A Division Of The Spoils (Raj Quartet 4) (68 page)

‘Not everything.’

‘No one will trust or respect you if you don’t stand up for us along with other political leaders.’

‘I hope it is not my fear of this that you have been relying on?’ He made to go, but stopped, unable to part with his son on such terms. ‘It is you who have thrown away everything, Sayed. The men who did not are the Indian soldiers and
officers who are still in prison-camp, who resisted all these perhaps understandable and pardonable temptations and suffered infinitely greater hardship, and who will now be coming home. In a year or so, if you are not in prison, where will you be? For a time yes, you will all be heroes. But when there is no longer any reason to treat you as heroes, then you will be forgotten or if you are remembered at all it will be with mistrust, as men who broke their contracts, men who voluntarily took an oath of loyalty and then disregarded it, men who treated their commissions as mere scraps of paper to be used or thrown away as they thought fit. And if you
do
go to prison for this meanwhile, I beg of you do not try to console yourself with the thought that you and your father have both in your time suffered the same punishment for the same crime. It will not be so. The only contract I have ever made of this kind is with myself, to do what I could to obtain the independence and freedom and unity and strength of this country. Whenever in earlier days I defied the law it was in performance of that contract, and I defied it knowing full well the penalty and indeed inviting the penalty and proudly admitting that I had incurred it. The last time I went to prison was because I would not repudiate my membership of a party that Government lawfully suppressed. Unjustly but lawfully suppressed. It is true that at one time I was sworn in as a minister and it is true that I and all my colleagues resigned when we felt we could not any longer participate in an administration under the British. But a soldier cannot resign in wartime. When you became a soldier, Sayed, this fact should have been clearly in your mind as defining the difference between us. I did not interfere with your decision to become a soldier because I asked myself what kind of independent country will India be if we do not have a properly trained and experienced professional army to defend that independence. That the British allowed Indians to become officers I have always taken as a sign of their good faith in the matter of eventually bowing to our demands to rule ourselves. But that is by the way. What is not by the way is that now you can no longer be a soldier, you can no longer help your country. And this is what angers me. Your life so far has been wasted.’

Sayed stared at him.

‘It is not a country. It is two countries. Perhaps it is many countries, but primarily it is two. If I’m not wanted in one perhaps I shall be wanted in the other.’

‘Ah!’ Kasim exclaimed. And sat down. ‘So this also has happened to you. Then we are even more deeply divided.’

‘We’re only divided by your refusal to face facts, father, and by your reliance on this and that legal interpretation, also I begin to think by your reliance on the British to act as gentlemen. I no longer believe in such concepts. I have seen too much of life. It is no good relying on principles and no good relying on the British who themselves have no principles that can’t be trimmed to suit
them.
In any case, they are finished. They are no longer of importance and will drag us down with them if we aren’t careful. They are only interested in themselves and always have been. But now they are afraid of the Americans and the Russians and will try to get rid of India as quick as they can, both to curry favour with the
USA
and
USSR
and not to have any longer the responsibility. They will hand us over to Gandhi and Nehru and Patel – and then where will you be, father? How can you trust Congress as a whole? How can you imagine that just because you’ve been useful to them in the past you – a Muslim – will be allowed to remain useful when they have power? They will squeeze you out at the first convenient opportunity. Congress is a Hindu party whatever they pretend. They will exploit us as badly as the British have done, probably worse. There’s only one answer and that is to seize what we can for ourselves and run things our own way from there.’

Sayed leaned over the table.

‘When you say my military career is finished, I would agree with you. It would be finished if the British stay and finished if we merely substitute a Hindu for a British
raj.
It would be finished because I’m a Muslim and they hate us. Also they hate each other. A Hindu from
UP
hates a Hindu from Bengal and both hate a Hindu from the South. A Hindu
raj
would be a catastrophe. They have nothing to hold them together. They hate and envy us mostly because we have such a thing. We have Islam. It will be madness not to resist them. The only thing that matters in this world, father, is power. We must
grasp our own. Surely it is true you have been thinking of this too? Please, do not be too proud? I do not want to see you become neglected and bitter in your old age.’

Kasim kept his attention on his son’s hands: good, square capable hands. No sign of a tremor. Nor perhaps of sensitivity. He kept his own clasped.

‘You are asking me to throw everything away and go over to the League?’

‘It wouldn’t be throwing anything away. Guzzy and Nita are very keen on this, I think. Their letters are full of hints. Jinnah would welcome you. Almost I imagine he is expecting it, because you have been so difficult for people to get hold of.’

‘And Ahmed? Is he keen?’

‘What does Ahmed know about anything? He is still a child.’

‘No,’ Kasim said. ‘He is not a child.’

‘Well, no, no, not in that way. A man with a reputation I gather.’

‘A reputation?’

‘For liking the things a man likes.’

‘Women? Drinking? This is so.’

‘He should be careful. It must worry you.’

Kasim did not reply. He noted the solicitous tone in his son’s voice. Which verged on condescension. Sayed added, ‘Perhaps he is like this because he feels himself to be without chance or opportunity.’

‘You mean he does not agree with the things I stand for?’

‘How can I say, father? He is a good boy at heart, I’m sure. I shall try to find out what he thinks, shall I?’

‘He does not think about much. Except these things you mentioned. And hawking.’

‘Hawking?’

‘He was always very keen on riding. Now he has trained a falcon. It is very difficult, you know. It demands much attention and concentration. Sleepless nights. All that sort of thing. But he is much attached to her. He goes out whenever he can.’

‘But that is good! A good manly sport. I am glad. I should not like him to become dissipated.’

Sayed placed one hand on his father’s coupled ones. Kasim
did not look up. But he felt, as a physical pressure, the steady way his elder son watched him.

‘Perhaps we should say goodbye now, father. Thank you for coming to see me.’

‘It is you who have come the greater distance.’

‘That is my duty.’

Kasim stood up. Dutifully too, he held his arms out. They embraced. Speaking into his son’s shoulder he said, ‘Do not rely too much on this Colonel Merrick. He has known Ahmed for some time. He has told neither of you that he knew the other.’

‘He told me just before he brought you in, father. But don’t worry. I rely on no Englishman. He is of no importance either.’

‘They will be waiting for you outside, no doubt. No doubt you can see Ahmed alone in here also, but you had better go out now. It would offend me to see you in custody of any kind. By the time they bring you back in I shall be gone.’

‘You will write to me?’

Kasim nodded. He murmured: Allah be with you. Then released him and moved away. He heard his son’s firm, heavy footsteps; and in a while the opening and closing of a door. He looked round the empty court-room and, familiar though it was, as such rooms went, it seemed to him lacking in the quality that gave such rooms meaning or even the dimensions of reality. Then he walked out by way of the dais and the magistrate’s room, through the corridor and along it in search of the room that had been set aside for him.

*

By the time they drove into the siding at Premnagar it was nearly half-past ten. There was barely an hour before the night train from Mirat to Ranpur was due to stop and pick them up. The stationmaster was fussing because the coach had to be shunted to a more convenient place for coupling and he had expected them by ten o’clock.

A puncture had delayed them. For half-an-hour Kasim had waited on the roadside, listening to the wind in the telegraph wires. The night sky had no luminosity. The wind held the
smell of approaching rain; a small rain; but better than a heavy rain in country like this which the wet monsoon either avoided or flooded, first drying the top-soil for a couple of years, then sweeping it away. He welcomed the rain and the darkness of the sky. The fort, unsilhouetted, had entirely disappeared. He welcomed the wind and the air. It was good to feel braced and chilled after the heat and humidity of the room in the Circuit House, but he knew he might catch cold. Instinctively he had felt in his pocket for the onion that was supposed to ward colds off. There was no onion. He had given that up when his wife died.

Now to the stationmaster’s fussing, Booby was adding his own. Where were the steps by which to mount? ‘We don’t need steps,’ Kasim said and reached for the handgrips, heaved himself up only to find himself steadied unexpectedly from inside by Ahmed who had been in the coach collecting the small suitcase he’d brought from Mirat and was now going to take back to Mirat in the Nawab’s Daimler.

‘Surely you’re not going yet?’

‘Not for a moment or two, father. I didn’t want to forget it though.’

‘Well give it to one of the people to take to the car then come and talk to me for a moment.’ He was conscious of the peremptory tone in his voice and wasn’t encouraged by it. He went down the corridor. Hosain was waiting. He slid the door open.

‘Tell them to bring tea or something.’

He entered the compartment. Before he could sit Mr Mehboob followed him in and put the briefcase on a seat.

‘Where is Ahmed? I want to see him alone for a moment. And please shut the door. I’ve been standing all that time in the open.’

‘You shouldn’t have got out on to the road, Minister, when we had the puncture.’

‘How can they change a wheel with two people like us sitting at ease in the back? It is bad for the springs, Ahmed says, and it is the Nawab’s car and must be returned in good condition.’

Hurt, Booby left the compartment and began to close the
door but opened it again for Ahmed. Sulkily he shut it when Ahmed was inside.

‘Come, sit, they are bringing tea.’

Ahmed looked at his watch but sat down. ‘I’ve not time for tea, father, it’s a long drive and the chauffeur wants to go to a garage to get the punctured wheel repaired so that we have a spare.’

‘There will be no garage open at this hour.’

‘He knows of one.’

‘It will take hours. You will get cold standing around.’

‘What he advises is best, father. So I mustn’t be long. Anyway they’re going to move the carriage at any moment.’

‘I don’t like you travelling alone in a car at night all the way to Mirat. It is a bad area round here. And the escort van has gone.’

‘I shan’t be alone, father. There’s the driver. Anyway, Booby came down at night. I can take care of myself just as well as he can.’

‘Booby is paid to risk his life,’ Kasim said. But smiled. Encouraged by Ahmed’s answering smile he said, ‘We have had no opportunity to talk today.’ That was untrue. He had deliberately avoided being alone with Ahmed. ‘What I want to suggest is that you come back now to Ranpur. Come back for a few days. There is a great deal to do and a great deal you can help me with. Poor Booby is such a muddler. Ring Dmitri in the morning and explain the necessity. If you like, send a note back with the driver too.’

‘I promised Dmitri I’d be away only two nights. There’s a meeting of Council tomorrow.’

‘Council, council. He doesn’t need you. The Council is Dmitri. Anyway, you do not attend these meetings personally.’

His heart sank. It was so badly said. He wished he could withdraw the imputation that Ahmed’s official duties in Mirat were negligible; although he knew they were. He should never have agreed to Ahmed going to work in Mirat – but then he should never have let his elder son go into the army. Both had seemed acceptable enough solutions at the time. He had found adequate explanations: that India would need experienced officers; that it could be useful to have a son
experienced in the administration of feudal survivals like the princely states. But for months now he had found these explanations less convincing than the other explanation – that in his heart he had felt at the time that neither son was capable of contributing much more. Neither son had inherited the spark. Neither son cared deeply about the things he cared for himself. The only thing he could still convince himself of was that he had believed, hoped, that in time they would, that their occupations would help to nourish in them the necessary passion, determination, and restraint.

‘Well,’ he said, ‘if you must go back, you must.’ He was not going to beg. Nor was he going to admit that he could not bear the thought of returning to the empty old house in the Kandipat road alone; although he believed that Ahmed understood this. When he had said to Sayed,
No, Ahmed is not a child
, he had not meant what Sayed thought he meant. He had been thinking of the occasion when Ahmed startled him with a shrewd assessment of the situation in which he might find himself – indeed now found himself; startled him into realizing it at a moment when he had been incapable of thinking clearly; the previous occasion at the Circuit House when they had brought him unprepared, without breakfast, from the fort, telling him nothing, so that he had feared the worst, that his wife was ill or dead and that they were releasing him on compassionate grounds as they had released Bapu when Kasturba was dying. He had nearly disgraced himself – finding Ahmed there – pathetically crying out ‘Then God is good!’ when Ahmed reassured him. Relief had been followed by bitter resignation when the truth came out, that his release was only partial, that he must suffer the humiliation of living under restriction at Mirat, and the bitter-sweet humiliation of learning that his wife was to share that restriction with him. And after the relief, the resignation and the humiliation, had come the shock of hearing Ahmed speak so calmly of Sayed’s capture in Manipur. Outraged, he had not only called his first-born son a traitor, but had insulted Ahmed. It had been unforgiveable, yet Ahmed had seemed to forgive it, had gone on, speaking calmly still, intelligently, about the motives Government might have in releasing him from the fort. It could have been the turning
point in their relationship. His own stubbornness, his peremptoriness, his coldness of manner – carefully nurtured defences against the Islamic sin of betraying emotion – had perhaps been the chief impediments to closer understanding. And yet after that one moment, that opportunity they had had to be closer to one another, Ahmed had seemed to withdraw again. It was as if the spark of involvement and commitment had failed to ignite. Subsequently, Kasim had tried tentatively to kindle it again and sometimes Ahmed had seemed to respond, but when his mother became ill, fatally ill, the capacity to respond had seemed to be deliberately smothered, and he had become again merely dutiful in matters where dutifulness seemed obligatory. As now, when he was dutifully sitting on the opposite seat, but leaning forward, hands clasped, indicating imminent departure.