody but herself to blame. For she was a Widyádharí, and is absolutely inexcusable.

And meanwhile Makarandiká, ignorant and careless of all that was occurring in that world of the Widyádharas which she had thrown away like a blade of grass, and utterly forgotten, was living like a siddhá in a moon without a spot, having, so to say, attained emancipation in the form of the husband of her own choice. And for his part, Arunodaya, having lit upon the very wife of his former birth, contrary to expectation, and married her again, lived with her like one plunged for an instant in an ocean of intoxication, salt as her beauty35 and infinite as her devotion, and unfathomable as her eyes. And for a while, he seemed to be the very image of a bee drowned in the honey of a red lotus, or a chakora surfeited with the beams of a young moon. And in order to make up to Makarandiká, and console her for the loss of her power of flying through the air, which of all her sciences she most regretted, he built for her innumerable swings, with gold and silver chains, and one, that she loved the best, on the very roof she first arrived on. And she used to pass her time in it, whenever she had nothing else to do, swinging softly to and fro, and looking across the sea; tasting, by means of the swing and her own imagination, some vestige of her lost equality with all the birds of heaven. And though she never so much as whispered it aloud, yet sometimes, her unutterable longing to possess once more that power which she had lost for ever, as she watched the sea-birds flying, brought tears into her eyes, which she never let Arunodaya see.

And yet, though she had utterly lost all her magic sciences, she still retained the whole of that other magic, which the Creator has not limited only to Widyádharís, of feminine fascination. And like the moon, she was a very bundle of bewitching arts,36 whose potency was doubled by the intensity of her affection for her lord. For a woman who does not feel affection for her own husband resembles a sunset from which the sun and all his redness are withdrawn.

And she was, moreover, so absolutely bent upon erasing from his recollection every vestige of the dim image of the wife of his former birth, for whom she had substituted herself, like a new moon eclipsing an old one, that she thought of nothing else: and the thought of this former wife resembled a thorn that was fixed ineradicably in her own heart. And she busied herself all day and night, in occupying his whole attention, and laying snares for his soul, by dancing, and singing, and telling him innumerable stories, and making as it were slaves of all his senses, enthralling his eyes with the variety of her beauty, and captivating his ears with the sorcery of her voice, and chaining his desires to herself by never-ending wiles of caressing attention, in the form of embraces of soft arms, and kisses like snowflakes, and glances shot at him out the very corner of her eye, enveloping him with such a mist of the essence of a woman's sweetness as to keep him from seeing any other thing at all. For her Widyádharí nature gave to all her behaviour grace that was far beyond the reach of any ordinary mortal, and she seemed like an incarnation of femininity, divested of all the grossness and clumsy imperfection that it carries when mixed with the element of death, so that her touch seemed softer, and her step seemed lighter, and her outline rounder, and her smile far sweeter and her passion purer, and her whole love ecstasy deeper and truer than any woman's could ever be.

But as for the prime minister, when he came, according to agreement, and Arunodaya showed her to him on the day of the full moon, he was so utterly bewildered by the very sight of her that she turned him as it were to stone. And after staring at her in stupefaction, being wholly bereft of appropriate speech, and as it were deserted by his reason, which lay prostrate at her little golden-bangled feet, he went away in silence. And after a long while, he said to himself as he sat alone: Beyond a doubt, this inexplicable King has somehow or other managed to find a very miracle of a queen, as far as beauty goes. For her very ankles alone, are enough to drive a lover mad, and worth more than the whole body of any other woman; so that whoever began to look at her, beginning with her feet, would never get any higher, but remain for ever worshipping their slender and provoking curve, with a thirst that was never quenched. She must be Rati or Priti, fallen, nobody knows how, into a mortal birth, and leaving Kama in despair. And yet, whether she be, as he supposes, the very wife of his former birth, or not, I am irretrievably disgraced. For he has managed this matter all alone, without so much as consulting me. And thus, not only have I lost my opportunity, of taking as it were tribute from all the surrounding kings, but I am very much mistaken if some of them, or even all, will not take umbrage at the slight put upon all their daughters by this unrelated queen,37 and band together, and suddenly attack him, bewildered as he is by her disastrous intoxication; and so, the kingdom will be uprooted, since he is likely to be so entirely wrapped up in her that he will think of nothing else. And it may be that he will discover in the future that he has lost more, by disregarding his prime minister, than he has gained, by marrying even for the second time the wife of his former birth. And if, as I suspect, this is all but a trick, time will show up the imposture, and then it will be my turn. For if ever he should discover she has cheated him, all the coquetry and coaxing in the world will not keep him from abhorring her, for stealing his affection, and diverting it away from its proper object, to herself. For as a rule, men object to being cheated, even to their own advantage, since the cheater seems to argue that the cheated is a fool. But in the meantime I must wait, since it is useless to do anything, till the charm has lost its magic by dint of repetition. For beauty resembles amber: it attracts, but does not hold: and like a razor, loses virtue every time that it is used: till at last, it becomes altogether blunt, and impotent, and without either edge or bite. And then, unless I am very much mistaken, this lovely false wife of his previous existence will find, that she has to reckon with a formidable rival, in his recollection of the true.

But Arunodaya, careless of his minister, gave himself up a willing captive to the witchery of his Widyádharí wife. And for a time, her task was very easy. For owing to his inexperience, he resembled a child, and every woman was to him an illusion, and a mystery, so that he would have sunk under the spell, even had it been less potent than it actually was. And Makarandiká was as it were his dikshá,38 incarnate in a form of more than mortal fascination: and like a priestess she took him by the hand and led him into the garbha39 of that strange temple built not of stone, but of the materials of elementary infatuation, and made him perform, so to say, a pradakshina round the image of the divinity40 of which she was herself a bewildering and irresistible incarnation. And lost in the adoration of a neophyte, he lay like a drunken bee in a lotus-cup, rolling in honey, and forgetting utterly not only his kingdom and its affairs, but everything else in the three worlds.

And yet, strange! there lay all the while lurking in the recesses of his soul a vague misgiving, mixed with a faint and unintelligible dissatisfaction, resembling a taste of something bitter in the draught of his infatuation, and an ingredient that qualified and just prevented his gratification from reaching its extreme degree, of ecstasy without alloy. And yet he hardly dared to acknowledge it, even to himself, accusing himself of ingratitude and treachery, and saying to his own soul: How is it possible to requite such infinite affection, and devotion, and service, and beauty, by returning nothing in exchange for it all but suspicion, and distrust, and doubt? For even if she were not the very wife of my former birth, what could I possibly wish for, more? And yet, it is very strange. For notwithstanding all she does, she does not seem to reach and satisfy the craving for recognition in my heart, which obstinately refuses to corroborate her asseverations: nor do I ever feel that confidence and certainty, arising from the depths of recollection, which, if she really were my former wife, surely I ought to feel. Is it my fault, or hers? Alas! instead of meeting her half-way, I am oppressed with what is very nearly disappointment, and feel almost like a dupe, that have allowed myself to fall into the snare of beauty, so as to yield to another what should belong to one alone. Little indeed would she have to complain of in the warmth of my return, had she just that one thing that she lacks, the stamp of genuine priority: for then she would get in full the very thing I long to give her.

Aye! I am as it were dying to do, the thing I cannot do, and divided from supreme bliss by a partition composed of the most exasperating inability to know for certain, what all the time may after all be true. For if she is only playing a part not really hers, how in the world did she discover the way to take me in, by exhibiting a knowledge of those very same dim vestiges of recollection which I have never told to anyone but my own prime minister? And very sure I am, that it was not he who told her, since he almost lost his reason with astonishment, and admiration that was mixed with envy and annoyance, when her beauty struck him dumb. So after all, perhaps I am mistaken, and only torturing myself for nothing. Out on me, if what she says be really true! for then indeed I deserve something even worse than death, for treating her with such monstrous ungenerosity. Can it be that her memory is truer and stronger, putting mine, for its fidelity, to utter shame? Or why, again, should I struggle any longer against conviction, and persevere in longing for what I have not got? Who knows whether even if I actually got it, I should be any better off than I actually am? Could the very wife of my former birth be a better wife than this? Is not this wife just as good as any wife could ever be? Does she not as it were combine the virtues of even a hundred wives? Yet if she be not the true, can it be that the other is even now upbraiding me, somehow, somewhere, for falling with such inconstancy straight into another's snares, and wasting on a stranger the love that belongs to her? Alas! alas! Why did the Creator make my memory too strong for blank oblivion, and yet so feeble as to leave me without a proof, and plunge me in such perplexity in this matter of a wife?

So then, time passed, and these two lovers lived together, she in the heaven of having discovered the very fruit of her birth, and he half in heaven and half outside, hovering for ever between delight and discontent, balanced in a swing of hesitation between assertion and denial, that like that other swing of hers was hardly ever still. And little by little, as surfeit brought satiety, and custom wore away the bloom of novelty, and familiarity began to rob her beauty of the edge of its appeal, and emotion lost, by repetition, its sincerity, and passion's fire began to cool, and the flood of desire to ebb, then exactly as that cunning Gangádhara foretold, the doubt that, like a seed, lay waiting in his soul began, seeing its opportunity, to swell and grow, till there came to be no room for any feeling but itself. And unawares, he used to sit gazing at her, with eyes that did not seem to see her, as if continually striving to compare her with some other thing that was not there, till under their scrutiny she shrank away and left them, unable to endure, turning away a face that became paler and ever paler, half with apprehension of discovery, and half with jealousy and resentful indignation: for only too well her heart understood what was passing in his soul, though he never dared to tell her, out of shame at having to confess, that in return for the free and absolute gift of her soul, he was yielding her only a fragment of his own, and even that, with suspicion and reluctance: converting the very completeness of her surrender into an argument against her, as if she did from policy alone what came from the very bottom of her heart. And he seemed to her to say by his behaviour: Did she not throw herself into my arms uninvited, without even waiting to be asked, of her own accord, like an abhisáriká, and could such a one as this be really the wife that I was looking for? Does it become a maiden, even a Widyádharí, to be bolder than a man? And why is it, that for all that she can say, and all that she can do, she never can succeed in arousing any corresponding sympathy, or producing a conviction that we ever met before? And is this the union I expected, devoid of that overwhelming mutual recognition that would leap like fire out of the darkness of oblivion, if the associations of a previous existence were really there?

So she would sit thinking, and watching him furtively, sitting in her swing, and swaying gently to and fro, gazing out over the sea. And she used to say sadly to herself: Now, as it seems, all my endeavours have been fruitless; for do what I can, all my labours are unavailing. And I have given myself away, and sacrificed all my magic sciences, for nought. For it is clear that he cares for absolutely nothing, in comparison with this dream of this wife of his previous birth. And yet what could she, or any other wife whatever, give to him, or for him, more than I have given. What! is the wife of the present birth so absolutely less than nothing, compared with the wife of the past? What! has not one birth the same value as another? And if she was the wife of that birth, then I am the wife of this. Very sure I am, that she cannot love him as well as I. Have I not become, from a Widyádharí, a mortal, solely on his account. And yet, who knows? For it may be, I am impatient, and am hoping to succeed, too soon; anticipating, and expecting to pluck the flower of his full affection before the seed that I have sown has had full time to grow. Well then, I will water it, and watch it, and let it ripen. And I will strive, in the very teeth of his prepossession, to overcome his stubborn recollection, and uproot it, not by ill-humour or peevish premature despair, but by flooding him with all the sweetness that I can. Yes, I will conquer him by becoming so utterly his slave, that for very shame he will find himself obliged to sacrifice his dream to me.

So then, as she said, she did. And making herself as it were of no account, and utterly disregarding the absence of reciprocal affection in a soul that held itself as it were, with obstinacy, aloof, she set herself to thaw his ice by a constancy of service that resembled the rays of a burning sun. And she met all his suspicion and his scrutiny by such invariable tenderness, and with such a total absence of even the shadow of complaining or reproach, that his heart began, as if against its will, to melt, unable to hold out against the steady stream of affectionate devotion, welling from an inexhaustible spring. And little by little, he began to say to himself as he watched her: Surely it were a crime to doubt her any longer. For such an irresistible combination of unselfishness and beauty could not possibly flow from any other source than the unconscious reminiscence of old sympathies, and adamantine bonds, forged and welded in a previous existence. For she gives and has given all, in return for almost nothing, resembling a mother rather than a wife; and so far from resenting any lack of confidence, she makes up for all that I do not give her, by increasing the quantity and quality of her own, as if she had incurred an obligation to myself, in some former and forgotten state, which she was never able to repay. And what proof other than this could I demand? And if this good fortune of mine, in her form, be not the reward of works, done in that birth which I struggle to remember, what else can it be?

So then at last, there came a day, when they sat together in the twilight on the palace roof, watching the moon, that wanted only a single digit, rising like a huge nocturnal yellow sun, looking for the other that had sunk to flee, far away on the eastern quarter, on the very edge of the sea, which seemed for fear to tremble like an incarnation of dark emotion, while a lunar ray, like a long pale narrow finger, ran over straight towards them, stepping from wave to wave, and seeming to say with silent laughter: Like me on the surge of the deep's desire, love bridges over the waves of time. What is the tide without me, but the livery of death?

And as she gazed, the eyes of Makarandiká shone, for very excess of happiness, and there came into each a crystal tear, that caught and reflected the moon's ray, like a twin imitation of himself. And as she looked, she murmured: Now at last, as I think, the victory is all but mine, for I have never brought my husband yet so near the very edge of love's unfathomable deep, as I have to-day. And now, with just one more effort, he will fall into the bottomless abysses of my soul, and I shall have him for my own. Strange! that she did not understand, she was herself tottering on the very brink of a fatal gulf that would swallow her up for ever, and plunge her, by a single step, into the mouth of hell!

For even as she spoke, she turned, and looked for a single instant, with unutterable affection, into her husband's face. And then, she said aloud: Aryaputra, dost thou know, of what I am now thinking? And he said: No. Then she said: How short a time it seems, since I settled on that parapet in the form of a sea-bird, and saw thee first: and yet, the difference is eternity!

And then, the very instant she had spoken, recollection suddenly rushed across her: and she knew, like a flash of lightning, that she had uttered her own doom. And as she gazed at him with eyes, whose love suddenly turned to terror, Arunodaya, all at once, started to his feet. And he exclaimed: Ha! wert thou the bird? Ha! now, at last, I understand. So this, then, was the means of thy discovery, and the origin of thy deceit, thy listening to the conversation of my minister and me? And all thy story was a lie, and thou thyself art nothing but a liar and a cheat. And like a worm, that is hidden in the recesses of a flower, thou hast placed thyself on a king's head, being only fit to be cast away and trodden underfoot: as I myself will tread thee, and cast thee away like a blade of grass, fit only to be burned. And I will sweep the very shadow of thy memory from my heart, into which thou hast wriggled, by treachery and fraud, to the prejudice of its proper owner, the true wife of my former birth.

So as he spoke, with eyes that consumed her, as it were, with the fire of their hatred and contempt, she stood for a single instant still, stupefied and aghast, shrinking from his fury, and confessing by her confusion her inability to clear herself of the charge he brought against her, looking like a feminine incarnation of the acknowledgment of guilt. But as he ended, the thought of the rival whom he cast into her teeth entered her heart like the stab of a poisoned sword. And as he looked at her, all at once he saw her change. And the fierce fire of his own emotion suddenly died away, annihilated as it were and turned in a trice to ashes as he watched her, by the intensity of hers. For from crouching as she was, she slowly stood erect, becoming so ashy pale that life seemed on the very point of leaving her a thing composed of snow and ice in the white rays of the moon. And she looked at him with eyes, in which the love of but a moment since had frozen into a glitter, as though the blood that filled her heart had suddenly turned to venom that was black instead of red. And so she stood for a moment, and then all at once she leaped at him and clutched him by the hand, with fingers that shut upon it and squeezed into it like teeth. And she said, with difficulty, as if the breath were wanting to make audible the words: Dost thou repay me thus? And have I thrown away my state of a Widyádharí, and all my magic sciences, for such a thing as thee, and this? And have I sacrificed a countless host of suitors, who would have given the three worlds for a single glance of my eye, for thee to trample on my beauty and my affection, counting it all as absolutely less than nothing, in comparison with another who is nothing but a dream? Make, then, the very most of all the sweetness and the love that she will give thee; for mine thou hast lost, and it is dead, and it is gone. See, whether the affection of the wives of thy future and thy past will make up to thee for that of thy wife of the present, which thou hast despised, and outraged, and mangled and annihilated, and wilt never see again.

And she turned, abruptly, and looked for a single instant away across the sea. And she said: I cannot leave thee as I would have done, for I have lost my power of flying through the air. But bid adieu to the wife of the present, and sing hey! for the wife of the past.