The Palace of Illusions

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

  Afterward, Arjun wept. The tears pooled in the sunken pits under his eyes. His chin, stubbled with white, quivered. I couldn't bear to look. I had never seen him weep like this. Yudhisthir, too, was weeping. So were the others. Watching them, my heart was torn apart by loss, by the realization that, like Krishna, my husbands' life purpose was over. Having purged the earth of evil, having changed the course of history, having raised a child to be a true king, they had rendered themselves unnecessary.

  Now Yudhisthir held Arjun's shaking shoulders, the bones that stood out under the loose skin. He said, “Brother, you're right. It's time for you—for all of us—to die.”

  42

  I stood under the archway of the main gates, its old, old stones, and gazed back at Hastinapur one last time in farewell. Its tree-lined avenues shimmered in heat haze like a scene out of a dream. Twice before I'd left this city. How different it had been each time.

  The first was as a naïve bride whose heart strained after all the things she wanted: adventure, love, queenship, a palace to call her own. I made sure to wear my finest clothes and all the gold I owned so that the eyes of onlookers would be dazzled. I held tight to the side of the elaborate, impractical chariot Dhritarashtra had given us to hide my nervousness, for I wanted the people of the city to remember me as heroic, majestic. The woman around whom history would gather itself. I wanted them to make up stories about the beautiful Panchaali, to weep because I was leaving them for something better.

  The second time I was on foot, clad in the rough garments a servant might wear. My hair hung loose about my face, already snarling. I no longer possessed any jewelry—my husband had lost it all at dice—but my eyes glittered like diamonds. My face was hard with hate and remembrance. Hadn't I possessed the most beautiful palace in the world, which Duryodhan had wrested from us by trickery? I lifted my chin high. I wanted the people of the city to remember the way I'd been humiliated, the curse I'd pronounced. I wanted them to cower under my slashing gaze, knowing that subjects must ultimately pay for the sins of the rulers.

  But today, like my husbands, I was clad in beaten tree bark, attire of those who have renounced worldly life. I wore no gold. I had given all my jewelry away. Indeed, beyond what I wore, I possessed nothing. Behind me, Pariksit wept, and his new wife, and Uttara and Subhadra, and further behind (as I had once so bitterly wished) I heard the laments of the people of Hastinapur, their sorrow at losing us. But I no longer required their tears. It baffled me that as a younger woman I'd thought such a thing would make me happy. Now I wanted nothing—not even from Pariksit, whom I'd come to love more than I'd ever loved my sons. I sent a good thought toward the city, but I felt oddly detached from it, from all that had been my life until now. I was struck, suddenly, by how brief that life was compared to everything around me: the marble buildings, the flowering flame-blossom trees, the cobblestones smoothed by generations of feet, the indigo haze of the distant mountains. Perhaps this was how Kunti had felt, like a tiny boat rocking unmoored on the shore of a huge ocean as she waited with vague interest to see where the current would take her. There was an unexpected freedom in finding out that one wasn't as important as one had always assumed!

  But as I stepped beyond the gateway, a traitor wind brought me the scent of parijats, that old smell out of my garden in the Palace of Illusions—and with it a regret. Why hadn't I planted it here in Hastinapur? Like the firework stars that the court magician had ignited on the night of Pariksit's coronation, that single regret exploded in my heart, filling it with showers of burning sparks. I wasn't ready to let go of my life. How amazing it seemed to me with its victories, its adventures, its moments of glory. Even the shame that had struck like hot iron, branding revenge into my brain, seemed suddenly precious in its uniqueness. I wanted to live it all again—with more wisdom this time! I wanted to put my hand on Yudhisthir's arm and ask him to wait another year, a month, even one day. I hadn't taught Pariksit's wife how to make mango pickles with the secret ingredient that would keep them fresh for a decade. I hadn't commended Uttara on the strength she'd grown into. I hadn't asked Subhadra's forgiveness for the many ways in which I'd tortured her. And Pariksit! How much there was to tell him! I should have confessed to him all the mistakes I'd made that I didn't want him to repeat. I should have disobeyed Vyasa and warned him of the dangers that lurked in his future. But it was too late. Already Yudhisthir strode ahead, his face still as glass, my other husbands following him, steadfast, as they had all their lives.

  Even then I could have changed my mind. They'd all asked me to stay back. Pariksit claimed he needed me to guide him, especially with my husbands gone. The women wept, saying they would miss me. Why did I have to go? they demanded. If it was a religious life I wanted, I could live it right here in Hastinapur. Didn't they have temples and priests? Wasn't every holy festival royally celebrated in this city? Didn't the most famous sages visit us regularly? My husbands, too, asked me to remain. They feared for my safety. The path they were to follow, up into the secret recesses of Himavan, was too treacherous. No woman had ever attempted it. If I fell by the roadside, Yudhisthir warned, my husbands could not stop to help me. Such was the implacable law of this final journey they had chosen to undertake.

  The more people dissuaded me, the more determined I became. Perhaps that has always been my problem, to rebel against the boundaries society has prescribed for women. But what was the alternative? To sit among bent grandmothers, gossiping and complaining, chewing on mashed betel leaves with toothless gums as I waited for death? Intolerable! I would rather perish on the mountain. It would be sudden and clean, an end worthy of bard-song, my last victory over the other wives: She was the only consort that dared accompany the Pandavas on this final, fearsome adventure. When she fell, she did not weep, but only raised her hand in brave farewell. How could I resist it?

  The sages guided us to the base of the Himalayas. There they left us, for only a person who had given up the world forever was allowed to embark on the road that stretched ahead. We knew little about it except its name, which seemed ominous (though Yudhisthir repeated it with relish): mahaprasthan, the path of the great departure. We had no idea of what it held. Even Arjun, the most widely traveled of my husbands, had not come this way before. The sages had told us that the road ended upon a sacred peak, a place where earth met the abode of the gods. There a man who was pure enough could push past the veil that separated the worlds and enter heaven. The scriptures declared it to be the most glorious of experiences. But those who were not as holy, the sages warned, would be prevented from proceeding beyond a certain point. The mountain would make sure of that. With melancholy relish, they described avalanches and hidden craters. Man-eating snow beasts.

  When he heard of the veil that could be crossed, Yudhisthir's eyes sparked with an interest I hadn't seen in them for a long time. I knew what he wanted: to enter heaven in human flesh! It was the latest of the impractical goals he'd run after all his life, with us in tow. I wanted to point out that we were dressed flimsily, in clothing made of bark. Our feet were bare. We carried no food, as was the custom when one embarked on mahaprasthan. We had no means to protect ourselves should the snow beasts happen to be real. (Yudhisthir had declared that weapons were a sign of ego and persuaded my other husbands to lay them down.) It was clear that we wouldn't last long enough to reach any peak, sacred or otherwise. That did not worry me too much. I had accepted that we would probably die on the mountain. (An end by freezing, I'd heard, was less painful than some others, and not too different from floating into sleep.) But what I resented was this: when we fell, our failure would be ascribed not to a physical limitation but a moral one.

  The path was narrow and untraveled, cluttered with sharp rocks and choked with snow and slush. Not too many people, it seemed, were desirous of leaving the world behind! In a few hours, my feet were lacerated, though because of the cold they didn't bleed. Nor did they hurt much. Already I'd begun to lose sensation in my feet. But my other senses were hei
ghtened. I'd never been one for appreciating the wilderness, preferring the shaped and contained beauty of my garden. Nature, whom I'd encountered often enough in my wanderings, had always seemed my enemy, her only purpose to add to my discomfort. But today I couldn't keep my eye off the peaks, the way the light slid and shimmered along them, turning them into different shades of gold as the day grew older. There was a sharp sweetness to the air. I breathed it in great gulps, holding it until my lungs ached, and still I couldn't get enough. Did it smell like the incense Vyasa had once sprinkled on a fire to make it speak?

  I shook my head to clear it. I knew that the ether of the mountains could make one hallucinate. Already it was hard to advance, to lift my feet from the snow that sucked at them. Still I smelled the incense, and along with it I heard the chirping of birds, though we were too high up to encounter any. I called to my husbands to ask if they noticed anything. Only then did I realize that they'd gone far beyond me. Arjun was the farthest ahead, scouting the path for danger, closely followed by Nakul and Sahadev. But Bheem and Yudhisthir, conversing as they walked at a more leisurely pace, heard me and stopped. Bheem turned—he was coming to get me—but Yudhisthir put a forbidding hand on his arm. He was reminding him of the law. Once on the path, you couldn't retrace your steps, no matter what happened.

  Resentment flared through me. Rules were always more important to Yudhisthir than human pain—or human love. I knew then that he alone would reach the gate of heaven, for among us only he was capable of shedding his humanity. I wanted to tell him this, one last outburst that he would remember even in heaven. But the bitter words dissolved in my mouth the way the far peaks were dissolving into evening. What use, even if I was right? On the nearest mountain, the snow had turned the color of the lotus I'd once made Bheem pluck for me. I hoped he recognized it and rejoiced in what we'd been: the strongest man in the world, who for the sake of love rushed into danger; the woman born of fire whose glance had the power to make him smolder with imprudence. It was a good memory on which to end a life.

  When I stepped from the path into the air, I heard my husbands cry out. As I fell, behind me there was a confused commotion. Bheem, I guessed, was scuffling with Yudhisthir, trying to get past him to me. But Yudhisthir would win, as he always did, because Kunti, in her efforts to ensure their survival, had trained his younger brothers to obey him without question. Bheem was sobbing. Would the others weep when they heard? Surely even the callous Yudhisthir would shed a few tears! Hadn't I been by his side all these years, through good times and bad? But no. I could hear him murmuring consolation, reminding Bheem of their greater goal. It was both infuriating and mortifying. Perhaps that was why, when the thought came, I did not try to push it away: Karna would never have abandoned me thus. He would have stayed back and held my hand until we both perished. He would have happily given up heaven for my sake.

  I hadn't fallen far. Just a few arm's lengths below the trail jutted a lip of rock cushioned with snow. I landed there. My breath was knocked out of me, and my left arm was twisted under my body, but—perhaps because of the cold, or because I'd deliberately chosen my fate—there wasn't much pain. I could have scrambled up to the path somehow—but for what? To listen to another of Yudhisthir's sermons? Better to lie here, in relative peace, and gather my last thoughts.

  Perhaps the mountain air carried sounds farther than normal, or perhaps I imagined the words. For though they must have traveled even farther by now, I could hear Bheem and Yudhisthir talking.

  “Why should she fall?” Bheem asked, his voice rough with tears. “Why couldn't she walk any further? Was it because her woman's strength gave out?”

  And Yudhisthir replied, in that dispassionate voice of his, “No, Bheem. It's because although she had many good qualities, she had one major fault. As do each one of you. Like her, you, too, will fall when you reach the level beyond which that flaw can't proceed.”

  “Panchaali?” Bheem exclaimed. “I don't believe it! Why, she was the most devoted of wives.” (I smiled through numb lips at his words, generous Bheem who had forgotten the many times I'd berated him, the many difficulties in which I'd landed him.) “What fault could she have had?”

  “She married us all. But she loved one man more than everyone else.”

  “Who was it?” I could hear the longing in Bheem's whisper.

  In that moment, if I could have chosen where love fell, I would have given it to Bheem. I consoled myself with this: at least I'd kept my feelings hidden from my husbands. I'd spared them the pain of knowing who it was that occupied my innermost thoughts through these years. Whose admiration I'd longed for, whose taunts had hurt me the worst. At whose death all colors were leached from my world.

  “It was,” Yudhisthir said—and then he paused.

  He knew! The secrecy I'd prided myself on—he'd seen through it. Lost as he was in his world of ideals, I'd never credited him with much perception. But I'd misjudged him. My heart constricted as I waited to hear what he would reveal. What he would accuse me of. I was surprised to discover how tense I was. I'd been wrong in thinking I wanted nothing more from the world. Though I wouldn't see them again, my husbands' final opinion suddenly mattered immensely to me.

  Yudhisthir let his words out in a rush. “Arjun. It was Arjun. She cared most for him.”

  He had spared me. He'd chosen kindness over truth and uttered, for the sake of my reputation, the second lie of his lifetime!

  Thus in my dying hour Yudhisthir proved that he had loved me all along. In doing so, he left me at once grateful and ashamed for the many bitter words I'd directed at him, and those I'd held festering inside.

  Bheem gave a resigned sigh. “Can't really blame her, I suppose,” he said. “Him being such a great warrior, and so good-looking, too. Why, even the celestial dancers at Indra's court couldn't resist him!”

  How easy he was with his forgiveness where I was concerned, how magnanimous! I wished I could tell him how much I admired him. And my other husbands, too—each had his strength, his tenderness. Nakul with his jokes, Sahadev with his consideration, Arjun who had never hesitated to stand between us and danger. When I'd had the chance to appreciate them, I'd spent it venting my dissatisfaction. Now it was too late.

  “What are the flaws that will cause the rest of us to fall?” Bheem asked.

  “Sahadev's is pride in his learning, Nakul's is vanity for his good looks, Arjun's is his warrior's ego, and yours is your inability to control yourself when you are angry.” Yudhisthir spoke calmly as always, but this time I caught the sadness beneath. It was a lonely life he'd led all these years, set apart even from those he loved most by his passion for righteousness. I'd been foolish to let it infuriate me, to wish that he would give up his stiff, silly principles. Righteousness was his nature. He couldn't give it up any more than a tiger can give up its stripes. And because of it he would go on, abandoning his dearest ones in the moment of their death, to the ultimate loneliness: to be the only human in the court of the gods.

  43

  The last of the footsteps have passed beyond my hearing. The light on the hills has dimmed, or is it my vision that's fading? My body, too, seems to be fading, parts of it floating away: feet, knees, fingers, hair. It strikes me that, like every home where I've resided, this body, too—my final, crumbling palace—is beginning to fail me.

  How shall I spend these last moments of my life? Should I remember my mistakes and practice contrition? No. What use to berate myself now? Besides, I made so many errors, I wouldn't even get past my childhood! Should I forgive those who harmed me? Should I ask forgiveness of those I'd harmed? A worthy enterprise, but fatiguing, particularly since they're all dead now. Perhaps I should recall the people I loved and send them a prayer, for prayer is one of the few things that can travel from this realm to that next, amorphous one. Dhai Ma with her ribald jokes, her loud, affectionate scoldings; on her deathbed she'd bolted upright, delirious, calling for me. Dhri of the conscientious eyebrows and startled laughter, my first
companion; he was murdered because of a war I helped cause. My boys that grew up without a mother; the way they'd greeted me after my years in the forest, wary respect in their eyes for the legend I'd become. Pariksit with his searching glance; I'd failed to answer his question and end his search; I'd failed to warn him of the calamities that lay in wait for him. And Karna who was born under an ill star, who sat alone in the midst of a jeweled court, his eyes filled with a bitterness that I'd put there. Torn in two by his love for me and his hate, he had sacrificed himself rather than give in to Kunti's temptation: You, too, could be Draupadi's husband. Would he feel vindicated right now if he knew that in the hour of my death I thought of him rather than my husbands, wondering again, one last time, whether at my swayamvar I'd made the wrong choice?

  But the faces swirl away even as I call them up—perhaps because I've hurt them, because I've betrayed them all in some way. They merge into each other, then into the blackness that has covered the sky, and I'm left alone. Left alone to die on a frozen hill! I, whose life had been a rush of attending to the needs of my five husbands—how ironic that at the moment of my own final need not one of them should be with me!

  A long time ago I'd asked Vyasa's fire-spirits, Will I find love? They'd assured me I would. But they'd lied! I'd gained glory, yes, respect and fear, yes, even admiration. But where was the love I'd longed for since I was a girl? Where was the person who'd accept me completely and cherish me with all my faults? Self-pity (that emotion I've always scorned) rushes through my being, what's left of it, obliterating my heroic resolutions as I realize this.