The Temple Dancer

by John Speed

  This set him flapping. "You ... you ... woman!" he howled.

  His blow exploded in her head. There were no stars this time, just a thudding pain. The side of her face felt dense; cold like a block of iron. Her back teeth ached. Then he struck her again, this time with his left hand, and she fell over. Like a pig on tiptoe, Slipper danced beside her. "Tell me, tell me now or get another!" He kicked her side, but the curved toe of his slipper slid across her waist and so did not hurt too much. He danced some more. "Tell me!" Now he lifted his foot over her head, ready to bring it down on her ear.

  Then with a scream, Slipper fell backward and rolled like an air-filled bladder over the marble tiles of the courtyard. And near where he had stood, Maya saw Geraldo, his dark eyes flaming. Geraldo had thrown him, Maya realized.

  He held out his hand and helped Maya to her feet. Then he strode to the wailing Slipper and kicked him so hard his fat belly lifted from the ground and fell back with a thud. "Get up," he ordered.

  Slipper struggled to his hands and knees and crawled backward, his bottom wiggling and his forehead scraping the tiles. His turban had once again come undone. "Please, please, sir, oh please, dear uncle, please!" Geraldo placed his foot where the hijra could see it. "No!" the eunuch cried. "You must not! She's a thief! She has stolen ..."

  "What has she stolen?" Geraldo asked quietly.

  Slipper's fat cheeks, red and blotchy, quivered. Then his mouth began to flap but no sound emerged. And then Slipper began to cry. His face curled up, his eyes creased, and his lips quivered. But then he filled his big lungs and let out a wail that filled the courtyard like a horn.

  "What has she stolen? Speak!"

  But Slipper could not control his wailing. Geraldo spat and hauled him to his feet. "This is how you treat a woman? You are an abomination!" One of Slipper's curl-toed slippers flipped from his feet as Geraldo dragged him off. The eunuch reached back helplessly but Geraldo, furious, dragged him even harder. Both of them were sweating, both grunting with the effort. Every time Slipper wailed, Geraldo gave him another furious heave, and so they tumbled toward the green gate of the palace.

  "Out! Out!" Geraldo placed his foot against the eunuch's enormous buttocks and shoved him through the gate. Slipper tumbled to the drive in a sobbing heap. The young farang, teeth bared and eyes blazing, motioned to a dazed old gatekeeper to swing the gates shut. Slipper lay in the dust and screamed like a goat when the knife strikes its neck.

  The gatekeeper moved too slowly to suit Geraldo. The farang pushed him aside, slammed the gates shut and latched them himself. The poor old gatekeeper looked more dazed than ever.

  Slipper's pathetic screams attracted attention. Servants came and stood staring at the green gate as if to see through it. Some children scurried up a ladder of lashed bamboo and looked over the wall. To Slipper's wailing the children added their thoughtless laughter, and then their mothers shouted and scolded, and from the gardens the peacocks began to trumpet, and at that same moment temple gongs clashed and clanged. Geraldo, who stood at the latch, lifted his hands to his ears and began to laugh.

  Geraldo went to Maya. She still knelt on the tiles, catching her breath. She realized with embarrassment that she was still wearing only her thin nightdress and the coverlet. Her head hammered with each pulse beat and her belly felt cold and dark. Geraldo stooped beside her, looking very regal in his borrowed jama robes. When he touched her face, his fingertips were soft, more gentle than Maya expected. The way he peered at the side of her face made Maya feel uncomfortable, as though she were a dead thing. She tried to catch his eyes, but he saw only her bruises.

  "It could be worse. You'll be fine. He didn't hurt you badly."

  Her eyes blazed. "Your goods are still intact, you mean. How very fortunate for you."

  Geraldo inhaled harshly, and his face grew pale, and he got to his feet so furiously Maya thought that he too might strike her. "You say that? You? After I defended you?" Suddenly he bent down and came up with the eunuch's curl-toed slipper. "This is how you treat me?" He shook the slipper a few inches from her face. Then he ran toward the gate and hurled it over the wall, as if he hoped to cast it in the lake. "Maybe the eunuch was right," he muttered, facing her again. There was sorrow in his face as well as anger. Then Geraldo spun on his heel and stalked off.

  Yes, thought Maya, glaring at him, there is no good in me. Now you know the truth.

  But by the time Geraldo's shadow passed the threshold of the guestroom door, Maya regretted what she'd said.

  The temple bells stopped clanging. From the other side of the courtyard, Maya heard a thump, thump, thump. She looked up to see Lady Chitra, the mistress of the palace, approaching pulled forward by the eager little girl. She wore a long shawl that spread behind her like a golden cape. With every other step, her walking staff banged the white marble tiles of the courtyard. Despite her staff, she moved as smoothly as a ship on calm waters.

  As she came, the servants and children stopped shouting. They huddled in groups and edged toward the doors. Outside the gate Slipper kept up his screaming.

  "Halt," came Lady Chitra's voice, harsh and dry as a sour raisin. "What is that racket?" She rolled her is when she spoke, giving her words a majestic, antique quality, as though she had learned to speak from an ancient queen. The servants rolled their eyes at one another and tiptoed toward the doors. "Do not think I cannot find you! I am not so blind!" Lady Chitra raised her staff and turned slowly until her sightless eyes faced Maya. As she pointed the staff directly at her, Maya got the impression that Chitra somehow could see, despite her filmed, unfocused eyes. "You! What is this disturbance?" But the little girl, Lakshmi, tugged at Lady Chitra's hand, and the woman stooped while Lakshmi whispered excitedly into her ear. Lady Chitra came up slowly, and placed the tip of her staff on the ground. "You are that devadasi from last night."

  Maya nodded, then remembered herself and said aloud, "Yes, madam."

  "Do not be formal with me, child. We are more sisters than you know. What is all that screaming?" She lifted her staff toward the gate without turning her head from Maya.

  It is one of our party, a hijra. He just returned from the doctor's house. The farang Geraldo, who you met last night, beat him and threw him out the gates."

  "A hijra. " The word as Lady Chitra said it had a dark malevolence, and her eyelids tensed and her filmed eyes rolled. But Maya thought the woman was trying to conceal a smile. "How did he come to beat a hijra, that fine young farang, eh?"

  "Because the hijra was beating me."

  "Ahcha. And why you?"

  "The hijra wanted something that I used to have." Lady Chitra grunted encouragingly. Little Lakshmi's eyes grew big, as they flickered from Maya to her mistress. "Some trinkets of my mother's."

  With a sigh, Lady Chitra closed her blind eyes and lifted her face so the warm sun fell upon it. "Worse than snakes are hijras," she hissed. She nodded toward the gate, and the little girl began to guide her there. "Are you not coming?" Lady Chitra called. Maya realized it was a command, not a question. She rose and followed.

  "Open," Lady Chitra intoned when she reached the gate. Outside, the wailing had become a blubbering sob, like the crying of an exhausted child. The old gatekeeper unlatched the wide gate and pushed it open. Instantly the wails began again. The girl pulled Lady Chitra forward.

  "Begone from here, hijra! Begone!"

  Maya expected Slipper to scream, or to fall at Lady Chitra's feet and beg mercy-in fact almost anything except what came next. The eunuch clapped his fat hands over his gaping mouth and stared at the woman with wide eyes. His right foot still was bare, though his curl-toed slipper lay on the ground nearby.

  "Begone!" she cried once more.

  Slipper peered at her, blinking, as if realizing at last that Chitra was blind. This seemed to suggest a course of action to him. He held his mouth still more tightly, and began to tiptoe backward, away from the gate. By chance his foot bumped against the empty slipper, which had landed on the road. He sq
ueezed his fat foot into it, though his eyes never left Lady Chitra.

  He crept backward like a fugitive, finally reaching the causeway. Halfway across, he glared at Maya, and his face burned. He shook his fist at her, and then turned and bustled to the other shore, his fat buttocks jiggling in his jamas.

  The girl tiptoed to whisper into Lady Chitra's ear. The woman rose with a satisfied smile. She turned and said, as if to no one, "Let the gate stay open, but call me if the hijra dares return." The gatekeeper bowed low as she passed, as though she could see. Then the little girl led her to where Maya was standing, and she said, "Sister devadasi, the dear goddess has brought you to me. Come and join me in my rooms, and tell me all."

  "I am not dressed," Maya answered.

  "I can wait," came Lady Chitra's reply.

  So began Maya's friendship with Lady Chitra.

  It was only while Maya was changing into a borrowed sari that she realized that once more, her life had changed. Only a few days ago she had been dancing for the Goddess every morning and every night, in the company of a dozen sisters. Wrenched from that life, she had gotten used to the endless lassitude and irritations of traveling as a slave with a hijra for a companion. It usually took a while for Maya to set her feelings in order. Days, sometimes months. This time it dawned on Maya suddenly that with Deoga away, and with Slipper banished, she was on the brink of a new freedom. She buried that thought, planning to consider it later, and finished dressing.

  In the part of the palace farthest from the main courtyard, Lady Chitra's rooms fronted an astonishing garden, filled with fountains and towering trees, and flowers-roses, jasmine, tuberoses. The garden looked across the lake, bordered only with a low wall more suited to sitting than protection. The breeze that spilled into Lady Chitra's rooms swirled with fragrance. Peacocks walked there, and parrots darted from tree to tree.

  Lady Chitra's rooms were large, even grand. In the corners of each of her rooms were heaps of tuberoses that sweetened the air with perfume. In the lampstands and hanging lamps, Persian rose blossoms of deep violet had been placed where wicks should be. Chitra had no use for flames, but she loved the peppery scent of musk roses.

  In a cage which hung from the ceiling a white parrot eyed Maya suspiciously.

  Near the blind mistress of the palace sat her eyes: the quick-faced little girl Lakshmi. Seven years old, maybe eight, no one cared, for she was only an orphan who had worked in the palace kitchens until Lady Chitra discovered her talent for seeing and describing. Lady Chitra adored the child, and had secretly begun to teach her natyam, holy dance.

  The women sat on a carpet spread as for a meal with white muslin sheets. Servants brought cups of chilled melon juice and plates of plain chapatis on a tray, and lit cones of incense. As they set things down, some of them tried to catch Maya's glance. They nodded to Lady Chitra and lifted their eyebrows and rolled their eyes and shook their heads. Maya ignored their bad manners.

  Lady Chitra said nothing until the servants left. She sat with a straight back, not leaning on a bolster, or reclining like the little girl. "The frog awaiting the sunset before he calls out his love," she said softly, as though forgetting Maya were there. "The cock watching the sky for the light of dawn. The hawk who holds his cry until the ferret rests." She turned her rolling, sightless eyes to Maya. "Now speak, and hold back nothing."

  So Maya began to relate her story: the death of her guru in a floodhow she thought that Gungama had been killed. Being sold to the farangs. The journey over oceans and mountains. Finally the bandit attack. Chitra stopped her often, demanding that she leave out no detail, however small. Chitra was not satisfied until Maya had even included in her story her last night's bath, and her dream of her guru, and finally her encounter with Slipper in the courtyard. Maya did not tell the part about the headdress.

  "Of course you have considered suicide, and murder, too," Chitra pronounced when she had finished. Maya acknowledged this with silence. "Those are vanities, child. They cause immeasurable suffering in this life and all future lives. Who knows, perhaps you have been given this harsh portion because of misdeeds in some past life."

  "What if I run away?" The words escaped from Maya's lips before she had a chance to stop them.

  "Ah, sister," Chitra answered. "The farang is gone, the hijra is gone, and the gate of this palace is easily opened. But I tell you, you would not escape. They would follow you and bring you back. You are too valuable."

  "Is there no way out? If I had known that Gungama was still alive. . Tears splashed from her cheeks.

  Then with her sightless eyes drifting, Chitra lifted her hand. But instead of words of comfort, she began to tell of her own harsh life. Lady Chitra had been head concubine to the sultan of Bijapur, Maya learned. A concubine to the sultan, and before that a nautch girl, and before that a devadasi. But this information came out slowly, in a whorl of words majestically intoned.

  It took a while for Maya to realize that Lady Chitra was crazy.

  Lady Chitra's rambling story sounded all too plausible to Maya, given the similarity of their histories. She came from the southern reaches of Hindustan, and her parents had given her to Kanyakumari, the Goddess as bride and virgin, whose temple overlooked the southern seas. There Chitra had studied natyam, temple dance. Eventually she too had come to be a vessel.

  Slowly Lady Chitra came to realize that it was this part of her training that most engaged the shastri. Dance, which meant everything to Chitra, was only a vehicle for the shastri to train his vessels for repeated congress. Chitra rebuffed him. When she was fifteen the shastri sold her to some Golcondans, who in turn sold her to the eunuchs.

  Or as Chitra called them, cursing them, the Brotherhood. It was as though she spoke of demons.

  The Brothers, Chitra said, had mocked her and tortured her, forced her to do all kinds of unspeakable acts that to Maya seemed impossible, particularly for eunuchs.

  So Chitra patiently explained that there were many kinds of eunuchs: shaved eunuchs who had cut off both testicles and lingam, usually at a young age. These, Chitra told her, were barely human.

  Most eunuchs had merely had their testicles sliced off as they approached puberty, and still had a lingam like a shriveled sausage; these were the more docile. These eunuchs laughed often, and were easy to frighten.

  But then, Chitra said, her face strained, there were crushed eunuchs.

  It was Chitra's portion to have been sold for a concubine at the time a war was ending. The eunuchs who had bought her made a specialty of crushing.

  The eunuchs had bid for a company of captured soldiers. One by one, the Brothers took the prisoners to a tent and crushed their testicles with a mallet and a block. Their screams, she said, were unendurable.

  Crushed eunuchs, Chitra explained, were most often used as harem guards, not as servants. Still, the women of the harem greatly desired to acquire crushed eunuchs as slaves, for they were still like men in many ways. They kept their low voices, and much of their strength, and most important, they could still have congress. They were better than men, for they did not squirt like thoughtless men, who shrivel up and sleep and leave their women frustrated. Instead, if properly aroused, crushed eunuchs stayed stiff a long, long time. This provided for vigorous congress.

  Chitra herself could confirm this. She said this bitterly. She had not been a lonely, well-heeled harem wife, protected by a rich husband. Chitra was the prisoner of those new-made hijras, those bitter souls who had recently been men. At night, a gang of them would snatch Chitra into a tent. There she'd be passed from hijra to hijra, another picking up as soon as the first began to droop.

  Though the crushed hijra could get their lingams stiff, there was of course no finishing them off. They thrust and thrust and thrust without a hint of pleasure until they found themselves exhausted. Then they would vent their fury on her with cries and blows, and when they tired even of that, would pass her on to another of their kind. Dozens of them would spend the frustrated night ramming awa
y, then striking her, sometimes until she bled, all the while cursing her and cursing their fates. In the morning she would be forgotten, depleted, marked, and sore. The crushed eunuchs, smelling of wine and vomit and sweat, would still be weeping.

  Lady Chitra hated the Brotherhood. Eunuchs, she told Maya, control the world in secret, using blackmail and money and cruel plots. She blamed them for all sorts of things: famines, wars, even droughts and floods.

  They had untold wealth. Chitra told Maya of visits to torchlit caves filled with jewels and gold. There the eunuchs dressed her as a queen and did unspeakable things with her and with each other. They forced her, and forced her to watch, and called it training. "I could see then," she said softly. "Sometimes I wish I'd gone blind earlier."

  "Do you know the types of congress of the mouth, sister?" Chitra said in her dry, throaty voice, as if suddenly changing the subject.

  Maya looked up in surprise. "Vatsyayana says that there are eight ways, sister, to bring a man to paroxysm with the mouth: Nominal Congress, Biting the Sides, Pressing the Outside, Pressing the Inside, Kissing, Rubbing, Sucking the Mango, and Swallowing," Maya recited methodically. "Scratching and Striking, and Biting with the Teeth may also be done with this type of congress." She had of course memorized this and dozens of other passages of the Kama Sutra.

  "You are well informed, sister. And how many of these forms have you attempted?"

  Maya blanched. "None of them, sister. They are unclean! Only hijra and unchaste women . . ." Maya let the thought drift, slowly realizing Chitra's point. And it was like a cut made with a razor ... slowly darkening Maya's thoughts like a spreading bloodstain.

  "The Brotherhood had a special purpose for me, sister. The sultan of Bijapur required an heir. He had ... varied tastes, none of them likely to produce offspring. But the Brotherhood had a plan, and I was part of it." Lakshmi had taken Chitra's golden shawl, and moved silently to the shadows where she folded it with care. Other little girls might have run and played or been bored, but Lakshmi's big bright eyes stared ardently at her mistress, stroking the folded cape as one pets a cat. Chitra's lacquered staff lay at her feet, glistening in the sunlight.