Presumably the old beggar had stopped her just before she brought him to spruzzo. The stone was held to him now simply by the stiffness of his organ. He stared down at that peg and its constricting hoop, and so did the by now slightly breathless nach girl, and so did we at the table, and the shouters against the wall, and all the servants in the dining room. The Yogi’s linga had attained to a respectable size, considering the man’s age and general scrawniness and beggarly debilitude. But it looked somehow strained and inflamed, bulging as it did from the narrow yoni of the stone it held firmly at his crotch.
The Yogi made several more gesticulations, but in a rather hurried and sketchy manner, and yammered a whole string of incantations, but in a rather strangled voice. Nothing happened that we could see. He glanced about at all of us, looking somewhat abashed, and glowered really hatefully at the nach girl, who was now humming indifferently and examining her fingernails, as if to say, “See? You should have used me.” The Yogi yelled some more at his linga and borrowed yoni, as if cursing them, and made some more violent gestures, including shaking his fist. Still nothing happened, except that he sweated more copiously, and his tightly pinched organ was adding a distinct purple hue to its brown-black. The nach girl gave an audible snicker, and the Musicmaster an amused chuckle, and the little Raja began drumming his fingers on the tabletop.
“Well?” I said aside to Tofaa.
She whispered, “The Yogi appears to be having some difficulty.”
Indeed he did. He was now dancing in place, more vigorously than the professional dancing girl had done, and his eyes were more redly extruded than they had been after the palang-swinging performance, and his vociferations were no longer incantatory, but recognizable even to me as cries of pain. His ragged boy assistant came running, and tugged at the imprisoning stone, at which his master gave a frightful screech. The six shouters then also dashed forward to help, and there was a confusion of hands at that empurpled center of attention, until the agonized Yogi reeled wailing away from them and fell down, writhing and hammering his fists on the floor.
“Take him away!” the little Raja commanded, in a disgusted voice. “Take the old fraud to the kitchen. Try an application of grease.”
The Yogi was carried from the room, not without some trouble, for he was contorting like a gaffed fish and trumpeting like a speared elephant. The entertainment appeared to be over. We four sat on at the table, in a mutually embarrassed silence, listening to the shrieks gradually diminishing down the corridors. I was the first to speak. I naturally did not remark on this having been one more affirmation of my opinion of Hindu foolishness and futility. Instead I said, by way of graciously excusing it:
“That happens all the time, Your Highness, to all the lower animals. Everyone has seen a dog and a bitch stuck together until the bitch’s clasping yoni relaxes and the dog’s swollen linga wilts.”
“It may take some time for the Yogi,” said Master Khusru, still with amusement. “The stone yoni will not relax and his linga’s swelling therefore cannot go down.”
“Bah!” exclaimed the little Raja, in furious exasperation. “I should have insisted that he levitate, not try something new. Let us go to bed.” And he stamped out of the room, with no shouters present to congratulate himself and the world on the grace of his gait.
4
“I have your Buddha’s tooth, Marco-wallah.”
That was the very first thing the little Raja said to me when we first met the next day, and he said it about as cheerfully as he might have said, “I have a murderously achingtooth.”
“Already, Your Highness? Why, that is wonderful. You said it might take some while to find.”
“I thought it would,”he said pettishly.
I understood his rancorous demeanor when he shoved at me a basket and I looked in. It was piled half full of teeth, most of them yellowed and mossy and carious, quite a few of them still bloody at the root, and some of them identifiably not even human—dogs’ fangs and pigs’ tushes.
“More than two hundred there,” the little Raja said sourly. “And people are still arriving with more, from all points of the horizon. Men, women, even holy naga mendicants, even one temple sadhu. Gr-r-r. You can present a Buddha’s tooth not only to your Raja Khakhan. You can give one to every Buddhist of your acquaintance.”
I tried not to laugh, for his anger was justified. He had boasted of his people’s honesty and of their devotion to their Hindu faith, and here they came in flocks to confess that they possessed a relic of the discredited Buddhist religion—meaning they had to lieabout it, besides.
Holding my face impassive, I inquired, “Am I expected to pay a reward for every one of these?”
“No,” he said, gritting his own teeth. “Iam doing that. The cursed reprobates come in the front door, hand their counterfeit tooth to the steward, and are passed on out the back door to where the Court Executioner is rewarding them with fervent enthusiasm in the rear courtyard.”
“Your Highness!” I exclaimed.
“Oh, I am not according them the karavat,” he hastened to assure me. “That is reserved for men who have done crimes of some account. Also it takes a bit of time, and we would never have done with this procession.”
“Adrìo de mi. I can hear the wretches screaming from here.”
“No, you cannot,” he growled. “They are being very quietly dispatched with a wire loop whipped around the throat and yanked. What you hear is that otherfraud—that degenerate old Yogi, still screeching in the kitchen. No one has yet been able to get him loose from his clinging rock yoni. We have tried greasing him with cooking fats, softening him with sesame oil, shrinking him with boiling water, wilting him by various natural means—surata by the nach girl, buccal blandishment by his boy assistant—nothing works. We may have to break the sacred yoni stone, and what revenge the goddess Parvati will inflict, I dare not think about.”
“Well, I will not sympathize with the Yogi. But the tooth bringers, Your Highness—it really is a trivial misdemeanor they have tried to commit, and in a trivially witless way. These teeth they brought would not fool even me, let alone a Buddhist.”
“That is what is especially deplorable! My people’s imbecility! That they would shame their Raja and insult their religion, and with trickery so transparent. They are incapable even of a decent crime. Dying is too good for them! They will only be reborn immediately in some lesser form—if there is any.”
I frankly believed that any depletion of the Hindus could only improve the planet, but I did not want the little Raja later to realize how severely he had depopulated his realm, and be dismayed, and maybe hold me to blame for it. I said:
“Your Highness, as your guest I formally request that the surviving imbeciles be spared, and any newcomers turned away before they also can perjure themselves. This was, after all, the fault of an apparent omission in Your Highness’s proclamation.”
“Mine? An omission? Are you suggesting Iam at fault? That a Brahman anda Maharajadhiraj Raj can havea fault?”
“I think it was only an understandable oversight. Since Your Highness is of course aware that the Buddha was a man nine forearms tall, and that any tooth of his must have been as big as a drinking cup, Your Highness no doubt assumed that all your people likewise knew that.”