Prologue

 

 

“I won’t leave without your blessing,” Siddhartha whispered so softly I wasn’t sure he wanted me to hear. He stood in the carved rosewood doorway of our bed chamber, and in the deepening silence of my refusal, I pulled Rahula closer, praying that our two-day-old son would feel only the beating of my heart and not the bitterness that filled it.

“You don’t need my blessing. Just go. Find your Dharma.”

My young husband, who would one day be called the Buddha, didn’t move. He stood in the darkness, across the room from our wedding bed, and I lay on my side with my back to him, staring out the window at a moon waning to a diamond-white crescent. A single star, sharp as betrayal, was poised beside it. It was just before dawn.

Rahula stirred against my collarbone, a small shifting warmth under the cool silk coverlet. My husband had named him Rahula, the common word for “bond.” But it also meant “fetter.”

“Yasi,” Siddhartha said, “if you ask me to stay, I will.”

I looked at him, still standing in the doorway, but he was only a silhouette, his clear eyes and the tender curve of his lips already fading in my memory. Perhaps if I’d seen his face and it had revealed a change, I would have begged him to stay. But in recent months, his look of sadness and revulsion at the sight of my mortal flesh and all the suffering it implied had lodged in my soul, and now I could think of nothing but that look.

“I won’t change your plans,” I said. “You’re right to cast off your illusions. I only wish you’d done it before we married.” I gazed at the rising crescent moon, which was soon to be effaced by morning sunlight. Already there was a green smear in the eastern sky.

My husband spoke one last time. “I promise if I find the truth, I’ll bring it home to you and Rahula.”

I doubted his words. A minute went by, then another. Finally, the breeze shifted and the crickets resumed their refrain. Siddhartha had left, as I knew he would. He was taking the journey I’d once intended for myself.

 

Supposedly, the moon was full the night he left. Supposedly, I slept through it all. My version of these events will not be the one told to future generations. I was all but banished from that story. It’s the price I had to pay for the life I chose.