The Palace of Illusions (41 page)

Then I saw Karna recoil. Amazement and suspicion chased each other across his face before courtesy won and he bowed. And even before she threw back her shawl I knew it was Kunti that had come to meet so secretly with the man who boasted he was the nemesis of the Pandavas.

Kunti was weeping. All these years I'd never seen her weep. When she'd heard of my humiliation at the hands of Duryodhan, she'd pressed her lips together until they were bloodless. When we left for our twelve years of exile, her eyes had been bright with unshed tears. But always she'd been in control, the same alabaster queen who had towered over me at our first meeting in the slums of Kampilya. Today, however, tears streamed down her cheeks, and there was a look on her face of such careless abandon that I was startled. She held out her arms toward Karna as one would to an intimate, and then, as he backed away, she knelt in a gesture of supplication.

Vainly I strained to read her lips. Was she begging him not to fight against her sons? Was this what worry and age had reduced her to? Would she stoop so low, humiliating us all with her weakness? But what I saw next astonished me further. I'd expected Karna to end their meeting with a curt refusal, but he was speaking passionately,
with angry gestures. What could he have to say to her? Now he was brushing tears from his own eyes. Karna! Even in the dream I felt my amazement at this. Now he was lifting her tenderly, touching her feet while she smoothed his hair. Why did he bend over her hands, kissing them?

With every fiber of my being, I longed to hear their words as they continued talking. He held up his right hand to show her five fingers. Was he referring to my five husbands? He held up the index finger of his left hand so that she was looking at six fingers. Then he fisted his left hand and dropped it as if it were a stone. Kunti burst into fresh weeping. She clutched his arm so that he couldn't release himself without hurting her. I saw her lips pronounce a word I recognized—for one's own name is a word nobody can mistake, heard or unheard. Draupadi, she'd always called me, though she knew I preferred to be addressed otherwise.

All my old suspicions of her flared up. What was she saying about me to the man who had once wanted to be my husband?

Karna grew very still. For the first time, indecision flickered over his face. After a while he sighed, as though awakening from a dream. He shook her hands off, bowed coldly, and left without a word. As I awoke the thought came to me that he hadn't trusted himself to speak.

And this, too, came to me: when I saw him in the dream, I was no longer angry with Karna. When had my feelings changed? I still wanted the war; I still longed for vengeance against Duryodhan and Dussasan. But when I thought of Karna, I only remembered the moment at my swayamvar when I'd spoken the words that turned a bright-faced youth into a bitter man.

Truly the heart is incomprehensible.

I agonized over whether to tell my husbands the dream. I sensed that what I'd seen had occurred in reality, though the reason for it
was no clearer to my waking brain. Finally I decided to say nothing. I didn't want them to torture themselves by wondering why their mother had met with their fiercest opponent. They needed to concentrate on other matters now. They needed to harden their hearts against kinsmen they'd loved all their lives. They needed to pluck guilt from their souls. If they were to gain the revenge they'd promised me, they needed to proceed without being racked by the doubt that had awakened in my heart as I watched Kunti's inexplicable tears, the voice that whispered,
Could it be?

32

By the time I arrived at Kurukshetra, the armies were already in position, for the war was to start tomorrow. My bones ached from having been jostled in a carriage all the way from the kingdom of Matsya, and for the first time I felt the full weight of my years. But no amount of pain could douse my excitement. The blood pounded in my veins. The day I had burned for, lying sleepless on my thorny bed in the forest or pounding sandalwood into powder in Queen Sudeshna's chamber—that day of vindication had finally arrived.

Subhadra and Uttara, who had come from farther-away Dwarka, were worse off than I. Uttara was in the third month of a difficult pregnancy. Though we'd all entreated her to remain at home, she had refused. She'd vomited several times in the carriage, and Sub-hadra had her hands full taking care of her. Subhadra had secretly confided to me that she was worried about the unborn child's safety. But looking at Uttara's face, wilted as a plucked lotus, no one had the heart to chide her. She'd had such a short time with Abhimanyu and was so much in love with him. Greeting me, she kept her eyes carefully lowered. When she raised them inadvertently, startling at a sudden sound, I saw that they were swollen from long, secret weeping. She knew she should not cry; it was harmful for her baby.
But what else could she do with the fear that grew and grew inside her until her chest felt it might explode? The fear she couldn't articulate because it might bring bad luck: What if her husband didn't survive the war?

Kunti arrived last of all. She had come from Hastinapur and had the shortest distance to travel. But she was so exhausted that when she descended from the carriage, she could barely stand. I was shocked to see how much she'd aged. Her hair had turned completely white, her face sagged, and she walked with a dispirited stoop, leaning on a cane. In the dream-vision I'd had just a few weeks back, she'd looked much more robust. Something had transpired during her meeting with Karna that had done this to her. Once again I longed to know what it was, and if it had affected Karna similarly.

Tired though we all were, when the Pandavas asked if we'd like to view the battlefield, we agreed at once. Even Kunti pulled herself together and stated that seeing the actual arena would help us direct our prayers for their safety to it more effectively. I wasn't convinced of that, but I was curious to view the site of the great adventure that was about to begin. And I wanted to spend as much time with my husbands as possible before the war claimed their full attention.

Slowly we climbed the small hillock. Yudhisthir took my arm, leaving Arjun free to take Subhadra's, sending (yes, still) a small ripple of jealousy through me. Abhimanyu tenderly helped Uttara make her way over the stony path. I watched as Ghatotkacha, Bheem's son by his first wife Hidimba, picked Kunti up and carried her. Though raised in a forest among his mother's people, the wild rakshasas, he had a sweet and pleasing personality. From the way he looked at Bheem, his eyes shining, I could tell he idolized him. A good-luck mark glistened redly on his forehead. His mother must have painted it on before he left.

Watching him made me remember Hidimba. Even after I'd
grown to tolerate my husbands' other wives, I never quite liked her. She was a tough woman who knew her own mind and followed it, uncaring of what people might think. Perhaps I was envious of that. She'd met Bheem in the forest when the destitute Pandavas were fleeing from the house of lac and married him against the wishes of her tribe. Soon after, when the Pandavas left for Kampilya, where Arjun wanted to compete in my swayamvar, she chose to remain with her people. The unexpected news that Bheem, too, had married me must have shaken her, but she took it in her stride. If she felt betrayed, no one knew of it. She devoted her life to taking care of her people, ruling them with a strict but fair hand, and bringing up her son. After we gained our own kingdom and built our palace, Bheem invited her to join us in Indra Prastha—but she turned him down politely. The one time I'd met her, at the Rajasuya celebration, she'd been courteous but cool. I'd been annoyed by the fact that, though she was from a poor forest tribe and virtually husbandless, she'd seemed so complete, so unimpressed by all I had.

Before the war, when Bheem asked Hidimba for aid, I thought she would make excuses or send a few paltry troops. She had every right. Bheem hadn't made much of an effort to stay in touch, not like Arjun, who visited his other wives regularly. (Bheem, on the other hand, had only seen Ghatotkacha once in all these years.) Furthermore, rakshasas tended to stay out of the quarrels of citified weaklings, as they called us. But Hidimba surprised us all by sending us her only son, her dearest companion, to fight alongside his father. She wasn't the kind who would have given in to tears when Gha-totkacha left. I imagined, though, that later she would weep bitterly. Did she, in the depth of her mother's heart, regret her generosity? For the first time, I admired her and felt humbled by her sacrifice.

Our lives had entered a different time. We women—no less than the men—were going to be faced by challenges we'd never
imagined. The petty resentments I'd felt for Subhadra and Hidimba and the animosity I'd harbored toward Kunti were no longer appropriate. Who we were as individuals was receding to the background. What mattered more was that our dear ones were going into danger to fight beside each other. From now on, we would be united in our anxiety, in being torn between pride and concern, in our prayers for the safety of them all.

My first view of Kurukshetra was hazy and uncertain, for the sun was setting even as we reached the hilltop. In fact, what I first mistook for the battlefield was actually Lake Samantapanchaka, beside which the women's tents were pitched. In the evening light, the water looked like blood. I told myself that it meant nothing. Any lake might seem this way at sunset. But the feeling of disquiet wouldn't leave me.

Long before I saw the army, my ears were assaulted by the cacophony of animal calls. The neighing of horses and the trumpeting of elephants created a din even now, while the animals were at rest. How deafening would the noise be tomorrow in the heat of battle, when their cries would be augmented by battle yells, the blowing of war conches, and the launching of astras!

The Pandava battalions occupied the western part of the field. They would face east—a good omen, Yudhisthir said. (But would it be harder for the soldiers to begin the battle with the sun in their eyes?) When I looked down on the gathering, I was taken aback by its hugeness. I'd known the numbers, but seeing made them real in a very different way. The tents extended as far as my eyes could reach, and the tiny figures that scurried around them, busy with last-minute preparations, were too many to even attempt to count. I couldn't believe that so many men had come together to help us!

Still, I couldn't afford to feel elated. I knew that beyond our tents, past the mists that shrouded the no-man's-land, the Kaurava army lay in wait. It was far larger—eleven akshauhini to our seven— and led by Bheeshma, the most experienced warrior of our times, with Drona as his second in command. What made them dangerous was not so much their prowess in battle but the love my husbands bore them. That love would deflect the astras of the Pandavas, would make their hands shake as they aimed blows at the grandfather who had shielded their childhood, the teacher without whom they wouldn't have learned how to wield these weapons.

I narrowed my eyes and stared at the veils of vapor, trying to visualize Bheeshma and Drona, wondering whether they waited for morning with sorrow or a resigned sense of duty. But while I thought, the insidious currents of my mind changed their direction. I found myself imagining another face, the one I considered most dangerous. In my mind he stood apart from the rest of his company, gazing toward the Pandava camp, where he knew I would be. But I could not decide on the expression his face would hold.