The Journeyer

by Gary Jennings

  “I never before saw a musical instrument with strings made of metal,” I said, and Tofaa—now subdued to meekness—translated as I went on, “Indeed, I had never before thought of Hindus as inventors of anything so good and useful.”

  “You Westerners,” the little Raja said peevishly, “are always looking to do good. We Hindus seek to be good. An infinitely superior attitude to life.”

  “Nevertheless,” I said, “that new Hindu sitar is a doing of good. I congratulate Your Highness and your Master Khusru.”

  “Except that I am not a Hindu,” the Musicmaster said in Farsi, with some amusement. “I am of Persian birth. The name I gave the sitar is from the Farsi, as you may have perceived. Si-tar: three-stringed. One string of steel wire and two of brass.”

  The little Raja looked still more peeved at my having learned that the sitar was no Hindu achievement. I wished to put him in a good mood again, but I was beginning to wonder if there was any subject that could be discussed without its blatantly or subtly denigrating the Hindus. In mild desperation, I turned to praising the food we had been served. It was some kind of venison, drowned as usual in the kàri sauce, but this kàri was at least colored a sightly yellow-gold and a little enhanced in its flavor, though only with turmeric, which is an inferior substitute for zafràn.

  “Meat of the four-horned deer, this is,” said the little Raja, when I complimented it. “A delicacy we reserve for only the most favored guests.”

  “I am honored,” I said. “But I thought your Hindu religion forbade the hunting of wild game. Doubtless I was misinformed.”

  “No, no, you were rightly informed,” said the little Raja. “But our religion also bids us be clever.” He gave a broad wink. “So I ordered all the people of Kumbakonam to take holy water from the temples and go into the forests and sprinkle that holy water about, loudly declaring that all the forest animals were henceforth sacrifices to the gods. That makes our hunting of them quite permissible, you see—each killing being a tacit offering—and of course our hunters always give a haunch or something to the temple sadhus, so they will not inconveniently decide that we are misinterpreting any sacred text.”

  I sighed. It really was impossible to light on an innocuous subject. If it did not explicitly or implicitly denigrate the Hindus, it made them impugn themselves. But I tried again:

  “Do Your Highness’s hunters hunt on horseback? I ask because I wonder if some horses might have been lost from your royal stables. The Lady Tofaa and I encountered quite a herd running loose on the other side of the river.”

  “Ah, you met my aswamheda!” he cried, sounding now most jovial again. “The aswamheda is another cleverness of mine. A rival Raja, you see, holds that province beyond the Kolerun River. So every year, I have my drovers deliberately whip a horse herd over to there. If that Raja resents the trespass and keeps possession of the horses, then I have excuse for declaring war on him and invading and seizing his lands. However, if he rounds them up and returns them to me—which he has done every year so far—then it betokens his submission to me, and all the world knows I am his superior.”

  If this little Raja was the superior, I decided, as the meal concluded, then I was glad not to have encountered the other. Because this one marked the close of the banquet by leaning to one side, raising one little buttock and gustily, audibly, odoriferously passing wind.

  “His Highness farts!” bellowed the shouters and congratulators, making me flinch even more than I had already done. “The food was good, and the meal acceptable, and His Highness’s digestion is still superb, and his bowels an example to us all!”

  I really had not much hope that this posturing monkey could be of any help in my current quest. However, as we sat on at the table, drinking tepid cha from elaborately jeweled but slightly misshapen cups, I recounted to the little Raja and the Master Khusru the events that had brought me hither, and the object of my pursuit, concluding, “I understand, Your Highness, that a pearl-fisher subject of yours was the man who acquired the Buddha’s tooth, hoping that it would confer good fortune on his pearl fishing.”

  The little Raja, as I might have expected, responded by taking my story as a reflection on himself, on Hinduism and on Hindus in general.

  “I am distressed,” he muttered. “You imply, Marco-wallah, that some one of my subjects imputed supernatural power to that fragment of an alien god. Yes, I am distressed that you could believe that any Hindu has so little faith in his own stalwart religion, the religion of his fathers, the religion of his benevolent Raja.”

  I said placatively, “Doubtless the new possessor of the tooth has by now realized his error, and found the thing not at all magical, and repented his acquisition of it. He, being a good Hindu, would probably throw it in the sea, except that it cost him some time and perhaps some uncertainty in the winning of it. So, for a suitable exchange, he would probably be glad to give it up.”

  “Give it up he most certainly will!” snapped the little Raja. “I shall make proclamation that he come forward and surrender it—and surrender himself to the karavat!”

  I did not know what a karavat was, but evidently Master Khusru did, for he remarked mildly, “That, Your Highness, is not likely to make anyone come hastening forward with the object.”

  “Please, Your Highness,” I said. “Do not make demand or threat, but publish only a persuasive request and my offer of reward.”

  The little Raja grumbled for a while, but then said, “I am known as a Raja who always keeps his word. If I offer a reward, it will be paid.” He eyed me sidewise. “You will pay it?”

  “Assuredly, Your Highness, and most liberally.”

  “Very well. And then I will keep my word, which I have already spoken. The karavat.” I did not know whether I should remonstrate on behalf of some unsuspecting pearl fisherman. But anyway, before I could, the little Raja summoned his steward and spoke rapidly to him. The man scuttled from the hall, and the Raja turned again to me. “The proclamation will immediately be cried throughout my realm: bring the heathen tooth and receive a munificent reward. It will bring the desired result, I promise you that, for all my people are honest and responsible and devout Hindus. But it may take a while, because the pearl fishers are constantly sailing back and forth between their coastal villages and the reptile beds.”

  “I understand, Your Highness.”

  “You will be my guest—your female, too—until the relic is retrieved.”

  “With gratitude, Your Highness.”

  “Then let us now cast off all dull business and sober care,” he said, dusting his little hands to demonstrate, “and let mirth and joy reign in here as it does in the square outside. Shouters, bring on the entertainers!”

  This was the first entertainment: an aged and very dirty, brown-black man, so ragged of dhoti that he was quite indecent, shuffled woefully into the room and fell prostrate before the little Raja. Master Khusru helpfully murmured to me:

  “What we call in Persia a darwish, a holy mendicant, here called a naga. He will perform to earn his supper crust and a few coppers.”

  The old beggar went to a cleared space in the room and gave a hoarse call, and an equally ragged and filthy young boy came in bearing a roll of what seemed to be cloth and rope. When the two of them unrolled the bundle, it proved to be one of the swing-style palang beds, its two ropes terminating in little brass cups. The boy lay down in the palang on the floor. The ancient naga knelt and slipped the two brass cups onto his eyeballs, and pulled down his wrinkled black eyelids over them. Very slowly, he stood erect, lifting the boy in the palang off the floor—not using his hands or teeth or anything but his eyeballs—then swinging the boy from side to side until the little Raja felt moved to applaud. Khusru and Tofaa and I politely did, too, and we men threw the old beggar some coppers.

  Next came into the dining hall a portly, squat, dark-brown nach girl, who danced for us, about as listlessly as the woman I had seen dancing at the Krishna festa. Her only accompanying music was the
jingling of a column of gold bracelets which she wore from wrist to shoulder of just one arm, and she wore nothing else at all. I was not much enthralled—it might have been Tofaa stamping her familiar soiled feet and undulating her familiar bushy kaksha—but the little Raja giggled and snorted and slavered throughout, and applauded wildly as the woman withdrew.

  Then the tattered and filthy old mendicant returned. Rubbing his eyes, which had got bulged and reddened by his performance with the palang, he made a brief speech to the little Raja, who turned and told me:

  “The naga says he is a Yogi, Marco-Wallah. The followers of the Yoga sect are accomplished in many strange and secret arts. You will see. If you truly harbor any belief, as I suspect you do, that we Hindus are backward or lacking in aptitude, then you are about to be convinced otherwise, for you will now witness a wonder that only a Hindu could show you.” He called to the waiting beggar, “Which Yoga miracle will you show us, Oh Yogi? Will you be buried for a month underground and come up still alive? Will you make a rope stand erect and climb it and disappear into the heavens? Will you carve your boy assistant into pieces and then restore him whole? Will you at least levitate for us, Oh holy Yogi?”

  The decrepit old man began to speak in a creaking small voice, but sounding earnest, as if making a momentous announcement, and doing much gesticulation. The little Raja and the Musicmaster leaned forward to listen intently, so now it was Tofaa who explained to me what was going on. She seemed pleased to do so, saying eagerly:

  “It will be a wonder which you may wish to observe closely, Marco-wallah. The Yogi says he has discovered a revolutionary new way to do surata with a woman. Instead of his linga gushing out its juice at the climactic moment, as a man’s customarily does, his gives a great inhaling suck inward. Thereby he ingests the life-force of the woman without expending any of his own. He says his discovery not only provides a fantastic new sensation, its continual practice could accrue to a man so much life-force that he might live forever. Would not you like to learn that ability, Marco-wallah?”

  “Well,” I said, “it sounds like an. interestingly novel variation on the ordinary.”

  “Yes! Show us, Oh Yogi!” the little Raja called to him. “Show us this instant. Shouters, bring back the nach girl. She is already undressed and ready for use.”

  The six men went trotting out in lock step. But the Yogi held up a cautionary hand and declaimed some more.

  “He says he dare not do it with a valuable dancing girl,” Tofaa translated, “because any woman must wither to some degree when his linga does its sucking inside her. Instead, he requests a yoni with which he can demonstrate.”

  The six shouters trotted back in again, bringing the naked girl, but at another command from the little Raja they ran out once more.

  I asked, “How can the Yogi be provided with a yoni without a woman attached?”

  “A yoni stone,” said Tofaa. “Around every temple you will see standing carved linga stone columns, which are representative of the god Siva, and also open-holed yoni stones, representative of his consort goddess Parvati.”

  The six men came back, one of them bringing a stone like a small wheel, with an oval opening cut through it, roughly resembling a woman’s yoni, even having the kaksha hair carved around it.

  The Yogi did a number of preparatory gesticulations, and spoke what sounded like solemn incantations, then parted his dhoti rags and unashamedly pulled out his linga, which was like a black-barked twig. With more incantations and gestures of demonstration—this is how it is done, gentlemen—he pushed his limp organ through the yoni hole in the stone. Then, holding the heavy stone against his crotch, he beckoned to the nach girl, who was also standing watching. He bade her take his linga in her fingers and bring it to arousal.

  The girl did not recoil or complain, but she did not appear delighted with the idea. Nevertheless, she took hold of what protruded beyond the stone, and began working it, rather as if she were milking a cow. Her own udder bounced and all her bracelets jingled in rhythm to the motion. The old mendicant chanted down at the yoni and at the girl’s hand yanking at him, and he narrowed his red eyes in intense concentration, and rivulets of sweat began to course down the dirt of his face. After some while, his linga grew enough to protrude farther past the stone, and we could even see its brown bulbous head creeping out a little beyond the nach girl’s fricating fist. Finally the Yogi said something to her and she let go of him and stepped away.

  Presumably the old beggar had stopped her just before she brought him to spruzzo. The stone was held to him now simply by the stiffness of his organ. He stared down at that peg and its constricting hoop, and so did the by now slightly breathless nach girl, and so did we at the table, and the shouters against the wall, and all the servants in the dining room. The Yogi’s linga had attained to a respectable size, considering the man’s age and general scrawniness and beggarly debilitude. But it looked somehow strained and inflamed, bulging as it did from the narrow yoni of the stone it held firmly at his crotch.

  The Yogi made several more gesticulations, but in a rather hurried and sketchy manner, and yammered a whole string of incantations, but in a rather strangled voice. Nothing happened that we could see. He glanced about at all of us, looking somewhat abashed, and glowered really hatefully at the nach girl, who was now humming indifferently and examining her fingernails, as if to say, “See? You should have used me.” The Yogi yelled some more at his linga and borrowed yoni, as if cursing them, and made some more violent gestures, including shaking his fist. Still nothing happened, except that he sweated more copiously, and his tightly pinched organ was adding a distinct purple hue to its brown-black. The nach girl gave an audible snicker, and the Musicmaster an amused chuckle, and the little Raja began drumming his fingers on the tabletop.

  “Well?” I said aside to Tofaa.

  She whispered, “The Yogi appears to be having some difficulty.”

  Indeed he did. He was now dancing in place, more vigorously than the professional dancing girl had done, and his eyes were more redly extruded than they had been after the palang-swinging performance, and his vociferations were no longer incantatory, but recognizable even to me as cries of pain. His ragged boy assistant came running, and tugged at the imprisoning stone, at which his master gave a frightful screech. The six shouters then also dashed forward to help, and there was a confusion of hands at that empurpled center of attention, until the agonized Yogi reeled wailing away from them and fell down, writhing and hammering his fists on the floor.

  “Take him away!” the little Raja commanded, in a disgusted voice. “Take the old fraud to the kitchen. Try an application of grease.”

  The Yogi was carried from the room, not without some trouble, for he was contorting like a gaffed fish and trumpeting like a speared elephant. The entertainment appeared to be over. We four sat on at the table, in a mutually embarrassed silence, listening to the shrieks gradually diminishing down the corridors. I was the first to speak. I naturally did not remark on this having been one more affirmation of my opinion of Hindu foolishness and futility. Instead I said, by way of graciously excusing it:

  “That happens all the time, Your Highness, to all the lower animals. Everyone has seen a dog and a bitch stuck together until the bitch’s clasping yoni relaxes and the dog’s swollen linga wilts.”

  “It may take some time for the Yogi,” said Master Khusru, still with amusement. “The stone yoni will not relax and his linga’s swelling therefore cannot go down.”

  “Bah!” exclaimed the little Raja, in furious exasperation. “I should have insisted that he levitate, not try something new. Let us go to bed.” And he stamped out of the room, with no shouters present to congratulate himself and the world on the grace of his gait.

  4

  “I have your Buddha’s tooth, Marco-wallah.”

  That was the very first thing the little Raja said to me when we first met the next day, and he said it about as cheerfully as he might have said, “I have a mur
derously aching tooth.”

  “Already, Your Highness? Why, that is wonderful. You said it might take some while to find.”

  “I thought it would,” he said pettishly.

  I understood his rancorous demeanor when he shoved at me a basket and I looked in. It was piled half full of teeth, most of them yellowed and mossy and carious, quite a few of them still bloody at the root, and some of them identifiably not even human—dogs’ fangs and pigs’ tushes.

  “More than two hundred there,” the little Raja said sourly. “And people are still arriving with more, from all points of the horizon. Men, women, even holy naga mendicants, even one temple sadhu. Gr-r-r. You can present a Buddha’s tooth not only to your Raja Khakhan. You can give one to every Buddhist of your acquaintance.”

  I tried not to laugh, for his anger was justified. He had boasted of his people’s honesty and of their devotion to their Hindu faith, and here they came in flocks to confess that they possessed a relic of the discredited Buddhist religion—meaning they had to lie about it, besides.

  Holding my face impassive, I inquired, “Am I expected to pay a reward for every one of these?”

  “No,” he said, gritting his own teeth. “I am doing that. The cursed reprobates come in the front door, hand their counterfeit tooth to the steward, and are passed on out the back door to where the Court Executioner is rewarding them with fervent enthusiasm in the rear courtyard.”

  “Your Highness!” I exclaimed.

  “Oh, I am not according them the karavat,” he hastened to assure me. “That is reserved for men who have done crimes of some account. Also it takes a bit of time, and we would never have done with this procession.”

  “Adrìo de mi. I can hear the wretches screaming from here.”

  “No, you cannot,” he growled. “They are being very quietly dispatched with a wire loop whipped around the throat and yanked. What you hear is that other fraud—that degenerate old Yogi, still screeching in the kitchen. No one has yet been able to get him loose from his clinging rock yoni. We have tried greasing him with cooking fats, softening him with sesame oil, shrinking him with boiling water, wilting him by various natural means—surata by the nach girl, buccal blandishment by his boy assistant—nothing works. We may have to break the sacred yoni stone, and what revenge the goddess Parvati will inflict, I dare not think about.”