Voices in the Night

by Steven Millhauser

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  Chanda Receives a Report. For two days and two nights, specially trained Watchers concealed in the nearby woods observe the arched doorway in the trellis-wall and send reports to Chanda that all is well. By the third morning, when a messenger announces that there has still been no sign of the Prince, Chanda can no longer suppress his joy. Gautama has chosen to remain within the enclosure. He has been drawn in by the melancholy light, the Lake of Gloom, the Island of Desolation, the Pavilion of Sorrowing Women. On the fifth day, Chanda visits the King, who rewards him with a silver chest filled with precious jewels. On the seventh day, Chanda detects in himself a faint unease. The plan is working not merely well, but supremely well—far better than he had dreamed possible. Now, Chanda knows that life isn’t in the habit of exceeding one’s dreams. He calms himself; his friend’s craving for melancholy scenes, the disappearance into the dark pleasures of tears and sighs, is precisely what Chanda foresaw. His error lay in underestimating the intensity of Gautama’s need. By the end of the ninth day, Chanda can no longer sleep. Has something happened to the Prince? He instructs the Watchers to make inquiries by means of the oarsman, who is in the pay of the King. Anxiously he awaits the report. It is possible that Gautama has fallen so deeply under the enchantment of sorrow that he no longer craves the pleasures of the sun. It’s equally possible that he has become sick and lacks the strength to return. But Gautama has never been sick in his life; he scarcely shows signs of tiredness after nights of excess that would leave most men weak with exhaustion. Can it be something else? Are the pavilion women, chosen by himself and one of the King’s most loyal advisers, entirely trustworthy? Is the Prince in danger? So deeply does Chanda sink into troubled meditation that he is startled to notice one of the three Night Watchers standing patiently in the chamber doorway.

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  The Night Watcher’s Tale. Chanda motions him in. The story is swiftly told. The Night Watcher has just come from speaking with the oarsman, who had been ordered to pay a visit to the Pavilion of Sorrowing Women. The women reported to the oarsman that the Prince remained with them for two wakings and two sleepings. In the timeless dark, he spoke to them kindly and wiped away their tears. On the third waking, as the mechanical birds began to sing, the women discovered that the Prince was no longer there. He had vanished, like a god. The waters of the lake are broad, the walls high and covered with a trellis-roof. Where is Gautama? As the oarsman rowed from the island, he could hear the women, who once played the part of sorrow, weeping in earnest. Chanda is no longer listening. He is staring at his hand, which has begun to tremble. He has never seen a trembling hand before, and it interests him so much that he is puzzled, when he looks up, to find the Night Watcher still standing over him, awaiting orders.

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  Chanda Investigates. Chanda steps from the wooden swan, instructs the oarsman to wait, and makes his way over the moon-white sand and through the ruined courtyard to the cedarwood wall with its hanging of black silk. He passes through the curtain into the clearing, and as he approaches the Pavilion of Sorrowing Women he hears the sound of raised voices. Inside, he comes upon an unpleasant scene. Groups of women are quarreling and shouting, throwing their arms about; other women sit sullenly alone. Their silks are rumpled, their faces soiled, their hair disorderly. A hush falls as Chanda enters. He questions the women closely, and the answer is always the same: the Prince vanished, like a god. They speak of his kindness, the gentleness of his eyes, the tenderness of his voice. Chanda can learn nothing from them. He strides from the pavilion and makes his way through the trees to the shore. Swiftly he circles the island. Gautama might have swum across the water to the far shore, but the only way out is through a single doorway, and that doorway is uninterruptedly observed by disciplined Watchers, three by day and three by night. As Chanda returns in the painted swan he considers the possibilities. The girls, instructed to deceive Gautama, are deceiving Chanda; the Prince has made them promise to guard the secret of his escape. It is also possible that they’re speaking the truth, and that it is the oarsman himself who is deceiving him. Chanda imagines the grim oarsman rowing Gautama secretly across the lake, opening the door in the trellis-wall, cunningly distracting the hidden Watchers as the Prince creeps away unseen. If the girls and the oarsman are speaking the truth, then perhaps one or two or all three of the Night Watchers have become loyal to the Prince and have somehow conspired in his disappearance. If everyone can be trusted, then the vanishing of Gautama is a perplexing and alarming mystery. For all anyone knows, he may be lying at the bottom of the Lake of Gloom. At the Summer Palace, Chanda assembles one thousand guards, warriors, and attendants in the Courtyard of Eternal Youth. He dispatches four hundred men to the Four Hundred Bowers. He sends two hundred men to the Two Hundred Lakes and Ponds, three hundred men to the palace woods and fields, fifty men to the Fifty Gardens, and fifty men to the Island of Desolation. In his chamber, Chanda waits restlessly. He understands that it is his duty to go at once to the royal palace and report to the King, but he feels that it would be irresponsible for him to be absent for even a moment while the search is under way. He understands with absolute clarity that his commendable sense of responsibility is nothing but a desire to conceal from the King the disturbing news of his son’s disappearance. Chanda walks up and down in the courtyard. He returns to his chamber. He paces between his clothes chest and the lute hanging on the opposite wall. He lies down with an arm across his eyes. He sits up, he lies down. At sunset a servant appears at his doorway. He reports that one of the caretakers thinks he might have heard the gate creak in the Bower of Quiet Delights. The servant himself has just returned from searching the bower thoroughly but has found nothing. Chanda, who has lowered his eyes for a few moments in order to concentrate on the meaning of this report, looks up impatiently. Behind the servant, in the doorway, stands Gautama. “If you’re busy,” Gautama begins. The servant turns in surprise. Chanda rises to embrace his friend.

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  Gautama’s Tale. When the servant leaves, Gautama sits cross-legged on a rice mat and, thanking his friend warmly for the delights of the Sorrowful Enclosure, tells his tale. He recognized Chanda’s ingenuity everywhere: the stone trees with their black leaves, the globed lanterns hanging like small moons, the elegant boat-swan, the women disposed in pleasing arrangements of grief. And his heart was stirred, not only by his friend’s thoughtfulness but by the women themselves. It seemed to him that they were playing a part, which pleased him as a lover of theatrical performances, but he soon sensed that the attitudes of grief had released in them a genuine sorrow that lay buried in their hearts. He, a man bearing within him his own darkness, spoke to them of life’s perplexities, of the shadows born of sunlight. The result was curious: tears that had been artful soon changed to passionate tears, which flowed along cheeks and dampened the translucent silk that clung to young breasts so perfectly formed that they appeared to be the work of a master sculptor. He passed from girl to girl, until the pavilion was a great hall of woe, a musical composition of sobs and moans. The tears he was able to evoke he was also able to soothe away; by the second night the girls were calm, and indeed their grief, though heartfelt, did not run deep, for beneath their flights of sorrow lay the vast country of youthful happiness. His task completed, he left in the middle of the second night. All the women were sleeping peacefully, their foreheads smooth and childlike. Mindful of the oarsman, who might be under orders to report his movements, Gautama made his way to the opposite shore of the isle. The lake was broad and the water deep, but the son of King Suddhodana was well trained in the art of swimming. He removed his silks, wrapped them about his head like a turban, and swam to the far side. A path led to the sturdy trellis-wall. He climbed swiftly, naked except for the turban of silks. The immense trellis-roof, covered by interwoven vines, was supported throughout the enclosure by cedarwood pillars disguised as trees. The overhanging edges of the roof rested so that the horizontal slats lay between the vertical strips at t
he top of the trellis-walls. Gautama pushed up an edge of vine-covered roof, made his way over the top of the wall, and lowered the roof in place. He climbed down the outside of the wall by placing his toes in the spaces of the trellis. At the bottom he removed his turban of silks. He fastened his garments about him and set forth on familiar paths. Overhead, the moon was so perfectly round and so brilliantly white that he wondered whether it, too, was an artificial moon suspended from the heavens by an artisan’s assistant. On turning paths, through well-known woods and parks, he walked until he came to the Bower of Quiet Delights. For seven days and seven nights he sat beside the fountain, under a red-blossoming kimsuka tree. For seven days and seven nights he reflected on his life. On the morning of the eighth day he rose and went out to seek his friend, to whom he wished to recount his adventures and announce his decision. But why does Chanda look troubled? Can he read the heart of his friend?

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  Father and Son. In the Hall of Private Audience, King Suddhodana listens with alarm and close attention as his son explains that the time has come. The time has come for him to leave the world of the Three Palaces and seek his way in the larger world. The way he seeks is inward. He has had glimpses of it, intuitions, here in the world of his father, but he is continually distracted by the things that bring him most pleasure. Moreover, he is causing unhappiness to the very people for whom he wishes only happiness, namely, his father, his wife, and his friend. For these reasons he seeks permission to go out into the world and find what he cannot find here: himself. The King, as he listens, understands that he must answer with extreme care. He can, of course, simply refuse permission. His son prides himself on obedience. But Gautama is restless; he will obey, but rebelliously. What the King wants isn’t a troubled and fretful obedience, but a joyful embrace of a father’s wishes. “Are you not happy?” he asks his son. The Prince answers that he is the happiest man alive, but for one thing. “And what is that thing?” “It is this. My happiness is a sun that casts an inner shadow.” The King, irritated that his son should speak to him in riddles, restrains his anger. A man stands to inherit a mighty kingdom, and he speaks of shadows. But the King understands that he is losing his son. A shadow passes over his own heart. He replies that it would be irresponsible of him to give his beloved son permission to renounce the kingdom that is his to inherit. But when the father is no longer able to rule, and the kingship passes to the son, then he may do as he likes, for there will be no one above him. The King is startled to feel tears on his face. His tears shake him, and as he weeps he turns his face away from his son.

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  In Which Gautama Observes a Gate. Gautama sits on the shore of the Lake of Solitude, where the swan once spoke to him as in a dream. Now the swans drift silently on the still water. He cannot disobey his father. He will assume the crown. He will conquer neighboring kingdoms. He will be merciless in battle. His inner restlessness will drive him to victory after victory, until there can be no more victories, since all his enemies will be enslaved or dead. The world will be his. King Siddhartha Gautama! Lord of the Earth and Sky. An impatience comes over him as he watches the swans under the swans in the dark water. Why don’t they do something? Why are they just sitting there? Why don’t they break away and fly off to unknown lands? This is no place for him. He wants to run, to shout, to ride in his chariot, to hurl a javelin at the sun. He wants—oh, what does he want? He wants to tear out his insides with a sword. He wants to cut off his head and hand it to his father. Here, Father: I cannot obey you. Irritably he rises and makes his way toward the gate in the wall. Outside, he strides along a shady path. Partly because he can’t bear the idea of returning to his chamber, where nothing awaits him but his own fretful thoughts, and partly for reasons that elude him, he finds himself stepping from the path into a thicket. Like a boy playing in the woods, he reaches up to a strong branch and pulls himself into the leaves of a mimosa tree. He climbs to the branch above and sits there, a wingless bird. Through the leaves he can see the path, the wall, and the gate in the wall. Slowly the gate begins to open. One of the King’s guards steps onto the path. He looks about, turns toward the open gate, and beckons. Chanda emerges. Gautama watches as they walk along the path, speaking in low voices, and pass slowly out of sight.

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  The Laugh. High in his tree, Gautama laughs. It’s a laugh he has never heard before, and though it disturbs him, he discovers that he cannot make himself stop. Gautama knows many kinds of laughter, for happiness reigns in the world of the Three Palaces. There is the giddy laughter of concubines as they splash in the Fountain of Dreams, the playful laughter of friends as they rest after a footrace, the tender laughter of Yasodhara as she listens to him reciting a small adventure of the day. There is the witty laughter of highborn ladies, the fierce laughter of guards as they roll ivory dice in the courtyard. But the laughter that issues from Gautama, as he sits in the branches of the mimosa tree, the laughter that pours from him like flocks of birds, like fire, the laughter that hurts his ribs and scorches his throat and will not stop, though he wishes it to stop, is not like the laughter of the Three Palaces, and Gautama, who is trained to notice how one thing is distinguished from another thing that is like it in all ways but one, tries, even as he laughs, to understand the difference. And as he continues to laugh, harder and harder, he comes to understand that what distinguishes his laughter from the laughter he has known—the laughter of sunlight, the laughter of the summer moon—is that it is a laughter that is not happy.

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  The Work of a Master. The workshop of the Leaf Artist is located in the northeast wing of the Summer Palace, where the artisans are housed, not far from the musicians’ quarters. In the late afternoon, the Prince pays the Master a visit. After their talk, the two men walk in the Garden of Artisans, where the Leaf Artist points out the silk leaves on trees of sandstone and hedges of carved cedarwood, the painted birds in the branches, a pond with artificial swans, and at the base of a sculpted juniper bush blossoming with lifelike flowers, a stone cat asleep on its side. Gautama is full of hope as he walks in the garden, for the Master has promised to set to work immediately. Four days later a messenger hands Gautama a wooden writing board on which a message has been written. He is to meet the Leaf Artist at nightfall in the Pavilion of Deepest Peacefulness, in the woods that border the southern rampart. Gautama dips his swan quill in an inkpot, writes on the board, and hands it back to the messenger. At sunset Gautama passes through parks and gardens, enters a bower, and descends a flight of steps into a mossy tunnel. He climbs a second flight of steps, emerges at the edge of a wood, and makes his way through the darkening trees. In the spaces between black and purple branches he sees the night sky. The sky is so fiercely blue, so shiningly, darkly blue, that it appears to quiver with inner fire. The moon is a white swan in a blue lake. Before him Gautama sees a dim shimmer. A moment later he pushes through a silk hanging and enters the Pavilion of Deepest Peacefulness. A shadow stands before a divan. Gautama greets the Leaf Artist, who stoops in a streak of moonlight to unbind two bundles at his feet. The great wings are woven from white swan feathers and glimmer like white horses in the light of the moon.

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  Flight. The Leaf Artist lifts a wing and fastens it with straps of silk rope to Gautama’s left arm. He lifts the second wing and fastens it to Gautama’s right arm. The wings are heavier than Gautama has anticipated, and as he moves his arms slowly forward and back he thinks that it is like moving his arms in deep water. He follows the Master from the pavilion into the darkness of the forest. On shadowy tree trunks fatter than the legs of elephants he sees patches of moonlit moss. He feels a wing scrape against bark and draws his arms close to his sides. In a sudden streak of moonlight an edge of dark wing glows like white fire. The trees disappear. In the brilliant clearing he sees his long shadow stretching away. The sides of the shadow crack open: dark shadow-wings sweep out. The Master leads him across the clearing, which slopes up at one side to form a steep hi
ll. At the top of the hill the Master examines the wings, tugs at the feathers, tightens the silk straps. He repeats his instructions. Gautama looks down at the clearing, at the woods beyond, at the dark rampart rising high above the world. He swings his swan-arms back and forth. He thinks: I am a Swan of the Night. The Master gravely nods. Gautama begins to run down the hillside toward the clearing, lifting and lowering his wings. Massive trees rise up on both sides. He feels like a child, a fool. The clumsy wings are holding him back, he can feel the ground pressing up against his feet. He remembers an afternoon in childhood when he saw a large bird rise slowly from a lake. Never will his feet leave the grip of the earth. He runs, he runs. Something is wrong. The trees are sinking down. Are the trees sinking down? He can no longer feel the slap of the path. The great wings lift him higher. He is above the clearing, above the trees. Before him rises the rampart. He is a swan-god, he is Lord of the Night Sky, Prince of Stars. He can feel his blood beating in his wings as he flies upward toward the top of the wall.