The Kashmir Shawl

by Rosie Thomas

  The woman looked surprised. ‘Are you? You can come in for ten minutes. She is tired today.’

  The room at the back of the house was pleasantly sunny. There was a rug on the floor, a large old-fashioned music centre on the table against the wall, and a fireplace with a jug of sunflowers in the grate. In an armchair drawn into a pool of sunlight sat an old woman, white-haired and straight-backed. Her heavily bandaged leg rested on a stool, and a walking-stick was placed against the chair. She turned her head towards Mair. ‘Aruna? Are you there? Who is this?’

  ‘I don’t know. She says from England.’

  Mair moved closer. ‘I’m sorry to intrude,’ she said.

  The old woman’s head tilted, giving her the look of an inquisitive bird. Her skin was sallow, deeply lined, the eyes anxiously peering. ‘You are English. How jolly to hear your voice. Come right over here, my sight’s not so good. That’s better. Do we know each other? Aruna, can we have some tea? Or would you rather a gin?’

  ‘Actually, we haven’t met before. My name is Mair Ellis.’

  ‘Well, how do you do?’ She held out her tiny knotted hand for Mair to shake. ‘I am Caroline Bowen. What brings you to Srinagar?’

  NINE

  ‘It’s not too cold,’ Rainer insisted.

  Rainer never seemed to feel it, but in the last few days the valley weather had become so raw and damp that even indoors Nerys wore her new tweed pheran with several cardigans layered beneath. Myrtle had warned her that she would soon have to start carrying an earthenware fire-pot for warmth, as the Kashmiris did. Recently the two women had begun to feel like the forgotten rearguard of an army, as the last of the summer-season residents retreated south to the plains. The mountains were shrouded in mist, the Srinagar Club was empty, except for a couple of subdued tables for bridge, and the Lake Bar was silent, stripped of its lounge chairs and parasols.

  Rainer Stamm was one of the few who did remain. Myrtle and Nerys had gone to his party, and instead of the usual faces they had been introduced to a Pandit university professor and his daughter, who was a musician, a Buddhist poet, and two tough-looking young American men whose role had never been fully explained and who, Myrtle later insisted, had been spies. They had had fun at this unusual gathering, and since then Rainer had taken to visiting the Garden of Eden for coffee or drinks. In return he invited them to the magic shows he gave to audiences of students.

  Today he was explaining to Nerys how a permit he was waiting for had finally been refused. ‘The reason the British are giving me is the war. Tell me, how can it make the smallest difference to the war whether or not one Swiss national climbs Nanga Parbat? On the other hand it does make the greatest difference to me, and to the family of Matthew Forbes.’

  ‘If you climb what?’ Nerys asked him. ‘And the family of whom?’

  This morning they were at Rainer’s house in the old town, sitting on the window seat of a casement that projected over a reach of the Jhelum river. There was a magnificent view of a bridge and the stately Hindu temple on the far bank, but the room itself was under-heated and dusty. Rainer’s furniture was a collection of battered rejects haphazardly grouped on a once fine but now filthy and threadbare carpet, and his possessions seemed to consist of nothing but books, coils of rope, glittery stage props and hinged boxes painted with occult symbols relating to his magic tricks. Nerys was fascinated by the few glimpses she had been given into Rainer’s life, but until today he had offered little real information.

  Now he answered, ‘You don’t know? Nanga Parbat is a mountain. A very fine peak, the ninth highest in the world. It lies just eighty miles north of here. I will be the first person to reach the summit. I decided that years ago. The Germans think it is theirs to claim, but they are mistaken.’

  Nerys was beginning to recognise Rainer’s brand of bravado and defiance. He made his claims with such intensity and such twinkling humour that it was impossible not to catch his enthusiasm. ‘I see.’

  His eyes held hers. He didn’t often look as serious as he did now.

  ‘Maybe you do. I will capture it by going fast and light. That was always my intention with Matthew.’

  ‘Rainer, I don’t understand a word of this,’ she protested. ‘Are you going to tell me the story or not?’

  Rainer was good at telling stories. He liked to exercise command over his audience, just as he did when he performed his magic. He waved his hands now in an abracadabra gesture. ‘I will tell you on the way. Are you ready to go?’

  He had suggested a drive to one of the villages and a picnic. Even the thought of going out into the mist made her shiver, but on the other hand Rainer’s company would make up for the cold. Myrtle was attacking her own boredom by volunteering for all the war work that came her way, and today she was on a committee concerned with packing Indian sweets to send home to British children. Nerys didn’t belong to the wives’ groups, and was quite relieved not to, but solitude and inactivity were a particularly unwelcome prospect today.

  She gave in. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m ready.’

  Rainer hoisted an armful of canvas bags and bowed her out into the street. On a patch of derelict ground, with a swarm of children to guard it, stood a red-painted Ford truck. It had a small closed cab and an open back into which Rainer tossed his bags. Two boys capered on the cab roof and others swung on the running-boards. They catcalled and gestured at Rainer until he dropped some coins into the hands of the biggest one, then fought to open the doors for him, like a mob of ragged footmen. Rainer cranked a starting-handle and the engine coughed. Nerys climbed into the passenger seat and they swayed over the ruts, the most daring children clinging to the chassis until the last possible moment.

  ‘I didn’t know you had a car,’ she remarked, as they accelerated away.

  ‘Of course I do. And for your sake I have even begged a cupful of petrol. Enough to get us where we are going – and who knows? Maybe all the way back again.’

  Fuel was reserved for military purposes, and for civilians it was increasingly hard to come by. Nerys laughed. ‘I’m impressed. Are you going to tell me exactly where we might not get back from?’

  Rainer tapped the side of his nose. ‘In good time. First the story.’

  They were heading out of town, through quiet streets where the houses of civil servants and teachers rested in secluded gardens. Nerys settled as comfortably as she could in the truck’s rigid seat.

  ‘Did you ever visit the European cemetery in Leh?’ Rainer began.

  ‘Of course I did. I used to go and sit there whenever I felt homesick. There’s a handful of headstones with Welsh names, belonging to mission families from before our time. It’s a sad place because of the little children’s graves, but there’s a wonderful view.’

  ‘Then you will remember the memorial plaque to Matthew Forbes.’

  Nerys did remember. She suddenly saw it in her mind’s eye, a simple plate let into the wall of the enclosure.

  In Memoriam

  Matthew Alexander Forbes, St John’s College, Cambridge Lost on Nanga Parbat, August 1938, aged 22

  ‘Yes, I do,’ she said.

  Rainer stared ahead over the truck’s steering-wheel. They were reaching the outskirts of Srinagar, where the houses and roadside markets gave way to paddy fields and orchards. ‘I placed it there, following the wishes of his family. I was with Matthew on the last morning of his life. The very last words he spoke were, “See you in a couple of hours. I’ll open a tin of soup.”’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Fast and light, that was our plan. We were in good shape for the climb. We had a small team of Sherpas, Matthew, two very strong officers of the Indian Army, and me. Matthew and I had camped at twenty thousand feet and were planning to advance the next day to establish a higher camp. Matthew was resting and I had climbed solo to a point on the ridge from which to reconnoitre our route upwards. I was looking towards the summit through my binoculars, when the entire slope above the camp gave way. Matthew, the tent, everyt
hing – everything that had been there – was swept away and buried under thousands of tons of ice and snow.’

  Rainer’s voice remained steady but furrows had appeared in his cheeks. He looked suddenly a decade older. ‘I stood in the avalanche debris, and there was nothing around me but the wind. All I could do was climb down to the low camp where the other men were waiting for us to come back. We sent the news home to Matthew’s family via Gilgit and Simla.

  ‘His father was a mountaineer, too, and he understood the climber’s compulsion to climb, but I don’t believe his mother will ever recover. He was her only son, a brilliant mathematician. I had known him and his family for ten years because they came out to Switzerland to ski in winter and to climb in summer, and as soon as he heard about my expedition Matthew begged and begged me again to take him with me. I knew that he was fully capable of it, or of course I would have refused him. We came out from Delhi via Manali and up to Leh, in order to train and to acclimatise, and Matthew loved that place. That was why I placed his memorial in the graveyard there. It would have been a fine achievement for him, you know, to reach the summit. I couldn’t have denied him the chance, when he wanted it so badly. But the mountains take away as readily as they give.’

  Nerys imagined an eager young Englishman discovering the winding alleyways of sleepy Leh, or climbing to the old palace that stood on a hill overlooking the town to gaze out over the gold and emerald Indus valley.

  Understanding that he was revealing a source of deep, private pain, she reached out and put her hand over Rainer’s. Her fingers rested on his fist, until she remembered herself and withdrew them again.

  ‘So, you may understand why I must go back. When I stand on the summit, the first man to reach there, Matthew will be with me. I have a book belonging to him that he left in the low camp, with his signature on the inside. I will take that page with me, and I will bury it up there for him.’

  There was the faintest tremor in Rainer’s voice now. Nerys found that her eyes were pricking with tears in response. ‘I do understand,’ she said.

  ‘Yes. The British authorities do not see it in the same light. There is no permit for me to return. Even though I engineer an invitation and take myself to the Residency party in my evening clothes, such as they are, to speak in person to Mr Fanshawe and dance with his wife, who unfortunately looks like a horse, the answer is no. However …’ He glanced at Nerys, and the lines in his face softened and disappeared. ‘I danced with you, and for that it was worth attending the most tedious British party only to be told I am not allowed to climb a high mountain in India.’

  ‘I don’t know about mountains or permits, Rainer, but I enjoyed dancing with you too,’ she said.

  She was remembering some of the words she had heard Myrtle’s acquaintances murmur in connection with Rainer Stamm. Dubious, adventurer and charlatan were among them, but Nerys didn’t care. He intrigued her and, for all his bad reputation, she thought he was as honest as anyone she had ever met.

  Rainer pointed ahead. The road had been climbing northwards, and the mist that cloaked the valley suddenly fell away in trails of silvery-grey vapour. The foothills emerged with their ribbing of dark pine trees, and the white peaks lifted into the sky behind them. She knew, because she had been watching it for long days, that the snowline dropped by a few hundred feet each morning.

  ‘It’s very beautiful,’ she said, as lightly as she could manage.

  ‘I would like to take you up there with me, all the way over the passes and up to a place called Astor, from where you can see my Naked Mountain. Nanga Parbat is called that, you know, because it stands alone.’ He leant forward and tapped one of the dials on the dust-coated dashboard. ‘But we have only just enough petrol to get us to Kanihama and perhaps home again.’

  ‘Kanihama?’

  ‘Wait and see.’

  After an hour’s driving on a dirt road winding between tall poplar trees and bare paddies, they came to a village of mud-brick houses set in apple orchards. The sun shone over the rumpled blanket of mist that layered the Vale below, and a breeze stirred the trees. Rainer stopped the truck in a small square of houses and Nerys wound down her window. Sweet air flooded into her lungs, bringing with it the loud chirping of crickets, a cock’s crow, the splash of running water and the voices of children playing nearby.

  ‘Oh,’ she said in surprise.

  This place looked and sounded different in a dozen ways but still it strongly reminded her of villages at home that were also caught in the cup of hills and flooded with the scent of woodsmoke and animal manure. She opened the truck door and stepped out, drawing her pheran around her.

  Kanihama was a lovely place.

  Wide-eyed children crept round the corners of houses, followed at a distance by shawled women and men in thick coats and lambskin caps. Rainer swung down from the truck and spoke a few words to a crescent-faced man with a thick black beard.

  Rainer turned back to Nerys. ‘Your shawl spinner …’

  He had found out where the woman lived, not far from his own house in the packed alleyways of Srinagar old town, and a few days ago Nerys and he had gone together to visit her. As Nerys had done the first time, they found her in her bare room with her spinning wheel and her children. Nerys gave the family food and some money, and she had tried to make promises about coming back and helping in whatever way she could. The woman only stared up at her, her face dulled by hunger and despair, while the two older children dragged at Nerys’s clothes and insinuated their small filthy hands into her pockets. The baby clung to its sister’s hair, seeming too listless even to blink. The oldest one had snatched up the family treasure again, and thrust the shawl towards Nerys’s face. ‘You buy. You buy,’ she had insisted.

  Nerys had gently put the piece aside, asking Rainer to tell the mother that she wanted to help them without taking their single asset.

  ‘Kanihama is the woman’s family home,’ Rainer continued. ‘I heard this much, and I asked for some more information. I discovered that this man is her father.’

  The man nodded abruptly to Nerys. She offered the few words of Kashmiri greeting that she had learnt so far and he inclined his head again. A woman joined him, her hair and the lower half of her face covered with folds of plain pashmina.

  ‘They are asking if we want to see their work,’ Rainer said.

  One of the houses was a little larger than the others, with wooden benches placed against the outside walls to catch the sun. Inside they were shown into a single room, the beamed roof supported by rough wooden pillars. A stove burnt at one side, the fragrant smoke curling up an iron chimney pipe.

  There were three looms, looking to Nerys like a dauntingly complicated web of struts and cords. The only sounds were the steady whisper of bobbins as they passed between the threads, and the occasional gentle thump of the heddles.

  When the weavers looked up and saw the visitors, the atmosphere of quiet industry changed to a bustle of welcome. The one nearest to them slid smartly off his bench and beckoned Nerys to his side. Watched by the crescent-faced man and two or three of the women, and by a fringe of inquisitive children bobbing in the doorway, he unpinned a protective cotton cloth that had covered his work.

  Nerys gazed at the half-completed kani-woven shawl that was revealed.

  The design was an intricate pattern of peacock feathers within lush borders of floral and paisley shapes, but it was the colours that took her breath away. They captured all the shades of a Kashmiri summer’s afternoon, from aquamarine to silver, from the sky’s blue to the deep green depths of lake water.

  ‘You like?’ the head man asked.

  She could only nod.

  With a touch of theatre the weaver bounded back on to his seat, and rippled fingers as practised as a concert pianist’s over the dozens of bobbins laid out in front of him. He picked out one note, a bobbin wound with pearl-white yarn, and dipped it beneath a single warp thread to create, Nerys realised, a tiny point of light at the heart of a s
tylised lotus bloom. Then he took up another, this time wound with palest silver, and counted the next five threads before slipping the bobbin beneath them. He was already rapt in concentration, and instinctively she stepped back in order not to distract him.

  She realised that she had been holding her breath.

  Rainer and Nerys were led outside again and escorted to a sunny bench. Tea was brought and served by one of the dark-eyed girls of the village. She smiled at Nerys but was too shy to linger. Rainer and the head man were deep in a conversation involving more gestures than actual words, so she rested her head against the wall and studied the view. The village seemed far away from Srinagar. She guessed that nothing much had changed here in centuries. Food was grown in the fields and the patches of garden; rice was planted, harvested and sold, and the dry stalks were neatly bound into the sheaves she could see piled in the barn beside her to provide winter fodder for the animals. Two boys drove a small flock of sheep and goats across the other side of the square, rattling their sticks against the house walls and giving low calls of encouragement. A group of little girls crouched together, playing a game of throwing and catching five white pebbles.

  Nerys was so absorbed in the scene, and in her thoughts, that she started when Rainer called her name. He was talking now to two of the women who held up enamel jugs and baskets for his inspection.

  ‘We could make up for being too poor to buy the shawl by supplementing our picnic with some of their fruit and yoghurt, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  For a few rupees they chose an earthenware pot full of cool white yoghurt, some small yellow apples, and a square of sacking tied round a generous scoop of walnuts. The villagers were disappointed but evidently not particularly surprised that the visitors hadn’t made a more substantial purchase.

  ‘At the price they’re asking, they’ll have to wait for Vivien Leigh to come calling for that shawl.’ Rainer grinned. ‘I would have bought it for you, if I had the money.’