Victory City(15)

“And before death comes for me,” Chukka said, “I want to rule the kingdom of Nellore. Or at least to take command of that, as a beginning.”

“If death comes for us,” Pukka Sangama reasoned, “it will be sent in our direction by our brothers Bukka and Hukka. I’d like to send the exterminating angel in their direction before they send him in ours. After that we can worry about ghosts.”



* * *



—

Commander Shakti, Commander Adi, and Commander Gauri, the three intrepid palace officers assigned to guard but also to spy on the three departing Sangamas, were known as the Sisters of the Mountains (although they were not really sisters), because their names were also those of three of the many forms of the goddess Parvati, daughter of Himalaya, the King of the Mountains—and their air of authority was so irresistible that it was inevitable that the recently reformed bandits should fall in love with them.

In their dreams each brother saw his personal Sister beckoning to him, issuing erotic challenges and making sweet promises of rewards. Chukka Sangama, the most extroverted, even aggressive, of the three brothers, met his match in Commander Shakti, in whose name the dynamic energy of the cosmos was contained. “Chukka, Chukka,” Shakti whispered to him in his dreams, “I am lightning. Catch me if you can. I am the thunder and the avalanche, the transformation and the flow, the destruction and the renewal. I may be too much for you. Chukka, Chukka, come to me.” He was possessed by the thrill of her, but when he woke up she was standing spear in hand, stone-faced and impassive, at the door of the tent, not looking as if she had had the same dream.

Meanwhile Pukka Sangama, the cautious and rational one, dreamed of Commander Adi, who revealed herself to him as the eternal truth of the universe. “Pukka, Pukka,” she sighed, “I see that you are a seeker, and want always to know the meaning of things. I am the answer to all your questions. I am the how and why, the what and the when and the where. I am the only explanation that you need. Pukka, Pukka. Find me and you will know.” He awoke bright-eyed and eager, but there she was, beside her fellow Sister, spear in hand, impassive, at the door of the tent with a face that could have been carved in the hardest granite.

And Dev Sangama, the most beautiful brother and the least courageous, was visited by Commander Gauri, the most beautiful of all beings, and her dream-incarnation was four-armed, holding a tambourine and a trident, and her dream-skin was as white as snow, an analogy which came to Dev Sangama in his dream even though he had never once seen snow in his whole hot life. “Dev, Dev,” murmured Gauri, dripping her words like sweet poison into his sleeping ear, and shaking her tambourine, “your beauty makes you a worthy companion for me, but no mortal man can survive the devastating force of making love to a goddess. Dev, Dev, will you give up your life for a single night of celestial bliss?” And he awoke with the words of assent on his lips, yes, yes I will, yes, but there she was standing granite-faced beside her stony co-Sisters, as impassive as they were, with only two arms, no tambourine, and a spear, not a trident, in her hand.



* * *



—

When the Sisters of the Mountains were discussing matters they leaned in toward one another so that their heads touched, and they spoke in a private language. Some of the words were the everyday words the Sangama brothers could understand, like food and sword and river and kill. But there were many other words that were a complete mystery. Dev Sangama, the fearful one, became convinced that this was some sort of demon-language. In that army cantonment in which soldiers were listening to secret whispers whose source was unknown, acquiring individuality, memory, and history, and gradually turning into fully realized human beings, it was easy to believe that a kingdom of demons was being born, and that their elder siblings Hukka and Bukka had fallen under their spell. In the bright light of day he tried to convince Chukka and Pukka that they were in danger of losing their eternal souls and that the risks of a life on the highway stealing horses were smaller than the dangers of being the figurehead commanders of this occult military force. But at night when Sister Gauri visited him his fears were quelled and he longed only for her love. So he was torn, and as a result incapable of making any sort of radical decision, but did not abandon the plan.

Finally he asked Gauri about the unknown words and was told that this was the hidden language of security, the coded tongue which defeated the best efforts of any spying ears. In the language of security there were ordinary words for extraordinary things, a running stream might indicate a certain kind of cavalry advance, and a feast might be a slaughter; so even the words Dev could understand might have meanings he could not know. And at a higher level of safety there were new words, words that looked at individuals in battlefield terms, for example, so that the word for a man on the front line was not the same as the word for a man on the flanks, and there were chronology words too, describing people as beings moving in time, words that could make the difference, in war, between life and death. “Don’t worry about words,” Gauri told Dev. “Words are for word people. You are not a person of that type. Concern yourself only with deeds.” Dev was not sure whether or not this advice was a kind of insult. He suspected that it was, but he took no offense, being in the grip of love.

In the evenings the three Sangamas took their meals in the royal tent with the three Sisters. The brothers, coarsened by their outlaw lives, devoured heaped platters of roasted goat meat without any concern for religious niceties, goats slathered in chilies that made the men’s eyes water and their heads sweat and their copious hair stand on end. The women, by contrast, with grace and care ate delicately flavored vegetables, with the air of people who barely needed to eat. And yet it was plain to all six of them that these well-mannered angels were by far the more dangerous, and the men gazed upon them with an unfamiliar mixture of fear and desire, unable to express the desire because of the fear; and, so unmanned, tore into their goat legs with ever more barbaric ferocity, hoping that this would give them at least the appearance of masculinity. It was not clear to them if this gastronomic performance made any kind of favorable impression on the ladies, whose expressions remained enigmatic, even obscure.