Zira, clad in a ragged, brown dress, sat beneath a clump of bamboo growing by the stream that ran past Gangya’s house, and cleaned the copper cooking-pots. For three years Zira had been called widow. When you are young and fortunate, beloved and happy, three years is not a great space of time. When you are young but unfortunate, abused and wretched, it may be long indeed. Zira was young in years, but quite old in misery.
Her head showed shaven, the ragged shawl that covered it being pushed back since none was by saving the monkeys in the banyan tree and the lizards on the rock wall. She was thin, for she was never given enough to eat and steadily overworked. Upon her arms were black bruises, for her mother-in-law was subject to hot rages and yesterday had shaken Zira until her teeth chattered in her head, and the blood stood still under the griping fingers. Across her shoulders ran a weal from the stick with which she had been struck because she had broken an earthern lamp. Zira looked, and was, forlorn, ill-treated, poorly lodged and fed, abused, struck with tongue and hand, a menial and pariah, a widow in the house of her husband’s parents.
Zira scoured, dully, a huge red copper pan. There were many vessels to be cleaned, for Gangya was a rich man as riches went in the village by the Jumuna. The earth swam in heat; it was so hot that even the monkeys were quiet, and the lizards themselves might seem less active. Zira,{224} drawing a sigh, put her head on her arms and her arms on her knees. She must have a little rest, no matter what the consequences! A change to looking on pleasurable things from things so sadly unpleasurable becomes now and then a necessity, even to the old in woe. Zira must have a little colour and fragrance and music, and went to the only place where she knew she might get them, and that was down the steps into Memory. The ache might seem worse after being there, but let it seem!
Madhava’s caste and her caste had been Vaisya, merchants, husbandmen. As a child and a girl she was not without teaching. Her own mother strictly taught her many things, though not, of course, the high things in which the priest instructed her father and elder brother. But she knew, sitting by the stream, with her head in her arms, that she had been born many times and would be born many times again. But she was not one of those strong ones who could stray at will in Memory. She could go down the steps a little way, but then there arose, as it were, mist and a roaring in the ears. She had imagination, had it, indeed, in bulk, but it did not occur to her particularly to connect imagination and her own history—not yet did that occur. She made pictures with which to lighten unhappiness, but often the pictures were bitter, and gave her no entertainment.... But now, down in Memory, she was re-living small happinesses of childhood and girlhood—toys and adornments and days and moods and happenings—and then again, again, for the ten thousandth time again, her marriage to Madhava.
Her marriage to Madhava. Ah!... Ah! She sat under the bamboo, under the teak tree, and forgot the pots and pans, the bruises upon her arms and how sore were her{225} shoulders—how dull and slow-beating and sore was her heart!... Village lights—village lights, and the gongs in the temple—lights carried in procession, and flowers and flowers; spices and cakes and fruits burned in sacrificial fires.... How she, Zira, was dressed by her mother and sisters and the neighbours, and how she met Madhava and they walked hand in hand.... All the rites—oblation to Agni and prayers for long life, kind kindred, many children, right wealth—all the rites, and the marriage pledge,
“That heart of thine shall be mine, and this heart of mine shall be thine.”
How bright was that day—and the village shouting and laughing—and all so friendly, even the children friendly—children that now stoned her and cried “Widow, widow! Madhava must have died because of you!”
Oh, the marriage, how sweet it was, and the feasting and the well-wishing—and now all the sweetness long gone by, long, long gone by.... That was the trouble with going down into Memory—the swords were so sharp beside the flowers!
Zira raised her head and looked at two darting lizards beside her, then at a painted butterfly upon a red flower, then up into the boughs of the tree. A monkey there threw down a sizable twig. It struck upon the wall and sent the lizards into crannies. “Tree-folk, you do not suffer like me!” said Zira.
“Boom!—Boom!” went the temple gong, some sacrifice being toward. Zira threw herself upon the ground and wept.
Blurred and aching pictures still came through. The days after the wedding danced by—then Madhava, ill, pale, and shaking, then red with fever, bright-eyed, talking,{226} talking, talking!—Madhava lying upon the great bed and Zira and his mother and sisters nursing him—the priest coming, gazing, speaking—and the hot still days with the rains beginning—and the nights velvet black with the clouds gathering—and all the verses of the sacred writings that they said ... but Madhava only burned the more with fever and cried the more wildly—and the mother and sisters said to Zira, “Unhappy one! Do not all people know that if the husband dies it is the wife who slays him!”
Zira dug her fingers into the earth. Memory now was not fair and warm and dear, no indeed it was not! but it held her—it held her—away down the stair! It poured over her again, it made her feel the hot days with the rains beginning, the nights velvet black without a star. It made her hear again the dogs that howled by night, the sounds that went stealthily through the village, the jungle murmur that the winds brought over the fields, over the village wall. She heard again, mind-brought, the cry of a tiger a-roam. Memory made her hear and see and touch Madhava, talking, talking, talking, and hard to hold in bed, and the nursing women so tired and thirsty for sleep.... It brought her to a grey day with warm, large raindrops falling slowly—it brought her to a black, black night, and Madhava lying at last quiet, seeming to sleep.... Madhava lay so still, seeming as though he dreamed and were happy. Itura, his mother, and Jadéh, his sister, stole away to get a little sleep. Zira stayed, heavy-eyed, beside the bed. What happened then? She sat upon the floor, her head drooped against the foot of the bed; she did not mean to shut her eyes, or, if she shut them, meant at once to open.... Zira drew a moaning sigh, lying{227} upon the earth beneath the bamboo by the stream near Gangya’s house, three years and more from that night. What happened? Some demon entered surely to entice! but if she had not slept the demon might not have won in. So it was Zira’s fault—Zira’s fault—Zira’s fault—set to guard her lord, her husband, and sleeping, sleeping—Zira’s fault—Zira’s fault. The fever came back to Madhava. He opened his eyes, he sat up in bed, he looked around—and there was only the faithless wife sleeping. Madhava put his feet out of the bed; he stood up—and all the little bells and flower faces were calling! Madhava went out of the room and down the passage and out of the house door—all in the soft and black and muffled night. Zira, in the shadow of the teak tree, took up a handful of earth and strewed it over her sunken head. O woe, woe! death for Madhava, and for Zira such long woe, such long atonement, such long woe.... Down in Memory, she followed Madhava. Out of the house, into the village street, and the night so black and wordless with the rain at hand and all householders within doors, sleeping with their families. The street, the wall, the gate made for keeping out all jungle beasts, but not formed so that a man might not pass from within, knowing the opening’s trick—Madhava went out of the gate, and Zira who had not waked and followed that night, waked and followed now.... The beaten path across the black fields, and the hilly ground, and the little ravines, and in front the jungle growing higher, growing blacker, growing higher, growing blacker, growing nearer.... The jungle sounds growing louder.... Madhava the sick man, fevered and talking to himself, and walking the jungle path where no one went at night, before him the{228} pool with the cane and the fallen trees, and the bank where the jungle came to drink.... Madhava, talking to himself, going to the jungle, and there, by the pool, red-eyed, and waiting, the tiger whose voice for a week the village had heard.... Zira stumbled up the stair from Memory, covering her eyes with her hands.
“My lord is gone, my head is shorn!”—
breathed Zira under the bamboo.
“Mine is death in life,
The evil one!”
She took the greatest copper pot, set it between her knees, and with the rag that she held rubbed it clean. It blazed in the sun, it hurt her eyes. A quarrel sprang up between the monkeys in the teak tree. They chattered and screeched at one another, they showered twigs and leaves. Zira, drawing her hand around and around the copper vessel, saw with each circle some one of the hours that followed Itura’s return to the room, and the missing of Madhava. Around—the tracking him from the house—around—the rousing of the village, the finding without the wall his naked footprints—around—the following at dawn upon the jungle path—around—-the coming to the pool, the track of the tiger there, the end of all signs and of all hoping—around, around—the beginning of the unhappy life of Zira, a woman wedded, whose husband was dead!
The monkeys in the tree sulked after quarrelling. The lizards ran again over the wall, the water went past in sheets of diamonds, the brown earth swam in heat, boom! boom! sounded the temple gong. Zira gathered together{229} all the pots and pans, clean now until they must be cleaned again. She weighted herself with them, her thin shoulders bending under the load. She drew the ragged veil over her head, and getting stumblingly to her feet because of her burden, faced Gangya’s house that was all her home. “What stupid and wicked lives were mine before I came here—before I came here?” asked Zira, and went on to the house and her midday piece of sessamum-cake.
Three years.... And all that time Madhava walked the earth as Madhava, though not by the banks of Jumuna. He walked in a forest back from Ganges, a forest standing from old time, a resort from old time of holy men. Madhava gathered firewood, dry branches from beneath the trees, dead and broken scrub. He carried the fuel to the hut of such a man. When that was done, he shouldered an earthern jar and went for water to a spring two bow-shots away. When the water was brought, he made cakes of millet flour and baked them upon a heated stone. When they were baked he ranged them upon a board; and when this was done he went out under the trees, looking for Narayana, the holy man. He found him seated, entranced, under a sandal-wood tree. Madhava, stepping backward, returned to the hut and seating himself by the fire which burned without doors, waited for the seer to retake the body and bring it to the hut for food. Madhava was the holy man’s one pupil, his chela.
Madhava looked through the grey and green and purple arches of the forest. He looked at one spot, and he said over thrice verses that he had been taught, and strove to still the waves of the mind that ran here and there in twenty different channels. Madhava always found it very hard to still the mind, though the holy man told him the method{230} time and again.... This day, somehow, the waves sank of their own accord.
Madhava, sitting there in the forest back of Ganges, beside the jar of water and the millet cakes, with the blue wood smoke rising in a feather, very quietly and suddenly remembered how he had happened to enter the forest. He had not remembere............