She listens for movements in Rohan’s room. When after a quarrel with Sofia he would forgo a meal, saying quietly from his room that he was not hungry, she would take food to him in secret, and she would grin as he pretended not to care initially but would then ask, ‘What have you brought?’
She looks down at the book. The Sultan gave Francis the key to his private prayer room, and on parting he accepted one gift from the Sultan, an ivory horn, which is kept today in Assisi. The inscription on it says that Francis used it to summon people and birds to hear him preach.
*
The black shadow of the railing falls on her white tunic and makes it appear as though the fabric is patterned. The candle flame swaying on the floor beside her. He leans and places his mouth on her neck, his hunger shouting from underneath his skin. Every object around them is heightened, everything surprised. He feels ashamed for seeking happiness so soon after his brother’s death. Something terrible will happen to him. He is inviting punishment. He thinks of Salomi, and he thinks of Jeo who has only been dead for four days — for him. Pushing past the confusion in the darkness he lifts her wrists and begins to break the glass bangles, eliminating the possibility of Sharif Sharif from her. ‘I want my breath,’ he says. His hand under the tunic on her breast on her stomach on the curve of her spine and now he panics. He has been in a world war and he can sense blood. She pushes him away gently because she knows about blood too — she is a woman. A breaking bangle has torn into her left wrist. They light the candle that had extinguished itself a moment ago and see the thin line of red emerging from the puncture. He lifts it to his mouth and with his teeth works out the small shard of glass lodged under the skin, not stopping as she stands up and leads him indoors, the glass disappearing into him the way the ruby had entered Jeo’s body.
*
He crosses the Grand Trunk Road and enters the night-dark alley, moving towards the high painted rooms, visualising the doves and pigeons in one of them. When he notices a shadow behind him, there is a surge of anger in his body at not realising he was being followed. Squeezing through the narrow gaps between the fenders and bumpers of two parked trucks, he looks over his shoulder. They won’t just pick you up, they’ll spirit away everyone you know.
He climbs the stairs two at a time towards his room. It’s Basie’s birthday tomorrow and he has a bottle of Murree’s whisky hidden behind a loose brick in the wall.
He looks down from the window. There doesn’t seem to be anyone out there, at least not in the few areas where light is falling.
He turns and stands looking at the coloured walls, then leans against one of the painted angels and closes his eyes. ‘To them everything was about helping others,’ Basie said about their parents, getting drunk on the mattress in this room. ‘They’d always find that aspect. Once I wanted to see a cowboy film — it was on at the Capri cinema, I remember — and Father said he himself loved cowboy films because they were about someone coming to the aid of a town terrorised by the wicked and the powerful.’ They and their friends took poets into factories and mills, to inspire them to write songs about the terrible conditions the workers had to endure. They found itinerant storytellers and introduced them to the screenwriters in Lahore, so that the land’s age-old tales of resisting the unjust could be incorporated into contemporary movies.
There is a sound outside the door.
‘Akbar.’ The tension snapping into relief, of a kind.
Akbar comes forward and embraces him.
‘What are you doing here?’
The boy looks dishevelled and unslept, the eyes dark.
‘They found out I killed my father,’ he says quietly.
‘The military. The people he was trying to bring to your house?’
‘Yes.’ He looks around him. He is carrying a shoulder bag and he places it at Mikal’s feet. ‘You have to take this to Megiddo.’
‘What is it?’
‘Salomi is married. She and her new husband need to get out of Pakistan. They will be safe in Yemen.’
He tells himself not to let Akbar see his reaction.
‘What’s in the bag?’
‘They need money to get out.’
‘I would have thought he had enough.’
Akbar shakes his head. ‘He did. But before my father went off that night he burnt it all in the furnace in the gun factory. Not a single rupee was left. Everything turned to ash.’ He points to the bag. ‘You have to go and give this to Salomi, so the pair of them can leave.’
Akbar unzips the bag. It is full of clothes but from under it he pulls out three bundles of American dollars, each the thickness of a telephone directory.
‘When did she get married?’
‘The morning you left.’ Akbar replaces the money and fastens the zip. ‘It’s fifty-five thousand dollars.’
‘I don’t think I can do this, Akbar.’
‘Please. The soldiers, backed by the Americans, will raid the house very soon, if they haven’t already. The pair of them will have to bribe their way out of the towns and cities, find places to shelter. Otherwise people will hand them both to the Americans for the reward.’
‘I can’t.’ At the brick factory the Americans had asked him if he had ever transferred monies for al-Qaeda. And yet he knows he must see Salomi and explain himself to her, if he can.
‘Just go and give it to her and come back,’ Akbar says, and adds, ‘You are my brother.’
*
He sits beside the bag, smoking, the room full of night’s darkness. Three days have passed since Akbar gave him the money and it is still here. He moves towards the window and looks at the garden, the blossoms beautiful as Eden, where every memory of every man is said to have its origin, and after a while he turns and walks towards where she lies on the bed.
*
When he is naked beside her she sees the bullet wounds. She watches him, pale brown with calves and forearms darkly hairy, thin but sinewy and sheerly beautiful with the candlelight running over him.
From a book she has learned what a human body is worth. The chemical elements making up a living person are said to have the market value of about $4 or $5. His sweeping laughter, the merged eyebrows, the flavour of his breath and saliva when he leans every few minutes to kiss her for minutes at a time. $4 or $5. The features take shape under the red point of brilliance when he inhales from the cigarette in the darkness. It is as though he is sucking in light through the white tube, light that then runs under his skin to reveal him softly. She watches him as he gets up during the night and sits crouching beside the shoulder bag. Jeo came back wearing a tight-fitting suit of bruises, and now she doesn’t want Mikal to go to Waziristan.