TEN
THE CALL WAS UNEXPECTED. A voice I hadn’t heard for almost fifteen years. The accent was now transatlantic, but it was definitely Alice Stepford. What did she want, why me and why now?
‘Greetings, Dara.’
‘Where are you?’
‘In London. We moved here after the Iraq war, though heaven knows why. It was a mistake. England’s dead. Dead politics, dead culture, servility the norm, even the old Guardian looking more and more like a marketing artefact. The BBC trying hard not to be like Fox TV, but in some ways worse with its hand-wringing conformism. Fake objectivity is the real killer. Anyway, you must have seen that Ell played at the Obama inauguration? Time to return.’
I hadn’t seen the live broadcast of the inauguration and had missed Eliot Lincoln Little Jr. playing the fiddle. She wasn’t pleased.
‘Ridiculous. Where were you? In some remote corner of the Amazon Basin? I thought television was everywhere. A new Roman emperor is chosen and anointed, the world is watching, but not you. You really didn’t see it live? Amazing. Ell was so good. His violin wept with joy. Not a cliché, not a cliché… anyway I didn’t ring to quarrel. Free for supper tomorrow? Still a bachelor or would you like to bring someone? There’s a lady over from your parts extremely keen to meet you. A friend of old Plato.’
‘His latest flame, I hope. I need to speak with her.’
‘Cruel choice of words, my dear. No flame without fire, and as we know…’
‘Mean, mean Ally. It may not be physical, but appears to be a very intense affair, according to our old friend. I’m suffering as a result and have to meet her. It will also be good to see both of you again.’
‘Ell left last week. And Jezebel, our teenager, went back to Brooklyn a few years ago. Jez is now the lead guitarist in a crazy neo-punk outfit in Brooklyn. She’s only eighteen. You’ll love the band’s name. The Seventeenth of Brumaire, the French revolutionary equivalent of the seventh of November. It’s because they had all just turned seventeen when the band was set up and were flicking through my books and found a reference to the 18th Brumaire and delved deeper. Cool, they all thought. Real hoot. I’ve closed the house. Come to the studio. Eightish? Promise supper will be served promptly. It’ll just be us three.’
Her artistic energy was now channelled into her husband’s and daughter’s work. As I drove to Chelsea later that day, I made a mental note to ask whether she was painting again. Unlike its owner, the studio had changed little. Ally was elegantly attired as always, but the dyed hair was noticeable, which surely defeated the whole exercise, and she was much bulkier, but then so we were we all. But the continuities outweighed the changes. Ally’s throaty laugh revived old memories, as did the wine.
‘George got the buildings; my other siblings got money and pieces of furniture. I inherited the cellar. It was in the will. Naturally, I share it with the siblings, except for pre-1986 wines. Ell doesn’t drink at all.’
‘Is he a Muslim?’
‘But darling, you know full well he is… surely I told you.’
‘Ally, I gave you away in church.’
‘So you did. So you did. Of course, it was some years later that Ell shifted faiths and did the Hajj. I didn’t much care that he found Islam was more congenial than Presbyterianism. All I said was that if he as much as looked at another woman lustfully, I wouldn’t hire a Blackwater mercenary to castrate him, I’d do it myself. Otherwise it didn’t bother me too much. Most Americans love religion, and it’s part of the package if you marry one of them. What did annoy me was that he chose such an unbelievably pompous name. It was only when his agent warned him very firmly that his fame as a violinist had been built wearing the old identity, and that concerts by al-Hajj Sheikh Mohammed Aroma might not appeal as much to the box office, that he decided to carry on under a “false” name. He is so very weak and in so many ways, otherwise he’d have discarded the old name like a pair of soiled underpants. After awful 9/11 he panicked yet further and simply stopped using his Muslim name at all. This, I’ve always thought, was utterly pathetic and pandering to Islamophobia. It’s as if Muhammad Ali had reverted to Cassius Clay. But at least he remained a Muslim. I dislike all religions, Dara. I hope you’re not thinking of a late-life conversion.’
‘Don’t be silly. And speaking of Islamophobia, why should Ell need a change of religion to be unfaithful?’
‘I’m going to make a salad dressing.’
She could not explain the reasoning behind Eliot’s conversion. It was surprising, since it wasn’t the result of a lengthy stay in prison, where the Honoured Classic has had a magical impact on many young African-Americans and especially on their diet. I made a mental note to delve deeper, but all gloomy thoughts vanished with the appearance of Ally’s other guest.
Zaynab Shah’s appearance startled me. Her deep brown eyes were not languorous but filled with mischief. Her aquiline nose gave her a haughty expression, but the minute she smiled her entire face relaxed. She spoke in a lively and deep voice, her mind was clear-sighted and, instinctively, I felt that she scorned the mask of hypocrisy. Many women from the same social class are layered in duplicity, a price they pay for living and functioning in Fatherland.
Whatever the basis of their relationship, Plato had struck gold. Of this I had no doubt. I had done some homework and realized that I knew one of her brothers, the decent one, as she later informed me. The other had laid the abominable trap that wrecked her life.
I had not been prepared for this combination of intelligence and beauty. Zaynab was dressed in a colourful Sindhi cholo and maroon suthan, or loose cotton trousers. She crossed her legs as she sat down, the Sindhi colours blending well with Ally’s decrepit, faded olive-green velvet sofa. There was not the slightest trace of starchiness in her, of the variety often displayed by society begums in Fatherland when first encountering strangers. Zaynab was informal, and her darting, smiling eyes suggested a free-and-easy approach to life. Outside, I remember, the sky was overcast.
A writer with no other concerns or preoccupations would have produced a masterwork based exclusively on the tragedy that befell this amazing woman. My version, alas, can only offer a prosaic account as per the strict instructions given me by the progenitor of this book and currently an intimate of the lady. The last thing I feel like doing is questioning her about him, but promises must be kept. I will only provide a basic outline, and here, too, as is my weakness, explain the history and social conditions that produced someone like her and explain why she fell in love with my friend Plato. Or did she? What lay hidden in so lovely a body, or behind so many backward tosses of the head? Did she have an angelic or a devilish soul, or was it a mixture of the two that had affected Plato so deeply? She had not yet looked at me seriously, but concentrated her attention on Ally. An old tormentor, vanity, made a sudden appearance and began to mock at me, at the same time alerting me that any false steps could only lead to the abyss. And the warning irritated me, for I was far from green and hardly devoid of experience, unlike Plato.
Zaynab looked younger than fifty-two — as if she were in her late forties at most. It was difficult to tell. She’d been born to an extremely wealthy family of Sindhi landowners. These men were the most primitive lords in Fatherland, where competition in the field remains high. To add to the woes of their serfs, for that is what the peasants were, some of the landowners were hereditary saints or pirs, which meant that their word was not simply the law but came directly from the special relationship they enjoyed with God. Challenge this status and they would fight like devils possessed. When the British annoyed a distant cousin of Zaynab’s grandfather, he had replied with a rebellion that had lasted a whole year and forced the empire to deploy troops in the interior of Sind, and this in 1942 when British troops had just suffered a crushing defeat in Singapore.