The Palace of Illusions

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

  This time our rooms were not in the old palace but in the new building, resplendent, in the gaudy style Duryodhan favored, with statues of curvaceous beauties and lurid paintings of hunts and battles. They were conveniently located next to his sabha so that my husbands could go back and forth as they desired. I was not displeased with this change. It was a relief to be away from that malicious old labyrinth with its stares and gossip, its complicated histories of hate. Here I could spend my days as I wished, for my husbands were kept busy, and the boys went off each morning to play with other children or to watch jugglers and dancing monkeys. Once I'd paid my obligatory visits to the palace women, I was left with few responsibilities. It was a luxury I hadn't enjoyed since girlhood— and at that time I'd not known enough to appreciate its precious rareness. I read, composed poems, or walked in the courtyard. (I was amused to find that Duryodhan had filled it with as many of the flowers from our gardens as he could find, each crowded upon the other with little regard for aesthetics.) I had the maids bring me a light meal under the fragrant trees. I listened to birdsong. I dressed informally, in cool, thin cottons, for all the attendants in our quarters were women. I daydreamed while Dhai Ma combed my hair, and if my imagination went where it should not, I consoled myself with the thought that it harmed no one.

  I was further pleased that Kunti wasn't staying with us, for though we continued to be polite to each other, matters had grown thorny between us. Since the day when I swayed my husbands' opinions about accepting Duryodhan's invitation, I often caught her watching me with narrowed eyes. I could tell that she suspected my motives in coming here, though she wasn't sure what they were. She made me feel nervous and guilty—and as a result, irritable. Fortunately when we reached Hastinapur, Gandhari, with whom she'd kept up a correspondence, invited her to stay in her chambers. “We two old women,” she said, smiling from beneath that ambiguous blindfold, “have much to talk about that you youngsters wouldn't understand.” I hadn't thought Kunti would agree—Gandhari's sons had, after all, tried to kill hers. But she accepted with alacrity. Perhaps the two dowagers relished this chance to complain to each other about their daughters-in-law!

  Duryodhan's new wife, Bhanumati, was coming to visit. I prepared by donning dauntingly elegant clothing and a haughty expression, but I need not have bothered. She was just a girl and regarded me with such a mix of awe and apprehension that she could hardly speak without stammering. I felt a stab of anger at Duryodhan for having plucked her so soon from her parents. I also wondered what she'd heard about me that made her so nervous.

  Watching her fidget with the heavy brocade that weighed her down, I guessed that Duryodhan had dictated this entire visit, including what she should wear. I brought up his name in our conversation; a painful blush spread over her pretty face. The poor girl was in love with him even as she feared him! I felt a twinge of pity—any woman who gave her heart to the egoistic Duryodhan was bound to suffer—and did what I could to put her at her ease. She responded with such gratitude that I suspected few in this palace had befriended her. Soon she was jingling her bangles, showing me her new silver toe rings and chattering about her favorite activities—eating sweetmeats, teaching her pet parrot to talk, and playing hide-and-seek with the friends who had accompanied her from Kasi. Sometimes, she confided, Duryodhan and a few of his close friends joined her in these games.

  She amazed me further by adding, “Among my husband's friends, I like Karna the best. He doesn't make fun of me for being afraid of lizards, like Dussasan. And sometimes when he finds my hiding place, he pretends he hasn't seen me.” Her face lit up with an uncomplicated pleasure when she spoke of Karna. Clearly, she adored him.

  I was still trying to digest this information—and to ignore a foolish pang of jealousy—when she said goodbye, inviting me charmingly to come and visit her, too. At the doorway, she gave me an impulsive hug. “You're so kind,” she said. “Not cruel-tongued like they warned me.”

  I bit the aforementioned cruel tongue to keep from asking who her cautioners were, but she carried on, oblivious. “Karna never said that, though. He took me aside and said you were noble and beautiful—and he was right.” Then she was gone in a tinkling of ankle bells, leaving me without words.

  Karna had returned from Anga. (This, Dhai Ma said, was in response to a taunting letter from Duryodhan that asked if he was afraid to face the Pandavas, especially his erstwhile rival Arjun.) To celebrate his friend's arrival, or perhaps the success of his own persuasive tactics, Duryodhan planned a lavish “family” banquet. This meant that all his relatives and close friends were expected to attend, accompanied by the women of their household.

  I was at once excited and agitated by this news and spent much time trying to decide what to wear. Even my most exquisite sari seemed paltry, old-fashioned. Finally I ordered the royal weavers back at Indra Prastha to design a new outfit that would be unlike anything they'd made before, outstanding enough to make it unforgettable. They were to rush it to me as soon as it was completed. They promised me they would work on it night and day. It had not yet arrived when a flustered and tearful Bhanumati begged me to help her pick out appropriate clothing for the event. I arrived in her chambers to find her knee-deep in saris, each one more vibrantly colored and more finely embroidered with gold thread than the last, while sandalwood boxes holding jewels covered the entire floor. It took me the whole afternoon to convince her that she would be beautiful in almost any of them.

  “But Duryodhan will be displeased if I don't dress just right,” she must have said a score of times. And once, turning her wide, ingenuous eyes to me, “I want Karna to admire how I look.”

  Finally we decided on a deep red silk, so encrusted with gold and jewels that when she wore it I feared she would be unable to walk, and chose a set of rubies embedded in thick gold to go with it.

  By the time I returned to my rooms, I had changed my own plans for the banquet. The visit to Bhanumati had opened my eyes, exposing the folly I'd been about to commit. And what was forgivable in her would be shameful in me, a woman old enough—if not wise enough—to know better. I finally faced the truth: what I wanted—even if it was only an admiring glance from Karna—was sinful. Was I not married, five times over—and worse, to men with whom Karna was at enmity? Words from our scriptures came into my mind: a wife who holds in her heart desireful thoughts of a man who is not her husband is as unfaithful as a woman who sleeps with such a man. I put aside the beautiful sari that had just arrived from Indra Prastha, colored like the rainbow and woven through with diamonds. I picked instead a plain white silk with a delicate border of red and gold. I informed Dhai Ma that I would wear a simple set of pearls and dress my hair only with jasmine. She clicked her tongue in disapproval, saying that I would be woefully underdressed for the occasion, that only old women wore white, but finally she complied.

  Ironically, though, when I entered the banquet hall, all eyes turned to me. Among the women clustered like multicolored bouquets, I stood out in my pristine attire. Some of the women envied my creativity; others whispered resentfully, Always she must be different, always she wants to show that she's better, always she craves attention. Kunti, who had joined us for the event, gave a small snort at what she obviously considered my pretentiousness. Then she ordered me to give her my arm to lean on. Since she was perfectly capable of walking on her own, I could only surmise that she wanted to keep a close watch on me.

  We had barely taken a few steps when I saw Karna, dressed simply as always. He noticed me at the same time and came to a sudden halt. For a moment I thought he would take another path through the banquet hall—it would be easy enough, among all the milling guests, to avoid me. But he did not. There was an expression in his eyes that I couldn't quite read as he took in my clothes. And that was when I realized that he and I—both in white, both almost unadorned—mirrored each other. Had such a thought lurked in my subconscious when I chose my attire? Kunti noticed the similarity at the same time. She drew in her breath, stif
fening, and I wondered what she thought of our strange symmetry.

  Karna had reached us by now. He bowed in a gesture that was friendlier than anything he'd offered me in Indra Prastha. He greeted Kunti first, as was appropriate, but without waiting for her response, he turned to me. “It is a pleasure to see the queen of the Pandavas looking so well,” he said with a smile. “I hope her visit here has been comfortable so far.”

  His words of courtesy were common enough, no different from what any courtier might say. Still, my heart pounded. Perhaps this was the chance I had waited so long for: to release the past and make things better between us. Perhaps then Karna would cease to haunt me. I readied myself to smile, to say that I hoped he had had a good journey and to ask after his health. Would it be too forward of me to state that I was glad to see him? But Kunti had tightened her hold on my arm. Her eyes went from him to me and back to him. Her face was pale and rigid.

  What did she guess?

  I could not afford to have my secret bared before her ruthless gaze. It would place me in her power forever. I forced my face into expressionlessness and gave Karna a bow so slight that it was worse than if I had ignored him. I swept by him without a word, pulling Kunti along. But from the corner of my eye I saw his face, the dark anger that had leaped into it. My heart twisted. I'd ruined everything! And yet what else could I have done? What ill star shone on us that made the wrong things happen—things I never intended— every time we met? Now he'd never forgive me.

  Through the elaborate, unending dinner, as I ate without tasting the delicacies and smiled until my mouth ached and conversed with the women around me, not knowing what I said, I resolved it was time to return home. I would insist on it to Yudhisthir this very night. A longing for my palace shook me. I needed it the way an injured beast needs its lair—to crawl in and lick my wounds.

  25

  Time is like a flower, Krishna said once. I didn't understand. But later I visualized a lotus opening, the way the outer petals fall away to reveal the inner ones. An inner petal would never know the older, outer ones, even though it was shaped by them, and only the viewer who plucked the flower would see how each petal was connected to the others.

  The petal of this afternoon opened like a red sigh. It was my time of month, which made me lethargic. Dressed in a light cotton that a trader had brought all the way from Bengal, I drowsed in the soft sunlight at my window, listening to the mynahs calling in the garden, feeling calmer than I had in a while. Yudhisthir had agreed (as a result of some sharp words exchanged in our bedroom last night) that it was time he ended his visit and returned to his own kingdom. He had promised to announce this to Duryodhan today. So finally I would be back in my own palace, where I could start working on forgetting the look of anger on a certain face.

  I had no idea of the petal that had opened a few hours earlier in Duryodhan's new hall, where the Kaurava prince, expressing his disappointment at the prospect of losing his dear cousin so soon, had challenged him to a last game of dice. Maybe this way I can recover a little of the money I've lost to you, eh? And in this game—connected to all those earlier petals, shriveled now, those games played in Indra Prashtha, luring my husband in—Sakuni had taken Duryodhan's place as Yudhisthir's opponent. The petal unfurled, revealing the skill he'd hidden until now. Time after time he won until my husband—deaf to the entreaties of his brothers—lost his jewels, his weapons, and all his personal wealth. Then, goaded by Duryodhan, gripped by stubbornness, and intoxicated by the game, he began to wager things he had no right to jeopardize. And forfeited them all.

  There was a commotion at the door. Had my husbands returned early? But the man standing outside my rooms, head bowed awkwardly, was—I could see it from his clothes—one of Duryodhan's attendants. I was angered at his insolence. A male servant should have known to wait outside the building and send a message through one of my maids.

  I drew the semitransparent cotton closer around me. “What is it you want?” I asked in my haughtiest tones. But before he could speak, Dhai Ma came hurtling in, gasping for breath.

  “Girl, girl,” she cried, forgetting formal courtesies in her agitation, “terrible things have happened, things you won't believe.”

  My heart began to pound. Or was the pounding in my head? I spoke more sternly than I ever had to her. “Pull yourself together! Tell me clearly what the problem is.”

  But she had dissolved into hiccuping tears at my feet.

  I glared at Duryodhan's servant. “Leave us!” I commanded him.

  He licked his lips nervously and bowed. “Forgive me, your highness. I must carry out my task. Prince Duryodhan invites you to the sabha.”

  “To the hall?” I asked, incredulous. “But women never go there! And why would he and not my husbands send for me?”

  Dhai Ma was tugging at my sari. “Because he lost it all gambling,” she said through slurred tears. “Yudhisthir. First the money in the state coffers, then the palace—”

  “My palace?” I interrupted, furious. “He had no right!”

  Dhai Ma's lips stretched in a grimace. “That's not all. He lost the kingdom, too. Then he wanted to stop, because he had nothing else to bet against. But that fiend Sakuni said, Why, as an elder brother you can wager the other Pandavas.”

  “That's preposterous!” I cried. “Surely he wouldn't do that.”

  “He did. And lost them. Then he wagered himself and lost again. The luck of the demons was with that vulture Sakuni. And then Duryodhan said, I'll wager everything I've won from you in one final game, against Draupadi.”

  My head was ringing. “No!” I said.

  Dhai Ma nodded, then covered her face and burst into fresh weeping.

  My mouth went dry. Denials collided with each other inside me.

  I'm a queen. Daughter of Drupad, sister of Dhristadyumna. Mistress of the greatest palace on earth. I can't be gambled away like a bag of coins, or summoned to court like a dancing girl.

  But then I remembered what I'd read long ago in a book, never imagining that quaint law could ever have any power over me.

  The wife is the property of the husband, no less so than a cow or a slave.

  “What did my other husbands say?” I whispered to the servant.

  “They could say nothing,” he answered unhappily. “They were already Duryodhan's slaves.”

  My head reeled, but I steadied myself. I tried to remember other words from the Nyaya Shastra. If perchance a man lost himself, he no longer had any jurisdiction over his wife.

  “Go back to the court,” I ordered, “and ask the elders this: Is it not true that once Yudhisthir was Duryodhan's property, he had no right to wager me?”

  The servant scurried away, thankful to go. I took a deep, hard breath. It was good that I was no unlettered girl, ignorant of the law. The elders would know the rule I referred to. They would put an end to Duryodhan's effrontery. Bheeshma in particular wouldn't stand for my being insulted in this way. I still had much to worry about, but at least I was saved from the indignity of being ogled by Duryodhan's cronies.

  In thinking this, I was mistaken. In what happened next, the laws of men would not save me.

  The incident that took place at the sabha has been sung of widely, though to my senses it remains a blur. Was it only a heartbeat before Dussasan came storming in, shouting that Duryodhan was my master now, and I must obey his orders? Did Dhai Ma try to run to Gandhari's apartments for help? Did he send her sprawling with a blow? Did he grab my hair, which no man had touched except with reverent love? I begged his leave to change into suitable clothing. Jeering at what he termed my false modesty, he dragged me down the palace corridors, before the shocked gaze of retainers. No one dared intervene. I found myself in court, a hundred male eyes burning through me. Gathering my disordered sari around me, I demanded help from my husbands. They sent me tortured glances but sat paralyzed. I could see that in their minds they were already Duryodhan's vassals, chained by Yudhisthir's word. That same word had made me Duryod
han's property. They felt they had no right to rescue me—or themselves. The blind king swiveled his head from side to side, pretending confusion, when I cried out his name. My anxiety grew, but I was still not desperate. I called to the grandfather to protect me, certain that he at least would intervene. Had he not called me his dearest granddaughter? Had he not shared with me tender confidences that he kept from others? Had he not helped me become queen of the Palace of Illusions? But to my disbelief, he sat with his head lowered.

  Seeing this, Duryodhan laughed, sure of his victory. He motioned crudely at me to come and sit in his lap. And so finally, I turned my gaze on Karna. He was my last hope, the only one who had the ability to stop Duryodhan. He looked back at me, his eyes steady. There was a waiting look on his face. I knew what he wanted: for me to fall on my knees and beg him for mercy. He would have protected me then. He had the reputation of helping the destitute. But I wouldn't lower myself to that, not if I died.

  He was our enemy. I had recently rebuffed his attempt at cordiality. Why then did I feel betrayed because he hadn't come to my rescue of his own accord?

  I called on pride to freeze my tears to stone. I mustered all the hatred I could find within me and focused it on Karna.

  When he saw the contempt in my eyes, Karna's face grew white and still, as though made of ivory. Duryodhan was laughing in triumph. He shouted to Dussasan, “Remove the Pandavas' fancy clothes and jewelry. All of that belongs to us now!” My husbands threw off their upper garments, their gold chains and armbands, before Dussasan could touch them. Karna watched the glittering mass on the floor intently, as though it could tell him a secret; his mouth stretched in a mirthless smile. “Why should Draupadi be treated any differently? Take her clothes, too.”