Maya (20 page)

All the yogic traditions of India begin and end here, before creation, where the breath turns back on itself, where the breath of God moves like wind over the waters of the deep. In my memory I am lying on my back in the Himalayan night under a canopy of striped moonlight, watching. And in my body each breath revolves on a gossamer axis, meeting and merging with its opposite: inhalation becoming exhalation, exhalation bending around on itself in the same elusive transmutation. Turning inward I find my way along an ancient path, gathering together what is and what is not. I let my attention rest on the pull of the abdominal muscles, on the lungs filling, expanding, tapering off, on the incorporeal vein of air growing ever more thin, the sensations ever more subtle, weightless, flexible, malleable, alive, still moving in toward the center. With exquisite patience I search for the place of crossing over, the bridge between breathing in and breathing out—that infinitely precious and fragile interface between opposites, a hidden chamber of the heart where self and other meet and trade places in the simplest, most elemental act of love.

But what if the turning point is concealed in the very act of attention? In awareness itself? That would explain why the goal always seems to lie so tantalizingly near at hand and yet forever beyond my grasp. Awareness: present only in its absence, as the reflected image of what it is not. Awareness is always manifest as nothing. Nothing to find and no one to find it. Is the very act of observation, then, the ultimate illusion?
Who sees the seer?

“Did you say something, Stanley?”

“What?” I looked up at the sagging net, then through the gauze into the dimly lit room. She was not there. “Sorry. Not really. I was thinking out loud.”

Her voice came from inside the bathroom where a candle flickered. A shadow climbed up the opposite wall, around and over the ceiling, a distorted black ghost washing and drying itself with a spectral towel that twisted and bent as it danced over the uneven surface of the plaster. A phantom hand swept down like a raven, lifting the candle, and Penny emerged from the door with her fingers cupped around the flame. She walked over to the vanity and set the candle to one side, then sat down and looked at herself in the mirror for a few seconds before beginning to brush her hair. She was still wearing the petticoat and blouse.

“What do you see in the mirror?” I asked.

“A woman brushing her hair.”

“That's all? You don't see anything else? Look closely.”

She bent forward and stared into the glass. “What? See what?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?!”

“Yes. Exactly. That's it.”

“What on earth are you talking about?” she snapped back, her expression moving swiftly from confusion to exasperated disbelief. “You're being philo
so
phical, aren't you?” She jerked the brush down through her hair. “Stanley, don't
do
that. I was certain you saw some horrible insect crawling in my hair.”

I stretched out under the sheets, clasping both hands up behind my head. When I spoke again it was with my best parody of her Oxford intonation. “So tell me, Miss Ainsworth. Perhaps I am mistaken, but were you not a tad uneasy earlier this evening when our host broached the subject of our accommodations? The single room, I mean.”

“Uneasy?” She considered. “Yes, I suppose I was.”

“And why might that be, my
dey
ah?”

“Are you blind, Stanley? Have you really not noticed?”

“Noticed what?”

“The colonel, he sees me differently now.”

“Differently? What do you mean?”

“Shall I spell it out? He knows I'm available. He's interested in your girlfriend.”

“R
ay
ally?”

“Yes,
ray
ally, you idiot!”

“Hrumph! Well, then, I must say that I'm not a bit surprised. Surely you must be familiar with that quaint old Punjabi adage.”

“No, I am not. But I'll bet you're about to tell it to me.”

“Since you asked. How does it go? Let me see . . . oh yes: You can wrap a nice ass in a sari, but men will still want to bite it. There. You see?”

“That's an old Punjabi adage?”

“Damn right it is. You hear it all the time in the streets of Chandigarh. I'm told the original has a sort of rustic elegance that's lost in translation. Of course I don't speak the language, so I can't evaluate such claims. But you get the point.”

She continued to brush, unimpressed.

“So Singh wants to bite your ass. But I still don't understand what that has to do with our sharing a room.”

“Stanley, sometimes you positively amaze me with your naiveté. Wake up. This is India. I realize that you're a male and therefore have not been compelled to deal personally with all of this. And you're not exactly the sensitive feminist type.”

“Whoa there! What's that supposed to mean?”

She ignored the interruption and continued. “But you really ought to be aware of what the rest of us are enduring, at least the Europeans and Americans. I can't claim to speak for what it's like to be an Indian woman. Put down your Sanskrit texts and take a look around. We are walking a very fine line here, Mr. Buddhist philosopher.” She drew her hair around one shoulder and down over her chest, brushing the ends.

“How so?”

“Listen closely now, and you will learn something important: class is in session. In India there are five roles for women. No more, and no less. First, mother: threatening in her own way, no doubt, the mother is basically an archetype of pure, nonsexual or spiritual love and total, unwavering acceptance. You come to her and she takes you, as you are. Especially if you happen to be a man. Or, more precisely, a boy who has never grown up. Of course all five roles are assigned from the male point of view, but in India this should more or less go without saying. The second role is sister: still pure, with the emphasis here on chaste. Virginal. Untouched. As you Americans say, her cherry has not been popped. Did I get that right?”

“Yep, that's what we Americans say.”

“So that's number two. Woman's role number three is daughter, which is pretty much the same as number two so far as the virgin thing goes. And then we have woman's role four: wife. The operative word here is
loyal
, as in
Sita is the model of the loyal wife, because she was willing to be burned alive to prove her fidelity to Ram
. Of course that's only the ideal. As often as not I suspect the reality is even less pleasant. If you want to call the role sexual in some sense I won't quibble, it's in there somewhere, I'm sure.” Her voice trailed off. “So anyway, that's role number four: woman as wife.”

“Isn't this maybe, well, just a bit cynical?”

“Maybe. I'd like to think so.” She paused in her brushing to fiddle with a recalcitrant tangle. “Which brings me to the last of the five possible roles.”

“Let me guess. Uh . . .”

“Think hard and it will come to you, I'm sure.”

“Wait a minute! Wait just a minute! I believe I've got it: prostitute!”

“That's it. Now think again, Stanley. Does anything seem to be missing here?”

I gave it a couple second's consideration. “Girlfriend? Lover?”

“Bingo.”

“You know, though, prostitute isn't a bad substitute. In a pinch, that is.”

“Very amusing,” she said dryly, not deigning to glance toward where I lay under the net. “But with a little more reflection I'm sure you'll grasp the point. In Colonel Singh's eyes I am a whore. A sexual woman.”

“Hot to trot.”

“Marvelous. Another charming Americanism.”

“And this explains why you were uncomfortable when he brought up the room arrangements?”

“Now you've got it, Professor. He knows damn well we're not married. Keep the little lesson I just gave you in mind, and I guarantee you will see and understand a great deal that you might otherwise miss.”

“So,” I said, idly checking out the penumbra cast by the moonlight as it arched around and under her breasts, “aside from the fact that he wants to fuck you, what do you think of our host?”

“I like him. He can't help it if he was raised in this screwed-up society. What the Mughals didn't accomplish in five hundred years, my prudish Victorian ancestors more than made up for. Anyway, I'm accustomed to it by now. I don't take any of it personally. But I've had enough encounters with fellows like Mr. Bhattacharya, whacking off behind his desk. I like
to keep on my toes. That way I'm not caught by surprise too often.” She paused. “But Colonel Singh really is a charming man. He's quite handsome, too, Stanley. Maybe you ought to be jealous.”

I was fiddling with the mosquito net now, trying to grip the sheer material between my toes. “I'll bear that in mind.”

She slapped her forearm with the back of the brush, picked up the miniscule carcass of a mosquito and flicked it toward the shutters.

“Getting thick out there?”

“A few. Not bad.”

“Tell me, Penny.” I loosened my toes and let go of the net, turned around and adjusted the pillow so I could lean back on it and get a better look at her. “What do you make of his story?”

“Which one? We heard about two dozen.”

“Not the wild animal act. I mean all this stuff about the hermit. Kalidas.”

“I don't know.” She examined a few split ends, sifting the tips of the hair through her fingers. “It's interesting, I guess. India is full of these characters.”

“Is that all? You don't sound very impressed.”

She took a last casual stroke through her hair and laid the brush down next to the candle. With both hands she reached around behind her back and unfastened a row of wire hooks, slipped the blouse forward over both arms, letting it dangle from her fingers for an instant, then dropped it on to the sari. This left only a white silk brassiere and the petticoat. “What do you want me to say?”

“Do you believe any of it? I thought the colonel's testimony seemed pretty convincing.”

“I suppose so. But the whole thing seems a bit far-fetched.”

“Do you remember what Singh said about the pundits in Dehradun? About Ramesh being a bad choice and all?”

“Ramesh?”

“You know—the accountant. That was his name before he became Kalidas.”

“Oh. Well. So he was a ‘bad choice.' Whatever that means.” For the first time she looked over toward where I lay, then swiveled around on the wooden stool and crossed one leg over the other. “It's a bit disconcerting, Stanley, trying to carry on a conversation with a disembodied voice. I can't see a bloody thing through that net.”

“Listen,” I said, “I've been thinking about this a lot. It seems to me you
could interpret it in two ways. At least. Maybe the pundits were right and the goddess Kali made a mistake: if Ramesh had only been stronger he could have somehow prevented the death of his son. You know—refused to cooperate.”

“Do beings of her rank make mistakes?”

“Sure, you read about it all the time. Didn't your Oxford dons ever lead you through a few installments of the Puranas?”

“They don't
lead
us through anything. At Oxford we do it alone.”

“Fine,” I replied, “but I've read enough to know that even the big guys like Shiva or Ram—or girls, as the case may be—blow it once in a while. If the goddess was wrong, then poor Ramesh has suffered plenty for her mistake. That much is certain. But personally I don't think she was wrong. I think she knew exactly what she was doing when she picked him.”

“Why?” She reached down and scratched her ankle, then lifted the petticoat to her knee and flexed one long calf, running her fingers slowly up across the muscle.

“For one thing, after all these years the man is still meditating and doing puja to her. Doesn't that seem significant, somehow?”

“Do you mind if I go to the loo?” Without waiting for an answer she stood up, grabbed the saucer with the candle and disappeared back into the bathroom. “Go on with what you were saying. I can hear you perfectly well from in here.”

“What I'm getting at is this,” I continued. “Obviously the man has turned his whole life over to the goddess. And why? Because Kali considered him worthy to receive her boon: the power to look directly into the face of death. I mean, how many people could handle that? When you think about it, he's holding up pretty well.” No sooner had I said this than the memory of his emaciated form appeared before me, and I saw him all over again as he had looked only a few hours earlier, at the moment when he stepped out the door and spotted me standing there with the incense. “Maybe she gave him even more. Not just the opportunity to see death, but to see right through it. After all, what does the old guy do all day? Think about it.”

“I'm sure I haven't the slightest idea.” Now it was my turn to listen to a disembodied voice.

“Singh told us. He worships Kali. Nothing but puja and meditation on the goddess, from morning to night.”

“So?”

“So he hasn't flipped out. He's holding it together. He's doing all right for himself. No. More than that. Kalidas is doing his sadhana—his spiritual practice. He's going deeper.”

“Then why did he kill his own baby?”

My jaw dropped. “Now what kind of total non sequitur is that? How on earth does his stepping on the baby contradict anything I've been saying?”

“If he really knew what was going to happen—which he must have, if there's any truth at all to the story—then why didn't he at least try to avoid it somehow?” She cranked open the faucet down by the shitter, and I heard water spewing into a plastic cup. I heard her pouring the cup of water over her fingers, washing herself off.

“Come on,” I said, “that's the point here. That's the key to the whole thing. He couldn't avoid his fate. He had to do it. The only difference between him and all the rest of us is that he knew he had no choice and we don't. We think we have this mysterious thing called ‘free will' that allows our little ego to get whatever it wants, if only it's clever enough. Like the universe is this huge cafeteria with all these wonderful dishes to choose from and we've got endless credit.”