We got to a small park, he sat, then I did, choosing a bench not so far away. He brought out a cigarette and lit it. I wanted a cigarette—that cigarette, the one he held, to press to my own lips. Would I love my child the way my parents loved him, or the way they loved me? It was equal, they had said, you do not love your right hand more than your left. But even then I knew it to be false. You may love your right hand less than the thrilling evanescence of lightning. Which would my child be, the hand or the lightning? Which would be easier to love—to bear?
My brother stared out at the smoke he was making, or through, to the people who inhabited the dirty street. His face had the keen quality of a person reading a book, which is to say it did not look bored, nor occupied in its own thoughts, rather, it was fully present in the direction it pointed. If I were only a little closer I could have caught the smoke in my lungs. But I did not know how to be around animals or ghosts. I held them too tightly. The trick, I think, is to show some interest, but not too much wanting. But what did you do with all that want?
A girl came, a white girl, charging down the street. She looked young, very angry, as she stopped in front of him, pulling the cigarette from his lips and stubbing it out with her toe. Where have you been, she was demanding of him, in a voice loud enough for me to hear her. She had long, light brown hair that looked well cared for, slightly curly and loose, and her skin too looked well cared for, flushed in the cold. My brother looked up at her, unruffled. I could not hear his reply. She sat down beside him and put a hand against his rough cheek. Are you hungry, she asked him. Yes, I saw him reply. Come on, she said, I’ll make you something. I felt sorry for her then. No. I felt only envy.
They, together, rose. We walked together for a while, the girl and my brother arm in arm on one side of the street, me, some paces back, on the other. Then they reached an apartment building, and I could go no farther. I watched them disappear behind the glass doors.
What do the dead really look like? Every month the moon grows bigger and bigger, and yesterday I saw it hanging ripe and hard as an apple in the black. I cannot imagine. Just before my brother and the woman went into that building, he turned. He turned to look at me. He opened the door and turned to me and I think he smiled. Looking at me—or past me? I think of this moment so often. I imagine the life nested luminous inside me, he could have seen that, like he could see the faces of the dead. He could have seen a bald woman with red eyes. A stranger, or a sister, or nothing at all. What do you see? I should have asked him. Demanded it: What is it you see, that I cannot?
The Siege
It was the priest who smothered the horse. The horse’s limbs were tied with ropes strong enough to withstand his panic, as the priest took the horse’s head in his arms. Almost tenderly. The body became wilder and wilder and tried to buck itself loose. When he was dead, stallion, black-colored, neck-sweat, they lay the body down and I lay down beside it as I was instructed. I had seen other queens perform the horse ceremony, now I was a queen myself. I was newly married, and young. They daubed my forehead with sandalwood, my forehead, the horse’s forehead. I lay facing the face of the horse and I looked into his open eyes.
For weeks, for years, they had been preparing me for this moment, the men, the priests, conferring upon me the shlokas I would recite, mentally or aloud, through the full course of night. The women had prepared me too, told me a truth known only to them: that I would dream a dream that the gods had chosen for me, that the dream, if I heeded it, would prove me. Old queens told me old dreams, the dream that reversed a drought, brought sons—triplets, cured a sick king. Yet, when the mantras began to slow from my lips and sleep took me, I saw behind my eyes nothing like the dreams that others had described. I saw no magic cows, or wizened sages, or women springing from the earth. I saw my city burning. When I woke it was still deep night. The horse’s open eyes had a gleam and I could smell him, his dry, dusty smell starting to sour. I touched him. His body had become cold. I could feel the muscles in his neck. I was not supposed to touch him, only to say my mantras. But I had forgotten even though I had practiced for weeks and lay there with my hand on the creature. It was as if this night would never end. I began to whisper to the horse, touching him, his silky ears. We had both been bred and groomed for this night. He had fulfilled his duty as I had failed mine. Dew had gathered in the field and soaked me, I began to shiver. And slowly, slowly, dawn came, the most beautiful I had seen. I bore three sons who lived, and two who died, and a small fish that slipped out too early and who I knew to be a girl. Then I was not young anymore, and took pleasure in my garden.
When I went to see the woman in my garden she was wearing a cotton sari that had once been yellow, but was torn and dirty as a beggar’s as she sat under the tree. Her face too was dirty, yet unharmed by my husband’s hands. It was slender and symmetrical, her face, but there was something keen there, sharp-eyed as a bird and not quite pretty. She was frightened when she saw me and began to whimper, but I lay a hand on her cheek, and she calmed at my touch, and began to cry. I asked her if she was hungry, and she shook her head. Her breath was dry and horrible, her body smelled of squat human smells: sweat, urine, shit. I bade my servants bring a plate of nuts and fruit, and a clay pot of fresh water. It was hot, on this day, a fat ominous heat, and I was sweating in my silks. She too was sweating, across her forehead and her upper lip. I had wanted to spend the day outspread in pleasure, a hand dipped into cool water. But the sight of her gave me serious fright. There would be no pleasure, I knew, while the woman remained here.
My attendant poured a stream of water into my cupped palms. I drank. The clay gave it a sweet taste, like the river water of my childhood, in which I swam freely, like a kitchen boy. I could see her watching me drink with resolve to refuse it. But I could see the desire for water plainly. Again my servant poured, and again I drank, lustily, wetting my lips. The third time, I held my hands out to her. She, after a moment of hesitation, ducked her face between my palms and sucked the liquid, wiped her face, and spat, and then held out her hands hungrily, and drank, and drank and drank. When she was sated I washed her face and peeled and fed her pieces of a bright, sweet mango, which I ate from too. She had stopped crying. I asked her if she wanted to bathe and she said yes, so I had my servants bring her a tub of water. When she emerged from it she wore the clean cotton clothes I had brought her, and smelled only of flowers, rose. She was smiling with relief to be free of her animal stink. Luminously beautiful, as youth is, brought back to herself: for an instant I wondered if I had made a mistake. But I put that thought aside. Guests necessitated kindness, this guest above all. When it was time to leave she asked me to stay, and her eyes began to fill again with tears. Like a child I took her in my arms, and told her that she would not be harmed, that she could have anything she desired, food, or drink, clothes, or jewels, or servants. What did she want? To go home, she told me. She only wanted to go home. Then she steadied herself, wiped her hot face with the tail of her sari, and pulled herself away.
In bed that night I asked my husband plainly to let the woman go. At first he seemed irritated that I had brought the subject up, but he willed himself into patience and listened to my misgivings. He was still my old friend. There was a border dispute, he explained. The woman’s husband, this king-in-exile, was mobilizing an uprising in the outer territories. Rebellions had to be quashed ruthlessly, as ruthlessly as these men had handled his sister, ruler of the dark woods.