Brahmahatyā was leading the way for once, when they saw the town in the distance. It looked like any other big town. But there was something different in the air, countless grains of the finest dust, a subtle smell, at once sweet and sour. From beyond the warehouses and workshops, the cattle sheds and markets, palaces and parks, came the sound of a river in full flow, a river like the sea, its further shore lost in the mist. There, they whispered, was release, on the further shore of the Gangā.
Before going into the town, Śiva and his companion tried to approach a clearing where a lavish sacrifice was going on. But this time they were chased off. Someone noticed the bowl of bone hanging unnaturally from the beggar’s hand. They stopped him. Using a long stick, laughing, they tried to tear it off him. The bowl fell, but immediately another grew out of his hand. Nobody was laughing now. They stared in horror. Śiva and Brahmahatyā went away, unfed.
It was the eighth day of Mārgaśīrṣa, the Head of the Antelope. Śiva hurried on toward the town as if eager to revisit a place he already knew. He was walking swiftly, and Brahmahatyā saw how his steps were turning into a dance. Śiva was heading not toward the lights and the bustle of the travelers but toward a dark, smoking expanse, dotted with pyres. Then Brahmahatyā felt her feet sinking in a soggy mush: ashes, blood, charred flesh. You couldn’t see the jackals and vultures, but you could hear them. Ambiguous shadows flickered by the fires. It was a huge cremation ground, called Avimukta. As he walked ahead of Brahmahatyā, Śiva’s steps were delicate and precise. From time to time a pyre would flare up: others sank into embers. Śiva sat down, motionless. Brahmahatyā stood and watched. She had never spoken so much as a word to him, but now she felt a tremendous urge to use his name, as if they were lovers and that cremation ground their bed. She couldn’t do it. In a dark light of moon and pyres, she saw Śiva’s open palm offering its bowl to the night. The skull was crumbling away. She saw Śiva’s lean hand, free at last. Beneath her feet the ground grew softer. It gave way and sucked her in. Without a sound she plunged down into a yawning crack.
VI
Hardly anything ever happened in the city of Himavat. Sometimes a ṛṣi would stop by — and soon set off again. No wars, no uprisings. The roads had an unnatural shine to them. Parrots, cranes, and swans were painted on countless palace walls. With all the fountains and canals, the sound of gurgling water was everywhere. The city spread out like a quilt over a plateau of the Himālaya. The gods gazed down covetously, as they always had. They knew that in its bowels, beneath cellars full of spices, was hidden, lined with rock, the greatest store of gems in all the universe: the heart of the mountain. A halo of that dazzling, concealed light seemed to seep upward to the surface. It provided a soft backdrop welded to the sharp outlines that dominated the landscape, indifferent to the slow decay of everything that is. It was here that Pārvatī grew up, she had seen nothing else of the world: this nature at once too sharply etched and too clear, metallic almost, was the only nature she had known.
The first time Pārvatī heard Śiva’s name, it was from her playmates. The little girls would stifle their laughter, and sometimes they blushed, when they chanted rhymes about him. “Lord of ashes and oil,” they would say. But what did the words mean? Or they would say: “Snake among snakes, goad of the bull.” Pārvatī loved it when she didn’t understand. What attracted her most was obscurity. Otherwise the world that surrounded her would have been too transparent.
Her old father, Himavat, old as the mountain itself, was made of rock, as she was, and they understood each other without speaking. Her mother, Menā, seemed to have lived her whole life between palace and gardens. Her worries and anxieties seemed futile to the small, severe Pāvatī. Only very occasionally would Mēna loosen up a little and mention a voyage of long ago, to a “white island,” where, like a princess on a world tour, she had gone with her two sisters, Dhanyā and Kalāvatī. Something had happened there, a serious offense, a lapse on the part of those cheeky princesses. But at whose expense? There was always some ṛṣi or other who was upset. But Pārvatī never managed to get to the bottom of it, however stubbornly she questioned her mother. It was as if that story belonged to another, unmentionable life. Even Himavat sometimes seemed to be talking nonsense, spoke of himself as the “Guardian” and came out with incoherent remarks about a time when everything was still “closed” and only he, Himavat, had known what “fullness” was and had protected it. But whatever her parents’ past may or may not have been — thought Pārvatī—they certainly led a childish life now; they didn’t suffer, they had no knowledge — and she, the little Pārvatī, eager as she was for change, already felt older than they, who perhaps had lived thousands of years.
Tāraka shook the world. He had already stolen the gods’ wives. He rode on a lion, strangled his enemies with ten thousand hands. He was an Asura. A powerful ascetic, on a par with so many other demons before him. But this time, faced with the havoc he was wreaking, Brahmá let slip an unprecedented admission: only Śiva’s son would be able to kill him. But how could Śiva have a son? The gods felt impotent as never before: Indra’s thunderbolt, Varuṇa’s noose, Viṣṇu’s discus lay scattered about like forgotten toys. Tāraka plundered the gem reserves of sea and sky. He broke into the celestial homes of the Apsaras. Out tramped long lines of girls, their eyes on the ground, like prisoners of war.
The gods fled: but Tāraka came at them from every side. At their wits’ end, they turned once again to Brahmā. The god smiled. “It is my will that Tāraka flourish. It is hardly likely that I will destroy him. He can only be killed,” the gods had to hear for the second time, “by the son of Śiva.” “But Śiva has no time for us, or for the world,” said the gods, gloomily. “He’s always wrapped up in himself.” Brahmā answered: “Śiva’s seed rises and goes around in his body. No one has ever seen it. No one has ever received it. But now a woman has been born capable of making that seed squirt. Seek out Pārvatī, daughter of Himavat.”
“To seduce Śiva,” thought Indra. “Who can help us? Only Kāma.” He went to see the old friend who had goaded him on so often in his adulterous exploits. Kāma’s welcome was both gentle and proud. “We’re about to be overthrown,” said Indra. “The time has come to show that you’re my friend. Only you, Desire, have the weapon that will do it.” Kāma didn’t bat an eyelid. “I can overthrow gods and demons with the sidelong glance of a woman. Brahmā too, and Viṣṇu. The others aren’t even worth mentioning.” Then he fell silent a moment and added, solemnly: “I could even overthrow Śiva.” “That’s what I came to ask of you,” said Indra.
Kāma stroked his bow and his five flower-arrows. Just brushing that bowstring was enough to fill the air with a hum of bees. “First of all,” he thought, “we need spring.” He looked at Rati, his beloved, who followed him everywhere, the way Pleasure will follow Desire, and sent her a nod full of complicity.
That spring came out of season. It surrounded and invaded the mountain where Śiva was sitting, motionless. It crept into the Forest of Cedars, where the ṛṣis were practicing tapas. They had the sensation of an acute and unbearable torment. They felt their resolution crumble. Stubbornly, they stuck at it, but secretly they were floundering. Beside Śiva, Nandin, the white bull, lifted his head just a little. And the Ganas, the Genies who surrounded him as though in a gypsy camp, sniffed the air, intrigued.