“Oh, it is possible,” they all answered, “but none of
us have been there. Besides, why should we go? It cannot
er he has flown again since then to the
,” at once came the answer from him
f the
. They wound a chain about the
ingly
,
be more beautiful anywhere than here. Several of the
others, to be sure, have been there, but they have never
flown there again.”
“Why not?”
His white‐robed visitor pointed towards the pond:
“Do you see the red figure, almost at the other
bank? He was there once, though it is long, long ago. Shall
we ask him wheth
shores of the Gangā?”
“Never again
o
red robe.
“And why not?”
“Fly there yourself and bring back the answer.”
“Shall we? Together with you I might do it.”
“I should like to go — but not now.”
Forth from a neighbouring grove there floated a
train of happy figures
meadow shrubbery and, while they extended the chain,
the figure at the end, a light blue one, seized the hand of
the white‐robe. She stretched out her other hand invit
to Kāmanīta.
He thanked her smilingly, but gently shook his
head.
“I would prefer to be a spectator still.”
“Yes, better rest and awaken. For the present,
farewell.” And, gently led away by the light blue, she
floated thence in the airy roundelay.
The others also, with kind and cheerful greetings
moved away so that he might have quietude in which to
collect himself.
190
~ 24 ~
T
HE CORAL TREE
K
ĀMANĪTA FOLLOWED THEM long with his eyes
and wondered. And then he wondered at his wonder.
*
*
*
“How does it happen that everything here seems so
strange to me? If I belong to this place, why doesn’t every‐
thing appear perfectly natural? But every new thing I see is
a puzzle and fills me with astonishment. For example, this
fragrance that now floats past me so suddenly? How
absolutely different it is from all other flower scents here
— much fuller and more powerful, attracting and disquiet‐
ing at the same time. Where can it come from? But where
do I myself come from? It seems to me as though I was,
only a short time ago, a mere nothing. Or did I have an
existence? Only not here? If so, where? And how have I
come here?”
While he revolved these questions in his mind, his
body had risen up from the meadow, without his perceiv‐
ing it, and he was already floating onward — though not
in a direction taken by any of the others. He made his way
upwards towards a depression in the crest of the hill. As
he passed over it he was greeted by a yet more powerful
breath of that new and strange perfume.
Kāmanīta flew onward. Beyond the hill the
193
neighbourhood lost something of
charm. The show of
flowers was scantier, the shrubbery darker, the groves
more dense, the rocks more forbidding and higher. Herds
of gazelles grazed there, but only in a few solitary instances
was one of the Blessèd to be seen.
The valley became narrower and ended in a cleft,
and here the perfume grew yet stronger. Ever more rapid
became his flight; ever more naked, steep and high did
the rocky walls close around him until an opening was no
longer to be seen.
Then the ravine made a couple of sharp turns and
opened suddenly.
Round about Kāmanīta extended a deep, pit‐like
valley shut in by towering, deep green malachite rocks
which seemed to reach the heavens. In the midst of the
valley stood the wonder‐tree. Trunk and branches were of
smooth, red coral; slightly more yellow was the red of the
crisp foliage amid which blossoms of a deep crimson
glowed and burned.
Over the pinnacles of the rocks and the summit of
the tree rose the deep blue sky in which not a single cloud
was to be seen. Nor did the music of the gandharvas
penetrate in any appreciable degree to this spot — what
still trembled in the air seemed to be but a memory of
melodies heard in the long past.
There were but three colours to be seen in the
valley: the cerulean blue of the heavens, the malachite
green of the rocks, the coral red of the tree. And only one
perfume — that mysterious fragrance, so unlike all others,
of the crimson flowers which had led Kāmanīta there.
Almost immediately the wonderful nature of that
perfume began to show itself.
As Kāmanīta inhaled it here, in the dense form in
which it filled the whole basin, his consciousness became
suddenly brightened. It overflowed and broke through the
its
194