The Temple Dancer

by John Speed

  Anala now came to Lucinda. She could not take her eyes from his, which glistened in the torchlight, radiant against his dark skin. He seemed hesitant but excited as he placed his arms around her waist. "Sister," he sighed, nestling his head against her breasts. His thinning, perfumed hair had been pulled back into a queue, and Lucinda found herself looking straight down on to his dark scalp while he clung to her.

  He stood there for a long time, stepping away only when Da Gama cleared his throat. Even then he kept Lucinda's hand sandwiched between his palms. She had always thought of her hands as delicate, but in his tiny ring-covered fingers her hands seemed huge and clumsy.

  "My wife, Silvia, is also a Christian, of course," he said. His eyes fixed on Lucinda. "She is honored that you will be her guest tonight. She waits for you in the guesthouse." His fingers rubbed Lucinda's palm. "I'm sure we men would only bore you with our talk."

  Lucinda lowered her eyes and nodded.

  "There are other women in your party?" He did not let go.

  "Just the bayadere," Da Gama said. Anala blinked as though the word eluded him. "The nautch girl, I mean. The devadasi."

  At the last word, Anala's head flew up. "You have a devadasi with you? No one told me." He seemed upset. Lucinda seized this opportunity to slip her hand away, but still he held on. "I should have been informed."

  "The blame for the secrecy is mine, senhor. She's a gift to the grand vizier.

  "Ahcha. Baksheesh. " He hissed when he said the word. Anala lifted his dark face to Lucinda's. "Bijapur is full of sinners. A city of the damned. Muslims have the blackest souls." He leaned toward Lucinda as if revealing a confidence: "A Muslim will keep a dozen wives and a hundred concubines." But it seemed to Lucinda as if Anala were sizing her up for a place in his own harem. "Well, we must save souls, not condemn them. What better way to save a soul than trade, eh? In trade we find the vehicle for redemption." He leaned so close to Lucinda that his ear nearly touched her breast. "If I had not begun to trade with farangs, sister, my wife and I would still be damned today, instead of glorying in Our Lord's salvation."

  "How nice for you," Lucinda replied. Anala would not let go her hand.

  Soon Anala had tallied everyone: Maya and Slipper, he decided, would be entertained by his wife, while Pathan would join the Christian men for dinner. There was some hope, Anala said, that the three Christians could save his soul. The arrangements settled, Da Gama and Geraldo made sweeping bows as Anala approached them, and managed this way to fend off another embrace. Anala once more pressed his head against Lucinda's breasts. "Sister," he said fondly. "My servant will see to your comfort," he told them all as they left. "We say the rosary in here before supper."

  "Oh good," Da Gama managed to say.

  The silk-turbaned servant led Lucinda across the courtyard and opened the door for her, saying, "Good evening, senhorita," in perfect Portuguese. The room was spacious, dominated by two big canopied feather beds that stood in the center of the room. Lucinda saw her smaller trunk had been placed near the end of one of them. Wooden chairs stood stiffly against the walls, as if no one had ever sat there, and here and there a small table and the odd chest.

  Maya was already there. On the carpet she had spread out a few of her belongings from her floppy cloth bag. Lucinda wondered whether that one bag was all of Maya's luggage.

  Maya nodded toward the beds and lifted her eyebrows. "So this is how farangs sleep," she said softly. "I will be too frightened to sleep so high. How do you not roll off?"

  "You don't roll off. You sink into the feathers like a big pillow. It's very comfortable."

  "Comfortable for farangs. Not for Hindis. I shall sleep on the floor."

  "Our host and hostess are Hindi," Lucinda said. Maya looked up, but when she saw that Lucinda was serious Maya giggled. "I was surprised as well," Lucinda went on. "The man calls himself Fernando, so who would know? And he dresses like a Portuguese. I haven't seen the wife. Anyway, she will be eating with us here."

  Lucinda circled the room as she spoke, but stopped when she noticed something unusual on a table. A sort of shrine, she decided; amidst a scattering of white grains of rice, a single silver lamp; lying next to it a crucifix, the head and hands stained red by kumkum. "What is this?" she said, almost to herself.

  Maya came to her side and looked. "She must love this god very much."

  "Well, no Christian would treat a crucifix this way."

  "No, she is Christian. But not like you are Christian." Maya looked suddenly concerned. "You say she's eating with us? Where will Slipper eat?"

  "With us, of course."

  "That will not be pleasant. I must speak to Deoga."

  "Who is Deoga?"

  Maya looked at her, confused. "Senhor Da Gama. Do you not call him Deoga as well?"

  "No," Lucinda replied, equally confused. "What is Da Gama to do?"

  "Look here; look at this woman's puja. She is Hindi. She will not eat with a hijra."

  "Why don't we ask her first?" Lucinda suggested.

  Maya looked at her as if suddenly seeing her heart. "You speak Hindi so well that I imagined you understood our ways as well. Of course she'd agree.

  "Then where's the problem?"

  "She would say so only to be polite. It would be most unkind to impose so. Like asking her to eat in a latrine."

  Lucinda's face twisted. "But why?"

  "Don't worry. Deoga can fix it. He's very good with these things, once you tell him."

  "How do you know this?"

  "Didn't we sail together in a dhow for three weeks?"

  Lucinda nodded. But a second later she began to wonder-Maya's answer any number of interpretations. So of course she changed the subject. "But don't you eat with Slipper?"

  "I do a great many things that Hindi women do not do, and before long I shall do a great many more. You know why as well as I do. Let us not speak of it again. I will tell Deoga and that will be enough."

  "You seem very certain."

  Maya smiled. "He is a good man. Haven't you seen that?" A moment later she was out the door.

  Da Gama, of course, understood, and did what Maya asked. After a wearying hour standing beside "Brother" Fernando, intoning rosary after rosary in front of a particularly gruesome crucifix, Da Gama persuaded him to invite Slipper to the men's supper. At first their host had been reluctant, but with Da Gama repeatedly imploring, Anala's concern for Slipper's immortal soul overcame his distaste at eating with a hijra. "A Hindi would never agree," he told Da Gama. "It shall be the proof that I am reborn a Christian."

  "Your actions reflect well on Christ," Da Gama assured him.

  Anala's servant found Slipper in a small courtyard by the stables, at evening prayer with the other Muslims. Pathan's guards laughed when they heard Slipper being invited. "What shall I do?" Slipper asked Pathan.

  "You must accept. I'm sure the Christian considers his invitation to be some sort of honor."

  "Will there be forks?" the eunuch asked. "I've wanted to try eating with a fork."

  "Forks, yes," the servant replied. "Also wine."

  "Wine..." Slipper said dreamily. "Tell him I shall come."

  The dining table was lit by a chandelier. The sideboard was crowded: a platter of roasted chickens the size of pigeons, a mutton haunch, a loin of pork, each rubbed with pepper and coarse salt. The steaming meats glistened; juice trickled onto the pewter platters. Beside them stood gravies and sauces fragrant with wine and herbs, crisp round loaves of yeasty bread, and a bowl of butter. If not for the bowl of rice and dal and a plate of mango pickle, they might have been eating in Lisbon.

  The men sat in chairs (Fernando's seat a few inches taller than the others), used forks, ate from porcelain. A pair of waiters, dressed as farangs except for bare feet and turbans, served them with unexpected skill. "How did he get all this stuff?" Geraldo whispered to Da Gama. But Da Gama was too busy eating to answer.

  "Don't I get a glass of wine?" Slipper asked in a piping voice after a few minute
s. "Everyone else has one."

  "Not the burak. Muslims, I assumed..." said Anala, looking miffed. But he recovered, and with a flick of his delicate fingers, directed one of his servants to bring a glass.

  Slipper drank the whole glass before the servant had time to step away, and held it out for more. Soon his round cheeks flushed in a mottled patchwork. He gave up trying to use his cumbersome fork, and like Pathan ate with his fingertips, washing down his food with big gulps of wine. One of the servants took to hovering near him, pitcher in hand.

  Soon Slipper could barely speak for giggling. One of his eyelids began to droop. Fernando kept trying to bring the conversation around to theology, but Slipper brushed each effort aside with a joke, often lewd.

  Finally, to everyone's surprise, Fernando leaped from his chair. "I can turn my other cheek no longer," he shouted. His voice was not much lower than the eunuch's. Even Slipper grew quiet, sensing the fury radiating from Anala's tiny form. "You will make no more sport at my expense, hijra, or at the expense of my beloved Lord Jesus Christ!" Fernando stabbed the air with a fork for emphasis.

  "Your Jesus?" Slipper struggled to his feet. "Yours? I won't be scolded by a Hindi! Particularly not by a counterfeit farang like you! I'm a Muslim, not some Hindi infidel! I knew about Jesus while you were still kissing some idol's plaster ass!" With that the eunuch drained his glass, and with an attempted dignity stumbled from the room. As the waiter shut the door behind him, they heard a great clatter from the hall beyond, but no one moved.

  Fernando whipped a kerchief from his sleeve and patted his dark forehead, then pressed the cloth to his lips as he regained his composure. The gesture was so perfectly European that Geraldo nearly laughed out loud. "Insolent hijra!" Ferando's delicate fingers pressed the kerchief back to his sleeve. "As if he knew anything about my beloved Lord Jesus Christ."

  "But he does, you see," Pathan said softly. "He is a Muslim, though he drinks. You must certainly know that we Muslims hold Jesus in great reverence." But a glance at the others made it clear that none of them knew any such thing.

  "Is this true?" Fernando asked Da Gama.

  "How would I know, senhor? But this fellow is a burak, and a prince as well, and I have never heard him lie."

  Pathan turned to Fernando. "Does not your faith teach forgiveness, sir? Here is a chance for you to forgive. That mule hunni ... that hijra as you call him ... lives a life that might be pitied. Stolen from mother and home, cruelly maimed when he was child. He has no home, no family. All his life he lives with women, cleaning them, dressing them, doing all their bidding. Can we be surprised that he acted so foolishly here? What does he know of the company of men? Rather it is for us men to pity him and forgive."

  Fernando stared at Pathan. Perhaps he hoped to find a flaw in his words, so he might reveal his better knowledge of the love of Christ.

  But he found no flaw. At last Fernando raised his hands to his forehead. "You are right, sir. He was not ready to accept the treasure I tried to offer him. His is the greater loss. I will forgive." Fernando sat again, and slowly the dinner went on.

  While Maya went out to find Da Gama, Lucinda changed into her dressing gown. Helene had thoughtfully folded it at the top of her trunk. It had been hard to take off her dress and unlace her corset by herself, and Lucinda now very much regretted sending Helene away.

  But thinking of the incident in Goa brought the memory of Pathan's eyes, lustrous and troubling; a memory she quickly set aside.

  After Maya returned, servants came in with lit candles, and unrolled a linen sheet over one of the colorful rugs near the wall. Not long after, Silvia entered, a short round woman wearing a Portuguese dress. Her black hair, shot with gray, she wore in long braid wrapped into a bun. She had a wedding ring, but around her neck she also wore a Hindi's marriage necklace.

  She saw Lucinda first and smiled, friendly but nervous. But before she greeted her visitors, Silvia made a slow circuit of the room, pausing for a moment near the puja table. Lucinda watched as Silvia's fingers darted from her lips, to the silver crucifix, then to her heart. After that she namskared to each of her guests, and then, with an awkward flouncing of her skirts, sat beside them.

  "It is an honor and blessing to welcome my sister Lucinda to this house," Silvia said in halting Portuguese.

  "It is a blessing and honor to be here, my sister in Christ," Lucinda answered. Then she said in Hindi, "But we must be thoughtful of our companion." She nodded to Maya.

  Silvia's expression changed to one of surprise and relief. "My husband told me you spoke Hindi, but I thought that he was joking." The idea of Brother Fernando joking with his wife had never crossed Lucinda's mind. Silvia leaned toward Maya. "A Christian woman who speaks like a civilized person. How remarkable."

  "She is remarkable in many ways," Maya answered. Lucinda felt her cheeks burn as the women looked at her.

  But Silvia seemed to have a question that would not wait. She turned to Maya, her eyes round and wide. "Are you truly a devadasi?"

  Maya shrugged. "Whatever I was once is in the past."

  "You will always be a devadasi! It is a blessing to have you in our house." Silvia's round face glowed in admiration, but Maya humbly turned aside. Lucinda tried to hide her puzzlement. So Maya was a temple dancer? What of it? But she said nothing.

  Soon servants brought in dinner. Before Silvia and Maya they set china plates: rice, vegetables, dal, and dahi. Then the women waited politely while Lucinda was served.

  Someone had made an effort to cook Portuguese food in her honor. Her plate held cabbage boiled to a thick paste, and in a pool of congealing fat, an unidentifiable sphere of meat, fire-blackened until it looked like an enormous bolus.

  "I knew you would not want your food half raw, the way men eat it," Silvia said.

  "You are very kind."

  All of them stared in silence at the dreadful plate. "Would you like a fork, sister?" Silvia asked politely.

  "My digestion is unsettled," Lucinda answered. She glanced at the servant, who whisked the plate away, holding it at arm's length as she carried it from the room.

  The other two women looked relieved. "Perhaps some rice and dahi? Very soothing, I think." Silvia nodded and one of the servants scurried to fetch a plate. The white grains floating in the white curds actually looked rather appetizing, Lucinda thought. She did her best to scoop up the mixture with her fingers, Hindi fashion, since Silvia had not given her a spoon.

  What a strange collection they were: She and Maya so similar in age and appearance, so different in background. She and Silvia, like a pair of mismatched bookends, dressed in Portuguese clothing but talking in Hindi. It wasn't that Silvia looked uncomfortable in her clothes so much as she looked lost. She wore the Portuguese dress as one might wear a costume to a fancy ball.

  They talked little until the plates were cleared. When they did at last begin to chat, Silvia wanted mostly to speak with Maya. Even though Maya did her best to include Lucinda, somehow the subject always steered to temples and idols, and gurus and shastris. Lucinda could do little but listen.

  "But Maya cannot have always been your name," Silvia insisted.

  Maya shook her head. "It was given to me by that hijra."

  The two women shared a scowl. "What was it before?"

  Maya set her face, as one preparing to feel the doctor's knife. "Prabha."

  Silvia sighed and closed her eyes, looking as if someone had placed a sweetmeat on her tongue. "Do you know this word?" she asked Lucinda. "It means light; the light that surrounds the head of the Lord. It is one of the names of the Goddess."

  "Which goddess?" Lucinda asked.

  Silvia looked confused. "There is but one."

  Maya placed her hand on Lucinda's. Lucinda tried to hide her surprise. So many people had touched her since she left Goa. "That one goddess has so many forms. Surely you have seen the goddess Lakshmi?" Lucinda nodded; the goddess of wealth-even some of the Portuguese shopkeepers kept her idol in a tiny shrine. "Prabh
a is one of her names."

  "My name was Uma. That name too means light-the light of serenity." Silvia smiled, remembering. Then she sighed and turned to Lucinda. "I suppose your name means something, too?"

  "Yes," Lucinda answered slowly. "Lucinda too means light."

  Later, there had been an awkward moment when Slipper burst into the women's room. He staggered and lifted his pudgy hands to the women, nearly toppling over, as if this were some difficult balancing act. No one knew what to say, least of all Slipper. "I'll go to sleep now," he slurred at last, and with that stumbled out of the room. Soon they heard him snoring outside the door. Though his speaking voice was high as a woman's, his snores were deep and rasping as an old man's.

  "And he pretends to be a Muslim," Silvia humphed. "They're just the same. All of them, just the same."

  As the evening went on, Lucinda noticed that Silvia's conversation recalled the way her father discussed money-he would talk for hours, discussing everything and anything else before finding the courage to touch the subject. But from her circling talk, it seemed to Lucinda that Silvia too had some topic she wished to bring up but was too embarrassed to say.

  The candles had already begun to flare and gutter before Silvia at last revealed her target. "Why have you done it?" she asked Maya in a whisper. "Why have you become a nautch girl?"

  "What does it matter now, auntie? What's done ...

  "Don't humor me. I'm too old for it. Tell me."

  A darkness such as Lucinda had never seen fell across Maya's face. The nightbirds chattered outside, a dog barked, in the stable courtyard the elephant yawned, and Slipper's snoring sawed outside the door. A half-dozen times Maya took breath and seemed about to speak. "What was left for me?" she said at last.