Rabindranath Tagore, "The Supreme Night" (1892/ Translated 1918) (Short Story)
Tags: Monsoon Flood / Climate Event, Childhood loves, Calcutta, Zemindars, Adultery, Arranged Marriage
THE SUPREME NIGHT
I used to go to the same dame's school with Surabala and play at
marriage with her. When I paid visits to her house, her mother would
pet me, and setting us side by side would say to herself: 'What a
lovely pair!'
I was a child then, but I could understand her meaning well enough. The
idea became rooted in my mind that I had a special right to Surabala
above that of people in general. So it happened that, in the pride of
ownership, at times I punished and tormented her; and she, too, fagged
for me and bore all my punishments without complaint. The village was
wont to praise her beauty; but in the eyes of a young barbarian like
me that beauty had no glory;--I knew only that Surabala had been
born in her father's house solely to bear my yoke, and that therefore
she was the particular object of my neglect.
My father was the land-steward of the Chaudhuris, a family of
_zemindars_. It was his plan, as soon as I had learnt to write a good
hand, to train me in the work of estate management and secure a rent
collectorship for me somewhere. But in my heart I disliked the
proposal. Nilratan of our village had run away to Calcutta, had
learnt English there, and finally became the _Nazir_[ Superintendant of Bailifs] of the
District Magistrate; _that_ was my life's ideal: I was secretly
determined to be the Head Clerk of the Judge's Court, even if I could
not become the Magistrate's _Nazir_.
I saw that my father always treated these court officers with the
greatest respect. I knew from my childhood that they had to be
propitiated with gifts of fish, vegetables, and even money. For this
reason I had given a seat of high honour in my heart to the court
underlings, even to the bailiffs. These are the gods worshipped in our
Bengal,--a modern miniature edition of the 330 millions of deities
of the Hindu pantheon. For gaining material success, people have
more genuine faith in _them_ than in the good Ganesh, the giver of
success; hence the people now offer to these officers everything
that was formerly Ganesh's due.
Fired by the example of Nilratan, I too seized a suitable opportunity
and ran away to Calcutta. There I first put up in the house of a
village acquaintance, and afterwards got some funds from my father for
my education. Thus I carried on my studies regularly.
In addition, I joined political and benevolent societies. I had no
doubt whatever that it was urgently necessary for me to give my life
suddenly for my country. But I knew not how such a hard task could be
carried out. Also no one showed me the way.
But, nevertheless, my enthusiasm did not abate at all. We country lads
had not learnt to sneer at everything like the precocious boys of
Calcutta, and hence our faith was very strong. The 'leaders' of our
associations delivered speeches, and we went begging for subscriptions
from door to door in the hot blaze of noon without breaking our fast;
or we stood by the roadside distributing hand-bills, or arranged the
chairs and benches in the lecture-hall, and, if anybody whispered
a word against our leader, we got ready to fight him. For these things
the city boys used to laugh at us as provincials.
I had come to Calcutta to be a _Nazir_ or a Head Clerk, but I was
preparing to become a Mazzini or a Garibaldi.
At this time Surabala's father and my father laid their heads together
to unite us in marriage. I had come to Calcutta at the age of fifteen;
Surabala was eight years old then. I was now eighteen, and in my
father's opinion I was almost past the age of marriage. But it was
my secret vow to remain unmarried all my life and to die for my
country; so I told my father that I would not marry before I had
finished my education.
In two or three months I learnt that Surabala had been married to a
pleader named Ram Lochan. I was then busy collecting subscriptions for
raising fallen India, and this news did not seem worth my thought.
I had matriculated, and was about to appear at the Intermediate
Examination, when my father died. I was not alone in the world, but
had to maintain my mother and two sisters. I had therefore to leave
college and look out for employment. After a good deal of exertion
I secured the post of second master in the matriculation school of a
small town in the Noakhali District.
I thought, here is just the work for me! By my advice and inspiration I
shall train up every one of my pupils as a general for future India.
I began to work, and then found that the impending examination was a
more pressing affair than the future of India. The headmaster got angry
whenever I talked of anything outside grammar or algebra. And in a few
months my enthusiasm, too, flagged.
I am no genius. In the quiet of the home I may form vast plans; but
when I enter the field of work, I have to bear the yoke of the plough
on my neck like the Indian bullock, get my tail twisted by my master,
break clods all day, patiently and with bowed head, and then at sunset
have to be satisfied if I can get any cud to chew. Such a creature
has not the spirit to prance and caper.
One of the teachers lived in the school-house, to guard against fires.
As I was a bachelor, this work was thrown on me. I lodged in a thatched
shed close to the large cottage in which the school sat.
The school-house stood at some distance from the inhabited portion of
the town, and beside a big tank. Around it were betel-nut, cocoa-nut,
and _madar_ trees, and very near to the school building two large
ancient _nim_ trees grew close together, and cast a cool shade around.
One thing I have forgotten to mention, and indeed I had not so long
considered it worth mentioning. The local Government pleader, Ram
Lochan Ray, lived near our school. I also knew that his wife--my early
playmate, Surabala--lived with him.
I got acquainted with Ram Lochan Babu. I cannot say whether he knew
that I had known Surabala in childhood. I did not think fit to mention
the fact at my first introduction to him. Indeed, I did not clearly
remember that Surabala had been ever linked with my life in any way.
One holiday I paid a visit to Ram Lochan Babu. The subject of our
conversation has gone out of my mind; probably it was the unhappy
condition of present-day India. Not that he was very much concerned
or heart-broken over the matter; but the subject was such that one
could freely pour forth one's sentimental sorrow over it for an hour
or two while puffing at one's _hooka_.
While thus engaged, I heard in a side-room the softest possible jingle
of bracelets, crackle of dress, and footfall; and I felt certain that
two curious eyes were watching me through a small opening of the window.
All at once there flashed upon my memory a pair of eyes,--a pair of
large eyes, beaming with trust, simplicity, and girlhood's love,--black
pupils,--thick dark eyelashes,--a calm fixed gaze. Suddenly some
unseen force squeezed my heart in an iron grip, and it throbbed with
intense pain.
I returned to my house, but the pain clung to me. Whether I read,
wrote, or did any other work, I could not shake that weight off my
heart; a heavy load seemed to be always swinging from my heart-strings.
In the evening, calming myself a little, I began to reflect: 'What
ails me?' From within came the question: 'Where is _your_ Surabala
now?' I replied: 'I gave her up of my free will. Surely I did not
expect her to wait for me for ever.'
But something kept saying: '_Then_ you could have got her merely for
the asking. _Now_ you have not the right to look at her even once,
do what you will. That Surabala of your boyhood may come very close to
you; you may hear the jingle of her bracelets; you may breathe the air
embalmed by the essence of her hair,--but there will always be a wall
between you two.'
I answered: 'Be it so. What is Surabala to me?'
My heart rejoined: 'To-day Surabala is nobody to you. But what might
she not have been to you?'
Ah! that's true. _What_ might she not have been to me? Dearest to me
of all things, closer to me than the world besides, the sharer of all
my life's joys and sorrows,--she might have been. And now, she is so
distant, so much of a stranger, that to look on her is forbidden,
to talk with her is improper, and to think of her is a sin!--while
this Ram Lochan, coming suddenly from nowhere, has muttered a few set
religious texts, and in one swoop has carried off Surabala from the
rest of mankind!
I have not come to preach a new ethical code, or to revolutionise
society; I have no wish to tear asunder domestic ties. I am only
expressing the exact working of my mind, though it may not be
reasonable. I could not by any means banish from my mind the sense
that Surabala, reigning there within shelter of Ram Lochan's home,
was mine far more than his. The thought was, I admit, unreasonable
and improper,--but it was not unnatural.
Thereafter I could not set my mind to any kind of work. At noon when
the boys in my class hummed, when Nature outside simmered in the sun,
when the sweet scent of the _nim_ blossoms entered the room on the
tepid breeze, I then wished,--I know not what I wished for; but this
I can say, that I did not wish to pass all my life in correcting the
grammar exercises of those future hopes of India.
When school was over, I could not bear to live in my large lonely
house; and yet, if any one paid me a visit, it bored me. In the
gloaming as I sat by the tank and listened to the meaningless breeze
sighing through the betel- and cocoa-nut palms, I used to muse that
human society is a web of mistakes; nobody has the sense to do the
right thing at the right time, and when the chance is gone we break
our hearts over vain longings.
I could have married Surabala and lived happily. But I must be a
Garibaldi,--and I ended by becoming the second master of a village
school! And pleader Ram Lochan Ray, who had no special call to be
Surabala's husband,--to whom, before his marriage, Surabala was no
wise different from a hundred other maidens,--has very quietly married
her, and is earning lots of money as Government pleader; when his
dinner is badly cooked he scolds Surabala, and when he is in good
humour he gives her a bangle! He is sleek and fat, tidily dressed,
free from every kind of worry; _he_ never passes his evenings by the
tank gazing at the stars and sighing.
Ram Lochan was called away from our town for a few days by a big case
elsewhere. Surabala in her house was as lonely as I was in my school
building.
I remember it was a Monday. The sky was overcast with clouds from the
morning. It began to drizzle at ten o'clock. At the aspect of the
heavens our headmaster closed the school early. All day the black
detached clouds began to run about in the sky as if making ready for
some grand display. Next day, towards afternoon, the rain descended
in torrents, accompanied by storm. As the night advanced the fury of
wind and water increased. At first the wind was easterly; gradually
it veered, and blew towards the south and south-west.
It was idle to try to sleep on such a night. I remembered that in this
terrible weather Surabala was alone in her house. Our school was much
more strongly built than her bungalow. Often and often did I plan to
invite her to the school-house, while I meant to pass the night alone
by the tank. But I could not summon up courage for it.
When it was half-past one in the morning, the roar of the tidal wave
was suddenly heard,--the sea was rushing on us! I left my room and ran
towards Surabala's house. In the way stood one embankment of our tank,
and as I was wading to it the flood already reached my knees. When I
mounted the bank, a second wave broke on it. The highest part of the
bank was more than seventeen feet above the plain.
As I climbed up the bank, another person reached it from the opposite
side. Who she was, every fibre of my body knew at once, and my whole
soul was thrilled with the consciousness. I had no doubt that she, too,
had recognised me.
On an island some three yards in area stood we two; all else was
covered with water.
It was a time of cataclysm; the stars had been blotted out of the
sky; all the lights of the earth had been darkened; there would have
been no harm if we had held converse _then_. But we could not bring
ourselves to utter a word; neither of us made even a formal inquiry
after the other's health. Only we stood gazing at the darkness. At our
feet swirled the dense, black, wild, roaring torrent of death.
To-day Surabala has come to _my_ side, leaving the whole world. To-day
she has none besides _me_. In our far-off childhood this Surabala
had come from some dark primeval realm of mystery, from a life in
another orb, and stood by my side on this luminous peopled earth; and
to-day, after a wide span of time, she has left that earth, so full
of light and human beings, to stand alone by _my_ side amidst this
terrible desolate gloom of Nature's death-convulsion. The stream of
birth had flung that tender bud before me, and the flood of death had
wafted the same flower, now in full bloom, to _me_ and to none else.
One more wave and we shall be swept away from this extreme point of the
earth, torn from the stalks on which we now sit apart, and made one
in death.
May that wave never come! May Surabala live long and happily, girt
round by husband and children, household and kinsfolk! This one night,
standing on the brink of Nature's destruction, I have tasted eternal
bliss.
The night wore out, the tempest ceased, the flood abated; without a
word spoken, Surabala went back to her house, and I, too, returned to
my shed without having uttered a word.
I reflected: True, I have become no _Nazir_ or Head Clerk, nor a
Garibaldi; I am only the second master of a beggarly school. But one
night had for its brief space beamed upon my whole life's course.
That one night, out of all the days and nights of my allotted span,
has been the supreme glory of my humble existence.
This page has paths:
- Short Stories by Rabindranath Tagore Amardeep Singh