Arctic Summer (15 page)

In just a few days, Morgan himself would be beset by boredom. Bankipore was horrible, and offered almost no distraction. He was here for only two and a half weeks, which felt both too short and too long. What would ever happen in this place? There was nothing to do, and very little to think about. The only open space was the Maidan, some distance down the road; between it and Masood's house were the Library and the Law Courts. These buildings weren't much better than the hovels that surrounded them, and on the dusty ground between them squatted litigants waiting for lawyers, while inside the courts, lawyers waited for litigants. That was the sole entertainment.

He was in touch with one Englishman he had known from King's, but he preferred spending time with Masood's friends. Two in particular became his escorts and companions. In the morning, while the rest of the household was still asleep, he would bicycle over to the house of one or the other, and they would accompany him for a few turns about the Maidan. Then he would return home for breakfast with Masood before he left for the courts or consulted with clients in his office. There were many hours spent alone in the middle part of the day, until evening and more conviviality came along.

One afternoon, while Masood was out, three young men came to call on him and were treated instead to Morgan's company. He found himself holding forth to the visitors on politics: he spoke about English foreign policy and the complicated, contradictory interests of the Empire, emphasising that much of what Britain did was based on fear of Germany rather than hatred of Islam. The youths listened eagerly and when they left one of them delivered an effusive speech about their good luck in meeting him and how the Empire could go on for ever if it produced wonderful gentlemen like him.

It was only afterwards that Morgan reflected, with amusement, that everything he'd said had sounded credible only because he happened to know a little more than the young men did. And yet there was something about the exchange that reassured and pleased him. If people could only sit down together and speak—or perhaps more importantly,
listen
—then many intractable problems might disappear. Everything of significance in his own life had come about through the simple act of open-hearted conversation.

Yet that could be the most difficult thing in the world. Sometimes the better you knew somebody, the more impossible any real talk became. That, at least, was how it felt to him. Here he was, in the home of the man he loved, on the other side of the world from his own constricting life, and what truths could be spoken between them? They talked about food, or the weather, or problems of justice, but they didn't speak about anything that mattered. Everything was jest, or chatter, or deflection, and all the while the days were passing.

Of course, some important things were said, though more by accident than design. There was the moment, for example, when Masood mentioned that he thought he'd made a mistake by going into law and that he was considering a change.

“But to what?” Morgan asked.

“I am thinking of education. It is a very necessary field.”

“Of course, but you've spent years, studying in England . . . ”

“Yes, yes, but the time wasn't wasted, whatever happens. I have met you, apart from anything else. Just look—here we are, six years later, sitting together in India.”

Morgan couldn't help himself; he was overcome with pleasure at the words. It did seem miraculous that an appointment to teach Latin in Weybridge could have carried him such a distance. The talk about Masood's career became forgotten.

But it was followed by another conversation, possibly the very next night, when Masood mentioned casually, as if it didn't matter, that he thought he might marry soon.

“Oh?” Morgan said. A bolt of pain fell cleanly through him, then vanished into the floor. “Do you have somebody in mind?”

There had been no women evident, not even in their idle chatter.

“Yes, yes,” Masood said impatiently. “You remember in Aligarh, you met my friend Aftab Ahmed Khan, we had dinner together . . . ”

“Yes,” Morgan said vaguely. There had been so many dinners, so many meetings . . .

“I am considering marrying his daughter.” As if there had been some objection, he added, “These things are arranged here in India. We do not pretend to follow the English example. Our tradition is different.”

“By this time, I should hope I know that.” And both of them laughed and put the subject away hurriedly, as if it were somehow shameful. But the thought of it kept Morgan awake that night and it was the first thing in his mind when he woke the next morning.

Masood getting married; a door closing deep inside somewhere. He could be miserable if he thought about it too much. Though it wasn't as if it came as a surprise. Marriage was inevitable here, far more so than in England; he'd known it would happen one day.

Still, he struggled to contain a sensation of rising dismay. He was at the midpoint of his time in India: three months behind him and three in front. Nor did his friend seem troubled by that fact. There had been no mention of seeing one another again. And when Morgan brought it up, Masood waved the matter away.

“I am very busy, my dear chap,” he said. “You see how my days are. Of course I would love to travel around with you, but I don't know how it's possible. Not at the moment. But the next time you come—certainly then, oh yes, we'll tour about and I'll show you everything. Oh, I look forward to that hugely.”

“The next time. When will that be?”

“I don't know, Morgan, that's up to you. But you'll come back, of course you will. Now we're not going to be depressed, are we, and spoil our happy days together? That would be too dreary.” And he went off, singing a ghazal, to shave before work.

In the end, Bankipore seemed to fall past him, so swiftly did his stay run out. And his memory of it afterwards was filled with Masood's friends, rather than Masood himself. As the days converged on his departure, his anguish rose invisibly, not uncoloured by resentment. Why had he come here—to India—at all?

 

* * *

 

And then there were the caves.

“I have organised a little expedition for you,” Masood mumbled at him on one of his last mornings, as they took breakfast together on the roof. “Before you go to Gaya, I think you should see the Barabar caves. I am sending you with a friend, and you will have a picnic breakfast.”

“That is very kind of you,” Morgan said, “very kind,” but his teeth clinked painfully on the edge of his cup. “Are they wonderful, these caves?”

“Oh, yes. Famous caves.” After a moment he conceded, “Well, they are not so wonderful. But you should see them.” And after a further pause: “I have arranged an
elephant
.”

Morgan, staring down into the complicated trees, tried to be impressed by the elephant.

The last day was the worst. Time seemed to swell, becoming waterlogged with emotion. He thought he would get through it all right, but then in the middle of the night, when they'd said goodbye, his sadness had become too big and he'd gone back through to Masood's room and done what he'd done. The attempted kiss, the pushing away, the tears: all of it had shamed him deeply, so that he couldn't consider the memory too directly. And he had taken those feelings—of sadness and longing and shame—to the caves with him the next morning.

It was true: the caves were not so wonderful. They were small, with almost no ornamentation, no visible history. And they were spread out so far, in such a remote place, that he found himself retreating afterwards with a low, persistent headache and his deep melancholy unassuaged.

But despite their ordinariness, the caves lingered in him. He carried their hollowness inside, their negatively asserted shape. In Bodh Gaya, in the sunken garden where the Buddha had supposedly attained his enlightenment, he was less stirred by the prayer flags and the pilgrims than the memory of a glassy smoothness under his fingers, and that echo.

That echo. It played in his head at unexpected moments, repeating certain sounds and making nonsense of them. But could you remember an echo? Memory itself was like another kind of echo, everything duplicating endlessly, in shadow versions of itself.

Something had happened between Masood and himself, he felt, in the caves. Which was nonsense, because Masood hadn't even been present. Though that was exactly the point. That was what everything between them had come down to: Masood still abed, while his friends, Agarwala and Mahmud, were at the station to see Morgan off. And wasn't that always the way of it? Hadn't his association with Masood, under the elaborate filigree of language, hadn't it always been about this deferment, this selfishness, this veil drawn over the obvious truth, which was that Masood simply did not care enough? Morgan could not look at the possibility for long, but at least he could look at it, and over the coming days he took it out and hurt himself with it at particular moments when he was alone. He had always been slow to comprehend his own feelings, and it came only gradually to him how disappointed he was. He had hoped for a great deal in making this journey and none of it had come to pass. Now he was left with time and an immense amount of space, and nobody else to keep him company.

In the weeks that followed, Masood, bewildered or lazy or unable to help himself, continued in his apparent indifference. The promised letters did not arrive. Morgan wondered: would they ever see one another again? And would it matter if they didn't? His mood, which seldom left him, was like being under the sea, in aquamarine light. However bright or loud your surroundings, you were somehow always alone.

Even in the middle of the vastest tide of humanity he had ever seen in his life—at the Magha Mela, the Bathing Fair in Allahabad, which Rupert Smith had invited him to—he felt profoundly singular. He was in a tent again, pitched in the middle of a mango grove. Nearby, the crowd seethed. A million people, Smith said. It was like a small nation, in which certain details could suddenly become apparent. People praying to idols with frighteningly painted faces. A sadhu hanging over a fire, his head in a black bag, being pushed back and forth by another sadhu. Long lines of pilgrims, waiting to have their scalps shaved, except for the one lock by which they hoped to be pulled to heaven. Their shorn hair piling up, to be taken to the water.

For the most part he watched it from an observation platform, astounded at this epic display of faith. The scene was especially remarkable in the early evening, when the air was blurred with dust and smoke, and people became like tiny animals crawling on the bottom of the sea. The junction of the two rivers kept changing overnight, according to how the Ganges wandered in its bed. This must have been the reason that he and Mirza had been unable to locate the spot, yet other people now were finding their way.

His journey had lost some of its velocity by now, though its form continued to hold him. He went on to Lucknow, where the Residency, the site of the Mutiny siege, had been preserved as a museum, through which he stumbled by the light of a golden afternoon. It was very still and weirdly beautiful, the wide, garden-like spaces with their bougainvillea and bursts of orange creeper, shaded by tall banyan trees, and then the broken buildings, punched and pocked with the marks of cannon balls, looking like much older ruins already. In one place the besiegers were only the width of an alley from the residents, whose presence still trembled on the air, in the form of heat ripples rising from the ground.

He fled from them, back to Agra, Muttra, Aligarh. It was a measure of how much he'd seen that Aligarh, and the college, now seemed like a place where relations between the races were good, even kind. He went to call on Masood's mother, who still would not see him in person. But Mirza had coached him in the right words to convey.
Give my salaams to Begum Sahiba and say that I have been at Bankipore and that Masood is very well
. All true, of course; but he began to wonder whether his entire Indian visit might not dwindle to those bare facts.

Injury had transformed slowly into anger, inseparable sometimes from the landscape he was travelling through. He had begun to voice this emotion in letters, in a way he'd never done before.
You can now go to hell as far as I'm concerned
. . . These words, to Masood!
You didn't work at law, you don't write anyone letters, you can't even stop yourself getting fat by taking proper exercise. Soon you'll be too slack to trouble to keep your friends and will just drift about making casual acquaintances with the people you find handy. I do think that is beastly of you
.

Such sentiments would have been inconceivable just a few weeks before—to say nothing of signing off without love, which he now pointedly did. Love was still there, of course, but to refrain from declaring it was a declaration in itself.

 

* * *

 

In the first half of his journey, everything had seemed to fall past him at dazzling speed; nothing was still or fixed. But now that Masood was behind him, the end of his stay had become visible in the distance. All of this would finish. The world that he was passing through was not so new or shiny any more; it had taken on solidity and weight.

He found himself noting little moments, or particular people, with an eye to using them later. He didn't really know what he would do with them; only that they were part of a fabric he'd begun to weave. His mind was especially receptive on a return visit to the Darlings in Lahore. He had enjoyed his previous stay, but it was only now that he fully appreciated how unusual the Darlings were in British India. Every week there were several gatherings involving a mix of Indians and Europeans, and at an evening party Morgan met an elderly gentleman, whose name made an impression. After the party ended Mr. Godbole strolled with him through the public gardens, discussing ragas. Different scales were applicable to different times of day, he told Morgan, and to illustrate the point Mr. Godbole sang to him a little in C major, which was appropriate for the evening.