Holder of the World - Bharati Mukherjee [104]
For minutes the Emperor did not look at or address his guest. He sewed. Bhagmati fanned her mistress, more against flies than the evening’s trapped heat. Only when the needle fell out of his misshapen fingers did he break his silence.
“Your night was comfortable?”
She merely nodded. Bhagmati made the proper affirmations. The interpreter rendered all speech in the flattest of monotones.
“You are wrong to think that you have been wronged. As woman serves man, man serves the will of God. You have placed yourself where no woman has a right to be. I have decided to be merciful and return you to your people.”
“Even the Great Mughal cannot do that.”
“The angrezi are your people. Do not think I am unaware of the name of Captain Legge. You are the prostitute of infidels and idolaters, and you reject the offer of my protection.”
All of this was said without rancor, not as a taunt, but as a kind of incontrovertible preamble. The tone of voice hinted at a fondness for paradox, that this lowest of outcasts should even be sitting before him, polluting his tent on the eve of battle.
This was the moment, if she was ever to have one, when the gods that controlled the universe had conspired to put her Christian-Hindu-Muslim self, her American-English-Indian self, her orphaned, abandoned, widowed, pregnant self, her firangi and bibi self, into a single message, delivered to the most powerful man those separate worlds had ever known. She stood.
“It is you, Great Mughal, Your Majesty, if you forgive a mere woman’s speech, a prostitute’s speech, who calls the condition of servitude protection. It is you, Noble Badshah, who confuses a cruel and vindictive nature with a generous spirit. I speak as one who has lost everything, who owns nothing, and who desires nothing for herself.
“I have come late in my life to the feeling of love. Love for a man, love for a place, love for a people. They are not Devgad people or Roopconda people, not Hindu people or Muslim people, not Sunni or Shia, priests or untouchables, servants or kings. If all is equal in the eye of Brahma as the Hindus say, if Allah is all-seeing and all-merciful as you say, then who has committed atrocities on the children, the women, the old people? Who has poisoned the hearts of men?”
“The blame belongs with the rat of Devgad” came the response.
“The blame lies with anyone who confuses protection with power.”
“No idolater can thwart the Lashkar-i-Islam.”
“I agree. Your army is most formidable. Your enemy is weak.” She waited for his satisfied agreement. Then she cried out, from her heart, “Oh, Great Emperor, build your city, build your mosques and your palace, but stop this war before it destroys the world! You speak of mercy, but where is the quality of your mercy?”
“Mercy before Allah, not mercy before men. Allah judges men, and the Emperor is but a man who must also be judged. The duty of the Emperor is to bring the infidel before the throne of judgment. There is no escaping the judgment of Allah.”
“Duty! Duty, judgment! I have heard enough of duty. And of judgment. You cloak your lust for vengeance and for gold and diamonds in the noble words of duty and judgment and protection and sacrifice. But it is the weakest and the poorest and the most innocent who suffer, who sacrifice, whose every minute of every day is obedience to duty—”
The Emperor slapped the floor. He stood. He reached slowly above him and lifted the diamond off the top of the world. He held it in front of him, the pale candlelight reflecting off a thousand facets as he spoke.
“I do not fight for treasure and glory in this life. This diamond is the tear I shed as I discharge my duty. That is why it is called the Emperor’s Tear. The dutiful and the innocent, if they are pure and