Their Language of Love (10 page)

Ruth glanced at Raj: he looked tired and abstracted. The evening sun was aiming its glare at them and it was blistering hot. A floppy white cloth cap covered Raj’s head: he must carry it in his pocket. It also occurred to her that he was going through the tour for the umpteenth time because of her. She felt a swell of gratitude.

By now they had arrived at the shadowy space the elder had indicated. With most of the supporting brick missing at the top it appeared to have been gouged out of the plinth and looked more like a muddy ingress to a cave. Ruth could make out a narrow passage part of the way before it became engulfed in darkness. It must be cool inside the cave, she thought.

Surrounded by a coterie of elders, Raj had moved ahead. Ruth felt a gnawing curiosity. She knew she should follow them, but an indefinable impulse to know what lay beyond
rooted her to the mouth of the cave. And then she felt the pull of something powerful and benign as a subtle strength swelled in her body and provoked her to follow its direction.

Ruth had to stoop to enter, but once she stepped on the earth floor the passage widened and she was able to stand up. A little ahead of her the path seemed to veer to the right; she wasn’t sure—the light was too murky. Stepping somewhat hesitantly, she walked up to a sort of landing, from which the path sharply turned and sloped gently down. She stood there. It was blessedly cool and after the glare outside, the diffused light engulfed her with its benevolent serenity. She went down the slope, lightly touching the cool earth walls of the tunnel with her fingers.

Her senses were enhanced—even in the dark she could see clearly: the walls of the tunnel and the roof had a strange translucency that enabled her to see the grit and stones embedded in the mud. Ruth stood before a steep shadow-shrouded staircase that seemed to disappear down and down into a void. She felt no fear, only a sense of lightness. She took her first step, and then another, and with each step the void that appeared to swallow the steps further down filled with a greenish glow which grew brighter and brighter—not a blinding light but a diffused pleasurable brightness, evocative of promise, of expectation. The glow reached out to engulf her and she stepped into that light.

It was not until she became aware of the voice saying ‘Memsahib! Memsahib! Stop’—at first distant, and then all too close—that she became conscious of the state of bliss
she was being wrenched out of, and her whole body resisted and stretched backwards like rubber.

In an instant she was drenched in an almost unbearable disappointment. As the granthi’s hands gripped her she heard Raj’s fearful: ‘Ruth? Ruth? Are you all right?’ And then he had his arm around her and she leaned against him with the lassitude of regret. He half carried her up the steps, lit now by the granthi’s flashlight.

When they were ready to leave, the elders once again formed a line, holding their palms pressed together and bowing. The granthi, smiling and swelling with pride, placed an orange ‘sarrappa’ scarf round their shoulders. It was meant to cover Ruth and the Minorities minister with respect from head to foot. The Sikh stalwarts, surprisingly subdued, hovered in an awed, uneven line. Word had spread that the woman had experienced something mystical in the tunnel. Even that she might have seen their Fifth Guru, Guru Arjan Singh, in a flood of divine light.

‘Cat got your tongue?’ Raj asked on their way back.

Ruth turned to him on the back seat. Groping for words she tried to explain the regret she had felt at being dredged out of her experience. ‘I wasn’t conscious of the state of bliss I was in till I’d left it … I wonder if that’s what death is like: the brightness at the end of the tunnel dying people see.’

Raj held her hand. ‘That is what we seek: At the end of the cycle of birth and rebirth the eternal divine bliss—Nirvana.
That is why we meditate—to lose ourselves in the cosmic soup.’

‘I’ve lost my fear of death,’ Ruth said definitively, startled by the surety of her knowledge. Raj squeezed her hand tight, rubbing her fingers as she leaned against him. He stroked her arm. Conscious of the driver’s presence up front, there was not much else he could do.

Dusk had almost deepened into night as Ruth lightly touched Raj’s proffered hand and stepped out of the Mercedes. ‘Won’t you come in?’ she said to him. They could hear Jungi Khan drawing the gates shut behind them. Raj searched her eyes; she briefly held his gaze, untroubled by what he might see in them.

Billo held the door open to let them in and Ruth asked her to get them coffee.

‘I’d prefer tea,’ Raj said.

After they’d had tea and the maid had cleared the coffee table and retired to her room in the servants’ quarters, Ruth languidly stood up to say: ‘You haven’t been upstairs, have you?’ She glanced at Raj, who lay almost supine on the sofa.

‘No, but I’ve been waiting for the grand tour of the house,’ he replied, sitting up at once.

Ruth led Raj up a stylish flight of wooden slats that ran along the brick dining room wall. At the middle landing, and sharply angled to the left, another flight of steps led to the upstairs hallway. Ruth had not turned on the landing light and in the glow coming from the dining room, she, for an instant, imagined herself in the passage in the cave, except,
instead of going down, the steps rose up. Raj was ahead of her. She followed him to the top of the stairs and as he stepped aside to make way for her, pushed open the door to their right. As Raj stepped into the room she suddenly noticed Jungi Khan close behind her on the steps. He slightly bent his head to lower his gaze and, assuming a somewhat deferential posture, remained on the steps—the gun slung on his shoulder.

Ruth blushed. She marvelled at his stealth.

Raj had not seen him. His voice thick, turning towards Ruth, he murmured: ‘Show me the rooms, my dear …’ and he noticed the guard on the steps, his chiselled profile and still body as if carved from stone. Raj caught a hint of movement beneath his lowered lids and he sensed the dire glint of menace flash a warning. He knew that even if he was to as much as touch Ruth, Jungi Khan would have no compunction about killing him. The guard was honour bound to protect Rick’s possessions.

Acutely conscious of the gatekeeper’s presence on the landing, Ruth led Raj perfunctorily through the two guest bedrooms. Her voice sounded unnaturally loud in her ears.

When they emerged Jungi Khan had his back to them. His shoulders sloping, his neck bent, he was trying to appear servile and inconspicuous but Ruth knew: had she permitted Raj to embrace her, the man would have broken his neck and flung him down the steps.

Moments later, when Ruth saw Raj to his Mercedes, the gatekeeper was already at his post at the gate.

‘Next time, my dear,’ Raj said, unrepentant and amused,
‘let me take you on a tour of
my
hotel suite. The hotel’s guards are more civilized.’

‘When would that be?’ Ruth said, trying to match his tone but failing.

‘How about, I send the car to fetch you tomorrow evening,’ Raj said. ‘I’m leaving the day after for Islamabad … To be sworn in as Roving Ambassador at Large.’ Raj conveyed the news of his appointment with his usual disarming humility.

Ruth was taken aback enough to say: ‘When were you going to tell me? One is not appointed Ambassador at Large every day!’

‘After I’d had you to myself for a bit … If that damned mountain oaf had not felt duty bound to kill me.’

‘He would have, you know,’ Ruth said, her shaky voice revealing the extent of her fear now that the terrifying moment was past.

‘I know,’ Raj said simply.

Ruth twisted her head as if ridding herself of a crick in the neck. ‘You’d better go,’ she said, nodding her head towards the car and stepping back.

‘Will you be all right?’

‘Yes …’ she said uncertainly, and then noticing Raj’s concerned face added on a firmer note: ‘I’ll be damned if I let that man hang around … I’ll tell Rick’s office to get rid of him.’

Later that night as she tossed restlessly in bed, she knew her affair with Raj was over. A sense of relief seeped through her. She remembered the merciless gossip that had erupted when it became known that a woman of her acquaintance
was having an affair. What was she thinking? Behaviour that might be condoned back home would be unforgivable in this culture; frowned upon even by her closest friends.

It was the last day of the polo match. The popular Brazilian team had scored a narrow victory over the team from Nepal to win the finals in a tense match. Ruth, who had politely rooted for the Nepalese but had not much cared who won, was nevertheless disappointed. She spotted Raj in the knot of sympathetic onlookers that had formed around the Nepalese players. She noticed him cut through the throng to the Brazilians to congratulate them and had almost been tempted to join them. She would see him tonight, anyway. The handsome Brazilian captain had accepted the huge silver cup with crossed polo-sticks for handles, and held it aloft to enthusiastic applause.

As she walked down the path leading to the parking lot Ruth’s mind drifted to the gala that would take place later that evening at the Punjab Club. It was to bid farewell to the visiting teams. Her friends would be there and the usual anonymous blend of party faces. The teeniest excuse and there’s a party, she thought. Didn’t this lot get tired of seeing the same faces evening after evening? They’d had a grand shindig to welcome the polo players only a few weeks back.

She was wondering absently what she might wear that evening, when she spotted her driver, already holding the car door open to receive her. Bless his heart, she thought—he always managed to find a conveniently close parking spot.

Once she was home Ruth went into the kitchen to ask if Chikoo had been fed. This was more a ritual than a query—an unconscious means of reclaiming the house from the servants and establishing her domain. At times, yearning to have the house to herself as she had back home in New England, she would dismiss the servants—insist they take the day off. It never quite worked as she hoped. Billo would stalk away miffed that her mistress should have so little need of her. The cook, loath to go home so early, would lock the kitchen door and settle on a charpoy beneath a tree with a hookah, ready to pass the time of day with a game of snakes-and-ladders or a chat with whoever happened by. No matter how she barricaded herself the gardener might decide to trim a hedge outside her bedroom window, or Grace turn up to sweep the drive. And always she would hear their muffled voices talking. Did people anywhere else in the world talk so much?

Telling the cook he could take the evening off, Ruth settled down to watch an old re-run of
Bewitched
. Idly stroking Chikoo as he nestled in her lap she was irked, and at the same time amused, by the eccentricity of the mullah-supervised television censors. At the merest hint of a kiss—even a perfunctory peck-on-the-cheek between Samantha and her husband—the screen became blurred. Cleavage and legs in commercials on CNN were subjected to a similar ambush.
Ruth found it ironic that a country with one of the highest birthrates in the world should be so queasy about sex. Her friends kept scraps of muslin at hand; viewed through the fabric they said the images cleared. Ruth had not gotten around to trying this out yet.

Ruth waited for the six o’clock news in English. Ever since her visit to Kabul she liked to keep abreast of events in Afghanistan. The Pakistani newscaster’s delicate face, lightly framed by the obligatory chiffon scarf covering her head and shoulders, looked lovelier for it. She did not smile, as her counterparts on CNN and BBC did—it would be considered indecent in the wake of the increasingly puritanical atmosphere during General Zia’s regime—akin to flirting with men in the audience. The scarf was mandatory on Pakistan television and symbolized modesty.

It was almost four years since Ruth had accompanied Rick on a business trip to Kabul. Ruth knew that the Afghan king, Zahir Shah, had been deposed by the KGB and the delightfully informal couple, who had invited them to dinner in Kabul, had been forced to flee. After several subsequent unstable regimes, the Russians had placed a man of their choice at the helm of affairs to gain complete control.

There were desultory pockets of resistance by Afghan Mujahedeen. In their intended push through Afghanistan and then Pakistan to the warm waters of the Arabian Sea and on to the Straits of Hormuz, a short span of ocean across from Iran, the Soviet Union finally invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Their plan was to cut through to the port of Gwadar in Pakistan and from there to be in a position to control
the Strait. This, Rick had explained, directly threatened American oil interests in the Persian Gulf. The newly elected President Reagan, who Ruth had at first considered dimwitted and later, insane, had proved shrewd and even prescient. Reagan promptly branded the USSR ‘Evil Empire’, deployed missiles in Europe and bombarded the communist regime with dire ultimatums. In making the Russians believe he was dangerously deranged and reckless of consequences he evidently terrified and eventually pushed them into compliance. Breathtaking rumours circulated through the grapevine of the expatriate American community in Pakistan. Two Texans, Ruth excitedly learnt, had had a hand in influencing President Reagan and directing the action. A stunning Houston socialite, Joanne King Herring, whom Ruth had met briefly at a party when Rick had been posted to Houston, was befriending General Zia-ul-Haq, President of Pakistan, and throwing extravagant parties at her home to introduce the General to the Houston elite. She cultivated the senator from Lubbock, Charlie Wilson, who was on the Arms Appropriation Committee, and got him to direct the flow of weapons to the mujahedeen. Between them and a couple of CIA operatives they made Reagan aware of what was at stake. Reagan immediately grasped the possibilities inherent in the Afghan resistance and got America fully engaged in their struggle against the Evil Empire. Pakistan, a willing ally at the time, was used as a base to conduct covert military operations of the proxy war and as a conduit to funnel American arms and supplies to the freedom fighters in land-locked Afghanistan.

Ruth was uneasy about her country’s motives in supporting the Afghans. If her Pakistani friends realized the expediency of the American involvement they didn’t mention it. Except for occasionally calling American Capitalism ‘ruthless’, or its democratic ideals ‘hypocritical’ for foisting military dictatorships when it suited them, Ruth had found little anti-American sentiment in Pakistan. Although she agreed with these views, she found herself defending her country’s actions as she never would have done at home.

Ruth could hear Billo go in and out of the bedroom as she tidied up, putting away the washing and hanging the ironed shot-silk skirt and top she had decided to wear that evening. Once Ruth left for the Punjab Club Billo would turn down the bedcovers, turn on the electric heater, place the flask of water on the night table and plug in the mosquito repellant. Ruth heard Billo run the bathwater. She stretched her limbs in a gesture of ease and gratitude before getting up from her chair.

Ruth slipped into her long navy skirt and stood before the mirror to adjust the slim straps of her fitted top. She bent to accommodate Billo as the maid hooked up the clasp of her lapis choker, its three deep blue strands separated by delicate strips of gold encrusted with tiny diamonds. The choker enhanced the handsome set of Ruth’s tanned shoulders and the matching bracelet on her shapely, lightly freckled arm. Rick had bought the jewellery for her from the Gem Corporation of Pakistan their first Christmas in Lahore.

When she last wore the lapis with the same sleek navy outfit she had on now, Rick had told her she looked better
than she had on their first date. The compliment had charmed Ruth, and yet she found herself choosing the outfit tonight with thoughts of Raj eyeing her from across the party. With his love for polo, she guessed he would be there. The affair with Raj had fizzled out after their scary encounter with the night-watchman, and his endless travels now that he was Pakistan’s Ambassador at Large. Yet, his absence had left Ruth in quite an ironic state of missing the man who had filled in the holes left by her perpetually travelling husband.

Ruth draped the light pashmina stole around her bare shoulders. She studied her image in the mirror. Her flesh was firm, her stomach flat. Her face had taken on softer, more appealing contours. Her cleavage and the knee-high slit in her skirt were discreet; the tailor had made the outfit out of a sari Rick had brought her from Delhi.

By the time Ruth stepped out into the porch Yussaf, the company chauffeur, had already turned the Buick around in the porch. Rick did not like her to drive at night. Yussaf held the door open while she settled in. She directed him to the Punjab Club, and told him she would find a ride home. At dinner parties at their friends’ houses the chauffeurs were fed from their hosts’ kitchens. Later, huddled in blankets against the wintry nights, they slept in their cars. Ruth did not like to keep Yussaf waiting past midnight. When Rick was in town he drove. Tonight, one of her friends, or perhaps Raj, would drive her home.

The party honouring the polo players and the victorious Brazilian team was in full swing. The reception hall was crammed with women in silk saris and shimmering shalwar-
kameezes and men in dark suits or woollen sherwanis that came down to their knees. Waiters in white uniforms and crisp turbans were weaving between the guests with trays of fruit juices, sodas and steaming kababs. Ruth automatically switched into ‘party mode’. Greeting acquaintances, looking for friends, she moved through the crowd. People had spilled into the back garden and had formed small groups around the coal braziers scattered about the lawn. The temperatures dropped below freezing at night. The grass was covered with coarse handwoven wool rugs, and the garden was enclosed by orange marquees, appliquéd with brilliant swaths of red, blue and green colours.

A cheerful man with a prematurely white head of hair handed Ruth a drink. She often ran into him at parties. She took a sip: Scotch masked in Coke. She didn’t like Scotch, but ‘thanks’, she said, raising her glass, ‘great stuff’, and moved on. A little later she quietly abandoned the glass on a side table.

A diluted form of Prohibition had always existed in Pakistan but General Zia had recently enforced its laws. Alcohol was no longer sold in club bars and the wine shops were closed. At parties in public places like the Punjab Club, men concealed flasks of smuggled Scotch or vodka in their breast pockets. At dinners at home smuggled alcohol was freely served but there was rarely any wine: smuggling the bulky bottles of wine was unprofitable.

Non-Muslims could buy a limited monthly quota and Christian servants, therefore, were in demand. Grace and Sadiq, who swept the compounds and cleaned the bathrooms
of two other bungalows besides the Walkers’, divided their monthly quota of booze equally between their Muslim employers. Every month they stood in line with their permits to buy bottles of local beer, gin or brandy from the back rooms of the two five-star hotels licensed to sell alcoholic beverages. Scotch didn’t figure in their quota: a bottle cost twice their monthly salary. Bootleggers flourished.

She felt the familiar sly brush of fingertips across her back and turned, smiling, to face the beaming Raj … They hugged lightly, affectionately brushing cheeks. Raj held her at arm’s length to give her an appraising look. The gleam in his eyes flattered her as of old, but the spark it had excited in the past was no longer there and she was glad of it. ‘I saw you at the match,’ she said. ‘You were palling around with the Nepali and Brazilian teams.’

‘Why didn’t you join us, my dear?’ he said, and Ruth smiled to recognize the old caress in his voice. She loved this in him. Though they both recognized that their passion had cooled, the warmth of their friendship remained.

‘What, and have you neglect me while you hung around with players?’

‘My dear, I would have gladly hung around with you instead—you know that!’

‘I know no such thing,’ said Ruth laughing. ‘You’ve neglected me ever since you’ve become Ambassador at Large,’ Ruth pulled a rueful face.

Raj held her face between his palms as he looked deep into her green eyes—the men standing by looked on enviously, aware of the special status Raj enjoyed as a foreigner. ‘As of
this moment I’m resigning my appointment,’ he said. ‘I’d never neglect you, my dear—surely you know that!’

‘Oh Raj, I prefer my Roving Ambassador,’ she said laughing. ‘Don’t you dare resign.’

Ruth spotted Sherry and Nasira in the midst of a flirtatious bunch of polo players, and following the movement of her eyes Raj brushed her cheeks with his lips and moved away. Ruth smiled and waved discreetly, but her friends didn’t see her.

As she made her way towards them Ruth glimpsed, between a shifting fence of bodies, an arresting figure. There was something familiar about the person and Ruth edged sideways to have a better look. She recognized him almost at once. The man was transformed. He had lost at least twenty pounds. With his grey beard neatly trimmed and an Afghan cap on his head, the man stood out from the crowd, elegant and debonair. Four years ago, when Rick had introduced them in Kabul, Abdul Abbas had had a fuller, henna-rusty beard and an altogether more rugged and grizzled aspect. Back then, Abbas had been Minister of Trade and Finance, and had held the authority to sanction a sale Rick was negotiating. Rick had found him straightforward and honest. Ruth wondered how true that might still be, after everything that had transpired.

Despite Rick’s praises, it had surprised Ruth when Abdul Abbas invited them to dinner at his home. The two-storey brick structure, with wide balconies and verandas wrapped
all around, and rows of doors, was more like a barracks than a home. It could have accommodated enough people to fill a fair-sized hotel, thought Ruth. Later on Abdul Abbas had explained that the rooms were occupied by visiting tribesmen and their families, most of them in some form or another related to him. As the prosperous head of his tribe it was incumbent on him to accommodate the visiting kinsmen.

Abdul Abbas and his wife Nabila, a thickset easygoing woman in her late thirties, received them in the porch of their rambling bungalow. Nabila wore a cardigan over her magenta shalwar-kameez outfit with a matching dupatta draped round her neck. The conflagration of colours so close to her face imparted a dusky glow to her fine features and olive complexion. Ruth had read somewhere that shocking pink was South Asia’s navy blue. Even in the short time Ruth had spent up North she could tell that the woman, despite her almost black hair, was not Afghan.