Short Fiction - Vladimir Korolenko (easy books to read in english txt) 📗

This was caused by the appearance of the sage Purana. Exactly like Darnu he walked up to the temple, read the inscription above the entrance, and then going in, began to read the figures on the walls. The wise Purana was very unlike his stern companion. He was kindly and had a round face. A cross-section of his trunk would have formed a circle, his pleasant eyes sparkled, and his lips wore a smile. In his wisdom he was never obstinate like Darnu, and he sought blessed peace far more zealously than he did freedom.

Walking around the temple, he came to the recess, reverenced the deity, and then, with a glance at the brook and the fig tree, he said:

“Here is a deity with a pleasant smile, and there is a stream of fresh water and a fig-tree. What more does a man need for pleasant contemplation? Yes, and there’s Darnu. He is so blessed that the birds are building their nests upon him.⁠ ⁠…”

The appearance of his wise friend was not especially joyous, but Purana, gazing at him reverently, said to himself:

“There’s no doubt he’s blessed; but he always loved too stern methods of contemplation. I do not aspire to the higher stages of blessedness, but I hope to tell the dwellers upon earth what I see on the lower planes.”

Then after enjoying the water and the juicy fruit, he sat down comfortably not far from Darnu, and he too prepared for contemplation in the proper way: that is, by baring his abdomen and gazing at it as the other sage had done.

So passed a time, more slowly than with Darnu, for the kindly Purana often interrupted his contemplation to enjoy the water and the juicy fruit. Finally out of the navel of the second wise man sprang a bamboo trunk and this attained a height of fifty joints, the number of the years of his life. On the top again sat “Necessity,” but in his semiconscious state she seemed to him to smile pleasantly and he replied in the same way.

“Who are you, kind deity?” he asked.

“I am Necessity, who has governed the fifty years of your life. All that you have done, you did not do, but I did them, for you are but a leaf swept along by the stream and I am the mistress of every movement.”

“Blessed art thou,” said Purana. “I see that I have not come to you in vain. Continue in the future to execute your tasks for yourself and me and I will watch for you in pleasant contemplation.”

He lost himself in sleep with a happy smile on his lips. So he continued his pleasant contemplation, from time to time filling his gourd with water or picking up fruit which had fallen to the ground at his feet. Each time he stirred with less and less pleasure, since the drowsiness of contemplation was more and more strongly mastering him, and since he had already eaten the fruit which was nearest to him, he had to exert himself to obtain them from the tree.

Finally he said to himself:

“I’m a foolish man far removed from truth, and that’s why I have such foolish cares. Isn’t it because this good deity is so slow with her revelations? Here before me on the tree is ripe fruit and my stomach is empty.⁠ ⁠… But doesn’t the law of necessity say: ‘where there is an hungry stomach and fruit, the latter must of necessity enter the former’?⁠ ⁠… So, kind necessity, I submit to your power.⁠ ⁠… Isn’t that the greatest blessedness?”

Thereupon he buried himself in complete contemplation like Darnu, and he waited for necessity to manifest herself. In order to facilitate her task, he held his mouth open facing the fig tree.⁠ ⁠…

He waited one day, two, three.⁠ ⁠… Gradually the smile congealed upon his face, his body dried up, the pleasant rotundity of his form disappeared, the fat under his skin wasted away and the sinews stood out distinctly through it. When at last the fruit ripened and fell, striking Purana on the nose⁠—the sage did not hear it fall nor did he feel the blow.⁠ ⁠… Another pair of doves built a nest in the folds of his turban, fledglings peeped soon in the nest, and the shoulders of Purana were covered thickly with the droppings of the birds. When the luxurious vines had enveloped Purana, it was impossible to distinguish him from his companion⁠—the obstinate sage struggling against Necessity from the good-natured sage willingly submitting to it.

Absolute silence reigned in the temple, and the gleaming idol looked down on the two sages with its enigmatic and strange smile.

Fruit ripened and fell from the trees, the brook bubbled on, white clouds sailed across the blue sky and looked down into the interior of the temple and the sages sat on without manifesting any signs of life⁠—one in the blessedness of denial, the other in the blessedness of submission to Necessity.

Eternal night had spread its black wings over both and no living being would ever have known the truth which the two sages had perceived at the summit of the fifty joints of the reed. But before the last spark which illumined in the darkness the consciousness of wise Darnu had been finally extinguished⁠—he heard again the same voice as before: Necessity was laughing in the gathering darkness, and this laughter, taciturn and soundless, seemed to Darnu a presentiment of death.⁠ ⁠…

“Poor Darnu,” said the implacable deity, “pitiable sage! You thought you could leave me, you hoped that you could lay aside my yoke and by turning into an immobile column purchase thereby the consciousness of spiritual liberty.⁠ ⁠…”

“Yes, I am free,” answered the thought of the obstinate sage. “I alone in the darkness of your servants do not obey the commands of Necessity.⁠ ⁠…”

“Look here, poor Darnu.⁠ ⁠…”

Suddenly with his inner eye he saw again the meaning of all the inscriptions and calculations on the walls of the temple. The numbers quietly changed, they grew or diminished automatically and one