Every added word inflamed Devadatta, who forgot the distress and danger he was in. He hadn’t genuinely hated his small cousin; his feelings up to now had been a mixture of pity and jealousy. “It won’t take much to get rid of him,” he said.
The cloaked stranger held up his finger. “More than you think. Much more.”
The boy took this as an insult to his physical strength, the one advantage he knew that he had over his cousin. “You don’t think I can crush him? All it takes is a knife or an arrow when we’re out hunting.”
“Think again. The king would have you killed immediately. He wouldn’t even care if you did it. He’d know it was you.”
Devadatta paused. He and Suddhodana were enough alike that he saw the truth of this. Wouldn’t he kill anyone in the vicinity of the prince if he were the father and his son died mysteriously? After a moment’s deliberation Devadatta said, “If I let you teach me, what will it cost?”
Mara laughed. “You have nothing to give. A prince without a throne is also a prince without a fortune. You must be slow if you didn’t consider that. Too slow to bargain, except with your life. I’m going.”
“Wait, you can’t leave me here!”
The boy sounded agreeably terrified. Mara clapped his hands again, and the sputtering campfire went out. He was satisfied with the opening he’d made. Let the boy rest a night in the cave. He would be afraid of freezing to death, but Mara could keep the spark of life going. He had the minutest control over death, after all.
“Wait!”
The boy called louder, but his sinking heart knew that he was alone now. There was nothing near but the settling blackness and the glimmer of light coming from the mouth of the cave. Devadatta headed for it, creeping with one hand on the stone wall to steady himself. He climbed over rubble, and he felt something—a rat?—scramble over his foot. When he reached the light, the cave opened out into a sizable mouth. Devadatta stepped from the cave onto ice-hardened snow, which extended in all directions. He was near the top of a Himalayan peak, the kind of place that the truly fearless yogis sought out for their solitude. But Devadatta felt no holy presence in this hostile landscape. There was no sign that any human being had ever been there, not the faintest trace of a trail going downslope. All Devadatta could spy was the last wink of the fading sun before it disappeared beneath the horizon. His mind searched for words and failed. Standing between himself and the fast-descending blackness was nothing.
6
It took Devadatta most of the night to figure out how to escape from the cave. While there was still a glimmer of light in the sky, he staved off despair by scouring crevices for kindling to burn and scraps of vegetation to gnaw on. Not that he could have started a fire with his bare hands. Eventually he stopped this fruitless activity and busied himself with hating Mara. He fantasized about the revenge he would wreak if he survived. The night was so thick he lost all concept of time. Finally there was nothing to do but curl up on the stone floor of the cave, shivering and defiant, and wait to die.
It took a while longer to give up hope entirely. Only when there was no possible way out did his mind stop whirling in panic, and then Devadatta considered a simple question: Could demons physically transport a person anywhere? What if the cave was just an illusion? The moment he considered this possibility, two things happened. He heard the faintest echo of Mara laughing at him, and he fell fast asleep. When he woke up, he was lying on the ground near the pavilion on the spot where the demon had shown himself. Devadatta sat up, rubbing his stiff, aching limbs. The sun was setting, and so he must have lain unconscious there for hours.
He walked onto the veranda that circled the pavilion. Torch flames were reflected on the water of the lotus pond. From the distance he heard drunken laugher. The king’s revelries were continuing into the night. Devadatta headed toward the sound. For some mysterious reason his ordeal in the cave didn’t drain him. He felt stronger, in fact. He craved more than ever to do exactly what he had set out to do that morning: lure one of the maids into a corner and torment Siddhartha. Both desires came to mind again, and they aroused him to the point that he began to run. Devadatta didn’t care if he ran into a girl or Siddhartha first. Neither would come away forgetting the encounter.
Why can demons roam the mind in this way, taking advantage of innocent people? What made Devadatta prey to the terrors of the cave was a tiny thing: he was claustrophobic. As an infant he had almost suffocated in his thick swaddling clothes when a careless nurse left him wrapped up in the sun. Mara knew this weakness, and all he had to do was to throw his cloak over the boy. Devadatta’s mind would do the rest. It would erupt with the memory of being suffocated and begin to panic. It was easy for the demon to shape mindless panic into a nightmare. The boy couldn’t wake up from the nightmare; it held him in its grip for as long as Mara wanted. A moment of terror could be transformed into a week in the dreaded cave. And Mara could accomplish the same thing with anyone.
ALONE AND DISCONSOLATE, Siddhartha roamed the grounds. It had become his habit to be alone as much as he could. He felt he had no other choice. “People seem to be afraid of me. They barely look at me or they run away. Why?” he had asked Channa not long before.
“You think I’m afraid of you?” Channa shot back.
“Not you. The whole rest of the world.”
This wasn’t exactly true. If you are holding a fragile egg and are afraid of dropping it, you are afraid not of the egg but of the consequences. The same was true of the courtiers around Siddhartha. So many doors were shut to Siddhartha, so many faces held low to the ground, so many eyes averted that he felt bewildered and mistook their attitude for fear. Even Bikram fell to his knees and prostrated himself when Siddhartha came into the stables. The only exception was if Channa was also present; the king had told Bikram he could stand then because a father shouldn’t be humbled in front of his own son.
“They’re just scared not to be perfect,” said Channa when Siddhartha wouldn’t let the thing go. “The king would find out.”
“And then what?”
Channa pointed to the high palace walls. “He throws them out. That’s what I hear.” Channa thought of the horses he and his father buried beyond the walled perimeter. “Only they’re not dead.”
Siddhartha knew in his heart of hearts that the horses that disappeared from the stables didn’t leave alive, and it made him anxious that something dark happened to a lord or lady who suddenly vanished from the morning levee when the king assembled the court for a greeting and allowed them to watch silently as he ate breakfast. None of Siddhartha’s favorites had disappeared yet, thankfully.
“When I’m the king, nobody gets thrown over the wall,” he said, but that was a rare remark; Channa would never recall another time when Siddhartha referred to taking the throne, not in the near future, the distant future, or ever.
Siddhartha’s mind was wandering through these gloomy thoughts as he stood alone by his favorite pool, the one surrounded by tall reeds. He knelt down and paddled his hands in the cool water. The pond was shallow there, and in the shadow of a floating lotus he saw something—the nymph of a dragonfly creeping slowly over the mud. Siddhartha watched it. The miniature monster moved steadily, fearlessly, on the prowl. A tiny silver minnow swam by, and with a startling leap the nymph snatched it in its jaws. The minnow shuddered once and was still, its eyes open and shiny even as it died. Siddhartha shuddered along with it. Why did he feel the pain of such a tiny, insignificant creature?
“A very good question. Maybe it’s your gift.” Startled, Siddhartha stood up to see an old man in front of him, a hermit. His skin was brown and weather worn. He wore a flimsy silk shawl thrown over his torso and a rough hemp skirt. The hermit was leaning on his staff by the waterside, gazing at the boy, his eyes unreadable in their depth.
The hermit said, “You found me. And very quickly at that.”
“I didn’t find anyone. I was just here,” Siddhartha protested.
The hermit smile
d, which made papery creases at the corners of his eyes, something Siddhartha had never seen before. Everything about the stranger made him seem like an apparition. “These things don’t work quite the way you suppose. I am Asita.”
An older boy, or a very different one, would have wanted to know how someone else’s voice got into his head. Siddhartha accepted that something inexplicable could still be real. “Why are you here? Does my father know?”
“Another good question. To which I can give a simple answer, since your other question is more complicated. Your father would be very displeased to see me here. Does that matter?” Before Siddhartha could reply, Asita said, “Of course it does. He’s the one you look up to.”
Siddhartha took this as a criticism. “Everyone looks up to him. He’s king here.”
“Let’s not worry about that for the moment. Have you heard other voices in your head? Tell me the truth.” Siddhartha hung his head. “I thought as much. You have a feeling nature, a very deep one. You will sense things that other people can’t. Unfortunately, not all those things will be good for you. There’s nothing I can do about that, do you understand?”
“I don’t want to be different, but you say I have to be. No, I don’t understand.”
Asita took a step toward him and laid a rough hand on his shoulder. “No mother, and a father you trust completely. We have to take that into account.”
Siddhartha grew more uneasy. “I can hear the guards coming. You have to go. You said you shouldn’t be here.” Soldiers were shouting at each other from the far side of the pond, and the voices were getting closer.
The stranger shook his head. “I can take care of them.”
Whatever he meant was a mystery to Siddhartha, because Asita did nothing that he could see. Yet when three guards came combing the tall reeds, they didn’t see the two of them standing there in plain sight. The boy hesitated.
“It’s your choice,” said Asita calmly. “Call for them, or stay and listen to me.” Without a word, the boy waited until the guards were safely away. “Good,” Asita said. “I am only here to show you a few things. If I keep protecting you, you won’t find your own way, and you must do that.”
“How have you been protecting me? Are you the one who keeps me here, inside these walls?”
“No. I have been protecting you in many ways, but not physically.”
Asita bent down and looked the boy in the eye. “Your father wants to live through you. But he doesn’t have that right. Believe me.” Siddhartha looked away, biting his lip. “You are so young. I only wish—” Asita’s voice trailed off, and he stood up again. “No one’s fate was ever decided by talking. I have something to show you, and now it’s time.”
Overhanging the water was a large rose-apple tree in full bloom. “I told you that you have a gift, but it’s not a simple one. Already you have begun to experience it, but each time you do, you are tempted to run away. Does this tree remind you of anything?” Siddhartha shook his head.
“You were barely four years old. It was time for the spring plowing, and your father held a feast like this one. It was his role to go out into the fields and plow with the common farmers, a great sight. Everyone wanted to see it, including your nurses. So they left you under a rose-apple tree, just like this one. You don’t remember at all?”
Siddhartha didn’t know what to say. A strange sense inside him, like a clearing mist, made him uncertain. Asita went on. “Nobody realized it, but you were watching closely, and as the plow blades turned the fresh earth over, you saw something very tiny but very disturbing. The bodies of insects and worms had been chopped into bits by the plow, along with other small newborn creatures. How did you feel?”
“I can’t remember how a baby feels.”
Asita’s gaze didn’t waver, and Siddhartha hung his head. It took a moment before he murmured, “I wanted to cry. Why should I cry over a half a worm?”
“You felt as if you had seen your own family hurt, and this frightened you, didn’t it? No need to answer. We both know. The feeling was too big for you. But something else happened next—”
At that instant Siddhartha lost the sound of Asita’s voice, because the clearing mist inside him revealed the scene the hermit was describing. Siddhartha saw himself in his baby’s robes sitting under the tree. He saw himself look up at the overhanging blossoms, and suddenly he was back there again. But what he felt was no longer anguish at the small creatures cut to bits by the plow. Something new had washed over him. The beautiful tree, the immense blue sky, the inrush of the spirit of spring—they made him hurt again, but this time with a pang of pure joy. And yet somehow the two things were connected. The sight of violence, which hurt so much, transformed into a joy that wanted to burst out of his chest.
Siddhartha came back to himself, gazing at Asita, who seemed to be reading his thoughts. “That was your gift. You mustn’t run away from it.”
“Did I run away then?”
“No, you didn’t have a conscience then.” Asita said. “You didn’t know enough to feel ashamed or different. You fell into that beautiful thing for hours, and when they found you, everyone was astonished that you hadn’t moved from the same spot all day. They were so astonished they didn’t even notice something much more interesting.”
Siddhartha held up his hand. “Don’t say it.”
“Ah. So someone did notice.”
Although he had sat under the rose-apple tree all day, the tree’s shadow hadn’t moved. It stood in the same place overhead. And so the child was shielded against the sun’s fierce heat until his nurses ran back again.
“Is that what you call protecting me?” asked Siddhartha, unsure whether to look upon this as a miracle or just one more thing that made him not like other children.
“You are troubled, and you shouldn’t be. Come.”
Asita sat down under the tree now. Siddhartha watched as the hermit crossed his legs and straightened himself until his spine was perfectly erect. From long practice he made this look effortless.
“Now, you try,” Asita said.
The boy imitated the position, which felt strangely comfortable considering that he had never seen it before.
“Hands like this.” Asita held one hand on each knee and circled his thumb and forefinger. Siddhartha followed and then closed his eyes after he saw the hermit close his. They were both quiet. At first the boy was only aware of his surroundings. The air was cooler under the tree; the noon sun filtered lazily through the still canopy of leaves and flowers. Siddhartha felt drowsy, and for a moment he might have nodded off. But he was awake when the voice in his head said, Can you be still, without thinking? Don’t talk to yourself. Just breathe gently.
These words came into his head like his own thoughts, but he knew that they must be Asita’s. The two of them seemed to be connected. Siddhartha accepted this fact without questioning it. The old hermit wasn’t like anyone he had ever met. Certainly not like Canki, whom the boy vaguely feared. Then Siddhartha caught himself. He wasn’t supposed to think. After a moment his mind stilled. This happened naturally, like a breeze calming over a cool lake. He became aware of his breath going in and out in a soft rhythm. The whole thing was pleasant, soothing. He had the sense, almost physical, that he was sinking down into the earth or was being lowered into a well. Only his descent wasn’t frightening and what waited below wasn’t sheer blackness. It was more like a welcoming sleep, except that he remained awake in its arms.
Siddhartha lost track of time. Once he opened his eyes again, Asita was leaning on his staff watching him.
“They’re coming for you,” he said soberly. Siddhartha knew he meant the guards sent out by his father. “Can you remember what I’ve just showed you?”
Siddhartha nodded, although he wasn’t really sure that he had been shown anything. Asita picked up his doubt.
“Here is your safety. This is going to be your special place. When you feel confused or when someone is trying to make you what you are not, come back to
this tree. Sit and close your eyes. Wait for the silence. Do nothing to make it come to you. It will come of its own accord.”
They could hear the return of soldiers shouting to each other by the pond. “Will I find you here?” asked Siddhartha.
Asita shook his head. “I had to think long and hard about even coming today. You are still in danger.”
“From what?” Siddhartha’s spirit was so settled that he was only mildly disturbed by Asita’s veiled warning.
“From everyone who thinks they know what your future should be. You are not alone. They are always watching.”
“I know.” Siddhartha’s voice was as sober as the hermit’s.
“Well, let that be. I am withdrawing my protection now, as of this moment. I don’t want to be like one of them.”
Asita’s voice had become tender and somewhat strange. Siddhartha didn’t understand why the old man’s gaze seemed so sad, or why he took a moment to bend over and touch Siddhartha’s feet. But the moment he did, the boy found himself closing his eyes again, and once more he descended into the well of silence, deeper this time, deep enough so that he didn’t hear Asita depart.
“Hey, over here!”
The shout was close by, and Siddhartha heard running footsteps approaching. He slowly opened his eyes to see a ring of guards around him. Some looked agitated, others relieved. The officer among them gave an order: “Run and tell the king.” He knelt down beside Siddhartha. “Where have you been? Did someone take you away?”
Siddhartha shook his head. He wished they would all leave. It would be much better if they did, if he didn’t have to return with them.
He wanted to close his eyes again, but instead he heard himself say, “I’ve just been here. Sitting by myself.”
The officer looked doubtful. “We’ve circled the place half a dozen times.”
If this was an implied question, Siddhartha didn’t answer it. He was too aware that his body was getting to its feet, as if another person were in charge of his muscles. He himself was still inside the silence. More people were running up now, including various courtiers dressed for the feast, some wobbly from drink. What time was it? He was surprised to see the sun low on the horizon.