The Queen's Play (3 page)

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 eye 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.

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.

They are taught to repel attacks and strengthen defences. Finally, having been taken into the king's employ, simply by making them bow to a silhouette on one of the high terraces of the palace, so far up he must surely be in confidence of the gods, use must be found for them, for all the rage and ruthlessness that has been carefully crammed into their hearts. Soon armies are being drawn up regularly against each other, attacking and defending by turn, mostly at war, or else restless for war, a vast clumsy monster, bent on slaying, destroying, pillaging, dying on its way to everlasting peace.

But amid all this how do melancholy kings grown weary and indifferent to their own wars distract themselves on leisurely evenings? How do they sublimate into a harmless pastime their horrid past forever thrusting itself into the present? What is it that keeps them utterly engrossed in their terraced gardens and filigree palaces as they await despatches that will tell them nothing but the ruin of this or that enemy's troops at the hands of their savage warriors, long ago loosed on distant, unsuspecting lands?

Whose ingenious idea could it have been? Or did successive monarchs, logicians, artists, add to their ancestors' collective labours to devise this game played on a field which holds light and dark together, entire nights and days, change, choice, difference? Very like this earth of ours, spinning eternally in the shadow and fire of stars, taking us along while we draw our tiny wills against each other to create the play of life, to divert ourselves as we move from day to night, from night to day. For what else is the sublime and the ordinary, indeed the heart and the frontier of consciousness, but play?

Observe, then, the sixty-four squares, the thirty-two pieces, the four teams restless to clash, bands of elephants, chariots, horses, and footmen ready to defend their kings, complete chaos and carnage waiting to erupt at a roll of the dice.

THE PLANT, its roots buried in a lump of soil, which Misa carried among her few belongings from those distant lands, has taken root beautifully, higher up, in the interior of the island, there a small section of the royal estate has been given over to its cultivation, the climate being suitable, sun tempered with cloud. Misa, the king's young companion throughout the long, arduous journey back to the island, little Misa from the roof of the world, the land of gods, godly land, godsland. The place, blue, white, and brown its dominant colours, so distant it begins to seem unreal only after a day's walk, a place shielded by the mighty Himalaya and the immensity of the lands they stare upon, lands of mythic rivers and lush jungles. Himalaya, the laughter of Rudra. Sparkling sheet upon sheet of snow suspended from the sky like a white illusion. What could lie past it? The king, staff in hand, pack on back, always two steps ahead of Misa, one shoulder bare, from the other hanging the hide of a leopard right down to the thighs, held tight by a cord round the waist, treading past everlasting snows, along flimsy passes that skirt unthinkable chasms. Two black dots in the vast terrain, here inching toward the white crest of a mountain, there descending into a vale of mist, beyond which lies nothing but more snow, more scree, bare jagged rocks piercing a thick coat of ice where not even eagles perch. The queen, awaiting the king's arrival on the hither side of this white wall against which even the sea winds are helpless, unable to cross, they fold and collapse into heavy showers over the forested plains. Green, white, and then beige, this is what the creator
ordains, for this is what he saw, dreaming for a billion years while earth and wind went about his bidding. Prehistoric glaciers that glint like nickel in the noon air, rising from pinched crevices to sprawl along entire mountain sides, face to face in majestic solitude, past a thousand suns, with the celestial night. The plant, the only symbol, perhaps the last reminiscence of the land. The land, forbidden to all but the fiercest of adepts, where the king roamed for years, an ascetic. The queen, seeing at last the bluish black summits with such clarity it could only be a vision, pure and undiminished by distance. The plant, glowing green in the morning sun above a circle of cloud, its leaves plucked and rolled, then passed through pine smoke, brewing in a spouted urn. The hot, amber liquid with a delicious smoky aroma falling into the queen's bowl. The board, set for a match, armies drawn close in its four corners, each commanded by a king, complete with his quadripartite force, the elephant, the chariot, the horse, the infantry. The queen, having become addicted to the brew, sipping from the bowl before her. The scent, never failing to uncork the past, which makes the sun melt and sizzle all over it before pouring its molten light into the blackening vast like a waterfall. Maybe this is what makes her an addict, the wish to live this grand sight again and again. The sea breeze, moving blue and white triangular flags high up on the turrets and bastions. The sentries, spears and escutcheons in hand, stiff and silent under the fluttering flags, staring at the frozen landscape before them. Sand, stars, sun, waves. Wind forever churning the sea's face white and green, bending the trees, rustling the leaves, drawing a dry crackle from the cloth turning on itself above their ears, the only proper sound for a sentry's ears, a sound which tells him that peace reigns in the land, that he performs his task well simply by feeling the wind on his hardened face. Wind in the flags, flags in the wind, at once near and far from the world, pure phenomena inviting you to see its plain truth, that it is just this, a mind observing its own nature, a mind
capable
of observing its own nature, a mind which moves the flag, a flag which unleashes the wind, and thus, everything, nothing.
The boats in the docks, bumping into one another, producing a delicious wooden sound, sound made all the more delicious by the water. The lion heads on the trapdoors at the bottom of the towers, imitating the inscrutable expression of the sentries above, gold rings hanging from their jaws, which so many hands have pushed and pulled to open or close a passage of thick stone steps, weathered and shining from the weight of countless hurrying bodies over the years, to the ramparts above. The king, lost in a brown, cold immensity, growing less and less mortal with each day, for he is fast losing the sense of time and self, was this not why he came here?, this seeker of immortality, now fording the river on his way back to the cave from collecting twigs for firewood and nettles and berries, the only food which can be found anywhere for miles. But today he also has a gazelle hanging about his shoulders, its eyes open and lifeless, as if staring across the king's nape, awed and stupefied, into the gold and russet landscape. The river, its water ice cold and fast flowing, making its long, winding passage through the stark panorama of the desert, leaving a thin deposit of gold between the king's toes as he wades through it. The king, an ascetic. The ascetic, a sage. The sun's rays, slicing the chill air swishing past his shoulders as it forms and deforms dust into rock and rock into rubble to enter and tinge the skin a deep copper. The two travellers, huddled round the small fire they have kindled in a cave just above the pine forests, which at last rise up sharply along the mountain sides to reach them. The king, thoughtfully chewing the hard crusted bread while the child prepares the stew over the low blue flames that hiss and groan, starved for air that they are, and project dancing shadows on the black slate walls of the cave. The cave! This narrow, gloomy space, where light and dark interact in a thousand ways and the most complete manner, here the opposites merge and are made whole, here the inexplicable finds silent expression, here, in its warm depths, lions, thinkers, and seekers make their refuge. Misa, now almost a woman, the queen's daughter, friend, and confidante from the moment she reached the island and gave into the queen's open
hands her own little hands clutching the small red pot with slim, pointed animals moving round it in the finest brushwork of black she has ever seen, raising the bowl of tea to her lips as she watches from across the board the queen feel the dice protractedly between her curled fingers. The queen, wishing for the throw to be a
five
or at least a
three
so she may begin the game at once, if not the pawn, then surely the horse may be leapfrogged into battle, for no more can she tolerate this painful matter with the dice, this tiny cuboid making the will hostage to chance at every step of the game, taking it away from its natural, intelligent course to strange, unforeseen ends. The dice, reducing the incorporeal to matter by way of a clever and simple association, what will we not do to make tangible, to see, touch, and grasp even the most ethereal and therefore the most significant of symbols. The spy, despatched by the exiled prince to take the message of imminent freedom to his wife enduring captivity in the heart of the enemy's kingdom, furtively jumping the fence into the palace courtyard. The travellers deep in the forest, turning back to look above the serrated line of the pines at the mountain peak which just yesterday was a never ending ocean of mist, and today is all but the tatters of a cloud flying from it, what better proof of the eye's deceit, of our smallness in the vastness of the world? The king, walking once more under the dense cover of trees after what seems a lifetime, is a lifetime. The child, unable to believe her eyes, for she has seen nothing like this before, not just a tree, which in itself would have been too much to take in, but an entire evergreen forest rising rapidly in every direction to claw the glistening snows of great massifs. The woman on the bridge, looking at the boats in the dock, shivering in the scarlet light of the setting sun, thinking of a man long dead. The cartload of grain, wheels clacking across the flagstones on its passage from the granaries to the bazaar, accompanied by the joyous shouts and jumping of children. The tall white stallion, grey veins visible across its full round belly, galloping away with its cloaked rider through the wet morning air of the forest, which mixing with the hot, excited breath of the animal forms a pale,
flowing ring around them, joining the two in pursuit of a lasting, noble silence. The queen, standing in the balcony, watching the darkness which is the sea. The sage, eyes fiery, frame tall and bony, of an unkempt and matted mane, tufts of beard curling under the chin, skin dark and leathery, covered in dust and wood smoke of sacred fires, fording the icy river with a gazelle in the crook of his arm. The gazelle, bending in submission before the sage, and then up close, swiftly jumping into his open arms to lick the droplets off his chest and face. The gleaming blade, slowly sinking through the flesh of a supine figure, somewhere in the maze of the gold city.