by John Masters
She took it in her stride, answering easily, ‘Oh, really? I should have asked you,’ and then for the first time spoke to the bearer. Five minutes later a plate of toasted cheese reached the table.
Afterwards she did comment on the incident. She said, ‘You used to eat meat?’
‘Yes. I gave it up.’ He could not tell her why he had, because he wasn’t sure that he could isolate the true reason. Perhaps it was just that he had been training himself to live on the simplest foods--the cheese, milk, curds, whey, and yoghurt of Gharghara. Perhaps it was something else--but Jagbir loved animals more than he did, yet would happily eat any meat except cow.
Ever since his arrival in Peshawar the weariness that followed him had been drawing closer. His sleep in Hayling’s bungalow had hardly checked it. The champagne had slowed its advance, but here at Edith Collett’s sadness and frustration had compounded it, and soon it would catch him and bear him down. Then after dinner Anne suggested going to bed, and in the invitation he heard the hour toll for his second trial. He was a young man and knew that he was loved. He knew, from the messages of many starlit, lonely nights, what joy she held for him and only for him. A part of him pressed eagerly forward because he was sure that the act of sexual union must contain a mystery, and he was seeking a mystery, a solution and appeasement of the mysterious isolation of his spirit, and this might be it. But he had no clue to the nature of it, and those men and women to whom it meant most were least able and least willing to explain it. Besides, if physical love contained--possibly--a mystic core, the act of it assuredly flung out tentacles which bound the man and the woman together even when they both had come to desire only separation. That he had seen and thought about many long nights, but found no explanation for. Some people said that the children born of the union became the bonds which held it together, but he thought they might be only physical reminders of unseen, always-felt moral ties. So to-night, if he could master his wilful body--which, to help him, was tired--and his hungry spirit, Anne would remain free and unbound until he knew what it was that he sought. It might be her. With a sudden foretaste of loneliness he prayed it would be. But it might be something else, and in that case, if he failed to-night, Anne would never be whole again. A part of her, wrenched out by the trailing fingers of to-night’s union, would always follow him, wondering, searching, trying to see what he saw, experience what he experienced.
The big bed was ready. While he undressed, Anne slipped out and returned in a minute with an opened split of champagne and two glasses. She went into the bathroom and came out a quarter of an hour later, wearing a muslin and silk nightdress with a low front and short puffed sleeves.
The lights danced across her body as she moved, and the shadows swung closer together to shape her, like a woman seen through a misty waterfall. She raised her glass and drank to him, smiling over the rim.
She saw him staring at her and said, ‘From Paris. Do you like it?’ He nodded. She sat down in front of the mirror and began to brush her hair. He saw that her eyes watched him in the glass and that she was frightened.
His weariness, the only ally of his compassion, had deserted him. It was raised aloft, poised above his head ready to smother him, but on the field of battle were only two enormous strengths fighting their way up inside him--the strength to do and the strength not to do. Reaching out for help, his mind brought him visions of dogs that strove, with their tongues out, in the streets, and of the bitches crying in pain afterwards because they could not escape from what they had achieved. He saw the young Hazara man and the Hazara woman whom he had surprised together on the hillside; he knew them, and each was married; unseen, he had watched the greetings, the play, the whole course of the love that became violence and, at last, despair.
Anne sank slowly back on the bed, never taking her eyes off him. Her slippers slid from her feet, her hair spread out in an aureole around her face. When she drew up her legs the nightdress fell back above her knees, wrinkling in transparent folds about her thighs. She raised her arms to him.
He held still, away from her, and knew that she would see the shape of his hurt in the lines of his chin and mouth.
The unnatural champagne-sparkle died in her green eyes. Her voice was like a frightened girl’s, who sees death for the first time. He watched the tears spring out in the eyes that she could not seem to shut against him. She wept with wide eyes and, while weeping, slipped awkwardly under the sheet and pulled it up around her neck. No beauty remained in her face, only the ugliness of slack mouth and swelling eyelids and streaming cheeks. Robin’s frantically rising lust sank away.
He had won. Perhaps, a little, she had helped, because while he had been away she had made herself, to perfection, the woman that all men desire, and he was not ‘all men.’ He was himself, and it was easier for him to deny that woman than the simple, loving girl of his honeymoon.
As he had won, he saw that she had lost. She had failed to chain herself with the bonds that she desired and he feared. Everything she loved, he feared. Everything she knew, he doubted.
For the first time he had come to grips with her beneath the layers of competence or shyness or ignorance. He was no longer aloof, fenced inside himself, but struggling face to face and eye to eye against her. She had broken his glass and come too close, and he was afraid. Hers was the same love, but stronger, that once long ago had suddenly vanished and become a long fall in a black well. She had been pushing him to the edge of a longer fall, a blacker well. But he had won and he hated her for loving him, with a crawling hate that flew up his spine and crinkled the short hairs at the back of his head. There was no escape from such love.
Her eyes changed as she saw his face. She knew. He ripped off the sheet and heard the fearful ecstasy in her cry--’Robin!’ He sprang on her, fierce as a hunter at her shriek. She struggled with him all night, with teeth and nails and flesh, until in the first light she fell back, open-mouthed, bleeding, insensible, and triumphant.
CHAPTER 11
On August 14th, 1880, Robin and Jagbir came late in the afternoon to the city of Balkh. Here, forty-five miles south of the river, the Oxus valley was like an airless oven. The trail ran across flat loess soil to the grey walls of the dilapidated city. Small patches of orchard and market garden, listless and still in the heat, dotted the flat. Close on their right, where a string of camels showed that another road converged here on Balkh, humps and hillocks of older cities rose above the plain and the gardens. The walls of Balkh were in utter disrepair. She that had been called The Mother City of all earth had fallen on sad days. Robin wrapped the end of his robe more tightly around his mouth and stretched his legs in the wooden stirrups. The path widened, and Jagbir--who was not Jagbir, but Turfan--came up to ride at his side.
Jagbir wore a heavy black sheepskin cap, a doublet of dirty coarse-woven grey wool with tight, long sleeves, trousers of the same material, ending under ragged puttees, and high, cross-laced boots of untanned hide. A grey blanket, carefully rolled to show its red and black border, hid the front arch of his saddle. He had a long rifle slung diagonally across his back, the muzzle pointing upwards and to the left behind his left shoulder. A curved sword hung from his leather belt on the left side, and a thin-bladed twelve-inch knife on the right side. Robin wore a grey astrakhan cap, a long white robe of fine linen, and red Persian slippers. He carried as weapons only a rifle and a jewelled knife in a jewelled sheath. They were, respectively, a Hazara peasant who had temporarily become a body servant, and his master, an Afghan trader of Persian descent.
A third horse, heavily loaded, walked at the end of a short rope behind Jagbir’s pony. It carried bulging saddlebags, a goatskin full of water, several small sacks of food and fodder, a rattling miscellany of pots and pans, and bundles of blankets and spare clothes. Slung on Robin’s and Jagbir’s ponies were two or three more small skins full of water.
Robin coughed to clear the dust from his throat; some always filtered through. The taste was as familiar as if he had nev
er left Gharghara. The fleeting visit to India had never taken place; he had never worn that tight green uniform, never rushed in a train across the Punjab, never sat across a table under the Simla deodars, against a bank of rhododendrons, and talked in the cool midday with the heads of the government of India. But he had taken possession of his wife, and she of him. That was real; this scouring heat and harsh emptiness of Asia were real; three weeks’ hard travel from the Indian frontier to here were real; Bahram’s habit of biting his arm when being saddled was real. The rest was a dream.
He said, ‘Nearly there now, Turfan.’
The language was comfortable in his mouth, and as right as Jagbir’s gutturally mangled Turki. ‘Yes, master. Where do we sleep the night?’
‘We shall see. We’ll refresh ourselves in the first tea-house we come to.’
Seen from outside, Balkh appeared to have died six hundred years before. Inside, the streets throbbed with life. It was still a caravan city. The black tents of Powindahs dotted the plain to the west, and the men were here in the town bargaining in Pushtu at the shops. The dust was here, brought in from the plain, deposited by generations of travellers, stirred up by hoofs and feet. The houses were drab, the stalls bright with cloth and fruit. Veiled Afghan women passed silently among unveiled, yelling Turki women.
After the silence of the road the noise beat at their ears. They slid down from their ponies in front of a small, open-fronted shop, tethered the ponies to the posts supporting the shop roof, and went in. The proprietor sat cross-legged at the back. Robin said, ‘Iced sherbet for me and my servant.’
‘Can’t have it iced.’ The proprietor grunted, remaining seated. ‘No ice till next week.’
Robin shrugged. ‘Some of your tea, then, if you have that.’ Being of Persian blood, he was expected to be superciliously aware of the three thousand years of Persian culture behind him.
The proprietor brought them tea in tiny cups of delicate porcelain, but chipped and unwashed. When serving Jagbir he wrinkled his nose with great distaste. Robin sympathized with him. Jagbir was living his part completely and reeked of goat and grease and sweaty wool. Robin lifted his cup between his palms, for it had no handle, and sipped noisily. ‘These cups are filthy.’
‘I do my best, lord,’ the proprietor whined. Robin tossed down a coin. The man surreptitiously rang it on a stone and made to return to his carpet in the corner. Robin said, ‘Wait. Do you know Selim Beg, the Learned One?’
‘I know everybody. He never was much of a customer here, and he’s been away for some months now, I hear. Why, what do you--?’
Robin stared coldly at the man, who looked from him to the morosely glowering Jagbir and fell silent. Robin said, ‘Has he moved his house recently, by any chance?’
‘No, lord. Same house, at the corner of Tartar Street.’
Robin nodded and tossed him another small coin.
‘Blessings on you, lord, the blessings of. . .’
Robin put his lips to his tea. Since leaving Simla he had been thinking whether or not he should publicly avow any connection between himself and the dead Selim Beg. If he did avow it--as he just had--his unseen enemies would know that he was looking for Selim Beg; if they guessed the reason they could act at once, either to kill him or to dog his footsteps and hinder his investigations. On the other hand, Selim Beg must have had contacts. At his level, Asia being Asia, many of the people he talked to must have known the purpose of his questions and guessed whom he worked for. It was very possible that Selim Beg paid a few pence to his poorer confidants for their gossip. So, by making public that there was a connection between himself and Selim Beg, he would announce himself to Selim Beg’s friends. They might come to him with their news and their suspicions. He had to start somewhere, and had decided to take the risk.
When they had finished their tea they remounted and forced slowly on down the crowded street, one behind the other, the led packhorse last. Where Tartar Street bent sharply to the left the roadway widened. There was a well in the middle of the road there, and, set back on the right, a house behind a high wall. Its gates hung open on tom hinges. A fountain had once played in the courtyard, but it played no longer. Three mulberry trees drooped against a wall of cracked mud. Since the outer gates could no longer be closed, dogs and men used the courtyard for a latrine. Robin pulled his pony to a halt and called, ‘Ho, within! A friend of Selim Beg wishes to speak with him.’
A frowzy, black-costumed girl opened a door in the lower storey and shuffled out to stare at them. On the upper storey, behind a balcony just above the level of Robin’s head, the dim, large face of a woman came to peer at him from the shadows of a room. Lastly, a pockmarked man joined the girl in the courtyard and said with no welcoming manner, ‘Who are you? What do you want? The serai is outside the town, to the north-east.’
‘I am Khussro of Gharghara, a horse trader. The benisons of Allah, of Mohammed, and of Ali his chosen successor be upon you!’
The man spat. ‘We are Sunnis here.’
‘So I guessed. That makes no need to deride the name of God. I would wish to talk with Selim Beg--a matter of business. Is he, by chance, within reach?’
Movements of a heavy body shook the upper storey. Sandalled feet thumped and clacked down an inside stairway. A fat hand came around the door and tugged the man’s sleeve. He bent back his head and listened to a shrill whisper from inside the doorway. The servant girl stared numbly at Jagbir.
The pockmarked man turned to Robin. ‘Come in, then. I am the brother of Selim Beg’s wife. She is here.’
Robin followed the man into the house. Jagbir said a word to the servant girl, who burst out giggling but came to help him with the ponies. Selim Beg’s wife was big and fat and encased in black robes with red patterns. A heavy black veil hung across her face just below the eyes and kept slipping down. Every minute she adjusted it; every other minute it fell down. She led the way into a small room. Light entered through a square hole in the wall. It was breathlessly hot.
She said, ‘What news? You have seen him?’
Robin caught the brother’s suspicious, pockmarked frown. He said, not speaking directly to either of the others, ‘It was here that I hoped to receive news of him. There is this little matter of business that has remained unsettled for over a year. I found myself in Balkh, so----’
‘We don’t know anything about his debts,’ the brother broke in roughly. ‘We are not responsible for them.’
‘I have not, I think, suggested that you are,’ Robin said coldly. ‘I hoped only to see Selim Beg himself, who is my friend. If he is not here, I am asking your hospitality under false pretences and will remove myself. Good day.’
‘No. Stay!’ the woman said abruptly. ‘How long will your business keep you in Balkh? A few days? We can manage. Don’t argue, man! If your brother-in-law owes this gentleman money, what less can we do?’
‘He hasn’t said yet that----
‘Chut! Show him the chamber at the end there. Food is ready, guest. We were just about to eat.’
The smells of hot bread, curry, and spice filled the house. The men sat down, and Jagbir joined them. The woman muttered at the servant girl, and the two of them brought on the food. Its quality did not live up to the savoury smell. It was poor stuff, and there was little of it. After the meal Robin soon went to his room. If the woman had anything to say she would come to him. He lay awake a long time on the threadbare rug in the middle of the floor. The moon shone in through a Persian grille, and the sounds of the town died slowly under the stifling heat.
He awoke silently and sat up. She was squatting beside his knees. She put her face so close to his that he could see the enlarged pores of her pale, yellow, shiny skin. ‘What news? The truth.’
He took both her arms, above the elbows, and held them tight, his fingers sinking into the fat. ‘Be brave. Do not make a sound. The man of your house is dead.’
She rocked to and fro on her heels. In spite of his warning her mouth opened, and she
moaned, a long, low sound like wind in the streets at night. After a minute she whispered, ‘He was my sun, and I his moon. Our children are long gone from our house. Are you one of his, like him?’
‘Yes.’
‘So much I felt in my bones, even through this fat. I was like a young doe.’
‘Our enemies killed him near Attock on the borders of Ind, where he went with an important message. He died. He was true to his salt. What can you tell me that he--now--is no longer able to?’
‘Little. He was afraid when he went, so he talked to me. He could not say much. What would I understand? But he did say that much money, in gold, was reaching certain people here, from the west.’
‘From the west? Are you sure?’
‘Yes. From Herat and Meshed. He didn’t tell me why; I think he did not know. That was all. I must go. My brother will kill me if he finds me here.’
‘Listen. I’ll stay a week or so. We’ll get a chance to talk again. I have gold for you, for one thing, a pension from my government.’
‘Ah, gold. He deserved it. But he is dead. That I won’t show to my brother.’ She rose creakingly upright.
He said, ‘Wait. Whom used he to meet and talk with most?’
‘Zarfaraz the banker and Gol Mohamed the trader in the Narrow Street.’