And Aja stood, staring at her with stony gaze, like a mirror of her own
surprise. And he said to himself: Surely it is not she, but I myself,
that am the dreamer. For here since the sun rose last, I have escaped
the desert, and found this city without a man, and acquired a bride of
peerless beauty: and now here is another, rising as it were from the
dead, and seeming to expect me. And he continued standing silent, gazing
at her, sword in hand. And after a while, she said: What! is my form,
then, so frightful as to rob thee of thy tongue? Or art thou going to
use that sword against me? Speak: but in the meanwhile, let me see,
whether I have lost the use of my limbs, as thou hast that of thy
tongue, after so long a sleep. And she leaped from her little pedestal,
and moved a little way here and there, waving her beautiful arms about:
and after a while, she came back, and sat down just before him, on one
of the fallen pillars that were lying about the ground. And all the
while Aja watched her, as if fascinated by a serpent, saying within
himself: She moves like nothing I ever saw, save a panther or a gliding
snake[9]. And then, all at once, she again put up one eyebrow, and said
to him with a smile: Must I, then, actually tell thee, that I am
Natabhrúkutí[10]? Then Aja said: O lady, it is obvious. For thy bent
brow would plant arrows even in the heart of the Great Ascetic. And she
said again: O husband, is this thy welcome, after so long a separation?
[9] It is a wonderful thing to see a cobra move. Nothing
can describe it.
[10] That is, _the Beauty of the arched eyebrows_.
(Pronounce _Nat_- to rhyme with _but_.)
And Aja bounded, as if bitten by a snake. And he exclaimed: Thy husband!
What! Am I then thy husband also? Does thy whole sex want to get me for
a husband? But O thou beauty of bending brows, how can he be thy
husband, that never saw thee in his life before? And only this morning,
I was still wifeless, and a day has not elapsed, since I became
another's husband. And he stopped short, again confounded at the effect
of his own words. For hardly had they passed his lips, when Natabhrúkutí
started up, swelling with rage and convulsed with fury, with eyes that
blazed like fiery stars. And she exclaimed: Never! never! Never shall
she possess thee, nor any other than I myself. And then, like a flash of
lightning, her rage vanished as quickly as it came. And she looked at
him with imploring eyes, and said: Slay me now, with thy long bright
sword, and send me back to that nonentity out of which thou hast just
recalled me: but speak not of another woman in front of me. Alas! and am
I all forgotten? And tears rolled from her great blue eyes, and fell
like suppliants at her feet.
And Aja put up his left hand, and tugged at his hair in the extremity of
his amazement. And he said: O thou strange offended lady, I am utterly
bewildered, and resemble one that has lost his way at midnight in a
wood. And thy anger and thy grief are alike altogether incomprehensible.
How can I possibly have forgotten one, whom as I just now told thee, I
never saw in my life before? Then she said: Nay, not in this life, but
the last. For I was the wife of thy former birth.
Then Aja laughed, and he said: O beauty, who remembers his former
birth? For like every other man, and like my ancestor the sun, I have
risen up into light out of the sea of dark oblivion, into which I must
sink again at last. And then she looked at him with a deep sigh. And she
said: Alas! This is a punishment indeed, and worse by far than all the
rest, if after having endured so long the state of a stone upon a wall,
I am again become a woman, only to find myself repudiated and all
forgotten, by him, on whose account I suffered all. Listen, then, and I
will tell thee the story of thy former birth. It may be, that, in the
hearing, some scattered reminiscences will be as it were awakened, to
stir again in the dark lethargy of thy sleeping soul.