The Mulberry Empire

by Philip Hensher

  It disturbed him, because it disturbed his deepest conviction, that what he most wanted and needed was solitude. In Kabul, he had come to think that the desire which had always driven him was the desire to be alone. He believed, now, that he was happy because he was alone and undisturbed; that here, there was nothing to interrupt his solitude, when he locked his door to the world. There was a solitude in the language which he could not share with anyone in the city, and a solitude in his way of life in this little house. Looking back, he felt assured that solitude was the thing he had always sought, and which he could never find before now. When he ran as a boy to his hiding place, to pull the gorse over him and sit in the warm near-dark, not knowing why, that was his need to be alone, in England. And in Calcutta, when, in precious hours in the crowded city, he had found his way to the English cemetery and wandered among the grandiose tombs, reading and sitting and musing, undisturbed, that, too, had been his deepest want not to be with people. If anyone had seen the private soldier in his uniform, wandering about the graves, they would not have wondered about him, or approached him; he was a person without interest, whose feelings were beneath the interest of any inquiring observer, and that had suited Masson and his solitude. There, in the cemetery on Park Street, he had been left alone with a crowd of the dead, and he read the beautiful sentiment on the graves knowing that whatever luxuriant feeling they might call forth from his bosom, nothing would be returned, and nothing more would be demanded of him than what he felt like offering.

  Rose Aylmer! Whom these mourning eyes

  May weep, but never see

  A night of wakefulness and tears

  I consecrate to thee …

  How sad that was, and how true! How he was moved by the death of poor Rose Aylmer, a woman he never knew! How wonderfully it confirmed to Masson, those lovely long Calcutta afternoons, that, in solitude, he possessed more than the common run of feelings without demanding anything more of him than he was prepared to give. Yes, as he had recognized since he came to Kabul, he was most himself when he was alone, when he could choose how to expend his feelings, and to be alone had always been what he had most wanted. He had not known that until now, but now he knew it. That certainty was what, on consideration, he felt absolutely assured of, and only two things in the last years had shaken his absolute assurance. The first, of course, had been Hasan, when for a week that desire for solitude had left him with an appalling force. And the second, which he could still less explain, was the bound of his heart on hearing the plausible news that there were English in Kabul. It was not fear alone that he felt. He recognized that it was something he deplored in himself, an urge to speak English to an Englishman. He was better when he was alone; he had always wanted to be alone, had he not? So why this excitement? Why this urge to run into the street and find what he was convinced he never missed?

  The news, however, that there was an Englishman in the city was one regularly and confidently conveyed by a succession of bazaar-boys, and it always turned out to be false. There were no English in Kabul, and he had started to think there never would be. This was a safe city for Masson. Beyond a certain distance, all foreigners were English to the Kabulis, and only twice had the reported approach of an Englishman referred even to a European. For the rest of it, the Englishman had turned out to be someone who even the Kabulis had to admit was very unlike Masson in appearance, language and manners, and Masson settled down again into his peaceful existence, undisturbed, wondering only what power the name of England still had over him, to raise him up from his equable state. He had heard the same news six or seven times since Hasan had so suddenly disappeared. It had always been false. But this time, it might just be true.

  2.

  Masson’s hours for company were mid-afternoon to mid-evening. The unwearying curiosity the city had exercised towards him had, over the months, diminished, but not disappeared. After a few frantic months of ceaselessly entertaining one visitor after another, Masson had immured himself, only opening the doors for a few hours each day. He had thought that the curiosity would diminish, but he could not see that it had. The whole city came to see him; to sit and stare and listen to him, from near-babies to toothless old men; everybody had come; everybody still came; except one. And each of them told him the same thing; that the English were in Kabul. They never were; only Masson.

  But Masson, now, had seen someone, in the bazaar, and that someone, unmistakably, had seen him. It was two days before. He had his daily round, sitting and talking with the shoemaker, the fruitsellers, the carpet-menders; he listened at the edge of a crouching little group to the epics of the storytellers, gathering little fragments of knowledge. To listen patiently to the ordinary conversation of the people of the city was knowledge, too; he had heard their stories, knew of their lives, and learnt from it. What they believed about themselves was always wrong, but always interesting, and he went from place to place, patiently drinking tea, never admitting the feeling that he might be wasting his time. And occasionally the shoemaker, at the back of his fusty little shop, would break off from his customary long complaint about his wife, and explain in detail exactly what had been done at his cousin’s martial funeral rites, and Masson would listen, his eyes bright, itching for his notebook. They could tell him what had been done; he would explain, one day, why. Sometimes they would say, Oh, are you interested in old things? And produce something from a pile of rags, something strange which they could not explain. Sometimes it was nothing much – Masson had grown to loathe those industrial figures of Hindu gods, which were incomprehensible and therefore curious to the shopkeepers – but sometimes, on the other hand, it was interesting; an old Persian medal, a Tibetan prayer-conch encrusted with the instructions of opaque, distant devotions. He went on his morning rounds feeling pleasantly braced, and sometimes his patient civility was rewarded.

  Masson prided himself, now, on being able to distinguish between the faces of Kabul. All Asia poured through here, and with one look, he could tell a Pushto-speaking near-savage from a pompous Qizzilbash merchant, a man with a Turkish grandparent, a blue-eyed hillsman, a face on which Arab or Chinese or Cashmire ancestry had left its mark. He had often thought that the small distinctions in faces would reward serious study. The variety here was so opulent, and all witnessed by the tiny shifts in eyebrow or nose, that it seemed for a time as if the world was here. Then one day Masson saw an English face, and knew that was not so.

  It was in the great hall of the butchers. By mid-morning, the trade had fallen to nothing, and it became a sleepy, dusty place. On the flimsy tables, the butchers and their apprentices reclined, sleeping or smoking, the rough dark carcasses by their side like old friends. They passed occasional leisurely remarks, but lay for the most part in deep content. The hard-packed mud floor was covered with baskets of chickens, crowded together and poking their heads through the net; most, by now, held only one or two chickens, a sight which never failed to strike Masson as poignant, as the last survivor waited for its purchaser. The air of the hall was thick with dust; feathers, fur, dry mud floated in the clear light shining through the thin slits in the hall’s roof. It was Masson’s favourite place, and he stood and looked at something a different person could have written a poem about.

  There were few customers, now; the time for meat-buying was in the early morning, and only a couple of women navigated their way through the islands of captive chickens. The butchers were used to the sight of the Englishman who liked to come and stand, and sometimes ask them about odd things, but the splendidly robed figure who was picking his way across the hall was unfamiliar to them, and they raised their heads to look at this new figure in mild curiosity. Masson, too, observed the man’s progress with interest; he was tall, and dressed in a courtly fashion. For a moment he thought of Hasan in his splendour. The man approached, not showing the usual curiosity, but simply making his awkward way, observing quietly. He was five yards from Masson when he raised his head and, with a shock, Masson saw a head as ginger as
his own, and the unmistakable Englishman saw what Masson was. He lowered his face again, and went on, not varying his pace, speaking, or looking back at Masson. Yes, this time it could be true.

  It was December, and bitterly cold; the first snows could not be long delayed, and Masson cut short his social visits around the marketplace. He returned to the widow Khadija’s house in a state of agitation, and waited eagerly for the arrival of Qasim. Qasim was a good boy, on the whole, and a useful one; Masson overlooked his occasional pilfering, and rewarded the occasional heart-rending tales of the misfortunes of his family with small gifts of money, wishing only that Qasim had the wit to see that they would be as effective if he could make them somewhat shorter. And, after all, his unfounded belief that Masson must be extremely rich had its occasional uses, both domestic and public. Still, he was a good boy, on the whole, and usefully curious about the city. He had been Masson’s most regular visitor for some months now, and would probably know about this alarming apparition.

  One of the upper rooms had been transformed by Masson into a treasury-cum-study; it was here that he kept his various acquisitions, and here where he wrote. He kept two sets of notes; the first was a bald diary, noting times and places and the briefest comment on any interesting conversation. It was a habit he had usefully fallen into when travelling, and kept up when he was in Kabul. The second set of notes was more elaborate; a careful, formal description of anything he had seen, or anything he had acquired, supplemented where necessary with any information, however obviously false, he had had on the occasion. A goatherd would not hold any correct information about a tomb, and a merchant, even if better informed about his goods, might have reason to mislead his strange customer; still, it was knowledge, and worth recording. False beliefs and the native idea of a plausible lie were of interest. Sometimes Masson made an attempt at a drawing of the object; not often enough. He deplored his lack of skill with the pencil, and his clumsy renderings, even if they were no more than aides-mémoire, irritated him. They were inaccurate, and inaccuracy was what Masson disliked most in himself. What his scrupulous notes were building towards was a great work, the most complete and truthful account possible of what no one had ever seen. That he might, in the fullness of time, be misled by his stumbling pencil into misdescription was inconceivable, and Masson unwillingly chose not to attempt a drawing from time to time, believing – he knew falsely – that his memory ought to be good enough.

  Today he sat on the floor and could not work. He stared into space, trying to will himself into activity, but nothing much came. There were tasks to be undertaken, descriptions to be done, the events of yesterday and today to be set down. He sat in his pile of blankets in the cold room, a ewer before him and his notebook and pencil in his hand, and thought, unaccountably, of the Englishman he had seen.

  3.

  Qasim came as the daylight was fading, and Masson stirred himself to go down and welcome him. The sight of Qasim’s face was always a slight shock, as if there ought to be a different one there, looking up at him. He pushed away the half-formed thought, which was always there, and then it was only Qasim, with his squarish Indian face, looking at him anxiously. They salaamed, smiling, to each other, and then Qasim, with his periodic niceness, reached out and stroked Masson’s arm.

  ‘My father asked if you would do him the honour to come to his house,’ Qasim said, once Masson had called for tea. ‘He has seen you in the street and begs your condescension.’

  ‘I would be honoured,’ Masson said gravely. ‘The opportunity to repay the honour your house has done me in affording me the finest flower of the family is one I should seize, and am conscious of the honour done me by your invitation.’

  Qasim looked at him oddly, and Masson worried, as often, that he had rather failed to grasp where the honour in these transactions was due. Still, it would be interesting to see Qasim’s family, and try to understand what, precisely, they thought of him and his unwarranted concern for a mere street-boy, the useless elder son (as he understood it) of the family.

  ‘I think I saw your father,’ Masson said. ‘Certainly I was greeted by a gentleman I did not know, three days ago, a gentleman who seemed to show a remarkable degree of esteem for a poor foreign stranger. I suppose that must have been him, then. I did not recognize him.’

  ‘I resemble him greatly, it is said,’ Qasim said distractedly.

  ‘A very handsome gentleman,’ Masson said.

  Qasim brightened. ‘I could not come yesterday,’ he said earnestly. ‘My cousin—’

  ‘Your cousin?’

  Qasim nodded.

  ‘Which cousin?’ Masson said.

  ‘My cousin the carpenter,’ Qasim said fluently. ‘He has great problems. His brother—’

  ‘His brother, your cousin,’ Masson said.

  ‘Yes,’ Qasim said, momentarily puzzled. Then he resumed his story. ‘His brother was robbed and left for dead, and my cousin cannot help him.’

  ‘Why not?’ Masson said. He was rather enjoying this.

  ‘His family is large and he has no money,’ Qasim said baldly. ‘And so …’

  Masson let him run on in this familiar vein for some time; he found it rather restful. When he had finished, Masson agreed to give him something – the little silver bowl, a remnant of Das’s quite without interest would probably do – to sell in the market. They sat for a moment in silence. Absurdly, Masson was waiting for Qasim to mention the presence of Englishmen in Kabul. Finally, he raised it.

  ‘Yes,’ Qasim said, without much interest. ‘Yes, there are English here again. I have not seen them. They are with the Amir at the Bala Hissar.’

  Masson raised an eyebrow. ‘Important Englishmen, then,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ Qasim said. ‘They are the guests of the Amir. What are their names?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Masson said. ‘I don’t know who they are.’

  ‘But they are English,’ Qasim said.

  ‘Do you know everyone even in this city?’

  Qasim made a puffing noise at the absurdity of the idea. ‘The English,’ he went on. ‘My father said they are the English who came before.’

  Masson dismissed this; when he arrived, he too had been widely assumed to be the Englishman who came before, carrying gorgeous gifts to amaze the court. Probably any European, arriving here, was routinely assumed to be the same as those mysterious visitors, whose purpose and whose nature he had never been able to disentangle from the thickets of rumour and mangled repetition.

  ‘They are friends of the Amir,’ Qasim said. ‘They come to pay him homage. I would like to see them. And now, Tschawzzz …’

  A great grin broke out on Qasim’s face; the name of Charles was almost impossible for him to pronounce, and he took great relish in his approximations. Produced like this, it had a single meaning, an invitation to fuck, and Masson never stopped finding it amusing that so ordinary an English name had, in one distant boy’s mind, become a synonym for their rowdy congress. Qasim only said Charles at these moments, and when he struggled with the name, its knot of consonants at either end, Masson suddenly saw himself as exotically lubricious, and he swiftly, gorgeously divested himself of his robes with all the swagger of a Parisian whore.

  The raucous acts occupied the evening, and when Qasim had eaten, he departed, holding the reward of the little silver bowl in triumph. Masson sank back, lighting his pipe, and resumed his thoughts. Qasim never stayed the night, and his departure was normally a moment of pleasure for Masson; a moment to be still, and not to think, in solitude. He could feel the thoughts of the English crowding around his little guilty brain, and he resolved not to indulge them. He blew out the little oil lamp, and lay down, pushing the mattress here and there until he had made himself a nest; he was tired, and soon he slept. He had fended off the thoughts of the English, but it had been a mistake. That would be one set of bad thoughts, and he triumphed over them, forgetting what always lay in his mind. He slept, and, in one wide wave, what came to him was what
was worse, what was always there.

  4.

  He who, in his daily life, herds sheep and nothing but sheep, will dream of sheep. Masson, every day, handled coins which spoke of kings; of the precious objects of courts, of jade bowls and lapis lazuli, of the rings of princes, of the seals which the chamberlains of distant and obscure palaces once yielded; he walked and rode into the dry high mountains to stand with careful reverence before the tombs of emperors; he hoarded curved scimitars, the witnesses of conquest; he held holy books, buried in gold, in filigree, in arabesque; he read of diamonds as big as a man’s fist, which wars were fought over as if they were empires; he touched and imagined and described and hoarded the properties of the magnificent dead, of the kings of the world, and through this great pile of things walked the ghosts of emperors, looking at the assessing, guilty Masson with their calm cruel eyes. Masson, every day, lived among the wreck of empires and his eyes shone with their treasures: and when he closed them, he dreamt of Hasan.

  To be with Hasan was to understand loss. Over and over again, that infinite week, Masson was overwhelmed with it. Over and over again, as the clean bright day faded into the luxuriant cool blue evening, and Hasan buried his face in the breast of the Englishman, Masson felt a terrible want, a terrible longing to be with Hasan. I long to be with you, so much, he thought, over and over again; and his love was such that the longing was never fiercer than when he already was. Seven days: seven days of longing for what was already there. A week of desire, so strong that nothing could fulfil it, nothing, not even fulfilment. There was nothing that Hasan did not give, nothing more than Masson could have asked for. It was as if Hasan had entered, and for seven days, poured out the full measure of his existence, selflessly, giving everything, and Masson had a thirst for more, for everything, even when he had and was being given everything that could be given. Loss was in Hasan. And when he went, there was nothing more to be added to Masson’s desire: nothing but grief. I want to be with you, so much, so much: I want to be with you, even when I already am.