The Temple Dancer (50 page)

The rain had cleaned the air and the morning light sparkled sharp as diamonds. Puddles lingered in the road, reflecting the crisp blue sky. Cleaned
by the rain, the sword grass poked from the ground glinting wet. Every
green leaf glistened in the morning sun.

Da Gama mounted, and rode once round the courtyard, checking the
palki and the bearers, and then drawing up next to Geraldo's horse. "Let's
go," was all he said. The palki bearers grunted and hoisted the palki onto
their shoulders; inside its railing, the women lurched.

"It's not far," Da Gama told Geraldo. "We made good time yesterdayit was all downhill from Sunag, or so it seemed." Geraldo smiled indulgently.
"What happened, Geraldo? What happened to Pathan?"

Geraldo shrugged. "The man has problems, sir. He is lonesome and
melancholy. It is a risky combination."

"Love," Da Gama said, with the same resigned horror that one might
say the word "treachery."

"As you say, Deoga. The burak took it in his head that Lucy fancied
him."

"What, Lucy?" Da Gama's eyebrows shot up. "Well? Did she fancy
him?"

Geraldo shrugged again. "With women, who can tell, sir? Maybe for a
day or for an hour. Such is woman's love. In any case, I steered him right."

"How?"

"I made up some story. Told him Lucy hates him. That cooled things
down."

"But you say she fancied him?" Da Gama seemed genuinely confused.

"She hates him now!" With a satisfied shake of his head, again Geraldo
chuckled. "She had me bring him some pathetic message. It was quite
grotesque. Naturally I embellished it a little. I suppose she thought he'd
come racing back to her. Nothing like. Not when I was done: he hates her;
she hates him, and all is well."

Da Gama considered Geraldo with a frown. "It seems you have been
busy, sir."

Geraldo's eyes flashed. "He's a heathen-and she's pledged! What
would you expect me to do? Encourage them?"

"Calm yourself, sir," Da Gama answered, raising his hands as if he'd
been attacked.

Geraldo's facile smile returned. "I begin to see that you are sentimental, Deoga." His face grew stern. "This was business."

"Ahcha, " Da Gama said.

Once they had passed beneath the trees that lined the drive of Pathan's estate, and turned onto the Sunag road, Lucinda allowed herself to weep. She
hid her face, and through her fingers watched the house and vineyards disappear into the distance.

Lucinda had stood by her mother's bed the moment she died. She had
watched the long, slow sigh of her mother's last breath, and the stillness
that came upon her; the fading of her face, already pale, as the color left her
lips and cheeks; the way the delicate tissues of her nostrils and her tongue
dried, like petals drying in the sun. Now as she watched Pathan's home fade
behind her, she had that same feeling, as of a tearing; as of a bright, beating
light ripped from her heart. Her throat ached from holding back her sobs.

Maya pretended not to see.

The sun rose higher, and in the cloudless sky bore down on them like a
weight. The road grew dry, and then dusty. The palki bearers' shuffling gait
raised a gritty cloud. The vineyards came to an end as they pushed up a
hill. On the other side, the road was yellow and bare, and the ground rocky and untended, and there was no shade. Soon their eyes ached with longing
for the cool greens of Konnur.

For lunch they stopped near a large broken rock, nearly as big as a
house, and tucked the palki close to catch what little shade it offered. The
air around the rock quivered with rising heat.

"We'll wait here for a while. Wait for the sun to fall a little," Da Gama
said. No one ate much. The palki bearers squeezed next to the base of the
rock. Geraldo found a shadowed niche and curled inside to nap.

Lucinda longed for the cool silk of the saris she wore in Belgaum. Dust
clung to her hot skin. Maya had retreated to that quiet, imperturbable state
that she found when she was traveling, and neither spoke, nor looked up.
From time to time, she flipped the page of her palm-leaf Gita, while Lucinda looked on with envy. At last she lay on the cushions of the palki and
tried to sleep.

After a half hour or so she saw Da Gama approach the palki. "This is
yours," he said to Maya holding out a cloth sack. His voice was gruff, and
his mouth tense, and he seemed more uncomfortable than Lucinda had
ever seen. She pretended to move in her sleep to get a better look. The cloth
sack that Da Gama now placed in Maya's lap was the one she had seen in
Valpoi: the sack that held the wedding headdress.

When Maya began to open it, Da Gama laid his thick fingers on her
hand. "Do you trust me?"

"Of course, Deoga."

"That sack-what's in the sack, I mean-that's what the eunuchs want.
Not you."

"It's all I have left of my mother ... of my history. If they take it, they
take me as well."

Da Gama's hand closed on Maya's, and Lucinda realized that he was in
love. It was such an unexpected revelation, she nearly sat up. Da Gama
seemed very old to Lucinda, and Maya so young, but she saw that his heart
smoldered for her. And she saw that he was timid and uncertain-him, at
his age! She wondered if Maya saw it as clearly as she did.

"I do not like the part I'm forced to play." His voice was hoarse. "I'm
doing my best, but. . ."

"We all must play our roles, Deoga. It is what my book says ..."Maya nodded to her palm-leaf Gita-". . . the song of God himself: play
the role God gives you, knowing it is He in every heart." Her face was not innocent, but full of understanding: the face of one who had endured,
without yet turning bitter.

Da Gama could not bear the compassion in her serene, unwavering
gaze, and looked away, and stammered something, and stormed off.

After a few moments, Lucinda rose. Twenty yards away, Da Gama,
with his back toward the palki, swung his fists at the open air, and they
could hear him cursing. "What was that about?" Lucinda yawned.

Maya nodded toward the sack. She was not so calm, Lucinda realized,
as she seemed at first. "May I see?" Lucinda took the sack and began to
open it.

"Don't ... not now." Maya's pretense of calm completely disappeared.
"No, never mind what I say. Go ahead and look..."

Her expression puzzled Lucinda. At last she worked the knot loose,
and lifted out partway the jeweled headdress she had seen in Valpoi.

"Stop ... that's enough." Maya looked at the headdress, and then
turned her head. "I've never seen it in the sunlight. Please put it back."

"It looked much grander in the lamplight. In the sun it looks so. .

"It looks cheap and false," Maya said, finishing her thoughts. "Children live in make-believe. I will be a child no more. Put it back."

Lucinda did as Maya asked.

"All these years . . ." Maya murmured, "I believed a fantasy. What did
my mother really give me? False diamonds, and a broken sword. If that's
what the hijras want, let them have it. Let them have me, too. I no longer
care." She looked at Da Gama, who still paced angrily far off. "But I
thought that somewhere in this world there still was ... goodness." Her
voice trailed off.

"You hoped for goodness, sister. So did I ..." Lucinda gave back the
sack to Maya, and then touched her hand. "I think we were very foolish,
you and I."

A couple of hours after the sun reached its zenith, Da Gama got everyone
moving once more. The road led upward now, ever upward, and the sun
screamed down, and there was no shade. The bearers were silent, and their
breath came hard.

The sun cooked Da Gama's thoughts. They bubbled in his mind like a
stew on a fire.

He had felt angry at himself for miles, after he gave Maya the imitation
headdress. He hadn't expected to feel so wicked. For a while he thought
about going back to her, putting the original in her lap, saying sweetly that
it had been an error.

Slowly his rational mind reemerged. No harm had been done yet, after
all. There was still time to alter the plan if need be, after all. She might never
even see the difference, after all. And who knew what fortune would bring
for her? Why should the eunuchs have her headdress. Why should Da
Gama not keep it?

Keep it safe, he corrected himself.

Yes, of course. Keep it safe, his rational mind affirmed.

Then growing weary of this introspection, Da Gama started to consider what Geraldo had said. It didn't hang together somehow.

Da Gama considered speaking with Lucy, but not now, he decided, not
with Maya there to listen. But by placing sweet young Lucy in the center
of his thinking, instead of Geraldo, the earlier conversation took on a different cast. Why had Lucy sent a message to Pathan? Why had Geraldo felt
that he needed to embellish it? Why had he been so concerned about the
two of them?

From Da Gama's slow imagination, the answers began to emerge. He
wheeled his horse around and drew up next to Geraldo.

"You lied to me," he growled.

"Sir! Whatever do you mean?"

Da Gama lowered his voice to harsh whisper. "I mean about Lucy, and
the burak. "

Geraldo's face hardened. "It happened as I said."

"No. You left something out. She was fond of him. Admit it!"

"Fond?" Geraldo sneered. "Maybe, or maybe not. With a woman who
can tell?"

"A man can tell."

Geraldo let the implication hang without a comment. "Well, if she was
fond of him, what of it?"

"Then you had no business interfering. Her feelings are no business of
yours! "

"Apparently you think they're your business." His dark, malevolent eyes denied Geraldo's sardonic smile. "She's my cousin, sir. I have a responsibility to my family, and I shall execute it as I see fit. Since you are my
family's employee, I trust you know your place and you'll keep your opinions to yourself."

It doesn't pay to be his relative, Da Gama remembered saying of Geraldo in Goa. "I'm a cousin, too, you know. Distant maybe, but still family."

"You'll never be my family, sir. Besides, I had reasons for my actions,
reasons that a man may claim despite the opinions of his employees."

"Like what?"

"What if I love her, eh?"

Da Gama's eyes widened.

"What if it cut my heart to see Lucinda throwing herself at some blacksouled heathen? A man might do a hundred things in such a case, and who
would blame him? Other than you, I mean. You who know so much about
affairs of love."

"You ..." Da Gama bit his tongue and chose his words carefully. "You
are not suitable for her."

"Why? Because I am poor? I won't be poor forever."

"Because you are a liar, sir."

Geraldo broke into an unguarded laugh. "Unsuitable because I am a
liar? By the Virgin, I always assumed dissembling was the very key to a
happy marriage!" Once more Geraldo's eyes grew sharp, and his face now
did not hide his anger. "Good lord, man-do you think Victorio will make
a better match?"

"What can be done about that? He's her guardian!"

Geraldo's eyes hooded, and his face grew guarded. "We shall see what
may be done. One thing's clear enough, however. You have no right to interfere. Say nothing! Especially to her!"

"Or what?" Da Gama bristled.

Without replying, Geraldo spurred his horse and galloped off.

Da Gama stared after him. He expected him to halt up ahead. Instead,
Geraldo picked up speed, spurring his horse with a violent effort. "Wait for
us!" Da Gama shouted after him, but maybe he didn't hear.

At last he disappeared, leaving Da Gama alone with his thoughts, remembering what else he'd said that night in Goa.

People die around him.