The Far Pavilions (81 page)

Koda Dad finished his prayers and turned to see Ash standing by the parapet with his back towards him, facing the ‘Pindi road and the eastern horizon where a full moon was drifting slowly up into the sky as. the sun sank down in the glowing, dusty, golden West. The rigidity of that back and the spasmodic clenching and unclenching of the lean, nervous hands told Koda Dad almost as much as the determined lightness of Ash's conversation had done, and the old man said quietly:

‘What is amiss, Ashok?’

Ash turned quickly – too quickly, for he had not given himself time to control his features, and Koda Dad caught his breath in the involuntary hiss that greets the sight of a fellow-creature in physical agony.

‘
Ai, Ai,
child – it cannot be as bad as that,’ exclaimed Koda Dad, distressed. ‘No, do not lie to me' – his uplifted hand checked Ash's automatic denial – ‘I have not known you since your seventh year for nothing. Nor have I become so blind that I cannot see what is written on your face, or so deaf that I cannot hear what is in your voice; and I am not yet so old that I cannot remember my own youth. Who is she, my son?’

‘
She
–?’ Ash stared at him, startled.

Koda Dad said dryly: ‘You forget that I have seen you troubled in some such manner before – only then it was calf-love and no more than a boy's foolishness. But now… now I think it cuts deeper; for you are no longer a boy. It is Kair-Bai, is it not?’

Ash caught his breath and his face whitened. ‘How did you… But you can't… I did not –’

He stopped, and Koda Dad shook his head and said: ‘No, you did not betray yourself in words. It was those you did not speak that warned me of something amiss. You told of two brides and spoke of the younger one by name, describing her and telling of things that she had said and done. But save when you could not avoid it you did not mention the elder, and when you did, your voice changed and became without feeling and you spoke as though there was a restraint upon you. Yet this was that same Kairi-Bai whom we all knew, and to whom you owed your escape from the Hawa Mahal. Yet you told us almost nothing of her and spoke of her as you would have spoken of a stranger. That told its own tale. That, and the change in you. It could be nothing else. Am I not right?’

Ash smiled crookedly and said: ‘You are always right, my father. But it shames me to learn that I can be so transparent and that my face and voice are so easily read.’

‘There is no need,’ said Koda Dad placidly. ‘No one but myself could have done so – and then only because of my long knowledge and affection for you, and because I remember the old days very clearly. I will not press you to tell me anything that you do not wish, but I am troubled for you, my son. It grieves me deeply to see you so unhappy, and if I can be of any help–’

‘You have always been that,’ said Ash quickly. ‘I leaned upon you as a child and I have done so again and again when – when I was a raw recruit. Also I know well that had I taken your advice more often I would have saved myself much sorrow.’

‘Tell me,’ said Koda Dad. He seated himself cross-legged on the warm stone, prepared to listen, while Ash leaned on the parapet, and looking out across the Begum's garden to where the Indus glowed red-gold in the sunset, told all those things he had left out of his tale on the previous day, omitting only the happenings of one night…

When he had finished, Koda Dad sighed and said inconsequentially: ‘Her father had great courage and many good qualities, and he ruled his people wisely – but not his own household. There he was both weak and idle, being one who greatly disliked tears and arguments and quarrelling.
Hai mai
!’

He fell silent, brooding on the past, and presently he said: ‘Yet he too never broke a promise. If he gave his word, he kept it, as befits a Rajput. Therefore it is only right that Kairi-Bai should do likewise, as from what you have told me I see that she has inherited only the good. This you may see only as your misfortune, yet in time I think you will come to see that it was best for both of you that she had the courage to keep faith, since had she done as you desired (and lived to tell of it, which I think unlikely) you would not have found happiness together.’

Ash turned from his contemplation of the darkening river and said harshly: ‘Why do you say that? I would have done anything – everything.’

Once again Koda Dad's sinewy, authoritative hand checked him: ‘Do not talk like a child, Ashok. I do not doubt that you would have done all that was in your power to make her happy. But it is not in your power to build a new world; or to turn back time. Only the One God could do that – were it necessary. And it would be very necessary for you! I myself have had little or no experience of your people, but I have sons and kinsmen who know the ways of the Sahib-log; and having ears to hear, I have listened and learned much during the years since I left Gulkote. Now as I do not believe that all I have heard can be lies, you, Ashok, will now listen to me.’

Ash smiled faintly and sketched a mock-humble salute, but Koda Dad frowned him down and said sharply: ‘This is not a matter for jest, boy. Once, long ago, in the days when the rule of the Company Bahadur' (he meant the East India Company) ‘was young and there were no memsahibs in Hind, the Sahibs took wives from among the women of this land and none spoke against it. But when the Company waxed strong their ships brought out many memsahibs, and the memsahibs frowned upon this practice, openly despising all those who associated with Indian women – above all, those who married them – and showing scorn and contempt towards the children of mixed blood. Seeing this, the people of Hind were angry and they too set their faces against it, so that now both regard it with equal disfavour. Therefore neither Kairi's people nor yours would have permitted a marriage between you.’

‘They could not have stopped us,’ declared Ash angrily.

‘Maybe not. But they would have tried. And if you had persisted, and made her your wife, you would have found that few if any mem-log would have consented to meet her or invite her into their houses, or allowed their daughters to enter hers; and none would treat her as an equal – not even her own people, who would do likewise, and speak ill of her behind her back because she, a king's daughter, must accept such treatment from many
Angrezi
women whose own parents were far less well-born than hers. They would despise her as the Rana and his nobles did, because her grandfather was a
feringhi
and her mother a half-caste; for in this respect, as you will have learned in Bhithor, her people can be as cruel as yours. It is a failing common to all races, being a matter of instinct that goes deeper than reason: the distrust of the pure-bred for the half-breed. One cannot overcome it, and had you brought Kairi-Bai away with you, you would have discovered these things soon enough – and discovered too that there would be no refuge for you here; your Regiment would not have wished to have you back, and other Regiments would not have been anxious to accept one whom the Guides had rejected.’

‘I know,’ said Ash tiredly. ‘I too had thought of that. But I am not a poor man, and we should have had each other.’

‘
Beshak
. But unless you lived in the wilderness, or made yourselves a new world, you would also have had neighbours - native-born villagers or townsmen to whom you would have been foreigners. You might well have learned to like their ways and earned their friendship and acceptance, and in the end been content. But
bardast
(tolerance) is a rare flower that grows in few places and withers too easily. I know that the path you now tread is a hard one, but I believe it to be the best for you both; and if Kairi-Bai has had the courage to choose it, have you so much less, that you cannot accept it?’

‘I have already done so,’ said Ash: and added wryly, ‘There was no choice.’

‘None,’ agreed Koda Dad. ‘Therefore what profit is there in repining? What is written is written. You should rather give thanks for that which was good, instead of wasting your time in fruitless regret for what you cannot have. There are many desirable things in life besides the possession of one woman, or one man: this even you must know. Were it not so, how lonely and desolate a world it would be for the many, the very many, who through ill-luck or by reason of being ill-favoured, or from some other cause, never meet that one? You are more fortunate than you know. And now,’ said Koda Dad firmly, ‘we will talk of other things. The hour grows late and I have much to tell you before I go.’

Ash had expected him to talk of mutual acquaintances in villages beyond the Border, but he had spoken instead of far-away Kabul, where, so he said, agents and spies of the ‘Russ-log’ had recently become so numerous that there was a jest in that city that out of every five men to be met with in the streets, one was a servant of the Tsar, two were taking bribes from him and the remaining two lived in hopes of doing so. The Amir, Shere Ali, had scant love for the British, and when Lord Northbrook, the recently retired Governor General, had refused to give him any firm assurance of protection, he had turned instead to Russia, with the result that during the past three years relations between Britain and Afghanistan had deteriorated alarmingly.

‘It is to be hoped that the new Lat-Sahib will come to a better understanding with the Amir,’ said Koda Dad. ‘Otherwise there will surely be another war between the Afghans and the Raj – and the last one should have taught both that neither can look to gain advantage from such a conflict.’

Ash observed with a smile that according to Kairi's uncle, the Rao-Sahib, no one learnt over-much from the mistakes of their parents and even less from those of their grandparents; for the reason that all men, using hindsight, were convinced that they could have done better, and in trying to prove it either ended up making the same mistakes, or new ones that their children and their children's children would criticize in their turn. ‘He told me,’ said Ash, ‘that old men forget, while young ones tend to dismiss events that occurred before they were born as ancient history. Something that happened very long ago and was naturally mismanaged, considering that everyone involved – as can be seen by looking at the survivors – as either a creaking grey-beard or a bald-headed old fool. In other words, their own parents, grandparents, uncles and aunts.’

Koda Dad frowned at the lightness of his tone, and said with a trace of sharpness: ‘You may laugh, but it would be as well if all those who like myself can remember that first war against the Afghans, and all who like you and my son Zarin Khan had yet to be born, would consider that conflict, and what became of it.’

‘I have read of it,’ returned Ash lightly. ‘It does not make a pretty tale.’

‘
Pretty
!’ snorted Koda Dad. ‘No, it was not pretty, and all who engaged in it suffered sorely. Not only Afghans and
Angrezis,
but Sikhs, Jats and Punjabis and the many others who served in the great army that the Raj sent against Shere Ali's father, the Amir Dost Mohammed. That army won a great victory, slaying large numbers of Afghans and occupying Kabul, where they remained for two years and doubtless expected to stay for many more. Yet in the end they were forced to abandon it and to retreat through the mountains – close on seventeen thousand of them, men, women and children, of whom how many think you reached Jalalabad? One! – one only out of all that great company who marched out of Kabul in the year that my son Awal Shah was born. The rest, save for some few whom the Amir's son took into custody, died among the passes, butchered by the tribes who fell upon them like wolves upon a flock of sheep, for they were weakened by cold, it being winter and the snow lying deep. Some four months later my father had occasion to pass that way, and saw their bones lying scattered thick for mile upon mile along the hillsides, as though…’

'I too,’ said Ash, ‘for even after all these years, many are still left. But all that happened very long ago, so why should it disturb you now? What is wrong, Bapu-ji?’

‘Many things,’ said Koda Dad soberly. ‘That tale that I have just told you, for one. It is not so old a tale, since many men still living must have seen what my father saw, and there must also be others, far younger than myself, who took part in that great killing and later told their sons and grandsons of these things.’

‘What of it? There is nothing strange in that.’

‘ No. But why is it that now of a sudden, and after so many years, the tale of the destruction of that army is being told again in every town and village and household throughout Afghanistan and the lands that border upon it? I myself have heard it told a score of times in the past few weeks; and it bodes no good, for the telling of it breeds conceit and over-confidence, encouraging our young men to think scornfully of the Raj and to belittle its power and the strength of its armies. And there is another curious thing: the teller is nearly always a stranger, passing through. A merchant perhaps, or a Powindah, or some wandering mendicant; a holy man on pilgrimage or someone on a visit to relatives in another part of the country, who has asked for a night's lodging. These strangers tell the story well, making it live again in the minds of folk who first heard it ten, twenty, thirty years ago, and had almost forgotten it, but who now retell it to each other and become boastful and full of wild talk. I have begun to wonder of late if there is not something behind it. Some plan… or some person.’

‘Such as Shere Ali, or the Tsar of Russia?’ suggested Ash. ‘But why? It would not pay Shere Ali to embark on a war with the British.’

‘True. But it might please the Russ-log if he should do so, for then he would hasten to ally himself to them so that he might call upon them to aid him. All the Border knows that the Russ-log have already swallowed up much of the territory of the Khans; and were they to gain a firm foothold in Afghanistan, who knows but that they might one day use it as a base for the conquest of Hind? I for one have no desire to see the Russ-log replace the Raj – though to speak truth, child, I would be happy to see the Raj depart from this land and the Government return once again to the hands of those to whom it rightfully belongs: the native-born.’