It was Ajita I noticed first in the photograph, a little younger than when I first met her; she was standing arm-in-arm with the father I had murdered, a massive dose of adrenaline in the heart stunning him.
I could feel Mustaq looking at me as I recalled that night in the garage, trying to picture the father’s face and compare it to what I had in front of me. I had no photographs of Ajita, or of Wolf or Valentin. The only photograph I had was one of the father, cut from the newspaper, which I hadn’t seen for years, and which must have been thrown out when Mother moved.
“Do you miss him?” I asked.
Mustaq replaced the picture. “He would have hated all that I am. I can’t imagine him having supper with Alan. But maybe he’d have appreciated my wealth and success.”
“That normally brings people around.”
“Are you pleased to see my sister?”
“Thank you, Mustaq. Yes-delighted, though we haven’t spoken much yet.”
“You’ve certainly been looking at one another.”
“Indeed. Is she with her husband and children?”
“I took them all to dinner in New York. When I told her I had seen you in London, and that you were coming to the country for the weekend, she came to life. She phoned me continuously, and began to move very quickly. Though she hates to leave the house, she brought no one with her. I suspect she might be ready for an encounter. Jamal, you lucky guy, you’re all she’s been waiting for.”
“I’d better not let her down.”
Mustaq lifted my wrist and looked at it, stroking my arm ironically. “You’ve taken the watch off. What I want now is information. I know it was a long time ago, but how in God’s name did you really get that thing?”
I reached into my pocket and drew out the watch. I couldn’t look at it now without wishing I could wind it back until before the moment it was given to me. My attempted good deed had brought more hell into my life than I could handle. Mustaq’s father was a ghost who still wouldn’t take his hands from my throat and, I feared, never would. The one thing you can never kill is a name. I wanted to cry out, Will the dead never leave us alone?
I gave it to him and sighed. “You can take it.”
He looked surprised. “It’s not mine, really.”
“Nor mine, I guess. Please.”
He removed his own watch and replaced it with his father’s. Tapping it, he said, “Thank you. I have to ask you this. Why did you deny that it was my father’s?”
“I wasn’t able to say how I got it.”
“Why not?”
“It’s a painful subject, Mustaq, going back a long time.”
“Painful for you or for me?”
“I will tell you. It may change your view of your father.”
“You don’t know what my view is. I don’t know what my view is. And I am almost an adult.”
“Okay.” I said. “Now?”
“Yes, if you don’t mind. Think how many years I’ve waited.”
The others were coming upstairs and quickly picking glasses of champagne from silver trays. Mustaq followed me across the room to a quieter spot, where we sat down together. The story took only a moment to make up.
I said, “This was not long before he died. I was at your house with your sister when your father came home. I couldn’t let on that I was her boyfriend, so I said I was waiting for you. He laughed and told me I was wasting time.”
“He said that a lot.”
“He wanted me to help him with a box of papers he couldn’t carry himself. Upstairs in your bedroom, in that small dressing room just off it, full of suitcases, he took off the watch. He told me it was valuable, it was a gift, he was giving it to me. I said I didn’t want it, but he insisted on stuffing it into my pocket. I noticed his trousers were open. He was touching himself. He took hold of me and forced me to caress him. Then we brought the box downstairs. That’s all,” I said. “I’m sorry I had to tell you.” While he was thinking, I said, “Mustaq, did he touch you?”
“No! Me-never. Why are you saying that? He didn’t go that way. He hated homos!” He stood up suddenly and stared out of the window. “For fuck’s sake-why are you telling me this! I have to consider it all now!” He was staring at me; his tone became absurdly gracious. “And I have to apologise to you. On behalf of my family, I am sorry for what my father did to you.”
“Will you speak to Ajita about it?”
“She’s fragile. She has a lot of depression, at least two weeks a month she is almost catatonic, and I really worry about her.” Then he said, “Do you know whether he did this to anyone else?” I said nothing. “Jamal, in your professional experience, do people who do these things do them to others?”
“My answer will be of no use to you. It depends on the subject’s history. Often, people do it for a particular period in their lives, after a separation or when they are depressed, and never again. I think we’re talking about a version of incest rather than paedophilia. They are different.”
He wasn’t listening. “The damned filthy man, with his bloody secrets. Do you hate him?”
“Me? No. It did disturb me. It shook me up. I guess it might have helped me in the direction I was going-to analysis. It spoiled my week but not my life.”
“Now I’m suffocating!” he said. I noticed his hands were on his own throat, as though he was trying to strangle himself. “I need to get out. I must walk freely for a bit.”
I watched him hurry out of the room. Alan went to him, but Mustaq brushed him aside. Alan looked at me and shrugged. I took another glass of champagne and wondered where Ajita was.
She wasn’t outside. From the window I could see Mustaq in the illuminated grounds, pacing, his arms thrashing. After a while he seemed to make up his mind about something and disappeared into another part of the house.
“Look,” he said, when he reappeared. He was tapping his arm.
“What is it?”
“I’ve already had an allergic reaction to the watch. My wrist is red and a little swollen. There’s a…throbbing!” I looked closely but could see nothing. He took the watch off and put it in his pocket. He said, “I went to Ajita’s room and opened up to her. I couldn’t stop myself. I told her what you said about our father. I wanted her to know. I asked what she thought. You’re lucky.”
“In what way?”
“She believed you, saying you were always a trustworthy person, with no reason to make up a story about our father.”
He went on, “The weird thing was: I thought it would devastate her, to learn Father was like that. Wouldn’t such knowledge do that to a person? To me it was an explosion. I watched her closely, and she didn’t seem shocked or even surprised.”
“Do you know why?”
“Sorry?”
I said, “What sort of man was your father?”
“He was strict. I think I mean stern. There was always reason to be afraid of him. But he wasn’t religious and never prayed. He’d have despised those mad mullahs and extreme Islam fascist wallahs. When Papa was alive, intelligent people thought superstition was dying out. Of course he hated the whites, particularly after his experience with the documentary. They were tricky, and their racism was deep.
“But there was a barrier between him and me. Since before I was eleven I suspected I might be gay.”
“You did?”
“The other boys called me a fat Paki bummer. I guess that just about clarified everything. One of our cousins told Papa I wanted to be a dancer or hairdresser. Papa had already noticed I had a weak handshake. So his response-that fags should be killed-made it obvious that this was not only unacceptable but a crime.
“I expect you know it, but I was in love with you and couldn’t wait for you to visit. I wondered what you wanted me to wear, what you wanted me to be. I read all those books thinking you might decide to test me on them. At the same time, whenever I was alone with Papa-only when we watched cricket or boxing together-I asked his advice about women. ‘How do you get a girl to be nice to you? Should you kiss her on the first date? What about marriage, should you bring it up sooner or later?’ I knew he liked to talk about such things. The stupid, indirect shit the straights have to go through. What’s it laughably called-seduction? At least it made my father feel like a big man.”