The Journeyer - Jennings Gary (книга читать онлайн бесплатно без регистрации .TXT) 📗

“I have your Buddha’s tooth, Marco-wallah.”

That was the very first thing the little Raja said to me when we first met the next day, and he said it about as cheerfully as he might have said, “I have a murderously aching tooth.”

“Already, Your Highness? Why, that is wonderful. You said it might take some while to find.”

“I thought it would,” he said pettishly.

I understood his rancorous demeanor when he shoved at me a basket and I looked in. It was piled half full of teeth, most of them yellowed and mossy and carious, quite a few of them still bloody at the root, and some of them identifiably not even human—dogs’ fangs and pigs’ tushes.

“More than two hundred there,” the little Raja said sourly. “And people are still arriving with more, from all points of the horizon. Men, women, even holy naga mendicants, even one temple sadhu. Gr-r-r. You can present a Buddha’s tooth not only to your Raja Khakhan. You can give one to every Buddhist of your acquaintance.”

I tried not to laugh, for his anger was justified. He had boasted of his people’s honesty and of their devotion to their Hindu faith, and here they came in flocks to confess that they possessed a relic of the discredited Buddhist religion—meaning they had to lie about it, besides.

Holding my face impassive, I inquired, “Am I expected to pay a reward for every one of these?”

“No,” he said, gritting his own teeth. “I am doing that. The cursed reprobates come in the front door, hand their counterfeit tooth to the steward, and are passed on out the back door to where the Court Executioner is rewarding them with fervent enthusiasm in the rear courtyard.”

“Your Highness!” I exclaimed.

“Oh, I am not according them the karavat,” he hastened to assure me. “That is reserved for men who have done crimes of some account. Also it takes a bit of time, and we would never have done with this procession.”

“Adrio de mi. I can hear the wretches screaming from here.”

“No, you cannot,” he growled. “They are being very quietly dispatched with a wire loop whipped around the throat and yanked. What you hear is that other fraud—that degenerate old Yogi, still screeching in the kitchen. No one has yet been able to get him loose from his clinging rock yoni. We have tried greasing him with cooking fats, softening him with sesame oil, shrinking him with boiling water, wilting him by various natural means—surata by the nach girl, buccal blandishment by his boy assistant—nothing works. We may have to break the sacred yoni stone, and what revenge the goddess Parvati will inflict, I dare not think about.”

“Well, I will not sympathize with the Yogi. But the tooth bringers, Your Highness—it really is a trivial misdemeanor they have tried to commit, and in a trivially witless way. These teeth they brought would not fool even me, let alone a Buddhist.”

“That is what is especially deplorable! My people’s imbecility! That they would shame their Raja and insult their religion, and with trickery so transparent. They are incapable even of a decent crime. Dying is too good for them! They will only be reborn immediately in some lesser form—if there is any.”

I frankly believed that any depletion of the Hindus could only improve the planet, but I did not want the little Raja later to realize how severely he had depopulated his realm, and be dismayed, and maybe hold me to blame for it. I said:

“Your Highness, as your guest I formally request that the surviving imbeciles be spared, and any newcomers turned away before they also can perjure themselves. This was, after all, the fault of an apparent omission in Your Highness’s proclamation.”

“Mine? An omission? Are you suggesting I am at fault? That a Brahman and a Maharajadhiraj Raj can have a fault?”

“I think it was only an understandable oversight. Since Your Highness is of course aware that the Buddha was a man nine forearms tall, and that any tooth of his must have been as big as a drinking cup, Your Highness no doubt assumed that all your people likewise knew that.”

“Hm. You are right, Marco-wallah. I did take for granted that my subjects would remember that detail. Nine forearms, eh?”

“Perhaps an amended proclamation, Your Highness …”

“Hm. Yes. I will issue one. And I will mercifully pardon the dolts already here. A good Brahman kills no living thing, however lowly, unless it is necessary or expedient.”

He called for his steward, and gave the instructions for the proclamation, and commanded also an end to the procession through the rear courtyard. When he returned to me, he was restored to quite good humor.

“There. It is done. A good Brahman host acquiesces in his guest’s wishes. But enough of dull business and sober care! You are a guest, and you are not being entertained!”

“Oh, but I am, Your Highness. Constantly.”

“Come! You shall admire my zenana.”

I half expected him to fling open his dhoti diaper and expose something nasty, but he only reached up and took my arm and began walking me toward a far wing of the palace. As he escorted me through a succession of sumptuously furnished rooms, inhabited by females of various ages and various hues of brown, I realized that zenana must be the local word for an anderun—the apartments of his wives and concubines. The women of mature age I found no more attractive than I had Tofaa or the nach dancers, and they were mostly surrounded by swarms of children of all sizes. But some of the little Raja’s consorts were mere girls themselves, and not yet gross of flesh or vulturine of eye or corvine of voice, and some were delicately pretty in a dark-skinned way.

“I am frankly a bit surprised,” I remarked to the little Raja, “that Your Highness has so many wives. From your evident aversion to the Lady Tofaa, I had rather assumed …”

“Ah, well, if she had been your wife, as I first thought, I should have plied you with concubines and nach girls to distract you, while I seduced that lady to surata. But a widow? What man wishes to couple with a cast-off husk—a dead-woman-waiting-to-die—when there are so many still-juicy wives of one’s own and of others to be had, and also so many newly-budding virgins?”

“Yes. I see. Your Highness is a manly man.”

“Aha! You took me for a gand-mara, did you? A man-lover and a woman-hater? For shame, Marco-wallah! I grant you that, like any sensible man, for longtime companionship I prefer a quiet and mannerly and compliant boy. But one has one’s duties and obligations. A Raja is expected to maintain a teeming zenana, so I do. And I dutifully service them in regular rotation, even the youngest, as soon as they have had their first flow.”

“They are married to Your Highness before their first menstruum?”

“Why, not just my wives, Marco-wallah. Every girl in India. The parents of any daughter are anxious to get her married off before she is a woman, and before any mishap to her virginity, which would make her unmarriageable. For another reason, every time a daughter has her flow, her parents are guilty of the hideous crime of letting die an embryo that might prolong the family line. It is well said: If a girl is unwed by the age of twelve, her ancestors in the other world are mournfully drinking the blood she sheds every month.”

“Well said, yes.”

“However, to return to the subject of my own wives. They enjoy all the traditional wifely rights, but those do not include any queenly rights, as in less civilized and more debile monarchies. The women take no part in my court or my rule. It is well said: What man would heed the crowing of a hen? This one here, for instance, this is my premier wife and my titular Maharani, but she never presumes to sit on a throne.”

I bowed politely to the woman and said, “Your Highness.” She only gave me the same look of dull detestation she had given her Raja husband. Still trying to be polite, I indicated the dark-brown swarm about her, and added, “Your Highness has some handsome princes and princesses.”