The Journeyer

by Gary Jennings

  The last of the horses disappeared on up the road to the northward, and the dust began to settle, and the villagers began to clamber down from roofs and trees and to amble back from whatever distances they had run to. They immediately commenced a concerted keening of grief and lament, as they peeled up their flattened dead, and they shook their fists at the sky and squawled imprecations at the Destroyer God Siva for having so unfeelingly taken so many of the innocent and infirm.

  Tofaa and I went back to our meal, and eventually our host and hostess also returned, and counted their children. They had not lost any, and had trodden on only a few, but they were as sorrow-stricken and distraught as all the rest of the village—she and he did not even, after we all went to bed, perform surata for us that night—and they could not tell us anything more about the aswamheda except that it was a phenomenon which occurred about once a year, and was the doing of the cruel Raja of Kumbakonam.

  “You would be well advised, wayfarers, not to go to that city,” said the woman of the house. “Why not settle down here in tranquil and civilized and neighborly Jayamkondacholapuram? There is ample room for you, now that Siva has destroyed so many of our people. Why persist in going to Kumbakonam, which is called the Black City?”

  I said we had business there, and asked why it was so called.

  “Because black is the Raja of Kumbakonam, and black his people, and black the dogs, and black the walls, and black the waters, and black the gods, and black the hearts of the people of Kumbakonam.”

  3

  UNDETERRED by the warning, Tofaa and I went on southward, and eventually crossed a running sewer that was dignified with the name of Kolerun River, and on the other side of it was Kumbakonam.

  The city was much larger than any community we had yet come through, and it had filthier streets bordered with deeper ditches full of stagnant urine, and a greater variety of garbage rotting in the hot sun, and more lepers clicking their warning sticks, and more carcasses of dead dogs and beggars decaying in public view, and it was more rancid with the odors of kàri and cooking grease and sweat and unwashed feet. But the city really was no blacker of color or layered no thicker with surface dirt than any lesser community we had seen, and the inhabitants were no darker of skin and layered no thicker with accumulated grime. There were a great many more people, of course, than we had seen in one place before, and, like any city, Kumbakonam had attracted many eccentric types that had probably left their home villages in search of wider opportunity. For example, among the street crowds I saw quite a few individuals who wore gaudy feminine saris, but had on their heads the untidy tulbands usually worn by men.

  “Those are the ardhanari,” said Tofaa. “What would you call them? Androgynes. Hermaphrodites. As you can see, they have bosoms like women. But you cannot see, until you pay for the privilege, that they have the nether organs of both men and women.”

  “Well, well. I had always supposed them mythical beings. But I daresay, if they had to exist anywhere, it would be here.”

  “We being a very civilized people,” said Tofaa, “we let the ardhanari parade freely about the streets, and openly ply their trade, and dress as elegantly as any women. The law requires only that they also wear the headdress of a man.”

  “Not to deceive the unwary.”

  “Exactly. A man who seeks an ordinary woman can hire a devanasi temple whore. But the ardhanari, although unsanctioned by any temple, are kept far more busy than the devanasi, since they can serve women as well as men. I am told they can even do both at once.”

  “And that other man, yonder?” I asked, pointing. “Is he also peddling his nether parts?”

  If he was, he could have sold them by bulk weight. He was carrying them before him in a tremendous basket which he held by both hands. Although the parts were still attached to his body, his dhoti diaper could not have contained them. The basket was completely filled by his testicular sac, which was leathery and wrinkled and veined like an elephant’s hide, and the testicles inside it must each have been twice the size of the man’s head. Just to see the sight made my own parts hurt in sympathy and revulsion.

  “Look below his dhoti,” said Tofaa, “and you will see that he also has legs of elephant thickness and elephant skin. But do not feel sorry for him, Marco-wallah. He is only a paraiyar afflicted with the Shame of Santomè. Santomè is our name for the Christian saint you call Thomas.”

  The explanation was even more astounding than the sight of the pitiable man-elephant. I said unbelievingly, “What would this benighted land know of Saint Thomas?”

  “He is buried somewhere near here, or so it is said. He was the first Christian missionary ever to visit India, but he was not well received, because he tried to minister to the vile paraiyar outcasts, which disgusted and offended the good jati folk. So they paid Santomè’s own congregation of paraiyar converts to slay him, and—”

  “His own congregation? And they did it?”

  “The paraiyar will do anything for a copper coin. Dirty work is what they are for. However, Santomè must have been a powerfully holy man, albeit a heathen. The men who slew him, and their paraiyar descendants ever since, have been cursed with the Shame of Santomè,”

  We pressed on to the center of the city, where stood the Raja’s palace. To get to it we had to cross a commodious market square, as crowded as all market squares, but on this day not with commerce. There was some kind of festa in progress, so Tofaa and I made our way across it leisurely, to let me see how the Hindus celebrated a joyous occasion. They seemed to be doing it more dutifully than joyously, I decided, for I could not see a happy or animated face anywhere. In fact, the faces, besides having a more than usually ornate measle painted on the forehead, were smeared with what looked like mud, but smelled worse.

  “Dung of the sacred cattle,” said Tofaa. “First they wash their faces in the cows’ urine, then put the dung on their eyes, cheeks and breast.”

  I refrained from any comment except, “Why?”

  “This festival is in honor of Krishna, the God of Many Mistresses and Lovers. When Krishna was only a lad, you see, he was a simple cowherd, and it was in the cowshed that he did his first seductions of the local milkmaids and his fellow cowherds’ wives. So this festival, in addition to being a blithe celebration of high-spirited lovemaking, also has its aspect of solemnity in honoring Krishna’s sacred cows. That music the musicians are playing, you hear it?”

  “I hear it. I did not know it was music.”

  The players were grouped about a platform in the middle of the square, wringing noises from an assortment of devices—cane flutes, hand drums, wooden pipes, stringed things. In all that concert of strident screeching and twanging and squawking, the only perceptibly sweet notes came from a single instrument like a very long-necked lute with a gourd body, having three metal strings played with a plectrum on the musician’s forefinger. The Hindu audience sweatily massed roundabout looked as morosely unmoved by the music and as barely enduring of it as I imagine I did.

  “What the musicians are playing,” said Tofaa, “is the kudakuttu, the pot-dance of Krishna, based on an ancient song the cowherds have always sung to their cows while milking them.”

  “Ah. Yes. If you had given me time, I should probably have guessed something like that.”

  “Here comes a lovely nach girl. Let us stay and watch her dance Krishna’s pot-dance.”

  A brown-black and substantial female, lovely perhaps by the standards Tofaa had previously recited to me, and properly mammalian for the cow-worship occasion, got laboriously onto the platform, carrying a large clay pot—symbolic of Krishna’s milking pot, I assumed—and began limbering up by doing various poses with it. She tried shifting it from one arm’s crook to the other, and put it on top of her head a few times, and occasionally stamped a broad foot, evidently clearing the platform of ants.

  Tofaa confided to me, “The worshipers of Krishna are the most lighthearted and blithesome of all the Hindu sects. Many condemn them for pr
eferring gaiety to gravity and vivacity to meditation. But, as you see, they imitate the carefree Krishna, and they maintain that enjoyment of life gives bliss, and bliss gives serenity, and serenity gives wisdom, all together making for wholeness of soul. That is what the nach girl’s pot-dance conveys.”

  “I should like to see that. When does she commence?”

  “What do you mean? You are seeing that.”

  “I mean the dance.”

  “That is the dance!”

  We continued on across the square—Tofaa seeming exasperated, but I not feeling much chastened—through the crowd of woebegone and nearly inanimate celebrants, and to the palace gates. I was carrying Kubilai’s ivory plaque slung on my chest, and Tofaa explained to the two gate guards what it represented. They were clad in not very military-looking dhotis and holding their spears at lazily disparate angles, and they shrugged as if disinclined either to bow us in or to take the trouble to keep us out. We went through a dusty courtyard and into a palace which was at least palatially built of stone, not the mud-and-dung that constituted most of Kumbakonam.

  We were received by a steward—perhaps of some rank, since he wore a clean dhoti—and he did seem impressed by my pai-tzu and Tofaa’s explanation of it. He fell flat on his face, and then scrabbled off like a crab, and Tofaa said we should follow him. We did, and found ourselves in the throne room. By way of describing the richness and magnificence of that hall, I will only say that the four legs of the throne stood in tureens full of oil, to keep the local kaja snakes from climbing up into the seat and to keep the local white ants from gnawing and collapsing the whole thing. The steward motioned for us to wait, and scuttled off through another door.

  “Why does that man go about on his belly?” I asked Tofaa.

  “He is being respectful in the presence of his betters. We too must do so, when the Raja joins us. Not fall down, but make sure your head is never higher than his. I will nudge you at the proper moment.”

  Half a dozen men came in just then, and stood in a line and regarded us impassively. They were as nondescript in person as any of the celebrants out in the square, but they were gorgeously attired in gold-threaded dhotis, and even fine jackets to cover their torsos, and almost neatly wound tulbands. For the first time in India, I supposed I was meeting some people of upper class, probably the Raja’s retinue of ministers, so I began a speech for Tofaa to translate, addressing them as “My lords,” and starting to introduce myself.

  “Hush,” said Tofaa, tugging at my sleeve. “Those are only the Raja’s shouters and congratulators.”

  Before I could ask what that meant, there was a stir at the door again, and the Raja strode ceremonially in at the head of another group of courtiers. Instantly, the six shouters and congratulators bellowed—and believe this or not, they bellowed in unison:

  “All hail His Highness the Maharajadhiraj Raj Rajeshwar Narendra Karni Shriomani Sawai Jai Maharaja Sri Ganga Muazzam Singhji Jah Bahadur!”

  I later had Tofaa repeat all that for me, slowly and precisely, so I could write it down—not just because the title was so marvelously grandiose, but also because it was so ludicrous a title for a small, black, elderly, bald, paunchy, oily Hindu.

  It seemed for a moment to perplex even Tofaa. But she poked me with an elbow and she knelt—and, because she was no small woman, she discovered that even kneeling she was still a fraction taller than the little Raja, so she lowered herself still deeper, into an abject squat, and began falteringly, “Your Highness … Maharajadhiraj … Raj …”

  “Your Highness is sufficient,” he said expansively.

  The shouters and congratulators roared, “His Highness is the very Warden of the World!”

  He made a genial and modest gesture for them to be silent. They did not bellow again for a while, but neither were they ever entirely silent. Every time the little Raja did anything, they would comment on it, in a murmur, but somehow still in unison, things like: “Behold, His Highness seats himself upon the throne of his dominion,” and: “Behold, how gracefully His Highness pats a hand upon his yawn …”

  “And who,” said the little Raja to Tofaa, “is this?” turning a very haughty look upon me, for I had not knelt or bent at all.

  “Tell him,” I said in Farsi, “that I am called Marco Polo the Insignificant and Unsung.”

  The little Raja’s look of hauteur became displeasure, and he said, also in Farsi, “A fellow white man, eh? But a white-skinned one. If you are a Christian missionary, go away.”

  “His Highness bids the lowly Christian go away,” murmured the shouters and congratulators.

  I said, “I am a Christian, Your Highness, but—”

  “Then go away, lest you suffer the fate of your long-ago predecessor Santomè. He had the outrageous nerve to come here preaching that we should worship a carpenter whose disciples were all fishermen. Disgusting. Carpenters and fishermen are of the lowest jati, if not downright paraiyar.”

  “His Highness is rightly and righteously disgusted.”

  “I am indeed on a mission, Your Highness, but not to preach.” I decided to temporize for a while. “Mainly, I wished to see something of your great nation and”—it cost me an effort, but I lied—“and to admire it.” I waved toward the windows, whence came the mournful music and the sullen muttering of the festival, so called.

  “Ah, you have seen my people making merry!” the little Raja exclaimed, looking not so petulant. “Yes, one tries to keep the people happy and content. Did you enjoy the exhilarating Krishna frolic, Polo-wallah?”

  I tried hard to think of something enjoyable about it. “I was much—much entertained by the music, Your Highness. One instrument in particular … a sort of long-necked lute …”

  “Say you so?” he cried, seeming unaccountably pleased.

  “His Highness is royally pleased.”

  “That is an entirely new instrument!” he went on, excitedly. “It is called a sitar. It was invented by my very own Court Musicmaster!”

  It appeared that I had, all fortuitously, melted any incipient frost between us. Tofaa gave me an admiring look as the little Raja bubbled enthusiastically, “You must meet the instrument’s inventor, Polo-wallah. May I call you Marco-wallah? Yes, let us dine together, and I will bid the Musicmaster join us. It is a pleasure to welcome such a discerning guest, of such good taste. Shouters, command that the dining hall be prepared.”

  The six men trotted off down a corridor, bellowing the command, still in concert, and even trotting in step together. I discreetly gestured a suggestion to Tofaa, and she comprehended, and timidly asked the little Raja, “Your Highness, might we wash off some of our travel dust before we are honored by joining you at table?”

  “Oh, yes. By all means. Forgive me, lovely lady, but your charms would distract any man from noticing any trivialities. Ah, Marco-wallah, again your good taste is evident. It is also evident that you have admired our country and our people, seeing that you have taken a lady wife from among them.” I gasped. He added, archly, “But did you have to take the most beauteous, and thereby so sorely deprive us poor natives?” I tried to make an instant correction of that horrific misapprehension, but he went to where the steward was still lying on his face, and kicked the man and snarled, “Misbegotten wretch! Never to be twice-born! Why did you not lead these eminent guests immediately to a state apartment and see them cared for? Do so! Prepare for them the bridal suite! Assign them servants! Then see to the banquet and the entertainers!”

  When I saw that the bridal suite had two separate beds, I decided it would not be necessary to demand other quarters. And when a number of stout dark women dragged in a tub and filled it, I found it not inconvenient for me and Tofaa to have the same bathing chamber. I took the masculine prerogative of bathing first, then stayed to oversee Tofaa’s ablutions and direct the women servants—causing some incredulity among them at my insistent thoroughness—so that, for once, Tofaa got well washed. When we put on the best clothes we carried and went downs
tairs to the dining hall, even her bare feet were clean.

  And I made certain, before indulging in any small table talk, to inform the little Raja and all others present, “The Lady Tofaa Devata is not my wife, Your Highness.” That sounded brusquely uncomplimentary of the lady, so, to maintain his estimation of her importance, I added, “She is one of the noble widows of the late King of Ava.”

  “Widow, eh?” grunted the little Raja, as if instantly losing all interest in her.

  I continued, “The Lady Gift of the Gods most graciously consented to accompany me on my journey through your fair land, and to interpret for me the wit and wisdom of the many fine people we have met along the way.”

  He grunted again, “Companion, eh? Well, to each his custom. A sensible and tasteful Hindu, going on a journey, takes not a female Hindu, but a Hindu boy, for his temper is not so like a kaja snake’s, and his hole not so like a cow’s.”

  To change the subject, I turned to the fourth at our table, a man of my own age, bearded like me, and seeming more tan than black of complexion behind the beard. “You would be the inventive musician, I believe, Master …”

  “Musicmaster Amir Khusru,” said the little Raja proprietorially. “Master of melodies, and also dances, and also poetry, being an accomplished composer of the licentious ghazal poems. A credit to my court.”

  “His Highness’s court is blessed,” crooned the shouters and congratulators, standing against the wall, “and blessed most by the presence of His Highness”—during which the Musicmaster only smiled self-deprecatingly.