The Temple Dancer (37 page)

There was no music, but using one of her gold bangles, Chitra tapped
the tal on the flagstone floor. Teen tal, twelve beats, the most challenging of
dances. As Maya's bare feet slapped the tiles, she began to forget. The bandits disappeared, Slipper disappeared, then Lucinda and Pathan, even Chitra and Lakshmi. It took time, but as she leaped and whirled with her eyes
locked on those of the Goddess, even Geraldo's face began to fade, and at last she forgot even the touch of his hands upon her thighs. The stones beneath her feet became as soft as clouds, the flickering lamps of the temple
grew bright. The mudras of her face and hands, each one carefully practiced and executed, required no more thought: they flowed from her like
water now, the absolute expression of Maya's heart.

When she finished, she held the last pose for a long time, seeing only
the Goddess's serene gaze. Slowly Maya became aware of her surroundings; her breath echoing from the dark walls, her sweat falling on the cold
floor. Little Lakshmi stared in awe at Maya. The brahmins bowed to her as
they returned to tend the Goddess.

"You are a great devadasi," Chitra said, as they walked back to the
palace arm in arm.

"How can you know, sister?"

Chitra stopped and placed her hand on Maya's cheek. "I know." But
her face was full of sadness. As they came to the palace gate, Chitra pressed
Maya's arm. "Will you go to him again tonight?'

"What do you know of it?" Maya asked when she had caught her breath.

"Only that you are a woman, and that you are young," Chitra answered. "What will you do, sister?"

But Maya could not say, or would not.

Geraldo once again had astonished her. That night Maya practiced with
him the arts of pressing, and marking, and scratching with the nails, and
biting. She could feel along the inside of her thigh the imprint of Geraldo's
teeth, the Line of Jewels.

She had laid awake all night, but not from the tingling of his bite, nor
from the memory of her body's fire. She was thinking of Chitra's simple
question, and her thoughts roiled. "What will you do, sister?"

In the morning she found Geraldo gone, so she must have slept. Her
side where he had laid against her now felt hollow, as if a part of her was
gone.

As she dressed, as sometimes happened, a memory erupted in Maya's
thoughts with such completeness that it was almost like a vision. She saw
with exquisite clarity the face of her mother dying in the forest.

It was as though the room had disappeared, and all that she could see
was that pale face, the lips turning gray-blue in the dawn. Maya had been
about three years old, yet the memory was fresh and painful as a burn.

She'd felt her mother's body growing cold though she covered it with
leaves, watched her beautiful face grow slack though she kissed the cheeks.
At last a fat man had come through the woods, a big fat man with a bear.
He led her to the temple where she would end up living out her childhood.

No one there believed her story. They thought she'd run away and that
someone would come for her. When no one came, the shastri put her to
work in the kitchen. One day by fate, she'd met her guru, Gungama, who'd
taken one look at her and set her dancing.

Even Maya had come to think she'd made the story up, of her dying
mother, of the stranger and his bear. Even so, whenever she got the chance,
she'd wander through the forest near the temple, hoping.

Years passed. She grew up slim and graceful, became a dancer, became
beautiful. The shastri taught her tantra and promised that one day she
would be the vessel for sadhus seeking the divine.

On her last day as a virgin, Maya had stepped still dripping from her river
bath to find the saint named Twelve Coats waiting for her, seated on the bank
beside his brown bear. The bear looked up and yawned at her, and she saw
that it was old, its teeth yellow and its snout gray. The saint held a leash of
knotted rags around the old bear's neck. He was thin, she saw now, but he
wore a dozen coats, one pulled over the last, so he looked fatter than the bear.

The old man nodded to her silently and motioned to her with his
twiglike fingers. He then gave the leash a tug and vanished with the bear
into the leafy shadows of the woods.

Without a word, she followed.

It was nearly dark when the bear sat down near a mound of rocks and
leaves. The saint gestured toward the mound and nodded. Maya's fingers as
they touched the rocks were tender as a child's kiss. Then she touched a
bone, dry and hard, and she stopped, and patted back the leaves and wept.

She looked up to find Twelve Coats rummaging at the end of a hollow
log, from which he took something: dirty, cobweb-covered; Maya could not tell what. He placed whatever it was on the ground, and with his hand
brushed off the cobwebs. It was a parcel wrapped in an old ragged coat, and
inside the parcel were two plain wooden boxes, one long and thin, one
small and square.

Twelve Coats pointed to the mound, and then to the boxes, and then to
her. He gave the boxes to her, and then pressed his bony hand against her
head. When he let go, she sat dumbfounded. This made him smile, and for
a while he stared as an uncle stares at a charming niece. The bear scratched
behind his ear like a dog. At last, with a tug at the bear's leash, he and the
animal set off, leaving her to find her own way home.

The night watchman at the temple gate had stared at her as if she were a
ghost. "We thought you'd died," he said, looking disappointed. "There's
been a bear around."

By the dim light of a butter lamp, she opened the boxes in her room.
The long one held a bright, broken sword, the small one a wedding headdress, a net of glass beads, some clear, some white. She hid both boxes, but
had at last a clue then who she was, or at least who she once had been.

Over the years Maya had managed to pack that memory away, burying
it in some dark place, just as she had hidden her treasures from the shastri's
sight. Sometimes, though, like today, her mother's cold, pale face emerged
unbidden. She remembered, and as she remembered, wept.

Even while she twisted her hair into a soft braid, she wept. Her tears
spotted her dusty sandals as she walked. She found a quiet place in the garden, amidst the dew-wet rose leaves, pushed the end of her sari into her
mouth, and cried until her throat ached. Even muffled, the sound of her
sobs scared the crows that rested in the mango tree. They burst from their
branches, finally fluttering down to prowl around her, their caws so loud
they hid the sound of her weeping.

She never heard Lady Chitra's footsteps, or those of Lakshmi leading the
blind woman through the garden. Chitra turned toward Maya for a moment as though her blind eyes actually saw, and then she shooed Lakshmi
away. Hesitantly, feeling her way, she came to where Maya sat, scattering
the crows as she walked.

She sat beside Maya for a long time before she spoke. "Those shastris
are bastards, sister," she said at last. "A girl should grow into a woman, but
they turn her into a plaything. They toyed with you as they toyed with me.
They told us that we served the Goddess, but we served them only."

Maya sniffed, but could not answer. Chitra's eyes drifted as though
watching the movements of something far away. "Did the shastris ever tell
us of desire? Did they tell us of the ache of yearning? Did they tell us of the
feel of a man, or the smell, or of his weight on our breasts as he thrusts?
No ... They gave us sadhus, dried twigs of wood, not men. A man is a
bonfire, a feast of agony and pleasure. It's such a nuisance."

Chitra stroked Maya's hair. "When you dance, sister, you feel in your
heart the blessing of the Goddess, her peace, her kindness. But when you
are with him, then the power of the Goddess is in your heart, crashing
through you. The Goddess is no thing of stone. The Goddess is breath, desire, despair. She is the green of the bursting leaf, the baby's cry, the lover's
bite, the fragrance of the rose. You feel the Goddess moving through you."

"It is horrible," Maya said, her voice choked.

"Yes," Chitra said.

"I enjoy it."

"Yes. Yes." Chitra dropped her hand into her lap. "Now what will you
do?"

"I don't know." She tried to say more, but sobbing once more overwhelmed her. Pressing her hands to her face, Maya ran off.

By now, Lucinda could wind her sari by herself. She placed kohl in her
eyes, and touched vermilion to her forehead. When she stepped into the
morning sunlight of the corridor, she saw Chitra's young guide, Lakshmi.
"Are you looking for Maya?" Lucinda asked kindly. Lakshmi shook her
head. "For who, then?" The girl's eyes grew wide, and she lifted her hand
and placed it in Lucinda's.

Lakshmi led her down a corridor, and then a hall, and then across another courtyard. "Where are you taking me?" Lucinda asked, and though
the girl looked at her with fear, she did not answer.

They had come to some part of the palace that Lucinda had not yet seen. The girl led her to a pair of ornamented doors that creaked when she
pushed them open, and led Lucinda inside.

The room was completely dark except for the faint light that came in
through the still-open door. The air was awash in fragrance, with the tang
of Persian roses and jasmine, and a thick smoke of incense burning.

"Who is that?" said a soft voice, but Lucinda could not tell where. The
girl dropped her hand, leaving Lucinda standing in shadows, too uncertain
to move.

Slowly Lucinda's eyes adjusted. The room was as large as her uncle's
hall in Goa, the beamed ceilings high. Where the light struck, Lucinda
could see bundles of flowers heaped everywhere, like the stalls of the flowerwallahs in the market. Though full of perfume, the air felt still and stale.

In the shadows, Lucinda could just make out Lakshmi, now whispering in the ear of Lady Chitra, reclining on some cushions on a low dais in
the center of the room. From the ceiling hung a white parrot in a cage,
which cocked its head and whistled.

"Come here, Lucinda." Her voice came from the shadows. "Is it
thought polite among farangs to stand at such a distance?" Lakshmi
jumped from her seat and brought Lucinda forward. For the first time, she
did not look terrified.