The Queen's Play Read online

  The queen left the room and walked over to the balcony. The moon shone, white and serene, high up in the dark dome, and a soft, sinister wind rose up from the sea. Flashes from time to time brightened the sky’s edges. Were these the fiery dragons, the island’s guardian spirits, out on patrol? Dragons or comets, the queen doesn’t give them another look. She is elsewhere, perhaps nowhere at all.

  III

  NIGHT HAS fallen from the sky. It is pale and vacant and airless. A shadow moves in it slowly, perhaps with difficulty, having journeyed this far only to dip its beak in the river, which is calm now that the lands are flatter and the hills round and low. Unable to ride the wind any more, the river in its eyes, the fall happens quickly when the overwhelming weariness has ejected the last remaining strength, and the milk-white water is the bird’s grave.

  The vision shook the child. Raising his tongue, he let the stone of the peach slip past his lips, and suddenly felt free of a burden. Light had returned to his eyes, but he knew that the comfort of mortality, of belonging only to this time, was leaving them.

  The child rose to the tree’s crown as before. At his feet and far beyond, the mountains opened into a valley where tall conifers stood in never ending ranks, like soldiers holding their breath before the bugle-horn of battle.

  And then the horn sounded. A collective sigh escaped from the ranks that spread like a wave and was carried away on the updraught. For the moment, a weariness came over the army, a moment which returns at the start of battle each day to confound every soldier, a moment that must be wrestled with and overcome, a moment in which the uselessness of his enterprise fills every soldier with despair, a despair, nonetheless, to be tamed swiftly into a resolve. To draw the enemy’s blood and to fulfil one’s duty to the king, one’s debt to the gods, regardless of the fact that such duties and debts had been written in the stars long ago and he who moved so close to earth was essentially powerless to shake their yoke from his flesh, so that to return home alive and be joined once more to his woman was reward enough.

  Yet many will not fulfil this resolve, certainly not that noble warrior who stands in the second row set to meet the adversary, head firm and high, muscles flexed, the left hand gripping the weapon lightly, breathing into the charnel void that awaits him. Like so many others, he will go down under the blows of the enemy, cloven by its large axe-blades that glitter in the morning sun, ready to strike.

  Anjaneya ran at the head of the brigade straight into the enemy formation. From a distance the prince-in-exile observed the scene phlegmatically, standing in his three-horse chariot, having not yet lifted his bow. Then the enemy forces closed around the first batch of his army, and, for a moment, the sea’s fluid silence covered everything.

  A clap of thunder made the prince look up. But the sound had not come from above. The sky was light and clear though he could see the gods keenly watching the scene with their heads between their legs. It was the first roar of the hovering doom. The spear skidding against the shield, the sword meeting the axe, the ribcage breaking beneath the skin, the kick in the groin, the blood on the ground, the contact of a club driving the cone of a soldier’s helmet down into his very skull to settle in the space between the eyes, which were already bidding farewell to the elements, Earth, Water, Wind, Fire were for him coalescing into a thin coolness that for another was still the ether where the visible was made invisible, where the dreamer dreamt his life again and again, where, just this moment, the dead soldier was sinking into the earth, and where dust freely swirled in the rising heat past the swinging limbs, shouts, curses, sweat, and blood.

  High above, in the sky that was beginning to be dotted by vultures, the ominous sounds from the field did not reach. And without these sounds where was the spectacle of battle? What more could this be than a game opening between two rival forces facing each other, played on a field of alternating dark and light spaces, not fixed but shifting, little more than a motif of trembling shadows, wresting from light at one place what they returned at another, moving yet unmoving. Not so different was this then from the chequered board of smooth ebony and maple woods where, with a faint scent of pine needles on the air and the calls of the peacocks breaking into a sudden dance, with water from the fountains softly plashing in glowing pools of colour, the dark foot soldier had taken its first slight step, pushed ever so gently from behind by a pale slim hand.

  By noon the sea’s rhythm itself had permeated the battle. Each hour, the round of fatalities grew and fell with the periodic revival and ebbing away of the strength of its warriors. The initial rush of energy had departed the thick and fast of war, for the soldiers on either side, now that the first sudden terror of losing their lives had somewhat abated, had taken a more reasonable view of the situation and had settled on a longer span of combat, stretching over days, maybe months. Thus, both sides had adopted a defensive strategy, and deaths occurred more from oversight or a failure of strength than sustained initiative. Incredible as it seemed, hope had taken root even here, indeed it was thriving in every soldier’s breast, who would not have put past him the mugs of stout and tales round the campfire, a generous fare, and six hours of deep, unbroken sleep on the other side of sundown. But between sundown and the first drink there yet remained the cruel, backbreaking task of clearing the ground for the next day, moving away and cremating the dead, lighting vast funeral pyres all along the coastline, wood crackling, bones bursting from heat, blue ashes.

  When the sun sank into the waves, Anjaneya was opening his arm for a swing at his opponent, but just then the moan of the conch shells signalled a close of the day’s battle, and his hand slowed in mid air, but in the infinitesimal space born outside time, a space in which forms dissolve into one another, where the club touched the chest the bones bayoneted the heart, the victim falling to the ground as the first banners heralding the night’s rest were going up.

  At last a bone-white moon rose slowly over the trees, where the forest suddenly opened onto the vast beach, the very theatre of this danse macabre. Here and there embers glowed in dying campfires about which bodies lay huddled together for warmth, traversing a darkness deeper than night, a spectacular stillness born of drink, food, and an excruciating fatigue. Near the grove where he had retired with his two aides, the fire was still burning. Moonshine was returning valour to their faces, causing glints in the lesions over them. Somewhere someone was crying from toothache, one misery gaining ground on another. Polishing the round fruit on his tunic till it shone red and golden, catching the fire in its skin, he sat unwashed in the shadow of a fig tree, black with grime, beard matted, hair clotted with blood, the metal guard still fastened to the left leg. The fruit was slowly transmitting its fire to his eyes, in their dark depths a tiny flame was now blazing. From the far side of the world came a slow sound of a hollowed-out antelope horn being played.

  IV

  WHEN THE final betrayal had taken place, when one act of honour had been traded for a second, when the death-dealing arrow had been delivered to the enemy by the king’s own brother, when the iron tip had pierced the king’s navel at twilight, when the lord of three worlds lay writhing on the ground, spattering the sap of his hard-won immortality everywhere, when our confused, weary troops had been eventually routed, the war was at last over. Then I climbed down the back of my wound-ridden elephant into an immense lake of silence. A curiously fluid world from before the birth of sound. For days, I carried this emptiness in me, and the emptiness carried me in it.

  Soon we had a king. He who was next of kin to the deceased ruler, he who having been wrongly banished for speaking his mind, hitting straight at the king’s pride, had walked over to the exiled prince and offered his confidences, an act some claimed was righteous, others, no less rightly, anctimonious, was deemed fit for the throne by the victors.

  I was, of course, at the court, amid the oboes, cymbals, and kettledrums sneaking behind the unceasing chants and invocations of the priests, to pay my obeisance to our king upon his crowning.
Seeing everything, hearing nothing, not even my own voice. And yet by some miracle was heard and understood by all.

  Now that peace was upon us, the work of rebuilding from the debris of battle commenced in full swing. What did I care for it? To the one born in the streets, this business of building and wrecking and building again was the very essence of living. Indeed, it seemed, if one took a true stock of our miserable condition, that we could fight and kill simply to relieve the tedium of days or to stroke our own, when not the sovereign’s, foolish, insatiate pride at the first opportunity. If one was not combatting an enemy on the battle- field, one was trying to get killed in drunken brawls, knife-fights, and duels in the street. And what men could not finish among them, the vagaries of fate did. After all death from syphilis or cracking your skull in the wash was not inconceivable, while an innocuous remark slipped over drinks could estrange a loved one forever. Just when you were looking the other way, a scaffold was being readied for you. Alas, who could tell where you would end up for letting your gaze wander a moment? And so it took you not long to see that each peaceful day was a carrier of untold silent cruelties, that every honourable motive girdled countless devious and dishonest deeds, that the war continued beyond all wars, a war against an invisible foe, from whom you had to snatch each good lungful of air, each firm foot of earth, for as long as you lived.

  Not that I had wanted any of this. As a child, I was even a little yielding. But then you are here to learn, and how fast you learn scavenging in the street. There, in the midst of indifference and wretchedness, iniquity comes at you with long strides, cruelty grows as easily as hunger, and before you know your arms are swinging freely, the weapon having long since settled in the groove of your small fist. Yet, when all was said and done, my life hadn’t been much worse than another. Think of the orphan who had once been a page at eleven and a foot soldier at fifteen, who had perchance saved the king’s life in a skirmish, where could he not go from there, what effort would he spare to put some distance between himself and his wretched past?

  Thankfully, over the years, I had risen so high at court under the gaze of the deceased king that I could choose to delegate all duties until an exceptional event caused me to intervene. But with the long-drawn-out battle behind us, what was really left to demand my attention? With the king dead, I, for once, was free of the obligation I had long felt toward him and the empire. Time had come for the one lasting thing my riches could procure, something that would remain when all else had been turned to dust in its smithy, something that gave its fullness to days, years, epochs, and yet remained full, something that could show me my true face, help me find and love the self which got lost long ago in the very process of securing its extreme vulnerability, this deep, silent river of time which gently carried me, free of desire or destination, neither leaving nor arriving.

  For this quiet period, I was thankful. Because a sudden illness had taken hold of my body and mind. Fatigue not only of the long war, but of the very effort of breathing was collecting in my blood, moving through my arteries, acquiring mass, growing like a massive rock bent on bursting my vessels and tearing open my flesh. A prolonged rest was prescribed by the medicine men who were unable to form a specific diagnosis. A warm brew with some or other medicinal herb and a pinch of turmeric and saffron was handed to me twice a day to heal injuries. Thus, amid a flurry of servants, I lazed about, sucked lightly scented smoke through the long stem of my water pipe, thought, and waited.

  During the day, sparrows the size of a child’s fist with indigo and blue patterned crowns and sword-like erect tails, flitted in the hedgerows enclosing the yard, splashing colour everywhere, and in the evening, before the pine torches had pushed the darkness further into itself, a martin returning to a nearby tree would sometimes brush its open wing against my cheek. While I took my ease in the long chair, shimmering in the heat like a mirage, the sparrows hopped in circles, or took two hesitant jumps forward and one backward, until suddenly one was sitting on my chest, for it I too was the earth and the firmament, part of the familiar forms it knew instinctively, and my phantom fingers were caressing its crown, gentle like the fingers forming an urn on the wheel, a gesture the bird appeared to be enjoying, slowly sinking into a torpor in front of my lowered eyes, and lightly pressing on my chest a benediction for the past, a hot, bloody, nightmarish past, for which the bird and the world which it belonged to, which we both belonged to, cared nothing in the least. It seemed I had been awaiting this moment all my life, but now that it was upon me, I could do little else than shed tears of relief. Then the bird let out a chirp and, after days of being submerged, my head came above water, and how clearly I heard the river of smoke making its bubbling passage far off through the clay pot of my pipe.

  News then came that my elephant was dying. How loyal he had been to me in the war, taking on himself wounds from so many weapons, any of which would have sent me to my end, here throwing a cavalier off the horse with a twitch of his tail, there toppling an enemy chariot with his swaying trunk, all this at just the slightest twists from my big toe at certain points in his back, which worked like a code between us. When we waited at the edge of the ranks or up close for a sign from the king, the great shudder of war ended at his padded feet, when we entered the fray, a path opened by itself in the throng ahead of us, and never had we to cut diago- nally through a warring faction, at its weakest point, like a chari- oteer, nor did we have to jump inevitably sideways after two straight bold leaps like a cavalryman who somehow always found himself deep in the tumult of a packed group of soldiers.

  I hurried to the stables, and there he was, shrunken to half his size between ears that looked ever more gigantic, in part due to the absence of the gold-threaded headgear and the delicately carved conical armour on the tusks, stock still in shade of the thatched roof, preserving the last of his strength. In those amber eyes there was no hint of recognition as I came close and offered him a cane to chew, but when I hugged the leg near me, his trunk calmly crept over my back. He took the cane distractedly into his half-open mouth, standing in the odour of long festering wounds, which four stable boys worked through day and night to keep free of flies by burning camphor and other unguents. Behind, at the edge of the wall where it touched the roof, the wood had rotted and given way to an irregular patch of sky. Somewhere between this black rotten wood and that blue floating oblivion lay the answer to the puzzle of our lives.

  I returned having known I had seen the last of him. At night, an aide sent to my chamber a girl to distract me. And though my mind was far away, I let her undress me, even as my own hands worked through her lace gown on which tiny rhinoceroses were locking horns. I should have continued to move deeper into the vortex of desire, sinking, no, drinking in the secretions, and leaving far behind a body thick with sorrow, had I not by chance glanced into her eyes. The same unawareness of truth, the same slow trembling, the same inexplicable fragment of fear for every passing moment, for that which was to follow. All at once, there welled up in me some great unknown love for the girl, who had in that moment ceased to be another. And in a flash, she saw it too. Now we were only two children clinging to each other in the dark. I pulled her to my bare chest, and began to rock gently waist upward, stroking her from head to bottom, cocooned in the warmth of the two conjoined skins.

  In the morning, I slipped off the bed and staggered away to the pot. A biting chill was fast filling my blood. I saw a tarn in a ring of ice peaks, fed by age-old glaciers, drip drop, drip drop, the snowmelt seeping into the steaming pool was already a scorching unending gush by the time it flowed out of my body, making me swoon and hold to the walls. And like this, standing with legs apart dropping a burning watery arc into the pot, it came to me, the truth of things, that dignity was possible only in exile, outside the cataclysmic rumble of history, away from the inferno of desires and follies, this lust of the head to create, to vanquish, to enjoy, to suffer.

  Suddenly, my head went clear, and there rose in the mind’s ey
e shining above the green rolling hills the long and spacious marble stairway, and past it, as if floating in the air, the Pavilion of Solitude, to which I knew I would soon be leaving.

  V

  DO YOU see how cleanly they fall in place, one after another, subsuming the four cardinal points, these days and nights of our life? Always the same day, always the same night. The world nothing but a motif threaded with light and dark spaces, a simple, ineluctable result of the constant flux in the realms.

  At first, only this. Elements, emptiness, meaningless movement. A vast unending terrain waiting to be taken, ordered, made intelli- gible. Then someone comes and draws a fence, marking a territory. Another maps the heavens, fixing the constellations, and little by little the universe begins to breathe, there arises a field of thoughts and possibilities. What baffling possibilities! What incredible schemes! In time, others follow, inducement is already at work in so new a world. Before long a giant web has come into place, is hanging from the farthest orbs into our lives, twisting its filmy yarns around our actions, enmeshing us, growing tighter, more intricate, with every move, every word.

  Now it is never the same day, and seldom the same night. The phantasms of the human have been wholly projected onto the inhuman. Yet uncertainty and elusiveness are our lot, pain and beauty, fear and aggression our only markers. Somewhere there is peace too, a little of it, though more can be had with a slight enter- prise. For this it is essential to conquer distant lands and civilize the barbarians inhabiting them. Thus, men happily tilling the fields are removed from their hoes and handed out swords, fields they have just begun to love and were about to fill with seed, fields they have recently snatched in an ongoing tussle from the grasp of unbearable darkness which exists between mammoth trees. But it is not for them to decide, the ruler’s will must be done.