Grandmaster (24 page)

"A man came. Józek, from the village. But you can't go there. The villagers think you're the Devil."

And so I may be, Justin thought. All he had known since he first came to consciousness here were voices and images outside human experience. "Why?" he asked.

She shrugged. "I don't know. They say you rose from the grave. Some think you're a Russian. But of course, you couldn't speak then—"

"A Russian?"

"The doctor saw you with the Russian soldiers in the mountains. Don't you even remember that?"

"I remember . . . strange things," he said. "But the snake ... It was a necklace?"

"Yes. I'll get it back for you, I swear it. Please forgive me, if you can." She rose quickly.

He touched her long skirt. "Don't go," he said.

"What's wrong?"

He swallowed. "I don't know. I'm so confused. The snake... everything seems jumbled together. I'm not sure what anything is. I don't even know my own name."

She sat beside him, her strong hands holding his. "It will come back," she said. "When I get the snake back for you, it will come back." She stroked his hair. "My name is Yva."

"Yva," he repeated softly.

"It was the name given to the first woman, in the Bible. She and her husband, Adam, lived in Paradise until she found the snake." She laughed. "You see, just like yours."

"And after?"

"Well," she went on as if she were telling a bedtime story to a child, "then they ate an apple because the snake told them to. The apple was knowledge that they were forbidden to have."

"The secrets of thought and power," Justin said, remembering the lines of force on the chessboard.

"That's very good. You get smarter every day. Anyway, after they listened to the snake, who was the Devil, and ate from the Tree of Knowledge, God was displeased with them. As their punishment, they had to leave the beautiful garden where they lived, to wander and toil on the earth for the rest of their lives."

"Did you take me from the village, Yva?"

She smiled. "Yes. Yes, I did. They were cruel to you there."

"Why did you save me?"

She looked down at the ground. "Because you were so beautiful," she said.

Justin stared at her questioningly, and finally she raised her face and then kissed him. He was afraid at first. Something inside him feared the lips of women.

But this was no fearsome experience. Yva was a simple girl, and he felt nothing but softness and warmth.

"Perhaps you are the first woman I ever kissed," he said sincerely.

She laughed. "I doubt that." She put her arms around him and pulled him down to the ground with her, and he buried his face in her hair.

She had said something that stirred uneasily in the far reaches of his memory. Had there been other women? Or just one? And why did the trace memory fill him with both joy and loathing?

It had all been so long ago ... so long ago ...

 

 

I
n Justin's sixteenth year
, Tagore sent him to the palace of the abbess Varja to learn the ways of women and pleasure.

"But we do not need women here, my teacher," he said, "and my pleasure comes from learning the ways of Rashimpur."

The old man smiled. "The pleasure you will find with Varja's acolytes is of a different character. It is a pleasure of the senses, of the body."

Justin made a face. "But they're nuns," he said guiltily.

"Not as you know them, my son. The abbess finds her acolytes as young children, and then trains them in the ways of sensual expression. This does not displease the spirits," he added. "Brahma, Shiva, and Vishnu—the creative, transcendental, and preserving powers of the universe—recognize the female force as both necessary and magical. The enjoyment of the senses is as meaningful to them as the denial of those same pleasures, for without enjoyment, there can be no sacrifice."

"Then why aren't there women at Rashimpur?"

"It is the main denial of our sect, Patanjali. The monks here seek all their lives to attain spiritual purity. This is not to say that women are impure, but only that their company is so intoxicating that to give in to a life lived with women would deter us from our chosen path. Do you understand?"

"I guess so." In fact, Justin didn't understand at all. The life he led at Rashimpur was orderly and full. There were classes, devotions, and work. There was Tagore, the greatest of all men, to guide him. And most important, there was the discipline of yoga, in which Justin learned every day to accomplish things he had always believed to be impossible. What would women be like in such a place?

He remembered girls he had known at the various schools he'd attended. They were tolerable but useless; not one of them could even climb the rope in gym class to the top. His Uncle Sid's wife Arlene had walked around in nightgowns most of the time, smoking cigarettes and painting her fingernails. She had hair the color of Mercurochrome, and it never moved, even in the highest breeze. That would be no sort of person to have at Rashimpur.

"I don't see why I have to do this," Justin grumbled.

"You will do it because it is necessary for you and because Varja herself has offered to initiate you in your first rites." With a flick of his eyelids, he dismissed the subject. "I have explained the route to Varja's palace to you. Can you find it alone?"

"Yes," Justin said, resigned to his fate.

As was his custom, the old man bowed to him, and Justin returned the gesture.

"Remember that you are the son of Brahma. Do not displease him with unseemly conduct. Be a welcome guest in the great house of Varja, for she is powerful beyond your knowledge. But keep the preserving spirit of Patanjali within you."

Varja's palace was small in comparison with the monastery at Rashimpur, but it was exquisite. Constructed of ancient rock in the Indian style, its low, domed roof of black iron gleamed in the sun.

Justin stood in an open field near the front entrance, shivering with apprehension. What was he supposed to do in there? He would be the only male among a hundred women. Would they try to harm him? Would they make fun of him and laugh behind their painted fingernails?

A young woman came out of the building. She was small and heavily veiled. On her feet were satin slippers that curled fancifully at the toes. She fell to her knees, in front of him and bowed, touching her forehead to the ground.

"Welcome to the dwelling of the great goddess," she said.

"It is the honor of my brothers and their ancestors that I be permitted into the presence of the abbess and her acolytes," he answered formally in the arcane Hindi dialect he had learned just for this occasion.

She rose. Behind the thick white veil she wore, the girl's features showed fleetingly. Justin couldn't see all her face at one time, but he saw enough to know that she didn't look anything like the woman he'd expected. She was not a female version of the monks at Rashimpur. For one thing, she was nearly as tall as Justin, and he towered over the other men in the monastery. Her skin was very light, and though her hair and eyes were dark, her hands, covered with jewelry not only on the fingers but up to the wrists, were pale and blue-veined, like his own.

Her coloring shocked Justin. He didn't think anyone in this strange part of the world looked like him. He longed to ask her where she came from, but restrained himself. He did not wish to appear rude and overly inquisitive before he even entered the palace.

She moved aside and gestured for him to walk ahead of her into the palace. The path led through a magnificent ornamental garden, replete with curved stone bridges over streams that must have been created artificially. Low, spreading trees shaded small stone benches, and huge golden carp swam in a shallow pond. Everywhere, flowers blossomed in a profusion of color and sweet perfume. Beside it, the bare, windswept peaks around Rashimpur seemed bleak and desolate. It was hard for Justin not to linger in the garden, breathing in its lush fragrance and succumbing to its visual perfection, but he made himself keep the pace he had set. It would not do for the girl to think him weak.

She led him into an unoccupied room lit by spade-shaped brass oil lamps. The walls were covered with silk that billowed with the breeze from the garden, causing the pale colors of the fabric to shine in the light. More than a dozen huge cushions, covered with gold and silver brocade, were arranged on the floor around a pastel rug intricately woven into fluid designs. The ceiling was of hammered silver. It was the most opulent room Justin had ever seen. Even the Great Hall of Rashimpur with its magnificent Tree of the Thousand Wisdoms paled beside it.

The girl bowed again, and disappeared. Within a few minutes, a line of young women filed in through the mosaic doorway with its onion-shaped arch. Some of the women carried strange-looking musical instruments. Others brought with them books, clothing, pallettes, clay, and armloads of bright flowers. They came in silently, smiling but keeping their eyes averted, and arranged themselves on the cushions. After the last one had entered, the veiled girl came in and led Justin to the corner, where he would be flanked by the women, and gestured for him to sit down on the largest and most comfortable cushion.

"The goddess Varja accepts your most honored presence," the girl said softly, assuming an attitude of prayer as she knelt at his feet.

"Is she coming here?" Justin asked hesitantly.

The girls giggled. "No," the veiled one said. "This place is for your welcome. We hope to make you comfortable and easeful here so that you may be initiated into the rites of love in the proper state of mind."

The proper state of mind? Justin wondered. How hard was this going to be, anyway?

One of the girls began to play. In her lap she held a seven-stringed instrument; gourds served as sounding boards at each end of the fretted fingerboard, which extended downward in a curve to the floor. The music it made was droning and soft. To Justin's ears, which had never heard anything but Western music, the sounds struck him as discordant, but he smiled anyway, lest he offend the musician.

"This is Rakhta who plays the
vina
," the veiled girl said. "It is a sacred instrument, formed in the shape of a woman. Its music is the sound of darkness and the sea, where the female spirit originated." She pointed out another young woman of striking beauty who was arranging heaps of orchids in translucent pastel bowls. "Dakini arranges the flowers from our garden. Flower arranging, like music, is one of the womanly arts. So are poetry, sculpture, disguise, and many others."

"Do you have to learn them all?"

"Yes. We must master sixty-four arts, including dancing, writing, painting, reading, perfumery, gardening, languages, carpentry, chemistry, logic ... Many."

"Which languages do you speak?" Justin asked, hoping to learn more about the strange-looking Caucasian girl.

"Here we learn all the dialects of the region, plus the ancient languages of religious rites ..."

"Do you speak English?"

The girl bowed her head. "Yes," she said. "It is understood that English is your language. For this reason, I have been selected as your companion, if I do not offend you too severely."

Justin grinned. "It will be a pleasure to speak my native tongue again."

One of the women added a final dab of ink to a drawing, blew on it for a moment, then presented it to Justin, bowing low as she offered it.

Justin took it from her, then uttered an involuntary gasp as he noticed the subject of her art. The drawing depicted a man and a woman, dressed in ornate finery from the waist up, but utterly naked below. Their feet were joined at the soles, and their hands rested on their bent knees. At the center of the picture, the man's penis fully penetrated the woman.

Justin felt himself flushing deeply. He swallowed and forced himself to look at the young woman who had given him the drawing. She was very pretty, and no more than twelve years old, with the soft, rounded cheeks of childhood still accentuating her oval face.

"This is Saraha," Justin's guide said. "She is our best artist."

The young girl smiled shyly.

"Yes, it's ... wonderful," Justin said, hearing his voice crack and feeling horribly ashamed by it. If the girls heard him, they made no show of noticing. The veiled girl took the picture and set it aside.

"And what is your name?" Justin asked.

"My name is Duma, but it will be difficult for you to remember us all," she said. "But we have another name. Saraswati is the name given to the feminine counterpart of Brahma. Here, we are all Saraswati. Whatever you wish, Saraswati will provide it."

"Is that what you call Varja, too?"

"The goddess Varja is only Varja," she corrected quickly. "The spirit of Saraswati is within her, but Varja cannot be interchanged with any ordinary woman."

"But no one can be interchanged..." Justin began, but Duma's stiffening posture made him drop the subject. He didn't understand why the tall girl's approval was so important to him, but it was Duma he sought to please more than the mysterious abbess who owned the palace. "I'd like to call you Duma," he said lamely.

"As you wish."

"Why are you the only one wearing a veil?"

She hesitated for a long moment, dropping her head. "Because I am too ugly to be presented to your sight," she said softly. Then she rose. The movement was so quick that she seemed to float off the ground. She ran to the garden.

"Don't go," Justin called, going after her. She stopped at his command. "I'm sorry if I offended you," Justin blurted. "My teacher has told me that, to the eyes of seeing men, even the grossest disfigurements are invisible. Brahma knows only what is inside a person's soul."

Duma lowered her head. Maybe women were different, he thought. Sid's wife Arlene seemed to be a lot more concerned with how she looked on the outside than how much she understood about life. Maybe to a woman, an ugly face was the end of the world.

"Please come back," he said. He felt his face reddening. "I'm—I'm not comfortable in there alone."

"But you are not alone," she said, astonished. "The women will be with you to pleasure you and prepare you for Varja. I am not permitted to participate in those rituals."