Channa said, “You can change the world when it’s yours to play with. The rest of us have to live in it.”
“You think I’m going to get the world?”
“It’s just what they say.”
Siddhartha knew it was better to let the whole subject die. He had lived a long time with the knowledge that even his best friend, at some level that reason couldn’t touch, regarded him with superstitious awe. It wouldn’t matter that Channa had seen the worst of Siddhartha, watched him cry, run away, complain bitterly about his father. It wouldn’t matter that the prince was a creature of flesh and blood or that Channa had often in the heat of sword practice drawn his blood. Being the friend of a royal gave Channa the special status and protection that he enjoyed. But there was a limit to royal protection with an enemy as cunning as Devadatta.
The realization came to Siddhartha that he had always regarded his cousin with anxiety. Devadatta had been like a blade held lightly against his throat. That’s what was now missing. Fear. Siddhartha couldn’t bring back the old sense of threat.
If he wasn’t afraid of Devadatta anymore, what else wasn’t he afraid of? Siddhartha reached inside and opened the hidden trunks of memory, expecting that phantoms of dread would fly out. But the trunk was empty. He had been a death-haunted child, a boy full of fears without a mother.
Tears were rolling down his cheeks now. It was the first time in his life that truth had made Siddhartha weep. That’s what had changed when he jumped into the abyss. He exchanged illusion for truth. He felt purified, and yet some part of him couldn’t rejoice in it. What would it be like to be the only man who wasn’t afraid? His father was afraid despite his battles won; Canki was afraid despite the favor of the gods; Channa was afraid despite his bravado. None of them would be able to grasp this change in Siddhartha. They might even hate him for it.
WITH THE CURTAINS CLOSED and one candle guttering to a spark, Sujata’s room was almost dark. She lay in bed staring at the ceiling. In her mind she kept going over what she should have said to Siddhartha. Everything had gone wrong. Even when she got her heart’s desire and he showed that he wanted her, she had run away. Sometimes when she woke up in the middle of the night, all Sujata could think about was the fact that Siddhartha had looked at her with longing. She fixed that look in her mind and swore she would never let it go.
The simple truth is that Sujata was waiting for Siddhartha to come to her on his own. So when she lay half asleep and the door creaked open, Sujata was instantly wide awake. She trembled under the sheets and widened her eyes to see him in the dark, to make sure this wasn’t another phantom of her imagination.
She saw the outline of a strong young man moving toward the bed, his bearing erect, moving quickly because he desired her so strongly. Fear and exultation fought wildly in Sujata’s breast. If only her bed could have been prepared properly for love, with scattered flower petals, rose water, and sprinkled spices known to make a man aroused.
For a fleeting instant Sujata thought of her mother and wondered if she had been in the same situation. She banished this thought as soon as it came. She didn’t want to think about anything when Siddhartha’s hand took hers; he was bending over her, lowering his face to kiss her.
“Hold still. If you scream I’ll kill you.”
Scream was all she wanted to do, in that instant when she realized this wasn’t Siddhartha and horror had entered her sanctuary. The man’s hand came over her face, covering mouth and nose so that she would be too breathless to cry out, even to think. But panic had already seen to that.
“You’ve been waiting for me a long time. I’ve seen your light. I wanted the moment to be perfect, sweetheart.”
It was unmistakably Devadatta. He tore open her bodice with quick efficiency and began to knead her breasts with his hands, roughly and without consideration for how it hurt her.
Please stop… I’ll do whatever you want.
With her breathing cut off, Sujata didn’t know if she actually spoke those words or if they were a desperate prayer. Devadatta had opened her dress against her feeble struggling, and she felt his hand opening her legs. Half-suffocated as she was, she couldn’t sob. Devadatta was having her, and his thrusts were violent signals of his savagery and disdain.
She went limp, hoping that her rapist would spare her more violence. Devadatta suddenly stopped what he was doing to her. “I know who you want!” he said, and the menace in his voice should have warned her. But Sujata, knowing she was dead, felt a flood of relief.
The only mercy remaining to her was that Devadatta acted swiftly in the dark. She couldn’t detect him pulling out his rippled dagger. “Remember that the last thing you ever saw was me,” he growled at the instant that the blade swept across her eyes. Sujata heard a shriek that must have been her own, then the searing pain came, and she stopped breathing. She was spared the spectacle of Devadatta rolling off her body with a groan. He tried to control himself, but his hands were shaking.
Devadatta realized his predicament: someone would come sooner or later, and there was no time to waste. He seized hold of himself and started the work in front of him. He wrapped Sujata in bed sheets and tied her shrouded body with curtain cords. He easily slipped past the guards and found a sentry’s horse tethered by the gates. He loaded the corpse on its rump and rode quietly toward the river. Mara was already there; he stood by while Devadatta, still not speaking, strong enough that carrying the body didn’t make him groan with exertion, approached the water.
“Weigh her down with stones,” Mara ordered. Devadatta shot him a look of hatred and dumped the bundle into the water. The bed sheets were not securely tied, and they billowed out over the surface of the river, a spectral white like sails in the moonlight. They retained enough air in bulges and bubbles that Sujata didn’t sink immediately, and the fast current carried her away. Devadatta didn’t wait. He wanted to forget that Mara was beside him.
“Not beside, dearest. Inside,” Mara said with satisfaction.
Devadatta trembled in despair. He had no doubt that the gods didn’t exist. But at that moment he understood why, when the horror of life finally reveals itself, somebody had to invent them.
10
Sujata’s disappearance wasn’t discovered for several days. The first day a maid ran to Kumbira with the news that the tray of food left outside Sujata’s door was untouched.
“She’s always pouting. Wait till she gets hungry enough.” Sujata’s staying in her room hadn’t hid her plight from Kumbira, who knew well enough that she was lovesick. But when her food was untouched the second day, Kumbira knocked on the door and entered. What she saw made her react quickly.
“Run away. Now.”
Kumbira pushed the maid who had followed her out the door, hoping that the drawn curtains hid the sight of blood on the stripped bed. But the frightened girl certainly saw something, which left Kumbira very little time before palace rumors would spread like wildfire. She immediately went to the king and laid before him everything that had happened between Sujata and the prince.
Suddhodana took the news more calmly than she had expected. And if the king was concerned about Sujata’s fate, it certainly didn’t show. “She was too ashamed to stay. Send a few men to search where she went. Not too many.” It wasn’t even half an hour before Channa carried the news to the prince, who immediately ran to Sujata’s room. Kumbira had been swift enough in having the bed removed; even so, Siddhartha was alarmed at Sujata’s sudden disappearance.
“I’ve sent my men out,” Suddhodana told him. “What else do you expect me to do? She wanted to go home. Somebody should have kept her from getting so lonely.”
Siddhartha was stung by his father’s implication. The pleasure pavilion had been open to him since he was sixteen, but in those two years he hadn’t gone there. Suddhodana was offended by this show of chastity. “I didn’t put those girls there so you could pray with them,” he had once taunted.