The Palace of Illusions (22 page)

I lifted my veil and stared back, uncaring of what his brothers might think of my indecorous behavior. I had to send Arjun a message and knew this might be my last chance in a long time. According to Vyasa's dictum, we wouldn't even be able to speak privately to each other for the next two years. I was desperate to make him realize that this situation wasn't any more to my liking than his. That he keep in his mind, through the next two years, what we'd shared,
frail though it was: that moment of tenderness on the road, his gentle hands on my injured feet. Only then could I hope to salvage our fledgling relationship.
I'll be waiting for you
, I tried to tell him with my eyes
.
But he averted his gaze. My heart sank as I saw that he'd made me the target of the frustrated rage that he couldn't express toward his brothers or his mother.

I blamed Kunti for this development. She knew her son's psychology: if he couldn't have me all to himself, he didn't want me at all. He would go through the motions of marriage, but he would keep his heart from me. And wasn't that exactly what she intended?

Afterward, Dhri tactfully whisked the four younger brothers off to a tiger hunt, my father sent opulent wedding announcements to everyone he knew, and Yudhisthir moved into my palace. I went to him reluctantly, still brooding over Arjun's unfair anger. But perhaps my own situation made me more patient with my husband than I would have been otherwise. When he made overtures of tenderness, I stopped myself from turning away. I would not make him the victim of my disappointment, I told myself. Kind, courteous, and well-read, he was easy to get along with, though I found him somewhat lacking in humor. (Only later would I discover other facets: his stubbornness, his obsession with truth, his insistent moralizing, his implacable goodness.) In bed, to my amused surprise, he was shy and easily alarmed. Slowly I realized that he had in his head a compendium of ideas (had Kunti put them there?) about what constituted ladylike sexual behavior, and—this was a longer list—what didn't. I could see that I'd have to dedicate significant energy to reeducating him.

It was going to be a long year.

17

Dhri sent an urgent message: Yudhisthir and I were to meet him at the guard tower situated atop the city walls. When we climbed it, we saw a huge army approaching Kampilya.

Fear dizzied me. Only two weeks had passed since my swayam-var. Had the unsuccessful suitors returned for revenge? But Yudhisthir said, “Look, there's the banner of Hastinapur!”

“It seems that your uncle has sent an entourage to welcome you home!” Dhri said with an ironic smile.

“What else can he do, now that he's learned his nephews are alive and well—instead of reduced to ash and crumbled bone—and allied moreover to the powerful Drupad?” Yudhisthir said, his smile equally ironic. I was surprised. With his brothers, he was always the reasonable one, holding them back, chiding them when they cursed their Kaurava cousins. So he did have his secret darkness, my near-to-perfect husband!

But now he was leaning over the edge of the battlement, as delighted as a child at his first fair. “Look, Panchaali! Grandfather himself has come to fetch us!”

At the head of the army I saw a man on a white horse, his beard like the rush of a silver river. The sun, reflecting off his armor, was blinding. He dwarfed everyone around him.

So this was Bheeshma, grandfather to my husbands, the keeper of dreadful vows, the warrior to whose destruction Sikhandi had dedicated his life. Torn between detestation and fascination, I couldn't drag my eyes from him.

Yudhisthir glanced at me, his grin proud and boyish. “He does tend to take one's breath away, doesn't he!”

As usual he had read me wrong.

Bheeshma raised his hand in greeting—he must have recognized Yudhisthir. Even from that distance I felt his love, heavy and piercing as a javelin.

My father received Bheeshma respectfully enough, but he didn't mince his words. “Duryodhan almost killed them last time,” he said. “Who's to say he won't succeed the next time around? I don't want my only daughter sent back to me in widow's white.” He seemed more concerned about losing his new allies than about my marital misfortunes.

Bheeshma's eyes flashed at the insult. But he only said, “My life for their safety.” He spoke with such simple force that even Krishna, whom my father had invited to the meeting, nodded.

“Let them go,” he said to my father. “With the grandfather to watch over them, Duryodhan won't try anything—not for a while. Besides, how long can you keep them cloistered? They're heroes, after all.”

When my father and his courtiers left the room, Bheeshma embraced Krishna. I hadn't realized they knew each other so well. My ignorance irked me.

“Now it begins, Govinda,” Bheeshma said, calling him by a name I hadn't heard before. (How many facets were there to Krishna? I felt,
with a kind of despair, that I'd never know them all.) The two men looked at each other, somber with a secret they wouldn't share with us. They made me feel like a child.

Then Bheeshma turned to Yudhisthir, cuffing him on the ear. “Scoundrel!” he scolded. “Why didn't you let me know that you were alive? When I thought you boys perished in the burning house, it almost killed me!” His tone was jocular, but his face showed the depth of his emotion. Deep grooves were etched around his mouth. All of a sudden, he looked his age. When he wiped his eyes, I couldn't stop myself from staring. I'd never seen a man—least of all a famous warrior—shed tears.

But in the space of a breath he shook off sorrow and took my hands in his. His face filled with genuine gladness. “Dearest granddaughter,” he said, “I welcome you with all my heart to your new home!” No one had invited me into his life so convincingly. No one had been so eager to find a place for me in his home.

All this while, for the sake of Sikhandi, I'd decided to hate Bheeshma. But now I found I couldn't withstand his quicksilver charm. I felt my mistrust melting in the warmth of his smile. Perhaps, I thought, I was finally going where I belonged.

The Pandavas returned to Hastinapur in triumph, escorted by marching soldiers and painted elephants and musicians blowing on conches and horns. Kunti and I rode in a chariot resplendent with silk pillows and cloth of gold curtains. Behind us came a hundred men carrying chests filled with jewels, my father's parting gift. Kunti had a small, satisfied smile on her face—and why shouldn't she? Her sons were safer and wealthier than they'd ever been, with powerful relatives that Duryodhan would hesitate to anger. The
whole of Bharat was abuzz with the story of my marriage to five brothers whose filial piety was such that they preferred to share a wife rather than break their mother's word. In our skirmish of wits, too, she had come out ahead, successfully destroying the bond that might have formed between Arjun and me had we only had each other—a bond that might have made him turn, in time, to me instead of her for counsel.

I swallowed the bitterness that rose like bile to my mouth. Our war wasn't over yet. I would bide my time, observing her, learning her weaknesses. Meanwhile, I would act to perfection my role of daughter-in-law.

“What's the palace at Hastinapur like?” I asked in my politest voice.

“It's very grand,” she said, her voice dismissive. With no one else around, she didn't need to put on a show of pleasantness. “It's probably grander than anything you're used to.”

Though I suspected Kunti's words, they fired my eagerness to see my new home. I fantasized about a structure that would, in every way, be the opposite of my father's fortress: airy and effulgent, with windows everywhere and doors opening onto generous balconies. Its walls would be shimmering red sandstone. Its gardens would be a celebration of color and birdsong. Situated on the topmost floor, my rooms would be washed by breezes carrying the distant fragrance of mango blossoms. From a balcony inlaid with marble I would look out over the entire city and know what was going on, so that when Yudhisthir became king, I could advise him wisely.

If Dhai Ma (to whom Kunti had taken a dislike, banishing her to the back of the procession with the other servants) had been in the carriage, she would have known right away what I was thinking.

She would have clicked her tongue and puffed out her bottom lip and warned me with one of her favorite sayings:
Expectations are like hidden rocks in your path—all they do is trip you up.