by John Speed
“Not Kashi right away, not the city of the dead right away. Later, Shahu. Please don’t rush me. First Nasik, I think. Yes, Nasik first.” Dadaji steps to the gateway and raises his hands above his head. “Namaste!” he calls and “Namaste!” everyone replies. Then he lowers himself awkwardly to the moist, cold ground, and begins: for he intends to be a rolling pilgrim, to make his way by rolling from his back to his stomach, from his stomach to his back.
By the time he reaches the gates, his old body is already thick with dust.
Lakshman rides into the jungle, following the sound of singing.
He follows a stranger who has not told his name. The man had appeared in Poona that morning as if from nowhere.
The stranger knew Lakshman, though. He’d come on an errand, he said: his master had an offer for Shivaji—a plan to give Shivaji “total victory.” But his master would negotiate only with Lakshman, and only at his own place.
Lakshman might have walked away. He might have picked a fight. But something about the stranger, the way his eyes sparkled, a hint of mystery in his voice, tempted Lakshman’s soul. Two hours later, the sounds of the jungle crowd around him, the shrieks of unknown beasts and the rustle of the great trees. And the stranger’s singing, which caresses Lakshman’s heart.
Even though the stranger sings of Kali, the black destroyer.
Kali, of course, had terrified Lakshman as a child: a gaunt, dark horror, her eyes huge and burning, a bloodstained tongue hanging like a pennant from her gaping mouth. Weapons she held in each of her eight flailing arms: no sign of peace, no boons did she offer. She wore a necklace of human skulls, and a skirt of human arms.
But the stranger sings of Kali’s beauty: the kindness of those gaping eyes, the sweetness of that dangling tongue. In his song, the stranger calls her “Mommy.” And even though he can’t reconcile the horror of his childhood nightmares with the gentle goddess mommy of the rider’s song, Lakshman finds tears flowing down his cheek.
By that song, Lakshman can guess their destination. His guide, he guessed from the start, was a brigand. His song to Kali leaves no doubt.
Kalidas. The singer’s master is the worst of thieves: violent, senseless, terrifying. Everyone fears his name. Torture, rape, death—for Kalidas, no act is too depraved. What can Kalidas want with him, or with Shivaji?
At last they come to a clearing full of strange huts. Forest creepers thread through their walls and roofs, so the huts look like plants that have somehow grown into houses. There’s a big fire where a goat is being cooked upon a spit.
Lakshman sees eight or nine men sitting around idly, and maybe a dozen women or more, all of them young and strikingly beautiful, preparing food, hanging laundry, cleaning pots and dishes, all of them smiling, some of them singing. The men look content, almost smug, eyeing the women as they pass, sometimes reaching out to grab a bottom or a breast. The women giggle and scold them, eyes flashing. Everyone, men and women alike, dresses in extravagant finery: rich silks, necklaces and rings, bright jungle flowers. It’s like a dream, thinks Lakshman.
“Do you want some toddy?” one of them asks, and before Lakshman can answer, a jeweled cup is thrust into his hand. He takes a long drink: the liquid is sweet and fiery and he chokes and coughs as the men around him laugh.
Suddenly, though, they stop laughing and step away. A man walks toward Lakshman, dressed all in black—no flowers, no jewels, with bushy hair and a black beard, and large dark eyes that seem hot as fire.
“I am Kalidas,” the man says. He looks calmly, almost affectionately, at Lakshman. Since his eye was injured, a straight look is a rarity. Neither he nor Lakshman bows. “Welcome to my humble place.”
“I came not for my sake, but Shivaji’s,” Lakshman answers.
“He can wait. Are you hungry? Thirsty? Fancy a woman?”
Lakshman tries to shrug nonchalantly, but the great black eyes of Kalidas burn through his skin. “No,” he manages to say.
“Fresh clothing,” Kalidas orders. Two women drop their chores, bringing robes and sandals, jewelry and flowers. Kneeling at Lakshman’s feet. The women gently peel away his cotton garments, taking even his lungi.
The women hum as they work. They wrap him in silk. He feels the smoothness of their hands against him, the flutter of their breath against his skin. The rich cloth rests heavily against him, rustling when he moves.
“This suits you,” says Kalidas when the job is done. “I have some business. Rest for a while. Then we shall talk.” Kalidas then walks into the jungle; his men and women following silently behind, leaving Lakshman alone. The sky grows pale as the sun sets. Lakshman waits in his strange new garments. Loneliness begins to eat at him. He’s faced with a dilemma: stay here alone, or follow the others into the deep forbidding darkness.
He hopes the light will last long enough for him to follow the path. As he walks into the trees, his nostrils are filled with jungle smell; green and wet, a rotting lingering sweetness that grows stronger with each breath. Far off, he hears chanting. And another sound, now growing stronger and more clear, a buzzing, a great and endless drone. With every step that drone grows stronger, punctuated by deep drumbeats like the beating of the jungle’s heart. He doesn’t need to see his way, he can follow his ears.
The path bends and he sees them, huddled in a semicircle before a huge fat man who stands in an enormous swirling cloud of smoke. They chant and wave a tray of lights and incense. The droning and booming grow louder.
But the firelight surges and he sees that he is wrong. It isn’t a cloud of smoke at all. It’s flies. Millions of flies. That’s the drone: Flies so thick that he can hardly see the man standing in their midst. How can he stand so still, in all those buzzing flies? Of course, it’s not a man; it’s a statue.
Kali.
A huge painted murti of a black-skinned, wild-eyed goddess, a long red tongue hanging from her mouth.
She wears around her neck, not skulls, but real heads: human heads, strung together through the ears, dripping and festering with rot. Around her waist, a skirt of arms, real arms: different sizes, different shapes—the thick arms of workmen, the slender arms of young wives—and some of them, Lakshman realizes, the tiny arms of babies.
As Lakshman gapes in horror, the idol’s eyes begin to move, turning slowly in their sockets.
It can’t be, he thinks, you’re just a statue.
At last she finds him where he tries to hide, and then Kali looks at him, and around her dangling tongue her stone face smiles.
“It’s no good, Jedhe,” Bandal says. “Your father will not budge.”
“I told you he would not, cousin. My father may be a fool, but I guarantee he is a stubborn fool.”
“Can you blame him for his stubbornness? He struggled hard to achieve his current status. He’s a Bijapuri mandsab of four thousand horse! You think he’s ready to give it up on your whim?”
“It’s not a whim!” Jedhe’s usual look of calm amusement is gone, replaced by a fierceness that Bandal has never seen before. “It’s what’s right.”
“You’re a fool,” Bandal mutters. Jedhe shrugs, his eyes burning. “Well,” Bandal says at last, a small smile on the corners of his lips, “we’ll be fools together.”
Stars are beginning to glimmer in the skies over Poona. Sai Bai carries a tiny lantern against the coming night, more for comfort than light. In any case she knows the way.
At the entrance of the Shiva cave, she can see within the dim flame burning in the lamp above the tiny shivalingam. If he’s anywhere, she thinks, he’ll be here. But it saddens her that she might find him here, for she knows this is the place he comes in times of greatest tribulation. He’s doing his best, she scolds the gods, so why is everything so hard for him! She sees Shivaji from behind, sitting in the dark, his turban gone and his long hair falling softly on his shoulders. As she moves in front of him, however, she gapes. Shivaji has ripped his shirtfront from neck to navel. He holds in his hand a shining knife, the tip pointing
to his heart.
“No!”
He sees her but he does not move. At last his eyes flicker—from the blade to his wife’s pale face. Finally he sets down the knife and lifts his eyes to Sai Bai. “At least we first shall say goodbye. I was sad that I did not say goodbye to you, my wife. That was the part I most regretted.”
At last she finds her tongue. “What are you thinking? Do you really mean to die here?”
“We all must die, my darling,” he says. “It will be best for everyone.”
“No!” Sai Bai answers, twisting away. “The god of death alone knows when to pluck your soul. It is Yama’s choice to make, not yours.”
“I will not be his slave, but my own master,” Shivaji replies. “I need no permission. It is a warrior’s privilege. Tell me goodbye and leave me.”
A silence passes agonizingly between them. “Tell me why, husband, and I will leave. Otherwise I’ll do everything I can to stop you. Is it something I have done?”
“No!” Shivaji shouts and the sound echoes from the walls. He has to look away from her before he can speak. “I’ve made a mess of things. I can feel the hands of the gods about to crush us. I’ve angered them by my pride.”
“But those stones!” Sai Bai protests.
Shivaji lifts his hands to silence her. “Four stones placed in my hand by a madman and look what I do! In a few days, Bijapur will fall upon us like a thunderbolt!” He counts the problems on his fingers: “No cannon. No army—a few farmers, maybe, men whose fathers went to war, but no army! No money—that’s right, the money’s all but gone! What am I to do, Sai Bai, what am I to do?” Now she cannot stop from throwing her arms around his shoulders, from pressing her face against his cheek.
“Is this the man I love, the husband I married, the father of my children? If you have a warrior’s privilege, then you have a warrior’s duty, husband! Why are you afraid?”
He lifts his head, each word an agony. “I can’t send men to die.”
“Is that all?”
“It’s enough,” he answers. A light seems to flash between them, like a flash of lightning. She squeezes her eyes tight, but sees an echo of that flash behind her eyelids. In it, she sees faces: men that she has never seen. Dozens, then hundreds, then thousands, each face a shrieking mask of agony and pain. “Make it stop!” she cries at last, grabbing Shivaji’s hands. “What have you done to me? Make it stop!”
Shivaji whispers: “You see now what I see—every moment. Does this course now seem so bad?” He lifts his knife.
“It’s not your choice, husband. Everyone must die. So what if some may choose to die for you! Let them choose! Let them act as warriors, too. Let them follow you, to death if they choose!”
Taking his face between her small hands, she looks into his eyes. “And who are you to say that they will die? Why in a month, a week, a day, all may be changed! Maybe a devi will shower us with gold.” Shivaji snorts. “Oh, you laugh at me,” Sai Bai pouts. “I’m just a foolish woman! But look, you: Who would have said that today you would hold four forts? Who could guess an army would be at your gates, awaiting your command? Who? Things change, husband. Do not take this coward’s blade! If you claim the warrior’s privilege, take the duty, too! Stand firm! Be brave!”
He stares into her trusting, gentle face, her face that has no doubt of him at all. “You called me the father of your children,” he says softly.
“Did I?” She looks away, brushing back a hair that has fallen out of place. The lamplight flickers around them like dancing stars. “Silly of me.” He waits for her to speak. “Maybe …”, she says, and she sees at last that smile of his, the one she longs to see.
“Don’t you know?”
“It’s early, but … Well, I’m woozy every morning, and you have been … vigorous.” Her voice falters, but her face tells him everything. He lifts her hands to his lips. When they walk back, Shivaji presses her close, his long arm tight around her shoulder.
“She liked you.” Kalidas, chewing on the haunch of a roast goat, lifts a heavy black eyebrow to Lakshman.
“Who?” Maybe from the wine, maybe from the vision of Kali, Lakshman’s brain floats in a kind of dream. The thief’s hut is furnished like a palace—Persian carpets scattered everywhere, pillows of brocade.
“She has taught me everything,” Kalidas says, his voice rich but raw. “I made myself her slave—her child—fifteen years ago. And I had been a good Muslim up till then—said my prayers each day, right up until the day Mommy looked at me.” His face grows serious. “She said she’d give me anything I desired. And she has.”
He’s mad, thinks Lakshman. But he’s fascinated by the heavy, dark energy that hovers around Kalidas. “You live well, sir,” Lakshman says, nodding at the beautiful furnishings.
Kalidas turns on him. “What you see here is shit. Anyone may get such trash. One has only to reach into the privy. I’m talking about one’s true desires, sir. The thoughts a weak man dare not even name.”
Lakshman feels clammy. There’s a ringing in his ears. Suddenly his mind leaps back in time: He’s back at Torna, the cold edge of the serpent knife slicing across his eye, the rain pouring across the bleeding socket. He looks up to see Kalidas. “Yes,” the dark voice says. “Yes, thoughts like that.”
Lakshman shivers. “That’s not a desire!”
“Isn’t it?” The question lingers in the air like smoke. Kalidas frowns, and then as if struck by inspiration he claps, and a young servant girl enters, twirling gracefully through the door. “This is Amba,” Kalidas says to Lakshman. Then he nods, indicating Lakshman. Instantly Amba falls to her knees before Lakshman, and tugs the drawstring of Lakshman’s pants. “Amba is a houri,” Kalidas whispers, as though explaining to a child. “She’s an angel made in paradise for the pleasure of the blessed. You didn’t truly think that she was real? She is but Mommy’s shadow.”
Lakshman finds himself growing stiff, and he tries to hide it. His eyes are glued to Amba’s. Suddenly his pants are around his ankles, and he feels her lips upon him, her sliding, wriggling tongue, the moist darkness of her mouth. A deep droning burns in Lakshman’s ears; his heart is pounding like a beating drum. “What are you doing to me?” he cries out.
Amba sucks at his lingam as though it were the source of all desire. She fondles her heavy breasts as she works, her face glowing, and always her wild eyes on Lakshman. Kalidas chuckles. “To Mommy it is nothing. To have a woman do whatever you bid, no matter how depraved. To her it is a trifle.” But Lakshman now is past the point of speech. “Ahhh,” Kalidas sighs as he looks at Lakshman’s face. “Yes, Lakshman. Mommy says yes: it can be any woman you desire.” As Kalidas says this, Amba’s face begins to change. Even as she rubs her wet cheek against his length, Amba’s eyes grow lighter, flecked with gold, and her nose grows small and straight; her brown lips shine like bloodred rubies; her breasts grow smaller and more shapely; the hands that fondle them grow delicate and small.
“Maya …”, Lakshman gasps, his voice constricted.
“Even her,” Kalidas whispers. Maya clutches the shaft with both fine hands to her bare breasts, glorying in it, moaning. And all the while Maya’s gold-flecked eyes still bore into Lakshman’s face.
“Leave us,” Kalidas says casually. Maya stands—but, no, now she’s turned back into Amba as she was before. Amba stands, pulling her sari clumsily around her as she leaves, still smiling over her shoulder at Lakshman.
“Don’t be upset you didn’t finish,” Kalidas chuckles. “You can have that nautch girl anytime, brother.”
“Why are you doing this to me!” Lakshman cries as he struggles back into his pants.
“Have you not yet understood? We have a pact, Mommy and I. She gives me anything I desire … I give her anything she asks for.”
“What has she asked for now?” says Lakshman. He feels like his whole world is spinning out of control.
“You.”
Lakshman closes his eyes when he hears the word; he feels himself s
liding into blackness. “And if I say no?”
“Hell, say whatever you like. What you say to her is your look-to, not mine. Mommy just likes you, that’s all. She wants you to be her little boy. But I have brought you here for a different reason.”
“What reason was that?”
“A secret.” He runs his hands through his thick hair, looking very serious. “I talked with Mommy—I told her I was tired of running, tired of robbing and killing. I told her my desire was peace.” Kalidas laughs, his voice rich and harsh. “I have a secret. Tell Shivaji. I have a secret that can bring him victory. If Shivaji will guarantee me peace, I’ll tell it to him.”
Crickets and night birds. And the sound of footsteps. “Who’s there?” the young sentry whispers into the darkness.
“Just me.” Jedhe moves into the dim light. “Why aren’t you asleep?”
“I’m to watch all night, sir. I can’t go to sleep.”
“Can’t you? Thought it was part of the job! You’re the first sentry who has stayed up this late.”
“Oh, you’re joking again sir,” the sentry laughs. But his head jerks up. “Who’s that with you, sir?” he asks, grasping his lance tightly again.
“It’s just my cousin Bandal. We’ve come to see my father.”
“He gave strict orders, sir, not to be disturbed …”
Jedhe pats him on the shoulder. “Family business, you understand. Be a good lad and stand away from the door.”
Bandal takes the sentry’s arm and whispers. “We’ve got some bad news. He’d be embarrassed if one of his soldiers were to hear him cry. A favorite uncle. Very old. It’s been expected, but …”
“I understand, sir. I’ll stand here where I won’t hear a thing.”
“That’s the boy.” Bandal steps back to Jedhe, near the door. “Keep an eye on the horses.”