by John Burgess
At midday, Subhadra sniffed at the lingering scents of incense, murmured a final verse, then rose and walked out through the forest to where the other priests waited. There he declared that everything had been done exactly as Heaven would have it.
As soon as he and the others left for the Capital, another spiritual job got underway. This one Subhadra never acknowledged, to me or to anyone else, as far as I can say, but he did nothing to stop it, no doubt knowing how uneasy the local villagers, and quite a few Brahmins as well, would feel if it were left undone. It was carried out by men whose garments were frayed at the edges, who were missing eyes or fingers or some basic trait of human decorum, but who had shown that they had power to reach into the supernatural realm. These men – you have seen their kind, I’m sure, begging by the roadside, or in trance at a forest refuge – had the assignment of calming the paddy and tree spirits who would be displaced from land they had always inhabited. It was all very unfortunate, but these spirits would have to take up residence elsewhere. At the same time, it was of course important to make sure that they left on the best possible terms. Otherwise, what mischief they might cause! What if they were seen to hover at night in the workers’ encampment in hideous glowing form? Labourers would drop their tools and run, no matter what orders were issued to the contrary. What if they chose to befoul the drinking water? So these tattered holy men built tiny shrines on dikes, beside the largest, oldest trees, sometimes even in the waist-deep water of ponds. They burned incense, a cheaper variety than what the Brahmins used. They made offerings of rice and sometimes they fell to the ground in one of those trances. Villagers watched from a respectful distance, hands together, to show they were concerned over the spirits’ plight, even if the reason for the eviction was a legitimate one, creation of the greatest mountain-temple the world would ever know.
In the end, it was concluded that most of the spirits were duly assuaged and made their exit. Now an army of labourers could move in. Numbering more than five thousand, they were all volunteers, some from settlements a short walk away, some from the far reaches of the Empire. There had been quite some competition for spots in this throng. Every person in the royal compound had heard in recent weeks from some relative or acquaintance hoping for a place in this first labour team. Nol, I believe, personally placed more than thirty from the parasol village. For people who lacked such connections – well, there were other ways. I am sure some paid bribes to local priests and headmen who made the picks for labour quotas that the Capital had assigned. The work would be punishing, yes, but when else in their lifetime would they get a chance to accrue merit of such inviolable purity?
The chosen men were given a few days to build a bamboo shantytown on scrubland to the south and to dig slit trenches. Then they laid down for what would be their last night of peace for a very long time. In the morning, they tied on loincloths and lined up to be issued shovels, saws and long-bladed knives. Then there began a full-scale attack on the land, because it would have to be ravaged before it could host Heaven on earth.
In ensuing months, I passed the site several times on my journeys in and out of the Capital. What activity, what energy there was, no matter how hot, no matter how strongly the sun shone down from the sky! Sometimes I had trouble seeing through the raised dust. The men levelled paddy dikes and hillocks, they filled ponds and depressions. They cut down trees, using elephants to drag away the logs. Grass and reeds were ploughed under. At times, the site put up fearful resistance, the work of a few recalcitrant spirits. One day, a mother boar, surprised in her lair, bloodied a boy who was bringing drinking water to a shovel team, and then fled snorting into jungle cover with her two young. On another day, a saw blade snapped, opening the belly of a man who had arrived only a day earlier. He died within the hour.
But try as they might have, these few spirits could not obstruct the flow of events. After eight months, the ground was flat and clear. Priests blessed this first team of labourers and sent them home. The Architect, trailed by assistants, spent a week walking the site, memorizing every feature, though now there were far fewer of them. But there was one more important rite to be staged before actual construction could begin.
On a sunny afternoon, His Majesty was carried to the site in a gilded palanquin, twelve parasols overhead, in the company of many Brahmins and nobles. Members of the palace household followed behind. The procession ended at a teak altar that had been placed on raked soil at the precise centre point of the future central tower. The King took up a position facing to the east. There began prayers by the Brahmin assemblage, the lighting of incense.
My husband and son sat down just behind the altar to oversee the bearers who shaded His Majesty. I was not present – I avoided all gatherings that His Majesty attended.
The Brahmins worked their way through a very lengthy liturgy, now picking up the speed and volume of their chants, now slowing down. The rite’s peak came perhaps an hour along: The priests stopped, abruptly, and cued the King to raise his right arm to the sky. With a bleached white cord, two of the holy men took a precise measure of the distance between royal wrist and elbow. They now had the basic unit by which the mountain-temple would be laid out and constructed.
With the ceremonies completed, my husband got to his feet and began forming up the procession for the journey back to the palace. Sovan, however, remained on the ground, peering away from the holy altar.
Nol was annoyed. ‘I can use your help, boy.’
He got no response.
‘Get up. What’s the trouble with you?’
‘What? Nothing’s the matter, father.’
‘Well, come on then – pitch in.’
But even then he did not get up. Nol prodded my boy with the staff of a folded parasol and finally he stood.
I later learned that the trouble with Sovan was that during the ceremony he had had a flash realization: His Majesty, indeed everyone, was facing the wrong direction.
When Sovan had arrived at the site, he had looked all around and tried to match what he saw against his memories of that day when he had tramped around virgin ground with the Architect. It seemed impossible that this was the same place. Termite nests, paddies, swathes of tangled forest – all gone, as if the builder god Visvakarman had cleared them with a single swipe of a giant forearm.
That disbelief was to be expected. Had not thousands of men, if not a god, worked to transform this site into something entirely different? But then there began something that was entirely a surprise: In the midst of the ceremony, strange tinglings arose in Sovan’s heart. They were slight; they escaped his notice at first. When he became aware of them, he in no way felt they were due to illness. There was placed in him a conviction that the cause was some force that was outside his body, but resonating inside. His eyes moved about, seeking an explanation. He examined the altar, the sun, the lie of the shadows of the parasol shafts, the lazy motion of a distant bank of clouds. In stages it came to him: There was something wrong in orientation. He was sitting behind His Majesty, and yet this supposedly subordinate place was invested with the greater cosmic energy. He was sure of it. He could feel that the future temple’s emanations flowed toward the west. Yet everyone here was aligned toward the east, creating a conflict. It was as if many men were pulling on a rope in one direction, and many others pulling in the other. The rope would grow very taut, and it would vibrate – that is what my son was feeling.
It was a breach of protocol, but he turned his back on the ritual and did what he had done on that long-ago day when he first came to the site. He looked in precisely the opposite direction from that which had the attention of everyone else. The tingling subsided. He gazed down this western axis and an image appeared again to him, but with new clarity and truth. He saw a great holy mountain of stone with five towers, each with the gentle curves of a closed lotus blossom.
Then he looked back to the ritual, seeing His Majesty raising his arm for the measurement, oblivious to the mistake.
S
ovan finally came out of his reverie with the help of that poke of a parasol handle. He said nothing to his father, who would only have laughed. And Sovan was modest enough to wonder how it could really be possible that so many learned people – virtually the entire elite of the Brahmin community was present that day – could make so fundamental a misjudgement and feel nothing of what he was feeling.
Nol stepped away to tend to something at the front of the procession. Then, from behind – a voice.
‘The young would-be builder! Still working with parasols, but I see he’s come up in the world. He’s not bearing but supervising.’
It was the Architect. Sovan blushed and looked to the ground, but at the same time, I don’t think he felt he was being mocked.
‘Tell me something,’ the Architect said. ‘Can you read and write?’
‘Why, yes, sir. Of course. Keeping the records of the parasol pavilion requires it.’
‘And how about numbers? Can you work with them?’
‘Yes. I do it most every morning to keep the accounts.’
Just then, over the Architect’s shoulder, Sovan caught sight of two young women standing far away, at the edge of the cleared ground, no doubt waiting for His Majesty to leave before they would make their own exit. My boy was still unmarried and such was his abiding hope of finding the girl from the house in the forest that he allowed his attention to wander in the very presence of this great man.
‘Well, then,’ said the Architect. ‘How would you like to help build this temple?’
‘Sir..?’ Sovan’s attention returned in a flash!
‘Help build it as one of my assistants.’
My boy gasped. The Architect folded his arms, seeming amused by it all.
Occupations are of course determined by birth, but there was something I did not know at the time – exceptions were made for a few lines of life work, architecture among them. The innate talents were so rare, it was said, that the Empire’s chief builder could induct people into his group regardless of their station of birth. A call from him was assumed to carry the authority of the King, because it was in his name that the work was carried out.
‘It’s not what you were raised to do, I know, or what your family expects. But one of my assistants, he was a very promising one, died last week – a snake, actually, it got him in that stand of trees just across there.’ He poked a finger in its direction, but his eyes remained on Sovan. ‘So I need a new one. I’m willing to take a chance on you. Will you do it?’
Sovan answered: ‘Sir, you know I was born a canal dredger?’
‘I do. And I would be counting on that to mean you know how to do a real day’s work.’
Sovan took a breath. This was a sign if ever there was one. First a repeat of the vision, then this great man standing before him.
‘Then, yes, sir. I will join your team. If you will have me.’
‘Then be at the plans pavilion at sunrise tomorrow. It’s just beyond that same tree line. We get started at first light.’
‘Tomorrow, sir?’ Sovan was trembling now.
‘Why, yes, tomorrow. Do you want the job or don’t you?’
Nol reappeared. The Architect broke off the conversation and walked off.
On the way back to the city, Sovan resisted his father’s urgings to tell him what the man had wanted. Yet, back at the house Sovan came right to me and spilled it.
I was as shocked as any mother would be, and said so. How could his years of work with the parasols simply be cast off? And what would be the effect on Nol? ‘Do you know how people will laugh at your father if he has no son to take over when his soul departs? You know, it’s been a very long time since people have laughed at him. It will hurt him deeply.’
‘Please, mother, I will have prayers said. But don’t you think his shock, and yours, would pass? He has an apprentice, Veng. He’s good. Really, he’s better than I am. He can take my place. He likes the work. I wish I did but I don’t. I hate the waiting, I hate the palace gossip.’
‘You’ll grow accustomed…’
‘I won’t!’ His voice had actually risen – I had rarely seen this kind of emotion in him. ‘There are times…there are times I think of killing myself, rather than doing this for an entire life.’
Now he pled for my help, and, how could I stand up to that? I embraced him and promised to speak to his father.
It was no surprise that however gently I broke the news, my husband reacted with cries of anger and betrayal. What I didn’t expect was that he would run outside for a stick and then go after my boy, who was waiting in his room.
The first blow caught him across the jaw.
‘Leave the family, will you?’
Sovan retreated unbelieving to a corner. There would be less room to manoeuvre the stick there. I rushed in; Nol fended off my attempts to restrain him.
‘Father, I’m sorry! I only thought...’
‘Leave behind everything we’ve built here? Everything I’ve done for you and the family?’
‘I only...’
‘You want to rise above the place I’ve given you? You want to shit as big as an elephant, do you?’
‘Father...’
His voice was cut off by the stick. With no room to swing, Nol was jabbing its tip hard into Sovan’s belly.
I placed myself between them.
‘You will not kill our son, husband!’
He backed off, swishing the stick through the air. ‘I will do whatever is necessary to put an end to this ridiculous idea.’ He gave one more hard poke, then stared at his son. ‘I expect your apology and your immediate rejection of this request. A servant will deliver a note.’
He left the room. I stayed with Sovan. Some time later, Nol returned, still holding the stick
‘Are you ready to apologize? Answer me!’
‘Father, I want to work with the Architect. I’m sorry, I’m sorry...’
Again Nol struck him!
‘The parasol hall’s not for you? It was the parasol craft that nurtured you, that got you your rice, your education, your place in society.’
‘Please, father...’
‘I’m not finished. It’s the craft that got us out of that slum we lived in. Do you remember that? You were just a naked boy, running around with all the others, nothing to set you apart.’
That was it, for that night at least. But Sovan was not deterred. He left the house early the next morning. He later told me that when he presented himself to the Architect the man joked about the bruises on his face and informed him that he was worth a full evening banquet for ten at the new inn, the one that had just opened just behind the morning market, with wine and music and dancers. Nol, you see, had come to speak with him the night before, and opened with this offer if the invitation were withdrawn. When that didn’t work, the terms were raised, by quite a bit: fifty weight of silver, twenty paddies of rice land outside the city, one hundred oxen, the use of a cart and driver for six months. And so on. The Architect turned it all down, saying that life had brought him material wealth, but the thing in which he was truly poor was that which he valued most, talented, inspired assistants. When he had finished recounting this to Sovan, he declared that he liked it when his assistants had to make a choice. Do you really want to do this? He gave Sovan one more chance to back out. Of course Sovan did not.
It was all work for the rest of the day. A young man a few years senior to my boy entered the pavilion and was introduced as Pin, the Architect’s nephew. Sovan would start as his helper and be shown the basics. Pin led Sovan silently to another pavilion, which contained a row of tall shelves. On these, Palm leaf diagrams were stacked lengthwise. Pin pulled one down in a hurried kind of way. ‘Study this,’ he said. Then he left him alone.
Sovan is the kind of person who prefers it that way. He would have all the time he needed to examine the diagram, without worry of someone hovering around and thinking him stupid for taking time. He took the sheet to a table, and unfolded it. On it were lines and sh
adings and circles, all coming together into a cohesive form, a holy stone. In ten minutes he had figured out that he was looking at the plan for the lower parts of a library. The laterite blocks which would make up the base in the soil were marked with tiny patterns like the strands of a fishnet, sandstone blocks resting atop them were rendered in shaded form. To the side, drawn in the margin, was a rough outline of a divine guardian that would be carved on its upper edge. This, then, was how buildings began the journey from thought to solid stone.
An hour later, Sovan looked up to see the Architect.
The man asked: ‘Where’s Pin?’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t know, sir. He left.’
‘Just as well. Now, I need to see how good your hand is. Can you make a copy of this?’ He held up a small, simple diagram of a doorway. ‘Take one of those slates. You’ll use the chalk and a bronze edge. And don’t get too ambitious. You’re not designing a temple yet, just copying. Now here’s how you start.’
He put the bronze edge down, drew the chalk along it, then lifted the edge. It was some kind of magic – on the sheet now was a line as straight as any sun ray emerging from any cloud. He drew three more to form a rectangle.
‘Now look here, I’ll show you something. Draw a line like this. It’s called a…’ I think the word was ‘diagonal,’ or something similar. There were many technicalities tossed about that day. But in the end he revealed some more magic by which the drawing of straight lines allowed a rectangle to grow or shrink and yet retain the precise same proportions with which it began.
That evening Sovan returned home exhausted. In the main room, his father waited. I stood to the side. I did not have to physically intervene because I knew that something different was coming.
‘Sovan,’ said Nol, ‘you have not responded to arguments of duty, or to force, so I will now try to buy you off.’
‘Father, I don’t want an offer...’
‘Sovan, I will place you in full charge of the work of ordering and maintaining His Majesty’s parasols. The storage hall will be yours alone to direct; I will never enter. You may work on them yourself if you wish. You are very young for such responsibility, in fact I can’t think of any man your age in the Capital who would have anything comparable to it. You would be in charge of relations with the village that makes them, and you would direct the thirty artisans who work here.’
