by Aashish Kaul
Night after night, I heard them from the shadows of a sal tree, beyond whose sprawling branches curled the flames that lit up their faces from below as they squatted about the burning logs, constantly sputtering crimson rinds into the grey pillar of air, and passed clay pitchers around, telling stories by turn, till their eyes lost the fire in them and turned smoky and stood open for the night and whatever lay in its wake.
It was then, on one of my routine wanderings, that I came upon resting on a rock the exiled prince, who, along with his brother, was slowly making his way to the demon king’s capital to rescue his wife. But how? Two warriors, no matter how able, were helpless against the vast strength of the enemy and his forces. And for a start they were not even certain of their way. I took them along to my friend’s shelter, where the exiles met and exchanged their sad tales in sympathy and agreement, conferred at length, and finally sealed the historic pact, a solemn oath of exiles that would see wrongs done to each punished, iniquities put right, honour restored, virtue re-established.
The plan then was for my friend to go and challenge his brother to a duel and while they were assaulting and tearing each other apart, for the prince to shoot an arrow from behind a tree and kill the arrogant fool. Thus, not only his rightful position and his wife, but the entire kingdom would be restored to him, in return for which he would forthwith align his men and, with himself at the head of the troops, help the princes lay siege to the enemy’s citadel and rescue the woman in captivity.
It was not much different from a coup d’état, though none of us saw it as such in our simple inflamed hearts bent solely upon avenging the wrongs done to each. The plan was both quick and effective. None saw anything but victory in it, none saw anything near abominable. Now there was little need of the irregulars we had been recruiting, and we left them sitting on their haunches girdling the burning logs, regaling one another with tales and drinks and laughter, to pick up on the morrow their violent lives from where they had left them, without once thinking of the lost opportunity. Nothing was unusual in this. Life was one such long chain of unful- filled plans and discarded choices, and where one gate closed, ten others came open.
Surprising though it seemed, things went scrupulously to plan, even if there were delays and misunderstandings along the way. For when the exile had won back his wife and the kingdom besides after what seemed to him a cruel and extended period of hardship, he, as was only natural, wished to delay further travails and enjoy a little the pleasures of throne and community, until he was rudely pulled out from a night of carousing and squarely threatened by the younger prince. Very soon the tribal army was on the march through the forest, snaking its course toward the southern tip of the peninsula, having received along the way crucial guidance regarding the route it was to take.
More than a millennium had passed since then, and all the actors in that horripilating drama had long since turned to dust or something finer than dust. Past that epic war, past many great wars, only he remained, the child in the tree. Not a few hundred years, and already the events were being recounted as children’s tales. Maybe that was why wars were fought, so that at some remote point in time they could be told as tales to children. Everything was possible here where no matter how slowly the wheel rolled it would get from blood to laughter soon enough.
Just the other day, while he sat above a huge rock beyond the spray of the falls, he had heard coming down the opening in the hills the voice of a woodcutter reciting the story to his little son astride a burro, utterly pared and simplified, as is the case with stories or the telling of them, the story of the demon king’s death at the hands of the prince-in-exile, the former, in his telling, the embodiment of pure evil and the latter of pure good, a moral tale, a tale of morals. As if there ever was such a thing in life, as if what was cruelty to one was not kindness to another. Now all that remained was for a bard to come along singing it from village to village, improvising and embellishing it as he sang into history, Rama’s journey or Rama’s story, for one’s journey was also one’s story, the only story, no matter how and in how many ways one chose to tell it.
But not a word passed from father to son about that death on the battlefield at the very cusp of night, much like that of the demon king at the end, but nowhere near as significant to this story, the death on the close of the first day, the death from my hand, the death which occurred outside time, the unaccounted death, the death that could have been avoided if I had not been entirely beside myself clearing my way all day through bones, blood, bodies.
What to think of it? We are but trailing phantoms in another’s story to say nothing of those who trail in ours.
The child turned suddenly to look at something. His pet puma had materialized on the branch as if out of thin air, and was now watching him with its yellow-green eyes. The child spread his arm round its neck to caress it from below. A low mist was rising over the trees in the east, but here the sun shone clear and the rays left a reddish tinge in the animal’s coat. Far into the distance, at the rim of the world, blazed the immense, metaphysical wall of ice.
X
IT RAINED without cease for several days. The heavens were making good for the longest dry spell in years, for the most part of which the war had raged on.
Had it happened, we would probably not have noticed the gradual grading of the sky from blue to white to grey, the world darkening above us and feral sparks renting the cloudbank and the thunder rumbling DA, DA, DA, DA, DA, that a golden light was falling in bands far out in the sea, while here amidst the turmoil rain was upon us, churning and loosening up the mud under our feet, so that the solid ground beneath was soon a quagmire where mud not water dripped from our hair, silting in any cavity it could find, even working as a salve for our wounds.
But, of course, it did not rain, and the soil was kneaded solely with the sweat and blood from our teetering, faltering bodies. The sun burned stark and incandescent in the skies and drew out of the humid air a terrible effluvium of death and decay, against which bracing ourselves we went on thrusting and parrying until night fell, provisionally or for good.
Within hours from the start of the day’s fighting, vultures were alighting on the corpses that lay strewn along the war ring. The birds would settle on the still bleeding warm flesh and begin at once to peck at the softer skin around the neck and the face or scoop out the eyes clean from their sockets and suck on them for all their worth. If the breath of war moved closer, they lifted their wings, even flapped them in slow, deliberate strokes a few times, but then having barely risen would come down instantly to the free and generous repast before them.
And rain it did not when the war was over, not when the throne was no more vacant, nor when I took my siesta day after day, smoking my pipe and watching the tiny, indigo-crowned birds flitting in the hedgerows, threading fleeting lines of colour through them, nor when the long and spacious marble stairway and then the pavilion itself swam before my eyes.
The sky was high and clear above the yard when the stable boy brought in my horse, bridled and groomed, the leather saddlebags, holding a few personal effects and provisions for the journey, hanging from each side of the seat. But not before I was deep in the forest did it occur to me for the first time, so much had the war, its preparation and the resulting exhaustion, made us neglect, how long it had gone without rain.
Prancing on they went all day long, the traveller and his horse, mixing their breath with that of the trees, leaving a white plume in their wake and filling the world to the brim with the continuously unrolling, untiring clickety-clack of their movement, elated at this sudden freedom, consuming all earth and all time, until unexpectedly they emerged from the forest and the rider reined in his horse and the horse reared and neighed, and the rider saw the pavilion, issuing like a flame above the earth at the extreme end of a path that went crawling into a distant hill. A lone band of light was washing over it where it stood towering and radiant on the escarpment, while in every concavity about shadows we
re gathering, swooping down straight from the fast flowing clouds which were closing in on the sun from every direction. Even better, thinks the man, even better than how I envisioned it. And then the last ray of light was snuffed out and night came on suddenly.
By the time the rider ascended the hill, rain was upon him. A cloudburst. Birds had flown away, all life had retreated into the bush. Torrents gushed down the slopes and through the trees and the entire country sank in a deluge of rain, out of nowhere an enormous lake appeared that would slowly come to cover everything. Thunder struck and gales blew. Shielding his eyes against the downpour, he went trotting up the path that blazed white, pink and ochre by turn in its swift dissolution, reflecting the wrathful face of the firmament, in a torrid landscape where none moved save he. There was nothing to tell if he had in fact seen the building or it was merely a vision engendered by a mind reeling from tiredness, hope, and yearning. But onward he went, soaked to the bone and shivering from the sharp drop in temperature.
Around halfway up the hill as the track made hairpin bends, I could make out tiny lamps or flames being lit one by one, like the first stars appearing from the gauze of dusk, and toward them I went, a weary traveller riding this constellation of lights as a guide to the end, never letting it out of my sight, although the slanting rain and the curving, melting road and the hair plastered over my face made this difficult.
Upon dismounting, a searing pain shot from the soles of my feet, up through my legs, collecting and pinching in the small of my back. I suddenly noticed how modest this place was, how utterly unlike what I remembered of it. The rain was at work in the front lawn which was untended and slipping into ruin and wilderness. The marble steps, maybe ten or fifteen, not more, neither too wide nor too high, nothing like how I had dreamt them, but fixed solidly to the ground, paling and coming apart on the edges. This was just an old hunting lodge slowly falling into decay from lack of interest or forgetfulness. Long ago, the dead king had passed it on to me in a kind and spontaneous gesture after we had returned from a successful hunt one evening. Often had I thought of the place, but not once had I returned. One thing or another kept happening, whether at the court or out in the field, delaying my decision. Later I had even thought of bringing Misa here for a day or two, but I could never garner the courage to ask her, and besides is one ever sure about love?, either it is too quick in coming or it is too late, and in both cases calamitous for the parties involved. Better it would have been for the poets to never sing of love, for then maybe we would not have discovered it within ourselves. Soon anyway the events took a turn for the worse and war was upon us. Yet I was glad to have come now, if only alone and vaguely grieving.
Three men had emerged from the pavilion’s dim interior onto the main landing to see about the traveller. This was what remained of life here. Maybe this was what always remained once the king and his escort had departed after the excursion. Three shadowy forms floating in a parallelogram of flames issuing from the half-damaged, serrated urns on sills and parapets that had yielded their colour piecemeal to time and the elements, time which here was nothing but the elements. Solitary men getting by in age, half slaves, half hermits. What did it mean to them, the war and the subsequent change of power, the weariness of loss? Probably they were not even aware of it, content with collecting food and wood in the forest, watching the sky, listening to the streams, brewing their ale, and smoking and drinking each evening round the low fire. Days alike, empty and peaceful. At most a careful barter of words and movements to sustain them. A bare life, a routine life, a robust life.
One man came down the steps and led the horse away to the stables at the rear of the building, another rushed inside to light the fire and prepare a meal, while the third stood right there, calmly waiting for me at the edge of the steps. They seemed to behave most naturally, as if they had been expecting me, after these many years, on this of all evenings, when the night was bursting with thunder and rain.
On the landing under the roof, the attendant took the dripping cloak off my shoulders. Did he recognize me? I turned and from the sanctuary of softly waving flames watched the sheets of water being ruffled by the wind and charge leaking from the sky and flaring up the night with its deep staccato roar. I could have stood there for hours, watching and hearing the rain, not thinking about anything, forgetting the past and its ties to me.
I changed into dry clothes and settled by the fire, supping from an earthen bowl a hot creamy broth made of goat’s fat and hooves along with unleavened bread with burnt rings that left a faint taste of ashes on the palate. It was an appetizing fare. Afterward, someone handed me a pipe stem and I settled down with the others drinking and discussing, in words that barely broke away from the long pauses that held them, the day’s few and common happenings prior to my arrival. The rain drummed lightly afar and the fire crackled from the twigs bursting in flames, releasing a smell of juniper in the spreading warmth. I knew not when sleep levelled with me and when it left me far behind.
Sometime before dawn, the first dawn, the second or the fifth, it was forever dawn, a pallid, rain-sodden dawn, I had a dream. I saw my elephant, not dark and lacerated in the shed when I had last laid eyes on him, but snow-white, like Indra’s ride Airavata, with three, four, even five heads, falling from a bluff into a cold blue luminosity, spinning as it fell in slow motion, without a sound, trailing away in his vast bulk into the gap opening under my feet.
We were four friends, all warriors, what else could we be, men chained to their humble, uncertain origins. Men who, to begin with, did not possess even the comforts of a blacksmith or a potter. Men who had taught themselves early the art of survival in the street, who only knew how to handle weapons or swing their limbs fast in combat. To then be recruited into the king’s army seemed like good fortune. Food, handsome weapons, a roof over the head, however temporary, some coins to buy drinks each evening, and fresh clothes on the back. This was no small fortune. In return for which we were simply to practice the one skill we knew, and this time without fear of sanctions for the deed was to be done in the name of law or defending the nation’s honour. Eventually, two ended up in the ranks on foot, one in cavalry, and I on the elephant. Ours was a bond formed in the early days of scarcity and hardship, from before my ascension to the higher echelons of the court, something which the passage of time, or what was in my case the accrual of sudden privilege, had not diminished in the least. Yet only I had survived the war, and what was I but this opiate, forlorn figure slithering in between the sheets, watching the rain fall unabated on the world, now hard like a barrage from heaven and now gently in bands of mist trailing over treetops, thinking of the dead.
The three slain, and one of them not even in the war, but during the brief armistice that resulted from the younger of the two enemy princes being mortally wounded by our arrows. This brave warrior, my friend the foot soldier, who had given battle fearlessly while managing to save himself from the enemy’s blows for so many days, dead with a long knife in his navel, half the blade shining up from the naked flesh, in a room above the tavern, back in the safety of the city’s walls, a place to which he had come running the moment the fighting was suspended to slake his passion for a crotchety barmaid, who on the night in question clearly surpassed herself. Murdered out of petty jealousy or anger or some arcane impulse by the most unsuspecting of agents, the same one you can see standing at the side of the cot, hands red with blood and heart madly pounding and white with shame at what she has accomplished without ever intending to. Fortunately for her, she would go unpunished, for the custodians of king’s peace are busy elsewhere, looking out, facing an enemy more formidable than a trembling woman beaten by her own crime. One dead and the other constrained to flee, both victims of drives neither could have fathomed in full.
Another killed in action toward the end of battle. Thrown off his horse in the thick of bleeding and warring bodies, and swiftly dispatched to his end by three spears fixing him to the earth at once.
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nbsp; And the third, whom I loved best, the poet, the soldier in front ranks, the maker of charming verses, a rarity, a warrior and a poet, a poet warrior, dead on the first day, all poetry gone out of him. Just at the moment the battle was over. Clubbed to death by that general who some said was a god whose name was Anjaneya. That spy who had entered the palace before the war and had managed to escape after being arrested. But what would it have mattered, this day or the next. On foot, death would have caught up with him one way or another. But on the first day itself, and that too when the battle was over. In stark contravention of the rules of war. A barbaric act. Immoral. Unforgivable. To first rein in the chaos and to then snap the reins yourself. Lay down rules of conduct, cast your net far and wide, and then smartly evade it to satisfy your lust for blood.
My eye was on him as the fighting drew to a close. It was then that I saw the general or the spy or the god coming straight at my friend, who had just a moment ago freed himself from his adversary, disposing of the latter in a hand-to-hand fight, first giving him a clip behind the knee that made his legs cave in and, while his body was helplessly sinking to the ground, fastening his fingers in the victim’s nose and breaking his neck with the bottom of a fist, vertebrae and all, extreme work from which my friend was still reeling, when the general yelled at him, demanding engagement. Something like a foreboding, something like a stab of pain, went through my chest and, snatching my mace from its hold, I leapt out of my seat on the elephant’s back. I was still on his head, balancing my bulk to run down the trunk and jump into the fray, when the conch shells began to blow, and my sprint was arrested in mid air, hesitation crept round my legs for I felt he was safe now. But not for the attacker, who could simply not control himself, and packed my friend’s death in the melancholy moans of the conches, even when he had seen my friend drop his weapon in response to the call for the close of battle.
