Roberto Calasso - Ka

She found Cyavana motionless as ever, with his sharp bones and knowing eyes. She told him what had happened, without sparing a single detail. Her voice trembled. Cyavana gazed at her with immense sweetness and a shrewd, almost mocking gleam. He said: “They were the Aśvins, the divine twins. They wander around the earth, helping people here and there, healing them. What they told you is true, but not the whole truth. Tomorrow they’ll be there again, perhaps in the same place, and they’ll say the same thing. They won’t give up. Then you must say: ‘It’s you who are not whole, because you are not allowed to drink the soma .’ You’ll see how they’ll change their tune at that. They’ll ask you who could take them to the soma . You’ll say: ‘My husband. He drinks the soma .’ They’ll follow you like two tame dogs, you’ll see. Bring them here to me.”

All went as Cyavana had foreseen. The twins and the old Cyavana fell to talking with some familiarity. But now the Aśvins’ voices were anxious and urgent. Sukanyā didn’t know if she was supposed to be listening. They were whispering. Then Cyavana’s sharp voice rang out very clearly: “Agreed. This is the deal. I help you get to the soma . All you have to do is find a priest called Dadhyañc. In return, you give me youth. And Sukanyā will choose whichever of us she most desires.”

Taking advantage of a moment when the Aśvins were confabulating together, Cyavana came to Sukanyā and muttered: “We’re going now. When we come back, you won’t be able to tell me from them. The moment I arrive, I’ll lift my hand to my right eye, where you pricked me. That way you’ll know who I am.”

Then he set off toward the Sarasvatī. Standing by the door of their hut, Sukanyā watched the magnificent backs of the Aśvins and, between them, the shrunken, skinny Cyavana. They reached the water and jumped in. When Cyavana reemerged and looked around, the Aśvins were beside him. Deft as devoted servants, they stripped “the skin off his body, like a cloak.” Cyavana felt a sudden exuberance flood in. Without a word they climbed out of the water. They were three prodigiously beautiful young men, with sparkling earrings, all naked and identical. Sukanyā left the bushes where she had been hiding and went to meet them. “Choose which of us you desire,” said a single voice. Sukanyā lowered her eyes, but not so far as not to see one of the three young men rub au eyebrow. She nodded in his direction. As soon as the Aśvins were gone, Sukanyā abandoned herself to the exploration of Cyavana’s body. Thus began their unending embraces, “like those of the gods.”

“How are we to find Dadhyañc?” the Aśvins asked themselves. “How are we to recognize him?” They wandered anxiously around. They had hoped to set off with a resplendent bride on their chariot, as though a new Sūryā. Daughter of the Sun, were traveling with them on the earth. But all they had gotten was a name. They repeated it to themselves as if it were a password: “Dadhyañc, Dadhyañc…”

Still, they were all three quite sure of themselves when they met in the crowd that milled as though at a market in the field of the Kurus, where in times past the gods used to sacrifice. Each knew the other at once. Before being men or gods, they were horses. They recognized each other’s stride and rhythm.

Dadhyañc was used to being alone. He knew his knowledge could not, must not be communicated. Why? Honey cannot flow into the world without turning it upside down. So Dadhyañc was a seer like so many others, he kept himself to himself.

The Aśvins looked him straight in the eye and said: “We want to be your disciples.” Dadhyañc had never seen creatures of such beauty. It was as though they were transparent receptacles for doctrine. But most of all he felt an affinity with them, and this disturbed him. It happened the moment they shook out their hair. He realized he wanted to neigh with them.

“You’re asking me to teach you what the head of the sacrifice is. I’d be glad to. But one day Indra came to tell me that, if ever I revealed it, he would cut off my head. Indra is sovereign among the gods, and he would sense it at once. Nothing escapes him. I must live alone.”

The Aśvins didn’t give up. They looked at Dadhyañc and said: “There is a way. Let us cut off your head.” They waited. “Then we’ll put a horse’s head in its place. With that new head you can teach us the doctrine of the honey.” Dadhyañc was already smiling. “Of course Indra will find you out one day and cut off your head. But he’ll be cutting off the horse’s head. Then we pull out your human head from a safe place. And we stick it back on your neck. We can do that kind of thing. We’re doctors. What we don’t know about is the doctrine of the honey.”

Dadhyañc had big, trembling nostrils, which stood out in his long, pale face. “They look like ours,” said the Aśvins. Observing this person who had accepted them as disciples, they shared a feeling of inexplicable familiarity. They had come to the aid of the blind and the crippled, of widows, aging spinsters, imprisoned seers. They had always had a goddess beside them, whether visible or invisible, third wheel to their cart. But they had never known their father. And they couldn’t ask their mother about him, for she had abandoned them. People said she was the immortal woman the gods would not let mortals see. There were all kinds of stories about their birth, none of them entirely convincing. The gods claimed to have cut them off from the soma because they helped men too much and traveled too much around the earth. But the Aśvins were convinced that this was a pretext. “Perhaps it’s our past we need…,” said one of the Aśvins. “Perhaps it has to do with the doctrine of the honey…,” said the other.

The Aśvins sat next to Dadhyañc. He still had a pinkish scar around the top of his neck, where a new white head had been attached, topped by a glossy mane. Dadhyañc spoke as if he had finally found his own voice and his own face.

He said: “Before ending up as a papier-mâché sign over the door of some boucherie chevaline , I know I have to speak to you. The doctrine you want from me is not human, that’s why it is I who reveal it to you. And you too are more horses than gods. Your mother, Saraṇyū, was a mare who practiced tapas . She saw a stallion approaching her and chose at first to move away, thinking it was one of the many who wanted to mount her and disturb her spiritual exercises. Then she saw that the stallion was still coming toward her, and was dazzling. She decided to go to him. The important thing was to cover her back from attack. Thus their muzzles met, and rubbed together. The stallion was Vivasvat, the Brilliant One, or rather the sun, or rather the amorphous, white-hot husband who had always desired her but whom Saranyū had quickly abandoned. That desire was a burning well within the stallion: his seed streamed out from warm nostrils. And it was immediately sucked into the mare’s nostrils; it was the only way she could touch her partner’s body now. That is how you two were conceived.”

Another day Dadhyañc said to the Aśvins: “Here’s something else you ought to know: Viṣṇu was standing still, deep in thought — half asleep perhaps? — his chin resting on the tip of his bow. Strewn around him were a pink shell, a sharp discus, a hammer. On his bare chest glittered the Kaustubha gem. The gods crouched in a circle around him, and were hostile. Watching Viṣṇu and seeing his enigmatic, self-sufficient repose, they had the suspicion that he had something in him that was about to escape all of them, something that they would never know. Viṣṇu had seized the splendor that shines out at the end of the sacrifice, and he wanted to keep it to himself. The gods had tried to overpower him, but in vain. Alone, Viṣṇu kept them at a distance. Indeed, and this was the ultimate insult, he smiled. That smile spread out across the surrounding grass. But it is dangerous to smile like that. The bright force is frittered away. That is why an initiate must cover his mouth when he smiles, to preserve the bright force, say the texts.