The Palace of Illusions (42 page)

Small fires dotted the army encampment, which looked deceptively peaceful. The cooks were preparing dinner. My brother, who had been chosen as commander of our army, was down there somewhere, walking among the men, speaking words of encouragement. My sons walked with him. I ached to see them, to hold them if they'd let me, to find out more about the young men they'd become—what interested them, what they did in their leisure time, whether they were contemplating marriage. In the last twelve years, we'd spoken to each other only a few times, and never at length. I wished they'd decided to spend this last evening with me, then pushed the thought away. Through the years of our exile, Dhri was the one who had been there for them, comforting them when they were lonely or unhappy and applauding their triumphs. He was more a parent to them
than my husbands or I. It was fitting that they should keep him company at this difficult time. And difficult it certainly was; he'd confessed to me that the responsibility for so many lives lay heavy upon him. Additionally, though he hadn't said it, surely he worried about how he would fulfill the destiny he was born for, because his studies under Drona had made it clear that he would never equal Drona as a warrior.

As I turned away, I thought I heard the faint, plaintive notes of a flute, borne on a moment's breeze. Could it be Krishna's? I knew he was down there in the stables, checking on the horses he was to drive tomorrow. Until the very end, he had tried to stop the war, to mediate between my husbands and their cousins. He had risked his own safety by traveling to Hastinapur to tell Duryodhan that my husbands would be content if he gave them just five villages to live in. Anyone else would have been furious when Duryodhan mocked him, saying he wouldn't even give my husbands the amount of land that could fit on the tip of a needle. But Krishna had shrugged and smiled and slipped effortlessly from the grasp of the soldiers whom Duryodhan had ordered to capture him. And now, on the eve of a battle that might be the most devastating one our age would see, he was playing his flute! What gave him such calmness, such courage?

Arjun was explaining to Subhadra the rules that both sides would follow in this battle, rules set up by the senior warriors on each side. It was to be a civilized war, great and glory-giving and, most of all, righteous. Fighting would start only after sunrise, when the commanders of the armies blew on their conches, and it would end at sunset with a similar signal. Night was a time of truce when warriors could visit one another's camps unharmed. Wives and mothers would occupy separate camps in the rear of each army. No matter who won the war, the women would not be harmed. The battle was to be between equals—foot soldiers would fight with foot
soldiers, horsemen with horsemen, and the chief warriors only with those who had similar astras. Servants, charioteers, musicians who blew the war horns, and animals would not be harmed on purpose. No one who was weaponless should be attacked, and above all, no one who had laid down his arms should be killed.

Subhadra nodded as Arjun spoke, listening carefully. Her face was alight with admiration. Arjun's eyes softened as he looked at her, and he reached out and tucked a stray hair behind her ear. How was it he never behaved with such tenderness toward me?

I knew the answer, of course: I never acted like Subhadra, though sometimes I wished I could. But I'd been with my husbands too long. I knew them too intimately. I was too critical. My eyes had bored into their deepest recesses, illumining every weakness.

Even now, the skeptic in me was wondering, how in the heat of battle would people manage to keep these laws?

Arjun's face glowed as he spoke of the nobility of this enterprise, this war unlike all previous ones, by which the heroes of our era would be recognized and remembered. I looked from his face to the faces of his brothers. They mirrored the same shining zeal. Even Yudhisthir, who had hesitated for so long, was ready. Most eager were the faces of Ghatotkacha and Abhimanyu, so sure they were entering an adventure that would imprint their names into the hearts of posterity. I couldn't help smiling as I listened to them brag to each other about how many enemies they would destroy. Some of their enthusiasm seeped into me. I lifted my face to the sky and sent forth a prayer that they would achieve even greater fame than they imagined. I'd barely finished when a star detached itself from the black fabric of night and fell. My heart expanded at this good luck sign. The gods had answered me!

I should have remembered how tricky the gods are. How they give what you want with one hand while taking away, with the
other, something much more valuable. Yes, fame would come to both the young men, and bards would sing of their exploits oftener than they sang of their fathers'. But when they did so, listeners would turn away to hide their tears.

My husbands were discussing warcraft. Should Dhri arrange the soldiers in the ocean formation or the crocodile formation tomorrow morning? Which kings should be placed at the head of the army? Who should bring up the rear? Abhimanyu begged to be allowed to lead the first charge, but his uncles felt he didn't have enough experience yet. Uttara listened to them argue, her feverish, glittery eyes filled with wonder and dread, moving from face to face, her hands clasped over the slight mound of her belly. Had I ever been so young? I thought as I wandered to the edge of the hill where a copse of trees hunkered.

And suddenly he was in front of me, Vyasa who had prophesied everything that had led us here today. In the dark, his eyes glittered, and the holy thread that lay across his chest gleamed as though carved from ice. He looked no older than on the day I met him in the banyan grove.

I felt a chill grip my chest. Why had he come? I didn't have the heart to listen to another dark prophecy just when we were beginning this great enterprise. But I masked my anxiety with formal words. “It is a delight—though an unexpected one—to find you here, respected sage. I'm glad to see you looking so well.”

“A pity that the years have not been equally kind to Drupad's daughter,” he replied, smirking through his forest of a beard as though he knew how uncomfortable his presence made me. “Perhaps, instead of a box of mosquito powder, I should have given you age-conquering unguents!”

Easy for you to joke, I thought in anger. You'd be acting differently if your loved ones were poised on the edge of a sword.

“Would I really?” he said, startling me. “Let me tell you where I was before this: I was visiting my eldest son, who is in some distress. I think you know him—his name is Dhritarashtra.”

“The blind king? He's
your
son?” I knew I was gaping. “But I thought he was the son of Bheeshma's brother—”

“It's a long story,” Vyasa said, “and some parts of it are less than flattering to my ego. I'll tell it to you one of these days. For now, let me just mention my second son's name. It is—was—Pandu.”

I stared at him aghast, ashamed at how quick I'd been to judge him. His grandchildren were pitted against each other in this fight to the death! No matter which side won in the war, Vyasa had much to lose.

“How can you be so calm?” I whispered.

Vyasa smiled. “The life that you're living today is only a bubble in the cosmic stream, shaped by the karma of other lifetimes. The one who is your husband in this birth was perhaps your enemy in the last, and he whom you hate may have been your beloved. Why weep for any of them, then?”

The ideas he offered me weren't unfamiliar. The sages who visited us during our exile had spoken similarly in their efforts to resign me to my fate. I didn't disbelieve them, but I wasn't convinced. This world around me with its beauties and terrors held me too firmly in its grip. I wanted my rightful place in it. Perhaps there were other lifetimes. But I wanted the satisfaction of vengeance in this one.

“The war will work itself out the way it's meant to—the way I've set down already in my book,” Vyasa continued. “Why should I grieve any more at it than if I were watching a play?” Seeing the stubborn look on my face, he stopped. “But I didn't come here to spout philosophy. I want to offer you a gift—the same that I offered
to the blind king: a special vision so that you may see the most important parts of the battle from afar.”

I drew in a jagged breath, trying to encompass the enormous-ness of what he offered. I, a woman, to view what no woman—and few men—had ever observed!

“Did Dhritarashtra accept?”

“He didn't have the courage to watch his sons reap the fruits of their actions—actions that he had encouraged with his misplaced love. Instead, he asked that I give the gift to Sanjay, his charioteer and confidant. Sanjay will tell him what occurs. By the end of it, he may be sorry, for Sanjay isn't one to mince his words! But you—are you brave enough to watch the greatest spectacle of our times? Are you steadfast enough to tell others what really happened in Kurukshetra? Because ultimately only the witness—and not the actors— knows the truth.”

I hesitated. Suddenly I was afraid. For the first time, my euphoria receded and I was aware of the other face of war: the violence and the pain. Observing, I would suffer them no less than the men undergoing these experiences. And would I feel any less guilt than Dhritarashtra? Was I not, in my own way, as responsible for this war as he? Maybe it was best to wait for the couriers to bring me news, a lifetime's worth of tragedy encapsulated in a sentence.

I took a deep breath. Until the words came out, I didn't know what I'd say. “I accept your gift. I will watch this war and live to tell of it. It's only just, since I've helped bring it about.”

“Don't give yourself so much credit, granddaughter-in-law!” Vyasa's smile was ironic as ever. Only later, thinking back, would I recognize the compassion in it. “The seeds of this war were sown long before you were born, though perhaps you did nudge it along a bit. But I'm glad of the choice you have made.” He stretched out
his arm to touch my forehead on the spot where the third eye is supposed to lie. I braced myself—for what, I didn't know. Perhaps a burst of heavenly music, a lightning flash. But his touch was disappointingly ordinary, no more dramatic than the brush of a bird's wing. I looked around. Everything was the same as before. In the dusk, I couldn't even see my husbands.

Was Vyasa indulging in a joke at my expense?

“Suspicious, aren't you? Don't worry. Starting tomorrow, for eighteen days—because that's how long this carnage will last— you'll see every important moment of this war.”

He stepped back into shadow. Darkness swallowed everything except the unraveling whiteness of his beard.

“Wait!” I cried. “You say you've already written the story of the war. Tell me then, who will win?”

“Is it fair to ask the playwright to give away the climax of his play? But in this case, I'm not even the playwright—merely a chronicler. It would be presumptuous of me to reveal the end before the ordained time, O granddaughter who has learned no more patience than when I first saw you!”

With that, he was gone.

“Where are you, Panchaali?” I heard Yudhisthir call. “We must go down for our night meal now. We need to ready ourselves for tomorrow.”

I allowed him to take my hand and answered his courtesies ab-sentmindedly. We made our way by smoky torchlight to the camp. The attendants had raised up a crude structure with a roof of palm fronds that would be home for us women until the war ended. They had tried to make it comfortable with silk hangings and sandalwood incense, and had even brought in a musician who plucked at his single-stringed lute and sang softly. Still, there was an unquietness
in the air, as before a lightning storm, and under the floor coverings the ground was hard with rocks so that Kunti grimaced as she sat down. As for me, I didn't care. Once I lost my palace, all places—be they mansions or hovels—became the same to me.

As we sat down to eat, my sons came in, followed by Dhri and Sikhandi. They greeted me with courtesy if not tenderness, and I knew I should be satisfied with that. There had been so much I'd wanted to say to them, but now I couldn't remember any of it. Dhri looked harried. Sikhandi, whom I hadn't seen in a great while, had grown his hair long. It gave his face ambiguity—male from a certain angle, female from another. My sons were dressed in armor, though surely there was no need for it yet. But for them it was part of this new, exciting game. I watched with fascination as the firelight played on their metal skins. I have no remembrance of what I said in blessing when they touched my feet, and strangely, though I knew I should be concerned as all other mothers were on this day, I felt no fear.

Already Vyasa's gift was working on me. It was as though I'd fallen into a river, as though I was being borne toward a waterfall, away from the people I'd thought of, until now, as my dearest kin. In the distance I could hear the rushing of water, or was it voices crying out in confusion? Soon the current would speed up, pulling me over the edge. I looked at the faces around me. They were stern and blank, carved in stone. No one noticed my consternation. Each man was locked in his own inner world where he visualized himself as the protagonist of a glorious drama.