Rejoicing in spring after the harshness of winter war, we went down towards the rivers. The tall shade-trees and banks of flowers we left behind with the hills. Round the Indus is barren sand, scoured at its flood-times. A little above that, stretching a mile over dunes and scrub, Hephaistion had pitched the camp of the Macedonians. Across the river was his bridge.
He rode out to meet Alexander. He had worked well, he and his engineers. The bridge was of pointed boats linked side to side, with a firm road laid across them. It was longer than the river's width, for that spreads quickly when the snows melt at its source; he had great cables stretched far inland, ready for this. Alexander said he'd done better than Xerxes had with the Hellespont.
Near the place reserved for Alexander's tent was the camp of Roxane's household. But, so I heard, after the King had greeted Hephaistion and commended him, his next words were, "How is Oxhead? Did the mountains tire him?"
He rode through the cheering soldiers, and then straight to the stables, hearing the old horse was short in the wind, and had been missing him. Then he held a war council. Sometime that day, he paid his respects in the harem.
Soon we crossed the river and were in real India, whose marvels I have been asked to recount so often that I could do it in my sleep. The first of them was King Omphis, waiting to receive Alexander with all his kingdom's splendors; his whole army drawn up on the plain, flashing and bright, with its scarlet standards, its painted bedizened elephants, its clashing cymbals and booming gongs.
They were all armed to the teeth. Alexander had seen enough of treachery; he had the trumpets sounded, and came on in order of battle. Luckily, King Omphis had sense, and guessed something was wrong. He rode out in front with a couple of sons and princes; Alexander, always glad once more to believe in men, at once rode out to meet him.
We were all splendidly entertained and banqueted. King Omphis' chief wife went in her curtained carriage drawn by pure white oxen, to fetch Roxane to a ladies' feast. The soldiers, laden with pay they'd had no chance to spend for a year, filled the bazaars, bargaining by signs. They needed cloth, their tunics being in tatters. It dismayed them to find no good strong wool for any money. Even the linen was flimsy, made not from flax but from Indian tree-fluff; being either white or gaudy, it caused much discontent. However, they had no lack of women; they could be had there even in the temples.
I looked everywhere for more of the heavy silk I had bought from the caravan at Marakanda; I fancied another suit of it, now we were in India whence it came. But I could not find any at all.
On the city outskirts, I came on one of the Indian marvels; the offspring tree, which lets down from its branches roots that turn into other trees. A phalanx could have camped within its shade; this one tree spread like a wood. Walking up to look, I saw sitting under it groups of men, some quite venerable, naked as they were born.
Even after the Macedonians, this astonished me; even they did not sit about in such a state. Yet these old men seemed full of dignity, and did not vouchsafe me a glance. One, who seemed the chief of them, with an unkempt beard down to his middle, had a ring of pupils, old and young, who listened with admiration; another had for audience a young child and a white-haired ancient; yet another sat cross-legged, still as a block, his eyes cast down to his belly, hardly seeming to breathe. A passing woman laid before him a garland of yellow flowers, showing no shame for his nakedness; nor did he, he did not so much as move his eyes.
These, as I now remembered, must be the naked philosophers, whom Alexander had said he wanted to see. They were not much like Anaxarchos or Kallisthenes.
Sure enough, here was Alexander himself approaching with some friends, escorted by one of King Omphis' sons. Neither teachers nor pupils rose, nor indeed paid any attention. The prince showed no anger, but seemed even to expect it. He called his interpreter, who addressed them, announcing Alexander; I heard his name.
At this, the chief man rose, followed by all the rest, except the cross-legged man still gazing at his belly. They stamped with their feet on the ground, two or three times, and then stood silent.
Alexander said, "Ask them why they did that."
At the sound of his voice, for the first time the cross-legged man looked up, and fixed his eyes on him.
The leader spoke to the interpreter, who said in Greek, "He asks, lord King, why you have come so far with so much trouble, when wherever you go, nothing of earth is yours but what is under your feet, till you come to die, when you will have a little more, enough to lie in."
Alexander looked at him earnestly for a while, then said, "Tell him I do not only travel the earth to possess it. I seek to know what it is, and what men are, also."
The philosopher bent down in silence, and held up a pinch of dust.
"But," said Alexander, "even the earth can be changed, and so can men."
"Men indeed you have changed. Through you they have known fear and anger, pride and desire, chains which will bind their souls through many lives. And you, who think yourself free because you have mastered fear and the body's greeds; the desires of the mind consume you like raging fire. Soon they will burn you all away."
Alexander thought a little. "That may be. So is the sculptor's wax consumed within the clay, and is gone forever. But in its room they cast the bronze."
When this was interpreted, the philosopher shook his head.
Alexander said, "Tell him I should like to talk further with him. If he will come with me, I will see he is treated with honor."
The old man's head lifted. Whatever he thought he was free of, I doubt he was free from pride. "No, King. Nor would I permit the least of my children here. What can you give me, or what can you take away? All I have is this naked body, and even that I do not need; by taking it you would lift from me my last burden. Why should I go with you?"
"Why indeed?" said Alexander. "We will trouble you no more."
All this time, the man with the garland had sat still, gazing at Alexander. Now he stood up and spoke. I could see his words disturbed the others; the leader for the first time looked angry. The interpreter motioned for silence.
"He says this, lord King. 'Even the gods grow weary of their godhead, and seek release at last. I will go with you till you are freed.' "
Alexander smiled at him and said he would be welcome. He took from a crotch of the tree an old breechcloth, which he wound on, and a wooden food-bowl, and followed barefoot after the King.
Later, I met a Greek who kept a shoeshop in the city and knew the sages; I asked him why they had been so angry with the man. He said it was not because they thought he had gone from greed of wealth, but because he had been drawn in love to a mortal creature. They held that even though his love was of the soul, it would be a chain to him, and cause him to be reborn after his death, which they think a punishment. This was all I could understand.
Certainly, all he would take from the King was food for his wooden bowl, and not much of that. Since no one could pronounce his name, we called him Kalanos, from the sound of a word he used in greeting. Soon we all grew used to him, sitting under some tree near the King's pavilion. Alexander asked him inside, and talked to him alone but for the interpreter. He said to me once that though people thought Kalanos did nothing, he had fought and won great battles to be what he was, and was magnanimous in victory.
He had even a little Greek, picked up from the settlers there. It was said he had been a scholar, before he joined the naked men. But Alexander did not have long to study with him; he had to make war upon King Poros.
This was King Omphis' enemy, against whom he'd asked for help. His land was beyond the next river, the Hydaspes. This too had been taken into the empire, under Darius the Great; its kings were still satraps in name, but had been let alone for generations, and were kings again. So King Poros told Alexander's envoys, when they came asking for fealty; he added that he would pay no homage to any ally of Omphis, descended as he was from lowborn slaves.
Alexander prepared for battle, but had first to rest his men, after the winter wars (Hephaistion's had had some hard fighting too, going through Khyber). He took his time, giving them games and festivals, though as it grew warm with spring, the rivers were rising. We were told that soon it would rain.
When we did march down to the Hydaspes along with King Omphis' troops, we were a vaster host than ever, in spite of the garrisons left in conquered strongholds. We made camp up above the river, while Alexander scouted for the best place to cross. It was brown and fierce already; one could tell it would never endure a bridge.
On one of these days, some person of consequence, whose name and race I forget, came to Alexander's tent for audience. He had been gone some time, so I said I would go and find him. I rode about the camp —no Persian will walk when he can ride—till I heard he had gone to the horse-lines. I went over to the endless rows of shelters, made from bamboo and grass and palm-leaves, which housed the cavalry mounts; a town in itself. At last a blue-tattooed Thracian slave, who was holding the King's charger, pointed me out a shelter standing alone, and handsomer than the rest. I dismounted and went inside.
After the Indian sun it seemed almost dark. Splinters of dazzle came through the chinks of the wall, making bars of light and shade. They fell on an old black horse, that lay in the straw with laboring sides; and on Alexander, sitting in the muck of the stable floor, with its head laid in his lap.
My shadow had darkened the doorway; he looked up.
I had no words. I just thought, I would do anything ... As if I had had the words all along, I said, "Shall I fetch Hephaistion?"
He answered, "Thank you, Bagoas." I could just hear him. He'd not called the groom, because he could not command his voice. So I was not there for nothing.
I found Hephaistion by the river, among his engineers. They had brought his bridge-boats overland, in halves for cartage; he was seeing them put together. He stared at me in surprise; no doubt I looked out of place there. Besides, it was the first time I'd ever sought him out.
"Hephaistion," I said, "Oxhead is dying. Alexander wants you there."
He looked at me in silence. Maybe he would have expected me to send someone else. Then he said, "Thank you, Bagoas," in a voice he'd not used to me before, and called for his horse. I let him get well ahead, before I took the road.
Oxhead's funeral was held that evening; it has to be quick, in India. Alexander had him burned on a pyre, so as to have his ashes for a proper tomb. He only told his friends; but it was wonderful how many old soldiers came quietly up, who had fought at Issos, and Granikos, and Gaugamela. There were bowls of incense to throw upon the pyre; we must have given old Oxhead a full talent's worth. Some of Omphis' Indians, who stood further off, uttered loud cries to their gods, thinking Alexander had sacrificed the horse for victory.
When the fire had sunk, he went about his work again. But at night, I saw he looked older. When he first had Peritas he had been a man; Oxhead, he had had since boyhood. That little horse (all Greek horses look little to a Persian) had known things of him I'd never known. That day some of them died, and I shall never know them.
At night it thundered; and the rain came down.
In the morning the dust was laid, the sun was out, and all smelled of growing greenness. But clouds soon gathered; next time, it was as if the river had poured down from the sky. And I heard it said this was only the beginning.
In the downpour, plodding through mud, without a dry stitch on them, Alexander marched his men to the riverbanks.
He would not take me. He said he could not tell where he'd be from hour to hour, let alone day to day, or when he would cross the river. He found time to bid me goodbye, but, as always, did not make much of it. He saw no cause. He would win, and soon be back. Tender farewells were for the losers.
Yet this was the greatest and most perilous of all his battles; and I did not see it.
The rain drummed down, turning the camp to quagmire. The wretched followers huddled in leaky booths; a good tent was riches. In the drenching storms I would give some wayfarer shelter; a half-drowned Baktrian child, a Greek ballad-singer; and, once, Kalanos the philosopher, whom I saw standing in a waterfall, in his single breechclout. When I beckoned him in, he signed a blessing; then crossed his feet upon his thighs, and sank into meditation. It was like being alone; but alone and happy.
At first, whenever the rain grew less, I would throw on a cloak and ride down to the river. There were troops along there for miles, but no one could tell me where the King was, nor what he meant to do. As it turned out, there was someone even more eager than I to know: King Poros, who had made his camp on the further shore, at the easiest point of crossing.
One night, in a lull of the roaring rain, we heard a great din of onset—trumpets, battle-yells, horses neighing. It had come at last. I lifted my hands to Mithra. The night was like pitch. All the camp was awake and listening. No word came back to us.
No wonder. No one had crossed the river. All that had happened was that Alexander had made a noise, and Poros had moved his whole army towards it, to stand by all night in the pouring rain.
Next night, the same. Now the great battle had really started; we held our breath. No battle. The next night, and the next, when we heard clamors we took it easily. So did King Poros, too.
Alexander never minded looking a fool, or even a poltroon, in the first part of a battle. He could afford it. By now, he had to find distant places to be believed in; but here he was far enough. He had fought no war with Omphis, to warn King Poros of what he was. Poros was seven feet tall, his only mount an elephant. It can't have been hard for him, to think the little pup across the river was all bark, no bite.
Alexander kept barking, and running back to his kennel. He had great convoys of stores brought to his camp, giving out, to whoever would listen and spread the news, that he would wait if he must till the rains were over and winter shrank the stream. So Poros could camp all that time on a mudbank in the wet, while Alexander worked up his courage.
