The Temple Dancer (44 page)

"But I don't have it anymore ..." she whispered.

"Yes, I know. You gave it to Da Gama; dear, trustworthy Deoga, everybody's uncle, everybody's friend." Geraldo snorted. "Be careful who you
trust, my sweet. Has no one ever warned you to be careful?"

Before she even realized it, Maya had fled from Aldo's room. She was
halfway across the courtyard before she stopped and clutched her head and
wept. She managed to contain herself enough to reach the ladies' quarters.
There she burst into Lucinda's room, fell down beside her, and sobbed. Lucinda cradled her and asked what had happened, but Maya would not say.

She slept on a carpet near Lucinda's bed. Neither woman got much
rest ... they spent the night tossing fitfully, scared of what they might
dream.

The next morning Maya helped Lucinda tighten her new corset and
put on the heavy, rag-stuffed skirt Victorio had sent. "This is how poor
women dress," Lucinda told her. "They can't afford stiff silks to hoop their
skirts, so they fill the channels with rags."

"But you can barely see the difference," Maya lied. Lucinda's face, like
Maya's, was a blank: she was full of thoughts too deep for speaking,
thoughts that made no dent upon her face.

After she had dressed, from a little chest beside her bed, Lucinda took
out her silver box and flipped the lid. "Do you want some?" she asked
Maya, holding out the arsenico.

"Why do you have this?" Maya asked. "Why do you offer me a dra-
vana?"

Lucinda blinked. "This is arsenico, to pale and purify the skin. What is
a dravana, sister?"

"You don't know? It means a drug for passion, to make congress more
pleasurable. Your cousin offered this same stuff to me."

"Surely not," Lucinda said.

"Yes, I say. It looked just the same. And had that same smell, just like
garlic. It only made me dizzy. He said I had not taken enough, but I
wanted no more."

Lucinda's eyes widened. "You did right. This is the poison I told you I
had. A little makes you pale. Too much . . . "

Maya's face grew serious. "Give me some."

Lucinda held out the box. "Just a small bit, placed on the tongue."

"No!" Maya's eyes burned. "Give me what you promised me. Give me
enough to kill."

Lucinda thought about saying no. She thought about asking what
Maya meant to do. But she knew already, she knew by Maya's bright stare
fixed upon her, for Lucinda's own thoughts also were dark. Having arsenico, having power, having hold of one's fate. Arsenico gave freedom,
though the harshest kind of freedom. And she had promised Maya, after
all.

"Bring me a cloth," Lucinda said at last.

Maya found a small silk handkerchief, and on it Lucinda scooped out
half her arsenico. With some care she used an edge of the cloth to wipe the
excess from her finger, and then tied the corners of the kerchief, and
handed it to Maya.

Lucinda saw that there remained a few small dots of red upon her finger. She reached up and touched the tip to Maya's lips, and then her own.
"Now we are sisters indeed," she said.

The next morning, Lucinda found Pathan in the courtyard, saddling his
horse. She could not stop her feet from hurrying toward him, and when he noticed her, he gave the cinch an angry tug. She watched the change that
crossed his face as she approached-how the brightness left his eyes, and
his mouth grew harsh. He stiffened to a soldier's posture. In short he
looked as distant and as haughty as the first time she had seen him in Goa.
What happened to my Munna, a voice cried in her heart. But the heaviness
of her skirts and the tightness of her corset whispered the answer: Lucy too
had disappeared.

Even so, his gaze found hers and never wavered until she reached his
side.

"You're leaving?" Her voice sounded harsher than she wished.

"You've heard my plans. I'll be back tomorrow night with palkis and
horses. You heard all this last night, did you not?"

"I thought you'd tell me goodbye." His coldness chilled her. Lucinda
felt the few feet of space between them like a chasm. Looking at his face she
remembered the moist pliance of his lips against hers, and the press of his
long fingers on the bare skin of her waist; she remembered the slippery, unexpected twisting of his tongue; and she had to turn away. "I wanted you
to say goodbye."

"I could not bear it," he whispered back.

She realized that the stony blankness of his face was held there by the
hard force of his will. Oh, the child, she thought. He believed it pleased her
that he did not show his pain.

The fullness of her skirts kept a distance between them. He could not
casually come closer without pressing against the bulky clothing. "Will
you remember me, Munna?" she whispered, stretching out her hand. From
where she stood, she could not quite touch him.

He looked at her pale hand, and her chalk-powdered face, and her
cumbersome clothing, and peered at her as if to see behind a mask that
she'd put on. He lifted both his hands, and cradled her outstretched fingers
as gently as one holds a bird. "You are closer to me than my breath," he
said. His eyes, for just a moment, lost their coldness, and she saw that he
was frightened. "Must you marry him, Lucy?"

"I have no choice, Munna."

His face grew hard. "You say this? When you were pledged, then I
could understand. But that pledge is broken."

"Another pledge now takes its place."

"It means nothing! I see that now. It is not your pledge, Lucy! This is
another's will, not yours!"

"I have made it mine. I am a Dasana, and my will is not my own." She
lowered her head. "I am no more than a puppet, Munna. Another pulls the
strings." She pulled her hand away. "Listen, Munna. It is my duty to my
family. But he will have my body only, but not my heart."

"Have I no family? No duty? Yet I would cast them all aside-for happiness, for love. For you."

Lucy looked up as if seeing him for the first time. "You are not a
Christian, or a Portuguese. We are so different, you and I."

His face grew hard. "Suppose I put on farang clothes, and drank blood
like a Christian, then would I be suitable?"

"No!" Lucinda cried. She stepped away for him, recoiling at the
thought.

"Did I really mean to give my heart to you? Damn you then, and damn
all women!" Pathan shouted, suddenly on fire. She had seen such a fury in
his eyes once before, when he had killed her attackers at the pass, when his
hands were stained with bandit blood. Without another glance Pathan
slapped his horse, and mounted it even while it ran, and galloped out the
gate, across the causeway.

"Munna!" Lucinda's throat was so tight, she could barely hear her own
words. She tasted the ocean-her own salt tears, she realized-and then
cried out once more, "Munna!"

The word echoed against the palace walls. He was gone. From
nowhere, a bloated cloud edged past the sun, and the courtyard darkened
in cold shadows. "I never meant," she whispered toward the empty gate. "I
never meant for you to change, dear Munna." Her throat closed in a sob.
"Come back. Let me tell you so." Lucinda shivered, and straightened her
skirts, and pressed the pins more deeply in her hair, and turned and walked
away unseen except by one, and he could only chuckle at what had passed.

"Until we leave here, won't you wear your sari, sister?" Maya asked. She
and Lucinda had come together to the wide platform swing in Lady Chitra's garden. On their backs they lay as the corner ropes creaked, staring through mango-leaf shadows at the clouds and sea-blue sky; lying so
their heads just touched, and the closeness comforted them both. Maya had
told Lucinda of her conversation with Geraldo, and Lucinda then had told
Maya about Pathan and the courtyard. They had no secrets now.

"I dare not think about it, sister. I must set my thoughts on what is, not
what might have been."

"There's yet time." Where Maya's head touched hers Lucinda felt the
subtle vibrations of her skull with every word. It tickled. It made Lucinda
smile. She felt her head buzz as Maya asked, "Do you ever think of
dying?"

Maya's question hardly shocked her. They both possessed arsenico
now, and when one carries poison, thoughts of death are never far away. If
Lady Chitra had been there, of course, Maya might not have said a word,
but Chitra had not come out for days, not since Da Gama's letter came. "In
truth I think more of killing than of dying, sister," Lucinda answered
softly. "But you asked if I ever think of it-and I tell you: yes."

"How do you imagine it?"

Lucinda thought but did not answer for a long time. Maya waited and
then spoke again. "I think it is a coldness, like a shadow." Maya paused.
"That's how it was when my mother died."

"Then what?" Lucinda asked.

"I think it is a sleep. There's darkness for a time. Then you see your
next body glowing for you, lighting the way, waiting for you. You put on
the baby's body, as one slips a sandal on a foot. Then another life begins."

"Is there no end?" Now Maya did not answer. "When I die," Lucinda
continued, "I want an end. I want arms around me, holding me. I want to
see his eyes with my last sight, to taste his kiss with my last breath."
Lucinda's voice grew so soft that Maya could barely hear it for the groaning
of the swing against its ropes.

Maya reached her out hand until she touched Lucinda's face. "Sister,
have you no hope at all?"

Lucinda grasped her fingers. "There is nothing for me now but death. I
myself shall die, or walk among the living with a dead heart. Or maybe I
will kill."

"Who?" Maya asked.

"Who would you kill, sister? Who has destroyed your life?"

A half-dozen faces flashed across Maya's thoughts. "I must not think
this way," she whispered.

"And I," Lucinda answered, "must not wear a sari. It is just the same,
you see: some thoughts are too painful to be borne." The swing moved in
its long slow arc while the branches swayed. In her warm clothes, beneath
the afternoon sun, Lucinda's thoughts began to drift.

As if from inside her, Lucinda heard Maya speaking. The sound of each
word, vibrating where their heads touched, formed a brilliant image in Lucinda's drowsy brain.

"I had a dream last night," Maya said. "I went in spirit to the Guru
planet, where my dear teacher found me. She took my hand and we began
to fly. There she lives atop a mountain island, in an ocean of pure milk. The
sky was bright, but filled with brighter stars. We flew so high I thought to
touch the sun, when suddenly we began to descend. I thought we were
falling, but my guru held me close and gestured to the ocean. We dove into
the milk.

"I saw that the ocean was the very void from which all creation springs.
It sat completely placid, in abundant readiness, and as we two swam
through it, the milk assumed a million forms-bubbles turning into objects that in a moment melted and were gone.

"My guru drew us toward a giant structure white as bleached bone. A
great temple tower, so it seemed. Against its endless walls the milk swirled.
Carved there I saw a million bright white figures: men and women-not
gods but humans just like us-pressing and touching and coiling round
each other. They were locked in couples, all of them, embracing, kissing,
having congress in every imaginable way.

"Then I saw that the carvings were alive: thrusting and twisting in furious embrace-a million, million couples locked in endless passion, as far as
any eye could see.

"At last my guru took me back, farther from the churning waters and
the churning couples, until at last I saw the structure in its fullness-they
formed the surface of a tower so enormous that it stretched into the endless
sky and down into the endless depths, and every inch of it alive with forms
of passion and desire.

"'What have you shown me, my guru?' I cried. But for answer she only took my hand, and we began to plummet down, deliriously down along the
length of that enormous spire. It was so huge that we were small as mites
beside it. My guru then held out her hand to show me, far below, that the
tower's base was ringed round with a circle just as vast and grand, pulsing
like an annulus of light. And I gasped, for I realized at last what I was
seeing.