The Root and the Flower (New York Review Books Classics) by L.H. Myers

Author:L.H. Myers [Myers, L.H.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781590174340
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2011-08-31T00:00:00+00:00

11

WHEN HE WOKE from his sleep, his waking was sudden and complete; his mind was perfectly clear, or so it seemed to him; and if he felt a certain bewilderment—that was simply because he could not make out what time of day it was. A few seconds later, however, he realized that the light in his room was not daylight at all, but very bright moonlight; and the next moment he heard the voices of men talking excitedly and understood that it was they who had woken him. In a single overwhelming rush his memories returned; and almost in the same instant he guessed what the situation was—Gokal had been poisoned after all: Gokal was dying or dead.

He lay quite still in his bed and listened. That voice with a sob in it was the voice of Gokal’s cook. Weak and garrulous the old man now sounded, and his mother was sternly questioning and chiding him. Other agitated explanatory voices broke in; a group of Gokal’s servants were talking to his mother through the window of her room. And the servants in the house were hurrying about in a turmoil. He heard someone being sent off to fetch the herb-woman, whose skill in medicine was accounted great. “I wonder if I killed her,” thought Jali. The fact that she was being sent for showed that Gokal was not yet actually dead.

He lay in bed, very calm, resolved to pretend that he was still asleep. His agonies were over; he noted it himself without surprise. At the back of his mind the same thought was repeating itself over and over again: “This is the end. I shall try to find Gunevati, and kill her. But in any case, this is the end.”

For the time being all he had to do was to lie still and keep his eyes closed. He felt sure that his mother was making ready to go over to Gokal’s house; and he had hopes that after looking in at him she would give the servants orders that he was not to be disturbed. Everything happened as he expected. Before very long his mother and the others moved off, and the house became quiet again. For a little longer he lay still, listening to the subdued but excited voices of the group, who were moving down the path that went across the valley. Then he got up and dressed himself. Taking his dagger to the window, he examined it carefully in the moonlight, and felt its edge. There was very little hope of finding Gunevati, he supposed; most likely she was already well on her way out of the valley; but all the same he was not going to let any chance slip by.

In these intentions there was certainly an element of make-believe; if his thoughts were concentrated on Gunevati to the exclusion of Gokal, it was because he was seeking to make revenge serve as a refuge from grief; in revenge, real or factitious, he could forget himself.

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