The Friendly Ones

by Philip Hensher

  ‘Mother took the flag down,’ Sharif said.

  ‘Did she? Mother, did you? Never mind,’ Rafiq said. ‘It needs to fly, but –’

  ‘Well, Bina and Dolly,’ Nazia said. ‘It’s all very well saying that we would die for a flag, but it’s hard to volunteer Dolly to do the same.’

  ‘I’m sure Dolly would die for her country,’ Rafiq said. ‘No, I understand, I do. Sadia and Mahfouz don’t know when it’s going to happen, any more than we do.’

  ‘The Friend of Bengal …’ Nazia said, and with a big, uncomfortable, theatrical gesture reached to her side and swept little Aisha up into her arms, brought her over to her lap. Aisha had been nearly sleeping, and kicked out, her fists brought sleepily to her face in protest. Nazia kissed her little head, again and again.

  ‘I’m going out tomorrow,’ Rafiq said. ‘But I don’t think you should. And don’t let Sharif go to the university. There won’t be anyone there.’

  ‘My students!’ Professor Anisul said, overhearing this. ‘Education is the most important thing in life!’

  Father raised his right finger at Professor Anisul. It was his preface to making a point.

  6.

  Since Grandfather’s time, they had liked to move to the salon after dinner to continue the conversation. The children came for half an hour; then it was time for the little ones to go to bed. If there were guests, Sharif and his wife often stayed a while longer. When Sadia was a little younger, she had sometimes been encouraged to read out loud, and these days Bina and less often Dolly were sometimes asked to. Sadia had liked to read from Sandesh – her favourite author was Leela Majumdar – and the tradition had continued until it was their bedtime. You were not supposed to read it – the government had banned the magazine. But Mother had a friend in Calcutta who got it through to them. In the last year or two, Sandesh had started publishing detective stories about a genius called Feluda, and even Father enjoyed those. They were written by Leela Majumdar’s nephew, or so Mother had been told by her Calcutta friend, and even Father and Professor Anisul had been known to shake their heads and laugh ruefully over the ingenuity of the solution, some overlooked detail that only Feluda had been able to explain to his nephew, Topshe. Then you wondered how anyone, even Topshe, had been able to ignore the clue. It shone out from its surroundings, like a gun sitting on a polished table in a library.

  Even though there was a new Feluda story being read out tonight, Bina only had Dolly and one of the grandmothers as an attentive audience. The others had something they wanted to go on talking about. Bina half wanted to hear it, too. It was a great shame and, sooner or later, Bina knew that she would have to go back and read it to them all over again, but there it was. Only one of little-brother’s friends had come tonight. With his way of talking over everyone to contradict them, the words spilling over each other in excitement, Rafiq’s friend Dev reminded Bina of a naughty boy in her class at little school. Dev sprang up from time to time as he talked, running his fingers through his rough hair until it stood on end. His hands waved before he sank down again into the armchair. He seemed to want a blackboard to write on.

  ‘Yahya is gone,’ Dev said. ‘Now there is nothing left but to wait. The Friend of Bengal has declared independence of Bangla Desh –’

  ‘The Friend of Bengal has not declared independence of Bangla Desh,’ Sharif said, with impatience. ‘He was expected to declare it three weeks ago at the racecourse. But he did not. And he has not.’

  ‘The Friend of Bengal has declared independence tonight,’ Dev said, holding up the palm of his hand in protest. Rafiq looked at him, his eyes shining. ‘I am sure of it. And now the Pakistani has gone and thousands of Pakistanis are here to take his place.’

  ‘Where is the Friend of Bengal?’ Father asked.

  ‘I do not know,’ Dev said. ‘But one thing is certain …’

  Over in the corner, a flurry was taking place between the grandmothers. Nazia was keeping an eye on it; they liked to make sure that the little outbreaks of distress or need between Grandfather’s widows were quickly solved with the cup of tea that one wanted, the finding of the walking stick that the other needed to get up, the helping hand to walk to the bathroom. They were so small, the grandmothers’ needs, but they started with gestures of real distress. One was rubbing her hands, her face a study in anxious worry, the other listening to her tiny voice with no less worry. Bina was continuing to read, apparently not having noticed that she had lost her audience. Nazia went over.

  ‘Grandmother,’ she said, ‘is there something that I can fetch for you?’

  ‘There are men in the road,’ a grandmother said. She was the one whose anxiety was being tended. ‘There are strange men in the road.’

  The windows of the salon faced onto the back garden, and beyond that only the back garden of the house in the parallel street. It was as quiet as a garden could be. But asked the direct question, the grandmother grew distant, vague, a small smile. ‘Is she quite sure?’ she asked the other grandmother.

  ‘Husband told me,’ the first grandmother said. ‘Husband saw them. The men in the road.’

  Nazia left it and returned to her armchair. Dev was giving his own account of what Sheikh Mujib had said at the racecourse, and what the now famous Four Students had demanded of him – these were the ones who had raised the flag at Dacca University. When he had finished his by now polished account, Nazia said, quite casually, ‘Has anyone been outside the house in the last hour or two? Ghafur or Khadr or anyone?’

  Her mother-in-law stared at her, reproving and baffled, but Dev somehow understood that she had come by a piece of information. He got up and left the room, walking towards the front door of the house. He made a gesture of stilling to Rafiq – sit or at ease or remain at your position, soldier – that would have made anyone who saw it understand that, in the last resort, there existed a relationship of command and obeisance between the two. Dev was Rafiq’s officer. All student naughtiness was gone. Dev turned off the electric light in the hall as he went. The telephone began to ring and, without hesitating, in the darkness, he picked it up. ‘Hello,’ he said, and then ‘Yes, it’s me.’ He stayed silent, his head bent, his half-illuminated hand reaching for the pen and pad of paper always kept by the telephone in the hallway. He put down the telephone without saying goodbye to whoever it was. Father and Mother and Sharif and Nazia and Professor Anisul had been drawn to the door of the salon.

  ‘That was Iqbal,’ Dev said. ‘He is working at the InterContinental – the foreign correspondents are all there. Carrying bags, the last four weeks. There have been Pakistani troops there. They have torn down all the flags, the flags of Bangla Desh. Are there men in the streets now? Don’t turn on this light.’

  He swiftly went through the front door in the darkness of the hall, almost closing it behind him. Khadr had been drawn out too; he stood with Ghafur at the door of the kitchen, waiting. They stood in the near-darkness silently for what seemed like minutes. Behind the family, in the salon, a quiet girl’s voice could be heard going on: ‘“… but the trouble with you, Topshe,” said Feluda, “is that you will always jump to conclusions. If, like me, you examine all the possibilities, and the situation from every conceivable angle, you will soon discover that the gold snuffbox was far from an innocent object. It was, in fact, placed there by –”’

  ‘Quiet, Bina,’ Father muttered, turning back. Out there in the dark between the house and the front wall, Dev was moving stealthily. Nazia suddenly remembered that there was a watering can out there, left on the tiles. She had noticed it that afternoon, when she had taken Aisha out in her arms to admire the jasmine, just now in flower, to greet the chickens. It was a heavy metal watering can, not so heavy that it could not be kicked over by a passing foot to crash on the tiles. Out there it was nearly total darkness; the front of the house was heavily shaded by the strangling banyan tree, its many downward growths forming a screen against what little light came from the road. Dev was walking out into the garden,
and could so easily kick over the can. But, she consoled herself, he must have passed it by now. They waited in silence.

  The front door opened, quickly, quickly, and the figure closed it behind him, turning the lock so as not to make any clicking noise. He stood in the dark. It was only when he spoke, so quietly, that she could rid herself of the thought that this was a Pakistani soldier, just the size of Dev, who had taken his place and was standing there to carry out his orders. But he spoke and it was Dev. He had been on the longest journey, to the front wall of the house and back again.

  ‘I saw,’ he said, his voice lowered. ‘There are men in the street. They were running, a platoon with guns, padding as quietly as they could. It is time for me to go.’

  ‘No,’ Mother said. ‘Tonight, you must stay here.’

  Dev did not bother to respond to this.

  ‘I must come with you,’ Rafiq said.

  ‘No,’ Dev said. ‘If you have a working telephone line you are going to be needed here. Keep them all safe and bolt the doors. When I come back I will sleep on the terrace. Look for me in the morning.’

  He was through the door, pulling his scarf up over his head and shutting the door behind him. In only a second Nazia heard the noise that she had foreseen but done nothing about, the watering can being kicked over with a crash. She could have warned him. It could not have been more than ten seconds after the sound of the can falling on the terrace that a great industrial burst of sound broke out, it seemed only yards away.

  It was only Father who understood how little time there might be. He turned to Nazia. ‘Take the girls down to the cellar, and Mother too. Go. Behind the packing cases, sit in the dark. Make no sound, whatever you hear. Go. You,’ he spoke to Khadr and Ghafur, clutching themselves as they understood that they had heard the death of the honoured guest, out there in the road, ‘you have heard nothing and you understand nothing and these are the people who are still in the house.’

  But there was no more. Half the household sat in the salon, in darkness, and half in the cellar for eight hours. At some point somebody tried to turn on a light, but the electricity had failed, or been cut off. They had to assume that the telephones had been severed, too. Towards the end of the night Dolly started crying, for water, but silently, and Nazia comforted her. She had finished crying at the thought of her daughter, Aisha, left sleeping in her room. She hoped husband had had the sense to take her with him. When they went up the stairs, they did not know what they would find. In fact the others had gone to bed, reasoning that they might as well be roused from there to be killed as from the salon. Nazia recognized the characteristic style of assessment of Professor Anisul in this decision. Rafiq, in his nightwear, went out and onto the roof. He came back in five minutes. The city was on fire. Heavy black smoke hung in the air – last night, he explained, they had seen tracer bullets in the sky, black explosions of flak, and the heavy thumps of tank fire, not at all far off. That immense noise that had burst out at one point in the night – it must have come from the HQ of the East Pakistan Rifles in Road Number Two. The women looked at him: down there, they had heard only a general rumble, a continuous one. Rafiq thought that one blaze might be coming from the bazaar, but it was huge, huge. Outside on the road, in the middle, lay a body lying face down. It had been left there by whoever shot it, as some kind of warning. ‘It could have been worse,’ Rafiq finished. ‘They just saw a man running in the road, and shot him. They did not investigate where he had come from. We have been lucky.’

  ‘Rafiq, how can you? That was –’

  ‘We have been lucky,’ Rafiq said obstinately, and in his deliberate style emerged the clarity of feeling of the soldier. He was only seventeen. In a moment he turned on his heels and went into the kitchen to find something to eat, some tea to drink. ‘Nobody is to leave this house until I say so. The telephone is still cut off, I presume.’

  7.

  Dolly had been deputed to look after Aisha, and they walked about the house, hand in hand. It was dull and tiresome not to be able to walk outside, not even in the garden, but there was plenty to look at inside. She showed Aisha the photograph of Father, just qualified from university, and Mother and her three sisters in what looked like white, but was really pink and palest blue, so young and pretty. The bench in a park they sat on was a seat in a photographer’s studio. She showed her the ivory elephant, which made Bina shudder, an elephant carved out of its own teeth or tusks. She showed her the special dish for sweets, with the ivy and the irises curving round in silver, and the picture of the devil with burning eyes in Daddy’s copy of Milton. Dolly was showing Aisha all of this when with a great flop Aisha flung her fists down, throwing the book on the floor, and began to grizzle. One of the grandmothers was in the room. She looked up in surprise.

  ‘Come here, girls,’ she said. ‘What’s wrong?’

  It was rare that either of the grandmothers spoke to any of the children, and the children paid them little attention. They yawned and slept and ate and muttered to each other and slept again. Aisha clung to Dolly, and with some difficulty Dolly led her over to the grandmother. She smelt clean but aniseed-ish, her hands soft and pale as she took theirs.

  ‘When I was a girl …’ she said. ‘Do you want to hear a story? I can tell you a story, nice nice story.’

  They agreed.

  ‘Father was an advocate,’ she began. ‘And Father had an important case. Went all the way to London and the Privy Council and the House of Lords. It happened in Jessore, village near Jessore. A man in the village was famous. He could eat! Everyone knew the glutton in this village. If there was wedding and the glutton was invited, then they had to make more more food. If there were a hundred guests, then food for a hundred and thirty. He ate it all!

  ‘Then one day the zamindar heard of this man. He was so famous! He said, “I am going to challenge the glutton to a contest. I am going to supply him with more food than even he can eat.” Because zamindar very rich, you understand.

  ‘So the day is named and the glutton comes forth in a new white kurta. And a whole sheep is roasted and a whole ox and a cauldron of rice and many many other things. The man he starts to eat, it is afternoon, perhaps four o’clock, eating so steady careful. The people in the next village, they hear what is happening, and they walk and run to see the glutton. One family is about to ride on the donkey but then the father says, “No, no, if we take donkey, perhaps glutton will eat donkey when he has finished with the ox and the sheep.” The man finishes the sheep, licks bones clean! Whole sheep! And he starts to eat the ox, calm, patient, steady.

  ‘Now the zamindar starts to worry. Because after the sheep and the ox there is not much that is prepared for the glutton to eat. Zamindar sends out order that another sheep should be killed and roasted. But the village is not so happy about this. Now the glutton has finished the sheep, half finished the ox, has been eating steadily for twelve hours. It is now late at night, but still hundreds of people gathered, watching the glutton eating eating eating, watching rich zamindar looking worried. The elders of the village go off into a house next door, and start to discuss. “This is enough!” some of them say. “The zamindar has proved his point, the glutton has shown his capacity. Enough.” But others say that the village is famous now, and the glutton is famous now, and he should go on while he still can. One of them just starts to say that they should talk to zamindar, get him to see reason, when there is big noise from outside and screaming. They rush out.

  ‘The glutton had eaten and eaten and now his body can do no more, and the noise they all heard, it was his stomach exploding. There is the remains of the glutton painted all over the inside of the room where he was eating, the remains of cow and sheep and two-three cauldrons of rice as well, and the glutton is dead. Glutton splashed all across walls, splash, splash, splash, splash, splash. The policeman is there, policeman from next village, and he stands up solemn very solemn. He says to zamindar that he is under arrest for murder of glutton because you cannot allow man to
be killed like that.

  ‘Court case follows, very long and many people. Hundreds of people saw the glutton eat eat eat. People cooked for him, all of them witness in court. Grandfather a junior in case. Did zamindar murder him? Was food the weapon? Was it wrong to give the man food when should be obvious will kill him? Or was it man’s responsibility, glutton’s responsibility for self? Well, finally court decides, and zamindar guilty of manslaughter. Like handing a drunk man a full bottle whisky, judge says. Knows he would drink it, knows that it kill him. There is appeal and further appeal, and then to Privy Council and House of Lords. Zamindar found guilty manslaughter. Famous, famous case and Grandfather junior counsel. In the end zamindar say as he go to prison, doesn’t care, was fine fine entertainment.’

  The girls had their mouths open; they had been listening. Without meaning to, Bina had cast her eyes around the room when the glutton had exploded and his stomach painted across the walls. She saw steaks, globules of rice, meat and blood and a neat fried aubergine painted across these walls, hurled by the explosion. That had been how it was. Dolly and Aisha stood, their eyes enormous, waiting for the grandmother to go on. But the story was finished. Dolly dropped her niece’s hand, and went on her own to think on the sofa, the blue one covered with yellow cushions where Mother liked to sit. Mother was in the kitchen, it sounded like. She was trying to work out how much food there was, and Ghafur was disagreeing with her. You could hear their voices rising, their voices falling, trying like everyone else not to make much noise in Father’s house. Bina hoped it would not go on for much longer like this.

  CHAPTER TEN

  1.

  The war was a month old when a new name started to be heard. Almost certainly, in those days, the best thing to do was to behave as if everything mentioned was familiar to you. A new name was mentioned, and everyone nodded, or made no sign, as if they understood completely what was being referred to. So it was impossible afterwards to know who it had been who had first said anything about the Friendly Ones.