The Indian Lily and Other Stories Part 42

My ear listened to all the confusing noises that were about me, but the voice of my faery was not among them. My hand groped after alien hands, but the faery hand was not among them. Nor would I have recognised it.

And then I went in quest of her to all the ends of the earth.

First I went to a philosopher.

"You know everything, wise man," I said, "can you tell me how I may find my faery again?"

The philosopher put the tips of his five outstretched fingers against his vaulted forehead and, having meditated a while, said: "You must seek, through pure intuition, to grasp all the conceptual essence of the being of the object sought for. Therefore withdraw into yourself and listen to the voice of your mind." I did as I was told. But the rushing of the blood in the sh.e.l.ls of my ears affrighted me. It drowned every other voice.

Next I went to a very clever physician and asked him the same question.

The physician who was about to invent an artificially digested porridge in order to save the modern stomach any exertion, let his spoon fall for a moment and said: "You must take only such foods as will tend to add phosphorous matter to the brain. The answer to your question will then come of itself."

I followed his directions but instead of my faery a number of confusing images presented themselves. I saw in the hearts of those who were about me faery gardens and infernos, deserts and turnip fields; I saw a comically hopping rainworm who was nibbling at a graceful centipede; I saw a world in which darkness was lord. I saw much else and was frightened at the images.

Then I went to a clergyman and put my question to him.

The pious man comfortably lit his pipe and said: "You will find no faeries mentioned in the catechism, my friend. Hence there are none, and it is sin to seek them. But perhaps you can help me bring back the devil into the world, the old, authentic devil with tail and horns and sulphurous stench. He really exists and we need him."

After I had made inquiry of a learned jurist who advised me to have my faery located by the police, I went to one of my colleagues, a poet of the cla.s.sic school.

I found him clad in a red silk dressing gown, a wet handkerchief tied around his forehead. Its purpose was to keep his all too stormy wealth of inspiration in check. Before him on the table stood a gla.s.sful of Malaga wine and a silver salver full of pomegranates and grapes. The grapes were made of gla.s.s and the pomegranates of soap. But the contemplation of them was meant to heighten his mood. Near him, nailed to the floor, stood a golden harp on which was hung a laurel wreath and a nightcap.

Timidly I put my question and the honoured master spoke: "The muse, my worthy friend--ask the muse. Ask the muse who leads us poor children of the dust into the divine sanctuary; carried aloft by whose wings into the heights of ether we feel truly human--ask her!"

As it would have been necessary for me, first of all, to look up this unknown lady, I went to another colleague--one of the modern seekers of truth.

I found him at his desk peering through a microscope at a dying flee which he was studying carefully. He noted each of its movements upon the slips of paper from which he later constructed his works. Next to him stood some bread and cheese, a little bottle full of ether and a box of powders.

When I had explained my business he grew very angry.

"Man, don't bother me with such rot!" he cried. "Faeries and elves and ideas and the devil knows what--that's all played out. That's worse than iambics. Go hang, you idiot, and don't disturb me."

Sad at seeing myself and my faery so contemned, I crept away and went to one of those modern artists in life, who had tasted with epicurean fineness all the esctasies and sorrows of earthly life in order to broaden his personality.... I hoped that he would understand me, too.

I found him lying on a _chaise longue_, smoking a cigarette, and turning the leaves of a French novel. It was _La-bas_ by Huysmans, and he didn't even cut the leaves, being too lazy.

He heard my question with an obliging smile. "Dear friend, let's be honest. The thing is simple. A faery is a woman. That is certain.

Well, take up with every woman that runs into your arms. Love them all--one after another. You'll be sure then to hit upon your faery some day."

As I feared that to follow this advice I would have to waste the better part of my life and all my conscience, I chose a last and desperate method and went to a magician.

If Manfred had forced Astarte back into being, though only for a fleeting moment, why could I not do the same with the dear ruler of my higher will?

I found a dignified man with the eyes of an enthusiast and filthy locks. He was badly in need of a change of linen. And so I had every reason to consider him an idealist.

He talked a good real of "Karma," of "materialisations" and of the "plurality of spheres." He used many other strange words by means of which he made it clear to me that my faery would reveal herself to me only by his help.

With beating heart I entered a dark room at the appointed hour. The magician led me in.

A soft, mysterious music floated toward me. I was left alone, pressed to the door, awaiting the things that were to come in breathless fear.

Suddenly, as I was waiting in the darkness, a gleaming, bluish needle protruded from the floor. It grew to rings and became a snake which breathed forth flames and dissolved into flame ... And the tongues of these flames played on all sides and finally parted in curves like the leaves of an opening lotus flower, out of whose calix white veils arose slowly, very slowly, and became as they glided upward the garments of a woman who looked at me, who was lashed by fear, with sightless eyes.

"Are you Thea?" I asked trembling.

The veils inclined in affirmation.

"Where do you dwell?"

The veils waved, shaken by the trembling limbs.

"Ask me after other things," a m.u.f.fled voice said.

"Why do you no longer appear to me?"

"I may not."

"Who hinders you?"

"You." ...

"By what? Am I unworthy of you?"

"Yes."

In deep contrition I was about to fall at her feet. But, coming nearer, I perceived that my faery's breath smelled of onions.

This circ.u.mstance sobered me a bit, for I don't like onions.

I knocked at the locked door, paid my magician what I owed him and went my way.

From now on all hope of ever seeing her again vanished. But my soul cried out after her. And the world receded from me. Its figures dislimned into things that have been, its noise did not thunder at my threshold. A solitariness half voluntary and half enforced dragged its steps through my house. Only a few, the intimates of my heart and brothers of my blood, surrounded my life with peace and kept watch without my doors.

It was a late afternoon near Advent Sunday.

But no message of Christmas came to my yearning soul.

Somewhere, like a discarded toy, lay amid rubbish the motive power of my pa.s.sions. My heart was dumb, my hand nerveless, and even need--that last incentive--had slackened to a wild memory.

The world was white with frost.... The dust of ice and the rain of star-light filled the world... cloths of glittering white covered the plains.... The bare twigs of the trees stretched upwards like staves of coral.... The fir trees trembled like spun gla.s.s.

A red sunset spread its reflection over all. But the sunset itself was poverty stricken. No purple lights, no gleam of seven colours warmed the whiteness of the world. Not like the gentle farewell of the sun but cruel as the threat of paralysing night did the b.l.o.o.d.y stripe stare through my window.

It is the hour of afternoon tea. The regulations of the house demand that.