The Palace of Illusions

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

  But this night, lying in a hovel, I dreamed of the palace of lac, burnished like wings. Gods and goddesses were carved into its sills to lull its inhabitants into a belief of safety. When did the Pandavas discover its flammable truth? They told no one. Such a bitter betrayal by their own cousin, their childhood playmate, must have hurt, but they secreted it deep within their bodies. They continued to laugh and sing and go boating on Varanavat lake. They invited the caretaker, the traitor Purochan, to a banquet, and did not poison his food. What gave them so much strength?

  Years later, Sahadev, the youngest brother, the gentle chronicler of their lives, told me the rest of the story.

  He said: “When she realized that Duryodhan had offered us this holiday at Varanavat in order to kill us, our mother went into her chambers and wept for a night and a day.

  “We paced outside her room, not knowing what to do. She'd always been so strong, our foundation stone. When she came out, we rushed to comfort her. But her eyes were dry. She said to us, I've used up all the tears of my life so that they will not distract me again.”

  (In this, though, she was mistaken. A woman can never use up all the tears of her life. How do I know this? Because Kunti would weep again—and I would weep with her.)

  “She sent word to Vidur, the blind king's chief minister, who was sympathetic to our cause. On his advice, she made us dig a tunnel that would run from the house to the forest, that would collapse after we'd used it, leaving no telltale trace. But she wouldn't let us escape until she felt the time was right. Meanwhile, each day she gave alms to the poor and opened our doors to homeless travelers so they might have a place to sleep.

  “One night the nishad woman arrived with her five sons. They were traveling to the fair with their woven baskets and feathered arrows. My mother offered them food and all the wine they wanted. She invited them to sleep in the main hall though they would have preferred the stables. When they were asleep, she asked us to set the house on fire. We saw the perfection in her plan: the nishads' charred skeletons would be taken for ours; Duryodhan would believe he had succeeded in ridding himself of us. But we were distraught, too. They were our guests. They'd eaten our food; they'd gone to sleep trusting us. To kill them would be a great sin.

  “Our mother looked us in the eye. I drugged the wine, she said. They'll feel no pain. As for the sin of killing them, I swear it will not touch you. I take it all on myself. For the safety of my children, I'll gladly forgo heaven.”

  Sahadev's eyes grew moist as he spoke. He'd forgotten that Kunti wasn't his true mother. The look on his face was more tender than anything he'd ever offered me. But for once I didn't begrudge it to Kunti. Could I have made that ultimate sacrifice, taking on damnation for my children?

  Sahadev, if only you'd told me this earlier! For by this time Kunti and I (yoked together uneasily by our desire for Pandava glory) had frozen into our stance of mutual distrust. But had I known the story before, I would have tried harder to be her friend.

  In my dream, Bheem applies the torch to the palace: doors, windows, threshold. Last of all, he flings it onto the roof of the caretaker's cottage where Purochan sleeps. The others are in the tunnel already. He vaults in after them, clangs shut the trapdoor. The fire buzzes like bees. The roof of the tunnel is hot to the touch. The palace walls buckle and fold. Lacquered tears flow down the cheeks of the gods. The Pandavas crawl on hands and knees in the mud, their ears alert for cries. But the blessed roar from the fire drowns all other noises. The palace explodes, a dark heart bursting. Those who run to look will later claim they saw a thousand insects soar into the sky on blazing wings.

  16

  “Marry all five of you!” my father sputtered. “How can you, prince of a noble house, suggest such a heinous act?”

  In the throne room, the air throbbed with tension. My father and Dhri sat on golden thrones. The five Pandavas sat across from them on silver seats, to remind them that they were honored guests but less powerful. In a corner, behind an embroidered curtain, Kunti and I sat on chairs of sandalwood. I'd graciously offered her the larger one. She'd accepted with a slight frown, not sure if my action was respect or ruse. But the size of a seat has little to do with the power of the person who occupies it. We all knew this.

  Earlier in the day, Dhri had arrived with palanquins and musicians to take us to the palace. (It had, indeed, been him at the window last night; he and his men had been scouring the city for me.) He brought robes and jewels, horses. Fine weapons that brought a gleam to the brothers' eyes. And an invitation from King Drupad, who wanted to celebrate his daughter's marriage (which had been so hasty and unsatisfying) with a grand banquet where he could show off his new son-in-law.

  “We are delighted to have gained the Pandavas as our relatives,” Dhri said with an elegant bow. I tried to catch his eye, to indicate that I was less than delighted, but he was busy being gracious.

  He loved courtesies and had had little occasion to practice them. The brothers looked relieved at having to shed their disguise. On the way to the palace, their kingly robes cast a glow on their faces. Even I had to admit that they rode like gods.

  “Admittedly, this is an unusual arrangement. But how can it be heinous to obey one's mother?” Yudhisthir asked. “Haven't our scriptures declared, The father is equal to heaven, but the mother is greater?”

  Not many men would have been able to make such statements sound convincing, but somehow Yudhisthir succeeded. Perhaps it was because we could see that he believed what he said.

  “If we can't agree,” he continued calmly, “that Panchaali should marry all five of us, then we brothers must take our leave, returning your daughter to your care.”

  I stared at him in outraged shock. King Drupad stiffened, and my brother's hand fisted around the hilt of his sword. To be sent back to her father's house was the worst disgrace a woman could face. When she was a woman of a noble house, such an insult could lead to a blood feud between the families. Was Yudhisthir oblivious of the danger in which his words had thrust the Pandavas?

  “You can't do that!” Dhri exclaimed angrily. “My sister's life would be ruined!”

  Arjun's eyes flew to his brother's face. His jaw was tense. He disagreed with Yudhisthir, I could see that. But out of respect for his brother—or perhaps because he knew that they had to stand together in this—he said nothing. I was disappointed, but in the pragmatic light of day, I didn't blame him as much as I had last night. Family loyalty was what had saved the Pandavas all these precarious years. How could I expect him to give it up for a woman he hadn't met until yesterday?

  “To say nothing of the reputation of the royal house of Panchaal!” my father added. “Draupadi would most likely have to take her own life, and then we'd have to hunt you down and kill you in revenge.”

  “The choice is yours,” Yudhisthir said, without heat. (Was that calmness a façade, or was he truly unshakable in the face of threats?) “An honorable life for the princess as a daughter-in-law of Hastinapur—or a death you force upon her.”

  “Honorable!” blustered my father. “Perhaps in Hastinapur such behavior's considered honorable, but here in Kampilya men will call Draupadi a whore! And if I should hand her over to the five of you, what will they call me? Perhaps death is a better alternative.”

  I didn't fear the fate they imagined for me. I had no intention of committing honorable self-immolation. (I had other plans for my life.) But I was distressed by the coldness with which my father and my potential husband discussed my options, thinking only of how these acts would benefit—or harm—them. My brother protested hotly, but they brushed his youthful words aside. Why didn't Arjun speak up in my defense? Surely, now that they were considering my possible death, he should have felt some responsibility? Some tenderness?

  Ah, Karna! Was this my punishment for having treated you so cruelly? And where was Krishna, whose ill advice had lured me to this moment?

  The rest of the Pandavas, stolid in their silence, didn't seem to care abou
t what became of me. (In this assumption I was wrong. One of them had already begun to fall in love with me. Later he would tell me, I thought my chest would burst from the effort of holding in my angry words. If it had gone any further, I would have stood against my brother for your sake, even if it made me traitor to my clan. But in my agitated preoccupation with Arjun, I was blind to this.)

  While the men negotiated—my father furiously, Yudhisthir with nonchalance—I examined Kunti from under my veil. (I wasn't required to wear a veil in my father's house, but it had its uses.) A small, triumphant smile flickered on her lips when she heard Yudhisthir quoting the scriptures in praise of motherhood. But a telltale artery pulsed in her throat. The Pandavas—hiding as they'd been from Duryodhan's long and lethal reach—had much to gain by forming an alliance with the powerful Drupad. They had everything to lose if they angered him. Knowing this, why hadn't Kunti laughed off her remark as a mistake and allowed the marriage to stand as it was? I didn't believe her claim that everything she said had to come true, or her honor would be lost.

  Something else was at work here, something I'd have to puzzle out.

  My father's eyes were the first to fall. “I'll send word to Vyasa, wisest of the wise,” he muttered. “He knows the future as well as the past. We'll abide by his advice.”

  Yudhisthir graciously acceded; Kunti wiped a tiny bead of sweat from her temple; the Pandavas retired to their quarters. I retreated to my bedroom, pleading a headache to escape Dhai Ma's eager queries about my bridal night.

  Vyasa sent a prompt verdict: I was to be married to all five brothers. My father was not to distress himself about how this would affect his reputation. This never-before-seen marital arrangement would make him more famous than a heap of battle victories. If people asked uncomfortable questions, he could blame it on the gods, who had ordained it lifetimes ago.

  To keep me chaste and foster harmony in the Pandava household, Vyasa designed a special code of marital conduct for us. I would be wife to each brother for a year at a time, from oldest to youngest, consecutively. During that year, the other brothers were to keep their eyes lowered when speaking to me. (Better if they didn't speak at all.) They were not to touch me, not even the tips of my fingers. If they intruded upon our privacy when my husband and I were together, they were to be banished for a year from the household. In a postscript he added that he would give me a boon to balance the one that had landed me with five spouses. Each time I went to a new brother, I'd be a virgin again.

  I can't say I was surprised by Vyasa's verdict. (Hadn't his spirits threatened me with such a fate years ago?) But now that it was to become an imminent reality, I was surprised at how angry it made me feel—and how helpless. Though Dhai Ma tried to console me by saying that finally I had the freedom men had had for centuries, my situation was very different from that of a man with several wives. Unlike him, I had no choice as to whom I slept with, and when. Like a communal drinking cup, I would be passed from hand to hand whether I wanted it or not.

  Nor was I particularly delighted by the virginity boon, which seemed designed more for my husbands' benefit than mine. That seemed to be the nature of boons given to women—they were handed to us like presents we hadn't quite wanted. (Had Kunti felt the same way when she was told that the gods would be happy to impregnate her? For a moment, sympathy twinged through me. Then it was lost beneath a surge of resentment. If it weren't for her, I wouldn't be in this miserable situation.)

  If the sage had cared to inquire, I'd have requested the gift of forgetting, so that when I went to each brother I'd be free of the memory of the previous one. And along with that, I'd have requested that Arjun be my first husband. He was the only one of the Pandavas I felt I could have fallen in love with. If he had loved me back, I might have been able to push aside my regrets about Karna and find some semblance of happiness.

  I was married to the four other Pandavas, one after the other, in a long-drawn, tedious ceremony. I put my hands into each man's as the priest chanted the appropriate mantras and scattered yellow rice over us. A part of my mind noted the slight differences: Yudhisthir's palm was the softest; Bheem's was calloused from wielding the mace, which I'd learned was his favorite weapon, and it trembled in mine, surprising me; Nakul's hands were scented with musk; Sahadev's had an ink smudge on the middle finger of his right hand. I tried— not too successfully—to read these clues. It struck me that, during our hasty ceremony at the swayamvar, there had been no opportunity for Arjun and me to hold each other's hands.

  The irony of that made me want to find Arjun, to see what he was doing. Angling my face discreetly under my veil, I discovered him sitting off to one side, staring deliberately into the distance as though he refused to be part of the festivities. I was shaken by the bitter downturn of his mouth. I hadn't expected him to care so much about the fact that I didn't belong to him alone. I must have made an involuntary movement, for he swiveled his head to look at me. His eyes were angry—as though I were the one who had chosen to marry his brothers, and thus betrayed him!

  I lifted my veil and stared back, uncaring of what his brothers might think of my indecorous behavior. I had to send Arjun a message and knew this might be my last chance in a long time. According to Vyasa's dictum, we wouldn't even be able to speak privately to each other for the next two years. I was desperate to make him realize that this situation wasn't any more to my liking than his. That he keep in his mind, through the next two years, what we'd shared, frail though it was: that moment of tenderness on the road, his gentle hands on my injured feet. Only then could I hope to salvage our fledgling relationship. I'll be waiting for you, I tried to tell him with my eyes. But he averted his gaze. My heart sank as I saw that he'd made me the target of the frustrated rage that he couldn't express toward his brothers or his mother.

  I blamed Kunti for this development. She knew her son's psychology: if he couldn't have me all to himself, he didn't want me at all. He would go through the motions of marriage, but he would keep his heart from me. And wasn't that exactly what she intended?

  Afterward, Dhri tactfully whisked the four younger brothers off to a tiger hunt, my father sent opulent wedding announcements to everyone he knew, and Yudhisthir moved into my palace. I went to him reluctantly, still brooding over Arjun's unfair anger. But perhaps my own situation made me more patient with my husband than I would have been otherwise. When he made overtures of tenderness, I stopped myself from turning away. I would not make him the victim of my disappointment, I told myself. Kind, courteous, and well-read, he was easy to get along with, though I found him somewhat lacking in humor. (Only later would I discover other facets: his stubbornness, his obsession with truth, his insistent moralizing, his implacable goodness.) In bed, to my amused surprise, he was shy and easily alarmed. Slowly I realized that he had in his head a compendium of ideas (had Kunti put them there?) about what constituted ladylike sexual behavior, and—this was a longer list—what didn't. I could see that I'd have to dedicate significant energy to reeducating him.

  It was going to be a long year.

  17

  Dhri sent an urgent message: Yudhisthir and I were to meet him at the guard tower situated atop the city walls. When we climbed it, we saw a huge army approaching Kampilya.

  Fear dizzied me. Only two weeks had passed since my swayam-var. Had the unsuccessful suitors returned for revenge? But Yudhisthir said, “Look, there's the banner of Hastinapur!”

  “It seems that your uncle has sent an entourage to welcome you home!” Dhri said with an ironic smile.

  “What else can he do, now that he's learned his nephews are alive and well—instead of reduced to ash and crumbled bone—and allied moreover to the powerful Drupad?” Yudhisthir said, his smile equally ironic. I was surprised. With his brothers, he was always the reasonable one, holding them back, chiding them when they cursed their Kaurava cousins. So he did have his secret darkness, my near-to-perfect husband!

  But now he was leaning over the edge of the battle
ment, as delighted as a child at his first fair. “Look, Panchaali! Grandfather himself has come to fetch us!”

  At the head of the army I saw a man on a white horse, his beard like the rush of a silver river. The sun, reflecting off his armor, was blinding. He dwarfed everyone around him.

  So this was Bheeshma, grandfather to my husbands, the keeper of dreadful vows, the warrior to whose destruction Sikhandi had dedicated his life. Torn between detestation and fascination, I couldn't drag my eyes from him.

  Yudhisthir glanced at me, his grin proud and boyish. “He does tend to take one's breath away, doesn't he!”

  As usual he had read me wrong.

  Bheeshma raised his hand in greeting—he must have recognized Yudhisthir. Even from that distance I felt his love, heavy and piercing as a javelin.

  My father received Bheeshma respectfully enough, but he didn't mince his words. “Duryodhan almost killed them last time,” he said. “Who's to say he won't succeed the next time around? I don't want my only daughter sent back to me in widow's white.” He seemed more concerned about losing his new allies than about my marital misfortunes.

  Bheeshma's eyes flashed at the insult. But he only said, “My life for their safety.” He spoke with such simple force that even Krishna, whom my father had invited to the meeting, nodded.

  “Let them go,” he said to my father. “With the grandfather to watch over them, Duryodhan won't try anything—not for a while. Besides, how long can you keep them cloistered? They're heroes, after all.”

  When my father and his courtiers left the room, Bheeshma embraced Krishna. I hadn't realized they knew each other so well. My ignorance irked me.

  “Now it begins, Govinda,” Bheeshma said, calling him by a name I hadn't heard before. (How many facets were there to Krishna? I felt, with a kind of despair, that I'd never know them all.) The two men looked at each other, somber with a secret they wouldn't share with us. They made me feel like a child.