"Welcome to the dwelling of the great goddess," she said.
"It is the honor of my brothers and their ancestors that I be permitted into the presence of the abbess and her acolytes," he answered formally in the arcane Hindi dialect he had learned just for this occasion.
She rose. Behind the thick white veil she wore, the girl's features showed fleetingly. Justin couldn't see all her face at one time, but he saw enough to know that she didn't look anything like the woman he'd expected. She was not a female version of the monks at Rashimpur. For one thing, she was nearly as tall as Justin, and he towered over the other men in the monastery. Her skin was very light, and though her hair and eyes were dark, her hands, covered with jewelry not only on the fingers but up to the wrists, were pale and blue-veined, like his own.
Her coloring shocked Justin. He didn't think anyone in this strange part of the world looked like him. He longed to ask her where she came from, but restrained himself. He did not wish to appear rude and overly inquisitive before he even entered the palace.
She moved aside and gestured for him to walk ahead of her into the palace. The path led through a magnificent ornamental garden, replete with curved stone bridges over streams that must have been created artificially. Low, spreading trees shaded small stone benches, and huge golden carp swam in a shallow pond. Everywhere, flowers blossomed in a profusion of color and sweet perfume. Beside it, the bare, windswept peaks around Rashimpur seemed bleak and desolate. It was hard for Justin not to linger in the garden, breathing in its lush fragrance and succumbing to its visual perfection, but he made himself keep the pace he had set. It would not do for the girl to think him weak.
She led him into an unoccupied room lit by spade-shaped brass oil lamps. The walls were covered with silk that billowed with the breeze from the garden, causing the pale colors of the fabric to shine in the light. More than a dozen huge cushions, covered with gold and silver brocade, were arranged on the floor around a pastel rug intricately woven into fluid designs. The ceiling was of hammered silver. It was the most opulent room Justin had ever seen. Even the Great Hall of Rashimpur with its magnificent Tree of the Thousand Wisdoms paled beside it.
The girl bowed again, and disappeared. Within a few minutes, a line of young women filed in through the mosaic doorway with its onion-shaped arch. Some of the women carried strange-looking musical instruments. Others brought with them books, clothing, pallettes, clay, and armloads of bright flowers. They came in silently, smiling but keeping their eyes averted, and arranged themselves on the cushions. After the last one had entered, the veiled girl came in and led Justin to the corner, where he would be flanked by the women, and gestured for him to sit down on the largest and most comfortable cushion.
"The goddess Varja accepts your most honored presence," the girl said softly, assuming an attitude of prayer as she knelt at his feet.
"Is she coming here?" Justin asked hesitantly.
The girls giggled. "No," the veiled one said. "This place is for your welcome. We hope to make you comfortable and easeful here so that you may be initiated into the rites of love in the proper state of mind."
The proper state of mind? Justin wondered. How hard was this going to be, anyway?
One of the girls began to play. In her lap she held a seven-stringed instrument; gourds served as sounding boards at each end of the fretted fingerboard, which extended downward in a curve to the floor. The music it made was droning and soft. To Justin's ears, which had never heard anything but Western music, the sounds struck him as discordant, but he smiled anyway, lest he offend the musician.
"This is Rakhta who plays the vina," the veiled girl said. "It is a sacred instrument, formed in the shape of a woman. Its music is the sound of darkness and the sea, where the female spirit originated." She pointed out another young woman of striking beauty who was arranging heaps of orchids in translucent pastel bowls. "Dakini arranges the flowers from our garden. Flower arranging, like music, is one of the womanly arts. So are poetry, sculpture, disguise, and many others."
"Do you have to learn them all?"
"Yes. We must master sixty-four arts, including dancing, writing, painting, reading, perfumery, gardening, languages, carpentry, chemistry, logic ... Many."
"Which languages do you speak?" Justin asked, hoping to learn more about the strange-looking Caucasian girl.
"Here we learn all the dialects of the region, plus the ancient languages of religious rites ..."
"Do you speak English?"
The girl bowed her head. "Yes," she said. "It is understood that English is your language. For this reason, I have been selected as your companion, if I do not offend you too severely."
Justin grinned. "It will be a pleasure to speak my native tongue again."
One of the women added a final dab of ink to a drawing, blew on it for a moment, then presented it to Justin, bowing low as she offered it.
Justin took it from her, then uttered an involuntary gasp as he noticed the subject of her art. The drawing depicted a man and a woman, dressed in ornate finery from the waist up, but utterly naked below. Their feet were joined at the soles, and their hands rested on their bent knees. At the center of the picture, the man's penis fully penetrated the woman.
Justin felt himself flushing deeply. He swallowed and forced himself to look at the young woman who had given him the drawing. She was very pretty, and no more than twelve years old, with the soft, rounded cheeks of childhood still accentuating her oval face.
"This is Saraha," Justin's guide said. "She is our best artist."
The young girl smiled shyly.
"Yes, it's ... wonderful," Justin said, hearing his voice crack and feeling horribly ashamed by it. If the girls heard him, they made no show of noticing. The veiled girl took the picture and set it aside.
"And what is your name?" Justin asked.
"My name is Duma, but it will be difficult for you to remember us all," she said. "But we have another name. Saraswati is the name given to the feminine counterpart of Brahma. Here, we are all Saraswati. Whatever you wish, Saraswati will provide it."
"Is that what you call Varja, too?"
"The goddess Varja is only Varja," she corrected quickly. "The spirit of Saraswati is within her, but Varja cannot be interchanged with any ordinary woman."
"But no one can be interchanged..." Justin began, but Duma's stiffening posture made him drop the subject. He didn't understand why the tall girl's approval was so important to him, but it was Duma he sought to please more than the mysterious abbess who owned the palace. "I'd like to call you Duma," he said lamely.
"As you wish."
"Why are you the only one wearing a veil?"
She hesitated for a long moment, dropping her head. "Because I am too ugly to be presented to your sight," she said softly. Then she rose. The movement was so quick that she seemed to float off the ground. She ran to the garden.
"Don't go," Justin called, going after her. She stopped at his command. "I'm sorry if I offended you," Justin blurted. "My teacher has told me that, to the eyes of seeing men, even the grossest disfigurements are invisible. Brahma knows only what is inside a person's soul."
Duma lowered her head. Maybe women were different, he thought. Sid's wife Arlene seemed to be a lot more concerned with how she looked on the outside than how much she understood about life. Maybe to a woman, an ugly face was the end of the world.
"Please come back," he said. He felt his face reddening. "I'm—I'm not comfortable in there alone."
"But you are not alone," she said, astonished. "The women will be with you to pleasure you and prepare you for Varja. I am not permitted to participate in those rituals."
"Then why are you here?"
Duma hesitated, seeming not to know what to say for a moment. Finally she said, "I was told that you possessed the curious mind of the Westerner. Since I, too, am a foreigner, I was selected to act as your guide. It is a great honor, considering the unpleasantness of my appearance."
&nbs
p; "But why are you in this place at all?" Justin persisted. The folds of her white veil trembled in the breeze. "The goddess Varja rules over time," she explained. "Next to the creative force of Brahma himself, there is nothing more powerful than time. The goddess knows our destinies, because she understands time."
"You mean she can foretell the future?"
"Yes. There is one in time to come who will possess me. One whose destiny will be entwined with mine. He will desire me, despite my ugliness. It is for him that I was brought here."
"Where'd you come from?" Justin asked.
She shook her head. "I have already spoken too much."
She put her hand gently on his shoulder. "Come. You must begin what you were sent to accomplish."
She led him back to the harem. At the doorway, she knelt. "I will remain here, if you wish."
Justin nodded and walked desultorily inside.
The girl named Saraha, who had given him the drawing, came forward and knelt before him. In the background, the droning instrument played on, while a third girl, also very young, rose and glided in a sensuous, swaying motion to the middle of the floor. She was dressed in a brassiere of chained silver, which left her nipples exposed, and a loose silk skirt that hung low on her hips. Flowers were in her hair, and she wore a wide silver collar. She began to sway, finding rhythms in the tuneless music that was so alien to Justin.
Justin glanced at the doorway. Duma sat, as she had promised, the veil and the light from the garden behind her completely obscuring her features. She was a shadow of reality in this bizarre place where Justin felt more frightened than he had been even on the night his father was killed.
The dancer whirled, her perfumed skirts rising higher until Justin could see her thighs and, beyond, the mound of flesh downed with short pubic hair. He gulped, ashamed of looking, but unable to take his eyes away from the undulating female body in front of him. He was so transfixed that he didn't notice when two more women came to sit on either side of him, until they began to unfasten his garment. Involuntarily, he reached up to swat at the intruding hands. The women drew back with curious glances at each other. To Justin's astonishment, he saw that they were completely naked.
One was small, with breasts still budding and tender; the other was fully developed. The place between her legs was dark with long silky hair dappled with moisture. Gently, she took Justin's hand, questioning him first with her eyes for permission. Frantic, Justin looked for Duma. When she caught sight of him glancing nervously at her above the heads of the other girls, she nodded slowly.
The mature girl slid his finger along the cleft of her sex. When she maneuvered herself to let it penetrate her, Justin felt an aching in his groin that he thought would make his heart stop. He had experienced erections before—once when he had seen a pair of rutting mountain goats, he had nearly exploded with his own excitement—but he had never permitted himself to spend his seed. Tagore had told him that to fondle one's genitals was contrary to the discipline of yoga. Sexual pleasure was something that a man could enjoy only with a woman, and he was taught to curb his instincts.
Until now. Apparently it was all right for him to have an erection in this place. The deeper he probed into the dark, wet crevice, the more out of control he felt. His penis seemed to take on a life of its own, growing huge beneath his wraps, embarrassing him wildly. What if the women should see it? What if it just exploded, right here on the cushions?
The other girl leaned forward, almost across him, and rubbed her nipples across his lips. They were swollen with her first flush of womanhood and felt to Justin like wisps of air. His lips parted. Experimentally, he touched one of the nipples with the tip of his tongue. A thrill like a faint electric shock coursed through him. He opened his mouth wider and took the soft, soft disc into it until he could suck it. From deep in her chest, the girl moaned.
His breath came fast and hot. He could feel perspiration beading on his forehead and upper lip. A woman's body was a powerful thing.
He permitted the women to remove his robe. They were all over him, fluttering, caressing his chest, his neck, his buttocks, teasing him softly with their fingernails and teeth, using their tongues to stimulate him in areas where he had never thought to seek pleasure. The musician slowed her rhythm to a persistent, steady beat; the dancer followed suit. Undulating so that her belly heaved with each thrust of her hips, she spun slowly, unclasping her skirt as she turned. When she faced him again, moving as sinuously as a snake, she wore only the silver halter and a girdle of silver chains high on her hips. She bent backward, nearly touching her head to the floor, while her hips continued to push. The exposed vulva was glistening with wetness, and gave off a faint odor that affected Justin like a drug.
Saraha, at his feet, turned to face him. With her small hands, she spread his thighs apart.
What's she going to do? Justin thought, panicking. Not with her mouth!
She took him easily, her practiced tongue flicking, then holding lightly as he slid into her up to the hilt. She squeezed him with muscles at the back of her throat. The pleasure was so exquisite that it was a hair's breadth away from pain. His eyes were heavy; he wanted to sink into the cushions of silk and flesh around him and cry out with his ecstasy.
But instead, his gaze wandered toward the shadowy figure in the doorway. Duma sat, unmoving, veiled, and tense as a statue. He could not see her eyes, but he knew she was watching him. And for a reason he did not comprehend, he felt a great sadness coming from her. Duma was the only one of all the women around him who was not a complete stranger; and yet his pleasure excluded her. It was not that the women did not please him; there was something else, something about the lonely figure in the doorway that drained his pleasure as soon as he saw her. Because, for all the skills the women possessed, something was missing, an essential he could not name, and the sight of her reminded him of it. He felt lonely.
"I'm sorry," he said, getting clumsily to his feet. The women whispered, shocked, among themselves. He strode toward the garden.
Duma leaped up and hurried toward him. "What is wrong?" she asked anxiously.
"It's nothing," Justin said, brushing past her. It was difficult for him to walk. His belly ached. His senses, still filled with the tastes and scents and sensations of the harem, reeled. He sat down on a stone bench, wrapping his robe around him. He buried his face in his hands.
"They—they did not please you?" It was Duma, standing a few feet away. Her hands were clasped in front of her.
Justin looked up, but unable to speak, he covered his face again.
"It was my presence," she whispered. "My spirit destroyed the love force."
"No," Justin said with an effort. "It wasn't you. It was me. Something was missing."
"Perhaps if they were to try again ..."
"No!" He hadn't meant to shout. But the girl bowed to him and left. He was relieved. He didn't understand his own feelings, let alone hers.
Inside the harem, the women were chattering in a fury. He had doubtless offended them all, Justin thought. He would be considered not only a coward but a boor as well. Tagore would not be pleased. At the moment before completion, he had failed. But why? Perhaps he was not Patanjali after all. Perhaps he was not even worthy to become a man. The monks had made a terrible mistake, selecting as their leader a boy who was afraid of women.
He stayed in the garden, alone, until long after dark. The sound of soft, feminine voices stilled. When he was sure the harem was empty, he went inside.
Duma was waiting for him.
"I have prepared a sleeping pallet for you," she said.
"You shouldn't have stayed awake on my account."
"It is my duty," she said softly. She bowed again to him, then rose.
"Wait," he called. She turned around. For a moment, he longed to tear the shapeless veil from her face, see whatever scars or deformities it hid, shame her with her own ugliness. He wanted to blame her for his failure. It would take some of the sting away. But he knew t
hat she had done nothing, that the fault was his alone.
"I'll leave tomorrow," he said at last.
"But the goddess Varja will not receive you for many days to come," she explained, her voice strained.
He could not offend the goddess with so grave an insult. There was nothing to do but bear the derision of the women for however long it took the abbess to meet him. Tagore would still be displeased with his performance, but at least he could not accuse Justin of endangering Rashimpur by his rude behavior.
He nodded to her. "All right."
She took a tentative step nearer. "Would you like me to send someone to share your pallet for the night?" she asked hopefully.
Justin laughed bitterly. "No. No, thank you. I prefer to sleep alone."
He stayed awake, his thoughts a jumble of fear and self-reproach, until the first gray streaks of light appeared in the sky.
He didn't want to sleep. He didn't want to be in this place, this playpen full of girls. He had no desire to meet the terrible Varja, whom the legends said could eat a man whole and spit out his skeleton. He wanted to talk with Tagore, not with the deformed young girl who talked from behind a veil.
But mostly, he wanted to see Duma's face.
He got up slowly and walked to the inner entrance to the harem. He made no sound, although his heart was pumping furiously. What if Varja caught him? He had seen no men, but Tagore had said that the goddess ruled over both sexes. Were the men invisible? Anything was possible in this place. Had she eaten them whole? Would Justin's own skeleton be spat out in some desolate place with the others?
To his right was a room. It was little more than a tiny enclave, with no door. Inside, a plump young woman slept.
Beyond it was another room. He recognized the occupant as Saraha.
The sleeping rooms. She's in one of these. He moved swiftly, checking each room. When he reached the end of the hallway without finding Duma, he reproached himself angrily for his childish curiosity.
What difference does it make what she looks like? he asked himself. There's nothing special about her anyway, except that she goes around all covered up while the others live as naked as jaybirds.
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