Arctic Summer

by Damon Galgut

  * * *

  At this time, fate handed him another respite. For some weeks now there had been plans for a royal trip to Simla, to see the Viceroy, Lord Reading, whom Bapu Sahib hoped to persuade to come to Dewas to inaugurate his new constitution. This journey had been put off more than once, but it was decided that now would be a good moment to make it.

  Morgan immediately applied for leave which was due to him, so that he could extend his absence. Three weeks away from Dewas and Kanaya: a chance to restore his better nature. He returned, however, to another crisis, which threatened to grow larger.

  His predecessor in the court was a Colonel Leslie, with whom he’d had some amicable correspondence over the last months, but the letter that was awaiting Morgan now wasn’t friendly in the least. I know that some people feel when they get east of Suez that not only the Ten Commandments are obsolete but also the obligations and etiquette of English society. His crime, apparently, was to have opened some of the colonel’s correspondence, thinking that it related to official business, before forwarding it to England.

  His face grew hot as he read and re-read the haughty words. It always took him some time, when he’d been insulted, to arrive at the correct emotion in response. But he knew that this couldn’t remain a private matter. He hurried off to find Bapu Sahib, only to discover that he was at prayers and couldn’t be disturbed.

  While he waited, he considered the situation. He knew that Colonel Leslie had gone back to England to recuperate through the Hot Weather, but it had always been his plan to return to his job. Perhaps, Morgan thought now, the colonel had become threatened. Perhaps he believed that his position had been usurped.

  And when the Maharajah turned up, his suspicions were quickly confirmed. Before Morgan could speak, Bapu Sahib said, “I’ve had a letter from Colonel Leslie. He says he shall undertake no more administrative work since it is not appreciated. It is an unpleasant letter.”

  “So is this.”

  “Oh, dear. Oh, dear.” Bapu Sahib seemed to contract with dismay as he read. “This is very bad. I am so sorry on your account, Morgan.”

  “I was rather concerned that I might have caused you trouble.”

  “No, no. He has been jealous of you for some time. He has been writing to me to say that I prefer you to him. Which of course is true. I am very sorry.”

  So bound up was he in the coils of diplomacy that it took Morgan a couple of days to comprehend that he’d been offered an escape. Colonel Leslie was expected to arrive in a few weeks, at the end of October: a perfect time to say goodbye to Dewas. He would book his passage home for January. The remaining two months he could spend with Masood in Hyderabad.

  When he told this to Bapu Sahib, the response was regretful. The Prince of Wales was due to make a royal visit to India in November, and he would have liked Morgan to remain at least that long, to see him through. But the Private Secretary had made up his mind.

  “I shall be very sad to be without you, Morgan,” the diminutive monarch told him. “But I do understand.”

  His position had always been temporary. Even without Colonel Leslie, Morgan had been thinking of going soon. But now that it had become official, he too felt sad. He knew that these months would haunt him later in England, like a strange and spectral dream, a vision seen in a fever.

  But it was, in every way, time to go. His relations with Kanaya had resumed, and he was too weak to break them off. The memory of these indulgences, he suspected, wouldn’t make him proud. Nor would his achievements at the court. All the works that had been in progress when he arrived had since been stopped, for lack of funds. Bapu Sahib’s predecessor had already sunk the state into debt, and every royal extravagance since then had gone unchecked, sucking the coffers dry. The palace itself stood up in the middle of the landscape like something anomalous and misconceived. It was unfinished when he’d first seen it, and it remained unfinished now. Perhaps it would always be like this.

  * * *

  His remaining two months in Hyderabad—with his first and most important Indian friend—were happy. The royal palace, with all its weight of responsibility, had lifted from him. Everything felt new and fresh; even foods he had been eating for months seemed to have a different taste. The weather was fine, the company congenial, and it was a relief to be among Muslims again, whose problems were at least comprehensible to him. He had loved Bapu Sahib, but Masood he also understood.

  From this contented vantage point, he could reflect back on his last few days in Dewas. The farewells had taken on a moist and maudlin quality. He had been profusely thanked, and presented with the second-highest honour the state could confer: the Tukojirao III Gold Medal. Except that—money being in short supply—it was only a temporary medal: the sun’s face had been scratched out inexpertly onto it with a pin, and the ribbon was a makeshift scrap of red cotton.

  “Soon,” Bapu Sahib had told him, “a proper medal will be struck, and then you shall exchange.”

  But Morgan didn’t want to exchange it: the improvised imitation was far more apt.

  He had been forgiven much, he knew. Damn the little barber! If he hadn’t entered the scene, Morgan wouldn’t have acted so vilely, or felt so wretched and insignificant in consequence. Only glancingly did he wonder how things might have looked from the other side. Perhaps Kanaya, too, was cursing Morgan’s arrival and the moral downfall that followed. But that was hard to believe. Kanaya could only have been in it to bolster his standing in the court, or perhaps for financial reward.

  He hadn’t received much of the latter. Though the Maharajah had raised his salary, of course; and when Morgan had finally left, he had given him some money. Kanaya had responded by counting it despondently and telling him that it wasn’t a lot.

  “How ungrateful,” Bapu Sahib had said crossly when he heard. “Did he ask for a chit?”

  “No. Should I have given one?”

  “You did well not to. It might have made talk when he showed it about, and now all will soon be forgotten. But it shows how utterly he has failed to appreciate the high position he had with you—and your goodness to him.”

  Morgan shifted uncomfortably. “Will you send him away?”

  “No, I think not. I shan’t scratch him off the budget, despite the way he’s treated us both, because I can’t forget that he was useful to you earlier in the year.”

  But Bapu Sahib’s generosity couldn’t erase the guilt. He knew that he had failed to be kind, and had, moreover, caused anxiety for His Highness. After a few days in Hyderabad, Morgan felt relaxed enough to confess the whole story to Masood. He told him everything, not holding back even the most unpleasant details.

  If he’d expected to be chastised, he was pleasantly surprised by his friend’s reaction. Masood shook his head despairingly and laughed. “Oh, Morgan, Morgan. Are you never going to change?”

  “I doubt it, at this late stage.”

  “I think the time has come at last for me to take you to a woman. I know a few who might oblige. Come, think about it. A voluptuous Indian lady, with breasts like mangoes. It might save the day, just when there is no hope left.”

  “I’m afraid it’s too late for that.”

  It was good to be able to talk with his friend in this way; sex, which had always divided them, now united them a little. In part, this was because they had reached a certain age. Masood had thickened in girth and his life had thickened around him too: he was happy in his job and full of enthusiasm and plans. Property and family and future had filled him out. Morgan, although he was poorer in all these things, had accepted that his friend would never be his lover—not in the way he’d once wanted. But the loss was also a sort of gain, because a new gentleness had sprung up between them.

  Zorah, Masood’s wife, wasn’t there this time when he first arrived. Morgan had met her on his last visit and they had tentatively warmed to one another. Each of them had tried har
d and in the end a mutual admiration had resulted. But she and the boys were away for a few days, so that for a while it was like bygone times, when he and Masood were young. They lived in the zenana, the part of the house usually reserved for women, sleeping next to each other on a back veranda, with vines hanging overhead.

  Other friends were present too. Some were new acquaintances, whom Morgan had never met. Some, like Sherwani and the Mirza brothers, he had encountered before. All of them were warm to this English visitor, whose name they often heard. As on his first trip to India, he was treated as one of the company—an honorary Indian. This involved frank airings of their political views in front of him, with no protection of his feelings. There was no malice in it, for they had nothing to lose. The Khilafat issue—the cutting up of the Turkish Empire after the War—had outraged Mohammedan sentiments and pushed Indian Muslims, who had long supported the British, towards the National Congress. Now all were united behind Gandhi in his push for civil disobedience.

  It was into this swelling tide of nationalism that the Prince of Wales was stepping. Almost everybody in Masood’s circle was opposed to the royal visit. For the past six months Morgan had been among Indians who were attached, sentimentally and politically, to the British Crown, and it was startling to suddenly hear the opposite. How hated they were, the English! How unwanted, how mistrusted! And how very far from under­standing what they’d done.

  He himself, as usual, was subtly conflicted. Sitting with Masood, surrounded by his friends, he was keenly attuned to their feelings. If he had been born here, with a different shade of skin, he too would be roused. But at the same time, part of him always wanted to protest, though in a very small voice. He had heard the noble justifications for Empire, not only from British politicians, but from high-minded friends like Goldie, and it was hard to give them up entirely. It could all have happened so differently, if it had simply been carried out with civility and politeness. It was a smallness of soul, a narrowness of the heart, which had done for Goldie’s high ideals. Ill-breeding had undermined the whole edifice. He couldn’t help believing that on a certain level this great dream was dying because of petty rudeness in railway carriages.

  But it was dying; there could be no doubt of that. The change of tone among the English living here betokened that. Some were even admitting aloud that they would have to leave—not now, perhaps not even in the next few years. But one day there would be an end to the Raj, which meant the end of the Empire.

  He would get a little taste of it a month later, when he accompanied Masood on an official tour to the south-west corner of the state. There had used to be a British cantonment in Lingsugur, but it had been abandoned in 1860, and only the relics of colonial occupation were left behind. It was oddly moving to wander through the ruins of old bungalows, catching the sound of ghostly conversations, or to touch the stucco walls of what was once a bandstand. The cemetery, too, carried the inscriptions of past lives, not all of them under the ground, but gone anyway—gone. No mourners came to remember the dead. No English left now; neither the language nor the people. It was curious how touching the vacancy was, when he didn’t especially care for what had filled it. Wind and weeds were the only things alive.

  * * *

  He had booked his passage home for the middle of January. His plan was to disembark in Port Said and spend a few weeks with Mohammed along the way, if the military situation permitted. Unrest and upheaval there had continued to simmer, breaking into outbursts of violence from both sides. The big concern, from Morgan’s point of view, was that the boat might not be allowed to dock.

  It had been arranged that Mohammed would come to meet him on board. He was working now in Port Said, but they might be able to spend some time travelling together. He was a father again—a daughter had recently been born—so that his family obligations were powerful, too, but there would be the chance of a few days without anybody else in attendance.

  As the boat entered the Suez Canal, Morgan was in an excellent mood. The voyage had been good, with few people on board and most of them pleasant company. A kindly purser had moved him from his first, shared cabin on the inside of the vessel to a charming outside one that he had to himself. From the porthole, as well as from the deck, he could see the delicate colours of Suez flowing slowly past, and take in its temperate air. More than anything, though, he was charged with the anticipation of seeing his friend in a day or two.

  The boat arrived early in Port Said. This was a new worry, because it was possible Mohammed didn’t know of the change in schedule and might not find him in time. But not long after they’d docked, there was a knock on his cabin door and he opened it, smiling.

  It wasn’t Mohammed; it was the purser, with a letter that had been delivered to the boat. When Morgan unfolded the single page, the familiar handwriting made his heart leap. But only for a moment. Mohammed wasn’t able to meet him, because he had fallen ill again. Morgan should come to Mansourah.

  * * *

  “I am very sorry, Forster.”

  “No, my dear fellow, it’s I who am sorry. What has happened to you?”

  “I don’t know. About two weeks ago, no, three, I received a great pain. Then I became weak and I was vomiting blood. I think it is the old sickness again.”

  “And how do you feel now?”

  “Because you are in front of me, already I feel much better.”

  But Morgan could see that Mohammed was very ill. He had lost so much weight that his ribs stood out starkly in his chest and his breath came with an audible wheeze. A little later, when he needed the bathroom, he could barely hold himself upright and had to lean on the wall for support.

  It didn’t make him proud later that Morgan’s first thought was a selfish one. Through the weeks of debauchery in Dewas, his imagination had frequently travelled over the sea to Egypt. What he’d done to Kanaya he wanted done to him by Mohammed, and in his mind he had dwelt often on this moment. But he could see in an instant that no more carnality was possible. His friend was hollowed out, a husk of his former self, so that it seemed a strong wind might blow him away.

  Then Morgan became very calm. He knew now with a clear certainty that Mohammed was dying. He also knew that he himself could survive it.

  Where had it come from, this new steadiness of spirit? When Mohammed’s illness had first showed itself, three years before, his reaction had been panic. His fear then was not so much that his friend might lose his life, but that he might lose his friend. Now, when that prospect seemed sure, it didn’t break him into pieces.

  He didn’t dwell on the future too much. It seemed more sensible, not to say helpful, to approach the matter practically. Money would make things easier, and that he could provide—although not in an unlimited way. Mohammed’s circumstances were dire: no job any longer, no income and no savings. His wife and some of her relatives were dependent on him, and his baby daughter was herself quite ill, in the hospital at the moment. Morgan had enough in the bank at home to look after him for six months, or perhaps a year. But he didn’t want to send a large sum, which he thought would soon be lost. It would be a better idea to find somebody reliable, living nearby in Egypt, who might be depended on to pay over a monthly allowance.

  What he also needed to do, quite urgently, was to take Mohammed to see a specialist in Cairo. So far he had been treated only by a local doctor who was, as far as Morgan could tell, a quack and a thief. But he didn’t know the name of any suitable person, and to get one he would have to speak to some of his expatriate friends.

  He went to Alexandria. He was away for a week and by the time he returned to Mansourah he had found somebody who would help with payments. Gerard Ludolf, who had been assisting him with research on Alexandrian history, was happy to be of use in this way. He also had the name of a doctor in Cairo who specialised in consumption, and had made an appointment to see him.

  This man was English and plump and round,
the embodiment of appetite and good health. Morgan introduced Mohammed by name, and nothing further was asked. But when the examination was over, it was to Morgan that the doctor turned, not to his patient. Even before he spoke, the news was visible in his face.

  “I’m afraid it’s what you feared,” he said.

  “Is there anything that can be done?”

  He shook his head. “Not very much. The disease is far advanced. A matter of months, perhaps even weeks. I’m sorry.”

  It didn’t seem possible that they could be sitting in a normal room, on a normal day, discussing such things. Not even Mohammed appeared concerned, while he studiously did up his buttons. So that it didn’t feel unnatural for Morgan to ask, delicately, “Will he . . . that is, will there be much suffering?”

  “Not necessarily.”

  The reply was really no reply at all, and through the hot vacancy in its wake the two men walked silently back to their hotel. Each was plunged in thought, and separate from the other. Until the Englishman lifted a hand and touched his friend on the shoulder.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Mohammed said. “I think he doesn’t know.”

  “I’m sure you’re right.”

  “He says it is consumption, but he doesn’t know. My doctor in Mansourah . . . ” And he began a complicated account of what that charlatan had told him, a story involving money and false hope.

  “Of course,” Morgan said, when he was done. “You are young, you have power. You will get better.”

  “Yes. And if I do not, that also doesn’t matter.”

  * * *

  Three weeks later, it was time to go. Mohammed accompanied him as far as the train station in Cairo, and as they pulled up outside in a carriage Morgan was murmuring distractedly about a parcel that he would send soon, with medicine and clothes and tins of food. It was easier—it always was—to speak about plans rather than feelings, but Mohammed cut him short.