The Palace of Illusions

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

  When we reached it, the Pandava camp was ablaze. A few servants ran here and there, wailing, trying to drag out bodies. Our guards put out the fire and helped assemble the dead. They brought a man to me. He fell at my feet, gibbering with terror. Through soot and bruises I recognized him: Dhri's charioteer. Dhri had told me once, I'd trust him with my life. Through the carnage of Kurukshetra, he'd managed to keep my brother safe.

  He told me that Aswatthama had crept into the camp and overpowered my sleeping brother. When Dhri begged him to give him a chance to die fighting, he'd laughed a maniac's laugh and started to strangle him.

  Choking, my brother had entreated, At least kill me cleanly with a weapon and give me an end that's fitting for a warrior!

  Aswatthama replied, What end can be more fitting than this for a man who killed his guru when he'd dropped his weapons? I'll make sure you die in a way that will ensure your passage to hell.

  He kicked my unconscious brother until he was dead.

  “He was as strong and bloodthirsty as a rakshasa,” the man cried, “and like them he struck silently at night. By the time we realized he was in the camp, he'd already killed your brother Sikhandi, and all five of your children. If only he'd killed me, too—”

  My ears refused to hear any more, or maybe it was my mind that stopped. I walked to where they'd laid the bodies. Dhri's face was so swollen and discolored with bruises, at first I couldn't recognize him. I sat and placed his head on my lap. I asked the guards to place my dead children around me, to bring Sikhandi. His long hair had been torn from his head. I ran a hand over his lacerated scalp, too numb to weep. My sons' mouths were O's of blood, open as though they were still screaming.

  A part of me screamed, too, but without sound. Why should this happen to me now, after all the other things I'd suffered already—just when I thought my troubles were finally over? But a part said, She who sows vengeance must reap its bloody fruit. Have you not had a hand in turning Aswatthama into the monster he is today? But the largest part of me refused to believe what I saw, what I touched. It waited for them to disappear the way dream images do in the morning. When they didn't, my mind detached itself from my body and flew away. I was a girl again in Kampilya, behind a curtain, whispering to Dhri the words he didn't remember from his lessons. Later, on our lonely terrace, I hung on his words as he explained to me the rules of righteous war. I watched Sikhandi walk across the marble floor of my room toward me; I heard him tell me the pain of his past life as Amba. At our gates, I held his callused hand and begged him not to leave us yet. Older, I ran after my children in the gardens of the Palace of Illusions, scolding them for some childhood naughtiness while they dodged me, laughing. One of them plucked an aparajita flower and stuck it in my hair. I gathered him in my arms. I would never let him—any of them—go.

  But a flute was calling me, sweet but insistent, refusing to allow me to rest. I cried to be left in peace. I was too weary; the world was too hard. But its haunting notes snared me and tugged me back across a chasm. When I awoke (is awoke the word I'm looking for?) Krishna was passing his hands over my face.

  “Be strong!” he said. “Such is the nature of war, and you're not the only one to feel its lash. As a winner, you can't take the easy way of oblivion. Many responsibilities will be waiting for you. We'll speak of this again—but for now I must leave you. Bheem has already gone in pursuit of Aswatthama. Arjun and I must help him, or else Aswatthama will kill him, too.”

  In this way the chariot of vengeance, which requires no horses or wheels, rolled on.

  They found Aswatthama by the Ganga, where he'd fled after informing the dying Duryodhan of what he'd done. Aswatthama fought Arjun with the one-pointed strength of desperation, and when it was clear he couldn't win, he loosened upon the world the terrible Brahmaseershastra with the command, May the earth be rid of the seed of the Pandavas. Arjun countered it by sending his own astra.

  Vyasa writes: As the two flames coursed along the sky, oceans began to dry up and mountains to crumble. Men and beasts screamed their terror, for the fabric of the world was about to be ripped apart. Watching from the edge of the tale, I was forced to intervene, though that is not my preference. I stepped out between the flames and raised my hands. By the power of my penances, for a moment the astras were rendered immobile. I chided the two warriors for forgetting themselves and their responsibilities toward the earth-goddess. I demanded that they recall their weapons.

  Arjun obeyed, but Aswatthama the tainted (as he would be known from now) no longer had the power to pull back his astra. As he gabbled useless chants, it aimed itself at the unborn child in Ut-tara's womb. In the women's tent, they saw the sky begin to burn. The air grew too hot to breathe. They didn't know what came at them, or why. Subhadra threw herself in front of Uttara—Uttara, who carried within her the only hope of the Pandavas—and cried out to Krishna. The last thing she felt before fainting was a wall of misty coolness around them. And Pariksit, whom Yudhisthir would place on the throne of Hastinapur thirty-six years later, was saved.

  When Bheem returned, he placed in my hand Aswatthama's most precious possession, a fabled jewel that had been set in his forehead in the golden days of his life by the gods. It had the power to protect its wearer from weapons, disease, hunger. I stared at the gem as it sparkled many-hued in my palm, its edges bloodstained because Bheem had torn it from him. Once I would have felt delighted at having acquired an object so unique. I would have placed it in a position of pride in the Palace of Illusions. Today it held no more meaning than a lump of clay. Worse: each of its shiny facets seemed to hold the face of one of my loved ones in the throes of death.

  I wanted to fling it from my sight, but I knew that Bheem had fought hard to wrest it from Aswatthama, hoping to console me. To please Bheem I gave the jewel to Yudhisthir and told him to wear it in his crown. He took it, but on his face was a strange lassitude, and I could see he accepted it only because he thought it would bring me satisfaction. I grew light-headed; it seemed that time rippled around me like wind on water. I saw that this was how we would live out the next decades, dragging ourselves from one expected action to the next, hoping by meticulous duty to bring each other some small measure of happiness. But the comfort that duty proffers is lukewarm at best. Happiness, like a mischievous bird that hops from branch to branch, would continue to elude us. Duryodhan's last words to Yudhisthir echoed in my ears: I'm going to heaven to enjoy all its pleasures with my friends. You'll rule a kingdom peopled with widows and orphans and wake each morning to the grief of loss. Who's the real winner, then, and who the loser?

  38

  Constant, pitiless, ever-increasing, the stench assaulted us as we made our reluctant way to the battlefield to deal with our dead. I pressed my lips tightly together to keep from vomiting. Where earlier soldiers had built their cook fires, now funeral pyres were being lighted—so many that the vista in front of us was covered in a haze of smoke. I blinked my stinging eyes. The chandaals whose job it was to burn bodies rushed from fire to fire, shaking their cudgels and yelling at mourners to keep their distance. Dressed only in loincloths, their faces streaked with soot and sweat, they looked like the guards of hell. But when I glanced past them, a strange sight met my eyes. The battlefield was filled with white shapes. In my confused numbness they looked like snowbirds, the large wingless ones poets sometimes sing of that live at the far northern edge of the world where neither herb nor grain grows. They moved uncertainly, like creatures that have lost their way in a storm and emerge from it to find themselves in a strange, frightening terrain. From time to time they emitted sharp, wordless cries. It took me a moment to recognize what I was looking at: not birds but widows who had traveled from Hastinapur and Indra Prastha—and who knew how many other cities of Bharat. Who had congregated here to do what nature never required of bird or beast—for it is only we humans that create such tragic duties for ourselves: to identify their dead and perform their final rites.

  It was soon clear that they w
ould find the first of the tasks impossible. The kings and commanders who had died in duels, though mangled, were recognizable. But the sons and husbands of these women—the common soldiers who are the first casualty of every war—had been annihilated by astras, or crushed to pulp beneath chariots and stampeding beasts. There was nothing left of them but heaps of rotting flesh.

  When the women realized that they would not be able to view the bodies of their loved ones, they grew frenzied with despair. Some called down curses so vituperative on my husbands' heads that I shuddered. (Strangely, they didn't curse Duryodhan. Perhaps his death had absolved him in their minds. Or perhaps there's no satisfaction in cursing someone who can't hear you.) Others tried to kill themselves with the weapons that were strewn about the field. Still others threw themselves onto the pyres stacked with bodies. Their tormented cries as their white garments charred to black were more unbearable than all the death screams I'd heard in battle. My own despair receded as I watched their agony.

  A horrified Yudhisthir ordered the guards to stop the women from harming themselves, to bring them to him. It wasn't easy. Crazed with fear and grief, the women fought the guards with whatever strength they had left. Some threw themselves down into the bloody mire and refused to move. Some tried to run away. Some called on their dead husbands' spirits to save them. They didn't trust Yudhisthir. They didn't want to come anywhere near him. Wasn't he the one who caused their husbands' deaths? Wasn't he the one who made them widows? Who knew what he'd do to them now?

  At first the guards were taken aback by the ferocity of the women's attack. They tried to reason with them. When that failed, they resorted to force. How long can unarmed women resist a battalion? They were finally gathered in front of a makeshift dais where Yudhisthir assured them they had nothing to fear. He vowed that they would suffer none of the evils that befell the women of a defeated city. He offered them food and water, and a safe place to rest while the dead were taken care of.

  But the women wailed and cursed, their grief replaced by rage. They didn't want his charity! Having taken everything from them, did he think he could appease them by something as paltry as refreshments? They beat their breasts and asked him to murder them, too, and thus spare them the bleakness of widowhood and its endless humiliations. If he was too cowardly to kill them, they cried, at least he should allow them to die an honorable death on their husbands' pyres. We will die! some of the more militant among them cried. Which man here dares to anger the gods by denying us the final right of a faithful wife? They broke away from the group and rushed at the pyres. Others followed them, keening as they went. Threatened with divine anger, the guards tried to stop them only halfheartedly; many of them pulled back, reluctant to intervene. Soon, if a quick remedy wasn't found, there would be a stampede, followed by mass suicide.

  Aghast, Yudhisthir stared at what was happening. If it had been a battle, he would have known what kind of command to give his men. But here he was at a loss, paralyzed by guilt and compassion and the ancient and terrible tradition the women had invoked. I could see on his face a further concern: the tragic death of so many women at the very beginning of his reign would be a stain on his kingship, a devastating karma for him to bear. But neither he nor my other husbands knew how to prevent it.

  When I climbed onto the makeshift dais, my intention was only to stand beside Yudhisthir because he seemed so alone. But to my surprise, the women stopped fighting to get to the pyres and turned toward me. Was it the unexpectedness of seeing a woman up there? Or did they know my story—all the way to the last bloody night, for that's how swiftly stories can travel? I wondered if they were thinking that I deserved everything that happened to me. I remembered how, even before the war began, a woman had made the sign against the evil eye at me. How much more reason did these women have to hate me now. My palms grew sweaty as I looked at their hard faces. My eyes burned, but I could not weep. Since my children's deaths, tears had deserted me. My mouth was dry, as if stuffed with cotton. I knew that if I stood there much longer, I'd be unable to form any words at all. And this one moment of opportunity, this one moment when I had their attention, would be lost.

  Before this, I had never addressed a crowd, though I recalled Dhri's tutor discussing, earnestly and at length, the importance of powerful words. He'd said they were the sharpest and subtlest of weapons. It was crucial for rulers to use them correctly, swaying their audience with the appropriate intonation, tugging at their hearts as a master musician does his lutestrings, mesmerizing them until they obeyed the speaker blindly.

  But even if I'd been capable of such manipulation, I didn't want to, not with the images of my dear dead still floating in front of my eyes. Instead, I started too fast and too loud and did not know what I would say. I found myself mentioning the bereavement we shared— for I, too, like them had lost a father and brothers. I admitted my guilt about the part I'd played in bringing this war about and asked for their forgiveness. When I spoke of the children, my voice broke and I had to pause. I told them that unlike me, who was left childless, they had a responsibility toward the sons and daughters they had left at home. Who would take care of them if the women killed themselves? I was not sure what I said after that; I spoke as though in a trance. I think I said, In spite of grief, we must live for the sake of the future. For the sake of the future, I promised them, I would take their children (for certainly I would have no others) as my own and make sure they lacked for nothing.

  I'd started to address the women as a queen might her subjects, but as the words formed in my mouth, I spoke as a mother among mothers, and together we wept.

  It fell upon me, the wrenching task of guiding my husbands to our dead. There was no one else who knew what I longed to forget: where and how they'd fallen, what their dying gestures had been. I pointed out the mangled bodies: Ghatotkacha, who in the extreme pain of his end had thought only of our good; Uttar and his father Virat, who had sheltered us in our distress, not knowing the ultimate cost of that hospitality; my father, his eyes open in death, his mouth drawn back in a grimace of disappointment, for he did not live to see the vengeance he had spent his entire life planning. Reaching the mutilated corpse of the young Abhimanyu, I described to my husbands how bravely he had fought even when overwhelmed by so many experienced warriors and saw pride mingle with the sadness on their faces.

  But as we proceeded, I grew confused. Which of the dead should I single out, and which should I ignore? What of Salya, uncle to the Pandavas, who had helped us the best he could even though he was tricked into fighting for Duryodhan? Drona, his headless body twisted in his chariot, who had once taken their child-hands in his and taught them how to bend back their first bows? I looked into the blood-encrusted face of Lakshman Kumar, Duryodhan's son, his eyes wide with surprise as though he hadn't expected death to win this game of tag, and it blurred into the face of one of my boys.

  And now we came to Karna's body. I kept my face averted, but it seemed my heart would burst from agitation. I couldn't bear to think that there was no one to mourn this great and unfortunate warrior's passing. His friends were all dead, Kunti could not claim her kinship with him, and I could not express my grief. My husbands remarked casually on the smile on his face. Why, Nakul asked, did his body not give off a stench like the other corpses? Arjun spoke magnanimously of his valor, for it is easy to praise those you hate once you have killed them. When Yudhisthir said, I wonder who his parents really were, and if they know he's dead, I couldn't bear it. I fell to my knees and said, “Husbands, you must cremate every warrior who died in Kurukshetra with due honor. You must pour ghee into the fire for them all, and offer rice and water so that their spirits may be at peace.”

  Yudhisthir agreed at once, but as he called for arrangements, we heard a voice behind us.

  “No,” it cried. “You have no right to touch my sons, whom you butchered along with their loyal friends. I will not allow you to offer prayers for them and thus lessen the punishment that awaits you in this life an
d beyond. I will take care of my own dead.”

  It was Dhritarashtra. He had always been stalwart and tall in spite of his infirmity. But overnight he'd aged—spine bent, hair grayed, forehead marked by grief ‘s ravages. But Gandhari, who led him by the hand, stood taller than ever. The anger on her face, ice-white as the scarf that covered her eyes, frightened me more than her husband's outburst. Her years of prayer and abstinence had given her great power. Would she use it now to harm my husbands? I reached for Yudhisthir's arm to warn him—but I was too late.

  Everyone knows what happened next. How the old king, with piety on his tongue and murder in his heart, pretended to accept Yudhisthir's apologies, his promise that he'd be a son to them. He held out his arms in a gesture of forgiveness, calling first for Bheem, who had killed every one of his sons. But once more Krishna saved us. He pulled Bheem back and gestured to his servants to bring out, instead, the iron statue upon which Duryodhan had so often vented his hatred. Dhritarashtra tightened his arms around it until he crushed it. Then he wept with genuine regret—for hidden behind the anger and envy, there still remained some concern in his heart for his brother's children.

  Seeing this, Krishna explained his ruse and reminded the king that the Pandavas had been pushed unwillingly into war by his own son. “The least you can do to make up to them for all they've unjustly suffered at Duryodhan's hands,” he said, “is to truly forgive them and give them your blessing, so that their hearts might find peace.”