Victory City(41)
“What I need around me,” Pampa Kampana decided, “is a lot more girls.”
It was a hard time to raise the subject of procreation. Her three daughters were having trouble dealing with the idea that their forest exile might not be brief, and might even last for the rest of their lives. The last things they wanted to discuss, as they neared their fortieth birthdays, were babies. They were shaken and uprooted, like trees in a hurricane. They were full of disbelief that their half-brother the new king would endanger them in this way, but at the same time they were old enough to know that when a king died the royal family’s most dangerous enemies were within the family circle. They were strong-minded women, with deep reserves of character, so they set their jaws and worked with great determination to make their new lives the best that they could be. “If we have to be junglees from now on,” Yotshna Sangama told her mother, “then we will be the most fearsome junglees anyone ever saw. That’s the jungle law, right? Either you’re on the top or you’re on the bottom. Eat or be eaten. I intend to be the hunter, not the prey.”
“We’re not at war here,” her mother reproved her gently. “We are accepted. We need only learn to coexist.”
Yes, there must be granddaughters, she thought; maybe even great-granddaughters. For obvious reasons this was something she had to keep to herself. She turned over in her mind the idea that some of her granddaughters might have Chinese blood, which would make possible a grand alliance with the Ming. She also feared that the old soldier to whom Yotshna was attracted might be too old for fatherhood. And Yuktasri, what of her?
As if to answer her question, her youngest daughter asked her as they sat around their campfire at night, “Are there other women in the forest? Sometimes at night I imagine I’m hearing laughter, songs, and shrieks. Are they human, or rakshasa demons?”
“There are almost certainly other women somewhere,” her mother replied. “Refugees like ourselves from one cruel kingdom or another, or just wild women of the wood, who have chosen to live their lives away from the coarse presumptuousness of men, or women who were abandoned by their mothers as babies at the forest’s edge and have known nothing else but the forest, having been suckled by wolves.”
“Good,” Yuktasri said emphatically. And oh, her mother thought. Oh.
10
It quickly became evident that the forest creatures meant them no harm. During those early days, the denizens of the forest came in groups to greet the newcomers. Snakes hung down from the trees, and bears and wolves all came to pay their respects. The drummer in the air welcomed them, Aranyani danced invisibly over their heads, and the atmosphere around them was festive. Gradually the members of their party relaxed, and Grandmaster Li and Haleya Kote accepted that it wasn’t necessary for one of them to stand guard at all times, and gave up the idea, which the four women had found more than a little patronizing anyway.
“This woodland festival to celebrate our arrival,” Pampa Kampana said ruefully, “reminds me of how things used to be in Bisnaga in the good old days.”
In the old days everyone in Bisnaga had celebrated everyone else’s festivals. At Christmas Pampa Kampana had put up a tree in the palace and asked Domingo Nunes to teach her the songs and prayers that praised his “three gods,” in their original language, and also what those alien words meant, adeste fideles, laeti triumphantes, translated into words she could understand. Baby Jesus became someone she could say she knew, a little bit, at least. And as for the followers of the “one god,” she prevented herself from ever saying that, in her opinion, just one god sounded much less interesting than her large and variegated pantheon of deities; instead, she invited the one-godly to take part in the festival of light, the festival of color, and the festival of nine nights celebrating the victory of the goddess Durga over the demon Mahish-asura, which was to say, the victory of good over evil, because, she argued, surely that was something everyone could celebrate, whatever their preferred mode of worship, and however singular or plural their gods might be. This was what she had wanted for Bisnaga, this cross-pollination, this mingling. Now that was all fading away. The crow and the parrot made repeated visits to the city and reported to her that tensions between the communities were running high. Now there were areas of town where it was not safe for the one-godly to go, and there were unprovoked assaults at night. The news broke her heart, but, she told herself, for the moment her business was here, building the future with her daughters, until history provided her with the springboard for her return.
In the forest the conventions of the outside world lost their meaning and melted away. There were no schedules or timetables. One ate when one was hungry and slept when one was tired. It was a theater in which one could discover oneself, invent oneself anew, or clarify oneself by meditation. Hopes hung on every branch. Fears were things to be controlled. Desires were there to be fulfilled.
Pampa Kampana spent much of her time meditating. Arajakta, the condition of being without kings, was held by philosophers to be equivalent to a state of chaos or disorder. Yet here in the forest, in the very place of arajakta, it felt like something closer to a state of grace. Could it be that the world would be better off without kings? But then the animal kingdom too chose chieftains, leaders of the pack, top dogs. So perhaps a better question was, how should such leaders be chosen? The animal way—by fighting—was not the best. Could there be a way—was it even possible?—to let the people choose?