Dust on the Paw

by Robin Jenkins

  ‘So my own inclination is to warn her not to come here at all,’ he said. ‘I think most Western people here, especially women, would support me.’

  ‘No doubt about it,’ said Bolton.

  ‘But I thought I’d like the opinion of some Afghan who isn’t personally involved and is acquainted with both ways of life.’

  ‘Am I not personally involved,’ murmured the Prince, ‘if the reputation of my country is in question?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Moffatt, after a pause. ‘I have no right to ask you.’

  ‘On the contrary, Harold. I am deeply interested. This is a matter I have been considering for some time. I mean this comparison between the two ways of life, ours in Afghanistan still so primitive, and yours in the West so advanced and scientific. And I have decided that I much prefer ours. For one reason. Here it is still possible for us to have simplicity in our lives; in the West that is now quite impossible. Yes, we have aeroplanes and also simplicity. I admit that we may in time be so foolish as to throw it away, as you threw it away, but at the moment we still have it, and as a result progress is not for us the dead end that the West now sees it to be. We may be deluding ourselves, but we are still able to dream of achieving industrial advancement and a high standard of living, without necessarily destroying this sense that life is still open, that the simple relationships between people are still green.’

  ‘You’ve certainly given it a lot of thought, Prince,’ said Bolton, but as he spoke he was thinking of the ex-Minister of Finance who, suspected of embezzling government funds, had vanished without a trial. Rumour had it he had been beheaded in a dungeon under the king’s own palace. Well, that sure was simplicity.

  ‘I read the Western newspapers and journals,’ said Naim, ‘and I am constantly appalled by how complicated and yet infantile your society has become.’

  ‘Aren’t the terms contradictory, Prince?’ asked Bolton.

  ‘I don’t think so. You would agree that there is a breast fetish in the West?’

  Startled, Bolton nodded and then laughed. ‘Guess you could call it that. Put a bare bosom on your dust jacket, and you don’t have to worry about your sales.’

  ‘Such a fetish is surely infantile. Yet no one could deny that your civilization is also very complex.’

  ‘I guess I see what you’re aiming at. You think you’ve got a chance here in Afghanistan of acquiring the benefits of materialism without being destroyed in your souls by its evils?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘Is it because you think the Moslem religion’s a surer safeguard than the Christian has turned out to be?’

  ‘Partly.’

  ‘And the Eastern mind is basically wiser than the Western?’

  The Prince smiled. ‘I believe so, yes. And of course, Mr Bolton, we have the West’s example to profit from. We, so far along the road, can look ahead and take care that what has happened to you does not happen to us.’

  ‘By “you” you mean all undeveloped countries?’

  ‘Certainly. Well, Harold, have I given you your answer? Let me reduce it to personal terms. Do not warn Miss Johnstone not to come. Do not scare her off with tales of stenches in the bazaars and lecherous Moslems who will pinch her behind.’

  ‘I don’t think it was the stenches and the nips in the behind that have sent Mrs Mohebzada nearly crazy.’

  ‘Oh, if your Miss Johnstone is like Mrs Mohebzada, a foolish young girl lured by materialistic ambitions, by all means save us from her. But if she is as intelligent and brave as she appears to be, even from your rather prejudiced account, then please, for my country’s sake, do not discourage her. Let her come; let her help us to advance and yet preserve our simplicity.’

  Bolton was not quite convinced. All right, he thought, all right, Prince; just give us a minute or two to sort this out and apply a few tests. You aren’t what I’d call a typical Afghan; you don’t really represent. This Abdul Wahab, though, might; he isn’t a peasant and he isn’t an aristocrat. What green relationship, for example, exists between him and Your Highness, or even between him and those three guys we saw limping along the road, with donkey loads of thorn bushes on their backs? Or between the cops and their suspects in the jails where, so I’ve heard, the blood’s kept on the walls to encourage confessions?

  ‘Of course,’ said the Prince, smiling, ‘to appreciate the force of what I have said you must love us. Few of our Western guests do; they think we are dishonest, stupid, cruel, untrustworthy; in their history books we are always referred to as “the treacherous Afghans”. But this Miss Johnstone, she loves us; or at any rate she loves one of us, which is a beginning. She will therefore see us differently. She may even see the truth of what I have been saying at such thirsty length.’

  Laughing, the Prince clapped his hands and ordered the servant hovering by to bring more orange squash and beer.

  ‘I am afraid, Harold,’ he said, ‘I have disappointed you. But after all is it not consistent to believe that a people which can bear poverty with dignity, as you’ve so generously claimed for us, can also bear prosperity in the same way?’

  ‘But,’ said Moffatt, ‘this Wahab is already corrupted. If he could, he would have stayed in England.’

  ‘I can see that a lot depends on our friend Wahab. I must find out what I can about him. You say he’s a teacher of science at Isban College? Excellent. What you call corruption may only be his progressive outlook.’

  Bolton had now arrived at his conclusions. He tapped his notebook with grimy nail. ‘I guess I may have been in too big a hurry over these women. Very likely they did come here with the wrong ideas; they thought they were going to live – if you’ll pardon the expression, Prince – like princesses. So they brought their materialism with them, and their closed minds. No wonder the shock’s been too much for them. Now this woman who’s coming, this Miss Johnstone, she may be different, her mind may be wide open. If it is, then her response could be darned interesting to watch. As a writer I’ll be very interested in her reactions.’

  ‘So shall I be, as an Afghan,’ murmured Naim.

  They waited for Moffatt to speak; but he had been thinking more about himself and Lan than about Wahab and Miss Johnstone. Indeed, he had made a discovery: his own marriage was still an experiment, at least for him. If he were ever to decide it had failed and wished to break with her, Lan would make no fuss.

  ‘I’m afraid,’ he said, ‘you’re both being too optimistic.’

  ‘I am surprised, Harold,’ said the Prince, ‘that the husband of Lan Moffatt should ever be pessimistic about the future.’

  Remembering the many lunches, dinners, and even breakfasts he had enjoyed at her gracious table, Bolton said heartily: ‘I couldn’t agree more.’ All the same, he was thinking, he could never have married her himself; not just because she was Chinese, and to him her race was a greater menace to humanity than Russia even, but also because when he eventually settled down in Vermont, say, or if he were lucky, California, her very presence, however delightful, would make his fireside too exotic and somehow too disturbing.

  ‘Let’s change the subject,’ suggested Moffatt, smiling.

  They noticed how his hand trembled as it picked up the glass of beer.

  ‘By all means,’ agreed the Prince. He began to chat about the forthcoming visit to Kabul of Mr Voroshilov, President of the U.S.S.R.

  Six

  DURING the journey back into Kabul, Bolton delivered what amounted to a monologue. Moffatt had often heard it all before and disagreed with it for reasons inexplicable to the American, who saw everything that the Russians did in Afghanistan as well-planned evil, whereas everything his own people did was mismanaged philanthropy. Besides, Moffatt felt that when he got home that evening the crisis between him and Lan, threatening for months, might break out, not accidentally but provoked by him. Therefore, although so calmly contained, he could not bear the painstaking but commonplace sanity of his companion’s views.

  So Bolton droned on unheeded
about the diabolical astuteness of the Russians in sending to Afghanistan, not professors of morphology and university librarians, as the Americans did, but cloth-capped engineers who worked with their hands alongside Afghans and lived in native villages where the conditions were too primitive for other Europeans. There was, too, the scandal of the bread. Dominating Kabul was the silo, a twelve-story granary built by the Russians, with a bakery attached. From this bakery came supplies of good cheap bread, preferred by many Afghans to the traditional unleavened nan, and called by everyone Russian bread. But as often as not the flour used was supplied by America, either as a gift or on generous terms; so with every bite of bread an Afghan took the Russians took a bite out of his mind. The trouble was, Bolton concluded, Americans back home were so pacifically minded that they were not even willing to wage war by unloading their surpluses on the underfed, uncommitted nations like Afghanistan; it could be, too, he conceded, that they were short on compassionate foresight. And now Voroshilov himself, the Russian President, was going to pay a State visit, which of course would be very flattering to such a small, uninfluential country as Afghanistan; a few waves of his soft hat would be worth a million roubles.

  Remembering Prince Naim’s story about Said Hasruddin’s shaddried men, it occurred to Bolton that here was someone’s chance to get his name in capital letters into the history books. Why shouldn’t that someone be himself? Disguised in a shaddry – how simple to stand near enough to the dignitary to shoot him dead. There were, though, three drawbacks: first, no woman was ever allowed upon the streets during public celebrations; second, Voroshilov was nowadays a mere figurehead; and third, it was very improbable that there would be any history books afterwards. Still, that picture of himself in a shaddry – black would be the most fitting colour – with his small automatic clutched ready, fascinated him. He might not live long after it but what an MGM entry he would make into paradise.

  The car stopped outside the hotel. He was disappointed, for he had hoped Moffatt was going to invite him to dinner; but he was fair and supposed he had talked himself out of a good meal.

  ‘Thanks for the ride, Harold,’ he said. ‘Give Lan my regards.’

  Moffatt nodded and drove away.

  Bolton rushed upstairs, locked his bedroom door, dragged out from under the bed the suitcase in which he kept the shaddry bought as historical evidence, struggled into this, and then, half blind, stumbled to the chest of drawers for his gun, took it out, and stood crouching in the centre of the room, in potentiality the most sinister figure since the history of the world began.

  Lan was in the gul-khana, or flower room, working on one of the designs for the Kabul marble factory. As Moffatt kissed her he thought that the three Afghan huntsmen in her painting resembled Wahab. He had not thought that yesterday.

  ‘Mr Najibullah rang me up,’ she said, smiling. ‘He’s very impatient. According to him the Afghanistan’s going to be the best pavilion at the exhibition, though he did admit, sadly, that the Russians will have a model of a sputnik in theirs, and an operating table. By the way, Harold, Mrs Mossaour has invited us to dinner this evening. I said we would go. Is that all right? I thought you and she would have something to discuss.’

  That might have been the moment for him to speak, but he let it pass; perhaps because he felt, from the way she smiled up from her painting, that she was prepared and would not submit, despite her love for him. Indeed, perhaps because of that love she could not. Again he realized that in her were rarer and more valuable qualities than those he already loved her for. She was so superior to the members of the Embassy group from which she had been excluded that the exclusion was more ridiculous than offensive. But the exclusion that he himself was inflicting on her all the time could not be laughed at.

  ‘Were you at the Club?’ she asked.

  ‘No. I picked up Josh Bolton, and we went to Istalif.’

  ‘Did you see Prince Naim?’

  ‘Yes, he was there.’

  Gazing down at her glossy black hair and at her small skilful fingers creating the tigers that menaced those Wahab-like huntsmen, he found himself tormented by his love as by an enemy who knew him profoundly. His weakness and unworthiness were cruelly revealed. He saw himself as a self-exiled Englishman of thirty-five, proud of principles as fat and out of condition as himself, a writer of verses whose brave irony after a month or two decomposed into clever petulance, an internationalist with a wife five years older whose Chinese loveliness he dreaded to find repeated in his children.

  ‘Was he teasing Josh? I think he makes up silly stories for him.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Josh’s book should be very interesting. Of course people will say: this or that isn’t true; this wasn’t done in Kabul when I was there; and so on. No one’s picture can be complete. But Josh’s will be charitable.’

  ‘Except to the Russians.’

  She smiled. ‘It is not even Christian to be charitable to them.’ For a few moments she was silent as she painted the tiger’s claws.

  The gate bell tinkled.

  ‘This will be the young man back again, Harold. I forgot to tell you. He came about an hour ago. It was about his diploma. I’m sorry he’s going to be disappointed. He’s got such a merry face.’

  Rahman’s voice too was merry. Shown into the lounge by Sofi, he could not keep from laughing as he apologized for being a trouble. In his brown eyes inquiry was pessimistic, though he was smiling.

  ‘No trouble,’ said Moffatt.

  ‘Oh yes, sir. Last time I was a trouble to your wife. Perhaps I ruined her beautiful painting.’

  ‘I don’t think you did that.’

  ‘You will not be angry, Mr Moffatt, if I tell you that we all think your wife is beautiful also, like her painting? Two things we say about Mr Moffatt; one is that he is our friend because he understands our position and has sympathy; and the other is that his wife is very beautiful. She is more than beautiful, she is good. When I talk to her I feel happy.’

  Moffatt took the diploma out of his brief case and handed it over.

  Beaming, Rahman examined it as if for some mystical sign which would convince the Minister of Education of its true value.

  ‘I’m afraid the Embassy can do nothing,’ said Moffatt. ‘They think it is purely an Afghan matter.’

  ‘But this diploma, it is English!’

  ‘Yes. I don’t promise anything, but I’ll see the Minister. If it’s just a move to save them from paying you the extra salary you’re entitled to, then, as you know, nothing I can say will change their minds. In that case you’ll just have to keep on applying.’

  Rahman shook his head and laughed. ‘If I do that I become a nuisance to His Excellency.’

  ‘In my country, that’s the way to get things done.’

  ‘Here, it is not so.’ He glanced round and dropped his voice. ‘It says in the official book Afghanistan is a democracy. Of course it is not. If you speak to His Excellency, must you mention my name?’

  ‘I’ll keep it general, if you wish.’

  Rahman’s smile was at its jolliest. ‘And you will keep calm also, sir? We know that any injustice makes you angry, and we admire you for it; but here in Afghanistan it is always best to be polite, whether you are speaking to a Minister or a peasant. It is perhaps our politeness which has helped to keep us backward, but it is our way of life.’

  Moffatt grinned. Translated, the appeal meant: for God’s sake say nothing to exasperate the Minister, who can dismiss as well as promote. ‘I’ll be very discreet.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. Now I shall go and not trouble you longer.’

  ‘No, sit down. There’s something I want to ask you.’

  ‘I shall be delighted to help if I can.’

  ‘Do you know an Abdul Wahab, teacher of science at Isban College, recently returned from England?’

  Rahman’s smile was suddenly preyed on by fear. ‘I know him,’ he whispered hoarsely, and again glanced about.

  ‘What’s the
matter?’

  ‘There is nothing the matter, sir.’

  ‘Is there any mystery about this Wahab?’

  Rahman shrugged his shoulders. ‘They say he is in trouble.’

  ‘You mean, with the Government?’

  Rahman nodded.

  ‘Why? What kind of trouble?’

  ‘You are glad, sir? You do not like him?’

  ‘Why should I be glad? I don’t know him. Why is he in trouble?’

  ‘They say he tried to escape. He wished to stay in England. He married a woman there.’

  ‘No, he didn’t.’

  ‘That is what they say, sir.’

  ‘Who are “they”?’

  Rahman smiled and shook his head. ‘Just people in Kabul, sir.’

  ‘Why did he return to Afghanistan?’

  ‘He has parents here, and brothers and sisters. Perhaps it would not have been pleasant for them if he had refused to return. They say he is a strange man. He has abandoned his religion. He does not pray. It is even said that he is a Communist and speaks about revolution.’

  Disconcerted, Moffatt remembered the small cautious prim man with the cap held in his hands like a nest or a Koran. ‘I don’t believe he is a Communist.’

  ‘Perhaps he is not. I do not know. Others have said it.’

  ‘I didn’t know there were any Communists here.’

  Rahman smiled. ‘They do not wave red flags, sir. They would be dragged off and killed.’