"Let us pass our lives at Benares, living by the banks
of the divine river, clad only in a single garment, and
with our hands uplifted over our heads."--_The Vairagya Sataka_.
The Praying Ghats or Steps lay desolate in the light of the full moon.
Hundreds of small lights twinkled and flickered before the countless
temples; hundreds of fading flower garlands, hung about the temple
doors or festooned about the gods--some of which are quite
indescribable--perfumed the night air; and to the right and to the left
the smouldering bodies on the Burning Ghats cast a crimson glow on the
slow, silvery waters of India's most holy river.
Of worshippers there was not one.
Of the countless priests who crowd the steps at dawn there was but one.
The mad priest.
Naked save for a loin cloth, he stood as he always stands from dawn to
dawn with feet wide apart and hands upraised to the heavens, outlined
against some one of the Rajah's palaces which crown the top and stretch
the length of the terraces like a mighty rampart between the holiness
of the place, and the fret and traffic of the outer world.
The holy man's arms, his legs, his emaciated body are covered with a
fine ash powder, his long hair is matted with cinders and cow-dung, his
mad eyes stare across the river into the infinite, at that which _we_
cannot see, as he stands shouting unintelligible, maybe mad words,
maybe not, to the glory of his goddess, Kali the Terrible.
Was he born mad? no one knows! What does he eat or drink? A handful
of rice, a sip of water from his glittering bronze vessel! When does
he sleep? No one can tell you.
Who knows! who cares!
He is a holy man! the mad priest of the Holy City!
He alone had taken no heed of the incessant resistless throbbing of the
drums behind him in the city; neither did he take notice of the two
white figures as they ran lightly, swiftly, hand-in-hand down the
sunken, crooked, granite steps to a place between the praying rafts at
the water's edge.
For a moment Leonie hesitated with the water lapping her feet on the
third step, then she turned her head slowly, and looked straight into
the man's eyes which had been fixed intently on the nape of her neck.
She gave a little sigh, drew out the dagger and let fall the plaited
glory of her hair, and lifting the garlands from about her neck threw
them out on to the waters; then with a native woman's movement pulled
the _sari_ backwards from her head, and unwound it from her shoulders
which gleamed like ivory in the moonlight. Slowly, but without
hesitation, even as the man dropped his shawl and long white garment
upon the waters, she untwined the _sari_ from about her body, dropped
it across a _suttee_ stone, and the dagger upon the step behind, and
stood swaying gently with naught but the sheeting about her waist and
limbs.
The man, naked save for a loin cloth, stood like some splendid bronze
statue two steps lower; straight as a pine was Madhu, the descendant of
princes, with a width of shoulder most unusual in the native of India,
and which served to emphasise the slimness of the waist. Muscle
rippled under the bronze skin of back, and chest, and limbs; and
between the breasts gleamed the painted symbol of his religion, just as
it shone between the brows.
The lean face with its hawk nose, and curved mouth set close in a
straight line, had the look of an eagle as he stood gazing up at the
girl with burning eyes, in which fanaticism, heightened by the lapping
movement of the holy water about his knees, warred with an overwhelming
passion roused by the slenderness of the white girl's waist, the
virginity of her beautiful breast, and the satin whiteness of her skin.
And she placed her hand in his and followed him submissively down the
steps.
The waters bathed her ankles, her knees, her waist, as she made a cup
of her two hands and drank of the holy water; the jackals yelled from
the far shore, and the unseemly body of a dead youth floated past face
downwards a few yards away.
For some long minutes she stood with her face uplifted, then dipping
her hands again into the water raised them and poured it upon her head
until she glittered as though beset with diamonds. Strange little
movements she made to right and left with both hands, circles she drew
on the face of the waters, and the man within an inch of her beautiful
body stood with arms folded hiding his hard clenched hands.
Raising both arms straight above her head she called aloud in answer to
the spirit which moved her:
"Flowing on, devoted to it," she cried in the soft words of India's
holy writ, "by day and by night flowing on; I, of desirable activity,
call upon the heavenly waters!"
From the temple above the mad priest took up her words as he scourged
himself in the ecstasy of his worship, and shouted:
"Kali! Kali! Kali!"
Which eerie solitary cry brought the pigeons out of their nests in
thousands, to wheel and whirl madly in their fright before resettling
in the facade of the palaces, of the niches and nooks of the temples,
and the slender minarets of the Mosque of Aurangzeb.
Bending backwards Leonie laughed up at the priest above, whose body was
running blood, then descending the last three steps worn by the feet of
thousands of pilgrims, and tilted by time and the resistless waters,
flung out her arms and sank beneath the surface while the great plaits
of hair floated towards the man and crept about his waist like loving,
living arms.
Three times she sank, and three times she rose, singing gently to
herself, while great tremors shook the man from his turbaned head to
his slender feet.
Love or religion? Who knows!
Are they divided by much more than the breadth of a hair?
Leonie turned and walked up the steps, the wet heavy sheeting hobbling
her about the knees and ankles, clinging to her as the skin to the
peach, her dripping hair making little pools of holy water upon the
holy steps; until, standing upon the one where lay the little crumpled
heap of her silken _sari_, she unplaited it and shook it out in the
night breeze.
She picked up the _sari_ and the dagger, and ran a finger along the
razor edge, looking sideways at the man who moved not an inch when she
drove the point of the blade beneath the skin above his heart until the
blood ran; neither did she move when he dipped his finger in his own
blood and marked her between the brows with the sign of Kali.
The mad priest, frothing at the mouth, swooned upon the slanting temple
roof, the drums were silent, the jackals had ceased their indecent
noise, being intent doubtless upon the task of tearing some body to
pieces before the arrival of the hosts of enemy pariah dogs; and
Leonie, beautiful, bewitched Leonie, holding the white _sari_ picked
out in silver against her breast, held out her hand, and with the
sweetest, maddest laugh in all the world sped like a deer up the great
nights of steps.
And at the top when the man, moving swift and as surefooted as a buck,
closed in upon her, her heavy drapery folded itself soddenly about her
ankles so that when she essayed to save herself she twisted round and
fell backwards.
Her mouth quivered in a smile, and her eyes, like stars, flashed back
into the flaming ones so near her own as the man, lost to all but his
consuming love for the girl, bent above her, and with slender hands
crushed her back against the edge of the steps until the skin of her
shoulders was torn and bruised.
"As the creeper!" he said, whispering the words of the Vega hymn with
his eyes staring straight into her eyes. "As the creeper has
completely embraced the tree so do thou embrace me, that thou mayest be
one loving me, that thou mayest be one not going away from me!"
He smiled softly as she half raised her arms and whispered to her, the
words sounding like a summer breeze blowing upon the hill-top.
"As the eagle, flying forth, beats down his wings upon the earth, so do
I beat down thy mind, that thou mayest be one loving me, that thou
mayest be one not going away from me!"
And his delicate finger-tips pressed about her temples as he whispered
to her.
"As the sun goeth at one about the heaven--and--earth here, _so do I go
about thy mind_, that thou mayest be one loving me, that thou mayest be
one not going away from me!"
Slowly he bent still closer, and gently put one hand upon the gracious
curve of her slender throat; and Leonie, wanton, seductive, bewitched
Leonie smiled as she too whispered in the tongue of India's holy writ.
"Let yon man love me; being dear to me let him love me; ye gods send
forth love, let yon man burn for me.
"That yon man may love me, not I him at any time, ye gods send forth
love, let yon man burn for me!"
The silence which followed was pierced by the call of the holy conch
shell, so low, so sweet, to prayer, to sacrifice.
Those who have not heard that call can never understand, those who have
heard will forgive this feeble description of the intoxicating,
soul-shattering, maddening sound.
Soft and sweet it will steal insidiously into your ear, your brain, and
the whirlpool of your senses until you stand rooted in ecstasy in a
flooded field of sweet desire. Rising swiftly and shrilly it will tear
like racing waters at the ramparts we and our forefathers, have
assiduously and mistakenly built around our inner selves; built until
you and I and our neighbour have been metamorphosed through the ages
from that mighty thing which went forth and took exactly what it
wanted, to the almost shapeless slug form which, in the peace times of
the present enervated century, contentedly eats lettuce in the damp
seclusion of an overturned flowerpot.
Yes! that call will pull those ramparts to pieces about your feet; and
at the last indescribable, insistent scream of triumph which sears your
brain and soul, it would be wise to be on the look out, and to keep a
strong hand upon the vows you may have vowed, and upon those of the
commandments you may not already have broken; because at that strange
seductive sound the solid chunks of love, honour, chastity and right
thinking; everything, in fact, that is in any way decent and above
board is likely to break into a thousand infinitesimal, unconsidered
atoms, and be blown broadcast by the wind of indiscretion.
Leonie lay still, unconscious of the sound and the subtle change
creeping over the man who bent down to her, and who, high caste,
over-educated, overstrung, aflame with love and afire with the
sensuality of his religion, slowly tightened his hand upon the gracious
curves of the slender throat.
Years ago Kali, his dire deity, had been outraged by denial in her
desire for sacrifice, and since then, in her wrath, the black goddess
had scourged the land with plague, pestilence, famine, and earthquake.
Truly sacrifice of goats and buffaloes had been made until the altars
and the courts of her temples ran blood; offerings had been made to her
priests of grain and jewels, yet had she continued to whip the land
until thousands died of hunger and disease.
Why should not his hand bring the long-desired and long-sought peace to
his well-loved land, and what more fitting place and time for sacrifice
than the steps of the Holy River, under the light of the full moon
which is Kali's lamp?
Ah! and why should he not have his earthly reward in love, one short,
full hour of the delight he had denied himself, and then, even upon the
_suttee_ stone, that little memorial of the burning alive of the young
widow upon the funeral pyre of the beloved husband, drive the diamond
hilted dagger through the soft breast in worship of his god, and
through his own heart that he might follow his beloved quickly as she
passed to Paradise.
Yes! sacrifice of the woman he loved that his god might be twice
pleased.
He was crazed with the delirium of his religion, mad with the call of
the senses lashed to frenzy by the restraint which had been unnaturally
forced upon him throughout his life; his eyes had the look of the eyes
of those gods who spy down upon you from the shadowy corners of India's
temples, and his nostrils dilated as he touched the dagger in her hand.
Only for a moment! For even as he touched it the single beat of a drum
fell heavily upon the air, causing him to sit back on his heels with a
smile upon the full curved lips, and a light of sudden understanding in
his eyes.
There was more toward than a mere sacrifice!
The Holy City was, and had been for days, in a positive ferment of
religious excitement; the bazaars were thronged with pilgrims who, by
boat and train and on foot, had hurried to the city of a thousand
temples.
Something unusual was in the air although no one could clearly explain
what it was; something was to happen although no one could name the
hour or the day!
Rice, and flowers, and jewels cemented with blood had been thrust into
and pressed down until they completely filled the great crack which had
suddenly appeared before the altar of the oldest and most venerated
image of Kali, the Goddess of Destruction, in the Holy City; and the
foreigner had been warned not to place his profane foot within the
precincts of the city upon this night of the full moon.
The native laughed as he sprang to his feet, standing bare and
exceeding beautiful beside the indescribable graven images; and he
laughed as he searched in the folds of his turban, and having found the
pellets bent down and pressed them between Leonie's teeth, then jerked
her to her feet, steadying her with his eyes.
He flung her back against the kiosk wall, and encircling her with his
arms drove them fiercely down and against her as he met his splendid
teeth in the whiteness of her shoulder--in love; and taking her hand
sped with her to the inner places of the city, shouting as he ran in
the frenzy of his religion.