Bride of the Buddha Page 9

  “I think I’ve done enough for our family,” I said. “If you need to secure your position here, I’m sure you have the ability to do it without my help.”

  “What about your position? If you marry Devadatta, he’ll do more than push me aside.”

  I blinked. Apparently, my brother had not come to urge me to marry our cousin, but the opposite. Of course. The two of them had to be rivals, and Jagdish feared that an alliance between me and our cousin would edge him out. I was on the point of opening my mouth to reassure him, but here was an unexpected opportunity. I cleared my throat. “Devadatta could be very helpful in the raising of my son,” I said. “And now that my husband seems to have left for good, he’s the most capable, not to say best looking, man on the land.”

  “Yasi, I can’t believe you would consider that strutting opportunist. If you think you’re a prisoner now, wait until you’re married to him. He’ll set up his own harem and lock you away.”

  “Nonsense,” I said. “He needs the love of a woman to soften him. There’s a touch of sadness under his hard expression. I see it.” This was a blatant lie. Devadatta’s sadness, such as it was, came out of his failure to best his cousin Siddhartha, particularly when they both trained as warriors. His gaze belonged to a man who wanted to conquer my love for my husband and have it for himself. “I might even be able to influence him to keep you on.”

  Jagdish snorted. “Why are women so sentimental? I know the man. He’ll trample us both.”

  I made a point of looking into his eyes, etched with rage and anxiety. “I’ll take that risk. Devadatta is offering me love. If it turns out to be a disappointment, it will be no worse than my current life, the one that I have you to thank for.”

  “So,” he said, “you’re doing this to spite me.”

  He still took everything personally. “Not at all,” I said.

  “Then why? Have you no loyalty for your only brother?”

  I hardened my gaze. “Loyalty to individual family members has never been anything you’ve pursued. Why should you expect it of me?”

  But I’d gone on long enough. I folded my arms, in imitation of his favorite stance. “But if you truly want me to refuse to marry our cousin, I will do so only under certain conditions.”

  He jerked up his chin. “What conditions?”

  “I want you to do all you can to implement what my husband would have wanted, had he remained focused on his worldly life. The houses he was constructing for the field workers were never completed. Have them up within the year. Dig the four wells that he promised to the village. Also, tell the priests they can no longer commandeer animals for sacrifices without compensating their owners, and make sure that not only do the farmers and servants get festival days off, but they are not saddled with extra duties that prevent them from working their own land.”

  “You can’t expect me to destroy the natural order and defy the gods!”

  “That’s your interpretation, not mine.”

  The hatred in his face jolted me so much I almost lost my footing. “You should accept the request from a brother out of duty,” he said. “Instead you scheme and manipulate to compensate for your female weakness. And for what purpose? To act out your inane fantasy that your husband will return and reward you for carrying out his will.”

  There was a grain of truth in his words, but mostly they brought me sorrow, for now I understood my brother. The flash of hatred in his eyes wasn’t just for me; it was for all women, except perhaps our mother. Now I knew why he had chosen to remain unmarried, preferring courtesans and dancing girls to having to look the same woman in the face day after day. What a barren life he was doomed to live, and there was nothing I could do about it. “I’ve told you my conditions,” I said.

  “Suddhodana and Devadatta will never agree.”

  “Persuade them. Speaking of manipulation, I know you have skills in this area.” I couldn’t contain my sarcasm—I suppose I was angrier at my brother’s hatefulness than I wanted to admit. “If you want to be a great leader, you’ll need to practice.”

  Jagdish appeared to be considering my offer, staring out the window, where swallows swooped and knifed through the air. “You’d better hope I can persuade the priests to make the proper sacrifices.”

  “I’m sure that won’t present a problem. Just don’t be obvious when you pay them off.”

  “I’m surprised you’re not more worried about your karma with all of this.”

  “I’ll worry about mine; you can worry about yours.”

  “You’ve left me no choice.”

  I didn’t reply. In spite of a niggling little satisfaction at besting my brother, I disliked resorting to blackmail. I also feared that his anger could sprout into vengeance. So be it, I told myself. I had managed to exercise the little power I had to help the servants.

  As he turned to leave, he looked back at me. “You can’t let Devadatta know about this conversation. You need to discourage him in some unrelated way.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll do what I should have done a long time ago.”

  That night I cut off my hair; the next day I sewed myself a set of ocher robes. To assure the good will of everyone in the compound, I gave away my clothes and jewelry, trying not to play favorites, although I did reserve my best ruby earrings for my sixteen-year-old personal maid, Vasabhakhattiya, who’d been given to me when I arrived. Vasa had been loyal and friendly from the beginning, and her round face and bright laughing eyes reminded me of Deepa. I also gave her my silver mirror. If I never looked at my image, it had far less power over me, beautiful or hideous.

  “But it doesn’t seem right,” she said, studying her face in the mirror, her lips naturally curved in the direction of a smile. “I don’t deserve to look like a princess.”

  “You deserve it every bit as much as I do.”

  “But the gods…”

  “The true gods will celebrate you,” I said. “Just don’t flaunt your gifts to the others.”

  “I would never,” she said.

  And she didn’t, as far as I knew. But this didn’t eventually matter, and one day I would long to beg her forgiveness, never having imagined how our karma would ripen.

  I had yet to be seen by any of the men, but the next morning was the day before our full moon fast, a day when the women ate breakfast in the main dining room. I arrived just as the men were leaving. There were perhaps twenty-five of them, the clan leaders and their sons, including Jagdish and Devadatta, all clambering to their feet and kicking aside the cushions where they’d been seated around the varnished dining platform. Silver plates, utensils and drinking vessels lay scattered about as if by some restless wind—as usual, the men were eager to be off. The room smelled of woodsmoke and reheated dahl and rang with the laughter and shouts of men confident that their day of hunting, practicing warfare, and overseeing the lands would go according to their expectations and the will of their gods. Meanwhile, wives and servants were clearing away plates and consolidating bowls of rice and chickpeas to be served to the women, mostly on plain ceramic dishes, after the men had finished—a custom I had never questioned until recently and that for now was the least of my worries.

  I felt Devadatta’s gaze on the side of my neck. I glanced at him—his narrow face, jutting cheekbones, caustic eyes—and saw enough to understand his reaction. He was looking at me with more disgust than anger, as if he had been considering the purchase of some silver belt or dagger, only to find that his potential property had been dented and tarnished beyond repair. At least, I thought, he didn’t seem to share my brother’s active hatred of the female sex, but I had no time to feel relief over avoiding some angry encounter, because Suddhodana was striding toward me, his sword clanking at his side. He glared at my hair and yellow robes. “Were it not for my wife, you’d be out on the street, begging or dying of the plague,” he said. “You have three years. If my son h
asn’t come to his senses by then, you will leave this household. I’ll bring up my grandson without you.”

  Sick with fear, I returned to my bare room, which seemed smaller and darker now that I’d gotten rid of the furniture but for one small chest and a stuffed cotton mattress on the floor. Suddhodana’s threat seemed to vibrate in the air around me, as if it had followed me here, and it grew louder in my mind as I considered its implications. He had left me with no choice. If Siddhartha didn’t return within the allotted time limit, I would have to track him down myself and lie, which meant stealing my own son. And if Siddhartha had permanently disappeared, it meant throwing myself on the mercy of some itinerant group of seekers—if such a group existed that would accept a woman and her child.

  5

  To prepare Rahula for our future life, I had to teach him how to meditate and how to climb. When the time came, I would descend using clotheslines, tying my son to me in a way that if he fell, it would only be as far as the rope between us. After everyone went to bed, I practiced my escape, hanging out the window in the darkness, eventually lowering myself to just above the rose bushes. I hated to think of landing in thorns, but I was glad my escape route didn’t involve a mango tree. The memory of Deepa’s wild-eyed face as she clung to the mango branches remained as immediate as it had been on the day of her funeral.

  Encouraging Rahula to take up climbing was easy enough—he was a boy! At six, he’d already conquered every climbable tree in the lower courtyard—the jacarandas, the neem trees, and even the two big palms, which he’d shimmy up without a thought. Meditation was another matter.

  I made a game of it. How long could he sit still? How long could he go without words coming into his head? Could he look at this one lemon for the count of one hundred without turning away? All during the dry season and into the hot season, we played these games, sitting cross-legged on the roof terrace among the half-tamed doves. At times I’d sneak in a comment or two that holy men were the best and truest warriors, because they learned to master themselves, the hardest task of all.

  Then one morning on the terrace as I sat down for a before-breakfast session, Rahula tapped me on the knee. At first I thought he was just being affectionate. “You can sit with me if you want,” I said. I smiled, allowing myself to enjoy the feeling of a day just starting out, with pink clouds unfurling through lavender skies, bird trills and warbles sailing through the bright clang of temple bells. Here was the one time of day that I could believe in the promise of Atman, the eternal soul, as a goal I could actually reach and not just some vague concept to wedge between myself and the fear of death. I closed my eyes.

  I felt another tap. I opened my eyes to my son’s brown-eyed gaze, a tiny pucker of disapproval between his eyebrows. “I don’t want to do this,” he said, meaning, to meditate.

  “That’s okay,” I said trying to keep my predawn moment from disintegrating into annoyance. “Go off and play until breakfast. I need to sit here and learn to tame my emotions. Then I’ll be happier all day long. And I’ll be nicer to you too.”

  “I don’t want you to do it either.” There was something oddly sinister in his tone, especially for a six-year-old.

  “Why not?”

  Rahula bunched up the edge of his green dhoti. “You might go over to the enemy.”

  “What?! What enemy? What are you talking about?”

  “Nobody.”

  “Then why did you say it?”

  Rahula backed away from me. Then he spoke at double the usual speed. “Because-Father meditated-and-now-he’s-with-them.”

  “With whom?”

  “The king. He’s going to join his army.”

  The morning crashed to a halt. Had my husband quit the holy life? Was he staying in the nearby Kosalan kingdom, not even bothering to let me know? I scrambled to my feet, reeling. “When did you hear this?”

  Rahula stood in the doorway of the dim little room, shaking his head, holding on to the doorframe as if to some adult protector. “I can’t remember.”

  I tried to steady my breath. A fine exemplar of meditation I was turning out to be. “I’m going to talk to your grandma.”

  In the flickering shade of a peepal tree, Pajapati sat on the tile floor in her usual corner of the courtyard, stripping leaves from the stems of white chrysanthemums piled at her feet. Their penetrating scent seemed to cool the morning air, already heating up, but the fragrance of flowers was not enough to soothe me.

  “Rahula told me something very strange,” I said, planting myself in front of her. “Something about Siddhartha joining King Pasenadi’s army.”

  “Rumors and tall tales are always flittering around here.” She continued stripping leaves. “Go tell Rahula that everything’s fine. The last thing his father would do is join an army.”

  She had yet to meet my eye.

  “Siddhartha is back, isn’t he?” My voice bucked in my throat. I fought to steady it. “My uncle is keeping him away so Rahula won’t meet him.”

  Pajapati glanced around, as if to make sure no one was listening. We were alone in the courtyard but for a pale yellow lizard behind her head, its waxlike little body clinging spread-eagled to the grayish trunk of the tree. “I happen to agree with Suddhodana. Rahula is too young to meet his father.”

  “Too young? He should have been with his father all along!”

  “Not if his father’s a recluse.” She cast a look, somewhere between thoughtful and accusing, at my hair and robes.

  “How can you say that? The spiritual quest is the noblest pursuit of all.”

  “You and I have different opinions about that, Yasi. Rahula needs to learn about human life as it is. He’s too young to chase after some magical peace he’ll never find.” Her unpainted lips tightened around the words—revealing, I thought, a hidden bitterness that her life, for all its discipline and virtue, failed to satisfy her deepest self.

  “You still blame me, don’t you?” I said. “For my influence on Siddhartha.”

  “What does it matter, at this point? We’ve lost him.”

  I hated her attitude then, her resignation about everything. “How can you say that? What do you know about him? Or about the spiritual quest, for that matter?”

  A rare anger flashed in Pajapati’s face, surprising me. “Stop,” she said. “I’ll tell you what I know, but you can’t tell Suddhodana I told you. Siddhartha is in fact staying with the king of Kosala.”

  “How did this come to be?” I stared at her. Kosala was our dangerously powerful neighbor to the south.

  “My son, apparently, is his teacher,” Pajapati said. “He’s the kings’s guest. He and his five hundred followers.”

  My knees almost gave way. “Five hundred?”

  “He’d been on the brink of death, starving himself, when he had a vision. A year ago, he announced the turning of the Wheel of Dharma, and it’s said that a thousand deities came streaming down from the Tusita heaven to hear his words. Since then, he’s been traveling with a band of monks that keeps growing by the day.”

  “You’ve seen him! You visited him! How could you betray me?”

  “No, I haven’t seen him.”

  “But you’re going to,” I said. This was the only way Suddhodana could have persuaded her to stay silent. “The flowers,” I said, glancing down at the chrysanthemums—an offering.

  She nodded, more somber than guilty-looking. “Yes, I’ll be allowed to hear him speak. But so what, really? I’ll see him once—and who knows when or if again? He’s a monk now, and he’s given up his family.”

  There it was. What I’d longed for and dreaded. “Are you saying he’s abandoned us forever? What proof do you have?”

  “He could have come home months ago, but he didn’t.”

  “He’s staying away on purpose?” I couldn’t believe it. “He promised he’d come back! He promised!” I felt like a chil
d possessed by a rage that could escalate into hysteria.

  Pajapati grasped my wrist. “I don’t know how much he chose, and how much the men in our family have kept him away.”

  I snatched back my hand. “Why would they do that?”

  “The thought of a Sakyan begging for food repels them. And that’s how my son and his followers survive. And Sakyans have always looked down on Kosala, including their king, as little more than acorn farmers and fish gutters, even though compared to their army, ours is a dozen fifteen-year-olds with slingshots. Suddhodana is sending me to see Siddhartha alone, with only my personal maid and the charioteer to accompany me.”

  “But doesn’t your husband want to see his own son?”

  The anger had never entirely left Pajapati’s face. “Your brother persuaded him that allowing Siddhartha to come here would endanger our property. Siddhartha has denounced the varna system. Our servants would be tempted to become his followers.”

  Jagdish! Would he never let up? Yet I was relieved to hear that Siddhartha had not abandoned his ideals. “I doubt our servants would choose celibacy,” I said. “Can’t you convince Suddhodana of that? At the very least, Siddhartha could pay us a personal visit. Then maybe I could persuade him to come home.”

  Pajapati gave me a one-sided smile, and a second glance at my hair and robe. “Too bad you abandoned so many of temptation’s tools.”

  I glared at her. “Isn’t letting me try worth possibly getting your son back?”

  “But then there’s your brother. He has a lot of power these days, Yasi. My husband’s getting old.”

  The leaves of the peepal tree shivered in a stray gust of wind, and I watched the lizard skitter up the tree trunk and disappear. Some of Jagdish’s power was because of me and how I’d manipulated him. Now I feared I’d have to do it again.