Voices in the Night

by Steven Millhauser

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  Chanda’s Plan. As Chanda watches the door close behind his friend, in the earthen wall that surrounds the Lake of Solitude, a picture appears in his mind: a young woman weeping. He doesn’t understand this picture, but he feels a familiar excitement, for that is how ideas always come to him: as pictures that he gradually begins to understand. He returns to the Summer Palace, descends to the underground passageways, and summons a charioteer to take him to the royal palace. King Suddhodana is out hunting in the forest; Chanda is forced to wait in one of the pillared recesses of the Hall of Patience. It is here, beneath a painting of a war elephant with swords fastened to its tusks, that the picture in his mind reveals its meaning. Later that day, as he walks beside the King in the Hall of Private Audience, Chanda presents his plan. The Prince’s continual retreats, his craving for solitude, his despondency, his dissatisfaction—what are these but signs that the pleasures of the world are growing stale? None of this is new. The King and he have discussed such matters before. What’s new is the intensity of the dissatisfaction, the sense that an inner crisis is at hand. The remedy has always been to heighten the old pleasures and to provide new ones. Chanda reminds the King of the young concubines trained by master eunuchs in the Twenty-Four Forbidden Paths of Love, of the recently constructed Theater of Shadow Puppets in the new wing of the palace. And always the result is the same: his friend is drawn back to the world of pleasure for a time, only to turn away more violently when the revulsion comes. Chanda’s new plan takes into account the failure of pleasure as a strategy for binding the Prince to the sensual world. What he proposes is to entice Gautama by other means—by nothing less, in fact, than un-pleasure itself, which is to say, by the seductions of unhappiness. It is, he admits, a dangerous proceeding. After all, every sign of unhappiness is rigorously excluded from the life of the Three Palaces. A single tear shed by a concubine is punished by banishment. An attendant who falls to the ground, breaks an arm, and fails to continue smiling is immediately removed from the Prince’s retinue. People, horses, peacocks never die: they disappear. Gautama walks in a world without pain, without suffering. Precisely for this reason, Chanda feels certain that a place set aside and devoted to sadness can have only an alluring effect on the dejected Prince, who will be drawn to it as other men are drawn to the hips of a concubine moving artfully among transparent silks. If His Royal Eminence in the wisdom of his Being would be willing to entertain the possibility—but the King interrupts with an impatient wave of his hand and grants permission. He is, he confesses, growing so desperate over the condition of his son that his own unhappiness is increasing. Only last night, while pleasuring a new dancing girl for the third time, he found himself suddenly thinking of his son shut away behind the wall of a private bower. The girl, skilled in the ways of delight, looked at him with a flash of fear—the fear of someone who expects to be punished for failing to give sufficient pleasure. The King calmed her and returned to his bedchamber. Perhaps Chanda’s enigmatic remedy will cure more than one man.

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  A Family Stroll. Gautama, walking along a pebbled path with his wife and son, wonders whether this is a moment the boy will remember: the three of them walking together in the morning, the pink pebbles catching the light, the shadows of father and mother and son thrown out in front of them and flowing together as if the three separate beings were one moving body, the different sounds of their feet on the path, the mother’s white silk parasol shading her face but sometimes slipping to reveal a lustrous strip of hair and a crimson acacia flower. Gautama looks at his son with pride, admiring Rahula’s dark intelligent eyes, the cheekbones like polished stone, the ruby hanging from his ear. He reproaches himself: he hasn’t seen the boy for five days. Here on the path, Gautama feels his fatherhood. He turns to his wife and looks at her tenderly. She draws back and lowers her eyes. Startled, he asks if anything is the matter. “Nothing, my lord,” she answers. “Only, you looked at me as though you were saying goodbye.”

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  From the Balustrade. The Prince stands with his hands on the railing of the second-story balustrade of the northwest wing of the Summer Palace, looking out at a broad garden planted with flower beds shaped like six-pointed stars and with ornamental fruit trees resembling swans and small elephants. At the far side of the garden stands a low wall, and on the other side of the wall a procession is making its way slowly in the direction of the Joyful Woods. He sees elephants with festive red stripes painted on their heads, chariots drawn by high-stepping white horses, two-wheeled carts pulled by yoked rams and piled with sections of cedarwood trellis painted yellow and red and blue. Gautama has promised his father not to ride after the daily processions, not even to inquire about them, for their mission is a secret and will be revealed in due time. Although he is mildly exasperated at being treated like a child, he’s also deeply pleased: he has always liked secrecy and its excitements, the sense of a revelation about to come. He remembers a day in his childhood when his father handed him a gift, concealed in a small ivory box decorated with a border of carved tigers. For a long time he held the box in his hands, while faces looked down on him and voices urged him to slide back the top. Evidently the trellises are intended for a large enclosure. Some of the workmen’s carts, with their two high wheels, carry long, polished pillars that gleam in the sun. Beside the carts walk young laborers with bare chests. There are other paths to the Joyful Woods; Gautama is aware that his interest is being deliberately piqued. He is aware of another thing: his father, Chanda, and Yasodhara have begun to worry seriously about him. They are continually casting sideways looks in his direction, suppressing anxious questions, turning him over in their minds. He can feel, like the touch of a hand, their troubled silences. Their solicitude has begun to interest him. Should they be worried? Now they’re trying to draw him out of himself by means of a procession with a secret. They would like to distract him, to seduce his attention. He, for his part, would be delighted for them to succeed. Sometimes he is bored, bored with everything. It’s an emptiness he does not know how to fill. At such times, even his inner shadow bores him. The sky bores him, and the earth bores him, and each blade of grass on the earth bores him, and that two-wheeled cart bores him, and his boredom bores him, and his knowledge that his boredom bores him bores him. As he watches a royal guard seated on an elephant adorned with topazes and emeralds, he remembers sliding back the top of the ivory box. But although he can see his fingers on the ivory lid, although he can see the row of carved tigers, and the faces looking down, for some reason he cannot remember what he found inside.

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  Approaching the Yellow Bridge. A few days later, Gautama is walking on a path in the Park of Six Bridges. He is alone. In the near distance he catches sight of the Yellow Bridge, and as he recalls his recent stroll with Chanda an uneasiness comes over him. He can’t accuse himself of deliberately avoiding Chanda, but it’s true enough that he hasn’t sought out his friend in the old way. The estrangement puzzles him. The deep friendship that flows between them, the fierce closeness, the intimacy deeper than blood, the long nights of adolescence spent pouring out their souls—all this has come to seem oppressive to Gautama, who doesn’t want to walk beside a friend who glances at him anxiously, watches hungrily for signs, and observes him as one might observe a child leaning too far over a balustrade railing. Sometimes Chanda blurts out enigmatic half-questions that seem to hint at accusations or confessions. Gautama understands that he himself is partly to blame for this state of affairs, for lately he has felt in himself a kind of inward hiddenness, which is bound to provoke the anxious scrutiny of a friend, to say nothing of that friend’s sense of injury. After all, to whom should Gautama turn, in his obscure trouble, if not to Chanda? But Chanda’s urgent concern doesn’t limit itself to charged looks and riddling utterances. Gautama can feel, beneath those looks, some deeper turbulence. Can Chanda be concealing something from him? On several occasions recently, the Prince has had the peculiar sensation that
someone is watching from a hidden place, and he cannot prevent himself from imagining that this unseen watcher might be Chanda. As he steps onto the Yellow Bridge, he looks back suddenly at the path. With self-disdain, with remorse, he returns his gaze to the bridge and looks down at the clear water, through which he can see white pebbles and red sand.

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  A Tremor of Whiteness. Chanda, walking along a path in the Park of Six Bridges, feels the smoothed earth press into his bare soles. He walks so quietly that he cannot hear the touch of his own feet on the path. Sometimes he stops, his body tense, his senses alert. Sometimes he picks up the pace. He crosses the Azure Bridge and continues along a path bordered on one side by a pond with wild geese and on the other by a grove of blossoming acacia trees. Sometimes, when the path turns, he sees a tremor of whiteness that disappears. Now the path turns again. Chanda follows the curve and stops—stops so completely that it’s as if he has come to a closed door. He does not breathe. Directly before him, on the Yellow Bridge, Gautama stands in his brilliant white dhoti and shawl, staring down at the Stream of Happiness. Chanda walks silently backward. He watches as the turn of the path gradually pulls the trees across the Prince, making him disappear.

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  The Ladder. Gautama crosses the Yellow Bridge and strolls along a shady path under a canopy of branches. If only he were a pebble in a stream! He tries to imagine himself as a pebble in a stream. He is cold and white and round and hard and still. The thought calms him. He wonders whether it is possible to be a discontented pebble in a stream. He imagines a pebble having dark thoughts in a stream. As the path begins to curve to the right, he thinks: My mind is absurd. I am absurd. He rounds the turn and sees ahead of him a high narrow ladder reaching up into the branches of an asoka tree. Near the top of the ladder stands a gaunt man, his face partly hidden by dark green leaves and pale orange blossoms. The man appears to be touching a leaf on a branch above his head. Beside his knees, on each side of the ladder rails, hangs a wooden basket. The man pulls the leaf from the branch, drops it into one basket, and removes from the other basket another leaf. With a needle and thread he carefully begins to attach the second leaf to the place where the first leaf hung. He does not look down as Gautama walks up to the ladder and stands there watching.

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  Chanda Continues on His Way. In the middle of the Yellow Bridge, Chanda stops for a moment to look down at the clear stream. He wonders what drew Gautama’s attention, down there where one sees only smoothly flowing water, white pebbles, and red sand. His friend sees other things, he’s sure of it, but they lie within. Chanda crosses the bridge and continues along a sunny-and-shady path that stretches away beneath a canopy of interlaced branches. He walks slowly, listening for the possible sound of his bare soles against the smoothed earth, but he hears only birdsong. Chanda has trained himself to walk so quietly that he can bend over a bird pecking at the ground and pick up that bird in his hands. As he walks, he glances quickly over his shoulder, but no one is there. Is he foolish to imagine that the King is having him followed? The King, after all, is having his own son followed. Before him, where the path turns out of sight, Chanda hears a clatter of distant cart wheels amidst the birdsong. He follows the turn of the path and stops abruptly. Gautama is standing beside a ladder, staring up. Chanda pauses, looks quickly about, and steps into the trees. The sound of cart wheels grows louder.

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  The Leaf Artist. Moments later a two-wheeled cart comes clattering into view, drawn by a bare-chested young man whose knee-length white loincloth is decorated with images of green leaves. The cart is filled with leaves so brilliant in their greenness that they appear to be wet. Upon seeing the Prince, the young man falls to his knees and presses his forehead to the path. Gautama bids him rise. The young man explains that he is an assistant to the Leaf Artist—he points to the man at the top of the ladder—who has been ordered by the Park Overseer to make leaves of green silk in his workshop, so that they may replace all leaves in the Park of Six Bridges that are in danger of falling. A report concerning a fallen leaf has caused great agitation. Now the Leaf Artist is passing from tree to tree, inspecting the leaves and replacing weak or damaged ones with sturdy leaves of silk. Gautama asks how many leaves are replaced in the course of a single day. The assistant answers that he doesn’t know the precise number of leaves, but he can say that this is the third cartload of silk leaves he has delivered to the park this afternoon. At the top of the ladder the Leaf Artist, awakened from his trance of concentration, glances down. When he sees who is standing at the foot of the ladder, he turns sideways and bows low, very low—so low that for a moment it appears he will fall from the ladder and strike the ground at Gautama’s feet. Slowly he uncurls and returns to his task.

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  Gautama’s Knee. Gautama returns from his walk in the Park of Six Bridges, enters his chamber, and sits on a floor mat. The afternoon has not been a success. He feels certain he was being followed, but he doesn’t know why anyone should follow him as he takes a stroll in one of his parks. There are many things he does not know. He doesn’t know why a leaf falls from a tree. He doesn’t know why he is a man and not a pebble in a stream. He doesn’t know why he is unhappy. Does he know anything at all? He looks at his left knee. What does he know? He knows nothing. Does he even know that he has a knee? A man should know whether or not he has a knee. He asks himself why he thinks he knows he has a knee. He thinks he knows he has a knee because he perceives a particular shape and color. But what if his eyes are deceiving him? What if he’s asleep? Say he closes his eyes and imagines a knee. Is that knee real? Is the outer knee more real than the inner knee? When he opens his eyes, the imagined knee disappears. Is it possible that when his eyes are open, as they are now, he is still not awake? And if he should wake? It’s warm in his chamber. His right eyebrow itches slightly.

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  The Island of Desolation. Accompanied by chariots festooned with crimson and white flowers, by royal elephants draped with necklaces of pearls, by soldiers with javelins and by guards with ceremonial swords, by courtiers, friends, musicians, dancing girls, and jugglers, Gautama stands beside Chanda in the princely chariot as they come within sight of the secret place. The soaring trellis-wall is the height of three elephants. At the arched doorway he turns, embraces Chanda, and stares back at the silks and swords flashing in the sun. He descends. A guard opens the door, closes it behind him. Gautama has entered a realm of dusk. Black trees with black leaves rise up on both sides of a white path. From the covered top of the vast enclosure, globed lanterns hang like small moons. The globe-light shines on the trunks and branches, which appear to be blocks of stone shaped into trees and finished with black lacquer. High above, birds in the branches sing plaintively. Are they carved birds, there in the artful dark? The light of the round lanterns, the gloomy stone trees, the melancholy birdsong stir Gautama and fill him with a drowsy, vague excitement. He follows the path to the edge of a dark lake where black swans glide. Under the swans he can see the other swans, dreaming in the still water. In the middle of the lake he sees an island. As one swan drifts closer, Gautama realizes that it is a boat shaped like a swan. Under the boat-swan another boat-swan trembles slightly. An oarsman in a black robe beckons him aboard. Gautama sinks down among soft cushions as the black oars rise and dip like wings.

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  Chanda in Sunlight. As Chanda returns in the chariot, where he stands holding the reins in brilliant sunlight, he recalls with particular pleasure the six hundred birds carved by the artisans and fitted with mechanisms that can produce sorrowful birdcalls. If his creation is as successful as those birds, three things will happen: his friend will achieve happiness, the King will be grateful, and life in the Three Palaces can continue undisturbed forever. Chanda feels the sun on his bare chest, the warm breeze on his shoulders. He breathes deep. He can feel his aliveness glowing in him like an inner sun. In his nostrils, sharp smells of green. In his forearms, the pull of the reins. To live,
to breathe, to laugh among friends! For no particular reason, Chanda laughs aloud in the sun.

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  The Black Pavilion. In the dusk of the enclosure the oarsman rows the black swan to the shore of the island. Under the swan-head the other oarsman draws in his oars. The Prince steps from the body of the swan onto white sand. It glimmers under the moon-globes. Before him he sees half a dozen crumbling pillars, which appear to be all that is left of a palace courtyard. He has never seen crumbling pillars before, and as he passes among them he is filled with a gentle, sweet distress. Past the strange pillars he comes to a high cedarwood wall. The doorway is hung with a black silk curtain, behind which he hears the soft, dark notes of a flute. Gautama pushes aside the curtain and enters a clearing among high trees. In the center of the clearing stands a large black pavilion, with an entrance awning supported by poles. From the pavilion comes a flute melody that rises and slowly falls, rises higher and slowly falls. The notes are accompanied by sounds he has never heard before, sounds that remind him of wind in leaves, of water in distant fountains. Quietly he moves forward, as if drawn by whispering voices. He enters the pavilion. Young women dressed in translucent black silk lie languorously on couches with their faces turned to one side. Others sit on floor cushions with their shoulders slumped forward, their cheeks resting on their hands. Still others walk slowly with bowed heads. All the women are taking deep breaths and letting out long sighs. The intermingled sighs create the sound of a mournful breeze. Black jewels adorn their necks and wrists. Black flowers tremble in their hair. He can hear other soft sounds among the sighs: sharp intakes of nose-breath, small high throat-bursts. What are those sounds? Slowly Gautama makes his way into the lantern-lit dark. From somewhere come the rising and falling notes of an insistent flute. One young woman, almost a girl, is lying on her side on a row of floor cushions. She is staring at nothing with her large, unblinking eyes. Her body is half-sunk among the cushions, her cheek lies upon an outstretched arm, one wrist rests languidly on her upswept hip. As he draws closer, he is startled to see her eyes begin to shimmer. Lines of water run down her face. Gautama feels a warmth in his chest. A tender confusion comes over him as he sinks to his knees beside her and takes her limp hand in his hands.