So, under my roof, peace was no longer to be found. If thou, O brother, didst chance to delay thy steps at the farmhouse of the rich Brahman who lives but a short way off, and didst hear how, within, his two wives upbraided one another—disputing in high, shrill tones, and polluting the air with their coarse epithets—then thou hast, so to speak, passed my house on the way.
And it also became, I am sorry to confess, a proverbial saying in Ujjeni now: “The two agree like Kamanita’s wives!”
XV
The Bald-Pated Monk
Such was the state of affairs in my home, when, one forenoon, I sat in a large room which lay on the shady side of the house, and was set apart for the transaction of all business matters. For that reason it overlooked the courtyard, an arrangement which enabled me to keep under my own eye everything relating to the administration of my affairs. Before me stood a trusted servant, who had during a number of years accompanied me on all my journeys, and to whom I was giving exact instructions with regard to the taking of a caravan to a somewhat distant spot, as well, of course, as to the best mode of disposing of his wares when he got there, the produce he had to bring back with him, the business connections he was to form, and other similar matters; for it was my intention to give him full charge of the expedition.
To be sure, my house was less homelike than ever, and one might suppose that I myself would have been glad to embrace every opportunity of roaming about in distant lands. But I was beginning to be somewhat self-indulgent and dainty, and shunned very distant journeys, not only because of the fatigues to be faced on the way, but, above all, on account of the sparing diet to be put up with, at all events when actually on the road. Yet even supposing the journey’s end reached, with the possibility of making up for lost time and of having the best of everything, there were numerous disappointments to be reckoned with, and I, at least, was never able to dine abroad as I did at home.
As a result, I had begun to send out my caravans under trusty leaders while I remained behind in Ujjeni.
Well, as I was saying, I was in the midst of giving my caravan leader very minute and well-considered instructions, when from the courtyard we heard the quarrelsome voices of my two wives, both much louder than usual, and with a flow of language which sounded as though it would never end. Irritated by this tiresome interruption, I finally sprang up and, after having vainly looked out at the window, stepped into the courtyard.
There I saw both of my wives standing at the outer gate. But far from finding them wrangling with one another, as I had expected, I came upon them for the first time of one mind; they had discovered and pounced upon a common enemy and on him they now poured out the vials of their united wrath. This luckless beggar was a wandering ascetic, who stood there leaning against one of the pillars of the gate, and quietly letting this stream of abuse flow over him. The actual reason for their attack upon him I have never discovered; I imagine, however, that the mother instinct, which was very highly developed in both, scented in this self-denier, a traitor to the sacred cause of human propagation and a foe to their sex, and that they had just as instinctively fallen upon him as two mongooses upon a cobra.
“Out upon him, the bald-headed priest, the shameless ruffian! Just see how he stands there, with his bent shoulders and hangdog look, breathing piety and contemplation—the oily hypocrite, the smooth-faced windbag! It is the kitchen pot that he peers and gazes, sniffs and snuffles at—just like any old ass who, unyoked from his cart, runs to the rubbish-heap in the courtyard and peers and gazes and sniffs and snuffles … Out upon him, the lazy, brazen-faced thief, the shameless beggar, the bald-pated monk!”
The object of these and similar expressions of maternal contempt, a pilgrim belonging to some ascetic school and a man of strikingly lofty stature, still stood leaning against the gatepost in an attitude of easy repose. His mantle, of the yellow colour of the kanikara flower, and not unlike thine own, fell in picturesque folds over his left shoulder to his feet, and gave the impression of covering a powerfully built body. The right arm, which hung limply down, was uncovered, and I could not help admiring the huge coil of muscles, which rather seemed to be the well-earned possession of a warrior than the idle inheritance of an ascetic; and even the clay alms-bowl appeared, in his nervous hand, to be as strange and incongruous as an iron bludgeon in that same hand would have seemed to be
