The Temple Dancer (23 page)

"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 away, 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.

"Now that I am blind, I see it all. When I had my eyes, I could see
nothing." Maya was about to answer, but Chitra lifted her hand before she
could speak.

Maya saw the strange, dark mark on Lady Chitra's palm, like a magenta star, or-Maya thought a moment later-like an evil eye.

"The odd thing is that we fell in love. Yes, I did things. I satisfied the sultan's rude desires as the Brotherhood forced me to." Chitra's voice sighed,
and she almost whispered. "I would have done those things anyway, for him.
He was beautiful, and so kind. And he loved me." Cares seemed to fall from
Chitra's face, and Maya could see the beautiful young nautch girl that the
sultan loved.

"Is that all they wanted, sister? That you should do those unchaste acts
to satisfy him?"

Chitra's face grew stony. "Do you think so? You are quite naive. No,
for each act, always there was something; some price, some favor, some little
wish that I was to exact. So I sold to my dear love what I would have given
gladly. That was the price the Brotherhood demanded."

"But why did you agree, sister?"

Lady Chitra's voice, usually so formidable and majestic, grew as weak
as a little girl's. "You have no idea of what they may do, sister. But I fear too
soon you will."

"But how could these unchaste acts produce an heir, sister? Didn't you
say that was what the Brotherhood desired most?"

Lady Chitra however had begun to weep. She said nothing as the tears
stained her cheeks. At last she waved her hands, and Lakshmi instantly
rose. The girl took Maya's hands and pulled her swiftly from the room.

Lakshmi tugged Maya through the courtyard with the same timid strength
that she used with Lady Chitra. Without a word, she pulled her through Chitra's garden. At the far end was a door so small Maya had to stoop to
pass through it. Before Maya had crossed the threshold, Lakshmi had taken
hold of her hand again. Along a narrow dirt path that hugged the brick wall
of the garden, Lakshmi tugged Maya, sometimes walking backward and
staring at her with terrified pleasure.

A few yards from the end of the wall were a half-dozen mud huts with
peaked thatch roofs, like conical hats. Some of the huts had been decorated
with whitewash: Oms, swastiks, geometric designs. Small dark women in
faded saris squatted on the open ground, peeling onions and chopping
pumpkin. They wrinkled their faces familiarly when Lakshmi passed, and
stared at Maya but said nothing.

Around the rough door of the last hut someone had drawn a design of
whitewashed diamonds. In the center of each diamond was a bright red
spot of kumkum. Lakshmi slipped through this door, into the darkness of
the hut, and Maya followed.

Her eyes adjusted to the shadows. The inside walls had been whitewashed. Maya could probably have touched both sides if she stretched her
arms. The dirt floor had a shiny green, well-kept look from being swept
and painted with cow-dung slurry. On opposite sides of the hut were two
thin mats, one of them short-Lakshmi's mat, Maya guessed. "Who sleeps
there?" Maya asked. "Your mother?" But Lakshmi shook her head.

At the foot of Lakshmi's bedmat stood a small wooden trunk. As the
girl opened it, her eyes rarely left Maya's. Then she handed to Maya a tiny
pair of painted slippers as a baby might wear, some ribbons, and with great
shyness, a doll made with bright silk rags.

Maya received each item like a precious gift. When she was Lakshmi's
age, she herself had a box like this in her kitchen hut in Orissa. She admired
the slippers and ribbons, examining them with delight, then setting them
with care upon the bedmat. Then she lifted the doll as one might lift a toddler, holding it gently beneath the arms. "What is your name, little girl?"
she asked. But the doll didn't answer. Maya gave it a stern, disappointed
look, and asked again.

"Uma," Lakshmi whispered, answering for the doll. It was the first
time she had spoken.

"What a pretty, pretty name for a pretty little girl."

Lakshmi held out her hands, and Maya gave her the doll, which Lakshmi cradled in her arms. Maya watched her for a minute, and then one by one removed a few bangles from the dozens she wore on her wrist. It took
a while; for they were small, and she had to squeeze the bracelets past her
knuckles. "These are for you and Uma."

Lakshmi solemnly placed them on the doll's rag arm, one at a time.
Then, glancing guiltily at Maya, she slid them onto her own wrist. She then
locked the doll and everything else back into the wooden box.

Near Lakshmi's hut was a storehouse with a wide, flat roof. The girl led
Maya to a ladder and climbed to the top. Around them, servants glanced
up and then looked away again, unconcerned. Maya understood their
looks. When she had been a girl, she too could do as she pleased: everyone
considered her someone else's problem.