THE HUNGRY

STONES
My kinsman and myself were returning to Calcutta from our Puja trip when we met
the man in a train. From his dress and bearing we took him at first for an up-country
Mahomedan, but we were puzzled as we heard him talk. He discoursed upon all
subjects so confidently that you might think the Disposer of All Things consulted him
at all times in all that He did. Hitherto we had been perfectly happy, as we did not
know that secret and unheard-of forces were at work, that the Russians had advanced
close to us, that the English had deep and secret policies, that confusion among the
native chiefs had come to a head. But our newly-acquired friend said with a sly smile:
"There happen more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are reported in your
newspapers." As we had never stirred out of our homes before, the demeanour of the
man struck us dumb with wonder. Be the topic ever so trivial, he would quote science,
or comment on the Vedas, or repeat quatrains from some Persian poet; and as we had
no pretence to a knowledge of science or the Vedas or Persian, our admiration for him
went on increasing, and my kinsman, a theosophist, was firmly convinced that our
fellow-passenger must have been supernaturally inspired by some strange
"magnetism" or "occult power," by an "astral body" or something of that kind. He
listened to the tritest saying that fell from the lips of our extraordinary companion
with devotional rapture, and secretly took down notes of his conversation. I fancy that
the extraordinary man saw this, and was a little pleased with it.
When the train reached the junction, we assembled in the waiting room for the
connection. It was then 10 P.M., and as the train, we heard, was likely to be very late,
owing to something wrong in the lines, I spread my bed on the table and was about to
lie down for a comfortable doze, when the extraordinary person deliberately set about
spinning the following yarn. Of course, I could get no sleep that night.
When, owing to a disagreement about some questions of administrative policy, I
threw up my post at Junagarh, and entered the service of the Nizam of Hydria, they
appointed me at once, as a strong young man, collector of cotton duties at Barich.
Barich is a lovely place. The Susta "chatters over stony ways and babbles on the
pebbles," tripping, like a skilful dancing girl, in through the woods below the lonely
hills. A flight of 150 steps rises from the river, and above that flight, on the river's
brim and at the foot of the hills, there stands a solitary marble palace. Around it there
is no habitation of man—the village and the cotton mart of Barich being far off.
About 250 years ago the Emperor Mahmud Shah II. had built this lonely palace for
his pleasure and luxury. In his days jets of rose-water spurted from its fountains, and
on the cold marble floors of its spray-cooled rooms young Persian damsels would sit,
their hair dishevelled before bathing, and, splashing their soft naked feet in the clear
water of the reservoirs, would sing, to the tune of the guitar, the ghazals of their
vineyards.
The fountains play no longer; the songs have ceased; no longer do snow-white feet
step gracefully on the snowy marble. It is but the vast and solitary quarters of cess-
collectors like us, men oppressed with solitude and deprived of the society of women.
Now, Karim Khan, the old clerk of my office, warned me repeatedly not to take up
my abode there. "Pass the day there, if you like," said he, "but never stay the night." I
passed it off with a light laugh. The servants said that they would work till dark and
go away at night. I gave my ready assent. The house had such a bad name that even
thieves would not venture near it after dark.
At first the solitude of the deserted palace weighed upon me like a nightmare. I
would stay out, and work hard as long as possible, then return home at night jaded and
tired, go to bed and fall asleep.
Before a week had passed, the place began to exert a weird fascination upon me. It
is difficult to describe or to induce people to believe; but I felt as if the whole house
was like a living organism slowly and imperceptibly digesting me by the action of
some stupefying gastric juice.
Perhaps the process had begun as soon as I set my foot in the house, but I distinctly
remember the day on which I first was conscious of it.
It was the beginning of summer, and the market being dull I had no work to do. A
little before sunset I was sitting in an arm-chair near the water's edge below the steps.
The Susta had shrunk and sunk low; a broad patch of sand on the other side glowed
with the hues of evening; on this side the pebbles at the bottom of the clear shallow
waters were glistening. There was not a breath of wind anywhere, and the still air was
laden with an oppressive scent from the spicy shrubs growing on the hills close by.
As the sun sank behind the hill-tops a long dark curtain fell upon the stage of day,
and the intervening hills cut short the time in which light and shade mingle at sunset. I
thought of going out for a ride, and was about to get up when I heard a footfall on the
steps behind. I looked back, but there was no one.
As I sat down again, thinking it to be an illusion, I heard many footfalls, as if a large
number of persons were rushing down the steps. A strange thrill of delight, slightly
tinged with fear, passed through my frame, and though there was not a figure before
my eyes, methought I saw a bevy of joyous maidens coming down the steps to bathe
in the Susta in that summer evening. Not a sound was in the valley, in the river, or in
the palace, to break the silence, but I distinctly heard the maidens' gay and mirthful
laugh, like the gurgle of a spring gushing forth in a hundred cascades, as they ran past
me, in quick playful pursuit of each other, towards the river, without noticing me at
all. As they were invisible to me, so I was, as it were, invisible to them. The river was
perfectly calm, but I felt that its still, shallow, and clear waters were stirred suddenly
by the splash of many an arm jingling with bracelets, that the girls laughed and dashed
and spattered water at one another, that the feet of the fair swimmers tossed the tiny
waves up in showers of pearl.
I felt a thrill at my heart—I cannot say whether the excitement was due to fear or
delight or curiosity. I had a strong desire to see them more clearly, but naught was
visible before me; I thought I could catch all that they said if I only strained my ears;
but however hard I strained them, I heard nothing but the chirping of the cicadas in
the woods. It seemed as if a dark curtain of 250 years was hanging before me, and I
would fain lift a corner of it tremblingly and peer through, though the assembly on the
other side was completely enveloped in darkness.
The oppressive closeness of the evening was broken by a sudden gust of wind, and
the still surface of the Suista rippled and curled like the hair of a nymph, and from the
woods wrapt in the evening gloom there came forth a simultaneous murmur, as
though they were awakening from a black dream. Call it reality or dream, the
momentary glimpse of that invisible mirage reflected from a far-off world, 250 years
old, vanished in a flash. The mystic forms that brushed past me with their quick
unbodied steps, and loud, voiceless laughter, and threw themselves into the river, did
not go back wringing their dripping robes as they went. Like fragrance wafted away
by the wind they were dispersed by a single breath of the spring.
Then I was filled with a lively fear that it was the Muse that had taken advantage of
my solitude and possessed me—the witch had evidently come to ruin a poor devil like
myself making a living by collecting cotton duties. I decided to have a good
dinner—it is the empty stomach that all sorts of incurable diseases find an easy prey. I
sent for my cook and gave orders for a rich, sumptuous moghlai dinner, redolent of
spices and ghi.
Next morning the whole affair appeared a queer fantasy. With a light heart I put on
a sola hat like the sahebs, and drove out to my work. I was to have written my
quarterly report that day, and expected to return late; but before it was dark I was
strangely drawn to my house—by what I could not say—I felt they were all waiting,
and that I should delay no longer. Leaving my report unfinished I rose, put on my sola
hat, and startling the dark, shady, desolate path with the rattle of my carriage, I
reached the vast silent palace standing on the gloomy skirts of the hills.
On the first floor the stairs led to a very spacious hall, its roof stretching wide over
ornamental arches resting on three rows of massive pillars, and groaning day and
night under the weight of its own intense solitude. The day had just closed, and the
lamps had not yet been lighted. As I pushed the door open a great bustle seemed to
follow within, as if a throng of people had broken up in confusion, and rushed out
through the doors and windows and corridors and verandas and rooms, to make its
hurried escape.
As I saw no one I stood bewildered, my hair on end in a kind of ecstatic delight, and
a faint scent of attar and unguents almost effected by age lingered in my nostrils.
Standing in the darkness of that vast desolate hall between the rows of those ancient
pillars, I could hear the gurgle of fountains plashing on the marble floor, a strange
tune on the guitar, the jingle of ornaments and the tinkle of anklets, the clang of bells
tolling the hours, the distant note of nahabat, the din of the crystal pendants of
chandeliers shaken by the breeze, the song of bulbuls from the cages in the corridors,
the cackle of storks in the gardens, all creating round me a strange unearthly music.
Then I came under such a spell that this intangible, inaccessible, unearthly vision
appeared to be the only reality in the world—and all else a mere dream. That I, that is
to say, Srijut So-and-so, the eldest son of So-and-so of blessed memory, should be
drawing a monthly salary of Rs. 450 by the discharge of my duties as collector of
cotton duties, and driving in my dog-cart to my office every day in a short coat and
soia hat, appeared to me to be such an astonishingly ludicrous illusion that I burst into
a horse-laugh, as I stood in the gloom of that vast silent hall.
At that moment my servant entered with a lighted kerosene lamp in his hand. I do
not know whether he thought me mad, but it came back to me at once that I was in
very deed Srijut So-and-so, son of So-and-so of blessed memory, and that, while our
poets, great and small, alone could say whether inside of or outside the earth there was
a region where unseen fountains perpetually played and fairy guitars, struck by
invisible fingers, sent forth an eternal harmony, this at any rate was certain, that I
collected duties at the cotton market at Banch, and earned thereby Rs. 450 per
mensem as my salary. I laughed in great glee at my curious illusion, as I sat over the
newspaper at my camp-table, lighted by the kerosene lamp.
After I had finished my paper and eaten my moghlai dinner, I put out the lamp, and
lay down on my bed in a small side-room. Through the open window a radiant star,
high above the Avalli hills skirted by the darkness of their woods, was gazing intently
from millions and millions of miles away in the sky at Mr. Collector lying on a
humble camp-bedstead. I wondered and felt amused at the idea, and do not knew
when I fell asleep or how long I slept; but I suddenly awoke with a start, though I
heard no sound and saw no intruder—only the steady bright star on the hilltop had set,
and the dim light of the new moon was stealthily entering the room through the open
window, as if ashamed of its intrusion.
I saw nobody, but felt as if some one was gently pushing me. As I awoke she said
not a word, but beckoned me with her five fingers bedecked with rings to follow her
cautiously. I got up noiselessly, and, though not a soul save myself was there in the
countless apartments of that deserted palace with its slumbering sounds and waiting
echoes, I feared at every step lest any one should wake up. Most of the rooms of the
palace were always kept closed, and I had never entered them.
I followed breathless and with silent steps my invisible guide—I cannot now say
where. What endless dark and narrow passages, what long corridors, what silent and
solemn audience-chambers and close secret cells I crossed!
 Though I could not see my fair guide, her form was not invisible to my mind's
eye,—an Arab girl, her arms, hard and smooth as marble, visible through her loose
sleeves, a thin veil falling on her face from the fringe of her cap, and a curved dagger
at her waist! Methought that one of the thousand and one Arabian Nights had been
wafted to me from the world of romance, and that at the dead of night I was wending
my way through the dark narrow alleys of slumbering Bagdad to a trysting-place
fraught with peril.
At last my fair guide stopped abruptly before a deep blue screen, and seemed to
point to something below. There was nothing there, but a sudden dread froze the
blood in my heart-methought I saw there on the floor at the foot of the screen a
terrible negro eunuch dressed in rich brocade, sitting and dozing with outstretched
legs, with a naked sword on his lap. My fair guide lightly tripped over his legs and
held up a fringe of the screen. I could catch a glimpse of a part of the room spread
with a Persian carpet—some one was sitting inside on a bed—I could not see her, but
only caught a glimpse of two exquisite feet in gold-embroidered slippers, hanging out
from loose saffron-coloured paijamas and placed idly on the orange-coloured velvet
carpet. On one side there was a bluish crystal tray on which a few apples, pears,
oranges, and bunches of grapes in plenty, two small cups and a gold-tinted decanter
were evidently waiting the guest. A fragrant intoxicating vapour, issuing from a
strange sort of incense that burned within, almost overpowered my senses.
As with trembling heart I made an attempt to step across the outstretched legs of the
eunuch, he woke up suddenly with a start, and the sword fell from his lap with a sharp
clang on the marble floor. A terrific scream made me jump, and I saw I was sitting on
that camp-bedstead of mine sweating heavily; and the crescent moon looked pale in
the morning light like a weary sleepless patient at dawn; and our crazy Meher Ali was
crying out, as is his daily custom, "Stand back! Stand back!!" while he went along the
lonely road.
Such was the abrupt close of one of my Arabian Nights; but there were yet a
thousand nights left.
Then followed a great discord between my days and nights. During the day I would
go to my work worn and tired, cursing the bewitching night and her empty dreams,
but as night came my daily life with its bonds and shackles of work would appear a
petty, false, ludicrous vanity.
After nightfall I was caught and overwhelmed in the snare of a strange intoxication,
I would then be transformed into some unknown personage of a bygone age, playing
my part in unwritten history; and my short English coat and tight breeches did not suit
me in the least. With a red velvet cap on my head, loose paijamas, an embroidered
vest, a long flowing silk gown, and coloured handkerchiefs scented with attar, I would
complete my elaborate toilet, sit on a high-cushioned chair, and replace my cigarette
with a many-coiled narghileh filled with rose-water, as if in eager expectation of a
strange meeting with the beloved one.
I have no power to describe the marvellous incidents that unfolded themselves, as
the gloom of the night deepened. I felt as if in the curious apartments of that vast
edifice the fragments of a beautiful story, which I could follow for some distance, but
of which I could never see the end, flew about in a sudden gust of the vernal breeze.
And all the same I would wander from room to room in pursuit of them the whole
night long.
Amid the eddy of these dream-fragments, amid the smell of henna and the twanging
of the guitar, amid the waves of air charged with fragrant spray, I would catch like a
flash of lightning the momentary glimpse of a fair damsel. She it was who had
saffron-coloured paijamas, white ruddy soft feet in gold-embroidered slippers with
curved toes, a close-fitting bodice wrought with gold, a red cap, from which a golden
frill fell on her snowy brow and cheeks.
She had maddened me. In pursuit of her I wandered from room to room, from path
to path among the bewildering maze of alleys in the enchanted dreamland of the
nether world of sleep.
Sometimes in the evening, while arraying myself carefully as a prince of the blood-
royal before a large mirror, with a candle burning on either side, I would see a sudden
reflection of the Persian beauty by the side of my own. A swift turn of her neck, a
quick eager glance of intense passion and pain glowing in her large dark eyes, just a
suspicion of speech on her dainty red lips, her figure, fair and slim crowned with
youth like a blossoming creeper, quickly uplifted in her graceful tilting gait, a
dazzling flash of pain and craving and ecstasy, a smile and a glance and a blaze of
jewels and silk, and she melted away. A wild glist of wind, laden with all the
fragrance of hills and woods, would put out my light, and I would fling aside my dress
and lie down on my bed, my eyes closed and my body thrilling with delight, and there
around me in the breeze, amid all the perfume of the woods and hills, floated through
the silent gloom many a caress and many a kiss and many a tender touch of hands, and
gentle murmurs in my ears, and fragrant breaths on my brow; or a sweetly-perfumed
kerchief was wafted again and again on my cheeks. Then slowly a mysterious serpent
would twist her stupefying coils about me; and heaving a heavy sigh, I would lapse
into insensibility, and then into a profound slumber.
One evening I decided to go out on my horse—I do not know who implored me to
stay-but I would listen to no entreaties that day. My English hat and coat were resting
on a rack, and I was about to take them down when a sudden whirlwind, crested with
the sands of the Susta and the dead leaves of the Avalli hills, caught them up, and
whirled them round and round, while a loud peal of merry laughter rose higher and
higher, striking all the chords of mirth till it died away in the land of sunset.
 I could not go out for my ride, and the next day I gave up my queer English coat
and hat for good.
That day again at dead of night I heard the stifled heart-breaking sobs of some
one—as if below the bed, below the floor, below the stony foundation of that gigantic
palace, from the depths of a dark damp grave, a voice piteously cried and implored
me: "Oh, rescue me! Break through these doors of hard illusion, deathlike slumber
and fruitless dreams, place by your side on the saddle, press me to your heart, and,
riding through hills and woods and across the river, take me to the warm radiance of
your sunny rooms above!"
Who am I? Oh, how can I rescue thee? What drowning beauty, what incarnate
passion shall I drag to the shore from this wild eddy of dreams? O lovely ethereal
apparition! Where didst thou flourish and when? By what cool spring, under the shade
of what date-groves, wast thou born—in the lap of what homeless wanderer in the
desert? What Bedouin snatched thee from thy mother's arms, an opening bud plucked
from a wild creeper, placed thee on a horse swift as lightning, crossed the burning
sands, and took thee to the slave-market of what royal city? And there, what officer of
the Badshah, seeing the glory of thy bashful blossoming youth, paid for thee in gold,
placed thee in a golden palanquin, and offered thee as a present for the seraglio of his
master? And O, the history of that place! The music of the sareng, the jingle of
anklets, the occasional flash of daggers and the glowing wine of Shiraz poison, and
the piercing flashing glance! What infinite grandeur, what endless servitude!
The slave-girls to thy right and left waved the chamar as diamonds flashed from
their bracelets; the Badshah, the king of kings, fell on his knees at thy snowy feet in
bejewelled shoes, and outside the terrible Abyssinian eunuch, looking like a
messenger of death, but clothed like an angel, stood with a naked sword in his hand!
Then, O, thou flower of the desert, swept away by the blood-stained dazzling ocean of
grandeur, with its foam of jealousy, its rocks and shoals of intrigue, on what shore of
cruel death wast thou cast, or in what other land more splendid and more cruel?
Suddenly at this moment that crazy Meher Ali screamed out: "Stand back! Stand
back!! All is false! All is false!!" I opened my eyes and saw that it was already light.
My chaprasi came and handed me my letters, and the cook waited with a salam for my
orders.
I said; "No, I can stay here no longer." That very day I packed up, and moved to my
office. Old Karim Khan smiled a little as he saw me. I felt nettled, but said nothing,
and fell to my work.
As evening approached I grew absent-minded; I felt as if I had an appointment to
keep; and the work of examining the cotton accounts seemed wholly useless; even the
Nizamat of the Nizam did not appear to be of much worth. Whatever belonged to the
present, whatever was moving and acting and working for bread seemed trivial,
meaningless, and contemptible.
 I threw my pen down, closed my ledgers, got into my dog-cart, and drove away. I
noticed that it stopped of itself at the gate of the marble palace just at the hour of
twilight. With quick steps I climbed the stairs, and entered the room.
A heavy silence was reigning within. The dark rooms were looking sullen as if they
had taken offence. My heart was full of contrition, but there was no one to whom I
could lay it bare, or of whom I could ask forgiveness. I wandered about the dark
rooms with a vacant mind. I wished I had a guitar to which I could sing to the
unknown: "O fire, the poor moth that made a vain effort to fly away has come back to
thee! Forgive it but this once, burn its wings and consume it in thy flame!"
Suddenly two tear-drops fell from overhead on my brow. Dark masses of clouds
overcast the top of the Avalli hills that day. The gloomy woods and the sooty waters
of the Susta were waiting in terrible suspense and in an ominous calm. Suddenly land,
water, and sky shivered, and a wild tempest-blast rushed howling through the distant
pathless woods, showing its lightning-teeth like a raving maniac who had broken his
chains. The desolate halls of the palace banged their doors, and moaned in the
bitterness of anguish.
The servants were all in the office, and there was no one to light the lamps. The
night was cloudy and moonless. In the dense gloom within I could distinctly feel that
a woman was lying on her face on the carpet below the bed—clasping and tearing her
long dishevelled hair with desperate fingers. Blood was tricking down her fair brow,
and she was now laughing a hard, harsh, mirthless laugh, now bursting into violent
wringing sobs, now rending her bodice and striking at her bare bosom, as the wind
roared in through the open window, and the rain poured in torrents and soaked her
through and through.
All night there was no cessation of the storm or of the passionate cry. I wandered
from room to room in the dark, with unavailing sorrow. Whom could I console when
no one was by? Whose was this intense agony of sorrow? Whence arose this
inconsolable grief?
And the mad man cried out: "Stand back! Stand back!! All is false! All is false!!"
I saw that the day had dawned, and Meher Ali was going round and round the
palace with his usual cry in that dreadful weather. Suddenly it came to me that
perhaps he also had once lived in that house, and that, though he had gone mad, he
came there every day, and went round and round, fascinated by the weird spell cast by
the marble demon.
Despite the storm and rain I ran to him and asked: "Ho, Meher Ali, what is false?"
The man answered nothing, but pushing me aside went round and round with his
frantic cry, like a bird flying fascinated about the jaws of a snake, and made a
desperate effort to warn himself by repeating: "Stand back! Stand back!! All is false!
All is false!!"
 I ran like a mad man through the pelting rain to my office, and asked Karim Khan:
"Tell me the meaning of all this!"
What I gathered from that old man was this: That at one time countless unrequited
passions and unsatisfied longings and lurid flames of wild blazing pleasure raged
within that palace, and that the curse of all the heart-aches and blasted hopes had
made its every stone thirsty and hungry, eager to swallow up like a famished ogress
any living man who might chance to approach. Not one of those who lived there for
three consecutive nights could escape these cruel jaws, save Meher Ali, who had
escaped at the cost of his reason.
I asked: "Is there no means whatever of my release?" The old man said: "There is
only one means, and that is very difficult. I will tell you what it is, but first you must
hear the history of a young Persian girl who once lived in that pleasure-dome. A
stranger or a more bitterly heart-rending tragedy was never enacted on this earth."
Just at this moment the coolies announced that the train was coming. So soon? We
hurriedly packed up our luggage, as the tram steamed in. An English gentleman,
apparently just aroused from slumber, was looking out of a first-class carriage
endeavouring to read the name of the station. As soon as he caught sight of our
fellow-passenger, he cried, "Hallo," and took him into his own compartment. As we
got into a second-class carriage, we had no chance of finding out who the man was
nor what was the end of his story.
I said; "The man evidently took us for fools and imposed upon us out of fun. The
story is pure fabrication from start to finish." The discussion that followed ended in a
lifelong rupture between my theosophist kinsman and myself.