India. June 2018.
I heard about the Prince for the first time during my fourth day in India. Was he a holy man, a hermit, and a prophet like some said? Was it true that he lived with ninety-nine concubines, that he could give life or take it away with his eyes, that he possessed a devastating appetite for all kinds of flesh? Was he really a wild, beautiful, and terrifying creature?
The sky outside my hotel window was tainted a blinding milky white. The streets nearby were covered in dust and filled with the loud voices of men, the younger among them going about their business nearly naked, and the calls of crows and pigeons. Somewhere not too distant a violent quarrel ensued between two men. A cloud of hungry locust traveled in the distance. Ahead to the south, just below a clump of dark clouds, the hills came into view. A new day was here, this one too, like all the rest, unique and final.
Why was I here? I did not know. I still bore like an ulcer the weight of regret after my father’s death. After that, I had become an uprooted wanderer, a drifter, a man tired of years of mindless contentment, dispossessed of meaning and purpose and both appalled and obsessed by their absence. Apart from the children I had fathered, what else did I have to validate my days on Earth?
I guess I was just tired of looking at life as if from behind a window.
Someone slipped an envelope under my door. It smelled of sandalwood and the large, round characters were written in blood red ink. My heart skipped a beat. At last, a call to adventure! Was it a poem, a love confession from a female guest or a member of the staff? A case of espionage? Or perhaps instructions to a mysterious quest? None of the above. It was just the bill for a Kingfisher beer and some peanuts I had consumed at the hotel bar the night before.
After a copious breakfast of chana and okra masala and mattar paneer served with warm, flat bread and basmati rice mixed with peas and carrots, the driver took me to meet Himan, my guide for the day. Himan, a soft, grey-haired man who looked fifty but was only thirty-five and smelled of sweat, cinnamon and anise, pressed his hands together and placed them near his chest, palms touching, fingers pointing to the now deeply and almost painfully blue sky above our heads. Namaste, he said, and for a moment I thought he was hurt and bleeding from his mouth. Betel seeds, he reassured me with a smile, it makes you alert and happy. Himan welcomed me to India once again and said we would start the day by visiting the fort of Agra. He walked next to me chewing betel without cease. His gait was swift and rhythmical.
That was some storm this morning, I said, trying to make some conversation.
That’s nothing, said Himan with a belittling wave of his hand. Nothing but a squall. You shall see how it rains where I come from. The river often bursts its banks and floods it all. You can see dogs and small cows and sometimes children carried downstream by the grey waters. You can hear their screams too, all quite different in pitch and tone.
And thus, my envy for small talk ended.
Our subjects of conversation inside the walled city made of red stone, ancient residence of the Emperors, comprised from then onwards the dynasty of the Mughals, who controlled a large portion of Asia for over three centuries, a simple explanation on why the country was at present named India, and no longer Bharat or Hindustan as it was the case before, the Trimurti, the Hindu trinity composed by Brahma, the creator, Vishnu, the preserver and Shiva, the destroyer, and their respective companions, Saraswati, goddess of intelligence and knowledge, Lakshmi, goddess of wealth and fertility, and Parvati, goddess of love, beauty and power, the law of karma, cause and effect, action and reaction, as well as Dharma, which Himan defined as our own responsibility to this world, to the society we are members of, to our parents, to our children.
Himan stood still when we reached the Mirror Palace, went quiet for a while, lost in a maze of thoughts and memories, and raised his eyes to the sky before telling me that he and his wife were trying to have a child again.
We want to have a boy, he said, we had two girls before and they both passed away. I could only hold our last child alive for a couple of minutes. The next thing I knew, the nurse was taking her away and I never saw my girl again. Do you have children? he asked after a pause. I thought about lying, assuming that would ease his pain, but felt this man already knew what was in my mind. I nodded. My third daughter was born three months ago, I said. Blessed you are, he said. I could not agree more. I expected him to ask next, why are you not with her instead of here, so far away? Instead, the stared at me with an unblinking gaze and asked nothing else, and for that I was immensely grateful.
Before we left the fort, Himan showed me a group of five Indian fruit bats taking a nap, hanging upside down from the cornice of an inner wall. Don’t get too close, he said, or they will bite you and you will die of hydrophobia. Himan’s warning brought to mind Giuseppe Abbati’s self-portrait with his dog, whose story I had read some weeks before. In the portrait Abbati, elegantly attired and wearing a black patch over the right eye he had lost at the Battle of Capua, stands, right hand in his trousers’ pocket, before a whitewashed wall covered in small paintings. The young black Labrador next to his left hand looks at him with an air of guilt and sorrow. This same dog would later bite the Italian painter and infect him with rabies, to our day an incurable illness. Abbati had celebrated his thirty-second birthday a month before his death.
In exchange for a small amount of cash and while we waited for the car, Himan offered to take my photograph with a withered snake charmer, a red turban on his head, pink cotton shirt, black vest, pastel blue trousers, who worked with his glistening cobra near the fort’s exit. The old man, delighted by the profitable interruption to his act of waiting, bid farewell to us with a vivid gum-pink, toothless smile surrounded by a long, grey beard, the tip of which rested coiled like a mouse tail on the floor.
I was desperately looking for a square of shadow when, as if heaven sent, we heard the car’s engine and saw it come our way being chased by the heavy and bitter fumes its exhaust angrily expelled.
At around one in the afternoon mister Kamal, the short, stocky, and bald driver, took us downtown to eat, according to his words, the best palak paneer in the city.
An old arc of red stone marked the entrance to the restaurant. Several black crows, necks and chests the color of tobacco, stood rigidly on its edge staring down on us.
Mister Kamal stopped in front of it and honked noticeably annoyed. I stretched my neck to see the obstacle, expecting to see a boulder or another fallen object, and saw on the ground, exactly below the keystone, a black dog not unlike Abbati’s, except for the long and swollen pink, hanging teats, a litter of pups most likely waiting nearby for her return, licking in despair the face of a smaller dog. The driver honked again. The mother looked at us, as if asking for some patience and compassion, and resigned, moved to the left to let the car pass over her puppy’s body. I looked back as she went back to her fallen son or daughter to continue her vain resuscitation attempts.
Lazarus, I whispered.
Who? said Himan.
Never mind, I said.
You will like this place, said the driver, completely putting behind us the dead dog and its mother.
I could not help, as it is often the case, being disillusioned by my human companions, by their lack of empathy and mercy. I could not take Lazarus the dog and its mother out of my head. The image of the futile maternal act burned the insides of my mind for the duration of the meal and after. It recalled childhood memories.
Sister, mother and I were escaping once again from father and his multiple acts of violence. We had been on the northern road for over seven hours when we found ourselves in the middle of an inexplicable traffic jam. I looked out the window and saw, two cars in front of us, a young, black dog stumbling in the middle of the road. His long, pink tongue hung from his open jaw as if he had been forever thirsty. Blood continuously trickled from his mouth and anus, leaving two scarlet trails behind him. A car hit him, said mother. Poor thing. The dog finished crossing the street, walked into the ditch next to the road and lay down to wait for death to come. I suspected someone had hit and killed Lazarus too, given its resting location in the middle of the road.
Having no other point of reference, I decided to simply agree with Mister Kamal about the exquisite taste of the paneer. A skinny shoe-shine boy aged six or seven waited at the entrance, eager to offer us his services as soon as we stepped out of the restaurant. Mister Kamal kindly handed him some coins and told him something in the local language. The boy exchanged what sounded like pleasantries with mister Kamal, looked at our feet once, the three of us were wearing sneakers, and went away smiling. I could not help but think the boy was hungry.
With little energy left after the meal, I closed my eyes and was quick to fall asleep in the stuffy car for a portion of the long drive while mister Kamal and Himan excitedly conversed, perhaps partly about me, in the local dialect. Falling asleep in a car with two men who to me were practically strangers had become another of the skills I had acquired during this trip.
I dreamed that mister Kamal, Himan, and also Goro and Kushat, the guides that had cared for me and showed me the main points of interest during the previous days spent in Delhi, were engaged in a low-pitched exchange. Mister Kamal pointed at me, the group surrounded and overpowered me, three of them seized and pinned me to the ground as Himan cut out my tongue with a pair of gardening scissors. While I choked on my blood, they proceeded to offer the pink, pulsating organ to Rashmi, the attractive waitress who smelled of Jasmin with whom I had briefly discussed about the storm raging outside, and about Lucknow, her hometown, during breakfast time at the hotel. Rashmi’s beauty had now faded. Her skin was sallow, her teeth were brown and rotten. She had the black and glassy eyes of an owl. Rashmi bowed once with her head. The tongue was placed on the blue palms of her hands, covered in intricate indigo designs. She looked much pleased.
We got off the car some hours later. I stretched my legs and filled my lungs, as if I were drowning and had just been rescued. The air was fresh and scented. Red dragonflies fluttered all around. I saw and walked around the grounds of the Taj Mahal, that glorious monument to love and death, before saying goodbye to Himan and wishing him the best in his paternal endeavors. In spite of the multitude, I was struck by the silence that reigned over the place.
During our last walk together, I found myself telling a man I had met that same morning about my exile from the violent country I was born in, about my failed marriage in this foreign land with someone who saw the world upside down from how I saw it. I longed for closer ties with her, and loved her until the end, but our aims in life and values were diametrically opposed. An argument ensued, I met another woman, then I almost lost my daughters, I told Himan. My father died not long after that. Sorrow comes in waves, it seems, and most of it is self-provoked and self-inflicted.
You must not worry about your father anymore, he said. He had already entered the fourth stage of Ashrama before the passing of his human body. His soul might ramble for a while, but he will find his way after some time. It all makes sense, can you see? For us Hindus, there are four life stages. You are a student of life until you turn twenty-four, and you told me that was the age you married. Your union failed simply because you disrespected Dharma. You will be given a new chance, he said, if it is not the case already. You will see, and you will then remember me, he said smiling. From ages twenty-four to forty-eight, a man must be devoted to his household, to his children, to his Dharma. It’s the time to produce food, wealth, wisdom and virtue. This is no meager task, said Himan, as your offspring will continue mankind’s lineage and hopefully help alleviate its Karma. So, my friend, do not give up on your children, no matter how hard Mara makes your way. From ages forty-eight to seventy-two man needs to detach from pleasure, security and attachments. It is the time of Moksha, the season of release, liberation, self-realization and, if only for a few of us, of spiritual enlightenment. Sannyasa is the last stage. It goes from the seventy-second year after birth until the day this body goes back into the earth. As you see, there is an order for it all. It was your father’s time to go. It is during this time that we renounce our properties, hand them over to the young and, knowing that the flesh we inhabit can only get more and more corrupted, we focus instead on finding peace in our spirits. I felt something akin to rage and wanted to protest Himan’s logic and conclusions. But then he said before I could begin to talk: There is a reason for your being here, my friend. There is a reason for it all.
The sun set behind the marble mausoleum. Before heading back to the vehicle, I thought: It is moments like this, in places like this one that renew hope and keep it fresh, that make this life worth living, that bring me closer to infinity. Mister Kamal waited inside the car. He was so still that I thought he had died.
That night, after halfheartedly eating a plate of unidentifiable ingredients covered in a thick layer of green gravy, and somewhat frightened of sleeping on the soiled sheets covering the thin mattress, I went out and looked up and saw strange patterns in a strange sky, an impossibility in the gigantic, oppressive metropole where I spend most of my days and where the intrusive lights of man’s civilization have raped the darkness of the once sacred.
I could see Sirius, of course, but also Orion and his Canis Major, the vain Cassiopeia, the Pleiades and, if not mistaken, I even spotted once or twice Aldebaran. Ancient texts tell us that our ancestors knew the night like the back of their hands. For some amongst them their lives depended on this knowledge. When did all this change? I wondered.
I also saw a dream that night, and in the dream a girl, five or six years of age, wearing a white dress adorned with small red polka dots stood, as if waiting for my arrival, in the middle of an empty cobbled road flanked by old buildings on both sides. She held in her left fist what looked at first like a bunch of large balloons but were, after closer inspection, half a dozen or so of oversized, silver pink tilapias attached to the string the girl was tightly holding. The fish were floating, jerking, gasping for air.
II
Only in motion, and especially en route to somewhere else, can I see things from outside myself.
Our third stop after Delhi and Agra was Dhoola Raoji, a small town between Agra and Jaipur. The landscape from one city to the next did not change much, apart from the fact that it emptied itself of all animal life for a long time. The only sign of life was a decomposed carcass of what could have been a dog or a goat at one side of the road. The odors in the air intensified, and none of them were pleasant.
How did you become a driver, mister Kamal? I said in an attempt to break the silence.
It’s a long story, Sir.
We have time.
As you wish, Sir. I wanted to become a pilot.
A pilot?
Yes, Sir. My father was a pilot and he had always wanted me to follow in his steps. His own father loved planes. Miracle machines, he used to call them. Grandfather never flew in one, he could not afford it. His son was determined to make things right after his passing, Sir. Father left India and went to the UK to study, obtained his nationality, received his pilot license, and had a remarkable career with Air India. More than thirty years, Sir, dedicated to flying people across, around, in and out of this country. The man loved his life. Airplanes, family, Krishna, and Kabaddi. He had found the right food for his brain, his heart, his soul and his body. He was also a strategist chess player, Sir.
A remarkable man.
A most remarkable one, Sir. I still envy him, and he is dead.
So, you drive tourists to make money to become a pilot?
No, Sir. I wanted to become a pilot. I do not want that anymore.
I don’t understand, mister Kamal.
I will explain, Sir. Father went with mother to Europe to celebrate their love and his retirement. They spent a week in the north of Italy, some days in the south of France, and from there they traveled by train to Barcelona. The last leg of their second honeymoon would take them from Spain to Dusseldorf for some days in Germany, then to London to board the flight back home. They never made it. A hundred and fifty people, including my mother and father, the only two British nationals in the flight, were killed when, as the story goes, the copilot of the flight, a man named Andreas Lubitz, locked the pilot out of the cockpit and crashed the plane at a speed of four hundred miles into the French alps.
Oh, God.
Yes, Sir. I think have seen most of the photographs taken after the crash. There was little left, you can barely see a thing. The plane disintegrated leaving behind white patches of minuscule debris over the grey surface of the mountain. Like black and white snow. Everything in monochrome. That is why I will not fly again, Sir, and prefer to be behind the wheel and feel there is a solid road under my feet.
I rolled down the window since I was suddenly feeling nauseous. The air smelled of black tea leaves and woodsmoke.
An hour or so went by before the Gods agreed to bring back to this realm some other life apart from mister Kamal and me. A family of four squeezed on a small white scooter overtook our vehicle. The two kids waved at us and laughed. We then drove next to a herd of elephants of different sizes walking in a row next to the road. There were around thirty of them or so, in any case many more than I had seen during my whole life.
Further down the road we found a turbaned shepherd and his trip of long-haired, spotted-black-and-gold goats eating and resting under a pair of twisted, thirsty-looking trees. The tails of the animals were long like those of dogs and their ears also long and flat like fleshy, hairy leaves.
One of them had two enormous sacs hanging from his body, the largest testicles I have ever seen in man or beast. The driver, as if reading my thoughts, or just getting used to my incessant questioning, said that those were Sirohi goats, commonly raised by the peasants for milk and meat. To my regret, he did not comment on the goat’s gonads and I lacked the will to pursue my enquiry. The Raikas, as the owners of those goats are called, said the driver, are nomad herders of goats and camels. People around here shun them much because of their outdated customs and their worship of Pabuji, the warrior god of Rajasthan. Each community of Raikas orbits around a Bhopaji, a spiritual guide and leader who claims being able to talk to and obtain advice and wisdom from Pabuji while entranced by prayer and by the large quantities of opium he smokes. The Raikas, as a result of this social isolation, prefer their herds of animals over other people. I can tell you more about the Raikas if you want after we reach the hotel, he said, guessing my intentions. You might even meet one or two of them later.
I looked back as we advanced and saw the shepherd’s yellow eyes glint back at me from the shadow of the red turban. The white ulcers on his face and his small, snub-nose made me suspect he suffered from some malady akin to leprosy. He was cleaning the recently severed head of one of the goats.
Father enjoyed drinking Spanish wine, eating Spanish cured meats and Spanish dry cheese, watching Spanish women dance Flamenco and bulls being tortured and killed by Spanish toreros. This always puzzled me. The country I was born in and the whole Latin American continent were not only conquered but also raped and ravaged by Spanish hands. This conquest remains to this day one of the worst and least talked about genocides in history. The conquerors came riding the four horses of the apocalypse: Conquest, War, Famine and Death, the latter often in the form of plagues. Yellow fever, typhus, whooping cough, flu, malaria, smallpox, rabies, to name some, and there were three even worse.
Syphilis ravages the skin, mucous membranes, heart, liver, nervous system, bones and brain. Many among the ill leave the world insane.
The victim affected by Cholera dies hours after infection. The diarrhea the bacteria causes weakens the ill, vomit mortifies, and the fever drives him crazy. Thirst becomes unquenchable after infection, cramps like a thousand needles pierce the fevered skin, rivers of cold sweats bathe him, shock comes and, at last, the well-deserved repose of death.
And then there’s leprosy. Once a month or so we used to go with father to a warm town named Girardot, in memory of Manuel Atanasio Girardot, the son of a French miner who fought against the Spanish for the country’s independence and was shot in the chest as he tried to plant the yellow, blue, red flag when he considered the battle of Barbula won and ended.
That on the right side is Agua de Dios, father used to say approximately thirty minutes before our arrival, announcing a former colony of lepers. Agua de Dios is a small town, just a couple dozen houses painted white or yellow covered by blue skies and surrounded by hills and mountains. It used to be the largest lazaretto in the country and the whole of South America.
Father described with amusement how leprosy gnawed the human body. The skin of the sick is covered in gaping wounds, he said, purple, deep and wet like the hungry open mouths of newborn birds. The illness eats their fingers, their ears, their lips and eyelids. Where the nose shall be, all that remains is a black triangle. There was a time when the country was the leper of America. The horrific news, enhanced with black and white photographs of men, women and children falling apart, reached the magazines and journals of Paris and New York. Only when this happened, over three hundred years after the first contagions and when the country was about to be quarantined and isolated from the rest of the world, the government decided to take serious measures. The ill were expelled from their lands and towns, became outcasts and went to die in places like Agua de Dios. To avoid the panic of the sane and the further tarnishing of the nation’s image, the government had the lazarettos cordoned and guarded by armed sentries, and law 14 of 1907 was drafted. Men and women were confined, stripped of their civil rights, fed measured daily rations, officially labeled as solemn subsidized poor, forbidden to marry and were given a different, worthless currency to handle their transactions in the enclosure. Their only crime was to be sick.
A scorching evening in June of 1991 Mother and I ran into a dark-skinned gentleman begging in front of a chicken rotisserie. I could not understand how he could resist the tempting smell coming from the pan drippings. Beggars were abundant in every place of the country, but even more so in the large cities like Cartagena where they arrived in throngs from smaller towns and villages attempting to escape from violence and hunger. To our desensitized vision, seeing one of them was nothing new. What was different this time was the gentleman’s appearance. Although definitely an adult, he was as small as an eight-year-old child, both his arms and legs ended in stumps, he had no ears, his eyes were shut not by his eyelids but by a thick layer of skin, as if his forehead had melted over them, his nose was nothing but two dark, circular openings in the middle of his face, and his lipless, toothless mouth brought to mind a large pink cavern. He was little more than a dark shell of flesh and bones.
Mother handed me some coins to leave in the silver tray resting in front of the misshapen man. The way he stooped after I dropped the coins told me that at least his hearing worked.
How can he live like that? I wondered. What happened to that man? I asked Mother after we had walked a block away from him. Leprosy, my love, leprosy, said Mother adding nothing else.
Here I am, I thought, in the midst of horror.
To dispel the memory of the black misshapen man and of the Raika shepherd, I asked the driver about his thoughts on the British invasion of India.
I must admit they did some terrible things to us, Sir, he said. During the Mutiny of 1857, the British, following the steps of the Mughals, used to execute Indian rebels and deserters blowing them from a gun. No one knows how many died this horrible death, Sir. The British soldier tied the accused to a canon, the upper part of his back resting against the muzzle. When the gun was fired, the severed head went up into the air, the arms flew off right and left and the legs dropped to the ground. There was not much left of the torso. The British punished us in this life and beyond. They knew well that the destruction of the body prevented the relatives of the condemned from performing the necessary funerary rites. The souls of the dead remained in pain. And do not get me started on the way they famished us for decades, people still talk of the thousands of skinny corpses rotting in the streets, Sir. But we also learned and now speak English thanks to them, he said, and that has been good for the economy.
The driver guided us through a narrow, solitary dirt road flanked by ochre sand and arid hills on both sides. I scratched the fleshy inside of my hand, the section fortune tellers and palm readers called the mount of Venus, and was somewhat surprised to find a small hole. I pinched it between my thumb and index. The brown pupa of a carrion fly popped out and landed on my palm. I looked at it amused and put it in my pocket.
The silence both inside and outside the vehicle made me think that mister Kamal could have robbed me of my scarce possessions, killed me and disposed of my body right then and there, and no one would have ever found out. I was still lost in such frightening thoughts when he said, We are almost there, and I saw in front of me what seemed to be the first structures of a village. On either side of it, a sea of sand and stones.
The penury of the place was both blatant and hard to look at. The first humans I saw were a woman and a child. The woman, carrying a heavy-looking bundle of wood sticks on her right shoulder, wore bright red and golden clothes from head to toe. Her head and face were completely concealed by a thick ghunghat of the same color. The only visible part of her body was her right arm, as dark and thin as one of the sticks she was holding. The boy, probably the woman’s son or younger brother, wore a black fabric necklace, a dirty white, sleeveless t-shirt with the face of a cartoon bear embroidered on its chest, ripped black shorts and no shoes or sandals on his little, dark feet. The plum-black circles under his large eyes made him look both sad and hungry.
The streets of Dhoola Raoji were made of brown-gray grime that looked like ashes, as if just hours ago a volcano had erupted, or the rests of a gigantic funeral pyre had slowly fallen to the ground. There were empty cigarette packets, food wrappings, plastic bottles and all sorts of garbage scattered here and there. Our way was blocked for a few moments by a skinny, white calf, as dirty as the rest of the village, who was busy tearing and chewing a piece of soiled cardboard. Some meters ahead we found a brown pig, also eating refuse in the middle of the street. A pink dog, its fur and skin eaten by mange, raised its head and looked at us with little interest. The walls of the two-story houses, most of them cracked, had been painted too many years back in either white or pastel tones of blue, red, green and yellow. Not only the color on them but also the houses, once undoubtedly beautiful to look at and comfortable to live in, were themselves falling apart. Most were or looked hollowed, soulless and abandoned. Some had already given up and fallen to the ground. The mountains of debris that were once someone’s dwelling laid for the most part untouched. A few of those mounds had become playing grounds for the wood-skinned children who shrieked like tormented souls or demons. It made me think of Tokyo, Nagasaki, and Kagoshima, of Shizuoka, Osaka, and Fukuyama, and the many other Japanese towns and cities bombed by the Americans during the second great war.
A static and unblinking woman dressed in a pleasant mint-green and sand-colored shalwar watched the vehicle pass next to her as if she had just noticed a glitch or an anomaly in her concept of reality. Her clothes were stained with what looked like large blotches of dark blood below her waist. She remained there, stationary, even when we were far ahead. Just another prop of the scenery.
My head spun and my stomach hurt. I felt a mix of pain and sorrow for the animals and human beings living in this place. What happened here? I wondered, why these streets looked now like the little left from a once prosperous and now fallen kingdom? I thought of asking mister Kamal to turn the car around and drive in the opposite direction. I wanted to get out of that place but could not bring myself to tell him.
It took mister Kamal seven or eight interminable minutes to navigate the narrow streets, avoiding curious pedestrians, dogs barking frantically in chorus as the car went by, slow-moving cows, two more pigs, and a handsome polychrome fowl in the process. Here we are, he said, stopping the car in front of the gates of what was without a doubt an abode worth of a king.
I thought he was confused, tired after so many hours behind the wheel, but he got off the vehicle, walked towards the entrance and greeted a man who had seemingly been waiting for our arrival. The heat inside the car became oppressive.
The curtain walls of the structure were painted gold and daffodil yellow. The entrance arch had also green leaves and blue flowers painted on its walls and a relief sculpture of the face of a sun deity, most likely Malakbel, smiling at us with his eyes closed, the rays on his head denoting either seasons or the orbs of heaven. Two young men opened the gates. Mister Kamal came back after some minutes, got in the car, handed me a heavy bronze key and drove us inside.
You will like this place, Sir, he said. Please go upstairs and take a shower if you please. Your camel will be here soon. The Prince will be in town tonight and you will dine with him. Please give me your passport, Sir, I will pass it to the clerk. You will get it later when he has filled in the register. I handed him the only way to confirm my identity. I had no proof of my existence. I must confess that I felt lighter, as if the heaviest portion of the burden I had been carrying most my life had vanished when I handed him the document.
The driver parked the car next to the dry terracotta fountain at the center of the patio. It was a miracle the old structure chipped and cracked here and there was still standing. Mister Kamal excused himself, offered me an oil lamp that I declined, and went to converse and have tea with the vulture-faced gatekeeper.
I got off the car, dragged my luggage up the stairs to the second level, and did as I was told. I looked at the premises from this new vantage point before entering my quarters.
There were four doors like mine on each side of the yard. Downstairs, in addition to the yard, which I then realized was paved with grey, marble-like stone, was a small office, a large room, probably a restaurant or a salon, and four more closed doors like the ones above. The many plants and flowers in pots on the checkered balcony floor, shrubs and vines attached to rail and veranda, and the lush trees sprouting from the soil of the open garden below made me think of the hanging gardens of Babylon, The ancient city of flowers and gate of the Gods. Five or six vibrant, elegant peafowl, who nested on the many lush trees in the backyard, ran free inside the walls, going merrily back and forth without a noticeable aim or destination. All memories of the external filth and poverty had no place inside the enclosure. At first sight, I knew there were no other guests in the establishment.
I did feel being there as if I had been in some way elevated to a different realm above the plane of the Earth.
There was no light inside the room either and the last rays of the sun barely brightened it. It was a spacious but by no means luxurious chamber. The walls were painted gold and cyan blue. A light, small bed that the Indians call charpoy, described in detail by Muslim traveler and writer Ibn Battuta in his travel journals, a copy of which was recommended and later sold to me by a cheerful young boy with large, piercing eyes during my visit to the grounds of the Jama Masjid Mosque, was placed near the only window. Violet silk curtains filtered the day. Six dead flies rested on the windowsill. I took the pupa from my pocket and left it there, next to its kin.
I thought of the bedbugs, cockroaches, lice, mice, and even scorpions that could possibly come out at night and thought of asking either mister Kamal or a member of the hotel staff for a cat or a chicken or some vermin-hungry animal like that. A curious, musky smell lingered in the air around me made me divert from that intention.
I took out a change of clothes, a bar of soap, toothbrush and toothpaste, left the suitcase inside the wooden wardrobe, went to relieve myself, the chemical processes inside me went on relentlessly and against my will, and clean my body in the adjacent bathroom.
I wondered what the Prince looked like, what he smelled like, what I would say to him, what would he say to me and what we would eat and drink as I took a much-needed shower. I looked at my moist hands and caught myself trembling. My curiosity had become too great.
III
Someone knocked on the door. I opened. Mister Kamal stood in front of me. His face was flushed and puffy. He was voraciously biting and chewing from what looked like a piece of hard bread. I thought he was there to repeat the offer he had made during my first night in Delhi. You look tense, Sir, he had said at the time. How about a little relaxation? I have a pair of friends, you know, beautiful and caring both of them. I had pretended to be tired and had just answered, maybe another day, mister Kamal. Maybe another day.
To avoid another irksome moment, I took the lead and said: What a coincidence, mister Kamal. I was just thinking about you. I want to ask you a favor.
Please ask me later, Sir. You will ride a camel now, he said.
A camel?
A camel. His name is Ron.
Where?
Outside, of course.
I mean, where are we going?
Just to take a stroll.
What’s out there?
Mister Kamal gave me a reproachful look. The cadence of his voice showed the first signs of impatience and irritation. Not much, Sir. Some shrubs. A couple of tamarisk trees. Some dunes. A flat, windswept desert. Rows of hills that look like breasts and others that look like shark fins behind that. Not much, Sir. Basically nothing.
I am a bit tired, mister Kamal.
Please hurry up, Sir. Ron’s owner is not a patient man. It has all been paid for.
May I at least have some coffee before leaving.
You will have coffee later, Sir, said mister Kamal. Now please hurry up or he will be angry and will charge us more.
I naturally obliged. I understood I would ride that camel notwithstanding my objections.
Ron was a gentle golem of muscle and sinew twice as tall as me. His eyes, round and large like two black moons, were shaded by long eyelashes. He peered at me with suspicion, as if he knew me from before but could not remember where and when we had already met. Ron’s hairless skin colored in shades of gray and yellow expelled a pungent smell of urine, sweat, and cumin. A magnificent animal.
Father taught me dromedaries had one hump and camels two and I thought that was all there was to know about these animals. I only learnt later that both are in fact camels, one is called the dromedary and the other is called the Bactrian. I also believed the general idea that camels store water in their humps. Another misconception. The fat of the camel’s body is mainly stored in the hump. This local concentration not only ensures that the rest of the organs and tissues trap little to no heat, but also produces hydration through metabolic processes. A cow’s stomach has four chambers. Jellyfish have nothing but a cavity to eat and process nutrients. Mammal milk is made of nutrients extracted from the blood. Blood cells are made in the bone marrow. Organs, bones, feathers, shape, motion and even the bodily functions of birds are designed for flight. Dogs do not sweat but regulate their temperature through panting and vasodilatation. Some whales and sharks can live two centuries and more. Everything in life and nature is more complex and interesting than we have been told it is, but ignorance and lack of wonder enslaves us.
The camel’s owner was a quiet man dressed in flowing rags, an old yellow shirt and a tattered pair of trousers, both of which were too large for his frame, who barely nodded as an answer to my greeting. A metallic green fly walked from his eyelid to his eyebrow and then leisurely strolled all over his forehead. I fought hard to repress the instinct to swat it. The man remained impassive. He did not say much during our walk to the high dunes and preferred chewing and spitting tobacco the whole time to engaging in meaningless conversation about the scenery or the weather. A wise man.
The camel, by all accounts used to the occasional visitor, sat down on his belly and allowed me to get on the stained and dirty saddle on his hump. Ron swiftly stood up lifting his rear legs first and we towered over the world. He was to all appearances undisturbed by the extra burden on his back. The camel lurched into motion. Someone closed and bolted the gates behind us.
As the camel man, whose name I was never told, walked us out of town into the desert, I could feel the eyes of the dwellers we passed by pierce my back. The air reeked of open drains, of rotten food and, curiously, of decomposing flowers. The village turned into an expanse of sand, mountains of dirt and scattered bushes in a matter of minutes. The camel man walked in front of Ron most of the time, then beside him, then sometimes slipped behind to pat the animal on its thigh.
There was not a single human being in sight. I found this solitary stillness and the unvaried landscape much pleasant to my senses. I lost track of time. The sky was a turbid green and yellow.
In this remote place the man received a phone call. He spoke for a long time in unnecessary whispering. Even in the unlikely event that I had understood his dialect, the waves carrying his words would have never reached my ears from that distance. The vacant expression on his face remained a constant during the whole length of the conversation. A pang of fear crept into the pit of my empty stomach. I realized again that I could disappear out here and no one would ever find my bleached bones. I asked the camel-man to stop and pointed at my lower back as if in pain when he stared back at me with an air of complete incomprehension. He pulled the reins and Ron sat down slowly, front legs first, like a tower crumbling. I told the camel-man I would take a short walk, unsure and not really caring if he understood me or not. I tried my phone when I was far enough from the camel-man and Ron. I had no signal. My heart was racing. A large white sun shone with rage over my head. When I looked back I found a young, dark-skinned man chatting with the camel-man.
He is waiting for you, Sir, said the young man in clear English without any further ado.
Who is? I asked.
The Prince, of course, he answered.
And you are?
Who I am does not really matter, Sir, said the young man. Just think of me as another humble servant.
I mounted Ron repeating the same process, slightly satisfied at my promptly acquired mastery of camel riding, and the four of us, three men and a camel, turned around and retraced our steps. The young man asked me for my phone, my only possible means of communication with the rest of the world, to take my photograph on Ron. My fear defeated my hesitation and I handed him the phone. He snapped the photograph and showed it to me. I am ashamed to admit that I liked the photograph he took. The background was well-balanced between sand and sandhill and the camel-man, Ron and I looked like a friendly trio. He also captured my good side. I looked neither too fat nor too old. I looked back once as we left the dunes behind and found, in addition to the young man’s, the camel’s and his carer’s, three more sets of differently sized footprints that seemed to be forming next to us. I shook my head trying to dispel the heat, the drowsiness and the irrational figments of my imagination. The new angle of the sun was turning the hills carmine.
At the village’s entry was a tree large as a house that, surprisingly, I had not seen before. Its long, tentacle-like roots were half-buried in the sand. Its branches shot like firework rockets in all directions and the golden rays of the setting sun pierced through them as if passing through the stained glass of a cathedral.
Bodhi tree, said the camel-man as Ron walked unconcernedly past it. Bodhi tree. That was the first and last time he addressed me. The young man, proceeded to explain to me, although I was barely hearing what he said, that the tree had been planted at the entry of the village in the year four hundred and fifty before the coming of Jesus the Christ by one of Siddhartha’s followers.
How can it be so old? I asked him.
How can it not? he said without looking at me.
That was the moment I noticed that a corpse-like mendicant, probably my age, was laying under the tree’s shadow. The yellow soles of his feet were rough and dirty. He looked half-unconscious and was breathing heavily. I could smell the sour odor he gave off in spite of the distance.
I would like to help that man, I said to the young photographer.
Help him how? he asked.
I do not know, I said, give him some water. Perhaps buy him some sandals.
Do not cry because he has no shoes, the young man said. He is already blessed, can’t you see? He has two feet, and he is in peace.
If only for an instant, I felt as if my coupling to the world were shattered. I could not find the words to argue against the young man’s statement.
We walked next to another skinny Raika and his herd of goats, next to a merchant selling trinkets, colorful fabrics and peafowl-feather fans, an emaciated man riding a tired elephant, cream-colored vitiligo spots on its trunk and ears, a tall woman dressed in yellow, azure and magenta fetching water from a well, a five or six-year-old boy naked from the waist down, and next to what was without a doubt a funeral procession. I was staring at the body wrapped in orange cloth and orange flower garlands and at the group of silent pallbearers carrying it when a handful of children materialized around us and started screaming, laughing and chanting in tongues. It took my brain some time to realize we were in a different village.
Where are we going? I asked.
I told you already, Sir, said the young photographer, he is waiting for you.
The Prince?
The Prince, Sir.
IV
The Prince’s palace was in the middle of a lake surrounded by brown-grey hills and ashen mountains. A couple of crows cawed and flew over the lake in their direction. I imagined what the crows saw from above. Under the warmth of the pale sun, the hills and mountains would look like the liver spots and wrinkles on the hands of a sick, old God.
A merely functional shipwreck of a boat and its lonely skipper, accompanied only by the dozens of white, grey, and brown pigeons fluttering over and around him, were already there waiting for us. I got off the camel’s back, thanked the two men, and handed them the tip they were expecting. The wind blew and whistled. A thick layer of dead fish and fish skeletons surrounded the vessel. The air was foul.
The ferryman, a walnut-colored man with a reptilian face who seemed to be sneering all the time and whose body expelled whiffs that brought to mind stagnant mud and raw meat, happened to be another mute. The dark brown bucket hat on his head ensured that the upper half of his eyes and the bridge of his nose remained unseen.
Besides the excessive throat clearing of the captain and the random thoughts brought on by my surroundings on the efficacy of the yellow fever vaccine I had received two weeks before, the first part of the crossing was uneventful. Soon after the boat had crossed the imaginary line of what I calculated was the first half of our journey, an oatmeal-colored pigeon flew to where we were, gurgled once and then cooed before landing on the edge of the boat’s bow. I was taking a closer look at the bird’s bright pink feet, one of them completely deformed by accident or illness, when the captain fiercely struck the animal with his paddle. An explosion followed. The feathers flying all around us brought to mind the aftermath of joyful pillow fight. The bird fell dead into the lake and its body remained there, half-concealed by the brown soup, broken and disheveled, floating on the surface. Although the man seemed to rejoice after this act, the gagging sound coming from his throat was not even close to laughter. I heard a blaring horn. The skies drained of any life and light and turned dead and iron-grey at once. Doom seemed to hang over the town like a massive rain cloud. My head immediately started hurting. I could feel the tension grow on my forehead and temples. My heart pumped blood with rage up into my neck and head.
The rest of the ride felt like perpetuity. The bird-killer captain alighted first and helped me out, the skin of his hand as rough as bark. He kept the bleached palm of his hand facing up, waiting for the coin I placed on it. He took his hat off, which allowed me to see his eyes for the first time. They were empty. A silent sneer was his goodbye.
The blind skipper left me there, alone, in front of the sand-colored structure. I walked the narrow stone edge seeing my only means of transport back to the village shrink until it was no more. There was no escape now.
I felt my pockets for my phone and realized with horror that I had not gotten it back from the young photographer. The last string attaching me to the society I knew was gone. Suddenly trembling, scared and close to tears, I wondered if the black waters of the lake were infested with disease and aquatic, man-eating creatures. Even if it was not the case, I was sure my arms, lungs and legs would not be strong enough to swim me back to the shore. I was again confronted to the vicissitudes of my own mortality. I felt my way around the series of archways and balconies until I found a doorway.
I tumbled down into the waters, a metallic shiver going deep into my bones, after the white-coated, black-faced langur standing straight and tall under the door and I crashed into each other. My brain instructed my arms to flap and paddle, since my legs seemed to have shut down after the impact, but try as I might, I could not keep my mouth above the water long enough to breathe, let alone to shout asking for assistance. I swallowed mouthfuls of thick water. The thought of something unidentifiable brushing against my skin, or even worse, grabbing and holding onto one of my ankles, sent fear rippling down my spine. I could barely hear the monkey screech as I felt the last remnants of strength and consciousness about to leave my body. I was about to drown.
A pair of strong hands grabbed me from the armpits and effortlessly pulled me up and out of the lake. My savior was a young girl dressed in yellow.
Please forgive Hanuman, she said, after I caught my breath and was sitting between the monkey and her. He did not mean to scare you. The opposite is true. He has been eagerly waiting for your arrival. We all have. The langur grunted, chattered, scratched his chest twice, and presented to us his orange teeth as if to confirm what the little girl had said. The little girl fed me some rice pudding from a small katori bowl she extracted from one of the folds of her saffron-colored sari. For strength, she said, and for remembrance. Take some time to rest under the sun. It will dry your clothes and purify your soul.
While I ate, the monkey leaped inside, screaming loud, and came back seconds later holding a man by the hand. The man held a burning torch in his other hand.
Welcome, Sir, said the hairless servant attired in old, but impeccable white robes adorned with a vertical row of golden buttons and a red turban on his head. A long scar crossed his forehead from left to right. Please come with me, he said. The little girl stood still. Are you coming, I asked her? She shook her head and smiled. Her teeth were white and perfect. I must stay here, she said, in case somebody else decides to jump into the lake.
The turbaned man and the langur led the way into the palace. I was about to penetrate a threshold I did not even know existed. I followed the pair, leaving like a snail a humid trail of embarrassment behind me.
The grapefruit-colored walls of the dark hallways, filled with the light and smell of burning sulfur coming from the torch, were covered with and abundance of painted representations of men and women having sex in all imaginable positions. Although I found these depictions exquisitely obscene, I remembered that Himan had mentioned, as we walked the grounds of a lesser palace in Agra, that these erotic drawings were there to remind visitors and dwellers of the many temptations around them and to bring them back to the path of wisdom. The monkey chattered in a low voice as if talking to the man. I know what you mean, Hanuman, whispered the man, neither I can find peace here any longer.
The hallway ended in a cloister which surrounded a verdant garth. I heard a murmur of male voices first, followed by a loud commotion and the eruption of laughter. Another guard, an exact replica of the one holding the torch and the monkey’s hand, was running towards us from one of the opposite hallways.
You must see this, Sir, said the newcomer, there is no time, please come with me. The first guard and his monkey followed us, resigned, like ones who have already seen what we were soon to see a thousand times and one.
They behave like this only when the Prince is home, said the second guard, both hands on his waist, laboriously panting, trying his best to stand straight. His presence arouses the birds and all the other beasts, he said, either ignoring or not noticing my dripping hair and clothes. You should see when there are monkeys here, he said, forgetting about the white langur named Hanuman standing next to us. They hurt and sometimes kill each other, he said, they go insane with lust.
It was hard to believe what the many palace servants, who were clearly enjoying the display, the guards, Hanuman and I were seeing. Surrounded by Arjuna trees, planted in rows like the brave soldiers of a mighty army, their branches pregnant with yellow bulbs and flowers that shone like miniature suns, at least a dozen peafowl, much plumper than the ones back at the village palace, were screaming, waggling on top of one another, an agitated heap of legs, beaks, tails and metallic green, iridescent blue and bronze-colored feathers. The birds, who made me think of dwarfish dinosaurs, were engaged in what seemed to be some form of avian group sex.
Follow my brother and go change your clothes, if you please, said Hanuman’s companion in the tone of a command as he handed the torch to the other guard. The Prince will see you in the dining room in fifteen minutes.
Although the fort looks flat, said the guard walking next to me, it has five levels, four of them submerged under the lake. Guards and servants live above with the birds and other beasts. The Prince’s court and men of God occupy the third and fourth floors, his relatives and many concubines the second. The Prince spends his time, mostly alone, in the deepest of them all.
I did not enquire further about the concubines out of a mix of fear and respect. But, boy, how I longed to see at least one of them.
We went down yellow stone stairways that looked a thousand years old, turned right and then left and then right again and went into one of the many rooms in the level where we were. I could hear but could not see the musician playing the lyre. I was enchanted by the sound and lost all sense of direction. The guard placed the torch on a rusted holder on the wall, went to the end of the room and came back holding a golden silk kurta and a pair of white dhoti. The clothes expelled a pungent smell of naphthalene, but also of mustard seeds and peppers.
Now I am one of them, I thought after I had finished changing. I do not belong up there, on the surface of the world. I can stay here for good. I have found my labyrinth, my home. I need to leave no more.
Stay here, please, said the guard taking the torch from the wall and walking towards the entrance. I will go and see if his highness is ready. I stayed there as he ordered, immersed in a kind of quiet and darkness I had never met before. The incessant cacophony of needy human shrieks and voices, the horrendous sounds of man-made horns and engines, the purgatory of painful white and yellow artificial light, all of that was nowhere to be found. I thanked the Gods with silent words coming from my heart. I could not fathom how most of us stay relatively sane, day in and day out, amongst the horrors of the perverted civilization we have made.
V
There was some sort of muffled chanting in the room, an incessant repetition of verses in unknown tongues. Meeting the Prince, after so many years of dogma and deeply rooted preconceptions, meant the end of the illusion. I placed all my attention on the small and simple man wearing small and simple clothes who was standing in front of me. A second closer look offered me renewed impressions.
His bare feet were clean and smooth, and his well-proportioned toes were finely webbed. His thighs looked strong, like those of a stag, and on them rested long arms and long hands with slender fingers, also delicately webbed, reaching just below his knees. The clean fingernails looked soft and rosy. I could not help noticing there was no protuberance where his genitals were supposed to be. Instead, there was a bulge the size of a tangerine on the crown of his head. His long, untangled curled hair was bright and charcoal black as was the graceful hair covering the smooth, golden brown skin of his forearms.
When I moved closer to him, I felt some sort of pressure against my chest and face, as if the Prince were surrounded by a force field.
Although a young man he was no more, there was neither crease, nor blotch nor wrinkle on his face.
As he stood there, erect and upright, he made me think of a small lion with a smile of white teeth like polished conch, a strong, protruding aquiline nose, brows large and bushy, and the gentle eyelashes of a bull. A marvelous chimera. His eyes shone, sometimes blue, sometimes red, sometimes in shades of green and yellow like a pair of opals. Every element in his elongated face, even the petal-like ears on each side of it, was radiant and well-balanced.
He smelled fresh, like cold water near a waterfall.
The Prince was a delight to the eye, an assault on the senses.
He pressed his hands together and placed them in front of his forehead, a salutation I mimicked in return after stealing a look at his well-filled armpits. I had the certitude that his smell was pleasant even in that dense place.
A breathtaking creature dressed in a red sari manifested next to me. A dream come true. A concubine. Her lips, full and flower-shaped, as well as the parting on her head, were colored in the same bright vermilion red as the bindi on her forehead. Her large eyes made me think of cold, hard coal. When, without saying a word, she anointed my head with the clear oil she held in her left hand in a small silver recipient, I could not stop myself from inhaling the smell of sandalwood from her dark, delicate fingers. The woman looked into my eyes, searching for my soul, I thought, slightly bowed, took her leave and vanished.
Have a seat, said the Prince in a deep, androgynous voice that resonated through the hall like thunder. I looked around me before doing as he said. The yellow walls in the large room were decorated with numerous paintings in which the central character was the blue-skinned baby Krishna.
Baby Krishna, on one foot, the bright red sun at his back, holding the tail and standing on the head of a giant cobra while two goddesses or princesses revered and smiled at him.
Baby Krishna crawling on a colorful, elaborate carpet on the floor, holding an orb in his right hand. Inside the orb a river ran with thick green water and next to it nine little women danced in front of some sort of palace garden.
Baby Krishna being bathed in a golden tub by six beautiful women, a pale girl and a white calf.
My favorite ones were the three showing the plump, indigo-colored infant either carrying, spilling or eating and licking from his hands and fingers the contents of a large butter pot.
Although the ceiling was naked of lamps and other fixtures, the presence of the Prince and the few torches on the walls and were enough to fill the room with light.
The long table held pots and trays and plates of aromatic rice, colorful vegetables, at least three kinds of dal, thick dahi, sweet chutney, sour pickles, and all sort of spicy curries served on the many thali and katoris on the table, mountains of freshly baked puris, roti and papad around them, dates, rambutans, apricots, and pomegranates, as well as jugs of tea, fresh juice, and yogurt to wash it all down with.
Last night I saw a dream, said the Prince, and in the dream my naked mother was being carried in the air by two pairs of what appeared to be either ghosts or spirits who left trails of golden dust behind them. The entities transported my mother to the lake where we are now, bathed her, anointed her with oily perfumes, placed flowers in her hair and dressed her in a pale rose-colored robe. An old, white elephant approached the lake, towered in front of mother, looked down at her and with his trunk offered her a lotus flower bud about to open. What do you think that means? he said. He grinned delighted after asking the question.
We began to eat.
