The Temple Of Dawn Part 3

She was never quiet. Lit by the sunbeams dancing through the stripes in the cotton print, she smiled constantly at Honda. She made no effort to conceal her quite plump, childish belly as she splashed water on the ladies. When she was scolded she dashed away. The stagnant river water was not clear, but rather a yellowish brown, similar to the Princess's skin. But even that turned into limpid, sparkling droplets when splashed in the light that filtered through the cotton print.

Once the little girl raised her arm. Involuntarily Honda looked intently at her left side, at her small flat chest usually hidden by her arms. But he did not see the three black moles that should have been there. Whenever he could, he stared at the area until his eyes watered, thinking that perhaps the light moles were indistinct against the tan skin.

6.

THE LAWSUIT Honda was handling came to an unexpected conclusion when the plaintiff, realizing he was at a disadvantage, suddenly dropped charges. Honda could have gone home at once, but as a token of their grat.i.tude Itsui Products wanted to present him with a bonus in the form of a pleasure trip. He wished to go to India and expressed this desire. The administration replied that it would probably be the last opportunity for anyone to go to India since there were signs of approaching war; they promised that all Itsui offices would do their best to a.s.sure his every comfort. Honda prayed that that would not entail the kind of consideration they had imposed upon him by a.s.signing His.h.i.+kawa as his guide.

Honda sent word to his family in j.a.pan. At once he took pleasure in scheduling his itinerary with the aid of an Indian timetable featuring steam engines that traveled only fourteen or fifteen miles an hour. Upon consulting a map, he saw that the places he wished to visit-the Ajanta caves and Benares on the Ganges-were so far apart that he almost felt faint. Yet each attracted equally the magnetic needle of his desire for the unknown.

His intention of taking leave of Princess Moonlight was dampened as he was faced with the nuisance of asking His.h.i.+kawa to interpret for him. Using the urgent preparations for his trip as an excuse, he simply wrote a thank-you note on hotel stationery for the outing to Bang Pa In. He sent it off to the Rosette Palace by messenger moments before his departure.

Honda's trip to India was marked with colorful experiences. But it is enough to describe one profoundly moving afternoon spent in the Ajanta caves and the soul-shaking sight of Benares. In these two places, Honda witnessed things extremely important, things essential to his life.

7.

HIS ITINERARY included a voyage by boat to Calcutta; then one whole day by train to Benares, which was 350 miles from there; a trip by car from Benares to Mogulsarai; then two days by train to Manmad; and finally another car trip to Ajanta.

Calcutta in early October was bustling with the annual Durga festival.

The G.o.ddess Kali, the most popular of the Hindu pantheon and especially venerated in Bengal and a.s.sam, had innumerable names and avatars, as did her husband s.h.i.+va, the G.o.d of destruction. Durga is one of Kali's metamorphoses, but her bloodthirstiness is less p.r.o.nounced. Gigantic effigies of the G.o.ddess had been erected everywhere in the city. They showed her in the act of punis.h.i.+ng the deity of water buffalos, and beautiful, angry eyebrows were depicted on the valiant face. At night the statues, standing out sharply against the bright lights, received the adulation of the crowds.

Calcutta is the center of Kali wors.h.i.+p, with its temple, the Kalighat; and the activity there during these festivals defies the imagination. As soon as he arrived in the city, Honda hired an Indian guide and paid a visit to the temple.

The core of Kali is shakti, the original sense of which is "energy." This great mother G.o.ddess of the earth imparts to all female deities throughout the world her sublimity as mother, her feminine voluptuousness, and her abominable cruelty, thereby enriching their divine nature. Kali is depicted in an image of death and destruction, doubtless the two essential elements of shakti, and she represents pestilence, natural calamities, and various other powers of nature which bring death and destruction to living things. Her body is black, and her mouth is red with blood. Fangs protrude from her lips and her neck is adorned with a necklace of human skulls and freshly severed heads. She dances madly on her husband's body which lies prostrate in fatigue. This bloodthirsty G.o.ddess brings epidemics and calamities as soon as she feels thirst, and constant sacrificial offerings are necessary to keep her appeased. It is reputed that the sacrifice of a tiger quenches her thirst for one hundred years, that of a human for a thousand.

Honda visited the Kalighat one sultry, rainy afternoon. Before the entrance, hordes of people were noisily jostling about in the rain while beggars everywhere pleaded for alms. The temple precinct was extremely small, and the temple itself was packed with people. A throng had congregated around the high shrine with its marble base, jostling, eddying back and forth, packed so closely together that there was no place to stand. The marble base, wet with rain, gleamed especially white, but it was daubed with brown mud by the feet of the wors.h.i.+ppers who were trying to climb up and with spatterings of the cinnabar that was to be applied to their foreheads along with a blessing. It seemed like a sacrilegious turbulence, but the intoxicating din went on and on.

A priest, his black arm extended outside the temple, was painting small, round holy dots of red cinnabar on the foreheads of the devout who had thrown a coin in the box. In the pressing crowd of those wis.h.i.+ng to be so decorated were a woman with a blue, rain-drenched sari that clung to her body, molding the contours of her round back and b.u.t.tocks, and a man in a white linen s.h.i.+rt, whose neck was a pile of s.h.i.+ny black wrinkles. They were all jostling toward the red-stained black fingertip of the priest. Their movements, their paroxysms, and their devotion reminded Honda of the crowd depicted in the "Almsgiving of Saint Rocco" by Annibale Carracci, a painter of the eclectic Bolognese school. However, in the inner part of the temple, somber even in the day, a statue of the G.o.ddess Kali, with her protruding red tongue and her necklace of fresh heads, quivered in the candlelight.

Honda followed his guide to the back garden, with its irregular, rain-drenched flagstones, that occupied an area of less than four hundred square yards. He found only a few people there. A pair of pillars stood like low, narrow gateposts, with a trough of carved stone at their base. There was also a small, part.i.tioned enclosure like a sort of was.h.i.+ng place. Then immediately beside them stood smaller but exact replicas. The shorter pair of posts was wet with rain; and in the trough at their base lay a pool of blood, and dots of blood smudged the rainwater on the stone floor. The guide explained to Honda that the larger one was the altar where water buffalo were sacrificed and that it was no longer in use. The smaller replica was one used to sacrifice goats; and particularly during important festivals like that of Durga, four hundred goats would be slaughtered there.

When Honda looked at the back of the Kalighat which had previously not been clearly visible because of the crowds around it, he found that only its base was constructed of pure white marble, the central stupa and surrounding chapels being decorated with a mosaic of brilliantly colored tiles reminiscent of the Temple of Dawn in Bangkok. The rains had washed the dust from the exquisite floral patterns and arabesques of affronted peac.o.c.ks, and the brilliantly colored edifices towered arrogantly over the gory mess below.

Large raindrops fell in sporadic flurries; and the water-laden air, carried inside, created a misty warmth.

Honda saw a woman unprotected by her umbrella come to kneel reverently in front of the smaller altar. She had the round, sincere, intelligent face found so frequently in middle-aged Indian women. Her light green sari was drenched. She carried a small bra.s.s kettle containing holy water from the Ganges.

The woman poured the water over the pillars, lit the oil burner which functioned even in the rain, and scattered miniature vermilion java flowers around it. Then she knelt on the bloodstained stone floor, and pressing her forehead against the post, began fervently to pray. The holy red spot on her forehead was visible through her rain-plastered hair all during the ecstatic prayer, as though it were a spot of her own blood offered in sacrifice.

Honda was deeply moved, and at the same time his emotions were mixed with an indescribable abhorrence close to rapture. As he examined his own feelings, the scene about him receded and only the figure of the praying woman was sharply, almost uncannily focused. Just as the clarity of detail and his horror became so overwhelming that he felt unable to cope with either, the woman suddenly vanished. For a moment he thought it must have been an illusion, but no. He saw her walking away past the unclosed back gate of openwork wrought-iron arabesques. However, there was no connection between the woman who had been praying and the one walking away.

A child led in a young black kid. A vermilion holy spot shone on its s.h.a.ggy, wet forehead. As holy water was poured on the daub, the kid shook its head and kicked its hind legs, struggling to escape.

A young man with a moustache, wearing a soiled s.h.i.+rt, appeared and took the animal from the boy. As he placed his hand on its neck, the goat began to bleat pathetically, almost irritatingly, writhing and backing away. The black hair on its rump was disheveled in the rain. The youth forced the goat's neck between the two posts of the altar, face down, and inserting a black bolt between them, he pushed it home over the imprisoned animal. The victim reared its hips and struggled desperately, bleating piteously. The youth poised his crescent-shaped sword, its edge glittering silver in the rain. It descended accurately, and the severed head rolled forward, eyes wide open, its whitish tongue protruding grotesquely. The body remained on the other side of the posts, its front quivering delicately while the hind legs kicked wildly around its chest. The violent movements gradually weakened, like those of a pendulum abating with every swing. The blood flowing from its neck was relatively scant.

The young executioner grasped the headless kid's hind legs and ran out through the gate. Outside the sacrificed goats were hung on pickets where they were then dismembered and swiftly disembowled. Another headless kid lay in the rain at the youth's feet. Its hind quarters were still trembling as though in the throes of some dreadful nightmare. The borderline between life and death, which had just been drawn so skillfully, so painlessly, had been pa.s.sed almost unconsciously; only the nightmare remained to torment the animal.

The young man's skill with the sword was remarkable; he was following faithfully and unemotionally the practice of this holy, yet abominable profession. Holiness dripped in the most ordinary way, like perspiration, from the blood spotting his soiled s.h.i.+rt, from the depths of his deep, clear eyes, and from his large, peasantlike hands. The festival-goers, accustomed to the sight, did not even turn around, and holiness with its dirty hands and feet sat confidently in their midst.

And the head? The head was offered on an altar protected by a crude rain cover inside the gates. Red flowers had been scattered in the fireplace burning in the rain, and some of their petals were scorching; it was the fire of the shrine dedicated to the wors.h.i.+p of Brahma. Seven or eight black goat heads were arranged by the fireside, each red, open end blooming like a java flower. One of these was the one that had been bleating just a few minutes ago. Behind them an old woman, crouching low, appeared to be intently sewing, but her black fingers were earnestly stripping away the smooth, gleaming entrails from the inner lining of the skin of a carca.s.s.

8.

DURING HIS TRIP to Benares, the sight of the sacrifice came again and again to Honda's mind.

It was a bustling scene as if in preparation for something else. He felt that the sacrificial rite did not end there at all; it was as though something had begun, and a bridge had been built to something invisible, more sacred, more abominable, more sublime. In other words, the series of rituals was like a strip of red carpet unrolled in welcome for some indescribable being who was approaching.

Benares is the holy of holies, the Jerusalem of the Hindus. At the point where the Ganges curves in an exquisite crescent, accepting the melted Himalayan snows where the G.o.d s.h.i.+va resides, is situated on its western bank the city of Benares, the Varanasi of old.

It is a city dedicated to s.h.i.+va, husband of Kali, and has come to be considered the main portal to paradise. It is also the destination of pilgrims from throughout the country. The bliss of paradise is achieved on earth by bathing in the waters at this juncture of the five holy rivers: Ganges, Dutapapa, Krishna, Jamna, and Sarasvati.

The Vedas contain the following pa.s.sage concerning the efficacy of the water: The waters are medicine.

The waters cleanse sicknesses of the body And fill the body with vitality.

Indeed the waters are healing And will cure all sickness and evil.

And again: The waters are filled with eternal life.

The waters are the protection of the body.

The waters have miraculous efficacy for healing.

Forget not ever the awful powers of the waters, For they are medicine for body and soul.

As eulogized in these pa.s.sages, the ultimate of Hindu rituals, which start with the cleansing of the heart by prayer and the ablution of the body by water, is enacted on Benares's innumerable ghats.

Honda reached Benares in the afternoon and immediately unpacked and bathed in his hotel room. Then he arranged for a guide. He felt no fatigue after the long train ride, and he found his strangely youthful inquisitiveness had put him in a gay and restless frame of mind. The stifling light of the setting sun pervaded everywhere outside the hotel windows. He felt as if he could instantly grasp its mystery by das.h.i.+ng out into it.

Yet, Benares was a city of extreme filth as well as of extreme holiness. On both sides of the narrow, sunless alleys stalls for fried food and cakes, astrologers, grain and flour vendors were all crowded together; and the area was filled with stench, dampness, and disease. As one pa.s.sed through and emerged on the flagstone square by the river, cl.u.s.ters of crouching leprous mendicants had gathered; they had come from all parts of the country as pilgrims, and now they begged for alms while awaiting death. Flocks of pigeons. Sultry late-afternoon sky. A leper was sitting in front of a tin can containing a few coppers; his one eye was red and festered and his fingerless hands like the stumps of felled mulberry trees were raised to the evening sky.

There was deformity of every kind. Dwarfs were running about, and bodies were arranged like some undeciphered ancient writing, lacking any common symbol. They appeared deformed not because of corruption or dissipation, but because the wretched, twisted shapes themselves, with freshness and feverishness, spewed out a repulsive holiness. Blood and pus were carried like pollen by thousands of fat, s.h.i.+ny, green-gold flies.

On the right-hand side of the slope that led down to the river, a colorful tent with holy insignia on it had been pitched, and cloth-wrapped corpses had been deposited beside the crowd listening to a sermon by some priest.

Everything was afloat. Under the sun lay exposed mult.i.tudes of the most ugly realities of human flesh with their excrement, stench, germs, and poisons. Everything hovered in the air like steam evaporating from ordinary reality. Benares. A piece of carpet, hideous to the point of brilliance. A riotous carpet joyously hoisted day and night by temples and people and children-fifteen hundred temples, temples of love with red pillars and black ebony reliefs ill.u.s.trating all the possible positions of s.e.xual intercourse, the House of Widows whose inmates earnestly await death, loudly chanting sutras night and day . . . inhabitants, visitors, the quick, the dead, children covered with pox, dying children clinging to their mother's breast . . .

The square sloped down to the river, leading visitors naturally to the most important ghat: the Dasasvamedha, the "Sacrifice of Ten Horses." Tradition has it that the creator Brahma once made a sacrifice of ten horses at this spot.

The river with its opulent ochre waters was the Ganges! The precious holy water which filled the small bra.s.s kettles to be poured on the foreheads of devotees and sacrificial victims in Calcutta was now flowing down the vast river before Honda's eyes. An unbelievably generous feast of holiness.

It was only reasonable that here the sick, the healthy, the deformed, the dying should all be equally filled with golden joy. It was only reasonable that the flies and vermin should be plump and besmeared with bliss; that the characteristically dignified and suggestive facial expression of the Indians here should be so filled with reverence as to verge on blankness. Honda wondered how he could fuse his reason with the blazing evening sun, the unbearable odor, with the river breezes like faint swamp vapors. It was doubtful he could immerse himself in the evening air which was everywhere like some thick woolen fabric woven with chanting voices, tolling bells, the sound of beggars, and the moaning of the sick. He was afraid his reason might, like the sharp edge of some knife he alone concealed in his jacket, slash this perfect fabric.

The important thing was to discard it. The edge of the knife of reason, which he had regarded as his weapon since youth, had barely been preserved, considering the nicks already inflicted on it by each substantiation of transmigration. Now he had no choice but to abandon it unperceived in the perspiring crowds covered with germs and dust.

Numerous mushroomlike umbrellas for bathers stood on the ghat, but for the most part they were unoccupied now that evening sunbeams darted deep beneath them. It was long after bathing time, which had reached its peak at sunrise. The guide went down to the sh.o.r.e and started to negotiate with a boatman. Honda could do nothing but wait to one side throughout the interminably long d.i.c.kering, feeling the hot iron of the evening sun scorching his back.

Finally the boat carrying Honda and his guide put out from the sh.o.r.e. The Dasasvamedha was located approximately in the center of the many ghats along the western bank of the Ganges. Sightseeing boats for the most part went downstream to the south to see the other ghats, then turned upstream to reach those north of the Dasasvamedha.

Whereas the western sh.o.r.e was considered to be holy, the eastern bank was sorely neglected. It was said that people who lived there would transmigrate into the body of an a.s.s, and therefore all avoided that side. There was not so much as the shadow of a house, just the low jungle green in the distance.

Once the boat started downstream, the bright evening sun was at once cut off by buildings and provided only a brilliant halo for the magnificent view formed by the many imposing ghats with their columns at the back and the mansions supported by pillars. Only the Dasasvamedha ghat, backed by the square, allowed the setting sun its way. The evening sky was already casting its gentle rose color over the river; pa.s.sing sails dropped dusky shadows on the water.

It was a time of opulent, mysterious luminescence before the dusk of evening. A time controlled by light, when the contours of all things were perfect, every dove painted in detail, when everything was dyed a faded yellow-rose, when a languid harmony reigned with the exquisiteness of an etching between the reflection on the river and the glow in the sky.

The ghats are great architectural structures suitable precisely to this sort of light. They consist of colossal staircases, like those of palaces or great cathedrals, that lead down to the water, and behind each one stands a great monolithic wall. The columns and arches forming the background for the ghats are only pilasters, and the arcades have blind windows. The staircase alone has the dignity of a sacred place. Some capitals are Corinthian in style, others are quite syncretic in the Near Eastern fas.h.i.+on. On the pillars white lines are drawn as high as forty feet, the heights reached in the yearly flood disasters, especially the notorious ones of 1928 or 1936. Above the staggeringly lofty pilasters, cantilevered arcades jut out for the people who live at the top of the walls, and rows of pigeons perch on the stone bal.u.s.trades. Over the rooftops a halo of evening sun paused, gradually fading in brilliance.

Honda's boat was nearing one of the ghats called Kedar. There a man was fis.h.i.+ng with a net near his boat. Kedar ghat was quiet, and the thin, ebony bathers as well as the spectators on the steps were all lost in prayer and meditation.

Honda's attention was caught by a man who had come down the center of the great staircase and was about to bathe. Behind him stood a line of magnificent ochre columns, and in the fading glow everything was clear and distinct, even to the ornamented crannies in the capitals. He was standing in the midst of holiness, yet it was questionable whether he could be called a man at all, so great was the contrast of his skin with that of the black bodies of the tonsured priests about him. A tall, stately old man, he alone was a radiant pink.

He wore a small topknot of white hair on his head, and with his left hand he held a heavy scarlet loincloth around his hips. The rest was an ample expanse of slightly slackened pink nudity. His eyes were rapturously transfixed, as though no one existed about him, and he gazed vacuously at the sky above the opposite bank. His right hand slowly stretched heavenward in adoration. The skin of the face, chest, and abdomen was a fresh pinkish white in the evening light, and his n.o.bility completely removed him from his surroundings. But remnants of the black skin of this world remained here and there on the upper half of his arms, on the backs of his hands, or on his thighs, almost peeling off, but still forming blotches, marks, and stripes. These remnants made his glowing pink body appear even more sublime. He was a white leper.

A mult.i.tude of pigeons took flight.

As the boat started upstream, the movement of one startled bird was instantly transmitted to the others, and the sudden flutter of many wings took Honda by surprise. His attention was drawn from the foliage of the lime trees stretching out over the river surface between the many ghats. Each leaf was said to house for ten days the soul of one just deceased while it waited to be reborn.

The boat had already pa.s.sed the Dasasvamedha ghat and was alongside the House of Widows, a building of red sandstone by the river. The window frames were decorated with green and white mosaic and the interior was painted green. Incense wafted from the windows, and bells and the chanting of kirtana could be heard echoing from the ceiling and spilling over the river surface. Here widows gathered from all corners of India to await their death. Emaciated by sickness and antic.i.p.ating the salvation of extinction, for these people their last days in Mumukshu Bhavan, or the "House of Happiness," in Benares were their happiest. Everything was conveniently close. The crematory ghat was situated to the immediate north, while just above rose the golden spire of the Nepalese Temple of Love, on which the sculptures honored the thousand postures of s.e.xual intercourse.

Honda's eyes picked out a package wrapped in cloth floating beside the boat. He remarked that the shape, bulk, and length suggested the corpse of a two- or three-year-old child and was told that that was precisely what it was.

Honda glanced at his watch. It was forty minutes past five. The evening dusk was gathering. At that instant, he distinctly saw a fire in front of him. It was the funeral pyre of the Mani Karnika ghat.

Facing the Ganges, it consisted of five-tiered platforms of varying widths on a Hindu-style base. The temple was formed of a group of stupas of different heights that surrounded a large central one, and every structure had a Mohammedan-style arched balcony in the shape of a lotus petal. As this gigantic brown cathedral was smoke-stained and stood on high colonnades, the closer Honda's boat approached the more its gloomy, imposing silhouette, uninhabited and smoke-swathed, loomed like an ominous hallucination in the sky. But a vast muddy stretch of water still lay between the boat and the ghat. On the darkening surface of the water, a profusion of flower offerings-including the red java flowers he had seen in Calcutta-and incense came floating down like trash; and the inverted reflection of the towering flames of the funeral pyre played clearly on the water.

The pigeons inhabiting the stupas fluttered about in confusion, mingling with the sparks that rose high in the sky. The heavens had turned a dark indigo touched with gray.

A sooty stone grotto stood near the water, and flowers had been placed before the statues of s.h.i.+va and one of his wives, Sati, who had flung herself into a fire in order to uphold her husband's honor.

Many boats piled high with wood for the funeral pyres were moored in the area, and Honda's craft hung back from the center of the ghat. Behind the brightly burning fire a small flame was visible deep under the temple arcade. It was the sacred, eternal flame, and every funeral pyre received its fire from it.

The river breeze had died and a suffocating heat hung over the area. Like everywhere else in Benares, noise rather than silence prevailed here too; it mingled with the constant movement of people, cries, children's laughter, and the chanting of sutras. People were not the only bathers; emaciated dogs followed the children into the water; and from the dark depths away from the fires, there where the extremity of the ghat steps lay submerged, the sinewy, s.h.i.+ny backs of water buffalo suddenly emerged one by one, herded on by the cackling shouts of their keepers. As they teetered up the steps, the funeral fires were mirrored on their wet black backs.

Sometimes the flames were enveloped in white smoke and flickering red tongues would appear through rifts. The smoke wafted up to the temple balconies and eddied like some living thing in the dark recesses of the building.

The Mani Karnika ghat offered the ultimate in purification: it was the outdoor, public crematorium in which all was out in the open in Indian fas.h.i.+on. Yet it was full of nauseous abomination, the inevitable ingredient of all things deemed sacred and pure in Benares. Beyond question this location marked the end of the world.

A corpse wrapped in red cloth was propped against an easy slope of steps adjoining the grotto of s.h.i.+va and Sati. It had been soaked in the waters of the Ganges and now awaited its turn for cremation. The red wrapping around the human form showed that the body was that of a woman. White cloth was reserved for men. Relatives waited with tonsured priests under the tent in order to fulfill their duty by throwing b.u.t.ter and incense upon the corpse after the pyre was lit. Just then another white-swathed corpse arrived, borne on a bamboo litter and surrounded by chanting priests and all the relatives. Several children and a black dog chased each other around their feet. As observable in any Indian town, the living were all very much alive and making considerable noise.

It was six o'clock. Flames suddenly rose in four or five places. As the smoke was blown away in the direction of the temple, the offensive odor did not reach Honda in the boat, but he could see everything clearly.

To the extreme right all the ashes were gathered together and left to soak in the river water. Individual characteristics that had so obstinately clung to each body were no longer, and the ashes of all, conjoined and finally dissolved in the holy water of the Ganges, thus returned to their four elemental const.i.tuents and the vast Universe. The under part of the ash mound was inextricably mixed with the damp earth of the area before being soaked in the Ganges. The Hindus do not build tombs. Honda suddenly recalled the shudder that had gone through him at the Aoyama Cemetery when he had visited Kiyoaki's grave, the horror he had felt that Kiyoaki was quite definitely not under the gravestone.

The corpses were laid on the fire one after the other. As the binding cords burned away and the red and white shrouds were consumed in the fire, a black arm would suddenly rise or a body would curl up in the fire as though turning over in sleep. The corpses that had been placed on the pyre first turned a dark gray. Sizzling sounds, like those of a pot boiling over, could be heard across the water. The skulls did not burn easily, and a cremator constantly walked about, poking a bamboo pole through the ones that were still smoldering well after the bodies had been reduced to ash. The sinews in his strong black arms that powerfully drove the pole through the skulls reflected the flames, while the crunching sounds he made reverberated against the temple walls.

The slow progress of purification of the human body, returning its parts to its four elemental const.i.tuents . . . the resistant human flesh and its useless odor lingering after death . . . something red opening in the flames, something s.h.i.+ny writhing, black powdery particles dancing up with the fiery sparks. There was a flas.h.i.+ng animation in the flames, as though something were being created. From time to time, when suddenly the firewood noisily collapsed and part of the fire disappeared, the cremator would pile on more wood; and from time to time unexpectedly lofty flames would leap upward, almost licking at the temple balcony.

There was no sadness. What seemed heartlessness was actually pure joy. Not only were samsara and reincarnation basic belief, but they were actually accepted as a part of nature, constantly renewing itself before one's eyes, the rice paddy and its growing plants, the trees bringing forth their fruit. Some a.s.sistance from human hands was necessary, just as harvest and cultivation required human intervention; people were born to take their turns in this natural progression.

In India the source of everything that seemed heartless was connected with a hidden, gigantic, awesome joy! Honda was afraid of grasping such delight. But having witnessed the extremes he had, he knew that he should never recover from the shock. It was as though all of Benares were afflicted with a holy leprosy and that his very vision had been contaminated by this incurable disease.

But his impression of having seen the ultimate was incomplete until the following moment arrived, one that struck Honda's heart with a crystalline thrill of fright.

It was the moment when the sacred cow turned toward him.

In this crematorium there was a white cow, one of those sacred animals permitted anything anywhere in India. The sacred cow, accustomed to the fires, had been chased off by the cremator and stood just out of reach of the flames in front of the dark temple arcade. Inside was total blackness; and the white of the animal seemed awe-inspiring and full of sublime wisdom. The white belly reflecting the flickering flames appeared like cold Himalayan snow bathed in moonlight. It was a pure synthesis of impa.s.sible snow and sublime flesh in the body of an animal. The flames were smoke-logged; sometimes flashes of red dominated, again to be hidden by the swirling smoke.

Just then the sacred cow turned its majestic white face to Honda through the vague smoke rising from the burning bodies and looked directly at him.

That night, as soon as he finished dinner, Honda left word that he would be leaving before dawn the next morning, and fell asleep with the help of a nightcap.

Legions of phantasmagoria cluttered his dreams. His dream fingers brushed a keyboard they had never touched before, producing strange sounds. They examined like an engineer all corners of the structured universe so far known to him. The limpid Mount Miwa suddenly appeared, then the Offing Rock, reclining rock of horror on the peak of which dwelt the G.o.ds; blood spouted from a crevice and the G.o.ddess Kali emerged, her red tongue protruding. A burned corpse rose in the form of a beautiful youth, his hair and loins covered with the brilliantly pure leaves of the sacred sakaki tree. Then the obscene scene at the temple instantly turned into the cool precincts of a j.a.panese shrine covered with clean pebbles. All ideas, all G.o.ds were jointly turning the handle of the gigantic wheel of samsara. The great disk like a spiral nebula was slowly turning, carrying ma.s.ses of people who, unaware of the effects of samsara, were simply happy, angry, sad, or joyful, quite like those who lived their daily lives totally unaware of the rotation of the earth. It was like a ferris wheel at night all decorated with lights in the amus.e.m.e.nt park of the G.o.ds.

Perhaps Indians knew all this. This fear had followed Honda into his very dreams. Just as the fact of the earth's rotation is never detected through any of the human senses and is barely recognizable by scientific reasoning, samsara, karma, and reincarnation too were perhaps not discernible through ordinary perception and reason, but only through some supernatural power, some extremely accurate, systematic, intuitive super-logic. And perhaps this perception made the Indians appear so listless, so resistant to progress, and so devoid of all those human emotions-joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure-that are common standards for measuring ordinary human beings.

Of course, these were the rough impressions of a traveler who had barely scratched the surface of the land. Dreams often combine the highest level of symbols and the most vulgar of thoughts. Perhaps Honda was following in his dreams the old habit of his judges.h.i.+p days: a cold, prosaic, speculative process had inadvertently put in its appearance. His professional habits and his character seemed like a cat's tongue, too sensitive to hot food, forcing him to cool at once any warm, unidentified elements and to transform them into conceptually frozen food. He was probably using this same old automatic defense mechanism, exactly like so many others who are particularly cautious in their dreams.

Far more than the ambiguity and strangeness of the dream, what he saw in reality was a much greater mystery to him, one that stubbornly rejected understanding or interpretation. When he awoke he perceived that the heat of this fact lingered clearly in his body and mind. He felt as though he had contracted a tropical fever.

Near the dim light of the front desk at the end of the hotel corridor, his bearded guide stood joking and chuckling with the bellboy on night duty. He recognized Honda approaching in his white linen suit and bowed respectfully from a distance.

Honda's reason for leaving the hotel before the dawn was to see the crowds waiting to wors.h.i.+p the sunrise at the ghats.

Benares was dedicated to the concept of the one from the many, the unity of Brahma, who was a transcendent G.o.dhead, being the One that contained the many. The solar disk was the embodiment of his divinity, and his G.o.dliness was greatest at the moment the sun rose above the horizon. The holy city of Benares and the heavens had been treated as equals in Indian religion. The pundit Shankara once said: "When G.o.d put the heavens and Benares on the scale, heavy Benares sank to the land and the lighter heavens rose."

Hindus perceive the highest consciousness of the G.o.dhead in the sun and consider it the symbol of ultimate truth. Thus Benares is filled with devotion to and prayer for the solar disk. People's consciousness frees itself from the rules governing the earth, and thus Benares itself, like a floating carpet, is elevated by the efficacy of prayer.

Unlike the day before, Dasasvamedha ghat was now swarming with ma.s.ses of people, and the candles under countless umbrellas were flickering in the dusk before sunrise. In the sky above the jungle on the opposite side of the river, there was a hint of the approaching dawn below the tiers of clouds.

People had placed benches under each large bamboo umbrella and decorated the lingam stone, symbol of s.h.i.+va, with red flowers. Some were mixing red cinnabar powder in small mortars, preparing to paint their foreheads after the bath. Beside them attendant monks were mixing the paste with Ganges water in bra.s.s jugs which had been dedicated and blessed at the temple. Some people had already descended the stairs in order to be in the water to meet the sunrise. After wors.h.i.+pping the water, which they scooped up in their hands, they slowly immersed their entire body. Some awaited the sunrise kneeling under the umbrellas.