by Paul Scott
Old Khansamar had had three wives, ten daughters and no son, ever. It touched him to be called father by a boy like this. He began to give him less strenuous jobs. A week, two weeks, a month went by. Sometimes Merrick would say, ‘Well, Khansamar, how is that young fellow of yours? I see you have made something of a carpenter and decorator of him too. What is a farmer’s son doing with so many accomplishments? Can he also read and write? If so he can put my books in order, once he has put up the shelves and painted them.’
The answer was, yes, Aziz could read, a little slowly. But every night, now, he read to the servants from the newspapers. He had had to give up school when both his parents died. At an early age, he said, he had left his village to find work in the nearest town. But he had always tried to keep up his reading.
So Aziz was put to the task of finishing the shelves in the bigger bungalow and then of transferring the books from the packing cases and putting them on the shelves in alphabetical order of authors’ names.
And one day, when Khansamar was going towards the room where Aziz was working, to tell him it was time for his evening meal, he heard the boy laughing. He looked into the room and saw Aziz sitting on the floor, with his back to the door, reading a book, and turning the pages, turning them rapidly for someone who normally read with difficulty. But, that evening, when Khansamar went to the servants’ quarters, he found Aziz stumbling, reading aloud, with difficulty, from the morning newspaper.
*
‘You must understand, Mr Perron, that Khansamar had come to regard the boy with affection, as a son almost, and that it was not easy for him to admit to himself that there was something a bit suspicious, that the young man he had seen quickly reading through one of the Sahib’s books and laughing was rather a different young man from the one who worked in the compound like a farmer’s son. And now he also remembered that when the boy had first scythed the grass he had had to wear rags round his hands the next day and in the evening Khansamar had noticed the blisters, on his palms and fingers. At the time he had merely been touched that Aziz had worked so hard and hadn’t complained of his sore hands. But now he was troubled. Troubled by the thought that the boy was not the sort of boy he pretended to be. And that night when he went to bed he couldn’t sleep. He found himself tossing and turning and wondering and puzzling. And then something else odd struck him. He realized that since Aziz had turned up looking for a job, and had been employed, no one else had arrived at the gate, waving their little chits and begging to see Colonel Sahib.
‘So he got dressed and went to the hut Aziz slept in. The door was bolted on the outside, which meant Aziz was out. It was very late, one or two o’clock in the morning. He went round to the front of the house and found the chaukidar fast asleep on the verandah.’
‘Which bungalow was this?’
‘The one which Nigel has. The one at which you are staying. The bigger bungalow was nearly ready, but not quite ready. Chaukidar should have been patrolling between the two, but he was fast asleep on the verandah. The front gates were closed but anyone can climb these things. It was simply a peaceful Indian night, Mr Perron, and Khansamar thought, well, Aziz was a strong active young fellow. He was probably in the bazaar, making love to a girl whose husband was away. Reprehensible, but understandable. So Khansamar woke chaukidar up and told him off for sleeping. Then he went back to his quarters but found himself more wide awake than ever, and listening for the sound of Aziz coming back. This, he heard, only a little sound, the sound of the bolt on the door of Aziz’s hut being opened. He got up and put on his shawl and went over to the hut and saw there was a light on. So he knocked. When Aziz opened the door Khansamar began saying things like, What foolishness is this? Where have you been? Aziz said he had been at the back relieving himself. So Khansamar said, What, for two hours? Are you ill or something?
‘Then he noticed that there were marks on the boy’s face and that he had been bathing them. He said, What happened? Did the husband come back? Or have you been brawling in the bazaar? He was talking to him like an angry father who is not really angry. Probably Aziz understood this because he became contrite. He said it was true he had been in the bazaar, but there had been no angry husband and no brawling. He had fallen and grazed himself climbing back in over the locked gate and in the morning he would no doubt have a black eye.
‘Khansamar said, Wasn’t Chaukidar there to help you over? And Aziz laughed and said Chaukidar was no doubt asleep on the front verandah as usual and that nothing would ever wake him.
‘Khansamar did not believe Chaukidar could have gone to sleep again, after being told off, but he realized that with two bungalows to look after it would have been possible for Aziz to slip in over one of the gates, and not be seen. So he just gave the boy a telling off too and warned him that Merrick Sahib might have to be informed.
‘When he got up in the morning, which was always before anyone else, to make Colonel Sahib’s chota hazri, he looked for the chaukidar and asked him whether he had stayed awake and if so whether he had seen anything unusual. The chaukidar said he had certainly stayed awake after being woken but that there had been nothing unusual. Khansamar asked him whether he wouldn’t call it unusual to see Aziz climbing over a gate and missing his footing and falling on the gravel so heavily that he had grazed his face badly. Chaukidar agreed that that would be unusual.
‘In which case, Khansamar said, chaukidar had neglected to see something unusual, because this was what had happened, and that in the circumstances he could only believe that chaukidar had fallen asleep again, and that this would have to be reported to Colonel Sahib.’
Bronowsky lit another pink cigarette.
‘Chaukidar said, I do not advise that. You can accuse me to Colonel Sahib of nodding off for a few moments if you like, but you should not say you know I did because I failed to see Aziz climb over the gate. Colonel Sahib will think you are trying to make trouble for him. For two nights – last night and the night before – Aziz was with Colonel Sahib. I saw Aziz go in through the door of the gusl-khana just as I saw him go in the night before. The only difference was that the night before I stayed on watch, expecting to see him come out like a thief, in which case I would have pounced on him. But he came out after some time by the same door, and this time Colonel Sahib was with him, dressed in the clothes he sometimes wears when he is alone. He is at heart a Pathan, and Aziz is a fine sturdy boy. If I were not a dried-up old man I would be tempted myself and it does not surprise me that Colonel Sahib has been tempted because for weeks I have sometimes seen him watching the boy at work in the compound. When he went into the bungalow again last night I thought, It is none of my business, but since Colonel Sahib is not alone in the house I can nod off for a moment.’
Dmitri drew on the cigarette, exhaled, stubbed it out as if already tired of it. He took the ebony cane in both hands and leaned forward, chin resting on the hands that rested on the cane.
‘So,’ he said, ‘Khansamar thought it was no business of his either. But he had seen the mess that had been made of Aziz’s face and when he took in Colonel Sahib’s chota hazri he found him already up, sitting in front of the dressing-table, and wearing his harness. The knuckles of his right hand were grazed. He had beaten the boy with his fist. And at that moment, you know, Khansamar conceived for Merrick a dislike. Not a violent dislike. A cold dislike. Contempt. And of course he wondered why a boy like Aziz submitted to that kind of treatment. Do you wonder, Mr Perron?’
‘Tell me why you don’t.’
Bronowsky smiled and leant back, swirled his brandy in the glass, sipped and put the glass down.
‘I think it is clear he had been so instructed. Instructed to present himself, to stand there at the gate until Merrick had seen him. Also instructed to submit, without complaint, to whatever Merrick did once he had accepted the lure of this terrible attraction, of this terrible temptation which young men like Aziz represented.’
‘Instructed by whom?’
‘I think not Pa
ndit Baba, don’t you agree? If it was the Pandit then he must have studied more than the Bhagavad-Gita. He must also have studied Freud. So I do not think the Pandit. The Pandit has probably long ago been superseded by someone with a more modern and intelligent approach. There are always plenty of gurus waiting in the wings, and many of these young men willing and ready to serve and submit and suffer in the belief that what they do is done for a cause. In their death-photographs they look so pale, so insecure. But not in life. Whoever instructed Aziz, and his predecessors, and those who followed him, had come to know of these tendencies in Merrick. How? Always known? I doubt that. More likely through some later indiscretion or lapse. That he had always been kept track of as a potentially useful instrument goes without saying. And this was the new and subtle form of persecution. Young men like Aziz, turning up, with no instructions I imagine other than to tempt, submit, and not complain, not accuse, perhaps to go, so that they could be replaced, gradually, by young men of steelier temperament, young men capable of taking the ultimate step when the victim was properly lulled.
‘But what other instructions the boy who called himself Aziz might have had, one does not know. In the event, Merrick sacked him. He told Khansamar there was no further work for Aziz to do. So Aziz was sent packing. And a week or two later another boy arrived, begging for a job, and coming back day after day, standing at the gate. The same kind of boy. But Merrick resisted the bait. And the boy gave up. Only to be replaced by another. And another. And then Susan and Sarah arrived, with the child and the ayah and the bigger bungalow was occupied. But still they came, these young fellows. Perhaps some of them were genuinely looking for employment. Khansamar thought this was so, because they were not all of them boys like Aziz. But among them, from time to time, there would be one like that.
‘And then the tactics changed. Khanasamar did not at first connect the one thing with the other. A young Pathan arrived quite late one night, sometime towards the end of April, when the heat was getting bad but Susan was still here and Merrick was often working late, often slept in a room on the other side of the house. The Pathan insisted on seeing Merrick personally. He said he had an official and confidential message. He was alone with Merrick for only a short while. I wonder what was said? What services were offered? What services implied? In May Susan and the child and ayah went back up to Pankot. A few days after they had gone Merrick told Khansamar that he was expecting a messenger, probably quite late, and that the chaukidar shouldn’t lock the gates. The Pathan arrived just before midnight. This time he had a companion. Merrick had them taken to his study, then ten minutes later called for Khansamar and told him that one of these men should be given a bed for the night. The Pathan left and the chaukidar locked the gates after him. The companion who stayed was the younger man. He had a bedroll and said he could sleep anywhere. The verandah would do very well. It was very hot. He would be glad if he could be woken at five o’clock. Khansamar said he was a boy like Aziz but probably better educated. He wore European clothes. He was grateful for the charpoy Khansamar put out on the verandah and for the cup of tea he was given. He said he came from Lahore originally and asked a lot of questions about Mirat, so many that Khansamar said, Why do you ask so many questions? The boy laughed and apologized and said it was a habit got from the kind of work he did. Khansamar asked what kind of work that was and the boy looked surprised and said confidential work for the police, what else?
‘Khansamar believed it in one part of his mind but not in another. He didn’t worry very much either way. It was the Sahib’s affair if he slept with boys when his wife was away, not his. But in the morning when he took the boy some tea he was quite innocently asleep where Khansamar had left him and in half-an-hour he had washed and dressed and gone. Khansamar didn’t ask the chaukidar whether the boy had ever left his bed and chaukidar didn’t volunteer anything, which might have meant that there was nothing to say or that he had been asleep again – perhaps the latter because Khansamar was sure he smelt the boy’s hair-oil on one of the pillows in Merrick’s bed when he was making it up.
‘And so it continued, Mr Perron, about every two or three weeks, always two young men arriving, one going, one staying. Sometimes the one who had stayed the previous time accompanied the new boy. Sometimes Khansamar had seen neither of them before. None of them was a Mirati and Khansamar never noticed the smell of hair-oil on the pillow again. He questioned chaukidar once who said that yes, on one occasion when he patrolled, the boy’s bed on the verandah was empty but that when he waited expecting to see him come out of Merrick’s ghusl-khana he saw him instead coming back from the compound, as if he had been relieving himself and that when he went over and greeted him the young man acted quite naturally and offered him a cigarette and sat and smoked and talked to him for a while.
‘So, one wonders. And one wonders what really was in Merrick’s mind, whether there was some reality behind this illusion of spies or whether he had simply agreed with the Pathan to have boys procured for him. And in the latter case one wonders again whether he saw a connection between this arrangement and the older forms of persecution, and deliberately put himself in the way of it. I’m afraid we shall never know, Mr Perron. And in a country as vast as this all these young fellows have just disappeared, as if they never existed.
‘But consider it this way. And discard the evidence of the hair-oil on the pillow. The smell of the oil could have been in Khansamar’s imagination. He never smelt it again. Not even when the rains came and the boys no longer slept on the verandah but on Merrick’s instructions indoors in an empty room, where they were free to go to him at any time. Did they go? Perhaps. But if they went, did anything occur? Or did they just sit there discussing with him the information they had pretended to collect or actually collected for him? Was there any such information? Perhaps. On the night he was murdered the private drawer in his desk was forced open, so something might have been removed. But what? A slowly collected dossier about the subversive activities of real or imaginary political activists in Mirat, or a dossier about the scandalous activities, real or imaginary, of Mirat police officers and Mirati officials? If so, had Merrick ever believed in any of it? When he was going on and on about the man in the nullah and the imaginary stone he never referred to the existence of such dossiers, although he said the chief of police should start investigating what he called subversive elements. So, if he had any dossiers, files containing information collected from these so-called spies, had he believed in any of it, or had he just sat there, listening to these young men, pretending to accept their reports, pretending to need their reports but waiting for them to make it clear what else they were offering, and puzzling them by blandly ignoring every hint, every temptation. You knew him, Mr Perron. Would you say that was possible?’
‘I should have thought very possible, but in view of the Aziz business, not very probable.’
‘And there I disagree. I think perhaps it was probable precisely because of the Aziz business. I think it likely that what he did with, and to, Aziz revealed something to him about himself that utterly appalled him . . .’
‘Appalled him?’
‘I don’t mean the revelation of his latent homosexuality and his sado-masochism. These must have been apparent to him for many many years and every now and again given some form of expression. What I mean by a revelation is revelation of the connection between the homosexuality, the sado-masochism, the sense of social inferiority and the grinding defensive belief in his racial superiority. I believe – although you may not – that Aziz was the first young man he had actually ever made love to, and that this gave him a moment of profound peace, but in the next the kind he knew he couldn’t bear, knew he couldn’t bear because to admit this peace meant discarding every belief he had. I think he realized that, when he woke up after his first night with the boy. And I think that when the boy turned up the following night he just found himself punished and humiliated. And I believe that when Merrick beat him with his fist he was invit
ing retaliation. I believe he knew why Aziz had arrived. I am sure that finally, Mr Perron, he sought the occasion of his own death and that he grew impatient for it. He wanted there to be a man in the nullah. He wanted there to be a stone thrown at his horse. He wanted what happened to happen. Perhaps he hoped that his murder would be avenged in some splendidly spectacular way, in a kind of Wagnerian climax, the raj emerging from the twilight and sweeping down from the hills with flaming swords –’
A steward interrupted, approached, leant close, murmured something to him. Bronowsky nodded. The steward went.
‘Nawab Sahib?’ Perron asked.
‘Yes. He has seen the fires in the city. Forgive me, Mr Perron. It is a summons I can’t disobey. But really it is just that he cannot sleep, and wants company.’
They both rose.
‘The car can drop you next door and take me on to the palace,’ Bronowsky said.
‘It’s only a step or two.’
‘But the car has to take me anyway. Come.’
Bronowsky led him out on to the terrace, taking the long way round to the front. He placed his left hand on Perron’s right shoulder. ‘But let me tell you what did happen. Or all that one knows. Which isn’t much. There was no apparent difference between all the previous nights of the spies and the fatal night. Two young men turn up. Neither has visited before. One goes. The other stays. Perhaps the one who went did not really go, but came back and stayed hidden, to assist, when the time came. It was a lot for one man to do alone. But all that is a mystery, a little event between midnight and six o’clock in the morning when Khansamar went in with the chota hazri. The visitor who was to stay the night had gone. Chaukidar had seen nothing, heard nothing. The fact that he did not see them going does not necessarily mean that he was asleep. When the boys made off they might have gone over the wall at the back. No. The real mystery is what happened in the room. Did Merrick dress himself in those clothes, do you think? Habbibullah says that he was strangled before he was hacked about with the little axe and that he was dressed in the clothes before being hacked. One wonders why this was the chosen night, whether it was because time was running out or because the time was now exactly right for leaving on our doorstep as it were, one dead Englishman.’