Creation (24 page)

Free of the land, the square sails were hoisted, and as they collected wind the ships tacked this way and that, and the rowers rested. To our left, the desert sparkled in the sun while the hot west wind smelled of sea, of salt and decayed fish. All along this part of the coast the natives have built crude salt pans. Once the sun has burned away the water, the natives collect the residue of pure salt for sale to caravans. They also preserve fish on the spot. These odd people live in curious tents, whose frames are made from the skeletons of whales.

We had not been under sail for an hour when Caraka came to me, ostensibly for my daily lesson in the Indian language; actually, he had other matters on his mind. “Lord Ambassador,” he said, and I found it most satisfying to be so addressed even though my new dignity was nothing more than Darius’ premonitory shadow in India.

“I’ve been investigating the ship.” Caraka lowered his voice, as if fearful that Scylax might overhear him. But the admiral was in the forward part of the ship, talking to the chief mate.

“A fine ship,” I said, rather as if I had built it. From the beginning, I loved the sea; and if I regret anything now, it is the fact that I shall never again hear the chant of the rowers, feel the salt spray in my face, watch the sun rise or set over the ever-changing unchanging curve of the sea.

“Yes, Lord. But the hull is full of
nails
!”

I was startled. “How else do you hold together a ship?” I asked, not quite sure just how a ship is made. Except for a brief visit to Halicarnassus, I had never really observed the workings of a seaport.

“But the nails are
metal
,
Lord.” Caraka was shaking with fright.

“But wood spikes are not seaworthy.” I sounded knowledgeable. Actually, for all I knew, wood spikes were indeed superior to metal nails. As I spoke, I was careful to stand with legs wide apart, in imitation of experienced seamen.

“Lord, I have made this journey before. But I’ve only traveled in Indian ships, and we use no nails. We don’t dare. It’s fatal.”

“Why?”

“
Magnetic
rocks.” The round black face looked up at me with true terror. Caraka had the snubbed nose and broad lips of the original Indian stock, sometimes known as Nagas, sometimes known as Dravidians. These dark people still dominate the south of India, and their language and customs are quite unlike those of the tall, fair-skinned Aryan tribesmen who overthrew their northern kingdoms and republics so long ago.

“What on earth is a magnetic rock?” I asked, genuinely curious if not alarmed.

“There!” Caraka gestured toward the barren, wind-smoothed hills of the coast. “Those hills are made of rocks that contain the power to attract metal. If a ship gets too close, nails fly from ship to rocks and the timbers will fall apart and we shall drown.”

Since I saw no reason to disbelieve him, I sent for Scylax and asked if there was any danger. Scylax was soothing. “There
are
certain rocks that do attract metal, but if the metal has first been covered with pitch, then the magnetic powers are nullified. Since all our nails have been carefully shielded, we’ve nothing to fear. After all, this is my third trip along the coast and I promise you that we’ll arrive in India with every single nail in place.”

Later I asked Scylax if what Caraka had said was true. Scylax shrugged. “Who knows? Perhaps it’s true of certain rocks on certain shores, but it’s not true on this coast. I know.”

“Then why have you covered the nails with pitch?”

“I haven’t. But I always tell the Indians that I have. Otherwise, they’ll abandon ship. I’ve noticed one odd thing, though. No one has ever looked to see if the nails are really covered or not.”

To this day, I am curious to know if such magnetic rocks exist. Certainly I never met a single Indian mariner who was not convinced that if so much as a single bit of metal was used in the construction of a ship, it would be extracted by a demonic force and the ship would sink. Indians hold their ships together with rope.

“Not the worst method of shipbuilding,” Scylax conceded. “No matter how high the sea or strong the wind, you can’t sink because the water just goes through and around the planks.”

It is some nine hundred miles from the delta of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to the delta of the Indus. The strip of desert between the sea and the highlands of Persia must be the bleakest on earth. Since there is little fresh water, the coast barely supports a handful of fishermen, salt makers, pearl divers, pirates.

The third day out, at sundown, just back of a group of coral islands, I saw the fire altar at Bactra, saw my grandfather, saw the Turanians attack, saw the slaughter. Although this magical apparition or mirage lasted only a minute or two, I was transfixed by what I took to be a message from Zoroaster. He himself was reminding me that all men must follow the Truth, and I felt guilty because I had set out on my journey to follow not in the way of Truth, but in the way of the golden eagle of the Achaemenid. Later, in India, I was to feel even more disloyal to my grandfather. Although I never lost my faith in Zoroaster’s teaching, the wise men of India did make me uncomfortably aware that there are as many theories of creation as there are gods in Babylon, and of these theories there are a number that I find altogether fascinating—if not true or True.

Democritus wants to know which theory was the oddest. I can answer that one. That there never was a creation, that we do not exist, that this is a dream. Who is the dreamer? The one who wakes up—and remembers.

During the weeks that it took us to reach the Indus River we were either becalmed, and obliged to resort to our rowers, who grew weaker and weaker in the blazing sun, or we were hurled to the northeast by the winds. Under full sail our lives were always at risk, since we were never so far from the spiky coral shore that a sudden gust of wind might have wrecked us. But Scylax was a master mariner who had never lost a ship. Or so he said, to my great unease. Those who have not undergone minor disasters are usually being held in reserve for something major.

Nevertheless, I was able to use those weeks at sea to good advantage. In my youth I was quick to learn new things, and Caraka was an excellent teacher. By the time the blue-black mud of the Indus delta came into view, I had mastered the fundamentals of the Indian language, or so I thought. As it turned out, Caraka had taught me a Dravidian dialect that is almost as unintelligible as Persian to the Aryans of the sixteen kingdoms.

Fortunately, Caraka knew enough Aryan words to help me begin to comprehend not only a new language but a new world, for it is the language of a people that tells us most about what gods they worship and what sort of men they are or would like to be. Although the language of the Indo-Aryan is not at all like what the Dravidians speak, it does resemble Persian, which proves the ancient theory that once upon a time we were all members of the same northern tribe and shared—until Zoroaster—the same gods. Now the Aryan gods have become our devils.

Scylax told me a good deal about his first voyage down the Indus. “In the beginning, Darius wanted all of India. He still does, of course—though, between us, he’s much too old for a long campaign. He should’ve gone east right after I secured the Indus valley for him.”

“But he couldn’t. There was a rebellion in Babylon. There was—”

“There is always something else to be done. But if you want the world, you must forget insignificant places—like Babylon.”

I laughed. It is always a relief not to be at court. Like Scylax, I wore nothing more than a breechclout and an Indian cotton shawl to shield my body from the sun. We looked no different from the rowers. Although Scylax must have been over fifty years old at the time, he had the hard wiry body of a young man. Salt preserves men as well as fish. Sailors always seem younger than they are.

“Babylon is the greatest city in the world,” I said.

Scylax disagreed. “Once upon a time, maybe. But the cities of India are far richer, grander.”

“Have you actually seen any of them?”

“Only Taxila. And Taxila is as large as Sardis, and much richer. But the Indians will tell you that Taxila is nothing more than a frontier town.”

“Then why has Darius waited so long?”

Scylax shrugged. “Like the pharaohs and their tombs, I suppose. He thinks that once India is his, he’ll die because then there’d be nothing left in the world to conquer.”

“Cathay?”

“Is that really a part of the world?” For a professional mariner, Scylax was sometimes unadventurous. Yet to his credit, he was the first to map out, in a systematic way, the ocean of the Indians as far as the island of Ceylon. I say first but that is not quite true. Some years later, when I presented the Great King with a tolerably accurate map of India, he showed me a similar map that had recently been found in the archives of the temple of Bel-Marduk at Babylon. Apparently the Babylonians and the Indians had been in regular correspondence long before Darius and Scylax. In this old world, there is nothing new but ourselves.

Through the wide delta of the Indus, all sorts of streams and tributaries crisscross a considerable area of land. Some of the rich black earth is planted with rice, and some of it is brackish swampland suitable only for waterfowl like the Indian duck, a superb dish if cooked long enough. Here and there, groves of willow trees make beautiful shapes against the leaden sky: the annual rains were a month late that year and the Indians talked of nothing else. Without the rains, half the country dies. That year they need not have worried. The very day that we disembarked upriver at the port of Patalene, the rains arrived in torrents and we were not to be entirely dry again for the next three months. My first impression of India was water. The Greek Thales’ theory of creation has its attractions for those who have endured the Indian monsoons.

During the journey upriver to Patalene, Scylax showed me the sights. “Both sides of the river are Persian,” he said, with some satisfaction. “Thanks to you.” I was polite.

“Yes,” he said, not at all vaingloriously. “Thirteen months it took me. Fortunately, the people hereabouts prefer an overlord a thousand miles away to one close at hand. They would rather be ruled by the Achaemenid at Susa than by a local king.”

“But there is a satrap.”

Scylax nodded, and frowned. “I picked the first one myself. He was an Aryan, from the Punjab. Then he died and now we’ve got his son on our hands.”

“Is he loyal?”

“I doubt it. But at least he is always on time with the annual tribute. You’ve never seen so much gold dust as there is in this part of the world.”

From nowhere, a school of dolphins made gleaming arcs all about us. One even leapt across the ship’s bow. As the dolphin hung for an instant in the torpid air, he gave us a most humorous look.

“That’s good luck,” said Scylax.

“
Fresh
-water dolphins?” I had never known that such creatures existed.

“Yes. But only in Indian rivers, as far as I know,” he added. Scylax was a dedicated explorer who took nothing on faith. He was always skeptical of hearsay. If he had not seen something himself, he did not report as a fact its existence—unlike those Dorian Greeks who write what they call histories.

We disembarked at Patalene, a large but undistinguished port city. The air was stifling with all the rain that had yet to be released from the oppressively low sky.

I should note here that there are three seasons in India. From early spring to the beginning of summer the sun shines relentlessly, and were it not for the great rivers and the elaborate systems of irrigation, the earth would soon turn to dust and the people die. Then, as summer starts, the monsoon winds blow and there is rain for a third of the year, causing the rivers to flood. This season is followed by the altogether too short winter. One perfect cool day follows another. The skies are a vivid blue, and flowers grow in such profusion that the rose gardens at Ecbatana seem barren by comparison.

Just as I set foot on the dock at Patalene, a huge gust of wind caused our trireme to smash hard against the wharf, and we lost two horses to the river. Then the sky broke in half and rain fell in hot sheets. Completely drenched, we were welcomed by the king’s eye who told us, “The satrap is at Taxila. He sends his apologies.”

We were then escorted to government house, a ramshackle wooden affair with a most imperfect roof. Never before in my life had I been both wet and hot, a disagreeable condition characteristic of the rainy season in that part of the world.

The next day Scylax and I parted. He continued up-river to Taxila, while I began my journey overland to the kingdoms of Koshala and Magadha. I was eager to be on my way; happy to be on my own. I was fearless. I was stupid. I was young. Democritus thinks that I should reverse stupid and young. The first being the cause of the second. But I would not be so impolite as to make such a link. In any event, the king’s eye arranged for camels, provisions, guides; and Caraka knew, more or less, the route.

We started out in a northeasterly direction toward Mathura, a city located on the Yamuna River. A hundred miles east of the Yamuna is the Ganges. From north to south, the two rivers run side by side until they arrive at the center of what is known as the Gangetic plain. Then the Ganges makes an abrupt bend to the east, and it is along that west-to-east branch of the river that the central kingdoms and republics and important cities of modern India are located.

Feeling not unlike the Great King, I set forth in a driving rain with Caraka beside me. My entire retinue numbered three hundred men, five concubines and no eunuchs. At Susa, Caraka had warned me that the Indians have such a strong dislike of castration that even animals are not tampered with. Because of this eccentricity, Indian harems are guarded by very old men and women. Although this sounds a bad arrangement, vigorous old people of either sex tend to be not only vigilant but uncorruptible. After all, they have no future to plan for, unlike our ambitious young eunuchs.

I rode horseback, as did Caraka and my personal guards. Everyone else was either mounted on camels or walked along the dirt trail that had been turned by the rains into a sort of trough of thick yellow mud. We traveled slowly, weapons at the ready. But although India is plagued with bands of thieves, they tend to stay home during the monsoon season. In fact, only an ignorant and zealous ambassador would have attempted a thousand-mile journey overland in such weather.