‘Look like hell!’ snorted Gozan’s nephew, drunkenly scrambling through one such set of roots. ‘Everything look like hell!’
‘Pardon him. He feel strongly because he is young. But it is the truth. It was not – how do you say – not argument of ours, Lieutenant Jones,’ said Gozan, who had been bribed two pairs of boots to keep quiet about his friends’ sudden rise in rank. ‘What do we have to do with all this?’ He wiped a tear, half inebriated, half overcome with emotion. ‘What we have to do with? We peaceful people. We don’t want be in war! This hill – once beautiful! Flowers, birds, they were singing, you understand? We are from the East. What have the battles of the West to do with us?’
Instinctively, Archie turned to Samad, expecting one of his speeches; but before Gozan had even finished, Samad had suddenly picked up his pace, and within a minute was running, pushing ahead of the intoxicated Russians, who were flailing about with their bayonets. Such was his speed that he was soon out of sight, turning a blind corner and disappearing into the swallowing night. Archie dithered for a few minutes, but then loosened himself from Gozan’s nephew’s merciless grip (he was just embarking upon the tale of a Cuban prostitute he had met in Amsterdam) and began to run to where he had last seen the flicker of a silver button, another one of the sharp turnings that the mountain path took whenever it liked.
‘Captain Ick-Ball! Wait, Captain Ick-Ball!’
He ran on, repeating the phrase, waving his torch, which did nothing but light up the undergrowth in increasingly bizarre anthropomorphisms; here a man, here a woman on her knees, here three dogs howling at the moon. He spent some time like this, stumbling about in the darkness.
‘Put your light on! Captain Ick-Ball! Captain Ick-Ball!’
No answer.
‘Captain Ick-Ball!’
‘Why do you call me that,’ said a voice, close, on his right, ‘when you know I am no such thing?’
‘Ick-Ball?’ and as he asked the question, Archie’s flash stumbled upon him, sitting on a boulder, head in hands.
‘Why – I mean, you are not really so much of an idiot, are you – you do know, I presume you know that I am in fact a private of His Majesty’s Army?’
‘ ’Course. We have to keep it up, though, don’t we? Our cover, and that.’
‘Our cover? Boy.’ Samad chuckled to himself in a way that struck Archie as sinister, and when he lifted his head his eyes were both bloodshot and on the brink of tears. ‘What do you think this is? Are we playing silly-buggers?’
‘No, I… are you all right, Sam? You look out of sorts.’
Samad was dimly aware that he looked out of sorts. Earlier that evening he had put a tiny line of the white stuff in the cup of each eyelid. The morphine had sharpened his mind to a knife edge and cut it open. It had been a luscious, eloquent high while it lasted, but then the thoughts thus released had been left to wallow in a pool of alcohol and had landed Samad in a malevolent trough. He saw his reflection this evening, and it was ugly. He saw where he was – at the farewell party for the end of Europe – and he longed for the East. He looked down at his useless hand with its five useless appendages; at his skin, burnt to a chocolate-brown by the sun; he saw into his brain, made stupid by stupid conversation and the dull stimuli of death, and longed for the man he once was: erudite, handsome, light-skinned Samad Miah; so precious his mother kept him in from the sun’s rays, sent him to the best tutors and covered him in linseed oil twice a day.
‘Sam? Sam? You don’t look right, Sam. Please, they’ll be here in a minute… Sam?’
Self-hatred makes a man turn on the first person he sees. But it was particularly aggravating to Samad that this should be Archie, who looked down at him with a gentle concern, with a mix of fear and anger all mingled up in that shapeless face so ill-equipped to express emotion.
‘Don’t call me Sam,’ he growled, in a voice Archie did not recognize, ‘I’m not one of your English matey-boys. My name is Samad Miah Iqbal. Not Sam. Not Sammy. And not – God forbid – Samuel. It is Samad.’
Archie looked crestfallen.
‘Well, anyway,’ said Samad, suddenly officious and wishing to avoid an emotional scene, ‘I am glad you are here because I wanted to tell you that I am the worse for wear, Lieutenant Jones. I am, as you say, out of sorts. I am very much the worse for wear.’
He stood, but then stumbled on to his boulder once more.
‘Get up,’ hissed Archie between his teeth. ‘Get up. What’s the matter with you?’
‘It’s true, I am very much the worse for the wearing. But I have been thinking,’ said Samad, taking his gun in his good hand.
‘Put that away.’
‘I have been thinking that I am buggered, Lieutenant Jones. I see no future. I realize this may come as a surprise to you – my upper lip, I’m afraid is not of the required stiffness – but the fact remains. I see only-’
‘Put that away.’
‘Blackness. I’m a cripple, Jones.’ The gun did a merry dance in his good hand as he swung himself from side to side. ‘And my faith is crippled, do you understand? I’m fit for nothing now, not even Allah, who is all powerful in his mercy. What am I going to do, after this war is over, this war that is already over – what am I going to do? Go back to Bengal? Or to Delhi? Who would have such an Englishman there? To England? Who would have such an Indian? They promise us independence in exchange for the men we were. But it is a devilish deal. What should I do? Stay here? Go elsewhere? What laboratory needs one-handed men? What am I suited for?’
‘Look, Sam… you’re making a fool of yourself.’
‘Really? And is that how it is to be, friend?’ asked Samad, standing, tripping over a stone and colliding back into Archie. ‘In one afternoon I promote you from Private Shitbag to lieutenant of the British army and this is my thanks? Where are you in my hour of need? Gozan!’ he shouted to the fat café owner, who was struggling round the bend, at the very back, sweating profusely. ‘Gozan – my fellow Muslim – in Allah’s name, is this right?’
‘Shut up,’ snapped Archie. ‘Do you want everyone to hear you? Put it down.’
Samad’s gun arm shot out of the darkness and wrapped itself around Archie’s neck, so the gun and both their heads were pressed together in an odious group hug.
‘What am I good for, Jones? If I were to pull this trigger, what will I leave behind? An Indian, a turncoat English Indian with a limp wrist like a faggot and no medals that they can ship home with me.’ He let go of Archie and grabbed his own collar instead.
‘Have some of these, for God’s sake,’ said Archie, taking three from his lapel and throwing them at him. ‘I’ve got loads.’