4.
Burnes said this, or some of it, and Mohan Lal nodded and sucked on his pungent beedee.
‘He wants too much,’ Mohan Lal said. ‘Well, he wants everything, and that is too much.’
‘That is what I thought, more or less,’ Burnes said. ‘They said almost nothing to each other – I mean, no business was pursued. There is nothing to say, of course. He has come here, and he knows what we are thinking of, without our having to say anything. And he knows what his being summoned here means. What he does not know is what he is to say, so he sits like an ass and pretends to summon the Governor General and dismiss him, and gaze serenely over the tops of our heads in between. Lord, what are we doing?’
Mohan Lal smiled. ‘The Lion of the Punjab, and then the Ass of Ludhiana. Quite, quite. You think he has destroyed his chances of becoming a British hero?’
‘Auckland was certainly very unamused by the performance,’ Burnes said. Then he caught something in the way Mohan Lal hung fire. ‘You don’t agree.’
Mohan Lal stood up and went to the flap of the tent. There was no one outside to listen. Most of the camp, it seemed, had retired. ‘No,’ he said, turning. ‘No, I think he has probably not destroyed his chances, and I think he has assessed the situation well enough to know fairly precisely how badly he can afford to behave. Which is very badly indeed, although you and the Governor General have not quite realized this, yet. He is absurd, of course, as everyone knows. But he has had twenty years to brood over his neglect, over what happened to him, and to plan how he will behave when events turn his way. He is acting as he wants to, as he thinks best, because he feels that at some time soon, you will decide that you have need of him, and will do his bidding, because it coincides with your needs. You saw his manner; come, Burnes, think what plans have been growing in him during his years in exile in Ludhiana. And now he thinks – no, not that nothing will prevent him regaining what was once his, but that he could soon be beyond the opinion of the British, of the Afghans, of everyone. I am certain of what he believes, as certain as if I believed it myself. God made him King; men deposed him from his anointed place. Now men will make him King again. It is as things must be. Burnes, Burnes, you are tired.’
Burnes had yawned, hugely, involuntarily. ‘I am so sorry,’ he said. ‘I feel – not tired, in truth. I feel old, so terribly old.’
‘You are tired, I expect,’ Mohan Lal said. ‘A tiring thing, bowing before one emperor – but to bend the knee to two in one day! Even a fellow as fine and strong as you must find it so. A tiring thing, to bow and kneel and kiss the hand of the anointed one, and to listen to the meaningless compliments for hour upon hour.’
Burnes, all at once, was overwhelmed by Mohan Lal’s thoughtful kindness; it was true, he was quite drained of vitality, but no one in the camp ever exerted himself to inquire after another’s exhaustion. It was too universal a condition, and one which, surely, Mohan Lal must be intimately acquainted with. Burnes felt almost moved by the man’s solicitous care. Well, that was what came of having your country ruled by an alien and remote power, and seeing the best of your countrymen turned into servants about you; you learnt to see another man’s situation finely, clearly and whole, and remembered to inquire about it. And then Burnes was struck with shame; because he knew nothing about the man, knew nothing about his circumstances, his family, his history, his life, and it had never occurred to him that he might politely inquire.
‘I think you are right,’ Burnes said. ‘Yes, it must be the paying of compliments. That, and standing so straight for so long, of course. I start to pity the poor body-servants who surround us from the moment we rise to the moment we retire – I feel I know how they must ache, after having danced attendance on emperors the whole livelong day. But they, our servants I mean, they never seem to complain. Not that they would complain to us, that would hardly be expected, but they hardly seem to complain among themselves either. One hardly feels that they are dissatisfied, and yet their lives seem so hard. Yes, perhaps it is the paying of compliments which drains the vital fluid so.’
‘I think your servants are probably most heartily grateful for their lot,’ Mohan Lal said. ‘I should not compare yourself, talking to kings about matters of the utmost importance, with an unclean fellow who is delighted to be taken from his poor hovel and given food and bedding, and in exchange, all he is expected to do is clean the boots of Your Honour, whom he must regard as the kindest of masters. I truly think you have by far the more physically onerous task. The vanity of emperors is a bottomless well, which no man can ever hope to fill with the grossest and most fulsome compliments.’
‘Do you think, now, to speak frankly,’ Burnes said, ‘that these old kings believe what they are told? Or do they merely permit us to convey our appreciation as they accept treasures they can have no possible need for, because that is what the courtly form dictates? Auckland enters a tent, and says to the old King of Afghanistan that he has long desired to be admitted to the Presence, which is a lie, since I don’t think he gave Shujah-ul-mulk a moment’s thought until six weeks ago. He tells him he is powerful, which he is not, unless you count the whims Shah Shujah chooses to exercise over his little court, which largely amounts, I suppose, to deciding the colours of the Imperial flowerbeds at Ludhiana. He goes on to say that he is wise, when he is clearly an old fool who could not be trusted to pass judgement over a man who had stolen sixpence. And finally Auckland has to tell the old man, with a completely straight face, that he can now see for himself what all reports have suggested, that the King of Kabul is as beautiful as the day, when in fact he closely resembles a moulting crow held together with rubies. I present you with the encomium in the briefest synopsis; Auckland found it necessary to continue in this preposterous vein for half an hour. Now, my point is this: we only find it possible to convey these extravagant sentiments because we know it means nothing, and go through the customary gestures of obeisance because we would not otherwise be permitted to talk to the old fool of subjects we felt worthy of our attention. But does he know this? Why else would he condescend to listen to such cheap trash? Can he possibly believe it to be sincerely intended? Would he, in fact, like it all to be perfectly true?’
‘May I ask you,’ Mohan Lal said, ‘what he said in response to the Governor General’s gracious address?’
‘Well,’ Burnes said, ‘I was hardly listening, so badly were my feet aching. But it seemed to be another waterfall of nonsense, beautifully expressed, how powerful and wise and gracious the English were and old George handsome as the sun. The most ingenious flights of fancy, you know, but a meaningless stream of drivel, all things told.’
‘Come now,’ Mohan Lal said. ‘You believe all that, do you not? What is your objection to what the old man said? Are not the British extremely powerful, to rule this vast country? Are they not wise – surely, sir, you believe in the wisdom of the British rule, when placed beside the insane and unjust governments which would quickly arise again, were the British ever so foolish as to withdraw their administration? Is it so very extraordinary to regard the Governor General as a remarkably fine-looking man – somewhat dressy, I grant you, but handsome, decidedly handsome. Come, sir. What, precisely, do you object to in what Shah Shujah said? Do you not believe it all to be entirely true?’
Burnes was stuck. ‘Yes,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Yes, I suppose I do consider it to be well founded. Perhaps it is simply my Scotch distaste for any form of fulsome compliment. But surely you must see that he would have said it all even if none of it were remotely the case.’
‘And you would still have believed it,’ Mohan Lal said. ‘You would. There is no power in the world, even the cruellest and most arbitrary, which does not believe itself to be merciful, compassionate and wise, or would not listen with keen appreciation when it is described in such a way. Indeed, those are the qualities which we choose to emphasize when they are least apposite. We are men of the world, are we not? We both know that to seduce an intelligent woman, w
e comment on her beauty; to lay siege to a beautiful woman, it is best to compliment her on her intelligence. And so it is with rulers. To curry favour with the cruellest, we praise the quality of their mercy; the weakest and most vacillating like to hear of the strength and swiftness of their judgement. Those whose position is as fragile as a feather blown hither and thither by the wind, will always prefer those supplicants who arrive and tell them that their position is impregnably secure. Come now, Burnes-ji; you believe what you are told, because it is what you like to hear, and the princes of the East know this. They tell you what you most need to be told. And none of it may be the case, and all of it will be believed. Avidly believed. Drunk up, like water in the desert.’
Burnes sat in the warm flickering darkness. Mohan Lal’s eyes glittered at him, as if excited with his certain knowledge, and he felt something had been taken from him.
‘Well,’ he said lamely, ‘I shall certainly never listen to a compliment from you again.’
‘Yes, you will,’ Mohan Lal said, almost scornfully. ‘And you will believe it. Tell me – when I said to you, a moment ago, that even a fellow as fine and healthy as you would be tired after such a day, did you not believe what I said – believe it without a moment of doubt? Yes, of course you did.’
‘And you didn’t mean it?’
‘Ha. Of course I meant it,’ Mohan Lal said, brushing this aside quickly and unconvincingly. For a moment, the man seemed to look at Burnes as if at an inanimate object, as one might look at a sign in the street; not at what he was, but what he meant.
‘What are we doing here?’ Burnes said, almost to himself.
‘That, Burnes, I cannot tell you. I do not know why anyone leaves his house, to travel ten thousand miles, when all the poetry that has ever been written, all the poetry since the beginning of the world all tells us the single lesson that we would be happiest in our own homes, since that is where happiness is born, and where it lives. What poetry cannot answer is the question that follows from that, whether we men actually want to be happy, or whether we would prefer to be restless. In your case – in the English, excuse me, the British case – I would say that when you have gone home, when you are all old and thinking about what this adventure, this whole centuries-long adventure meant, what it meant to you … well, things do not always mean something, but perhaps your adventure, perhaps it meant something. You will sit at home and look into your fires and draw your Cashmire shawls about you, and think that you came here for one reason. Of course, now, you tell yourself all sorts of fairy stories – you are here to sell us your wonderful English goods, you want to set us free, you want us to grow up, you want to educate us and make us worship three gods instead of forty thousand—’
‘Only one God.’
‘I stand corrected, Burnes-ji, and I am sure your one God is much more sensible than ours, who are quaint, who have the heads of elephants and monkeys and have blue skin. They are all very good reasons to tell yourself at the time, but they are not, at the bottom, the real reason you came here. You came here not to make yourselves rich, not to make us better and Christian and clean and dressed in Bradford cotton. You believe all this, I know. But when you are old and tired and sleeping in a thousand years’ time, you will start to realize that you came here and took possession of what was not yours for one reason. To surrender it, to give it up. That is the only reason. Do you not know your Shakespeare, Burnes? Have you never seen The Tempest in your London theatres? Do you not think it strange that, so very long ago, before your English kings owned anything at all, your English poet was dreaming of giving it all up, of surrendering what was not yet yours? Of what never would truly be yours? You are not adventurers; you are all Prosperos, waiting for the day you can give it up, drown your book, and return nobly. We endure your presence, because we see that when you look at us, you know that we will take it all back one day. And you want us to. That desire is so strong in you, it makes you build an empire; because if you never had an empire, you would not have one so nobly to surrender. That, Burnes, is what you are doing here. You asked me, and you did not think that I had an answer. But I have an answer, and that is what you are doing here. And now you are tired, and I shall leave you.’
‘Come to Kabul,’ Burnes said. He was so tired, he spoke almost without willing it, as a man asleep still moves his limbs.
‘Kabul?’ Mohan Lal said. ‘Once more?’
‘Yes,’ Burnes said. ‘Once more. It may prove – well, I do not know what it may prove, but those are my instructions, and I want you by me. Come again to Kabul.’
‘Very well,’ Mohan Lal said. He seemed to have expected exactly this instruction. ‘We will talk tomorrow.’ He got up, gracefully salaamed, as if to a superior, and then he was gone, leaving Burnes to the dark, and the fire, and thoughts of the great wrong empires.
In the night which took hold between the fires, and the tents, there was a strange frantic movement. A small flurry of white jumped, and snarled, and lay still; then the movement was repeated, and repeated, and repeated. For a few minutes, the boy Bustan stood alone in the darkness, fifteen feet away, and tried to see what it was. It was some kind of animal, he could see that. It grew still. Bustan took a brand from the fire, and approached cautiously. There, slavering, looking up in pain, was a small white dog, its coat stained everywhere with thin yellow shit. It cowered away from the light. By it lay a fat long rat, dead and chewed by the dog. Bustan had no way of knowing it, but it was Emily Eden’s lapdog. Its name had been Pug. All Bustan saw was a small shitty dog, foaming and dangerous, which would bite. He retreated smartly. In its poisoned confusion, the dog saw a man, a hard painful flame, approaching and retreating. It seemed, the man, to pick something up, beyond the light the dog would not look at, and then, so painfully, to return, to stand there, unmoving, for a second.
Bustan shot once, and the dog fell immediately. The shot was heard all over the silent sleeping camp. The soldiers on guard, close by, heard it, looked at each other, and when no more shots followed, they continued their long night of watch. Bustan went back to his tent with his gun, never thinking that he had done anything but what had to be done. Night had fallen, and everywhere, now, under the blanketed hot moon, men slept heavily, and they did not dream.
THIRTEEN
‘I WANT PESHAWAR,’ Dost Mohammed said, all on a sudden, sitting up. ‘I want Peshawar. We shall have it,’ he said, correcting himself into the imperial plural. ‘We shall have what is Ours.’
He looked around him, shining with approval for his own resolution. Peshawar was the Emperor’s, there in the middle of the night. It was a part of the empire. And the British would help him recover the lands. That was his brilliant pre-dawn thought. They would take it back from the stinking faithless Sikhs, and give it back to him.
In the imperial bedroom, things were stirred a little by the imperial resolution. At the foot of the bed, the guards were rising from their nests of robes, flailing at their jezails, to fight off what must, surely, be an assassin. The Amir sank back in his bed. He had spoken aloud, thinking that Akbar his son was in the room with him. He had spoken, and Akbar, in that waking second, had been by him with his alert black eyes, listening closely to what his Amir had to say. But Akbar was not there: he was out in the high hills, riding through the night, unsleeping and brave.
Around him, there was no one: no one but his servants. The Emperor’s secretary slept on, oblivious of his Emperor’s call, in the long low cot. The guards went to wake him, a sullen resentful move. Outside, it was the hour before dawn. A nightingale sang on, pursuing its thousand tales in the starless clouded garden. The Emperor sank back, his marvellous mind, too, singing on and on and on, like an empty glass under a salt-wet finger. Peshawar shall be Ours again, he thought. It shall be Ours.
And the Dost slept, and while he dreamt, about the borders of his kingdom
His enemies clustered and took parley with each other and they dreamt too
Dreamt of taking a new jewel for their
new crowns and when they woke they boasted of their dreams
They said they would seize the city of Kabul for their crowns, and in the black cities they had built
In the black cities of Ind of Persia of Engelstan of Muscovy and worse
In the streets of the City of Kali the goddess of the godless in the streets of London and Qom and the city of Peter
And other cities beyond the mountain, beyond the mountains where no swallow flies
They talked of Kabul and thought by taking it they would come to rival it
That they would steal a nation and rival that nation’s greatness.
And the great Amir slept on, and knew of these plots and knew in his sleep
That their plans would come to nothing, their plans against the holy city, the God-anointed King
He knew this while he slept. And Akbar rode in the night
Rode through the King his father’s dreams. And Akbar rode into the high mountains
And looked out from the peaks at his enemies’ empty plans, and turned to his people.
And Akbar spoke, and this is what he
FOURTEEN
1.
IT HAD TAKEN ALMOST UNTIL MID-MORNING for the early mists to clear. The country, seen from this high point, was dimpled and rippled like a morning bedspread; the downs undulated with little pockets and valleys, each of which had kept hold of a white pond of thin white mist. An hour or two ago, the two riders had seemed to swim through thin bright cloud; now the September sun had cleared the air into a sharp hardness, as if of some mineral purity. The mist remained only in the pockets of the downs’ lower points. Even now, however, the mist, which thinned and shifted as they looked at it, had no solid contours, and while it so patchily lasted, it was all but impossible for the observer, perched high on a mound, to gauge over what expanse of land his view extended. Each hill was fringed, as they are in lower countries, by a line of trees; but no building or landmark allowed the eye to judge how far there was still to go. The trees, the patches of furze and gorse, and those otherworldly pockets of mist barely specified any distance or any shape. It could have been an ell of green and white cloth, on which the distant copses seemed the roughest darning, a cloth laid over an uneven surface, which at any moment might be pulled off again. The observer, resting now after his long ride, felt that it could be any distance at all which stretched before him. Whether it was a ten-mile stretch, or a short mile, or even a toy green landscape in front of the gaze could not be told; those might be pockets of cotton wool, down there, deceiving the eye. He felt that his gaze was being deceived, when it would be more true to say that it was not being given a great deal of help. Nothing in this whole helped to fix the distance, but the observers: two men dismounted from their horses, which now stood wearily chomping at the tight short grass. Half an hour ago, the whole country was obscured by mist; in half an hour, the whole country would be laid out clearly before him; but Stokes, standing when he would much rather be lying in a state of indecorous frailty on the damp ground, thought that his weak and trembling legs would be most unlikely to be able to endure much more time on a horse than that. He had been riding for hours, and he took a sideways glance at his companion’s burning vitality, undiminished since their dawn start, with envy and dislike.
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