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Two Hands, Wrapped in Gold – Part One

by S.B. Divya

 

My parents taught me to lie as soon as I could speak. Before I knew the meaning of the words, before I understood heat or fire, and long before I felt the pain of singed flesh, I learned to tell strangers that I burned myself by grasping a hot iron pot.

Once a day, my mother would pour water over my bare hands, then bandage each one down to the wrists, first with cloth of gold, then plain muslin. She had a technique for winding them in a way that left each finger separate but fully covered, and at no point would her skin come into contact with mine. When I was old enough, she taught me how to wrap them myself. By then, I also understood the danger that she had put herself in.

My parents allowed me to transform small items and only rarely, usually before we approached a large city where people would ask fewer questions about our wares. They let me play with other children, never roughly. After all, if I had burned myself, I would find it painful to use my hands. Other boys my age would wrestle and scuffle. I always ran from a fight.

I was happiest when we were on the road. I could relax around my parents. I was often clumsy because of my bandages, but I could perform basic tasks. My mother, Niraja, taught me how to slice vegetables and boil grains, how to groom our horses, and how to whistle like a bird. My father, Padmanabhan, showed me how to construct a simple bow and arrow, how to mark time by the sun, and how to navigate by the stars. They both shared their tricks for accounting.

“We are not so weak-minded that we need a ledger,” my father would say. “And our memories are safe from rain damage or theft.”

At night, they would take turns telling me stories from the Mahabharata, the Ramayana, and the Panchatantra, and point out the names of the constellations. I knew which stars pointed the way home — to my parents’ villages — and I knew the names of everyone from my great-grandparents onward; every cousin, aunt, and uncle, though I had never laid eyes on a single one.

We passed through many cities and countries. The great metropolis of Constantinople made a strong impression with its buildings decorated in golden domes and intricate tile mosaics. It bustled with people, some whose skin didn’t darken from the sun, others with eyes that gleamed blue or green like a peacock’s feathers. People came in all shapes, sizes, and colors, including those with missing limbs or eyes. No one cared about my hands. I wanted to stay there forever, but my parents would not hear of it.

“Too dangerous,” my father said. “What if someone discovers what you can do, Ram?”

And so we moved on, as we did for years, never staying in one place longer than a few days. I had no friends except for my golden fox.

---

Just before my first birthday, my father returned from several months on the road to the place my mother had stayed since her labor. He arrived a few weeks before the monsoon, the same rains that had trapped him a year earlier.

When my mother began to experience birthing pains, my parents were in the land of the rajputs, in a small state ruled by a newly self-anointed king. An old rishi, a woman who spent most of her time communing with the gods, took them in and helped with my mother’s labor. The streets flooded up to my father’s knees on the day I was born. Some locals said it was fitting that the clouds had ended their pregnancy on the same day as my mother. Others said that gods brought the water as an answer to our prayers. Either way, my parents named me Rampalalakshmicharan, after Lord Vishnu and his consort, the Goddess Lakshmi.

“When we named you,” my mother would say, “we laid you at their feet and asked them to bless you with health, wisdom, and prosperity.”

My mother learned to spin and weave while my father was away. She had a knack for producing gold thread, prized by the king, and found employment in the palace — temporary, until I was old enough that we could travel together.

My father gifted me a small wood carving that he’d acquired on his travels.

“This creature is called a fox,” he said. “I received it from a man with skin as pale as the rising moon. He was from a land called Bavaria.”

When the carving entered my grasp, it turned gold.

My parents were so astonished that my father snatched it away, causing me to sit and wail in protest. My father then bit it, marking the tail, and pronounced it real. He declared that I must have received Goddess Lakshmi’s blessing.

My mother, however, had heard the tale of King Midas, and panicked. “If he has a golden touch, it could be deadly. We should take him to see the rishi, the one who helped with his birth.”

“You watch over him,” my father said. “I’ll go get the woman.”

While he was away, my mother’s gaze fell upon the gold uttariya that she’d been weaving for the queen. She took the fabric and placed it into my hands. Being made of golden thread, it did not change, so she wrapped it around my hands and tied it tight. Then she took a piece of plain white muslin and placed it over the precious material. The cloth remained as it was.

When the wise woman arrived and saw what I could do, she left to meditate and commune with the gods. She was gone for an entire day and night. At last, she returned and said, “He is indeed blessed by the goddess, but it’s a dangerous gift. You must beware the king’s greed. If he discovers what your son can do, he will take the child away to be his personal coffer.”

Even my father was troubled by this. Monarchs weren’t the only people filled with greed. Anyone who learned of my gift might abuse me.

“Help us,” my mother begged the rishi. “Pray to Sri Lakshmi, and ask her to take away this boon.”

The old woman shook her head. “That might anger the goddess. You shouldn’t appear ungrateful.”

After some discussion, the rishi devised a curse, one whose words I know by heart because my mother repeated them to me every night before I slept and every morning when I awoke: “If Rampalalakshmicharan turns an object into gold for another person, they must give him whatever he demands in return. If they don’t, the golden object will turn to ash and he will lose his ability forever.”

It wouldn’t guarantee my safety, especially not while I was too young to understand the consequences of my actions, but it meant that no one could abuse my gift forever.

That night, my parents packed my mother’s few possessions into our family wagon and fled the palace. As a traveling merchant, my father already knew how to live as an itinerant. My condition meant that they moved more quickly than they might have otherwise, but it was our way of life, and for the most part, I liked it. My father picked up and traded wood carvings along the way, but the golden fox belonged to me. At some point, our journey gained a destination, one that all three of us felt curious about: Bavaria.

---

The air grew colder as we traveled further northwest than we had ever gone. The rains fell in heavy sheets, the wind blew mercilessly, and two days after we crossed the border into the land of foxes, my father fell sick. After my mother and I caught the same illness, we stopped near the next village. Fever held us all for a while, but we huddled in our wagon and drank tea and broth. I recovered my strength first. My mother followed. My father didn’t.

My mother wished to give him as a proper a funeral as she could with no priest accessible. She drove the wagon off the road, into the surrounding forest. I helped her gather wood. My bandages were laced with splinters, and my arms ached, but after two days, we had collected enough for my father’s funeral pyre. They don’t burn their dead in that part of the world so we did our best. It’s strange what lingers in my memory all these years later — the overpowering smell of smoke, the quiet sobs of my mother at night, the first snowflakes falling from the sky.

It was too dangerous for my mother to continue alone with me, so we were effectively stranded in Talgove, a small village that mostly functioned as farmland and a waystation for travelers to Salzburg, our intended destination. The few stone buildings belonged to a man named Konrad, a vassal of the local noble lord, and consisted of his house, a watermill, and an inn. The bulk of the villagers worked the land and lived in huts made of straw. Of the many places I had seen in those early years of my life, this one did not impress me as a good place to stay, but my mother was too distraught over our circumstances, and I was too young to do anything else.

We didn’t speak Bavarian, but trade is universal, and we managed to get ourselves into an abandoned hut on the edge of a field in exchange for our horses and wagon. We kept the trading goods for a while, doling them out for food, but the village was small and we ran out of things they wanted. We might have starved to death that first winter but for the kindness of the miller’s wife.

I have only the vaguest memories of Herlinde’s face, but I remember her pale hair, which shone like my mother’s gold threads. She visited our hut once a week to bring us flour, which my mother turned into flatbreads. She and Blasius, the miller, had two daughters. Ilsebill took after her father’s looks, with darker hair and a stick-thin frame. Trudy, the younger one, had her mother’s yellow hair and a softer figure. The girls would sometimes accompany Herlinde during her charity visits.

Ilse was only a year younger than me and plenty willing to run and play with a stranger who didn’t speak her language. I learned most of my Bavarian from her. Trudy, however, clung to her mother’s skirts and preferred quieter pastimes. She would sit while my mother showed Herlinde the various spinning tools she’d acquired during our travels. It was weaving season, and my mother learned as much from Herlinde as she taught, going so far as to trade looms with her. Ilse and I would head straight for the trees.

My first clear memory of Ilse has to do with my hands. We were out playing somewhere in the woods behind the hut, when she said,  “Ram, why do you keep your hands like that?”

I tripped over the old lie about having burned them. We had lived in one place for so long that it no longer made sense. I was terrified. What could I say that she would believe? I grasped for a word and came up with schlecht. I knew it meant that something was not good.

“Oh.” She grabbed a low-hanging branch and swung from it. “Well, can you do this?”

I nodded, my heart pounding with relief, and proceeded to hoist myself up and onto the branch.

Ilse dropped down and ran off, calling, “Follow me!”

I did, tripping over unfamiliar roots and getting smacked by bushes from her wake.

She stopped in a small clearing surrounding two large beech trees whose upper branches had grown together.

“This one’s mine.” She pointed to the left. “And that’s yours. Race you to the top!”

Ilsebill scaled the tree like a squirrel. That first time up was no contest, but we visited the spot every time Herlinde came to see my mother, almost weekly. As spring warmed the land, I grew stronger, and by the start of summer, I could almost keep up with my friend.

And then one day, as the last of the spring blossoms fell, Herlinde stopped coming by. Three weeks later, she was dead. By mid-summer, one fifth of the villagers had perished from fever. Whatever the disease was, it ran its course. My mother and I escaped death once more. Perhaps our remote location saved us, or perhaps our gods, to whom we prayed daily, gave us protection.

---

I didn’t see Ilse again until the autumn. On a day when the leaves whispered in drifts against the hedgerows, and the harvested wheat stood in great sheaves, all work stopped in the village. Like everyone else, my mother and I went to the mill for the harvest festival. We had managed the summer by helping in the fields and foraging in the woods. Other than Herlinde, no one had befriended my mother, but they had grown used to our presence, or so I thought.

Konrad, the steward, presided over the festivities, which included free food and drink. As we approached a table, I heard someone mutter the word hexe. Being a child and without inhibitions, I looked around and spotted a cluster of adults speaking in low tones and glancing at my mother. Their expressions were unfriendly. I huddled closer to my mother.

We had dressed in our finest clothes for the occasion. The bright, intricate patterns made us shine like gems among the dyed woolen tunics around us.

“She can spin silk into gold,” someone muttered.

My mother, being an adult, kept her gaze fixed straight ahead, chin high. Her thick, black hair hung to her waist in a neat braid. No matter how cold, she washed daily and insisted I do the same. We did not resemble the people of Talgove.

My anxiety was forgotten as I devoured a piece of cake. I spotted Ilsebill and Trudy playing with a group of children. I waved, and Ilse waved back. She gestured for me to join them, and after a nod from my mother, I ran off.

The group stopped as I approached.

A tall boy with reddish-brown hair and orange freckles stepped forward. “I’m Konrad stewards-son. Who are you?”

“His name is Ram-pala-lakshmi-charan … near-the-wood,” Ilsebill said, enunciating each syllable with precision. It had taken her several attempts to learn my name.

Konrad snorted. “He doesn’t need a byname. We’ll not have another Rumpel … stick-man in our village any time soon.”

“You can call me Ram,” I said. There were parts of the world where the length of my name didn’t cause difficulty, but this was not one of them.

“Do you know how to play tag?” Ilse asked.

I nodded. Games of chase-and-catch were universal.

“What’s wrong with your hands?” Konrad demanded.

Before I could explain, Ilse spoke. “His hands have an infirmity. He has to keep them wrapped up always.”

I hadn’t heard the word before, but I memorized it on the spot.

Konrad grinned. “Then he can be It first! Don’t let the diseased hands touch you,” he shrieked as he ran off.

The other children screamed and fled. Before long, I was joyfully covered in sweat and dust as we chased each other. Their taunts might sound cruel to an adult, but at the time, I had no room for such qualms. I had playmates! I left them with heavy feet when my mother called me away.

“Can’t I stay?” I begged.

She shook her head. In a low voice, she said, “The men will start drinking soon. We’ll be safer at home.”

---

The next afternoon, Ilse showed up at our door with a basket of bread and cheese. She wore a gown like a woman rather than the tunic of the previous day.

“I asked Papa if I could do the charity work that Mama did. He said I’m old enough now that I have eleven years.”

“Can you play?” I looked dubiously at her dress.

A mischievous smile lit her face, and her brown eyes twinkled. She lifted the cloth wrapping out of the basket. It was a tunic.

“I’ll change in the woods,” she said.

We ran off and found our favorite spot. She made me turn around while she dressed. After an hour of practicing our acrobatic and balancing skills, she transformed back into a modest young woman and left.

When I returned home, my mother thwacked me across the head twice. “Once for playing with that girl who’s no longer a girl, and once for wasting time in the woods.”

“We’re just climbing trees!”

“Be sure that’s all you do.”

After that, I would always leave home a little later than Ilse, and I would forage for herbs and greens before I returned. My mother liked to prepare them in our traditional ways. She had learned to improvise when we ran out of the spices, rice, and legumes that we’d brought with us. As long as I came home with my hands full, she didn’t object to my time in the woods.

From then on, Ilse came every other week, just as Herlinde had. We snuck off to play for an hour unless it was too wet. Sometimes she had Trudy along, which prevented our play time, until one day, Ilse had a brilliant idea.

“Could you show Trudy those spinning devices?” Ilse asked my mother. “I can help Ram gather some herbs for you while you teach her.”

“Of course,” she said. “Perhaps she’d like to try the hand loom, too?”

After that, Trudy accompanied Ilsebill on every visit. My mother said Trudy had the knack for spinning, just as she herself did.

“If only I had gold, I could show her how to make thread,” my mother said after one visit. “That’s not a request, Ram.” She wrapped a freshly woven length of linen around my hands. “And be careful while you’re out in the woods. Don’t let the outer cloth tear.”

I suspect that my mother knew that Ilse and I did more than gather herbs, given the terrible state of my outer wrappings on those days, but she also realized that I was still very much a child, too much so to care about the trouble young men and women could get into. And while I tried to hide my loneliness, she would have observed that none of the other children ever came to play with me.

---

The apple trees were blooming when my mother and I took our first trip to Salzburg. She’d heard from some passing merchants that late spring brought spices and grains from the Far East up the river, and wanted to see if we could buy some. By then, the village had learned of her skill with spinning and weaving, and she spent more time making thread or cloth than in the fields.

We hitched a ride on a hay wagon, part of a train passing through Talgove. Clouds of pale pink blossoms covered the orchards we passed. My mother smiled a true and proper smile for the first time I could remember since we’d arrived in Bavaria. Trudy had gifted her a woolen shawl — one that Trudy had woven with her help — and she wore it over one of her old cotton traveling tunics.

That morning, she had taken my father’s silk clothes from our remaining bronze traveling chest, intending to sell them. I could tell it broke her heart from the way she clamped the delicate fabric in her fists.

“Amma, instead of those, let me turn something gold to trade,” I said.

She shook her head. “The villagers will be suspicious. I’ve told them for months now that I have nothing left to trade. I have only the box spindle and the small handloom, and I need those for myself. I can only hope the merchants in Salzburg will accept your father’s clothes.”

“There are caves not far from here that have gold veins, and the boys in the village say that sometimes you can find small nuggets by the river. I could transform some very small stones and cover them with mud?”

Her expression twisted with doubt.

I felt my father’s spirit at my shoulder, whispering that I should behave as a man, not a boy, and use my gift to help our family. “Please! I’m useless without my hands. I can’t work in the fields or chop wood. I can’t even do women’s work because I’m too clumsy for spinning or sewing. You’ve always said that one day I’ll be grown enough that I can safely use my gift.” I was twelve years old and nearly as tall as my mother. “How much longer do I have to wait?”

With a crease in her brow, my mother nodded.

Pebbles studded the soil liberally, and it took me minutes to find several the size of my littlest fingertip. As I loosened the bandage on my left hand, my mother stopped me.

“Tell me the words of the curse,” she said.

“‘If Rampalalakshmicharan turns an object into gold for another person,” I recited, “they must give him whatever he demands in return. If they don’t, the golden object will turn to ash and he will lose his ability forever.’ You make me repeat it every night.”

She smacked me lightly on the head. “And you should thank me for it. They are the most important words of your life. If you do this, you must also make the trades.”

I shook my head and continued to unwrap my hand. “I’ll give them to you in exchange for Appa’s clothes.”

Her eyes glimmered with tears. “Clever boy,” she said as I gently prised the clothing from my mother’s grasp.

I folded them neatly and slid them into the secret compartment at the bottom of the trunk, along with my golden fox, our other silks, and a length of spare gold cloth for my hands. Traveling merchants have their tricks, and this chest had a false bottom to fool any thieves or bandits.

---

We arrived at Salzburg’s central market at midday. The sun shone high overhead in a blue sky dotted with cottony clouds, and the open space bustled with merchants and their wares. The city didn’t impress me nearly as much as Constantinople. From the way Konrad and other village children had talked, I had expected a much larger and grander metropolis. A lord’s manor dominated the houses on a low hill overlooking the Salzach river. The only other sizable structure was a church.

The market spilled out like a natural growth from the river docks. I heard languages that hadn’t fallen on my ears in a long time. I still remembered many of the basic words involved in trade, especially numbers. Most of the shoppers were Bavarian, but the merchants came from far and wide, and their appearance spanned a variety of colors and features. I felt at home in a way that I hadn’t during our years in Talgove.

It took some searching, but eventually my mother found and purchased some of the items she’d wanted. With the leftover money, she bought me a fur-lined leather cloak that hung to my waist. A few merchants looked askance at my bandaged hands. Diseases traveled as well as humans, and we couldn’t use the lie about my burns anymore, so I wore the cloak in spite of the mild weather and hid my hands under it.

That was the first time I felt anger mingled with the usual fear of discovery. It struck me as terribly unfair that I had to conceal my ability, and worse, that it had turned me into a person who was shunned when I should rightly have been revered. My mother hadn’t allowed me to disclose my magic to anyone, but I had nothing else of value — no trade, no prospects. The lowliest peasant could work the land, but to preserve my deception, I had to act as if that was beyond me. I couldn’t even wear gloves, which only the noble could afford. My golden touch surpassed the abilities of kings! I shouldn’t have to hide in shame.

The market revealed a way to put my gift to good use. I could improve our fortunes, earn us a way home. If we lived among family, I wouldn’t have to hide the truth. People would appreciate my gift for what it was: a blessing of the gods. All I had to do was keep it a secret until then. On that day in Salzburg, my path to freedom lay ahead like a gleaming ribbon.

---

Word must have spread in Talgove that my mother had spent an unusual amount during our market outing, because a few weeks after our excursion, some of the young men paid a visit to our hut and dragged me and my mother outside.

“We’re here for your gold,” said the biggest one in a matter-of-fact tone. Walter Up-hill, I recalled. He had no children, but he had rounded up a dozen youths for this task. The sour smell of ale hung about them in an invisible cloud.

“We don’t have any gold,” my mother replied truthfully. She kept her eyes to the ground, her voice soft but firm. We’d traded all of the nuggets at Salzburg, and I hadn’t bothered to make more.

Walter smacked her across the face with the back of his hand, the sound of it sharp and quick, like the noise made by a length of wet cloth against a rock.

“Don’t lie to us, witch, or we’ll burn you at the stake!” He nodded to the two boys behind him. They entered our hut, and we could hear the crack of pottery smashing.

“Please, we have nothing,” she begged.

I watched it all with a building fury, but I had a child’s body and couldn’t match the men for strength. Besides, my parents had taught me never to fight. I had no idea how to handle myself in that situation except to make sure my hands stayed protected. So I did the only thing I could.

“I found the gold by the river,” I cried out. “But we spent it all.”

“Then find us some more,” Walter demanded.

“It’ll be dark soon. I’ll look tomorrow,” I said.

“All right. We’ll come back in three days at sunset. You’d better have some gold for us, little man.”

They left us alone. My mother trembled as she swept out the shattered remnants of our crockery.

“What will we do?” she fretted. Her lower lip swelled from the cut left by Walter’s blow.

“I can make some nuggets,” I said. “It’s easy.”

“Foolish child! You’ve memorized the words, but have you understood them? Do you think those men will give you anything you demand in exchange for the gold?”

“I’ll trade it to you first, like before.”

“And then what? Do you think they’ll stop coming after one time? What happens when I have nothing left to give you in return? I hardly own anything as it is, and if anything happened to me, you’d have no way to continue the bargain. You should have kept quiet.”

I unleashed my pent-up rage at her. “So they could destroy the rest of our things? Or drag you off and burn you? You should thank me for saving us!”

She met my glare with a sigh and shook her head. “I’m afraid you’ve done the opposite. When they return, you must tell them you couldn’t find any, that last time it took you many months of searching. We’ll stall for as long as we can that way. Perhaps they’ll tire of asking and give up.”

---

That night, I asked my mother to tell me again about my father, about our family back in their villages near Kanyakumari, a spit of land where three oceans met.

“One day, we’ll go back to the great Chola Empire,” she promised, “so you must remember who your people are. My name is Niraja. Your father’s name is Padmanabhan. His father is Lakshmichandran. His mother is Krishnapriya.” She had me learn all the names — my four grandparents, eight great grandparents, numerous uncles and aunts, all the cousins born before my parents left. She would tell me something special about each of them. How her father loved to sing. How her mother swam and bathed in the ocean.

“Your father taught you how to make bows and arrows,” she said, “when you were five years old. He showed you how to hunt for small animals and prepare the meat. Do you remember?”

I’m no longer sure whether my memories were true or whether hearing her stories impressed them into my mind, but I knew it would please her for me to say yes, so that’s what I did. My own recollections were blurred by the passage of time, more impressions than images — the warmth of my parents’ bodies on either side of mine as we lay in our wagon; the smoke from damp wood fires stinging my eyes; my father combing tangles from my mother’s long hair. We passed through many splendorous cities, crossed mountain passes, and drove along vast oceans, but it’s those quiet times at the end of the traveling day that have stayed with me. When the terror of flames threatens to overwhelm me, I take myself back to those moments of in between, the three of us safe and happy on our own, without a care for the rest of the world.