The Temple Dancer (10 page)

Finally, to everyone's surprise, Fernando leaped from his chair. "I can
turn my other cheek no longer," he shouted. His voice was not much lower
than the eunuch's. Even Slipper grew quiet, sensing the fury radiating from
Anala's tiny form. "You will make no more sport at my expense, hijra, or at
the expense of my beloved Lord Jesus Christ!" Fernando stabbed the air
with a fork for emphasis.

"Your Jesus?" Slipper struggled to his feet. "Yours? I won't be scolded
by a Hindi! Particularly not by a counterfeit farang like you! I'm a Muslim,
not some Hindi infidel! I knew about Jesus while you were still kissing some
idol's plaster ass!" With that the eunuch drained his glass, and with an attempted dignity stumbled from the room. As the waiter shut the door behind
him, they heard a great clatter from the hall beyond, but no one moved.

Fernando whipped a kerchief from his sleeve and patted his dark forehead, then pressed the cloth to his lips as he regained his composure. The
gesture was so perfectly European that Geraldo nearly laughed out loud.
"Insolent hijra!" Ferando's delicate fingers pressed the kerchief back to his
sleeve. "As if he knew anything about my beloved Lord Jesus Christ."

"But he does, you see," Pathan said softly. "He is a Muslim, though
he drinks. You must certainly know that we Muslims hold Jesus in great reverence." But a glance at the others made it clear that none of them
knew any such thing.

"Is this true?" Fernando asked Da Gama.

"How would I know, senhor? But this fellow is a burak, and a prince as
well, and I have never heard him lie."

Pathan turned to Fernando. "Does not your faith teach forgiveness, sir?
Here is a chance for you to forgive. That mule hunni ... that hijra as you call
him ... lives a life that might be pitied. Stolen from mother and home, cruelly maimed when he was child. He has no home, no family. All his life he
lives with women, cleaning them, dressing them, doing all their bidding. Can
we be surprised that he acted so foolishly here? What does he know of the
company of men? Rather it is for us men to pity him and forgive."

Fernando stared at Pathan. Perhaps he hoped to find a flaw in his
words, so he might reveal his better knowledge of the love of Christ.

But he found no flaw. At last Fernando raised his hands to his forehead. "You are right, sir. He was not ready to accept the treasure I tried to
offer him. His is the greater loss. I will forgive." Fernando sat again, and
slowly the dinner went on.

While Maya went out to find Da Gama, Lucinda changed into her dressing
gown. Helene had thoughtfully folded it at the top of her trunk. It had
been hard to take off her dress and unlace her corset by herself, and
Lucinda now very much regretted sending Helene away.

But thinking of the incident in Goa brought the memory of Pathan's
eyes, lustrous and troubling; a memory she quickly set aside.

After Maya returned, servants came in with lit candles, and unrolled a
linen sheet over one of the colorful rugs near the wall. Not long after, Silvia
entered, a short round woman wearing a Portuguese dress. Her black hair,
shot with gray, she wore in long braid wrapped into a bun. She had a wedding ring, but around her neck she also wore a Hindi's marriage necklace.

She saw Lucinda first and smiled, friendly but nervous. But before she
greeted her visitors, Silvia made a slow circuit of the room, pausing for a
moment near the puja table. Lucinda watched as Silvia's fingers darted from
her lips, to the silver crucifix, then to her heart. After that she namskared to each of her guests, and then, with an awkward flouncing of her skirts, sat
beside them.

"It is an honor and blessing to welcome my sister Lucinda to this
house," Silvia said in halting Portuguese.

"It is a blessing and honor to be here, my sister in Christ," Lucinda answered. Then she said in Hindi, "But we must be thoughtful of our companion." She nodded to Maya.

Silvia's expression changed to one of surprise and relief. "My husband
told me you spoke Hindi, but I thought that he was joking." The idea of
Brother Fernando joking with his wife had never crossed Lucinda's mind.
Silvia leaned toward Maya. "A Christian woman who speaks like a civilized person. How remarkable."

"She is remarkable in many ways," Maya answered. Lucinda felt her
cheeks burn as the women looked at her.

But Silvia seemed to have a question that would not wait. She turned to
Maya, her eyes round and wide. "Are you truly a devadasi?"

Maya shrugged. "Whatever I was once is in the past."

"You will always be a devadasi! It is a blessing to have you in our house."
Silvia's round face glowed in admiration, but Maya humbly turned aside.
Lucinda tried to hide her puzzlement. So Maya was a temple dancer? What
of it? But she said nothing.

Soon servants brought in dinner. Before Silvia and Maya they set china
plates: rice, vegetables, dal, and dahi. Then the women waited politely
while Lucinda was served.

Someone had made an effort to cook Portuguese food in her honor.
Her plate held cabbage boiled to a thick paste, and in a pool of congealing
fat, an unidentifiable sphere of meat, fire-blackened until it looked like an
enormous bolus.

"I knew you would not want your food half raw, the way men eat it,"
Silvia said.

"You are very kind."

All of them stared in silence at the dreadful plate. "Would you like a
fork, sister?" Silvia asked politely.

"My digestion is unsettled," Lucinda answered. She glanced at the servant, who whisked the plate away, holding it at arm's length as she carried
it from the room.

The other two women looked relieved. "Perhaps some rice and dahi?
Very soothing, I think." Silvia nodded and one of the servants scurried to
fetch a plate. The white grains floating in the white curds actually looked
rather appetizing, Lucinda thought. She did her best to scoop up the mixture with her fingers, Hindi fashion, since Silvia had not given her a
spoon.

What a strange collection they were: She and Maya so similar in age
and appearance, so different in background. She and Silvia, like a pair of
mismatched bookends, dressed in Portuguese clothing but talking in
Hindi. It wasn't that Silvia looked uncomfortable in her clothes so much as
she looked lost. She wore the Portuguese dress as one might wear a costume to a fancy ball.

They talked little until the plates were cleared. When they did at last
begin to chat, Silvia wanted mostly to speak with Maya. Even though
Maya did her best to include Lucinda, somehow the subject always steered
to temples and idols, and gurus and shastris. Lucinda could do little but
listen.

"But Maya cannot have always been your name," Silvia insisted.

Maya shook her head. "It was given to me by that hijra."

The two women shared a scowl. "What was it before?"

Maya set her face, as one preparing to feel the doctor's knife. "Prabha."

Silvia sighed and closed her eyes, looking as if someone had placed a
sweetmeat on her tongue. "Do you know this word?" she asked Lucinda.
"It means light; the light that surrounds the head of the Lord. It is one of
the names of the Goddess."

"Which goddess?" Lucinda asked.

Silvia looked confused. "There is but one."

Maya placed her hand on Lucinda's. Lucinda tried to hide her surprise.
So many people had touched her since she left Goa. "That one goddess
has so many forms. Surely you have seen the goddess Lakshmi?" Lucinda
nodded; the goddess of wealth-even some of the Portuguese shopkeepers
kept her idol in a tiny shrine. "Prabha is one of her names."

"My name was Uma. That name too means light-the light of serenity." Silvia smiled, remembering. Then she sighed and turned to Lucinda.
"I suppose your name means something, too?"

"Yes," Lucinda answered slowly. "Lucinda too means light."

Later, there had been an awkward moment when Slipper burst into the
women's room. He staggered and lifted his pudgy hands to the women,
nearly toppling over, as if this were some difficult balancing act. No one
knew what to say, least of all Slipper. "I'll go to sleep now," he slurred at
last, and with that stumbled out of the room. Soon they heard him snoring
outside the door. Though his speaking voice was high as a woman's, his
snores were deep and rasping as an old man's.

"And he pretends to be a Muslim," Silvia humphed. "They're just the
same. All of them, just the same."

As the evening went on, Lucinda noticed that Silvia's conversation recalled the way her father discussed money-he would talk for hours, discussing everything and anything else before finding the courage to touch
the subject. But from her circling talk, it seemed to Lucinda that Silvia too
had some topic she wished to bring up but was too embarrassed to say.

The candles had already begun to flare and gutter before Silvia at last
revealed her target. "Why have you done it?" she asked Maya in a whisper.
"Why have you become a nautch girl?"

"What does it matter now, auntie? What's done ...

"Don't humor me. I'm too old for it. Tell me."

A darkness such as Lucinda had never seen fell across Maya's face. The
nightbirds chattered outside, a dog barked, in the stable courtyard the elephant yawned, and Slipper's snoring sawed outside the door. A half-dozen
times Maya took breath and seemed about to speak. "What was left for
me?" she said at last.

"Tell me, daughter. Tell me." Seeing Silvia cradle Maya's hand so gently,
Lucinda recalled the nearly forgotten memory of her own mother's touch.

"You know I was a devadasi." Silvia nodded. "I was at the Paravati
temple in Orissa. My guru . . ." here Maya halted, letting out a tiny sob.
Silvia stroked her hand. "My guru said I might go to the Shiva temple. She
said I might do seva there with the sadhus and siddhas."

Lucinda knew that sadhus were mendicant monks: beggars, most of
them naked with matted hair so long that the dirty, braidlike locks fell to
their knees. She didn't know what siddhas were, or seva.

Silvia, oddly, seemed conscious of Lucinda's ignorance. "Seva means work; work for god," she whispered to Lucinda, while her hand stroked
Maya's arm.

"It was good, you know. The training was difficult, but the work made
it all worthwhile. In the morning I would dance for the god; in the evening
I had congress with the sadhus."

In less than a day, Lucinda had all but forgotten that Maya was a whore.

Well of course she'd had congress with them, Lucinda realized. Of
course. That was her work. But Maya's wistfulness and regret made Lucinda realize that Maya thought she was doing something worthy, not
something shameful. Maya spoke of having congress as a nun might speak
of giving alms.

Silvia sighed. Lucinda expected her to pity or to scold. Instead she said:
"You were most fortunate, daughter. Why ever did you stop?"

"There was a flood. The temple was damaged. There was no money, so
I offered ..."

"Is that really why, daughter?"

Maya's cry began as a low moan and ended as a wail. She pitched forward, shaking her head and sobbing. "My guru was gone. She was swept
away in the floods." Lucinda could not resist reaching out to Maya, patting
her back while she sobbed.

"Who was your guru?" Silvia asked.

"Gungama," Maya said. The name set off a new round of sobs.

"Gungama?" Silvia whispered. Her face grew pale and her eyes wide.

"Did you know her?" Lucinda asked, as Maya tried to still her sobbing.

"Of course I know her. My father was one of her patrons. She's famous
throughout the world." Silvia seemed shocked that Lucinda had not heard
of her. "But she's not dead."

Maya sat up. She seemed to have cried all her tears away. "Auntie, she
drowned eight months ago."

"But she didn't," Silvia insisted. "She slept in this very house last
month."