Oxherding Tale Read online

  “Ask something else.” The question made Brahma uncomfortable. “Anything else. How to win a woman’s heart, or gain wealth—these things I can easily tell you.”

  “I asked about Samsara. That, and only that, is what I do not fully understand after a lifetime of meditation.”

  Though reluctant, the Most High said, “All right, but this knowledge of Samsara will take some time. It is the highest knowledge, Trishanku. First, we must prepare ourselves—the ground beneath us is very hard. Have you a pillow I can sit upon?”

  “I will find one,” said Trishanku, and, after bowing deeply and pulling on a loincloth, he took off for Magadha, the nearest village. It was a long walk, and you must remember that Trishanku, after thirty years of fasting, standing on one foot, and yoga postures was not a very physical man. Soon he was breathing heavily and his legs buckled, yet the village seemed no closer than before. Like a mirage, it seemed, moving backwards as the old sannyasin planted one blistered, brown foot before the other. When at last he reached the first hut at the fringe of the village, Trishanku was too tired to knock. He tripped through the doorway, and would have shouted Water! but he was too parched, and besides, what Trishanku saw inside the hut took away his breath, and that was no small thing (said Ezekiel), for the sannyasin was a master of breath, chi, prana, and a number of other cardiovascular tricks. What he saw, lifting his eyes, was a woman so beautiful his heart whispered Oh! and his old knees smacked together, and for a time the sage, the rsi, the swami Trishanku only stared. “Do you need help?” asked the woman, whose name was Lila. Trishanku pointed at his lips and croaked, “Water,” which she brought, then food for him—a little fruit on banana leaves—and then Lila, who was unwed and hungry for companionship, looked at him. Trishanku looked at her. Their bodies moved closer, then twinned together like those of two eels. By morning, they had not moved from their spot near her door. But Trishanku had, from guilt and love, asked Lila to be his wife, and to this she agreed.

  Their first few days of marriage were a delight to Trishanku. Before retiring to the forest he had apprenticed as a carpenter, and to this trade he returned, taking only a few assignments at first—he wanted to spend all his time with Lila—then more when a daughter, then a son came into their lives. He worked harder then, traveling sometimes to other villages and towns—Kurukshetra and Brahmapura—building homes and for himself the reputation of being the best carpenter in all India. But always his joy was in returning home to his family, the root and fruit of his happiness, his great elephants groaning with garments from Persia for his wife, and toys for the boy and girl. There, at home, his house buzzed with activities. Babies to feed. Younger boys to teach, as his family grew, and the affairs of his servants, the kitchen maids and mahouts, to see after (for Trishanku was a good employer). To her credit, Lila loved Trishanku and was as prudent as she was shrewd about money—she balanced her husband’s books, for he could not read, and with her help he made many wise investments. His holdings tripled, as did his household, and after eight years there was no wealthier estate in twenty provinces than that of Trishanku of Magadha.

  And then their eldest son was of an age for work, and his daughter ripe for marrying. The boy, who was a blessing to Trishanku, took the hardest part of his father’s business, which gave Trishanku time to be with his grandchildren, or to gamble (lightly) with other rich men of the village; his girl married well, snaring the son of a local Brahman and, with him, political connections for her father. Once or twice, though, it came to Trishanku that his duties were too much. He felt, now and then, as if he might one day drop in the street and die in harness like a horse. But he tried not to complain—one look at Lila’s smile of pleasure at their prosperity was enough to dispel his doubts. Late some nights, they lay in each other’s arms, kissed, and when he could manage it they made love as passionately perhaps as when he first stepped through her door. “How dear you are to me,” Trishanku whispered as he rolled off his wife. Lila, knowing how men are—he would be complaining again in the morning—simply nuzzled closer, her head on his chest.

  But as often happens in India, there came a flooding of the Ganges, an overflowing that swept away the houses Trishanku had built. The roar awoke him and Lila in the night. From his doorway he watched the waters rise above the temple roofs, carrying away the families of his friends; then his bins of grain; his house, which splintered as if slapped by the great toe of a god; and then it carried away as well his wife and children, his grandchildren—they were torn from him, each of their deaths like a dagger in his mind; the entire village washed away, and only Trishanku, broken and bleeding, remained, clinging to driftwood, crying aloud, Lord! for he now drifted toward a cliff with a hundred-foot drop, Lord! but he was not even sure now that he wanted to live.

  Instantly, the flood was gone. Where the remains of Magadha had stood there was Brahma in a sea, a miracle, of light. He was a little impatient now, tapping his foot. “Trishanku,” asked the Most High, “where is my pillow?”

  “Wake hup, Hawk.” George elbowed me. “We heah, son.”

  Covered with dust, and just an hour before twilight, we arrived at an old Hanoverian hip-roofed house that, large, dark, and imposing, hunched high up in the hills. The sky was fast losing light. My father looked, or so I thought, uneasy—but was he? And afraid—but was George afraid? Swinging his feet down from his seat, he said, “All this heah, up to the mines north-northwest, belongs to Flo Hatfield.”

  “You’ve been here before?” I pulled my bag from beneath tarpaulin in the rear of the wagon. And then, suddenly, the answer trumpeted through my thoughts: “You’ve been here before with Master Polkinghorne, haven’t you?”

  “Gimme a hug, Hawk.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m saying goodbye, son.” He opened his arms. “From here on, you go by yoself.” I hesitated for a moment—I saw him chewing my meat for me when I was a child, softening it before spooning it toward me; he would wiggle, I remember, his big ears for me, and let me look through his pockets for coins, and keep them. I squeezed George round his neck until he grunted. Then my father took out his handkerchief, dusted me off, and wiped his eyes. He clapped me on the back, climbed back on the wagon, then turned it around. “Be y’self.” His voice began to creak. “That’s all I’m askin’, Hawk.”

  Therewith, I bunched my shoulders, marching up a footpath along the hill, stiff from sitting so long in the wagon, but the path ended abruptly, leaving me standing near sawmills fallen into perdition, leaf-heavy trees, hot houses near Augean quarters—they once had been quarters, I decided, but were now rotting sheds that smelled worse than Hell on housecleaning day. Slouching women too old for the fields—Wolof and Fulah by their crimped faces—stirred clothing in their boiling pots with willow wands. I labored on through weeds, gulping air. The wind rolled through my hair. Griffinlike wolfhounds wuffed at my ashey ankles. Worksounds—sawing, hammering, the lilt of a spiritual struck up like a lay—whorled round my head in great humping arcs. Was I to work here? In this dreary factory? Each sound, blunted by the heat, stuck to me like a burr. Thereaway were trees that shot out branches favoring the writhing feelers at the front of a squid. Closer were summered-over yards full of soapwort and boneless snakes. Children waved. Whistled. Yoohooed. Away to the left were different strains of sunblackened slaves (Marabous and Griffe) tinkering with rickety plows, repairing mule harnesses, and one looked up with curiosity from the casket he was building as I stumbled along.

  “My name,” I told him, “is Andrew Hawkins. I’m here to see Flo Hatfield. Can you help me reach the house?”

  “You folks?” he asked, and I swallowed. This man or boy—he might have been either—had a hoarse, carrying voice, like a slab of granite grunting, that went through you, that burst inside your head like thought, or intelligence felt telepathically. He was obscenely bald like an egg, but his ears bristled with hair. His body, which ranged in color from coal black (arms) to brown (palms), was large, but not tall, with the look
of a wrestler who’d let himself go. On his cheeks was scarification. In his left nostril, a dull ring. This was Reb, I learned later. Leviathan’s Coffinmaker. He squeezed shut one eye asking again, “You folks, I say, or white people?”

  “Oh, folks,” I assured him. “Definitely folks.”

  “You ain’t folks or white,” he snorted. His eyes studied me. “You fresh meat, boy.” Two dirty children came up to stare at me, but the Coffinmaker waved them away. He lay his long saw down inside his casket, dusted his hands, then stood up. “Oh, she gonna like you awright—all that curly hair and them brown eyes. And that ain’t good.”

  “No?” My breath went out of me. “Why?”

  “C’mon.” Gently, Reb shoved me toward the house. I said no more, but stayed as close as I could to him, lugging my bag. Moving along like a wind-up doll, locomotively, both arms flat at his sides, he looked back at me and laughed. It was the laugh, you’d have thought, of a hangman. Had you entered with us that day, you’d have passed through outside odors arranged in a strata so that we moved, slowly like a funeral procession, from room to room through curtains of smells that included cabbage, hominy made from Indian corn, and fresh fish. You’d have seen a white-pillared doorway leaded with sidelights, then, as Reb stepped aside, an oak-paneled, high-ceilinged boudoir of whorehouse luxury.

  “She’s in there?” My voice was shaky. I offered him my hand. “Thank you.”

  “Boy,” he said, turning away. “You don’t wanna thank me.”

  He left me outside the door. Thinking I might charm this woman Flo Hatfield and thereby earn my quick return to Cripplegate, I breathed deeply to steady myself. Be steady, I thought, then, straightening my cravat with two fingers, I stepped slowly inside.

  III

  IN THE SERVICE OF THE SENSES

  After looking over Jonathan Polkinghorne’s letter, Flo Hatfield peered at me for perhaps a minute through a black lorgnette, first my dusty boots, then my lap, and, finally, my face before she intoned:

  “Well, you are here now, Andrew Hawkins. And I will not send you home. You shall work. However, it is vital that you know a few things about Leviathan. And me.”

  She settled herself more comfortably on a long horsehair sofa with round, tasseled pillows, both her knees drawn up, then made a pause, which I dared not break. So here was Flo Hatfield, wearing clothes of a period I could not place, but the material was embroidered to look like a landscape—forests and fauna—and cut tightly over an extraordinary bosom. She was a beautiful woman. A sumptuous woman with a little red mouth, and an uptilted nose. I placed her age at forty. Forty-five. In the darkening room her face looked at first sharp and highly stylized, then old and spidered with wrinkles. Arranged in broad basket plaits, ornamented with pearls, her brown hair made her appear, in twilight silting through windows of storied glass, much older than her hands, which had a vegetable sensuality that, at first, frightened me. You would have thought Flo Hatfield had found a way of speaking that perfectly twisted the English tongue to fit her voice, which was deep and steamy: a kind of soft, deer language. And what of her boudoir? It was, in the truest sense, Decadent. Lush curtains near her door resembled paired Ionic columns. Closed in comfortably by chairs with cabriole legs, her paintings, and a bust of Dionysius, Flo Hatfield lounged, feeding herself an egg from a demitasse cup, swinging her left foot, her head thrown back against the cushions of her sofa. I did not so much listen to her words as I listened to Flo. She made me feel larval and lazy. She had a way of stroking her breasts up, letting them fall back, then looking—all innocence—at me for my reaction. A nerve trembled in the center of my belly. I kept my eyes on the plates and bric-a-brac behind her, to the left, and she said:

  “Leviathan belonged to my late husband Henry. It is a profitable affair for me, Andrew, but I sometimes find it necessary to hire our people out to the mines during off-season.” A grin, elastic, tightened around her mouth. “We work well together here,” she said. “I am Leviathan’s sovereign, its soul. All others are, in a manner of speaking, the joints, tendons, nerves, and tissues that sustain the soul. You have read Jeremy Bentham? No? Well, no matter. Leviathan supports, oh, fifty slaves and that human sloth Earl, my second husband. I have been,” she watched me narrowly, “married eleven times—I’m sure I hold some kind of record. Does that surprise you, Andrew?”

  “No,” I said. “I mean, I think it generous, very Christian of you to support your last husband.”

  Laughing, her teeth flashed white. “Each year I send Earl five hundred thrips inside a mule, Andrew.”

  “In a mule, I heard you say, ma’am?”

  “Yes, we mix the money in with their feed.” Flo Hatfield’s cackle went through me like a shock. “You see, I never just let a man walk out of my life. This doesn’t,” she asked, “seem cruel to you, does it, Andrew?”

  “Oh no.” I could feel my smile freezing. Hereupon, I plaited the right leg of my trousers with my right hand. “Whatever you think is fair.”

  “I’m so glad you see it that way.” She clapped her hands twice, why I didn’t know, but lifting her arms—her armpits were stippled black from shaving—also lifted her breasts, which fell again. She caught me staring and smiled. Head cocked to the left, sly, she leaned back, turning a brilliant ring on her finger, watching me watch her cleveage, and said, “I am selfish, Andrew—I know my faults and virtues—and I stay dissatisfied. Often, I believe I was born on another planet, perhaps Venus, which is a world of spoiled, pampered women, who are all geniuses of love, ravishing and forever young, but somehow, by some terrible cosmic accident, I was brought here by slavers, millions of miles from my true home and sisters. I knew a monstrous error had been made when, as a girl in Georgia, I took a hard look at the great soft toads who called themselves my parents. I felt a bit like a changeling. Does that make any sense to you?”

  “Yes.” I wiped sweat from my brow with the back of my hand. “You’re an artist, Mrs. Hatfield.”

  She brightened. “You can tell?”

  “The thrips inside the mule gave you away.” She saw me perspiring and pulled from under her pillows a lace handkerchief scented with patchouli. “Creative types,” I offered, “often feel so…misplaced.”

  “You are charming,” smiled Flo Hatfield. “And I like your breeding. Jonathan has done handsomely by you.”

  “It was my tutor Ezekiel,” I said, “And you are too kind.”

  Into this steamy room came some species of butler—a young man close to my age, but well-heeled, and with a voice like a tuba. He had an easy, loose-hinged walk. His face was clean-shaven, with an explosion of dreadlocks like the cowboy Nat Love. He saw me sitting by Flo and stopped. He took two steps back, then, looking from Flo to me, holding a tray with a glass and a decanter of Bordeaux, he asked—a whisper—“You wanted refreshments?”

  “For both of us, Patrick, yes,” she said. “Will you get Andrew a glass?”

  “Get him a glass, too?”

  Flo dipped into her egg cup, finished it, then licked the back of her spoon as Patrick watched. “That’s what I said.” Angling upward, her gaze crossed his, and for a second I thought her look was to reassure him. His shoulders relaxed. “And before you go,” added Flo, “please measure Andrew for a new wardrobe, something like what you’re wearing—he looks as if he lifted his clothes off a scarecrow.” She wound hair close to her ear around one finger, watching Patrick’s reaction to me. She seemed, I thought, to swell, growing larger on her sofa as he glared back at me, feeding on his anxiety. And after a second: “What kind of wage did you have in mind, Andrew?”

  “Mrs. Hatfield.” I sat up with a jerk. “Maybe I should tell you my purpose for coming here. In a year’s time I hope to earn enough to buy my parents and the girl I wish to marry”—I felt her stiffen at the word “marry,” and, as I said it aloud, I felt silly—“from Master Polkinghorne.”

  “Well!” Flo Hatfield said violently. “Do you mean to say that you love this girl?”