Queen of Dreams (33 page)

“Idiots,” my father says. “They shouldn’t keep showing that at a time like this.” He rises unsteadily to his feet, switches off the TV and takes Jona off to play Chinese checkers. And as though his action had released us from some kind of spell, we all get up. Belle and I go into the kitchen to make sandwiches. I’m surprised to discover that I’m ravenous. We all are. Belle says it’s from the relief of being safe. We decide that we’ll switch the TV on once every hour for updates. Belle says she’s going to bake a cake, and I bring out a sweater of Jona’s that I’ve been working on desultorily for the last several months. Jespal says he wants to go back to work just so that he can feel halfway normal. “I’ll come see you in a few hours,” he tells Belle. “You going to be at the Kurma House?”

“I guess so,” Belle says.

“That’s not a good idea!” Sonny says sharply. “You should keep the store closed today.”

I’ve had the same thought, but I don’t like his tone. Sonny-Know-It-All. Maybe because I’m already tense, anger flares up in me. “Why?” I ask.

“Can’t you see?” his tone implies that I had better not enter any IQ contests. “It’s not safe.”

“Maybe Sonny is right,” Belle says. “I don’t want to go
anywhere
today. Not even home. Rikki, can I sleep here tonight?”

I nod. But I’m not done with Sonny. “And why isn’t it safe?”

He gives an impatient sigh. “Are you really that dense? People would think you didn’t care about the folks who died, about America being attacked. They’d think all you cared about was making money.”

He knows exactly how to get under my skin. “You mean to say every business in this country is closed today?” I say, my voice rising. “That closing is the only way we can show we care? What about the fact that it might be good for the country to keep running as normally as possible, and not allowing everything to come to a standstill, which I think is exactly what the terrorists want—”

Sonny shakes his head tiredly. “Let’s not make this into a sparring match, not today. I’m just telling you how the average man on the street would react. I’m just telling you what would be a safer course of action.”

There’s truth to what he’s saying, but it only makes me angrier. I look at Belle, then Jespal. They look away. It’s clear they agree with Sonny. I clench my teeth. I’m even more determined not to give in. But as I try to figure out a plan of action, support comes from an unexpected quarter.

“We can’t close the shop,” my father says. “Especially today. For a lot of our customers, it’s their only meeting place. If we’re upset and worried, so must they be. We owe it to them to stay open so they can come in and talk about what’s happened, draw support from each other. Maybe we can help them deal with the shock.”

This is my chance. “You’re absolutely right, Dad,” I say. I give Sonny an angelic smile. “We’d be providing a valuable community service.” I turn to Belle. “And don’t you think we’ll feel a lot better off if we’re busy doing something useful, rather than sitting in front of the TV listening to a bunch of experts conjecturing about what terrible thing’s going to happen next?”

She looks uncertain, but finally she nods.

“I think you’re making a mistake,” Sonny says to my father before he leaves. He doesn’t speak to me. From the way his eyebrows are jammed together, I can tell that this time I’ve really managed to annoy him. I count it as a small victory on this day of defeats.

35

FROM THE
DREAM JOURNALS

The story of Tunga-dhwaja was a perplexing one, because unlike the other stories we studied with Elder Jahnavi, it contained no obvious dream. Discussing, we wondered if the king had dreamed the entire story from the time he fell asleep in the forest till he awoke there the second time. Was it a warning dream, heeding which he escaped an ominous fate? Yet that was too easy a solution. It negated the king’s suffering and undercut the magnitude of his transformation.

“You are right,” Jahnavi said. “That is not the answer. Think again.”

After more thought, we decided that the forest was a magical dream space. What the king did there called down a curse upon his waking life so that people were no longer able to recognize him. The curse could only be negated by a reparation performed in the same dream space.

“You are getting closer,” Jahnavi said. “But you’re fixing your attention on the wrong things. You’re trying too hard. Forget all you have learned about interpreting. Unfocus your eyes. Then maybe the real picture will appear before you.”

But we did not know how to unfocus.

At the end of a week of waiting, Jahnavi took pity and gathered us around her. She drew a diagram on the sand floor, two ovals connected by a tube. She added small squares along the circumference of each oval. A few squares had thicker outlines than the others. She looked at us hopefully, but we had no idea what it meant.

“The story of Tunga-dhwaja,” she explained, “is important because it illustrates a rare yet pivotal occurrence in dreaming.” She pointed to one of the ovals. “Think of this as waking time, and the other oval as dream time. The connecting tube is called the gateway, and allows us to pass from one time to the other. Under normal circumstances, the oval of dream time is always in motion, so that whenever you pass through the gateway, you enter a different door”—here she pointed to the squares—“and thus experience a different dream. The oval of the waking state moves, but with infinite slowness. Thus, throughout a human’s life span, he or she will reenter the same door, and experience the same story, which we have termed reality. Now do you see what happened in the case of Tunga-dhwaja?”

“He upset the balance between the ovals somehow,” one of us ventured.

“Yes,” Jahnavi said. “Usually when the balance is upset, the oval of dream time comes to a halt, and people dream the same story over and over. But the king’s problem was unique. By angering the sages in the forest he speeded up his waking time, so that when he returned to it, he entered through a different door into a different life. Here, he paid for his earlier arrogance by being reduced to the lowest of the low.”

“But why did that happen?” I asked. “All of us do what we shouldn’t, from time to time, in our dreams. But we aren’t pushed into other lives in punishment—”

“It is because, in the magical forest, the king had entered a transforming dream.” Here Jahnavi pointed to one of the thickly outlined squares. “Transforming dreams are rare. They come to a human once or twice in a lifetime, or perhaps not at all. What we do in these dreams transforms our natures and affects our waking lives in powerful ways. In most cases, the dream erases itself from our consciousness once we have dreamed it, and we can do nothing to change its effects. Tunga-dhwaja was fortunate in that he remembered, and even more fortunate in that he could reenter the same transforming dream, where he was forgiven. Otherwise he would have been trapped in his new life, and doomed to spend his days as a beggar.”

That night I lay on my pallet in the sleeping hall and contemplated what Jahnavi had said. The tale of Tunga-dhwaja was meant to caution us, but it filled me with exhilaration. To think that there existed, just beyond our perceptions, different realities! To think that they might become available to us—to me, even! That I might slip, by virtue of something I did in a dream, into another life, and become a new person, possessed of talents and joys I could not even imagine at this moment! The law of reversal had transformed Tunga-dhwaja from a king into a beggar. Couldn’t that same law transform me—an orphan and a novice, a beggar girl of sorts—into a queen?

As I thought this, a strange discontent took hold of me. Until now I had loved the caves. I’d blessed the day I’d been accepted here to become a dream teller. It had allowed me to escape the hopelessness of my life in the slums. It had opened for me a world I’d been ignorant of, had stirred within me powers I’d barely guessed at. It had given me a reason to live. But today the darkness of the sleeping hall pressed upon me with a heaviness I’d never felt before. The curved roof of the cave was like a hand held over my mouth, suffocating me. It might be years before the elders decided I knew enough to go out into the world to practice my craft. By then my youth would have passed away, and what beauty I possessed, and along with them, my hopes for happiness and adventure. A great despair filled me as I thought this. I gathered all the power within me into a dream-seeking wish. I knew the elders would be furious if they found out, and not only because of the dangers involved in wishcraft. The dream chooses the teller, they had told us over and over. The teller must not choose the dream.

I felt the wish leave me the way a powerful bird takes off for the sky, beating its vast wings, confident of its destination. I was filled with elation. Until that moment, I hadn’t believed I could accomplish such a complex task. But—I would learn this later—it wasn’t a bird wish I’d sent forth. It was a boomerang, and it would recoil upon me in the way I least expected.

What did I want from my transforming dream? I wanted it to take me into a new world, one unshackled by the rules that guided every moment of our lives in the cave. I wanted reckless passion. I wanted adventure. I wanted a man who’d be willing to kill himself for my love.

Did a transforming dream come to me that night? I was no Tunga-dhwaja; in the morning I remembered nothing. All was as before, except the discontent that had been a grain of sand in my eye had grown into a ball of iron in the pit of my stomach. It continued to grow in the weeks before we went on our trip to Calcutta. It unbalanced me.

Transformation is an erratic phenomenon. It strikes people in different ways. Tunga-dhwaja’s change was like a tower cracked open by lightning. My own would be slower, subtler, more insidious—a rodent gnawing at the roots of a banyan. But it had begun.

36

Rakhi

For a long time after we open, no one comes into the shop. Most of the businesses around us are closed, and the street appears abandoned. Even the homeless people have disappeared, leaving the streetlamps to throw shivery pools of light on empty pavements.

“Maybe we should go home,” Belle says again.

“Let’s wait a little longer,” my father says, “until the time our musicians usually come in.” He disappears into the back room, and when I look in, I see him sitting in front of the empty alcove where my mother’s photograph used to be.

The door chime rings, but it isn’t the musicians. It’s Mr. Soto, the owner of the Mexican restaurant next door. It takes me a moment to recognize him—I’ve never seen him without his chef ’s hat and apron. I hadn’t realized he was bald.

“You planning to stay open?” he asks.

I nod.

“Wouldn’t do that, if it was me,” he says. “I only came in to make sure everything was locked up safe, with the alarm turned on. I’m going home now. Too many angry people around—”

“But why would they do anything to us?”

Mr. Soto shrugs. “Angry and scared—that’s a dangerous mix. People don’t think much when they’re like that.”

I peer out the window at the deserted street. Then I notice that the lights are on in Java. I point. “She’s open.”

“Si. You seen what she’s put up?”

I peer out. A big banner hanging from the storefront proclaims, PROUD TO BE AMERICAN.

“She’s quick, that one,” Mr. Soto says with a grin that’s more a grimace. “Can’t blame her this time, though. I myself—” He gestures with his chin toward his store, and I see there’s a large American flag taped to the inside of his window. Under it a sign in red, white and blue reads GOD BLESS AMERICA.

“They’re selling them on the corner of University and Shattuck,” he informs us as he leaves. “You should get one before they run out.”

Belle and I stare at each other. The look on her face mirrors the disbelief I’m feeling. “Is this California, year 2001,” I ask, “or is this Nazi Germany?”

“Maybe Mr. Soto’s right,” Belle says. “Maybe we should put up a flag, too. To show solidarity, you know.”

“Belle, I don’t have to put up a flag to prove that I’m American! I’m American already. I love this country—hell, it’s the only country I know. But I’m not going to be pressured into putting up a sign to announce that love to every passerby.”

Belle doesn’t say any more, but I can see the disquiet in her eyes as she places a tray of cookies—that’s all we’re serving today, along with tea—on the counter.

The musicians arrive in ones and twos, looking stunned. No families accompany them today. Instead of kurtas and loose pants, dashikis and fez hats, today they’re dressed in jeans. T-shirts. A 49ers cap. They incline their heads in greeting, then sit silently, their cups of tea untouched in their hands. I turn on the portable TV and we watch President Bush, who has been flying around the country in a military plane all day to keep himself safe. He vows to root out terrorists—not just the ones responsible for today’s tragedy but all terrorists, everywhere. It seems a task as impossible as those described in Jona’s book of fairy tales. I wonder how he plans to go about it. A stern newscaster announces that a certain Osama bin Laden is the mastermind behind this plot. A picture of him in white robes, with a turban and a beard and black fanatic’s eyes, flashes on the screen. The picture fills me with uneasiness, though I can’t put words to it.