Mario and the Magician by Thomas Mann

Author:Thomas Mann
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781473559387
Publisher: Random House

6

Returning now from the bowels of this rocky cell back to the pair waiting outside, we need not be surprised that they spent the first part of the time in silence, but after that began to question aloud. After all Shridaman had only wanted to make a brief devotion; where was he lingering so long? The lovely Sita, sitting behind Nanda in the cart, had gazed by turns at his neck and into her lap and kept as still as he, whose goat-nose and thick lips remained turned towards his team. But at length both began to wriggle in their seats, and after a while friend Nanda resolutely turned round to the young wife and asked:

‘Have you any idea why he keeps us waiting and what he is doing there so long?’

‘I cannot imagine, Nanda,’ responded she, in the sweet lilting and trilling voice he had been afraid to hear. She had quite superfluously added his name, and he had been afraid of that too – it was unnecessary, and he himself had not said: ‘Where is Shridaman’, but simply: ‘Where is he?’

‘I have been wondering a long time,’ she went on, ‘and if you had not turned round to me and asked me, I should very soon have asked you.’

He shook his head, partly out of surprise at his friend’s delay, but partly to ward off the unnecessary words she always used. ‘Turned round’ would have been enough, the ‘to me’, although quite correct, was unnecessary and even dangerous, spoken as it was, while they waited for Shridaman, and in that sweetly lilting, slightly affected voice.

He said nothing, afraid lest he too might speak in an unnatural voice and address her by her name, for he felt drawn to follow the example she had set. It was she who after a short pause made the suggestion:

‘I will tell you what, Nanda, you must go after him and see where he is, give him a shake with those strong arms of yours, if he has forgotten himself in prayer – we cannot wait any longer, and it is very strange of him to leave us sitting here, and waste the time while the sun is getting higher. We are late anyhow by reason of losing the way, and my parents must be beginning to worry about me, for they love me beyond aught in the world. Do, pray, go fetch him, Nanda! Even though he does not want to come and protests a little, yet make him come. You are stronger than he.’

‘Good, I will go fetch him,’ Nanda replied. ‘Of course in all friendliness. I need only remind him of the time. It was my fault we lost the way. I had already thought of going, and only feared you might not like to wait here alone. But it is only for a few seconds.’

With that he lowered himself from the driver’s scat and went up into the shrine.

And we, who know what a sight awaited him there! We

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