"He's a prudent man, Your Majesty, as befits a sovereign." And,
Hawksworth thought, also a coward, if you believe the talk in London.
What all men know for fact, though, is that he's a weakling, whose legs
are so spindly he has to be helped to walk, leaning on other men's
shoulders while he fiddles spastically with his codpiece.
"Does your king wear many jewels, Ambassador Inglish?"
"Of course, Your Majesty." Hawksworth drank calmly from his wine cup,
hoping the lie would pass unnoticed.
What would the Moghul think if he knew the truth, Hawksworth asked
himself? That King James of England only changes his clothes when they
are rags, and his fashion never. He was once, they say, given a
Spanish-style hat, and he cast it away, swearing he loved neither them
nor their fashions. Another time he was given shoes with brocade roses
on them, and he railed at the giver, asking if he was to be made a
ruff-footed dove.
"Is your king generous of nature, Ambassador? We are loved by our
people because we give of our bounty on every holy day. Baskets of
silver rupees are flung down the streets of Agra."
"King James is giving also, Your Majesty." With the moneys of others.
He'd part willingly with a hundred pounds not in his own keeping before
he'd release ten shillings from his private purse. And it's said he'd
rather spend a hundred thousand pounds on embassies abroad, buying
peace with bribes, than ten thousand on an army that would enforce
peace with honor. "He is a man among men, Your Majesty, admired and
loved by all his subjects."
"As are we, Ambassador." Arangbar took another ball of opium and washed
it down with a third glass of wine. "Tell me, does your king drink
spirits?"
"It is said he drinks often, Your Majesty, though many declare it is
more out of custom than delight. He drinks strong liquors--Frontiniack,
Canary, High Canary wine, Tent wine, Scottish ale--but never, it's said,
more than a few spoonfuls."
"Then he could never drink with the Moghul of India, Ambassador. We
have twenty cups of wine a night. And twelve grains of opium." Arangbar
paused as he accepted yet another glass. His voice had begun to slur
slightly. "But perhaps your king can trade with me. When will the ships
from your king's next voyage arrive? And how many of your king's
frigates will we see yearly if we grant him the trading _firman _he
requests?"
Hawksworth noticed out of the corner of his eye that Nadir Sharif had
now moved directly beside him. The prime minister held a glass of wine
from which he sipped delicately. Around him the other courtiers were
already drinking heavily, to the obvious approval of Arangbar.
He'll not finish a single glass of wine, if my guess is right. Nadir
Sharif'll find a way to stay stone sober while the rest of the room
sinks into its cups. And they'll all be too drunk to notice.
"King James will one day send an armada of frigates, Your Majesty."
Keep Arangbar's mind off the next voyage. He just may try to hold you
here until it comes, or refuse to grant a _firman _until he sees the
next batch of presents. "His Majesty, King James, is always eager to
trade the seas where his ships are welcome."
"Even if other nations of Europe would quarrel with his rights to those
seas?"
"England has no quarrels in Europe, Your Majesty. If you refer to the
engagement off Surat, you should know that was caused by a
misunderstanding of the treaties that now exist in Europe. England is
at peace with all her neighbors."
A skeptical silence seemed to envelop the room. Arangbar took another
cup of wine and drank it off. Then he turned to Hawksworth.
"The matter, Ambassador Inglish, does not seem to us to be that simple.
But we will examine it more later. Nights are made for beauty, days for
affairs of state." Arangbar's voice had begun to slur even more
noticeably. "You may have heard there will be a wedding here soon. My
youngest prince is betrothed to the daughter of my queen. The wedding
will be held one month after my own birthday celebration, and it will
be an event to remember. Tonight I begin the always-pleasant task of
selecting the women who will dance. Do you know anything of Indian
dance?"
"Very little, Your Majesty. I have only seen it once. In Surat. At a
gathering one evening at the palace of the Shahbandar."
Arangbar roared and seized another glass of wine. "I can well imagine
the kind of entertainment the Shahbandar of Surat provides for his
guests. No, Ambassador, I mean the real dance of India. The dance of
great artists? Perhaps you have classical dance in England?"
"No, Your Majesty. We have nothing similar. At least similar to the
dance I saw."
"Then a pleasant surprise awaits you." Arangbar examined Hawksworth's
cup and motioned for a servant to refill it. "Drink up, Inglish. The
evening is only beginning."
Arangbar clapped drunkenly and the guests began to settle themselves
around the bolsters that had been strewn about the carpet. An ornate
silk pillow was provided for each man to rest against, and a number of
large hookahs, each with several mouthpieces, were lighted and
stationed about the room. The servants also distributed garlands of
yellow flowers, and as Nadir Sharif took his place next to Hawksworth,
he wrapped one of the garlands about his left wrist. With the other
hand he set down his wineglass, still full, and signaled a servant to
replenish Hawksworth's. Arangbar was reclining now on the throne,
against his own bolster, and the oil lamps around the side of the room
were lowered, leaving illumination only on the musicians and on a bare
spot in the center of the carpet. The air was rich with the aroma of
roses as servants passed shaking rosewater on the guests from long-
necked silver decanters.
The musicians were completing their tuning, and Hawksworth noticed that
now there were two drummers, a sitar player, and a new musician holding
a _sarangi_. In the background another man sat methodically strumming a
simple upright instrument, shaped like the sitar save it provided
nothing more than a low-pitched droning, against which the other
instruments had been tuned. Next a man entered, wearing a simple white
shirt, and settled himself on the carpet in front of the musicians. As
silence gripped the room, Arangbar signaled to the seated man with his
wineglass and the man began to sing a low, soulful melody that seemed
to consist of only a few syllables. "Ga, Ma, Pa." The voice soared
upward. "Da, Ni, Sa." After a few moments Hawksworth guessed he must be
singing the names of the notes in the Indian scale. They were virtually
identical to the Western scale, except certain notes seemed to be a few
microtones higher or lower, depending whether approached from ascent or
descent.
The singer's voice soared slowly upward in pitch and volume, growing
more intense as it quavered around certain of the high notes, while the
sarangi player listened attentively and bowed the exact notes he sang,
always seeming to guess which note he would find next. The song was
melodic, and gradually what had at first seemed almost a dirge grew to
be a poignant line of beauty.
Suddenly the singer's voice cut the air with a fast-tempo phrase, which
was brief and immediately repeated, the second time to the
accompaniment of the drum, as both players picked up the notes. On the
third repetition of the phrase, the curtains on Arangbar's right were
swept aside and a young woman seemed to fairly burst across the room,
her every skipping step announced by a band of tiny bells bound around
her ankles and across the tops of her bare feet.
As she spun into the light, she whirled a fast pirouette that sent her
long braided pigtail--so long the end was attached to her waist--
whistling in an arc behind her. Her flowered silk tunic flew outward
from her spinning body, revealing all of her tight-fitting white
trousers. She wore a crown of jewels, straight pendant earrings of
emerald, and an inch- long string of diamonds dangled from the center
of her nose.
She paused for an instant, whirled toward Arangbar, and performed a
_salaam _with her right hand, fingers slightly bent, thumb across her
palm as she raised her hand to her forehead. The movement was possessed
of so much grace it seemed a perfect dance figure.
"May I take the liberty of interpreting for you, Ambassador?" Nadir
Sharif ignored the hookah mouthpiece that another, slightly tipsy,
guest was urging on him and slid closer to Hawksworth. "Kathak is an
art, like painting or pigeon-flying, best appreciated when you know the
rules." He pointed toward the dancer. "Her name is Sangeeta, and she
has just performed the invocation. For the Hindus it is a salute to
their elephant-headed god Ganesh. For Muslims, it is a _salaam_."
Next she turned slowly toward the guests and struck a pose, one foot
crossed behind the other, arms bent as though holding a drawn bow. As
the _sarangi _played a slow, tuneful melody, she seemed to control the
rhythm of the drums by quietly stroking together again and again the
thumb and forefinger of each hand. The explosive tension in her body
seemed focused entirely in this single, virtually imperceptible motion,
almost as a glass marshals the power of the sun to a tiny point. Then
her eyes began to dart from side to side, and first one eyebrow and
then the other lifted seductively. Gradually the rhythm was taken up by
her head, as it began to glide from side to side in a subtle, elegant
expression that seemed an extension of the music.
She had possessed the room almost as a spirit of pure dance, chaste,
powerful, disciplined, and there was nothing of the overt
suggestiveness of the nautch dancers of the Shahbandar's courtyard. She
wore a low-cut, tight vest of brocade over a long-sleeved silk shirt,
and of her body only her hands, feet, and face were visible. It was
these, Hawksworth realized, not her body, that were the elements of
Kathak dance.
"Now she'll begin the second section of the dance. It's the
introduction and corresponds to the opening of a raga. It sets the
atmosphere and makes you long for more. I know of no _feringhi _who has
ever seen Kathak, but perhaps you can understand. Do you feel it?"
Hawksworth sipped his wine slowly and tried to clear his head. In truth
he felt very little, save the intensity that seemed to be held in
check.
"It appears to be rather subtle. Very little seems to be happening."
Hawksworth drank again and found himself longing for a lively hornpipe.
"A great deal will happen, Ambassador, and very soon. In India you must
learn patience."
Almost at that moment the drummers erupted with a dense rhythmic cycle
and the _sarangi _took up a single repetitive phrase. Sangeeta looked
directly at Hawksworth and called out a complex series of rhythmic
syllables, in a melodic if slightly strident voice, all the while
duplicating the exact pattern of sounds by slapping the henna-reddened
soles of her feet against the carpet. Then she glided across the carpet
in a series of syncopated foot movements, saluting each of the guests
in turn and calling out strings of syllables, after which she would
dance a sequence that replicated the rhythm exactly, her feet a precise
percussion instrument.
"The syllables she recites are called _bols_, Ambassador, which are the
names of the many different strokes on the tabla drums. Drummers
sometimes call out a sequence before they play it. She does the same,
except she uses her feet almost as a drummer uses his hands."
As Hawksworth watched, Sangeeta called strings of syllables that were
increasingly longer and more complex. He could not understand the
_bols_, or perceive the rhythms as she danced them, but the drunken men
around him were smiling and swinging their heads from side to side in
what he took to be appreciative approval. Suddenly Arangbar shouted
something to her and pointed toward the first drummer. The drummer
beamed, nodded, and as Sangeeta watched, called out a dense series of
_bols_. Then she proceeded to dance the sequence with her feet. The
room exploded with cries of appreciation when she finished the
sequence, and Hawksworth assumed she had managed to capture the
instructions the musician had called. Then Arangbar pointed to the
other drummer and he also called out a string of _bols_, which again
Sangeeta repeated. Finally the singer called a rhythm sequence, the
most complex yet, and both dancer and drummer repeated them precisely
together.
As the tempo became wilder, Sangeeta began a series of lightning spins,
still pounding the carpet with her reddened soles, and in time she
seemed to transform into a whirling top, her pigtail loose now and
singing through the air like a deadly whip. She had become a blur, and
for a brief moment she appeared to have two heads. Hawksworth watched
in wonder and sipped from his wine cup.
"Now she'll begin the last part, Ambassador, the most demanding of
all."
The rhythm became almost a frenzy now. Then as suddenly as they had
begun the whirls ended. Sangeeta struck a statuesque pose, arms
extended in rigid curves, and began a display of intensely rhythmic
footwork. Her body seemed frozen in space as nothing moved save her
feet. The bells on her ankles became a continuous chime, increasing in
tempo with the drum and the _sarangi _until the rhythmic phrase itself
was nothing more than a dense blur of notes, Suddenly the drummer and
instrumentalist fell silent, conceding the room to Sangeeta's whirring
bells. She seemed, at the last, to be treading on pure air, her feet
almost invisible. When the intensity of her rhythm became almost
unbearable, the drummers and _sarangi _player reentered, urging the
excitement to a crescendo. A final phrase was introduced, repeated with
greater intensity, and then a third and final time, ending with a
powerful crash on the large drum that seemed to explode the tension in
the room. Several of the musicians cried out involuntarily, almost
orgasmically, in exultation. In the spellbound silence that followed,
the nobles around Hawksworth burst into cheers.
Sangeeta seemed near collapse as she bowed to Arangbar. The Moghul
smiled broadly, withdrew a velvet purse of coins from his cloak, and
threw it at her feet. Moments later several others in the room followed
suit. With a second bow she scooped the purses from the carpet and
vanished through the curtains. The cheers followed her long after she
was gone.
"What do you think, Ambassador? You know half the men here would give a
thousand gold _mohurs _to have her tonight." Nadir Sharif beamed
mischievously. "The other half two thousand."
"Come forward." Arangbar motioned to the singer sitting on the carpet.
He was, Hawksworth now realized, an aging, portly man with short white
hair and a painful limp. As he approached Arangbar's dais, he began
removing the tiny cymbals attached to the fingers of one hand that he
had used to keep time for the dancer.
"He's her guru, her teacher." Nadir Sharif pointed to the man as he
bowed obsequiously before the Moghul. "If His Majesty decides to select
Sangeeta to dance at the wedding, his fortune will be made. Frankly I
thought she was good, though there is still a trifle too much flair in
her style, too many tricks. But then she's young, and perhaps it's too
soon to expect genuine maturity. Still, I noticed His Majesty was taken
with her. She could well find herself in the _zenana_ soon."
Arangbar flipped another purse of coins to the man, and then spoke to
him curtly in Persian.
"His Majesty has expressed his admiration, and says he may call him
again after he has seen the other dancers." Nadir Sharif winked.
"Choosing the dancers is a weighty responsibility. Naturally His
Majesty will want to carefully review all the women."
The lamps brightened again and servants bustled about the carpet
filling glasses and exchanging the burned-out tobacco chillum, clay
bowls at the top of each hookah. When they had finished, Arangbar took
another glass of wine and signaled for the lamps to be lowered once
more. A new group of musicians began filing into the room, carrying
instruments Hawksworth had never before seen. First came the drummer,
who carried not the two short tabla drums but rather a single long
instrument, designed to be played at both ends simultaneously. A singer
entered next, already wearing small gold cymbals on each hand. Finally
a third man entered, carrying nothing but a piece of inch-thick bamboo,
less than two feet in length and perforated with a line of holes.
Arangbar looked quizzically at Nadir Sharif.
As though reading the question, the prime minister rose and spoke in
Turki. "This one's name is Kamala, Your Majesty. She is originally from
the south, but now she is famous among the Hindus in Agra. Although I
have never seen her dance, I assumed Your Majesty would want to humor
the Hindus by auditioning her."
"We are a sovereign of all our subjects. I have never seen this Hindu
dance. Nor these instruments of the south. What are they called?"
"The drum is called a mirdanga, Majesty. They use it in the south with
a type of sitar they call the veena. The other instrument is a bamboo
flute."