The Palace of Illusions

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

  The bards sing of what occurred when Dussasan took hold of my sari to pull it away, exposing my nakedness to all eyes. How more and still more fabric appeared until he was exhausted with tugging. Was it a miracle? I don't know. I had shut my eyes. My body would not stop trembling though I willed it to. I clutched my sari in my fists—as though I could save myself with that futile gesture! The worst shame a woman could imagine was about to befall me—I who had thought myself above all harm, the proud and cherished wife of the greatest kings of our time! Now they sat frozen as I struggled with Dussasan. The sorceress had said, When in great trouble, rest your mind on someone who loves you. I tried to call up Dhri's face. But all I could imagine was how enraged and helpless he'd feel when he heard of what had been done to me.

  Then—maybe because there was no one else who could help— I thought of Krishna. He owed me nothing; we were not related. Perhaps that was why I could fix my mind on him without being swept away by the anger that arises from expectation. I thought of his smile, the way it would appear on his face for no reason. The sounds of the courtroom faded—Dussasan's grunts, the whispers of the watchers. Suddenly I was in a garden. There were swans in a lake, a tree that arched above, dropping blue flowers, the sound of water falling as though the world had no end. The wind smelled of sandalwood. Krishna sat beside me on a cool stone bench. His glance was bright and tender. No one can shame you, he said, if you don't allow it.

  It came to me, in a wash of amazement, that he was right.

  Let them stare at my nakedness, I thought. Why should I care? They and not I should be ashamed for shattering the bounds of decency.

  Was that not miracle enough?

  Krishna nodded. He took my hands. At his touch, I felt my muscles relax, my fists open. He smiled, and I prepared to smile back.

  But just then another face pushed its way into my mind. I saw a different pair of eyes, hot with hate. I heard again the words with which he sealed my doom. They resonated through me like the twang of a bow that has just released a poison arrow. The punishment he'd heaped on me was so much greater than my crime.

  Karna, I said to myself. You've taught me a lesson, and you've taught it well.

  Is the desire for vengeance stronger than the longing to be loved? What evil magic does it possess to draw the human heart so powerfully to it? As I spoke, my hands slipped from Krishna's. His face wavered, dimming.

  I opened my eyes. I was still clothed, and Dussasan was on the floor in a swoon. I stepped over him and spoke to the assembly in a voice like cracking ice. “All of you will die in the battle that will be spawned from this day's work. Your mothers and wives will weep far more piteously than I've wept. This entire kingdom will become a charnel house. Not one Kaurava heir will be left to offer prayers for the dead. All that will remain is the shameful memory of today, what you tried to do to a defenseless woman.” I spoke to all, but it was Karna I looked at, his gaze I held. Of one thing I was glad. What happened today had stripped away all ambiguities from my heart. Never again would I long for his attention. Behind me I heard Bheem and Arjun pronouncing oaths of revenge, and the blind king's anxious entreaties as he called my name, begging me to retract my curse. Inside me Krishna's face dissolved in a red haze, but I could not—would not—stop my words.

  I lifted up my long hair for all to see. My voice was calm now because I knew that everything I said would come to pass. “I will not comb it,” I said, “until the day I bathe it in Kaurava blood.”

  What did I learn that day in the sabha?

  All this time I'd believed in my power over my husbands. I'd believed that because they loved me they would do anything for me. But now I saw that though they did love me—as much perhaps as any man can love—there were other things they loved more. Their notions of honor, of loyalty toward each other, of reputation were more important to them than my suffering. They would avenge me later, yes, but only when they felt the circumstances would bring them heroic fame. A woman doesn't think that way. I would have thrown myself forward to save them if it had been in my power that day. I wouldn't have cared what anyone thought. The choice they made in the moment of my need changed something in our relationship. I no longer depended on them so completely in the future. And when I took care to guard myself from hurt, it was as much from them as from our enemies.

  For men, the softer emotions are always intertwined with power and pride. That was why Karna waited for me to plead with him though he could have stopped my suffering with a single word. That was why he turned on me when I refused to ask for his pity. That was why he incited Dussasan to an action that was against the code of honor by which he lived his life. He knew he would regret it—in his fierce smile there had already been a glint of pain.

  But was a woman's heart any purer, in the end?

  That was the final truth I learned. All this time I'd thought myself better than my father, better than all those men who inflicted harm on a thousand innocents in order to punish the one man who had wronged them. I'd thought myself above the cravings that drove him. But I, too, was tainted with them, vengeance encoded into my blood. When the moment came I couldn't resist it, no more than a dog can resist chewing a bone that, splintering, makes his mouth bleed.

  Already I was storing these lessons inside me. I would use them over the long years of exile to gain what I wanted, no matter what its price.

  But Krishna, the slippery one, the one who had offered me a different solace, Krishna with his disappointed eyes—what was the lesson he'd tried to teach?

  26

  After the blind king took fright at my curse and gave my husbands their freedom and their kingdom, after Duryodhan taunted Yudhisthir for being saved by his wife and challenged him to play one last game where the loser would be banished to the forest for twelve years. After I begged Yudhisthir to ignore the challenge, after he refused me for honor's sake, after he lost as I knew he would, after we discarded our finery for clothing such as servants wear. After we said goodbye to Kunti, who stared white-faced and tearless, after I handed my crying, clutching children to Dhai Ma, who would take them to be brought up in Subhadra's house. After her accusing eyes (for she knew I could have stayed with them, I didn't have to go with my husbands to the forest, my boys needed me more). After we walked barefoot from the city all the way to the wilderness.

  After all this had happened, Duryodhan and his men rode in triumph to the Palace of Illusions to take possession of it.

  When they came within sight of the palace, Duryodhan released his pent-up breath. Mine, finally! His retainers realized then that all he'd done to the Pandavas had been for this—to own the palace he had failed to replicate, the site of his past humiliation, his present triumph. To rewrite his history. But even as he spoke a wind rose up, and as it swirled whitely around the palace, its domes and turrets began to dissolve. Duryodhan whipped his horse furiously forward until blood foamed from its mouth. Even so, by the time he arrived where the main gateway had stood, only a few small piles remained on the ground: bones, hair, sand, and salt.

  How do I know? I dreamed it.

  My husbands surmised that faithful servants, hearing of our misfortune, had set the buildings on fire, but I knew with bitter satisfaction that my dream was true. My palace refused to be occupied by anyone other than its rightful owners. It did what it had to do in order to remain true to us.

  As we moved through the forest, I carried a pouch of salt in honor of my lost palace. At night I let the grains run through my fingers, over skin scraped raw by rocks and branches, and welcomed the sting. It would help me not to forget. In my dreams, the palace came back, at once grander and more exquisite than in life. I knew I would never find another home where I belonged in the same way.

  I had another reason now for my hatred.

  The forest, shadowed and feathered, was beautiful in a submarine manner. If I had allowed it to seduce me, my life might have turned out different. But to me it was merely a reminder of all that had been wrested from me. As
we went deeper, I thought it watched us. Did it know we had burned down its brother? Did it resent us for it? I slept warily at night, my ears tuned to slitherings.

  My husbands had no such qualms. A childlike excitement took them over. I think they remembered their early, wooded years, which were perhaps their happiest ones. With equal delight they pointed out spoor and berries, the serrated bichuti leaf that could make a man itch for hours. Can anyone blame me for being annoyed? It was almost as though they hadn't lost a kingdom!

  I should have expressed more interest when they showed me a lioness with her young, or giant slugs leaving their silvery mark on fallen logs. I should have laughed with them at the antics of the orange-tailed monkeys who lived from moment to joyful moment. The twelve years would have passed faster then, and more pleasantly. We lacked no essentials. Arjun always managed to find enough game. Bheem dug up roots and shook ripe fruit from trees. Nakul and Sahadev brought me fawns to pet, and milk from wild goats. No matter where we went my husbands constructed me a cottage, airy and fragrant, lined with the softest rushes they could find, where in the early morning the sun winked through the leaf-woven roof. At times Yudhisthir sang—something he'd never done in the palace. I was surprised to discover that he had a fine, deep voice.

  But a strange implacability had taken hold of me. I refused all that my husbands did to bring me comfort. I stitched discontent onto my features and let my hair fall, matted and wrathful, around my face. Each day as I served their meals, I reminded the Pandavas of how they'd failed me, and what I'd suffered as a result in Duryodhan's sabha. Each night I recited the taunts of the Kauravas so that they stayed fresh in their minds. When we blew out our lamps, I tossed and turned on my bed, the rushes suddenly as hard as sticks, recalling Karna's face, its complicated darkness as he said, Take her clothes, too. (But of this I did not speak.) Each dawn when I arose, sweaty with restlessness, I pictured our revenge: a fire-strewn battlefield, the air grim with vultures, the mangled bodies of the Kau-ravas and their allies—the way I would transform history. (But I couldn't bear to imagine Karna's corpse. Instead, I pictured him kneeling at my feet, head bent in humiliation. When I tried to decide on a suitable punishment for him, however, my imagination failed me again.)

  Thus I won the war with insidious time, which otherwise might have softened the edge of our vengefulness or perhaps eroded it altogether.

  Durvasa, that most ill-tempered of sages, had descended upon us with his hundred disciples, and they were hungry.

  This was how it happened: He had visited Hastinapur, where Duryodhan had taken excellent and obsequious care of him. Pleased, the sage had offered a boon. The prince had replied that it would delight his heart if the sage visited his cousins in the forest and blessed them, too.

  Durvasa had graciously agreed, and was, at this moment, bathing in a nearby river. He had given strict injunctions that food should be waiting by the time he returned.

  On another day, this wouldn't have troubled me. Vyasa, who had shown up just as we were leaving Hastinapur as exiles, had handed me a cooking pot. It had special powers, he said, and belonged to the sun god. Whatever I cooked in it would increase to feed all who visited us—but only until I took my meal. At that point, the pot would yield no more food for the day.

  I was suspicious of Vyasa's pot (gifts from sages, I'd learned, often came trailing complications) but so far it had borne out his claim. (Sometimes, being of a doubting nature, I wondered if it was so because our guests made sure there was always enough food left in the pot for me. But deep down I knew that this world is filled with mystery.)

  Today, however, I'd already finished eating and had washed the pot. It lay empty and shining on a makeshift shelf in my makeshift kitchen. My husbands left in haste to forage for whatever the woods might yield. I started a fire in case they were successful, though what could they find that would feed so many? Worries roiled inside me as I stared at the flames. Durvasa was known for his creative curses. No doubt Duryodhan had sent him here hoping he would burden us with some obscure, incurable disease, or metamorphose us into exotic fauna. I imagined him smirking in the comfort of his palace, imagining our new troubles. Was Karna involved in this new plot as well? In spite of my anger with him, I guessed the answer was no. He was too proud to resort to chicanery.

  Often when I was fearful and didn't know what to do, I thought of Krishna. It was a habit I'd fallen into after the incident at Duryodhan's court. It didn't necessarily remove my problems, but it often calmed me. Sometimes I held imaginary conversations with him. It was a good way to vent my frustrations, since he never answered back.

  Today I said, “Don't we have enough sorrows already? Haven't we been tested sufficiently? What kind of friend are you? It's time you exerted some of those divine powers you're supposed to possess on our behalf!”

  And there he was, sitting across the fire, smiling that charming, infuriating smile. Was my anxiety causing me to hallucinate?

  “A situation in itself,” he said, “is neither happy nor unhappy. It's only your response to it that causes your sorrow. But enough of philosophy! I'm hungry.”

  “Don't tease me,” I snapped. “You know there's no food anywhere in this hovel that I'm forced to live in.”

  “You could have remained with Dhri in your father's palace,” he pointed out equably. “He's begged you, many times, in my own hearing. Or you could have stayed with Subhadra, giving her a hand with those unruly children of yours. But no! You wanted to make sure you'd be on hand to provide daily torture to my poor friends the Pandavas.”

  Perhaps because I was stung by guilt, I said, “That's right, give me a few more blows while I'm down. What else is a friend like you good for?”

  “Peace! Peace!” Krishna laughed, holding up his hand. “I can't bear to fight on an empty stomach. Why don't you look again. Maybe there's a little something left at the bottom of your pot.”

  “I tell you, I washed it. Can't you see?” In annoyance I picked up the vessel and flung it at him.

  He caught it deftly. “Do you do this to your husbands, too? Ah well, it'll make them that much more agile at dodging enemy arrows.”

  His smile was infectious. I felt an answering smile take shape on my face and changed it, just in time, to a grimace of annoyance.

  “Ah, here it is,” he said, removing from the pot's rim a grain of rice that hadn't been there—I could have sworn it—a moment back. “You never were any good at housework.” He placed it in his mouth and made a great show of chewing. Then he made me pour him water to drink. “That was good,” he said. “May all beings in the world be as satisfied as I am.”

  I scowled. This was no time for jokes and riddles.

  Suddenly he reached out and pulled a half-burnt stick from the fire. He thrust it at me so that I flinched back.

  “What are you doing?” I cried, startled and angry.

  “Trying to show you something. The stick—it scared you, right? It may even have hurt you, if you hadn't been so quick. But look—in trying to burn you, it's consuming itself. That's what happens to a heart—”

  I could see where he was headed.

  “I wish you'd focus on the problem at hand,” I interrupted brusquely. “Durvasa is about to turn us into anteaters.”

  “That would be worth seeing.” His tone was light, but there was that old disappointment in his eyes. “But it isn't going to happen today. Look!”

  I glanced behind me. Bheem was returning, bunches of bananas slung over his shoulder.

  “It's the strangest thing!” he exclaimed. “I met Durvasa and his disciples on my way back. They were heading away from our hut. I thought they were lost and humbly requested them to follow me. But he hemmed and hawed and finally confessed they weren't hungry any more. He wouldn't even take the bananas. He gave a great belch, sent his blessings to all of us, and made off fast.” He shook his head. “Baffling, these sages. Glad I'm not one.”

  I swung to face Krishna, but the spot where he'd been sitting w
as empty. I touched the rim of the vessel where a moment ago, a grain of rice had materialized.

  “Where did he go?” I asked Bheem.

  “Who?”

  “Krishna.”

  “Krishna? He hasn't gone anywhere, as far as I know. Don't you remember, he told us he'd be busy in Dwarka until after the rainy season? What made you think of him all of a sudden when we were talking about Durvasa? Watch out! That stick is too close to your foot, it could burn you.”

  Bheem threw the still-smoldering stick into the fire and went off to inform his brothers of Durvasa's inexplicable behavior.

  This wasn't the only time Duryodhan tried to cause us trouble. Once, pretending to examine a Kaurava cattle station, he came to taunt us in Dwaita Vana. Once he incited Jayadrath, his own sister's husband, to abduct me. Both attempts ended in failure. Duryodhan was taken captive by a gandharva king and had to be rescued by Arjun. He almost killed himself over that humiliation. And even before he reached the edge of the woods, Jayadrath was caught by Bheem, who chopped off his hair as punishment. Jayadrath had to spend a whole year on the banks of the Ganga disguised as a mendicant, waiting for his locks to grow back to a respectable length.

  I was delighted at our enemies' embarrassment and didn't care who knew it, though Yudhisthir warned me it was both unworthy and unwise to make my feelings so public. I refused to listen. There were few enough satisfactions I had in my banishment. But later I would see how ignorant I'd been. The humiliated enemy is the most dangerous one. My taunting words, making their way to Hastinapur, would infuriate Duryodhan and Jayadrath. They would plan and wait, and when the time was right, strike back where it would hurt us most.