Free The Temple Dancer by John Speed Page B

everything and anything else before finding the courage to touch
the subject. But from her circling talk, it seemed to Lucinda that Silvia too
had some topic she wished to bring up but was too embarrassed to say.
    The candles had already begun to flare and gutter before Silvia at last
revealed her target. "Why have you done it?" she asked Maya in a whisper.
"Why have you become a nautch girl?"
    "What does it matter now, auntie? What's done ...
    "Don't humor me. I'm too old for it. Tell me."
    A darkness such as Lucinda had never seen fell across Maya's face. The
nightbirds chattered outside, a dog barked, in the stable courtyard the elephant yawned, and Slipper's snoring sawed outside the door. A half-dozen
times Maya took breath and seemed about to speak. "What was left for
me?" she said at last.
    "Tell me, daughter. Tell me." Seeing Silvia cradle Maya's hand so gently,
Lucinda recalled the nearly forgotten memory of her own mother's touch.
    "You know I was a devadasi." Silvia nodded. "I was at the Paravati
temple in Orissa. My guru . . ." here Maya halted, letting out a tiny sob.
Silvia stroked her hand. "My guru said I might go to the Shiva temple. She
said I might do seva there with the sadhus and siddhas."
    Lucinda knew that sadhus were mendicant monks: beggars, most of
them naked with matted hair so long that the dirty, braidlike locks fell to
their knees. She didn't know what siddhas were, or seva.
    Silvia, oddly, seemed conscious of Lucinda's ignorance. "Seva means work; work for god," she whispered to Lucinda, while her hand stroked
Maya's arm.

    "It was good, you know. The training was difficult, but the work made
it all worthwhile. In the morning I would dance for the god; in the evening
I had congress with the sadhus."
    In less than a day, Lucinda had all but forgotten that Maya was a whore.
    Well of course she'd had congress with them, Lucinda realized. Of
course. That was her work. But Maya's wistfulness and regret made Lucinda realize that Maya thought she was doing something worthy, not
something shameful. Maya spoke of having congress as a nun might speak
of giving alms.
    Silvia sighed. Lucinda expected her to pity or to scold. Instead she said:
"You were most fortunate, daughter. Why ever did you stop?"
    "There was a flood. The temple was damaged. There was no money, so
I offered ..."
    "Is that really why, daughter?"
    Maya's cry began as a low moan and ended as a wail. She pitched forward, shaking her head and sobbing. "My guru was gone. She was swept
away in the floods." Lucinda could not resist reaching out to Maya, patting
her back while she sobbed.
    "Who was your guru?" Silvia asked.
    "Gungama," Maya said. The name set off a new round of sobs.
    "Gungama?" Silvia whispered. Her face grew pale and her eyes wide.
    "Did you know her?" Lucinda asked, as Maya tried to still her sobbing.
    "Of course I know her. My father was one of her patrons. She's famous
throughout the world." Silvia seemed shocked that Lucinda had not heard
of her. "But she's not dead."
    Maya sat up. She seemed to have cried all her tears away. "Auntie, she
drowned eight months ago."
    "But she didn't," Silvia insisted. "She slept in this very house last
month."

    Looking up from his port wine, Geraldo glanced at Fernando Anala and
once more experienced a moment of confusion. Anala's face was so perfectly Hindi-the dark, alert features, the bright, perfect teeth-but to see it
emerging from a lace-trimmed shirt and a Portuguese coat awash with gold
braid-each time Geraldo looked up, he was taken aback.

    They had been discussing the upcoming leg of the journey through the
Sansagar Pass. Pathan seemed unable to avoid bringing up his concerns,
though clearly he and Da Gama had discussed the matter already. "Should
we not have more guards, sir? Are we not in danger?" he asked Fernando.
    Fernando glanced at the farangs before answering. "What does Senhor
Da Gama say?"
    "What I say is, the hell with guards. They