Then the tattered and filthy old mendicant returned. Rubbing his eyes, which had got bulged and reddened by his performance with the palang, he made a brief speech to the little Raja, who turned and told me:
“The naga says he is a Yogi, Marco-Wallah. The followers of the Yoga sect are accomplished in many strange and secret arts. You will see. If you truly harbor any belief, as I suspect you do, that we Hindus are backward or lacking in aptitude, then you are about to be convinced otherwise, for you will now witness a wonder that only a Hindu could show you.” He called to the waiting beggar, “Which Yoga miracle will you show us, Oh Yogi? Will you be buried for a month underground and come up still alive? Will you make a rope stand erect and climb it and disappear into the heavens? Will you carve your boy assistant into pieces and then restore him whole? Will you at least levitate for us, Oh holy Yogi?”
The decrepit old man began to speak in a creaking small voice, but sounding earnest, as if making a momentous announcement, and doing much gesticulation. The little Raja and the Musicmaster leaned forward to listen intently, so now it was Tofaa who explained to me what was going on. She seemed pleased to do so, saying eagerly:
“It will be a wonder which you may wish to observe closely, Marco-wallah. The Yogi says he has discovered a revolutionary new way to do surata with a woman. Instead of his linga gushing out its juice at the climactic moment, as a man’s customarily does, his gives a great inhaling suck inward. Thereby he ingests the life-force of the woman without expending any of his own. He says his discovery not only provides a fantastic new sensation, its continual practice could accrue to a man so much life-force that he might live forever. Would not you like to learn that ability, Marco-wallah?”
“Well,” I said, “it sounds like an. interestingly novel variation on the ordinary.”
“Yes! Show us, Oh Yogi!” the little Raja called to him. “Show us this instant. Shouters, bring back the nach girl. She is already undressed and ready for use.”
The six men went trotting out in lock step. But the Yogi held up a cautionary hand and declaimed some more.
“He says he dare not do it with a valuable dancing girl,” Tofaa translated, “because any woman must wither to some degree when his linga does its sucking inside her. Instead, he requests a yoni with which he can demonstrate.”
The six shouters trotted back in again, bringing the naked girl, but at another command from the little Raja they ran out once more.
I asked, “How can the Yogi be provided with a yoni without a woman attached?”
“A yoni stone,” said Tofaa. “Around every temple you will see standing carved linga stone columns, which are representative of the god Siva, and also open-holed yoni stones, representative of his consort goddess Parvati.”
The six men came back, one of them bringing a stone like a small wheel, with an oval opening cut through it, roughly resembling a woman’s yoni, even having the kaksha hair carved around it.
The Yogi did a number of preparatory gesticulations, and spoke what sounded like solemn incantations, then parted his dhoti rags and unashamedly pulled out his linga, which was like a black-barked twig. With more incantations and gestures of demonstration—this is how it is done, gentlemen—he pushed his limp organ through the yoni hole in the stone. Then, holding the heavy stone against his crotch, he beckoned to the nach girl, who was also standing watching. He bade her take his linga in her fingers and bring it to arousal.
The girl did not recoil or complain, but she did not appear delighted with the idea. Nevertheless, she took hold of what protruded beyond the stone, and began working it, rather as if she were milking a cow. Her own udder bounced and all her bracelets jingled in rhythm to the motion. The old mendicant chanted down at the yoni and at the girl’s hand yanking at him, and he narrowed his red eyes in intense concentration, and rivulets of sweat began to course down the dirt of his face. After some while, his linga grew enough to protrude farther past the stone, and we could even see its brown bulbous head creeping out a little beyond the nach girl’s fricating fist. Finally the Yogi said something to her and she let go of him and stepped away.
Presumably the old beggar had stopped her just before she brought him to spruzzo. The stone was held to him now simply by the stiffness of his organ. He stared down at that peg and its constricting hoop, and so did the by now slightly breathless nach girl, and so did we at the table, and the shouters against the wall, and all the servants in the dining room. The Yogi’s linga had attained to a respectable size, considering the man’s age and general scrawniness and beggarly debilitude. But it looked somehow strained and inflamed, bulging as it did from the narrow yoni of the stone it held firmly at his crotch.
The Yogi made several more gesticulations, but in a rather hurried and sketchy manner, and yammered a whole string of incantations, but in a rather strangled voice. Nothing happened that we could see. He glanced about at all of us, looking somewhat abashed, and glowered really hatefully at the nach girl, who was now humming indifferently and examining her fingernails, as if to say, “See? You should have used me.” The Yogi yelled some more at his linga and borrowed yoni, as if cursing them, and made some more violent gestures, including shaking his fist. Still nothing happened, except that he sweated more copiously, and his tightly pinched organ was adding a distinct purple hue to its brown-black. The nach girl gave an audible snicker, and the Musicmaster an amused chuckle, and the little Raja began drumming his fingers on the tabletop.
“Well?” I said aside to Tofaa.
She whispered, “The Yogi appears to be having some difficulty.”
Indeed he did. He was now dancing in place, more vigorously than the professional dancing girl had done, and his eyes were more redly extruded than they had been after the palang-swinging performance, and his vociferations were no longer incantatory, but recognizable even to me as cries of pain. His ragged boy assistant came running, and tugged at the imprisoning stone, at which his master gave a frightful screech. The six shouters then also dashed forward to help, and there was a confusion of hands at that empurpled center of attention, until the agonized Yogi reeled wailing away from them and fell down, writhing and hammering his fists on the floor.
“Take him away!” the little Raja commanded, in a disgusted voice. “Take the old fraud to the kitchen. Try an application of grease.”
The Yogi was carried from the room, not without some trouble, for he was contorting like a gaffed fish and trumpeting like a speared elephant. The entertainment appeared to be over. We four sat on at the table, in a mutually embarrassed silence, listening to the shrieks gradually diminishing down the corridors. I was the first to speak. I naturally did not remark on this having been one more affirmation of my opinion of Hindu foolishness and futility. Instead I said, by way of graciously excusing it:
“That happens all the time, Your Highness, to all the lower animals. Everyone has seen a dog and a bitch stuck together until the bitch’s clasping yoni relaxes and the dog’s swollen linga wilts.”
“It may take some time for the Yogi,” said Master Khusru, still with amusement. “The stone yoni will not relax and his linga’s swelling therefore cannot go down.”
“Bah!” exclaimed the little Raja, in furious exasperation. “I should have insisted that he levitate, not try something new. Let us go to bed.” And he stamped out of the room, with no shouters present to congratulate himself and the world on the grace of his gait.
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