Istvan put the figure down gingerly.
“You are a man of good judgment,” Chandra commended him. “You know how to profit from good advice, so you will be rewarded. If you wish to buy, and cheaply, a genuine work of art, a few centuries old, take that stone head the peddler woman uses to weigh down the plastic. It has a chipped ear and a dented nose — we can bargain for it — but it is the only piece worth anything. Do not look at it so eagerly. I will buy it for you.”
Chandra asked about a heavy silver necklace, haggled for a moment, then, as if resigned to defeat, reached for a copper lamp that he also rejected as too expensive. Just as he seemed on the point of leaving, he pointed the end of his shoe carelessly at the battered head.
“And how much for that?”
The Tibetan woman did not want to antagonize him by naming too high a price. She was afraid they would go away without buying anything. So she raised both hands and spread her fingers:
“Only ten.”
“Good!” said Chandra. “Take five and be glad of it. This rubbish is not worth that much.”
He did not even bend over, but waited for her to kneel and hand it to him. He frowned as he passed a finger over the nicks in the stone.
“Very well, sahib,” she said. “My loss. Please take for luck. Today I almost give away, tomorrow I make profit. It is from a temple. Very, very old.”
“In that case I will not take it. Do you know that carrying away old sculptures is not permitted? And still you say that you are losing. And I wanted you to sell something, at least. It would have been useful as a paperweight, but I can use any stone for that. No, I will not take it.”
“Sahib will buy—”
“No, for you ought to know that you may be able to swindle someone, but not me. Look: a chip. A dent…”
“Sahib, three rupees.” She held up three fingers on her left hand.
“No. I have changed my mind. Let’s go—” he turned to the counselor.
“Two rupees. One—” she begged. “Take without money, as gift. Do me great favor.”
They stopped and turned back. Chandra took the head with an indifferent air.
“Heavy,” he sighed as if disenchanted, and handed it to Terey. Nevertheless he groped in his pocket, took out two rupees and tossed them to the bowing peddler.
“Gift for gift.” He glanced at her as if with reluctance.
“I am happy.” She bent over, pressing her fists to her chest in Chinese style.
They left. Istvan was delighted as he looked at his prize: the heavy lips in a somnolent smile, the eyes with their tolerant, complacent gaze, the impeccable lines of the elegantly secured hair. The flaws only heightened the charm of the old sculpture. He touched it delicately with his fingertips, as if its wounds could feel pain. A raindrop from a tree fell onto the stone and flowed over one smooth cheek like a tear, leaving a trace of wetness. A beautiful head! Suddenly he felt grateful to Chandra, who was saying in a low, melodious voice:
“There is a great deal of the child in you; you are capable of taking pleasure in anything. Really — do not give me back the two rupees. Rather it is I who should be embarrassed that I took the liberty of offering you such a trifle.”
“You know that the delight this bit of sculpture evokes is beyond price.”
“Some herdsman must have broken it from a temple frieze,” Chandra mused. “He pried at it with a crowbar and chipped the ear. The head fell off and rolled down from the upper floors of the pagoda. It hit the stones and dented the nose. I suspect that the peddler did not pay a penny for it, but received it as a makeweight or gratuity. She did someone a favor by taking it. The thought of buying such a piece of sculpture would never even have crossed my mind. What would I buy it for? So my eyes would always be lighting on that head — that head, which came into being a couple of hundred years before me and will still be here when I am gone, when my ashes mingle with the Ganges slime.”
“But you believe, you should find comfort in it…” Istvan looked at him in amazement.
“Comfort — that beauty can be destroyed by nothing more than a little stupidity and greed? He was not even thinking of the possibility of selling it; he tended goats and he was bored. He climbed onto the temple wall to grapple with the stone figures. He did not even know that he had knocked off a god’s head. Do I believe?” he said meditatively. “In what? That there is something indestructible in me, a breath of immortality, a spark which will return to life, grown over with new and ever-varying flesh? If that will not be myself, Chandra, what concern is it of mine? If I lose the memory of my own acts, merits, and faults, how can they influence my fate?
“The return of the reincarnated,” he mused, “greeting the world with tears and cries, the despair of the infant who has lost its knowledge of itself and must begin all over creating its personality. I tell you, I do not believe, and the moment of fear when the thought of eternal existence rears its head I consider a weakness unworthy of a man. One must have the courage to say to oneself: I am condemned and there is no salvation. Every day gently but relentlessly brings me closer to the threshold of night, the darkness which will finally close over me. That is scientific truth, after all, and you are taught it in school. And you yourself—”
They walked through cascades of sunlight that gushed between the treetops, through the succulent smells of greenery and earth that steamed as if from the breath of an unclean animal above them. Istvan tasted fear. He saw the wise smile of the stone head he was cradling in his hands, and Chandra’s hungry eyes.
“No,” he contradicted the lawyer passionately. “I believe.”
“Certainly.” Chandra was letting him dodge the issue, was offering him a way out. He need do nothing but be quiet and enjoy the gift. “You are a poet. You believe in the immortality of gracefully ordered words.”
“I believe in God.” He was amazed himself at the gravity with which he made the pronouncement. Chandra paused.
“You are right. Each of us can be a god. But that takes courage. That god of yours as well was only a man. You see — I am a god without disciples, for if they are submissive, they are boring. I leave behind those I have won over; I am only attracted by those who resist. I test them, I fulfill their dreams. I try to ascertain whether they truly possess what I could not buy or obtain by request. And what contempt I feel for them when they surrender to me, giving themselves over with the trust of chickens who peck up grain, lured to the feet of the cook even when he does not hide his knife!”
“But you went to Benares seeking purification.”
“So our babbling friend the rajah said. I went because a tale was going around about a pious man who returned from beyond the threshold,” he said pointedly. “I wanted to verify it, and I recognized the deceased.” He laughed silently. “I reminded him of his past, and the liberated one returned with alacrity to his abandoned assets.”
“So he is really the rajah’s brother?”
“If you do not trust the verdict of the court, you must believe God. After all, I myself resurrected him. I. I. I called him out of darkness and if I like, I can push him back into it. That is the cruelty of resurrection: the one who receives the gift of life is also under sentence. He does not want to remember that, but I know the day of his demise and that amuses me.”
“And yet you demand to be paid.”
“But why not, since I rid people of difficulties? I do not need money for myself, but to secure the happiness of others. I enjoy fulfilling their requests, their dreams, and I watch as they stand troubled and helpless with the longed-for gifts of fate, not knowing what to do or where to turn.”