During the second
obsession the witch ran, leaped, and raced for exactly fourteen
minutes. After this, she plunged twice in the tank, in honor of
the second sister; and with every new obsession the number of her
plunges increased, till it became six.
It was already an hour and a half since the race began. All this
time the witch never rested, stopping only for a few seconds, to
disappear under the water.
"She is a fiend, she cannot be a woman!" exclaimed the colonel,
seeing the head of the witch immersed for the sixth time in the water.
"Hang me if I know!" grumbled Mr. Y - -, nervously pulling his beard.
"The only thing I know is that a grain of her cursed rice entered
my throat, and I can't get it out!"
"Hush, hush! Please, do be quiet!" implored Sham Rao. "By talking
you will spoil the whole business!"
I glanced at Narayan and lost myself in conjectures. His features,
which usually were so calm and serene, were quite altered at this
moment, by a deep shadow of suffering. His lips trembled, and
the pupils of his eyes were dilated, as if by a dose of belladonna.
His eyes were lifted over the heads of the crowd, as if in his
disgust he tried not to see what was before him, and at the same
time could not see it, engaged in a deep reverie, which carried him
away from us, and from the whole performance.
"What is the matter with him?" was my thought, but I had no time
to ask him, because the witch was again in full swing, chasing
her own shadow.
But with the seventh goddess the programme was slightly changed.
The running of the old woman changed to leaping. Sometimes bending
down to the ground, like a black panther, she leaped up to some
worshipper, and halting before him touched his forehead with her
finger, while her long, thin body shook with inaudible laughter.
Then, again, as if shrinking back playfully from her shadow, and
chased by it, in some uncanny game, the witch appeared to us like
a horrid caricature of Dinorah, dancing her mad dance. Suddenly
she straightened herself to her full height, darted to the portico
and crouched before the smoking censer, beating her forehead against
the granite steps. Another jump, and she was quite close to us,
before the head of the monstrous Sivatherium. She knelt down again
and bowed her head to the ground several times, with the sound of
an empty barrel knocked against something hard.
We had hardly the time to spring to our feet and shrink back when
she appeared on the top of the Sivatherium's head, standing there
amongst the horns.
Narayan alone did not stir, and fearlessly looked straight in the
eyes of the frightful sorceress.
But what was this? Who spoke in those deep manly tones? Her lips
were moving, from her breast were issuing those quick, abrupt phrases,
but the voice sounded hollow as if coming from beneath the ground.
"Hush, hush!" whispered Sham Rao, his whole body trembling. "She
is going to prophesy!.... " "She?" incredulously inquired Mr. Y - -.
"This a woman's voice? I don't believe it for a moment. Someone's
uncle must be stowed away somewhere about the place. Not the
fabulous uncle she inherited from, but a real live one!.... "
Sham Rao winced under the irony of this supposition, and cast an
imploring look at the speaker.
"Woe to you! woe to you!" echoed the voice. "Woe to you, children
of the impure Jaya and Vijaya! of the mocking, unbelieving lingerers
round great Shiva's door! Ye, who are cursed by eighty thousand sages!
Woe to you who believe not in the goddess Kali, and you who deny us,
her Seven divine Sisters! Flesh-eating, yellow-legged vultures!
friends of the oppressors of our land! dogs who are not ashamed to
eat from the same trough with the Bellati!" (foreigners).
"It seems to me that your prophetess only foretells the past," said
Mr. Y - -, philosophically putting his hands in his pockets. "I
should say that she is hinting at you, my dear Sham Rao."
"Yes! and at us also," murmured the colonel, who was evidently
beginning to feel uneasy.
As to the unlucky Sham Rao, he broke out in a cold sweat, and tried
to assure us that we were mistaken, that we did not fully understand
her language.
"It is not about you, it is not about you! It is of me she speaks,
because I am in Government service. Oh, she is inexorable!"
"Rakshasas! Asuras!" thundered the voice. "How dare you appear
before us? how dare you to stand on this holy ground in boots made
of a cow's sacred skin? Be cursed for etern - -"
But her curse was not destined to be finished. In an instant the
Hercules-like Narayan had fallen on the Sivatherium, and upset the
whole pile, the skull, the horns and the demoniac Pythia included.
A second more, and we thought we saw the witch flying in the air
towards the portico. A confused vision of a stout, shaven Brahman,
suddenly emerging from under the Sivatherium and instantly
disappearing in the hollow beneath it, flashed before my dilated eyes.
But, alas! after the third second had passed, we all came to the
embarrassing conclusion that, judging from the loud clang of the
door of the cave, the representative of the Seven Sisters had
ignominiously fled. The moment she had disappeared from our
inquisitive eyes to her subterranean domain, we all realized that
the unearthly hollow voice we had heard had nothing supernatural
about it and belonged to the Brahman hidden under the Sivatherium -
to someone's live uncle, as Mr. Y - - had rightly supposed.
- - - - - -
Oh, Narayan!
