My Fearful Symmetry Page 7

  “Is this sharp?” I tested it. The blade had been dulled and the tip blunted.

  He proceeded to teach me a dance that simulated combat. “Pay close attention, Shardul. A sharpened sword is used in actual performance. Only perfect timing achieved by proper counting will protect you and your partner from injury. Part of the thrill for spectators is betting on whether someone will end up decapitated or bleeding to death.”

  We went through a drill of steps and arm movements using the swords, over and over, until I’d learned the combination. Then we went at one another with the weapons. Sure the moves were choreographed, but it didn’t take long to figure out that with a little training I could be deadly with a real blade in my hand. I improvised and managed to force Avijit to the ground, knocking his sword from his hand. Laughing, I pressed the blunt tip of mine to his throat.

  He lay there panting. His painted eyes narrowed at me. “You could hurt someone like this, you buffoon.”

  “Aw, c’mon, it’s just a bit of fun. Lighten up.” I drew the point back from the adept’s neck and traced the whirling tattoos on his chest. “It’s not like I can stake you through the heart with this.”

  I offered my hand. He pushed the sword aside and rose to his feet, drawing his dignity about him—as much dignity as someone five-foot-four and wearing more makeup than Boy George can manage. Sometimes, I found it difficult to remember he was some one hundred and thirty years my senior.

  “This is all a joke to you, isn’t it?” He pulled on his choga and smoothed out the silk folds. “We have a few months in which to turn out an accomplished artist, and you behave like a child.”

  “I’m sorry, Avijit. Let’s try it again. I promise to behave.”

  He glared at me. “I’m done with you. Practice on your own.” Avijit flounced out with his red robe flapping behind him.

  Sandhya came into the hall, a look of displeasure on her face. “What did you do?”

  “Just having a laugh.”

  She whacked me hard on the back of the head. “Grow up Cedric, this is serious business. Go and get your instrument. We will practice the new song we have been working on.”

  Sandhya expressed pleasure with my musical talent and voice, but I found the caterwauling singing style she taught worse than being forced to listen to a Yoko Ono marathon. The sitar was the ultimate cool in musical instruments, still I longed for the guitar Raj bought me just before we’d left London. My Stratocaster languished in my master’s quarters, as Kalidasa disliked all modern noise. Even the chief elder’s fleet of motor vehicles was kept in a garage deep in the bowels of the palace so the sound of their engines wouldn’t disturb his illusion of the past.

  My guru, as I was instructed to call her, assigned me books to read and started me on languages. Immortyls lived on every continent, and I’d be expected to entertain representatives of all thirteen houses. Aside from the music, I liked this part best. If things had gone differently in my life I would have gone to University, and my eager brain benefited from my teacher’s knowledge of so many things like art, literature, and world events.

  “Conversation is expected of us,” Sandhya said, as we sat in the ashram library, looking over yellowed scrolls that comprised something commonly known as The Code. “An adept must understand Immortyl history and politics, the laws and customs that govern us. It is important to be a good listener. You won’t voice your opinion, but you must be able to follow the thread in order to make some intelligent contribution toward keeping the dialogue flowing.”

  “Who wrote this Code?”

  “Lord Liu, the elder you will entertain after your debut.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “Gracious and generous, a true admirer of our art, but he also demands adherence to tradition and form. If you impress him, Raj may finally have a territory of his own.”

  “And we won’t have to live here anymore?”

  An indecipherable look passed over Sandhya’s face. “Raj would be expected to spend the majority of his time in Thailand to oversee the businesses and properties in question. Members of his household would also reside there to serve him.”

  The prospect of getting out of this place made me determined to give this Liu character the ride of his life. Seeing a speck of light at the end of this very dark tunnel, I applied myself to my studies and did my best not to antagonize my teacher.

  Many hours of my training consisted of learning ceremonies at table and in the bedchamber, all the tedious details that turned domestic service into an experience for the senses. How to pour and serve refreshments, arrange flowers, and perfume the sheets to enhance enjoyment. Sandhya stood there dictating as I practiced pouring from a golden pitcher for what seemed the thousandth time. “All must be done with finesse and grace, always aware that you are an object of beauty surpassing the precious things you handle. Lift your elbow a bit. The line is more graceful that way. Mind your sleeve.”

  “How many times must we do this? My arm is about to fall off.”

  “Modulate your voice. A man who whines is most unattractive.”

  I pitched my voice into that ticklish tone Avijit used while speaking and congratulated myself that I sounded more masculine. “We’ve been at this for over an hour.”

  “Enough then, follow me. Don’t stamp your feet like one of the guards. Tread lightly as a cat. You must never disturb the masters’ environment.”

  I followed her outside to the spring. A full moon illuminated the courtyard. The area around Kali’s statue benefited from the addition of artificial light concealed in the trees. Nighttime trills and cries from the jungle filled the air. Sandhya carried a little carved chest in her arms. She halted at the stone benches ringing the pool.

  “What exactly is in all those bottles and jars in there?” I asked, as she set the chest on a bench.

  “Elixirs and hallucinogens to heighten passion and free inhibition. Perfumes. Oils. Lubricants. Paints to adorn the face and body. Sit down. Tonight, you will learn how to adorn yourself.”

  I’d learned to obey her at once or get cracked on the back of the head. With all the rings she wore, it really hurt. I took a seat as she took out pots and brushes and set them between us on the bench.

  She gave me a hand mirror and demonstrated the traditional makeup on my face.

  I chafed at the process, fidgeting as she painted around my eyes with shimmering black kohl. I worried I’d end up a right mess when she was done. My fears were realized when she smeared my lips with a reddish paste. I looked like the Joker from Batman—worse a green-eyed Joker with ginger hair.

  She tilted her head and frowned at the effect. “The lip color is all wrong for you. There’s never been an adept with red hair before. We must come up with a better shade.” She sat on the stone bench and measured out and ground up ingredients, using a little mortar and pestle. I swore she kept more things in that chest than Mary Poppins did in her carpetbag.

  She mixed the powdered pigments into a base of beeswax and oil, coming up with a tint that was more along the line of sienna. She wiped off my lips and repainted them.

  I looked in the mirror to see the result. The new color complimented my complexion much better. I looked rather glam, I decided, like a young Bowie maybe, only prettier. “Wicked.”

  Her lips pulled to the side in a thoughtful grimace. “You are so damned pale. In some circles it is preferred, but here a golden skin is prized. There must be a way to enhance your pallor. I must search the ashram stores for something.”

  Next she poured a greenish-brown powder into a bowl of water and mixed a paste with a spoon. I couldn’t imagine what she meant to do with it.

  “What’s that muck? Looks like the peacock shit in the garden.”

  “Henna, to apply mystical symbols whose meanings are known only to we adepts. Disrobe please and lie on your belly.”

  I draped myself over another bench and grinned over my shoulder at her. “You going to spank my naughty little bum?”

  I tho
ught I saw the corners of her mouth twitch a little, but her eyes remained all business. “Keep your dirty thoughts to yourself. Lie still!” She did smack my bottom, just once and oh-so-lightly. Ah, heaven.

  She painted the symbols all over me. The henna squeezed out through a tube-like instrument onto my skin like frosting on a birthday cake. Much of her energy concentrated on my back, where she laboriously decorated along my spine.

  “Why all this fuss with my back?”

  “The line of a male adept’s back is considered highly erotic. Yours is so damned long.”

  “Why the back?”

  She just snorted in reply.

  You can imagine how this process felt, with her feather-light hands on my all-too-eager body. It was torture, nothing less. Once the paste dried, she rubbed off the residue with a cloth, leaving the elaborate patterns stained into my skin.

  Afterward, she drew the same symbols with a stick in the damp earth around the spring, explaining in detail the meaning and significance of each. She made me draw them in the same manner and repeat their meaning aloud, again and again, until I’d memorized them. Then she used the stick to erase them from the dirt.

  A series of notes from a songbird fluted down from the jungle canopy. Awakening birds and monkeys chattered above our heads, alerting us that dawn approached. Sandhya led me inside to her room and sat me at a dressing table in front of a tri-fold mirror.

  She arranged combs, hairbrushes, and a spool of fine metallic thread onto the polished surface. “Aside from the henna, which must be done by another and lasts several weeks, from now on the adornment process will be part of your nightly toilette.”

  That didn’t thrill me, but I remembered to lower my voice to an even tone. “Must I go around looking like a drag queen every night? I mean, I get that it’s part of the costume and all. I’m okay with that—but c’mon.”

  “As long as you dwell within these walls, or when entertaining elsewhere, you will be painted. The paint is like a mask that preserves the mystique of Shakti’s earthly representative. You will not be painted while traveling or in mortal company, of course.” She gathered my hair up in her hands. “Your hair must grow longer still. It should flow over the shoulders like a prince’s cloak.” She brushed it back from my face and braided little bits of it, wrapping it up in the shiny thread. “Such beautiful hair…like spun copper. There is a bolt of green silk in the storeroom with such embroidery. It would suit you well. I will have it made into a costume for you.”

  Sandhya hummed a tune as she fussed over my hair, like a mother might with a child. I wondered if she’d ever been married. In India, it still wasn’t uncommon to marry young. She looked like she’d made it at least to sixteen or seventeen before Raj took her, but her demeanor suggested a woman much older and wiser. A million questions about my guru bounced around my brain, and I sensed she was in a mood where she might be receptive to answer.

  “Sandhya…how long have you been like this?”

  “An adept?”

  “An Immortyl.”

  “Nearly one hundred and fifty years.”

  “Then Raj must have taken you early on?”

  The face behind mine in the mirror saddened. “Yes…”

  “What?”

  “Nothing…it was so many years ago.”

  She and Raj obviously had a history. I suspected she still loved him, even a century and a half later. Yet, he’d never even mentioned her name to me in the six months he and I lived together in London. I imagined how difficult it must have been for her to be forced to train her successors. My respect for her grew. Sandhya behaved like a real lady, a class act all around.

  She shook herself out of her momentary funk and tied a ribbon around my head to hold my hair back from my face. “There. When you’ve taken your vows you will wear a jeweled band to hold it in place.” She came round in front of me and raised my chin up in her hand, blending the rouge on my cheekbones.

  I gazed into her velvety eyes. “I can’t imagine living such a long time. How strange it must be to see the world change.”

  Sandhya drew back and titled her head to the side to scrutinize my appearance. “Mostly from afar. I’ve lived here in the ashram, and only have left the walls of this palace when Kalidasa wanted me to entertain elsewhere.”

  “Don’t you ever want to live out there? Don’t you wonder what you might be missing?”

  Tightness pinched her mouth down. “I serve the Mother.That is enough for me.”

  Somehow, I didn’t think so. Sandhya kept herself on a tight leash, but man if she ever let it all go, I wanted to be there. “I don’t know about you, but I want to see the world. I want to travel every bit of it. I want to live long enough to travel into outer space.”

  She shook her head and packed up the combs and brushes in the wooden chest. I stood. Shaking out my robe behind me, I wandered to the carved screen by the window. Rosy tendrils of light crept down through the jungle’s foliage. The choir of birds and beasts out there rose to a crescendo. A wild longing overtook me. My soul felt as pent up as one of Kalidasa’s tigers.

  “There is one thing I’m beginning to miss…about being mortal. I never thought much about it, since I was such a creature of the night before. There were Sundays when my mate Ricky and I went to the park, just to hang out and watch girls. I had to stay out of the sun, or I’d end up lobster red and freckled, but I liked the way it looked on the trees or in a girl’s hair. Every morning now, I battle this insane urge to go out into the sunlight. I stand there just staring out of these screens. We wouldn’t burst into flame, would we, like in the movies?”

  “No, but it will kill you.” She laid a gentle hand on my shoulder. “You must never give into this urge, no matter how much it torments you. It is a kind of madness to which some succumb.”

  “Raj also says serious wounds to the head or heart or burning until the body is consumed.”

  She led me away from the window. “And complete abstinence from human blood, if you don’t feed or are bled completely, you will die.”

  “It has to be human?”

  She nodded. “Sometimes you will be called upon to choose a suitable victim for a lover’s repast. Mortals are kept on hand here for this purpose. They are blood sacrifices to the Mother, and this will bring them better karma in the next life.”

  I laughed it off. “That’s a load of bollocks. Convenient isn’t it, to make a religious ceremony out of murder?”

  Sandhya’s face shadowed with worry. She made a sign over her person. “You should heed your tongue, Cedric. Kalidasa received the blood from the Goddess herself, and he does not tolerate heretics. They are staked outdoors before dawn and their bones left to the tigers. It is a horrible death. The flesh feeds upon itself.”

  “You’ve seen this?”

  She nodded. Kalidasa had thought out everything. The fat leech styled himself semi divine and entrenched himself in superstition to protect his position. Who knew where or how he’d actually been infected? This thing had to be a disease of some kind, maybe a virus. I knew from personal experience the way viruses could seriously fuck things up. AIDS used to mean an automatic death sentence, and even if treated it’s life altering.

  “Suppose there was a cure for the bloodlust, and we could go out in the sun again?”

  She pressed her fingers to my lips. “Banish such thoughts from your head and never speak them. You will get yourself executed.”

  Our eyes met. I drowned in those fathomless pools. My fingers clasped around hers. Turning her hand up, I kissed her palm. Her mouth parted. She didn’t snatch her hand away, as I might have expected, or whack me with it. She just lowered it and shook her head. “You must go to your room now, Cedric.”

  She pushed me out of her door, back to my adjoining cell. I groaned when she slid the bolt on the other side. Like I was going to ravish her or something? I turned toward my hard pallet, forgetting to duck my head. “Ouch!”

  I threw myself on the cot, feet dangling over th
e end. Just knowing she was on the other side of the door made me randy. Drawing up into a fetal position, I loosened the drawstring of my trousers to relieve my tension. I’d gotten too used to sleeping with Raj and having it off at all hours. Immortyl desires are stronger than those of mortals, and to become Immortyl as a teenager only made it worse. All this denial wore me down. I decided Sandhya must be a sadist. All the intricate tortures devised by the old Marquis himself couldn’t hold a dripping hot candle to the violence she did with a glance.

  Next door, Sandhya whispered fevered prayers. She might as well have shouted them. I heard everything. Kali glowered in judgment of me from her altar across the room. That killed the mood. I wished I had a pillow under which to bury my head. My guru’s chanting grew louder and more impassioned. No matter what I did, I couldn’t escape all this religion.

  * * * *

  The adept’s calling forced me to endure hours of tedious ceremonies and prayers. Sandhya impressed upon me that an adept’s primary function was temple devotee or devidasa, literally a servant to the goddess. I observed Sandhya and the other four adepts in residence, celebrating a sunset ritual around the spring. My participation was forbidden, as I hadn’t yet taken my vows. Avijit did most of the honors, with Sandhya assisting in the chanting and smearing of spices.

  He left afterward in the company of another male adept and the two women, Padma and Sita, to wait upon their master Kalidasa. Once they left, Sandhya sat me down in the ashram library for the evening’s devotional instruction.

  I tried my best to be attentive and polite, resisting the urge to roll my eyes. All this transmigration of souls and reincarnation sounded as unbelievable as the religious instruction I’d received at school. But I didn’t want to get my nose broken again. So, in the spirit of respect for my teacher, I listened to her tales about the gods’ and goddesses’ millions of forms and avatars and what these taught us. The stories made sense to me on an allegorical level. It wasn’t such a bad thing to have cultural traditions and ceremonies to celebrate life events. I didn’t have a problem with that. But when she suggested our degradation was a holy act, I couldn’t help laughing out loud. “You can’t tell me that bending over for them is some kind of sacrament!”