The Mulberry Empire

by Philip Hensher

  That certainty was confirmed when, three days later, they encountered each other again in a dry little village on the road to Kabul. The leader, this time, was on his own, and outside the stables, he bowed elaborately to Burnes and introduced himself in perfect French, explaining rather unconvincingly that it was unwise to be familiar with strangers in the desert. His name was Vitkevich, and he said, perfectly simply, that he was bearing gifts to the Shah of Persia. Burnes did not challenge him; he knew this was not true. The Russians were going to Kabul. The man sniffed constantly throughout their brief conversation, and was formal, correct, cold, apart from one moment. In his hand Burnes held a French novel, with which he was whiling away the evenings. Vitkevich suddenly stopped, his attention seized, and took Burnes’s hand. ‘Balzac,’ he said. ‘I adore Balzac.’ And then, as if fearing that he had said too much in admitting his literary tastes, he bowed again and was gone.

  Burnes had not seen him again, but had learnt that he was in Kabul now, and knew of the daily, fruitless applications of his messengers at the great gate of the Bala Hissar. That was no surprise; he had immediately sent the intelligence of the Russian party to all corners of the world, to see what could be made of it. A few weeks after his arrival in Kabul, word had arrived from the court of the Shah; the British envoy to Persia had mentioned, in passing, that he understood that the Tsar was sending gifts. The Shah, from the envoy’s report, had all but fallen off his throne in amazement, and hotly denied knowledge of any such mission. ‘Although we cannot doubt,’ the envoy wrote, ‘that the Shah is receiving the attentions of the Russian empire in other ways …’ By the time Burnes finally had this report, it was redundant; Vitkevich and his men had turned up in Kabul. Still, he was concerned. His obsession with Vitkevich’s presence, perhaps, was the reason he was so little interested in the otherwise curious information that there was an Englishman living in Kabul, and why he greeted Masson in the market with something not far from irritation.

  ‘There is an Englishman in Kabul,’ Burnes said, laying the cards aside with a heavy sigh. There was nothing more important than being a good loser, even on this monumental scale.

  ‘I know,’ Mohan Lal said absently, whether because of his predictably orderly hand, or for some other reason. ‘I heard about him.’

  ‘I met him today,’ Burnes said. ‘His name is Masson. He seems remarkably well informed on various interesting matters.’

  ‘Masson,’ Mohan Lal said. ‘What, did you go to visit him? I wondered who he was, and what he could be doing here.’

  ‘No, he approached me in the town,’ Burnes said. ‘He seemed to be waiting around in the market, as if he were trying to meet me, to be frank.’

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Burnes admitted. ‘We hardly talked.’

  ‘Burnes-ji, what a poor spy you make,’ Mohan Lal said. ‘To discover nothing about a man – hmm. You must try harder.’

  ‘I expect so,’ Burnes said. He could not quite account, now, for his lack of interest in so surprising a presence. ‘Of course, he might be valuable. The Newab told me that he has lived here for some years, as well as some scurrilous stories about him which hardly bear repeating. He thought that he had come here from India, which seems likely, though he was rather vague about it. I got the impression that the Amir had made it his business to find out all about him and then rather lost interest when he turned out to be nothing very remarkable. Perhaps I should go and talk to him.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Mohan Lal said. ‘He is some sort of scholar, people say.’

  ‘The Newab said he was a poet.’

  ‘Well, that is how they describe any solitary person with no visible occupation, though why even they should believe an English poet would come to this remote place … One thing that they all agree on is that he asks questions incessantly about all manner of things, which to me suggests that he might be worth talking to. You have really acquitted yourself lamentably, Burnes.’

  ‘I know,’ Burnes said contentedly. ‘Very well, I shall go and pick his brains over.’

  8.

  The next day, snow began to fall for the first time that year. It settled heavily, and when Masson left his house in the morning, a weight of snow fell in where it had drifted against the door. He always loved this first fresh snow of the year in this high city, and as he went heavily through the streets, it had seemed to work a transformation on the contours of the city. Everything was rounded, smoothed, and turned into the same substance, and the city was made clean. In the silent muted morning, the Kabul of the day before seemed not just transformed, but made entirely new, and it was a different city Masson wandered through. The noise of the streets was deadened; the smells of shit and spice quite gone, and nothing was here instead except the clean silence of a snowy day in which the loudest noise was the crunching of Masson’s own boots through the crust, and the intangible oxygen flavour of snow when you stuck out your tongue into the clear empty air. The heavy clouds were clearing above, driven by a high wind, and the still streets blazed under the brilliant blue.

  Masson walked the streets for an hour or so, without stopping to call on any of his habitual cronies and shopkeepers, thinking of nothing very much. It was good to walk in this suddenly unfamiliar city, and everything, from his cold wet feet to the freezing bite of the air when he breathed in, was a pleasant sensation to him. He felt happy for no reason, and even his wet socks seemed absurd and nice to him today. Like a child, he carried out pointless little experiments as he went, and the curious Afghans watched him hop along to leave a line of left-footed prints, or stand for two minutes at the street corner, pursing his lips to blow the thinnest stream of steam into the air with mild, forgiving amusement. Finally, he turned tail and went home, rubbing his hands under his armpits, pink and grinning with the cold.

  He was just taking off his socks in his upstairs study when the widow Khadija sidled in. Beneath her veil, there was the groping gesture, like two cats mating in a sack, which was her usual greeting to Masson.

  ‘The foreigner is here,’ she said in her guttural muffled voice.

  ‘The boy Qasim?’ Masson said – since to Khadija, Qasim, whose family were Qizzilbash, and originally from Herat, were not to be considered as the same as her.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘No, the other foreigner, the …’ she shrugged, another big shifting gesture inside the cloak as her powers of description failed her.

  Masson put on a pair of sandals and a dry coat, and went down to the large room at the back. Burnes was standing there, his back to the door, his arms awkwardly gripping each other behind him, his whole attitude one of mild impatience.

  ‘Good morning, sir,’ Masson said in English. Burnes turned, and bowed deeply. ‘I am honoured by your calling on me.’

  ‘Good morning to you, Mr Masson,’ Burnes said. Why it was shocking that Burnes should so bluntly acknowledge that his name had registered, that it was important enough to remember, Masson did not know, and yet it was so. Masson called for tea, and they sat down. There was something rather unreal about the whole encounter, Masson thought. The silence of the snowy city seemed to be concentrated in this room and to lie between them; neither, it seemed, quite knew how to start on exploring what they already knew of each other. Suddenly Masson was aware that Burnes had asked him a question.

  ‘Sir?’ he said.

  ‘I was merely wondering how you come to be in this place, sir,’ Burnes said patiently.

  ‘Curiosity, sir,’ Masson said. He felt disinclined to share his history with this fellow. ‘I am a clergyman, and travelled in curiosity, and my curiosity led me from place to place, and finally I find myself very far from home, but profitably so. My interests were originally in the ancient history of the Greeks, and to examine the question of Alexander’s campaigns in the region, but since then, my studies have led me to very many—’

  ‘It is unusual for a clergyman to wear Company boots, I believe,’ Burnes said coolly.

  Masson
was thrown; and he looked down in bemusement at the bazaar sandals on his feet.

  ‘I noticed when we talked yesterday,’ Burnes expanded. ‘In the market. Your boots, sir.’

  ‘You are observant, sir,’ Masson said. ‘Company boots? You mean, a soldier’s boots? I had no idea. How interesting. The fact is – the fact is – I acquired them in a most out-of-the-way place – I acquired them in, in Peshawar on my travels, in the market there. Company boots? How they came to be in such a place I do not know. I saw only boots of European manufacture, sturdy, very useful, and acquired them there. Not being a soldier—’

  ‘Not having been a soldier,’ Burnes said.

  ‘No, indeed, I was unfamiliar with their exact origin, and did not trouble to inquire. What poor fellow must have surrendered his boots, and in what manner, I do not care to think, but they are a good fit, a good fit. Tell me, sir – I heard there is now a Queen in London.’

  ‘Yes, there is,’ Burnes said briskly.

  ‘I somehow heard,’ Masson said.

  ‘A great curiosity to a Mussulman, I suppose,’ Burnes said. ‘Now, you must see the world pass through this place, situated as you are.’

  ‘It is certainly less isolated than might be thought,’ Masson said, not quite seeing the end of the conversation.

  ‘You must see persons of very many nations, here, I expect,’ Burnes said.

  ‘Yes, we do,’ Masson said.

  ‘Hindus? Chinese? Europeans?’

  ‘Sometimes, yes, sir, yes, Europeans.’

  ‘Russians?’ Burnes said, and there was nothing in his tone to indicate that he had reached the centre of his conversation, but all the same, Masson knew it. Russians? Burnes’s eyes focused, seriously, on Masson, and his posture did not alter, but now, Masson knew, with the sensation of being alone with a snake, that now, whatever he said, Burnes would listen to it.

  9.

  The court had no doubt in the matter. The Amir was going to have someone killed, and soon. Who it would be, they did not know; what they would have done, they could not imagine. But, without discussing the matter, every one of them recognized the signs, and waited in a state of continuous terror. None of them left. They did not dare. But the unspoken rage of their Amir was unmistakable, and would end in the way it always ended. They examined each other’s sleepless faces and tried to see the face of a victim.

  The Amir sat in his throne room and his face was clouded with concentration. None of them would raise the subject, but they knew exactly what it was. Over there, the Sikhs, beating at the gates of the empire, stealing lands, moving forward. Over there, the Shah of Persia at the gates of Herat. The Amir’s tranquillity was quite gone. He was a man under siege, and if he could do nothing, then at least he could satisfy his feelings by having a prince of the court executed. And the court waited to see who it would be.

  The news from Herat arrived in pieces, unpredictably. Whatever Dost Mohammed’s feelings about the ruler of Herat, it was and always had been an Afghan city. Now, it was walled up and besieged by the Persians, moving in. The Emperor received the news, and said nothing. The court did not raise the question, and they all knew what they thought; that the holy city would fall to their murderously perfumed neighbours as Peshawar had done; that from either side, the invaders would move in, would drive forward, and Kabul would fall. Whom it would fall to, they did not know or care. It was all one, and a gilded foreign prince would rule in the Bala Hissar, and they would all be dead.

  Dost Mohammed’s thoughts went around and around, and in his sleep and in his waking moments, his marvellous mind paced two great empty halls, echoing with his pain and shame and misery. And the two halls of his thought had names. The first was named Peshawar. The second was named Herat. He thought, and thought, and thought, and nothing could distract him. He took no action; he made no orders. The only glimmer in his dark mind was that something had come to Kabul from outside all this, something that could help him. The British, surely, could save Herat from the Persians, and drive them back from the borders of the Amir’s empire; they, surely, would help him to regain what was his, Peshawar. He made a single, infuriated gesture with his hand and the court scattered, grateful that it would not happen today. He sent for Burnes.

  Burnes knew, too, of Herat; he knew of the siege through the occasional report from the envoy to the Shah, and from the stories filtering through to Kabul. The envoy could be of no help, apart from one interesting suggestion; he believed, although he could not be sure, that the siege was being pursued with the support and aid of Russian arms. This was not implausible, and, as Mohan Lal said, the information could greatly strengthen their position. If Burnes was painfully aware that under no circumstances could he offer what the Amir so plainly wanted, the offer of British help against his neighbours, he was at least reassured that, if need be, the Russian presence outside the walls of Herat could be demonstrated. Vitkevich, still languishing in the house of the Newab Jubbur Khan, would stand no chance at all of being received at the Bala Hissar; he would be lucky, if it came to that, if he escaped from Kabul with his life.

  ‘I have received a letter from a traveller present here,’ Dost Mohammed said. They were seated in a small room, one of the Dost’s private apartments. It was always hard to understand what kind of purpose each room in the palace served, since all were so simple, and little distinguished what might be a dining room from the stables from a bedchamber. What was needed was brought in and out, and each room was otherwise bare and empty. The only rooms with obvious purpose that Burnes had seen were the throne room and the armouries. Still, he thought that this might be a sort of robing room. The Dost reached forward with a formidable-looking piece of parchment, grandly sealed in blue.

  Burnes took it, bowing from the neck, and looked at it. It had the appearance of the most formal communication imaginable, and his eyes flicked through the imposing and lavish Persian encomiums at the beginning to the matter.

  ‘It appears to be a letter from the Tsar of Russia,’ he said guardedly. This, it seemed, was to be their first conversation about the Russian presence in Kabul.

  ‘Yes,’ Dost Mohammed said. ‘That is what it appears to be. I learn from this letter, to my considerable surprise, that you are not, it seems, the only Europeans here. This was presented yesterday, and from it, I discover that there are some gentlemen here from Russia, who say that they come from the Russian Emperor. Now, I wonder what to make of this?’

  Burnes looked at Dost Mohammed, but he was giving nothing away. His face was serenely blank. The Russians were lodged in the house of the Newab Jubbur Khan, in the house of the Amir’s brother, at the orders of the Amir. Despite their best efforts, they were not received into the Presence, of that Burnes was sure, but the Amir certainly knew all about them. The Amir was testing him, in some unfathomable way.

  ‘I cannot say whether these gentlemen are what they appear to be,’ the Amir went on. ‘Can this be what it seems? I would be most grateful for your opinion.’

  ‘I think I will need to study it, Pearl of the Age,’ Burnes said; and at least the Amir was trusting him with the knowledge of this communication.

  ‘Very well,’ Dost Mohammed said. ‘What manner of country is Russia?’

  Burnes girded himself up for the familiar inquisition, to acquit himself as well he could. It seemed as if Dost Mohammed had, for these last weeks, been saving himself for this subject; his inquiries about the dress of Englishwomen had hidden his concern for what directly mattered to their present concern, the demands the Amir wished to make of Britain. He had not mentioned the Russians before now, or referred to the events taking place at Herat; and it was to this that he turned towards the end of their morning conversation.

  ‘It must be a matter of great concern and grief to Your Majesty,’ Burnes said, referring to the siege.

  ‘That is so,’ Dost Mohammed said. ‘The loss of so great a jewel as Herat would wound the heart of every Afghan, and I, whose grief is greatest of all, feel helpless and
friendless as a new widow.’

  ‘The actions of the Persian Shah are of great concern to Her Majesty’s Government, and we cannot condone any such action taken against the territories of Afghan princes. You are assured that the Shah of Persia has been informed of our displeasure in the strongest terms.’

  ‘And yet, what can I, alone, do?’ the Amir went on. ‘A poor, helpless country cannot resist alone the might of the Shah of Persia.’

  ‘The situation of Your Majesty fills the heart of every Briton with sympathy,’ Burnes said. He suddenly felt quite exhausted, and stuck at this point like a soldier in a ditch.

  Dost Mohammed rose, and Burnes followed suit, standing still, his hands pressed together in the gesture of supplication while the Amir moved about the room. ‘Sympathy may not be enough,’ he said. ‘No, sympathy will not save my lands.’

  ‘Your Majesty is right to think that the love between our nations is deep and inexhaustible,’ Burnes said. ‘But whatever my personal feelings on the matter, I am required to remind the Pearl of the Age that my nation cannot enter a course of action which will lead to the destruction of the friendly relations we have established elsewhere. Your Majesty, we are not a warlike people, and we cannot take sides in a dispute like this; it would have the most disastrous consequences, for us and for you. Your Majesty, we thoroughly deplore the actions others have taken against you, but further than that we cannot go.’