The Temple Dancer (35 page)

They stepped outside the palace gates and walked the narrow causeway.
She recalled again that untethered kite. In Goa, she had rarely left her
house, and then only to visit a nearby friend or go to mass, and even then
always in a covered palanquin or a carriage. To walk on this strange roadit seemed terrifying, tantalizing, and forbidden. Lucinda stopped at the end
of the causeway; there in the sour-smelling mud of the lakeshore she saw a
hundred lotus blossoms lifting from the black water, their petals brilliant
purple edged in white. Pathan stood beside her, so close she could feel his
breath on her bare neck.

The town of Belgaum was a beehive. People everywhere, in streets and
shops and standing in doorways, alleys, and windows. Her ears, grown
used to silence, rang with the shouts of shopkeepers and the laughter of
children. Instead of flowers and incense the air was heavy with spices and
sewage, animals alive and slaughtered, sweat and dust and rotting vegetables. Once an old gray cow came up behind her and nudged her with his
nose. Most stared as they passed. If Pathan had not been beside her, she
might have panicked. He did not alter his stately, graceful stride; he answered their stares with a haughty nod. He did not notice her hesitant
steps. She worried that her sari would come undone.

He seemed certain of his way, but Lucinda quickly became lost. Once
Pathan stopped and pointed to the palace behind them, hoping to orient
her. "Just don't leave me, Captain," she whispered. "I'd never find my
way." As they turned again to go, she saw another of his smiles, and his
hand brushed against her elbow.

Lucinda could not fathom the twisting complexity of the town, so unlike the thoroughfares of Portuguese Goa. Here in Belgaum, houses and
shops sprouted like weeds to form a labyrinth of narrow alleys.

At one intersection, they stopped for a moment to watch a noisy procession of men standing in a double line, passing a shrouded body from
shoulder to shoulder. The body seemed to float above their unmoving
heads as they handed it forward from man to rnan. A crowd of women followed, wailing.

As the corpse left their hands, the men at the line's end would peel off
and rush to the front, like an elaborate dance. The shroud was parrot green,
and billowed in the breeze.

Pathan bowed his head and Lucinda watched in morbid fascination, not moving even when he said her name. "That might have been me, Captain," she said.

"Or me," he replied. "Our lives are loaned us for a moment only. No
one knows when the angel may knock upon our door demanding payment."

At last they came to a walled courtyard, standing in the midst of what
Lucinda guessed was a Muslim graveyard. Pathan nodded toward her head,
and after some uncertainty, Lucinda pulled the end of her sari over her hair,
which seemed to satisfy him.

A few steps into the courtyard, Pathan removed his shoes. Lucinda
placed her slippers next to his. He motioned for her to wait while he
washed. "All mosques have tanks, as men must be clean before they pray,"
he explained as he splashed his hands, feet, and face. He gave no sign
whether Lucinda should follow his example. He's not very helpful, she
thought.

Still dripping, Pathan led her to a small building with a whitewashed
dome at the far end of the complex. "We have come to the dargah of Yusuf
Chisti, a great saint," he whispered. A couple of old men rose as they approached. To these Pathan gave long bows. Lucinda had never seen him so
humble. The old men glanced at her and gave Pathan amused looks. "These
are the great-grandnephews of the saint," he explained softly. "Their family tends his tomb." Lucinda lifted her hands to her forehead.

She stood with Pathan at the door of the dargah and slowly her eyes adjusted to the darkness inside. Pathan nodded toward two flat tombs beneath the dome, each covered by heavy dark-green velvet strewn with
flowers. "The large one is Yusuf. The small one is his son, who died
young." His face was more solemn than she had ever seen. "Will you wait
for me here?"

What else was she going to do? "Of course," she answered. Pathan
knelt and kissed the threshold before he entered, followed by one of the old
men. He sat near the larger tomb for a long while, the old man standing
silently beside him. Lucinda wondered if there were some prayer that she
was supposed to be saying.

At last Pathan crawled to the foot of the tomb. Kneeling, he buried his
head beneath the velvet cloth. When he emerged, Lucinda saw tears in his
eyes.

The old attendant sighed as he bent over the tombcloth and picked out
a few of the scattered flowers. He embraced Pathan and pressed the petals
into his hand. As reverently as one might eat the Host, Pathan ate them one
by one. Meanwhile, the attendant took a long peacock-feather fan, and patted the tomb of the saint as if dusting it.

Then he came out of the dargah, and motioned for Lucinda to come
near. She glanced behind him to Pathan and saw him nod, and hesitantly
stepped to the doorway, her bare feet on the cool flagstone walk, a gentle
breeze kissing her face.

Then the old attendant began to pat her head with the fan. The air was
dense with rose oil; each bat of the fan wafted a cloud of scent into the air
around her, sweet and musky, like an avalanche of roses. Lucinda was surprised by her reaction. With each touch, she felt lighter, as if she was being
dusted clean, as if sadness was being brushed from her shoulders. The old
man lowered his head to her. A salaam aleichem, he said.

Pathan had taught her this Muslim greeting. Aleichem salaam, she
replied.

They put on their shoes and walked in silence toward the palace. "Is
that how you worship, Captain?"

"No, madam." Pathan seemed to consider his answer carefully. "To
worship means to feel a distance. But God is not distant. He is closer to
you than this." With that Pathan reached out and pressed his fingertips
against Lucinda's jugular. She felt her heartbeat pulse beneath his touch.
"So close is God to you, madam."

He lowered his eyes then, as if he too sensed the warmth that rose in
her face, and slowly dropped his hand. "What we do in there is prayer, not
worship. At the feet of a saint, one may place one's heartfelt wish. Who
knows what will happen? Maybe that wish will come true." His dark eyes
bored into hers.

"And what was your wish, Captain?"

But Pathan would not answer.

Maya once more ate with Lady Chitra, so that same night, Geraldo again
joined Lucinda and Pathan for supper. They spoke of Slipper, of Da Gama, and many times, of Maya. Geraldo's eyes darted often from Lucinda to
Pathan and back, as though he was reading a troubling story in their faces.
Lucinda shifted uncomfortably.

"Well, good night," Geraldo said at last, looking pointedly at Lucinda.
She waved her hand to him in reply-a gesture that caught Pathan off guard,
something Hindi women never did.

"Won't you be going to your room, Lucy?" Geraldo once more glanced
from Lucy to Pathan. But Lucinda did not answer, and Geraldo's ironic smile
had slowly disappeared. "Have a care, dear cousin," he muttered, walking
off.

Lucinda had brought Pathan's shawl, and now she pulled it over her
shoulders, though the evening air was still balmy. She stared at Pathan as if
willing him to speak. What he finally said surprised her. "He lusts for that
nautch girl." He said this as if it were obvious.

"Captain!"

"He lusts for you also."

"Surely not!" Lucinda could no longer stay seated. She rose and paced
along the railing. The last rose light of sunset hid behind the dark mountains.

Pathan eyed her gravely, then spoke as if to a child. "Who could blame
him, madam?"

Lucinda raised her face. Her belly trembled as if his voice had touched
her there. His eyes seemed deep as night.

She felt a wildness stirring inside her: something beautiful and dark
unfolding, glistening as if with the waters of its birth.

Later she could not remember who moved first. Her pulse raced and
her ears roared. She was in his arms, pressing her lips to his.

Warmth suffused her belly and became a fire. Pressing herself against
him, she felt her dark mysterious wings unfold.

Kama, the god of desire, shoots a sugarcane bow, but his arrows of spun
sugar can pierce the hardest heart.

They are not plucked out easily, those sweet, fragile arrows, and once
they lodge they infect and cause a fever. The brain begins to heat, the sight to shiver, hands grasp out longing to be held. The lips tremble; the eyes
burn. Sleep disappears: the nights ache past, and the days ferment with
dreaming. So the heart grows sick from Kama's darts.

Here was the flaw in Maya's plan. She longed to hate Geraldo, or to feel
nothing. Instead her heart was squeezed until it wept hot tears. Did she
love Geraldo? No. But she wanted him, or more precisely, wanted what he
gave her. She drank his love like saltwater, which slaked the dryness only
for a moment before her thirst began again.

How was she to know? He had seemed to her as lifeless as a wellgroomed doll. Empty words fell from his pretty lips, clanging at his feet
like hollow tin. His eyes flickered like a hyena seeking something dead to
eat. But Geraldo was handsome enough, and slender, and he did not smell
bad for a farang. He seemed to her the perfect foil for her plan.

A farang, a base farang, more unclean than a nobody. Geraldo would
be a defilement for her yoni, and no more. A thrust or two, a spurt, a groan,
and all Maya's worth as a nautch girl would disappear. For who would plow
a nautch girl's furrow once a farang had sullied it? Even the nobodies
would shun her if they knew, as they shunned the hijra.

Maya made up her mind to live a living death of foulness, to become
the ready vessel for his farang's pollution. Lady Chitra's words had shown
her; Maya would blacken every part of herself with his polluted lingam;
every orifice, each inch of her soft skin. She would reek of him, reek of
farang, and no man of honor ever would come near.

She would be free.

That was her plan, her plan that fell apart so quickly.

She had not reckoned on those spun-sugar arrows, on blind Kama and
his bow of cane.

Who could have guessed that Geraldo's tin words fell from lips so succulent? Or that his hands could stroke and glide and make her gasp, or that
the sight of his dark eyes devouring her nakedness would churn her to a
boil?

The sadhus who had used her for congress had studied tantra for years.
Desire makes us slaves, the sadhus said. They had focused all their desiring
on the Goddess, so they had become slaves of the divine. Now they could
mold shakti to their will: stiffening their lingams on command, spending
hours in congress with the devadasis. They had entered Maya slowly, reverently, and in the course of motionless hours embraced the goddess that Maya became for them. Next to them Geraldo seemed as innocent and
harmless as a child.

To her surprise she found that all of Geraldo's wisdom resided in places
she had never thought to look: in the tips of his fingers and the palms of his
hands, in the black hairs that curled on his chest No sadhu had such nipples, which felt hard as seed pearls when he embraced her, or a tongue that
danced across her skin, alive and wet, slipping between her lips, between
her legs. His whole body moved and coiled on her, around her.

He was no saint: he had flesh, and blood, and breath. He was, in fact,
an animal. And so, she found, was she.

In the ripples of his belly, along his hard thighs and firm shoulders, she
discovered that Geraldo owned a wisdom not of words but of touch; a poetry of stroking, of fondling, of embraces, of caresses dry and wet. His
hands tingled against her, awakening her skin; she sighed at the warmth of
them upon her breasts and flanks, the sudden empty coolness as they
glided to her shoulders and her thighs.

Desire makes us slaves, the sadhus had taught her. Desire makes us
slaves, she had mouthed in reply.