The Moghul Part 69

"That's something I've heard before."

"But do you know what your _dharma_ is?"

"I'm still trying to find it. Maybe it's to be here . . ."

"And then what?"

"I'm . . . I guess I'm still working out the rest."

"Well, for Hindus there's a second aim in life besides our honoring our dharma. We call it _artha_. That aim is to have things. Knowledge, wealth, friends. Is that part of why you're here?" Kamala smiled scornfully. "Some merchants seem to believe _artha _is their primary aim."

"It can't be for me. I somehow always manage to lose whatever I have."

"Hindus also believe there's a third aim in life, my handsome _feringhi_. And that's _kama_. It's to take pleasure in the senses."

"I think I like the sound of that better than the other two."

"Do not speak of it lightly. For Hindus it is just as essential as the other two aims. _Kama _is taught by Lord s.h.i.+va and his consort Parvati.

It means love, pleasure, the primal force of desire." She stared at Hawksworth for a long moment, and then at the lute standing in the corner. "Music is part of _kama_. It's one way we experience beauty and pleasure. That's the _kama _of the heart. But there's also _kama _of the body, and I do not think you yet know it. Your music betrays you.

You are a man of sensuality." Kamala looked at him regretfully. "But not of the sensuous. Do you even understand the difference?"

"How do you know what I am?"

"Remember I was once a _devadasi_. It's my _dharma _to know the hearts of men. Who they are and what gives them pleasure." She fell silent for a moment, then continued. "The sensualist is one who only knows his own feelings; the one who is sensuous knows also how to give."

Hawksworth s.h.i.+fted uncomfortably, uncertain how to reply.

"Do you, Amba.s.sador _Feringhi_, touch a woman with the same feeling you touch the strings of your English sitar?"

"I don't see any connection."

"The arts of _kama _are not unlike the mastery of your sitar. You can spend a lifetime learning to sound its notes, but you do not create music unless your hand is in touch with your heart, with _prahna_, the breath of life. It's the same with _kama_." She paused discreetly.

"Have you ever known it with a woman in India?"

"Well . . . I knew a courtesan in Surat who . . ."

Kamala's eyes hardened, but her voice remained dulcet. "Is this the woman you spoke of?"

"No, this was a different woman. Her name was Kali and she was thrown out of Arangbar's _zenana_."

"Ah, she was probably badly trained. But still. Did you feel the force of _kama_ with this Surat courtesan?"

Hawksworth s.h.i.+fted again, uneasily. "That's not the type of thing we normally talk about in England."

"Don't be foolish. You judge the skill of a musician. Why not of a courtesan?" She turned and said something Hawksworth did not understand. Both musicians immediately rose and moved a screen across the corner of the room where they were sitting. Then, from behind the screen came the first notes of a simple, poignant melody, the soft tones of the bamboo swelling slowly to envelop the room in their gentleness. "I have asked him to play the _alap_, the opening section, of a south Indian raga for you. To help you understand. His music has the life breath of _prahna_. He speaks to Lord s.h.i.+va with his music.

_Kama_ too must come from the heart. If we are worthy, we evoke the life-giving power within us." Her eyes snapped back to Hawksworth. "But tell me more about this Surat courtesan."

"Perhaps I'm not entirely qualified to judge. She certainly knew more tricks than most women in England."

"That's not surprising. It's well known _feringhi _women know nothing of pleasure." Kamala paused and studied Hawksworth carefully with her dark eyes. "But I've never known a _feringhi _who could move my senses with music. You did that just now, even though I don't understand how.

I cannot dance for you; that is for s.h.i.+va. But I want to touch you."

She s.h.i.+fted on the carpet until she was at Hawksworth's feet. With a gentle motion she removed a boot and quickly ran a finger across one toe. Nerves throughout his body tingled unexpectedly.

"What did you do just then?"

"The secret of _kama _is touch. To touch and be touched by one we desire always gives pleasure. Do you understand what I mean?"

"Is that _kama_?"

"A very small part."

"You know, the courtesan in Surat actually told me about you. She said you had a book . . . an ancient text."

Kamala laughed and began to remove the other boot. "And I've always heard that _feringhi _think everything can be put in books. You probably mean the _Kama Sutra_. Whoever told you about it has probably never seen it. Of course I have it, and I can tell you it is one of the great frauds of India. It was compiled by a musty scholar named Vatsyayana, who obviously knew nothing about giving pleasure, and simply copied things here and there from much older books. It's amusing, perhaps, but it's also pedantic and ignorant. It's certainly not sensuous, and the reason is he knew nothing about desire. He probably had none. He only knew how to make lists of things, like ways of biting and scratching during love play, but he had no idea why these are exciting."

She stroked the other foot very lightly along the arch with her long red fingernail, and again a bolt of sensation shot through him.

"I'm beginning to see your point."

"I don't think you understand anything yet. Did you know the pleasure, the power, the beauty possible in your music on the very first day you touched a string of this instrument?"

"I knew there was something in music that moved me, but I wasn't sure what it was."

"And now, many years later, you know." She s.h.i.+fted next to him and began unfastening the bells on her ankles. They chimed gently as she carefully laid them aside. Then she opened a small silver box she had brought and placed a red dot in the middle of her forehead, just below the pendant jewel.

"I sense the first stirrings of _kama _inside me now. The awakening of desire. And because I feel it, I know you must feel it too." She loosened his doublet and pushed him gently against the bolster. The notes of the flute wound through the dark air around them. Kamala listened a moment in silence, then slowly rose off the bolster.

She stood before him, holding his gaze with her eyes, and pulled away the heavy, jeweled belt at the waist of her dance sari. She dropped it at his feet, never averting her eyes. Then she made a half turn and twisted her hip gracefully into a voluptuous bulge. The silk clung even tighter to the statuesque curve of her legs as she crossed her feet with an almost ceremonial deliberation. Wordlessly she slowly drew the silk end of the _sari _from across her shoulder and let it drop before her, revealing the curve of a perfectly spherical breast. Seen from behind her body was fixed in a perfect double curve, a sensuous "S"

whose top was the full line of her half-revealed breast and whose bottom was the rounded edge of her hip.

In those few simple motions she had trans.m.u.ted her body, as though through some deep cultural memory, into an ancient fertility totem, a prayer for the bounty of the human loins. It was, Hawksworth suddenly realized, a pose identical to that of a statue he'd seen in a mossy temple in Mandu, on the way north from Burhanpur. It was the essence of the female principle, sharing with the earth itself the power of life.

That stone G.o.ddess had automatically stirred his desire, as it had the desire of man thousands of years before, as it was meant to do. Now it stood before him.

Before he could move, she turned again and swept up the pleats of silk that comprised the front of her _sari_. She whipped the loose ends of silk about her head once, twice, and magically it seemed to evaporate from her body. All that remained was a small drape of silk about her waist, held in place by a thin band of jade.

Her body was like ivory, perfect from the band at her neck to the small rings on her toes, and her b.r.e.a.s.t.s billowed full and geometrically round, a long necklace of pearls nestled between them. As Hawksworth stared at her dumbfounded, the drummer commenced a finely metered rhythm timed exactly with his heartbeat.

She moved to Hawksworth's side and slid her left hand beneath his open doublet. "The very first note of a raga can contain everything if it is sounded with _prahna_. And the first touch between a man and a woman can become the OM, the syllable that carries the totality of creation."

Her hand glided over his body with the gentleness of a feather, and in moments his amba.s.sador's ensemble slipped away like some superfluous ancient skin. He looked at her again, still overwhelmed by her physical perfection, and reached to touch the curve of her breast.

Her hand stopped his in midair.

"s.h.i.+va, in his dance, had four hands. But he did not use them for touch. Do you want to feel the touch of my b.r.e.a.s.t.s? Then feel them with your body."

She guided him over, across the round bolster, then rose above him.

"Your body is hard and firm, like the stone lingam of s.h.i.+va. But your skin still has a hidden softness, like a covering of raw silk."