“I’m a prince; I can bargain with you,” he said, his eyes moving from side to side in case the demon showed himself. Which Mara did, appearing as he had in the pavilion, a tall stranger in a black cloak.
“You aren’t listening. I said you’re here to learn.”
“Learn what?” Pause. “I’m listening.”
Mara caught the note of defeat in the boy’s voice; he couldn’t pretend to himself any longer that he had the upper hand. “Learn to be king,” said Mara.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” the boy flared. “I’m going to be king, anyway. I don’t need you for that, whoever you are.”
“Ridiculous! My dear fool, you gave away your chances the moment you set foot away from home. There is no throne waiting for you back there, not now or ever.”
“Liar!”
This heated outburst made Mara decide to wait again, and so he delayed another few hours while Devadatta grew colder and lonelier and the weight of the demon’s words had sunk in. Then, because he knew that gratitude can be as effective as fear, Mara clapped his hands, and a small campfire appeared in the cave some yards away from the boy. Devadatta rushed over to it and warmed his shivering body. “The only throne you have a hope of capturing is Siddhartha’s,” said Mara. The firelight made Devadatta’s eyes gleam. As always, the demon had grasped an idea that was already in his victim’s mind. “His father is too strong. You cannot overthrow him. But it is through him that you will depose the son.”
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?”