Part 94 (1/2)

The smoke from the _ghats _behind him still seared in his lungs. Only when he reached the top of the steps could he force himself to look back. Scavenger birds wheeled in the sky above and small barks with single oarsmen plied the muddy face of the Jamuna. Along the banks were toiling washermen, Untouchables, who wore nothing save a brown loincloth and a kerchief over their heads. They stood in a long row, knee-deep at the water's edge, mechanically slapping folded lengths of cloth against stacks of flat stones. They seemed unconcerned by the nearness of the funeral ghats, stone platforms at the river's edge that were built out above the steps leading down into the water. As he silently surveyed the crowd around him, from somewhere on the street above a voice chanted a funeral litany: Ram Nam Sach Hai, the Name of Ram Is Truth Itself.

It had taken four days for Kamala to die. The morning after she had danced, she had begun to show unmistakable symptoms of the plague. She had called for Brahmin priests and, seating herself on a wooden plank in their presence, had removed her _todus_, the ear pendants that were the mark of her _devadasi _caste, and placed them together with twelve gold coins on the plank before her. It was her deconsecration. Then with a look of infinite peace, she had announced she was ready to die.

Next she informed the priests that since she had no sons in Agra, no family at all, she wanted Brian Hawksworth to officiate at her funeral.

He had not understood what she wanted until the servants whispered it to him. The Brahmins had been scandalized and at first had refused to agree, insisting he had no caste and consequently was a despicable Untouchable. Finally, after more payments, they had reluctantly consented. Then she had turned to him and explained what she had done.

When he tried to argue, she had appealed to him in the name of s.h.i.+va.

”I only ask you do this one last thing for me,” she had said, going on to insist his responsibilities would not be difficult. ”There are Hindu servants in the palace. Though they are low caste, they know enough Turki to guide you.”

After the Brahmins had departed, she called the servants and, as Hawksworth watched, ordered them to remove all her jewels from the rosewood box where she kept them. Then she asked him to accompany them as they took the jewels through the Hindu section of Agra, to a temple of the G.o.ddess Mari, who presides over epidemics. They were to donate all her jewels to the G.o.ddess. Smiling at Hawksworth's astonishment, she had explained that Hindus believe a person's reincarnation is directly influenced by the amount of alms given in his or her previous life. This last act of charity might even bring her back as a Brahmin.

Two days later she lapsed into a delirium of fever. As death drew near, the Hindu servants again summoned the priests to visit the palace. The plague was spreading now, and with it fear, and at first none had been willing to comply. Only after it was agreed that they would be paid three times the usual price for the ceremonies did the Brahmins come.

They had laid Kamala's body on a bed of _kusa _gra.s.s in the open air, sprinkled her head with water brought from the sacred Ganges River, and smeared her brow with Ganges clay. She had seemed only vaguely conscious of what they were doing.

When at last she died, her body was immediately washed, perfumed, and bedecked with flowers. Then she was wrapped in linen, lifted onto a bamboo bier, and carried toward the river ghats by the Hindu servants, winding through the streets with her body held above their heads, intoning a funeral dirge. Hawksworth had led the procession, carrying a firepot with sacred fire provided by Nadir Sharifs Hindu servants.

The riverside was already crowded with mourners, for there had been many deaths, and the air was acrid from the smoke of cremation pyres.

On the steps above the ghats was a row of thatch umbrellas, and sitting on a reed mat beneath each was a Brahmin priest. All were s.h.i.+rtless, potbellied, and wore three stripes of white clay down their forehead in honor of Vishnu's trident. The servants approached one of the priests and began to bargain with him. After a time the man rose and signified agreement. The servants whispered to Hawksworth that he was there to provide funeral rites for hire, adding with some satisfaction that Brahmins who served at the ghats were despised as mercenaries by the rest of their caste.

After the bargain had been struck, the priest retired beneath his umbrella to watch while they purchased logs from vendors and began construction of a pyre. When finished, it was small, no more than three feet high, and irregular; but no one seemed to care. Satisfied, they proceeded to douse it with oil.

Then the Brahmin priest was summoned from his umbrella and he rose and came down the steps, bowing to a stone s.h.i.+va lingam as he pa.s.sed. After he had performed a short ceremony, chanting from the Vedas, the winding sheet was cut away and Kamala's body was lifted atop the stack of wood.

A mortal sadness had swept through Hawksworth as he stood holding the torch, listening to the Brahmin chant and studying the flow of the river. He thought again of Kamala, of the times he had secretly admired her erotic bearing, the times she had sat patiently explaining how best to draw the long sensuous notes from his new sitar, the times he had held her in his arms. And he thought again of their last evening, when she had danced with the power of a G.o.d.

When at last he moved toward the bier, the servants had touched his arm and pointed him toward her feet, explaining that only if the deceased were a man could the pyre be lighted at the head.

The oil-soaked logs had kindled quickly, sending out the sweet smoke of _neem_. Soon the pyre was nothing but yellow tongues of fire, and for a moment he thought he glimpsed her once more, in among the flames, dancing as the G.o.ddess Parvati, the beloved consort of s.h.i.+va.

When he turned to walk away, the servants had caught his sleeve and indicated he must remain. As her ”son” it was his duty to ensure that the heat burst her skull, releasing her soul. Otherwise he would have to do it himself.

He waited, the smoke drifting over him, astonished that a religion capable of the beauty of her dance could treat death with such barbarity. At last, to his infinite relief, the servants indicated they could leave. They gathered up the pot of sacred fire and took his arm to lead him away. It was then he had pulled away, wanting to be alone with her one last time. Finally, no longer able to check his tears, he had turned and started blindly up the steps, alone.

Now he stared numbly back, as though awakened from a nightmare. Almost without thinking, he searched the pocket of his jerkin until his fingers closed around a flask of brandy. He drew deeply on it twice before turning to make his way on through the streets of Agra.

”You took an astonis.h.i.+ng risk merely to honor the whims of your Hindu dancer, Amba.s.sador.” Nadir Sharif had summoned Hawksworth to his reception room at sunset. ”Few men here would have done it.”

”I've lived through plagues twice before. In 1592 over ten thousand in London died of the plague, and in 1603, in the summer after King James's coronation, over thirty thousand died, one person out of every five. If I were going to die, I would have by now.” Hawksworth listened to his own bravado and wondered if it sounded as hollow as it was. He remembered his own haunting fear during the height of the last plague, when rowdy, swearing Bearers, rogues some declared more ill-bred than hangmen, plied the city with rented barrows, their cries of ”Cast out your dead” ringing through the deserted streets. They charged sixpence a corpse, and for their fee they carted the bodies to open pits at the city's edge for unconsecrated, anonymous burial, the cutpurse and the alderman piled side by side. As he remembered London again, suddenly the Hindu rites seemed considerably less barbaric.

”You're a brave man, nonetheless, or a foolish one.” Nadir Sharif gestured him toward a bolster. ”Tell me, have your English physicians determined the cause of the infection?”

”There are many theories. The Puritans say it's G.o.d's vengeance; and astrologers point out that there was a conjunction of the planets Jupiter and Saturn when the last plague struck. But our physicians seem to have two main theories. Some hold it's caused by an excess of corrupt humors in the body, whereas others claim it's spread by poisonous air, which has taken up vapors contrary to nature.”

Nadir Sharif sat pensive and silent for a moment, as though pondering the explanations. Then he turned to Hawksworth.

”What you seem to have told me is that your physicians have absolutely no idea what causes the plague. So they have very ingeniously invented names for the main points of their ignorance.” He smiled. ”Indian physicians have been known to do the same. Tell me then, what do you think causes it?”