The Substance of a Dream | Page 9

me
like an ox that is pulled by a cord, the very moment I hear it, and I
stand still, like one that listens with tears in his eyes to the memory of
the voice of a friend that is dead. Ha! very wonderful are the influences
of a forgotten birth! For I was an anomaly, behaving not according to
my caste, which was that of a Rajpoot; and not music, but fighting, was
my proper work, and my religion.[9] And it was as if my mother had
been caught sleeping in the moonlight on the terrace of the palace in the
hot season by some king of the Widyádharas passing by, and looking
down from the air. For heavenly beings often fall into such temptations,
and even an ascetic would have found it hard to laugh at the arrows of
Manobhawa, coming in the form of such a feminine fascination as hers,
lying still in the lunar ooze at midnight, with her head pillowed on her
arm. And yet, for all my music, I was the tallest and strongest of all my
clan, and a hunter, when I chose, that could bear fatigue even better
than a Bhíl.
And then at last there came a day when the King my father sent for me.
And when I came, he looked at me with approval, and he said: Thou art
a man at last. And yet they tell me, thou dost nothing all day long but
sit playing thy lute. Canst thou really be my son, or art thou some
musician's brat, foisted into my son's place by some dark underhand
intrigue, when I was looking the other way? For who ever heard of a
Yuwarájá,[10] destined to sit upon the throne when I have entered the
fire, neglecting all his duties for the sake of a lute's strings? Come now,
throw thy lute away, and leave music to the professionals who have
nothing else to do, and apply thyself to policy, and the things of a king's
trade. And I said: What do I care for a kingdom in comparison with my
lute? I will not throw it away, no, not for a hundred kingdoms. I am a
devotee of Rádhá's lover,[11] and I care nothing for any ráj. Then my
father flew into a rage. And he said: Thou shalt do, not as thou wilt, but

as I will. Choose, between thy wretched lute, and the ráj: and if thou
dost not obey, I will turn thee off, and put thy younger brother in thy
place. And I said: There are kings in abundance everywhere, but those
who can really play on a lute are very few indeed. And I am one. Let
who will be a Yuwarájá: I will choose the lute. And he said, in wrath:
Be off! and play dirges to the memory of thy dead succession, for thou
art no longer heir. And I laughed in his face, and went away, and got on
my horse, and turned my back upon it all, and rode off laughing with
my lute hanging round my neck, counting the kingdom as a straw. And
thereafter, I wandered up and down, from place to place, living as I
pleased, and utterly disregarding the messages that reached me nearly
every day from my mother, who sent me bags of money and entreaties
to return, all in vain. And my story, like my playing, went from mouth
to mouth, and everywhere I went, the people said: Ha! there goes
Shatrunjaya, the mad musician, who cares more for a discord than the
loss of his hereditary ráj! Ha! and if his policy were only equal to his
playing, what a king he would have made! And what a fool he must be,
to care for nothing in the three worlds but a lute's strings!
IV
And yet they were all wrong. For there was another thing that nobody
knew anything about, that I cared for even more than for my lute. And
all the while I wandered, I was looking for a thing that flew before me
the more I kept pursuing it, like the setting of the sun. And yet it hung,
so to say, always just before my eyes, like a picture on the wall, so that
often I used to talk to it, as if it were alive, as I sat. And yet it never
answered, looking back at me in silence with strange kind eyes, and
seeming to listen to me gazing at it wistfully, and playing on my lute.
And this was a woman, that had come to me in a dream. For but a little
while before I quarrelled with my father, I was lying, on a day, at noon,
when I had been following a