The Substance of a Dream | Page 8

my vengeance will follow on the messenger who carries this threat:
whom I have bidden to reach thee with his utmost speed, so as to allay
my thirst for thy life; since every day that I wait seems to me longer
than a yuga. And I will slay thee with no other weapon than my two
bare hands--
And suddenly, the great god stopped, and he laughed aloud. And he
exclaimed: See now, how this poor lute-player deceived himself! For
his message not only never reached his enemy at all, but almost as soon
as it had left him, he was himself slain by the emissaries of the very
man he meant to kill, who never sent him any warning at all, but took
him unawares, and slew him, escaping by anticipation the fate that was
in store for himself, without even knowing anything of all that this
letter would have taught him, and so far from dying, living to a very
great age. And this instance shows, that the most dangerous of enemies
is the one that never threatens till he actually strikes, resembling not the
cobra, but the adder, as Shatrunjaya discovered to his cost, too late.[7]
And the Daughter of the Snow exclaimed, in wrath: Why hast thou
stopped, to tell me the end of the story, before even reaching the
beginning?
And Maheshwara said: Aha! Snowy One, thou art not yet, as it seems,
asleep. Many are the beginnings that never reach an end: but it will do
this story no harm at all, to begin with the end, since all the essence of
it lies in the middle, and as thou wilt find, it ends in the middle, and yet
never ends, even when it is done.

What I have told thee does not matter in the least; what matters is the
Queen, for she was the most extraordinary of all women, past, present,
or to come.
And Párwatí said: Let the letter speak for itself: and if thou hast
anything to say, keep it for the end. For nothing is more unendurable
than a commentary upon a text which is unknown.
II
And Maheshwara said: Thus the letter continues:--for there is not room
in one world for us both. And well thou knowest the reason why. For
the Queen told me, the very last time that I saw her, that it would be the
very last time, as indeed it was. And when I asked why she would see
me no more, she said, that thine was the order, to send me away. Dog!
was she thine to command, or was I? And yet, I knew very well, it was
all thy doing, before ever she told me. For never would she have
behaved as she did, had she not been pushed from behind: and the very
first time that we met, when she told me of thee, I understood, and
foresaw, and expected, the very thing that has happened, looking to
find thee hiding behind her, to rid thee of a rival whom thou hadst not
the courage openly to face. And dost thou dare to condemn me for
doing the very same thing thou wast doing thyself? Was not my claim
to love her as good as thy own? Or what, O cowardly dastard, does that
man deserve, who screens himself behind the clothes of a woman to
strike at a foe? I will answer the question, and show thee, by ocular
proof, very soon. But now in the meantime, I will open thy eyes, and
tell thee, from the very beginning, all that took place. And thou shalt
learn how I stole her away from thee, in spite of thee, as presently I will
come to rob thee also of thy life. And I will embitter thy life, and
poison it, first: and then I will take it away.
III
And yet, strange indeed was the way that I met her. I cannot tell,
whether it was a reward or a punishment for the deeds of a previous
birth. For the joy of it would have been cheap, bought at the price of a
hundred lives: and yet the sorrow is greater than the joy. And it

happened thus. I was roaming through the world, with my lute for my
only companion. For all men know, as thou must also, that I turned my
back upon my hereditary kingdom, and quarrelled with all my relations,
and left them, all for the sake of my lute. For ever since I was a child, I
have cared for absolutely nothing but my lute, and as I think, I must
have been a Gandharwa[8] in the birth before, since the sound of the
tones of its strings, touched by the hand of a master musician, leads