The Queen's Play (10 page)

Conjoined, moist, glistening bodies that have become their own altars, their own pious mandalas with tiers descending one inside the other, home to all peaceful and wrathful deities dancing in the concentric arcs of the mind, pointing within at the pure land, a blue
luminous tiny square space in the heart of which shines the
Vajra
, the indestructible, all destroying mace of Indra, which is also the thunderbolt which is also the forever glittering diamond of bliss and emptiness and oneness. Symbols here are useless, loosening away from the thing itself, they show their infirmity, reflecting and cancelling out one another in their own hall of mirrors. Device, word, knowledge finally merge together on this, the third night of the supreme coitus, to help the participants riding the wheel of great bliss,
Cakrasamvara
, to transcend the wheel of time,
Kālacakra
, itself.

When they separate, when a new dawn breaks, when the king leaves the queen's bed, the two have exhausted the entire spectrum of desire within themselves. Never will they come together again like this, never will the flame of longing flicker in the body of one for the other with such intensity. But is it desire alone that has been exhausted? Or memories too? If not completely, then in some measure the past has begun to disintegrate. A slight gap has opened that will widen and be filled anew. Different passions will arise and grow and in time repaint the mind's canvas, for life itself has not ceased yet. Whereas the queen will be pulled by the board's lure, the magic of its shifting currents, the king will put his strange liquid metal to new, unbelievable uses, most significantly to the prototype of the flying machine lying discarded in some corner shed of the palace.

At present it is nothing but a wooden hemispherical shell big enough to seat four, encrusted, round its edge, in jewels possessing properties that react to the elements in varying ways, decorated with the head and wings of the mythic bird
haṃsa
, part swan, part goose, with three closed vessels containing gyroscopes, placed at specific points in the hull. Mythic, surely, but dead too. Nothing but wood, alloy, cloth, and jewel. What it needs to take flight is a force, a consciousness, which the king will before long implant in its breast. Not for nothing has he learnt the various characteristics and functions of mercury, which he carries with him wherever he goes.
He knows how to bend it to his will, to his own subtle energies, and more than that, he knows that it can conduct the incredible power of the thunderbolt to create a force field. All he need do is to make the liquid run in a channel around the gyroscope and through a few conducting wires transfer the charge in the higher reaches of the atmosphere into the vessels. The rest he will manage simply by directing its course through concentration of thought. He will ride the bird, and like the earth so in the sky will he reign.

Life moving in circles. Better still, life moving in cycles. Learning, unlearning, learning afresh. To purge pride utterly inside oneself, only to find it streaming in from a chink so soon. From there what a short way it is to rage, to madness, to destruction. The weakening of the organism to let the parasite of evil action, from lives past or present, enter and defile the host yet again.

MUSIC, OPENING wide the portals of thought, slackening the bonds of flesh on the spirit, turning the water in jars sweeter by degrees.

Tall and heavy, his thinning hair falling in curls over his neck, a zither on his lap, the maestro sings into the cool tropical night to the accompaniment of a four-piece musical ensemble. Lamps burning in glass shades along the dais, and the walls of the courtyard filled with an ink-black air whose edges are swamped with stars. Gestures, modulations, faint unnoticed blinks to the prevailing deities of the night. The swish of an arm catching a note in the air, not just the chords in the throat, but the whole body performing and shuddering to the music, a great river of music flowing through and flooding the banks. A few lines of verse, ten or twelve words, not more, charged with ancient meaning or wisdom, sometimes merely expressing an aphorism or a yearning, sung a thousand times over in shifting patterns of notes with ever changing intervals, rhythms, improvisa- tions, here performing a swift short glide through words or suddenly breaking them into their constituent syllables which come whole again miraculously to make up an octave, there rising and falling and oscillating in notes, rolling in echoes, and at last breaking into a majestic howl, enacting the possibilities of speech to its very end, and then even beyond that end, catenated molecules of sound dissolving into soft strands of breath, and breath vanishing into silence or music of a kind the ear cannot yet detect whereby the auditor's soul takes flight with the dying vocals to travel and spread
across the empyrean, and there is every fear of it not returning.

The voice returns to earth and brings back with it the queen's soul and her heart begins to beat again. This kind of dislocation of thought she has not felt in years. When last was the mind so emptied out? When was it the king held her in that unending embrace?

An entire month has elapsed since that first fateful encounter over the board. Fateful not because of the results of the match, which, if anything, had been all but forgotten by the same evening, but because what took place over the board had been so altered as to bewitch any interested mind with a single glance. That is, for a mind in the know of the old game, of how a spectacular effect was achieved by a simple rearrangement of its component elements. How much more should the bewitchment be then for her who engendered it? Bewitchment that was also enervating and irksome. The case of all creators who take their task passionately and in earnest. Where others see a smooth synthesis of beauty and wit, the creator finds only torn and hanging sinews, architectonic problems, concerns over pace and rhythm, obfuscation. In brief, she knows too much about the game's defects to take heart from its striking achievements. This though is just an early version, at best a pointer to where the game can go, what it can become.

The first and the most pressing, perhaps the only, problem is the pace of the game. Or rather the pace or sweep of certain pieces. Better still the sweep of one piece in particular, the Queen. Why, she has asked herself countless times in the past days, is she bound to move about the king, as if still in chains?

The very next day, upon devising the new mode of play, the queen had called for the master carver and instructed him to make for her two complete sets of pieces, one of ebony and the other of ivory, with small, varying, leaden weights buried in each piece's base, such that wood weighed as much as ivory, king as much as king, pawn equivalent to pawn, and horses likewise, each piece just heavy enough to rouse the mind of the player who lifted it. Alongside this she described how certain pieces had to be remod-
elled, how the chariot had to be carved in the image of a boat, complete with its mast and sails, and the Queen in the image of the King, save for the crown, a replacement for which she drew on the spot for the carver's benefit as a perfect replica of her own diadem.

Now that the few physical departures in the new game had been dealt with, the more abstract of its aspects besieged her. But at this point all inspiration deserted, and she moved the pieces this way and that, testing the feasibility of fresh moves in the larger scheme of the game itself, which, however, and this was crucial, would preserve its delicate equilibrium. Yet she could not bring herself to it, nor saw any way of doing this. To her the moves were perfect, could not be bettered, each one following a different trajectory that contrasted and complemented all others to make up the unique multi-layered texture of the game. And yet she knew something was amiss, something
could
be improved. For as long as the Queen was not set free, she could well turn back to the old ludo and be done with the whole sorry matter for good. Howsoever more advanced than its precursor it was, this game of hers still fell short of giving her the joy she had half-knowingly envisaged.

To the one who perseveres not every solution occurs with equal ease, or indeed occurs at all. That said, one must keep searching, open and patient, holding doubt at bay, looking for the spark that, if the angle be right, is released from one thing's coming in contact with another. What else is beauty or inspiration of which the poets sing, if not the roving gaze suddenly held still upon the chance meeting of two or more objects, a small silk-and-bamboo fan resting against a glass jar, say, and drawing out from this combination their deepest essence. An essence not in the object but in the gaze narrowing into focus amid the chaotic bounty of the world. To each wandering gaze, its own essence.

In five days, the recast pieces were delivered to her, and as she admiringly placed them over the board, she saw something she hadn't previously seen. Because the chariot, now a compact, stream- lined ship, moved diagonally over the squares, was it not better
perhaps to bring it up-close to the royal pair, such that it may possess not one but two diagonals from the start and not be left stranded at the very edge of the board? Instantly, the elephant and the ship exchanged their respective positions round the horse on either flank, and just as this was done, there arose in her the idea, perchance out of proximity, that she may at least give the Queen the ship's powers, such that she could move two squares diagonally in either direction as against the earlier move of a single square.

Another ten days passed, but she did not cease to think, indeed her mind raced through several permutations one after the other. The root of her trouble, she believed, was primarily aesthetic, though behind it lurked a certain ambition as well. Prior to this latest modification, each type had its unique movement, but now all she had done was to give to the board another chariot or ship with the airs of a Regina. No, she was no mere charioteer or shipmaster. What was to be done though? Going back was unthinkable. But what new move could be added to her repertoire? How to rise above these ships and horses and footmen and not be merely their equal? The King may watch from behind the ranks, move with his slow, cautious tread in a guarded territory, but she would not wait by his side like a mute spectator or a dainty consort, she would boldly push forth into combat at whatever cost, even command the entire army if need be.

Outwardly calm but seething with turmoil underneath, she went through the days without once bringing up with Misa the subject of the game or the prospect of a rematch, even avoiding her at times, fearing a hint or, what was worse, a challenge from this former opponent waiting to avenge a past defeat. To play again before she had resolved her predicament would be agony. No, not till I have perfected the rules, the queen reasoned with herself. Thus, day after day she went about moving pieces in her head or, in the quiet privacy of her rooms, over the board itself.

By the month's end she had conveniently appropriated some of the elephant's powers too. Now she could move two squares in any
direction on the board. This was cause for relief. Each type had its own special gait once more, the harmony and variety of the game restored. The shackles at last had come undone.

Late in the night of the musical performance the queen fell into a liminal state. The pleasure that had been denied her all this while at last entered her, and the next day she was ready to play. But she did not call for the girl till late evening, and when the meeting did take place, it was Misa instead who enquired whether they should not play another game the following morning. In her own chambers, she had been privately poring over the board all through this time, seemingly playing with herself, but in fact just enjoying the physical proximity of the board and the pieces, for without the dice they had suddenly become living, palpable entities. Taking her cue from the queen, she had arranged two full sets of forces on either end of the board, first by calling for an entire spare set and fishing out from the velvet-lined case black and yellow pieces that lay jumbled up with green and red of their kind, and then by partly slicing off the crowns of the two additional kings to fashion the respective queens. The urge to play a real game, however, soon developed in her, and at the month's end she burst forth into the queen's chambers asking her to a match.

Back at their previous spot in the terrace gardens the ensuing day, indifferent to the strutting peacocks opening their tails in a shining blue-green fan, indifferent too to the ornate symmetry of the gardens, the turning drip of the fountains falling in coloured pools, the warm beams of the sun and the cool breeze of the sea, the half- full lightly steaming teacups, unaware of the many attendants unknowingly replicating around them the very angles formed by the patches of perfectly mowed lawns just as the attendants were unaware of everything except the bids and gestures of these royal personages, the queen began placing the new pieces on the board beneath the excited gaze of the girl.

When Misa had lifted and admired each and every piece, when she had made the queen promise to get a spare set of perfect replicas
cast for her, when the queen had shown and explained the fresh changes in arrangement and powers that she had dreamt up during the past month, among them relaxing rules of capture, for now any piece could take any other, which to the girl was all the same, impatient as she was to begin the game, and when the forces were stationed and ready, each at the centre of its square, restless to advance, play commenced.

Eager to charge onward into the fray, the queen opened her game again with the two centre pawns, easing the passage for her queen, but for the ships too. Misa this time responded with identical steps, and very soon the pawns in the queen file stood blocking each other, backed by their respective seconds in the king file, not unlike duellists approaching and apprehending one another. But there they stayed for the time being, the moment of reckoning deferred. Meanwhile the dark queen came gliding forward abreast of the king's pawn, one after another rival horsemen hopscotched into battle, ships attacked the open diagonals, then the queen again, then another pawn sallying forth. At this point one of the seconds stirred into action, and in a lightning stroke neutralized the rival duellist, a move that would have been impermissible in the outside world was in the board's compact domain only right and reasonable. But the two were under attack in an instant from every quarter, and were wiped out in quick succession, until there survived not a trace of the duel, the patch of ground empty as before, free to be traversed or used for a fresh encounter. Little strategy but unmitigated thirst for action on either side, and play progressing haphazardly though speedily. In just about a few minutes the game's spell was total and relentless, the strain on their nerves building unbeknown to the players. The queen was daring but alert, while Misa, utterly in thrall to the swift ruthless beauty of her ivory pieces, dashed headlong without care and struck without hesitation, not once planning ahead for anything like an endgame, if endgame, that is, could have had even a remote bearing on minds so beguiled by the flow of forces unfolding in a whirlpool of warfare. Deaths on both sides,
regardless of station or influence, were on the rise, bigger and bigger gaps were opening and closing in different parts of the field, tilting and turning the game's axis perpetually and unpredictably, yet the speed of engagement did not ease. The tall handsomely carved pieces were delighting Misa so much that she had twice already overreached herself by pushing one of her ships farther than was permitted. But where was the limit of the permissible in a game whose limits were being continually redrawn? The queen although noticing such aberrations, did not once correct her. In truth, it was not so much an overreach as a simple confusion regarding the right square. The cells all plain, the moves so quick, the exchange between emptiness and fullness constant and shifting from square to square, it was not difficult to see why Misa landed in the wrong place now and then. These few innocuous moves on her part, however, made her adversary ever bolder and she, this adversary, now reasoned with herself why the queen couldn't do what the ship was so easily doing. In the very next move, therefore, she advanced the queen far out into the enemy's left flank and slew the elephant which was only now beginning to take a more active role in the game. Thinking herself gone too far, past all limits, yet not wishing to retract, the queen trembled inwardly from a strange mix of thrill and anxiety, an anxious thrill or a thrilling anxiety. But rather than objecting to this patently false move, Misa gauged the situation astutely and responded likewise. The next instant a horseman lay dead on the very square he had so gallantly wrested from an enemy soldier. Like a symphony, like a painting, like a poem in the act of being composed, the game by now had developed its own wisdom and was issuing forth undaunted, drawing fresh breath on each step, stretching its own material to make space for yet more creativity, bearing along the happy and astonished pair into newer, unseen realms.