Roberto Calasso - Ka

His first move was to ask for an audience with the eight queens. He spoke with his subtle, supple eloquence, as though advancing a noble and solemn request. The queens looked at each other for a moment. Then the first spoke for all: “How could we? Our feet are perfumed with jasmine. We spend our time making sure that every inch of our bodies is pure. We couldn’t offer our Lord Kṛṣṇa anything that wasn’t perfect. We’ve even forgotten what dust is.” Nārada was taken aback. Kṛṣṇa was still delirious. Nārada went to the most noble ladies of Dvārakā and repeated his request, at once urgent and uneasy. Nobody would agree to it. To do something the queens had refused to do would doubtless be an unforgivable indiscretion. They didn’t say as much, but they feared for their heads.

The despondent Nārada went back to the palace, where he found a message from a doctor: “Lord Kṛṣṇa asks whether Nārada, who seeks far and wide, has also sought in Vrndāvana.” No, Nārada said, he hadn’t been to Vrndāvana. He set off. Leaving the city behind, he came across some huts and animals. The countryside was ever more lonely and enchanting. In a meadow surrounded by tall, dark trees, near the waters of the Yamunā, he saw a patch of dazzling colors. A herd of cows were grazing. It was silent. Getting closer, he saw that the patch was made up of a number of crouching figures, who now started toward him. “You are Nārada, you have seen Kṛṣṇa,” said a sharp-eyed little girl as the others gathered around. Nārada was looking at the ground. He saw all those small, bare, dirty feet. “Lord Kṛṣṇa is ill,” he murmured. “He needs the dust stuck to certain women’s feet.” The gopīs didn’t even answer. One took off a blue rag, and all of them shook the dust from their feet into it. They even scraped dust off with their nails. Then the first gave the rag to Nārada. “Here. Give it to our playmate. If this is a crime, we will face the punishment. We are ready. We are always ready. Kṛṣṇa is everything to us.” Nārada said not a word. He put the rag full of dust on his shoulders, like a bundle, and set off again toward Dvārakā. He walked deep in thought, head bent. He looked like a pilgrim now, or a beggar. All at once he stopped and caught himself saying out loud: “Kṛṣṇa, you were right. Now I understand.”

Memories of his time with the gopīs would well up in Kṛṣṇa’s heart like a spring of clear water, hidden beneath rushes. Now he was surrounded by people who knew nothing of his herdboy’s adolescence, who thought of him only as a shrewd, mature king, his body still powerful, his face furrowed with fine wrinkles. Kṛṣṇa hardly ever spoke about himself.

One day he was visiting Indraprastha, where his sister Subhadrā had married Arjuna and borne him a son. Kṛṣṇa celebrated his nephew’s birth rites. The hot weather was setting in. Arjuna said: “I’d like to leave the city and bathe in the Yamunā with our girls.” Kṛṣṇa added: “I’d like to play with our girls in the Yamunā too.” Preparations were made. At first light, a colorful procession set out from the city gate. Servant women, maids, and ladies clustered around carts laden with fragrant food baskets.

Hidden among the sunshades, Arjuna’s two wives, the majestic Draupadī and the enchanting Subhadrā, talked together. It looked like an exodus of young maidens. Among them, toward the end of the procession, came just two men, Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna. They too were talking together.

The sun was still low when they reached the banks of the Yamunā. The provisions were unloaded in a chatter of trilling voices. The girls spread white and embroidered clothes on the grass. Like skilled craftsmen they erected delicate pavilions. The water was already sparkling. Behind them the grassy clearing was surrounded by the dark presence of the Forest of Khāṇḍava, the Sugar Candy Forest. The air rang with the highest spirits. Already you could hear flutes, vīṇās , tambourines. Some of the girls had dived in the water, others had gathered in the pavilions, others were laying out the food. There was laughter, weeping, the whispering of secrets. Draupadī and Subhadrā were seen taking off their jewels and fastening them around the necks, wrists, and ankles of the first girls they came across.

Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna were not much in evidence. They had asked to be away from the group and were sitting on two inlaid chairs at the edge of the forest. Left alone, they said nothing, suddenly solemn expressions set on their faces. All at once Kṛṣṇa turned to the women in the distance: all he could see there was a swarm of colored points, milling madly. Voices and sounds came faintly through the air, a quivering in the background. He would never see anything so delightful again in all his life. Indeed he would hardly see anything delightful at all in the time that remained. Arjuna didn’t know that, couldn’t know it, but he was beginning to feel it. There was no need to speak to him. In the silence he was preparing himself for an immense catastrophe, albeit without knowing exactly what would happen.

Then they saw a tall figure emerge from the dense forest, upright, emaciated, with a red beard and skin of molten gold glimmering beneath a black robe. A brahman. He seemed exhausted and irate. He said: “I know who you are. I am a voracious brahman. Give me food I can eat.” Kṛṣṇa asked him what food would satisfy him. “I’m Agni,” said the brahman. “Only this whole forest can satisfy me. I can’t burn it because I haven’t the strength and Indra protects the place.” Kṛṣṇa looked up: he saw heavy clouds gathering darkly. They would have to fight together against Arjuna’s father, king of the gods. Secretly, Kṛṣṇa was pleased. “How can it be that Agni is unable to burn?” he asked. “I could, but only if you help me. It’s a sad story. A mad sacrifice. A rash and arrogant king fed me on melted butter for twelve years. He hoped his sacrifice would help him scale the sky. He wore me out with that butter. Now I want plants and meat. My mouth is sick of butter. Now I want nothing but wild food. I look at this forest, and I can’t make any impression on it. Seven times I’ve set it alight, and seven times elephants and Nāga have put it out. Indra poured down cataracts from the clouds. But I can offer you weapons that are invincible. And you’ll soon be needing them,” Agni finished with a chuckle. The bow called Gāṇḍīva was surrendered to the grip of Arjuna’s hands. The disk and the mace appeared in Kṛṣṇa’s.

Then the brahman turned back to fire again, creeping through the grass toward the forest. Suddenly there was a huge blaze, a whirlwind and a crash. Arjuna and Kṛṣṇa took up positions at either end of the clearing and stood motionless. Together with the crackle of fire came the piercing shrieks of wild beasts. The animals swarmed toward the clearing with desperation in their eyes. Elephants, antelopes, monkeys, buffalo, butterflies, tigers, moles, demons, goats, snakes, squirrels, colored birds. Arjuna brought them down one by one, the fiercest and the most harmless, the gigantic and the tiny, pulling out arrows from his two inexhaustible quivers. As every arrow whistled off, he felt at once and with equal intensity both the pointlessness and the necessity of what he was doing. How many more times would he have to kill? And at bottom every other killing, even the most justifiable and irreproachable, would be like the massacre of those beasts fleeing from one death to another. The pointlessness was glaring, the necessity just a thread, but the toughest thread of all, the one that tied him to Kṛṣṇa, that friend in whom he so deeply confided that it sometimes seemed Kṛṣṇa was at work inside him, ensconced there in a cell that just occasionally would open. Even now, as he drew out his arrows, Arjuna’s hand was a glove with the steady hand of Kṛṣṇa flexing inside. Meanwhile, from the opposite side of the clearing, Kṛṣṇa hit out incessantly like some automaton. Few were the animals who escaped the razor disk that flew from his hand and then immediately returned. And even those fled in vain: the mace brought them down at once. Toward the forest, nothing but devouring flame.