“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 façade 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.