Bubbles of the Foam | Page 7

it were imitated unconsciously the careless grace of Shrí[16], caught unaware when she thinks that there is nobody to look at her, and carved by a cunning sculptor in stone upon a temple wall; so that the eyes of all followed him as if against their will, drawn to him by an involuntary admiration that they could not understand, not realising that in his case only, the beauty of their own sex was reinforced, and as it were, reduplicated with the magic of a spell, by the mysterious and additional fascination of the other. And his face was so strange that whoever saw it, started, and fell, after a little while, into a kind of dream. And yet this was not merely by reason of its beauty, though that beauty was excessive, resembling a vision seen suddenly in the water by a Dryad, musing at midnight by a moonlit pool, with eyes that resembled the reflections of the shadows of the lotuses, and eyebrows that met together, in the middle of his brow, each drawn exactly in imitation of the other, like a lotus-fibre half in and half out of water, and lips that were almost too red, resembling that love-sick nymph's own pair of bimba lips, mirrored[17] in the clear black water, and dying to be kissed by others like themselves. But wonderful! the Creator had put into his face some ingredient of recollection, so that without knowing why, every beholder found himself plunged, as it were, into the agitation of dreamy reminiscence, and said within himself: Ha! now, somewhere or other, in this birth or another, I have seen that miracle of a face before. And each went away with a heart that was unwilling to depart, haunted as it were by dim desire for something he knew not what stirring in the depths of his memory, that he could not remember and yet had not forgotten, like the thirst for the repetition of the sweetness of a bygone dream.[18] And all the more, because his voice resembled a music that was playing a melody suggested by the theme of his face. For it was low and soft, like that of a woman, and yet deep, like that of a man: and it seemed to be made of sound stolen from the pipe of Krishna, in order to enable it itself to steal away the senses of the world: so that as he spoke, the listener gradually grew bewildered by its tone, resembling a tired traveller, falling little by little unconsciously to sleep as he sits in the murmur of a mountain stream. And whenever he chose, he could cajole his hearer, and make him do almost anything whatever, so hard was it to resist the irresistible persuasion that lurked, like the caressing touch of a gentle woman's hand, in the tone of that quiet and insinuating voice.
[Footnote 15: i.e. of extraordinary and surpassing beauty. Pronounce Uttirupa.]
[Footnote 16: The Hindoo Aphrodite.]
[Footnote 17: There is here an untranslateable play on bimba, the fruit, (as we say, cherry lip) and pratibimba, a reflection in the water.]
[Footnote 18: All this depends on an elaborate play on the double meaning of Smara, a name for the God of Love, which means memory as well as love.]
And yet, all this beauty was nothing but a mask, and a lie: and so far from expressing the nature of that soul which it covered and disguised, it actually added evil to its original defect; and he resembled a bamboo, looking like a very incarnation of loveliness and symmetry outside, and singing in the wind, and yet absolutely hollow and without a heart, within. For from the very moment he was born, he did exactly as he pleased, and nothing else, being as capricious as the breeze that blows only as it chooses. For beginning with his parents, nobody ever crossed him, or placed any obstacle whatever in the path of his desires, which grew up accordingly like a very rank jungle impervious to the light, in which his will wandered like a wild young tiger-cub, wayward, and passionate, and absolutely uncontrolled. And he gave in to others, and was guided by them, in one point only, and that was in their extravagant admiration of himself. For finding others worship him, he fell in with their opinion, and followed their example: and became as it were the devotee at the shrine of his own beauty, making it a deity to which every other thing or body was only fitted to be sacrificed. And he filled his rooms with mirrors of many colours, made of crystal and lapiz-lazuli, and polished gold and silver, and the water of tanks whose slabs were of marble of every variety of hue; and he used to sit alone, when he had