Tiger Claws (7 page)

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Authors: John Speed

BOOK: Tiger Claws
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Khalil shakes his head. “Intruders in the harem. A guards captain missing … and his lieutenant missing. A carpet in the moat …” His voice trails off. “The emperor so terrified of treachery that he removes his own guard in favor of the eunuch guards! Well, I can’t expect you to help me. Sorry to trouble you.” His smile is unchanged as ever, but there is a wan, defeated quality in his eyes. “I was sorry to hear about the death of your servant,” Khalil adds, his plaster smile unchanged. “He died over there. Fell down those stairs. They say he broke his neck.”
“Haridas? When?” Basant croaks.
“A few hours ago. His family collected the body.”
“He had no family.”
Khalil seems not to hear. He bows deeply to Basant, swirls his sumptuous gray cloak around him with a flourish, and glides away.
The guards look Basant up and down and then follow Khalil down the hallway of the palace. Leaving Basant behind, gasping for breath.
 
 
In the neat herb gardens Basant sees Tambula’s long, thin form bent over a row of tall plants.
Basant allows himself to breathe. It seems he has hardly breathed all day. The garden air smells full of tangy, pungent scents.
In the far corner Tambula picks carefully through a row of plants held up by stakes and strings. Now and then he plucks a leaf and places it gently in one of the sacks he has slung over his shoulder, dropping others less than perfect disdainfully to the ground.
Basant and Tambula have been friends since childhood, since they were made brothers by the same slavemaster. Tambula had a keen mind and an infallible memory—unlike Basant, whose main talents are a pleasant demeanor and an artless willingness to do whatever he is asked. Tambula, young though he was, became harem apothecary. Now of all the brothers in the harem, Tambula has the position of greatest trust. Only the Mir-Bakawal, the royal taster, has a post of greater trust, and he is not a brother and has never seen the inside of the harem.
Tambula straightens and lifts his chin in greeting. One of his two front teeth is much longer than the other, and gives him a sweet and slightly dopey appearance, which, Basant knows, is entirely misleading but very appealing. Basant waves back. They exchange a few pleasantries, and almost immediately Basant tells him why he has come.
“But do you know what she wants, brother?” Tambula asks. “Is she ill? Fearful? Too sad or too happy? Are her menses uncomfortable?”
To each question Basant merely shakes his head and shrugs, unable to bear any delay. “Just come quickly, brother.”
But Tambula moves slowly, carefully lifting each sack over his head and handing it gently to his apprentice, who sets it tenderly on the marble walkway that surrounds the garden. Tambula then removes and folds his apron; he hands this to his apprentice as well.
Basant can barely contain himself. “Hurry, hurry,” he says, glancing at the archway to the harem.
Tambula brushes the dust from his trousers and kicks the dry soil from his sandals. He opens a fine old, wooden box: plain, about the size of a harmonium. Tambula throws back the lid and studies his portable apothecary kit—full of vials and potions arranged in neat rows of corked glass bottles. Running a jeweled finger across the display, he quickly tallies what he has and what he lacks.
“I have no rue,” he says.
“Never mind, just come,” Basant says. “We must hurry.”
“It’s for painful menses.”
“It doesn’t matter. Just hurry.”
“But what if the princess has painful menses?” Tambula slips the embroidered strap over his head, and stands so the heavy apothecary box rests on his left hip.
Together they hurry back toward the concubines’ quarters. Tambula’s long legs easily outpace Basant, who has to waddle extra fast to catch up.
“Sorry about your servant. I know how you loved him,” Tambula mentions as they walk. “But I was there, you know. I held his hand and offered prayers, but he was already dead.”
Basant can barely speak. “Did he suffer?”
“No, dear. And the fall didn’t kill him, you know. Somebody broke his neck for him and then shoved him down the stairs. You could see his neck had been wrung like a washcloth.”
Basant stops walking. His world seems to go black. When he comes to himself, he has to run to catch up. When he reaches Tambula’s side once more, Basant is puffing hard.
“I could give you something to make you skinnier,” Tambula offers.
“Perhaps some other time,” Basant replies.
Never has Basant seen so many eunuch guards. All of them seem to be peering at him with accusing eyes. When they pass one, Basant positions Tambula between the guard and himself, altering his pace carefully to keep himself hidden. But he knows it is impossible to hide his quivering bulk behind the rail-thin Tambula. Tambula looks at Basant quizzically.
They reach the door of Breakfast and Lunch. The scene is much as Basant left it: Roshanara is still standing near the two nautch girls, but they have left their baths and stand wrapped in muslin sheets.
The faces of Breakfast and Lunch, those empty-eyed faces so beautiful and serene a few moments ago now appear agitated and fearful. The twins cower together as Roshanara strides nearby, dark and powerful. Basant wonders what Roshanara could have said to frighten them so. As she motions impatiently for Tambula to enter, she says brusquely to Basant, “Fetch their other servants.”
Basant bows. Tambula hurries to Roshanara’s side. She is already whispering to him fiercely when Basant goes out the door.
When he returns, he sees Roshanara watching imperiously as Breakfast
and Lunch swallow potions handed to them by Tambula. They make wry, wrinkled faces and reach for cups of wine. With that Roshanara turns straight for Basant. “Now pay attention. This time nothing must go wrong. When these two … women are dressed, take them to the Diwan-i-Khas. Yes, the purdah room, of course. When they are done there, come to my room. I’ll have a letter for Aurangzeb. Is that quite clear?”
It isn’t until after Roshanara strides from the room, scowling, that Basant realizes he doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do with two nautch girls in the purdah room. He feels his cheeks growing hot and tears welling up in his eyes, but he refuses to let her see him cry.
He closes the door behind the princess, and turns back into the room. Tambula has come to his side. The apothecary’s face is pale and his eyes are wide—Basant can see that Tambula too is shaken.
“I had no idea, brother,” Tambula whispers hoarsely. “No idea at all. You are fortunate in your friends. Indeed, I hope you will remember our friendship in days to come.” He seems to Basant almost to bow. “Even so, my dear, promise me that you will never say a word of this to Hing!”
“What can you mean, brother?”
“What if he finds out that I have had a part in this—the act that he has so explicitly forbidden?” His face is ashen. “The princess stakes everything on one throw of the dice.” He gives a resigned shrug. “Anyway, I suppose my secret’s safe enough with you. If things go wrong, I mean—why, you’d be the first one Hing would kill.”
Tambula turns to watch the servants dress the twins, leaving Basant to sort this out as best he can. “I’ve given them each dravanas,” Tambula explains. “Double doses. I don’t know what the princess said to them, but whatever it was, I’ve never seen them so upset.”
“What did she say to you?” Basant asks.
“You can imagine,” Tambula answers, appearing disturbed just by the memory. “In any case, she was quite explicit about what I was to do with these two. They’ll be as horny as lepers in a few minutes. Then you can take them to the purdah room.” Tambula bites his lip. “I’m concerned they might have convulsions. I can’t help them much if they do. I’ve never given anyone such big doses before. They’re young, so they’ll probably be all right. I’ll just watch them for a while, I think.”
Convulsions! He is about reply when he notices that Tambula’s hands have dark swellings, like thick pustules.
“Oh those,” Tambula says, as if answering the question Basant is too embarrassed to ask.
While they watch the twins being dressed and prepared by their serving girls, Tambula quietly tells Basant the story of those odd swellings. He speaks quietly and discreetly, slipping into Bengali, which all the brothers speak when secrecy is helpful.
 
 
It happened, Tambula says, after ‘taj Mahal died—giving birth to her fourteenth child: what does that say about Shah Jahan’s vigor? After a period of mourning, Shah Jahan called Tambula’s predecessor, a eunuch called Kela, for a consultation. At that time Tambula was Kela’s apprentice.
Every man, of course, experiments with
vardhanas
at some point—every man wants to add an inch or two to the length of his lingam. But in this endeavor as in others Shah Jahan was determined to surpass all other men. He let Kela know he was prepared to tolerate any manner of agony to achieve his goal—to have the grandest lingam the world had ever known.
Kela’s method required enormous effort—Shah Jahan ended up lying facedown in a hammock for more than a month. His lingam poked through a hole with small weights suspended from its tip. The shaft Kela wrapped in wool soaked in mustard oil, into which he and Tambula had ground up the stingers of a thousand
jalshuks
. Since a man might swell up and die from a single jalshuk sting, Kela had paid dearly for them: a full rupee apiece for each of the brilliant green bugs.
Though they wrapped their hands in rags before they applied this ointment to Shah Jahan’s lingam, no precaution was adequate. Touch even a few drops of the oil and hands and fingers would blister and swell to enormous size; and though they soaked their hands in
dahi
for hours, even that could not cool them. But Shah Jahan bore the treatment day after day, never sleeping for the pain, never uttering a sound.
At last, though more blistering oil was applied, the skin had become so thick and blackened that no more growth could be achieved.
For some weeks, the emperor used to show the results to anyone who asked, and also to those who did not ask. Tambula says that the court called it the
Jahan-minar
—the tower of the world—just to please him.
Since Basant never saw it, Tambula describes it to him: The emperor’s lingam is enormous—long, thick, but hideously misshapen; twisted, distorted, bulging, and in some places black.
Nevertheless, the emperor seemed delighted with the results. He only sees its size, says Tambula, not its deformity. Apparently he could make it function well enough, and that was the main thing.
He gave Kela jama robes of honor and a casket of jewels. And of course at that point Kela made his tearful goodbyes, and gave Tambula his apothecary box. Two days later he was dead. Shah Jahan could not bear that Kela might help another man achieve such a masterwork.
Shah Jahan’s wives and concubines quickly learned to bite back their horror at the emperor’s monstrosity: rather they learned to admire the results if they knew what was good for them.
As he listens to Tambula describe this lunacy, Basant wonders what Shah Jahan was like when Taj Mahal was alive. He has only seen him as he appears now: old, sneering, overwhelmed by wine, opium, and endless
va-jikaranas
. The brothers shake their heads when they speak of Shah Jahan.
Basant asks Tambula about it. Tambula confirms the stories. Yes, Shah Jahan had congress twenty-two times in one night. Three or four times an hour! Think of it! Recently he collapsed on his eleventh partner and couldn’t be roused, even with her screaming in his ear and the brothers rubbing ice on his hands and feet.
“Why do you think I am so honored by the emperor? He knows that no one can match my skill in
vajikarana,
” Tambula says ruefully. “Without my help, he’d have a stalk like a limp radish.”
Tambula speculates that all these drugs must be having an effect: He thinks that Shah Jahan’s strength is being squeezed from his limbs and out through his lingam, leaving his organs shriveled and dry like dates. He and his apprentice like to guess about which woman will squeeze the last drop from Shah Jahan and toss his brittle husk aside.
And yet, Shah Jahan still rules the empire. Though he may be dying slowly, he rules, and wisely, and well, Basant thinks. The empire thrives, its people are happy. The beauty of Agra, of Lahore, of Shahjahanabad; these reflect a sensibility and intelligence rarely seen in a king. Taxes are fair, he has been told, and collected with only minimal violence; justice is meted out with reason and charity—with only enough tortures and executions each week to make consequences apparent and memorable.
Basant likes to show a sophisticated interest in politics. But before he can consider matters further, as often happens, reality intrudes. The girls are dressed and ready, and showing no ill effects. Tambula places his long fingers first on the neck of one, then of the other, and pulls down their lower eyelids without a word. Appearing much relieved, he settles the vials in his apothecary case and slings it over his shoulder. “I’ve done enough damage here,” he says. “Get them to a man fast or they’ll attack each other. And pray to God he can stay hard for a month.”

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