How, I asked myself, could a people ignorant even of sewinghave envisioned and crafted these delicate, artful temple carvings? How could a people so slothful and furtive and woeful have portrayed here men and women joyous and nimble; inventive and adroit, lively and carefree?
They could not have done. I decided that these lands must have been inhabited, ages before the Hindus came, by some other and very different race, one with talent and vivacity. God knows where that superior people had gone, but they had left a few artifacts like this splendidly crafted temple, and that was all. They had left no trace of themselves in the later-come, usurper Hindus. That was deplorable, but hardly surprising. Would any such people have interbred with Hindus?
“Now here, Marco-wallah,” Tofaa said instructively, “this carven couple are entwined in what is called the kaja posture, named for the hooded snake with which you are acquainted.”
It looked snaky enough, and it was a position new to me. The man appeared to be sitting on the side of a bed. The woman lay upon and against him, head down, her torso between the man’s legs, her hands on the floor, her legs about the man’s waist, her buttocks held caressingly by his hands, and presumably his linga inside her (upside-down) yoni.
“A very useful position,” the sadhu recited, Tofaa translating. “Say, for instance, if you wish to make surata with a humpbacked woman. As you must know, you simply cannot put a humpbacked woman on a bed in the usual supine position, or she teeters and rocks on her hump, most inconveniently, and—”
“Gèsu.”
“You no doubt lust to try that kaja position, Marco-wallah,” said Tofaa. “But please do not affront me by asking meto do it with you. No, no. However, the sadhu says he has, inside the temple, an exceedingly capable, exceedingly humpbacked devadasi woman who, for a trifle of silver …”
“Thank you, Tofaa, and thank the sadhu for me. But I will take this one, too, on faith.”
5
“I have your Buddha’s tooth, Marco-wallah!” said the little Raja. “I rejoice in the happy conclusion of your quest!”
Some three months had gone by since his previous similar announcement, during which time no other teeth, small or large, had been brought to the palace. I had contained my impatience, assuming that a pearl fisher wasan elusive quarry. But I was glad to have the real thing at last. I was by now very weary of India and of Hindus, and the little Raja had also begun to make plain that he would not weep loudly when I departed. He seemed not to be tiring of my visit, exactly, but getting suspicious of it. Apparently his little mind had conceived the notion that I might be using my tooth quest as a disguise for a real mission of spying out the local terrain in advance of a Mongol invasion. Well, I knew that the Mongols would not have had this dismal land even if it were freely donated to their Khanate, but I was too polite to tell that to the little Raja. I could better allay his suspicions by merely taking the tooth and going, and I would.
“It is a magnificent tooth, indeed,” I said, with unfeigned awe. It was certainly no counterfeit. It was a yellowish molar, rather oblong from front to back, and the grinder surface of it was bigger than my hand, and its roots nearly as long as my forearm, and it weighed almost as much as a stone of equal dimensions. I asked, “Was it the pearl fisher who brought it? Is he here? I must give him his reward.”
“Ah, the pearl fisher,” said the little Raja. “The steward took the good man to the kitchen to give him a meal. If you would care to let me have the reward, Marco-wallah, I will see that he gets it.” His eyes widened as I jingled half a dozen gold coins into his hand. “Ach-chaa, so much?!”
I smiled and said, “It is worth it to me, Your Highness”—not adding that I was beholden to the fisherman, not only for the tooth, but also for my release from this place.
“Overgenerous, but he shall have it,” said the little Raja. “And I will bid the steward find for you a nice box to put the relic in.”
“May I request also, Your Highness, a pair of horses for me and my interpreter, that we may ride back to the coast and seek sea transport from there?”
“You shall have them, first thing in the morning, and likewise a stalwart pair of my palace guards for your escort.”
I hurried off to start my packing for departure, and told Tofaa to do the same, and she complied, though not very cheerfully. We were still at it when the Musicmaster stopped by our chambers to say his farewells. He and we exchanged compliments and good wishes and salaam aleikum, and then his eye chanced to fall on the things laid out on my bed to be packed, and he remarked:
“I see you are taking with you an elephant’s tooth as a memento of your stay.”
“What?” I said. He was regarding the Buddha’s tooth. I laughed at his jest and said, “Come, come, Master Khusru. You cannot fool me. An elephant’s tusk is taller than I am, and I could probably not lift one.”
“A tusk, yes. But do you think an elephant chews its fodder with its tusks? For that, it has ample tiers of molars. Like this one. You have never looked into an elephant’s mouth, I take it.”
“No, I have not,” I muttered, quietly gnashing my own molars. I waited until he had made his last salaam and left us, and then I burst out, “A cavàl donà no se ghe varda in boca! Che le vegna la cagasangue!”
“What are you shouting, Marco-wallah?” asked Tofaa.
“May the bloody gripes take that cursed Raja!” I raged. “The little wart was worried by my continued presence here, and evidently he despaired of anybody ever coming with another Buddha’s tooth, real or false. So he provided one himself. And took my reward for it! Come, Tofaa, let us go and revile him to his face!”
We went downstairs and found the chief steward, and I demanded audience with the little Raja, but the man said apologetically:
“The Raja went out, borne in his palanquin, to ride through the city and grant his subjects the privilege of observing him and admiring him and cheering at him. I was just explaining that to this importunate caller who insists he has come a far distance to see the Raja.”
As Tofaa translated that, I glanced only impatiently at the caller—just another Hindu man in a dhoti—but my eye caught on an object he was carrying, and at the same moment Tofaa cried excitedly:
“It is he, Marco-wallah! It is the very pearl fisher whom I remember from Akyab!”
And indeed the man was carrying a tooth. It was another immense one, and quite similar to my own latest acquisition, except that it was cupped in a mesh of gold tracery, like a stone set in a jewel, and the whole had a patina of unmistakable great age. Tofaa and the man jabbered together, then she turned to me again.
“It is truly he, Marco-wallah. The man who gamed with my late dear husband in the Akyab hall. And this is the relic he won with the dice that day.”
“How many did he win?” I said, still skeptical. “He has already delivered one.”
Jabber, jabber, and Tofaa spoke to me once more. “He knows nothing of any other. He has only this moment arrived, having trudged on foot all the way from the coast. This tooth is the only tooth he has ever had, and he is sad to part with it, for it much increased his crop of pearls in the season past, but he is dutifully heeding his Raja’s proclamation.”
“What a happy coincidence,” I said. “This seems to be a day for teeth.” I added, as I heard a commotion in the courtyard outside, “And here the Raja returns now, just in time to greet the one honest Hindu in his realm.”
The little Raja strutted in, trailed by his fawning entourage of courtiers and congratulators and other toadies. He halted in some surprise at seeing our group waiting in the entry hall. Tofaa and the steward and the fisherman all collapsed to lower themselves below the Raja’s head level, but, before any of them could speak, I addressed the little Raja in Farsi, and said silkily: