The King of the Dark Chamber/Act 10
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Inner Apartments of the Palace. Sudarshana and Surangama
Sudarshana
Go away from me, Surangama! A deadly anger rages within me—I cannot bear anybody—it makes me wild to see you so patient and submissive.
Surangama
Whom are you angry with?
Sudarshana
I do not know; but I wish to see everything destroyed and convulsed in ruin and disaster! I left my place on the throne as the Empress in a moment's time. Did I lose my all to sweep the dust, to sweat and slave in this dismal hole? Why do the torches of mourning not flare up for me all over the world? Why does not the earth quake and tremble? Is my fall but the unobserved dropping of the puny bean-flower? Is it not more like the fall of a glowing star, whose fiery blazon bursts the heavens asunder?
Surangama
A mighty forest inly smokes and smoulders before it bursts into a conflagration: the time has not come yet.
Sudarshana
I have thrown my queen's honour and glory to the dust and winds—but is there no human being who will come out to meet my desolate soul here? Alone—oh, I am fearfully, terribly alone!
Surangama
You are not alone.
Sudarshana
Surangama, I shall not keep anything from you. When he set the palace on fire, I could not be angry with him. A great inward joy set my heart a-flutter all the while. What a stupendous crime! What glorious prowess! It was this courage that made me strong and fired my own spirits. It was this terrible joy that enabled me to leave everything behind me in a moment's time. But is it all my imagination only? Why is there no sign of his coming anywhere?
Surangama
He of whom you are thinking did not set fire to the palace—it is the King of Kanchi who did it.
Sudarshana
Coward! But is it possible? So handsome, so bewitching, and yet no manhood in him! Have I deceived myself for the sake of such a worthless creature? O shame! Fie on me! . . . But, Surangama, don't you think that your King should yet have come to take me back? (Surangama remains silent.) You think I am anxious to go back? Never! Even if the King really came I should not have returned. Not even once did he forbid me to come away, and I found all the doors wide open to let me out! And the stony and dusty road over which I walked—it was nothing to it that a queen was treading on it. It is hard and has no feelings, like your King; the meanest beggar is the same to it as the highest Empress. You are silent! Well, I tell you, your King's behaviour is—mean, brutal, shameful!
Surangama
Every one knows that my King is hard and pitiless—no one has ever been able to move him.
Sudarshana
Why do you, then, call him day and night?
Surangama
May he ever remain hard and relentless like rock—may my tears and prayers never move him! Let my sorrows be ever mine only—and may his glory and victory be for ever!
Sudarshana
Surangama, look! A cloud of dust seems to rise over the eastern horizon across the fields.
Surangama
Yes, I see it.
Sudarshana
Is that not like the banner of a chariot?
Surangama
Indeed, a banner it is.
Sudarshana
Then he is coming. He has come at last!
Surangama
Who is coming?
Sudarshana
Our King—who else? How could he live without me? It is a wonder how he could hold out even for these days.
Surangama
No, no, this cannot be the King.
Sudarshana
"No," indeed! As if you know everything! Your King is hard, stony, pitiless, isn't he? Let us see how hard he can be. I knew from the beginning that he would come—that he would have to rush after me. But remember, Surangama, I never for a single moment asked him to come. You will see how I make your King confess his defeat to me! Just go out, Surangama, and let me know everything. (Surangama goes out.) But shall I go if he comes and asks me to return with him? Certainly not! I will not go! Never!
Enter Surangama
Surangama
It is not the King, my Queen.
Sudarshana
Not the King? Are you quite sure? What! he has not come yet?
Surangama
No, my King never raises so much dust when he comes. Nobody can know when he comes at all.
Sudarshana
Then this is
Surangama
The same: he is coming with the King of Kanchi.
Sudarshana
Do you know his name?
Surangama
His name is Suvarna.
Sudarshana
It is he, then. I thought, "I am lying here like waste refuse and offal, which no one cares even to touch." But my hero is coming now to release me. Did you know Suvarna?
Surangama
When I was at my father's home, in the gambling den
Sudarshana
No, no, I won't hear anything of him from you. He is my own hero, my only salvation. I shall know him without your telling stories about him. But just see, a nice man your King is! He did not care to come to rescue me from even this degradation. You cannot blame me after this. I could not have waited for him all my life here, toiling ignominiously like a bondslave. I shall never have your meekness and submissiveness.