3

 

 

In these later years of my life, I’ve seen how the gossips and pundits distorted the truth about Siddhartha and me. I suppose many people want to fit us into a preconceived idea. (Kisa, of course, is never mentioned outside of a persistent rumor that Siddhatha took her as a second wife!) In the most popular depiction, Siddhartha was only sixteen when he married me, and I was little more than the prettiest of the crowd of girls and women who temporarily blinded him to life’s suffering. Nonsense. He was twenty-six; he had known women, and what he wanted when he met me was a far deeper love. Our life was never one of decadence, where Siddhartha enjoyed his orgies and I sat around contriving ever new ways to titillate him—and where my father-in-law was perfectly content to wait thirteen years for me to bear him a grandson. As if Suddhodana would have allowed his son to endure a barren wife for so long! Such an idea is preposterous. Most likely our first years together have been distorted because few want to believe that even a profound and committed love is not enough to stop one from going forth to relieve the suffering of life’s dualities. But that is what Siddhartha did.

 

So what was our story? Had my husband died before I got pregnant or had we somehow lived to an innocent old age, I might have remembered those first three years of our marriage as a series of seamless moments of wonder and love, starting with our wedding. I wore a sari of scarlet and gold silk, material I’d received from my future in-laws as a gift, silk being almost unknown in our province. A rare Chinese fabric, it whispered to itself and reflected and mutated light in a way I’d never seen before. It seemed yet another manifestation of the deva realm I had entered, like the wedding procession to my husband’s home. He and I rode on a painted elephant high above the celebrants, with a view of soft green forested hills and glimmering blue lakes filled with lotuses like floating rainbows. Everywhere, nature’s beauty was accentuated by bridges and pavilions Siddhartha had designed and built, garden paradises we now would share.

My new husband introduced me to so much, beginning with my own body. After everyone’s endless vows, the spangled processions, the feasts of curries and crisp spiced meats on mounds of saffron-suffused rice accompanied by sweets of every kind—not to mention vessel after vessel of bright, transparent wine—we finally entered the marriage chamber. In front of the high rosewood bed—carved with images of vines and fanciful blossoms and shimmering with silk spreads like luxurious multicolored seas—my husband stripped off his garments.

I was shaken out of my trance. Was this big glistening penis actually going to force its way into me? Of course, I had been prepared for this as part of my education since childhood, and I had long ago accepted that I would feel some physical pain. But now I was remembering the holy men’s talk of celibacy, how it was a way of guarding one’s true Being, which otherwise would be squandered and washed away in the tide of desire. And if a man’s soul could be lost, how much more so a woman’s? I wasn’t ready to be changed into a completely sexual entity, much less a mother, my questing soul forever subordinated to my animal role.

My husband’s voice was gentle. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” I said, pressing my elbows against my ribs. I was still in my wedding sari.

“No, something is wrong, I can tell.” He reached down and picked up his upper scarf, which he wound around his waist.

All I could see in his eyes was sadness, not the anger I might have expected. “Isn’t it better to be celibate?”

I explained to him the theories of the holy men and confessed that I’d once considered going forth on a quest to discover the soul’s true nature.

“Souls!” Siddhartha laughed in his innocent way. “What can we know of them, really? They’re just ideas floating in the future or past. All we have is the present, where our bodies are, and our love.” The scarf around his waist stirred, and now he reached for my shoulder. “All I know is that I love you more than the devas, Yasi.”

“I’ve never seen a deva,” I said, suddenly needing to reveal this.

My husband’s grin spread across his face as if I’d told a marvelous joke. “You don’t need to! You’re more beautiful than any of them!”

“So you don’t believe in devas?” I dared to hope that he shared my peculiar blindness.

He kept on smiling, although with a bit of strain, I feared, because of the delay I was causing. “I don’t worry about devas,” he said, without anger or righteousness. “Best they stay in their realm and visit only on holidays.”

“But what about our souls? Do you believe they live in the deva realm?”

“So what if they do or don’t? I live in the earthly realm. Yasodhara, you are so much more than some ghost of a soul.” He leaned toward me, his eyes tender in spite of a touch of exasperation, and I could feel his warmth, smell his salty scent, and a sweet weakness pulled at my belly. But I told myself I needed to resist, because suddenly I knew that here was my one opportunity for a life where I could gain some kind of knowledge—if not of souls or devas, at least of the world that Siddhartha seemed to think took precedence over them.

I touched his warm shoulder. “Only one thing,” I said, my heart pounding—with fear and desire but also with determination. “I want to see this earthly realm for myself, and not spend all my time in the women’s quarters.”

He blinked. “You mean ride with me in my chariot? Help me inspect the property?”

“Yes.” I held my breath. “And help out as well.”

A funny little smile quirked up one side of his mouth, but his eyes lit up with wonder, as if he’d just heard a butterfly speak. “My father would never approve.”

“He would. You’re his precious only son. He grants you everything.”

He laughed again, fresh as rain. “Why not?” he said.

“Why not, indeed! We love each other. So why wouldn’t we want to be together?”

“All right,” he said. “We’ll do it.” He took my hand, still on his shoulder, and gently placed it around his waist, where his scarf was in the process of drifting to the floor. My sari followed suit.

“But please, Yasi,” he said in a breathless voice. “No more talk now of souls.”

With his merest touch, the swells and curves of my flesh turned to silk, my senses uniting in surrender to his gentle hands encompassing my waist and thrilling their way to my breasts. I closed my eyes in a swoon of pleasure, all my doubts and speculations falling away like diaphanous shawls, useless in the moment’s mounting heat. What could be more solid and real than our warm clutch as we fell upon the bed, my desire rising hot and urgent beneath him—my soul, whatever I might have thought it was, dissolving into a wild throbbing ecstasy—the pain of his entry opening me to a profound release of all my life’s petty tensions, followed by blissful, oblivious peace.

I needed nothing else, I thought. I had yet to turn sixteen years old.

 

As Siddhartha had promised, we spent those early days inspecting the land, riding in a chariot driven by his wiry and dependable manservant Channa, steering Siddhartha’s ivory-white war horse Kanthaka over the clay roads, hard as stone during the dry season—the worst heat a month away. Siddhartha’s knowledge of all aspects of practical life astounded me—planting, plowing, carpentry, metallurgy, engineering (he’d even invented a roller to remove the seeds from cotton); his aim was to create a good life for all, no matter what class you belonged to. But he had definite ideas of what this life required.

One crystalline day, we’d stopped at a cluster of squat, orange-brick buildings next to a grove of lychee trees, where a half-dozen bricklayers in dhotis were enlarging the servants’ quarters, seeming to ignore the worker sitting at the edge of the grove with his back against a tree. Siddhartha leapt out of the chariot, and I was expecting that he’d launch into some lecture to the foreman on some new method of stacking one brick on another. Already, I understood my husband was a great talker—he loved to teach and he also loved to learn, so he could teach some more. But not that day.

He approached the foreman, a mahogany-skinned giant about forty with ballooning calves and biceps, his dusty black hair tied up in a red rag. The air around him smelled of straw and sweat.

“What’s this man doing here, Agrata?” Siddhartha asked him, nodding at the worker sitting under the tree. The narrow leaves pelted shadows across the man’s leathery back.

The foreman wiped his forehead with the back of his wide wrist. “He’ll be okay, Master.”

“His eyes are watering,” Siddhartha said. The man was breathing harshly as if in pain, but when he saw my husband, he blinked frantically and wavered to his feet. Sweat had slicked his thin gray hair against his head; one of his eyes had a pearly white cast, as if half his vision had lost itself in the realm of the dead.

Siddhartha kept his eyes on the foreman, making no move to approach the sick man. “He needs to go the hospital.”

“We’re short on workers today,” Agrata said. “He was just taking a break.”

Immediately, Siddhartha pulled up his lungi into a makeshift dhoti. “Channa, take the man, now.” He nodded to the foreman. “I’ll help you unload.”

“But, Master, you can’t perform the duties outside your varna—”

“Agrata, the sight of this unfortunate man will only upset your workers and sap their strength.” Siddhartha was already bent over the wheelbarrow scooping up bricks, his back to the sick man.

My first impulse was to admire my husband for choosing kindness over class duty, which had always seemed like just some more priestly mumbo-jumbo—especially the varna system, introduced by Suddhodana’s newfangled gods, which unduly segregated the four social classes. Yet even in the midst of my admiration, some cold hand pulled aside a curtain in my heart as if to reveal a falseness where my Siddhartha was deliberately overlooking something important. But what? The worker was clearly ill, and certainly getting him to a doctor was the right thing to do. I shook off the feeling. “I’ll go with Channa,” I said. “I can help.”

“No! You wait right here,” he said to me over his shoulder. “I’ll have Agrata’s wife bring you some lassi.”

I glanced over at the craggy-featured Channa, who shrugged in a knowing way, as if he was used to his master’s behavior. I was mystified, and the feeling of falseness returned. “I’d like to go along,” I said. “I’ve never seen a hospital.”

Siddhartha straightened, his back to me. “And pray to the devas you never shall.”

“But I want to. Perhaps I could help out there.”

He thundered the bricks into the wheelbarrow, then strode over to me, placing his hands on my shoulders. For the first time since our marriage, I thought I saw his father’s tight upper lip pressing against his teeth. “Yasi, it is our duty to keep sickness as separate as possible from health. We’ll all have to face such things soon enough. There’s no reason to be miserable in advance.”

“But what about Channa? And all the people who have to care for the sick and the dead.”

Siddhartha shifted from one foot to the other, sweat glittering under his clear eyes. “They have some karma, obviously. Even so, I believe in making it as easy as possible for them, with plenty of time to get away. No one healthy needs to live permanently anywhere near where they’ll come in contact with pain and misery.”

His discomfort made the day seem to gray over, despite the sun shining on. I remembered that first monsoon season after losing Deepa. “Sometimes I can’t help but think of death,” I said quietly.

“Those are precisely the times we need to leap back into the present!” He smiled then, but his eyes were the same as when he’d warned the foreman against being in the presence of a sick man. “You can do it, Yasi. You just have to fill yourself with appreciation for life.”

“I’m not sure…”

In a flash, his smile spread over his entire face, his teeth a startling white, his innocence returning like the sun. He placed his arm around me. “Because we all can sing.”

To my shock, my husband burst into a work song that all the men knew and I remembered from my childhood, praising the devas for muscle and lumber and the joys when the work was done. Now the whole grove rang with rich male voices. Once again, I felt swept up into the glory of the present moment, and when Agrata’s wife arrived I remembered the women’s part of the song, and the two of us joined in. Afterward, she served me spiced chai in a clay pot, and we watched our husbands work and sing. How wonderful, I told myself, that Siddhartha keeps up his spirits and those of everyone around him. The dark part of the moment, his refusal to look at the sick man, I folded away in my mind like a burial cloth I hoped I would never have to use. But I knew now never to ask my husband about his family’s charnel ground. Later, Channa told me it was on the other side of an almost impenetrable jungle, and the road through the jungle, although kept clear, wound and twisted as if trying to hide from itself. From no part of Suddhodana’s domain, not even the hilltops, could the charnel ground be seen.

 

Our blessed life continued for almost three years. I helped Siddhartha set up his paradises. It turned out I had a knack for designing gardens, using shrubbery to create interlocking chambers flooded with roses, lilies, and orchids. We also planned systems of pools and waterfalls, arranging rocks and planting trees so that reflected ripples trembled over them, reinventing sunlight and shadow alike. Our gardens and fish-filled ponds attracted throngs of birds: kingfishers, black-crested herons, golden loras, rose-ringed parakeets, and so many others—their darts of song and color sparkling through the air. All this beauty anchored everyone who passed through, rich and poor, deeply in the present—everything so new and astonishing. Who needed to quest after souls when the glory of the earth could enter one’s heart and mind the way Siddhartha entered me? In these moments, everything was one.

Suddhodana and his wife Pajapati stayed benignly in the background, gently reminding us of our duty to produce a son. I looked forward to having children, although living in the present as I did, my future as a mother was little more than a thought that flitted through my mind like a bright hummingbird in a pleasant landscape. Besides, those first two years of my marriage were mostly devoted to being shown off. My in-laws held feasts and parties attended by most of the clan, my own parents celebrating their daughter’s marital success and all the cousins wanting a glimpse of the ideal heir and his new wife. If they also wanted to gossip and compare, I remained oblivious as we rushed from one perfect moment to the next. In those days, I barely noticed the slivers of time in between, those dips in spirit when the pretty sights seemed to shrink into a vacuous landscape that hinted no perfect moment could ever be enough.

But these in-between times, minuscule as they were, could be relieved as easily as a bodily pain that comes from staying still too long. If we ran out of ideas, we had the gods, who, believed in or not, always gave us an excuse to celebrate. Every god had a repertoire of deeds to be commemorated with dancers and acrobats, trained doves and elephants, musicians with lutes and drums—all joining together to reenact the cosmic dramas. Here, too, was a time for paying particular attention to the poor. Siddhartha—with his father’s halfhearted consent—made it a point that every festival not only had to include them in the communal feasts but also had to provide appropriate clothing and plenty of time off work to enjoy themselves.

I basked in the revelations of my husband’s generosity; it was part of my overall joy. But joy, as I would learn in so many ways, is always impermanent.

 

One morning I awoke in our wedding bed with a queasy feeling, not totally unpleasant, for it was surrounded by a strange kind of excitement. Through the open windows I could hear the chuckling of parrots and the gargling of peacocks, as if full of enticing news, and as the sun rose the morning light seemed to expand the room, illumining the mahogany ceiling to a rich, warm gold. I took a breath of sweet morning air to calm my queasiness and suddenly had a sense, as of a message from long ago, that a new spirit had actually made its home inside me, a soul to share my body. I was going to give birth, and I had the thought, what if Deepa was being reborn in me? I found myself hoping for a daughter in spite of everyone else’s expected desire for a son. Yet who was to say Deepa couldn’t be reborn a boy?

I lay still, not wanting to wake my husband, wondering how to tell him.

I must have drifted back to sleep, because all of a sudden a hoarse male shout tore through the fabric of some pastel dream. I yelped and sat straight up, terrified we were being attacked.

“I had a nightmare,” Siddhartha said. He was panting as if he’d run the length of his property and back.

I turned to him. His face was dark with a flush; his mouth gaped, his eyes dull with dismay.

“What was it?” I asked, my own heart galloping as if to catch up with his.

“Never mind.”

I had the uneasy thought that he was still back in the dream, trying to convince himself he’d been mistaken about it. “Tell me,” I said. “Please.”

“I don’t want to trouble you.”

“You’re troubling me now.” I felt a shadow of foreboding. On this morning of all mornings, I hated to think my husband the victim of an inauspicious dream. “I feel that you’re somewhere else.”

He sat up, placing his forehead against his knees under the crimson coverlet. “I was trapped under a giant’s corpse and couldn’t get free.”

“Well, the dream is over,” I said, shaking off my superstitious thoughts. “And nothing more than an illusion to begin with.”

He finally looked over at me, and this was the beginning of all the trouble, although I didn’t recognize it at the time. “It was a woman’s corpse,” he said.

Then he sprang out of bed. “But you’re right. There’s no sense dwelling on illusions.”

My belly remained clenched with unease. I decided to postpone telling him my news.

 

I let the next two weeks go by without revealing my pregnancy to anyone. Concealing my increasing nausea, I continued to go forth with my husband on his daily inspections, occasionally wandering off to vomit in the bushes while he conferred with this or that farmer or architect. I hoped to wait until I felt better to tell him about my condition. The last thing I wanted was for him to connect it with illness and banish me to the world of the sick.

We were planning yet another big festival, although not for several months, celebrating Durga’s return of the buffalo demon’s blood to the earth, a commemoration most people believed would incite her to keep the seasons going and bring the life-giving monsoon. It was an annual affair, but this year Siddhartha had decided on upping the number of military games and contests, he said, to thrill the maidens and distract young men like my brother and our cousin Devadatta, who might otherwise form raiding parties in the name of spreading our Sakyan happiness to territories beyond our traditional lands. These added games required clearing a large field near the edge of the property where stables and temporary housing needed to be built, and we visited the site daily.

One morning, I’d just left the dining room, where the servants were clearing away the collapsed rice dosas congealing on my plate, and I was waiting at the winter palace’s tall oaken door on the lookout for Siddhartha’s chariot, trying not to be nauseated by a choking smell of woodsmoke from the outside fires. The day was bright—too bright, I thought. The swallows dipping through the air around the almond trees made me dizzy. My stepmother-in-law took me gently by the arm.

“Is everything all right?” she asked, her tired brown eyes holding me in a dark study. She wore a plain beige paridhana, and the loose braid of her long coarse hair was gray as old rope.

I had spent the past two years being as cordial as I could to Pajapati. She was kind enough, with a keen intelligence in her eyes, but back then I cringed at her dogged devotion to her husband and adopted son. I thought she’d let her love for them drain off the sparkle of her own life, leaving her only a servant for her men’s every need.

“I’m fine,” I said.

“You haven’t eaten these past mornings,” she observed.

I knew she knew. “I just lack an appetite,” I said. “I guess that’s what happens.”

“You haven’t told Siddhartha.” Her voice descended into severity, and I heard it as an accusation. She must envy me for being the center of attention, I thought.

“I haven’t told anyone,” I said a bit coldly, turning her accusation back on herself. “I’ll tell Siddhartha today.”

Her grip on my arm tightened. “You can’t go out. You can’t risk yourself anymore. It’s time both you and my son entered the next phase of your life.”

Suddenly I was ten years old and locked in the women’s quarters—and subject to this disagreeable woman who wanted to dull me down to her level.

“I’m perfectly fine. And the air will do the baby good.”

The two-wheeled chariot appeared on the road. I broke Pajapati’s grip and ran toward it. “Don’t worry!” I called out, as if we’d been exchanging harmless jokes.

I smiled up at my husband as he hoisted me to the seat next to him. I gave Channa a nudge. “Let’s go!” I said in a reckless voice, and Channa, with his usual genial shrug, whipped Kanthaka into a canter.

Trees and fields flew by. At first I thought that my burst of energy had cleared my nausea, but I was soon overtaken by dizziness. The landscape slid into a green and yellow blur, and my viscera heaved inside me, threatening to liquefy. I grabbed Siddhartha’s arm and shoulder, fighting a dull panic as we hit a bend in the road. I wanted to close my eyes against the image of being hurled out of the chariot, but that could well make the wooziness worse. I kept my eyes on the horse’s churning white rump.

Finally, at the edge of the big gaming field we jolted to a stop. Shaking and clammy-handed, I allowed Channa to help me to the ground, hoping Siddhartha wasn’t watching. I could hear little over the ringing in my ears, and the yellow field in front of me swarmed with black insects—no, they were men. By now my mind had slowed to a crawl, telling me how bad I felt.

That was the last thing I remembered before I flipped out of space and time altogether.

When I opened my eyes, the world had started over. I was peering into the dark, slick face of some indeterminate being—a demon, an animal, the god of death?—with lips drawn back over teeth so white they hurt my eyes.

In this new world, I felt no fear or anything else, not even numbness. I closed my eyes and opened them again, and I was looking into the eyes of an unknown man. Horror and revulsion had conquered his face.

Somewhere inside me, dark emotions I couldn’t identify were gathering for an attack. I closed my eyes again.

“Yasi!” The strange man had put on a mask, that of my husband. “I thought you were dead!”

I stared up at him. I was lying on the stiff yellow grass, Siddhartha leaning over me, Channa standing in the background. “I just fainted,” I said. “I’m going to have a baby.”

“Darling! That’s wonderful! You should have told me earlier!” But it was the mask speaking, not my husband. Then I had the thoughts: the demon had put on the stranger’s mask and the stranger had put on my husband’s mask. The dark emotions crashed through me.

I remembered Siddhartha’s nightmare about the female corpse. I also remembered how he refused to look at the sick man, that he’d never mentioned the charnel ground the whole time I’d known him, and that he hadn’t attended Kisa’s funeral. Then an image came to me, how I must have looked when I passed out—my mouth hung open, my eyes rolling back into my head like empty porcelain spheres as I dropped to the ground like an unstrung puppet. Even now, saliva was drying at the corners of my mouth and on my chin. He’d seen me as a corpse.

I looked into Siddhartha’s eyes, barely visible through the squint of the stranger, and I knew he was still looking at a dead body. All I could think of was the charnel ground: the torn-off arms and legs, the slimed-over skulls, the bashed-in baby. My sister, no longer a sister but a Thing.

Yet Siddhartha was gathering me up in his arms, stroking my tangled hair, and kissing me lightly on my cheekbone, where an ache surrounded by a sting told me a bruise was forming. I sucked in air and told myself I was just imagining things.

“We need to get you home,” he said, lifting me into the chariot. “Do you need someone to ride with you? I can get one of the workers’ wives to help.”

“You’re not—?” Desolation choked off my words.

“I’m needed here,” he said.

 

For the next few months, I hardly saw Siddhartha at all. He was always thoughtful, always courteous, bringing me bouquets of roses and honeyed ginger to ease my nausea. He usually left these gifts at the women’s quarters, where I was forced to “rest,” enduring my mother-in-law’s relentless kindness amid the company of Siddhartha’s twelve-year-old half-sister and assorted cousins. I still slept in the marriage bed, but without Siddhartha, who spent his nights in the workers’ barracks, claiming he didn’t want to wake me when he went off at dawn.

We were never alone together. We appeared at ceremonies celebrating us, where we sprinkled ghee and dried petals into sacrificial fires to bring a healthy son into the world. These days Siddhartha seemed like the puppet, complete with varnished-on smile, jerky motions, and eyes painted to meet every gaze but mine. I had no idea what he was thinking, and my bewilderment grew. How could he just stop loving me because of one event, one I couldn’t even help? I dreaded to hear that he had taken up with some concubine.

As often as I could—I wasn’t a prisoner, not like later—I would take long walks, even as my belly grew, revisiting the sights of happier days. How different everything seemed now, although the spring greens thickened and deepened and the fat rhododendron buds exploded into bright punches of pink and scarlet, as they had for the past two years. But now the sweet grass and spring flowers failed to fill me with their joy. At best I felt them as a heavy solace; at worst a cruel charade, where everything remained as it was but excluded me. Over and over, my mind churned out the same thoughts: Would none of this had happened if I hadn’t fainted? Why had I foolishy insisted on going out that morning when I’d felt so sick? And what would happen to the child inside me without a father’s love?

Then one afternoon, I came upon Siddhartha under the shadow of an enormous rain tree. He was wearing a workman’s dhoti and sitting alone next to an artificial lily pond. Beyond the tree a field of cattle lowed; the air smelled of cow dung. My husband stared into the dark water paved over with slick black lily pads, nothing in bloom.

My heart gave a little hop of anticipation, but I realized this was an old reaction. The man in front of me had not come here to meet me, much less find me a welcome sight. Still, I had to ask the question that in one way or another he’d prevented me from asking ever since the beginning of my pregnancy. “Why are you ignoring me?”

The mask fashioned itself into a tentative smile. “How can you say that? I spend all my spare moments with you.”

“Me and fifty others.”

“I’m truly sorry,” he said. “This Durga festival is taking up all of my time.”

“That’s why you’re here, staring at the water bugs.”

“I was just taking a break.” Again, the contrived smile, with just the right amount of regret. “I’m afraid I didn’t have time to find you to enjoy it with me.”

“I’m here now.” I stared into the artificial eyes, trying to see behind them.

He eyed my belly, by now a good-sized mound tugging at the front of my blue sari. “Yasi, you shouldn’t be out here. You need to take better care of yourself.” He stood. “I’ll call Channa with the chariot. I need to get back to work.”

He was going to leave me again. A feeling of utter helplessness made me sink to my knees in front of him. All this time, in all my mulling and second-guessing, I had avoided the simple, miserable truth—that I could no more make him love me than I could change the course of a river with my bare hands. “Just tell me what happened.” My lips were quivering like a child’s, and I felt tears welling up in my eyes. “Why don’t you love me anymore? Do I disgust you that much?”

He sat down again, head against his knees as it had been after his nightmare, and for many moments he said nothing. Finally, he stirred. “It’s not you, Yasi.”

“Then, what? Some other woman?”

He shook his head. “For a long time I hoped that everything would change back, that I wouldn’t have to hurt you more than I already have. Yasi, all I can think of is that we’re all going to die.”

“But you’ve always known that! You’ve always had the strength to keep your mind from sinking into these thoughts.” A spark of rage ignited inside me. “You taught me how to do this as well.” And to desert the holy life without a backward glance.

“I don’t know what happened. The thoughts caught up with me. Now all I can think of is how everything dies, including love. How can a corpse love?”

The spark flared up. “What about souls? Didn’t you love me beyond my body?”

“I thought so. But now—I’ve never understood how bodies and souls can be separated. And when I look around I picture everyone dead—I can’t help myself—it’s as if I live in a charnel ground.” He still didn’t look at me. “Yasi, I so want to love you!”

“But you don’t,” I said.

He clutched his bare shoulders. “I look back at our time together, and it’s like all time—insubstantial as a clot of foam on a river. It dissolved even as we enjoyed it. We were always chasing after something new.”

“So what? It was worth it! We always knew about impermanence! Why can’t you get past this?” As I stared at his hunched-over form I saw him as I’d once feared he was, spoiled and weak. I also saw that his face, although freed from its artificial expression, no longer radiated the benevolent innocence I’d loved. “You used to care about things, about helping the world.”

“I don’t know what the world is anymore, beyond death. I’m afraid I just make everything worse by creating false paradises, which only raise expectations and in the end cause more suffering.”

“That about sums up what you did to me,” I said.

Suddenly, the being inside me gave me a kick. I was overwhelmed with tenderness, then rage. The little soul-body I was carrying didn’t deserve such unhappy parents. “You deflected me from my path! You seduced me! Now what?” I knew I shouldn’t blame him for my own decision, but I couldn’t help myself. I wanted to hurt him as he had hurt me.

He was dry-eyed, despairing. “Yasi, I’m sorry.”

Once again, I saw the world through his eyes. In his memory, our loving moments had been swallowed up by the in-between times of doubt and discontent, which had for whatever reason expanded to enormous proportions. The past that I cherished amounted to little more than a scattering of sequins in a vast desert.

He was as miserable as I was, and we were unable to comfort each other. This only fueled my anger. “You’re of no use to me now,” I said. “Now that you’re so disillusioned with earthly life, you’re fit only for the spiritual one. You should be the one to go forth. Find out what’s what and forget your so-called duties to your father.”

He buried his head in his hands, and I walked away, remembering the time when, to avoid thoughts of sickness, he had burst into song. Now singing was impossible, and all I heard was the bellowing of the cows.

 

The Durga festival was the last time I would appear in public before giving birth, and I had no desire to be there. The field, big enough for horse racing, contained an arena surrounded by tiered wooden benches occupied by hundreds of brightly clad Sakyans of all ages, cheering, laughing, and fanning themselves in the springtime heat. Cooking fires and food pavillions surrounded the field, and the early afternoon air was smoky with grilled lamb, trout, and venison. Everywhere, banners flapped, bells rang, and children dashed around, making me think sadly of Deepa and her ebullient spirit, the memory of which I had abandoned for Siddhartha. These days I hoped that my sister hadn’t reincarnated inside me, for she would only share my loveless life. At least I hadn’t burdened my family with my feelings. My parents, my sisters and their children—all at the festival—were overjoyed like almost everyone else that the clan was about to produce an heir, praying, of course, for a boy.

Only my mother seemed to notice that I wasn’t steeped in happiness. Earlier that morning, she’d looked in my eyes. “I know,” Ama said, “you want a daughter.” I let her believe this was the only problem.

Siddhartha and I occupied a place of honor in the stands, front and center, surrounded by others of our generation, including my brother and my cousin Devadatta, who had prevailed in the wrestling and fencing contests. Four years ago—before I met him—Siddhartha had won every competition; this time he was begging off, saying that the younger warriors needed a chance. But I knew he had no more heart for any of this than I did. Not that we spoke of our feelings. After that day under the rain tree, our pattern of never being alone together continued, and I made no more effort to break it.

As Devadatta and Jagdish took their seats, my husband congratulated them.

Devadatta glared at Siddhartha. “My victory means nothing, Cousin, as you have placed yourself above competition.” Devadatta had yet another version of the Sakyan face, narrower, and with higher cheekbones. His black hair was tied back with a leather strip.

“I’ve done nothing of the sort.” My husband smiled, keeping up his own facade of normality. “You’re the unqualified winner.”

Devadatta squinted at the spectators, his cheekbones crowding out his eyes. “Not according to them.”

“Let it go, Cousin, I’ve lost all interest in anything to do with killing. You’re the premier warrior, not I.”

My brother, on the other side of Devadatta, stared at Siddhartha as if he had just surrendered Suddhodana’s entire territory to the Kosalans. “How can you say such a thing? How can you abandon your gods? You were born to expand our uncle’s domain.”

In spite of all my recent disillusionments, I couldn’t let this pass. “My husband has always preferred spreading happiness to spreading death. Let other clans ally with us when they see how we live in peace and prosperity. There are many ways to serve the deities, after all.”

“Not for the warrior class,” Devadatta said. He made a point of addressing my husband. “As you know.”

“That’s exactly right!” Jagdish’s eagerness made me wince. “By risking death, warriors alone can honor the gods with the greatest virtue of all: selflessness.”

“Risking death?” I said. “If women didn’t risk death by giving birth, there’d be no warriors to risk anything. And as far as selflessness is concerned, most mothers could give lessons on it.”

“Are you going to let your wife speak for you?” Jagdish switched his angry look to me, but he, too, addressed my husband. “Perhaps marriage has made you soft.”

“Please don’t bait me,” Siddhartha said, his voice tinged with the weariness of an adult speaking to a child, even though Jagdish, at twenty-four, was only five years his junior. “The greatest virtue is conquest of the self, not of others. If you want to see selflessness, look to the holy men around you. And I don’t mean the priests.”

“Perhaps you should go forth,” said Devadatta, tight-lipped.

“There are worse things to do,” my husband said, looking straight ahead.

 

Another silly tale I’ve heard over the years is that Siddhartha had never known that sickness and death existed until, at age twenty-nine, he had Channa drive him outside the family compound so he could see what he’d missed. More nonsense, as you have already seen. My husband had been trained in war. He knew full well that his mother had died shortly after his birth, and he had witnessed the deaths of grandparents, cousins, and servants like everyone else. However, there’s some truth to the story, in that Siddhartha’s parents had kept him out of the presence of sickness and death as much as possible to the point of refusing any servant over the age of fifty to work in any of the residences. And of course, Suddhodana had moved the hospital and the charnel grounds out of sight soon after his birth. In the days after the Durga festival, Siddhartha had Channa take him to these places, where he spent many hours contemplating mortality.

One evening he entered our marriage chamber, but I knew by now it wasn’t to take me in his arms. He stood at the door, the full moon bluing the hall behind him and blanking out his face. “You were right, Yasi,” he said. “I should enter the holy life, and I want to do it.”

I’m still not sure what possessed me back then, why I had so little sympathy for my husband. Perhaps I envied his freedom, but more likely I was bitter because it was he who had convinced me that the earthly life was all I needed. “Are you asking my permission?” I said, hearing the coldness in my voice. “Or do you need to be persuaded?”

My husband’s silhouette shifted. “I’m not sure. I want to do my duty.”

I felt my anger rising. “How dare you put this decision on me? But since you do, I want you to go. But I have a couple of stipulations. First, if you learn anything about how to meet with the souls of the dead, come back and tell me how to reach my sister.”

“That’s not what I’m looking for.”

“Just promise me if you find out, you’ll tell me. I sacrificed my own holy path for your love, which you now deny me.”

He stepped into the lamplight, his eyes seeking mine. “I do love you, Yasi. I’d never have another woman.”

I stared into the clear gaze I once trusted would cherish me forever. Now it seemed as impersonal as water. “Your love for me—as you yourself said—is the love of one corpse for another. Please go.”

“I’m so sorry.” With a rustle of his cotton garments, he knelt in the darkness. “If I survive, I’ll return. This I promise you.”

My bitterness remained, immobile as an anchor in a dried-up pond. “One other thing. Delay your departure until after you see your child. I want you to know exactly what you are leaving.”

Siddhartha nodded, his face as grave as if he expected a stillbirth. “Please don’t tell anyone until I’m gone.”

And so, it came to pass.