The Temple Dancer

by John Speed

  What else was she going to do? "Of course," she answered. Pathan knelt and kissed the threshold before he entered, followed by one of the old men. He sat near the larger tomb for a long while, the old man standing silently beside him. Lucinda wondered if there were some prayer that she was supposed to be saying.

  At last Pathan crawled to the foot of the tomb. Kneeling, he buried his head beneath the velvet cloth. When he emerged, Lucinda saw tears in his eyes.

  The old attendant sighed as he bent over the tombcloth and picked out a few of the scattered flowers. He embraced Pathan and pressed the petals into his hand. As reverently as one might eat the Host, Pathan ate them one by one. Meanwhile, the attendant took a long peacock-feather fan, and patted the tomb of the saint as if dusting it.

  Then he came out of the dargah, and motioned for Lucinda to come near. She glanced behind him to Pathan and saw him nod, and hesitantly stepped to the doorway, her bare feet on the cool flagstone walk, a gentle breeze kissing her face.

  Then the old attendant began to pat her head with the fan. The air was dense with rose oil; each bat of the fan wafted a cloud of scent into the air around her, sweet and musky, like an avalanche of roses. Lucinda was surprised by her reaction. With each touch, she felt lighter, as if she was being dusted clean, as if sadness was being brushed from her shoulders. The old man lowered his head to her. A salaam aleichem, he said.

  Pathan had taught her this Muslim greeting. Aleichem salaam, she replied.

  They put on their shoes and walked in silence toward the palace. "Is that how you worship, Captain?"

  "No, madam." Pathan seemed to consider his answer carefully. "To worship means to feel a distance. But God is not distant. He is closer to you than this." With that Pathan reached out and pressed his fingertips against Lucinda's jugular. She felt her heartbeat pulse beneath his touch. "So close is God to you, madam."

  He lowered his eyes then, as if he too sensed the warmth that rose in her face, and slowly dropped his hand. "What we do in there is prayer, not worship. At the feet of a saint, one may place one's heartfelt wish. Who knows what will happen? Maybe that wish will come true." His dark eyes bored into hers.

  "And what was your wish, Captain?"

  But Pathan would not answer.

  Maya once more ate with Lady Chitra, so that same night, Geraldo again joined Lucinda and Pathan for supper. They spoke of Slipper, of Da Gama, and many times, of Maya. Geraldo's eyes darted often from Lucinda to Pathan and back, as though he was reading a troubling story in their faces. Lucinda shifted uncomfortably.

  "Well, good night," Geraldo said at last, looking pointedly at Lucinda. She waved her hand to him in reply-a gesture that caught Pathan off guard, something Hindi women never did.

  "Won't you be going to your room, Lucy?" Geraldo once more glanced from Lucy to Pathan. But Lucinda did not answer, and Geraldo's ironic smile had slowly disappeared. "Have a care, dear cousin," he muttered, walking off.

  Lucinda had brought Pathan's shawl, and now she pulled it over her shoulders, though the evening air was still balmy. She stared at Pathan as if willing him to speak. What he finally said surprised her. "He lusts for that nautch girl." He said this as if it were obvious.

  "Captain!"

  "He lusts for you also."

  "Surely not!" Lucinda could no longer stay seated. She rose and paced along the railing. The last rose light of sunset hid behind the dark mountains.

  Pathan eyed her gravely, then spoke as if to a child. "Who could blame him, madam?"

  Lucinda raised her face. Her belly trembled as if his voice had touched her there. His eyes seemed deep as night.

  She felt a wildness stirring inside her: something beautiful and dark unfolding, glistening as if with the waters of its birth.

  Later she could not remember who moved first. Her pulse raced and her ears roared. She was in his arms, pressing her lips to his.

  Warmth suffused her belly and became a fire. Pressing herself against him, she felt her dark mysterious wings unfold.

  Kama, the god of desire, shoots a sugarcane bow, but his arrows of spun sugar can pierce the hardest heart.

  They are not plucked out easily, those sweet, fragile arrows, and once they lodge they infect and cause a fever. The brain begins to heat, the sight to shiver, hands grasp out longing to be held. The lips tremble; the eyes burn. Sleep disappears: the nights ache past, and the days ferment with dreaming. So the heart grows sick from Kama's darts.

  Here was the flaw in Maya's plan. She longed to hate Geraldo, or to feel nothing. Instead her heart was squeezed until it wept hot tears. Did she love Geraldo? No. But she wanted him, or more precisely, wanted what he gave her. She drank his love like saltwater, which slaked the dryness only for a moment before her thirst began again.

  How was she to know? He had seemed to her as lifeless as a wellgroomed doll. Empty words fell from his pretty lips, clanging at his feet like hollow tin. His eyes flickered like a hyena seeking something dead to eat. But Geraldo was handsome enough, and slender, and he did not smell bad for a farang. He seemed to her the perfect foil for her plan.

  A farang, a base farang, more unclean than a nobody. Geraldo would be a defilement for her yoni, and no more. A thrust or two, a spurt, a groan, and all Maya's worth as a nautch girl would disappear. For who would plow a nautch girl's furrow once a farang had sullied it? Even the nobodies would shun her if they knew, as they shunned the hijra.

  Maya made up her mind to live a living death of foulness, to become the ready vessel for his farang's pollution. Lady Chitra's words had shown her; Maya would blacken every part of herself with his polluted lingam; every orifice, each inch of her soft skin. She would reek of him, reek of farang, and no man of honor ever would come near.

  She would be free.

  That was her plan, her plan that fell apart so quickly.

  She had not reckoned on those spun-sugar arrows, on blind Kama and his bow of cane.

  Who could have guessed that Geraldo's tin words fell from lips so succulent? Or that his hands could stroke and glide and make her gasp, or that the sight of his dark eyes devouring her nakedness would churn her to a boil?

  The sadhus who had used her for congress had studied tantra for years. Desire makes us slaves, the sadhus said. They had focused all their desiring on the Goddess, so they had become slaves of the divine. Now they could mold shakti to their will: stiffening their lingams on command, spending hours in congress with the devadasis. They had entered Maya slowly, reverently, and in the course of motionless hours embraced the goddess that Maya became for them. Next to them Geraldo seemed as innocent and harmless as a child.

  To her surprise she found that all of Geraldo's wisdom resided in places she had never thought to look: in the tips of his fingers and the palms of his hands, in the black hairs that curled on his chest No sadhu had such nipples, which felt hard as seed pearls when he embraced her, or a tongue that danced across her skin, alive and wet, slipping between her lips, between her legs. His whole body moved and coiled on her, around her.

  He was no saint: he had flesh, and blood, and breath. He was, in fact, an animal. And so, she found, was she.

  In the ripples of his belly, along his hard thighs and firm shoulders, she discovered that Geraldo owned a wisdom not of words but of touch; a poetry of stroking, of fondling, of embraces, of caresses dry and wet. His hands tingled against her, awakening her skin; she sighed at the warmth of them upon her breasts and flanks, the sudden empty coolness as they glided to her shoulders and her thighs.

  Desire makes us slaves, the sadhus had taught her. Desire makes us slaves, she had mouthed in reply.

  But she had never known desire until he entered her, bold as a lion, until she felt the yearning in her hips as her yoni lunged against his thrusts, until the gasping spasms took her and she squeezed her thighs against his sides and bit his lips till she drew blood, until her belly seized and seized and seized again and pleasure washed across her like sheets of monsoon rain. Until she fe
lt him burst inside her, until she heard him groan her name, and thought: I did that to him. I did that. Until she held him as the moment passed for both of them, until she felt his heavy grateful drowsiness, and her own, as his lingam softened in her yoni, until their breathing once again grew calm and she felt his whispered kisses tickling her ear.

  Desire makes us slaves, the sadhus had told her, and suddenly she comprehended.

  She became his slave.

  She had never seen a lingam so soft and shriveled before; for the sadhus always had made theirs hard before she even joined them. Geraldo's seemed like a pale worm, a blind, hairless mouse. She giggled when her rubbing made it pulse with life. She savored the way Geraldo's breath grew ragged as she stroked it, the way his head leaned back, and his eyes fluttered. Clean, unclean: these words had for her no meaning now. She wanted to hear him sigh, and scream, and beg her mercy.

  In no time her lips enveloped him. Geraldo's hands gripped her shoulders, and his thighs tensed. Maya felt his lingam swell against her tongue. Biting the Sides, Sucking the Mango-with each of the eight forms of the congress of the mouth that she had only read about, Maya cataloged with wonder the subtleties of his moans. I did that to him, she thought. I did that.

  Her mouth tingled as she thought it. He tasted warm and bitter.

  She had planned a single act, an hour, no more. They spent all night together.

  After, the filmy curtains billowed and emptied as the night breezes sighed. She heard faraway chanting. Purnima, she thought, the all-night festival of the full moon, and here she was pressed up against a sleeping farang, covered with his sweat and kisses, instead of at a temple dancing for the Goddess.

  The next day she dreamed only of the sunset. She braided flowers in her perfumed hair, and as soon as it was dark she found his door.

  She tried with him the five kisses, the four embraces.

  He showed her arts her books had never taught, from the land of tea, a thousand miles away. His tongue coaxed her yoni until her thighs quaked. She bit a pillow so she would not scream. He wouldn't stop, not even when she begged.

  When he at last looked up, she begged again-this time for more. He smiled, and stroked her hand, and leaned in to kiss her. She could taste the ocean when she sucked his tongue. Then he disappeared once more between her legs.

  After she could breathe again, Maya turned him on his back. He was long and beautiful. The flowers in her hair hanging loose, her smiles broken by her hard breathing, she pressed her breasts against his chest. His dark eyes burned. Together they breathed the dark perfume of night, of flowers and incense and desire. In the candle moonlight their perspiration glistened. She moved her hips creatively, and soon his breaths melted into moans that mingled with her own. She embraced him in the wild moment-the thumping, throbbing, lunging of their hips; his hungry mouth devouring her eager tongue; the eruption of their bodies, like a great cloth ripping in two; and finally the exhausted quiet of their collapse. I did that, she thought. I did that.

  Oddly, in the daytime, when she saw Geraldo on the verandah, or passed him in the courtyard, she did not even glance his way. She had nothing to say to him. The very thought of speaking with him annoyed her. When she saw him in the sunlight, she saw only the pale vacuity of his expression, the self-important vanity of his dress. It had been her plan to tell everyone of her defilement at his hands, but now, now she wondered if he could keep the secret. He had, she now realized, the look of someone who gauged his indiscretions, and might parcel out a secret to suit his own ends.

  In the daylight, when she saw him, she was horrified by what she felt. She despised him, and she despised her own hunger, but she could not stop desire from tugging at her yoni. As she watched the sun descend with aching slowness her eyes drifted despite her will to his closed door and she nearly wept. She longed for Aldo's hands upon her breasts, and his lips upon her neck, she longed to squeeze his swollen lingam while he nibbled that spot on her forearm, just above the elbow, she longed to pull him inside, to press her calves against his shoulders as he thrust deep, longed for the cloudburst, and the drowsy, peaceful melting of their joined bodies. Like it or not, she could not stay away from him. The night would find her knocking softly at his door.

  In the dark at least, her feelings for him were pure. In the dark, it did not matter what he was; only what he did to her, and she to him.

  The next morning, Lakshmi found Maya on the verandah, and took her by the hand to Chitra. Together they left the palace complex, and the three crossed the causeway and walked to a temple at the lake's edge.

  The temple of the goddess Mahalakshmi was small but elegant; endowed by Lady Chitra's generosity, it reflected the same aesthetic as the palace: clean, serene, and quieter than any temple Maya had ever visited. They sat at the griha, the inner temple, taking the darshan of the Goddess. She was exquisite, a small deity made of flesh-white marble, her features painted with a delicate hand. When time came for puja, the brahmins accompanied their whispered chants with tiny finger cymbals instead of the crashing gongs and big bronze bells Maya was used to.

  At the temple, Chitra lost her palace melancholy. She teased the brahmins like a girl. Some of her jokes were so bawdy that Maya found herself giggling uncontrollably.

  Over lunch beneath a shady tree in the outer courtyard, Chitra rocked side to side as she gossiped.

  "You seem much more cheerful, sister," Maya observed.

  "Oh, how I hate that dreadful palace. So full of tedious memories, hanging about the place like impolite ghosts."

  "Why don't you leave, then?"

  "Hmm," she asked, turning her filmed and sightless eyes toward Maya as if she hadn't heard. "Well, I have no choice, do I? Besides, it's mine." Lakshmi whispered in the woman's ear. "Yes, yes," Chitra nodded to the girl, and then turned to Maya. "I understand the farang woman has feelings for the darvish."

  "Who?"

  "That darvish-Captain Pathan ..."

  "Pathan? You say he is a darvish?"

  Chitra's eyes drifted in their sockets. "Of course, he's a darvish. Couldn't you tell? He's one of the quiet sort, apparently. Thank goodness. We've had spinners visit from time to time. They're bad enough, whirling around all night, but the howlers are worse, of course."

  "Howlers?"

  "Goodness, haven't you heard them? Count yourself lucky-they're all over Bijapur, howling at the top of their lungs."

  "What, singing? Captain Pathan?"

  "Some darvishes sing. Those, perhaps, one can tolerate. The ones I speak of simply howl like dogs. All night long." She demonstrated, and all three took to giggling uncontrollably. "Who knows why they howl?" Chitra said, when she had caught her breath. "In any case, you should tell your farang friend that it's hopeless. He'll only ignore her. It's one of their vows, I think." She looked toward Maya, her blind eyes drifting. "Lakshmi tells me, however, that the farang gentleman is very attractive."

  Maya was glad that Chitra could not see her face, though Lakshmi could. She leaned to whisper in Chitra's ear, but a glare from Maya froze her and she sat down again. "Some may find him so, sister." She tried to make her comment sound offhand, but Chitra's face showed that she had failed.

  "You should be careful, little sister. Farangs are no more to be trusted than hijras."

  "Well, perhaps we are too harsh." Maya replied. "I don't like hijras myself, sister, but really what have eunuchs done to you, or to me, that's so terrible?"

  Chitra grew so agitated that Maya worried someone would overhear. "They robbed me, that's what! Robbed me of my love, and then robbed me of my flesh and blood. Did I not tell you eunuchs stole my child?"

  She had said some such thing, but Maya had assumed she was exaggerating. Now as Chitra's face tightened with anger, she saw that it was a central part of Chitra's story. "Hijras! They tried but they could not conquer me! I loved the man they sent me to betray. I gave my heart to him, the sultan himself, and they could not stop me! I opened myself to him! I gave him a son, his only son!"
Chitra seemed to be speaking to the empty air, no longer conscious of Maya, nor of how her voice echoed from the temple walls. "The hijra destroyed everything, and stole anything they could not destroy. They could not allow the sultan to have a son borne by a Hindi. They took him! Took my baby boy and drove me away. If not for Shahji's protection I should now be dead."

  "I'm glad that farang drove away that hijra! I hate them, hate them all! They are all the same!" Chitra lifted the end of the sari to her face, whether to cover it or sob, Maya could not tell. Lakshmi patted Lady Chitra's shoulder. "I was delivered in that palace. The eunuchs told the sultan I had miscarried, and needed rest, and they had kept me there as in a prison." Chitra grew very quiet. "The day after my son was born, a hijra stole him away, a fat little hijra with no breeding. He had the servants say that the boy had died, but I found out the truth." From Chitra's filmed left eye, tears flowed. "I made enquiries. They made him a eunuch! My poor boy, my poor maimed, innocent boy. I knew he would have bad luck, poor child. He too had the sign."

  "What sign is that?"

  "The evil eye. Surely you've noticed?" Chitra opened her left hand, and displayed her palm to Maya. The dark streak stretched from her index finger to her wrist. "I have it, too. It is a mark of my family. For me bad fortune came when I was older, but his began when he was born!" She squeezed the hand into a tight fist and clutched it to her chest. "Now you've seen it, you will be afraid to speak with me."

  "I don't believe that you are cursed, sister."

  "How else to explain all that has happened?" Maya looked into her face so full of pain and did not answer. "Make me a promise, sister. When you go to Bijapur, look for my son among the eunuchs. Find him. Get word to me somehow." She reached for Maya with her uncursed hand.

  "Of course I promise," Maya answered.

  Slowly, surrounded by frangipani and tuberoses, beneath the shade of the spreading mango tree that towered over the temple steps that led to the lake, the two of them again grew calm. They napped in the temple courtyard through the heat of the day, just as the goddess slept in the griha until the brahmins pulled aside the curtains and woke her. After whispering hymns and garlanding the Goddess with fresh flowers, one of the brahmins came to Lady Chitra. "Sister," the blind woman said to Maya. "It's time for you to dance. That is why I brought you here."