Wings: Tales of the Psychic/Krishnavana, Destroyer of Souls
KRISHNAVANA,
DESTROYER OF SOULS
This is the story of the pale shadow of a forgotten love and of the death which therefrom came to the soul of a man. It is also the story of another man, a man of Hindustan, who took the soul of the first man for the sake of revenge, and squeezed it until it was as dry as a dom-nut and as bitter as a Dead-Sea apple.
But, if the whole truth be told, it is the story of the jest which Allah made of the human heart, when he breathed life into one lump of clay and gave to it blue eyes and a white skin, and then, with a strange wink at the Fallen Angel, breathed life into another lump of clay and gave to it blue-black hair and a brown complexion. {{dhr Krishnavana, a young Hindu of highest Brahman caste, came to England thirty years ago, in the good old days when the word sedition was unknown in Bengal and when even a nervous, overworked Viceroy enjoyed occasional nights untroubled by dreams of massacre and rebellion and the Seven Holy Rivers red with English blood.
He studied jurisprudence in the legendary days, when the dark-skinned Indian students who flashed the sharp colors of their turbans in the gray maze of Lincoln's Inn were apt to be more royalist than the king.
And Krishnavana was of Young-India. He had indeed a written pedigree reaching back to the time when the East was slowly emerging from its chrysalis, while the West was still in the throes of primitive erosion. But he freely acknowledged the power of the white-skinned Helots who had become masters overnight, while Asia was having one of her periodical naps.
And so he plucked with both hands at the fruit of the tree of Western wisdom; he steeped himself in English literature, history and political ideals; he deposed the many-armed, lust-scabbed gods of his ancestors and set up in their place brand-new, neat little idols, labeled Burke, John Stuart Mill, Topinard, and Universal-Brotherhood-Regardless-of-Race, Faith and Color.
He even became an adept at cricket, and the very day on which he made a "century" at the Oval, he gave a tentative tug at the Sacred Thread which was the secret emblem of his caste, and had qualmy thoughts of the gentle Christ, a house in Hempstead, a subscription to the Winning Post, admission to the English Bar, a potential Q. C, and English-born children, a little dark-skinned perhaps, but with the blue eyes of the Master-Beast and a thorough command of Public School slang … the last particular dream due to Miss Agnes Couzens, who loved him and whom he loved.
At least that s what they both claimed. It may have been that it was only the mystery of the Orient in his eyes which captured her, and the mystery of the Occident in hers which captured him. But they were eager to jump over the barrier which the prejudices of a dozen centuries have erected between East and West.
Unfortunately the girl had a brother, Oughtred Couzens, who was cursed with a malignant form of youth. He was a very young man, temporarily domiciled at Christ Church, Oxford, and his three chief deities were High Church, High Toryism and Old Port. He was not a bad sort, but simply one of those young men about whom you may easily produce a false impression if you describe them at all. His education had been the ordinary education of English gentlemen: in other words, he ate well, and he knew things that were information, but he did not know things that were things.
He was positive only about the one fact, that the white race was the race, that Asia had not even a sporting chance, and that men like Tamerlane, Genghis Khan, Akbar, and Aurangzeb were "rum blighters with unpronounceable names."
And so there was a nasty scene when Krishnavana and Agnes mentioned their miscegenating intentions. Agnes's love for the Hindu could not stand up against High Church and Old Port; her brother won, and the Brahman took his medicine.
Only when he was about to turn the handle of the door, he said:
"Where is the religion of robbers; where is the forbearance of a fool; where is the affection of a courtezan; where is the truth of a Christian?"
Couzens, who was very busy with his sister who had fainted, made some remark about crazy Oriental metaphors. But perhaps he would have thought a little differently if he could have heard what the Hindu was saying, over and over again, on his way back to his lodgings. It was a queer exclamation, and it ran:
"I pray God that there is a hell … for the sake of mine enemies, for the peace of my soul."
Couzens should also have considered that the wise man guards against the vengeance of an elephant, a cobra and a Hindu. But Couzens was not a wise man. Also, what does a monkey know of the taste of ginger?
It was not really Couzens's complexional prejudice which infuriated Krishnavana: for if the White does not like the Brown from an esthetic point of view, the Brown replies in the flowery language of the Orient that fairer even than the white is the leper.
Krishnavana was chiefly outraged because Couzens had made gentle remarks about family, mésalliance, suitable marriage, and similar fetishes.
Now the Englishman was the descendant of a knight who had crossed the Channel with William the Conqueror in comparatively recent times … a matter of eight hundred years or so ago … while Krishnavana's father was a Tomara of Delhi, claiming kinship with the flame, and his mother a Rathor of Kanauj, thus tracing her origin back to an indiscretion between the sun and the moon.
And then to be told that Agnes should marry an equal … that's what hurt.
It is easily understood that, when Krishnavana reached his rooms, he solemnly cursed Burke, John Stuart Mill, Topinard, and Universal-Brotherhood-Regardless-of-Race, Color and Creed, that he made a few unparliamentary remarks about Christianity, England, and the white race in general, and prayed long and fervently to Kali, the Mother, the great goddess of destruction.
He nursed no thoughts of killing; for he was of an old race and knew that blood cannot be washed out with blood. Also there is no sweetness in giving death, since the last moment of life is but as a quick, twisting lance-thrust, since the memory of pain is of the body and not of the soul, and since the man who is killed is born again in a child's body, free of wounds and blemishes.
To kill well, you must kill the soul. And the soul of Oughtred Couzens was the soul of the System which had conceived him.
Thus Krishnavana swore calm and terrible revenge against the System, cherishing his hatred as Paricarika cherished her love for Sakka, the powerful god of ruddy color.
And so, when he returned to India, he declared war against England and the Cross.
It was a trial of patience, and knowing that to practice the patience of Job one must have the age of Noah, he nursed the health of his body and worked carefully and soundly.
He went amongst the villages, living on alms, and reciting in return the Abhangs and Tukaram and Namdev, and writing letters for the illiterate. But in every village he left behind him a tiny seed of poison-wheat in the hearts of the peasants.
For he had the strength of words which drives thoughts into brains as the wind drives a thin sheet of flame. The sight of the cold, arrogant Cross made his sword-arm ache, and knowing that a man cannot strangle a nation with the strength of his fingers, he used the strength of his steely, feline mind.
Of course he lied; but he lied in a masterly manner, for he lied like truth. And wherever he wandered, the snake of dissatisfaction and rebellion lifted its flat, ugly head … not striking, but poising its body and measuring its strength for the day when one sudden strike would mean destruction to the sahib-log and humiliation to the Cross.
When he heard of abuse, he exaggerated the tale of it, and when he heard of good, clean reform achieved by the English, he would sneer and ask if a crow can become a swan by bathing in the Ganges. When loyal Hindus argued with him and asked him to treat the foreigners who ruled India, if not with love, then at least with fairness and understanding, he replied that only a fool pats a scorpion with the hand of compassion; and when he heard of young Rajputs enlisting in the regiments of the British, he demanded why people should give poison to the snake.
It has been said that harmful is a crow among birds, a rat in the house, a monkey in the forest, and a Brahman among men. And indeed, the Brahman Krishnavana was harmful to the men and the house of India.
As the sugar-cane has a sweeter taste knot after knot from the top, so his influence grew with each succeeding year, with each succeeding pilgrimage through the broad land of Hind.
Then, after he had acquired local reputation, he went in for religious revival; and if the worship of Kali, the sanguinary goddess of destruction, and the cult of Shivaji-Maharaj, the Mahratta chieftain who in his day had humbled the pride of the alien conqueror, played a conspicuous part in this revival, why … there was nothing in the Indian Criminal Code taking exception to the worship of any particular deity.
Finally, after many years of preparation, he began to preach an aggressive doctrine. And the Government of India said two or three words to the Secret Service, and several well-paid servants of the Crown went on the Brahman's trail.
But they found themselves face to face with an enigma; for although nobody knew the past history of the man, although there was a look in his eyes which courted Third Degree methods, he was found to be very much like a jackfruit: full of juice inside, but very thorny outside. Also there was never a letter found, there was never a conspiracy hatched which pointed directly to him, there was never a plot discovered which compromised him.
And Krishnavana mentioned the magical words "Habeas Corpus," and went on his way, warring against the Cross.
So, when Oughtred Couzens came to India many years later, the Hindu was a power in the land. Oughtred did not recognize him when he met him. Years and a beard and native dress are a wonderful disguise.
Couzens had also changed. After the scab of youth had rubbed itself off in contact with the harsh corners of the world, he was still a baby overtaken by manhood. The place in his soul which had formerly been filled by Omniscience, was now empty except for a residue of diffidence, so that he was easily influenced, affected and swerved.
He had become a missionary after a brief spasm of religion due to the harangue of a North Dakota Evangelist who had swooped eagle-wise on Britain's unprotected shores, had obeyed the call and had gone forth to convert Asia.
His mind was incapable of concise and lucid statements; the fruit of his intelligence could only ripen in a congenial soil of mystery and suggestion, and his soul could only communicate with a strange soul by a sort of wireless psychic telegraphy. And so he was a fine subject for Indian mission work … but not the way he imagined.
Let it finally be understood that the Reverend Oughtred Couzens was a sincere Christian, happy in his faith and happy in his faith alone, but that he prided himself on his broad-mindedness and his willingness to be convinced, and kept therefore in his soul a little reserve corner inoculated with a subconscious doubt of the very creed which meant his happiness and which he had come to preach.
It was good for the peace of India that the two met one evening in a Punjab village. For when the Hindu saw that the black-frocked missionary was Oughtred Couzens and that the recognition was not mutual, he decided to grant a little breathing-space to the Raj, and to busy himself with the particular destiny of the one man who had planted in his heart the seed of his crimson hatred for the Cross.
He took the Englishman's measure, and then he began to lay his plans, securely and smilingly. He knew that with the help of a little patience he would soon be able to sacrifice a writhing, smoking, bloodstained soul on the altar of Kali, the Great Mother.
Seeing that the weakest spot in his enemy s armor was a dormant northern love for the mysteries of Asia, he knew where to introduce the thin end of the wedge.
Couzens was charmed with the gentle, cultured, clever Brahman. He had never before met a man who could argue in such a strangely convincing manner.
And indeed, Krishnavana gave of his best. His speech was a butterfly which rests for a second on a trembling leaf; his sarcasm was a thousand splintering lance-points, and his knowledge of the mysterious roots which are the creeds and the hearts of men, was profound and astounding. His mental strength was a cat in climbing, a deer in running, a snake in twisting, a hawk in pouncing, and a dog in scenting.
And so he got beneath the Englishman's skin, and caused him to delve into the depths of his self-consciousness … and to find them empty. And then, gently and slowly, Krishnavana began to fill up the emptiness in Oughtred's heart with new wisdom, new suggestions, and the sweetly pungent odor of the Eastern mysteries which putrify the brains and plague-spot the hearts of Western men.
It is true that Oughtred fought hard for the old belief which was his happiness, his life, his very reason for existence. But he was as soft clay in a potter's hands.
And so the wedge of the East entered ever more deeply into his heart.
It was Couzens himself who first asked the Brahman about the practiced magic of India, about fakirs, yogis, gurus, and that Sixth Sense of the brown man which the baffled white savant dismisses as auto-suggestion and superstition, so as to save his face.
Krishnavana began by showing him the ordinary tricks of the veranda-fakir: the tricks of the basket, the rope, the mango, and the snake-stone.
Then one day, in a village of the Ahmednager district, he showed him a Sikh guru who came out of his tent, a drawn sword in his hand, and demanded to be allowed to cut off the head of any one who claimed to be a faithful and believing Bakhta.
And when the Sikh shouted "Wahuwah" and two or three disciples, quivering with excitement and drunk with bhang, had their heads cut off, only to be restored to life a minute later, the Indian Episcopal Mission came near to losing a promising missionary.
Later Krishnavana began to initiate the Englishman into the mysteries of the left-handed sects and the Vaishnavite cult. And at night, when Couzens returned to his tent and opened the Bible with the idea of fortifying his wavering soul, he would read in the black-bound book tales of other miracles … similar to the ones he had seen in the afternoon, but weaker, cheaper, more prosaic.
Also there is a difference between the miracles of which you read, and the ones which you see with the eyes of your body, in the clear light of the sun.
It is not the claw of the man-eater, but the sting of the bramra-bee which drives the elephant mad and makes him kill his mahout. It is not the cloud-born hurricane, but the turning and dropping of a small pebble which hurls the avalanche into the valley on its journey of ruin and destruction.
And even thus it was with the soul of the Reverend Oughtred Couzens.
For it was a small, dun-colored turtle which caused his final spiritual downfall, and which later on shriveled his soul—a small, dun-colored turtle, held in the thin, masterful hand of Krishnavana, Hater of the Cross and Destroyer of Souls.
For one evening, when they were talking about the unseen forces of nature, the unseen energy which breeds what the priests call miracles, Krishnavana remarked in a gentle voice:
"An impossible thing should not be spoken; when it happens before the eyes it is seen: a stone swims in the river, an ape sings a Kashmiri love-song."
Then he remarked casually that, thanks to fasting, torturing his body and submitting to the ordeal of fire, Shiva had given to him a certain wisdom which permitted him to cause living things to change as he willed them to, to increase in size, to expand, and then to shrink back to their original shape.
Couzens's revolted Christianity and outraged European common sense made one last, desperate stand. He doubted and sneered in a weak, half-hearted manner. And Krishnavana repeated calmly:
"When the impossible happens before the eyes it is seen," and he proceeded to perform the miracle.
He bought a little land-turtle, one span in length, and he told Couzens that, with the help of certain incantations, he would cause the animal to grow every day for three days by a span; but on the fourth day he would recite another incantation, and then the turtle would decrease by a span every day for three days until, on the morning of the seventh day, it would have returned to its original size.
Krishnavana put the turtle into a wooden cage, he moved his hands in a mysterious manner, and recited in a hollow voice:
"Bhut, pret, pisach, dana,
Chhee mantar, sab nikal jana,
Mane, mane, Shivka khahna … ,"
and the miracle happened as foretold by the Brahman.
Every night the turtle grew, and in the morning it had increased its length by a span, for three days in succession; then it decreased for another three days, until at the end of the week it was again a little animal one span in length.
And this took place although the cage was put underneath the bed in which Oughtred Couzens slept. And there was no explanation for it.
Only Krishnavana had taken the precaution to doctor Couzens's good-night cup of tea with a dose of hemp, to creep into the tent night after night, and to put a different turtle into the cage.
At the end of the week Couzens was a nervous wreck. His old creed was dead, his heart was empty, and he was eager to swallow the new belief, eager to absorb India and in the process become himself absorbed.
And the gentle Brahman pitied and helped him.
He took the empty soul of Oughtred Couzens and filled it with golden peace and happiness, he inoculated it with the ancient wisdom of India, and ever he made a point of dwelling on the fact that it was a little turtle which had worked the final conversion, which had destroyed the pagan belief in the Cross, which had opened to the Englishman the door of Asia's great, mysterious treasure-house. Thus had the many gods of India shown their might in the body of a small animal.
Couzens wondered and believed and worshiped, and even after Krishnavana had left him, he continued more and more to become an integral part of the land in which he lived, believing implicitly in the lessons of the land, and above all things happy in his new belief.
Never again could Christ come back to his soul.
But what of it? He had a new faith, a true faith, a faith which worked miracles, a faith in which happiness and wisdom mated.
And so the Reverend Oughtred Couzens became a Holy Man of Hindustan; he built a little temple near a village, and there, on an altar painted ocher, he worshiped the greatness of Shiva in the shape of a turtle.
Several years passed through the land, and Krishnavana considered it was time to finish the revenge, and to make the promised offer of a living soul to Kali, the Destroying Goddess.
And so, late one evening, Krishnavana walked into the village where the "yogi-sahib," as the natives called him, had his temple. He found him doing bhajan in front of the turtle-image, and there was deep devotion and calm happiness on his face in the yellow-and-pink light of the dying sun.
When he had finished his worship and saw the Brahman, he rushed up to him, with love in his eyes, and took his hands and called him many names of honor and endearment; the East had gone into his blood and his speech, and so he called him a Vast Sea of Excellent Qualities; the Father and Mother of Brahmans, Cows, and Women; the Blood of his Liver, and several other fine things.
Then he turned again to the ocher-colored altar and bowed before the idol, and thanked Krishnavana, saying:
"I owe to you my happiness and my life. You have opened my eyes to the mysteries of this world and of the next. You have given me peace and happiness. And you did it all through the miracle of the turtle … blessed be the Holy Name of Shiva."
And Krishnavana replied:
"Yes, most dear. It was indeed the miracle of the turtle which lifted the veil of your old, foul creed and which gave to you the mantle of truth. It was the miracle of the turtle which filled the yawning emptiness of your heart. Without it you would be but the shriveled husk of an empty, jingling soul."
Here he smiled and looked at Couzens, and then he continued gently:
"I shall now explain to you how the miracle of the turtle was done …"
That night Krishnavana sacrificed on the blood stained altar of Kali, the Mother, the soul of Oughted Couzens, and it was as empty as a dried tinduka fruit, as dry as a dom-nut, and as bitter as a Dead-Sea apple …