Between the Twilights/Chapter 10
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THE QUEEN WHO STOOD ERECT
It was a spacious roof-terrace—large even for the house of a King: for an earthquake had destroyed almost an entire story, and no one had troubled to do more through the years that followed than move away the débris.
So the Zenana had a whole wing of open spaces at the top of the landing, and here it was that we sat, under a sky that was like a pink opal, while the swallows and the yellow-beaked mainas, and crows, flew overhead to roost. Bats there were too—“devil’s mice”—flapping the sleep out of their wings: and now, a red-brown throated, red-brown coated brahmini-kite, to whom the women made prayerful salutation. A kingfisher had just flashed past, bright as the sea at noonday, bright even in that darkening light, and knowing the reverence of the Rajputni for the kingfisher, I thought the gentle courtesy his.
It was Nanni-Ma, Baby’s Grandmother, she who had the face of victory over death, who explained. “Kali Ma chose once to take that form,” she said, inclining her head towards the red-brown one. A sudden swoop brought him almost within reach of the baby plaything and those lonely widow-women, and with terror in loving eyes the child was clasped close. Who shall tell what mixture of dread was in their hearts? dread of the big bird’s talons and dread of Kali the Destroyer, to whom if she wanted a life, that one life which was theirs, it must be yielded, cost what it might. … But the love which was the parent and the offspring of that terror was spilling out of their eyes as they handed the child each to each—first Mother clasping him, and then Big-Mother, while the white-sheeted waiting-women huddled on their haunches, cloth drawn beseemingly over mouth, gurgled “Hi! hi!” wagging their heads, and swaying with sympathy. It is unique, the attitude of a Hindu widow to her baby, unique in its beauty even among baby lovers. For the child represents more to these lonely ones than just a soft lovesome bit of flesh and laughter, of pretty pursed lips and rounded limbs, and great mop of soft black hair; more too than the gift of him they love. It is now in itself their passport to heaven, their token of the visit of Ged to the world: it is to be, presently, the saviour of those who have been closest to them in life—husband, father. …
“One small flicker in the lantern of the body—should any put out this light, who will relight it? For us, not even the Creator himself, in this life, not even the Creator. …”
And the home of Love was the eyes of those two women as they passed the boy back and forth between them; and the home of tears was their heart.
And he?—darling rogue of but a dozen or so bright fortnights of the moon, would tyrannize in his manhood even as he tyrannized now; nor would he hear reproach in that household of devoted women. Did not his Father likewise?—who, dying, confessed to Nanni-Ma, that the sins he had committed would need many sacrifices and much offering of the sacred cake for expiation. And she, blaming him not, set patiently about his bidding, sparing nothing—the one note of joy in that chaunt of sorrow being this: “He came to his Mother, he loved her enough to come, to trust her;” … and, as the half-understood regret passed like a shadow over the dying mind, she used all her art to brush it away. “Fear not, my Son; was it not written? Is this not fruit of that past birth of which you have no remembrance. All is illusion even sin; all is good, yes, even sin could we know it … and your death-ceremonies shall be to be envied of men, buying you sinlessness through many future births. Fear not. … And, when he is of age, the boy, he also shall perform your ceremony … a new birth to righteousness. Do not fear, my Son.”
It is this memory which is in the soul of Big-Mother, as she plays with her son’s son on the terrace in the mystic hour between the lights.
But the boy will grow, and there will be a bride to be found for him. What great excitement this means for the Zenana, few know who have not gone in and out among the women. There is the search among caste folk near at hand, or at a distance. Often the Priest of the family goes a tour to consult the horoscope of likely candidates. … There are tragedies when Priest meets Priest and doctors the horoscope to fit desire or sloth; but that chance must be faced by all alike. … No need, at any rate, to fear that marriage will take the boy away, it but brings one more daughter to Big-Mother … a shy, small person—among the orthodox, aged ten or thereabouts, who keeps eyes on floor demurely the first year of marriage, in the presence of whomsoever; and always, always runs out of the room, or hides face and head, standing reverently in the presence of her lord. Even many years of marriage do not relax this reserve when third persons are by. I have known mothers of grown sons who will carry one aside to whisper what is necessary to be said, but which cannot be said direct to their husbands in the presence of others. … “Let the women be silent.” That a wife may not take her husband’s name is a very general rule throughout India.
Out of all this knot of etiquette, born, it seems to me, of some distorted view of danger to modesty, as well as of a becoming respect and reverence, it is hard to disentangle the Indian conception of the love of a maid for a man. But this is certain, it is unlike what is the ideal in the West. There is worship; he is her God; he has brought God close to her. She is created to serve him with all her powers of mind and body, to serve and never criticize or question. The habit of her life is expressive of the relationship. The day is planned round his needs. She brings water to wash his feet, cooks for him, anticipates his smallest want while he eats; if he leaves on the green plantain leaf of orthodoxy one mouthful for the faithful slave, how happy she is the day long!
At his hands she holds her life. … I remember a poor little woman who had been induced by some modern-minded friend to resent the drunken belabourings of her husband. … She ran away to the protection of a relative, and all the Zenana held up hands of horror, not at the beating but at her resentment of it. “What! did she not know that Hindu wives belonged to their husbands, to be done with as they would? Would she not give her body to be burned at his desire? Why not then give it to be beaten at his desire?” And no reasoning would convince them of a difference. That this conception of devotion can rise to great heights one knows. It is not uncommon for a Hindu wife to make way of her own accord for some younger wife, even though retaining her passion of love for her husband, or rather perhaps, if one could conceive it, because she has arrived at Love’s perfection. … And I have seen her charming to the second lady: “Whom my Lord honours, shall I not love?” But there is little camaraderie, except sometimes in old age, when the grandchildren are growing up; there can be little between such differences of levels—and very little community of interest either in work or play—where one is educated and the other not, where one may go about the world unveiled, and the other is hedged round with protection of wall and curtain.
Again, as there is no choice in marriage, since the orthodox marry in childhood, there is little chance for love except after marriage. “We grow up to think that such an one belongs to us,” explained an Indian girl to me of her boy husband; “we take the relationship as you do brothers and sisters; you do not choose them; you do not, however, therefore of necessity, resent them.” That attitude then is the beginning. That it does lead, as a rule, to loyalty and worship we know; that it often leads to a very high type of love, where each goes with each, all the way, in perfect sympathy, has also been known.
And the man? “English people,” said a Hindu to me, “do not understand our relationship to our wives; they treat their wives as we treat—left-handed relations.” It is true, the Hindu considers any show of feeling an insult; he almost neglects his wife in the presence of third persons. Necessary courtesies are left to brother, father, trusted old servant. … As they grow older she graduates in giving, he in taking. Is he paying the highest price possible to him in—taking, I wonder? Who shall say? My own impression is that he does not think about it at all, seeing it has been the habit of generations of Indian men. One does not think about what is natural. The pity is that the standard of ethics is different for men and women—and this surely is wrong in principle. “As you sow, so shall you reap,” is orthodoxy for the man. “As you sow, so shall they reap whom you best love—your son, your husband”—is the woman’s religion. She reaps herself, yes, but as a secondary result, and her own benefit certainly never enters into the calculation of the individual woman.
Do good if you can, but if you cannot, or will not, stand up to your penalty like a man; or rather lie submissive under the full flood of it. Count the cost, the degradation to the lowest order of creation, the weary re-start through the gradations of re-genesis. At least there has been no deceit. Sometimes you may buy back part of the penalty by counter-balancing good deeds. An Eastern loves a bargain, and the business of salvation is one great mercantile transaction; but only men are allowed on this Rialto.
Vicarious suffering with a woman for chief actor is one of the tenets of the male.
Vicarious pleasuring with a man for chief actor is the woman’s.
I said that you took your penalty, you paid your price. True, but not always. In the highest scheme of punishment, whether for man or woman, some one else pays. The Gods strike at the thing you love best. If the Gods are angry with a woman they take away her husband. Is not the very treatment of the widow in India recognition of the fact, and does she not so accept it?
But to return to the husband’s respect for his wife, that is a good thing to record. Say it is only policy; “where women are honoured, there the Gods are pleased; but where they are not honoured, no sacred rite yields reward.” … Say it is grounded in the fact of her being his possession; possibly, but at any rate it is there. How pre-eminently he regards her as his property there is proof upon proof. He leaves to no other hand punishment for encroachments; he shuts her away, lest eyes of others who do not own her should see and covet—it takes more than one generation to kill the anger in the eye of a man at a glance of admiration from another, honest though it be; and when he dies she remains his property still, that is the reason of perpetual widowhood; and till it was forbidden did she not, as suttee, acknowledge that she was his property, useless when no longer needed?
There is a temple on a City wall in a country of sand and low scrub, gray with dust. The Temple is beautiful with its outlook on the sea of sand, and the little earth holes of water where the women dig in the sand. It is a Temple to a woman. She was beautiful beyond words, and Kings sought her in marriage, and fought for her with the King to whom she was betrothed. And at last one of the Kings slew the Betrothed, and claimed the hand of Ranak Devi. But she, rather than betray the trust of him whom she had never seen, but whose she was nevertheless, sought refuge in suttee. It is her Temple which you find on the City wall, and round about it have gathered other women—there is a very forest of Suttee Stones. You may know them by this sign—the hand and arms of a woman graven in the stone, always the right hand, palm outwards.
And you find here also the pallias or memorial stones to warrior Kings and to great rulers among women. For the place of memorial stones, of the dead, of silence, is a place of glory. To it come the bereaved, the empty-handed, to give thanks for those who have attained; to it come the young, bending beneath blessings; death and life walk ever hand in hand, and the white jasmine triangles of the newly-wed make a fragrant carpet in the Temple of Memory.
But one cannot write truly of the conception of Love in any nation without writing a book without end of the conception of each loving soul in its loneliness and aloofness. And, when I said this to my Wisest of the Wise, she made answer: “So it is, even so” … and there was such beauty in her face that I wished it had been possible to hear her parable of Love. But silence of words was between us, naturally, on the things we most held sacred.
And it was one who sat by who took up the thought.
“There was a King who loved his Queen with all his soul, and one day, overcome of this love, he fell at her feet in an ecstasy, even in the presence of the old wives, who being jealous, said: ‘Shameless one! lift up the hands of the King to your head.’
“And the King said: ‘Yea, my Queen, so even shouldst thou, when I have done thee this honour.’
“But she stood erect, smiling gladly. ‘Nay,’ said she, ‘not so; for both feet and head are my lord’s. Can I have aught that is mine?’ ”