Part 3 (1/2)

Sajjad s.h.i.+fted away from his mother. The idea that anything could cut him off from Dilli was not just absurd but insulting, and he knew his mother was aware of this.

'Modern India will start the day the English leave. Or perhaps it started the day we used their language to tell them to go home.' Faintly, he wondered if he really believed this. 'No, modernism does not belong to the English. The opposite, in fact. They've reached the end of their history. They'll go back to their cold island and spend the next ten generations dreaming of everything they've lost.'

'They sound like the Muslims of India.'

Sajjad stood up, laughing.

'When I'm married, Ammi Jaan, you're still the one I want to have my morning cup of tea with.' He kissed her forehead, picked up his book and wiped away the ring of tea from its cover as he made his way to the vestibule.

Just as he was opening the heavy wooden door his brother Altamash came yawning out of one of the rooms off the courtyard and said, 'What's the little Englishman doing awake at this hour? Sunrise stroll with the Viceroy?'

Sajjad ignored the comment and stepped out, taking his bicycle with him. As though the soft dhuk! dhuk! of the door closing were a signal, the muezzin of Jama Masjid began the call to prayer. Sajjad turned his head and glanced up towards the mosque, just a few minutes' walk away, its marble domes and minarets almost two-dimensional in appearance. He recalled sitting on his father's shoulder one Delhi night, at the base of the sandstone steps that led up to the mosque, his vision given over entirely to the mosque and the darkness of the sky behind it. His father had told him that the Emperor Shah Jahan had come here one night with scissors that had belonged to the Prophet, and cut through the sky; in the morning when the people of Dilli woke up, the Jama Masjid was in their midst, revealing a glimpse of heaven's architecture. of the door closing were a signal, the muezzin of Jama Masjid began the call to prayer. Sajjad turned his head and glanced up towards the mosque, just a few minutes' walk away, its marble domes and minarets almost two-dimensional in appearance. He recalled sitting on his father's shoulder one Delhi night, at the base of the sandstone steps that led up to the mosque, his vision given over entirely to the mosque and the darkness of the sky behind it. His father had told him that the Emperor Shah Jahan had come here one night with scissors that had belonged to the Prophet, and cut through the sky; in the morning when the people of Dilli woke up, the Jama Masjid was in their midst, revealing a glimpse of heaven's architecture.

It had been weeks since Sajjad had last climbed those sandstone steps and walked across the pigeon-filled courtyard for Friday prayers. Pakistan was all anyone could talk about now, with the Imam and the most conservative members of the congregation arguing that you could not divide the Ummah, there was no place for nations in the brotherhood of Muslims; and the Muslim League supporters arguing back that it was already clear from the behav iour of the Hindus that they would not agree to share any power with the Muslims in a post-Raj India, and hadn't the descendants of the Mughals, the Lodhis, the Tughlaqs, fallen far enough already; and the Congress supporters insisting theirs was not a Hindu party but an Indian one, and what did the people of Dilli have in common with the feudals of the Punjab who would dominate this Pakistan? And so it went on and on, and in each group Sajjad found those who made complete sense and in each group also those whose opinions made him want to scatter seeds over the speakers so the pigeons would swoop down and stop their words with a tumult of feathers.

Someone in the distance called Sajjad's name it was the retired Professor from Aligarh University who had taught his sister and him English during their childhood while his brothers preferred to learn calligraphy from their father but though he usually went out of his way to greet the old man this time he pretended not to hear and started pedalling through the labyrinthine streets, all springing into wakefulness with the azan, eschewing the long route via the river to head straight through Kashmiri Gate into Civil Lines.

She had said, 'However early you arrive, I'll be awake.' He didn't really expect her to be dressed and ready at this hour, but the invitation or was it a challenge? seemed a good excuse to fulfil a long-held desire to see the Burton garden at dawn. He imagined himself sitting out on the verandah, watching the flowers emerge from the night's shadow while everyone in the house slept.

But Hiroko Tanaka was already sitting on the verandah as Sajjad was entering Delhi, pulling a shawl across her thin shoulders as she sipped a cup of jasmine tea, grateful to be regarding the world from a vertical position. It had not been so for most of these two weeks in Delhi. The first night in the Burton house she had slept in the guest room upstairs, too tired to wander out una.s.sisted and find a place to live but determined that the next day she would leave this house where there was nothing of Konrad to be found except a notion, gleaned from a single day in the company of Elizabeth Burton, of what his features might have looked like if his life had been unhappy.

But the next day she had stepped out of bed feeling as though she were on a violently rocking boat and had barely made it down the stairs before collapsing on the floor. When she recovered consciousness she was in the bedroom on the ground floor, which was filled with the scent of James's aftershave.

The Burton family physician, Dr Agarkar, arrived within minutes and diagnosed an infection, probably picked up during her journey over to Delhi; nothing that rest and medication couldn't sort out.

'You'll be fine in, oh, a week or ten days,' he'd said and Hiroko, even in her enfeebled state, had whispered, 'Do you know somewhere I can go?'

'Don't be absurd.' Elizabeth's voice was both stern and kind. 'You'll stay here. There's no further conversation to be had about this.'

Later, as Dr Agarkar was leaving, Hiroko heard James talking to him in the hallway.

'Yes, a telegram came from that Watanabe fellow Julian Fuller's cousin in Nagasaki. Did you know Julian he was here in, oh, '34 or '35. Company man. Uncle married a j.a.p. Anyway, turns out there really was something between her and Konrad. And she's lost everyone, the telegram said. Everyone. Poor girl. I feel such a brute.'

'So she's staying with you while she's in Delhi?'

'I suppose, yes. At least until she gets better. After that, well, I don't know. We'll see how we get on. Might do Elizabeth some good to have someone to mother again. Did your wife get like this when Ravi went to Eton?'

Hiroko was asleep before the doctor answered. When she woke up, Elizabeth was sitting by her bed, her slumped shoulders suggesting she'd been there a while. Hiroko smiled, Elizabeth smiled back, and then Hiroko was asleep again.

Two days later, Hiroko was finally awake long enough to start feeling bored.

'I'll read to you,' Elizabeth said. 'Any preferences?'

'Evelyn Waugh.'

'Really? How strange.'

'That's what Konrad said. He said Waugh is for readers who know the English and understand what's being satirised. And I told him that maybe the books are better when you don't know it's satire and just think it's comedy.'

Elizabeth considered this.

'You're probably right. I find him much too cruel. And almost unbearably sad.'

Hiroko's fingers moved just slightly so they were almost touching Elizabeth's hand as it rested on the coverlet. It was a gesture so astutely poised between discretion and sympathy that Elizabeth found herself imagining a life in which Konrad had brought Hiroko into this house as a sister-in-law.

'Perhaps after you've spent some time among us you'll see the satire.'

'Oh, I see it already,' Hiroko said, nodding, and then clapped her hand over her mouth.

But Elizabeth Burton was laughing as she hadn't laughed in a very long time. She took Hiroko's hand in hers and held on firmly.

'Forget this boarding-house nonsense. You're staying here. We're practically sisters, after all.'

James Burton, standing in the doorway, watched his wife's face glow with laughter, and nodded. Hiroko was far from convinced that living with the Burtons was an ideal situation but she was too weak to feel anything but grat.i.tude for the continued offer of a bed to sleep in.

A couple of mornings ago she had woken feeling much stronger a greater relief than she allowed anyone else to know; she had feared the radiation sickness which had so incapacitated her in '45 might have returned or simply reawoken from some state of dormancy, as the doctors had warned might happen. But as soon as she felt herself returning to strength she dismissed such thoughts with the briskness with which she had once dismissed Konrad's repeated suggestions that it wasn't prudent for her to continue meeting a German in Nagasaki, and decided it was time to start finding a way to fill her days. She had come to feel a greater affection towards the Burtons during her convalescence than she had imagined possible on her first day in Delhi but she knew she needed something beyond their company to occupy her.

She thought she had a perfect solution but her suggestion that someone in Delhi must have need of a translator who could speak English, German and j.a.panese met with little enthusiasm from the Burtons. Dr Agarkar was called in to inform her she was not yet well enough to go 'gadding around', though Hiroko half suspected he only said so as an act of friends.h.i.+p to the Burtons, who seemed to think their hospitality was being called into question if their guest found employment.

So Hiroko turned to the next option that announced itself to her.

'I'd like to learn the language they speak here,' she had said.

'It's not necessary. English serves you fine. The natives you'll meet are either the Oxbridge set and their wives or household staff like Lala Buksh, who can understand simple English if you just know a clutch of Urdu words to throw into the mix. Those Elizabeth can teach you,' James had said.

It was the oddest thing Hiroko had ever heard.

'Even so, I'd like to learn how to read and write,' she said. 'Is there anyone . . .?'

'Sajjad,' Elizabeth said. 'He used to teach Henry my son.' Her upper lip didn't really stiffen, Hiroko thought, but there was some subtle s.h.i.+ft around her mouth suggesting tamped-down pain at the mention of the child sent a year ago to boarding school in England, from where he wrote letters to his parents saying he wanted to be 'home, in India'.

'He doesn't have the time for that,' said James. 'You know I can't let him work half-days now. I don't have an office full of clerks any more.'

'You still have the office, James. You just choose to pretend your leg isn't healed well enough for you to go to it. And in any case, you and Sajjad do nothing but play chess all day.' Let the boy work for his salary again, Elizabeth thought to herself. She had been profoundly annoyed by Sajjad's acceptance of the raise James had given him at the start of the month; it seemed not just dishonest, but impudent.

Hiroko slipped off the sofa and went to look through the bookshelves, hoping by her movements to remind the Burtons she was in the room before they started one of their more unpleasant arguments, and wondered if Sajjad would mind being asked to play the role of teacher. She should have asked him first, she realised. Coming from the Burtons it would be a command rather than a request. But much to her relief, when James grudg ingly broached the subject later that day, Sajjad seemed delighted.

'I will teach you the chaste Urdu of Ghalib and Mir so that you can read the poets of Delhi.' Seeing James's look of unhappiness, he added, 'And since you say you wake up early, Miss Tanaka, perhaps we could have our lessons before Mr Burton and I commence our day's business.'

James had smiled broadly and Elizabeth didn't know whether it was Sajjad, James or herself who she wanted to hit for the effortlessness with which the Indian could delight her husband.

Hiroko bent her face into the steam that rose from the teacup, its warmth a pleasant contrast to the chill of Delhi's winter-morning air, and hoped Sajjad wouldn't arrive soon. It was rare, and welcome, this feeling of being alone in the Burton house, no need to modulate her expressions so that nothing in them would give cause for concern or offence. When either James or Elizabeth was around she always had to look busily engaged with something to avoid provoking a panicked stir of conversation or activity; they behaved as though she had lost Nagasaki only yesterday, and their joint role in her world was to distract her from mourning. It was kind, but trying.

She rubbed her thumb along the interlacings of the green cane chair. And this world, too, was ending. A year or two, no more, James had told her, and then the British would go. It seemed the most extraordinary privilege to have forewarning of a swerve in history, to prepare for how your life would curve around that bend. She had no idea what she planned to do beyond Delhi. Beyond next week. And why plan anyway? She had left such hubris behind. For the moment it was enough to be here, in the Burton garden, appreciative of a blanket of silence threaded with vibrant bird calls, knowing there was nothing here she couldn't leave without regret.

She was less than halfway through her cup of jasmine tea when she saw Sajjad enter the garden from around the side. He seemed surprised almost disappointed to see her there, but all that was just a flicker of the eyes before his polite smile settled into place and removed all expressiveness from his face. She wondered if her own face had revealed and concealed exactly as had his.