The Temple Dancer (22 page)

"What has she stolen? Speak!"

But Slipper could not control his wailing. Geraldo spat and hauled him
to his feet. "This is how you treat a woman? You are an abomination!" One
of Slipper's curl-toed slippers flipped from his feet as Geraldo dragged
him off. The eunuch reached back helplessly but Geraldo, furious, dragged
him even harder. Both of them were sweating, both grunting with the effort. Every time Slipper wailed, Geraldo gave him another furious heave,
and so they tumbled toward the green gate of the palace.

"Out! Out!" Geraldo placed his foot against the eunuch's enormous
buttocks and shoved him through the gate. Slipper tumbled to the drive in
a sobbing heap. The young farang, teeth bared and eyes blazing, motioned
to a dazed old gatekeeper to swing the gates shut. Slipper lay in the dust
and screamed like a goat when the knife strikes its neck.

The gatekeeper moved too slowly to suit Geraldo. The farang pushed
him aside, slammed the gates shut and latched them himself. The poor old
gatekeeper looked more dazed than ever.

Slipper's pathetic screams attracted attention. Servants came and stood staring at the green gate as if to see through it. Some children scurried up a ladder of lashed bamboo and looked over the wall. To Slipper's wailing the
children added their thoughtless laughter, and then their mothers shouted
and scolded, and from the gardens the peacocks began to trumpet, and at
that same moment temple gongs clashed and clanged. Geraldo, who stood
at the latch, lifted his hands to his ears and began to laugh.

Geraldo went to Maya. She still knelt on the tiles, catching her breath.
She realized with embarrassment that she was still wearing only her thin
nightdress and the coverlet. Her head hammered with each pulse beat and
her belly felt cold and dark. Geraldo stooped beside her, looking very regal
in his borrowed jama robes. When he touched her face, his fingertips were
soft, more gentle than Maya expected. The way he peered at the side of her
face made Maya feel uncomfortable, as though she were a dead thing. She
tried to catch his eyes, but he saw only her bruises.

"It could be worse. You'll be fine. He didn't hurt you badly."

Her eyes blazed. "Your goods are still intact, you mean. How very fortunate for you."

Geraldo inhaled harshly, and his face grew pale, and he got to his feet
so furiously Maya thought that he too might strike her. "You say that?
You? After I defended you?" Suddenly he bent down and came up with the
eunuch's curl-toed slipper. "This is how you treat me?" He shook the slipper a few inches from her face. Then he ran toward the gate and hurled it
over the wall, as if he hoped to cast it in the lake. "Maybe the eunuch was
right," he muttered, facing her again. There was sorrow in his face as well as
anger. Then Geraldo spun on his heel and stalked off.

Yes, thought Maya, glaring at him, there is no good in me. Now you
know the truth.

But by the time Geraldo's shadow passed the threshold of the guestroom door, Maya regretted what she'd said.

The temple bells stopped clanging. From the other side of the courtyard,
Maya heard a thump, thump, thump. She looked up to see Lady Chitra, the
mistress of the palace, approaching pulled forward by the eager little girl.
She wore a long shawl that spread behind her like a golden cape. With every other step, her walking staff banged the white marble tiles of the courtyard.
Despite her staff, she moved as smoothly as a ship on calm waters.

As she came, the servants and children stopped shouting. They huddled in groups and edged toward the doors. Outside the gate Slipper kept
up his screaming.

"Halt," came Lady Chitra's voice, harsh and dry as a sour raisin.
"What is that racket?" She rolled her is when she spoke, giving her words
a majestic, antique quality, as though she had learned to speak from an ancient queen. The servants rolled their eyes at one another and tiptoed toward the doors. "Do not think I cannot find you! I am not so blind!" Lady
Chitra raised her staff and turned slowly until her sightless eyes faced
Maya. As she pointed the staff directly at her, Maya got the impression that
Chitra somehow could see, despite her filmed, unfocused eyes. "You! What
is this disturbance?" But the little girl, Lakshmi, tugged at Lady Chitra's
hand, and the woman stooped while Lakshmi whispered excitedly into her
ear. Lady Chitra came up slowly, and placed the tip of her staff on the
ground. "You are that devadasi from last night."

Maya nodded, then remembered herself and said aloud, "Yes, madam."

"Do not be formal with me, child. We are more sisters than you know.
What is all that screaming?" She lifted her staff toward the gate without
turning her head from Maya.

It is one of our party, a hijra. He just returned from the doctor's house.
The farang Geraldo, who you met last night, beat him and threw him out the
gates."

"A hijra. " The word as Lady Chitra said it had a dark malevolence, and
her eyelids tensed and her filmed eyes rolled. But Maya thought the woman
was trying to conceal a smile. "How did he come to beat a hijra, that fine
young farang, eh?"

"Because the hijra was beating me."

"Ahcha. And why you?"

"The hijra wanted something that I used to have." Lady Chitra
grunted encouragingly. Little Lakshmi's eyes grew big, as they flickered
from Maya to her mistress. "Some trinkets of my mother's."

With a sigh, Lady Chitra closed her blind eyes and lifted her face so the
warm sun fell upon it. "Worse than snakes are hijras," she hissed. She nodded toward the gate, and the little girl began to guide her there. "Are you not coming?" Lady Chitra called. Maya realized it was a command, not a
question. She rose and followed.

"Open," Lady Chitra intoned when she reached the gate. Outside, the
wailing had become a blubbering sob, like the crying of an exhausted
child. The old gatekeeper unlatched the wide gate and pushed it open.
Instantly the wails began again. The girl pulled Lady Chitra forward.

"Begone from here, hijra! Begone!"

Maya expected Slipper to scream, or to fall at Lady Chitra's feet and
beg mercy-in fact almost anything except what came next. The eunuch
clapped his fat hands over his gaping mouth and stared at the woman with
wide eyes. His right foot still was bare, though his curl-toed slipper lay on
the ground nearby.

"Begone!" she cried once more.

Slipper peered at her, blinking, as if realizing at last that Chitra was blind.
This seemed to suggest a course of action to him. He held his mouth still
more tightly, and began to tiptoe backward, away from the gate. By chance
his foot bumped against the empty slipper, which had landed on the road. He
squeezed his fat foot into it, though his eyes never left Lady Chitra.

He crept backward like a fugitive, finally reaching the causeway.
Halfway across, he glared at Maya, and his face burned. He shook his fist at
her, and then turned and bustled to the other shore, his fat buttocks jiggling
in his jamas.

The girl tiptoed to whisper into Lady Chitra's ear. The woman rose
with a satisfied smile. She turned and said, as if to no one, "Let the gate stay
open, but call me if the hijra dares return." The gatekeeper bowed low as
she passed, as though she could see. Then the little girl led her to where
Maya was standing, and she said, "Sister devadasi, the dear goddess has
brought you to me. Come and join me in my rooms, and tell me all."

"I am not dressed," Maya answered.

"I can wait," came Lady Chitra's reply.

So began Maya's friendship with Lady Chitra.

It was only while Maya was changing into a borrowed sari that she realized that once more, her life had changed. Only a few days ago she had been dancing for the Goddess every morning and every night, in the company of
a dozen sisters. Wrenched from that life, she had gotten used to the endless
lassitude and irritations of traveling as a slave with a hijra for a companion. It
usually took a while for Maya to set her feelings in order. Days, sometimes
months. This time it dawned on Maya suddenly that with Deoga away, and
with Slipper banished, she was on the brink of a new freedom. She buried
that thought, planning to consider it later, and finished dressing.

In the part of the palace farthest from the main courtyard, Lady Chitra's rooms fronted an astonishing garden, filled with fountains and towering trees, and flowers-roses, jasmine, tuberoses. The garden looked across
the lake, bordered only with a low wall more suited to sitting than protection. The breeze that spilled into Lady Chitra's rooms swirled with fragrance. Peacocks walked there, and parrots darted from tree to tree.

Lady Chitra's rooms were large, even grand. In the corners of each of
her rooms were heaps of tuberoses that sweetened the air with perfume. In
the lampstands and hanging lamps, Persian rose blossoms of deep violet
had been placed where wicks should be. Chitra had no use for flames, but
she loved the peppery scent of musk roses.

In a cage which hung from the ceiling a white parrot eyed Maya suspiciously.

Near the blind mistress of the palace sat her eyes: the quick-faced little
girl Lakshmi. Seven years old, maybe eight, no one cared, for she was only
an orphan who had worked in the palace kitchens until Lady Chitra discovered her talent for seeing and describing. Lady Chitra adored the child,
and had secretly begun to teach her natyam, holy dance.

The women sat on a carpet spread as for a meal with white muslin
sheets. Servants brought cups of chilled melon juice and plates of plain chapatis on a tray, and lit cones of incense. As they set things down, some
of them tried to catch Maya's glance. They nodded to Lady Chitra and
lifted their eyebrows and rolled their eyes and shook their heads. Maya ignored their bad manners.

Lady Chitra said nothing until the servants left. She sat with a straight
back, not leaning on a bolster, or reclining like the little girl. "The frog
awaiting the sunset before he calls out his love," she said softly, as though
forgetting Maya were there. "The cock watching the sky for the light of
dawn. The hawk who holds his cry until the ferret rests." She turned her
rolling, sightless eyes to Maya. "Now speak, and hold back nothing."

So Maya began to relate her story: the death of her guru in a floodhow she thought that Gungama had been killed. Being sold to the farangs.
The journey over oceans and mountains. Finally the bandit attack. Chitra
stopped her often, demanding that she leave out no detail, however small.
Chitra was not satisfied until Maya had even included in her story her last
night's bath, and her dream of her guru, and finally her encounter with
Slipper in the courtyard. Maya did not tell the part about the headdress.

"Of course you have considered suicide, and murder, too," Chitra pronounced when she had finished. Maya acknowledged this with silence.
"Those are vanities, child. They cause immeasurable suffering in this life
and all future lives. Who knows, perhaps you have been given this harsh
portion because of misdeeds in some past life."