The following is a chapter from the novel, Divine Elemental, by Raywat Deonandan. The chapter has appeared as a stand-alone short story in IndiaWorld and India Currents. All international copyrights are retained by the author.

Chapter 3: Bucephalus

It is said that Alexander the Great loved his horse Bucephalus more than he did any woman or man. When Bucephalus was stolen by Afghani boys during the Great March to India, Alexander had been so distraught that, instead of razing the country to the ground, he had issued a reward for the safe return of his horse ---and had actually paid up! Such trustworthiness from a tyrant was unheard of, especially when it involved the payment of a ransom. Whether fact or fancy, the event and its telling speak highly of the bond between the man and his beast.

When Bucephalus finally breathed his last beyond the Hindu Khush, Alexander built for him a magnificent mausoleum upon whose site stands a Muslim shrine today. The local shepherds still speak of the “the horse temple," though they do not know why, its origins dissipated by the passage of time. But more than two thousand years of intervening conquests, geophysical activity, the rise and fall of countless small empires, and the inevitable amnesia of generations had not completely suffocated the memory of this unique relationship. In the ensuing history of tyranny, it is said, only Caligula and Catherine the Great would rival Alexander in their opulent treatment of their steeds.

Yet the horses of Caligula and Catherine were mere animals, handsome stallions to be sure, but simple beasts whose fame was but the reflected glory of their owners’ eccentricities. Bucephalus, on the other hand, was considered by some to be a demon horse, a creature impervious to mortal wounding. Matched with a pendant emblazoned with the image of the dreaded gorgon that dripped from Alexander’s neck, Bucephalus was among the many supposed supernatural weapons wielded by the young god-king. For such men, the love they claim to absorb and emanate is more complex than that felt by we mortals. In truth, we cannot know if Alexander truly loved his horse, or if instead the demon beast held the young king by a debt of supernatural honour. We do know that Alexander would have given anything, perhaps even his immortal soul, to conquer all the lands before him, so strong was his need to fulfill what he felt was his Destiny.

It was said by some, usually the descendants of his victims, that Alexander was himself a devil. A Persian tale has it that Iskandar, as he was known east of Greece, hired a different barber at every occasion since each would discover the king’s devilish horns beneath his hair, and would thus require silencing. According to the tale, one such barber was shrewd enough not to reveal his surprise at finding the horns, and so was spared to continue to tend to Iskandar’s flowing golden-red locks. The stress of keeping a secret of such enormity tortured the poor man until he felt the need to run to the nearest well and to scream into it, “Great Iskandar has horns!” Of course, the words echoed against the wet walls of the deep well, and the proclamation was thus heard around the world. Alexander’s demonic nature was revealed to all, and thence recorded in history.

In some small way, his namesake --Tristan Iskandar Diamandi-- had followed his forebear’s trek, displaying a minute degree of Great Alexander’s desperate ambition, his oneness of will and unwavering confidence in Destiny. He was no devil, this new Iskandar told himself, having chosen the most unobjectionable of trades, and eschewing ownership and conquest of any sort at every opportunity. But there were parallels he could not ignore. Indeed, some friends theorised, Iskie searched out and meditated upon those parallels, secretly revelling in the origins of his middle name.

“Name me three such parallels,” Professor Kumar had once insisted over several mugs of Kingfisher beer.

“All right,” Iskie said. “I am Greek, and so was Alexander.”

“Your family is from Sparta. You are from Canada. And Alexander was from Macedonia. I see no parallel there.”

“Details.” Iskie waved them away and drank deeply from his mug. The Indian sun was high that afternoon, beating down upon the Himalayan hill station much like the god for which it was once mistaken. Saner men, especially those as white as Iskie, would have sought cover. But the power of alcohol is such that subtle physical woes may be pushed aside for the benefit of compelling conversation. So it was with Iskie who took no notice of the scorching of the flesh upon his shoulders and the back of his neck.

“Tell me others then,” Professor Kumar said. Who was this odd little man I’ve accepted into my life? Why do I indulge him so?

“Like Alexander, I trekked from Greece to India, albeit via Canada and via two generations...”

“...and albeit by design! Intentional coincidences don’t count, my friend.”

“Okay, okay...” Iskie wiped the sweat from his forehead and waved at some flying insects buzzing around his ear. He noticed then that a mosquito had alighted upon his forearm. Waiting for the minuscule prick of proboscis against his hot flesh, he watched the mosquito with detached placidity. He never felt it, possibly because of the drunkenness that was seeping from his stomach to his brain, but he continued to watch as the mosquito grew fat with his own blood.

“Let me see... Alexander’s father Phillip had two wives...”

“He actually had several, Iskie.”

“Yes, yes, but we only care about the two. Olympia and the other one. Olympia was Alexander’s mother, and the other one had a younger son.”

Kumar laughed patiently. “You’re not very good with details, are you?”

“Details are for accountants. The big picture, that’s for great men like us! Thinkers! Scientists!”

“Go on,” Kumar said. “About the mothers.”

“Well, Olympia was so jealous that she had her rival’s son roasted alive in front of his mother. My father, too, married twice. And because of his first wife, my mother and I never received any of my father’s property when he died.”

“So you’re the second son, the one without a name? Your half brother is the true Alexander, not you!”

Iskie did not respond, but his eyelids fluttered briefly. He focused his attention on the mosquito again. It was nearly sated and about to fly away.

“Kill it,” Kumar said. Iskie didn’t move. Kumar lifted a hand to do the job himself, but Iskie intercepted him awkwardly, drunkenly.

“We’re scientists, Professor. We study nature. We don’t destroy it. Isn’t that what your Hindu religion teaches you?” Trying to discern alcoholic nonsense from true character, Kumar squinted hard at Iskie. Four years with him. Can I last four years? For hours now he had been examining young Diamandi, sizing up his new graduate student. He was not physically outstanding, indeed a dwarf of a man. It was interesting that Iskie himself had not pointed out that particular similarity between himself and the diminutive god-king. But what struck all observers when first faced with young Iskie was the depth of his eyes. Even in this drunken stupor, he seemed to look beyond you, into some infinity behind your head, or perhaps to an imagined assassin lurking atop a distant knoll.

His eyes were black pupils set against black irises, the infinite cradled within the never-ending. They absorbed any watcher, surrounded him in a salty pool of warm amniotic darkness that tore down all personal defences. In such an environment, one becomes a porous sponge to absorb any of the nonsense young Iskie blabbered on about. Only it wasn’t entirely nonsense. There was always a thread of thin believability that ran through his rambling alcoholic proclamations.

And how he liked to drink! Kumar had known him for only a few days, but had seen him imbibe spirits on all but one of those days. This was not ordinarily a problem since the drink did not seem to impair Iskie’s ability to produce structured thoughts and useful scientific insights. But as an entomologist, a steady hand was often a useful thing. If it were not for Iskie’s remarkably unwavering physical gentleness, Kumar would be concerned for his drunken ham-fisted destruction of living samples. But to let mosquitos feed upon you..?!

Iskie sat back for a spell, his eyes seeming to glaze over. This was not an indication of mindlessness, Kumar had learned, but rather the default condition of Iskie’s mysterious irises. Like those of a nocturnal burrowing creature, they were brightly reflective and probing, never sleeping. “There’s another parallel I can tell you about, Professor.” He was not, it seems, prepared to pursue his earlier comment about Hinduism.

Kumar waited, but there was nothing more forthcoming. The black irises seemed to widen, to separate further as if examining something at a great distance. His lips reddened and thickened, and seemed to Kumar to be in mockery of sensual Hindu sculptures. Iskie’s whole body at times could have been an amalgamation of the worst of Hindu art: round, stout, unnaturally full and flush, and senselessly sexual. At such times, he appeared serene and plump.

There was a giant statue of the god Indra not far from here. It pre-dated Aryan times, and so reflected a sensibility almost completely separate from European thought. Indra’s eyes were exaggeratedly oval and deep, reflecting the all-seeing wisdom that a king of heaven should possess. It occurred to Kumar that, when sufficiently soaked in beer, Iskie’s eyes resembled those of Indra. But the boy’s temperament, his curmudgeonliness and his insistence upon manufacturing mystery were more akin to the more “modern” Hindu gods. Kumar likened his student to Shiva, the god of both yogic tranquillity and sexual insatiability. Iskie would have done well to have been born into a brown-skinned body.

As if reading his thoughts, Iskie said, “Do you know that Greek scholars thought that the Hindus worshipped Olympian gods?”

“No, I didn’t know that. Is it true?”

“I don’t know. It’s what I’ve read. They felt that the ancient world was one great continuum with Greece at one end and India at the other. When Alexander and the later Bactrians arrived, they were shocked to find brown-skinned folk worshipping Herakles!”

“You mean Hercules? How could that be?”

Iskie giggled. “It’s what they thought Krishna was. And some of the stories are similar, some of the myths. Alexander even chanced upon an Indian settlement whose inhabitants claimed to be descended from the Greek god Dionysus himself! He believed it.... he spared them.”

Kumar made no reaction. He said, “Is that the parallel? Do you claim descent from a god, too?”

“No, nothing like that. Alexander did indeed believe he was descended directly from Herakles and Achilles on both parents’ sides. I’m not so arrogant.”

“So what are you trying to tell me?”

Iskandar became serious. He leaned forward and brushed a moth from his arm, careful not to hurt it. The solemnity that marked the facial pits between his cheeks and nose was compelling, sobering. “Alexander lived in a time that did not distinguish between mythology and history. And neither do I.”

The heat was almost unbearable now, soaking through Kumar’s black linen pants to make his thighs sweat uncomfortably. The odours of drying earth, settling beer and ubiquitous cow dung were usually consoling, but not today. Kumar finished his mug of beer and poured the dregs onto his forearm, drowning two small flies which had settled by his moist pores. “And what’s the other parallel?” he asked.

Iskie leaned back again, thoughtful in that detached distant way of his. “I, too, have my Bucephalus. But it’s not a horse. Nor do I love him.” He mumbled the last, unable to assert control over the finer muscles of his liquored tongue.

What would Alexander have thought, Kumar asked himself, if he had known that his trek of conquest would bear this unlikely fruit two millennia hence? Surely he would have balked at claiming a distant relationship to his brown-skinned sub-continental victims, so obsessed as they were with spiritual matters of little everyday consequence. Moreover, the warrior tyrant could never have predicted that his countryman and namesake, young Iskandar Diamandi, would be an unathletic drunkard pacifist unwilling even to swat a mosquito. Was that the Hellenic legacy of which Great Alexander had dreamed?

Diamandi’s Indra-like eyes were pleading upward from the table top, in silent despair for the stereotype of Indian tranquillity that had thus far eluded him. “Who had been the true conqueror?” Kumar whispered to himself, sure that Iskie was too inebriated to hear him, and casually dismissing Iskie’s last statement as drunken gibberish. “The general who loved his horse more than his men, or the stereotype of the country that has enslaved this young man’s heart?” Let him have his new mythology. I have to get back to work.

Iskie watched Kumar go, uncertain if, in his drunken stupor, he had indeed said his goodbyes. Like an army of war horses pressed between the awesome cliffs of the Hindu Khush, his blood slowed between the stiffening walls of his heart. Here, at the feet of the world’s mightiest mountains, ladders to heaven, the collision of East and West had first begun, drawing together the most disparate of religions and mythologies to struggle for millennia toward a common world view. Yet that confluence was marked most meaningfully and pointlessly by a barely-remembered monument to a dead horse.

He had to laugh. It was, after all, an irony in the finest ancient Greek tradition.

When soaked in alcohol, his brain comfortably afloat in numbing spirits, Iskie sometimes came close to the tranquillity, the undisturbed undistracted state of observation, that would allow him to gaze upon the Watcher without fully doubting his own sanity. But he would usually fall into unconsciousness before that point was reached, waking later only more frustrated.

When Iskie rose to wash up and return to his research, the Watcher, if it were indeed real, went with him. A new patron took Kumar’s place at the patio table, sank into placidity beneath the oppressive sun and looked right through it as the imagined Watcher walked in Iskandar’s footsteps. He didn’t notice. They never noticed what wasn’t there.