Some kind of grace, p.8
Some Kind of Grace, page 8
‘What happened to them?’
‘Small-pox.’
‘Was there an epidemic?’
The Major was amused at the note of alarm in the question. ‘No,’ he said. ‘Only five people died. Just the Colonel’s wife and children, and a beggar in the bazaar. The Colonel does not understand that. I understand it. That is why I do not bother to pray. There is the station, with the cannon in front. Do you recognise them? They are British; they were captured from your army long ago.’
Another officer met them in the corridor; sleep bleared his eyes.
‘How is he?’ asked the Major.
‘In his office, lying down. He had to be carried in.’
‘Did you send for the doctor?’
‘He wouldn’t have it. Is this the fellow?’
‘I think so. He’s British anyway.’
‘I understand English a little. Let me see his passport. Yes, he’s the man he wants. John McLeod.’
‘And what does he want me for?’ demanded McLeod. ‘Why should I be brought here in the middle of the night like a thief?’
The officer shrugged his shoulders. ‘We do not know. The Colonel will tell you. There was a telephone message from the capital. The Colonel took it himself. Perhaps it was from your Embassy. You see, he is ill and sometimes as a consequence behaves strangely.’
By this time they were outside the Colonel’s office. A guard yawned there. The Major knocked softly, once, twice, three times; there was no reply of any kind.
‘Wait here,’ he said, and entered.
McLeod immediately followed. It was a dismal room, lit by a shadeless bulb hanging over a desk. Always melancholy, but more so there, the king’s portrait hung tilted on the wall; in it he was a young man of about thirty, so it must have been taken soon after his father’s assassination twenty years ago. Otherwise, there was no one in the room.
The Major crossed to where a blanket covered a doorway. He drew it back enough for McLeod to see a charpoy, a native bed consisting of four wooden legs and a plaiting of rough rope. On this, under a grubby pink quilt, lay the Colonel, his eyes closed.
The Major saluted. ‘I have brought the Englishman, sir,’ he said.
The Colonel moaned.
‘I have brought the Englishman,’ repeated the Major. ‘If you do not wish to see him now, I shall take him away again, and bring him in the morning.’
The Colonel opened his eyes. ‘What is his name?’ he asked.
The Major couldn’t pronounce it.
McLeod said it.
‘Go,’ muttered the Colonel to the Major.
‘Perhaps I should stay, since you are not well.’
‘Go,’ shouted the Colonel.
‘Very good, sir. Here is his passport. I shall leave it on your desk.’
The Major went out with a murderous pout.
‘Excuse me, Mr. McLeod,’ said the Colonel, staggering to his feet, and lurching over to his desk. ‘I fell asleep. Please sit.’ He fell into his own chair, and looked for about a minute as if he was going to fall asleep again.
He was a small, handsome, grey-haired man, as fair-skinned as McLeod himself, and with a moustache in need of trimming. He gave the impression of being naturally dapper and even vain, but now he was unshaven, with his eyes bloodshot, and his uniform crumpled.
He gave a great shiver. ‘I beg your pardon, Mr. McLeod,’ he said. ‘As you see, I have a touch of malaria.’
‘Should you not be in bed?’
‘But I have just come from my bed.’ He tried to smile.
‘I meant, in your home.’
Still trying to smile, the Colonel with an effort that exhausted him opened a drawer. He had to rest before taking out what he wanted.
It had nothing to do with McLeod. It was a snapshot of a woman seated in a garden with a baby in her arms and two other young children beside her. She was not good-looking; her nose was too large and hooked, her eyes too close together. The children were all like her. Even the baby was gleeful, holding out its hand towards the person taking the picture. This, McLeod realised, must be the family wiped out by small-pox. The Colonel himself must have taken the photograph. Though he was not in it his presence, happily expostulating, could be easily imagined.
‘I’m sorry,’ said McLeod. ‘The Major told me about it.’
Mention of the Major reminded the Colonel he was a police official. He picked up the passport.
‘You are John McLeod?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Today—’ He looked at his watch so long he seemed to have forgotten; McLeod noticed it was half-past one. ‘Yesterday I had a telephone call from His Excellency the Minister.’
He paused again.
‘Well?’ said McLeod.
‘He warned me you might be passing through Mazarat. It appears you gave your word you would remain in the capital.’
‘I did not.’
‘His Excellency thinks so. He said you gave it to him personally.’
‘No, I said I would if I was satisfied.’
‘Satisfied? What about?’
McLeod noticed how his hands couldn’t rest, how they kept picking up the snapshot, and how damp this was with sweat.
‘I’ll explain,’ he said, ‘as briefly as I can. About five months ago, two friends of mine, a man and a woman, both British, passed through Mazarat.’
‘But, Mr. McLeod, I know all about them.’
‘It is said they were murdered in a village about two hundred miles from here. I saw the two men who confessed to the murder. I thought I would like also to see the village where it happened.’
‘You did not believe these confessions?’
‘I wouldn’t say that. I just felt I would like to see the place where it happened.’
‘Mr. McLeod, I have seen the place; some huts of mud in a wilderness of stones, and some holes in the cliff. It was I who went to arrest those men and punish the others. They were punished. Even your friend would have been pleased with their punishment.’
‘Why do you say that?’ asked McLeod.
‘Because I knew him. He was in this office. He did not sit, he rushed up and down, like a mad camel, striking the desk with his fists.’ The Colonel brought his own fists down on the desk with an exaggerated gentleness that, vivider than violence, suggested Kemp’s rage.
‘Why?’ asked McLeod. ‘Was it because he was being refused permission to continue on his journey?’
The Colonel stared strangely at McLeod. ‘He had permission. It was something else.’
‘What else?’
‘The woman sat in that chair; yes, the one you are sitting on yourself.’
McLeod could not help looking at it. One of the spars between the legs was missing. The leather covering the padding was torn. It was the kind of chair to be found in every office in that country.
‘Weeping,’ whispered the Colonel.
But why should she be weeping, wondered McLeod. So far as he knew they had been happy and reconciled. What had happened here? He began to think the Colonel was talking in a delirium.
‘It is secret,’ said the Colonel. ‘No one in Mazarat knows but me.’
‘Knows what?’
‘The men who did it were put out of the way.’
‘Did what?’
‘The policemen, too, had to be transferred. That was unjust, but the secret had to be kept.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said McLeod. ‘What happened? Did it concern my friends?’
‘If my wife and children were alive, Mr. McLeod, and I was a man with hope, I would not tell you. I would consider my position and my career; I would be afraid for my family.’
‘Tell me what, for God’s sake?’
‘Now there is no need for me to be afraid. So I shall tell you.’
But he was in no hurry to tell, and sat smiling insanely while McLeod waited, cold with horror.
‘The woman was attacked, Mr. McLeod.’
‘Attacked?’
‘Yes. By two men maddened with hashish.’
‘Christ!’
‘I shall tell you about it. It was night when they arrived in Mazarat. I did not know they had come. They should have reported to me, but they did not. It was cold and wet, too. There is a hotel here; it is not good, by your standards, but it is safe at least. For some reason your friend did not choose to go to the hotel. It could not have been lack of money, because it is, again by your standards, very cheap. He did not go to it. Instead, he asked for hospitality at a chaikhana. It was in a bad part of the town, but he could not have known that, as he was a stranger and it was dark. The proprietor allowed them to sleep in a hut next to the shop.’
He paused, to recover strength and memory. He was sobbing with weakness.
McLeod waited.
‘While they slept they were attacked.’
McLeod could picture it, in its sordid terror; but he was still not sure whether the Colonel was recounting a hallucination or actuality.
‘There were two of them. You cannot question them, Mr. McLeod, not in this world.’
‘You mean, they were put to death?’
‘Yes. Your friend waited here for four days until with his own eyes he saw the sentence carried out.’
It must be hallucination or nightmare, thought McLeod. ‘Two of them?’ he whispered.
‘Two. They were both equally guilty.’
‘But death is a punishment for murder.’
‘And in our country, for rape also; especially if the woman is a foreigner. We are poor, Mr. McLeod; we must seek friends; perhaps we seek too humbly.’
McLeod had his face covered with his hands.
‘Your friend could not prevent them. They were too strong with the drug. But he fought hard; it was the marks of his blows that helped us to find them. But they over-powered him. The cloth that they wind round their heads as a turban can have various uses; it can fasten a man’s hands and feet, it can muffle his mouth.’
And cover his eyes, thought McLeod. Rather foolishly he said: ‘But why? They were poor, humble, with nothing to steal.’ But even while he was speaking he was remembering the Major’s bitter grumble about the plight of men unable to afford to marry.
‘Are you asking me why men are evil?’ asked the Colonel. ‘Ask me also why God allows such evil men to live, and takes away the innocent and good. It is because I cannot understand these things that I have told you this.’
‘Was she badly hurt?’
‘In her body? It appears not. They left Mazarat again in five days. She was able to travel. I gave them a police car as far as Kalak, where the great Buddhas are.’
‘But surely she needed medical attention?’
‘I had the best doctor in Mazarat to attend her.’
‘Can I see him?’
‘No. He has gone away. Please understand, Mr. McLeod, this has been kept a secret. It is not in the official records. It never happened.’
Perhaps it hadn’t.
‘Why are you telling me?’ asked McLeod.
‘Because my wife and children are all dead. If one had been spared, only one, I would not have told you.’
But that surely was a delirious man’s reason. The whole thing sounded more and more like an evil dream.
‘But wasn’t it possible she might have become pregnant as a result of this?’ asked McLeod.
‘We are not babies, Mr. McLeod. We know how children are conceived. The doctor said he did what he could. It was against his religion, but he did what he could.’
And God knew what that had been, thought McLeod. Even the best doctor in Mazarat wouldn’t be up to much; and that doctor bothered with religious scruples would be worse than useless.
‘And it was against your friend’s religion, too, Mr. McLeod.’
‘Did he object?’
‘I understand he did. Of course he had a right to; she was his wife. But, you see, Mr. McLeod, it appears she was already pregnant.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘She said so herself, to the doctor. Every morning she had been sick; her breasts were tender to touch. Those are symptoms, Mr. McLeod.’
‘It would seem,’ burst out McLeod, bitterly savage, ‘that the people who murdered my friends afterwards should have been rewarded, not punished.’
‘Why do you say that, Mr. McLeod?’
McLeod could not tell; he made an angry baffled gesture.
‘They were still alive,’ murmured the Colonel, smiling. ‘They still could sleep in each other’s arms. Their child would be born. The world belonged to them. Their murderers took it from them, and so deserved punishment. I saw to it myself. I said to my men: “For the next hour they are yours, do what you want with them, except kill them.” There were women, some of them young, though none so beautiful as your friend’s wife. Justice was done, Mr. McLeod, in every way.’
McLeod was almost convinced the Colonel, in spite of his calm voice, was raving. His bloodshot eyes moist with tears, his face glistening with sweat, his distracted hands picking up and dropping the snapshot, were those of a man in a nightmare, who until he died would have this vision of his own wife being raped by death.
‘I should like,’ said McLeod, ‘to see this village.’
‘So you cannot believe your friends are dead? I do not blame you. You did not look upon their defiled bodies. You did not see their faces hideous with the kisses of death. You did not watch the hole dug. You think because she sat in that chair she must be still alive. If the chair exists, so must she. If the stars shine, so must her eyes. If a donkey brays in the night, why should she, too, not have a voice, to sing, and speak?’
‘I should be obliged,’ said McLeod, ‘if you would put on my passport whatever stamp is necessary to allow me to go on my way.’
The Colonel, more than ever like a man in delirium, pulled the passport towards him, rummaged in the drawer, took out a rubber stamp hardly any more impressive than one in a child’s post-office set, and stamped the passport.
‘This will get you beyond Mazarat, Mr. McLeod,’ he said.
‘Not any farther?’
‘For that you would need a permit signed by the Governor. I advise you not to seek it. I think they will be looking for you in the morning; and perhaps for me, too.’
McLeod rose, holding his passport. ‘Good-bye,’ he said, ‘and thanks.’
The Colonel bowed his head.
Outside there were two guards; one held McLeod there, while the other raced for the Major, who, in about five minutes, came buttoning his tunic and yawning.
He asked for the passport, examined it, and handed it back.
‘Was it a message from your Embassy?’ he asked.
‘Yes. The Colonel is ill. He should be in hospital’
‘He refuses. If he dies,’ went on the Major, with a sour smile, ‘they will send someone else to take his place. My father was not a friend of the king, as his was. I was not given a vineyard for a wedding present.’
He stood on the top of the stairs watching McLeod climb into the Land-Rover.
‘At least,’ he called, ‘please tell your friends in the capital that Major Samad, of Mazarat, was helpful to you.’
As McLeod drove away he glanced back and saw the moon still shining on the many domes of the mosque.
Eight
All next day he travelled up a narrow river valley, where the two thousand years since Christ were forgotten, or rather might never have been. On the strips of soil on either side of the white-bouldered river men still lived and worked as they had in His time. The corn was threshed by the feet of oxen going round and round, encouraged by a peasant who ran with them, bare to the thighs, sometimes singing. Men with sticks sent the chaff swirling about them like snow. Women, peeping round as the car passed, crouched in the small green fields, their fingers busy. Little canals in which water flowed as preciously as blood criss-crossed from the river into the fields. The road was of earth and stones, and the bridges of wood. Often the road twisted through narrow gorges or along thin ledges high above the river. So as not to take up any of the fertile land, the houses were built into the hillside, and often were screened by delicate trees.
Yet at one time there had been cities in this valley, not built trustfully on the low land but high up on the red hills, protected by walls on the brink of the precipices. Remnants of those walls still stood, and could be seen from the road. McLeod knew that if he was to cross the river and trudge up the steep path that led through the solid mountain he would be able to pick up pieces of pottery used by the inhabitants a thousand years ago, before Genghis Khan, marching in revengeful triumph out of Central Asia had slaughtered them all, to the last child. The cities had never been rebuilt, and though in time trust had timorously returned, enabling men to live again close to the river, ambition had been abandoned for good. Hope could not be kept away: it was present in the young trees, in the ripe corn, and in the children on the flat roofs laughing through the leaves; but nowhere was it urgent or impatient. It knew this valley was too accessible: there was no high, difficult mountain range to guard it, as there was guarding that other valley in which, if they were still alive, Donald Kemp and Margaret Duncan might be found.
If they were still alive . . . Now, whenever he thought of them, it was with a feeling of doom. Inimical forces, pursuing them, had been too powerful. Their love for each other, which ought above all to have sustained them in their flight, had itself often been treacherous. But if their journey had been a flight, from whom had they been fleeing, and whither?
That night he camped a mile or two outside Kalak, on the other side of the river from a hill on which could be seen, silhouetted against the moonlit sky, the ruins of what was called the Noisy City. Ever since its destruction by the Mongol hordes, it had been avoided, as if a curse was on it. Perhaps, in this land of Islam, the curse was that of Buddha. Legend had it that the city had been called Noisy because its citizens, every day at a certain hour, had congregated to watch, a mile away, the great arm of the carved god rising slowly in the sunshine, manipulated by the priests from their caves within the rock, but fancied by the people to be the Buddha’s own miraculous daily gesture of benediction. They had therefore shouted all together, in a joyful pious acclamation. Now no place could have been quieter than their strange pyramidical hill, and the colossal idol, its face sliced away by time or human malice, was without arms.
