Chapter XII

And the elephant said: Pippala, when she spoke, I uttered a cry. And I exclaimed: Ha! the husband! O alas! I had forgotten him. Then she said quietly: But I had not. And I cried: O alas! alas! Out, out upon this husband, for he was born only for my ruin and despair. Now, like a cloud of pitchy black, he stands between my soul, and the digit of the moon that I adore. Aye! but for him, I might be hanging like a moonstone bathed in the nectar camphor of its beams. O why did fate suffer him to come between us! why did I not meet thee first, before he ever saw thee? Ha! what would it cost the Creator to obliterate a single husband, and strike him from the roll of entities, making him absolutely nothing and a thing that has never been, thinner than the memory of a forgotten dream? Alas! I am cheated by the Creator and this husband, and coming just too late, I am robbed of the very fruit of this untimely birth. And after all, what is this husband? Is he a husband who goes away and leaves thee, like a flower dropped negligently upon the road, and have I not found thee, made ownerless by his absence, and picked thee up, to wear thee in my hair? Can he be thy owner, of whom it is not even certain that he lives? Aye! doubtless he is dead, and thou hast not any longer the pretext of a husband, to bar thee from my claim. And instantly she said: Then, if he is really dead, it is my duty to follow him through the fire, which, could I only learn his death with certainty, I would do without delay. And I exclaimed: Nay, nay, dare not to dream of fire, for how knowest thou he is dead? Beyond a doubt, he is not dead, but only hidden; and wouldst thou dream of such criminal impiety as to take it on thyself to precede him into the other world. I tell thee, it is thy duty to await him. And she said: Then if he is not dead, I am no widow, but his wife.

And I exclaimed with tears: Alas! dead or alive, he blocks the way, and I am lost. But what then, if he never should return? What if year follows year, and still he chooses to be absent, while all the time the lotus of thy beauty fades, and envious wrinkles crawl slowly, one by one, to feed like worms on thy soft delicious skin, and occupy the corner beneath thy little ear, turning thy dark tresses white, as if with fear of the shadow of approaching age and death? Am I to stand idly by, like a spectator, and watch the river of my happiness flow by me, in the form of thy decaying charm? And she said in a low voice: Each night and day I will expect him, and when he comes, let it be when it may, he shall never catch me unprepared, but find me waiting, sad by reason of his absence, and joyous like a city hung with banners to receive its lord, at the moment of his return.

And I gazed at her for a little, poised as it were between affection and despair; for as she spoke, the colour rose and stood upon her cheek, and her lip trembled, and her steady eyes seemed to gaze into the distance, seeing not me, but that absent husband: and I knew that as she said, so would she do. And I wrung my hands, and wept for sorrow. And I exclaimed: Ha! it is unjust, and I am the plaything of a destiny that I fastened on myself by sins committed in a former birth, in the form of this dark shadow of a husband, who is present even in his absence, though as it seems, time and space have swallowed him, as the ocean swallows up a little stone, dropped from the feather of a passing swan into the very middle of the sea. And know, O pippala, that it was exactly as I said. For that husband of hers returned no more, but vanished, and neither I nor any other ever saw him more, or knew where he had gone.

And Trishodadhi, as he listened, said within himself: Ha! little does this elephant imagine who it is, that sits and listens to him now. And oblivious of his muttering, he listened on, eager for the remainder of the tale.