A God in Every Stone (28 page)

The donkey-cart departed, the gulmohar trees blazed, a bird with an iridescent throat flew past. Viv walked through a frozen world. Same, same, same – as the merchants in the Walled City might insist while trying to draw your thoughts away from the unavailable object of your desire towards an inferior replacement. Same, memsahib, same. The red-tiled roof of the whitewashed barracks-like structure might have faded slightly, but the hedge framing the driveway was the same, the tall pines in the garden were the same, the starched white uniforms of the bearers were the same, the view towards the mountains was the same, the chatter and whistles of birds were the same, even the china teacup on the garden table with its border of roses was the same.

But the most same-memsahib-same thing of all she saw, when she walked through from the ballroom into the dining room that evening, was the Forbeses, fifteen years older but unchanged save for a few extra creases in their crumpling but lively faces. Viv joined them, was touched by their delight, and said yes, she had only just arrived and yes, she would certainly have a glass of something stronger than water.

The evening wore on, perfectly pleasant, Mrs Forbes regaled her with tales of everyone from all those years ago, most of whom Viv couldn't remember, though never mind. But at a certain point – during some story about the rumours started by a missing glove at a picnic – she found herself having to concentrate very hard to shut out the increasingly raised voices from the only other table that was occupied at this early hour of the evening.

– Bolsheviks, I tell you, Bolsheviks.

– They're Muslim fanatics, not Bolsheviks.

– They'd wear green, not red, if they were Muslim fanatics. And why are there sickles on their turbans?

– It's the Islamic crescent, not a sickle.

Mr Forbes leaned across to the arguing men and said, I say, there are ladies here, and the men apologised, the voices lowered.

Mrs Forbes, pretending the whole exchange hadn't occurred, moved on to the next topic that came to mind. Such an influx of Jews in Peshawar escaping the Russian Revolution. Had Viv seen the synagogue behind Dean's? Viv had not. Oh well, said Mrs Forbes, in most ways you'll find Peshawar unchanged.

Unchanging Peshawar. That had been Viv's mantra all through the previous year in London as Mary and her parents frowned at newspapers carrying stories of Gandhi and Civil Disobedience; whatever might be going on in the rest of India the Frontier was a place apart, Viv insisted. Her father had been the first one to relent and say no little Indian in a loincloth will stand in my daughter's way. Dear Papa – the hierarchies of his world had only been slightly shaken by the war and the women's vote; Englishmen were still at the apex, though Englishwomen now took second place ahead of Native men. Sending Viv off to Peshawar seemed to him an act of defiance against Indian agitation, which would once have pleased Viv and now struck her as faintly ridiculous. Even so, she was glad he was so easily convinced. Mama and Mary, on the contrary, were unrelenting until finally her Pashto teacher Mr Durand-not-Durrani had to be invited to her parents' home for tea in order to assure the two ladies that yes, indeed, the Frontier is a place apart. Miss Spencer, he had said, you will arrive in Peshawar to find the chicken cutlets and colonial conversations and cries of the bazaar as unchanged as the enclosing hills or the shadow of Bala Hisar Fort. Certainly the cutlets and conversations were unchanged, she thought, taking a bite of her food and listening to the Forbeses talk about their summer plans for Simla.

When Mrs Forbes excused herself and walked away Mr Forbes smiled at Viv and patted her hand.

– Always dancing to your own tune, Vivian. I've admired that in you. We both have. A burqa and a donkey-cart!

How strange to be with someone who looked at her and still saw Viv Spencer, the twenty-three-year-old. She certainly didn't want that self-absorbed girl back but even so she might just go out tomorrow to find a pith-helmet and wrap a velvet ribbon around it. Give me my glad-rags! She laughed at her own silliness and Mr Forbes raised his glass to her. The gin-and-tonic must have gone directly to her head, or perhaps it was just the musk of Peshawar's night flowers.

– And don't worry too much about the nonsense you overhear. Something unfortunate happened in the Walled City this afternoon, but it's all under control now.

– It goes on as it goes on.

– Quite.

But later when the Forbeses had returned home and Viv sat out in a surprisingly empty garden with the two men who'd been arguing about Bolsheviks the mood was darker, the tone more dangerous. She shouldn't be here, the men agreed, as they delivered warnings of the Murderous Pathans Awakened.

– But what exactly happened today?

The men shook their heads and wouldn't answer except to say she mustn't leave Dean's tomorrow on her own, and mustn't even consider entering the Walled City. It was unclear if they didn't know what had happened or were trying to protect her female sensibilities.

The younger of the men – the one who had delivered warnings of the Murderous Pathans in a thrilled tone which suggested desire – rubbed the ugly scar on the back of his hand.

– It's ingratitude, that's what it is. I don't mean for the roads and the railways. But we've kept India in a state of peace for so long they've forgotten to recognise it as the greatest of all gifts.

Viv bowed her head, stopped herself from trying to play the sweetest, cruellest game she knew: imagining what her life would have been if not for the war.

 

There were no Victorias available to take her to Shahji-ki-Dheri, the man at reception said in the morning. No, none at all. Thank you, Viv replied, and walked out to the bicycle leaning against one of the pine trees in the garden. Seconds later, she was whizzing down the driveway, ringing the bell and calling out to the startled gardener to say she'd return it unharmed in a couple of hours.

Oh the joy of pedalling down the tree-lined roads with their mingling scents! The ache of her back which had been a constant companion since her fall in Karachi had intensified due to the previous day's travels, but there was a pleasure in pushing past the pain, rejecting feebleness. She rang the bell at the water-buffaloes lumbering past and at the man on the side of the road using a length of sugar cane both as walking stick and breakfast. Across the railway bridge she rode, past marching troops headed towards the Walled City. As she approached it herself the troops stationed at the closed gate called out a warning and she waved to let them know yes, yes, she had been told she must stay away from there and even though she didn't truly believe there was any likelihood Pathan men would attack a woman in a crowded bazaar she would still circle the walls to get to where she was going. On she pedalled until her linen shirt was damp with sweat, through the orchards and along the canals which ringed the Walled City. Her feet slowed on the pedals near Gunj Gate. Here she was again, on the road to Shahji-ki-Dheri.

From the fields which bordered the road the sound of blades cutting through wheat were amplified scrapes of a razor against stubbled cheeks. As she approached the Great Stupa site, another sound – spades turning soil. Najeeb! she wanted to call out, but it was soon clear the spades working furiously were in the graveyard adjoining the excavation site.

Just a little way past the graveyard Viv turned onto a donkey-path, the ground pebbled and uneven. One side of the path was still luxuriously wheat-covered, the other side had been harvested. In the midst of the denuded rows, a pit. She walked slowly across the field, taking in the complete disappearance of earlier excavations. And this most recent excavation – the Spencer excavation it would have to be called – had fallen victim to the troubles of the City. No labourers, no Najeeb, no foreman, not even a watchman to be seen.

She stepped close to the edge of the pit, looked inside.

Despite the lancing emotion not far removed from desire her movements were unhurried as she descended into the maw of the site, and approached the stump of a marble stone leg.
To the south-west of the
Great Stupa a hundred paces or so, there is a figure of Buddha in white stone about eighteen feet high. It is a standing figure, and looks to the north. It has many spiritual powers, and diffuses a brilliant light.

– Oh, she said, cupping her hand around the Buddha's ankle, running a thumb along his Achilles tendon. Oh, there you are.

She was standing in a trench around the base of the statue, not very deep. Viv crouched, pressed the back of her hand against the soil as a woman might touch the pillow of a departed lover. If it were really here!

A man traced a circle in the sand with the toe of his shoe; a woman dropped fruit and leaves into that circle. Oh there it is, Vivian Rose; you've found it for me. She pulled her hand away from the soil and wiped it on her dress. Of course the Circlet wasn't really here. She wondered if Najeeb knew her curiosity about him was her primary reason for coming – her young Pactyike, the boy she'd rescued from nuns and maulvis, grown into a man whose imagination tracked the Circlet through a thousand years from Alexander to Chandragupta to Asoka to the girl who had no name until he gave her one that was Buddhist and Greek and Hindu and Muslim in origin: Maya, of the Peshawar Valley.

 

She climbed out of the pit and wheeled her bicycle along the donkey-path. Turning onto the paved road, she saw a small group of men dressed in the white of mourning making their way from the direction of the Walled City towards the graveyard. They walked in two columns, flanking a donkey-cart which must have been carrying the body. Viv stopped – one foot on the ground, one on a pedal – watching the men advance towards her. There was nothing here but fields, and crows, and Pathan men, and fresh graves.

The men at the head of the procession had seen her. They raised their eyes to hers, held her gaze. Viv jumped off the bicycle and ran into the wheat field, body hunched, breath coming fast. Idiot, she swore at herself, and didn't know if it was for coming out here on her own or for feeling terror because Pathan men looked at her instead of through her. She could hear the tread of the men, the wheels of the donkey-cart. By the laws of Pashtunwali you may not attack a woman, she practised saying in Pashto.

Then the steps grew fainter; the men had turned into the graveyard. Viv wiped sweat from her face, wrinkling her nose at the tang coming from her armpits. And then, a greater terror – not dozens of footsteps, not a group of Pathans among whom at least some could be relied on to insist their brothers hold fast to Pashtunwali, but only two sets of feet walking closer, stepping into the wheat field.

– We know you're here, said a man's deep voice in English. We've come to bury our dead, not to attack a woman. Please don't believe what your people say about us.

Viv didn't move, hardly dared breathe.

– Why is she hiding? said a second voice, and it was a boy speaking Pashto.

Viv gripped a stalk of wheat, used it to pull herself up. She raised her eyes to the faraway mountains, blue against an almost white sky; the first time she'd seen them she had regarded the unexpected colouring as welcome proof that she was in an inverted Europe. The unchanging familiarity of them allowed her to slow her breath as she walked out onto the path. A man was standing there; he had picked up her bicycle from the ground and was holding the very end of one of the handlebars, his face turned away from hers. The boy, ten or eleven, looked straight at her and waved his hand in greeting as she walked out of the wheat field. She caught the other end of the handlebar, and the man holding it let go as he felt her touch travel along the steel frame.

– We will accompany you back to ensure your safety, he said, still not looking at her, and she wanted to thank him, she wanted to say she was sorry about the loss which had brought him to the graveyard, but instead she jumped onto the bicycle and pedalled as rapidly as she could, away from the boy who cried out in surprise and the man who didn't.

 

Safety looked like the Peshawar Museum. Viv pushed open the wooden door set in the red-brick facade and there was a sweet familiarity to the weight of it beneath her palm and to the mustiness of ancient stone and fresh ink when she stepped inside. The two giant Buddhas still stood at the far end of the high-ceilinged hall, one raising its hand at her in the Abhaya Mudra. Protection and fearlessness. To enter this place was to feel all the foolish terrors of the day slip away. She raised her hand to the Buddha to return the greeting, and heard a door opening to her left, where the Native Assistant's office used to be.

– Najeeb?

Surely the man who walked through the door – young, stout, moustached – wasn't the boy she had known. No, he wasn't. He looked apologetic, and said the Assistant hadn't yet arrived, but could he be of any help? It was quickly established that he couldn't, and Viv said she would wait for Najeeb. The man's apologetic look grew even more pronounced as he explained there had been an unfortunate incident in the Walled City the previous day because of which some people were choosing to stay indoors, and perhaps the Assistant would be of that number.  He was usually here by this hour, he added. Viv fished in her satchel, and pulled out a coin.

– Can you send someone to tell him I'm here? I don't intend to leave until I see him.