Ch. 3: The Book in Vajraloka

“The wandering suitor walked for a long time,” said the vetala. “Seasons turned. The rains came and went. His sandals wore out and he went barefoot. And one evening, dusty and hungry, he came to a village called Vajraloka.

”It was the hour when householders feed guests, and the ascetic stood at the door of a Brahmin‘s house and asked for food, as wanderers do. The Brahmin received him courteously. He washed the stranger’s feet, gave him a seat in the courtyard, and called to his wife to bring the meal.

“Now, the wife was busy at the hearth, and she had a small child with her, and the child was tired and hungry and would not stop crying. It cried and cried, the way small children do at the end of a long day, a thin and endless wail. And as the ascetic sat waiting, the woman lost her patience in a way he had never seen. She snatched the child up and threw it into the blazing fire on the hearth.

” The ascetic leapt to his feet. The fire roared up. And then it was quiet, very quiet, and there was nothing in the hearth but flame. “

The king's step did not falter, but his hand tightened on the cold ankle at his chest.

”Do not fear, King,“ said the vetala. ”In this tale, fire is not always the end of things. Only listen.

“The ascetic stood there with his hair on end. ‘Brahmin,’ he said, and his voice shook, ‘I will not eat in this house. I will not take one grain of rice under a roof where such a thing is done. This is not a house. It is a demon’s den. '

” The householder did not grow angry. He only looked at his guest a long moment, as if weighing him. Then he said, ‘Wait. Sit down, and watch.’

“He went into an inner room and came back with a book, an old book, bound in boards and worn soft at the corners. He opened it, and found a certain page, and stood before the hearth and read aloud from it in a low voice. The ascetic did not understand the words. They were very old words, older than the verses he had learned as a boy. But as the householder read, a sweetness came into the room, like the smell of rain, and the fire on the hearth sank down and grew still. And out of it, whole and unharmed, rose the child, rubbing its eyes, as if it had only been asleep.

” The mother took it up in her arms. The child, being fed at last, stopped crying. The householder closed the book and put it back on its shelf in the inner room.

“‘Now,’ he said to his guest, ‘will you eat?’

” And the ascetic ate. But I think, King, he did not taste a single mouthful. All through the meal he was looking toward the inner room, toward the shelf where the book lay, and thinking of a heap of ashes on the bank of the Yamuna. “

”That night he lay down in the guest's corner of the house and did not sleep. He listened to the household settle. He listened to the breathing of the sleepers grow long and slow. And when the last lamp had gone out and the whole of Vajraloka was quiet, he rose without a sound, went into the inner room, felt along the shelf in the dark until his fingers closed on the worn boards of the book, and slipped out of the house into the night.

“I do not praise him for it, King. A guest who steals from his host has done a great wrong. But grief is a hard master, and he had been its servant a long time.

” He walked all that night and all the next day and on, on, back the way he had come. He no longer wandered. He knew exactly where he was going now. And at last he came again to Brahmasthala, and went down past the village to the burning ground by the Yamuna, and found there the little hut of leaves, sagging now and grey with smoke.

“The first suitor was there, sitting at the door of his hut, gaunt and wild-haired, like a man who had grown out of the ground.

” And as it happened, on that very day, the second suitor had come back too, footsore, burned dark by the sun of the eastern roads, his hands empty. He had given her bones to the Ganges. He had come back, he could not have said why, only that this was the last place in the world where she had been.

“So the three of them stood together again, there among the cold pyres, for the first time since the day she burned.

” ‘Help me,’ said the third suitor. ‘Take down this hut.’

“The first one stared at him. ‘Why?’

” ‘Because I have something to read over her,’ said the third, and he showed them the book. “

”They pulled away the branches and the leaves, and there was the heap of ash, grey and soft, the same that the first suitor had lain upon for so many nights. The third suitor took a handful of dust and sprinkled it over the ashes, as he had seen it done. Then he opened the book to the page he had marked, and began to read.

“The other two stood behind him, not daring to breathe.

” The same sweetness came that had come in the house at Vajraloka. The smoke of the burning ground drew back, as if it had been told to. The jackals stopped their noise. Over the heap of ashes a light began to gather, faint at first, like the grey before dawn, then warmer, then golden. The ashes stirred as though a wind were under them. They rose, and gathered, and took a shape.

“And there, where the heap of ash had been, Mandaravati sat up.

” She was not as she had been, King. She was more. The fever was gone from her face, and the weariness of dying, and it was as though the fire had burned away everything that was not gold. Her body shone like gold in the dull light. She looked about her at the burning ground, and at the three gaunt, ragged young men staring at her, and she did not know what had happened, nor why they were all weeping.

“For a moment, only a moment, the three of them were glad together.

” Then the third suitor stepped forward and said, ‘She is mine. It was my spell that brought her back. Without me she would still be ashes.’

“‘Yours?’ said the second, and his face went dark. ‘Her bones lay in the Ganges because of me. It was the virtue of the holy waters, which I sought out for her, that gave your spell anything to work upon. She is mine.’

” ‘Neither of you,’ said the first suitor, rising from where he had knelt, thin as a ghost himself. ‘I kept her ashes. I lay with them here in the cremation ground, night after night, in the cold and smoke, and did penance all that time. It was my austerity that kept her here to be called back. She is mine.’

“And so they quarrelled, there among the cold pyres, louder and louder, while the girl they had all loved stood in the middle of them, shining like gold, and said nothing at all.”