by John Speed
Suddenly he feels a wave of clammy cold. His stomach twists. Taking a deep breath, he clasps his arms across his chest, struggling not to fall. He stumbles toward the temple, eager to find water. He shivers and sweats. Oh Blessed Mary, he thinks, I should never have done this. But there’s no well, no water. Looking back to where the pointing man had stood he now sees no one. Bloody hell, he says to himself, setting his teeth and lurching forward. All he can think about is water. Maybe there’s some inside.
My boots, he thinks with a sinking heart when he reaches the doorway, and sees the row of chappals and shoes. He leans against a wall and tugs them off, grunting mightily. The effort triggers another bout of ague. This time he can barely control the tremors in his hands. As he drops them, his boots clump noisily to the floor. Strange that there would be water at a temple. He’s too exhausted to worry about it. Cold sweat bathes his limbs.
The smooth black tiles feel cool on his bare soles as he weaves forward through the hall, dimly lit by butter lamps. He stumbles toward the brightly lit griha, the inner room that houses the image of the god.
Surrounded by a chanting, swaying multitude, sweating, maybe dying, he stares at the brightly lit idol. He thinks it’s a female god, but of course it’s hard to tell—these Hindi sculptors carve their male idols with curves every bloody which way, so they look like women. But this one is wearing a big round gold nose ring. She’s been carved out of dark-colored rock, and her face is deep green. But O’Neil is bothered by her eyes.
He’s seen this sort of thing before: The carvers paste bright crescents of white shell where the eyes ought to be. In the center of the white they paint a dark black iris. The contrast is startling, fixing the face in a fierce stare that to O’Neil seems almost evil.
Those bright shell eyes now bore into him as a paroxysm of ague consumes him. He falls, first to his knees, then forward on his hands. Blackness clouds his eyes. Holy Mother, he thinks, Holy Mother, this is death.
He manages to crawl to a nearby wall, gasping for breath. His ears begin to close down: the din of bells and drums now seems to come from far away. He can’t wrest his eyes from the unblinking white stare of the goddess. The sweet, dead smell of his wound curls up from underneath his shirt and fills his nostrils. Holy Mary, he thinks, Holy Mary.
From the corner of his eye he notices a bundle of rags on the floor beside him, dirty rags the color of old leaves rotting. Who would leave a pile of rags lying about in a busy temple? Then as he watches, the bundle begins to breathe, to change its form: lengthening and narrowing, until it takes on a shape like a shaggy, dark peapod.
This is what happens when you die, O’Neil thinks. Your eyes go, and your mind goes, and a pile of rags begins to breathe. He wants to get away, but he can no longer move. And he can’t take his eyes off those damned rags. Holy Mary, pray for us sinners.
Suddenly, the peapod of rags splits down its length, like a cocoon opening. The sides fold back. O’Neil wants to shut his eyes, but can’t. And so he sees it: an old withered body lying in the rags, a body with gray flesh and gray hair, thin and contorted with age, covered in grime.
Yet a sweetness fills the air. The gray body itself splits down the middle, just like the rag cocoon did a moment before, like a dry husk. Tilting up from the husk a form emerges: lean, smoothly muscled, the flesh glowing like burnished mahogany; radiant, perfected.
The glowing form floats to O’Neil. “Brother of one mother,” the form says, lifting his graceful glowing hands to his forehead. “Be not afraid. I am Ram Das. She has sent me. I will bring you drink.”
The glowing rag man walks or floats or dances toward the griha. No one seems to notice him. I’m delirious, O’Neil thinks. The thought comforts him; at least he’s not going crazy.
From the feet of the idol, the rag man takes a brass water pitcher left by the brahmins. His feet scarcely touch the ground as he returns. He holds the lip of the pot to O’Neil’s lips. “She says, Drink what you want.”
O’Neil smells the stale river water in the pitcher, and nearly vomits. Never mind, he would drink no matter how it smelled.
But the flavor when he swallows is that of an icy stream that ran by his home when he was a child.
“Yes, you like that,” the rag man’s eyes gleam. “Drink what you want, she says. She is very happy with you.”
The rag man pours more liquid between O’Neil’s parched lips, and this time: My God! It is whiskey, real whiskey, the best he has ever drunk. He gulps it down: sweet smoky warmth pouring over his throat, into his heart. He drinks and drinks.
“She hears your prayers,” the rag man says. “She sends you blessings.” The rag man is speaking Persian, which O’Neil learned years before.
“She says, Don’t worry about your wife and daughter. They are with her in perfect bliss. They send you blessings. They are safe in the arms of the blessed mother.” The rag man nods toward the idol in the griha.
“But she’s not the one I meant,” O’Neil splutters. He wonders if he’s speaking Persian or English, or if he’s even speaking out loud at all. “I meant the Virgin, not some bloody idol.”
The rag man purses his lips in amused rebuke. “She is that same one!” he laughs. “She has so many forms! She loves to tease, that one!” He grows more serious. “Maybe you did not know to whom you prayed. But why would she care? She accepts all prayers, even yours! Even mine! She takes our prayers of lead and spins them to bright gold that they may be worthy of her. Who can understand her ways? She is all compassion, that one.” He places the pitcher once more to O’Neil’s dry lips. This time the water tastes delicate, like sunlight and honey, or mother’s milk.
“Your women are with her, dear one,” the rag man tells him. “With her they bloom like roses, watered by your prayers. And someday, they will fall like petals back to the earth. And she says, you will see them again, and again, for never does love die.”
O’Neil begins to sob. Putting the empty pitcher on the floor, the rag man places his hands gently on O’Neil’s shoulders. The touch is soft and warm. The rag man looks toward O’Neil; not at him, but through him.
The rag man draws his right hand across the farang’s chest, tracing the length of his wound with his index finger. The sensation is deep and exquisite; O’Neil groans; whether with pleasure or pain he could not say. It feels as though the rag man is reaching through the flesh itself.
When again he opens his eyes O’Neil sits alone. A few yards away, an old man so dirty he seems covered in chalk sits on a pile of rags. Despite the dust that clings to him, the rag man smells sweet. O’Neil sees that his hands are knotted with age, the fingernails yellowed and long.
The noise of the temple begins to reemerge. “Good, good,” says the rag man, no longer speaking Persian. “You good now, farang, stay good!” He gestures with his chin toward the griha, toward the image of the dark goddess on her silver throne. “Something, her! Always something, her!” The rag man lies back in his cocoon of rags, and merges into them, drawing into himself like a ball, until the bundle looks just as it did when O’Neil entered, a forgotten pile of rags.
O’Neil gets to his feet. His fever has broken, his thirst is gone, his wound feels cool. At the temple steps, he picks up his boots, and finds that he can pull them on without pain. It’s like waking from a dream.
As he walks toward the pilgrims’ quarters he feels buoyant, cheerful, as if he were being pulled by invisible strings of light.
“Hey, hey, Onil!” O’Neil sees Tanaji ambling toward him. “Hey, Onil, why are you smiling so much?” Tanaji calls. “Hey, Onil, are you drunk?” O’Neil has never seen Tanaji at ease before. “Look at you,” Tanaji says, slapping his shoulder. “I thought you were going to die!”
“Not dead. Feel better. No more sick. Hungry now.”
“And you smell bad. Come on. You need a bath.”
“Bath good,” O’Neil says gratefully. Tanaji leads him to a well where he draws several buckets of water. “Off,” he tells O’Ne
il, nodding at the farang’s clothes. O’Neil peels off the shirt, then his boots, stockings, pants, and with some hesitation, his underwear. It’s hard enough for him to get used to bathing. He remembers Deoga telling him that all the Hindis bathed, and if he were going to survive, he’d better do so, too.
So O’Neil bathes, he even strips down like a Hindi with his Master Tom flopping in the breeze and his bare ass shining for all to see.
Tanaji starts dousing him and soon he is thoroughly soaked. O’Neil finger combs his long coppery hair and beard, glad to have the dust rinsed from it, and hand scrubs his face. The poultice of cow shit and herbs melts off, forming a greenish oozy puddle around his feet.
Tanaji comes closer to him, frowning. “Look. That shit worked good.” O’Neil looks. The wound, festering before, is now closed, and the skin is a livid pink, like a scab has been picked away. There is no sign of bleeding or infection. “You’re going to have something,” Tanaji says—a scar, O’Neil thinks, noting the word, “but you won’t die. Not today, farang.” Tanaji laughs and O’Neil, with great relief, laughs, too.
O’Neil begins to shiver. “You need some clothes,” Tanaji says. “Not those, they smell like shit,” he says. Before he leaves, Tanaji finds a horse blanket. It is heavy and scratchy, but O’Neil throws it across his cool shoulders gratefully. Tanaji strides off.
He looks up to see a young farmer leading two dusty ponies into the courtyard. The ponies walk oddly as though they were lame or diseased. But as the ponies draw closer he realizes that the farmer is Shivaji. Seeing him, Shivaji gives a look of pleased surprise. Just then Tanaji rounds the corner, carrying fresh clothing, “Look at our farang,” he calls out.
“Give me clothes,” O’Neil says to Tanaji.
Tanaji hands him the clothing. “Most of your stuff was dirty,” he tells O’Neil. “I brought you some of my stuff.”
“Thanks,” O’Neil says in English, for while there really is no Marathi word for “thank you,” he still doesn’t feel comfortable taking a kindness without saying something in reply. Tanaji shrugs.
Shivaji and Tanaji talk, quietly and quickly. O’Neil can understand only a few words. He’s busy anyway, trying to dress in the clothes Tanaji has bought. The clothes are Hindi clothes, of course. O’Neil pulls on a light brown shirt, a pair of baggy cotton pants and a gauzelike roll of cloth about two yards long, to wrap around his privates.
Tanaji and Shivaji keep stealing glances at O’Neil as he dresses; they are particularly amused as he struggles to wrap his privates. Bloody hell, O’Neil thinks—he has seen men do this, but never tried it himself. Bloody in front of the whole bloody world, he thinks. He puts on the long shirt first, hoping that this will improve his privacy. But the bloody shirt seems to make things worse: he ends up wrapping both shirt and undercloth into his privates.
Naturally, his struggle delights Tanaji and Shivaji even more. At one point they try unsuccessfully to pantomime instructions to the farang, but instead, what with waving their hands and wiggling their asses trying to mime how the undercloth is worn, they end up laughing even harder.
At last he’s dressed. He tugs on his heavy leather boots, since of course Tanaji owns no stockings and his chappals would never fit a farang’s wide feet. Feeling a perfect fool, O’Neil steps over to the two men with a valiant smile. “Now look like Hindi,” O’Neil announces.
“Now look like fool,” Tanaji laughs. “I am telling how you now are not sick. Very good.” O’Neil feels embarrassed to be addressed by Tanaji in what clearly is simplified language, but since he can’t keep up otherwise, he is grateful.
“Good now, very good, all good,” O’Neil agrees. He lifts up his shirt to show Shivaji the wound. “All good now.”
Shivaji bends forward to look critically at the long line of bulging pink skin that marks where the slash had been just an hour before; after examining it for a moment, he looks at O’Neil with a puzzled expression. “Very good now, yes. But how? Should be very bad.”
O’Neil doesn’t have the words to describe his experience in the temple. “Man fix good,” he tells Shivaji.
“Yes, doctor very good,” Shivaji replies.
“Not doctor. Other man. In …” But he can’t remember the word for “temple.”
Shivaji isn’t paying attention; rather he holds O’Neil’s scapular gently in his hand, peering at it with unexpected fascination. “Something?” he asks, looking into O’Neil’s face.
O’Neil, not sure what he means, follows his glance. “Name is Mary,” he says. “God Woman. Mother of God.”
“She is Bhavani? Bhavani, yes?” Shivaji asks as if he hadn’t heard. He points to the temple where O’Neil met the rag man, the temple with the dark green statue of some goddess.
Bloody hell, no, O’Neil wants to say, she’s not some bloody cow idol, it’s the Virgin bloody Mary. But Shivaji is waving for Tanaji to come look.
Tanaji stares at it. Then he folds the medal in his hands and brings it to his forehead. “Har, har, mahadev,” he whispers.
This reaction confuses O’Neil. He gently takes his medal from Tanaji. Somehow the Virgin’s face has changed: dark now, dark green, except for the eyes; there the untarnished silver shines bright. Even O’Neil is reminded of the dark green idol in the temple. He stares at the dark face of Mary for a long time. It’s just some bloody kind of tarnish, he thinks.
“It’s a sign,” Tanaji whispers. Shivaji closes his eyes and nods.
It’s no bloody sign, O’Neil thinks. But at the same time he looks up at the two men. The golden glow of sunset touches their faces, highlighting their features. They seem to him noble, like kings of ancient times. It seems that he has known them all his life, maybe many lifetimes.
Bloody hell, I’m thinking like a bloody Hindi myself. He looks at the scapular and it changes before his eyes: now the Blessed Virgin, now the idol goddess. She is that same one, the rag man said.
O’Neil shakes his head. If he were home, if he were with his friends, he’d know how to deal with this nonsense. But home is half a world away. Now Hindustan is his home. Now these must be his friends.
Who can understand her ways? the rag man said.
He folds the medal between his hands, and raises it to his forehead as he saw Shivaji and Tanaji do. The last red rays of the setting sun bathe them in light like fire. “Har, har, mahadev,” he says, deciding.
They had left Ranjangaon temple in the dim light of dawn: Maya and her maid Jyoti hidden under blankets in the old oxcart; Shivaji and Tanaji dressed like farmers, walking beside. Now the sun lifts higher; the air warms and the shadows lessen. It’s breakfast time, and Tanaji is hungry. They stop at a small food hut near the road.
Tanaji loves places like this: good country people cooking good country food. No seats, no tables, just a fireplace and a packed-dirt verandah: beneath a rush roof, the floor freshly polished to a dark, translucent green with the cow dung slurry.
The men wash in a nearby basin. Soon Jyoti and Maya join them. They sit together on the green floor. Tanaji orders chapatis for everyone. Wheat chapatis.
Looking at his farmer’s clothes, the woman raises an eyebrow. Bakri chapatis, she suggests. Wheat, Tanaji insists. And dahi.
He has to put some coins in front of him before she is convinced.
“Are you going to take that from her, uncle?” Jyoti demands. “She has insulted you!”
“What do you want to me to do?” Tanaji replies. “We’ll all get along better if you deal with your business and leave me to deal with mine.”
“You are her business,” Maya puts in. Her voice reminds Tanaji of tamarind, that tastes at once both sour and sweet. “She is my maid, and you are my keepers.”
Tanaji takes a long look at Maya. It’s only been a day, but she looks so different now. She wears a sari the color of yellow roses, traced with vines of green. Her eyes are brighter, lighter, clear amber flecked with gold. Her dark hair catches the morning sunlight.
“Please think of u
s as your hosts,” Shivaji says.
“If its soothes you, I will say so. But I now rely on you, don’t I? So your actions—are they not her business? If you wander off drunk, or get yourself killed, or even if you let any pissy old serving woman insult you, is that not her business?” Maya says all this calmly, holding Jyoti’s hand.
Tanaji squares his shoulders and fixes Maya with a cold eye. “Listen to me. I don’t know what sort of life you’ve been used to, but the new rules are these: You’ll do what you’re told and take what you’re given. And you,” he says to Jyoti, “will keep your thoughts to yourself.”
At that moment the chapatis arrive. The woman sets them down in a stack on a rough clay plate, still steaming, and puts near them a bowl of fresh buffalo milk dahi, the curds firm and creamy white.
“Best if you think of yourselves as our guests,” Shivaji says.
“Guests then,” Maya replies. “So may your guests inquire what plans you have for them?”
“We’re going to my home in Poona. There’s a guesthouse in our compound, and you’ll be welcome there. You’ll stay—as guests—until you can be returned to your proper home. We don’t mean to keep you at all.”
Maya considers this. What is she to think? She looks away again, a little frightened.
Jyoti can’t remember having been this far from home, from the temple where she has lived since she was a baby, where she worked for so many years beside her mother, where her mother’s ashes now lie scattered. She felt brave when she offered her services to Maya; but now outside the temple walls, seeing the new world she is entering, her heart beats like a bird’s.
She clutches Maya’s hand, and thinks of the story of the kidnapped bride Subhadra, gripping the silver railing of Prince Arjuna’s war chariot in ancient times, feeling the wind in her face as the prince raced from the pursuing armies of Krishna.
Jyoti talks when she is afraid. She asks if Maya likes stories, and without waiting, she starts to tell story after story: of love forbidden, of love requited. Maya sits against the rocking rickety rails of the oxcart, deep in thought. She cares nothing for love stories. She may seem young to have a heart so hard, but there it is. Love, she thinks, is the fool’s name for desire.
