The Temple Dancer (36 page)

But she had never known desire until he entered her, bold as a lion, until she felt the yearning in her hips as her yoni lunged against his thrusts,
until the gasping spasms took her and she squeezed her thighs against his
sides and bit his lips till she drew blood, until her belly seized and seized
and seized again and pleasure washed across her like sheets of monsoon
rain. Until she felt him burst inside her, until she heard him groan her
name, and thought: I did that to him. I did that. Until she held him as the
moment passed for both of them, until she felt his heavy grateful drowsiness, and her own, as his lingam softened in her yoni, until their breathing
once again grew calm and she felt his whispered kisses tickling her ear.

Desire makes us slaves, the sadhus had told her, and suddenly she comprehended.

She became his slave.

She had never seen a lingam so soft and shriveled before; for the sadhus always had made theirs hard before she even joined them. Geraldo's seemed like a pale worm, a blind, hairless mouse. She giggled when her rubbing
made it pulse with life. She savored the way Geraldo's breath grew ragged
as she stroked it, the way his head leaned back, and his eyes fluttered.
Clean, unclean: these words had for her no meaning now. She wanted to
hear him sigh, and scream, and beg her mercy.

In no time her lips enveloped him. Geraldo's hands gripped her shoulders, and his thighs tensed. Maya felt his lingam swell against her tongue.
Biting the Sides, Sucking the Mango-with each of the eight forms of the
congress of the mouth that she had only read about, Maya cataloged with
wonder the subtleties of his moans. I did that to him, she thought. I did that.

Her mouth tingled as she thought it. He tasted warm and bitter.

She had planned a single act, an hour, no more. They spent all night together.

After, the filmy curtains billowed and emptied as the night breezes
sighed. She heard faraway chanting. Purnima, she thought, the all-night
festival of the full moon, and here she was pressed up against a sleeping
farang, covered with his sweat and kisses, instead of at a temple dancing for
the Goddess.

The next day she dreamed only of the sunset. She braided flowers in
her perfumed hair, and as soon as it was dark she found his door.

She tried with him the five kisses, the four embraces.

He showed her arts her books had never taught, from the land of tea, a
thousand miles away. His tongue coaxed her yoni until her thighs quaked.
She bit a pillow so she would not scream. He wouldn't stop, not even when
she begged.

When he at last looked up, she begged again-this time for more.
He smiled, and stroked her hand, and leaned in to kiss her. She could
taste the ocean when she sucked his tongue. Then he disappeared once
more between her legs.

After she could breathe again, Maya turned him on his back. He was
long and beautiful. The flowers in her hair hanging loose, her smiles broken
by her hard breathing, she pressed her breasts against his chest. His dark eyes
burned. Together they breathed the dark perfume of night, of flowers and incense and desire. In the candle moonlight their perspiration glistened. She
moved her hips creatively, and soon his breaths melted into moans that mingled with her own. She embraced him in the wild moment-the thumping, throbbing, lunging of their hips; his hungry mouth devouring her eager
tongue; the eruption of their bodies, like a great cloth ripping in two; and finally the exhausted quiet of their collapse. I did that, she thought. I did that.

Oddly, in the daytime, when she saw Geraldo on the verandah, or
passed him in the courtyard, she did not even glance his way. She had nothing to say to him. The very thought of speaking with him annoyed her.
When she saw him in the sunlight, she saw only the pale vacuity of his expression, the self-important vanity of his dress. It had been her plan to tell
everyone of her defilement at his hands, but now, now she wondered if he
could keep the secret. He had, she now realized, the look of someone who
gauged his indiscretions, and might parcel out a secret to suit his own ends.

In the daylight, when she saw him, she was horrified by what she felt.
She despised him, and she despised her own hunger, but she could not stop
desire from tugging at her yoni. As she watched the sun descend with
aching slowness her eyes drifted despite her will to his closed door and she
nearly wept. She longed for Aldo's hands upon her breasts, and his lips
upon her neck, she longed to squeeze his swollen lingam while he nibbled
that spot on her forearm, just above the elbow, she longed to pull him inside, to press her calves against his shoulders as he thrust deep, longed for
the cloudburst, and the drowsy, peaceful melting of their joined bodies.
Like it or not, she could not stay away from him. The night would find her
knocking softly at his door.

In the dark at least, her feelings for him were pure. In the dark, it did
not matter what he was; only what he did to her, and she to him.

The next morning, Lakshmi found Maya on the verandah, and took her by
the hand to Chitra. Together they left the palace complex, and the three
crossed the causeway and walked to a temple at the lake's edge.

The temple of the goddess Mahalakshmi was small but elegant; endowed by Lady Chitra's generosity, it reflected the same aesthetic as the
palace: clean, serene, and quieter than any temple Maya had ever visited.
They sat at the griha, the inner temple, taking the darshan of the Goddess.
She was exquisite, a small deity made of flesh-white marble, her features painted with a delicate hand. When time came for puja, the brahmins accompanied their whispered chants with tiny finger cymbals instead of the
crashing gongs and big bronze bells Maya was used to.

At the temple, Chitra lost her palace melancholy. She teased the brahmins like a girl. Some of her jokes were so bawdy that Maya found herself
giggling uncontrollably.

Over lunch beneath a shady tree in the outer courtyard, Chitra rocked
side to side as she gossiped.

"You seem much more cheerful, sister," Maya observed.

"Oh, how I hate that dreadful palace. So full of tedious memories,
hanging about the place like impolite ghosts."

"Why don't you leave, then?"

"Hmm," she asked, turning her filmed and sightless eyes toward Maya
as if she hadn't heard. "Well, I have no choice, do I? Besides, it's mine."
Lakshmi whispered in the woman's ear. "Yes, yes," Chitra nodded to the
girl, and then turned to Maya. "I understand the farang woman has feelings
for the darvish."

"Who?"

"That darvish-Captain Pathan ..."

"Pathan? You say he is a darvish?"

Chitra's eyes drifted in their sockets. "Of course, he's a darvish.
Couldn't you tell? He's one of the quiet sort, apparently. Thank goodness.
We've had spinners visit from time to time. They're bad enough, whirling
around all night, but the howlers are worse, of course."

"Howlers?"

"Goodness, haven't you heard them? Count yourself lucky-they're
all over Bijapur, howling at the top of their lungs."

"What, singing? Captain Pathan?"

"Some darvishes sing. Those, perhaps, one can tolerate. The ones I
speak of simply howl like dogs. All night long." She demonstrated, and all
three took to giggling uncontrollably. "Who knows why they howl?" Chitra said, when she had caught her breath. "In any case, you should tell your
farang friend that it's hopeless. He'll only ignore her. It's one of their vows,
I think." She looked toward Maya, her blind eyes drifting. "Lakshmi tells
me, however, that the farang gentleman is very attractive."

Maya was glad that Chitra could not see her face, though Lakshmi
could. She leaned to whisper in Chitra's ear, but a glare from Maya froze her and she sat down again. "Some may find him so, sister." She tried to
make her comment sound offhand, but Chitra's face showed that she had
failed.

"You should be careful, little sister. Farangs are no more to be trusted
than hijras."

"Well, perhaps we are too harsh." Maya replied. "I don't like hijras myself, sister, but really what have eunuchs done to you, or to me, that's so
terrible?"

Chitra grew so agitated that Maya worried someone would overhear.
"They robbed me, that's what! Robbed me of my love, and then robbed me
of my flesh and blood. Did I not tell you eunuchs stole my child?"

She had said some such thing, but Maya had assumed she was exaggerating. Now as Chitra's face tightened with anger, she saw that it was a central part of Chitra's story. "Hijras! They tried but they could not conquer
me! I loved the man they sent me to betray. I gave my heart to him, the sultan himself, and they could not stop me! I opened myself to him! I gave
him a son, his only son!" Chitra seemed to be speaking to the empty air, no
longer conscious of Maya, nor of how her voice echoed from the temple
walls. "The hijra destroyed everything, and stole anything they could not
destroy. They could not allow the sultan to have a son borne by a Hindi.
They took him! Took my baby boy and drove me away. If not for Shahji's
protection I should now be dead."

"I'm glad that farang drove away that hijra! I hate them, hate them all!
They are all the same!" Chitra lifted the end of the sari to her face, whether
to cover it or sob, Maya could not tell. Lakshmi patted Lady Chitra's
shoulder. "I was delivered in that palace. The eunuchs told the sultan I had
miscarried, and needed rest, and they had kept me there as in a prison."
Chitra grew very quiet. "The day after my son was born, a hijra stole him
away, a fat little hijra with no breeding. He had the servants say that the
boy had died, but I found out the truth." From Chitra's filmed left eye,
tears flowed. "I made enquiries. They made him a eunuch! My poor boy,
my poor maimed, innocent boy. I knew he would have bad luck, poor
child. He too had the sign."

"What sign is that?"

"The evil eye. Surely you've noticed?" Chitra opened her left hand,
and displayed her palm to Maya. The dark streak stretched from her index
finger to her wrist. "I have it, too. It is a mark of my family. For me bad fortune came when I was older, but his began when he was born!" She
squeezed the hand into a tight fist and clutched it to her chest. "Now you've
seen it, you will be afraid to speak with me."

"I don't believe that you are cursed, sister."

"How else to explain all that has happened?" Maya looked into her
face so full of pain and did not answer. "Make me a promise, sister. When
you go to Bijapur, look for my son among the eunuchs. Find him. Get
word to me somehow." She reached for Maya with her uncursed hand.

"Of course I promise," Maya answered.

Slowly, surrounded by frangipani and tuberoses, beneath the shade of
the spreading mango tree that towered over the temple steps that led to the
lake, the two of them again grew calm. They napped in the temple courtyard through the heat of the day, just as the goddess slept in the griha until
the brahmins pulled aside the curtains and woke her. After whispering
hymns and garlanding the Goddess with fresh flowers, one of the brahmins
came to Lady Chitra. "Sister," the blind woman said to Maya. "It's time for
you to dance. That is why I brought you here."

"Now?" Usually one danced in the temple only in the morning to
wake the Goddess, or at night right before she went to sleep.

"We must return to the palace before sundown. It is the rule. But the
Goddess will not mind the time."

Whose rule, Maya wondered as they mounted the stone steps of the
temple. At the doorway to the griha, the brahmins shuffled to one side, giving Maya room.

The little girl stared as Maya stretched in the corner. "Would you like
to be a devadasi?" Maya asked. Lakshmi nodded with eyes wide. "It is a
difficult life," Maya smiled. "You're named for her, you know," she added
as she tightened the skirt of her sari, nodding to the murti. "Lakshmi. The
goddess of wealth."

But Lakshmi, her eyes now nearly popping, dashed off to whisper into
Chitra's ear.