Chitra, a Play in One Act | Page 7

each flower chose a bed to die on. I slept. And,
suddenly in the depth of my sleep, I felt as if some intense eager look,
like tapering fingers of flame, touched my slumbering body. I started
up and saw the Hermit standing before me. The moon had moved to the
west, peering through the leaves to espy this wonder of divine art
wrought in a fragile human frame. The air was heavy with perfume; the
silence of the night was vocal with the chirping of crickets; the
reflections of the trees hung motionless in the lake; and with his staff in
his hand he stood, tall and straight and still, like a forest tree. It seemed
to me that I had, on opening my eyes, died to all realities of life and
undergone a dream birth into a shadow land. Shame slipped to my feet
like loosened clothes. I heard his call--"Beloved, my most beloved!"
And all my forgotten lives united as one and responded to it. I said,
"Take me, take all I am!" And I stretched out my arms to him. The
moon set behind the trees. One curtain of darkness covered all. Heaven
and earth, time and space, pleasure and pain, death and life merged

together in an unbearable ecstasy. . . . With the first gleam of light, the
first twitter of birds, I rose up and sat leaning on my left arm. He lay
asleep with a vague smile about his lips like the crescent moon in the
morning. The rosy red glow of the dawn fell upon his noble forehead. I
sighed and stood up. I drew together the leafy lianas to screen the
streaming sun from his face. I looked about me and saw the same old
earth. I remembered what I used to be, and ran and ran like a deer
afraid of her own shadow, through the forest path strewn with shephali
flowers. I found a lonely nook, and sitting down covered my face with
both hands, and tried to weep and cry. But no tears came to my eyes.
Madana
Alas, thou daughter of mortals! I stole from the divine Storehouse the
fragrant wine of heaven, filled with it one earthly night to the brim, and
placed it in thy hand to drink-- yet still I hear this cry of anguish!
Chitra [bitterly]
Who drank it? The rarest completion of life's desire, the first union of
love was proffered to me, but was wrested from my grasp? This
borrowed beauty, this falsehood that enwraps me, will slip from me
taking with it the only monument of that sweet union, as the petals fall
from an overblown flower; and the woman ashamed of her naked
poverty will sit weeping day and night. Lord Love, this cursed
appearance companions me like a demon robbing me of all the prizes
of love--all the kisses for which my heart is athirst.
Madana
Alas, how vain thy single night had been! The barque of joy came in
sight, but the waves would not let it touch the shore.
Chitra
Heaven came so close to my hand that I forgot for a moment that it had
not reached me. But when I woke in the morning from my dream I
found that my body had become my own rival. It is my hateful task to
deck her every day, to send her to my beloved and see her caressed by
him. O god, take back thy boon!
Madana
But if I take it from you how can you stand before your lover? To
snatch away the cup from his lips when he has scarcely drained his first
draught of pleasure, would not that be cruel? With what resentful anger
he must regard thee then?

Chitra
That would be better far than this. I will reveal my true self to him, a
nobler thing than this disguise. If he rejects it, if he spurns me and
breaks my heart, I will bear even that in silence.
Vasanta
Listen to my advice. When with the advent of autumn the flowering
season is over then comes the triumph of fruitage. A time will come of
itself when the heat-cloyed bloom of the body will droop and Arjuna
will gladly accept the abiding fruitful truth in thee. O child, go back to
thy mad festival.
SCENE IV
Chitra
WHY do you watch me like that, my warrior?
Arjuna
I watch how you weave that garland. Skill and grace, the twin brother
and sister, are dancing playfully on your finger tips. I am watching and
thinking.
Chitra
What are you thinking, sir?
Arjuna
I am thinking that you, with this same lightness of touch and sweetness,
are weaving my days of exile into an immortal wreath, to crown me
when I return