Modern Classics of Fantasy, page 39
As darkness arrived in the world, the travelers and townsmen who had begun walking as soon as they heard the chatter of the drums began to arrive at the festival field, large as a battlefield of old. There they found places and waited for the night to deepen and the drama to begin, sipping the sweet-smelling tea that they purchased at the stalls beneath the trees.
A great brass bowl of oil, tall as a man, wicks hanging down over its edges, stood in the center of the field. These wicks were lighted, and torches flickered beside the tents of the actors.
The drumming, at close range, was deafening and hypnotic, the rhythms complicated, syncopated, insidious. As midnight approached, the devotional chanting began, rising and falling with the drumbeat, working a net about the senses.
There was a brief lull as the Enlightened One and his monks arrived, their yellow robes near-orange in the flamelight. But they threw back their cowls and seated themselves cross-legged upon the ground. After a time, it was only the chanting and the voices of the drums that filled the minds of the spectators.
When the actors appeared, gigantic in their makeup, ankle bells jangling as their feet beat the ground, there was no applause, only rapt attention. The kathakali dancers were famous, trained from their youth in acrobatics as well as the ages-old patterns of the classical dance, knowing the nine distinct movements of the neck and of the eyeballs and the hundreds of hand positions required to reenact the ancient epics of love and battle, of the encounters of gods and demons, of the valiant fights and bloody treacheries of tradition. The musicians shouted out the words of the stories as the actors, who never spoke, portrayed the awesome exploits of Rama and of the Pandava brothers. Wearing makeup of green and red, or black and stark white, they stalked across the field, skirts billowing, their mirror-sprinkled halos glittering in the light of the lamp. Occasionally, the lamp would flare or sputter, and it was as if a nimbus of holy or unholy light played about their heads, erasing entirely the sense of the event, causing the spectators to feel for a moment mat they themselves were the illusion, and that the great-bodied figures of the cyclopean dance were the only real things in the world.
The dance would continue until daybreak, to end with the rising of the sun. Before daybreak, however, one of the wearers of the saffron robe arrived from the direction of town, made his way through the crowd and spoke into the ear of the Enlightened One.
The Buddha began to rise, appeared to think better of it and reseated himself. He gave a message to the monk, who nodded and departed from the field of the festival.
The Buddha, looking imperturbable, returned his attention to the drama. A monk seated nearby noted that he was tapping his fingers upon the ground, and he decided that the Enlightened One must be keeping time with the drumbeats, for it was common knowledge that he was above such things as impatience.
When the drama had ended and Surya the sun pinked the skirts of Heaven above the eastern rim of the world, it was as if the night just passed had held the crowd prisoner within a tense and frightening dream, from which they were just now released, weary, to wander this day.
The Buddha and his followers set off walking immediately, in the direction of the town. They did not pause to rest along the way, but passed through Alandil at a rapid but dignified gait.
When they came again to the purple grove, the Enlightened One instructed his monks to take rest, and he moved off in the direction of a small pavilion located deep within the wood.
* * * *
The monk who had brought the message during the drama sat within the pavilion. There he tended the fever of the traveler he had come upon in the marshes, where he walked often to better meditate upon the putrid condition his body would assume after death.
Tathagatha studied the man who lay upon the sleeping mat. His lips were thin and pale; he had a high forehead, high cheekbones, frosty eyebrows, pointed ears; and Tathagatha guessed that when those eyelids rose, the eyes revealed would be of a faded blue or gray. There was a quality of— translucency?—fragility perhaps, about his unconscious form, which might have been caused partly by the fevers that racked his body, but which could not be attributed entirely to them. The small man did not give the impression of being one who would bear the thing that Tathagatha now raised in his hands. Rather, on first viewing, he might seem to be a very old man. If one granted him a second look, and realized then that his colorless hair and his slight frame did not signify advanced age, one might then be struck by something childlike about his appearance. From the condition of his complexion, Tathagatha doubted mat he need shave very often. Perhaps a slightly mischievous pucker was now hidden somewhere between his cheeks and the corners of his mouth. Perhaps not, also.
The Buddha raised the crimson strangling cord, which was a thing borne only by the holy executioners of the goddess Kali. He fingered its silken length, and it passed like a serpent through his hand, clinging slightly. He did not doubt but that it was intended to move in such a manner about his throat. Almost unconsciously, he held it and twisted his hands through the necessary movements.
Then he looked up at the wide eyed monk who had watched him, smiled his imperturbable smile and laid the cord aside. With a damp cloth, the monk wiped the perspiration from the pale brow.
The man on the sleeping mat shuddered at the contact, and his eyes snapped open. The madness of the fever was in them and they did not truly see, but Tathagatha felt a sudden jolt at their contact.
Dark, so dark they were almost jet, and it was impossible to tell where the pupil ended and the iris began. There was something extremely unsettling about eyes of such power in a body so frail and effete.
He reached out and stroked the man’s hands, and it was like touching steel, cold and impervious. He drew his fingernail sharply across the back of the right hand. No scratch or indentation marked its passage, and his nail fairly slid, as though across a pane of glass. He squeezed the man’s thumbnail and released it. There was no sudden change of color. It was as though these hands were dead or mechanical things.
He continued his examination. The phenomenon ended somewhat above the wrists, occurred again in other places. His hands, breast, abdomen, neck and portions of his back had soaked within the death bath, which gave this special unyielding power. Total immersion would, of course, have proved fatal; but as it was, the man had traded some of his tactile sensitivity for the equivalent of invisible gauntlets, breastplate, neck-piece and back armor of steel. He was indeed one of the select assassins of the terrible goddess.
“Who else knows of this man?” asked the Buddha.
“The monk Simha,” replied the other, “who helped me bear him here.”
“Did he see”—Tathagatha gestured with his eyes toward the crimson cord—”that?” he inquired.
The monk nodded.
“Then go fetch him. Bring him to me at once. Do not mention anything of this to anyone, other than that a pilgrim was taken ill and we are tending him here. I will personally take over his care and minister to his illness.”
“Yes, Illustrious One.”
The monk hurried forth from the pavilion.
Tathagatha seated himself beside the sleeping mat and waited.
* * * *
It was two days before the fever broke and intelligence returned to those dark eyes. But during those two days, anyone who passed by the pavilion might have heard the voice of the Enlightened One droning on and on, as though he addressed his sleeping charge. Occasionally, the man himself mumbled and spoke loudly, as those in a fever often do.
On the second day, the man opened his eyes suddenly and stared upward. Then he frowned and turned his head.
“Good morning, Rild,” said Tathagatha.
“You are…?” asked the other, in an unexpected baritone.
“One who teaches the way of liberation,” he replied.
“The Buddha?”
“I have been called such.”
“Tathagatha?”
“This name, too, have I been given.”
The other attempted to rise, failed, settled back. His eyes never left the placid countenance. “How is it that you know my name?” he finally asked.
“In your fever you spoke considerably.”
“Yes, I was very sick, and doubtless babbling. It was in that cursed swamp that I took the chill.”
Tathagatha smiled. “One of the disadvantages of traveling alone is that when you fall there is none to assist you.”
“True,” acknowledged the other, and his eyes closed once more and his breathing deepened.
Tathagatha remained in the lotus posture, waiting.
When Rild awakened again, it was evening. “Thirsty,” he said.
Tathagatha gave him water. “Hungry?” he asked.
“No, not yet. My stomach would rebel.”
He raised himself up onto his elbows and stared at his attendant. Then he sank back upon the mat. “You are the one,” he announced.
“Yes,” replied the other.
“What are you going to do?”
“Feed you, when you say you are hungry.”
“I mean, after that.”
“Watch as you sleep, lest you lapse again into the fever.”
“That is not what I meant.”
“I know.”
“After I have eaten and rested and recovered my strength—what then?”
Tathagatha smiled as he drew the silken cord from somewhere beneath his robe. “Nothing,” he replied, “nothing at all,” and he draped the cord across Rild’s shoulder and withdrew his hand.
The other shook his head and leaned back. He reached up and fingered the length of crimson. He twined it about his fingers and then about his wrist. He stroked it.
“It is holy,” he said, after a time.
“So it would seem.”
“You know its use, and its purpose?”‘
“Of course.”
“Why then will you do nothing at all?”
“I have no need to move or to act. All things come to me. If anything is to be done, it is you who will do it.”
“I do not understand.”
“I know that, too.”
The man stared into the shadows overhead. “I will attempt to eat now,” he announced.
Tathagatha gave him broth and bread, which he managed to keep down. Then he drank more water, and when he had finished he was breathing heavily.
“You have offended Heaven,” he stated.
“Of that, I am aware.”
“And you have detracted from the glory of a goddess, whose supremacy here has always been undisputed.”
“I know.”
“But I owe you my life, and I have eaten your bread …”
There was no reply.
“Because of this, I must break a most holy vow,” finished Rild. “I cannot kill you, Tathagatha.”
“Then I owe my life to the fact that you owe me yours. Let us consider the life-owing balanced.”
Rild uttered a short chuckle. “So be it,” he said.
“What will you do, now that you have abandoned your mission?”
“I do not know. My sin is too great to permit me to return. Now I, too, have offended against Heaven, and the goddess will turn away her face from my prayers. I have failed her.”
“Such being the case, remain here. You will at least have company in damnation.”
“Very well,” agreed Rild. “There is nothing else left to me.”
He slept once again, and the Buddha smiled.
* * * *
In the days that followed, as the festival wore on, the Enlightened One preached to the crowds who passed through the purple grove. He spoke of the unity of all things, great and small, of the law of cause, of becoming and dying, of the illusion of the world, of the spark of the atman, of the way of salvation through renunciation of the self and union with the whole; he spoke of realization and enlightenment, of the meaninglessness of the Brahmins’ rituals, comparing their forms to vessels empty of content. Many listened, a few heard and some remained in the purple grove to take up the saffron robe of the seeker.
And each time he taught, the man Rild sat nearby, wearing his black garments and leather harness, his strange dark eyes ever upon the Enlightened One.
Two weeks after his recovery, Rild came upon the teacher as he walked through the grove in meditation. He fell into step beside him, and after a lime he spoke.
“Enlightened One, I have listened to your teachings, and I have listened well. Much have I thought upon your words.”
The other nodded.
“I have always been a religious man,” he stated, “or I would not have been selected for the post I once occupied. After it became impossible for me to fulfill my mission, I felt a great emptiness. I had failed my goddess, and life was without meaning for me.”
The other listened, silently.
“But I have heard your words,” he said, “and they have filled me with a kind of joy. They have shown me another way to salvation, a way which I feel to be superior to the one I previously followed.”
The Buddha studied his face as he spoke.
“Your way of renunciation is a strict one, which I feel to be good. It suits my needs. Therefore, I request permission to be taken into your community of seekers, and to follow your path.”
“Are you certain,” asked the Enlightened One, “that you do not seek merely to punish yourself for what has been weighing upon your conscience as a failure, or a sin?”
“Of that I am certain,” said Rild. “I have held your words within me and felt the truth which they contain. In the service of the goddess have I slain more men than purple fronds upon yonder bough. I am not even counting women and children. So I am not easily taken in by words, having heard too many, voiced in all tones of speech—words pleading, arguing, cursing. But your words move me, and they are superior to the teachings of the Brahmins. Gladly would I become your executioner, dispatching for you your enemies with a saffron cord—or with a blade, or pike, or with my hands, for I am proficient with all weapons, having spent three lifetimes learning their use—but I know that such is not your way. Death and life are as one to you, and you do not seek the destruction of your enemies. So I request entrance to your Order. For me, it is not so difficult a thing as it would be for another. One must renounce home and family, origin and property. I lack these things. One must renounce one’s own will, which I have already done. All I need now is the yellow robe.”
“It is yours,” said Tathagatha, “with my blessing.”
* * * *
Rild donned the robe of a buddhist monk and took to fasting and meditating. After a week, when the festival was near to its close, he departed into the town with his begging bowl, in the company of the other monks. He did not return with them, however. The day wore on into evening, the evening into darkness. The horns of the Temple had already sounded the last notes of the nagaswaram, and many of the travelers had since departed the festival.
For a long while, the Enlightened One walked the woods, meditating. Then he, too, vanished.
Down from the grove, with the marshes at its back, toward the town of Alandil, above which lurked the hills of rock and around which lay the blue-green fields, into the town of Alandil, still astir with travelers, many of them at the height of their revelry, up the streets of Alandil toward the hill with its Temple, walked the Buddha.
He entered the first courtyard, and it was quiet there. The dogs and children and beggars had gone away. The priests slept. One drowsing attendant sat behind a bench at the bazaar. Many of the shrines were now empty, the statues having been borne within. Before several of the others, worshipers knelt in late prayer.
He entered the inner courtyard. An ascetic was seated on a prayer mat before the statue of Ganesha. He, too, seemed to qualify as a statue, making no visible movements. Four oil lamps flickered about the yard, their dancing light serving primarily to accentuate the shadows that lay upon most of the shrines. Small votive lights cast a faint illumination upon some of the statues.
Tathagatha crossed the yard and stood facing the towering figure of Kali, at whose feet a tiny lamp blinked. Her smile seemed a plastic and moving thing, as she regarded the man before her.
Draped across her outstretched hand, looped once about the point of her dagger, lay a crimson strangling cord.
Tathagatha smiled back at her, and she seemed almost to frown at that moment.
“It is a resignation, my dear,” he stated. “You have lost this round.”
She seemed to nod in agreement.
