For almost ten years we confided all of our political and sexual fantasies to each other. When Zahid developed an obsessive crush on a general’s daughter, he insisted that I accompany him on his Vespa to the women’s college that she attended. We would wait outside and then follow her car, overtaking it just before it reached her house. She knew. Occasionally she smiled. The memory of a single smile kept him going for weeks. Then she graduated and was soon married off to the scion of some feudal family. Zahid’s offer, transmitted via his mother, had been rudely rejected. Zahid’s political bent and his father’s rejection of honours had made him out of bounds for daughters of army officers and bureaucrats, the two groups that ran Fatherland in those days, presiding over the kind of tyrannies that break a people’s heart and their pride. The boy had no future. How could he expect to marry into privilege?
Zahid recovered, though, and shocked his parents by insisting on marrying Jindié, the daughter of a modest but extremely well off Chinese shoemaker in Lahore. It was a Muslim family, but caste prejudices went deep in Fatherland. A cobbler’s daughter for the only son of a wealthy Punjabi family? Unacceptable. He might as well marry a Negro woman.
Zahid ignored them. ‘What are we?’ he would mock. ‘Peasants descended from low-caste Hindus whose job it was to grow vegetables for the rulers of this city. Our forebears grew turnips and pumpkins; Jindié’s father is a craftsman. Just because he measures your feet for sandals you think he’s lower than you.’ He married Jindié, the sunehri titli, as Zahid’s Punjabi friends called her — the Golden Butterfly. Her brother was a member of our political circle. She was a marvel of beauty and intelligence, a rare combination in Lahore. There was an air of gaiety about her as well as majesty. She had thin lips and profoundly expressive eyes. She had read more books than all of us put together, and in three languages. Her knowledge of Punjabi Sufi poetry went deep, and when she sang her voice resembled a flute. And she did sing sometimes, usually when she thought she was alone with our sisters and female cousins, unaware that we were listening. We all loved her. I more than the others, and I think she loved me. She had married Zahid just before his political treachery was exposed, but I thought she must have known of it and that had angered me greatly. It mattered in those days. Consequently, she, too, had been assigned to the deepest circle of my memory.
Now I found myself looking forward to seeing Jindié again. Our relationship had consisted mainly of letters, lengthy phone calls and attempted rendezvous. The last time we had met on our own, forty-five years before, she had been in a state of unspeakable confusion. Covered with shame, she had fled.
The next time I’d seen her had been at a farewell dinner for a retiring professor. She had come with her brother. It was a very proper occasion, not that she was ever capable of relapsing into coquetry. We did not speak and she appeared to be in fragile shape. Her melancholy glances cut me deeply, but there was nothing to be done. Some months later I received a letter informing me of her engagement to Zahid. It was a very long, self-justifying missive of the sort that women are better at writing than men, at least in my limited experience. I was so enraged at the news of her engagement that I never reached the end. In later years I did wonder whether it had contained any words of affection for me. I tore it up into little pieces and flushed it to the depths of the city. It was better confined to the sewers, I thought, where the rats could read bits of it. She should appreciate that, since she was marrying one. Years later, a mutual woman friend told me she had not detected any awkward corners in Jindié’s life. There were two children and they were the centre of her existence. I wondered what had become of them and her life after they left home.
I arrived early and went for a short walk by the river. There was a sudden sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. Perhaps this was a mistake, after all. Why was I dining with perfidy? The passage of time doesn’t always heal wounds incurred in political or emotional conflicts. Tipu’s shift from politics to business did not retrospectively justify Zahid’s betrayal. As for Jindié, I hadn’t thought of her for a very long time and when I did she appeared as a tender ghost. I couldn’t help feeling that a restaurant, neutral territory, might have been less stressful. I walked back to my parked car, took out the bottle of wine and inspected their Richmond home carefully before alerting them to my presence. The house, a late Georgian mansion, was certainly well appointed. A mature garden sloped gently to the river and a tiny quay where a boat was moored. But I had been sighted and the French windows were pushed apart as Zahid walked down to greet me. There wasn’t a hair on his head. It was polished and smooth like a carrom board. Given our history, a warm embrace or even a perfunctory hug was out of the question. We shook hands. And then Jindié walked out, and the clouds disappeared. Her hair was white, but her face was unaltered and her figure had not coarsened with age. Her smile was enough to flood decaying memory banks. I managed a few banalities as we walked indoors. While Zahid went to get some drinks — just to be difficult, I asked for fresh pomegranate juice and was told it was possible — I looked over the interior of the house.
The large living room was conventional and unsurprising. It could have been lifted straight from Interiors or one of the many other consumerist magazines that disgrace a dentist’s waiting room. Do they think that their patients are all empty-headed, or are the glossy pictures meant to make up for the dingy decor of their surgeries? The walls were covered with mostly unprepossessing paintings, with every continent unsuitably represented. No Plato, but two gouaches by his dreadfully fashionable rival, I. M. Malik. There were also a few swords and daggers, which had not been dusted for some time.
The only object that made an impression on me was an exquisitely painted Chinese screen depicting three women in earnest conversation with each other. Not a trace here of earthly existence being a mere illusion. Had I been forced to guess, I would have ventured that it was from the late seventeenth century and by someone who either inspired or was inspired by Yongzheng. She saw my appreciative look and smiled.
‘Genuine or a copy?’
‘It’s not a copy. It really is Yongzheng. Early eighteenth century. A gift from my son when he lived in Hong Kong, earning too much money for his own good. I have no idea how he managed to get it out of the country.’
It was a bit early in the evening to start discussing progeny, and I was wondering where the books were kept, when Zahid took me by the arm.
‘Jindié knows how fussy you are about food. She’s prepared a feast tonight. While she’s applying the finishing touches, let me show you my study.’
They seemed happy together, which pleased me. Not that Jindié was the sort who would have accepted being mired in misery for too long. She would have left ages ago.
The large oak-panelled study was certainly impressive; the eclectic collection accurately reflected the different tastes of the household. Zahid said, ‘I’ve bought all your books. Thumbprint them before you leave.’ He spoke Punjabi, as we always had when we were alone. He wanted to clear up the past. ‘Daraji, what hurt the most was that you rushed to judgement without speaking to me.’
I sat down on his desk and stared at him. His eyes were still the same and looked straight back at me. He then told me what had really happened. His father had simply bribed a senior police officer to get the No Objection Certificate, and all Zahid had done was sign an affidavit affirming that he was not a member of any clandestine Communist organization.
‘We are neither of us young, Zahid. Let’s not try to deceive each other or give sweet names to things that were never nice. Who betrayed Tipu?’