Creation (45 page)

This conversation took place during my last visit to India. With sufficient luck, Democritus, you will live long enough to be able to say of something that it is the last, and know for certain that what you have said is simple truth. I shall never again look upon scarlet parrots, yellow-eyed tigers, sky-clad madmen. I shall never again travel in that hot flat land where swift pale rivers rise and fall, and there is always a crossing to be made.

“Why did Virudhaka attack the Shakyas?”

At first Prince Jeta gave the official reason. “He wished to avenge the insult to his father. As an arhat, Pasenadi was obliged to forgive the Shakyans for sending him a prostitute for a wife. As a warrior, Virudhaka could never forgive this insult.”

“But there must be some other reason.” I never accept the official reason for anything. In the second room of the chancellery at Susa, I have myself invented altogether too many noble pretexts for necessary if ugly actions.

“Virudhaka feared the republics as much as Ajatashatru. I suppose he thought that if he were to break them first, he would be more powerful than his cousin. Who knows? Virudhaka had no luck.”

But on coronation day Virudhaka seemed blessed by heaven. For one thing, just after he took the last of his three steps on the tiger skin, all the gods came down from heaven and up from hell to greet him, and the crowds cheered this charming spectacle.

“Here comes Vishnu,” said Prince Jeta. “He’s always first.”

Twice the size of a normal man, the god Vishnu loomed over the heads of the excited mob. The god’s handsome face was blue-black, and he wore a tall elaborate headdress. In one hand he held a lotus, like the Great King. In the other he carried a conch shell. I was relieved that he had not chosen to wear his other two arms that day. While Vishnu slowly walked toward the tiger skin where Virudhaka stood, the people fell prostrate. Many of them wriggled toward him in order to touch the hem of his robe. Suddenly the fairground seemed to be full of human-headed snakes.

Just behind Vishnu was his wife Lakshmi. The goddess’ nipples had been painted vermilion, and the golden skin shone with ghee, as do her statues at the city’s gates. As the two high gods, adorned Virudhaka with wreaths, the ecstatic crowd began to howl and dance like haoma-drunk Magians.

“What on earth are they?” I asked Prince Jeta.

“On earth, as in heaven, they are the gods of the Aryans!” He was amused at my bewilderment.

Caraka laughed too. “Your Vishnu has been in India too long,” he said to Prince Jeta. “He’s the same color as one of our old gods.”

“I’m sure that they are all related.” Prince Jeta’s politeness required a change of subject. “Naturally, this is a very rare occasion. Only once or twice in a generation will a king summon all the gods to his side.” As Prince Jeta spoke, the baleful red-faced Indra materialized at the far end of the field. In one hand he held a thunderbolt; in the other he clutched a huge flask of soma, from which he swigged. Nearby, all in black, eyes ablaze, stood Agni in a chariot drawn by fire-red horses.

Brilliantly, eerily, from every direction, the Vedic gods solemnly converged upon King Virudhaka.

Prince Jeta was not entirely sure of my reaction. Nor was I, even to this day. Had I, for an instant, believed that the gods were really present? It is possible. Certainly, the performance was awesome. But it was only a performance, as Prince Jeta assured me. “The gods,” he said, “are being impersonated by actors.”

“But these actors are giants!”

“Each god is actually two actors. One sits on the shoulders of the other and the robes cover both of them. The effect is convincing, isn’t it?”

“And alarming.” I had the sense that I was in a haoma-dream. “Do the people really believe that these are their gods?”

Prince Jeta shrugged. “Some do. Some don’t.”

“Most do,” said Caraka. He turned to Prince Jeta. “You Aryans got the idea from us. At the New Year, when our people come to the temples to make sacrifice, all the gods appear. They threaten the people with plague and famine. So to avoid disaster, the temple priests beg the people to make a contribution to the temple. If our actor-gods put on a really good performance, a temple’s revenue can double.”

“In that case, was it Brahma or a couple of actors who came to see the Buddha in the deer park?” I teased Prince Jeta.

“I wouldn’t know. I was not there.” The answer was serene. “But then, neither was the Buddha, since he was already extinguished. So Brahma—or his impersonator—was wasting his time.”

I must confess that those huge deities moving about the crowded fairground had a most unnerving effect on me. In a sense, all my grandfather’s chief devils were being impersonated, and I saw what a Zoroastrian hell might be like.

But Ambalika enjoyed herself hugely. “They seem so real! Which is just as good as being real, isn’t it?” She had attended the coronation in the entourage of the old queen. Ambalika was somewhat plumper than she had been before my son was born. “I’m not too heavy for your taste, am I?” That was her greeting to me when I met her at the city’s gate. In a tactless moment I had once complained to her that everyone at the court of Magadha was too fat, including myself. In three years, I had nearly doubled my weight.

“No. You are exactly right.”

“If I’m not, tell me.” We were in the main garden of Prince Jeta’s house.

“I’ll tell you.” I was entirely delighted by Ambalika. I told her so.

“Then you’ll let me come to Susa?”

“If I can.”

“Because I’m certain you’ll never come back here.” Ambalika looked sad but sounded cheerful.

I told her that I was certain to come back for the prosaic reason that “there is bound to be more trade between Persia and Magadha. Koshala, too.”

This proved to be true. In fact, before I left Shravasti, I was approached by every important merchant in the city. Each wanted special trade concessions. Although I turned down several fortunes in bribes, I did accept a retainer’s fee from the potter’s guild in the form of a loan without interest. The loan itself would be paid off by the guild if I saw to it that Persian imports of Indian pottery were not taxed. I made this arrangement so that Ambalika and my children—she was again pregnant—would be taken care of in case Prince Jeta should die or be disgraced. Naturally, I assumed that when I next saw my wife and children, I would be with the lord of all India, Darius the Great King.

In the autumn of that year, I attached myself to a westbound caravan. In addition to my personal guards, I was accompanied by Fan Ch’ih. All the other members of his original expedition had been killed or died of the fever or gone home.

“The people of Cathay don’t like to travel.” Fan Ch’ih smiled his constant but never annoying smile. “Since Cathay is the world, why go anywhere else?”

“Persians feel the same.”

Because the days were dry and cool, we rode horseback. In fact, the weather was so splendid that one was absolutely happy to be young and alive—all in all, a rare sensation.

During our journey to the west I learned a great deal about Cathay, which I shall come to in the proper place. I had expected to impress Fan Ch’ih with the splendors of the Persian empire. Instead, he impressed me with the magnificence—alleged, of course—of the Cathayan world, where once upon a time there had been a single empire known as the Middle Kingdom. But as empires will, this one broke up, and today Cathay is comprised of a number of contending states like India. Also, again like India, these states are not only constantly at war with one another but there is not a duke or marquis or earl in his fortress who does not dream of one day making himself the single master of a recreated Middle Kingdom.

“But this can only happen if the ruler—whoever he is—receives the mandate of heaven.”

I remember hearing that phrase for the first time at the same moment that I saw the dreamlike towers of Taxila in the hazy violet distance. Usually the traveler smells a city before he sees it. This time one saw the towers first, then smelled the cook-fires’ smoke.

“We call the mandate of heaven, the awesome royal glory,” I said. “One of our old devil-gods was its sole bestower and he, and he alone, could give the glory to a ruler, just as he alone could take it away. Now we know that it is not a devil-god but the Wise Lord who bestows or withholds the awesome royal glory.”

“Master K’ung would say that the bestower was heaven, which is the same thing, isn’t it?”

A few years later I was to meet Master K’ung, and of all men that I have known, he was the wisest. Take my word for it, Democritus. Not that you have much choice. After all, I am probably the only man in the western world who ever knew this remarkable teacher.

No, Master K’ung—or Confucius, as he is also called—was not like Protagoras. Confucius was not clever. He was wise. Eventually I shall try to explain the difference between the two. But my best may not be enough. After all, Greek is the language of the hair-splitter and the debate-winner; it is not the language of the God, as opposed to gods.

I ARRIVED AT SUSA, FOUR YEARS LESS three days after I had set out on my embassy to the sixteen kingdoms of India, a perfect misnomer even at the time of my departure. In the Gangetic plain there were fewer than sixteen kingdoms, and no one has ever bothered to count how many nations there are to the south. The chancellery agreed with me that future ambassadors would be posted only to the kings of Magadha and Koshala.

Although the court was still at Susa, Darius himself had moved on to winter quarters at Babylon. The chancellery was now preparing to depart while the harem had already begun its slow progress by wagon to the west. Of the royal family, only Xerxes was in residence.

During my absence the harem war had ended with an outright victory for Atossa, as if there had ever been any real doubt. Except for making me chief Zoroastrian, she almost never failed in anything that she undertook. She had obliged Darius to recognize Xerxes as his heir, and that was that.

I was received by the crown prince in the private quarters. As I was about to fall prostrate Xerxes caught me with his left arm and we embraced like brothers.

Looking back, I now realize how fortunate we were. Each was in his prime. Unfortunately, each was unaware of the fact. I was weary of travel. Xerxes was weary of Mardonius. No man ever knows when he is happy; he can only know when he was happy.

We drank Helbon wine while I told Xerxes of my adventures in India. He was enthralled. “I must lead the army!” The pale-grey eyes glowed like a cat’s. “The Great King’s too old. He’ll have to send me. Except”—the brows that normally met in a straight line now formed a cleft—“he won’t. He’ll send Mardonius.”

“You could both go. And Mardonius would serve under you.”

“
If
I’m allowed to go.” The light in the gray eyes went out. “He gets everything. I get nothing. He has had a hundred victories. I’ve had none.”

“You conquered Babylon,” I said. “Or you were about to just before I left.”

“I put down a rebellion, nothing more. But when I asked to be made king of Babel like Cambyses, the Great King said no. He said it was quite enough for me to administer Babylonia, which I do. I’ve also built a new palace, which I’m allowed to stay in only when he’s not there.”

I have never been able to decide whether or not Xerxes liked his father. I suspect that he did not. Certainly, he resented the confusion over the succession, and he took as a deliberate insult the fact that he was never given a military command of any importance. Yet he was entirely loyal to Darius; and feared him just as Darius feared Atossa.

“Why are you here so late in the season?” I asked. In private we always spoke directly to each other, and looked each other in the eye.

“Cold, isn’t it?” The room was freezing. There’s no city in the world with such abrupt shifts in weather as Susa. The previous day had been positively sultry. Yet that very morning when I crossed from my quarters in the north section of the palace to Xerxes’ apartments, the ornamental pools had been covered with thin layers of iridescent night-ice and my breath hovered like smoke in the bright air. I could understand how the aging Darius came to abhor cold weather; at the first hint of frost, he would retreat to warm Babylon.

“I’m the Great King’s chief mason.” Xerxes held up his hands. The short nails were impacted with cement. “He was so pleased with the palace that I built in Babylon—for me, not for him—that he’s put me in charge of finishing this one. He’s also given me a free hand at Persepolis. So I build and build. Spend and spend. I’ve replaced most of the Egyptian builders with Ionian Greeks. They’re the best at stonework. I’ve even got some of your Indians as wood-carvers. I’ve accumulated just about everything, except money. Darius doles it out, a sheep’s worth at a time. I don’t think I’ve seen an archer since the Greek wars.”

That was the first time I heard the slang word archer, the name the Greeks give to the gold coin that shows the crowned Darius holding a bow in one hand. Current Persian joke: No Greek is impervious to a Persian archer.

Xerxes gave me his version of what had been happening while I was in India. I say his version because there is no such thing as a true account of anything. Each sees the world from his own vantage point. Needless to say, a throne is not the best place from which to see anything except the backs of prostrate men.

“After a long siege, Miletus fell. We killed the men. We shipped the women and children here to Susa. The Great King plans to settle them somewhere nearby so, till then, we’ve got several thousand very attractive young Milesians living in the old barracks. Take your pick. They’ve pretty much stopped their weeping and wailing. In fact, I’ve established one young widow in my harem. She’s teaching me Greek, or trying to. She’s clever, like all Milesians.” This clever lady was the aunt of Aspasia.

We must keep that a secret, Democritus. The Athenians would ostracize Pericles if they knew that the mother of his illegitimate son was the niece of the Great King’s concubine. Democritus doubts if the assembly would have the wit to figure out the connection. They wouldn’t. But Thucydides would.