Dust on the Paw

by Robin Jenkins

  Sadruddin slunk quickly in and stood behind an armchair, to get away from this ogre about to enter. But in came wearily a small, thin, sad-faced man in grubby, pink shirt and filthy, light-green trousers. Wahab recognized him as Bolton the author who had been in Afghanistan for nearly two years writing a book about the country; he was a friend of Moffatt’s. There were rumours his book was full of lies and misrepresentations, especially about the position of women.

  ‘Name’s Bolton, Josh Bolton,’ said the visitor.

  ‘Please sit down, Mr Bolton.’

  ‘Don’t mind if I do. I’ve been on my feet for days. The roads are packed with folk walking in for Jeshan. I was talking to a family from Sarobi; that’s more than a hundred miles away. But I’ve been walking farther than that, Mr Wahab, in circles.’

  As he sank with a sigh into an armchair he gave a glance first at the flowers in the corner and then at the papers and books on the table.

  ‘You writing a book?’ he asked, with a grin more ghastly even than the one with which Sadruddin now crept out of the room. ‘If you are, I suggest you turn the key in that padlock.’

  ‘I am translating a physics book into Persian. There is no need for secrecy.’

  Bolton tried to show interest, but it disintegrated on his face in the midst of a sudden yawn. ‘I guess you’re wondering why I’m here?’ He picked up the brief case he had brought in with him; he used only his little finger crooked round the handle. ‘I couldn’t have done that four days ago.’

  ‘Have you been ill, Mr Bolton?’

  ‘Four days ago this bag was fat as a cow due to calve.’ He smiled with wan pride at the sad felicity. ‘It calved all right.’

  Wahab wondered if his visitor was ill or wrong in the head. Or was his wife pregnant? No, he did not have a wife. Worse then, his mistress? Or had she died in childbirth? American women of course wouldn’t send even their dogs into Kabul maternity hospital. But that was not snobbish so much as prudent. If Laura ever was going to have a child, she too would stay at home or else fly to Delhi; that was to say, if they could afford the doctor’s fees or the fare.

  Meantime his visitor had been resting, with eyes closed.

  ‘I am afraid, Mr Bolton,’ said Wahab, ‘I do not understand. In the first place, I am not a veterinarian.’

  Without opening his eyes Bolton touched his brow in flaccid salute at what he took to be a witticism. ‘Maybe it’ll take a veterinarian at that,’ he said. ‘Those, sir, are very fragrant flowers. An offering from your pupils?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Bolton with a struggle got his eyes open. ‘Mr Wahab, sir, for eighteen months I’ve been in your hospitable country writing a book about it.’

  Wahab frowned. ‘Did you come here solely for that reason?’

  ‘Why else? It’s my profession. Last country I did was Thailand. Nepal was to be next on the list.’

  ‘Is it possible to achieve the necessary sympathy by that method, Mr Bolton?’

  ‘I got bags of sympathy. Too much. I like people. I’m prejudiced in their favour before I ever see them. To be frank, with one exception: if a man’s a Commie, I know he’s a bastard, and I’m prepared to treat him as such. But sympathy’s easy for me. I’ve been run out of a town in my own United States for showing too much sympathy; to the blacks.’

  ‘So in your book your portrayal of us is sympathetic?’

  ‘You’re using the wrong tense. It was sympathetic. It’s a thing of the past. Book, notes, sympathy, the whole damned lot are gone.’

  Again Wahab suspected weakmindedness. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘That’s right. I haven’t explained it to you yet. I keep forgetting, because I guess you’re practically the only English-speaking Afghan I haven’t explained it to. And I’ve been given the order to go; quick and sudden. Tonight at midnight my permit expires. And tomorrow’s the big day here. Maybe history will be made. Maybe some guy will take a shot at Voroshilov. Maybe Habbibullah and his Russian pals are going to jump. But I’ll not be here to see it. If you take a peek out of that window you’ll see a couple of buddies of mine.’

  Wahab smiled uneasily, but did not turn and look.

  ‘Sure, you know. It’s not news to you. They’ve been on my tail for four days now. If you’re wondering why my Embassy has done nothing to help me, then I’ll let you into a secret: that bunch doesn’t know their own asses from a monkey’s elbow. When you go to talk to them you’ve got to dig their heads out of the sand first; and then you find their ears are still full of it. Trouble is, they’ve made up what they call their minds that your country, Mr Wahab, is already halfway down the bear’s throat. All right, maybe so it is, but it’s not too late to take a good firm grip of its tail and haul it up again. And that, sir, is precisely what my book was, a good tight grip of your tail.’

  ‘Do you see us as a wolf?’

  Bolton ignored that rather wistfully put question. He again yawned. ‘So I’ve come to you, Mr Wahab. Hal Moffett mentioned you as one of the new men here, one of Habbibullah’s bright boys. Apart from that, who should I bump into in the street this very morning but Lan Moffatt and the little lady who, I understand, has come out to be Mrs Wahab.’

  ‘You met Laura?’

  ‘In person. Did you know you talk alike? Lancashire, I believe. I like it; it sounds honest.’

  Wahab should have been pleased, but wasn’t. There had been others in Manchester with that same accent but with blacker skins. Remembering them, and their thick lips and moist hopeful eyes, Wahab felt a spasm of hatred for the colour of his own skin; everything else could change, this never; his children too would inevitably be victims.

  ‘If you could help me get back my book, Mr Wahab, I would be in your debt for life.’

  ‘Has someone borrowed it,’ asked Wahab coldly, ‘and forgotten to return it?’

  Bolton laughed. ‘Oh, sure. That’s a laugh. I’m not a rich man, sir, as one glance should tell you. My books haven’t been best sellers yet. I’ll let you into another secret. I’ve been so poor my Embassy sent for me once and suggested I get the hell out of it; you see, I was letting the States down by not wearing a clean shirt every day, and not driving about town in a big new Chevy. I told them that my dirty shirt and my ass wriggling on an Afghan bus seat were doing more for the States here than the whole goddamned Embassy and U.S.I.S. rolled into one. They weren’t pleased.’

  Wahab decided this disagreement among Americans was distasteful, and in any case none of his business. ‘What happened to your book, Mr Bolton?’

  ‘As you said, it was borrowed. By the chief of police. Yeah, seems the fat bastard came in person, but not in uniform, with half a dozen official thugs. They burst into my room at the hotel and took every bloody scrap of paper with writing on it. Even letters my mom wrote me. Even my budget calculations.’

  ‘This is a serious accusation. Do you have proof?’

  ‘About a hundred people saw them break in, but I guess that is not proof. Not here, it isn’t.’

  Wahab clasped his hands to keep them from trembling. That rage which had astonished him before was working up in him again. He had thought it safely extinct. But really, how could any man proud of his country and anxious for its good name hear of such barbarities and not feel such anger? Nevertheless, he strove to control, even to disguise it.

  ‘I do not wish to condone what has been done,’ he said, ‘but is it not the case that you have been very indiscreet in your investigations?’

  ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘Putting aside the question as to whether the shaddry is an anachronism or not, would you not agree that a people which preserve it might feel insulted at inquiries as to their sexual habits? I understand one of the things which you have tried hard to find out is the amount of prostitution that goes on here.’

  ‘Why not, sir? People like to know these things. It’s legitimate human curiosity. In Bangkok they used to let me visit the brothels to see for myself.’

  ‘I am so
rry, Mr Bolton, I cannot help you. It so happens that I have an appointment with Dr Habbibullah this afternoon, but I think we shall have more important matters to discuss than your book.’

  Bolton said nothing, but for almost a minute sat in the chair, his eyes closed; his mouth seemed full of vomit. Then slowly he rose, and, picking up his brief case shuffled to the door. ‘I didn’t come here expecting anything,’ he said. ‘I just came because you were a human being I could talk about my troubles to.’

  Wahab had to clasp his hands still more tightly, though he could already hear the bones cracking. ‘I shall say this, Mr Bolton,’ he whispered, ‘I agree you have a grievance.’

  ‘Will you tell your boss Habbibullah that? Why should you? You don’t want the fat slug visiting you. I guess you’re going to have plenty of troubles without that. With a white woman as your wife you’re going to find things pretty tough here in Kabul. I can read the signs. Once the veil’s torn off, there’ll be a crusade to prove your native women are the best in the world after all. Your prize will turn out to be a dud.’

  Those remarks, unnecessarily malicious, reminded Wahab of a consideration that had already worried him. As an Englishwoman teaching in an Afghan girls’ school Laura would be paid at Western rates, about five thousand afghanis per month; as his wife, and so an Afghan herself, she would be paid at local rates, and would be lucky to get seven hundred. Moreover, with the emancipation of the Afghan women, many would want to become schoolteachers; these, speaking the language, would get preference over her, in spite of her much superior qualifications. The American’s way of expressing it had of course been bitter and spiteful, but all the same it was very likely that Laura’s value from the financial and prestige points of view would fall. No honourable man, and certainly no repentant violator such as he, could ever let such considerations influence him, but it would not be human not to regret it a little, especially if he were to resign from the Principalship or was dismissed from it.

  Bolton was gone. Looking out of the window, Wahab saw him, a minute or so later, cross the playground and climb on to the ghoddy that was waiting for him outside the gate. The two policemen were already mounted on theirs, about twenty yards along the road; indeed, the two horses were neighing to each other. Bolton’s driver cracked his whip, and off the horse galloped, with its hoofs striking sparks from the road. Holding on grimly, and bumping up and down, Bolton was carried off on an escorted journey that would in a few hours take him out of Afghanistan.

  You are lucky, Mr Bolton, thought Wahab, remembering Manchester, London, Paris, Rome; and then, aware of his treachery, he shook his head, renouncing tears, and set to work on his translation. But it was at least three minutes before he could see clearly enough to be able to write.

  In the taxi, on his way to the interview with Dr Habbibullah, Wahab with face among the flowers decided to think of himself neither as scientist nor poet, but simply as a man. As such he might grovel to Habbibullah, but then again he might defy the dictatorial Minister and his many uniformed thugs. The one reaction would be as human as the other; and indeed most human of all was this uncertainty as to which his would be.

  Into his mind and out again, too, wayward as a butterfly, came fluttering the elusive, frail-winged thought that his final decision as to Laura herself was still to be made.

  All the way to the heart of the city these human contracts or contradictions rather kept leaping to his mind. For instance, the taxi driver had pasted up on the cracked windscreen the coloured picture of an Indian actress, with breasts like melons about to roll out of a purple bag; yet the driver himself was thin and quite ugly, with a half-healed boil on the back of his neck. Then there were two donkeys making their water copiously under one of the triumphal arches. Along the streets decorated to celebrate freedom, brutal-faced policemen scowled and strutted. A large pink Buick car, no doubt belonging to one of Mr Bolton’s rich compatriots, crept behind a camel cart in which were crouched a nomad family with all their belongings; those, in terms of money, were worth less than the horn which kept sounding so peevishly.

  Yet the strange thing was that as the taxi, after the driver had anxiously made sure it was there Wahab really wanted to go, crept through the large, thickly guarded gates of the Ministry of Justice, Wahab did not feel cowed or depressed; on the contrary, he was elated by a sense of illimitable possibilities. All his sentimental hopes were surely realizable in a world of such shocking variety; his tears in fact were pearls. With fingers that fairly vibrated with anticipation he plucked off a flower and thrust it into his buttonhole. Since it was intended, partly, to represent Laura during the coming interview, he chose, instead of the showy yellow ones so reminiscent of Mrs Wint’s hair, a small dark-red rose with faint scent and tiny sharp thorns.

  The taxi driver objected to being asked to look after the rest of the flowers. He pointed out that the courtyard, the entrance, and the vestibule, were swarming with tough brutal policemen, every one of whom no doubt liked having a flower to twiddle in his fingers and hold to his nose. If they came forward and demanded flowers, did Wahab think he, the taxi driver, was going to protect them at the cost of a kicked behind or even punctured tyres?

  ‘This happens to be the Ministry of Justice,’ replied Wahab coldly, ‘and these men are policemen, upholders of the law.’

  The taxi driver agreed, with a great shudder.

  ‘But you need not be afraid,’ went on Wahab. ‘They will not interfere with my flowers.’

  He marched, or rather swaggered, in spite of his sore crotch, up to the entrance. There with authoritative forefinger he stopped a sergeant.

  ‘I have an appointment with his Excellency,’ he said.

  The sergeant saluted, with a respect that spread all round and even reached the taxi.

  ‘I should be obliged,’ added Wahab, smiling just at the right moment, with just the right degree of friendliness, ‘if no harm came to the flowers in the taxi. They are for my mother.’

  ‘Yes, sir. Is the lady ill?’

  ‘Very ill.’

  ‘I offer you sympathy, sir. With God’s help she will soon be better.’

  ‘We are all in God’s hands, sergeant.’

  Then through the throng of saluting policemen he pushed and flung open the first door he saw in the hall. Several clerks were seated at work. ‘I am looking for his Excellency’s secretary,’ he cried.

  Instantly one sprang up and conducted him to an office a few doors along. There the secretary, a small, sneering man with a blue bow tie, was ready to lead Wahab to the Minister.

  ‘His Excellency is waiting, Mr Wahab,’ he said, with a respect that Wahab noted with relief. The sneer had worried him a little. Now he saw it had to do with the secretary’s own troubles.

  The part of the building where the Minister’s office was had carpets everywhere, even here and there on the walls, which were of green marble. The soldiers standing discreetly about the corridors wore new uniforms and their boots were polished; the bayonets on their rifles gleamed, as did their eyes with a kind of sinister intelligence. Nevertheless they gazed on Wahab with submissiveness.

  Dr Habbibullah was seated at an enormous desk that somehow reminded Wahab of a great brown beast crouching; perhaps it was the Minister’s great tamer’s fists laid lightly on its back that gave him that impression. The face too was powerful but relaxed; gleams of private savage joy kept lighting it up. In such a mood might a man be who had just witnessed the extinction of a dangerous enemy.

  Yet Wahab’s own mood, he now discovered, as they shook hands, was not of fear. Rather did he feel excitedly confident. At his command he knew he had an agility of conscience that would elude the grip of this ruthless conscience-tamer; its source no doubt lay in the instinct of self-preservation, but only partly so; a nobler and higher source was his remembrance of the boys’ homage to him that morning.

  ‘You will understand these are busy days, Mr Wahab,’ said the Minister. ‘Tell me briefly what happened at your school ye
sterday.’

  ‘Certainly, Excellency. Some of the boys staged a patriotic demonstration in the playground. It culminated in a symbolic act: they all bent and rubbed their hands in the dust. Unfortunately, Mr Maftoon, who as you know is my deputy, misinterpreted this. He and two or three other teachers attacked the boys with sticks. The boys resented this. There was a disturbance. Mr Maftoon, again rather rashly, telephoned for the police. They came very quickly. Not surprisingly, they misread the situation. But I was able to set them right and convince them they weren’t required. The matter had to be dealt with swiftly and decisively, and in a way that would not forfeit the confidence of the boys. In my opinion their support is indispensable.’

  ‘Mojedaji was there. What part did he take in all this?’

  ‘To be frank, Excellency, he was upstairs in my office; he had been trying to bribe me to prevent the boys from marching to the airport to greet President Voroshilov. He appeared after the police had gone.’

  ‘All the boys were not at the airport.’

  ‘No. I thought it prudent in the circumstances to leave the decision to them. The only persuasion I used was to let it be known I would be accompanying the procession. The result was that the boys who chose to go were the active ones, the leaders; those who went home were the sheep. We know at any time where to find them grazing. I think I can claim that our contingent may not have been the largest at the airport, but it was certainly the most enthusiastic.’

  ‘That was noticed.’

  ‘I am afraid, however, Mojedaji isn’t pleased with me.’

  ‘Nor with me. It has been considered expedient to have him placed under house arrest. A close watch is being kept on the rest of the family. As you know, tomorrow the veil is going to be removed.’

  ‘That is still the intention, Excellency? I was afraid there might have been a change of heart.’

  ‘The Prime Minister has signed the order; so has the King. Any prejudiced fool who opposes will be dealt with as he deserves. The police have been given their instructions: to arrest on sight any man, or woman, molesting a woman who is wearing no shaddry.’