The Journeyer

by Gary Jennings

  “Well, I will not sympathize with the Yogi. But the tooth bringers, Your Highness—it really is a trivial misdemeanor they have tried to commit, and in a trivially witless way. These teeth they brought would not fool even me, let alone a Buddhist.”

  “That is what is especially deplorable! My people’s imbecility! That they would shame their Raja and insult their religion, and with trickery so transparent. They are incapable even of a decent crime. Dying is too good for them! They will only be reborn immediately in some lesser form—if there is any.”

  I frankly believed that any depletion of the Hindus could only improve the planet, but I did not want the little Raja later to realize how severely he had depopulated his realm, and be dismayed, and maybe hold me to blame for it. I said:

  “Your Highness, as your guest I formally request that the surviving imbeciles be spared, and any newcomers turned away before they also can perjure themselves. This was, after all, the fault of an apparent omission in Your Highness’s proclamation.”

  “Mine? An omission? Are you suggesting I am at fault? That a Brahman and a Maharajadhiraj Raj can have a fault?”

  “I think it was only an understandable oversight. Since Your Highness is of course aware that the Buddha was a man nine forearms tall, and that any tooth of his must have been as big as a drinking cup, Your Highness no doubt assumed that all your people likewise knew that.”

  “Hm. You are right, Marco-wallah. I did take for granted that my subjects would remember that detail. Nine forearms, eh?”

  “Perhaps an amended proclamation, Your Highness …”

  “Hm. Yes. I will issue one. And I will mercifully pardon the dolts already here. A good Brahman kills no living thing, however lowly, unless it is necessary or expedient.”

  He called for his steward, and gave the instructions for the proclamation, and commanded also an end to the procession through the rear courtyard. When he returned to me, he was restored to quite good humor.

  “There. It is done. A good Brahman host acquiesces in his guest’s wishes. But enough of dull business and sober care! You are a guest, and you are not being entertained!”

  “Oh, but I am, Your Highness. Constantly.”

  “Come! You shall admire my zenana.”

  I half expected him to fling open his dhoti diaper and expose something nasty, but he only reached up and took my arm and began walking me toward a far wing of the palace. As he escorted me through a succession of sumptuously furnished rooms, inhabited by females of various ages and various hues of brown, I realized that zenana must be the local word for an anderun—the apartments of his wives and concubines. The women of mature age I found no more attractive than I had Tofaa or the nach dancers, and they were mostly surrounded by swarms of children of all sizes. But some of the little Raja’s consorts were mere girls themselves, and not yet gross of flesh or vulturine of eye or corvine of voice, and some were delicately pretty in a dark-skinned way.

  “I am frankly a bit surprised,” I remarked to the little Raja, “that Your Highness has so many wives. From your evident aversion to the Lady Tofaa, I had rather assumed …”

  “Ah, well, if she had been your wife, as I first thought, I should have plied you with concubines and nach girls to distract you, while I seduced that lady to surata. But a widow? What man wishes to couple with a cast-off husk—a dead-woman-waiting-to-die—when there are so many still-juicy wives of one’s own and of others to be had, and also so many newly-budding virgins?”

  “Yes. I see. Your Highness is a manly man.”

  “Aha! You took me for a gand-mara, did you? A man-lover and a woman-hater? For shame, Marco-wallah! I grant you that, like any sensible man, for longtime companionship I prefer a quiet and mannerly and compliant boy. But one has one’s duties and obligations. A Raja is expected to maintain a teeming zenana, so I do. And I dutifully service them in regular rotation, even the youngest, as soon as they have had their first flow.”

  “They are married to Your Highness before their first menstruum?”

  “Why, not just my wives, Marco-wallah. Every girl in India. The parents of any daughter are anxious to get her married off before she is a woman, and before any mishap to her virginity, which would make her unmarriageable. For another reason, every time a daughter has her flow, her parents are guilty of the hideous crime of letting die an embryo that might prolong the family line. It is well said: If a girl is unwed by the age of twelve, her ancestors in the other world are mournfully drinking the blood she sheds every month.”

  “Well said, yes.”

  “However, to return to the subject of my own wives. They enjoy all the traditional wifely rights, but those do not include any queenly rights, as in less civilized and more debile monarchies. The women take no part in my court or my rule. It is well said: What man would heed the crowing of a hen? This one here, for instance, this is my premier wife and my titular Maharani, but she never presumes to sit on a throne.”

  I bowed politely to the woman and said, “Your Highness.” She only gave me the same look of dull detestation she had given her Raja husband. Still trying to be polite, I indicated the dark-brown swarm about her, and added, “Your Highness has some handsome princes and princesses.”

  She still said nothing, but the little Raja growled, “They are not princes and princesses. Do not give the woman ideas.”

  I said, in some wonderment, “The royal line is not of patrilineal primogeniture?”

  “My dear Marco-wallah! How do I know if any of these brats are mine?”

  “Well, er … really … ,” I mumbled, embarrassed to have broached the subject right in front of the woman and her brood.

  “Do not cringe, Marco-wallah. The Maharani knows I am not insulting her specifically. I do not know if any of my wives’ offspring are of my begetting. I cannot know that. You cannot know that, if you ever marry and have children. That is a fact of life.”

  He waved around at the various other wives whose rooms we were strolling through, and repeated:

  “That is a fact of life. No man can ever know, for certain, that he is the father of his wife’s child. Not even of a seemingly loving and faithful wife. Not even a wife so ugly a paraiyar would shun her. Not even a wife so crippled she cannot possibly stray. A woman can always find a way and a lover and a dark place.”

  “But surely, Your Highness—the young little girls you wed before they could possibly be fecundated—”

  “Who knows, even then? I cannot always be on the spot the instant they first flow. It is well said: If a woman sees even her father or brother or son in secret, her yoni grows moist.”

  “But you must bequeath your throne to somebody, Your Highness. To whom, then, if not your presumed son or daughter?”

  “To the firstborn son of my sister, as all Rajas do. Every royal line in India descends sororially. You see, my sister is indisputably of my own blood. Even if our royal mother was promiscuously unfaithful to our royal father, and no matter if my sister and I were sired by different lovers, we did drop from the same womb.”

  “I understand. And then, no matter who sires her firstborn …”

  “Well, of course, I hope it was I. I took my eldest sister for one of my early wives—fifth or sixth, I forget—and she has borne I think seven children, presumably mine. But the oldest boy, even if not my son, is still my nephew, and the royal bloodline remains intact and inviolate, and he will be the next Raja here.”

  We emerged from the zenana quite near to the part of the palace where the kitchen was, and we could still hear from in there moans and whimpers and sounds of thrashing about. The little Raja asked me if I could amuse myself for a while, since he had to attend to some royal duties.

  “Go back to the zenana, if you like,” he suggested. “Although I am careful to marry none but wives of my own white race, they keep producing children of disappointingly dark skin. A sprinkling of your seed, Marco-wallah, might lighten the strain.”

  Not to be discourteous, I murmured somethi
ng about having taken a vow of continence, and said I would find something else to occupy me. I watched the little Raja strut away, and I quite pitied the man. He was a sovereign of sorts, holding the power of life and death over his people, and he was the tiny cock of a whole hen yard—and he was infinitely poorer and weaker and less contented than I, a mere journeyer with only one woman to love and cherish and keep for the rest of my life; but that one was Hui-sheng.

  That reminded me: I could now dispense with my temporary co-journeyer. I went in search of Tofaa, who had been stertorously snoring when I left our chambers that morning. I found her on a palace terrace, gloomily watching the gloomy Krishna celebration still going on in the square below.

  She immediately and accusingly said, “I smell the pachouli on you, Marco-wallah! You have been lying with perfumed women. Alas, and after such an admirably sinless long time of behaving gentlemanly with me.”

  I ignored that, and said, “I came to tell you, Tofaa, that you may resign your menial position of interpreter, whenever you wish, and—”

  “I knew it! I was too demure and ladylike. Now you have been beguiled by some shameless and forward palace wench. Ah, you men.”

  I ignored that, too. “And, as I promised, I will arrange for your safe journey back to your homeland.”

  “You are eager to be rid of me. My genteel chastity is a reproach to your goatishness.”

  “I was thinking of you, ungrateful woman. I have nothing to do now but wait here until the proper Buddha’s tooth is found and delivered. In the meantime, if I need anything translated, both the Raja and the Musicmaster are fluent in Farsi.”

  She sniffled noisily, and wiped her nose on her bare arm. “I am in no hurry to go back to Bangala, Marco-wallah. I would be only a widow there, too. In the meantime, the Raja and the Master Khusru have occupations of their own. They will not take time to lead you about and show you the splendid sights of Kumbakonam, as I can do. I have already inquired and sought them out, just for your benefit.”

  So I did not compel her to leave. Instead, on that day and during the days thereafter, I let her take me about and show me the splendid sights of the city.

  “Yonder, Marco-wallah, you see the holy man Kyavana. He is the holiest inhabitant of Kumbakonam. It was many years ago that he determined to stand still, like a tree stump, to the greater glory of Brahma, and he is doing it yet. That is he.”

  “I see three aged women, Tofaa, but no man. Where is he?”

  “There.”

  “There? That is only an enormous white-ant hill, with a dog wetting on it.”

  “No, that is the holy man Kyavana. So still did he stand that the white ants used him as framework for their clay hill. It gets bigger every year. But that is he.”

  “Well … if he is in there, he is dead, surely?”

  “Who knows? What does it matter? He stood just as immobile when he was alive. A most holy man. Pilgrims come from everywhere to admire him, and parents show their sons that example of high piety.”

  “This man did nothing but stand still. So very still that no one could tell if he was alive—or if now he may be dead. And that is called holy? That is an example to be admired? Emulated?”

  “Do lower your voice, Marco-wallah, or Kyavana may manifest his great holy power at you, as he did at the three girls.”

  “What three girls? What did he do?”

  “You see that shrine a little way beyond the anthill?”

  “I see a mud shack, with those three old hags slumped in the doorway, scratching themselves.”

  “That is the shrine. Those are the girls. One is sixteen years old, the others seventeen, and—”

  “Tofaa, the sun is very hot here. Perhaps we should go back to the palace so you can lie down.”

  “I am showing you the sights, Marco-wallah. When those girls were about eleven and twelve years old, they were as irreverent as you. They decided, for a frolic, to come here and open their garments and reveal their pubescent charms to the holy man Kyavana, and tempt at least one part of him out of immobility. You see what happened. They were instantly struck old and wrinkled and white-haired and haggard, as you see them now. The city built the shrine for them to live out their few remaining years in. The miracle has become famous all over India.”

  I laughed. “Is there any proof of this absurd story?”

  “Indeed, yes. For a copper apiece, the girls will show you the very kaksha parts, once fresh and young, that were so suddenly made old and sour and stinking. See, they are already spreading their rags for you to—”

  “Dio me varda!” I stopped laughing. “Here, throw them these coins and let us depart. I will take the miracle on faith.”

  “Now,” said Tofaa, on another day, “here is a special sort of temple. A storytelling temple. You see the marvelously detailed carvings all over its exterior? They illustrate the many ways a man and a woman can do surata. Or a man and several women.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Are you suggesting this is holy?”

  “Very holy. When a girl is about to marry, it is assumed—because she is still a child—that she does not yet know how a marriage is consummated. So her parents bring her here, and leave her with the wise and kindly sadhu. He walks the girl about the outside of the temple, pointing to this sculpture and that, and gently explaining to her, so that, whatever her husband may do on the wedding night, she will not be terrified. Here is the good sadhu now. Give him some coppers, Marco-wallah, and he will take us about, and I will repeat in Farsi what he tells us.”

  To my eye, the priest was just another black, dirty, scrawny Hindu, in the usual dingy dhoti and tulband and nothing else. I would hardly have asked road directions of such a one. I would certainly never have entrusted a small and apprehensive child bride to his attentions. She was bound to be more repelled by him than by anything that could happen on her wedding night.

  But perhaps not. According to the temple sculptures, some astonishing things could happen on her wedding night. As the sadhu pointed out this and that, and snickered and leered and rubbed his hands together, I saw depictions of acts that I had not known were possible until I myself was well along in years and experience. The stone men and women were conjoining in every conceivable position and combination and contortion, and in several ways that—even at my present age—I would not have thought of trying. Almost any one of those sculptured acts, if performed in a Christian land, even by a legitimately wedded man and wife, would have required their going immediately afterward to a confessor. And if the performance could be accurately described and related to that priest, he would doubtless stagger away to seek shrift from a superior confessor.

  I said, “I will accept, Tofaa, that a girl barely out of childhood might be required to submit to the natural act of surata with her new husband. But are you telling me that she is required to be versed in all these wild variations?”

  “Well, she makes a better wife, if she is. But in any case, she should be prepared for whatever tastes her husband might manifest. She is a child, yes, but he may be a mature and lusty and experienced man. Or even a very old man, who has long been surfeited by the natural act, and now requires novelty.”

  Having myself been all my life led about by my insatiable curiosity, and led into some curious situations, I was hardly one to point an accusing or ridiculing finger at the private practices of any other person or people. So I merely followed the smirking sadhu around the temple as he gesticulated and jabbered, and I made no surprised or scandalized outcries as Tofaa explained, “This is the adharottara, the upside-down act … this is the viparita surata, the perverse act … .” I was, in fact, regarding the sculptures from a different point of view, and pondering on a different aspect of them.

  The carvings might well horrify a prudish spectator, but even the most censorious could not deny that they were fine art, beautifully and intricately done. The acts so explicitly portrayed were bawdy, God knows, even obscene, but the men and women involved were all smiling happily, and
they were spirited and vivacious in their attitudes. They were enjoying themselves. So the sculptures expressed both a superb craftsmanship and a wonderful verve for life. They did not at all accord with the Hindus as I knew them: inept in everything they did, and doing everything with joyless sniveling, and doing very little.

  As an example of their backwardness: in contrast to the Han, whose historians had been minutely recording every least event in their dominions for thousands of years, the Hindus possessed not one written book recounting any of their history. They had only some “sacred” collections of unbelievable legends—unbelievable because, in them, all the Hindu men were tiger-brave and resourceful, and all the Hindu women angel-sweet and lovable. For another example: the Hindu garments called sari and dhoti were only swathings of fabric. That was because, although the most primitive people elsewhere had long ago invented the needle and the craft of sewing, the Hindus had not yet learned to use a needle and had not any word for “tailor” in any of their multitude of languages.

  How, I asked myself, could a people ignorant even of sewing have envisioned and crafted these delicate, artful temple carvings? How could a people so slothful and furtive and woeful have portrayed here men and women joyous and nimble; inventive and adroit, lively and carefree?

  They could not have done. I decided that these lands must have been inhabited, ages before the Hindus came, by some other and very different race, one with talent and vivacity. God knows where that superior people had gone, but they had left a few artifacts like this splendidly crafted temple, and that was all. They had left no trace of themselves in the later-come, usurper Hindus. That was deplorable, but hardly surprising. Would any such people have interbred with Hindus?