FORTY
On the sixth day of that anxious week, a quiet man with a long face and keen eyes arrived in the palace of lac. In a soft voice, he said, "Your uncle Vidura sent me. I am a miner; I tunnel under the ground for precious stones."
Yudhishtira glanced at Bheema. He said nothing yet, because he must be sure the man was not a spy. After a moment, the miner went on, "Vidura said to me, 'Duryodhana means to immolate my nephews in a house of lac in Varanasi. Go and help the Pandavas.' So I have come."
Though they found themselves warming instinctively to the taciturn miner, the Pandavas waited for some sign that they could trust him. Suddenly remembering, the miner brightened and said, "Fire is a more terrible weapon than the sword. Against fire a man should guard himself as the rat does against winter, by burrowing."
Vidura's very words to Yudhishtira outside Hastinapura and the miner spoke in the rough mlechcha bhasha. Yudhishtira rose and embraced the man, "Welcome, friend! We had to be sure Vidura sent you. These are days of conspiracy and our cousin means to kill us. Did you notice the smell in the air?"
The miner nodded, he was not a man who missed much. "I will dig an underground passage out of here, through which you can escape on the night Purochana sets fire to this place. Duryodhana will believe you are dead and you will have the advantage over your enemies. The people will also suspect foul play and turn away from Duryodhana. You will gain an advantage twice over and time as well, says your uncle Vidura who loves you."
The miner began his task at once. He prised away a flagstone from the central courtyard and started digging. He said his tunnel would lead to the banks of the Ganga. The only trouble was that Purochana was always in the lacquer palace. He pretended to be an eager servitor; while, in fact, he was spying. And of course, he was waiting uneasily for a moonless night.
It was not possible for the miner to dig his tunnel while Purochana was about. Every day, the Pandavas went hunting with Purochana as their guide. While they were away, the miner worked feverishly.
For two weeks he toiled: by day, while the Pandavas were out in the forest with Purochana and by night as well, when Purochana returned to Varanasi to sleep. The miner barely slept a few hours daily and Duryodhana's man never suspected a thing. In fact, the miner made friends with Purochana. He even made him think that he, too, was Duryodhana's man sent by him to keep an eye on the Pandavas and on Purochana himself.
The tunnel was finished sooner than they expected. The miner's task had been providentially halved: some twenty feet down he struck a natural subterranean rock-tunnel that led straight to the river. All he had to do was excavate his way up through soft earth and make an opening for the Pandavas and Kunti to come out. By this stroke of luck, he was also able to make a much longer passage.
One night, the miner took Yudhishtira and his brothers a short way down the tunnel to show them how it led into the ground. Meanwhile he also took to drinking with Purochana on some evenings in Varanasi. He won the assassin's confidence by speaking slightingly of the Pandavas and praising Duryodhana. And once Purochana confided to the miner that an astrologer had told him the Pandavas should be very careful of their lives on the night of the coming new moon.
The next morning the miner warned Yudhishtira. The Pandava said, "Amavasya is a fortnight away. Before that we must set fire to the palace ourselves, with Purochana in it and escape."
Kunti said, "Let us have a poor-feeding in ten days. We will invite Purochana also and get him drunk until he falls asleep."
"And we set fire to this cursed palace and escape!" cried Bheema, hugging her. "Our enemies should beware of our mother."
Arrangements were made for the poor-feeding. There was one problem: when the house of lac burned down Purochana's body would be found among its ashes, but not the princes or Kunti's remains. Word would reach Duryodhana in Hastinapura and the Pandavas' advantage would be lost.
King's daughter that she was, Kunti had a solution for this as well. It was a terrible solution. But they all agreed, after a lot of hard thought and discussion—the miner insisted desperate measures were unavoidable—that it was the only way to mask their escape. If Duryodhana became suspicious that they were still alive, he would hunt them down relentlessly and have them killed by one agent or another.
Kunti had taken to feeding a nishada woman and her five dark sons, who came occasionally from the forest to visit her. She invited them to her feast for the poor. That night, Kunti was especially attentive of this woman and her grown sons. She took them away from the rest of the crowd into an inner room. There she not only fed them sumptuously but plied them with some very strong liquor, which the miner bought in Varanasi.
Bheema drank with Purochana that night. Now Bheema could drink as much as five men and feel just slightly merry. Obliged to keep up with the unusually friendly prince, Purochana was soon so drunk that he passed out even before he tasted Kunti's delicious cooking.
The feast ended and all the guests left: all save Purochana and the nishada woman and her five sons, who were also unconscious. One of those wild youths was a giant like Kunti's Bheema. A strong wind had risen over the river and the jungle beyond it. It whistled around the lacquer palace.
The Pandavas gathered in the courtyard where a trap door, covered by a flagstone, led to escape and anonymity: the inscrutable future. Bheema said, "The walls will burn so quickly we may not all have time to get away. The rest of you go down into the tunnel. I'll light the fire in Purochana's room and join you in a moment."
Bheema ignited the torch he carried in his hand. When his brothers and Kunti had climbed down into the darkness of the tunnel, he crossed quickly to Purochana's room. The man lay on his back, snoring. Bheema said, "Farewell, Purochana old friend. Sleep now for ever."
He stepped out of the room and applied his torch to the door. In moments, huge tongues of flame leapt across the walls and the ceiling. Bheema had thought he might have to apply his torch to some of the other rooms as well. When he saw how the fire caught and spread, he ran for the tunnel.
As he scrambled down the tunnel-mouth and secured the trapdoor behind him, the flames had engulfed the palace. They burned hungrily, devouring the willing stuff of which the murderous edifice was built. The vats of ghee stored in the kitchen erupted.
In the dimness, Bheema asked, "Won't they find the tunnel when the palace has burned down?"
Yudhishtira held his torch up to the ceiling of the underground passage; smoke dribbled in from above. He pointed to some wooden rafters. "Those will fall when they burn and the ceiling will cave in and debris from the palace will fill the tunnel. Rocks and earth will fall, blocking it halfway to the river. Our friend the miner is a cunning craftsman. Not even if someone looks for a tunnel will he find it. But let us fly, before the roof falls on our heads."
They set off by torchlight. The tunnel led steeply down at first, before straightening toward the river. The air was thin here. When they had gone a short way, Kunti and all her sons, except Bheema, felt dizzy. Behind them, the fire raged.
The people of Varanasi were woken from sleep by the crackling of great sheets of flame and the sound of rafters crashing down. They came running out of their homes and stood shocked, watching the lacquer palace burn like an immense firework. Walls and ceiling fell noisily with explosions of sparks.
"Duryodhana planned this."
"And his father knew."
"Alas, Kunti has perished with her sons."
"A curse be on Dhritarashtra. He will pay for this sin."
"Even Bheeshma did nothing to stop it."
"A murderer rules us and his murderous son will rule after him."
"Drona and Kripa were blind to their dharma."
"Vidura loved the sons of Pandu, but even he did nothing."
"Nemesis will stalk the Kuru kingdom."
They wept that they themselves could do nothing to save their princes. Until the treacherous palace had burned down completely and the piles of embers began to subside, the people of Varanasi stood and watched in horror under a flame-lit sky.
Some hours ago, when the Pandavas and Kunti started down the tunnel they were overcome by dizziness, except Bheema who had once drunk the nagamrita. Yudhishtira, Arjuna, Sahadeva, Nakula and Kunti sat down and gasped that they could not go a step further. The first rafters and stones came down, shaking the tunnel ominously. At any moment, the whole thing would collapse, doing Duryodhana's work for him.
With the strength of the elemental Vayu, Bheema now picked up Kunti and his brothers. Yudhishtira and Arjuna sat on his shoulders. Kunti perched on his neck. Then the titan scooped the twins up in either arm. While the others clung to him, stupefied, Bheema loped down the miner's tunnel. Just in time: as he set off, he heard part of the tunnel's roof, which lay under the lacquer palace, come crashing down.
The son of the wind streaked down the secret passage. He carried his mother and his brothers as lightly as his natural father may have some leaves. Like the wind, he arrived at the end of the tunnel. Like a gust of air from the earth, he burst out of the branch-and-leaf covering that hid the tunnel-mouth beside the Ganga. He sprang out into the woods with Kunti and his brothers.
Midnight was laden with the scent of wildflowers and lotuses that floated on the river. The others stirred from their swoon. They drew deep draughts of clean air. Bheema set them down gently on the grass. They were south of Varanasi now.
When they looked back, they saw the northern sky lit up. Gigantic tongues of flame reached for the stars and Kunti shuddered. Ahead of them the Ganga flowed, lapping serenely at her dark banks. They imagined the river spoke to them, saying, 'Like my waters, all things must pass and be forgotten.'
They stood on the banks of the river, not knowing how they would cross her. Their way lay across the water, into the thick jungle beyond and oblivion. Then a voice spoke from the night, startling them. The brothers drew their swords.
A thin, very tall man stepped out from behind a tree, into the light thrown all the way here by the fire. "You must be the Pandavas and their mother. I thank God that you have come. This is the night Vidura told me to wait for, when I would see the white palace burning like a hayrick."
"Who are you?" asked Yudhishtira, mistrustfully.
The man ignored the question. "The lord Vidura gave me gold to wait here every night with my boat. I have been here three months and I was beginning to think you would never come. Tonight I had fallen asleep, when suddenly I heard the fire crackling. I knew this was the night and God be praised, here you are."
Yudhishtira asked again, "Who are you, fellow? We don't know you."
The man cracked a big-toothed smile. "So you are careful, my prince; that is a good thing, because these are dark times. But listen to this."
Now he spoke in the mlechcha bhasha, "He survives who knows fire doesn't harm those that hide in the hearts of jungles."
Yudhishtira took his hand warmly. The man said, "You will be safer across the river and the sooner we set out the better."
He led them to a boat tethered to some rocks. The Pandavas noticed his skin glowed softly in the dark and wondered if he had gandharva blood in him; and his boat was the strangest, sleekest craft. It was made of a dull metal and was flatter than any boat they had seen. It had no oars or sail.
The mysterious boatman helped them aboard, Kunti first and then her sons. He smiled when he saw how the Pandavas stared at his craft. "My boat is not ordinary, my princes? You wonder how it will cross the river without oars or sails. But tonight, my passengers are more extraordinary than my father's boat!"
The night was moonless and they did not see what he did with some levers near the stern. The boat began to hum. Slowly, with life of its own, it set off across the river, gliding along hardly rippling the velvet water.
"It is best if I don't set you down directly across. We will go upstream, where the jungle is wilder and few men venture. So the good Vidura said I should."
He worked the shining levers beside him. The strange boat leapt forward, flying easily against the current while the boatman steered it casually with his left hand. He smiled to see their astonished expressions. "Cast off your despondency, my friends! As swiftly as my boat, your evil time will pass."
They went half an hour and they could no longer see the glow in the sky where the palace still burned. The night was black and the jungle loomed forbiddingly. A breeze sprung up in the trees and blew into their faces.
The boat slowed and, at the boatman's expert navigation, came to rest softly against the far bank of the Ganga. Above them bright stars hung in the sky, but ahead lay the jungle and utter darkness.
When he had helped them ashore, the boatman bowed, "My lord Vidura, who is wise and prescient, says that Duryodhana, Shakuni, Karna and all the Kauravas will taste bitter defeat one day. Yudhishtira will sit upon the throne of the Kurus, with his brothers around him. Vidura says he waits impatiently for that day."
The man of the night bowed again. He turned back to his boat and it hummed with life once more. He veered it round and set off into the dark and soon the night swallowed him. He had a long way to go back to Hastinapura, to tell Vidura his mission was accomplished.
The Pandavas knew it was not safe to rest where they were: anyone on the river could see them. With a prayer in their hearts, they plunged into the jungle, picking their way through it by rushlight. Hunting owls and other creatures of the night, nocturnal ones with luminous eyes, stared down from the trees at the intruders.