An Area of Darkness

by V. S. Naipaul

  No sight of the god, then, for me: I would sit it out. Not so Aziz. He was a Muslim, an iconoclast; but his devoutness as a Muslim could not overcome his curiosity as a Kashmiri. He joined the crowd and instantly vanished, his fur cap alone revealing his progress. I squatted on the wet ground, in a litter of paper and wrappings and cigarette packets, beside a grimy skull-capped Kashmiri Muslim who was guarding the shoes of the Hindu devout at four annas a pair. He was doing good business. Slowly Aziz progressed. Now, at the gates, he was squeezed out of the crowd, like a pip out of an orange: fur cap, bewildered but determined face, Ali Mohammed’s striped blue jacket, hands clawing at the rails. Somehow, hands working, unseen legs no doubt also working, he managed to be squeezed through the narrow opening of the gate, and then disappeared, fur cap and all, once again.

  I waited a long time for him, in a ringing cave which in a few hours had been turned into a busy Indian bazaar. A bazaar: at this moment of climax there came the flatness I had all along feared. And it was like the flatness, equally expected, equally feared, of my first day in Bombay. Pilgrimages were only for the devout. I concentrated on the Kashmiri’s shoes, the coins on his scrap of newspaper.

  When Aziz reappeared, tarnished but awed, he reported with contradictory satisfaction, which yet held nothing of surprise – he was, after all, a Muslim – that there was no lingam. Perhaps none had formed this time; perhaps it had melted in the rush. Where the lingam ought to have been there were only offerings of flowers and money. But the pilgrims streaming through the exit were as ecstatic as any we had met on the morning’s march.

  ‘You don’t come for the lingam,’ one man said. ‘It’s the spirit of the thing.’

  The spirit of the thing! Squatting in the cave, which rang continuously with shouts and shuffling, concentrating on the bazaar litter on the wet floor, glimpsing out of the corner of my eye the ever ascending crowd whose numbers I could less easily grasp than I could the size of the mountains and the valleys, I had grown light-headed. A physical growth, because it was extraordinary, was a spiritual symbol. The growth failed; it became the symbol of a symbol. In this spiralling, deliquescing logic I felt I might drown. I went outside into the light. Pilgrims, their offerings made, were looking up for the two rock pigeons, followers of Lord Shiva once, before they were turned into pigeons by the anger of their Lord and doomed for ever to live near Him in His cave. I did not look up. I went on down the white slope, hopping from rock to rock, and did not stop until I came to the clear stream.

  *

  Our return was to be swift. At Panchtarni, where the camp of the morning had already almost ceased to exist, our bundles were packed and the ponies were waiting. Aziz spoke of going straight on to Chandanwari; he wanted to be back in Srinagar on the following day, to be in time for another religious occasion: the display of the hair from the beard of the Prophet at Hazratbal mosque. I would have preferred to remain a little longer in the mountains. But no; we had to hurry; all about us there was the atmosphere of haste, almost of flight. Later, I thought. Later we would come back and spend an entire summer among these mountains. We would experience their weather – that morning in the camp at Sheshnag mist had suddenly swirled down the snowcapped mountains, adding ominousness to beauty, and had as suddenly lifted, revealing the bright sky. And in the afternoons we would have the streams to ourselves. But ‘later’ is always part of these moments. Already, in fact, the desolate camp at Panchtarni had affected me. The pilgrimage was over, our path was known; the journey had grown stale.

  Some time in the afternoon a Kashmiri in a green cap joined our party, and a quarrel instantly blew up between him and Aziz. I was on foot; from afar I could see the gesticulating figures; and when I drew near I recognized the man in the green cap as the missing ghora-wallah. He was attempting to take charge of the pony he had abandoned two days before; there was nothing to stop him, but at every shout from Aziz he behaved like a man who was being restrained by physical force. Vengeance was now Aziz’s; this was the moment he had been waiting for; and his anger and contempt were frightening, except perhaps to another Kashmiri. For all its passion, in fact, the exchange had something of play. The ghora-wallah pleaded, but he seemed untouched by Aziz’s abuse. He wept. Aziz, astride his shabby little pony, his socked, sandalled feet hanging very low, refused to be mollified. Suddenly, no longer weeping, the ghora-wallah ran to the abandoned pony and made as if to seize the reins. Aziz screamed; the ghora-wallah stopped short, as though he had been surprised in a furtive act and struck a heavy blow on the head. Finally he ceased to weep or plead; he blustered; he became abusive; and Aziz replied. He hung back; he ran forward; he hung back again. Then he didn’t run forward, and gradually dwindled in the distance, a still, standing figure occasionally roused to frenzy, shaking a fist against the Himalayan skyline.

  ‘When we reach Pahalgam you report Touriasm Office,’ Aziz, perfectly calm, said to me. ‘They take away his permit.’

  Sheshnag camp was almost deserted; it looked trampled over and unsavoury. We passed it by and at dusk pitched our tents at a small encampment a few miles on. For hours afterwards lights came twinkling down the mountain, and went past: pilgrims hastening back to Chandanwari, puffs of dust in the light of the full moon.

  The journey that remained was easy. We ourselves were in the woods of Chandanwari early next morning and by midday we were in sight of Pahalgam, back in a green world of fields and trees and earth. It was all downhill now. I got off my pony and scrambled down, avoiding the lengthy twists and turns of the jeep-track, and soon was far ahead of Aziz and the others. Aziz made no attempt to catch up with me; and even when, together again, we were on the metalled road and passing the bus station and the Tourist Office, he said not a word about the missing ghora-wallah. I did not remind him. He jumped off his pony to take an uninvited, and unresented, pull at someone’s hookah: he had abandoned the role of the aloof majordomo. Momentarily we lost him, and when he reappeared he was carrying a quantity of peas in his shirt, the front of which was knotted to form something like a tray, which he did not need to support. The transformation from major domo to hotel servant was complete. He was even without the vacuum flask; that, like Mr Butt’s shoes, he had destroyed.

  At our base, a tent in the shade of a tree, the ghora-wallah in the green cap was waiting for us. As soon as he caught sight of me he began to wail and weep: a formal self-abasement, a formal weeping, dry and scraping, without a hint of real distress. He ran to me, dropped to his knees and grabbed my legs with his powerful hands. The pony men gathered round with looks of satisfaction. Aziz, his shirtful of peas before him, was openly smiling down at the ghora-wallah.

  ‘He is poor man, sahib.’

  What was this? After all that I had heard from him about the ghora-wallah, could this be Aziz?

  The ghora-wallah wept more loudly.

  ‘He have wife,’ Aziz said. ‘He have children. You not report Touriasm, sahib.’

  The ghora-wallah ran his hands down my legs and banged his forehead on my shoes.

  ‘He very poor man, sahib. You not dock his pay. You not take away his permit.’

  Holding my knees firmly, the ghora-wallah rubbed his forehead against them.

  ‘He not honest man, sahib. He bloody swine. But he poor. You not report Touriasm.’

  The ritual went on, without any reference, it seemed, to me.

  ‘All right, all right,’ I said, ‘I not report.’

  Instantly the ghora-wallah was up, not a trace of anxiety or relief on his broad peasant’s face: he had simply been working. He dusted the knees of his trousers in a businesslike way, took out some rupee notes from a pocket, counted five and, even as I looked, gave them to Aziz.

  This was the price of Aziz’s intercession. Had they come to some arrangement the previous afternoon? Had it been planned days before? Had Aziz intended all his groans and complaints to lead to this, an extra five rupees? It seemed unlikely – that labour up Pissu Ghati had been real – but with Aziz I could
no longer be sure. He seemed surer of me: he had taken a gift – in the long run my money – in my presence. Throughout the journey he had promoted my dignity; he must have frightened the ghora-wallah with my importance. But his true assessment was plain. I was harmless. Faced with this assessment, I felt my will weaken. No, I wouldn’t, simply for the sake of my pride, make a scene; when all was said and done, Aziz was my servant. It would be less troublesome to preserve my character, as he had read it, until we got back to Srinagar.

  The five rupees, checked, disappeared into one of Aziz’s pockets. The moment for reprimand passed. I said nothing. His assessment had, after all, proved correct.

  Then the ghora-wallah, leading his pony by the reins, came up to me again.

  ‘Bakshish?’ he said, and stretched out one hand.

  *

  The sunflowers in the garden faded and were like emblems of dying suns, their tongues of fire limp and shrivelled. My work was almost done; it would soon be time to go. Farewell visits had to be made. We went first to our friends at Gulmarg.

  ‘We’ve been having our adventures too,’ Ishmael said.

  They always had. They attracted drama. They were interested in the arts and their house was always full of writers and musicians.

  ‘You didn’t by any chance meet a girl called Laraine on your pilgrimage?’

  ‘An American girl?’

  ‘She said she was going to Amarnath.’

  ‘But how extraordinary! Was she staying here too?’

  ‘She and Rafiq nearly drove us mad.’

  This adventure (Ishmael said) had begun in Srinagar, in the Indian Coffee House on Residency Road. There one morning Ishmael met Rafiq. Rafiq was a musician. He played the sitar. The apprenticeship of a musician in India is long and severe. And though Rafiq was nearly thirty and though, according to Ishmael, he was very good, he had not yet made a name; he was just beginning to give recitals on local radio stations. It was in order to relax before one such recital that Rafiq had come to Kashmir for a fortnight. He had little money. Ishmael, generous and impulsive as always, invited Rafiq, whom he had met that morning for the first time, to stay at his bungalow in Gulmarg. Rafiq took his sitar and went.

  The arrangement worked well. Rafiq found himself with a couple who understood the artistic temperament. His music delighted them; he could never practise enough. The routine of the house was also congenial. Dinner was at midnight, after music, talk and drink. Breakfast was at midday. Then perhaps the masseur called, carrying his equipment in a small black box marked with his name. Afterwards, if it was not raining, there was a walk through the pines. Sometimes they collected mushrooms; sometimes they collected cones for the fire, to give a quick aromatic blaze.

  Then one afternoon all this changed.

  They were having coffee on the sunlit lawn when on the path below there appeared a white girl. She was arguing with a Kashmiri ghora-wallah: she had no companion and was clearly in some trouble. Ishmael sent Rafiq down to see what he could do. In that moment Rafiq’s holiday was ruined; in that moment he was lost. When, a minute or so later, he returned, his hosts could scarcely recognize him as the mild, courteous sitar-player they had picked mushrooms with. He was like a man possessed. In that short time, during which he had also settled with the ghora-wallah, he had conquered and had surrendered: a relationship had been decided and had become explosive. Rafiq did not return alone. He had the girl, Laraine, with him. She was going to stay with them, he said. Did they mind? Could they make the necessary arrangements?

  Stunned, they agreed. Later that afternoon they suggested a walk: they would show their new guest the peak of Nanga Parbat, forty miles away, on which the snow glistened like oil paint. Rafiq and Laraine soon fell behind, then disappeared. Ishmael and his wife were a little aggrieved. Self-consciously and silently, like guests rather than hosts, they continued on their walk, pausing here and there to admire the view. In time they were rejoined by Rafiq and Laraine. No fulfilment on their faces, no fatigue: they were both hysterical. They were quarrelling and their rage was real. Presently they exchanged blows. The faces of both were already marked. She kicked him. He groaned, and slapped her. She cried out, swung her bag at him, kicked him again, and he tumbled down the brambly slope. Torn, bleeding, he came bellowing up, snatched her bag and threw it far down into a valley, where it would remain until the snows came and washed it away. At this she sat down and wept like a child. His rage vanished; he went to her; she yielded to him.

  He took it out on the sitar when they got back to the bungalow. He practised like a man gone mad; the sitar whined and whined. That night they had another fight. Their shouts and screams brought the police, ever on the alert for Pakistani raiders, who had made a swift looting expedition on the slopes of Khilanmarg the previous year.

  Now they were both damaged and scarred; it seemed dangerous for them to be alone together. Laraine, intermittently lucid, left the bungalow more than once. Sometimes Rafiq fetched her back; sometimes she returned while he was still making the sitar cry out. For Ishmael and his wife it was too much. On the second night, during one of Laraine’s absences, they asked Rafiq to leave. He put his sitar on his head and prepared to leave. His docility then, a reminder of the old Rafiq, and the sight of the musician carrying away his instrument, softened them; they asked him to stay. He stayed; Laraine returned; it began all over again.

  In the end it was Laraine, bruised, fatigued, lucid and desperate, who cracked. After three days – which to Ishmael and his wife seemed like three weeks and which to Laraine and Rafiq must have seemed as long as life itself – she said she couldn’t stand it; she had to get away. She would go on the pilgrimage to Amarnath; then she would go to an ashram. She was a woman and an American: her will endured long enough for her to make her escape.

  ‘Laraine! Laraine!’ Rafiq bellowed through the bungalow when she had gone, the name strange in his Indian mouth.

  He would be practising. Suddenly he would stop and scream out: ‘I must have Laraine!’

  He had known passion. He was to be envied; he was also to be pitied. How often, and with what pain, he would relive not perhaps those three days but that first moment: that going down to the strange girl and that first glimpse of her answering, disturbed eyes, which would never speak in quite the same way to any other man. And it might have been while he was bellowing her name one evening in Gulmarg that I was studying her eyes in the cold tent of the Indian Coffee Board at Sheshnag, and reading in them a broken family and a distressed childhood. I was partly right, as it turned out. But I had missed the greater turmoil.

  When Rafiq left Gulmarg it was with the intention of finding her. She had said she was going to an ashram. But India abounded in ashrams. Where was he to look?

  *

  He didn’t have to look far.

  I was at the blue table in my room one afternoon when I heard an American woman’s voice in the garden. I looked out. It was Laraine; and before I pulled my head in I caught sight of the back of a man’s head above sturdy fawn-jacketed shoulders. So she had surrendered; she had ceased to seek. They had come to the hotel for tea. I also heard them inquiring about rooms, and later heard them inspecting.

  ‘Everything thik?’ she asked, mispronouncing the Hindi th, still game for India, still spattering her speech with Hindi. ‘Everything all right?’

  There was a muffled male rumble as they went down the steps.

  They moved in the next day. I never saw them. They remained in their room all day, and occasionally the hotel quivered with sitar music.

  ‘I think,’ Aziz said at dinner, ‘that the sahib and the memsahib getting married today.’

  I was awakened that night by activity in the hotel, and when Aziz came in with coffee in the morning I questioned him.

  ‘The sahib married the memsahib last night,’ he whispered. ‘They mealing at one o’clock.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Mr Butt and Ali Mohammed take them Mufti. She turn Muslim, get Muslim name. They get ma
rried. They mealing at one o’clock last night.’ The lateness of the meal had impressed him almost as much as the marriage.

  And now from the bridal chamber, silence: not even the sitar. No wedding breakfast, no coming out to look at the view. All morning the room remained closed, as though they were both hiding inside, awed at what had happened. After lunch they slipped out. I did not see them go.

  It was not until the late afternoon, when I was having tea on the lawn, that I saw Laraine returning alone across the lake to the hotel. She was wearing a blue cotton frock; she looked cool; and she was carrying a paperback. She might have been a simple tourist.

  ‘Hi!’

  ‘Is it true what I hear? That you’re married?’

  ‘You know me. Impulsive.’

  ‘Congratulations.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  She sat down; she was a little frightened; she wanted to talk.

  ‘But isn’t it crazy? Me with all this interest in Hinduism’ – she showed the paperback she was carrying: it was Mr Rajagopalachari’s retelling of the Mahabharata – ‘and now overnight I’m a Muslim and everything.’

  ‘What is your new name?’

  ‘Zenobia. Don’t you think it’s pretty?’

  It was a pretty name, but it had brought problems. She didn’t know whether she had lost her American nationality as a result of her marriage, and she wasn’t sure whether she would be allowed to work in India. She had some idea that she was now very poor and would have to live in straitened circumstances – not, I felt, fully visualized – in some Indian town. But already she was speaking of ‘my husband’ as though she had used the words all her life; already she was concerned about ‘my husband’s career’ and ‘my husband’s recital’.

  They were poorer than she had perhaps imagined. Even the Liward was too expensive for them. They were to move elsewhere the following day, and trouble about their hotel bill blew up in the morning.