Tiger Claws

by John Speed

  The food is tastier than she expects, and she is famished.

  Tanaji scowls when Shivaji hands him a chapati. “You know, I made a vow never to eat bakri again,” he complains. “Eating this makes me look capricious.” He grins, clearly pleased to be using a fancy word.

  “Knowing your vow, I thought there would be more for me!” Shivaji replies. “I spoke to the cook,” he relates, more seriously. “He already knew about the fire.” At this, Tanaji stops chewing. “The fire was so big that no one survived. Everyone burned—beyond recognition. Everyone dead.”

  “They don’t know about us!” Tanaji says. “The fire covered our tracks!” Maya thinks he looks ready to dance in his happiness. He eats a chapati, and a banana, and another and another. Humming to himself, he walks around the grove of trees. Shivaji glances at Maya, who is sharing his amusement at Tanaji’s happiness. She can see that he likes Tanaji immensely.

  “There is one other thing though, uncle,” Shivaji says. “The cook said that two Bijapuri guards had ridden through yesterday. From Khirki. They were looking for two travelers. Offered a reward. Three rupees.”

  Tanaji whistles. “Three rupees? These travelers they seek—they didn’t sound like … us, by any chance?”

  Shivaji nods. Tanaji considers this. “And I was thinking …”

  Tanaji looks up. It’s never good when Shivaji starts to think.

  “Well, there’s her,” Shivaji says, nodding to Maya. Maya instantly takes offense at being referred to as though she weren’t able to hear. “Somebody is going to wonder what happened to her.”

  “No. She died in the fire, remember? We all died in the fire. Easy.”

  “Easy? Maybe. If she disappears and no one ever sees her again, maybe. Even so, somebody is going to wonder why all those bodies in the fire were men. Somebody will wonder why there isn’t a woman’s body.”

  Tanaji considers this and frowns. “There’s something you need to hear, Shahu.” He turns to Maya. “Tell him about yourself.”

  Maya, a little frightened, repeats the story she told Tanaji earlier. When he hears the figure of seven lakh hun, Shivaji whistles.

  “If it’s true,” Tanaji says, “then we’ve gone and stepped in it. Maybe we should let her go.”

  Shivaji’s eyes harden. “Well, what about the farang? What happens when he wakes up? Where does he go … Back to the Bijapuris? Won’t he lead them straight to us? And those thieves, those guards—three dots … That’s a clan sign, uncle. What if the rest of the clan comes after us? They might even start a wagnak.” Shivaji looks hard at Tanaji.

  “Seven lakh hun will buy a lot of enemies, Shahu,” Tanaji says. “We’ve got to do something. She’s got to disappear.”

  Maya doesn’t like being discussed as if she’s a problem to be solved. Men trying to be rid of her? That she has never experienced before. She wonders if they are capable of murdering her.

  Tanaji’s face grows hard. “We’re in trouble, Shahu. We’re too obvious. Her and the farang, they make us obvious.” He looks around and each item he sees upsets him more. “Look—these horses. And the saddle. Anyone with half a brain could recognize them. Shit, we’re tethered goats!”

  Maya can’t take any more. “Can’t you see? You are just weaving your own troubles!”

  Maya’s outburst surprises them as much as if a rock spoke. Tanaji and Shivaji are not used to women who speak without being addressed. They know that nautch girls are supposed to be frank and straightforward in bed—that’s their appeal, after all—but neither had any idea that this behavior extended past the bedroom door. They scarcely know how to react. So they ignore her, and this irritates her even more.

  “So what shall we do? Sell her?” Tanaji suggests.

  Maya bristles. “Sell me? You don’t own me!”

  “Speak when you’re spoken to,” Tanaji answers. “Don’t tempt me with the obvious solution.” His hand moves toward the hilt of his mace.

  “You wouldn’t …,” she whispers.

  “Don’t put it to the test,” Tanaji answers, looking into her eyes with a cold, lifeless stare. Maya backs away and sits on the ground near Onil.

  “Hold her,” Shivaji proposes, “for ransom.”

  “Ransom from who, Shahu?”

  “The Bijapuris were sending her to the viceroy in Surat. The farangs were supposed to be delivering her. So take your pick—the Bijapuris, the Moguls, or the farangs!”

  “Maybe all three?” Tanaji laughs. “But what about now? We need a place to hide.”

  All is silent except the sound of a dog barking far away. Then Shivaji’s eyes light up. “Have you ever been to Ranjangaon temple?”

  So Tanaji waits with the girl while Shivaji and the farang leave separately for the temple. The plan is that Shivaji will return with a horse cart.

  Hidden from the road by the dense bushes, Tanaji sits with his back to a tree, staring into space and digging into the dust at his feet with his mace, never looking up, especially never looking at Maya.

  Of course he wants to look at her. But the nightmare memories of last night are closing in. He can’t bear to look at her while he is thinking his dark thoughts.

  Run away! Maya thinks.

  But she does not run.

  She has her own dark thoughts: her vulnerability in a land of farmers—why, they might do anything to her, a woman, alone, and dressed in men’s clothing. She might take one of the horses, and ride for safety—maybe a horse would protect her from bumpkins on the road—but where would she ride? Into Ahmednagar?

  If she were found in Ahmednagar, who knows what might happen to her?

  Someone might simply capture her and sell her for a slave. And what then? Why risk the road, risk death or rape, merely to end up a slave once more? And not just any slave, she thinks: a new slave; a new whore begging for scraps in some rich man’s house.

  After years living in poverty at the temple, as a nautch girl she found wealth beyond imagining. Was it odd that she hesitated to run?

  She had learned whom to gratify, whom to mock, whom to frustrate, whom to join in congress—and in what manner, for there were many, and men were so silly about asking. She had been taught well and learned much. Now she was at the peak of her desirability, prized not just for her beauty, but for her knowledge, not just her sex, but for her skills. And more: desired for the price paid to buy her. She had achieved honor by her value, clear to great and powerful men.

  But to be sold again, without a patron, without history, without a story: she could end up flat on her back for every cook and groom and flyswatter in some second-rate nabob’s court.

  Better to chance the plans of her current captors; they would ransom her back into a world where she was known and valued … valued even more, she reasons perhaps, by someone who had paid to ransom her.

  And perhaps there is another reason why she stays.

  Shivaji returns.

  Instead of riding on Tanaji’s pony, he walks beside a bullock cart. He looks every inch a farmer. He plods toward the grove slightly bowlegged, the hem of his dusty lungi dragging in the dust. That’s a nice touch, thinks Tanaji.

  The cart is old, its two great solid wooden wheels broken and patched many times, and Tanaji starts to laugh. “Where did you get that piece of junk?”

  “Get in the wagon,” Shivaji says to Maya.

  “I won’t ride in that,” she answers. She tries to hide behind one of the Bedouins.

  Tanaji picks up a short, thin branch. “Act like a whore and be beaten like a whore.”

  “Stop!” Shivaji orders.

  Tanaji turns to him. “We can’t have this, Shahu,” he explains as if to a child. “She must learn who’s boss. What if she calls out, or runs away! We’ll take her, and bind her and gag her—for her protection as much as ours.”

  “No,” Shivaji answers with finality. “She’ll ride hidden in the cart and she won’t make a sound. And she’ll do it willingly.”

  “Why?” asks Maya, suddenly in
trigued. “Why will I do that?”

  “Because we will ask you to. Politely.” He bows his head and says clearly and slowly, “Please, Maya, hide yourself in the cart.”

  It is the first time he has said her name.

  “Make him say it, too.”

  “I ask you to get in the cart,” Tanaji says.

  She waits.

  “Please,” he croaks out, finally.

  As though she were dressed in heavy silks instead of farang pantaloons, Maya walks elegantly to the cart. To Shivaji’s surprise, she reaches out a hand as if waiting for him to help her.

  When he takes her hand, neither of them says a word, but Maya looks into Shivaji’s dark eyes with such intensity that Tanaji is taken aback. She’s just trouble, he thinks to himself.

  A half hour later, Maya sticks her head from under the sacks where she hides. “It’s getting hot,” she complains.

  “Well, so long as no one is coming, you can keep your head out,” Tanaji says.

  “Anyway we’re practically there,” says Shivaji. They have reached the top of a long rise at last, and now Shivaji motions toward a sweeping valley They can see the high, conical dome of a large temple, and the smaller domes of the lesser temples that surround it.

  “What’s that place?” asks Maya.

  “That’s Ranjangaon,” Shivaji answers. “A temple to Lord Ganesha.”

  “I’ve never heard of it,” Maya says. Suddenly she scrambles out of the sacks to kneel at the railing of the bullock cart. “What’s that?” she points, eyes gleaming. To the side of the main temple, they can just make out a raised platform.

  “That’s the dance temple,” Shivaji replies, and her eyes grow bright. He smiles at her pleasure.

  CHAPTER 8

  The temple gate leads to a cool arched stone corridor and into the courtyard. It is almost like entering a fort, Tanaji thinks.

  Against his bare feet, the bricks of the walk feel smooth and cool. The edges of the walk have been decorated with tangled designs drawn in lines of rice flour and kumkum—triangles, mangoes, swastikas, all melded together with vines traced in elaborate profusion and brilliant colors.

  On a raised platform at the end of the walk stands a tall lampstand of sculpted brass: from its branches hang a dozen or more butter lamps with flames burning steadily in the still morning air. A brazier of frankincense and sandalwood fills the courtyard with a heady tang. A mandala fashioned of fresh flower petals covers much of platform.

  Beyond, Tanaji sees several temples, constructed of the dark volcanic stone common to this part of the county. The temples share a common layout: four colonnaded wings, and above each, a dome, the shape of an elongated beehive, meant to resemble Vishnu’s celestial home, Mount Mehru. Most are small. The larger temples have been decorated with free-standing sculptures and with bas-reliefs: gods, animals, devas, asuras, heroes, villains, chakras, chariots—each temple a sculpted library of stories.

  The most lavish is a temple to Ganesha: its sculptures are not mere lifeless stone; all have been painted in bright, shocking colors: they vibrate with life, but only hint at the effulgent glory of the gods, at the forms that might be seen only by their grace.

  Tanaji gapes at the temple. The god that lives there must be very rich. “You haven’t been here before?” Shivaji asks.

  “No,” says Tanaji. In the distance, he sees the dance temple, with the raised platform that Maya pointed out from the top of the hill. He blinks, and takes another look. “Is that her? Is that Maya up there?”

  “Yes, uncle. She made straight for the dance temple,” Shivaji answers.

  “What was her hurry?” Tanaji asks.

  “She’s a nautch girl … a devadasi, uncle,” Shivaji says, turning to look at him. “Where did you think she’d go, first chance she got?”

  “I thought she was just another whore,” Tanaji answers. High class, maybe, a rich man’s toy, maybe, but a whore is a whore.

  “Real nautch girls are temple dancers. Devadasis. At least that’s what they used to be—what they’re supposed to be. The best ones still are—brought up from two or three to be dancers for the gods.”

  Tanaji shrugs. “How do they turn into whores? Because that’s what they are. You can’t deny it.”

  “Not all of them. Not here. There are temples where the brahmins make a trade in them. They raise them for sex, not for dance, and then sell them as soon as they ripen. But not here.”

  They soon reach a long row of rooms, much like those at the dharmsala: pilgrims’ quarters. The walls are painted with pictures of gods and goddesses. In one, Onil lies comfortably on a mat, face washed, eyes open. Nearby sits a young girl, fanning him. She is too young to mask her fascination at seeing a farang this close; she stares at Onil’s red hair, at his strange pink, freckled skin. She startles when Shivaji and Tanaji enter, and turns away even when Tanaji tries to give her a reassuring grin.

  “You come back,” Onil says. “I think you leave me here. Think I am dead man.” His wan smile only emphasizes his damp hair and clammy, white skin. “Little girl won’t say her name. What your name, little girl?”

  “Tell us your name, child,” Shivaji says gently.

  The girl looks up at him, her large, kohl-stained eyes luminous in the light from the tiny window. “Upala.”

  “Ah, see! For you she say!” Onil shakes his head. You good girl. Good girl, Upala.” She gives Onil a quick smile. And even this small gesture makes Onil happy; he beams at her as if she were his own daughter.

  “You’re looking better, farang,” Tanaji lies. His skin shouldn’t be so gray, Tanaji thinks. He’s dying.

  “Sure, good, good,” Onil replies. “Doctor comes. Gives me some mud to drink, taste like puke. Now feel very good. Also on chest puts some smell bad stuff, maybe cow shit. I don’t care. Smell bad, feel good.”

  He bows his head. “I now much grateful both of you. I grateful for my living. I dead man many times last night. Now maybe not dead, so now I grateful.” Tanaji thinks maybe he is thanking them too soon.

  “Go find the others, Upala,” Shivaji says, ignoring Onil for the moment. “They’re all down by the river, I expect.”

  “Sure, good. Come back soon,” Onil puts in. The little girl walks off with that solemnity only little children and royalty can muster. The bells of her ankle bracelet jingle pleasantly.

  “Nautch girl,” Shivaji whispers to Tanaji, nodding at Upala.

  Tanaji doesn’t quite know what to make of that. He hasn’t ever thought of all those whores as little girls before.

  “What do we do with you?” Shivaji says, kneeling near Onil’s bedside.

  Onil looks at him with gratitude: this is what he has wanted to ask, but there was no polite way to do so. “I go wonder this same thing.”

  Tanaji becomes aware of the smell in the room. The doctor probably did use cow dung on Onil’s wound, he thinks. Even with all the herbs and powders they mix into it, they can’t hide the smell. He has come to associate that dark tangy smell with sorrow; the smell takes him back to battle.

  “The doctor says you are too weak to travel. You can stay here for a few days. Then I invite you to come to Poona and stay with me. Stay as long as you wish. You understand?” Shivaji says.

  “Sure, good. I know you,” Onil says. “I much grateful for your kind to me, I now owing you. How can I pay that … that owing?”

  “Keep your mouth shut about the dharmsala,” Tanaji tells him gruffly. “You were never there. You never saw us. It never happened. You understand? Even here, say nothing about the dharmsala. You understand?”

  “Sure, I know not talk.” Onil pauses and licks his lips. “What about girl? What about treasure girl?”

  Shivaji glances at Tanaji. “She comes with us.”

  “You are boss now. She stay with you. Sure, good.” To Tanaji he seems troubled, as though he had been thinking up his own plans. “She yours if you want her. Very good for congress. I give her to you.”

  “She is not
yours to give,” Shivaji replies. It is as though Onil has stepped across a hidden boundary. They look hard at each other and a chill fills the air.

  At last Onil shrugs. “Sure. She just a girl. Anybody’s girl. Your girl, maybe. Maybe nobody’s girl. Just a girl.” It’s clear to Tanaji that this is not the response Shivaji wants, but it will have to do.

  A commotion has been growing outside. Tanaji goes to the door to see a large procession moving through the courtyard. Brahmins in lungis lead the way back from the nearby river, banging drums and gongs and blowing conches that bellow like great horns. Behind them come a host of young men carrying shoulder poles: at each end hang large silver pots full of water; following them a great crowd of local pilgrims.

  Among this crowd Tanaji sees the nautch girls—a dozen devadasis at least, maybe two—young ones and old, wearing yellow and orange saris, their long hair plaited with flowers and ribbons, with ankle bells jingling brightly as they spin and leap. The procession chants: Jai! Jai! Ganapati! Jai! Jai! Ganesha! To its infectious tune, the dancers clap and whirl their way to the main temple. It is time for Ganesha’s bath.

  “I’m going to watch,” Tanaji calls to Shivaji. He catches up with the procession just as it gets to the temple steps. The clatter of the drums and gongs and the deep blasts of the conch shells mix with the singing. He sees Upala, pretty as a flower, twirling with her eyes closed, hands in the air.

  Jostling, bumping, Tanaji pushes forward. Everyone is squeezing forward, trying to get into the sacred center of the temple. And by the time he and the others have mounted the steps, Tanaji has changed. He breathes as one with the others, moves as one with them, chants as one.

  The brahmins place frankincense on big braziers of charcoal, and the heavy smoke pours across the room, into their lungs, and out once more, so that they become part of the smoke that rises to the deity and up into heaven.