The Palace of Illusions

by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

  A well-meaning man, Dhai Ma liked to say, is more dangerous because he believes in the rightness of what he does. Give me an honest rascal any day!

  “My mother,” the grandfather said, staring at the river, “used to call me Devavrata.”

  “Your mother?” I was surprised into blurting. “But I thought—”

  He smiled. “That my father had brought me up single-handed? Not quite, though that's the story he preferred to tell. She kept me with her until I was eight—my happiest years, I think. She taught me everything I know that's of any value. She still comes to me sometimes, here in the river, if I have a really serious problem or need her opinion.”

  I wasn't sure how to take his words. Did he mean them literally? Or did the river soothe his mind, helping him to think better? There was a boyish yearning on his weathered face. I felt he didn't speak like this often. Against my better judgment, it made me lower my defenses, so that when he asked me how I liked living at Hastinapur, I told him the truth.

  “The palace makes me uneasy. Too many people there hate my husbands. It'll never be home to me.”

  He smoothed his beard. I thought I'd offended him. But perhaps he knew what it was to be hated, for he said, “You need a palace of your own. I should have thought of it earlier. I'll speak to Dhritarashtra about it. It's high time, anyway, that he announced an heir to the kingdom.”

  On our way back, I asked, a little self-consciously, “Did you tell your mother about me?”

  “I did,” he said. “She said you were a great flame, capable of lighting our way to fame—or destroying our entire clan.”

  My mouth went dry. Once again, when I least expected them, Vyasa's prophecies had returned to haunt me. “Why would she say that? How can I destroy the great house of the Kurus, and why would I want to do that when I'm part of them?”

  Bheeshma shrugged. He didn't seem overly concerned. “I don't know. She loves to tease me with riddles. Don't look so worried! Sometimes what she says shouldn't be taken literally.”

  His casual kindness put me at ease. “I know someone like that, too,” I said wryly, and it struck me with a pang how long it had been since I'd seen Krishna.

  Bheeshma laughed his vigorous, delighted laugh. “Impossible, aren't they? They drive you insane, but you can't imagine life without them.”

  As he helped me up into the carriage with old-fashioned gallantry, telling me that we must do this again soon, I felt that a door had opened between us. I believed that in some inexplicable way I understood him better than people who had spent their entire lives around him. What I sensed, I liked and trusted. And so (not knowing that one day I would rue it bitterly) I relaxed, allowing him into my heart.

  Bheeshma was, indeed, a man of his word. The very next day, in open court, he gave the blind king a severe tongue-lashing until the chastised Dhritarashtra agreed to hand Yudhisthir his birthright. He would divide the kingdom in two, he announced, his voice tremulous with largesse, and give the Pandavas the bigger half, leaving the smaller portion for his own son. From behind the curtain where the women sat, I was elated—more so for having been the catalyst for our good fortune. (I planned to make sure that my husbands learned of the part I'd played in it.) But Kunti, who knew the blind king better, pursed her lips. And rightly. The next day we discovered that he'd given my husbands Khandav, the most barren and desolate portion of the kingdom, keeping Hastinapur for his own Duryodhan. The younger Pandavas clamored to fight this injustice, but Yudhisthir said, “Wouldn't you rather live in your own home, even if it's a desert? Besides, it's an opportunity for us to make something out of nothing. To prove our worth.”

  Dhritarashtra held a rushed coronation for Yudhisthir, then promptly packed us off. Perhaps he feared we would change our minds about going.

  “After all,” he told Yudhisthir, “it's now your duty to govern your new subjects.”

  “Which subjects does he mean?” Bheem asked as we climbed onto the large and ornate chariot the king had given us as a parting gift. “The cobras or the hyenas?”

  Our departure was a quiet one; only a meager entourage accompanied us. (Khandav had a bad reputation among the servants.) To my delight, we left Kunti behind. I don't know what Bheeshma had deduced from our talk at the river, but he persuaded her—and only he could have done it—that the journey would be too strenuous. Waving us goodbye at the palace gate, she looked astonished that her sons could go off to live their lives without her. Framed by the giant doorway, her figure appeared so small that I was ashamed of my jubilation. (But not for long. Perhaps as revenge, Kunti insisted that I leave Dhai Ma with her. “She'll keep me company until I'm able to join you,” she said. Short of flagrant disobedience, I couldn't refuse.)

  On the third day, the chariot, not the best of vehicles for barren desolations, broke down on the pocked and uneven road, leaving us stranded beside a clump of cacti. But amazingly, a few hours later, Krishna joined us. (How had he known we would need help?) He brought with him soldiers, food, tents, and several sturdy horses, and appeared unsurprised at the recent turn of events. He gave me a warm but too brief greeting, leaving all the things I longed to tell him waiting in my mouth. Watching him ride ahead, joking with Arjun and Bheem, I was happy and dissatisfied—and jealous of my husbands. In the past, whenever he visited, Krishna had given me his complete attention. Why should things be different now, just because I was a wife? The old restlessness from my girlhood that I'd thought I was done with—if only I could have been a man—rose in me as I watched them clap each other on the back. I pushed it away sternly. Wishful thinking was a folly. For better or worse, I was a woman. I'd have to find a woman's way to force him to notice me.

  The landscape changed; the trees grew stunted; under our feet the earth turned yellow and foul-smelling. I sat sidesaddle behind Yudhisthir on a great black charger. I couldn't quite believe what a transformation my life had undergone—or that I had helped to bring about this new destiny we were living. If someone had told me a few days ago that I'd be rid of Hastinapur and traveling to my new kingdom with my husbands and Krishna and no mother-in-law, I'd have been delirious with excitement! But truth, when it's being lived, is less glamorous than our imaginings. Yudhisthir was not the best of riders, and the animal, recognizing this, yanked at his bridle, reared up, kicked out, and came to a stop at random moments. In between he bared his teeth and attempted to attack my husband's arm. I consoled myself with the thought that Yudhisthir was a good man. Righteousness come to earth, they called him. One couldn't expect such a virtuous personage to be a master horseman as well.

  Truly it was a transient world we lived in. Yesterday in a palace, today on the road, tomorrow—who knew? Perhaps I would find the home that had eluded me all my life. But one thing was certain: the currents of history had finally caught me up and were dragging me headlong. How much water would I have to swallow before I came to a resting place?

  In the midst of my elation, a thought twisted in me: with each moment, I was moving further from Karna. I would probably never see him again.

  In my mind I heard Dhai Ma's voice—and perhaps because I missed her bullying love, I admitted that she was right.

  It's the best thing that could happen to you, she said.

  19

  The forest was still burning around us when my husbands called me to the makeshift canopy that had served as our home since we arrived in Khandav. I considered ignoring them. I was hot and irritable, and in the midst of putting together a meal with primitive, foraged foods. Our entourage—soldiers, mostly—weren't much help. Besides, I was uneasy. I kept hearing the cries of animals, though I knew that couldn't be. There weren't any animals left in the wilderness of Khandav—not since Arjun set the forest on fire. The lucky ones had escaped. The rest were dead.

  Wind swirled ash along the ground. Smoke stung my eyes and coated my tongue. I looked for Krishna, then remembered that he'd ridden off in search of something. My husbands were speaking with a man I hadn't seen before. Where had
he come from? He squatted on the ground. Around him he'd drawn lines with a stick. I couldn't tell what they were. I stared at him. He was short and stubby, dressed in skins. Rings of bone and gold pulled his earlobes down to his shoulders. He stared back, unblinking, as though I weren't the queen of this land but an intruder.

  “Come, Panchaali,” Yudhisthir said. When I joined him on the wooden plank where he sat, he hesitated before putting an arm around my shoulder. The other brothers looked away, embarrassed. Were they thinking that next year, or the next, one of them would do the same to me?

  Better not to ponder such things.

  Arjun leaned against his chariot, his face fire-flushed. “Respected lady,” he said, “this is Maya.” He kept his eyes on a distant column of smoke and used the formal mode of address. The anger he'd felt at my wedding to his brothers still festered inside him, though he hid it so well that only I was aware of it. If I spoke to him, he answered politely, in monosyllables. If I approached a place where he was, he found a reason to leave it. I wanted to shake some sense into him, but along with exasperation I felt sympathy. Sometimes when he didn't know I was watching, there was a starkness on his face, the look of a man who was consumed by jealousy and hated himself for it.

  The ends of Arjun's long hair were singed. He was still carrying the giant bow that the god of fire had given him. It had a name, he had told us: Gandiva. From time to time, his hand caressed its curve as though it were a woman. I felt a sting, then chastised myself. I should be thankful he's consoling himself with a new weapon, I told myself, instead of looking for a new wife.

  “He builds palaces for gods,” Arjun continued, “and for the asura kings of the underworld. He's going to make us one, too—”

  “—because Arjun saved him from the fire,” Sahadev added proudly.

  “A palace like no one has ever seen!” Bheem said, throwing open his excited arms. “I've asked him to build me a kitchen where a hundred cook fires may be lit all at once, without need of fuel.”

  Bheem loved to cook as much as he loved to eat. To my surprise, he'd been the one to help me most these last few days, doing the heavy work, cleaning the animal carcasses and roasting them over the open fire while I boiled rice and cut up fruits. When I tried to lift a heavy pot from the fire, he took it from me, not caring if our hands touched. Our first day in Khandav, he'd announced bluntly that Vyasa's laws, which were meant for palace living, were ridiculous now that we were stuck in the wilderness with only each other to depend on. He'd treat me as a man should treat his brother's wife, but he couldn't follow all those nitpicky rules. Whenever I needed assistance, he was going to provide it. If he figured out a way to make life in this hot, sweaty, insect-plagued jungle a little more bearable for me, he was certainly going to do it. And if Yudhisthir had a problem with that, he should banish him right now. My law-abiding husband hadn't been pleased, but ultimately he accepted what his brother said. I, on the other hand, had been most grateful at finding such a devoted champion. I silently sent Bheem my apologies for having dismissed him earlier as a boor, and at mealtimes, I heaped his plate higher than the others'.

  “And stables with walls fashioned so cleverly that our animals will be warm in winter and cool in the summer,” Nakul said. I had already seen, on the journey, how much he loved horses. He made us pause at regular intervals so that our mounts could be fed and watered. At night he walked among them, feeding them lumps of jaggery, making sure they were rubbed down. Even Yudhisthir's hell-raising charger nudged him gently with its massive head, whickering, and Nakul smiled as though he understood what it said. Once I overheard him declare that he trusted wild beasts more than any courtier he knew.

  Did the massacre at Khandav forest torment him? I would never know. Though they must have disagreed with each other from time to time, my husbands never revealed their dissension to outsiders. (And in this matter, I was still an outsider.) Kunti had trained them well.

  “We need a great chamber of crystal and ivory where kings can discuss statesmanship or listen to music,” Yudhisthir proclaimed.

  “Or play at dice?” Sahadev teased, because that was Yudhisthir's one weakness.

  “We must have a dome that reaches up toward the sun, to amaze all men and proclaim the glory of the Pandavas,” Arjun said, looking into the distance as though he could see things invisible to the rest of us. He clutched his bow as though he'd never set it down.

  Bheem darted me a shy glance. “Shouldn't we ask Panchaali what she wants?”

  And now I saw what in my distraction I'd missed earlier: he loved me. I found the knowledge oddly painful.

  Yudhisthir nodded, reasonable as always, though by himself he wouldn't have thought to solicit my opinion. “You're right, brother. Tell us, Panchaali.”

  But when I opened my mouth to speak, my mind turned blank. Ash blew onto my face, settled on my skin, gritty as ground-up bone. I hadn't bathed for days. Why couldn't it have been Arjun who fell in love with me? He could have wrested my mind from the thoughts of a man who wouldn't stop occupying it even though I'd never see him again.

  Later, when I asked why he'd killed all those animals, Arjun would say, “Agni wanted me to set the forest afire for him. I couldn't refuse a god, could I?”

  But Krishna said, “How else could you have settled here? Built your kingdom? Gained all that fame? Changed the direction of history's wheel? Someone has to pay a price for that. You of all people should know this, Krishnaa.”

  He was right. In order for a victory to occur, someone had to lose. For one person to gain his desire, many had to give up theirs. Wasn't my own life—and my brother's—proof of that? But I refused to agree, to give Krishna that satisfaction. There was this, too: I wanted to believe that sometimes good may happen without bad biting its heels. I wanted to believe that sometimes the gods give us gifts and ask for nothing back.

  He looked at me with a sigh, part sympathy, part exasperation. “Dear one,” he said, “time will teach you what you refuse to learn from your well-wishers.”

  They were waiting for an answer, so I said the first word that came as I stared at the dead landscape.

  “Water. I want water. Everywhere. Fountains and pools, ponds for birds to sport in.”

  I didn't believe the ugly little man in front of me could make it happen, but he nodded, a considering spark in his eye.

  “I want a stream wending its way through the palace, with lotuses blooming all year,” I added. I was being outrageous, but why not? Everyone else was asking for impossibilities—fires without fuel, towers that brushed the sun. (“But running water inside a home!” Kunti would gasp when she saw it. “Fool of a girl, didn't anyone teach you that it washes away good luck?”)

  “I do it!” Maya said. A gap gleamed between his crooked teeth as his lips pulled back in a grin. “I give you more: floors looking like rivers, waterfalls looking like walls. Doorsteps all glittery like melted ice. Only wise people see through Maya's truth. But few so wise! All cry: How great are royal Pandavas to live in such palace! How great Maya, maker of palace! But first you must give me right name for it.”

  My husbands argued. Yudhisthir wanted to name the palace after their dead father, but the others didn't share his filial piety for a man they didn't remember. Arjun wanted to name it in honor of Shiva, god of the hunt, his favorite deity. Nakul suggested we should call it Indrapuri, because wasn't it going to be a palace fit for the king-god? Sahadev feared that that would be too prideful.

  “What does Panchaali think?” Bheem asked.

  I looked at Maya. His fleck-brown eyes glittered. Later I'd wonder, was it malice I'd glimpsed in them? Along with gratitude, he must have harbored rage and sorrow, his home reduced to cinders around him, his companions dead or scattered forever.

  He inclined his head as though he knew what I was thinking and approved of it. But perhaps it was he who sent the words into my mind.

  If foreboding flew over me on scorched wings, crying for its dead mate, I didn't hear. I smiled
with sudden elation, thinking, This is what I've been waiting for all my life!

  I said, “This creation of yours that's going to be the envy of every king in Bharat—we'll call it the Palace of Illusions.”

  Maya outdid himself as he built. He magnified everything my husbands wanted a hundredfold, and over it all he laid a patina of magic so things shifted strangely, making the palace new each day even for us who lived there. There were corridors lighted only by the glow of gems, and assembly halls so filled with flowering trees that even after hours at council one felt as though one had been relaxing in a garden. Almost every room had a pool with scented water. Not all his magic was benign, though. Early in our stay, before we got used to looking at things a certain way, we bumped into walls built of crystal so clear that they were transparent, or tried vainly to open windows that were painted on. Several times we stepped into pools that were disguised as stretches of marble flooring and ruined our elaborate court attire. At those times I thought I heard Maya's disembodied, mocking laughter. But it all added to the allure of this palace that was truly like no other.

  On the day the palace was done, Maya took Arjun aside.

  “You save Maya life,” he said, “so I give you warning. Live in palace. Enjoy. But not invite anyone to come see.”

  My husbands pondered over the cryptic words. What did Maya mean? Was it a trick? Had he slipped a curse into the foundations as he built them? Asuras were not to be trusted—everyone knew that. Still, they were reluctant to take him seriously. They'd waited so long for a place they could call home, a setting that proclaimed their worth. (How well I understood that craving!) They yearned to show it off—to friends and enemies both. (So did I, though only one man came to my mind.)