Night of the Golden Butterfly

NINE

A QUARTER OF A century had elapsed since I had left Lahore, and then fate placed a painter in my way. Plato re-entered my life in 1988, but in such a unique fashion that at first I didn’t recognize him. A London newspaper rang to ask if I would write about an unusual exhibition of paintings by an unknown Fatherland artist in an obscure East End gallery. The gallery was housed in a former medieval nunnery and only exhibited new work. From first-time sinners to first-time artists, said the woman on the phone to amuse me. The painter’s name, Shah Pervaiz Shah, meant nothing to me, and that in itself was intriguing, since I thought I knew every serious painter in Fatherland. He must be a new young thing, and I wasn’t in the mood. The woman persisted. It was his first exhibition. It would mean a great deal to him if I went, and the painter had wanted me to know that it didn’t matter if I hated the paintings. He never painted to please, and if I chose to ridicule his follies in print that was fine by him. This injunction had the desired effect. I decided to go the following morning, and it was agreed that I would write a piece only if I liked the work. They rang me back and told me that the caretaker would let me in and turn on the lights.

It was a beautiful November morning, cold, crisp and cloudless. I got off at Mile End and walked to the old nunnery. The Bengali caretaker was waiting patiently. He was dressed in a slightly eccentric fashion: a bright red beret covered his head and huge dark glasses concealed most of his face. Perhaps he, too, wanted to be an artist. Neither of us spoke as he unlocked the door and turned on the lights. The place was horribly lit, perhaps in homage to its past, but extremely unfair to the poor painter. To my great irritation, the caretaker hung around in the background, watching me closely as I began to look at the works. They were black and white etchings and they depicted pure agony, which was what the exhibition should have been titled. It took me some time to study each frame. The figures depicted were in different stages of despair. Munch’s Scream multiplied by a hundred.

Some years ago, after giving a lecture in Oslo I dragged a group of newly arrived Punjabi migrants who attended my talk to the Munch museum to show them their new country’s greatest artist. Some were reluctant to waste precious time but came anyway. All of them were stunned, and one, Salah, who became a dear friend, had moist eyes as he whispered in Punjabi, ‘This is an artist who knew inner pain. Our Sufi poets say, that the cure for that lies in oneself. Neither Allah nor a psychiatrist can help.’

I was reminded of that remark now as I studied each etching closely. This painter had experienced more than inner pain. He was bearing witness to a terrible tragedy. Men, women and children stood dying, together in three of the pictures, separately in the others. One showed a child stuck to its mother’s breast. Their eyes were gazing in different directions. Both were dead. After an hour I slumped on a bench. It was not what one expects so soon after breakfast. I looked for a catalogue or the sheet of paper detailing the work and the painter. There was nothing.

The caretaker, whose presence I had by now completely forgotten, muttered in broken Urdu, ‘Upstairs, more. No rush. There are no limits on time.’

Upstairs? I was not sure I could take any more, but as he turned on the lights I staggered up the winding stairs to another space. What had the nuns done here? It was obvious. This had been a primitive chapel, with a tiny confessional in a corner for the mother superior to console her charges in whatever way she considered fit. Nunneries always make me think of the Decameron.

Then I looked at the pictures. Colour! These were not etchings but vibrant paintings: watercolours and a few oils, though miniature in size. As for the subject matter, we had gone from Munch to Grosz, though in reality this artist was like neither. Shah Pervaiz Shah, or SPS, as he signed himself, was an original. I had no doubt on this score. My mood changed and I began to laugh loudly. These were the most savage caricatures of mullahs that I had ever seen. The literary tradition in the Punjab and elsewhere in the Islamic world had, of course, never spared the rod when it came to the mullahs, but this was something new and refreshing. Virtually every painting made me laugh. Here was a mullah walking with his veiled wife, but in his mind’s eye he was seeing naked houris with huge breasts. Another bearded venerable was holding an erect friend in his hand as he enviously watched two young men pleasuring each other. I roared with delight. I wanted to meet SPS or whatever his real name might be, since it was obvious now that he painted under a pseudonym, and who could blame him? I would do more than just write about it. I would get his work filmed and shown on television.

The caretaker had been following me as I studied each of these masterpieces, but I hadn’t noticed him. As he saw me laughing at a sketch of a mullah absentmindedly stroking his penis while he gazed longingly at the forbidden apple on the celestial tree, he addressed me in Punjabi.

‘Like them?’

‘They’re brilliant. Do you know the artist?’

‘I am the artist. Don’t you recognize me?’

He took off his stupid beret and dark glasses. Even then I had some difficulty, since he was bald as a turnip. Then I realized.

‘Plato? Can it be?’

‘So now you don’t recognize me.’

We embraced each other. My failure to recognize him was an even bigger shock than his actual presence. It worried me. The only explanation was that I had not looked too closely at the caretaker unlocking the gallery and later it was the paintings that had demanded all my attention. I apologized profusely but he was triumphant.

‘How long have you been in Britain, Plato?’

‘I came some years after you, but I had to find work and so I had no time to look for you or Zahid Mian or anyone else.’

‘Zahid was here?’

‘Yes, and the Butterfly, but not for long. He’s a heart surgeon in Satan’s city now. Washington, DS, District of Satan.’

I managed a weak smile, wondering, as usual, how Jindié’s heart had survived the marriage. Plato had returned with unwelcome memories.

‘This is amazing work, Plato. In Lahore you never spoke about painting. A leap from mathematics.’

‘You really like it?’

‘I do.’

‘Then I’ll paint more. I had decided that if you thought it wasn’t worthwhile I would stop.’

‘I’m not an art critic’

‘If it was one of those I wanted, I would never have pushed them to invite you. You understand. By the way. That woman from the magazine wants me to paint her.’

It wasn’t ‘by the way’. Something was up and it was Plato. He smiled at me.’

‘Now you understand the etchings.’

‘Partition?’

‘What else?’

‘The pain expressed is universal. War. Famine.’

‘Partitions. Always partitions. Whenever they divide, we suffer. Have you time? Should we find a teahouse?’

‘Yes, but not here. Let’s go to Drummond Street.’

I inspected his bald head and told him that would have been a better disguise than the beret, but irritatingly, now that we were in a public space, he insisted we only speak English. His aversion to mixing languages was as strong as ever, and he reacted angrily when I pointed out that every language was a mixture. Had he counted the number of Sanskrit words in Punjabi, or Persian and Arabic derivatives in Urdu or Arabic in Spanish? He brushed Urdu aside with a rude gesture.

‘What else do you expect from a courtier’s language?’

‘Ghalib, Iqbal and Faiz… all courtiers?’

‘Iqbal and Faiz were born in Sialkot. They should have written in Punjabi.’

‘But Plato, Faiz explained why he didn’t write in Punjabi. Baba Bulleh Shah had said all there was to say in Punjabi. There could be no other.’

‘Nonsense,’ said Plato. ‘He could have equally said that Ghalib and Mir had said everything in Urdu.’

‘But they hadn’t, don’t you see? Faiz used the model, refined it with political imagery. Politics as love. Love as politics.’

‘Please speak in English.’

‘Can’t discuss our poets in English, Plato.’

‘Then save talk till later.’

He had shrunk a little and walked with a slight stoop. And there was something else. Perhaps it was because I was so much older now that I noticed, but Plato appeared lost in a way he had never done in Lahore. Would he have prompted Hamlet’s ghost at the RSC? Since I was going to review his work, I needed to know why and how he had become a painter. That was the surprise. Mathematician, literary critic, cycling acrobat, conversationalist, bon vivant and now a painter and a very unusual one, too. But he had to tell the story in Punjabi, and so had to wait till we reached Punjabi space in Drummond Street.

I said in English, ‘Is there anything you want to do here that for some reason you haven’t yet done?’

‘Yes. I want to see Cambridge and the mathematics section of their library. So I can see a world that offered me attention, but that I rejected. No hurry, understand? When you have a free day, take me there.’

By the time we reached the Indus café in Drummond Street it was almost time for lunch. I asked for a corner table in the recess near the back, close to the ‘family tables’ where women were accommodated and where we wouldn’t be disturbed, and ordered kebabs and tikkas and the haleem for which the place was famous. It was cheap food infinitely superior to the trendy Indo-Pak eateries that catered to indigenous tastes and would do anything for a Michelin star.

It was here that Plato reverted to Punjabi and described his life since he had left Lahore, two years or so after me.

‘We were lucky in those days. We didn’t need visas. I borrowed money and left. Why? Because things were changing. Life at our table died soon after you left. They were planning to demolish Babuji’s cafe and Respected’s fruit juice parlour and replace them with something modern and ugly. The college centenary was approaching, and they thought they should tart up. They put on too much lipstick and face powder, like the girls in the Diamond Market. Also I was no longer happy with just teaching rich kids. The quality of my pupils was not improving. If anything, the opposite. I don’t know. Many reasons. I got fed up. Some of our friends were cuddling up to the military dictator, just like all the newspapers. I was disgusted. I reminded myself that, after all, this wasn’t my country. Lahore wasn’t my town. I was a refugee from another Punjab. The only friend I had left from those days was Younis the sub-postmaster. Remember? Of course you do. You had your own relationship with him. But he lived in Peshawar and loved the place. He was married. Children. Very different from me. I left.

‘When I arrived in London I had the name of one contact, a cousin of Younis who was married to a Mirpuri girl, and worked on a building site carrying bricks for the bricklayers all day long. He lived in Ealing, in a house filled with others like him. He greeted me warmly but said I would have to find a night job, so I could sleep in his bed during the day. Later I could find a room. I got a job within a week, working as a waiter in an all-night place where trucks stopped regularly for petrol and I made tea or coffee. I lived on baked beans and white bread every day and for many months. The body suffered. Not interesting.

‘Then Fate dealt me a slightly better hand. A cousin of the petrol pump’s owner fell ill. He had a franchise selling newspapers outside a tube station in North London. They asked me whether I would work there till he recovered. So I became a newsagent. It was better work, even though I had to start at five in the morning and finish at six-thirty in the evening. Morning papers till last editions of the evening papers for final rush hour. I now had a room of my own in a boarding house near Kilburn High Road. I earned enough to eat two meals a day and go to the cinema. Also, I must be honest, to strip joints, which were very expensive for me, but I had to make those visits, otherwise I’d have gone mad. Ten shillings entry it was, but I needed the images to comfort my seekh kebab at home. I was paid ten pounds a week, which was a lot in the early Sixties in London. One pound on strip shows twice a week, but still I saved three pounds each week.

‘The life of a newsagent was very dull, and between twelve noon and six I had a lot of spare time. I read all the papers and did the Times crossword puzzle. Still I had too much time. One day I bought a hardcover exercise book and in my spare hours I started drawing, but just to occupy myself. There was nothing else to do. Strange people with wounded bodies began to pour out of my wounded heart. It was just like that, and I had no idea what was happening. In my youth, as you know, I was good at equations, and sometimes I played with the figures in algebra, adding a few testicles here and some nipples there, but stopped after being caned by the teacher for my sins.

‘One day an English customer saw one of my sketches and said, “These are good. You should show them. Want to sell one to me? How much?” I asked for ten shillings. He gave me a pound. I hoped he would return, but I never saw him again. It was a fluke, but it encouraged me. I carried on drawing. All those sketches you saw today I did in black ink as I waited for people to buy newspapers. I bought larger and better pads from artists’ shops and better ink and did not stop till I had nothing more to say. Sometimes at home I would look at the drawings and think they were rubbish and many times I thought of destroying them, but something stopped me. I know it sounds stupid, but once I thought I heard your voice in my head telling me not to do anything till you had seen them.

‘One day a Punjabi boy, a Sikh who used to leave early for work and buy a Mirror from me every morning suggested he could find me a better job as a bus conductor. So I thanked my employer and handed in my notice. After a week of learning I became a bus conductor. That’s when I really got to see this city. No time for sketching, but much better wages and a strong trade union. The Sikh boy was a driver, and we became good friends. He would tell me not to get too worked up by racist abuse unless it was a passenger. Then I should stop the bus and we would throw him off. We did this sometimes, but got no support from any other passengers. They looked out of the window, pretending not to notice.

‘I began to look out of the window as well and ignore the abuse. I noticed there was always a long queue in one place on Charing Cross Road, and that some very beautiful young girls and handsome boys always got off the bus to join it. One day I asked one of the boys, and he explained they were art students queuing to paint nudes every Thursday, which is when the queue was longest. I asked if it was free. He looked at me strangely and nodded. This was a real discovery. In Soho they charged ten shillings to see nude women. On Charing Cross Road, just next door, it was free.

‘I was owed my holiday, so I took two weeks. On Thursday of the first week I bought a pair of denims and a nice jumper and joined the queue. Nobody questioned me. I walked behind a cute girl with a ponytail and sat at a desk just behind her. In front of me there stood an easel and a small tray full of pastels. As the naked model walked in, my heart started beating so fast I thought the others must be able to hear it. The model came to the front of the room and stood there, taking up different poses. Finally she lay down with her arms outstretched and the beard between her legs glistening. That was how she stayed, stark naked and in that pose for most of the two hours, with small breaks to stretch and drink tea that aroused me even more. I was the only person who appeared excited by the sight of her. She seemed so natural, unlike the naked women I’d seen in Soho. The others started painting. The teacher was looking at me looking at the model and I hurriedly picked up the pastels and began to sketch without thinking. After ten minutes there was a tap on my shoulder. It was the teacher.

‘“You have a very good eye for colour.”

‘This surprised me since the only colour I had used till then was grey, but I smiled and thanked her and hurriedly added other colours. That finished work is still at home. My first real piece of work. The teacher praised it. The other students congratulated me. That is how I became an artist. I forgot to say that the first time I saw that model’s body hair I imagined a mullah’s beard. And I saw the mullah’s face, but that is what I painted at home. My tiny bedroom was now also a studio. I carried on working on the buses for a few more years, but worked overtime at weekends and took Thursdays off till the teacher told me to go home and paint. I did not need a teacher anymore. One of the girls in my class had become a critic. We became lovers for a short time and some of the women in the mullah paintings are based on her. Another friend of hers is some big editor on the magazine that rang you. What are you going to write? Whatever you do, please don’t blow it up too much. No embroidery on the cloth. Just pure and simple; that’s usually more effective if you have something to say. If they need advertising copy they’ll hire someone.’

‘I’m useless at all that, Plato. I’ll just write what I feel. I hope it works for you. But there are some good critics here and I hope one of them likes it.’

He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Believe me, Dara. I don’t care. There are five other people whose judgement I value. If they like my work, that’s enough for me.’

‘You have to make a living, Plato.’

‘That is a disgusting sentence. At our table in Lahore you would have been asked to leave for a few days. Please withdraw it immediately.’

I did, but I was worried about him. At the time he was working as a security guard for a warehouse, and that meant a night shift and wearing a uniform, but all this amused him. When I asked why he had changed his name, he smiled.

‘I was told by the girls that Plato sounded ridiculous and pretentious in the West.’

I disagreed. Why not Aflatun in that case? But he had made up his mind, and it was as Shah Pervaiz Shah that I wrote of him and introduced him to a documentary filmmaker. She wanted to take him back to Lahore and Ludhiana, whence he had made the bus journey etched in his psyche, but Plato wasn’t agreeable to returning anywhere. He refused. Flummoxed by his obstinacy, she ended up making a twenty-minute documentary based on a brief interview and his paintings. A serious art critic reviewed them for the film and it was shown on a well-established arts programme. Plato may have bound himself by the strongest possible vows to resist the passions of the marketplace, but I think even he was pleased by the impact of his first exhibition. The etchings and the mullah paintings all went quickly, and Plato, for the first time in his life, found himself with a healthy bank balance.

With the help of his new friends and admirers, he found an artist’s apartment near Hogarth’s roundabout on the busy road to the airport in West London. Now he felt oppressed by too much space. It was too grand for him. He paced up and down all the time, watching the traffic go by, but he couldn’t work. He moved back to North London and bought a ground-floor three-room flat in Kilburn. One of the rooms was huge and had French windows that opened into a garden with a crumbling wall and a few apple trees. All this became precious to Plato. He seemed happy whenever I saw him but far from any illusions of being successful in the traditional sense and still prone to fits of a melancholy that went so deep that it frightened me. He really had been carefree in Lahore. The past had been repressed in those early years. He never talked about it, but it had returned to haunt him in middle age. Or had there been something back then, too, that I had completely missed? He was surrounded by women these days, and that was certainly a step forward. In Lahore he had always been lonely and had rebuffed all questions referring to his sexuality, unusual in a city where different parts of one’s anatomy were proudly worn on one’s sleeve.

He had three more exhibitions over the next few years. I went and bought some of his work. His style had changed. The mullah with exposed genitals and a nude on either arm had given way to imagined landscapes with surreal beasts and mermaids. Always mermaids. I didn’t like them at all. What was going on his head? I might never have known had I not received a phone call from Alice Stepford, a feminist art critic and painter who loathed being referred to as a feminist painter. There is no such thing, she would say. I had met her with Plato and assumed they were together in the way people were without actually sharing the same accommodations. I never questioned him about her. It was obvious he adored her. What she said about his work mattered a great deal to him, and even when she was scathing he tended to agree with her and dump the work. I warned him once, gently, against becoming too dependent on her whims. That she didn’t like all of his paintings was no reason to destroy any of them.

In return for this unwanted and unwelcome advice he gifted me with one of his old exercise books containing a slightly boring sex story set in ancient Egypt that he had written himself and illustrated with paintings of ancient males with multiple penises engaged in endeavours of various kinds. It did make me smile, but Alice Stepford hated it, and, to be fair, I could understand her reasoning. He could not bring himself to destroy the book, which is why it remains in my possession. On hearing that I was slightly mystified by the present, he said.

‘Look at the painting of the priest with three penises. Look at them closely.’

I did so and realized that all three organs were depictions in various sizes of the Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak. Somehow, that made them really disgusting. I managed a weak laugh.

Alice Stepford had rung to invite me to her studio for lunch, saying, ‘Today, please, if possible.’ It was possible and I motored over to the address in SW3, assuming that Plato would be present. Her Chelsea studio was a revelation, a bit too tasteful for a bohemian pad. Lunch was served soon after I arrived, and Alice wasted no time in sharing her concerns with me. Our conversation turned out to be extremely serious and I was touched by her intensity. Not that it prevented me from wondering what her breasts might be like underneath her sweater, and that was before she uncorked a bottle of Château Lafite and decanted it with an apologetic smile.

‘My only weakness apart from painting. Stolen from Daddy’s cellar last weekend.’

Daddy was Lord Stepford, whose forebears had fought on the wrong side during the Civil War — and he had three beautiful daughters, two of whom were married to their milieu. Alice was the family bohemian, and when she informed her parents that her boyfriend was an Indian bus conductor who was trying to paint she had received a terrible missive from Stepford, who was old-fashioned on the subject of mixed marriages. The letter made it clear that while he did not care who she saw in her own time, he absolutely forbade her to soil the family name by marrying a Hottentot, an Eskimo, a Negro, a Chinaman, a Nip or a Wop and certainly never a jumped-up Indian, let alone a Paki. Plato saw the letter and laughed. He had no thought of marriage and suggested she tell Daddy that she was safe, but Alice was livid. She wrote back asking whether her father was aware that she had been invited to exhibit her work in Sydney and Wellington. And if he was, why had the Maoris and aboriginals been excluded from his otherwise comprehensive ban? He wrote back immediately. When he compiled the list he had assumed that even she would exclude cannibals as potential husbands. Her mother tried to make up by suggesting Alice bring ‘your Indian’ home one weekend. Alice impolitely declined the offer.

All this I knew, but why were we having lunch? She described her affection for Plato, which was no surprise, but there was clearly a problem.

‘Can I rely on your eternal discretion, Dara? Please don’t tell him about this, but I thought you might be able to help.’

Till now, nobody in my whole life had ever asked me, leave alone with such soft eyes and pouting lips, whether they could rely on my discretion. I was so touched by her trust that I pledged total secrecy and help whenever and however it was needed. The wine, too, was delicious. The hours were gliding by.

What emerged was that she had been seeing Plato for more than two years. They had painted each other naked. They had sported with each other, but not too seriously, and he had, she now told me, always kept his penis safe from her touch and she had only seen it flaccid. I was seriously taken aback.

‘And there I was, so glad that everything had turned out so well for both of you. Work, love and sex in the same space. Purest joy.’

‘No. Definitely not.’

Not once had Plato wanted or attempted to make love to her. All her attempts had been rebuffed. This worried her. It worried me too.

‘What is it with him, Dara? Am I that unattractive? It can’t be a religious inhibition, can it? Or is he gay? If so, I wish to bloody God he would just tell me and we could all relax.’

I was desperate to relax, but the news had stunned me. What the hell was wrong with Plato? Was there someone else?

‘You don’t think he’s gone religious?’

‘Can’t be religion, Ally. That would be good for you. Islam is truly sensuous. Men who let women down by staying down themselves are considered worse than heretics and unbelievers like me. No, definitely not religion. Could he be gay? It would have been impossible to keep that a secret in Lahore. We would have known. Let me make a few ultra-discreet inquiries and get back to you.’

‘Will you, Dara? I’d be so grateful. This is so bad for one’s self-esteem.’

We finished the bottle, and while she made coffee I inspected her books and paintings and peeped into her bedroom, where Plato had let the side down very badly.

‘Would you like some cognac with your coffee?’

‘I like your paintings very much. Surprised me. I thought they would be…’

‘More didactic.’

‘Something like that.’

‘Glad you like them. I always feel that financial considerations sometimes necessitate bad art. Never found that tempting and nor does your friend. Affinities.’

‘True. But it’s always worth remembering that fine sentiments do not automatically produce good work, either.’

‘Do you think melancholy can be contagious? Is it possible that if a friend is depressed you can feel depressed too, even at a distance?’

‘Only if the friendship is so deep that a part of it is repressed.’

She agreed strongly. We looked at each other and it was obvious to both of us what the next step would be. Nor did we let each other down. As the enjoyable afternoon was coming to an end and I was putting my clothes back on, I asked whether she still wanted me to head an unofficial inquiry to uncover Plato’s secret.

‘Yes, please. I mean I should know, don’t you think?’

I was hoping she had moved on already, but hurt egos require nursing. I promised to have a report ready soon. She said she sorely needed my advice as to how she should proceed with Plato. I suggested that given the failure to establish physical contact, a close working friendship might be more appropriate. She nodded eagerly.

‘And can we have lots of lunches together, Dara?’

‘That is a much simpler request and easy to fulfil.’

But this is Plato’s story, not mine, and all temptation to describe the idyllic year I spent with Ally Stepford must be resisted. I thought Plato might be more inclined to share confidences in our mother tongue, so I rang him a few weeks later, and we repaired, as usual, to Drummond Street. It was he who began the inquisition.

‘Are you fucking Ally Stepford?’

This straightforward question sounds so crude in Punjabi that even my well-conditioned ears rebelled. I reprimanded him without answering his question. He rephrased it.

‘Did her eyes bewitch you? Was it lust at first sight? Was it her paintings or her apartment? Tell me, dear friend. What really attracted you?’

I decided to answer in the affirmative. It was pointless to lie, but I twisted my response so as to force him on to the defensive.

‘Yes, I am seeing her and for none of those foolish reasons, but there were no divided loyalties, Plato. She told me you weren’t lovers at all, not even on a spiritual level. I wasn’t sure whether to believe her or not. Was she lying just to reassure me, or is it true?’

An embarrassingly long silence followed, and a remorseful look replacing the earlier anger on his face.

‘What is it, Plato? Is there someone else?’

‘What she said is true. I’ve never told anyone else this before, but I think you should know.’

I thought this would be a declaration of his coming out and breathed a sigh of relief.

‘I’m impotent, Dara. Always have been. My alif won’t stand to attention. It won’t take the meem. It’s never erect. Unlike the sun, I never rise. Understand?’

How could I not, but I was nonetheless stunned since this contradicted so many earlier stories. I recalled some of the ingénue’s tales we had heard in Lahore. Were they all duplicitous? Or had the fantasy trapped him to such an extent that he found it difficult to back out?

‘But Plato, you described your visits to the strip joints and how this was all because you needed a memory enhancer when you masturbated.’

‘I did tell you that, and it was true, except that I could never jerk off. I have never had an erection.’

‘Why didn’t you tell Ally?’

‘I was embarrassed. I thought it would disturb her tranquillity.’

‘Not telling her disturbed her tranquillity a great deal more. Have I your permission to tell her?’

He became thoughtful. ‘Okay, but please stick to the facts. Don’t make the story more salty or spicy.’

‘I won’t. She’ll feel reassured and will be very sympathetic. She’s a good person. Have you ever thought of seeing an analyst?’

‘Greedy charlatans all of them and with very dirty, one-track minds.’

‘Plato, be reasonable. You sound like a Punjabi rustic. Not all of them are like that. Let me find a good one for you. If it works, your life could change. If it doesn’t, you certainly won’t be worse off than you are now. The impotence may be psychological, and if so it can be cured. It may well be linked to the horrors of Partition. You were fifteen at the time. So those memories stayed. You saw women being raped and killed. You owe it to yourself to see a good analyst. Tell me something. Before Partition, did you have any experiences in the village?’

He cheered up. ‘There was a village girl. She was so beautiful. I really wanted her. In the summer months, I’d follow her to the stream where she washed and spy on her, but she never took off all her clothes. Only her top to hurriedly soap her armpits, wipe her neck and breasts clean. And it’s true that at the time I did feel a rise below and had wet dreams as a result and was slapped by my mother, who had to wash the sheets more often.’

‘Did anything happen or was it a romance from afar?’

‘One evening I walked up while she was washing herself and asked if I could put my hand on her breast and kiss her lips.’

‘And?’

‘She slapped my face.’

I kept a straight face. ‘I doubt whether that was a real trauma, Plato. Did it never occur to you to just do what you asked permission to do? Then the slap would have been worth its weight in old silver. But this is very promising. Let me find you a good person. We’ll figure out something.’

He agreed. A few weeks later, I approached a highly regarded analyst on his behalf. She knew his paintings and was quite keen to see him after I had explained the problem. But Plato had disappeared. His phone had been disconnected. The apartment was being let by an estate agent and there was no forwarding address. The rent, I was told, was being deposited in his London bank account.

I found it odd and slightly upsetting that he had decided to flee without a single word of farewell. Perhaps he resented the fact that he had been forced to reveal his ailment to me. On previous occasions and in relation to other subjects when he found himself trapped he would mutter that he was an unsophisticated provincial at heart and leave the room. But he was always impassioned and slinking away was out of character.

Ally and I talked about him often. She was quite upset when I told her of the malady that afflicted him. Soon she gave up painting. One day she rang to say that she had realized her real vocation was to study music. She had done so as a teenager and had played the piano reasonably well, but life had intervened and she had changed disciplines and gone to the Slade. Of late the music embedded in her had returned to the fore and she was returning to her first love. She couldn’t see me because she was making hasty preparations to leave for New York and she hated farewells. Years later she was acknowledged a distinguished art and music critic, and one day I received an invitation to her wedding along with a cryptic note:

‘Even though the parents wanted a white wedding they’re not coming. Hope you are. Could you give me away? I would like that and it will be wickedly funny.’

I saw the joke when I reached the church on the Upper West Side. The groom was an African-American violinist. He certainly was on the Lord Stepford banned list, and so I had to give her away, much to the puzzlement of many present, though not of her sisters, who found the whole business hugely diverting. Poor Lord Stepford became unwell soon after this event was widely reported in the English tabloids. Ally’s husband behaved exquisitely when her father passed away the following year. He attended the funeral and played a Beethoven violin solo at the wake that followed in Stepfordshire House, and was, unsurprisingly, a big hit with the Stepford clan and their friends. Then the couple returned to New York and we lost touch.

As for Plato, after a year I was told that he had resurfaced in Karachi. He refused to live in the Punjab. Too many memories lay buried in that world. Since he had become known in Britain, his work had been exhibited in all the top galleries in Fatherland — all six of them. He returned to the mullah paintings and added a few local politicians to improve the texture of the satire. These were never exhibited, but remained in his private collection, rumours regarding which swept the small world of the native elite. The begums of high society would invite him and his collection to their homes, mostly when their husbands were at work. He became the equivalent of a high-grade dealer in Kashmiri shawls with his illegal shatoosh much in demand. Plato charged a surprisingly high price for these paintings. I suppose he was justified in doing so, since a number of them could have cost him his life. The bearded subjects of his clandestine caricatures had established a strong base in Karachi, and getting rid of Plato would have been part of a day’s work. So Plato bribed the secular gangsters who ran the town, who found him a large house on the outskirts of Karachi where he grew old comfortably and was regularly visited by aspiring painters. Naturally, the gangsters wanted a cut on each painting he sold, but then everyone does that to someone or other in Fatherland. That was the last I heard of Plato till his startling phone call to Zahid.