THIRTEEN
When night fell, Vyasa knocked for the second time at Ambika's door. It opened slowly and she stood there, now her face covered by a veil. No lamp burned in the room and he could see only dimly by the starlight that glimmered through the windows. When she brought the silver pitcher to wash his feet, he was pleased to see that her hands did not tremble. Unlike the first night he had been here, she bent and wiped his feet dry with a firm touch.
In a clear voice, she said, "Welcome, my lord, I have waited impatiently for you."
Vyasa was surprised! She had not uttered a word the last time; she had been so terrified. Now, to his growing astonishment, she came and sat near him in the dark.
She whispered and there was eagerness in her voice, "I am glad you have come."
She took his hand and brought it to her breast. She had undone her blouse when she went to put away the water. He was pleased: she must have thought back on their first night together and decided she liked him. Yet, even as she lifted her veil and began to kiss him and to caress him with some abandon, he remembered when she had shut her eyes that first night.
But tonight it was not he who stripped away her clothes and his own, but she. And she did not shut her eyes, he could tell even in the dimness. She was like another woman tonight as she ministered to him. Laughing softly in her deep warm way, she could not wait to lead him to her bed.
"You have changed," he observed quietly. "The last time, you were afraid."
She smiled in the night, stroking him, "The last time I had never been with a man like you before. I can't say the same tonight."
She laid him down and made such tender love to him until dawn Vyasa feared he would lose his heart to her. At the first flush of the sun on the horizon, she left him asleep and melted from the room. Vyasa slept for some hours and it was Satyavati who awakened him.
She was eager to know how the night had gone. "Did she shut her eyes again?"
Vyasa shook his head, smiling.
"Did she turn pale?"
"No," he murmured, "she did not."
Satyavati sighed in satisfaction. "So I will have a grandson who is neither blind nor pale."
"Surely you will and he will be a boy of great wisdom."
"Oh, I am content!" cried his mother.
"But there is one small matter," mused her son. "It was not with your daughter-in-law that I spent last night, but her sakhi."
Ambika was summoned and confessed she had been so afraid that in her place, she had sent her favorite maid, who was very like her in build if not in temperament. Satyavati begged Vyasa, "You must visit Ambalika again, we must…"
But he cut her short in a voice that brooked no argument. "Three times is as often as a hermit may risk himself with a woman."
Vyasa went away from Hastinapura. He wended his way back to the Himalaya, where he sat in dhyana. It was to take him a long time before he had his serenity back. One night of the three he spent with a woman haunted him. He felt her velvet body against his; he tasted her fervid kisses. Worst of all, she had touched him deeper than the flesh. If ever Veda Vyasa came dangerously near falling in love, if perhaps he did fall in love, it was on the enchanted night he spent with Ambika's maid, whose name he never learnt. It took him years of tapasya before her memory receded from his meditation.
And she, simple, passionate woman, never forgot him for the rest of her days.