The Linnet Bird: A Novel (61 page)

“I saw Daoud training a horse,” I said, when I had finished. I wiped my hands on the grass, then ran my finger over the etched surface of the silver bracelet Mahayna had given me to wear that morning. I thought of the sweat on Daoud’s smooth chest, how I had wanted to put my hand out and press my fingers against it.

Mahayna made a sound in her throat, a small sound, amused. I looked at her.

“You will go to him, I think,” she said.

I shook my head, feeling my earrings swing against my cheeks the way I had seen Mahayna’s earlier. My face grew hot. “Why do you say this? He is a chief and I a
ferenghi.
He has two wives. I have a husband.”

Mahayna shrugged. “Your husband has not given you children. He beats you. This is reason enough to seek comfort elsewhere.”

She said it, as she said everything, so simply. Seeking comfort. That coupling could be comfort was an odd concept. Sex meant release, I understood, for men. For women it meant children. Comfort? I looked at the distant silver of the sun, hurrying to rest behind the mountains. Mahayna and I sat in silence as the night sky grew black, and after she had nursed Habib until he fell asleep I followed her inside the tent and bundled myself in my quilt in the crowded space. Mahayna put Habib in a pile of skins in one corner and lay between me and Bhosla.

I
THOUGHT IT WAS
the camp dogs that woke me, although this wasn’t their usual thin yapping in the distance. It was a hoarse, rhythmic barking. I turned over, pulling the quilt around my ears, when a sudden stifled whisper made me tense and waken fully in the darkness. I opened my eyes, making out the curve of the tent wall. The whisper came again, now angry, from behind me. It was Mahayna. Then the guttural sound started again, and I realized it wasn’t the dogs at all, but Bhosla with Mahayna. I listened as his grunting grew louder and more urgent, culminating in a hissing groan. In only a few moments there was a muffled thump, followed by rumbling snores.

I lay stiffly, aware that my shoulder was aching; I was lying on my wounded one. Sleep had gone. I waited until I heard Mahayna’s quiet, even breaths between the rasps of Bhosla’s snores. Then I threw back my quilt and silently crawled through the tent opening.

Millions of stars shone brightly in the clear night sky. The light from a gibbous moon outlined the edges of the still camp; a breeze that carried the deep green smell of the mountains stirred the leaves of the tall birch and graceful poplars. I took the goatskin cover off the large earthenware pot of water beside the tent, splashing some of it on my hot cheeks and taking a long drink.

I walked through the camp, realizing I was not the only one awake. In one tent a child whimpered, in another men’s voices rose in angry bursts. I heard muffled weeping in another. A small white dog soundlessly charged at me from the shadows, its hackles standing straight, but after a few concerned sniffs at my feet it trotted away, tail high and rigid with its own importance. Something about the dog’s acceptance of me gave me a heightened sense of my own belonging such as I had never felt in Liverpool or in Calcutta or even Simla.

Finally I arrived at the horse enclosure. It was the only place I knew to come, the only place that called to me. I pressed my forehead against the hard roughness of the wooden fence, thinking of the press of Daoud’s forehead against the golden stallion’s earlier that day. The stallion and three smaller horses raised their heads in the air, alert in their far corner. I wanted to say his name. “Daoud.” It was little more than a whisper, but there was a sudden rustle behind me, and I whirled around.

He was sitting on a thick quilt, his back against a huge red-barked deodar. A
chapan
was thrown beside him. Had he heard me utter his name?

“You pray for your friend?” he asked, and I was first filled with relief, and then burned with shame. Him thinking I was mourning Faith, praying to a spirit, when my thoughts were base, and all too human.

I stayed at the fence. I couldn’t see his face. Just his boots and legs, stretched out in front of him.

“And you long for your husband,” he stated. Not a question.

I was so tired of lying, of secrets. “Yes, I miss my friend, and mourn for her. Her death is like—like a heavy rock, here.” I put my hand on my chest.
But I don’t care if I ever again see my husband,
I wanted to say, the exhilaration at being able to speak my thoughts growing ever stronger. “But it is not true that I long for my husband.”

I had never longed for another person, except my mother. I knew the feeling as it related to her. But had I longed for Shaker the night he wept as I let him take me in his narrow bed in Everton? For any of the young men I had danced with in the Calcutta salons? For Somers, even when I felt an unsettling confusion at the wrath I was able to stir within him? Had I ever longed to be near a man, to smell the scent of him? No. I moved closer to the edge of the quilt, trying to see Daoud’s face.

Suddenly he stood, and I took a step back. “You should return to Mahayna’s tent,” he said, and I knew I didn’t want to. I wanted to stay here. This is what I had hoped to find when I came to the enclosure.

I crossed my arms over my chest. I was trembling, although not cold. “Why are you here, and not in a tent?” I asked.

“I am happier sleeping under the sky. And I like to be near the horses,” he said. He stepped forward, picking up the
chapan.
He handed it to me.

I took the cape and put it around my shoulders. It was warm, thickly woven in myriad colors, heavy with the smell of woodsmoke.

“It is best if you go,” he said, and when I continued to stay, he came even closer. I looked up at him.

“Go, Linny Gow,” he said, and at the sound of my name from his lips the feelings that were confounding me swept in with such force that I turned and ran, rushing through the scattered tents in my soft shoes, making the dogs bay.

T
HE NEXT DAY
I worked beside Mahayna, my hands moving in the proper ways. I was thankful Bhosla was there, as Mahayna didn’t speak to me while he was present. I didn’t want to talk, afraid that if I did I would say things that I didn’t fully understand yet, afraid I would give away my yearning. To speak it aloud, giving it a name, frightened me.

Finally Bhosla left, dressed in clean clothing and carrying a sack of more clothing and an enormous pack of food on his back. Within minutes Mahayna was humming, chattering. I answered, but couldn’t stop thinking of the power Daoud held over me.

All the men I had known had wanted something—the endless stream of customers; Ram, using me for the easy coins he didn’t have to work for; Shaker, wanting love in a needy way that was smothering; Somers, wanting his inheritance and a cover for his lifestyle. And perhaps someone to bully. They all made use of me for something they wanted or needed. And by using me, they made me into an object.

Daoud wanted nothing. He appeared to need nothing; he appeared complete—a complete human being. This realization, coming slowly to me as I worked alongside Mahayana, was like warm water on my soul—he expected nothing of me, asked for nothing, and there was no need for me to fabricate any part of my life, as I had since Shaker had brought me to his home on Whitefield Lane. I was so weary of the lies I had to keep up with every single person I had met since then—first in Liverpool and then in the false image of England created in India.

Here, in this Kashmir camp, I could be who I actually was. Nobody cared what had been done to me, and what I had done, least of all Daoud. I felt myself opening, unlocking, the hinges rusted and giving way with a tearing sound like the wings of birds as they startle into flight.

I was open. My mind, my heart, my body. I knew what I would do. All the past choices in my life had been made for safety, for survival, for concealment and acceptance. All of them had been difficult, bound in twisted wire with consequences that could cost too much should they become unraveled. This choice felt easy, and carried not even the shadow of a doubt.

I
RETURNED
D
AOUD
’
S
chapan
to him the next afternoon, also bringing food to him at the horse enclosure. By offering him the rabbit stew from Mahayna’s pot, the flask of water from the stream, I felt strong, since I was giving him something. He took the bowl and sat on the top rail of the enclosure, eating it. I simply stood there, watching the horses. When he finished he drank from the flask, putting his head back to drain it. I watched his throat swallowing. I felt stretched, as if there were a bright, high singing in my brain.

As he handed the bowl and flask back to me, he jumped off the fence and looked into my face. “You are comfortable here now?” he asked.

I nodded. I wanted him to say my name.

“You do not behave as I imagined a
ferenghi
woman.”

I took a deep breath. “I am not like the other memsahibs. I only pretend. I am not one of them.”

He leaned one elbow on the rail. “Why do you do this?”

“I did not grow up as they did. I have a shameful past, kept hidden.”

He hadn’t stopped looking at me. A horse neighed, children shouted. “I have seen a sadness in your eyes,” he said. “I wondered at it. This is the heavy gift of your past?” His own eyes were almost black.

“Yes. I hate it. I’m ashamed of my past.” It was so easy to say these things to him.

“Perhaps you must let those old lights go out. It requires much effort to keep them burning. Let new ones take fire. Today it is not what you have done, but what you will do that matters. That is the new light.”

We both looked at the horses then. I was suddenly shy, and I sensed some feeling—similar?—from him. This gave me courage to say what I had wanted to say. “Will you sleep under the sky again tonight?”

He turned to me, and I saw his throat move as he swallowed. He nodded.

“I will come to you,” I told him, and he nodded again, and my heart thudded so loudly behind my ribs that it brought a strange and beautiful pain.