Night of the Golden Butterfly (8 page)

‘Not sure.’

‘Then you think she has. Well, we’re all here to help.’

Younis was disappointed. ‘I was imagining you with the moonlit Lailuma, but Allah decides. There is no reason to seal off that option. Am I to open all the letters addressed to the Chinese lady?’

‘No,’ I said, mortified by what Jindié might think if she ever found out. ‘Let’s wait.’

I had sprained my ankle while playing tennis and was incapacitated the day they arrived, but ordered a horse and rode over to the Pines the next day to pay my respects and drag Confucius to the old club. When Jindié saw me being helped down from the horse she burst out laughing, stopping only when she noticed that I was limping with the help of a stick.

‘I’m sorry, but I just never imagined you on horseback. You’re hurt?’ I explained. Confucius had gone in search of me. How we missed each other I don’t know, but Mrs Ma ordered some tea and Bostaan duly arrived with a tray and some truly terrible cucumber sandwiches made with stale bread, lightly soaked in water to make it appear fresh. He gave me a knowing smile, which could only mean that Younis had alerted him to my state of mind.

I warned Jindié and her mother against eating too often in the hotel and told Bostaan to offer the sandwiches to my horse, which he promptly did, only to have them rejected by the animal. This caused general merriment and a cheerful Mrs Ma went indoors to unpack.

‘It’s really beautiful here. You’ve been here every summer since you were two?’

I nodded, trying not to look at her too openly. She was wearing a blouse over a pair of black trousers and her hair was in a bun held together by ivory clips.

‘My foot is on the mend and in a few days I’ll be walking again. We’re all going up that mountain. Mukshpuri. A path leads to it from the other side of this hotel. The grown-ups usually stop halfway up, at Lalazar, where everyone eats lunch after we kids have returned from the summit.’

‘And after lunch?’

‘We pick daisies, sing, listen to Zahid play the accordion, tell stories and then come down and light a fire.’

‘Where will you light the fire?’

Before I could control myself the words slipped out. ‘In your heart.’ She became agitated and stood up as if to leave. I was spared the agony of her departure by the appearance of an out-of-breath Confucius.

‘One more thing, Jindié,’ I said, wanting to make up for my mistake. ‘You must walk a lot over the next few days to acclimatize. Otherwise your legs will be stiff after we climb the mountain.’

‘I suppose your legs are never stiff.’

‘Only because I walk several miles a day.’

‘On horseback?’ She laughed again and disappeared. I sighed with relief. I took Confucius to the bazaar and introduced him to Younis. Later that day Zahid arrived to stay with me for a few days and prepare for the Mukshpuri climb. In the evening I hobbled with him to the club. While everyone was playing tennis and ping-pong, I retired to the library and relieved the volunteer librarian for a few hours. Jindié came in to look at the books and said, ‘Colonial rubbish.’

I had no idea she was that way inclined and was quite delighted, but felt the library had to be defended.

‘The best books have been stolen. Only the rubbish is left, but there are a few others. Pearl S. Buck is quite readable.’

‘What? Are you mad or just stupid? Every literate Chinese laughs at her.’

‘Could that be because she describes the lowest depths of Chinese society and some literate Chinese find that embarrassing? I have to admit I learned a great deal from her books.’

‘That’s only because you’re ignorant and know nothing about China.’

‘True. One has to start somewhere. She got the Nobel Prize for no reason?’

‘Those idiots in Stockholm were ignorant, just like you. They were taken in by missionary sensitivities. Have you read
The Dream of the Red Chamber
?’

‘I tried, but the official translation is unreadable. Is it available in English?’

‘How do I know? My father is the expert on all this and will also know the best translation.’

‘In Punjabi, I hope. Confucius is a true Punjabi. He has assimilated every Lahori prejudice, including that profound malice against the cultured refugees who crossed the Jumna and found themselves in an illiterate hell.’

She laughed and lit the room, just as a whole gang of kids arrived to borrow books, disturbing our very first conversation. The day we climbed the mountain, Jindié, forgetful of her customary reserve, suddenly took my arm—a
coup de foudre
if ever there was one—and as come of the party looked askance, she pretended she had slipped. The gesture, however, had been noticed, and knowing looks were exchanged. Strange how the exchangers of knowing looks never realize that one can see them.

Lailuma arrived the following day, together with her extended family, and instantly became part of our crowd. She was in remarkably good spirits, understood perfectly that Jindié and I had become close and played the part of chaperone to perfection. She was now engaged to a lawyer she liked and thanked me again in Jindié’s presence for all my help last year. Strange, I thought to myself, how my desire for her had disappeared so completely. Love of the sort I felt for the Butterfly had a side effect, in the shape of what can only be the drollest of virtues: chastity.

Once we were alone, Jindié wanted to know the whole truth. Instinctively she had guessed that my motives in helping the Peshawari princess had not been totally pure. I told her the truth, concealing nothing, but made her pledge she would never reveal the sub-postmaster’s role. She agreed, but let me know that she thought what we did was despicable.

‘The end justifies the means.’

‘Have you instructed him to open my mail as well?’

‘Not yet.’

‘If you do I’ll never speak to you again.’

‘If I did, you’d never know.’

‘I would. I know your type better than you think. Spoilt Punjabi boys who think there are no rules in society. Anyway, most of the letters I get are from friends or my father, and they all write in Mandarin, so neither you nor that creepy postmaster would ever be able to read them.’

‘Creepy sub-postmaster, you mean.’ Jindié hit me on the arm with a clenched fist. ‘Would you like to know what some of our acquaintances are writing home about you and me?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘What I said.’

‘Have you read anything?

‘A detailed letter from that buck-toothed girl you really like because she constantly flatters you. She wrote about us to her best friend in Multan. It’s ugly. Guess what. A new romance is brewing in the hills, like mountain chai. You’ll never believe it. Dara and Jindié, that Chinese girl who’s at college with me. They’re so shameless. They can barely keep their hands off each other. They watch each other all the time.’

Jindié laughed. ‘You are evil, but I’m warning you ...’

‘Why should I want to read your letters?’

‘Curiosity. Jealousy. Possessiveness. Imbecility. All the Punjabi virtues. Your choice as to which applies best to you.’

‘I won’t read your letters, but get a sense of proportion. What you call Punjabi virtues are really universal. We’re just more open. Less subtle, but also less hypocritical.’

She smiled and I wanted to kiss her lips, but was too scared to do so because of the proximity of Mrs Ma, who now called for her daughter to come indoors. Had the old lady been eavesdropping as she watched the sun set from the cottage window?

When I reported this conversation to Plato and Zahid, they both agreed that there was little doubt that she loved me, and we discussed how to move forward. Zahid argued in favour of proposing marriage, but this was foolish since I had promised my parents I’d go study law in Britain. It was too early for any talk of marriage, and I dreaded the thought of saying anything to my mother, in many ways a deeply conservative person with fixed ideas on these matters. Plato advised a long engagement that would signify commitment and, no doubt, Jindié could also go abroad. The final decision could be left till later. A long engagement wasn’t appealing, but it made sense. The three of us agreed that this was what should be done once the summer was over. Before proceeding, I had to make sure that Jindié was in favour of this solution.

That last summer in Nathiagali was dominated by a process that I have already referred to earlier in connection with someone else, the process a lovelorn Stendhal described as crystallization in his compendium
Love:

At the salt mines of Salzburg, they throw a leafless wintry bough into one of the abandoned workings. Two or three months later they haul it out covered with a shining deposit of crystals. The smallest twig, no bigger than a tomtit’s claw, is studded with a galaxy of scintillating diamonds. The original branch is no longer recognizable.

What I have called crystallization is a mental process which draws from everything that happens new proofs of the perfection of the loved one ... one of your friends goes hunting, and breaks his arm: wouldn’t it be wonderful to be looked after by the woman you love! To be with her all the time and to see her loving you ... a broken arm would be heaven ...

Admittedly my sprained ankle and ride to her front door had produced different results, but the thought behind it, on my part, had been the same. All of my thoughts that summer were a maturation of the crystallization process. One evening, all of us young people were invited to dinner in Kalabagh, an Air Force recreation centre a few miles away from Nathia. Our hosts were two Pashtun friends, Lailuma’s cousins, whose father was a senior Air Force officer. It was an idyllic evening. The sky was beautiful, but it was getting chilly and we draped ourselves in shawls. Lailuma greeted us on arrival and I told her we were wearing the shawls to mark her escape from the shawl merchant’s son. She ignored me for the rest of the evening.

We carried torches for the return journey. I have no memory of anything else that happened that evening except the fact that Jindié and I abandoned all pretence. We walked next to each other. We talked only to one another and on the way back we took advantage of the dark and held hands. Lailuma came close to us and whispered, ‘Be careful’, but we were beyond caution and asked her to walk with us. The full moon was waning, but when we reached the old church in Nathia we could still see its light illuminating Nanga Parbat, the third-highest peak in the Himalayas. There were two or three special places where that peak could be observed, and so our party split up: Jindié, Lailuma and I went to the observation spot behind the lightning-scarred church. The others disappeared elsewhere.

‘Jindié.’

‘I know.’

We embraced each other, and I stroked her cheeks, but nothing more. We declared our love and I suggested we immediately get engaged to prevent our respective parents from thinking about other alternatives. She held me tight, kissed my eyes. We were surprised by our audacity and laughed about it at the time. Before we could continue the discussion, we heard Lailuma shouting our names as a warning. We walked away and joined her and the rest. Neither of us spoke till we reached the Pines Hotel. Then Zahid and I walked back another mile to my house and I told him. There was another member of our party that evening: Jamshed had arrived to stay with a cousin in Doongagali, but given his weak, cowardly and contemptible character, I’m trying to avoid mention of him as much as I can in this account. Plato despised him and I never told him about Jindié, though he probably found out, since it was hardly a secret anymore.

Three days before Jindié was due to leave she agreed to a tryst in the church. I knew where the key was kept, and in the past we had often used it as place to rendezvous. The days when a priest would come from Peshawar for Sunday prayers had ended in the Fifties. The building was in a state of disrepair and often leaked when the rain was heavy. Then Jindié decided that she did not want to meet there. When I asked why, she said it made her feel like a character in a Pearl S. Buck novel. I never let her forget that remark, but her rejection of the church meant a long trek with Lailuma, who was perfectly willing to walk behind us or in front at a suitable distance. She collected Jindié. I met them at the empty Government House. I had gone hunting once with the caretaker and now he let us in with a huge welcome. We walked out the back through its lush gardens and entered a path that led to Miran Jani, the highest mountain in Nathia. We found a beautiful meadow and sat on the grass while Lailuma opened a book and tried to ignore us for the next two hours. Jindié spoke first, and her voice was tremulous with emotion.

‘I’ve decided. I don’t want to get engaged to you.’

I seized her hand and kissed it. ‘Why? Why?’

‘It’s wrong for us to behave in such a traditional way. My mother says if we love each other we can do what we want. I could go to Leeds University and enrol in the Chinese department and we could see each other every weekend. And if we wanted to, we could get married. Or not? It’s for us to decide. Nobody else.’

I was in heaven. I put my head on her lap and after a while she began to stroke my hair. ‘It’s done,’ I said. ‘That’s what we’ll do. I’m glad you’ve told your mother. I’ll tell mine.’

‘No need to if you don’t want to,’ she replied. ‘Confucius said your mother was very beautiful and open-minded in some ways but also very traditional and conservative in others. She may not like her son marrying a Chinese cobbler’s daughter.’

I hugged her and kissed her head and hands and cheeks. ‘Jindié, my mother is traditional, but she married my father against her own father’s wishes. They were from the same family, but my father had become a Communist and ...’

‘The whole of Lahore knows the story, Dara, but that doesn’t stop people behaving differently when their own children are involved in something of which they disapprove.’

We carried on talking all the way back. Lailuma told me she agreed with Jindié. No confessions in Lahore whatsoever. In Britain we could do as we wished. Later Plato and Zahid strongly agreed as well.

‘You know how headstrong your mother is,’ said Zahid. ‘Don’t say a word. I hope you haven’t kept a diary.’