Bubbles of the Foam | Page 7

whether to make of him a man or
a woman, had combined, by some miracle of omnipotence and skill, the
fascinations of the two. For though he was tall, and strong, yet strange!
his body and his limbs were rounded, and delicately shaped, and
slender, with soft and tender hands and feet that were almost too small,
even for a girl: and as he moved, he fell as if by accident into attitudes
that as 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