“Well,” I said, “it sounds like an. interestingly novel variation on the ordinary.”
“Yes! Show us, Oh Yogi!” the little Raja called to him. “Show us this instant. Shouters, bring back the nach girl. She is already undressed and ready for use.”
The six men went trotting out in lock step. But the Yogi held up a cautionary hand and declaimed some more.
“He says he dare not do it with a valuable dancing girl,” Tofaa translated, “because any woman must wither to some degree when his linga does its sucking inside her. Instead, he requests a yoni with which he can demonstrate.”
The six shouters trotted back in again, bringing the naked girl, but at another command from the little Raja they ran out once more.
I asked, “How can the Yogi be provided with a yoni without a woman attached?”
“A yoni stone,” said Tofaa. “Around every temple you will see standing carved linga stone columns, which are representative of the god Siva, and also open-holed yoni stones, representative of his consort goddess Parvati.”
The six men came back, one of them bringing a stone like a small wheel, with an oval opening cut through it, roughly resembling a woman’s yoni, even having the kaksha hair carved around it.
The Yogi did a number of preparatory gesticulations, and spoke what sounded like solemn incantations, then parted his dhoti rags and unashamedly pulled out his linga, which was like a black-barked twig. With more incantations and gestures of demonstration—this is how it is done, gentlemen—he pushed his limp organ through the yoni hole in the stone. Then, holding the heavy stone against his crotch, he beckoned to the nach girl, who was also standing watching. He bade her take his linga in her fingers and bring it to arousal.
The girl did not recoil or complain, but she did not appear delighted with the idea. Nevertheless, she took hold of what protruded beyond the stone, and began working it, rather as if she were milking a cow. Her own udder bounced and all her bracelets jingled in rhythm to the motion. The old mendicant chanted down at the yoni and at the girl’s hand yanking at him, and he narrowed his red eyes in intense concentration, and rivulets of sweat began to course down the dirt of his face. After some while, his linga grew enough to protrude farther past the stone, and we could even see its brown bulbous head creeping out a little beyond the nach girl’s fricating fist. Finally the Yogi said something to her and she let go of him and stepped away.
Presumably the old beggar had stopped her just before she brought him to spruzzo. The stone was held to him now simply by the stiffness of his organ. He stared down at that peg and its constricting hoop, and so did the by now slightly breathless nach girl, and so did we at the table, and the shouters against the wall, and all the servants in the dining room. The Yogi’s linga had attained to a respectable size, considering the man’s age and general scrawniness and beggarly debilitude. But it looked somehow strained and inflamed, bulging as it did from the narrow yoni of the stone it held firmly at his crotch.
The Yogi made several more gesticulations, but in a rather hurried and sketchy manner, and yammered a whole string of incantations, but in a rather strangled voice. Nothing happened that we could see. He glanced about at all of us, looking somewhat abashed, and glowered really hatefully at the nach girl, who was now humming indifferently and examining her fingernails, as if to say, “See? You should have used me.” The Yogi yelled some more at his linga and borrowed yoni, as if cursing them, and made some more violent gestures, including shaking his fist. Still nothing happened, except that he sweated more copiously, and his tightly pinched organ was adding a distinct purple hue to its brown-black. The nach girl gave an audible snicker, and the Musicmaster an amused chuckle, and the little Raja began drumming his fingers on the tabletop.
“Well?” I said aside to Tofaa.
She whispered, “The Yogi appears to be having some difficulty.”
Indeed he did. He was now dancing in place, more vigorously than the professional dancing girl had done, and his eyes were more redly extruded than they had been after the palang-swinging performance, and his vociferations were no longer incantatory, but recognizable even to me as cries of pain. His ragged boy assistant came running, and tugged at the imprisoning stone, at which his master gave a frightful screech. The six shouters then also dashed forward to help, and there was a confusion of hands at that empurpled center of attention, until the agonized Yogi reeled wailing away from them and fell down, writhing and hammering his fists on the floor.
“Take him away!” the little Raja commanded, in a disgusted voice. “Take the old fraud to the kitchen. Try an application of grease.”
The Yogi was carried from the room, not without some trouble, for he was contorting like a gaffed fish and trumpeting like a speared elephant. The entertainment appeared to be over. We four sat on at the table, in a mutually embarrassed silence, listening to the shrieks gradually diminishing down the corridors. I was the first to speak. I naturally did not remark on this having been one more affirmation of my opinion of Hindu foolishness and futility. Instead I said, by way of graciously excusing it:
“That happens all the time, Your Highness, to all the lower animals. Everyone has seen a dog and a bitch stuck together until the bitch’s clasping yoni relaxes and the dog’s swollen linga wilts.”
“It may take some time for the Yogi,” said Master Khusru, still with amusement. “The stone yoni will not relax and his linga’s swelling therefore cannot go down.”
“Bah!” exclaimed the little Raja, in furious exasperation. “I should have insisted that he levitate, not try something new. Let us go to bed.” And he stamped out of the room, with no shouters present to congratulate himself and the world on the grace of his gait.
“I have your Buddha’s tooth, Marco-wallah.”
That was the very first thing the little Raja said to me when we first met the next day, and he said it about as cheerfully as he might have said, “I have a murderously
aching
tooth.”
“Already, Your Highness? Why, that is wonderful. You said it might take some while to find.”
“I thought it
would,”
he said pettishly.
I understood his rancorous demeanor when he shoved at me a basket and I looked in. It was piled half full of teeth, most of them yellowed and mossy and carious, quite a few of them still bloody at the root, and some of them identifiably not even human—dogs’ fangs and pigs’ tushes.
“More than two hundred there,” the little Raja said sourly. “And people are still arriving with more, from all points of the horizon. Men, women, even holy naga mendicants, even one temple sadhu. Gr-r-r. You can present a Buddha’s tooth not only to your Raja Khakhan. You can give one to every Buddhist of your acquaintance.”
I tried not to laugh, for his anger was justified. He had boasted of his people’s honesty and of their devotion to their Hindu faith, and here they came in flocks to confess that they possessed a relic of the discredited Buddhist religion—meaning they had to
lie
about it, besides.
Holding my face impassive, I inquired, “Am I expected to pay a reward for every one of these?”
“No,” he said, gritting his own teeth.
“I
am doing that. The cursed reprobates come in the front door, hand their counterfeit tooth to the steward, and are passed on out the back door to where the Court Executioner is rewarding them with fervent enthusiasm in the rear courtyard.”
“Your Highness!” I exclaimed.
“Oh, I am not according them the karavat,” he hastened to assure me. “That is reserved for men who have done crimes of some account. Also it takes a bit of time, and we would never have done with this procession.”
“Adrìo de mi. I can hear the wretches screaming from here.”
“No, you cannot,” he growled. “They are being very quietly dispatched with a wire loop whipped around the throat and yanked. What you hear is that
other
fraud—that degenerate old Yogi, still screeching in the kitchen. No one has yet been able to get him loose from his clinging rock yoni. We have tried greasing him with cooking fats, softening him with sesame oil, shrinking him with boiling water, wilting him by various natural means—surata by the nach girl, buccal blandishment by his boy assistant—nothing works. We may have to break the sacred yoni stone, and what revenge the goddess Parvati will inflict, I dare not think about.”
“Well, I will not sympathize with the Yogi. But the tooth bringers, Your Highness—it really is a trivial misdemeanor they have tried to commit, and in a trivially witless way. These teeth they brought would not fool even me, let alone a Buddhist.”
“That is what is especially deplorable! My people’s imbecility! That they would shame their Raja and insult their religion, and with trickery so transparent. They are incapable even of a decent crime. Dying is too good for them! They will only be reborn immediately in some lesser form—if there is any.”
I frankly believed that any depletion of the Hindus could only improve the planet, but I did not want the little Raja later to realize how severely he had depopulated his realm, and be dismayed, and maybe hold me to blame for it. I said:
“Your Highness, as your guest I formally request that the surviving imbeciles be spared, and any newcomers turned away before they also can perjure themselves. This was, after all, the fault of an apparent omission in Your Highness’s proclamation.”
“Mine? An omission? Are you suggesting
I
am at fault? That a Brahman
and
a Maharajadhiraj Raj can
have
a fault?”
“I think it was only an understandable oversight. Since Your Highness is of course aware that the Buddha was a man nine forearms tall, and that any tooth of his must have been as big as a drinking cup, Your Highness no doubt assumed that all your people likewise knew that.”
“Hm. You are right, Marco-wallah. I did take for granted that my subjects would remember that detail. Nine forearms, eh?”
“Perhaps an amended proclamation, Your Highness …”
“Hm. Yes. I will issue one. And I will mercifully pardon the dolts already here. A good Brahman kills no living thing, however lowly, unless it is necessary or expedient.”
He called for his steward, and gave the instructions for the proclamation, and commanded also an end to the procession through the rear courtyard. When he returned to me, he was restored to quite good humor.
“There. It is done. A good Brahman host acquiesces in his guest’s wishes. But enough of dull business and sober care! You are a guest, and you are not being entertained!”
“Oh, but I am, Your Highness. Constantly.”
“Come! You shall admire my zenana.”
I half expected him to fling open his dhoti diaper and expose something nasty, but he only reached up and took my arm and began walking me toward a far wing of the palace. As he escorted me through a succession of sumptuously furnished rooms, inhabited by females of various ages and various hues of brown, I realized that zenana must be the local word for an anderun—the apartments of his wives and concubines. The women of mature age I found no more attractive than I had Tofaa or the nach dancers, and they were mostly surrounded by swarms of children of all sizes. But some of the little Raja’s consorts were mere girls themselves, and not yet gross of flesh or vulturine of eye or corvine of voice, and some were delicately pretty in a dark-skinned way.
“I am frankly a bit surprised,” I remarked to the little Raja, “that Your Highness has so many wives. From your evident aversion to the Lady Tofaa, I had rather assumed …”
“Ah, well, if she had been your wife, as I first thought, I should have plied you with concubines and nach girls to distract you, while I seduced that lady to surata. But a widow? What man wishes to couple with a cast-off husk—a dead-woman-waiting-to-die—when there are so many still-juicy wives of one’s own and of others to be had, and also so many newly-budding virgins?”
“Yes. I see. Your Highness is a manly man.”
“Aha! You took me for a gand-mara, did you? A man-lover and a woman-hater? For shame, Marco-wallah! I grant you that, like any sensible man, for longtime companionship I prefer a quiet and mannerly and compliant boy. But one has one’s duties and obligations. A Raja is expected to maintain a teeming zenana, so I do. And I dutifully service them in regular rotation, even the youngest, as soon as they have had their first flow.”
“They are married to Your Highness
before
their first menstruum?”
“Why, not just my wives, Marco-wallah. Every girl in India. The parents of any daughter are anxious to get her married off before she is a woman, and before any mishap to her virginity, which would make her unmarriageable. For another reason, every time a daughter has her flow, her parents are guilty of the hideous crime of letting die an embryo that might prolong the family line. It is well said: If a girl is unwed by the age of twelve, her ancestors in the other world are mournfully drinking the blood she sheds every month.”
“Well said, yes.”
“However, to return to the subject of my own wives. They enjoy all the traditional wifely rights, but those do not include any queenly rights, as in less civilized and more debile monarchies. The women take no part in my court or my rule. It is well said: What man would heed the crowing of a hen? This one here, for instance, this is my premier wife and my titular Maharani, but she never presumes to sit on a throne.”
I bowed politely to the woman and said, “Your Highness.” She only gave me the same look of dull detestation she had given her Raja husband. Still trying to be polite, I indicated the dark-brown swarm about her, and added, “Your Highness has some handsome princes and princesses.”
She still said nothing, but the little Raja growled, “They are not princes and princesses. Do not give the woman ideas.”
I said, in some wonderment, “The royal line is not of patrilineal primogeniture?”
“My dear Marco-wallah! How do I know if any of these brats are mine?”
“Well, er … really … ,” I mumbled, embarrassed to have broached the subject right in front of the woman and her brood.
“Do not cringe, Marco-wallah. The Maharani knows I am not insulting her specifically. I do not know if
any
of my wives’ offspring are of my begetting. I cannot know that.
You
cannot know that, if you ever marry and have children. That is a fact of life.”
He waved around at the various other wives whose rooms we were strolling through, and repeated:
“That is a fact of life. No man can ever know,
for certain,
that he is the father of his wife’s child. Not even of a seemingly loving and faithful wife. Not even a wife so ugly a paraiyar would shun her. Not even a wife so crippled she cannot possibly stray. A woman can always find a way and a lover and a dark place.”
“But surely, Your Highness—the young little girls you wed before they could possibly be fecundated—”
“Who knows, even then? I cannot always be on the spot the instant they first flow. It is well said: If a woman sees even her father or brother or son in secret, her yoni grows moist.”
“But you must bequeath your throne to
somebody,
Your Highness. To whom, then, if not your presumed son or daughter?”
“To the firstborn son of my sister, as all Rajas do. Every royal line in India descends sororially. You see, my sister is indisputably of my own blood. Even if our royal mother was promiscuously unfaithful to our royal father, and no matter if my sister and I were sired by different lovers, we did drop from the same womb.”
“I understand. And then, no matter who sires her firstborn …”
“Well, of course, I hope it was I. I took my eldest sister for one of my early wives—fifth or sixth, I forget—and she has borne I think seven children, presumably mine. But the oldest boy, even if
not
my son, is still my nephew, and the royal bloodline remains intact and inviolate, and he will be the next Raja here.”
We emerged from the zenana quite near to the part of the palace where the kitchen was, and we could still hear from in there moans and whimpers and sounds of thrashing about. The little Raja asked me if I could amuse myself for a while, since he had to attend to some royal duties.
“Go back to the zenana, if you like,” he suggested. “Although I am careful to marry none but wives of my own white race, they keep producing children of disappointingly dark skin. A sprinkling of your seed, Marco-wallah, might lighten the strain.”
Not to be discourteous, I murmured something about having taken a vow of continence, and said I would find something else to occupy me. I watched the little Raja strut away, and I quite pitied the man. He was a sovereign of sorts, holding the power of life and death over his people, and he was the tiny cock of a whole hen yard—and he was infinitely poorer and weaker and less contented than I, a mere journeyer with only one woman to love and cherish and keep for the rest of my life; but that one was Hui-sheng.
That reminded me: I could now dispense with my temporary co-journeyer. I went in search of Tofaa, who had been stertorously snoring when I left our chambers that morning. I found her on a palace terrace, gloomily watching the gloomy Krishna celebration still going on in the square below.
She immediately and accusingly said, “I smell the pachouli on you, Marco-wallah! You have been lying with perfumed women. Alas, and after such an admirably sinless long time of behaving gentlemanly with me.”
I ignored that, and said, “I came to tell you, Tofaa, that you may resign your menial position of interpreter, whenever you wish, and—”
“I knew it! I was too demure and ladylike. Now you have been beguiled by some shameless and forward palace wench. Ah, you men.”
I ignored that, too. “And, as I promised, I will arrange for your safe journey back to your homeland.”
“You are eager to be rid of me. My genteel chastity is a reproach to your goatishness.”
“I was thinking of you, ungrateful woman. I have nothing to do now but wait here until the proper Buddha’s tooth is found and delivered. In the meantime, if I need anything translated, both the Raja and the Musicmaster are fluent in Farsi.”
She sniffled noisily, and wiped her nose on her bare arm. “I am in no hurry to go back to Bangala, Marco-wallah. I would be only a widow there, too. In the meantime, the Raja and the Master Khusru have occupations of their own. They will not take time to lead you about and show you the splendid sights of Kumbakonam, as I can do. I have already inquired and sought them out, just for your benefit.”
So I did not compel her to leave. Instead, on that day and during the days thereafter, I let her take me about and show me the splendid sights of the city.