Burnt Shadows Part 2

Occasionally Sajjad imagined finding a wife for himself, but then he thought of the Burtons.

'Let's play chess,' James said, dismissing the contents of the file with a wave of his hand.

'The alleys of Dilli are "insidious as a game of chess".' Sajjad sat down opposite James, his hand sweeping over the lower half of his face to wipe off any pollen that might have attached itself to his skin. 'Don't you agree?'

'Rubbish.' James pa.s.sed his handkerchief to Sajjad and gestured to the spot of pollen on the bridge of the other man's nose. 'Chess isn't insidious. It was my move, wasn't it?' This question incorporated a joke between the two men, referring back to a time when Sajjad was too conscious of the disparity of their social positions to contradict anything the Englishman said. Now, whenever they played and it was Sajjad's move first, James would claim the turn for himself.

'Yes, your move.' Sajjad brushed his fingers across his nose, and returned the handkerchief to James. He knew how important it was to James to enact these moments of camaraderie which undercut the rigidity of the barriers between them. That it was only in James's hands to choose when to undercut and when to affirm the barriers was something Sajjad accepted as inevitable and James never even considered.

James raised his eyebrows at Sajjad.

'No, it wasn't. It was yours.'

'Yes, Mr Burton.' With barely a glance at the board, Sajjad moved his knight into the path of James's p.a.w.n.

'What are you being so petulant for? Move that knight back, Sajjad, don't be ridiculous.'

'Why isn't chess insidious?'

'It's that d.a.m.n book again, isn't it? You're quoting that d.a.m.n book to me.'

The 'd.a.m.n book' was Ahmed Ali's Twilight in Delhi Twilight in Delhi, published during the war by Hogarth Press. James's mother had sent him a copy for Christmas and he'd read no more than two pages before deciding it an overblown piece of hyperbole and thrusting it in Sajjad's hands to show him the kind of nonsense that was being praised as an Indian masterpiece. 'Virginia Woolf and E. M. Forster at their patronising best. You could write a better book than this.' But Sajjad loved the novel, and had taken to peppering his conversation with quotations from it in the hope of revealing to James the beauty of its sentences.

Sajjad moved his knight back to its previous position, and pushed his p.a.w.n forward instead.

'Do you think an Englishman will ever write a masterpiece in Urdu?'

'No.' James shook his head. 'If there ever was a time we were interested in entering your world in that way, it's long past. And you wouldn't know what to do with us if we tried.'

It seemed to Sajjad these were the kinds of things said so often that repet.i.tion made fact of conjecture. He'd know what to do with an Urdu masterpiece written by an Englishman. He'd read it. Why pretend it was more complicated than that?

'Anyway, if it was going to happen it would have happened by now. The new Viceroy's arriving soon. To preside over the departure of the Raj from these sh.o.r.es.' He sat back, surveying both Sajjad and the garden beyond as though he were in equal parts responsible for both. 'Even the best innings must come to an end, I suppose.' Sajjad wondered how James Burton would have felt about the end of the Empire if he didn't have this cricketing phrase handy. James returned his attention to the board, smiling as he identified the trap Sajjad was laying for him. 'People who know about such things seem to think the creation of this Pakistan seems quite likely now. Ridiculous really.'

Sajjad twirled his fingers in the air in what James had learnt to recognise as an Indian gesture of indifference.

'Either way it won't matter to me. I will die in Dilli. Before that, I will live in Dilli. Whether it's in British India, Hindustan, Pakistan that makes no difference to me.'

'So you keep saying. I think you're talking nonsense.'

'Why nonsense? The British have made little difference to the life of my moholla.' At James's look of confusion he translated 'neighbourhood', barely disguising his impatience at the Englishman's failure after all this time to understand that all-important Urdu word. 'It goes on as it has gone on. Yes, there are interruptions 1857 was one, perhaps the departure of the British will be another but believe me over the next century Dilli will continue to do what it's been doing for the last two centuries fade at a very slow, and melancholically poetic, pace.'

James made a noise of disbelief at the a.s.sertion that the departure of the British would be nothing more than an interruption, but contented himself with saying, 'If that really is the case, then you're mistaken in thinking you'll live and die there. You're not cut out for a fading world.'

If Sajjad had the sort of relations.h.i.+p with James Burton of which he sometimes convinced himself while inventing speeches and subjects of discussion on the way from Dilli to Delhi he would have laughed and said, 'Is this what you call a flouris.h.i.+ng life? Spending my days playing chess with you? Isn't it time for us to get back to the law offices, James Burton?' But instead he kept his eyes on the board and nodded his head slowly as though deeply reconsidering his relations.h.i.+p with his moholla.

'Don't believe me?' James said. When Sajjad merely smiled and shrugged, James put a hand on his arm. 'I don't know any man more capable.'

In moments such as these Sajjad loved James Burton. It was not so much for the compliment itself Sajjad had no need of those from anyone but for James's way of compressing a complicated matrix of emotion, one that encompa.s.sed the relations.h.i.+p of rulersubject, employeremployee, fatherson, chess-playerchess-player, into the word 'capable'.

There was the sound of the front door opening, and then Lala Buksh's voice said, 'Wait, please. I will tell Mrs Burton.' James and Sajjad heard his heavy tread go up the stairs.

'Wonder who that is?' James said, rising out of his chair. He walked into the hallway, Sajjad following.

There was a woman there, hands in her trouser pockets, looking at the portrait of James, Elizabeth and their son Henry which hung on the wall. In addition to the blue trousers, flared below the knee, she was wearing a cream pullover with sleeves pushed up to the elbows, and her dark hair was cut just below her ears. Even with her back turned to them she looked like no one James knew among the Delhi set.

'Are you here to see my wife?' he said.

She turned, and James said, 'Good Lord,' as he found himself looking at a j.a.panese woman.

'I'm Hiroko Tanaka. You must be James Burton.'

2.

There were only three things Hiroko Tanaka knew about James Burton when she walked into his house. He was Konrad's brother-in-law. His uncle, George, had built Azalea Manor. He had a Muslim employee. So when Lala Buksh opened the front door for her and, amidst the black-and-white of walls and floor tiles, she saw the vibrant oil painting on the wall calculated to create a first impression of the Burton family for all visitors it was James more than Ilse who she stepped closer to examine. Who was this man about whom Konrad had nothing to say? But when she looked at the portrait the man in his expensive suit, one hand on his wife's shoulder, the other resting on a cabinet which showcased sports trophies she saw immediately what the painter had captured so perfectly: the complacency of James Burton. And then she understood why Konrad would have had nothing to say to, or about, him.

Standing before James, her extended hand unnoticed as he stared in confusion at her, she thought he looked like a discarded sketch that preceded the oil painting. The chestnut hair depicted in the painting was really light-brown, the slightly bronzed skin was pale and freckled, and the green eyes were set closer together than the painter had acknowledged. And yet, as good manners firmly but gracefully ushered the surprise off James's face and prompted him to take Hiroko's hand as though he'd been expecting her all along, she saw that the painting was a good likeness here was a man at ease with ease.

'How do you know my name?' he said. And then, as if answering a question that would win him a bottle of champagne, he declared, stabbing the air in triumph, 'Konrad!'

Sajjad, standing unnoticed behind him, winced.

This is what Elizabeth heard: Lala Buksh's voice telling her there was a visitor from j.a.pan, and then as she hurried along to the stairs James's cry of delight carrying up to her: Konrad! Konrad! Her heart, if not her mind, had already leapt to its impossible conclusion when she rounded the curve of the stairs and saw the wholly unfamiliar figure standing beneath, back towards her. Her heart, if not her mind, had already leapt to its impossible conclusion when she rounded the curve of the stairs and saw the wholly unfamiliar figure standing beneath, back towards her.

Noticing James's eyes sweep from her towards the stairs, Hiroko turned her head. And discovered a new aspect to pain. It was Konrad become female, and beautiful. The ginger hair augmented to copper, the heavy eyes made sensual rather than sleepy, the lankiness transformed into slimness. Beside her, James was saying, 'My wife, Elizabeth. Darling, this is Miss . . . Tanker?' and a man's voice behind him corrected, 'Tanaka,' but Hiroko did nothing but stare at the figure walking down the stairs.

In the past eighteen months there had rarely been a day when she hadn't thought of Konrad walking backwards, refusing her invitation to 'stay', but at some point the memory had become a.s.sociated with, rather than accompanied by, overwhelming emotions. Not so many months ago she had been dancing with an American GI in Tokyo when some s.h.i.+mmying movement of his recalled Konrad's departure, and she hadn't even lost a step as she saw the dance through to its end before excusing herself to the powder room, where she wept at her own callousness before returning for another dance. No, there was little Hiroko Tanaka hadn't learnt about the shameful resilience of the human heart. But seeing Elizabeth descend the stairs made it only yesterday that Konrad walked away from her to his death.

'Miss Tanaka,' Elizabeth said, extending her hand to the woman who was staring at her so disconcertingly. She intuited immediately that this was someone who had known Konrad well enough to be disturbed by his half-sister's resemblance to him. When there was no response from Hiroko, she reached out and caught the other woman's hand, which was hanging unthought of by her side, so for a moment they simply held hands before the unfamiliarity of Elizabeth's touch, the coolness of it, removed the ghost of Konrad from between them and Hiroko adjusted her grip and shook the hand vigorously.

'Ilse,' she said. It occurred to her that she should be saying 'Mrs Burton' instead, but in conversations with Konrad it was always 'Ilse'.

'Elizabeth,' corrected the other, with an apologetic smile that suggested she was at fault for having discarded her childhood nickname. 'And what may I call you?'

'Hiroko.'

'Could we offer you a cup of tea, Miss Tanker?' James said. 'It's lovely out on the verandah.' Why couldn't Elizabeth be so affable with the wives of his clients? 'Lala Buksh, chai!' he called up to the henna-haired man on the upstairs landing. Then he extended one hand in the direction of the verandah, inviting both women to precede him there.

Hiroko waited for Elizabeth's response she had pledged her allegiance in the household already, Sajjad thought and only when she received a smile and nod of the head did she make her way down the hall, with Elizabeth following closely after. On the way to the verandah, she let her eyes linger on the Indian man who was standing to one side to allow the three foreigners to pa.s.s.

'Sajjad, find some way to occupy yourself. We'll get back to those files later.'

'Sajjad?' Hiroko stopped in front of the Indian.

'Yes?' He wanted to reach out and touch the black, raised spot on her cheekbone, to see if it was part of her or if it was a tiny beetle that had landed on her skin, tucked its wings under its body and decided never to leave. She struck him as a woman who would allow certain liberties to beetles and to curious men if the intentions weren't discourteous.

She was about to say that Konrad had spoken of him but before she could Sajjad gave Hiroko a look of warning and shook his head slightly. What are the rules of this place, she wondered, as she smiled uncertainly at him and walked on past James and Elizabeth's looks of curiosity. Had Konrad felt as lost when he first came to Nagasaki? If only she had his purple-covered books; if only there were that much of Konrad Weiss still in the world. But the tree on which he'd hung his book mobile had burnt to a blackened stump on 9 August, though Konrad's neighbourhood was otherwise uncharred. Yos.h.i.+ Watanabe had said the bomb couldn't possibly have been responsible perhaps someone walking past the vacant plot had been lighting a cigarette when the flash of the bomb had startled him into dropping a match or the cigarette itself over the low wall. 'Even if that's true, the bomb is still responsible,' Hiroko had said.

The desire to sit down on the ground and weep was strong, but instead Hiroko stepped on to the verandah, and into another world. Everything was colour, and the twittering of birds. It was like walking into the imagination of someone who has no other form of escape. So beautiful, and yet so bounded in. She sat down on the chair James had pulled out for her, and said yes, she would love some tea.

'What brings you to Delhi? Have you been here long?' James crossed his legs at the knee and sat back, his elbows jutting out slightly from the arms of the chair.

Elizabeth watched him with interest as she settled herself less expansively. After eleven years of marriage she remained fascinated by James's way of directing people's perceptions of him. How casually he'd tossed the term 'darling' in her direction, minutes earlier. He did that often enough when they were in public, or hosting parties, but something about hearing it in the morning hours, with Sajjad standing near by glancing up in surprise, had made that travesty of endearment particularly striking.

'I just arrived. I didn't want to be in j.a.pan any longer,' Hiroko said.

James nodded encouragingly, as though approving the opening of a play and indicating his willingness to stay and discover how events unfolded, but Elizabeth saw that Hiroko had reached the end of her answer.

'And you know Konrad?' she said. Hiroko nodded. 'He told you he had relatives in Delhi?' As she spoke she ran her palms along the fabric of her dress, smoothing what wasn't creased to begin with. As though she believed the flowers imprinted in the cotton had fallen into her lap from the shrubs leaning into the verandah, Hiroko thought. That was a Konrad-thought.

'Bungle Oh!, Civil Lines, Delhi,' she said softly, speaking the memory out loud. 'He said who could resist such an address?'

James leaned forward slightly.

'Have you come from Nagasaki?' She seemed far too . . . whole to belong in any of those photographs that he still didn't see the point of publis.h.i.+ng in magazines that people's children might get their hands on. As eight-year-old Henry had. Daddy, did Uncle Konrad look like this when he died? Daddy, did Uncle Konrad look like this when he died? the boy had said, pointing to something barely recognisable as human in a magazine that Elizabeth had stupidly brought into the house. the boy had said, pointing to something barely recognisable as human in a magazine that Elizabeth had stupidly brought into the house.

'Tokyo. I've been working in Tokyo since soon after the war ended. As a translator. Someone I knew there told me about a friend of hers who was coming to India, to Bombay. We met, and I convinced him to let me travel with him. And from Bombay I took the train to Delhi.'

'What, alone?' James glanced over at Elizabeth. She's making this all up, his eyes signalled.

Hiroko didn't miss the unspoken communication since the bomb she had started to watch the married with the keen interest of one who knows all her understanding of coupling must come from observation.

'Yes. Why? Can't women travel alone in India?'

Elizabeth almost laughed. So much for those demure j.a.panese women of all the stories she'd heard. Here was one who would squeeze the sun in her fist if she ever got the chance; yes, and tilt her head back to swallow its liquid light. At what point, Elizabeth wondered, had she started to believe there was virtue in living a constrained life? She clicked her heels against the floor in impatience at herself. Virtue really had nothing to do with it.

'Well, there's no law against it if that's what you mean.' James was oddly perturbed by this woman who he couldn't place. Indians, Germans, the English, even Americans . . . he knew how to look at people and understand the contexts from which they sprang. But this j.a.panese woman in trousers. What on earth was she all about? 'But there are rules, and there is common sense. I certainly wouldn't allow Elizabeth . . .' He faltered as Hiroko glanced towards Elizabeth to see her reaction to his choice of verb.

'You say you're a translator? Did you know Konrad in a professional capacity or . . .?' Elizabeth made a vague gesture that managed to capture her utter ignorance of Konrad's life in j.a.pan.

'It's how we met. Through translations for his book. He was . . .' Hiroko paused. She had not spoken about Konrad to anyone but Yos.h.i.+ Watanabe, and with Yos.h.i.+ there was much that didn't need to be said. So now she had to take a second or two before giving words to the future she had lost. 'If our world hadn't ended he would have been my husband.'

Lala Buksh's arrival with the tea removed all necessity for an immediate response. James just sat back in his chair, not bothering to hide his disbelief. And Elizabeth thought, I did not know him at all! Nothing in the image she had of her half-brother a man enclosed in his own mind who viewed other people as irritants distracting from the beauty of a leaf or an idea allowed her to imagine him holding the attention of a woman as spirited as this. She wondered what marriage meant to the j.a.panese. Did it involve love? She really couldn't imagine it. Couldn't imagine Konrad and Hiroko Tanaka in love and in early love, at that, when everything that matters in the world is distilled into two bodies. She was suddenly aware of James's physical presence in a way she hadn't been for a long time.

Who could resist such an address? James ran the odd sentence through his mind, while nodding at the j.a.panese woman what was her name? as though it was the news of her relations.h.i.+p to Konrad that he was taking in. Could it be that she had come here expecting to stay? Could she possibly imagine they would ask her to stay simply because she claimed to have been Konrad's fiancee? Although, she hadn't quite claimed that exactly. He glanced at her hands. No ring. James ran the odd sentence through his mind, while nodding at the j.a.panese woman what was her name? as though it was the news of her relations.h.i.+p to Konrad that he was taking in. Could it be that she had come here expecting to stay? Could she possibly imagine they would ask her to stay simply because she claimed to have been Konrad's fiancee? Although, she hadn't quite claimed that exactly. He glanced at her hands. No ring.

'Terrible about Konrad,' he said, realising Elizabeth was not going to be the first to speak. 'Just an awful business, the whole thing. We hadn't really been in touch with him for a while, Miss Tan . . .' He brought his teacup to his mouth to try and obscure his inability to recall the rest of her name. 'But, of course, we'd like very much to know more about his life in j.a.pan. You must come over for supper while you're here. Will you be staying in Delhi a while?'

James, you b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Elizabeth felt a rush of protectiveness towards the j.a.panese woman who had clearly come here because there was nowhere else for her to go. Which was a ridiculous thing to do, of course, but that hardly justified the cutting dismissal with which James had just directed her towards the door.

But other than a bright spot of red on her cheek, Hiroko showed no sign of perturbation.

'I have some money and no attachments. It means I don't need to make plans.' The truth was she had little money the voyage from Tokyo had cut a swathe through her savings but she had every confidence that her three languages and glowing references from the Americans would be sufficient to secure employment anywhere in the world. 'How long I stay depends on how Delhi and I get along.' She turned to Elizabeth, the slight repositioning of her shoulders dismissing James just as effectively as he'd dismissed her. 'Could you tell me where I can find a respectable boarding house? I have references from the Americans in Tokyo, and from Yos.h.i.+ Watanabe, grandson of Peter Fuller from Shrops.h.i.+re.'

Whether it was simple curiosity, a feeling of sympathy, or a desire to offend James, Elizabeth didn't know, but she found herself saying, 'Why don't you stay here for a few days while we sort out further arrangements. Your luggage?'

'I left it with the man outside.' Hiroko tried to reconcile Konrad's bitter comments about Ilse, the sister who had made him feel so unwelcome in Delhi, with this woman of warmth and hospitality. 'But, please, I don't want to impose.'

'Elizabeth, a word.' James stood up, and moved indoors. After a pause long enough only to contain within it a glance of rea.s.surance, Elizabeth followed.

Hiroko pressed her fingers just beneath her shoulder blade. From Tokyo to here she had found momentum in momentum. She had not thought of destination so much as departure, wheeling through the world with the awful freedom of someone with no one to answer to. She had become, in fact, a figure out of myth. The character who loses everything and is born anew in blood. In the stories these characters were always reduced to a single element: vengeance or justice. All other components of personality and past shrugged off.

Hiroko had once spent an entire afternoon looking at a picture of Harry Truman. She did not know how to want to hurt the bespectacled man, though she suspected she would feel a certain satisfaction if someone dropped a bomb on him; as for justice, it seemed an insult to the dead to think there could be any such thing. It was a fear of reduction rather than any kind of quest that had forced her away from j.a.pan. Already she had started to feel that word 'hibakusha' start to consume her life. To the j.a.panese she was nothing beyond an explosion-affected person; that was her defining feature. And to the Americans . . . well, she was not interested in being anything to the Americans any more. She pushed herself up from the chair, her arms wrapped across her chest, and walked down into the garden. Some days she could feel the dead on her back, pressing down beneath her shoulder blades with demands she could make no sense of but knew she was failing to meet.

She ran her knuckles across the bark of a tree. The faint sound of skin on bark was oddly comforting. It reminded her of something . . . something from Nagasaki, but she couldn't remember what.

Sajjad walked out into the garden from James's study. The Burtons had started arguing outside the study door they knew nothing about this woman (said James), they couldn't simply turn Konrad's intended on to the street (said Elizabeth), she was clearly lying about her relations.h.i.+p to Konrad (James), it would take little effort to telegram that friend of Konrad Yos.h.i.+ What's-his-name and ask him about her, so why not just do that instead of being so unpleasant (Elizabeth), oh, I'm unpleasant, am I (James). Sajjad hated their arguments not the fact of the arguments themselves but the sense both of the Burtons conveyed of restraining themselves, even at their most barbed, from saying what was most true and most hurtful until the unsaid words filled up the room and made Sajjad want to run away to his home, where even Allah was berated soundly and in ringing tones for all His shortcomings.

Surprisingly, the Burtons' voices did not carry into the garden. So the newcomer, he saw, was entirely unaware of them. Unaware of all the world, it seemed, as she rubbed the back of her hand determinedly against the tree-bark with its knots and nodules.

'Don't,' he said, suddenly appalled by how fragile she looked in the sunlight. She seemed not to hear him, so he ran across the gra.s.s to her, just as the blood started to well up beneath her broken skin, and pulled her hand away.

Lala Buksh walked out in time to see Sajjad's hand encircle Hiroko's wrist.

Trouble, he thought.

3.

'I don't think it's going to work out with the girl we were considering as your bride,' Khadija Ashraf said, lowering herself on to the divan in the courtyard on which Sajjad was sitting, cross-legged, while sipping his morning cup of tea in the pre-dawn moments of in between.

Sajjad put an arm around his mother and whispered, 'While the others are still asleep, you can admit it. You don't think any of the girls in Dilli are good enough for you favourite son.'

Khadija Ashraf leaned back against the bolster-cus.h.i.+on after sweeping away the leaves that had fallen on it from the almond tree, and shook her head in exasperation at Sajjad's seeming indifference.

'This Muslim League nonsense about a new country is disrupting everything.'

'Back to that, again? Mohammed Ali Jinnah is starting to supplant Allah as the chief accused for all the problems of your life. There's a kind of devotion in that which exceeds even that of the most diehard Muslim League supporters.'

His mother straightened the lines of her gharara, and refused to smile. She'd taken a great deal of care in opening the formalities for the marriage negotiations between Sajjad and Mir Yousuf's daughter, Sheherbano, and all had seemed to be going well until Sheherbano's father had suddenly declared that of course this new nation would be a reality, and of course he would move there, and he would naturally expect his son-in-law to follow a similar course of action. Why the man didn't just leave the marriage talks to the women Khadija Ashraf couldn't understand, but the damage had been done. A new line of questioning had opened up, and it turned out the girl had herself declared that if there were pro-Pakistan processions in Delhi such as had been held in Lah.o.r.e she would be proud to emulate the thirteen-year-old Fatima Sughra who had pulled down the Union Jack from the Punjab Secretariat building and replaced it with a green Muslim League flag, which she had st.i.tched from her own dupatta. Whether the girl was wearing another dupatta at the time of this shameless act Khadija Ashraf didn't know, and was afraid to ask.

'Ammi Jaan-' Sajjad said, trying hard to find the words that would make his point without wounding his mother. 'Once I marry the girl she will enter our home; I will not become part of her household. Whether her father wants me to move somewhere else or not is irrelevant. And, as for the other matter . . . you've always said I'll need a wife with a strong will, otherwise I'll get bored.'

'I have a strong will. It doesn't make my dupatta fall off my head.'

'I want a modern wife.' It came out abruptly and unexpectedly, prompted by his imagination already falling in love with the girl who would dream of flying her dupatta in place of a Union Jack. Sajjad had no political allegiances, but many narrative preferences in the stories of history two of his favourite characters were the Rani of Jhansi and Razia of the Mamluk Dynasty: powerful women who led troops and sat in council with men. And it was his mother who had told him their stories and made him fall in love with those images of womanhood.

'Modern?' His mother repeated the English word with disgust, and Sajjad tried not to imagine the Burtons laughing at her p.r.o.nunciation: 'Maa-dern'. 'Do they tell you that's what they are, your English? Modern? These are words created only to cut you off from your people and your past.'