The Circle of Reason

Chapter Twenty. Playing to a Beat

And so it happened one day that Dr Uma Verma came upon an odd little group in a roadside café while she was walking down the sand-blown, dusty length of the Avenue Mohamed Khemisti in the little town of El Oued on the north-eastern edge of the Algerian Sahara.

She was on her way to visit a Berber patient of hers, an elderly Acheche woman who had promised her half a dozen eggs from her own chickens. She was walking very briskly; not because she was in a hurry — her patient had assured her, smiling till the tattoos on her face disappeared into her wrinkles, that there would always be eggs in her house for the ‘Indian doctor’ — but partly because that was how she always did everything. That was one of the first lessons her father had taught her. Often, before he set off for school in the morning, the old man would say to her: If you’re going to do anything, do it as though you meant to finish it, and finish it well besides. That’s what went wrong with this country — nobody ever thought anything worth finishing. Look at those Rajput kings and all those Mughals who sat around in Delhi and began things — just began … She could see him now, old Hem Narain Mathur, masterji, his bespectacled eyes bright in the gaunt hollow of his face, smiling, sucking his teeth, standing as though for a photograph beside the most treasured of his few possessions, his first bookcase — a few old nailed-together planks of wood which he had clung to somehow through all his years of wandering — three shelves which held all the most beloved books of his college years, the very bookcase which now haunted a corner of her drawing-room in El Oued like some patient, dusty ghost waiting for who knew what? And she could see herself watching him, stiff and starched in her school uniform and oiled braid, hurrying him out of the house — It’s time to go now, Ba — out into the almost-Himalayan cool of the Dehra Dun morning; walking hand-in-hand through their gullie, past the Clock Tower, listening to his frayed old cotton shirt and white trousers swishing briskly beside her, trying to keep up with him and wondering why it was that he who walked so briskly and talked so often of finishing — not just beginning — had never finished anything himself.

But there he was, in front of his bookcase again, smiling. She could see his smile clearer than ever now; and today, with the smell of failure already bitter in her nostrils, it stung, for she could see that it was at her that he was smiling, even though his smile was not mocking but melancholy.

And so, with her worries gnawing at her mind anew, Mrs Verma quickened her pace.

Just before leaving her house she had spoken to an acquaintance of hers, an Indian doctor in the hospital in Ghardaia, far to the south-west, deep in the Sahara. He or, rather, his wife was more or less her last hope. All her other Indian acquaintances in various hospitals in Algeria had said no, some rudely, some nicely. The young doctor’s was the last name on her list, and now he had said no, too. She couldn’t really blame him, for Ghardaia was a long way away and in any case she had got such a bad connection that he had barely understood what she was trying to say. At the end of her long explanation he had shouted: You want a young Indian woman? Why? She had begun to explain all over again, but the phone was crackling wildly, and she couldn’t even begin to imagine what he heard, for suddenly he shouted, very angrily: No, we don’t have a maidservant, and if you want one you should go back to India, Mrs Verma, instead of asking for my wife.

Then he had slammed the phone down.

So now, despite that unbelievable stroke of luck three days ago, she was back exactly where she had started. It looked as though it was all over.

Mrs Verma pulled the anchal of her sari tight over her head and walked straight on. She was always careful to keep her head covered when she went out into the streets of El Oued; it seemed appropriately modest somehow in that land of cavernous hoods.

But she was still conspicuous as she walked down the Avenue, not only because so many of her own and her husband’s patients greeted her with deep bows and their hands on their hearts, but also because her sari was brilliantly orange. Otherwise there was nothing at all remarkable about a short, pleasantly plump, honey-complexioned woman in her mid-thirties striding briskly down a dusty avenue in a small town. If there was anything to distinguish her from the thousands of other similar women who were probably doing the same thing in thousands of other small towns around the world, it was something which had no connection with her at all. It was the stark lunar majesty of the immense golden sand-dunes which towered above the avenue.

And so Mrs Verma hurried on down the Avenue Mohamed Khemisti, as strikingly visible as a newly flowered anemone on a beach, walking even faster now, for there was her father again, stooping over his bookcase, smiling, saying in his firm, gentle way: Stop worrying about it; it won’t work. It’s pointless. Can’t you see — the issue is political? Haven’t I told you? It’s the very same mistake that the Rationalists made.

Kulfi, who was sitting next to the window, saw her first. Alu, opposite her, was staring down into a glass of thick mint tea; and Zindi, sitting between them, was testing Boss’s forehead with the back of her hand, trying to decide whether he was running a temperature or not.

Kulfi spotted the orange sari when Mrs Verma was still a long way down the street. Very slowly, as though she were afraid to trust her eyes, her thin, tired face froze, and then suddenly she shot upright on her hard steel chair and struck the tin table-top with her fists.

Zindi looked up at that, and when she saw Kulfi sitting deathly rigid in her chair, gripping the edges of the table, her eyes feverishly bright, a great tide of weariness washed over her. She knew the symptoms; she could hardly not. In those two months she had watched the onset of Kulfi’s attacks of chest pains more than a dozen times. She had always done what she could to help her; but this time, with Boss already ill, in an unknown town in the middle of the desert, with nowhere to spend the day but the sand-dunes, an almost irresistible longing to let go gripped her — a yearning to give up, like them.

But instead she leant forward, saying instinctively: Kulfi, do you want to lie down?

In answer Kulfi turned, eyes glittering, and her arm went up and pointed rigidly out of the window.

Then Zindi saw her, too: a short woman in a bright orange sari, with a comfortable, homely face and a prominent upper lip, walking briskly down the street, smiling and nodding at people as she passed them by.

The men at the other tables, who had watched the two women enter the café with frowning disapproval, were staring at them now. Zindi, suddenly self-conscious, pulled Kulfi’s pointing hand down and growled: Be still, Kulfi — people are watching. Let me think. Kulfi pulled her arm free, sprang to her feet and stood poised above the table like a bird about to take flight. Zindi reached out again and this time she took hold of her sari and pulled her down hard. Kulfi crashed down on the chair with a gasp. What’re you doing? she snapped. Can’t you see? She could help us.

Wait, I have to think, Zindi began, but her voice died in her throat and then she forgot Kulfi altogether as the days-old knots of fear in her stomach uncoiled and something seemed to shoot up her spine in a warm jet, bathing her in a blessed shower of relief. Her cradled arms lifted Boss’s head to her cheek and, kissing him, she whispered: Allah! You’re saved now; saved in the middle of the desert. They’re your countrymen; they’ll have to do something for you.

Yes, said Kulfi, swaying on her chair, that’s right. I knew something was going to happen today. I could feel it in my heart. I prayed to Bhagwan Sri Krishan this morning, and he told me. He said: Something’s going to happen today. It won’t go on like this any more.

Kulfi leant forward and squinted into the sunlight. She looks very respectable, she said anxiously. Good family. She smoothed her hair back, ran her fingers through the drapes of her sari and stood up, muttering to herself: What’ll she think? Hair all in knots, no powder, nothing … in the middle of the desert.

Kulfi, wait, Zindi said quickly. You can’t just go like that. What’ll you tell her? She looks a proper babu’s wife. She’ll ask you all kinds of things, she’s bound to: Who’re you? What’re you doing here? and all that.

So? said Kulfi. I’ll tell her something.

Yes, Zindi said sharply, but what?

I could tell her something like — we got off the bus …

No. Zindi shook her head. What you’ll tell her is this. You’ll tell her that you’re tourists; that Boss is your son and that you and Alu are married.

What? Kulfi’s lips curled thinly back. Married to him? she spat, her voice jagged with contempt. Married to that thumbless half-wit? It’s no use, she won’t believe it. Not when she sees him and his withered thumbs.

Alu’s head dropped and involuntarily his hands hid themselves between his legs.

Zindi jabbed Kulfi’s thigh with a forefinger. Listen, she said, you’ll do exactly as I say or you can go on alone. You’ll tell her that Alu is your husband. Never mind his thumbs; he can hide them in his pockets. You’ll tell her that he works for an oil firm in al-Ghazira — she’ll like that. Babus’ wives like people who work for oil firms. Tell her I’m your ayah and you’ve brought me along to look after Boss. Tell her that you’ve come sightseeing; that we’ve arrived here by mistake and Boss has suddenly fallen ill, and that we need a place to spend a night or two. That should satisfy her.

She won’t believe me, Kulfi said. She’ll know I’m not married the moment she sees me. There’s no sindur on my head and there aren’t any bangles on my arms. She’ll know at once.

Tell her something, tell her you’ve lost your things — anything, it doesn’t matter.

Zindi snatched at Kulfi’s arm as she started forward. And listen, she hissed. Not one word about the Bird-man following us. Do you understand?

Do you think I’m a fool? Kulfi glared at her.

The orange sari was passing the window now. Zindi gave Kulfi a push — Go on, tell her — and watched as she darted out of the door. Then she looked up. The stretched white sky seemed to be smiling at her at last, and she smiled back. But a moment later she picked out a tiny speck, hovering like a mote in the sunlight, far above, and gazed at it with gathering unease.

Soon her smile faded away, for she saw that it was a vulture.

Actually Mrs Verma saw them before Kulfi had reached the door. She always glanced into that café when she passed it, for she had once done a series of blood tests on the owner’s wife and ever after he had always come out to greet her when he saw her walking by.

This time, looking in, she caught a glimpse of an unaccustomed shade of yellow somewhere in the dark interior. Something unexpected, something vaguely familiar about the drape of the cloth, lodged in her mind and drew her to a puzzled halt. She looked again and now there could be no doubt: it was a woman in a sari.

She started walking again, shaking her head. Miss Krishnaswamy the nurse perhaps; but, no, she’d asked her whether she wanted to come, and Miss K. had said no, she had to stay and cook lunch. And not Mrs Mishra, either; she was at home, too — she’d seen her that morning, across the square.

And neither of them had saris of quite that shade, and in any case they wouldn’t be sitting in a café. Mrs Verma stopped again and looked back in bafflement, not allowing herself to believe that it could be true: it couldn’t be; it would be too heaven-sent; too much luck; no one was that lucky in this world.

A moment later Kulfi came rushing out of the café and Mrs Verma saw that it was true; that she was indeed a woman in a sari, and quite young, too — exactly the right age in fact.

By the time Kulfi caught up with her Mrs Verma was so elated, so consumed by surprise, that she heard barely a word of Kulfi’s babbled explanations.

The only occasions when other Indians had come to El Oued in the two years Mrs Verma had spent there were when she and her husband, or Dr Mishra and his wife, invited some of their friends and acquaintances from the hospitals in Ouargla or Ghardaia, or even Tamanrasset in the far south, to come up for a holiday. Those visits needed months of advance planning; supplies had to be hoarded, parties organized and leave applied for. Those were the only Indians, as far as she knew, who had ever come to El Oued.

Of course other foreigners, mainly tourists, passed through El Oued every year, in a trickle which varied slightly with the seasons, like the height of the water-table. They were French mainly, with a sprinkling of Germans and a handful of Italians. Sometimes they arrived by bus, with rucksacks on their backs and water-bottles which could have emptied lakes. Or else they came in specially equipped jeeps or vans bristling with compasses to help them find their way south to the Mzab and the Ahaggar — the Heart, they said, of the Sahara. They often turned up at the hospital with upset stomachs or sunburn and talked to her in halting English about the legends of Légionnaires and Mécharistes and the veiled men of the Tuareg; about their childhood dreams of the desert and the promise of dangers and hunger and hardship that had drawn them there. In her first year there she had listened in astonishment and protested, thinking of the lacquered roads and swift buses, the air-conditioned hotels and brimming swimming-pools, the pylons and oil-derricks she had always encountered on her journeys south. But soon, rather than spoil their holidays, she had decided to keep her silence.

Not that everyone merely passed through; many people came just to visit El Oued as well. And there was no doubt about it; it was an extraordinary place. At first, she’d taken it very much for granted. But once someone led her and her husband to the top of the minaret of Sidi Salem.

The sight had taken her breath away.

If you looked down on El Oued — the old town, that is — from the top of the minaret or the new tower in the Hôtel du Souf, what you saw was a fine carpet of thousands and thousands of small yellowish-white domes, ringed by a sea of gigantic golden dunes. The houses stretched into that golden horizon like banks of confectionery at a feast. Every house had not one but dozens of tiny domes, perched on walls which sloped away at bewildering angles. If you walked through the lanes of the old town, every few steps you had to stop and marvel at the brilliant blue borders on the limestone walls; at the little sand-roses encrusted on the houses; the lush, vivid green of the doors. And then, beyond that knotted carpet of domes were the date palms, vast basins of sunken, dusty date palms, only their fronds visible above the sand, doggedly fighting the marching dunes.

But she knew that when she left it would not be the domes or the palms or anything like that that she would see when she tried to remember how it had looked. It would be the dunes. Even now, after two years, whenever she looked at them she was beggared, humbled, all over again, just as she had been the very first time.

These were no ordinary dunes: they were the great towering crescents of the Grand Erg Oriental. When you saw them poised above you, stretching towards the horizon in gigantic scalloped arcs, you could only be silent; they were outside human imagination, a force of nature displaying itself in space, like a typhoon or earthquake rendered palpable and permanent.

There were lots of other things about El Oued — fine points of Saharan architecture and archaeology and anthropology. Erudite visitors temporarily humbled by diarrhoea or dysentery often told her about those things. She would listen to them and then send them on to Dr Mishra. He took an interest in that kind of thing.

As for herself, she preferred people.

Mrs Verma tried to listen as the thin, pale woman chattered excitedly on: … and, then, you know the firm gives him a holiday bonus, so we thought why not? Everyone else buys VCRs and TVs but we already have all those things and we thought, you know, we should see the world, too, especially since we have an ayah and everything. Of course, it was a problem, you know, our house there is so huge and I didn’t know who to leave it with, servants are so unreliable nowadays, but if you think of all that you can nev-er do anything …

But the one thought on Mrs Verma’s mind was: Two years, two years, and not so much as a hint of an Indian tourist; and now, in the space of three short days, just when we need them …

She saw old Hem Narain Mathur standing beside his bookcase, smiling, and this time she smiled triumphantly back.

Raising herself on tiptoe, Mrs Verma stole a look over Kulfi’s shoulder and immediately fell back flat-footed. An indescribably vast woman swathed in some kind of immense black tent was bearing down on her, like a migrating Bedouin camp. She had a baby in her arms, and following close behind her, with his hands behind his back, was a man with a strangely distended head, and huge, staring, watchful eyes.

It occurred to Mrs Verma that this was the husband the pale woman had been talking about all this while. Her first reaction was of mild relief: as soon as she had heard about the husband some subterranean layer of her mind had busied itself with calculating whether this new factor would entail an even more dramatic revision of her casting than she had allowed for when she first saw the woman in the sari. But the moment she saw him she knew there was nothing to worry about: her first choice wasn’t ideal perhaps, but certainly this husband of hers was no contender for the role of mythological hero.

It occurred to her that she had said almost nothing all this while. Scolding herself for her thoughtless selfishness, she reached out, took Kulfi’s hand in her own and smiled. Kulfi broke off in mid-sentence, silenced by the sweetness of her smile. Mrs Verma said softly: I can’t tell you how happy I am to see you. My name is Uma Verma, Dr Uma Verma. My husband and I work in the hospital here. He’s in ENT and I’m a microbiologist.

She stopped, for Kulfi was brushing her hands across her eyes, and it didn’t seem as though she had understood much. I do a bit of gynae, too, she added quickly, though it’s not on the contract.

But that didn’t appear to make much of an impression, either, so then she said simply: You’re very, very welcome.

Next moment Zindi was upon her, her heavy-jowled face blazing hope. You’re a doctor? she cried in her guttural Hindi. A real doctor? God be praised.

She thrust Boss into Mrs Verma’s arms. What’s happened to him, Doctor? she said, her voice honed sharp by days of unvoiced worry. What’s happened to him, Doctor? Tell me what’s happened to him.

Mrs Verma felt his forehead with the back of her hand. I’m not in paediatrics, she said apologetically, but I don’t think it’s anything serious. Perhaps he has a little fever. Has he been like this for long?

Ten days, Doctor, Zindi said. Ten whole days.

Ten days! Mrs Verma was shocked. She turned to Kulfi: Why haven’t you taken him to a doctor before this?

There wasn’t any time, Doctor, Zindi cried, the words pouring out of her in a wailing, unthinking wave. There just wasn’t any time. First, we were on the ship and we couldn’t take him to the doctor there, though I did give him a few tablets. Then we had to get off at Tunis. I thought we’d find a doctor there, and actually we were on our way but then suddenly something happened and we had to rush off and that made him worse. Then in Kairouan I thought I’d take him, but we had to rush off again, and after that it was just a mess and all we could think of was how to get to the border …

Kulfi managed to stop her by leaning sideways and giving her elbow a discreet jog. It’s all right now, she said, smiling brightly at Mrs Verma. God has brought us to a doctor.

Mrs Verma ignored her. To me, she said, frowning, it sounds rather as if you were running away from something.

For an unbearably long moment she examined their faces.

Zindi held her breath: the doctor looked as though she had read something on their faces. How? Had the Bird-man’s talons marked them with the scars of the hunted?

Then Mrs Verma shrugged and said briskly: Anyway, he’ll be all right; I don’t think it’s anything serious. Probably just needs a little rest and a tonic.

Yes, Doctor, Zindi said eagerly, that’s what I thought — just a little rest.

You can come and stay with us, of course, Mrs Verma said to Kulfi, ignoring Zindi. We have plenty of room — though it may be a little crowded now, with so many people. But you won’t have any trouble. We could go right now, but we’d better not carry your little boy all the way in the heat. I’ll ask Driss to let you rest inside the café. Then I’ll go on home and see if we can get the hospital’s land-rover to fetch you.

She made her way through the little crowd that had gathered around them into the café and talked urgently to the proprietor in her own argot of French and Arabic. When they followed her in, she smiled: It’s done. The proprietor found them a table next to a fan and went off to fetch a mattress for Boss.

I’d better go now, Mrs Verma said. Would you like to come with me Mrs … Mrs …?

Bose. Mrs Bose.

Oh! exclaimed Mrs Verma in surprise. You’re Bengali, too, then? You speak Hindi very well.

Kulfi let out a trill of high laughter. He is, she said. I’m from … from Jamshedpur. Then she paused, puzzled: What do you mean — Bengali, too?

Oh, we have another visitor in our house, Mrs Verma said, but never mind that. She turned to Alu: So you’re Bengali?

He nodded.

I see, she said. Well, you might be able to help me a little.

How? said Alu nervously.

I’ll explain later, she said. It’s a small thing, a translation. A thought struck her, and she clutched at Kulfi’s hand. I hope you can stay for a while? she asked anxiously. You’re not in a hurry or anything, are you? You must stay at least a week. At the very least. I won’t let you go before that.

Kulfi, surprised, said: Yes, we can stay a week, I’m sure.

Good, Mrs Verma said, patting her hand. Very good. She thought of what Dr Mishra would say when he heard and suddenly she was smiling radiantly, tasting for the first time the full flavour of the victory which now seemed within her grasp.

So, sighed Zindi, it looks as though we’re safe from the Bird-man at last.

There’s only one way to be sure of that, said Alu.

What?

Don’t ever say ‘We’re going west’ again.

As quick as she could Zindi slapped her hand over his mouth. But it was already too late. You’ve said it, it’s done now, she whispered, trembling, her eyes searching the corners and shadows of the café. They were empty to all appearances, but that meant nothing. It’s done now, she whispered again. Now it’s just a matter of time.

It was nothing less than a certainty; like a sorcerer’s incantation those words could conjure a presence out of emptiness.

When she first said it she could not have imagined that words could leave a trail like an animal’s spoor. Even if she had, there was nothing else she could have said then; there was no other direction they could have taken. For that was the day they reached her village and her brothers’ wives barred their doors on her and shrieked till the roof of the very house she had built for them shook: The whore’s back from al-Ghazira — Fatheyya, who’s given herself some fancy whoring name. She’s come to take our daughters for her brothel.

It was more a hamlet than a village — a little ’izba, near Damanhour, perched on the casuarina-lined banks of a canal — a few mud-walled dwellings and one big house: the house that Zindi’s brothers had built with her Ghaziri dirhams. The way there was all dust and drying cotton fields and barking dogs, but when they arrived they were cheering — all five of them, Zindi, Abu Fahl, Zaghloul, Kulfi and Alu — screaming like children waiting at a circus. For this was no ordinary hamlet: it was the dream which had kept them alive while they dragged themselves across oceans, seas and half of Egypt; it was a promise of deliverance, of refuge, of a new life. They were cheering so loud when they drew up in their hired pick-up truck that it was a long while before they noticed the eerily empty lanes, the barred doors and the screeching chorus of voices.

When she heard those voices at last, Zindi looked around her at the mud walls of the lane, glowing treacherously in the morning sun, and she knew that if she were to live in that narrow pathway, jostled with hate on every side, she would not live to see another year.

It was all over then.

But she had a revenge of sorts. Abu Fahl battered down the door and they loaded their truck with furniture, jewellery, bales of newly harvested cotton — every movable object of value they could find. But those were paltry things; they could make no difference to a woman who had lost her nephews, nieces, land, even the magic of the name she had chosen for herself (who knew from where?). She was a different Zindi now, stripped, revealed as nothing but Fatheyya, plain old Fatheyya, Fatheyya Umm-nobody, mother of nothing, poor, simple, barren Fatheyya who was once abandoned in Alexandria by a child-hungry husband. Nothing she took with her could shut her ears to the cries of her brothers’ wives, the roar which shook the dead cotton bushes in the fields and creaked in the canals with the kababis: Fatheyya the whore is gone at last, shukr Illah!

That was when, teeth gritted, eyes rolling, she said to the driver of the truck: We’ll go west.

At first she had meant nothing farther away than Alexandria. She filled the first part of their bumpy ride with plans — she still had money left, and there would be more now with that truckful of goods. It could lead to anything — a new house, a shop, even a factory. But, at the crossroads near ad-Dilinjat, Abu Fahl and Zaghloul spotted the fine two-storey houses their fathers and Abusa’s father had built with their Ghazira-earned money. They looked down the road at distant, difficult Alexandria, and then back again at their fields and the houses with their crenellated pigeon-towers; they saw their lands growing, brides smiling and children playing naked in the canals as they had done themselves. And then there was no holding them.

After that Zindi talked to the half-empty Datsun about her plans not because she believed in them any more, but because she could not bear the silence.

It happened that very evening in Alexandria. Zindi and Alu saw him while Kulfi was away buying a comb at a shop in Tahrir Square. He was standing on the Corniche, leaning on the parapet with his back to them, watching the gulls as they scavenged in the harbour.

Two days later they heard that an Indian was asking about a huge woman called Zindi and a potato-headed Indian. Zindi decided then that Alexandria wasn’t safe. Next morning she dug out the passports she had had made for them in al-Ghazira and went off to a friend in Muharram Bey who dealt in currencies and visas, and she had them stamped for every country she could think of.

He asked: Where are you going, Zindi? And she answered: We’re going west, where the sewing machines are.

It happened again. This time Alu saw him alone. Zindi had raced off to the harbour because the wind had brought news that Virat Singh, the great pehlwan of Bareilly, had turned sailor and arrived in Alexandria in a Greek freighter. So Alu, with Kulfi snarling at him, and nothing else to do, wandered off to the Mohattat ar-Raml; and there, just as he was about to cross the street to the tram station, the door of a Greek restaurant opened and the Bird-man stood opposite him, staring him in the face. He ran, managed to lose him, but only just, by barging through the crowds on Safia Zaghloul Street and doubling back down Nabi Danial.

Later he discovered that at that very moment Virat Singh had asked Zindi: And where are you going next? And Zindi had answered: Westwards.

But it turned out well, for it so happened that Virat Singh’s ship was going west, too, to Lisbon. So naturally he decided to take them with him: balls to the captain.

So the ship it was and plain sailing, with the four of them safely hidden away below deck, until Alu asked: What after Lisbon, Zindi? Absent-mindedly (for she was tending to Kulfi, who had just had an attack of chest pains) she answered: Westwards still; where the sewing machine sets.

Sure enough, at dawn the next day, when the ship docked at Tunis, soon after Zindi first detected Boss’s fever, Virat Singh came scrambling down to tell them that there was an Indian on the bridge, some kind of policeman, who was insisting that the ship be searched for stowaways.

With the help of a few friends and a little money Virat Singh smuggled them off the ship and through the port, to the vast football-field width of the Place d’Afrique. Where now, Zindi? he asked, before turning back.

Zindi covered her face and sobbed: Westwards, where else?

It broke his great pehlwan heart to see her like that. He put a huge corded arm around her shoulders and barked, tugging fiercely at his moustaches: I’ve got to go now, before they find me missing. But I’ll be back. The ship will be in Tangier exactly three weeks from now, on its way to Port Said and Bombay. If you need help, meet me there.

Inevitably, that day they saw the Bird-man again. It happened while Zindi and Alu were wandering along the Avenue de France trying to find a doctor for Boss. They shot across the Avenue with his claws almost digging into their shoulders. They managed to lose him in the maze of the Medina and later, somehow, they dragged themselves to the Souq al-Attarine where Kulfi was buying perfume. That was the end of Tunis for them. But there he was again at Kairouan. This time it was he who spotted them, Alu and Zindi, bargaining at a taxi-stand, and he chased them all along the city walls, shouting.

What was he shouting? Zindi asked Alu later.

Alu said: He was shouting — Come back, I only want to talk to you.

Yes, snorted Zindi, come back to be tear-gassed.

After that Zindi would hear of nothing, stop for nothing — fever, chest pains, anything short of death. But mysteriously, just then, chance began to play at puppetry with them; trains left moments before they arrived at the station, buses were full up, taxis had flat tyres … And no sign of the Bird-man all that while. Where was he? Where was he waiting? Or had he flown away at last?

Never again, Zindi swore, would she say those words, those deadly, poisonous, son-of-a-bitch words. There was only one hope now: the border. The border it had to be; safety lay on the other side, in the vast welcoming emptiness of the Sahara.

So there they were, ten days after they left Virat Singh, sitting in a café in the desert. And now?

And now, said Zindi, you’ve said it again.

She looked up at the sky and a flash of hope sparked in her eyes. Perhaps, she said, we are safe after all. There aren’t any birds in the desert.

But a moment later she saw the vulture again, circling patiently above.

As they walked down the Avenue, Kulfi was still wondering, with gnawing apprehension, what exactly Mrs Verma had meant when she remarked: It sounds rather as if you were running away from something. She couldn’t help shooting a few quick sidelong glances at her.

Mrs Verma saw Kulfi looking at her and instinctively her hand rose to cover her protruding upper lip. She knew what her profile was like. She tried to think of something to say, but nothing occurred to her. It was always like that: since her girlhood she had never had the defences to cope with those particular looks.

It would have been different if her father had listened to her while she was still at school. There was still a chance then. She knew, because when she was twelve two girls in her class had had braces fitted by the Parsi dentist who had his clinic near the Odeon. Their cases were much worse than hers; their teeth fell like weighted curtains over their lower lips. But six months after they got their braces you could see the difference, and after a year you could hardly tell.

She talked about it to her father, all the time, hinting, hoping. He had prominent front teeth as well; she got hers from him. It gave her a right to hope that he would understand; after all, he had suffered the name Dantu through all his college years. Surely he had once felt something of what she went through every time the teacher told her to stop staring and cover her teeth, and the whole class exploded into laughter? It wasn’t the money; she knew that. It didn’t cost much; he could have raised the sum if he’d wanted. It was only a question of making him understand. He had always listened gravely and attentively to everything she had ever had to say. But when it came to this subject he never seemed to notice.

Actually, of course, he did notice; had noticed all the time. She discovered that when she couldn’t bear it any more and said to him, weeping: Ba, if you don’t take me to that dentist I’ll die. I know it. Even if I don’t die right now, no one will marry me so I’ll die as soon as I grow up.

There was a strong practical streak in her even then, so she added: And think of all the trouble you’ll have trying to find me a husband.

He took her into his lap then and dried her cheeks with the hem of his kurta. My love, he said, do you think I don’t know what it’s like?

Then, take me to that dentist, she sobbed.

I can’t, he said helplessly. I can’t — not for this. Don’t you see: it’s not important. If it was to do with your health, we’d go this very minute. But this is just a thing of appearances.

But it’s important to me. And it would be so easy.

No, my love; it wouldn’t be easy at all. What do you change if you change your face? Those are things of the outside; if we wanted things like that, where would we stop — jewellery, cars, money, houses? That’s not how I’ve lived, and that’s not how I want you to live. As for marriage, if no one wants you, why, you’ll be free. Anyway you’re going to be a microbiologist, a scientist; you’ll be too busy with your experiments to think about such things.

I will think about it, she cried. I think about it all the time — in school, walking down the road, everywhere. It’s the only thing I think about.

Then, he said, that’s the best reason for not doing anything about it. As you grow older, it’ll matter less and less. You’ll see. And the day it doesn’t matter at all you’ll know you’re a woman at last.

She shrank back, frightened by the finality of his tone. Then, choking on her sobs, she pounded on his chest: It’ll always matter; it’ll always matter. How can you know? You don’t have to live with it.

He caught her hands and kissed them. I’ll show you, he said. He turned and pulled a book out of his old bookcase. I’ll translate something for you. When I read it to you, you’ll see that things like these don’t matter.

She pushed herself angrily out of his lap and didn’t talk to him for a week. A translation. What difference would a translation make to the laughter in her classroom?

But the old man had been right about one thing: almost imperceptibly every passing year dulled the wounding edge of those glances. Nowadays it took her only a few minutes to recover.

So, after a while, almost cheerfully, she said to Kulfi: It’s a small town, isn’t it? One day I’ll take you to the top of a minaret and you can see it all spread out below you. Actually we’ve been here just two years ourselves. We’re leaving soon. Our children won’t let us stay away any longer. They’re back home in Dehra Dun.

Oh, said Kulfi, glad to have the silence broken. So you’ve come here with only your husband, then? I suppose there aren’t any other Indians here?

Oh, no, Mrs Verma laughed. There are five of us. There’s Miss Krishnaswamy — she’s a nurse. Then there’s Dr Mishra. He’s the seniormost among us. He’s a surgeon. He’s very good; some people say he’s brilliant. He looks it; you’ll see when you meet him. Then there’s his wife, but she’s not a doctor. They’re both from Lucknow.

It must have been lonely, Kulfi said thoughtfully, coming to a foreign place; having to work with people you didn’t know. You know, in al-Ghazira, I must say, in the beginning, though there were all his colleagues in the firm, I really—

People I didn’t know? Mrs Verma interrupted her. You mean Dr Mishra? Yes, I suppose it’s true that we didn’t know him, but it didn’t feel like that. You see, I’d heard about him for years. My father knew his father quite well once upon a time, and he talked about them quite a lot. So in a way, when we first met him at the interviews in Delhi, it was like meeting someone we’d known for a long time. Besides, he talks a lot …

Her voice trailed off. You’ll see, she added lamely. You’ll meet him this evening. I’ll ask them over so that we can make arrangements for …

She stopped and looked intently at Kulfi. Kulfi stopped beside her.

Tell me, Mrs Bose, she said, can you act?

Perhaps, Zindi said hesitantly, she could do something about your hands, too. After all, she’s a doctor.

Alu jerked his head quickly from side to side and his hands slid behind his chair. Much later she saw him sitting with his hands in his lap, staring at his fingers. The thumbs had stiffened and the skin had sagged over the bones, like a shroud on a skeleton. He tried to move them and he couldn’t. The bones were as rigid as a corpse’s; she half-expected them to clatter, dice-like. Then Alu caught her looking at him, and at once his hands disappeared under him and he went back to staring vacantly ahead of him.

That was the only time she had referred to his thumbs. She first saw them long after they had slipped past the frowning heights of Perim, through the Bab al-Mandab, into the Red Sea. They had already been at sea for — it seemed like months, with months left to go.

Somewhere on the journey, soon after Zeynab had swung through the Red Sea in a great arc and tacked close to the coast between Dhofar and Makalla, a very old man appeared in the ship. Nobody saw him arrive; he was just there one day. Nobody wondered, either, for there were boats enough drawing alongside Zeynab on that stretch of the coast, though always under the cover of darkness. He was a small man, with a gritty, hollowed-out face. He wore a string vest, a hat like in American movies, and khaki trousers many sizes too large for him (there were plenty of British soldiers in those parts, some dead). Nobody knew his name, for he couldn’t talk. His tongue had been torn out from the roots; he would wag the stump for anyone who cared to look. Nobody needed to ask how it had happened: there were more wars than villages along those shores.

Fikry, the dark, towering nakhuda of Zeynab, was said to know all about him. But despite Zindi’s efforts he never gave anything away, not even his name.

In the end the old man was named by the half-dozen boys of various ages who manned Zeynab. His one possession happened to be a Japanese umbrella, a thing of great mechanical beauty, which grew at the press of a button from a foot-long stump into a vast canopy, as shady as a banyan tree. It was dubbed, naturally, the Japanese Miracle, and it gave him his name: Abu Karamat il-Yabani.

He of the Japanese Miracle never lost his smile, all through the days after Makalla when they swung out again towards the open sea and their barrels of fresh water were found to be empty; nor even afterwards when they ran out of food somewhere in the Red Sea, along the Eritrean coast, and not one of the boats Fikry waited for in three different places turned up. Even then he kept smiling, though for everyone else it was nothing less than torture to have to watch the fires of the fishing villages on the coast and smell the delicious warmth of cow-dung smoke on empty stomachs.

Provisions reached them soon after, but then they had to suffer a torture of another kind. Fikry decided one evening that a coastguard or some other busybody had sniffed their trail. So with a few powerful bursts of her engines (rescued from a Centurion tank somewhere in Iraq) Zeynab lost herself in the basaltic maze of the Dahlak Archipelago. For the next few days they had to pick their way through hell. While two boys hung over the prow examining the colour of the water and shouting instructions to Fikry, at the wheel, they had to sit motionless as those tortured, jagged anvils of rock flung themselves at the boat’s side; watch while the magnificent, muted colours of the coral reefs leapt up without warning to scrape Zeynab’s prow.

It was somewhere there that a tail of sharks attached itself to Zeynab. No one knew what drew them: perhaps it was the sight of those two boys hanging so close to the water. It couldn’t have been the meagre remains of their rice-and-lentils meals.

No, said Fikry, they hang close because they like the smell of human shit. And, certainly, it was under the holes in the stern that they usually hung, jaws snapping, waiting for fresh turds.

All through those days the old man never once stopped smiling. He and Alu were drawn to each other by their silences, and soon they were spending the days sitting together on a little ledge near the stern, silently meditating under the banyan shade of the Japanese Miracle.

Things grew a little better after the Dahlak Archipelago. But their progress was still slow; for Fikry, in his keenness to stay safely away from the main shipping lanes, kept them close to the mangrove-encrusted shores where they had to pick their way through unpredictable sand-shoals. In the stretch between Trinkitat and Suakin they swung out towards the main shipping lanes again, to avoid Port Sudan, and somewhere there Fikry sniffed the air one morning and said: Big ships ahead — I can smell them. He laughed at the alarm his announcement caused: Nothing to worry about — these fish are too big to stop for shrimps like us.

Soon they saw it: like a city in the sea; so vast that it took a full half-hour to climb over the horizon, emerging gradually, in layers, until even at that distance it was like a marine skyscraper, dwarfing the little flotilla of destroyers in its wake. It grew vaster and vaster as it ploughed towards them. They could see planes on its flat deck now, and tiny men in uniform, and towers and turrets.

Those are guns, said Fikry, not these water-pistols we’re selling.

They were all crowded along the sides of Zeynab now, watching in silent awe. As it drew closer its flat deck became part of the sky above them and they could only see the curving black steel of its side. Even its bow wave was higher than the tallest mast in Zeynab. When it was almost level with them Abu Fahl let out a great yell and Zaghloul tore off his scarf and waved it in the air. Next moment the tiny Zeynab erupted into shouts and whistles and cheers.

He of the Japanese Miracle was watching, too, but he had ducked down and was squinting over the railing, his face screwed small like an angry boy’s. Then suddenly he leapt to his feet, gabbling incoherently in bellowing grunts and snorts, and waved the Japanese Miracle in the air. As the aircraft-carrier drew level with Zeynab his gabblings rose to a frenzy. Before anyone could stop him he threw one leg over the railing, swung his arms back and hurled the Japanese Miracle at the vast ship.

And just then, while his hands were still in the air and his leg was hanging precariously over the side, the aircraft-carrier’s bow wave hit Zeynab and tossed her up. The old man tottered and clutched wildly at the rail. But the timber was wet, his hands slipped, and with a last terrified grunt he fell.

Even before he struck the water it had erupted with the thrashing of sharks’ tails.

Alu was closest to him and he shouted: He’s gone over. He whipped round and reached for a rope. But no sooner had he picked it up than it slid out of his hands. He tried again; and again, like water, the rope poured out of his hands. So he stood there frozen, staring at his hands in helpless horror.

Do something, Kulfi shrieked. Throw him the rope.

He looked up then, and said: I can’t.

Instead it was Abu Fahl who ran there and flung a rope over the side. They could still see the old man, though the water around him was already frothing with blood. A shark rammed into him and dived but an instant later it was snapped in half by its own kin and its severed head floated grotesquely to the surface with a khaki-clad leg still clamped between its jaws.

The old man’s head was still above water, his fear-crazed eyes crying for help. Abu Fahl flung the rope out and the old man lunged with the last reserves of his strength, but the rope danced past his hands on a wave. Abu Fahl threw it out again and this time it went straight to him. They saw his fingers clawing, closing on the rope. Abu Fahl heaved and Zaghloul caught hold of the rope, too, and they hauled it in together, as quickly as they could. They saw his hands, his shoulders, his head, rising safely from the water. Then two sharp fins scythed through the water and afterwards, when the foam cleared, the head, the torso and the shoulders were all gone but the hands and arms and bloody, ragged stumps were still clinging to the rope as though the old man had willed them all his dying strength.

Abu Fahl and Zaghloul covered their faces and prayed.

Later Kulfi went up to Alu, and in front of the whole ship she hissed: Why didn’t you do anything?

In answer he held up his hands and they all saw that his thumbs had gone rigid and the skin had begun to sag on them like the fuzz on fallen apricots.

Kulfi spat on the deck, and held his hand up for everyone to see. Look, she said, you’re looking at the most useless thing in the world — a weaver without thumbs.

She pulled his hand back and slapped his face with it. Hold them up in front of you, she said. They’ll remind you that you can never do anything again. All you’ve got left now are your eyes.

This is how it had happened.

Dr Mishra brought up the matter first, giving Mrs Verma an initial tactical advantage.

Verma, he said, addressing himself to her thin faded husband, as he always did when he wanted to say something important to her. Do you have any ideas for this celebration they’re planning at the hospital?

Startled, Mrs Verma almost spilt the dal she was ladling into Mrs Mishra’s plate (for Mrs Mishra would have nothing to do with the meat curry; vegetarianism was the only issue on which she had ever dared to go against her husband’s declared wishes).

Not that Mrs Verma was surprised: a couple of their Algerian colleagues had already dropped a few hints to her about a get-together. She had expected it, for at about the same time last year they had organized a small celebration to mark the second anniversary of their arrival in El Oued. Since they were to leave in a few months she had taken it for granted that they would do something of the same kind this year; on a larger scale, if anything. But she had taken great care not to mention the matter in Dr Mishra’s hearing. She knew it was going to be a long battle, and she had no intention of hampering herself by choosing her ground first. And now Dr Mishra had conceded her the advantage.

Her husband, following his instructions, said nothing. Instead, Mrs Verma, choosing her words carefully, said: Well, Mishra-sahb, why don’t you tell us what you have in mind?

She knew perfectly well of course: what he had in mind was a repeat of last year.

Last year all the doctors, nurses, and even a few patients, had gathered in a large room in the hospital. First, a couple of their Algerian colleagues had said a few nice things. Then Dr Mishra, with the help of an interpreter, had made a speech.

He began by talking matter-of-factly about how happy he and all the other Indian doctors were to have had this chance to live and work in Algeria for a while — and to earn plenty of money, he added in an undertone (that raised a laugh). He commented on the good sense of the Algerian government in compulsorily repatriating half their salaries to India in foreign exchange. It showed, he said, a genuine understanding of the needs of developing nations (tactfully he said nothing about how the French doctors in Algeria were paid much more than they were, simply for being French). But, then, he went on, it was only to be expected, for they had all seen for themselves how, almost alone among the oil-producing nations, Algeria had forsworn ostentation and concentrated on bettering the lot of the common people; how, in such marked contrast to some neighbouring countries he could name, in Algeria one sensed everywhere an energetic purposiveness, a belief in the future.

But it was only after that, when he began to talk about the Algerian revolution, that he spoke with real emotion. He talked of how he had followed every event in the course of the revolutionary movement in the fifties and sixties; of his great admiration for Ben Bella (causing more than a little embarrassed foot-shuffling in the audience). With a softly confiding wonder that seemed very strange in a man usually so trenchantly cynical, he told them how moving it had been to work in a country that had literally risen from ashes; how it still staggered him to think that this very country had survived one of the most savage wars of this century; that it had lived through the whole wretched catalogue of technology-taught horrors — concentration camps, organized genocide and all the rest — that had been inflicted upon it by the French. It was nothing less, he said, than a testimony to the strength of the human spirit that a people who, of their meagre sixteen millions, had lost one whole million, had yet gone on to face the future without bitterness.

As a socialist, he ended, his voice breaking, it had filled him with pride to work in such a nation.

His emotion was very real. He had meant every word he said, and his audience was moved, despite the falterings of the translator. For months afterwards everybody they met talked about Dr Mishra’s speech.

It was not that she objected to what he said, for of course it was all true. But, still, at the end of his speech she had had to stifle a laugh.

Maithili Sharan Mishra a socialist! Even while he was saying it, she had heard old Hem Narain Mathur’s voice in her ear, telling her how bright young Murali Charan Mishra had come back to Lucknow in the thirties with a degree from the London School of Economics in his pocket, the Indian Masses on his lips, and a Scottish pipe in his mouth. That was the kind of socialist he was.

His son, too, for all Lucknow had known that young Maithili Sharan’s one ambition was to follow his father into politics. Only, by then, old Murali Charan knew better, and even though his decades of fancy footwork in various legislatures had earned him more money than people could even begin to guess at he had ultimately forced his son into the safe certainties of the medical profession.

It was not that Mrs Verma was self-righteous politically; her father had talked to her too often about the ugliness of socialist in-fighting. But certainly, if anyone had a right to point his finger at Murali Charan Mishra, it was old Hem Narain Mathur. For he was a real socialist, as true as the new-ploughed earth, and he had died in unsung obscurity while Murali Charan Mishra was still fattening himself on ministerships. It was a debt which had to be paid some day.

In 1933, a few confused months after he left Presidency College, Hem Narain Mathur gave up a fine job with a tea company and plunged into Bihar’s villages with Swami Sahajanand and the reactivated Kisan Sabha movement. Often it was a forlorn and lonely life: in the villages he battled vainly to explain his theories, the glories of science, and his vision of the future (which he only half-understood himself); and back at the innumerable party conferences and congresses he battled no less vainly to explain to Murali Charan Mishra and the party theoreticians that people were not atoms to be dealt with in formulae.

And while he was away, organizing that movement or this, at some conference or the other, the party was always splitting and splintering. At the centre of it all was Murali Charan Mishra, his pipe hidden under his various man-of-the-people disguises, reading out his evolving theses — first, on the Uneven Development of the Economy; then on Progressive Bourgeois Nationalism; and finally on the need for a Guiding Hand at certain stages of history, and the absolute necessity for an immediate tactical alliance with the classes and parties in power.

And so, while Murali Charan Mishra climbed his way up the political ladder on the rubble of the crumbling socialists, Hem Narain Mathur grew old before his time, torn between certainty and history. He wasted away with the obscurest of diseases, bewilderment, as he watched the world spinning beyond his grasp; as old comrades began to out-scoundrel scoundrels once they had been given a whiff of power; as fledgeling peasant unions withered inexplicably away or simply vanished in puffs of smoke as the membership was roasted alive by landlords. He had one final surge of energy in the fifties when Ram Manohar Lohia kindled the last spark of hope in the socialists. But by that time he was already too ill and too tired to carry on long; all that he really longed for was the solace of his bookcase, of J. C. Bose and Huxley, of Tagore and Darwin, Hazlitt and Science Today, and of course of that beacon which still lit those unsteady shelves — the Life of Pasteur. His mind was made up for him when his wife died suddenly of meningitis, leaving him with a daughter to bring up on his own. It was then that he took a job in a small government school in Dehra Dun. And there he lived out the rest of his time — a tired old man who, as he said so often, had only one worthwhile thing left to do. And that was to introduce his two redeemers, his old bookcase and his growing daughter, to each other.

But right till the very end he had stayed a socialist; never once was he tempted by the simple-minded attractions of cynicism. Lying on his deathbed with the spoonful of holy water from the Ganges already at his lips, he had found the strength to place his daughter’s hand on his bookcase and say: My love, make my failures the beginning of your hopes.

If anyone had a right to object when Murali Charan Mishra’s son called himself a socialist, it was her father’s daughter.

To tell you the truth, said Dr Mishra, I thought it went off quite satisfactorily last year. He was a short, stout man in his early fifties, with a round face and a bushy, unkempt moustache. His head was shinily bald, except for a crop of curly hair which ran along the top of his neck to his eartops. He was never still: a crackling, restless energy coursed incessantly through him, sparking out of his bright, bespectacled eyes and keeping his hands continually busy.

Some more meat, Mishra-sahb? Mrs Verma said, emptying a spoonful into his plate.

So, Verma, what do you think? Dr Mishra said, a little too loudly. I don’t see the need for a change. Shall we just have the same kind of thing again this year?

Dr Verma did not look up from his plate; nor did he by the slightest gesture acknowledge that the question had been addressed to him. Mrs Verma busied herself with the rice: she had to be careful now; she could tell that he had already guessed something; that he was trying to draw her out. She laughed briefly: It was very nice last year, Mishra-sahb, really wonderful. And, of course, if you feel strongly …

She left the sentence strategically unfinished and turned to Mrs Mishra: No more rice, Manda-bahen? Then have some prickly-pear custard — we got them from our own cactus. It tastes just like mango really, if you don’t worry about the smell too much.

Dr Mishra was ripping a chapati into minute pieces. So, then, Verma, he barked, you do have some other idea, do you?

Not exactly an idea, Mrs Verma said smoothly, but, yes, I did think that this year we could have something a little less cerebral … something lively … Of course, we must have your speech, too; we can’t possibly do without it. But in addition, if we could have something on the stage maybe, just something small to give everyone a glimpse of our country and our culture, our village life …

So that’s your idea, is it, Verma? Dr Mishra snorted.

Dr Verma sleepily mopped his plate with a chapati.

So you want to give them a glimpse of ‘our culture’, do you? Dr Mishra said. What exactly did you have in mind, Verma, could I ask? A pageant of the costumes of Indian brides perhaps, like the bureaucrats put on for foreigners in Delhi? We could dress up our elderly Miss K. and our own shy little brides, and you and I could be the bright young grooms, couldn’t we?

No one suggested that, Dr Mishra, Mrs Verma said sharply. She could feel her temper rising.

Oh, no, you didn’t suggest that, Dr Mishra snapped. What did you suggest, then, Verma?

Dr Verma quietly collected a few plates and went into the kitchen.

Can I suggest something, then? Dr Mishra went on, talking at the empty chair. Why don’t we give them a more realistic picture of our culture’? Why don’t we show them how all those fancily dressed-up brides are doused with kerosene and roasted alive when they can’t give their grooms enough dowry? Why don’t we show them how rich landlords massacre Untouchables and raze their villages to the ground every second day? Or how Muslims are regularly chopped into little bits by Hindu fanatics? Or maybe we could just have a few nice colour pictures of police atrocities? That’s what ‘our culture’ really is, isn’t it, Verma? Why should we be ashamed of it?

Typical! Mrs Verma exploded. Absolutely typical! Just like 1936.

1936? Dr Mishra turned to her at last, in bewilderment. Why 1936? You weren’t even born then.

So what if I wasn’t born then? That doesn’t mean I don’t know about it.

About what?

Mrs Verma’s face was suffused with blood now. She pounded her fist on the table. Don’t lie, she shouted. You know perfectly well what: 1936 — the second socialist conference in Meerut. Don’t think we’ve forgotten, for we haven’t. What was your little crowd doing there, do you remember? Do you remember how you lectured us about revolutionary theory and class struggle; about historical necessity and Leninist party organization? Do you remember how you talked about technology and the Scientific Temper and building a new rational world by destroying the superstitions of the peasants? And then, when we said surely there was more to socialism than just that, that in the villages we talked of socialism as hope, do you remember how you laughed? You laughed and said: Comrades, leave your villages for a while; peasants can’t lead peasants; go and study your theory. And, after all that, where were you when the crunch came? Who fell over themselves in their hurry to join the Congress in 1947 so that they wouldn’t have to waste any time in getting their fingers into all that newly independent money? Who broke the Praja Socialist Party when the real socialists were away, struggling in the villages? Who sabotaged Lohia? Don’t think we’ve forgotten. We’ve forgotten nothing. We know your kind inside and outside, through and through: we’ve heard your sugary speeches and we’ve seen the snakes hidden up your sleeves; we’ve seen you wallowing in filth with the Congress while High Theory drips from your mouths; we’ve heard you spouting about the Misery of the Masses while your fingers dig into their pockets; we’ve watched you while you were snarling over bribes with your Congress gang-mates, so we know exactly where your cynicism comes from. It comes from the rottenness within: those who’ve been dipped in pitch see nothing but blackness everywhere. So please don’t give me any clever lectures about India and Indian society, Dr Murali Charan Mishra, for my father gave me the measure of your kind when I was still a schoolgirl.

Dr Mishra laughed. It was a frightening thing about him that, though he often seemed to be on the verge of losing his temper, he never actually did so.

Murali Charan Mishra was my father, he said.

Same thing, she snapped, her chest heaving.

Dr Mishra smiled: Anyway, it’s all much clearer now. What you really want to do is climb on to the sand-dunes and let the Algerians know about your father’s Lohia-ite socialism. But to come back to the point: what do you want to put up for this get-together? Some kind of village festival perhaps, since you’re so enamoured of rural socialism? Or maybe one of those song-and-dance plays about gods and demons and mythological heroes?

Mrs Verma shook her head.

But, please, do remember, Dr Mishra went on, that your audiences will be made up of your own Algerian colleagues, who are rational, scientifically trained people. I, for one, wouldn’t like to give them the impression that the whole of India is still in the Middle Ages, still wallowing in ghosts and ghouls and demonology. I’d like them to know that some of us at least are in the modern mainstream.

Mrs Verma smiled secretly across the room at Hem Narain Mathur’s dusty old bookcase. She had her answer ready.

Mrs Verma settled back in her chair and rested her hands demurely on the rim of her plate. Please, forgive me, Doctor-sahb, she said. I shouldn’t have shouted at you like that.

He watched her suspiciously: Yes?

The fact is, she said, looking at her nails, that I do have a plan.

Wonderful! Dr Mishra exclaimed. He broke a matchstick in half and began to pick nervously at his teeth. A village masque, I suppose. Some kind of Ram Li la. Why, we can clear out a stage on a sand-dune and put up a few idols and images and give them a full-scale puja with chanting Brahmans, mantras and all the rest of it. I’m sure your fellow rural socialists will be delighted by a nice, gaudy spectacle of medieval superstition flaunting itself on a sand-dune. But, please, Mrs Verma, you’re welcome to dance about on the sand scattering holy water on the date palms, but don’t ask me to do it. I’m too old.

I wasn’t really thinking of anything like that, Mishra-sahb, she said. I was thinking of something else.

What? He was suddenly wary.

Well, she paused for a moment. What do you think of Tagore? I know you don’t much care for medieval villagers, but you can’t have any objection to Rabindranath Tagore. Apart from everything else, he got all the most modern literary awards in all the most modern cities, you know.

Dr Mishra laughed: Very good, Mrs Verma; you’re learning. Go on.

Well, people here do sometimes ask about Tagore. Surely it would be appropriate to give them a glimpse of his work? You can’t object to that, after all.

What exactly did you have in mind?

Chitrangada. Mrs Verma allowed herself to smile: My father did a translation from the Bengali. I still have it.

Dr Mishra reached into his pocket, though his hands were still unwashed after the meal, and pulled out his pipe. Chitrangada? he said, twisting the stem. Could you just remind me what it’s about?

It’s a dance drama.

That’s nice, said Dr Mishra. A dance drama. Of course there’s no shortage of dancing girls here — you and old Miss K. and my own bouncy young wife. Go on.

To tell you the truth, I don’t really remember it very well myself now. My father read it to me when I was a girl. It’s based on a legend from the Mahabharata I think. Chitrangada is the king of Manipur’s daughter; she’s been brought up like a man, and she’s a great hunter and warrior and all that, but she’s not — well, very pretty. Then one day Arjuna goes to Manipur and she sees him — handsome, a great hero and warrior — so naturally she falls in love with him. She goes to him and declares her love, but he turns her away. Then she gets very depressed because she thinks he can’t possibly love a woman who looks like her. So ugly, you know. So she goes to the gods and asks them to give her the gift of beauty for just one year. They do, and Arjuna falls in love with her, and they sort of get married, I think, but she doesn’t tell him who she is. But as the year passes Arjuna hears more and more about the heroism of Chitrangada, and he longs to meet her and is half in love with her, though he doesn’t even know who she is. Chitrangada sees all this and she learns finally that appearances don’t matter, so at the end of the year, when her beauty is gone, she stands before him and says something like: I’m no beautiful flower, I’m not perfect, my clothes are torn and my feet are scarred and so on, but I can give you the heart of a true woman. Then Arjuna, too, sees that beauty is only deception, an illusion of the senses.

Well, said Dr Mishra sardonically, that makes it much clearer. I can see now why you want to play Chitrangada, but who did you have in mind for Arjuna? Verma? Do you really think it would suit him to dress up as a hero, in a sort of mini-dhoti, and dance around with bows and arrows? He’s short-sighted, you know; he might hit Chitrangada with those arrows.

Mrs Verma turned quickly away, blushing furiously. Of course I wasn’t going to play Chitrangada, she said. We could ask some of the younger doctors and their wives to come up from Ouargla or Ghardaia.

She looked him over appraisingly. Actually, Mishra-sahb, she said, there’s a part that’ll be perfect for you.

Which?

Madana, the God of Love. I can just see you — hovering above the dunes, showering love on the Sahara.

Dr Mishra rose and paced the floor while she watched apprehensively. All right, Mrs Verma, he said at last. I’ll take up your challenge. I’ll play Madana if you can fill the other roles. But there’s a condition: since it’s we who are putting it on for our Algerian colleagues, you’ll have to find Indians to play the parts.

Mrs Verma nodded.

Have you thought of the other problems? Who’s going to sing? Who’s going to dance? Where are you going to get the music? And it must be a very long play — are you going to stage the whole of it?

That’s easy, said Mrs Verma. We won’t do the whole thing; just a few scenes. And don’t worry about the music; that’s an advantage with this play really. My father gave me a record years ago. We can just play that — we won’t even have to talk. We don’t have to dance, either; we can just mime the scenes. We can explain the plot beforehand through an interpreter. I’m sure Miss K. and Mrs Mishra will help me make the costumes. Even you could do something; you could help me choose the right scenes. I’ll give you the script.

You mean your father’s Hindi translation?

Yes, she said. I’ll lend it to you, but you must be very careful with it. To me that’s the most precious of all the things he left me.

Tell me, Mrs Verma, Dr Mishra said curiously, how did your father learn Bengali?

Oh, he learnt when he was in college in Calcutta. He loved Tagore’s poetry.

Dr Mishra gestured to his wife to get up. When they were at the door, he turned to Mrs Verma, smiling grimly. All right, he said, the bet’s on, then. If you do somehow manage to put it together, I’ll admit defeat and you can give a speech instead of me. But if you don’t you’ll have to apologize in public for everything you’ve said tonight.

Yes, I accept, Mrs Verma said at once, looking directly into his eyes. I have nothing to worry about.

But soon she was very worried; it didn’t seem as though she would ever be able to find a cast. And every morning at the hospital there was Dr Mishra, solicitously asking after the progress of her plan, grinning, like a school bully gloating over the break-up of a rival gang. She had come perilously close to accepting defeat simply to put an end to those questions and those grins.

Then one morning there was Arjuna, lying unheroically on a hospital bed, his oddly irregular eyebrows raised at her in surprised inquiry.

That was encouraging enough to hold a rehearsal and start work on the costumes. But, as Dr Mishra had said while he was being measured for his halo, it’s no use without a Chitrangada.

She had had no answer.

And then, like a gift from Madana …

So do you think, Mrs Verma asked Kulfi anxiously, you’ll be able to do Chitrangada? It won’t be difficult at all really — all you’ll have to do is dress up in a nice sari and pose on stage. You won’t have to say anything because the record will be playing off-stage. It’ll just be a set of tableaux really.

They turned left, and a broad square ringed with low bungalows sprang up and hung before them on a pall of dust.

Kulfi tossed her head: It’ll be easy. I haven’t acted before, but I do see a lot of films and, I must say, I don’t know why but in al-Ghazira my husband’s colleagues used to keep telling me, at every party I went to, Why, you look just like Hema Malini, Mrs Bose. I don’t know why you say that, I used to tell them …

And luckily, said Mrs Verma, you’ll have a nice Arjuna.

I hope so, Kulfi said, frowning. Who is he?

You’ll meet him in a minute.

Mrs Verma pushed open a steel gate. That’s our house, she said, waving proudly at a thick-walled colonial bungalow, surrounded by tenaciously green patches of garden. She led Kulfi down a brick-lined path, past dusty casuarinas and doggedly blooming bushes of bougainvillaea to a low, deeply shaded porch. Then her eyes fell on a snapped clothes-line at the other end of the garden and she rushed off with a cry to rescue the scattered clothes from the dust.

Peering at the veranda which led on to the porch, and the darkness of the rooms beyond, it was evident at once to Kulfi that Mrs Verma took good care of her house: the veranda was spotless, the curtains in the windows were clean and bright, and there were calendars on every wall. She took a step towards the veranda and caught the sound of a muffled voice somewhere inside. Craning forward, she squinted into the shadows.

The darkness rippled and a moment later Kulfi sprang back, shrieking.

A short, stout man dressed in a scarlet knee-length dhoti had appeared on the veranda. Bits of tinsel were dotted about his chest and there was a white flower entwined in the sacred thread of his Brahminhood. Above it, like a rainswept rock framed by the setting sun, his bald head shone against a noisily spinning halo that seemed to grow out of the back of his neck.

Poised to run, Kulfi stole another quick look. He was peering at her in short-sighted confusion, his narrowed eyes hugely enlarged by his thick glasses. Kulfi choked back a scream.

Folding his hands, he bobbed his head and at once the halo slipped, grazing his glistening scalp. Namaste, he said, wincing, and pushed the halo hurriedly back into place. Don’t pay any attention to all this — he waved a deprecating hand at his clothes — it’s only because I’m Madana.

Madana? Kulfi whispered hoarsely.

Yes, he said, hitching up his dhoti and advancing upon her, the God of Love. And you?

Kulfi began to back away rapidly, watching his every move. Then, to her relief, Mrs Verma was beside her, her arms full of clothes.

So Madana’s found Chitrangada? she said, laughing. That old curtain really suits you, Dr Mishra; you should wear it more often.

Dr Mishra was suddenly acutely self-conscious. Never mind, he growled, crossing his hands over his tinselly chest.

What? said Mrs Verma. I can’t hear you.

Will you please make me known to this lady? Dr Mishra shouted over the whirring of his halo.

Mrs Verma smiled and waved, magician-like, at Kulfi. This, she said, is my Chitrangada.

Dr Mishra stared, and Kulfi lowered her head shyly. Did you create her, Mrs Verma? he said. Or did Madana drop her from the sky?

Actually, Mrs Verma said, she appeared out of Driss’s café. She and her husband are passing through — they’re tourists.

I see, Dr Mishra said, examining Kulfi suspiciously. Well, I suppose we should take our touring Chitrangada in and introduce her to her Arjuna.

Led by Dr Mishra they went into a large cool room which had its twin functions unmistakably indicated by a dining-table at one end and a circle of sofas at the other. Otherwise, except for a few calendars and a papier-mâché Taj Mahal, the room was clinically bare. But it was that very bareness which seemed to shine a spotlight on a far corner of the room where a battered old bookcase stood propped against the wall, reigning, somehow, in spite of its rickety shelves and frayed dustcovers, over every other object in the room.

As they entered Dr Mishra gestured at a young man who was rising awkwardly from a sofa. Well, Arjuna, he said drily, here’s your Chitrangada.

Turning on his heels, his arms spread out, he said: May I introduce you to our very own avatar of Arjuna? Mr Jyoti Das.

Jyoti Das had not seen them yet, but his hands were already folded and he was smiling in polite expectation. Then his eyes found Kulfi, and the smile vanished from his face and he swallowed and clutched at his throat.

Mrs Verma dropped her armful of clothes on a chair and bustled forward. How are you feeling now? she asked him kindly. He shook his head in an effort to take his eyes off Kulfi, failed, and sank wordlessly back on to the sofa.

He’s not been well, you know, Mrs Verma confided to Kulfi. We met him quite by chance a couple of days ago, when he was brought to the hospital with a mild case of heatstroke. He’d been here a few days already and apparently he’d spent all his time at the bus station watching the buses from the border come in, and on the dunes, where he was looking for a vulture. Just imagine — a vulture! Are you a corpse, I said, that you’re looking for a vulture in this blazing sun?

Jyoti Das moistened his lips mechanically and, without taking his eyes off Kulfi, he said: Not any old vulture, Mrs Verma. I thought I’d spotted a lappet-faced vulture. I had to find it — none has been reported from these parts for decades.

Mrs Verma shrugged: A vulture’s a vulture, whatever its face. Anyway, you’d better get up now; you have to go to Miss K.’s for lunch.

But Jyoti Das stayed as he was, his eyes riveted on Kulfi.

Kulfi tossed her head. She swept past Mrs Verma and went across to the bookcase, swaying her hips. She saw him turning, following her with his eyes, his young boyish face contorted with the clumsy, painful longing of a virgin rebelling too late against his condition. Inclining her head slightly, she gave him a tight little smile and with his gaze lapping thirstily at her back she began to flip languidly through a calendar.

I see good things, Dr Mishra said, watching them shrewdly from the other end of the room. It looks as though Madana’s going to have some success at last.

While Mrs Verma rang the hospital, her husband began dismantling Dr Mishra’s battery-operated halo.

Can’t you make it a little quieter? Dr Mishra said. They’ll think Madana is a kind of helicopter if it goes on like this.

Mrs Verma put the phone down and clapped her hands. All right now, she said. We all have to hurry. There’s a lot to do today.

What? said Dr Mishra.

Mrs Verma nodded at Jyoti Das and said: The two of you have to go to Miss K.’s for lunch. She’s expecting you; she’s saved up a whole cauliflower, and she borrowed a tin of pineapples from me this morning. And after that you have to come back here for a rehearsal. We can do it properly, with costumes and everything, now that we have our Chitrangada.

Do you think, Dr Mishra growled, that I don’t have anything better to do on a holiday than spend all my time dressed up in an old curtain?

Mrs Verma laughed: It’s too bad, Dr Mishra. You’ll have to come, holiday or not. It was a fair bet and you can’t let me down now, when I’m so close to winning.

She beckoned to Kulfi. Come, let me show you the room you’ll be staying in, she said, leading her to a room at the back.

When they came out again Jyoti Das was standing beside the door, rigidly still, waiting. Mrs Verma bustled past without noticing him, but Kulfi hung back. As she stepped out of the door, she lurched and fell sideways. Her hands brushed against the front of his trousers and flew back as if scalded.

Shaking with nervousness, falling over himself, Jyoti Das managed to catch her in his arms. She leant against his shoulder, eyes downcast. I hope I didn’t hurt you, she said.

He stared at her tongue-tied, his forehead filming over with sweat. She could feel his groin quivering against her thigh. She swayed, and her breast brushed against his arm. A spasm seemed to shoot through him and he clutched helplessly at her blouse. Oh God, he breathed hoarsely into her neck, oh God …

Then there was a rustle in the corridor as Mrs Verma came hurrying back, and Kulfi shook herself out of his arms. Where did you disappear, Mrs Bose? Mrs Verma cried. She looked from Kulfi, gazing demurely at the floor, to Jyoti Das, standing frozen beside her, and a tiny eddy of suspicion stirred in her mind.

The land-rover’s come, she said to Kulfi. Shall we go to the café now?

She saw Kulfi glancing at Jyoti Das and, turning to him, she said sharply: You have to go out for lunch now, Mr Das. Dr Mishra’s waiting for you. Don’t waste time.

Jyoti Das went quickly back to the other room.

So, Mrs Bose? she said. Shall we go now? Of course, if you’re very tired you can stay here and rest.

To her surprise Kulfi nodded eagerly. Yes, she said, raising her hands to her temples. I’m very tired and I have a headache. I think I’ll rest here.

Achchha, Mrs Verma said doubtfully. But before leaving the house she went back again and handed Kulfi a crimson sari and box from her dressing-table. While you’re waiting, she said, you may as well try on your costume.

Later, in the land-rover, she said to her husband: These people are so … so strange. Do you think they’re all right?

He said nothing.

That Mrs Bose doesn’t seem, she carried on, at all like a married woman. And I must say she was behaving very strangely a little while ago. Mr Das, too …

Mrs Verma stared silently at a ration-shop.

They’re not like anyone I’ve ever met: that husband and that ayah — so strange. I just can’t place them. She fell silent. But just before they reached the café she added: Still, I suppose she’ll make a good Chitrangada.

On the way back she and her husband took turns at examining Boss, while Zindi heaped them with information about his symptoms.

He’ll be all right, she said, handing him back to Zindi. I’ll give you some medicine for him when we get back. She glanced at Alu, thinking of starting a conversation, but he was sitting so dourly hunched up, with his hands under his legs, that she thought the better of it and looked ahead.

When the land-rover drew up, she jumped out, relieved to be back, and led them quickly into the house. Come, she said, I’ll show you the way. But when she reached their room she found that only Zindi was following her; Alu had disappeared.

She found him crouching in the middle of her drawing-room, staring at Hem Narain Mathur’s old bookcase in startled confusion.

What are you doing here, Mr Bose? she said in surprise. Come and look at your wife. You won’t recognize her — she’s Chitrangada now.

Alu had snapped upright as soon as he heard her voice. He stood staring at her uncertainly, shifting his feet, with his hands behind his back.

Come on, she said briskly. Follow me.

But at the door she stopped, puzzled, and looked at the bookcase and then at him and back again. Why, Mr Bose, she said at last, when I came in you were staring at my father’s old bookcase as though it had just spoken to you.

Kulfi! Zindi shrieked. What’re you doing to your face? Stop it. You can’t go out looking for customers here in the desert; you gave that up when you left India.

Swathed in a zari-spangled sari, corseted by the heavy gold thread of the fabric, Kulfi was sitting stiffly upright before a looking-glass, powdering her already paper-white face. Zindi snatched the powder puff out of her hand. Stop it now, Kulfi, she cried. What d’you think you’re doing?

Don’t you know? Kulfi flashed her a brilliant smile. Today I’m a princess; I’m Chitrangada.

Chitra … what? Zindi gasped. Listen, you bitch. Today you’re no different from what you were when I first met you. You’re Kulfi the small-time callgirl whose MA-pass husband turned her to whoring when he lost his fancy job; you’re pale-faced, unemployed old Kulfi who came to me in Bangalore and said, Take me to al-Ghazira and give me some honest work.

No, Kulfi hissed, her voice quavering on the edge of hysteria. Today I’m Chitrangada, princess of Manipur.

Zindi’s mouth dropped open: Princess of what-place? You’re a princess, are you, you two-pice whore?

Just listen to that! Kulfi trilled with laughter, and the bangles that covered her arm in a sheen of plastic armour tinkled in counterpoint. I’m a whore? You dare say that to me when you’ve got the Grand Trunk Road between your legs and no toll-gates, either?

Still laughing, she dipped her fingertips into a small lead pot of sindur and filled her parting with a gash of bleeding vermilion. Today, she said, smiling at her reflection, I’m Chitrangada, princess of Manipur. You can go and ask Mrs Verma if you like. She’s an educated woman like me, not a gutter-slut like you. She’ll tell you. I’m Chitrangada and I’m going to marry Arjuna, hero of heroes.

Zindi’s eyes narrowed: You’re going to marry who?

Arjuna. He’s fallen in love with my beauty.

Zindi shot a quick worried look at Alu. Then she laid Boss on the bed and stood over Kulfi. Look, Kulfi, she said quietly, don’t give me any more of this phoos-phas or I’ll knock the teeth out of your mouth. Tell me quickly: who is this Arjuna?

He’s a man who’s staying here, said Kulfi. He’s Arjuna and I’m Chitrangada.

Zindi took hold of her shoulders and shook her till her bangles began to clatter. Who is he, Kulfi? she said. Tell me quick.

Kulfi slapped angrily at Zindi’s hands. Let me go, she said. I’ve told you what I know. Why don’t you go and ask him if you’re so curious?

Grinding her knuckles against her teeth, Zindi sank on to the bed. Kulfi, she said, drawing a breath in a long, whistling gasp. Is he the Bird-man?

Kulfi’s hands froze in the act of raising a tin tiara to her head. The Bird-man? she whispered. I don’t know. I haven’t ever seen your Bird-man, remember? I’m the only one. And he hadn’t seen me before, either.

Then she remembered how he had looked at her when she first entered the room, how his eyes had followed her, and she pealed with delighted, girlish laughter and crowned herself. Don’t worry, she said. Even if he is the Bird-man, I’ll manage him. You’ll be safe.

What did he look like, tell me, quick? Zindi said.

Before Kulfi could finish the first sentence of her answer, Zindi knew. It’s him, she wailed, it’s him. He’s got us now.

Yes, it is him, Kulfi said. I remember now; he said he was looking for a vulture.

A vulture? Zindi breathed. He’s come with a vulture?

Stop moaning, Kulfi snapped. Didn’t I tell you it’ll be all right? Aren’t you listening or what?

As she got up to leave, Zindi snatched at her arms: You can’t go with him waiting out there. I won’t let you.

Kulfi snorted contemptuously: Why don’t you try to stop me? Her eyes fell on Alu, standing by the door, and she stopped dead. Listen, you, she snarled at him, if you go anywhere near that bed I’ll tear your rotten thumbs off. She peeled away the bedcovers and flung them into a corner. You can make your nest there, she said and stormed out of the room.

Alu hesitated, then backed away towards the door.

Where are you going? Zindi snapped at him.

To look at the books, Alu said.

Books? Is this the time for books? Zindi snapped at him. Come back here. It’s your fault. You’ve brought him here — it was you who said it first.

But he was here before I said anything, Alu said. How did he know, Zindi? How did he follow us here?

God blind me for not thinking of it, she said. It must have been the easiest thing in the world. After he saw us in Kairouan he had only to look at the road-signs to know that we would head this way. Where else could we have gone? He must have known that with our kind of passport we wouldn’t risk any but the most remote of border posts. And once you’re across the border there’s nowhere you can go but El Oued if you’re heading west. He knows all that; he’s like a bird — he hears us every time we say we’re going west.

Maybe, said Alu, he’s only going west himself.

Do you think so? Zindi said eagerly, suddenly hopeful. Do you think it’s possible?

If he really wanted to do anything to us, said Alu, he’d have done it already. He must be here somewhere.

It’s possible, she muttered, but the ripple of hope had already trickled out of her voice. It makes no difference, she said. That man carries death with him wherever he goes. He can’t help it; it’s in his eyes. Think of what happened to Jeevanbhai; think of Karthamma and all the rest. And this time he’s come with a vulture.

For a while she stared blankly at the wall. We should never have come, she said at last. We should never have left Egypt. I can smell death in this house: it’s there in writing — one of us isn’t going to leave this house alive.

She lifted Boss into her arms, very gently, and kissed him as though she were bidding him goodbye.

As long as it’s not him, she whispered. Let it be me, but not Boss. Not him, Allah …

As soon as he could, Alu slipped back into the drawing-room. It was empty and curiously still; more than ever the bareness of the walls seemed to thrust the bookcase directly at him. For a long time he stood still, staring at it across the room, wondering why his skin was tingling with recognition. Then he began to inch his way forward, biting his nails, scanning the dusty brown-paper covers of the books for a visible sign.

When he was less than halfway across the room, Mrs Verma came bustling in. He stopped guiltily and began to edge away. Ah, there you are, she said. I’ve just given your ayah some medicine for your son. He’ll be all right soon.

He nodded, looking away, and hid his hands in his pockets. Mrs Verma cleared her throat. Mr Bose, she said hesitantly, you remember I was telling you that I might need your help? Well, as your wife has probably explained, we’re going to put on a small production of Chitrangada — I’m sure you’re familiar with it — for our colleagues. We have the record, luckily, so we won’t have to sing. But instead we’re going to explain the scenes we’re doing through a translator. I’ve been trying to put together a few notes but unfortunately I’ve run into a little trouble, and that’s where I need your help. You see, I have a Hindi translation of the original done by my father, but there are a couple of places where I can’t read his handwriting. He copied the original down along with the translation, but the trouble is I can’t read Bengali. Mr Das helped, but there were some bits he couldn’t read, either. So, if you could just help a little …?

Reluctantly, Alu nodded. Mrs Verma sank on to a sofa, next to the bookcase and began to look through the shelves. She noticed Alu bending over, looking intently at the bookcase. She patted the sofa: Sit down, Mr Bose. He seated himself next to her with his hands under his thighs, but his eyes stayed riveted on the books.

She found what she was looking for and drew it out: a tattered hardbound exercise-book that had been lovingly wrapped in brown paper. She flipped through it, showing him the smudged sections, and with the help of his glosses of the Bengali text she wrote down suitable Hindi substitutes. After half an hour she snapped the exercise-book shut. I’m very grateful to you, she said. I think that’s all that needs to be done. She put the book tidily back in its place and straightened the row with the back of her hand.

And then Alu saw it.

It bore no outward clue to its identity for it was wrapped in a cover like the others. Yet, the moment he looked at it, he knew. He tried to control himself, tried to say something polite, but the words died in his throat and he fell to his knees and snatched the book from its shelf.

He didn’t even need to look at the title-page. The fading print smiled at him like an all-too-familiar face. His eyes brimmed over with tears.

It’s the Life of Pasteur, he said quietly, looking up at Mrs Verma.

She had been watching him with some alarm, but when he spoke she laughed. Yes, she said, have you read it?

He nodded dumbly.

It was one of my father’s favourite books, she said. He loved it. A close friend of his gave it to him when he was in Presidency College.

Who? What was his name? Alu was already thumbing through the stiff, crackling leaves, fumbling for the title-page. Somehow it kept slipping past his fingers. He broke into a sweat, stopped, closed the book between his palms and opened it again, gently.

He saw Balaram’s handwriting on the first page, in red ink, sprawled across the corner: To Hem Narain Mathur, Rationalist and friend, from Balaram Bose; Medical College Hospital, Calcutta, 1932. Another hand had inscribed beneath: To remember Reason.

He could not bear to look at it. He shut the book and hugged it to his chest.

Why, Mr Bose, Mrs Verma said in surprise, you seem to be very fond of that book?

Mrs Verma, Alu said, this book is the only real brother I ever had. I’d lost him and now I’ve found him again — here in the desert, of all places, and in your house.

Mrs Verma listened gravely, picking at the frayed threads on the fall of her sari. Then she said: That’s very sad.

Sad! cried Alu. How can you call it sad?

I can see that you love that book, Mr Bose, and that’s very sad, because you can love a book but a book can’t love you. That’s what I used to tell my father, but he could never understand. He would look at the world whirling around him and he would look at his books, and when they told him different stories, like a man caught between quarrelling friends, he wouldn’t know which side to take. But in the end, even though it meant shutting himself away, the books won. They ruled over him: for him that bookcase had all the order the world lacked. I used to think it was love, but I know better now. He was afraid; afraid of the power of science and those books of his; afraid that if he disowned them they would destroy him.

That can’t be true, Alu cried. What could a book like this one have done to him? You’re wrong; you must be.

She smiled: You may be right — I’m often wrong. She took the book from him and flipped through it gingerly, holding it at a distance. Do you know, she said, looking at it in wonder; it’s because of this book that I’m a microbiologist today? My father told me that microbiology was Pasteur’s heritage, and that I was to keep it alive.

She took a deep breath and held the book out to him. Take it, she said. I’ve always wanted to get rid of it. Only I’ve never dared; I’m too much my father’s daughter.

Alu hesitated: How could I take it? It was your father’s …

Take it, she insisted, almost angrily. Now that I’ve found the courage to give it away I won’t take it back. Keep it with you. Take it outside to the dunes if you like, and read it in peace there.

Yes, he said eagerly, holding out his hand. I’ll do just that. I can always bring it back.

She dropped the book into his hands. He fumbled and it slipped and fell open on the floor. A paragraph underlined heavily in red pencil stared up at them from the open pages.

Read that bit out, she said quickly. What does it say? It always means something when a book falls open like that.

It’s about death, Alu said. It says that without the germ ‘life would become impossible because death would be incomplete’.

Smiling nervously, Mrs Verma looked around the room. I wonder who it was pointing at, she said.

By the time Dr Mishra and Jyoti Das returned, just before sunset, Mrs Verma had already cleared a space for the rehearsal in the drawing-room, and she and Kulfi were busy making a garland — of bougainvillaea, for lack of jasmine — to go with Arjuna’s costume. It was dull work, and Mrs Verma would have been glad of another pair of hands, but Zindi was busy watching over Boss’s drugged sleep behind a locked door, Alu was still away at the dunes and, as for her husband, she knew from experience that flowers always fell apart in his hands.

Mrs Verma was alarmed the moment Jyoti Das stepped in. His eyes were feverishly bright, his face tense, strained with suppressed excitement. With deep misgiving she saw how his eyes scanned the room, how they came to rest hungrily on Kulfi’s lowered head.

Come on, Mr Das, she broke in quickly. Come on, Mishra-sahb. Change into your costumes; we have to get started now. She waved them ahead of her, and when Jyoti Das hung back she herded him relentlessly on: Come on, come on now …

Jyoti Das came back first, dressed in a dhoti and kurta. He was stooping with his shoulders painfully hunched up, for the kurta was Mr Verma’s and therefore two sizes too small for him, and its starched seams were biting unpleasantly into his armpits. Pinched between his fingers, as though it were a dead rat, was a small bamboo bow.

No sooner had Mrs Verma stifled a laugh than she saw his eyes stray beseechingly towards Kulfi. She saw Kulfi rewarding him with a smile of approval, and at once, tapping the chair next to hers, she rapped out: Come and sit down, Mr Das; you ought to study your scenes now.

Then Dr Mishra appeared, scarlet below the waist, glittering with tinsel above, mouthing soundless curses. Isn’t this funny enough for you? he said to her. Do I have to put on Verma’s contraption as well?

Yes, she said, you look much better with a halo. And I have something else for you, too.

What? he said suspiciously.

She held up a cone of cardboard and gold paper. It’s a crown, she explained. It’s a kind of symbol of your reign over the realm of Love.

Don’t lie, he said, looking at it scornfully. It’s to cover my baldness.

Mrs Verma, undeterred, jammed it on his head. There, she said, and now you won’t catch a cold, either. But when her husband strapped on the halo and gave it a trial spin the crown hurtled off Dr Mishra’s slippery scalp and flattened itself on the floor. Mrs Verma pushed the tip up and tried to fit it on again, with a rubber band this time. Halfway through she happened to look up. Next moment the crown fell from her hands and Dr Mishra howled as the rubber band snapped back, catching him on the tip of his nose.

Kulfi was bending over Jyoti Das with the garland of bougainvillaea in her hands, smiling with coy bridal modesty. Mrs Verma started forward, but before she could reach them Kulfi had slipped the garland over his head and pirouetted away.

Jyoti Das rose to his feet, breathing hard, his eyes dilated, but before he could take a step Mrs Verma was in front of him.

No, no, Mr Das, she said sharply, pushing him back on to his chair. No more of that; sit down now.

After that she looked up every two seconds while strapping on Dr Mishra’s crown to make sure that they hadn’t moved. Dr Mishra was immensely amused. Love-game for Madana, he hummed. Three cheers for rural socialism.

Soon Mrs Verma was ready to begin. A quick look at Jyoti Das’s flushed face persuaded her to start with a scene which needed only Chitrangada and Madana.

The first part of the scene, in which Kulfi only had to kneel before Dr Mishra and suit her expression to the song of supplication that was playing on the gramophone, went off without a hitch. But when Dr Mishra pulled her to her feet as he had been told to a gust from his whirring halo caught Kulfi’s tiara and blew it off her head. Kulfi’s hands shot up. She patted her head with gathering dismay, and then she turned upon Dr Mishra with such unbridled rage blazing out of her eyes that he cowered back in fear.

Mrs Verma had to dart in between them. I think this scene’s done now, she said hurriedly. We’ll go on to another one.

She fetched a shawl and draped it around Kulfi’s shoulders. This shawl, she explained, represents the ordinariness of Chitrangada’s real appearance. You’ll have to wear it now, because we’re going to do the last scene, in which Chitrangada reveals her real self to Arjuna and he cries out in wonder: Dhanya! Dhanya! Dhanya!

She led Kulfi and Jyoti Das to the empty space at the far end of the room and explained their parts to them. While they took up their poses — Chitrangada with her hands dramatically outflung before a wonder-struck Arjuna — she stood beside them, watching narrowly, making sure that they stayed a respectable distance from each other. It was a long while before she was satisfied. But finally, apprehensively, she backed away and turned the gramophone on.

Ami Chitrangada, the record lilted softly, ami rajend-ronondini …

Jyoti Das edged slowly closer to Kulfi. Louder, please, he called out to Mrs Verma. We can hardly hear it over here.

Reluctantly Mrs Verma turned the volume up and carried the needle back to the first groove. The voice rolled sonorously out of the gramophone: I am Chitrangada; daughter of kings …

Jyoti Das stole a glance at Mrs Verma and the others. They were well out of earshot now, cloaked securely behind a screen of music. He leant forward as Kulfi gestured at her shawl with sweeping flourishes of her hands.

I am Chitrangada …

Are you, he whispered, the one they call Kulfi-didi?

Jyoti Das knew, from the sudden jerk of her head, that she had heard him. He glanced at Mrs Verma. She was leaning forward in her chair, watching them anxiously.

I am Chitrangada …

Kulfi whirled around and came to rest on her knees. He fell to his knees, too, as he had been instructed.

I am no goddess …

I know who you are, he whispered, trying not to move his lips. Don’t be afraid of me, I beg you. I know you’re Kulfi-didi. I know who the others are. There’s nothing to be afraid of and there’s nothing to hide. I won’t harm you or them. Listen to me, Kulfi, please …

And nor am I an ordinary woman …

Kulfi, please …

The sweat was pouring down his face now, but his mouth was curiously dry; his viscera, his loins, were straining against an invisible, unbearable constriction.

Kulfi, please …

She raised her lowered head. Her eyelashes fluttered and she gave him the briefest of smiles.

His head swam drunkenly. He groaned: Oh, Kulfi …

If you keep me by your side …

He leant forward, shielding his face with the bow. Kulfi, he said, I know you’re not married. I know he’s not your husband. I know all about him. I know you’re a free woman. Kulfi, please, I beg you, we can’t talk here. I beg you, come out into the garden tonight. Later, much later, when everyone’s asleep.

She looked up at him suddenly. He cut himself short, reading a reproach in her widening eyes and trembling lips.

No, no, Kulfi, he said, swallowing convulsively. Nothing like that, really. I swear. I promise you. I won’t touch you. I swear it. We’ll just talk; it’s impossible to talk here. Please, Kulfi, please …

Her eyes flashed and she rose unsteadily to her feet.

If you let me share your trials …

Anything, Kulfi, anything, he said, rising with her.

Suddenly she stiffened and looked him full in the face.

Today I can only offer you …

He no longer cared whether anybody saw him or heard him. Kulfi, he cried, I can’t bear it. I’ll marry you, if only tonight, just once. You see, I’ve never …

I can only offer you …

Her eyes had grown huge now. She shuddered and her hands rose to her heart. He started forward in a great surge of joy. But then he caught a glimpse of Mrs Verma, watching, frowning, and he checked himself. Don’t say anything now, Kulfi, he whispered hastily, jabbing his thumb at Mrs Verma. They might hear you.

Kulfi’s moist lips fluttered. She moaned and stretched her arms towards him, imploring, beseeching.

I can only offer you Chitrangada; daughter of kings …

Not now, Kulfi, he whispered urgently. Just wait a little; till tonight. What’s the hurry?

Dhanya! Dhanya! Dhanya!

Kulfi crashed to the floor, clutching her heart. In a trance, Jyoti Das watched her go down.

The first person to run across the room was Dr Verma. He pushed Jyoti Das back, undid the top buttons of her blouse and felt for her heart.

Jyoti Das covered his eyes and tried to steady himself. When he looked up again Alu was standing opposite him. For an interminable moment they stared at each other across Kulfi’s body. Then Dr Verma rose to his feet between them.

She’s heavenly, he said in English. Absolutely heavenly.

Her fathers have gathered her to their heavenly abode.

Chapter Twenty-One. Curtain

Very gently Mrs Verma closed Kulfi’s eyes. For a moment she looked into her pale, rigid face and then her lips began to quiver and she had to tilt her head to keep her tears back. Three of us, she said, three doctors sitting right in front of her, and there was nothing we could do. Nothing.

We’re not to blame, Mrs Verma, Dr Mishra said gruffly. There was nothing we could do. Especially since her husband didn’t bother to warn us that she had a heart condition.

Mrs Verma ran a consoling hand over Alu’s back: It’s not his fault, poor man. What could he do? She was so keen to do the part. How was he to know that she would get so carried away?

She glanced reproachfully at Jyoti Das, squatting beside her on the floor. If anything, she said, perhaps Mr Das could have behaved with a little more restraint. I won’t say any more.

Jyoti Das flinched and buried his head in his knees.

Anyway, Mrs Verma continued, there’s only one thing we can do for her now, poor woman.

She went into the kitchen and returned with a brass bowl and a spoon. Kneeling beside the body, she said: Go on, Mr Bose. Even though it’s too late now, you should wet her lips.

A quickly stifled snort of laughter checked her as she held the bowl out to Alu. She looked up, startled: What’s the matter, Dr Mishra?

Sorry, he muttered contritely, slapping a hand over his mouth. The sudden movement jolted his halo back into motion. Ignoring it, he said loudly: That’s a strange thing you’re doing, Mrs Verma.

What? she said. I can’t hear you.

Sala! he swore, taking a swipe at his halo. He yelped and snatched his hand back as the whirling blade skimmed the skin off his knuckles. Sala, bhain … sorry. Verma, he roared, can’t you get this thing off my neck? Dr Verma ran to help him.

What were you saying, Mishra-sahb? Mrs Verma said.

I was just asking, he snapped, whether you’ve managed to connect your kitchen tap to the Ganges? Or do you keep your own private stock of holy water for these occasions?

What do you mean? she said puzzled.

Maybe I should explain to you, in case you don’t know, that the water in that bowl has never been anywhere near the snows of the Himalayas or the Gangotri. It’s from a million-year-old water-table that lies under the Sahara. It’s never flowed past Rudraprayag or Hardwar or Benares or any of your holy cities. In fact it’s never flowed anywhere. It’s been pumped up by an artesian well.

Mystified, Mrs Verma looked from Dr Mishra to Alu and back again. So? she said.

In a word, that’s not Ganga-jal. You can’t give it to her.

She shook her head impatiently and turned her back on him. Go on, Mr Bose, she said, prodding Alu. Give it to her.

Wait! Dr Mishra cried. You can’t do that.

But, Dr Mishra, she said, where do you think we’re going to get Ganga-jal here in the Sahara? This is all we’ve got. What’s the point of arguing?

There is a point. First, I think you should ask yourself whether you as a rational, educated woman wish to encourage anyone in the belief that a bit of dirty water from a muddy river can actually do them any good when they’re already dead.

This is hardly the time for a debate, Mrs Verma said. We can only do what we think is right. Go on, Mr Bose.

Wait a minute! Dr Mishra leapt to his feet. If you are going to do this, you have to do it properly. You can’t just pour water from an artesian well down her mouth and pretend it’s Ganga-jal. You can’t. There are certain rules.

Never mind the rules, Mrs Verma said. We’ll just do what we can.

She put the spoon into Alu’s hands and helped him slip a few drops of water through Kulfi’s dead lips.

When she saw the body Zindi sank to the floor slowly, like the crust on a loaf of cooling bread. She straightened Kulfi’s outstretched arms, and then suddenly, like a scolded child, she began to rock from side to side, sobbing. She was pointing at me, she sobbed. Did you see her? She thinks I did it.

Alu put his arms around her. Zindi, he said, whispering, so that the doctors at the other end of the room would not hear him. Zindi, it’s not your fault; there was nothing you could do.

How do you know? Zindi whispered back. Her death won’t be on your soul. You’ve done nothing but stare at your thumbs ever since we left al-Ghazira. It was I who decided everything; I who brought her to this house of death; it’s I who’ll have it hanging over me on the Day of Judgement.

By why, Zindi? She came of her own will.

But I allowed her to stay on here, even after I smelt death in this place. If I’d done what I should have and we’d left, she would have lived.

But, Zindi, Alu said, you know we couldn’t have left. Boss is ill; and anyway where would we have gone?

She elbowed him angrily away. I don’t want your hugs and your explanations, she hissed. I’ll have to live with this for every day of what’s left of my life. Leave me in peace. What can you ever understand of this?

A hand touched her shoulder and she turned. It was Jyoti Das, his eyes bloodshot and swollen, his mouth open. He was trying to say something.

It’s the vulture, she cried.

It’s my fault, he stuttered. He reached out to touch her feet.

Zindi jerked her legs back. Don’t touch me, she snarled. Keep your murdering claws away or you’ll kill me, too.

Jyoti Das stared at his hands in despair. What could I do? he said. She came in out of the desert like a mirage and I …

Take him out, Alu, Zindi sobbed. Take him away. Don’t let him get his claws into me …

She was still sobbing as they helped each other up and limped out of the room like a pair of grieving cripples.

What do we do now? said Mrs Verma.

You don’t do anything, Dr Mishra said. You have no connection with the whole business except that it happened under your roof. What you should do now is ring up the hospital and the police. They’ll come and take the body away. Then it’s out of your hands. Maybe they’ll do an autopsy; they may have to, for the death certificate.

And then?

What do you mean, ‘and then’?

I mean, said Mrs Verma, what will they do with the body? They can’t keep it in the morgue for ever.

Dr Mishra shrugged: They’ll do whatever they usually do under these circumstances. I suppose they’ll hand it back to the next of kin. Whatever it is, it has nothing to do with you or me or any of us.

Mrs Verma thought hard, with her chin cupped in her hands. That means, she said, that they’ll hand the body back to Mr Bose. But what will he do with it?

How does it matter to you? Dr Mishra said brusquely. He can do what he likes. It’s none of your business. You don’t even know them. They just turned up today and you gave them shelter. For all you know, they may be international criminals or something. I think you should be very, very careful. Don’t get mixed up in this business.

Let’s see, Mrs Verma said, counting the possibilities on her fingers. He could take the body to Algiers. But how, and what for? Or he could fly it back to India. But how? He’d have to take it to the airport at Hassi Messaoud, and who knows whether there’s a plane tomorrow — and anyway the body would never last. Or else he could just leave the body with the authorities and let them … dispose of it.

Her eyes widened as she thought out the implications of that last possibility. What do you think they’d do with it? she said. Involuntarily she clenched her fist and raised it to her mouth. What do you think they’d do?

Dr Mishra chuckled: What’s another corpse to you, Mrs Verma? You’ve been seeing dozens every day ever since you first went to Medical College. You’ve chopped them up, pulled out their gullets, pickled their hearts in alcohol. Don’t you think it’s a bit late to start weeping over a bit of dead tissue?

It’s not the same thing, she said confusedly, when it happens in your own house.

It’s exactly the same thing, he answered, tapping the table with his pipe. Surely you don’t need me to tell you that. There’s nothing there that you wouldn’t find in any morgue or any textbook.

But only a few hours ago I offered her a room in my house because she had nowhere else to go. Don’t we owe her anything now; now that she’s dead?

We owe her nothing, he said sharply. We didn’t even know her.

But what will her husband do? Where will he go with the body?

He can go, Dr Mishra said gleefully, back to wherever he came from.

Mrs Verma rose from the table, her hands clasped determinedly together. There’s only one thing to do now, she said. We shall have to cremate her ourselves, properly, somewhere among the dunes.

Dr Mishra slumped back, stunned. After a while, his voice hoarse with shock, he murmured: How can we do that? There’s no crematorium here. What will the authorities say? We can’t do it. There’s a proper procedure for these things.

That can be worked out very easily, Mrs Verma said, clearing the table. After all, the authorities know us and we know them. We can explain the circumstances. I’m sure they’ll be sympathetic.

Mrs Verma, Dr Mishra said softly, recovering himself. When you said ‘a proper cremation’ what exactly did you mean?

Well, like we’ve seen it being done for our fathers and mothers, I suppose.

Say it, Mrs Verma, don’t be afraid. What you mean is a proper Hindu cremation.

It doesn’t matter what you call it.

Dr Mishra leant forward with all the aplomb of a chessplayer about to signal a checkmate. But, Mrs Verma, he said smiling, what makes you think she’s eligible for a proper cremation?

How could Jyoti Das explain, especially with Alu’s expectant, unblinking gaze clamped on him like that, what she had looked like when she first came through the door, how he had seen her then? It was an image with too long a past; it had appeared so suddenly, like the last photograph in a hastily riffled album, out of the haze left by pages of blurred pictures.

There was, for example, that final interview with the Ambassador in al-Ghazira, when he had said, with a sarcasm which could have sliced silk: Tell me, is it true, Mr Das, that you were away shopping when your so-called ‘extremists’ made their getaway? And before he could deny it the Ambassador was off, reminiscing pointedly about the incompetence of all the cloak-and-dagger men he had ever known; about the grudge they bore against the world because they hadn’t qualified for the more prestigious services in the examinations; about the ‘extremists’ they concocted to wangle trips abroad at government expense.

Mr Das, do you really think, he asked softly at the end, that we believed all this business about ‘extremists’? We know quite well why they send you people to visit embassies every now and then; they send you to watch us.

Then later there was Jai Lal sitting beside him, telling him how a First Secretary in the embassy had confided to him that even a small part of the report the Ambassador had sent to headquarters would be enough to stub out young Jyoti’s career like a half-smoked cigarette. And then Jai Lal again, telling him how there was only one way of retrieving something of his once bright future — and that was to find the Suspect.

After that, grey, sour days, waiting for his permission to proceed Cairowards to be cleared. And more grey days even after the permission arrived, for nobody in the embassy in Cairo would meet him. His contact said: The news is spreading fast; everyone’s heard about the business in al-Ghazira and your, your …

Failure? prompted Jyoti.

Inability to fulfil your commission, corrected his contact. Nobody wants to get involved.

But there were two flashes of light in Egypt as well: one the encounter in Alexandria when he knew that he had sighted the right flight-path; and the other a letter from his engineer uncle in Düsseldorf with a hint about a job for him in Germany as well as a draft for a few hundred dollars.

The money bought him a ticket to Tunis, but once there it was all darkness. When he rang the embassy a voice asked him for his name, designation, rank, business, and then informed him gleefully that they had received a telex from the Ministry notifying a Shri Jyoti Das to show cause why he should not be suspended for dereliction of duty.

Luckily there were a few more hundred dollars from Düsseldorf, waiting poste restante. What could he do, but put them in his pocket and set off to look for the only people he knew in that continent?

So there he was, in the desert, lying on a sofa, terrified of the future, without a past, aware only of the prickings of his painfully virginal flesh, and there, suddenly in the doorway, was Kulfi.

There I was, he said to Alu, lying on a sofa thinking of a vulture, and I looked up and there she was in her yellow sari, framed in the doorway, like an oriole in a Mughal miniature.

You can’t give her a proper cremation, Mrs Verma; your own scriptures won’t permit it.

Why not? she demanded.

Well, Dr Mishra said, I can think of two perfectly good reasons. To begin with, I think I could undertake to persuade anyone who’s interested that her death was largely accidental — sudden shock, etc. Do you agree?

Mrs Verma nodded uncertainly: How does it matter anyway?

There, he cried. You see how you pay the price for your well-intentioned ignorance? Don’t you know that, strictly speaking, someone who’s died accidentally is not entitled to a proper funeral? If you don’t believe me, have a look at the Baudhayana Dharmasutra — you can see for yourself. The argument, if I recall correctly, is that someone who dies accidentally can’t enter Pitrloka anyway, so why bother? I can’t quite remember offhand, but I think in scriptural times the bodies of people who died accidentally were thrown into rivers or left in forests. That should give you something to go on, except that, as you’ll notice if you look out of the window, there aren’t many forests here, nor rivers, and it’s possible that the Algerians might be a little upset if we dumped her in an artesian well. So maybe we can just leave her on a sand-dune somewhere and give some of Mr Das’s vultures a nice meal. What do you think?

Dr Mishra burst into laughter. Poor Mrs Bose, he said chuckling. She didn’t do anything right. Didn’t she know that she ought to have made a gift of a cow to a Brahmin before dying? It would have been so easy, too. All she had to do was call out for me; I’ve always wanted a cow. And now she’ll have to answer for it, poor thing. She’ll be stuck on the banks of the Vaitarani, with no cow to lead her across it into the underworld.

Mishra-sahb, Mrs Verma said, do you think this is the right time for your jokes?

If you think I’m joking, he said evenly, why don’t you go and take a look at the Smritis yourself? The trouble is you can’t, of course, because you don’t know any Sanskrit.

Tell me, Mrs Verma said curiously, where did you learn?

From my grandfather, he said. What do you think I was doing all those years when my father was away in England? My grandfather was a real old Kanyakubja pandit; he used to give me vivas till the day he died. But, to come back to the point, there’s another reason why you can’t give Mrs Bose a proper cremation: I think you could see quite as well as I could that she was within hours of adultery. It can’t have been the first time, either. You ought to see what your law-giver Manu has to say about giving funerals to adultresses and fallen women.

Gazing at him in wonder, Mrs Verma said: Do you really believe in all this, Mishra-sahb?

All what?

Manu and the Smritis and everything?

Of course I don’t believe it. You know that quite well — I don’t believe a word of it. Dr Mishra stabbed a finger at her: But you appear to believe it, so you ought to know what your beliefs imply. I think it’s time someone showed you, Mrs Verma, that ignorance is a poor foundation for belief.

You shouldn’t have bothered. I know quite well how ignorant I am.

That’s not the point. I think you’re old enough to learn that you can’t just do what you like on impulse. There are certain rules.

Rules, rules, she said softly. All you ever talk about is rules. That’s how you and your kind have destroyed everything — science, religion, socialism — with your rules and your orthodoxies. That’s the difference between us: you worry about rules and I worry about being human.

Alu had little interest in Jyoti Das’s visions of birds. Never mind all that, he said. Tell me what became of the others.

The others?

Hajj Fahmy, Professor Samuel, Chunni, Rakesh and all the rest. What happened after you ambushed us at the Star?

Jyoti Das had to think hard to put a face to every name.

They were questioned, he said shamefacedly, mainly about you and Zindi at-Tiffaha and all the rest of you who got away. I wasn’t there then; they wouldn’t let me stay. I only saw them the next day. They were taken straight to the airport next morning to be deported — sent back to India or Egypt or wherever they had come from. I only saw them from a distance. They had plainclothesmen all around them, and no one was allowed to go close. Many of them looked as though they were in a bad way. Only Professor Samuel seemed calm. He even seemed to be trying to quieten some of the others. When they were being taken out of the lounge to the plane, he turned and saw me. I think he recognized me — I don’t know. But, whatever it was, he stopped and shouted: This is not the end, only the beginning. Why? I shouted back. I couldn’t think of anything else to say. The plainclothesmen were pushing him then, but he managed to hold them off for a moment. He smiled at me and shouted, even louder: How many people will you send away? The queue of hopes stretches long past infinity.

It was some time before Alu spoke again. He said: And what will happen to them now?

I don’t know, said Jyoti Das. They might be tried or they might be allowed to go straight home. Anyway, nothing serious will happen to them — no one worries too much about things which happen far away. And it’s you they wanted — not them.

And what happened to Hajj Fahmy?

He died the same day, Jyoti Das said. Of shock, the Ghaziris claimed.

A little later he added: When they took Hajj Fahmy’s body home the next day, they found that his family already knew. They were waiting, dressed in mourning. His widow said that her son Isma’il had told them the moment it happened.

So what will you do now, Mrs Verma? Dr Mishra asked. Will you clean the body for the cremation? Do you know how to do it?

After a moment’s hesitation, Mrs Verma nodded. She said: It shouldn’t be too difficult for a doctor.

But you’ve always had nurses to stand between you and any real pain, Mrs Verma. Not that a corpse feels pain, of course. But what have you ever done to a corpse other than cut it up anyway? No corpse has ever presented you with anything which wasn’t in Gray’s Anatomy. This is a little different, isn’t it?

I’ll manage, said Mrs Verma.

It’s not quite as easy as you think, Dr Mishra said with relish. You’ll have to reach into the bowels and clean out all the dead faeces. You’ll have to scrape the insides of the rectum and the anus to make sure that they’re absolutely clean; that not the faintest trace of mortal shit remains to defile the sacred fire. Are you sure a well-brought-up woman like you will be able to do it, Mrs Verma? I’m not.

Mrs Verma cast a quick, uncertain glance at the corpse and wiped her forehead with the fall of her sari. I don’t know, she said.

You see, said Dr Mishra, it’s not as easy as you think.

Then Zindi rose to her feet and plodded slowly to Mrs Verma’s chair. She put her hand on her shoulder and glowered across the table at Dr Mishra. Don’t worry, she said, her tongue tripping indignantly over the Hindi syllables. I’ll help you. We’ll do it together. I’ve often done it: we clean out the bodies of our dead, too.

Dr Mishra lowered his head, momentarily embarrassed. Wonderful, he said, under his breath. Now we can have an international feast of love over our adulterous corpse.

Mrs Verma stood up and took Zindi’s arm. Come on, she said, we’d better start now.

Not so soon, Mrs Verma, Dr Mishra called out. You can’t do anything to the corpse yet. You have to contact the authorities first. They may want an autopsy.

Mrs Verma stopped abruptly. That’s right, Dr Mishra smiled. In the meanwhile all you can do is lay the body out properly. I don’t suppose you know how to do that, either, Mrs Verma? Well, let me tell you. First, you have to find a clean place on the floor somewhere and you have to purify it with Ganga-jal. If I remember correctly, you’re meant to cover it with cow dung, too. But since you’re not going to find much cow dung on the sand-dunes, I suppose you could always use camel dung instead and do a few penances when you get back. However, personally I feel compelled to advise you strongly to leave that step out altogether. After that you have to lay the body out straight, with the head pointing south and the feet north.

Mrs Verma dusted her hands briskly. We can lay her out on the veranda, she said to Zindi. That’ll be the best place. But first we have to clean it out properly.

They went into a bathroom and came back carrying buckets and mugs. When the first few mugfuls had splashed over the veranda Dr Mishra began to sniff the air suspiciously. Then, throwing back his head, he burst into laughter. Mrs Verma, he gasped, tell me, is that carbolic acid in those buckets?

Yes, of course, Mrs Verma said.

He nodded weakly. The world has come full circle, he groaned. Carbolic acid has become holy water.

Mrs Verma dropped her bucket, went up to his chair, and stood over him, arms folded. What does it matter? she cried. What does it matter whether it’s Ganga-jal or carbolic acid? It’s just a question of cleaning the place, isn’t it? People thought something was clean once, now they think something else is clean. What difference does it make to the dead, Dr Mishra?

For a microbiologist, Dr Mishra said, wiping his eyes, you’re not very rational, Mrs Verma.

Mrs Verma pulled her sari tight around her waist. Shall I tell you something? she said. I hate microbiology, I hate it.

Is a microbiologist who takes a bit of someone’s piss or pus and runs tests on it really so different from a mechanic who takes a crankshaft or a spark-plug out of a car and checks it to see whether anything’s gone wrong: whether the steel’s rusted or the porcelain’s cracked; whether there’s grime or dust somewhere in the machinery?

The specimens even come to you in bottles, labelled with names or numbers, like so many dirty spark-plugs. It’s not even like being a surgeon: at least the surgeon sees the whole machine, even though it’s all shrouded and chloroformed, face covered and weeping mothers hidden away, every trace of its humanity blanketed. The microbiologist has only her test-tubes. At least the surgeon can see how the parts mesh, how the crankshaft connects to the gear-box. And at the end of it, after he’s done all his oiling and his tightening and his replacing, he can, if he wants to (though he doesn’t, of course) go and take a look at the entire contraption lying dead in the morgue, or ticking away in its room. What does the microbiologist do? Where does she go to see whether all her shelf-fuls of piss are clearing up or dripping blood?

And when you do find something in a specimen can you really help wondering sometimes where all those microbes and bacteria and viruses come from? Whether they can really, all of them, be wholly external to our minds?

And just as you let yourself wonder whether sometimes they are anything other than a bodily metaphor for human pain and unhappiness and perhaps joy as well you cut yourself short, for it dawns on you yet again that ever since Pasteur that is the one question you can never ask.

Then you feel exactly as you did when you once helped in a general practice and found people straying in, all through the day, with nothing wrong with them — nothing that a mechanic could have repaired at any rate — complaining: I have this pain, Doctor, and that pain, Doctor, and I think this or that has gone wrong here or somewhere else. Then, too, you almost began to speak till you realized yet again that the tyranny of your despotic science forbade you to tell them the one thing that was worth saying; the one thing that was true. And that was: There’s nothing wrong with your body — all you have to do to cure yourself is try to be a better human being.

The phone rang an hour after the police had come and gone, when Mrs Verma and Zindi had almost finished with the cleaning of the corpse.

Dr Mishra managed to get to it first. It’s the police, he hissed at Mrs Verma with his hand on the mouthpiece. You’ll see, they’ll never allow your cremation. I told you, there was no point wasting your time explaining to them. Why should they allow it? Why should it make any difference to them whether some passing Indian tourist happens to die here? Why should they agree to bend the rules?

Mrs Verma smiled: Why don’t you hear what they have to say first?

They all gathered around to watch as Dr Mishra listened to the voice at the other end. He said nothing beyond an occasional oui and startled mais peut-être. Gradually his face fell and when he put the phone down it was with a grimace, half-rueful, half-angry.

What did they say? Mrs Verma demanded.

I don’t believe it, he said, shaking his head. They’re not in their right minds. They’ve made a mistake.

Tell us what they said, Mrs Verma cried.

They said it’s all right; they’re willing to look the other way. Only, we have to cremate her quietly, somewhere in the dunes, and quickly.

Mrs Verma bit back a cry of delight. You see, she said, they know how important it is to die properly. Haven’t you heard how during their war of independence the French used to blow up the bodies of the Algerian dead to demoralize the guerillas, because they knew how important it is to Muslims to be buried with their bodies whole and undesecrated? I knew the Algerians would understand: if there’s one thing people learn from the past, it is that every consummated death is another beginning.

And wood? Dr Mishra cried suddenly, when Mr Verma was about to leave the house to fetch a land-rover from the hospital.

Where are you going to get wood from? You have to have wood if you’re going to cremate her. Or do you think her body’s so pure now that it’ll go up like a lump of phlogiston when you put a matchstick to it?

Mrs Verma fell into a chair. That’s true, she said, biting her lip. That’s going to be a problem.

Delightedly, Dr Mishra called out after her husband: Stop, you don’t have to go now. It’s all called off.

But Mrs Verma waved him on. Nonsense, she said. Of course we can find the wood if we try. Go on, get the land-rover; we’ll arrange for wood somehow.

All right, so what’s your plan now, Mrs Verma? Dr Mishra said. Are you going to send us out to chop down date palms?

Mrs Verma laughed: No, no, Dr Mishra, you won’t have to do anything. Mr Das and Mr Bose can do it. It’s quite simple: there’s that old table in the kitchen — the top’s plywood, but the legs are good, solid wood. Then there’s that huge crate-like thing the refrigerator was packed in. I’ll ring up Manda-bahen, too; there’s bound to be lots of wooden boxes and things lying about your house, considering all those expensive things you’re always buying. I know old Miss K. has some termite-ridden old boxes she wants to get rid of.

Dr Mishra shook his finger violently in her face. You can’t do it, he cried. You just can’t do it. I won’t let you. You can’t put that poor woman on some termite-ridden bonfire and set her alight. That’s not a cremation; that’s like roasting a tandoori chicken.

I don’t see what’s wrong with it.

There’s everything wrong with it. You can’t do it like that. You have to have the right wood.

What wood?

I don’t know, Dr Mishra snapped, flinging up his hands impatiently. There has to be some sandalwood; I remember that.

Sandalwood? Mrs Verma said. Come with me.

She led him across the drawing-room and knelt beside Hem Narain Mathur’s old bookcase. Reaching into the gap behind the books she drew out two battered sandalwood bookends, carved like elephants. One had no trunk and the other lacked a leg.

Since they can’t be used for beautification purposes any more, she said, they might as well be added to the pyre.

Dr Mishra stormed out of the room without another word.

Mrs Verma rang Mrs Mishra and Miss Krishnaswamy and then sent Jyoti Das and Alu to their houses. Over the next couple of hours the two men carried a number of crates and several pieces of old furniture into Mrs Verma’s garden and chopped them up. When Mrs Verma went out into the garden later, there was a sizeable pile of wood chopped up and ready.

That’s plenty, she said. We won’t be able to fit any more into a land-rover. She noticed Alu standing beside her, shuffling his feet awkwardly. Yes, Mr Bose? she said.

He began to say something, but his voice sank into an inaudible mumble. What’s the matter? she asked a little impatiently. Do you want to say something?

I don’t want your book, he said in a rush, holding it out to her. The Life of Pasteur …

Oh, she said, pushing it back, that’s a problem. I don’t want it, either. What do we do with it now?

I don’t know, Alu said.

She took the book from him and turned it over in her hands. Then she gave it back to him.

Maybe we could give it a funeral, too? she said.

She left him staring at it in silence. After a long while he raised it high in both his hands and placed it reverently on the pyre.

Dr Mishra decided to play his last card soon after his wife and Miss Krishnaswamy had arrived in Mrs Verma’s house to help with the arrangements for the cremation.

All right, Mrs Verma, he said. You’ve managed all right till now. But there’s one thing you seem to have forgotten.

She sensed the elation simmering beneath his smooth tone and was on her guard at once. What thing?

The ghee, he said. What about the ghee?

Mrs Verma stared at him blankly: The ghee?

Yes, the ghee. You have to have ghee for a cremation. You have to pour it over the wood so that it catches fire. You can’t very well use kerosene, you know.

Frowning with concentration, Mrs Verma whispered: If only I had some butter, it would be so easy to make ghee. But we finished all our butter last week.

Then, eagerly, she cried: But what about that nice soya-bean oil I bought in Algiers?

Soya-bean oil? Dr Mishra said faintly.

It was very expensive.

Mrs Verma, he said, you’re cremating her, not pickling her.

Mrs Verma’s head sank on to her hands: Where can I get ghee now?

So that’s that, then, Dr Mishra said, rising jubilantly to his feet. We can call it off now. I’ll go and tell Mr Bose.

Wait! Mrs Verma reached out for Mrs Mishra’s hand. Manda … Mandodari-bahen, she appealed, don’t you have any butter?

Like a frightened bird, Mrs Mishra cocked her head at her husband. Mrs Verma brushed her hand angrily across her swimming eyes. For God’s sake, Mandodari, she said, surely you won’t let him tell you what to do in a situation like this? Can’t you see how important it is?

Mrs Mishra swallowed and then, with another frightened glance at her frowning husband, she said: Yes, I can give you two kilograms of butter. I stored them away last month.

Mrs Verma clasped her hand between her own and kissed her on her greying hair. So Mishra-sahb, she said. What do you have to say now?

So you’re really going ahead with this? he said. You’re going to broil her on rotten wood and baste her with rancid butter? It’s shameful. It’s a travesty. Can’t you see that?

The times are like that, Mrs Verma said sadly. Nothing’s whole any more. If we wait for everything to be right again, we’ll wait for ever while the world falls apart. The only hope is to make do with what we’ve got.

There’s only one small thing left now, Mrs Verma told Alu. And that is you have to bathe and shave your head. I’ll heat some water for you if you like. And I’ve told my husband to shave your head. He has an old razor; he can do it easily. Of course Miss K. could probably do it much better, but I thought you would prefer—

But, said Alu, why do I have to do all this?

Of course you have to; you’re her husband. You have to perform the last rites — the kapalakriya, lighting the pyre and all that. Who can do it but you? Your son’s hardly the right age. And to do it you have to shave your head.

I can’t do it, he said, a sudden fear knotting his stomach. I won’t be able to.

You have to, Mrs Verma said firmly. Even Dr Mishra says so. It’s not really very much, Mr Bose; having your head shaved isn’t at all painful, you know.

No, no, he said. You don’t understand. Of course I’ll shave my head. But I can’t light the pyre. I simply can’t.

Why not? said Mrs Verma.

It’s because … The words seared his throat like a gush of bile: It’s because of my hands, my thumbs.

Is something wrong with your thumbs?

Alu caught his breath, shut his eyes and thrust his hands in front of her. Look, he said.

Yes? said Mrs Verma mildly. What’s the matter?

Look, he repeated. I can’t do it. I can’t move my thumbs.

She laughed: But you just did.

He opened his eyes and stared blankly at his hands.

There’s a little muscular atrophy, Mrs Verma said, but nothing serious. Look, you’ve already chopped all that wood. Your thumbs are all right, Mr Bose. Really. You can do whatever you like as long as you want to.

Zindi hardly recognized Alu when she first saw him with his head shaven. He was changed, diminished. It was as though the clouds had lifted from some perpetually misted mountain; without his hair his head looked plain, ordinary, even smooth.

You’re another man today, she said. I’ve never seen you before.

But he was thinking of something else. I’m afraid, Zindi, he said, kneading his hands. I have to light the fire, and I don’t know whether I’ll be able to do it.

They left just before dawn when the dunes were glowing with the first amber streaks of the eastern sky. Zindi stood in the veranda with Boss in her arms and watched them drive away. Though Miss Krishnaswamy and Mrs Mishra had stayed behind and only five of them had gone, they had still had to take two land-rovers, because of the wood.

When she couldn’t hear the land-rover any more Zindi went back to her room and began throwing her things into her small suitcase. Hours and hours seemed to pass before she heard them driving back. She snapped her suitcase shut and hurried out to the veranda.

The moment she saw Alu jump out of the land-rover and walk towards her she knew it had gone well. She didn’t need to ask; she could see it in his step.

It was he who said: I did it, Zindi. Then he held up a sealed brass box.

What is it?

It’s a bit of her ashes.

Zindi backed away hastily. Don’t bring it close to me, she said. We don’t believe in cheating the Day of Judgement by burning our bodies like that. You can keep it for yourself. What are you going to do with it?

Alu turned the box around slowly, looking at its aged joins. He said: Mrs Verma gave it to me to take back. She said it would give me a good reason to go home.

Dr Mishra adjusted his spectacles, explored his pockets, shuffled his feet and, because he had still found nothing to say, he coughed.

Mrs Verma studied her watch. It’s very late, she said, looking meaningfully at her husband. She was thinking of everything she had to get done before they left for the hospital. But Dr Mishra was still standing in front of her, wriggling a little, as though he had something to say but didn’t know how.

Everything went off very well, she said brightly, to help him. Don’t you think so, Dr Mishra? Now we can just forget about it.

He kicked a pebble and followed its trajectory intently till it vanished into a bougainvillaea bush.

Mrs Verma raised her voice: I wonder what the time is?

Well, Verma, Dr Mishra said at last, still looking at the bougainvillaea bush. It looks as though your Chitrangada is not going to get very far now.

No, Mrs Verma said, prompting her husband. That’s all finished with now. We can just have what we had last year.

But this year is not last year, is it, Verma?

What do you mean, Dr Mishra? she said. Her husband stared sadly at a cactus.

Dr Mishra turned to her: This year you’ll have to make the speech.

Why me?

Dr Mishra tried to smile, but instead his mouth twisted awkwardly sideways. Because you’ve won, Mrs Verma, he said. You’ve beaten old Murali Charan Mishra at last.

Alu looked from Zindi’s locked suitcase to his own bag lying in a corner with clothes spilling out of it.

What’s the matter, Zindi? he asked in surprise. Why …?

Zindi, rocking Boss in her arms, didn’t answer.

Zindi? he said again.

Zindi hid her face in Boss’s hair. I don’t know, ya Alu, she said. We’ve travelled so far together. It seems just the other day that we were in Mariamma with me worrying about Karthamma and Boss … And you sitting there with all those boils, catching fish … Who would have thought …?

He knew then what the packed suitcase meant. But still he wanted to be sure, so he sat down beside her and took her hand in his: What is it, Zindi?

She would not look at him. I’m old, Alu, she said, and every day I get older and older. I won’t last much longer; I’ve only got a few years left now. And today, when you people took Kulfi’s body — God have mercy on her — away, I wondered; I wondered what would happen to me if I died in a desert in a foreign land, without a house or friends to help me. I don’t think I would find a Mrs Verma, Alu — not everyone is as lucky as Kulfi — and what would become of me then?

Like a pebble sliding down a mined mountainside, a tear ran down the deep ridges of her cheek. I can’t go on any longer, Alu, she said. I’m too old and Boss is too young.

Alu nodded slowly: So what do you want to do now, Zindi?

You’re all right now, Alu, she went on. You’ll manage. You’ll look after yourself somehow. You don’t need me any more, so you’ll forgive me soon enough. Boss is all right, too, now. So there’s no reason to wait any longer here.

What is it, Zindi? he cried. Tell me.

He felt the warmth of her hand on his shaven, shrunken head. She said: Boss and I are going back home, Alu. Boss is going to build me a house some day.

Standing apart, Jyoti Das watched as Alu carried Zindi’s suitcase and his own bag to the veranda. He listened as Zindi poured profuse, tearful thanks on Mrs Verma, as Alu mumbled his gratitude, as Mrs Verma (looking at her watch, for she was already very, very late) bade them goodbye.

He caught up with them when they reached the gate. Where are you going? he asked Alu.

We’re going home, Alu said.

How?

By ship. So we have to get to Tangier first.

Tangier? Jyoti Das rolled the name around his tongue. With Gibraltar on the other side?

Alu nodded.

Jyoti Das looked up at the sky and said: It’ll be autumn there now!

He looked past them at the great silent dunes and suddenly he saw a sky alive with Cory’s shearwaters and honey buzzards, white storks and steppe eagles, Montagu’s harriers and sparrowhawks circling on the thermals; all of them funnelled, like clouds driven to a mountain pass, into that point where only one narrow strip of water lies between Europe and Africa, like a drawn sword.

My God! he said. The whole sky will be migrating over Tangier now.

He saw Zindi’s face cloud over with suspicion, so then he said: I’m migrating myself — to Düsseldorf. I’ve got nowhere else to go. Can I come with you, too?

Chapter Twenty-Two. Tamám-shud

There is little left to tell.

Travelling slowly, because of Boss, it took them nine days to reach Tangier. They found a cheap pension in the rue des Postes and took two rooms on the second floor from which they could, if they craned out of the window, glimpse the winding tumult of the Petit Socco. Next day Jyoti Das rang his uncle in Düsseldorf and later he bought a ticket for the ferry to Algeciras in Spain.

Next morning they went down the Avenue d’Espagne and, while Jyoti Das watched the flocks of swift-flying birds in the sky, Alu and Zindi gazed across the sparkling blue water at the hint of Spain shimmering in the distance. When the time came, they walked with Jyoti Das till he had to turn off into the quays. As he walked away, they waved and waved at his back and the single airline bag slung across it.

When he was through the gate and walking away, he seemed to remember something. He spun round suddenly and ran back.

Alu, he shouted through the bars.

What? Alu shouted back.

He cupped his hands around his mouth: Don’t worry about the sewing machine; they make them better at home now.

He laughed. Alu waved, and he waved back. Jyoti Das’s face was radiant, luminous, as though a light were shining through him. He waved again and walked jauntily away.

By the time the sleek Spanish ferry drew away, churning up the harbour, Jyoti Das was already on deck, waving. He was sure he could see them among the trees of the Avenue d’Espagne, so he kept waving as the lovely white town cradled in its nest of hills shrank away. Then he looked down and saw a humped back caracoling through the water. Then he saw another and another and suddenly there was a whole school of dolphins racing along with the ferry, leaping, dancing, standing on their tails. He looked up at the tranquil sky and gloried in the soaring birds, the sunlight, the sharpness of the clean sea breeze and the sight of the huge rock growing in the distance.

It was very beautiful and he was at peace.

When the ferry entered a bay and turned away from the rock of Gibraltar towards the shiny oil-tanks of Algeciras, Jyoti Das turned back to wave for one last time. But all he saw there was a mocking grey smudge hanging on the horizon, pointing to continents of defeat — defeat at home, defeat in the world — and he shut his eyes, for he had looked on it for too many years and he could not bear to look on it any longer.

And so he turned to face the land before him, now grown so real, and dizzy with exultation he prepared to step into a new world.

Alu and Zindi, with Boss in her arms, walked up through the steep, narrow streets of the Medina to the high battlements of the Kasbah. From there they could see the ferry clearly, cutting swiftly across the Straits, towards the Mediterranean. But Boss was looking the other way, towards the Atlantic, and soon they were looking there, too, scanning the waters. They saw nothing except sleepy, crawling oil-tankers. So, drowsily warmed by the clear sunlight, they settled down to wait for Virat Singh and the ship that was to carry them home.

Hope is the beginning.