Steven Millhauser - Voices in the Night - Stories

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Chanda Alone. Alone in his chamber, Chanda sits motionless on a rice mat, in a shaft of sunlight that warms his face and bare chest. The rest of his body is in shade, and Chanda thinks how fitting it is that he should be divided in half this way: the outward sign of his inward division. For if it’s true that he is the closest companion of Gautama, the Prince’s dearest and truest friend, if it’s true that he would do anything for Gautama and would happily die for his sake, it’s also true that he spies on his friend and reports secretly to the King. How has it come to this? Chanda’s love for Gautama is not in doubt. They have been close companions since earliest childhood, and his love has only deepened with the years. It isn’t too much to say that Chanda lives for Gautama, finds the meaning of his life in his friend’s happiness. The feeling that moves in Gautama flows out of him and into Chanda, who therefore knows him from the inside out. If Gautama experiences a single moment of discontent, Chanda lies awake all night. How is it, then, that he watches his friend secretly and reports to the King? He answers his own charge by saying that everything he does is for the sake of his friend — that his secret meetings with the King are intended to cure Gautama’s unhappiness. He understands the paradox hidden in his argument. He is arguing that his loyalty to his friend runs so deep that he’s willing to be disloyal for the sake of loyalty. But although Chanda’s nature is fervent and extreme, he is trained to think clearly, and he knows perfectly well that an act of disloyalty is not the same as an act of loyalty. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say that, by doing the King’s bidding, he is being a faithful subject: he is obeying a higher loyalty. But Chanda doesn’t believe in a loyalty higher than that of friendship. It is possible, of course, that he is disloyal by nature, a corrupt man, a treacherous friend, a creature who serves his own interests and cares only for himself. Chanda, despite a modesty that is sometimes excessive, despite a willingness to condemn himself utterly, doesn’t believe he is this kind of man. What, then, is the truth? The truth is that a secret divides him from Gautama, a secret that, for his friend’s sake, he can never reveal. All members of the court know the secret, which the King revealed to Chanda in a private audience many years ago, after swearing him to silence on pain of death. The secret goes back to the time of Gautama’s birth, when a prophecy was uttered by a sage.

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The Tears of a Sage. When the Prince was born, a sage came to the royal palace to welcome the newborn son. As he held the child in his arms, the sage began to weep bitter tears. The King, trembling with fear, begged the venerable man to tell him what terrible misfortune was destined to befall his son. The sage answered that the child was destined for greatness. For if the child lived in a palace, he would one day rule the entire world; but if he renounced worldly things and chose the life of an ascetic, he would become an enlightened one. “But why are you weeping?” asked the King, himself alarmed at the possibility that his son might forsake the greatness of the world for a life of poverty and contemplation. “Because,” said the sage, “I will never live to see the Awakened One.” From that moment, the King vowed to attach his son to the pleasures of the world.

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A Cat in Sunlight. One afternoon, a few days after his walk with Chanda in the Park of Six Bridges, Gautama is strolling along a portico in one of the courtyards of the northeast wing of the Summer Palace. Here lie the chambers of the musicians. From the open doorways he can hear the strings of lutes, the thump and tinkle of tambourines, the birdsong of wooden flutes, the calls of conch shells. The day is bright and hot, and he sees the young men taking their ease in their chambers, sitting on mats dyed red and green, or lying back on divans, their bodies naked to the waist, their shoulders glistening. His mood of darkness, his longing to sit apart and brood over the meaning of things, has left him so completely that he can recall it only in a general way, as one might recall gusts of rain in the middle of a blue afternoon. He feels a warm affection for the musicians, in part because they possess the gift of transforming pieces of wood and shell and animal hide into sounds more beautiful than silk or gold, but above all because they are solitary beings who from time to time renounce their solitude and come together to form a miniature kingdom. In the warmth of the shady portico he feels a drowsy well-being, a welcoming of the sunlight and the shade, the doorways with their drawn-back curtains, the jewels brightening and darkening on his fingers, the white swan-cloud in the blue sky, the pebbled paths in the green grass, the sound of his bare feet slapping softly against the marble walk. He turns left as the portico follows the shape of the courtyard. Here the sun strikes in such a way that he sees a pleasing pattern of shady pillar-sides and sunny pillar-sides, like a wall painting in one of the corridors of his father’s palace. At the foot of a pillar, he sees a white cat asleep in the sun. Its back is beautifully curved, its head is bent gracefully into its hind paws, and its tail lies across its hind flank, so that it forms a perfect circle. As Gautama draws near, the white circle begins to come apart. The cat stretches: its front legs reach forward, its hind legs reach back and back, its body shudders with delight. Swiftly it draws in its legs, lays one paw across its face, and is still. Gautama walks on, but he is no longer at ease. Is he not that cat? He stretches himself in the sun of his pleasures. He curls up in the contentment of his days. He lies asleep in the sun. And if he should wake? The strings of the lutes, the jingling disks of the tambourines, seem to grow louder. They scrape against his nerves like knives on stone. Impatiently Gautama crosses the courtyard, enters a cool hallway, and steps out onto a path.

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The Two Swans. Through an arched doorway in an earthen wall, the Prince enters a small wood that leads to the Lake of Solitude. He sits on the grass at the edge of the lake, in the shade of a high mimosa tree. Swans glide among the white, red, and blue lotuses. Under the swans glide the other swans, the upside-down swans that he has loved since childhood. Two cranes stand in the water near the opposite shore. Gautama waits for the calm to descend. All about him is calm: the mimosa blossoms, the swans under the swans, the two cranes, the smooth water. All will enter him and calm him, as surely as he entered through the arched doorway. He waits under the mimosa tree, his legs crossed, his palms on his knees. The sun moves across the sky, but the calm does not come. It is there, outside him, all around him, but he himself is unquiet. Stubbornly he sits at the edge of the lake. Was it a mistake to have come here? What is he looking for? Nearby, a swan lifts its wings as if to fly, but does not fly. The wings, dipping, stir the water. Under the swan, the other swan is broken. Gautama thinks: I am the swan who does not fly. He thinks: I am the swan under the swan in the dark water. The air is still. The swan over the swan and the swan under the swan glide closer. He can see the two beaks, dark orange in the mimosa’s shade, the glassy bee-black eyes. As the double swan comes closer, it grows larger, it becomes more and more of itself, until it rises before him with outstretched wings. He can smell the wet feathers like sweat. The four wings spread wider and wider until they touch the ends of the lake, it is a swan-god, a swan-monster, the feathers are passing into his mouth and eyes, he can’t breathe, in a voice that issues from all sides the swan says: “You are wasting your life.” Gautama shuts his eyes tight and presses back against the tree. A moment later he opens his eyes. Before him he sees the calm lake, the swan gliding over the swan, among the lotuses, on a summer afternoon.