In Xanadu (35 page)

We heaved Laura up on our shoulders and precipitated her forwards into the train. She fought her way in, flaying like a Saracen. Once she had established a bridgehead, we followed. A coolie passed up our rucksacks, and we manoeuvred ourselves over legs, shoulders, tiffin cans, sacks, tables and benches, until we found ourselves above the central passage. Then we burrowed down. Within a few minutes we had reached the floor, and seconds later had excavated enough space to place our rucksacks down on it, and ourselves on tht m. We looked at each other and beamed with satisfaction at our achievement.

Then the beggars appeared. How they got to us confounded all known laws of physics; some strange miracle of agility transported them. But they appeared with the speed and appetite of ducks to breadcrumbs, hobbling, shrieking, tapping, circling above our shoulders, hands extended downwards. They hovered above Laura and me, peering down into our faces, then they noticed Joe. They stopped, cocked their heads, and looked back at us.

What is this?' asked one in English.

He is from Ghana,' I replied.

A Ghana,' he whispered to his companions.

Ghana, Ghana. Ghana,' they echoed.

'Name's Joe,' said Joe.

'He speaks,' said the first beggar.

"Yeah, and a whole lot else besides,' said Joe.

'Listen!' cried the beggars.

Claw-like hands caressed Joe's hair. A leper's stump felt his gleaming, matt-black skin. One woman cackled.

'Hey, get out of heah!' said Joe. 'Yeh, get, shoo.'

He rose to his full height, and brushed them away. They scuttled out of the carriage, but were still taunting him from the window when the train pulled out at 15.30 exactly.

'Damn animals,' said Joe. 'Dat's wad de are. Damn animals.'

I
read a bit more of
Crime and Punishment.
I had just got to the bit where Raskolnikov axes the old women, when I felt completely and utterly exhausted.
I
curled up on the rucksack and fell fast asleep. There, lying in the middle of the corridor, with half the population of Quetta stepping over me, poking, asking the terrible monotonous round of oriental questions (Who? Where? Why? Oh Sahib, just one more question. How?), I fell into a deep sleep, and did not wake up until nine o'clock the following morning.

Everything was green. After days of sand, shale and desolate aridity, the colour was almost violent to the eyes. The railway was raised on a bank, and all around us stretched the rich expanse of the Punjab. Even the word implies fertility:
pange ab
are the five waters, Chenab, Ravi, Jhelum, Sutlej and Indus; between them they made the Punjab into one of the great cradles of civilization, the Mesopotamia of Middle Asia, and still the breadbasket of India and Pakistan.

It was the monsoon season, and the first rains had already passed. Out of the window
I
could see paddy fields stretching away on either side. Villages were everywhere, and seemed to grow organically out of the soil, to be part of the teeming, procreating richness that formed so complete a contrast with the lifeless half-continent that separates the Punjab from the Mediterranean. Only after passing through Turkey, and the terrible wastes of Persia, can you fully comprehend why the
Islamic
paradise is a garden, a green dream of fertility.

The day passed uneventfully. After four days and three nights of nonstop movement I ached to stop. I fantasized qu etly to myself: in my mind most of that day was spent having long, hot baths, rolling in cold, clean sheets, putting on new underpants, things like that. I longed to be on my own for a moment, to bask in just a few seconds of privacy. But it was no to be. As ever the peasants kept their distance; the problem lay with the pseudo-Europeans. The first to intrude on my dream world was a dowdy creature, who sat nursing an engineering textbook on a seat a short distance away. I could see him eyeing me up for a while before he actually put down
Elementary Engineering Drawing,
and came over to me.

'Crime and Punishment,'
he said. 'What is this?'

'It is a novel,' I said.

'You are studying this book?'

Wo. I'm reading it for pleasure.'

'Why pleasure?'

it was a good question. It wasn't one of those novels that particularly improved on third reading.

'Well, I suppose I rather enjoy reading novels.' He eyed me suspiciously. 'What,' he asked, 'is your qualification?' The blind spot.

"I  
haven't got a qualification,' I said. He gave me an I-thought-as-much look, and returned to his seat.

We passed more paddy, edged by a slow-flowing irrigation channel. It was almost empty of people; only one or two men stood, bent over the plants, knee-high in water, picking, or perhaps grafting the young shoots. Then we left the paddy and passed drier fields of date palms and banana groves before returning to the thick chimps of boggy marsh grass and the jungle-book green of further fields of ripe rice. I remember passing a level crossing: a herd of elephants stood queueing behind the barrier as nonchalantly as a line of Ford Escorts would behind a similar barrier in England.

At Multan the train stopped for an hour and we all left the carriage to look for lunch. We ate another plate of curried lamb then returned to the train, where we fought to retain our places. I snoozed for a while, then awoke and got into conversation with Firdausi, a young Pakistani lawyer. His family were
Muhajir,
refugees from India, and before Partition had been wealthy Delhi-wallahs, merchants in the Chandi-Chowk, where they had cornered the Delhi end of the jute trade. He was very handsome, with dark intelligent eyes.

'Of course,' he said, 'to be a lawyer is not the most interesting of careers.'

'Really?' I said. 'I know some lawyers who love their jobs.'

'Oh don't be absurd,' he replied. 'Everyone knows lawyers are the dullest people in the world. The only thing to be said for it is that it pays well'

'Is it easy to get a job?'

'Yes, quite easy. In Pakistan there is much crime, especially in Lahore. There is a lot of work for lawyers.'

"What sort of crimes? I thought Lahore was a stable city, very prosperous and clean.'

'No, no,' he said, his face lighting up,'it's full of crime: murder, robbery, rape. Especially rape. There is more rape in Lahore than any other city in Pakistan.'

Really?'

'Oh, yes. Last week in my street a fourteen-year-old girl was raped. She was a pretty girl. Educated. Would have been very beautiful. But her face is now badly scratched; she will find it hard to get a husband.'

'How horrid. I always thought rape was a Western disease.'

'Oh it is. But we're very westernized in Pakistan.'

We arrived in Lahore at five o'clock, and took an autorickshaw to the house of a Pakistani friend from Cambridge, Mozaffar Quizilbash. Mozaffar was an Eton-educated aesthete, a kind of Muslim Harold Acton, who lived with his canvasses and library in a palatial house in Shah Jamal, a leafy suburb in the north of the town. We were greeted warmly.

'William, darling, how wonderful to see you. But, my dear, you're absolutely
filthy.
And why are you wearing those beastly Paki clothes?'

He rustled his silks.

'When you've washed you can come and see my new painting. I've been agonizing over
ii
for a week. It shows Love struggling. hopelessly, against Desire.'

I

SIX

CHINA

From the logbook

Lahore
26.vii.86

Too much food, too much tea, too much lying in bed, too many baths.

I'm writing in the icy air conditioning of Mozaffir's drawing room. Mozart is playing, I am wearing clean clothes and the logbook is resting on a Louis Quatorze bureau. Mozaffar is lying on a divan at the far side of the room. Occasionally he reads out snippets from his paperback: Freud's
Leonardo da Vinci.
In this unlikely setting the last week has been spent in relaxation. It seems onerous even to have to walk outside to the swimming pool. Any : whim is attended to by Mozaffar's servants, who exist here in almost Victorian profusion: bearers, drivers,
derzi. mali dhobi.
cooks and chauffeurs.