Dust on the Paw

by Robin Jenkins

  Wahab could not deny it, but his admission was wary. ‘But, gentlemen, is it not my private business?’

  ‘No. It is ours too. One of our purposes is to restore the dignity of our nation.’

  ‘An excellent purpose.’

  ‘What we have to consider is whether he ought to be punished, and if so, what that punishment ought to be.’

  ‘I did not think,’ said Wahab, still very cautious, ‘that you brought foreigners under your jurisdiction.’

  ‘In future we intend to do so,’ said Naim, as passionately as his muffled mouth could manage. ‘Why should they come here, live well at our expense, and all the time sneer at us, and insult us?’

  But surely, remembered Wahab, Moffatt is your friend, my dear Prince? I had better be very careful indeed.

  ‘Is it not better to answer their insults face to face?’ he asked.

  ‘How can you answer whisky flung in your face, Wahab? By throwing some back?’

  ‘No. By remaining calm. By refusing to retaliate. By being more civilized than the insulter.’ Not, he had to add to himself with a secret grin, by peeping in the window, hoping to find the whisky thrower engaged in drunken adultery.

  ‘We consider your own behaviour, Wahab, in the affair admirable,’ said the General.

  The one on the left, who might be Mojedaji, still kept quiet. Perhaps he was someone even more powerful than the gold-toothed mullah; a Minister even; the Chief of Police.

  ‘Well then,’ said Wahab, ‘why not let me continue to handle it in my own way?’

  ‘Turning the other cheek is a doctrine suitable for the powerful,’ burst out Naim. ‘The meek cannot afford it. Consider the practice of these Christians themselves. Besides, here the cheek is brown, and the hand white.’

  Wahab felt wisdom sliding in to join the compassion already cozy in his heart. Yet, he thought, I am really a villain. This is all pretence. I am a coward, yet here I am impressing important men with my courage. I hate Moffatt for having humiliated me and for trying to deprive me of Laura; yet I am asking mercy for him. What game am I trying to play? Am I myself? Did that whisky in my eyes bewitch me, change my view of the world?

  ‘We must take into account what his students at the University think of him,’ he said.

  ‘Yes. We have investigated. It is true enough. They think highly of him.’

  ‘And I believe it is true that he has more Afghan friends than almost any other foreigner in Kabul.’

  ‘So it is said.’

  ‘Influential friends, I understand.’

  There was a short silence, broken by a sigh from Naim.

  ‘So all we have against him is this throwing of a little whisky in my face?’

  ‘But, Wahab dear fellow, it might have blinded you for life!’

  Yes, this must be Naim, beyond a doubt. I must be careful, thought Wahab again, trembling. I am here like a man who has discovered gold. Before I rejoice and make plans to spend it, I must make sure my claim to it is recognized.

  ‘We should not forget it was his wife who bathed my eyes,’ he murmured.

  Afterwards, it was true, she had made it clear that she had disowned him and Laura, and her apostasy was even less forgivable than her husband’s antagonism from the beginning. Considering that change in her, Wahab had decided that the reason for it must be some personal trouble between herself and her husband. Perhaps Moffatt made a habit of adultery with big-breasted blondes. Then on the point of gloating over his enemy, Wahab suddenly sympathized with him instead. He, too, married to Mrs Moffatt, beautiful though she was, would feel like finding some other woman with whom to make soft-buttocked love. It was not that Mrs Moffatt was Chinese; it was just that as a woman she was too percipient, too able, too remote. No, her breasts were not of gold with rubies for nipples, but somehow, he felt, she would make love as if they were; it would be a precious holy experience but not enjoyable. She was too like an idol in a temple, come to life but never quite human.

  ‘We have no quarrel with Mrs Moffatt,’ said Naim. ‘She is a good woman and a true friend of Afghanistan.’

  ‘Well, if you take steps to cancel his contract, and expel him from the country – I take it that is the form of punishment you are considering – you will also be punishing her.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Where would they go?’

  ‘To England, surely. That is his country.’

  ‘No.’ Wahab found himself shaking his head with a certainty he had no right to show and yet felt deeply; indeed, he knew he had in that moment discovered Moffatt’s secret. ‘He will never take her back to England.’

  ‘Has he said so?’

  It was simpler, and truer, to lie: ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why? Because she is Chinese?’

  ‘Partly that.’

  ‘He is supposed to love her very much,’ said Naim.

  ‘He does, but their love is complicated.’

  ‘She is a strange woman,’ murmured Naim, and sighed, as if he too had to sympathize with Moffatt.

  ‘Therefore, gentlemen,’ said Wahab, ‘please, I beg you, leave me to settle this business between myself and Mr Moffatt. Of course,’ he added, with every word sweet as a grape in his mouth, ‘if I find he is irreconcilable and repulses my offer of friendship—’

  ‘In that case,’ said the General, ‘there would be no further hesitation: he would have to go.’

  Wahab bowed his head. He could hardly control his trembling now. Every man on his way up had to begin somewhere. Was this his beginning? And how lucky to have Moffatt thus handed over as a prisoner. He touched his pocket in which lay Laura’s letter; in it she described indignantly how Moffatt had maligned not only Afghanistan but Wahab himself. ‘He sounds a nasty kind of person, Dul,’ she had written.

  Then the man on Naim’s left spoke at last. He was not Mojedaji; but his voice, though soft, was even more accustomed than the mullah’s to be listened to with obedience and fear.

  ‘I understand, Wahab, there is an Englishwoman coming to Kabul to marry you.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘When is she coming?’

  ‘In three weeks. I have just received a letter telling me so.’

  ‘Are you aware that Moffatt has done his best to have this lady refused a visa?’

  Wahab had not known that, but he was not surprised. ‘He has not been successful then,’ he said, ‘because she tells me she has received her visa.’

  ‘It is the lady’s intention to come here and see the conditions for herself, before deciding to go on with the marriage?’

  It occurred to Wahab that if Laura’s decision was no, he would lose not only a wife but also a career.

  ‘Yes, that is so,’ he said. ‘It was not her wish; I insisted on it.’

  That was flatly a lie. He had been all for marriage in England; she had refused. A shiver crawled down his spine as he remembered how intelligent, affectionate, and firm that refusal had been. He had a vision of her limping bravely but determinedly during her investigations. He saw her gray candid eyes as they looked on shaddries, beggars, joweys, men pissing behind walls. Again he saw the resemblance between her and Mrs Moffatt. Her breasts were not of gold; his hand, privileged once only, had ascertained that; but there was nevertheless the same formidable priestesslike quality about her.

  ‘Other foreign women come here,’ said Naim, ‘already married to Afghans. They come for shameful reasons. They think their husbands are rich and able to keep them in luxury, with many servants.’

  ‘Laura knows I am poor.’

  ‘She is an educated woman?’ asked Soft-voice.

  ‘A University graduate.’

  ‘And she is coming here,’ said Naim, ‘because she loves you, an Afghan?’

  ‘That, sir, is her only reason.’

  Yes, she had loved him when he was in England; and judging from the letter in his pocket she had still loved him only two weeks ago. But when she came and saw how backward the country really was, and
how vulgarly poor he and his family were, would she continue to love him? He had always doubted it, and now that doubt, bold and agile in his mind, would not let timid faith pass. In a spasm of despair he blamed Aziz, coughing his diseased lungs all over the bus tickets. He blamed the contractor who had built the new block of offices and had left out lavatories. He blamed Mohebzada’s sickly baby. He blamed Genghis Khan for having, a thousand years ago, given civilization a setback in this country. He blamed God for having let the deserts and hills round Kabul, indeed throughout most of the land, crumble away into infertility. Flying over them and seeing how parched and barren they were, in contrast with her green England, Laura would have her mind already made up before she stepped off the plane, or rather before she was helped down the steps.

  When they discovered she was lame, would they turn against her? Would they think, as he had sometimes been unable not to think himself, that she was willing to marry him, a dark-skinned, poverty-stricken Afghan, because she knew her lameness would prevent her from marrying an Englishman?

  ‘Loving you, Wahab,’ said Naim, ‘she will understand Afghanistan.’

  Ah, but would she? I am not an expert in the consequences of love, thought Wahab. I do not know if it is the case that love brings understanding. Certainly it does not do so always. My parents do not understand each other after thirty years of loving. Perhaps their love had too many flaws in it. Will mine and Laura’s be perfect? Look at Moffatt and his wife. Could a couple be more intelligent? He writes poetry and she is a painter. Yet apparently they too have failed to understand.

  Soft-voice was softer than ever: ‘There is another thing, Wahab. We feel that the time is ripe for you to consider your personal advancement.’

  Naim and the other man nodded. ‘You are the kind of young man we need today,’ said the latter.

  It was impossible not to feel flattered; in fact, self-gratification tingled in Wahab’s fingers and ran up from his toes as far as his privates, like an electric shock. He had never felt so delighted with himself in his life before, not even when Laura had first declared she loved him. Even now, in the midst of this greater delight, he remembered the school-mistressy qualifications in her eyes, and the cool way her hands had stopped his. Here on the contrary was pure bliss; and there was to be more of it.

  ‘There is much dissatisfaction with the Principal of your school,’ said Soft-voice. ‘There has been talk of replacing him. The students do not respect him. They laugh at his authority. That is not good for a school. Do you agree?’

  Even as he was remembering that embrace and the joy and tears shared with Abdul Mussein, Wahab was nodding and replying: ‘He is a good man, I think, but he lacks ideals.’

  ‘Surely it is useless supplying a school with modern equipment, if its Principal has medieval ideas?’ asked Naim.

  These men, realized Wahab, were not merely speculating. They had the power to remove poor Mussein and put anyone they chose in his place – himself, for instance. As Principal, he could make the school famous for its teaching of science; he was sure of that. So famous, indeed, that he would probably leap from that eminence to one still higher, and then upwards again. With Laura by his side, counselling him, he would be able to reach greatness with far less damage to his principles and ideals than they would sustain if he were to remain a humble assistant teacher all his days. It was a pity about Mussein, of course; but really, had he not properly described himself as a dead fly on a cake? And besides, once degraded to his right level, that of ordinary class teacher in the primary department, he would at last be in a position to discipline the greedy dependants at present ruining him, especially the gluttonous old hypocrite who mouthed, through rice: ‘We are all God’s children.’ That was a useless truism; what was far more worth saying was that God, like all fathers, liked to be proud of His children and rewarded only those who brought Him honour and spared Him shame.

  ‘It is probable,’ murmured Naim, ‘that you will become one of us.’

  ‘I should be honoured, sir. Your ideals and purposes are mine. I wish to advance my country.’

  ‘We recognize your sincerity, Wahab. You will hear from us again.’

  What was that noise he heard in the far distance? Aziz coughing? The soul of his country lamenting? No, no, just a belated donkey objecting to being encouraged by its master’s stick. In any case, to help Aziz and all others like him he must first himself, by whatever means, rise to power.

  He took his leave with a dignity and restraint that impressed him. Inwardly he was all for yelling his gratitude to them, and falling on his knees to kiss their hands; but outwardly, as if he were the prince, he stood upright, manfully shook the hands thrust out at him from the folds of the shaddries, and left the room like a hero. In the outer room, though the thicknesses of the carpets under his crepe-soled shoes prevented his tread from ringing out as boldly as he would have liked, he strode through masterfully, with brisk greetings in return for theirs murmured respectfully. Outside the two burly guards were holding his bicycle by the handle bars in a way that turned it in the moonlight into a ministerial limousine, an English Daimler or Russian Zis. He could not do other therefore than mount it as if he were entering such a car, and as he pedalled away he caught sight of the moon nodding at him over the roof of a building. Such celestial familiarity did not surprise, and with a smile he nodded back.

  Sixteen

  LAN and Harold Moffatt were in the sitting room after dinner, she sketching, and he brooding with a glass of whisky in his hand, when the telephone rang.

  ‘I’ll get it,’ he said and, heaving himself up, waddled out.

  She thought that in the past two or three weeks he had got fatter; his stomach was like a man’s twice his age, and his rump was like a woman’s. Did it represent in some way a diminution of her love, that she should now see him as physically grosser than before? Could a feeling of guilt, such as had been festering in him ever since the night of the Club dance, coarsen the body as well as the mind? Her own fingers, steadfastly drawing, were as delicate and skilful as ever, and this old man’s age, seen that afternoon as she walked through the bazaar, was not only as good as anything she had ever done, but also, with its gap-toothed, bearded grin, represented a compassion so tender that she was still new to it, as a mother was to a newborn child. That Harold’s concern for Mrs Mohebzada, and for Laura Johnstone too, sprang as much from humanity as from principle, she now not only saw but felt; and also that his fears for their own children, as yet unconceived but now permitted, were based on love. As he had put it himself fondly, she had at last ventured out of her temple; but he had not seemed confident that she would stay out long.

  In the hall he was chatting to Maud Mossaour. Suddenly his voice became eager. ‘Did you? Yes, of course I’d like to see it very much. No, she hasn’t. At least not as far as I know, and I don’t think she’d keep it from us. Yes, but she’s still sorry for him, I think. Why, God knows; he can look after himself. I heard a rumour that he’s to be promoted to principal of his school. There’s to be a change at the Ministry itself. Rumour has it that Naim’s taking it over. I know he’s always fancied himself as an educationist and a leader of youth. We’ll be seeing our friend Wahab shoot up. He’s by way of being one of Naim’s brown-eyed boys. Yes, very good, Maud. I’ll let you know my verdict.’

  He returned to the sitting room, flat-footed in his native sandals, and took a sip of his whisky.

  ‘You would gather that was Maud,’ he said. ‘She’s had a reply from Miss Johnstone, and is sending it over. According to her, we’ve got nothing to be afraid of. From the tone of her letter, there are no flies on our Laura. When she sees the number of flies here, she’ll be shocked to the bottom of her antiseptic little soul, and she’ll rush away from the carcass that attracts them. I mean, this bloody, stinking, corrupt country.’

  She knew that the violence of his words was caused by his love of Afghanistan.

  He came over and looked down at her drawing. He said nothin
g, and she kept on, knowing that with every touch of the pencil she was pleading not for Afghanistan, but for herself.

  ‘It’s good, Lan,’ he murmured. ‘It’s uncannily good.’

  ‘Do you think so? These faces are so interesting, they draw themselves.’

  ‘Will Wahab smile like that when he’s old? I told Maud what I’d heard about him. She wasn’t surprised. Like me, she’s always thought of him as a slippery one. At the moment his wriggles seem to be upward, but the time’s coming when they’ll be downward, fast. It’s happening here all the time, but I hate to think of that poor bastard the present Principal being kicked backward to make room for our fancied jackanapes. It’s Naim’s doing, of course. He’s got it into his head that Wahab’s marriage to Laura Johnstone is a kind of experiment. If it succeeds, Afghanistan will prosper; if it fails, Afghanistan will continue to be backward.’

  Lan’s hand stopped for a moment. She remembered the bright-eyed smiling face of Laura Johnstone, in Wahab’s snapshot; and she tried to imagine the crippled left foot, as Wahab so tenderly had described it. She had not yet told Harold, or anyone else, about Laura’s lameness. She could not have said why; after all, the minute Laura alighted on Afghan soil it would be seen.

  He had sat down again beside his whisky.

  ‘According to Maud, she sounds as if she were already a Minister’s wife. We’ll have to tell her about the ex-Minister of Finance and his wife. Where is Farid now? According to the latest rumours round the Embassies, when he was last seen all his teeth had been knocked out and his face was so misshapen even his wife would have hesitated about kissing it. They say he did it for her. All that went wrong with their plan was that they got the money out safely enough, half a million of it, but didn’t manage to get themselves out with it. So there’s a situation would perplex even our hard-headed Laura: Her Wahab with his face in pulp, she guarded at home by men who won’t be eunuchs, and half a million pounds waiting in a Swiss bank.’

  He took another sip.