by John Speed
"Now that I am blind, I see it all. When I had my eyes, I could see nothing." Maya was about to answer, but Chitra lifted her hand before she could speak.
Maya saw the strange, dark mark on Lady Chitra's palm, like a magenta star, or-Maya thought a moment later-like an evil eye.
"The odd thing is that we fell in love. Yes, I did things. I satisfied the sultan's rude desires as the Brotherhood forced me to." Chitra's voice sighed, and she almost whispered. "I would have done those things anyway, for him. He was beautiful, and so kind. And he loved me." Cares seemed to fall from Chitra's face, and Maya could see the beautiful young nautch girl that the sultan loved.
"Is that all they wanted, sister? That you should do those unchaste acts to satisfy him?"
Chitra's face grew stony. "Do you think so? You are quite naive. No, for each act, always there was something; some price, some favor, some little wish that I was to exact. So I sold to my dear love what I would have given gladly. That was the price the Brotherhood demanded."
"But why did you agree, sister?"
Lady Chitra's voice, usually so formidable and majestic, grew as weak as a little girl's. "You have no idea of what they may do, sister. But I fear too soon you will."
"But how could these unchaste acts produce an heir, sister? Didn't you say that was what the Brotherhood desired most?"
Lady Chitra however had begun to weep. She said nothing as the tears stained her cheeks. At last she waved her hands, and Lakshmi instantly rose. The girl took Maya's hands and pulled her swiftly from the room.
Lakshmi tugged Maya through the courtyard with the same timid strength that she used with Lady Chitra. Without a word, she pulled her through Chitra's garden. At the far end was a door so small Maya had to stoop to pass through it. Before Maya had crossed the threshold, Lakshmi had taken hold of her hand again. Along a narrow dirt path that hugged the brick wall of the garden, Lakshmi tugged Maya, sometimes walking backward and staring at her with terrified pleasure.
A few yards from the end of the wall were a half-dozen mud huts with peaked thatch roofs, like conical hats. Some of the huts had been decorated with whitewash: Oms, swastiks, geometric designs. Small dark women in faded saris squatted on the open ground, peeling onions and chopping pumpkin. They wrinkled their faces familiarly when Lakshmi passed, and stared at Maya but said nothing.
Around the rough door of the last hut someone had drawn a design of whitewashed diamonds. In the center of each diamond was a bright red spot of kumkum. Lakshmi slipped through this door, into the darkness of the hut, and Maya followed.
Her eyes adjusted to the shadows. The inside walls had been whitewashed. Maya could probably have touched both sides if she stretched her arms. The dirt floor had a shiny green, well-kept look from being swept and painted with cow-dung slurry. On opposite sides of the hut were two thin mats, one of them short-Lakshmi's mat, Maya guessed. "Who sleeps there?" Maya asked. "Your mother?" But Lakshmi shook her head.
At the foot of Lakshmi's bedmat stood a small wooden trunk. As the girl opened it, her eyes rarely left Maya's. Then she handed to Maya a tiny pair of painted slippers as a baby might wear, some ribbons, and with great shyness, a doll made with bright silk rags.
Maya received each item like a precious gift. When she was Lakshmi's age, she herself had a box like this in her kitchen hut in Orissa. She admired the slippers and ribbons, examining them with delight, then setting them with care upon the bedmat. Then she lifted the doll as one might lift a toddler, holding it gently beneath the arms. "What is your name, little girl?" she asked. But the doll didn't answer. Maya gave it a stern, disappointed look, and asked again.
"Uma," Lakshmi whispered, answering for the doll. It was the first time she had spoken.
"What a pretty, pretty name for a pretty little girl."
Lakshmi held out her hands, and Maya gave her the doll, which Lakshmi cradled in her arms. Maya watched her for a minute, and then one by one removed a few bangles from the dozens she wore on her wrist. It took a while; for they were small, and she had to squeeze the bracelets past her knuckles. "These are for you and Uma."
Lakshmi solemnly placed them on the doll's rag arm, one at a time. Then, glancing guiltily at Maya, she slid them onto her own wrist. She then locked the doll and everything else back into the wooden box.
Near Lakshmi's hut was a storehouse with a wide, flat roof. The girl led Maya to a ladder and climbed to the top. Around them, servants glanced up and then looked away again, unconcerned. Maya understood their looks. When she had been a girl, she too could do as she pleased: everyone considered her someone else's problem.
A little girl in a short dress and bare feet had no trouble negotiating the flexing bamboo ladder, but for Maya, holding her sari and climbing in smooth-soled sandals, each step was an adventure. When she reached the top, Lakshmi pulled her down beside her. Her little legs dangled over the edge of the roof. She took out a handmade sack and poured a pile of cashews into her dusty palm, and offered one to Maya.
From here, Maya could see much of the palace grounds, and across the lake, the bustling city of Belgaum, in fact the whole valley ringed by mountains. It was noon; the lake was peaceful as a mirror, and the sunlight was silvery and diffused, casting gentle shadows. A family of monkeys lounged in a cavity in the wall a few yards away, a mother nursing a cute black-eyed baby.
Lakshmi leaned against Maya as if she were a bolster, one leg flipped casually over the other. She stared up at Maya and solemnly offered her cashew after cashew.
"You're happy here, aren't you, Lakshmi?" Maya said, combing the girl's hair with her fingers. "But sometimes, maybe not so happy." Lakshmi merely watched as Maya spoke. "Maybe you think about running away; maybe to that city across the lake. Maybe you just think about running on and on and never stopping." Lakshmi's little bare foot ticked up and down as she listened.
"But where would you go, little one? Who would care for you? What would become of you, all alone in that big world?" Maya's eyes drifted over the peaceful lake as clouds scudded across the sky.
"Maybe you think to end it all. Could your next life be any harder than this, you think?" Lakshmi's foot stopped moving. The girl slipped her hand around Maya's fingertips. But Maya seemed hardly to realize that Lakshmi was still there. "Is there no way out? No way but to live in endless suffering, or to die?"
As if in answer to this question, Maya saw the form of Geraldo stepping into the courtyard far below. Her face grew brighter and more serious. Something Chitra had said, she now realized, had been a hint to her, pointing to the way out of her dilemma. "Maybe the answer lies not in being good, but in being selfish."
Maya looked down to see that Lakshmi's face had grown troubled. The young woman stroked the girl's cheek. "Pay no attention to me, child," Maya smiled.
But Lakshmi had lived too long with Lady Chitra. When someone told her that, she worried twice as much.
Lucinda woke beneath a light coverlet in the darkness of an unknown room. She rose slowly, for her head felt thick, and winced when she tried her weight on her hurt ankle. She was wearing a dressing gown of cotton lawn that tied around her waist with a ribbon. She couldn't remember where she got it.
Near her bed she saw an old crutch, its head wrapped in faded rags. She had a vague memory of an old hakim looking at her gravely and leaving it for her last night. She took it and hobbled toward the wedges of brightness glowing along the sides of a dark curtain near her bed. Drawing back the heavy drape, she found not a window as she expected, but a stone archway as wide as the room, leading to a shallow balcony.
The balcony extended beyond the palace wall and gave an impression of floating in space. An exquisite vista spread in a coral haze before her, a wide lake in a valley framed by sheer shadowed mountains. On the other shore Lucinda saw forests of dense shadowed greens, and vibrant fields bright and soft as velvet as tiny shoots peeked from the ground. The lake water glittered.
Living all her life in Goa, used to city streets and sea
winds, Lucinda had no words to describe what she saw. It was like a dream, she thought, like the magic country of bedtime stories. The Beautiful Lands, she had called them to herself as a child; but now they stood before her.
She could taste moisture on the caressing breeze, even taste the smoke of cooking fires. On the far shore she saw a string of shining water buffalo, small as toys, wading along the lake; and near the forest's edge, a pack of gray-backed monkeys loping in a line.
Where was she? Where were her clothes? How had she gotten here? Where were the others? Just then she heard a soft voice behind her. "Isn't it a beautiful sight?"
It was Maya.
"You're all right!" Lucinda said. "Where am I? Where's Da Gama? Where is everyone?"
Maya did not seem to feel the need to answer her questions. "Lady Chitra sent me to see you. Your trunk was destroyed, lost and broken in the chasm. Lady Chitra sends her regrets, and asked me to bring you this sari-never worn, so far as I can tell." Maya held out a thick square of silk, folded flat.
The news of her belongings seemed unimportant at the moment. "Captain Da Gama?"
"He left this morning with General Shahji. He came to see you earlier. Do you remember?"
"No. Shahji was the man that brought us here, yes? And what about Geraldo? Did he go as well?"
"He stays here with us."
"Captain Pathan?" Lucinda asked. But she couldn't bear to hear the answer, and hobbled back to her bed, and sat down heavily. She felt herself in pieces, as if slashed by a knife. One part of her controlled her body: that part could speak, perhaps even think; another part of her, hidden deep inside the first, was a broken bundle, terrified.
Maya sat beside her. "You don't remember? After the bandits, we were discovered by General Shahji, and he and his guards brought us here. It's Shahji's summer palace. Very rich. Very beautiful."
But Lucinda had stopped listening as soon as Maya had said "bandits." The gentle light of the room began to dim before her; her mind's eyes stared instead into a vile face, half-mad and evil; cold and stony ground pressed against her back. She leaned against the crutch.
Maya touched her arm with distant friendliness and nodded toward the folded sari. "The silks of Belgaum are famous." She shook the square of cloth, which unfurled with a snap; a six-yard length of light, stiff silk the color of sand at sunset, its edging dense with gold-thread embroidery, the main body dotted with tiny, multicolored designs.
"But I am a farang. How can I wear a sari?"
"I can help you," Maya said. "It is so easy. First let's comb your hair."
Lucinda felt nothing, thought of nothing as Maya rubbed her dark hair with scented oils, then gently combed it and braided a ribbon through it. She had never worn it so. Her braid was much longer and heavier than she expected. With Maya's help, she stood, placing her weight on her good foot, and let the bayadere wrap her with the sari.
First she swirled over Lucinda's head a gauze blouse light as air. It barely hid her breasts, and left Lucinda's belly bare. Strange to be dressed without proper underclothes, just a wisp of gauze; no slip, no corset. With quick, sure motions, Maya folded the sari around her bare hips, hanging the cloth in nine pleats over her outstretched fingers, then quickly tucking it into place to form a generous skirt. The other end of the sari, heavy with gold embroidery, she lifted across Lucinda's chest and then tossed over her shoulders.
"You look like a princess," Maya said, looking her over with unexpected directness.
Lucinda lowered her eyes. "Is there no petticoat? Are there no fasteners? No pins? No buttons? What holds it on?"
Maya moved around her critically, here pressing in a fold, here straightening an edge. "You worry too much," she said. Taking care with her hurt ankle, she placed Lucinda's small feet into silk slippers with turned-up toes. Again she stepped back and admired the effect. "You look quite presentable. No one would know you were a farang. Would you like some lunch?"
Suddenly Lucinda realized that she was hungry. Maya helped Lucinda to hobble across the marble-tiled courtyard toward a wide pavilion that overlooked the lake. By now the sun had risen high, and the white tiles gleamed. "We're here in the women's section," Maya explained as they slowly neared the pavilion. "On the other side of the pavilion are the men's quarters. We'll get lunch there on that verandah, which the two sides share."
With the bright mountain sun, the stiff silk, the braid, the crutch, the slippers with the turned-up toes, Lucinda seemed not to know herself. She seemed to float above the courtyard watching a strangely dressed young woman hobble forward, held up by a nautch girl who might have been her twin.
The wide pavilion stretched in a semicircle, its sandstone archways overlooking the western shore. "I can't get over how you look," Maya said softly.
Lucinda glanced at her unfamiliar clothing. "Don't I look all right?"
"You look very different in a sari," Maya answered.
Lucinda thought about this for a moment, then turned to face the bright waters that sparkled in the noon sun. "What do you know about this place?"
"We're in Belgaum, about seventy miles from Bijapur. General Shahji often spends his summer here. Shahji has given part of this palace to the late sultan's first concubine, Lady Chitra. We met her last night. Do you remember?"
"No." Lucinda's gaze drifted over the water. A part of her still seemed asleep, but some other part she hardly knew drank in the sight of the palace grounds. "It's so quiet. So vast. Not like home, all city streets and bustle." She looked down, embarrassed. "Now you will think me unsophisticated. I came to Goa as a child and never left its walls."
Maya considered her. "Jewelry," she said. Lucinda arched an eyebrow, not understanding. "Jewelry. You asked how you looked. You need jewelry with such a fine sari. Bracelets. A necklace. With a rich sari like that, you should wear a headpiece as well, maybe a teardrop pearl resting on your forehead." Maya traced Lucinda's brow with a delicate finger. "Do farangs have such things? I think not."
It was odd to feel her touch. No one ever touched her face. At the stroke of Maya's finger on her brow, Lucinda looked up, shocked. She had the odd sensation of the disjointed parts of her memory colliding back together. Suddenly her eyes welled up with tears. "I have nothing, nothing. My trunk had everything. My jewels are gone, my clothes. I had brought nearly everything I owned. Now it's gone, gone, everything is gone."
While Lucinda sobbed into her palms, Maya's face passed through many changes: first concerned, then irritated, finally serene. "You think you have had misfortune," she whispered. "But I tell you that this is good fortune. The gods cannot place their gifts into a closed fist. First your hand must be emptied, then the gifts may be received. We poor fools call this loss, and we suffer, but it is the blessing of the gods."
Lucinda looked into the nautch girl's eyes. "Do you believe that?"
"I have to." She covered Lucinda's hand with her own, her many bangles clinking as they slid down her arm. "Here," Maya said suddenly. With an effort, she squeezed a few bangles from each wrist. "Wear these."
Lucinda gave a soft laugh. "They'll never fit! Look how small your hands are!"
"Nonsense. Our hands are just the same size. Let me help you." She took Lucinda's hand and rubbed her knuckles until they relaxed; the bracelets suddenly slipped over onto her wrists.
Lucinda shook her hand and the bangles jingled merrily, but her face grew dark. "What do you remember of ..." she let the words hang in the air.
Maya studied her face carefully. "I remember the elephant; I remember it slipping from the road, over the cliff's edge into the chasm." She looked back at Lucinda. "The mahout."
"The bandit," Lucinda whispered. "His mouth dripping spittle."
"Let me see your leg," Maya said.
The words were so unexpected, it took Lucy a moment before she lifted her foot and swept her sari skirts to the side for Maya to see. "Captain Pathan said it was broken."
"It's not," Maya said as she smoothed the ankle with strong fingers. "
You couldn't walk on it if it were."
"It hurts," Lucinda insisted.
"You just think it does," Maya answered, stroking the bones. She looked into Lucinda's eyes. "You want it to hurt."
"I don't!" She stared back at Maya. "What are you doing?" Maya's fingers made her ankle feel longer, softer somehow. Lucinda closed her eyes, strangely transported by the warmth, but only for a moment.
"Close your eyes." Maya's face was so confident that Lucinda could not disobey. The image of the bandit tore into her mind, but she kept her eyes tight. "There," she pouted.
"Better," Maya said, as if she could see into Lucinda's dream. "Let your mind wander."
Fascinated despite her reservations, Lucinda kept her eyes shut and did as she was told. She found herself again by the stream, again in terror. Tears streamed from her eyes. Then, suddenly, she saw not the bandit's face, but the captain's. Her eyes flew open. "Pathan," she cried, leaping to her feet.
"Yes." Maya's hair clung to her damp face. She looked exhausted. "Yes, we must help him."
A moment later they were hurrying through the courtyard, Lucinda walking as if her ankle had never been hurt. "Wait," Maya said as they passed her own door. She stepped inside and returned holding a tiny enameled jar. "Hold still," she said; and with the stick on the jar's stopper placed a drop of blackness into each eye. "Kohl," she told her as Lucinda blinked. "It will clear the whites. You don't want Pathan to see you with your eyes red from tears."
Impulsively Lucinda took Maya's hands. "When you show me such kindness, how shall I keep from crying even more?" With their shoulders pressed together, they walked across the causeway.
Belgaum was a warren of winding old streets and alleys. Maya asked a half-dozen people in the town before a boy helped them find the house of the hakim. The boy kept glancing over his shoulder, holding himself very tall and looking very serious. Wisps of fuzz had just begun growing on his cheeks and upper lip, and he would one day be handsome. Lucinda wondered if he were married.