The Temple Dancer (24 page)

A little girl in a short dress and bare feet had no trouble negotiating the
flexing bamboo ladder, but for Maya, holding her sari and climbing in
smooth-soled sandals, each step was an adventure. When she reached the
top, Lakshmi pulled her down beside her. Her little legs dangled over the
edge of the roof. She took out a handmade sack and poured a pile of
cashews into her dusty palm, and offered one to Maya.

From here, Maya could see much of the palace grounds, and across the
lake, the bustling city of Belgaum, in fact the whole valley ringed by
mountains. It was noon; the lake was peaceful as a mirror, and the sunlight
was silvery and diffused, casting gentle shadows. A family of monkeys
lounged in a cavity in the wall a few yards away, a mother nursing a cute
black-eyed baby.

Lakshmi leaned against Maya as if she were a bolster, one leg flipped
casually over the other. She stared up at Maya and solemnly offered her
cashew after cashew.

"You're happy here, aren't you, Lakshmi?" Maya said, combing the
girl's hair with her fingers. "But sometimes, maybe not so happy." Lakshmi merely watched as Maya spoke. "Maybe you think about running
away; maybe to that city across the lake. Maybe you just think about running on and on and never stopping." Lakshmi's little bare foot ticked up
and down as she listened.

"But where would you go, little one? Who would care for you? What
would become of you, all alone in that big world?" Maya's eyes drifted over
the peaceful lake as clouds scudded across the sky.

"Maybe you think to end it all. Could your next life be any harder
than this, you think?" Lakshmi's foot stopped moving. The girl slipped her hand around Maya's fingertips. But Maya seemed hardly to realize that
Lakshmi was still there. "Is there no way out? No way but to live in endless
suffering, or to die?"

As if in answer to this question, Maya saw the form of Geraldo stepping into the courtyard far below. Her face grew brighter and more serious. Something Chitra had said, she now realized, had been a hint to her,
pointing to the way out of her dilemma. "Maybe the answer lies not in being good, but in being selfish."

Maya looked down to see that Lakshmi's face had grown troubled. The
young woman stroked the girl's cheek. "Pay no attention to me, child,"
Maya smiled.

But Lakshmi had lived too long with Lady Chitra. When someone told
her that, she worried twice as much.

Lucinda woke beneath a light coverlet in the darkness of an unknown
room. She rose slowly, for her head felt thick, and winced when she tried
her weight on her hurt ankle. She was wearing a dressing gown of cotton
lawn that tied around her waist with a ribbon. She couldn't remember
where she got it.

Near her bed she saw an old crutch, its head wrapped in faded rags. She
had a vague memory of an old hakim looking at her gravely and leaving it
for her last night. She took it and hobbled toward the wedges of brightness
glowing along the sides of a dark curtain near her bed. Drawing back the
heavy drape, she found not a window as she expected, but a stone archway
as wide as the room, leading to a shallow balcony.

The balcony extended beyond the palace wall and gave an impression of
floating in space. An exquisite vista spread in a coral haze before her, a wide
lake in a valley framed by sheer shadowed mountains. On the other shore
Lucinda saw forests of dense shadowed greens, and vibrant fields bright and
soft as velvet as tiny shoots peeked from the ground. The lake water glittered.

Living all her life in Goa, used to city streets and sea winds, Lucinda
had no words to describe what she saw. It was like a dream, she thought,
like the magic country of bedtime stories. The Beautiful Lands, she had
called them to herself as a child; but now they stood before her.

She could taste moisture on the caressing breeze, even taste the smoke
of cooking fires. On the far shore she saw a string of shining water buffalo,
small as toys, wading along the lake; and near the forest's edge, a pack of
gray-backed monkeys loping in a line.

Where was she? Where were her clothes? How had she gotten here?
Where were the others? Just then she heard a soft voice behind her. "Isn't it
a beautiful sight?"

It was Maya.

"You're all right!" Lucinda said. "Where am I? Where's Da Gama?
Where is everyone?"

Maya did not seem to feel the need to answer her questions. "Lady
Chitra sent me to see you. Your trunk was destroyed, lost and broken in
the chasm. Lady Chitra sends her regrets, and asked me to bring you this
sari-never worn, so far as I can tell." Maya held out a thick square of silk,
folded flat.

The news of her belongings seemed unimportant at the moment.
"Captain Da Gama?"

"He left this morning with General Shahji. He came to see you earlier.
Do you remember?"

"No. Shahji was the man that brought us here, yes? And what about
Geraldo? Did he go as well?"

"He stays here with us."

"Captain Pathan?" Lucinda asked. But she couldn't bear to hear the
answer, and hobbled back to her bed, and sat down heavily. She felt herself
in pieces, as if slashed by a knife. One part of her controlled her body: that
part could speak, perhaps even think; another part of her, hidden deep inside the first, was a broken bundle, terrified.

Maya sat beside her. "You don't remember? After the bandits, we were
discovered by General Shahji, and he and his guards brought us here. It's
Shahji's summer palace. Very rich. Very beautiful."

But Lucinda had stopped listening as soon as Maya had said "bandits."
The gentle light of the room began to dim before her; her mind's eyes
stared instead into a vile face, half-mad and evil; cold and stony ground
pressed against her back. She leaned against the crutch.

Maya touched her arm with distant friendliness and nodded toward the
folded sari. "The silks of Belgaum are famous." She shook the square of
cloth, which unfurled with a snap; a six-yard length of light, stiff silk the color of sand at sunset, its edging dense with gold-thread embroidery, the
main body dotted with tiny, multicolored designs.

"But I am a farang. How can I wear a sari?"

"I can help you," Maya said. "It is so easy. First let's comb your hair."

Lucinda felt nothing, thought of nothing as Maya rubbed her dark hair
with scented oils, then gently combed it and braided a ribbon through it.
She had never worn it so. Her braid was much longer and heavier than she
expected. With Maya's help, she stood, placing her weight on her good
foot, and let the bayadere wrap her with the sari.

First she swirled over Lucinda's head a gauze blouse light as air. It barely
hid her breasts, and left Lucinda's belly bare. Strange to be dressed without
proper underclothes, just a wisp of gauze; no slip, no corset. With quick, sure
motions, Maya folded the sari around her bare hips, hanging the cloth in nine
pleats over her outstretched fingers, then quickly tucking it into place to
form a generous skirt. The other end of the sari, heavy with gold embroidery,
she lifted across Lucinda's chest and then tossed over her shoulders.

"You look like a princess," Maya said, looking her over with unexpected directness.

Lucinda lowered her eyes. "Is there no petticoat? Are there no fasteners? No pins? No buttons? What holds it on?"

Maya moved around her critically, here pressing in a fold, here
straightening an edge. "You worry too much," she said. Taking care with
her hurt ankle, she placed Lucinda's small feet into silk slippers with
turned-up toes. Again she stepped back and admired the effect. "You look
quite presentable. No one would know you were a farang. Would you like
some lunch?"

Suddenly Lucinda realized that she was hungry. Maya helped Lucinda to
hobble across the marble-tiled courtyard toward a wide pavilion that overlooked the lake. By now the sun had risen high, and the white tiles gleamed.
"We're here in the women's section," Maya explained as they slowly neared
the pavilion. "On the other side of the pavilion are the men's quarters. We'll
get lunch there on that verandah, which the two sides share."

With the bright mountain sun, the stiff silk, the braid, the crutch, the
slippers with the turned-up toes, Lucinda seemed not to know herself. She
seemed to float above the courtyard watching a strangely dressed young
woman hobble forward, held up by a nautch girl who might have been her
twin.

The wide pavilion stretched in a semicircle, its sandstone archways overlooking the western shore. "I can't get over how you look," Maya said softly.

Lucinda glanced at her unfamiliar clothing. "Don't I look all right?"

"You look very different in a sari," Maya answered.

Lucinda thought about this for a moment, then turned to face the
bright waters that sparkled in the noon sun. "What do you know about this
place?"

"We're in Belgaum, about seventy miles from Bijapur. General Shahji
often spends his summer here. Shahji has given part of this palace to the
late sultan's first concubine, Lady Chitra. We met her last night. Do you
remember?"

"No." Lucinda's gaze drifted over the water. A part of her still seemed
asleep, but some other part she hardly knew drank in the sight of the palace
grounds. "It's so quiet. So vast. Not like home, all city streets and bustle."
She looked down, embarrassed. "Now you will think me unsophisticated.
I came to Goa as a child and never left its walls."

Maya considered her. "Jewelry," she said. Lucinda arched an eyebrow,
not understanding. "Jewelry. You asked how you looked. You need jewelry
with such a fine sari. Bracelets. A necklace. With a rich sari like that, you
should wear a headpiece as well, maybe a teardrop pearl resting on your
forehead." Maya traced Lucinda's brow with a delicate finger. "Do farangs
have such things? I think not."

It was odd to feel her touch. No one ever touched her face. At the
stroke of Maya's finger on her brow, Lucinda looked up, shocked. She had
the odd sensation of the disjointed parts of her memory colliding back together. Suddenly her eyes welled up with tears. "I have nothing, nothing.
My trunk had everything. My jewels are gone, my clothes. I had brought
nearly everything I owned. Now it's gone, gone, everything is gone."

While Lucinda sobbed into her palms, Maya's face passed through
many changes: first concerned, then irritated, finally serene. "You think
you have had misfortune," she whispered. "But I tell you that this is good
fortune. The gods cannot place their gifts into a closed fist. First your hand
must be emptied, then the gifts may be received. We poor fools call this
loss, and we suffer, but it is the blessing of the gods."

Lucinda looked into the nautch girl's eyes. "Do you believe that?"

"I have to." She covered Lucinda's hand with her own, her many bangles clinking as they slid down her arm. "Here," Maya said suddenly. With
an effort, she squeezed a few bangles from each wrist. "Wear these."

Lucinda gave a soft laugh. "They'll never fit! Look how small your
hands are!"

"Nonsense. Our hands are just the same size. Let me help you." She
took Lucinda's hand and rubbed her knuckles until they relaxed; the
bracelets suddenly slipped over onto her wrists.

Lucinda shook her hand and the bangles jingled merrily, but her face
grew dark. "What do you remember of ..." she let the words hang in the
air.

Maya studied her face carefully. "I remember the elephant; I remember
it slipping from the road, over the cliff's edge into the chasm." She looked
back at Lucinda. "The mahout."

"The bandit," Lucinda whispered. "His mouth dripping spittle."

"Let me see your leg," Maya said.

The words were so unexpected, it took Lucy a moment before she
lifted her foot and swept her sari skirts to the side for Maya to see. "Captain Pathan said it was broken."

"It's not," Maya said as she smoothed the ankle with strong fingers.
"You couldn't walk on it if it were."

"It hurts," Lucinda insisted.