51

The Yamuna receives from the Himalayan peaks an inexhaustible current of snow-fed water; and the current of poetry that generations of poets have poured into her is equally inexhaustible. In her murmuring are sounded a hundred and more metres, and upon her rippling waves the rapturous emotion of age upon age is forever rising and overflowing. When Mahendra came and sat on the banks of the Yamuna at dusk, the concentrated essence of longing poured through his eyes, his breath, his veins, through the very marrow of his bones, as a deep intoxicating stream.

In the sky above, the golden vina of sunset rang out in its music of pain, as though in strains never heard in the mortal world. Upon the wide, solitary sandbank the day faded slowly in a play of many-coloured light. Mahendra half-closed his eyes and heard, from out of the poetic world and through the drifting haze of dust raised by cows' hooves, the lowing of Vrindavan's herds returning home to their fold. The sky grew heavy with monsoon cloud. The darkness of an unfamiliar place is not merely an enveloping blackness; it is filled with many strange mysteries.

The half-glimpsed forms that appear within it speak in an unknown and unutterable tongue. The faint pallor of the far sandbank, the ink-dark surface of the still water, the massed and silent density of the great neem trees in their heavy foliage, the curved pale-grey line of the treeless shore --- all of these, merging in the darkness of that Ashadh evening into countless vague and unformed shapes, gathered themselves about Mahendra on every side. He recalled the monsoon verses of the Padavali --- the abhisar, the beloved's nocturnal journey towards her lord.

She had come out and stood alone on the far bank of the Yamuna. How was she to cross?

"Oh, carry me across, carry me across" --- that cry was reaching Mahendra's heart even now: "Oh, carry me across." In the darkness on the far bank, that pilgrim of love stood at a great distance --- yet Mahendra saw her clearly.

She was of no particular age or time, she was the eternal cowherd's daughter --- and yet Mahendra recognised her: she was Binodini herself. She had set out on her journey of longing, carrying all her yearning, all her pain, all the burden of her youth --- passing through songs and verses of every age --- and had arrived at last upon the shore of this present time. In the sky above this deserted bank of the Yamuna tonight, it was her voice that could be heard: "Oh, carry me across" --- how much longer was she to stand alone like this in the darkness, waiting for the ferry?

"Oh, carry me across." One edge of the cloud shifted aside, and the moon of the third night in the dark fortnight appeared.

By its enchantment, the river and its bank, the sky and its far horizons, moved far beyond the world of mortals. Every earthly bond dissolved. All the sequential thread of time snapped --- the entire history of the past obliterated, all the consequences of the future vanished --- only this silver-flooded present remained, with the Yamuna and its banks, with Mahendra and Binodini, outside the ordinance of the universe, enduring for ever. Mahendra was drunk. He could not conceive that Binodini would refuse him --- that she would not complete and crown this isolated paradise of the moonlit night.

He rose at once and went in search of her, towards the house. He entered the bedchamber to find the room filled with the scent of flowers. Moonlight poured through the open windows and doors and fell upon the white bedclothes. Binodini had gathered flowers from the garden and woven them into garlands --- garlands in her hair, around her neck, wound at her waist --- and adorned with all these flowers she lay upon the moonlit bed like a creeper bent down under the weight of its spring blossoms.

Mahendra's enchantment redoubled. He said in a choked voice, "Binod --- I was waiting by the Yamuna, and the moon told me you were waiting here for me, and so I came." Saying this, he moved towards the bed.

In an instant Binodini started up and stretched out her right arm, saying sharply, "Go, go --- you must not sit upon this bed." A vessel in full sail ran aground on a sandbar.

Mahendra stood as though struck dumb; for a long time no words came. Lest Mahendra disregard her prohibition, Binodini left the bed and stood before him.

"Then for whom have you adorned yourself?" said Mahendra.

"For whom are you waiting?" Binodini pressed her hand to her heart and said, "The one for whom I have adorned myself lives within me."

"Who is it?" said Mahendra.

"Is it Bihari?"

"Do not speak his name," said Binodini.

"And it is for him that you have been wandering through the west?" said Mahendra.

"For him," said Binodini.

"And it is for him that you are waiting here?" said Mahendra.

"For him," said Binodini.

"Have you discovered where he is?" said Mahendra.

"Not yet," said Binodini.

"But I will, by some means or other."

"I shall not allow you to find out," said Mahendra.

"Then," said Binodini, "though you may keep me from knowing, you shall never drive him from my heart." With these words Binodini closed her eyes and held Bihari within herself for a moment.

Mahendra, both powerfully drawn and violently repulsed at one and the same instant by this flower-adorned figure in the grief of her longing, turned suddenly terrible --- he clenched his fist and said, "I will take a knife and cut him out from your breast."

"Your knife," said Binodini with an unmoved face, "will enter my heart more easily than your love."

"Why do you not fear me?" said Mahendra.

"Who is here to protect you?"

"You are here to protect me," said Binodini.

"You will protect me from yourself."

"This much respect, this much faith --- still remaining?" said Mahendra.

"Without it," said Binodini, "I would have killed myself. I would not have come out with you."

"Why did you not die, then? This noose of your small faith has been fastened around my neck, dragging me from country to country --- why must you torment me so? How much better things would have been, had you died --- think on it."

"I know it," said Binodini.

"But as long as there is any hope of Bihari, I cannot die."

"As long as you do not die," said Mahendra, "my desire will not die either --- I too shall find no deliverance. From this day I pray to God with my whole heart for your death. Let you be no one's --- neither mine, nor Bihari's. Be gone. Release me. My mother weeps, my wife weeps --- their tears scorch me from afar. Until you die, until you pass beyond all hope for me or for anyone else on earth, I shall have no moment free to wipe away their tears." With these words Mahendra rushed out.

The web of enchantment that Binodini had been weaving about herself was torn to shreds as he left. She stood in silence looking out at the darkness --- the moonlight that had filled the whole sky had drained away, its sweetness evaporated no one knew where. That carefully tended garden, the sandbank beyond it, the dark water of the river, the indistinct far shore --- all of it seemed no more than a pencil sketch on a large white sheet of paper --- flat and arid and without meaning.

Feeling how powerfully she had drawn Mahendra, how completely, like a violent storm, she had wrenched him up by the roots, her heart grew more troubled still. All this power was hers --- so why did Bihari not rush upon her like the sea at full moon and break at her feet? Why did a futile love, unwanted, come daily weeping into her meditations? Why did this uninvited grief return again and again to crowd out her own grief? This immense storm she had unleashed --- what was she to do with it for the rest of her life, and by what means was she to still it?

Knowing that Mahendra's dazzled gaze had fallen upon all the flower-garlands with which she had adorned herself, she tore them off and flung them away. All her power was wasted, all her effort wasted, her whole life wasted --- this garden, this moonlight, this bank of the Yamuna, this world of extraordinary beauty --- all wasted. Yet in the midst of all this failure, everything stood exactly where it had always stood --- not the smallest thing in the world had been altered by so much as a hair's breadth.

Tomorrow the sun would rise and the world would not forget its most trifling business; and the imperturbable Bihari, as distant as he had ever been, would remain far away, teaching a Brahmin boy his new lesson in his primer. Tears broke from Binodini's eyes. With all her strength, all her longing, she was pushing against a boulder. Her heart flooded with blood --- yet her fate did not shift by the width of a needle's point.