Lying languidly at the feet of the beautiful Kinnara, the young king asked her to sing.

“I’ll sing no other song than this: I believe that souls have a sex.”

“What you believe is absurd, Kinnara.”

“So, Your Majesty believes that souls are neuter?”

“That is equally absurd. No, I don’t believe in the neuter soul, or the sexual soul, either.”

“But then what does Your Majesty believe in?”

“I believe in your eyes, Kinnara. They are the sun and light of the universe.”

“But you must choose: either you believe that souls have no sex, and must, therefore, punish the only surviving academy, or you believe that souls do have a sex, and must, therefore, pardon it.”

“What a delightful mouth you have, my sweet Kinnara! I believe in your mouth; it is the very fount of wisdom.”

Kinnara leapt angrily to her feet. Just as the king was the feminine man, she was the masculine woman—a buffalo in swan’s feathers. Just now it was the buffalo that strode across the bedchamber, but, a moment later, it was the swan that stopped and, tilting her neck, asked and obtained from the king, between two gentle caresses, a decree in which the doctrine of the sexual soul was declared legitimate and orthodox, and the other doctrine absurd and perverse. On that same day, the decree was sent to the victorious academy, to all the pagodas and mandarins, and distributed throughout the kingdom. The academy hung out lanterns, and peace was restored.

III

Meanwhile, the beautiful Kinnara had an ingenious and secret plan. One night, while the king was studying some papers of state, she asked him if taxes were being paid on time.

“Ohimè!” he exclaimed, repeating a word he had heard from an Italian missionary. “Alas, very few taxes have been paid, but I didn’t want to have the defaulters beheaded . . . No, not that . . . Blood? Blood? No, I want no blood . . .”

“And what if I were to find you a solution to all of this?”

“What solution?”

“Your Majesty has decreed that souls are masculine and feminine,” said Kinnara, after first giving him a kiss. “Suppose that our bodies have been switched. All we need is to return each soul to the body that belongs to it. Let us exchange souls and bodies . . .”

Kalaphangko scoffed at the idea, and asked her just how they would achieve such an exchange. She replied that she would use the method of Mukunda, the king of the Hindus, who placed himself in the corpse of a Brahmin while a jester entered Mukunda’s. It’s an old legend passed down to the Turks, Persians, and Christians. Yes, but how was the invocation worded? Kinnara declared that she knew the wording, because an old Buddhist monk had found a copy of it in the ruins of a temple.

“What do you think?”