Bride of the Buddha Page 14

  I decided to let that pass for now and to concentrate on learning what she else had to teach me.

  7

  As the dry season progressed and the heat returned, Stick Woman taught me how to make medicinal pastes and potions out of aloe, pepper, turmeric, cardamom, and a host of other herbs, roots, and seeds. I memorized the stories and songs that went with each preparation, and with the spirit that each ingredient invoked. Not only did these spirits abide in earthly materials, they also occupied the spirit world, she maintained.

  Yet I had learned nothing that helped me find the spirit of Deepa, and I mentioned this to Stick Woman one day at the beginning of the hot season when the two of us were sitting in the grass, breaking cinnamon twigs in the shade of a neem tree “That’s because you haven’t forgiven the tree,” she said.

  “The cinnamon tree?” What nonsense was this?

  “No, that tree.” She pointed up the hill to a lone mango tree I passed every day when I carried the buckets up from the river. Early on, I’d noticed it and ignored it, the way I usually did that species of tree, putting it out of my head.

  “Why would I need to forgive a tree?”

  “The way you act around it, it’s clear you hold a serious grudge against it. Your grudge is Mara getting between you and your sister.”

  I felt a jolt. Had Stick Woman somehow known that Deepa had fallen out of a mango? I looked at the tree, which had nothing special about it. It bore no fruit; mangoes were out of season. I couldn’t believe I had acted in any special way—what had she seen? It was just a tree. “My sister fell out of a mango tree, but not this one.”

  “Oh, no? Then why do you keep your distance from it and curse it in your heart?”

  “I don’t curse it. I just don’t like to think about it.”

  “You need to sit under the tree and tell it you forgive it. And you need to mean your words.”

  “That’s impossible.” It was one thing to repeat the incantations Stick Woman taught me about herbs and a whole other thing to feel an emotion that depended on something entirely unreal. “This tree has nothing to do with my sister.”

  Stick Woman stood up abruptly. “Then you’ll have to lie. Just go over there, sit, and offer the tree forgiveness until you can understand its point of view. You’ve learned that much here.”

  I supposed I could do this until it was obvious that my forgiveness had no effect. Then I would have proven she was wrong. “How long do I sit?”

  “For as long as it takes.”

  Feeling foolish, I climbed the hill to the tree. I stood in front of it, clutching my upper arms until I realized how hot that posture was making me. I remained standing for what seemed like the passing of morning into afternoon, longing for the welcoming shade of the neem tree where I’d been sitting with Stick Woman. The mango tree did offer shade, but how could I accept it when I was so angry at it?

  Yes, I was angry at the tree! I folded my arms again, pummeled by the thoughts of a ten-year-old. Why did the tree drop my sister to her death? It had deceived her, and me, pretending its branches were safe. The memories flooded back: the branch bouncing upward, Deepa in her yellow shift lying face-down on the hard clay. I sat down cross-legged in the hot sun and forced myself to look up through its shiny green leaves, seeing for the first time the tight little nubs of unripe fruit dangling in clusters from every branch.

  How dare it bear fruit when my sister is dead?

  The sun’s heat bore into me, but I would rather enter a hell realm than accept the tree’s shade. That tree had helped me murder my sister.

  Yes, murder. I had enticed her to climb out the window, just as Ama had accused me of doing. I was no better than this tree. I deserved the hell realm, I deserved to be burned up by the sun.

  Suddenly, there was a sharp hand clap behind me. “Tell Mara to leave, now!”

  Stick Woman.

  I blinked and my thoughts dissipated.

  How could I have failed to recognize Mara, when he’d been putting all those thoughts into my head? The answer came to me. Because Mara had been with me in this way ever since my sister’s death, delusion being one his major weapons. Now his face hovered in my mind, the way I’d seen it in the mirror. “Leave me,” I said.

  And he was gone. In his place was the tree, its little unripe fruits and its dancing shade. I sat under the branches of the mango tree, and immediately a cool breeze washed through me as the shadows fluttered over my skin. Just like when I was a child, playing in the mango grove with my sister.

  How had I forgotten how much Deepa loved mangoes? I recalled those summer days when the golden windfall fruits all but obliterated the ground. We’d find the ripest ones, knead the rubbery skin with our thumbs, poke the skin with a stick, and then suck out the insides, the sweet juice dribbling down our necks. We’d laugh as Cook splashed a bucket of water over us, the only way to clean off the stickiness.

  I looked up into the luminous green foliage, the little fruits quivering on their long individual stems. Without being able to explain, I saw how this mango tree was all mango trees, in that in some equally inexplicable way it shared my sister’s spirit, that of the little goddess of mangoes. “I forgive you,” I said to the tree. “And I beg you to forgive me.”

  Not long after, Stick Woman wandered over to where I was sitting. “Don’t think you’re done forgiving,” she said.

  As the hot season continued, I entered a trance of contentment, pierced from time to time by pangs of loneliness for my own people, especially my son, but full of hope that carrying water, gathering and preparing medicinal plants, and learning the songs and rituals to invoke the spirits would teach me what I needed to learn. Slowly, I made the acquaintance of some of the villagers, the ones who came to the ridge seeking Stick Woman’s help. I set myself to learn their language with the help of Bahauk, but in spite of my skills at memorizing, it was difficult to master. The Gorge tribe had a single word to mean “white butterflies circle around the black rock,” which could also be translated “the wing-wind of air reverses good and evil.” There were also words that made no sense unless you were standing in a certain location.

  Still, I learned simple communication, enough to laugh and joke with Bahauk as we went about our tasks. Yet as the monsoon approached, I realized I still knew almost nothing about the ceremonies Stick Woman performed with the villagers. When I asked her if I could witness one, she always refused, citing not only my ignorance of the language but also the tribe’s suspicions of Sakyans. Maybe in a few years, she said, if I stayed that long.

  But by then Rahula would have reached manhood, his memories of me faded, his views solidified into a wall that could separate us forever. I needed to speed up my education.

  One of the herbs we gathered was a bright-green, spiky plant that Stick Woman used as the primary ingredient in what she called “spirit tea,” and which she sometimes brewed and drank when she journeyed to the spirit world. She had never warned me or ordered me not to consume it, so I decided to try. I would never dream of stealing from her supply; the tall green bushes massed over several nearby slopes, exhaling their dizzying astringence in the damp heat.

  I picked two arm-length bunches and dried them in my little shelter, not liking my secrecy but desperate for anything that might infuse me with a knowledge I could transfer to Rahula. I waited for one of the afternoons when Stick Woman headed down to the village as she did every few weeks for her ceremonies with other spirit guides or people who, for whatever reason, couldn’t climb to the top of the ridge. As soon as she left, I brewed a small pot of tea over the fire. My plan was to let it cool and then drink it in the shade of the mango tree, out of the heat, then go meditate in a tiny palm grove a little way off the main trail.

  Just as I was pouring the brew from the unfired clay pot into a smaller clay vessel, I heard a familiar heavy footfall.

  Bahauk.

 
I took a gulp of air, permeated with the tea’s astringent aroma. I knew he smelled it, too.

  “She lets you do that?” he asked. He was smiling, but there was a groove of doubt between his eyes.

  My one hope was to make Bahauk an accomplice.

  I hoped it wasn’t Mara who prompted my next words. “Would you like some?”

  “It’s only for sacred ceremonies.”

  “My intention is to meditate in the palm grove.”

  “I could tell on you,” he said, sounding worried, the way a child might worry, about a host of impossible-to-imagine consequences, some of which he himself could bring about.

  “You could,” I said, “but I thought I could trust you.” Aware of the slant of my cheekbones and my shining, thickly lashed eyes in a way I seldom was these days, I looked into his open face. “I didn’t steal the plant from Stick Woman,” I said. “It’s my own supply.”

  The doubt groove smoothed and faded, but his eyes seemed darker, quieter, older. He sat down beside me, not touching me, but I could feel his heat. “I’ve had this tea,” he said. “After you drink it, you shouldn’t be alone.”

  A fear cut into me. “I … I’m still…” and I used the word of his people for “celibate,” a complex term that included one’s vow to the spirit world, dedication to the sun, and an apology to the gods of marriage and fertility.

  At the sound, however mangled, of his native language, he smiled with the amiable innocence that never left him for almost the entire time I knew him and reminded me ever so slightly of Siddhartha when we first were together. “You don’t need to worry,” Bahauk said. “When we go to the spirit world, we can leave our bodies behind.”

  We shared the tea and then made our way toward the coolest part of the forest. I walked ahead of Bahauk, his footsteps, as always, reassuring. With him, I never worried about tigers or leopards attacking from behind. He knew every animal’s habits and predilections, not to mention all the subtle sounds they made moving through the forest. Truly, he occupied their points of view and in that way shared their souls.

  We reached the palm grove, which consisted of perhaps twenty trees close enough together for their translucent, lime-colored leaves to arc above our heads, creating a temple dome filled with shimmering green light. Nearby, a spring composed melodies that swam up through the hush of the air as we sat cross-legged, facing just off to one side of each other. I plunged my attention into my breath, waiting for the air to breathe me. Then I’m not sure what happened. Suddenly, we were talking, but our speech seemed to be a form of breathing, of sharing spirit between us.

  In that green, holy light, time loosened; we seemed to be still conversing, but perhaps we’d finished and were now just watching our thoughts. We had been speaking of our childhoods, of his father teaching him to swim and catch fish in the river, of my sister and me listening to the holy men tell their stories of the world. We also talked about our current lives, our favorite trees and trails and even Stick Woman and the unknown sources of her mysterious powers. It was strange. This reminder of her could have made me worry, but all I could feel was her benevolence, as if she had guided us to this very spot.

  I had the feeling she was protecting us from sex.

  By now the light seemed to saturate us, the outlines of our bodies dissolving and Bahauk’s face disintegrating into innumerable grains of radiance, which seemed to reform into Siddhartha’s face—not as the Tathagata but as his old self—and then the radiance orchestrated itself into the face of my beloved Rahula, who I saw through Deepa’s eyes, feeling her heart beating in my chest. At that point, I was certain Bahauk was looking at my sister’s face, even as the contours of our faces kept transforming themselves into a series of benevolent loved faces I couldn’t identify, their spirits flowing through us like silent breezes, or perhaps we were flowing through the spirits of all those we’d loved or would ever love. And then it struck me that we were indeed in the spirit world. It seemed to include the realm of the gods, but not in the way I’d thought as a Sakyan bride, as a domain of beauty apart from others. We were at the center of the universe, deeper than any notion of aesthetic pleasure, and we had been here forever.

  Then all went still; there was no more center, no more periphery. No “here,” no “there,” only peace. So this was eternity.

  Except that I didn’t have any such thoughts until I reentered the impossibility that I could only label time. It seemed inconceivable to be back inside time and space when they had so definitively—and retroactively—dissolved.

  Yet here we were, and we had changed in some yet-to-be-determined way.

  Bahauk and I continued to gaze at each other. I was still bathed in wonder at what had happened, but the wonder began to subside, replaced by a longing for bodily contact, as if the mingling of our spirits now required physical confirmation. Bahauk spoke. “In the spirit world we are husband and wife.” He touched me gently on the forearm. A dark heat spread through my body.

  I had the feeling of no longer being under Stick Woman’s protection.

  Without thinking, I reached out to him. “Celibate” in both of our languages seemed to have lost its meaning.

  Almost as if I’d willed his hands to move, they slid their warmth up under my garments, igniting a passion that spiralled from the molten core of me. Here it was, the unbearable craving that for so many years I had denied.

  The cause of all suffering is craving. The words came unwanted into my mind.

  These were just words, I told myself, I had not truly tested them. Yet they stopped me long enough for doubt to enter. “I can’t!” I gasped. “I have a son.”

  “Stick Woman told me,” he said in his simple way. “He should live with you here.”

  I stared at him. I realized I’d thought about this before, not in words but in flickering images: Rahula climbing the banyan trees, learning to gather herbs, Bahauk teaching him to hunt.

  “Yasi.” His hands gripped my hips, as if to steady us both. “We must marry. If you need to, get the blessing of your monk husband.”

  His words stunned me. Even more shocking was that I felt myself considering the possibility. Yet it was my mind that was shocked, not my body or spirit.

  “I can’t ask such a thing from my husband if I’m pregnant with another man’s child.”

  “I don’t have to stay inside you.” He smiled into my eyes. “The spirits of our children will just have to wait.”

  The cause of suffering is craving. Which I could quench, at least for now, if I dared.

  We lay on our sides face to face, my head buried in his shoulder as the heat of our bodies rose and merged, and his hands grew more urgent, moving in gentle circles closer and closer to my deepest center of desire; it had been so long since I had been touched there. All at once he grasped it, and my earth-body exploded into a flood of stars. Then he was on top of me, and it was too late to stop.

  At the very end, he flung himself off me, spilling our children’s spirits into the earth.

  By the time we roused ourselves and started up the trail to the fire site, it was twilight. I walked behind him, amazed at how late it was and wondering whether days or years had passed. Then I looked up and saw the wolf blocking my way.

  I staggered backwards. The beast seemed to tower and sway above me, its black eyes reflecting some unknown light.

  “So you decided to dream up your own world.” It was Stick Woman, wearing her wolf head.

  “I’m sorry, I…” I was flustered, guilty, and at the same time eager to tell her what had happened. “I think I was at the center…I think I was beyond all worlds.”

  “You think.” Yet her voice had a maternal softness, something I never would have said about her before. I also knew she knew about me and Bahauk, and she hadn’t out-and-out condemned me. “Well, my dear, you are going to have to be very careful. And I’m afraid you’ll have to experi
ence the consequences.”

  “I’m ready,” I said, still full of confidence after my experience. It didn’t occur to me at the time that such confidence could only come from Mara.

  I planned my trip home for after the rains, giving myself time to plan and prepare how I would present myself to my husband and relatives. The monsoons were mild that year; I’ll always remember the season as one of palatial clouds gliding through pale sapphire skies, which could well have housed Indra’s empire, for all I knew—or Bahauk’s sun god or my people’s god Agni, also associated with fire. But it no longer seemed to matter that I couldn’t discern the gods. All that mattered was my earthly life with Bahauk. Love was its own divine realm, and this was where I chose to live.

  Yes, I had dwelled here with Siddhartha, but in a less honest way. In my former life, I had tended roses and hibiscus for the sake of beauty. These days I gathered pine nuts, gourds, melons, and lotus roots for the sake of survival—which meant the survival of love, far deeper than beauty. I also learned to identify and preserve wild herbs for food and medicine, storing this knowledge in my mind the way I’d once memorized the holy men’s metaphysics. Overall, I was doing everything my servants did in my former life. This left me less time to strive for spiritual liberation, but at least I was liberated from the guilty conscience of the pampered upper class. Siddhartha talked of abolishing the varnas. I was living his truth. Also, I told myself, I was not hiding from death. After all, Bahauk and I were no spoiled young couple feted by loving relatives. Our every mutual look and touch was edged with a knowledge that we could be torn apart by our separate peoples—or by the beasts in the forest, for that matter. When I was with Siddhartha, living in the present meant trying not to think about dying. Now I savored each moment Bahauk and I had, because death could occur at any time.

  Yet as the days passed, I couldn’t deny that in between those precious moments lurked the same fear that had been with me ever since the charnal ground, and my love for Bahauk made this fear all the stronger. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing him.