The end of the matter was that I continued to reside in the house of my parents in Ujjeni.
This, my native town, O stranger, is, as all the world knows, famed throughout India not less for its revels and unstinted enjoyment of life than for its shining palaces and magnificent temples. Its broad streets resound by day with the neighing of horses and the trumpeting of elephants, and by night with the music of lovers' lutes and the songs of gay carousers.
But of all the glories of Ujjeni, none enjoy a reputation so extraordinary as do its courtesans. From the great ladies who live in palaces, building temples to the gods, laying out public parks for the people, and in whose reception-rooms one meets poets, artists, and actors, distinguished strangers, and, occasionally, even princes, down to the common wenches, all are beauties with softly swelling limbs and indescribable grace. At all great festivals, in processions and exhibitions, they form the chief adornment of the beflagged and flower-strewn streets. In crimson dresses, with fragrant wreaths in their hands, the air about them heavy with delicious odours, their attire sparkling with diamonds, dost thou see them, O brother, sitting on their own magnificent grand-stands moving along the streets, with glances full of love, seductive gestures, and playfully laughing words, everywhere fanning the heated senses of the pleasure-seekers to living flame?
Honoured by the king, worshipped by the people, besung by the poets, they are fitly named "the many-coloured floral crown of the rock-enthroned Ujjeni," and draw down upon us the envy of the less favoured neighbouring towns. Not unfrequently the choicest of our beauties go to these places as guests, and it actually happens that one or another of them has to be recalled by royal decree.
To the lips of one who, like myself, desired to drown the grief that was eating away his life, the golden cup of pleasure, filled to the brim with its intoxicating Lethe draught, was freely—nay, prodigally—held by the fair hands of this joyous sisterhood. Owing to my many talents and wide knowledge of the fine arts, and, not less, of all social games, I became a favoured guest of the great courtesans, of whom one indeed, whose favour could scarcely be measured by gold, fell so passionately in love with me that she quarrelled with a prince on my account. On the other hand, owing to my complete mastery of the robber dialect, I was soon on confidential terms with the wenches of the low streets, whose company, on the path of pleasure of a coarser and more robust type, I by no means despised, and of whom several were heart and soul devoted to me.
Thus madly did I dive deep down into the rushing whirl of the pleasures of my native city, and it became, O stranger, a proverbial saying in Ujjeni: "As fast as young Kamanita."
It was about this time that an event occurred which goes to show that evil habits, and sometimes even vice, may to such an extent be the source of good fortune that the man of worldly mind cannot easily decide whether he most owes his prosperity to his good or to his bad qualities.
I refer particularly to that familiarity with the wenches of the lower classes to which allusion has already been made, and which became of the greatest service to me. My father's house was broken into, and jewels, which had been for the most part entrusted to him for valuation, were stolen, to an amount, too, which it was practically impossible to make good. I was beside myself, for absolute ruin stared us in the face. In vain did I make use of all the knowledge I had gained in the forest. From the fashion in which the subterranean passage was constructed, I could easily tell to what class of thief the deed was to be ascribed. But even this most useful hint proved useless to the police, who, to be sure, do not, in Ujjeni, occupy the high position taken by the institution of the courtesans,—a circumstance not without suggestion of some inner relationship between the two bodies. On one occasion, in a very learned lecture on the love affairs of the various classes, I heard with my own ears the following sentence: "The gallantries of the police officer have to take place during his nightly round of inspection, and with the courtesans of the city. By order." Which, taken in connection with Vajaçravas' remarks upon "the service rendered by the city courtesans in hoodwinking the police," gave me, in those days of anxious waiting, much food for thought.
Now, however, in this strangest of all worlds of ours, things seem to be so arranged that the left hand must make good what the right has done amiss. And that is what happened here. For that flourishing blossom from Ujjeni's flower-garden actually yielded me the fruit which the thorny hedge of the police—perhaps stunted just on account of that very same flourishing condition of the said blossom—failed to ripen.
These kind maidens, seeing me in despair because of the ruin threatening me and mine, discovered the culprits, and forced them, by threatening the complete withdrawal of their favour, to hand over the plunder, so that we got off leniently with the loss of the little that had already been spent, and with a fright which did not fail of its effect in my own case.
It woke me up from the dissipated life in which I was uselessly squandering the best of my years and strength. For, quite apart from this waking up and its occasion, my folly had now reached a point where it was certain either, in the garb of habit, to enslave and deprave me utterly, or, on the contrary, to fill me with gradually increasing disgust. This latter result was now very much hastened by the experience I had just had. I had seen poverty staring me in the face—the poverty to which the life I had been leading would have handed me over defenceless, after it had, with all its costly pleasures, treacherously left me in the lurch. At this juncture I bethought me of the words uttered by the merchant at the grave of Vajaçravas: "Did I stand so high in Vajaçravas' favour as thou dost, I should in a very few years be the richest man in Kosambi."
And I resolved to become the richest man in Ujjeni, and to this end, to devote myself with all my strength to the caravan traffic.
I carried out my resolutions; and whether my friend and master Vajaçravas, from his abode in the other world, did or did not stand by me in his own person in all my undertakings I dare not certainly say, although I have at times believed it; but this much is certain, that his words in their after-effects now did. For my having become familiar, through his teaching, with all the customs and usages of the various types of robbers, and my having even been initiated into the mysteries of their secret rules, now placed me in a position where I was able, and that without ridiculous foolhardiness, to carry to a successful conclusion enterprises which another would never have dared to venture on. But just such I now selected, and no longer condescended to the ordinary routes.
As a result, when I conducted a large caravan to a town to which, for months, no other merchant had been able to proceed, because powerful bands of robbers had, as it were, cut off the district from all intercourse with the outer world, I found the inhabitants so desperately anxious to buy my wares that I was at times able to dispose of these at ten times the usual profit. But that was not all; for inestimable was the advantage I drew from my old friend's instruction with regard to "the distinguishing marks of officials, both of higher and lower rank, who are open to bribery, with reliable notes as to each man's price," and what I gained in the course of a few years by the skilful use of these hints alone, represents a modest fortune.
So several years passed, during which the various delights of my pleasure-loving native city alternated healthily with the hardships of business journeys, rich indeed in dangers, but nevertheless by no means barren of pleasure, in spite of all perils; for in strange cities I always resided with a courtesan to whom I was as a rule recommended by some mutual friend—some one of the fair ones of Ujjeni—and who not only played the part of hostess but, as often happened, formed my business connections for me very shrewdly as well.
Such was the tenor of my life when, one forenoon, my father came to my room.
At the moment I was busy putting some lac on my lips, only pausing from time to time to shout directions to a servant who had led my horse out into the courtyard in front of my window and was saddling him. The special care required on the present occasion was due to a unique contrivance by which cushions were to be strapped on in front of the saddle for a gazelle-eyed beauty I was to hold there. An outing had been arranged for the afternoon to a public garden, and I was going with some friends of both sexes.
I welcomed my father, and was about to call for refreshments; but he stopped me, and when I offered him some sweet-scented cashoos from my golden box, he declined these also, and only took some betel. I concluded at once from this, and not without misgiving, that my respected parent had something on his mind.
"I see that thou art getting ready for a pleasure excursion, my son," he said, after he had taken the seat I offered him, "and I cannot blame thee, seeing that thou art but just returned from a fatiguing business journey. Whither dost thou go to-day, my son?"
"It is my intention, father, to ride with some friends of both sexes to the Garden of the Hundred Lotus Ponds, where we are to amuse ourselves with games."
"Excellent, most excellent, my son! Charming, delightful is an afternoon in the Garden of the Hundred Lotus Ponds—the deep shade of the trees and the cooling breath of the waters invite the guest to loiter there. And well-bred and ingenious games are most praiseworthy, for they exercise body and mind without straining them. I wonder whether the games are still in vogue that we used to play in my youth? What dost thou suppose, Kamanita, will be played there to-day?"
"It depends, father, whose proposal proves to be most acceptable. I know that Nimi wants to propose spraying with water."
"I don't know it," said my father.
"No; Nimi learnt it in the South, where it is all the fashion. The players fill bamboo canes with water and spray one another, and whoever becomes wettest has lost. It is very amusing. But Kolliya thinks of suggesting kadamba."
My father shook his head—
"I don't know that either."
"Oh! that is much in favour at present. The players first divide into two parties. These then attack one another, and the branches of the kadamba shrub with its great golden blossoms serve as magnificent weapons. The wounds are recognisable from the dust of the blossoms, so that the umpires are able to decide without difficulty which party has won. The game is bracing, and has something dainty about it. I myself, however, intend to propose the wedding game."
"That is a good old game," said my father, with a decided smirk, "and I am greatly delighted that thou art minded to propose it, as it is an evidence of thy sentiments. From play to earnest, the step is not an excessively long one."
As he said this, he again smirked, with such evident satisfaction that it made my very flesh creep.
"Yes, my son," he went on, "talking of that leads me straight to what brought me to thee to-day. Thou hast, on thy many business journeys, by thy capacity and good fortune multiplied our possessions many times over, so that the prosperity of our business has become proverbial in Ujjeni. On the other hand, however, thou hast also quaffed the delights of youth's freedom in unstinted draughts. As a result of the former, thou art well able to provide for a household of thine own. And from the latter, it follows that it is also time for thee to do so, and to think of spinning the thread of our race farther. In order to make things very easy for thee, my dear son, I have sought out a bride for thee in advance. She is the eldest daughter of our neighbour Sanjaya, the great merchant, and has but recently reached the marriageable age. As thou dost perceive, she comes from a family of like standing with our own, respected and very rich, and she has a large number of relatives both on her father's and mother's side. Her body is faultless; her hair, of the blackness of the bee; her face, like the moon in its beauty; eyes, like a young gazelle's; a nose like a blossom of the sesame; teeth like pearls; and bimba lips, from which there comes the voice of the kokila, so rarely sweet is it. And her limbs delight the heart as does the stem of the young pisang; while her full hips lend to her carriage the easy majesty of the royal elephant. It is not possible, therefore, that thou canst have aught to object to in her."
I had indeed nothing to find fault with, save perhaps that her many and so poetically extolled charms left me utterly cold. And I own that, among the details of the wedding ceremonial, that prescribing three nights of continence during which, in the company of my young wife, eating no seasoned food, sleeping on the floor, and keeping the hearth-fire alight, I had, according to the ordinance, to preserve the strictest chastity, was, of all others, the least irksome to me.
An unloved wife, O brother, does not make home dear, nor its four walls attractive, so I betook myself on journeys almost more willingly than before, and in the intervals concerned myself solely with business matters. And as I—to give the truth its due—did not in these deal too scrupulously, but without much hesitation took what was to my own advantage on every occasion, my riches increased to such an extent that, after a few years, I found myself near to the goal of my ambition, and was one of the richest citizens of my native town.
With that happy state of things came the desire, as master of a house and father of a family—my wife had in the meantime borne me two daughters—to taste the sweets of my riches very fully, and in especial to make a display of them before my fellow-citizens. To that end I purchased a large tract of land in the suburbs, and laid out a magnificent pleasure-garden, in the midst of which I built a spacious mansion, with halls whose ceilings were borne aloft on marble pillars. This property was reckoned among the marvels of Ujjeni, and even the king came, to see it.
Within these fair domains I now gave fabulous garden festivals and the most luxurious of banquets. I had begun to devote myself more and more to the pleasures of the table. The most luscious viands which were by any Possibility, each in his season, to be had for money, had to appear on my table even at ordinary meals. At that time I was not, as thou dost now see me, lean and wasted by lone wanderings, by life in the woods, and ascetic exercises, but of a full habit of body—indeed, even inclined to be somewhat portly.
And it became, O stranger, a proverbial saying in Ujjeni: "His table is like the merchant Kamanita's."